Comparing the style of some of the painting designs in a manuscript of the Hezar o yek shab [Thousand-and One Nights] with the pictures in lithographic print of the book Romuz-e Hamzeh

The illustrated manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights kept at the Golestan Palace is the latest illustrated royal manuscript and one of the most exquisite of all Persian manuscripts, which was produced during the Qajar period. It was completed under the directorship of Abu al-Hasan Ghaffari, Sani’ al-Molk (d. 1867) in collaboration with thirty-four painters, illuminators, book-cover makers and binders within a span of seven years (1853-1860). Although the names of some of the artists active in the project are known to us, the painter’s name has always been heavily clouded by the overwhelming name of Sani’ al-Molk, the master painter at Naser al-Din Shah’s court.
The present descriptive-analytic study is based on this hypothesis that the unknown painters of the manuscript Thousand and One Nights were chosen from among the prominent artists belonging to other artistic fields, and that if there is no mention of their names in the manuscript under discussion, it is possible to identify them through the structural similarities between the lithographically printed pictures and the paintings in the aforementioned manuscript. This study seeks to find out if the painter of the Thousand and One Nights manuscript could be one of the painters of the lithographic print of the Romuz-e Hamzeh.The similarities between the paintings of the Romuz and those of the Thousand and One Nights seem to substantiate the hypothesis that Mirza Hasan Esfahani was one of the painters of the manuscript The Thousand and One Nights.