Our works point to us : Album making, collecting, and art (1427-1565) under the Timurids and Safavids

The dissertation examines the album $(muraqqa\sp{c})$ as a collecting practice. Albums constitute sites for the theorizing of art, and their study offers an opportunity to reconstruct the internal workings of an art tradition. Previous scholarship focused on the albums\u27 contents to develop a taxonomy for Persianate painting, but no single example has been examined as a total system. Little is known about the albums\u27 place and date of formation or method of assembly, nor do we know much about their life history since their original creation. A codicological examination was, therefore, the only means to establish their history as objects, and to trace their original shape and scope. This aspect of the research is presented in four catalogues. In its five chapters the dissertation discusses the problematics of album making. First, a growing consciousness of an art tradition is demonstrated by discussing the collection of calligraphies and paintings, and their arrangement in albums in which master-pupil relationships are evident. Second, in light of this awareness and new introspection, a genre of narrative preface developed in which is elaborated a language for criticism and a canon of makers and methods. Third, by the middle of the sixteenth century album collections had become a well-established format in which art history was presented as a written narrative and as a compilation of works. Lastly, while the albums under discussion vary greatly in content, aesthetic, and intent, they are all united by a concern for the preservation of the process of making art. The dissertation has defined this process as the stroke of the pen or brush. The preservation of the stroke, and not of the paper support, allowed the subsequent album makers to engage in an interaction with works of past masters, including gilding and reformatting. The collection of art in this culture engages in a process whereby the compiler becomes an author, enhancing rather than diminishing the value of the collection as a whole