One of my least favorite classes is art history. It is not that the class itself is bad, it is just that I have discovered I just don’t like art history. It doesn’t capture my attention. But yesterday was one of the coolest days ever.
I went to class like normal, not expecting much. We were going to have the manuscripts lecture. I was marginally excited about this topic because I have always liked books and illuminated Bibles, Korans, etc. But I was just expecting more slides and a half-interesting lecture. But instead of walking into the lecture room, we were led into the manuscripts department. There was this old man sitting at a big table with maybe half a dozen or so book. If you want to picture this man, just think of an old man who looks like he had been dealing with manuscripts all his life. We all sat down around this big table beginning to realize how cool this was going to be.
In front of us, he showed books that were anywhere from 300-1300 years old. The first book he showed to us was one of the earliest surviving copies of the Koran. It was written on deer hide and was kept in a padded box. But then he started going through all kinds of books. He mainly focused on Mughal illuminated Korans and histories. The books had original Mughal miniature paintings. These books were 400 years old and absolutely beautiful. We were looking at some of the most famous Mughal miniatures in front of us. He even let us touch the pages (we were stunned at this… in fact we were stunned by how he wasn’t using latex gloves and how he non-chalantly flipped through the pages with his thumb and not tweezers).
But these books were amazing. They were painted by the equvilant of
It may sound lame, but it was awesome. It was like Celtic manuscripts or medieval European Psalters. I really enjoyed it.
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