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Illustration from

'Book of Fixed Stars' (Kitāb suwar al-kawākib al-ṯābita)
by ‛Abd al-Rahman ibn ‛Umar al-Ṣūfī,
dated 1009-10 (Bodleian Library, Oxford, manuscript Marsh 144)

Page 69 - Bootes

click to see the constellation Bootes from the opposite direction

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Referenced on pp.200-201, Moya Catherine Carey, Painting the Stars in a Century of Change: A Thirteenth-Century Copy of Al-Ṣūfī’s Treatise on the Fixed Stars (British Library Or. 5323) (Thesis University of London, 2001).

The drapery style continued in a less adulterated form in Iran itself. So much is clear from the 1009-10AD al-Ṣūfī manuscript, and a contemporary silver dish, attributed to early eleventh century Iran or Afghanistan [1009-10 An Oxford al-Ṣūfī Bootes, early eleventh-century silver bowl- PLATES 70A, 84].¹⁰⁸ Together, these two artefacts demonstrate the continuity of this distinct Iranian style up to the eleventh-century. Three engraved and repoussé figures resemble the 1009-10 AD Oxford illustrations in almost every detail of costume.¹⁰⁹ This shows that the style was still current when al-Ṣūfī's treatise was illustrated for the first time, although it was soon to disappear from general decorative use. Beyond that period, the style occurs in certain al-Ṣūfī images. It has been suggested that the drapery style was exclusive to silverwork, and that al-Ṣūfī's constellation-images were similar because they had been derived from an engraved silver celestial globe. There is an early eleventh-century anecdote, which reports that the astronomer al-Ṣūfī traced out his constellation-images from the surface of a celestial globe. Al-Bīrūnī (973-1048AD) recites a story about al-Ṣūfī tracing images from a globe onto thin paper, told to him by his friend, the geometer Abū Saʿīd Ahmad b. ʿAbd al-Jalil al-Sijzī (c.951-c.1024AD).¹¹⁰ This anecdote is often cited as proof of the link between al-Ṣūfī's illustrations and the images on celestial globes.¹¹¹ Such a link seems rather obvious even without the anecdote - which may be a misconstruction of a method which al-Ṣūfī himself describes, in his treatise on the construction and use of the astrolabe.<sup>112

108</sup> State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, inv.S-499. Cf. also two other early Islamic silver bowls: a 658AD silver bowl from Khwarazm (British Museum OA 1975.5-16.1: PLATE 79A), and a seventh-century AD (?) silver bowl (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; reproduced in Wellesz 1959 fig.38).
¹⁰⁹ All three figures wear knee-length v-neck robes, wrapping across the body, with a round-necked undershirt beneath. Bell-shaped gathers fall from the waistline and form along the skirt-hem, and a small gather flares out to the side on two of the figures. On the sleeves, drapery-folds collect at the wrist. The ruler's robe consists of a short skirt over a longer one. The main figure wears a Sasanian style crown.
¹¹⁰ Wellesz 1959 p.19. Wellesz assumes that the celestial globe used by al-Ṣūfī was made of silver, supporting this by reference to a recorded description of a large silver globe made by al-Ṣūfī for his patron ʿAdud al-Dawla, which was exhibited in Cairo in 1043AD. She also quotes Al-Bīrūnī, who wrote that large celestial globes were rare, heavy and costly, and assumes that these were "obviously made of silver" (Wellesz 1959 p.19).
¹¹¹ For example, Ettinghausen and Grabar state that al-Ṣūfī's images are linear in style because they were traced from a celestial globe (Ettinghausen & Grabar 1987 p.250).
¹¹² See Chapter Two for a list of al-Ṣūfī's works.