The famed poet Baki became known as the “sultan of poets” during his long career and his poems were often included in anthologies and his Divan was copied widely. Despite the numerous copies of the Divan of Baki and the inclusion of his ghazals in most anthologies of poetry, illustrated copies of the Divan of Baki are scanty. Among these examples (British Library Or. 7084, Bibliothèque nationale de France Supp. turc 356, Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art T. 1959, and three detached folios coming from a single manuscript: Metropolitan Museum of Art 45.174.5, 25.83.9, RISD Museum 17.459), the seven paintings in the Harvard Divan are unique for their emphasis on the poet and their close connection to the poetry of Baki. These paintings reflect both on particular motifs of the lyric poetry and its mood. Rather than marking the ends of individual odes, or the beginning of a new set of ghazals––as is the case with the majority of illustrated divans––the paintings of the Harvard manuscript interact in a more fluid way with the text. As the Harvard manuscript has not been studied previously, this article provides a preliminary analysis into its paintings and their relationship to the text.  

The manuscript contains seven almost full-page paintings that come from the same hand. The first painting represents a youth carving a mountain and an older man shown in profile, with the distinguishing feature of a prominent nose. The ghazal that accompanies this painting begins with a description of spring and ends with the effects of love and of the beloved on the lover. The final couplet compares the poet with the legendary character Farhad, of Khusraw and Shirin of Nizami. The following painting also shows a close relationship to the text where it makes a specific reference to drinking as the painting shows a youth and an older man in a lush garden setting. The next painting similarly depicts the poet (again with his prominent nose) and the youth. This painting, like the previous one, follows the visual convention of juxtaposing the fashionable youth and an old man as the beloved and the lover, respectively. In addition to this visual convention, the composition appears to draw from the breakline couplet: “It is the place of pleasure and desire, let us dance / Let us shake the arches and porticoes, come hither.” The poet/old man appears in a pose redolent of dance in the painting. The following painting also takes a line from the ghazal and elaborates on one of its motifs. In the painting, a tall youth holds a bow and arrow. Facing him is a middle-aged man who bares his chest as the youth takes aim, echoing the line above the painting: “My heart, struck many a time, I held towards you.” Instead of the target on the left, the middle-aged man tears open his garment at the chest for the youth to take aim at. The next painting again depicts the poet, a youth, and in this case, a dervish wearing a tall, brown cap. In the poem, the poet is urged to expend his breath on gratification and pleasure. The inclusion of a dervish in this painting is perhaps a visual reminder to the poet. The final painting, smaller than the other six paintings, is the most straightforward painting of the manuscript—it represents two youths seated outside, and as a whole it encapsulates the literary universe of the ghazal. Such scenes are frequently found in illustrated non-narrative texts. Finally, meant to appear in the first section of the Divan (in the ode to Murad III), but placed haphazardly in the manuscript, is a representation of the arrival of the Safavid prince Haydar Mirza. 

This manuscript, taken within the corpus of illustrated divans urges us to look for possible options and paradigms for illustrating non-narrative texts. In dealing with a narrative text, the tendency has been to match the painting with a story, reading the “narrative painting” together with the text. When it comes to non-narrative texts, we can expect certain motifs, such as lovers in a landscape, indoor or outdoor gatherings, games of polo, hunting, etc. that may use a certain word or phrase from the text as a source of inspiration. In the context of lyric poetry, the different options we have of studying the book as a whole and studying how paintings may deviate from “expected forms of decoration” allow us to think further about illustrating a non-narrative text.