The Memoirs of Babur

Baburnamah : a 16th c. autobiographical, illuminated, Persian / Islamic manuscript (copy), courtesy of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

The manuscript miniatures below are cropped: please click through to the full-sized, full-page images hosted in Walters' Flickr set.

The Fall of Samarkand

The battle of Sultan Ḥusayn Mīrzā against
Sultan Masʿūd Mīrzā at Hiṣṣār in the winter of 1495

The siege and battle of Isfarah

Ḥamzah Sulṭān, Mahdī Sulṭan and Mamāq Sulṭān pay homage to Babur

Foray to Kuhat (Kohat)

Date Trees of Hindustan

Babur, during his second Hindustan campaign, riding a raft from Kunar back to Atar

The battle of Panipat and the death of Sultan Ibrāhīm, the last of the Lōdī Sultans of Delhi

Babur entering Kabul

Babur and his warriors visit the Hindu temple Gurh Kattri (Kūr Katrī) in Bigram

Babur and his party hunting for rhinoceros in Swati

Animals of Hindustan: monkeys, rodents and a peacock

"Recognized as one of the world’s great autobiographical memoirs, the Baburnamah is the story of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), who conquered northern India and established the Mughal Empire (or Timurid-Mughal empire).

Born in Fergana (Central Asia), Babur was a patrilineal Timurid and matrilineal Chingizid. Babur wrote his memoir in Chaghatay Turkish, which he referred to as Turkic, and it was later translated into Persian and repeatedly copied and illustrated under his Mughal successors.

The present copy in Persian, written in Nasta'liq script, is a fragment of a dispersed manuscript that was executed in the 16th century." {very slightly edited: PK}

Walters manuscript W.596 (Memoirs of Babur or Baburnamah) is available from the Walters Art Museum website or from their Flickr set.

Follow along on Twitter: Walters Art Museum and Will Noel (Manuscript Curator). Thanks Will! [Also see Will's great blog, Parchment and Pixel, where he features items of interest from the Museum].

The Walters Art Museum's online collection of manuscripts and rare books includes one hundred and forty Islamic works; or see the list: The Digital Walters.

Previously: arabic || illuminated

Neapolitan Cephalopods

I Cefalopodi!

UPDATE: The following quote relates to the author of a different volume

"Adolf Naef (1883-1949) was a Swiss zoologist and palaeontologist, famous for his work on cephalopods and systematics.

[He] studied at the University of Zurich, under the guidance of Arnold Lang, a former Professor of Jena University and close friend of Ernst Haeckel*. Naef visited and worked in Anton Dorn’s Zoological Station in Naples, Italy in 1908, studying the squid Loligo vulgaris, the subject of his dissertation.

Naef returned to the Naples Zoological Station in the mid 1920s to study cephalopods, publishing a two-part monograph in the Station’s 'Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neapel und der Angrenzenden Meers-Abschitte' ('Fauna e Flora del Golfo di Napoli') series, which formed the basis for his two short but significant monographs on systematic theory. In 1922 he became Professor at the University of Zagreb, and in 1927 was Professor of Zoology at the University of Cairo."

'I Cefalopodi' is hosted by the Biodiversity Heritage Library on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution.

The overall series from Naples is dated 1896 (presumably when it began) and this mid-1920s monograph (Vol. 35) on cephalopods features about thirty lithographs, most in black & white. (The digital book consists of only illustration plates)

UPDATE (Sep. 2011) I am indebted to Carlo C who emailed to advise the following:

"Actually the book they are from is not monograph n.35 by Naef, but rather the 1896 monograph n.23 by Giuseppe Jatta.

The author of the magnificent color and b/w plates you posted is Comingio Merculiano (1845- 1915), a professional watercolor painter hired in 1885 by prof. Anton Dohrn as in-house illustrator for the Naples Zoological Station.

He has been one of the best scientific illustrators of all times and this book on cephalopods is probably his masterpiece."

UPDATE II: (Sep 2011) The Biodiversity Heritage Library blog featured 'I Cefalopodi' in its Book of the Week.
Perhaps via; I don't quite recall. Click through on the images above to see them the right way up!