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delicate and broad, and I was thrilled by the veined side of his wrist. When I

was young, I would take an apprentice child’s hand into my palm and, before

telling him how to hold the brush, I’d gaze with affection into his sweet,

frightened eyes. That’s how I looked at Black. Reflected in his pupils, I saw the

flame of the candle he held aloft. “We miniaturists are brethren,” I said, “but

now everything is coming to an end.”

“How do you mean?”

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I said, “Everything is coming to an end” like a great master who longs for

blindness, having devoted his years to a lord or a prince, having created

masterpieces in his workshop in the style of the ancients, having even ensured

that this workshop had its own style, a great master who knows, whenever his

patron lord loses his last battle, that new lords will come in the wake of the

plundering enemy, disband the workshop, tear apart bound volumes leaving

the pages in disarray and belittle and destroy what remains, including the fine

details that he long believed in, that were of his own discovery and that he

loved like his own children. But I needed to explain this to Black differently.

“This illustration is of the great Poet Abdullah Hatifi,” I said. “Hatifi was

such a great poet that he simply stayed home while everybody else rushed out

and toadied up to Shah Ismail after the king took Herat. In response, Shah

Ismail personally went all the way to his house on the outskirts of the city to

see him. We know this is Hatifi, not from Bihzad’s rendering of Hatifi’s face,

but from the writing beneath the illustration, don’t we?”

Black looked at me, indicating “yes” with his pretty eyes. “When we look at

the face of the poet in the painting,” I said, “we see that it could be a face like

any other face. If Abdullah Hatifi were here, God rest his soul, we could never

hope to recognize him from the face in this picture. However, we could do so

relying on the illustration in its entirety: There’s something in the manner of

the composition, in Hatifi’s pose, in the colors, the gilding and the stunning

hand rendered by Master Bihzad that at once indicates the picture is of a poet.

Meaning precedes form in the world of our art. As we begin to paint in

imitation of the Frankish and Venetian masters, as in the book that Our Sultan

had commissioned from your Enishte, the domain of meaning ends and the

domain of form begins. However, with the Venetian methods…”

“My Enishte, may he rest in eternal peace, was murdered,” Black said

rudely.

I caressed Black’s hand, which rested within my own, as if respectfully

stroking the tiny hand of a young apprentice who might one day indeed

illustrate masterpieces. Quietly and reverently we looked at Bihzad’s

masterpiece for a time. Later, Black withdrew his hand from mine.

“We passed quickly over the chestnut horses on the previous page without

examining their noses,” he said.

“There’s nothing to them,” I said, and turned back to the previous page so

he might see for himself: There was nothing extraordinary about the nostrils of

the horses.

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“When shall we find the horses with peculiar noses?” Black asked like a

child.

But, in the middle of the night, toward morning, when we found Shah

Tahmasp’s legendary Book of Kings in an iron chest beneath piles of various

shades of green watered silk and drew it forth, Black was curled up fast asleep

on a red Ushak carpet, with his well-formed head lying on a velvet pillow

embroidered with pearls. Meanwhile, as soon as I laid eyes upon the legendary

tome again after so many years, I quickly understood that the day had only

just begun for me.

The legendary volume I’d seen only from afar twenty-five years ago was so

large and heavy that Jezmi Agha and I had difficulty lifting and carrying it.

When I touched the binding, I knew there was wood within the leather.

Twenty-five years ago, upon the death of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent,

Shah Tahmasp was so elated to be finally rid of this sultan who’d occupied

Tabriz three times, that along with the gift-laden camels he sent to Süleyman’s

successor, Sultan Selim, he included a spectacular Koran and this volume, the

most beautiful of the books in his treasury. First, a Persian ambassadorial

delegation three hundred strong took the tome to Edirne where the new

sultan spent the winter hunting; after it arrived here in Istanbul along with

the other presents carried on camels and mules, Head Illuminator Black Memi

and we three young masters went to see the book before it was locked up in

the Treasury. Just like the Istanbulites who would rush to see an elephant

brought from Hindustan or a giraffe from Africa, we hurried to the palace

where I learned from Master Black Memi that the great Master Bihzad, who’d

left Herat for Tabriz in his old age, hadn’t contributed to this book because

he’d gone blind.

For Ottoman miniaturists like us who were astonished by ordinary books

with seven or eight illustrations, looking through this volume, which

contained 250 large illustrations, was like roaming through an exquisite palace

while its inhabitants slept. We stared at the incredibly rich pages with a quiet

pious reverence as if beholding the Gardens of Paradise that had appeared

miraculously for a fleeting moment. And for the following twenty-five years we

discussed this book which remained locked in the Treasury.

I silently opened the thick cover of the Book of Kings as if opening a huge

palace door. As I turned the pages, each of which made a pleasant rustle, I was

overcome by melancholy more than awe.

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1. Mindful of the stories suggesting that all the master miniaturists of

Istanbul had stolen images from the pages of this book, I couldn’t give my full

attention to the pictures.

2. Thinking that I might chance upon a hand drawn by Bihzad in some

corner, I couldn’t devote myself wholeheartedly to the masterpieces that

appeared in one of every five or six pictures (how decisively and with what

grace did Tahmuras lower his mace upon the heads of the demons and giants,

who later, in a time of peace, would teach him the alphabet, Greek and various

other languages!).

3. The noses of horses and the presence of Black and the dwarf prevented

me from surrendering myself to what I saw.

