Abstract:
In this paper an early 14th century copy of Mathnawi al-Ma’nawi illuminated manuscript (Inv. No. M. 1006) located
in the collection of the National Archive of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Kyrenia, will be introduced. The manuscript,
originally a part of the manuscript collection of Sultan Mahmud Library, Nicosia, is a copy including only the
fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of the work within one binding, and the first three chapters are missing. The existing chapters
are inscribed at different dates between 1320-1330 and compiled together in a binding in 1360.
The Mathnawi al-Ma’nawi, written by Jalaladdin al-Rumi (d. 1273) in 1263, is a Persian philosophical work, composed in
six chapters, about 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines, that has a significant place in Islamic Sufi tradition. The first illuminated
copy of this work is believed to be the one which is today kept in the collection of Konya Mevlâna Museum (No. 51).1
Publications relevant to the illuminations of this manuscript realized by Zeren Tanındı is giving the date of the completion
of the work in the year 1278. Accordingly, this particular copy has been inscribed by a calligrapher, named Muhammed
bin Abdullah el-Konevi el-Veledî, a disciple from the close circle of Mawlana, and illuminated by the illuminator Muhlis
bin Abdullah el-Hindî.2
In this copy, the first three or four pages of each six chapters that are without any text are richly
illuminated, while the opposite pages that included the prefaces and headings of each chapter are also richly illuminated.
All these illuminations are designed in different shapes like an enclosed frame, a full page plate or oval medallion forms.
They are filled in with interlacing geometrical forms as well as arabesques (rumîs) and palmettes. Furthermore, the margins
of the illuminated pages are also decorated with illuminated rosettes. The dominant background colour of these illuminations
is gold which is mostly used in two different tones. Moreover, red, white, green and lapis lazuli are the preferred
colours for the designed motifs. It is clarified that the illuminator Muhlis designed this first Mathnawi copy according to
the decoration programme of a Qur’an copy (Chester Beatty Library, Is 1466) which had been also illuminated by him in
the same year.
