State document: T-S Ar.38.110

Description

Verso: State document. In Arabic script. Large script, chancery hand, wide space between the lines. Only the first 4 lines and a tiny piece of the 5th line are preserved. Conveys praises for the addressee and then offers the sender's services in any kind of craft ("... an yakhduma bi-kulli ʿināyatin marḍiyyahū min kulli ṣināʿati..."). An attempt has been made to wash off the ink. Seems most likely to be a decree sold as paper and reused, or else a courtier who wrote the prescription. Seems to find a parallel (with some variants) in a letter of the famed Buwayhid-era calligrapher Ibn al- Bawwāb (d. 413/1022?) as contained in Yāḳūt al-Ḥamawī al-Rūmī’s (d. 626/1229) Muʻjam al-udabāʼ (ed. I. Abbas, 5: 2001). al-Rūmī’s source for this letter is the poet, calligrapher and scribe al-Ḥasan b. ‘Alī al-Juwaynī al-Kātib (“the Scribe”) (d. 586/1190) who settled in Egypt sometime during the early Ayyubid period. (Information from Zain Shirazi).