Գանձարան [Gandzaran (Collection of poems)] - Lot 3

Գանձարան [Gandzaran (Collection of poems)] Ottoman Empire, 15th-16th century Incomplete Armenian manuscript on paper, 12 fols. written on oriental paper and 2 unwritten on three-moon watermarked paper. 23 to 25 lines per page, text in bolorgir script in black, red and carmine ink, and ornate initials in erkatagir. Double foliation, in Western and Arabic. On the flyleaf, old auction label stating "lot 105. Charagan ou Hymnaire (in Persian)"; traces of a library label; handwritten inscriptions in ink "Arm. L" and "n° 23" and "F." in gummed pencil. Sewn in a period oriental tan morocco chemise, decorated with a central orientalist cold-stamped fleuron on a black-tinted basane patch, double framed with cold-stamped roulette and fillets. (Wear, stains, minor restorations and worn binding). 26 x 17.5 cm Provenance: former public sale, late 19th-early 20th century, lot 105; Public auction, Maîtres Robert Juge and Vincent Gérard-Tasset, Hôtel des Ventes d'Angoulême, July 10, 2003 The present manuscript contains extracts from a single gandzaran (collection of sung poems), now incomplete, the remaining parts of which are bound in disorder. The poems are accompanied by musical notation (neumatic). Several poems are acrostic, forming the authors' names, such as krikor and mkrtitch. These poems are all identifiable in manuscripts from the same period. This type of collection reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries. Comparison with the Armenian paleographic album makes it possible to date this manuscript most probably to the 15th century (Michael E. Stone, Dickran Kouymjian and Henning Lehmann, Album of Armenian Paleography, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 2002).