{"book":"adl0957","page":271,"text":"218\n\nthe delicate carving of the Persian inscriptions, and its soft green\npatina are beyond praise.\n\nThere is no more glorious period in the history of Muslim\narchitecture than that of the Timurids of the fifteenth century.\nIt has been properly called the \"Renaissance of Art in the East\".\nThis brilliant renaissance with its centre in Herat was not\nsurpassed by a similar \"Rebirth\" in Europe which followed the\nDark Ages. The greatest painter of this period was Kamaluddin\nBihzad, who worked at the Court of Sultan Hussain (1469-1506\nA.D.), and painted two portraits of the Sultan, which are\ngenerally regarded as his master-pieces. Similarly, his miniatures\nmost of which are preserved in the British Museum, have world-\nwide fame.\n\nBesides paintings and miniature, other fine arts also attained\nhigh perfection under the patronage of the Timurids. Never\nwere the glazed tiles and faience mosaics made in greater perfec-\ntion, or employed to greater advantage. The main features of\nthe style are the huge-vaulted arches, the melon-shaped domes\nand the minarets, all faced with vari-coloured tiles and calligraphic\nornamentations. Of palaces, and other royal residences,\nfew examples remain, and only a few minarets, shrines, a mosque\nand a college are all that have survived the ravages of time.\n\nIt was the Timurides who gave the first real impetus to\nminiature painting. During the reign of Shah Rukh (1405-1447\nA.D.), Baisunqar Mirza founded an academy in Herat in which\nthe arts of painting, book-binding, especially miniature-painting,\nand calligraphy were zealously studied and encouraged. This\nacademy attained its most flourishing period under Sultan Hussain\nBaiqara, patron of the most famous miniaturist and painter,\nBihzad.","chars":1736,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00271.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/271","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/271","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}