In Muslim cultures, words are used not only to communicate but to decorate. Because it is through writing that the Qur’an is transmitted, scripts in the Arabic alphabet were devised and perfected to be worthy of divine revelation. On this account, calligraphy became the most important art form regardless of the text. This concern with beautiful writing extended beyond the use of pen and ink and to non-Arabic-speaking peoples whose languages are written in Arabic script, such as Chaghatay Turkish, as here.
This exquisite calligraphy, rendered in the nasta‘liq script, was not written with a pen but was cut from sheets of colored paper and meticulously pasted onto the page, which has gold-flecked borders. This remarkable type of calligraphic paper cutout, or découpage, is known as qit‘a. It is one of several such pages in the collection (see M.73.5.599c-d, M.73.5.599e-f, and M.73.56), which are from a partially dispersed manuscript of the collected poetry of the last great ruler of the Timurid dynasty (1370−1507), Sultan-Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469−1506). His court at Herat was the preeminent Persian cultural center of its day. In this instance, however, Sultan-Husayn chose to compose his poetry in his Turkic mother tongue.