Naturally, I was disappointed to find myself observing more with my mind

than with my heart, despite the great luck of having Allah, in His munificence,

grant me the chance to have my fill of this legendary book before the velvet

curtain of darkness descended over my eyes—the divine grace bestowed upon

all great miniaturists. By the time the light of dawn reached the Treasury,

which had gradually begun to resemble an icy tomb, I’d gazed upon each of

the 259 pictures in this superlative book. Since I looked with my mind, allow

me once more to categorize, as if I were an Arab scholar interested only in

reasoning:

1. Nowhere could I locate a horse with nostrils that resembled what the

wretched murderer had drawn: Not among the variously colored horses that

Rüstem encountered while pursuing horse thieves in Turan; not among

Feridun Shah’s extraordinary horses which swam the Tigris after the Arab

Sultan had denied him permission to do so; not among the gray horses

sorrowfully watching Tur’s treachery in beheading his younger brother Iraj, of

whom he was jealous because their father, while doling out his territory, gave

the best country, Persia, and far away China to Iraj, while leaving only the

western lands to Tur; not among the horses of the heroic armies of Alexander

that included Khazars, Egyptians, Berbers and Arabs, all equipped with armor,

iron shields, indestructible swords and glimmering helmets; not the fabled

horse that killed Shah Yazdgird—whose nose bled perpetually as a result of the

divine punishment for rebelling against God’s fate—by trampling him on the

shores of the green lake whose restorative waters eased his affliction; and not

among the hundreds of mythical and perfect horses all drawn by six or seven

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miniaturists. Yet, there was still more than one entire day ahead of me in

which to examine the other books in the Treasury.

2. There’s a claim that has been a persistent topic of gossip among master

illuminators for the last twenty-five years: With the express permission of the

Sultan, an illustrator entered this forbidden Treasury, found this spectacular

book, opened it and by candlelight copied into his sketchbook examples of a

number of exquisite horses, trees, clouds, flowers, birds, gardens and scenes of

war and love for later use in his work…Whenever an artist created an amazing

and exceptional piece, jealousy prompted such gossip from the others, who

sought to belittle the picture as nothing but Persian work from Tabriz. Back

then, Tabriz was not Ottoman territory. When such slander was directed at

me, I felt justifiably angry, yet secretly proud; but when I heard the same

accusation about others, I believed it. Now, I sadly realized that in some

strange way the four of us miniaturists who’d looked at this book once

twenty-five years ago ingrained its images into our memories, and since then,

we’ve recalled, transformed, altered and painted them into the books of Our

Sultan. My spirits were dampened not by the mercilessness of overly

suspicious sultans who wouldn’t take such books out of their treasuries and

show them to us, but by the narrowness of our own world of painting.

Whether it be the great masters of Herat or the new masters of Tabriz, Persian

artists had made more extraordinary illustrations, more masterpieces, than we

Ottomans.

Like a lightning flash, it occurred to me how appropriate it’d be if two days

hence all my miniaturists and I were put to torture; using the point of my

penknife I ruthlessly scraped away the eyes beneath my hand in the picture

that lay open before me. It was the account of the Persian scholar who learned

chess simply by looking at a chess set brought by the ambassador from

Hindustan, before defeating the Hindu master at his own game! A Persian lie!

One by one, I scraped away the eyes of the chess players and of the shah and

his men who were watching them. Flipping back through the pages, I also

pitilessly gouged out the eyes of the shahs who battled mercilessly, of the

soldiers of imposing armies bedecked in magnificent armor and of severed

heads lying on the ground. After doing the same to three pages, I slid my

penknife back into my sash.

My hands trembled, but I didn’t feel so bad. Did I now feel what so many

lunatics felt after committing this strange act whose results I encountered

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frequently during my fifty-year tenure as a painter? I wanted nothing more

than blood to flow onto the pages of this book from the eyes I had blinded.

3. This brings me to the torment and consolation awaiting me at the end of

my life. No part of this excellent book, which Shah Tahmasp had completed by

spurring Persia’s most masterful artists for ten years, had seen the touch of

the great Bihzad’s pen, and his excellent rendering of hands was nowhere to be

found. This fact confirmed that Bihzad was blind in the last years of his life,

when he fled from Herat—then a city out of favor—to Tabriz. So, I once again

decided happily that after he attained the perfection of the old masters by

working his entire life, the great master blinded himself to avoid tainting his

painting with the desires of any other workshop or shah.

Just then, Black and the dwarf opened a thick volume they were carrying

and placed it before me.

“No, this isn’t it,” I said without being contrary. “This is a Mongol Book of

Kings: The iron horses of Alexander’s iron cavalry were filled with naphtha and

set aflame like lamps, before being set against the enemy with flames shooting

from their nostrils.”

We stared at the flaming army of iron copied from Chinese paintings.

“Jezmi Agha,” I said, “we later depicted in the Chronicle of Sultan Selim the

gifts that Shah Tahmasp’s Persian ambassadors, who also presented this book,

brought with them twenty-five years ago…”

He swiftly located the Chronicle of Sultan Selim and placed it in front of me.

Paired with the vibrantly colored page that showed the ambassadors

presenting the Book of Kings along with the other gifts to Sultan Selim, my eyes

found, among the gifts which were listed one by one, what I’d long ago read

but had forgotten because it was so incredible:

The turquoise-and-mother-of-pearl-handled golden plume needle which the

Venerated Talent of Herat, Master of Master Illuminators Bihzad, used in the act of

blinding his exalted self.

I asked the dwarf where he found the Chronicle of Sultan Selim. I followed

him through the dusty darkness of the Treasury, meandering between chests,

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piles of cloth and carpet, cabinets and beneath stairways. I noticed how our

shadows, now shrinking, now enlarging, slipped over shields, elephant tusks

and tiger skins. In one of the adjoining rooms, this one also suffused with the

same strange redness of cloth and velvet, beside the iron chest whence

emerged the Book of Kings, amid other volumes, cloth sheets embroidered with

silver and gold wire, raw and unpolished Ceylon stone, and ruby-studded

daggers, I saw some of the other gifts that Shah Tahmasp had sent: silk carpets