CATEGORY
Small Project Grant
START
2024
STATUS
Active
ACRONYM
OMEN
Disentangling the narratives of the Falnama (Book of Omens) in the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam
The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam holds 35 loose pages of a Falnama (Persian): a Book of Omen (inventory number: WM-71803-*, fig. 1). Falnamas are illuminated manuscripts that were used in large areas of the Islamic world from the 14th century onwards. The pages functioned as a tool for personal or political decision making by reading of the omen on a certain page. Worldwide, only five large illuminated Falnamas are known. The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam houses a sixth Falnama which is described as “produced in 1580, India” at an auction house in London in 1986. However, this attribution has been questioned by international experts due to differences in stylistic elements, the use of language and its unknown provenance. With material analyses we hope to aid in the disentangling of the narratives of the Falnama. By provenance research, the circumstances under which the Falnama was brought to Europe will be explored, taking into account colonial power relations. By combining provenance and novel material-based research techniques, the interdisciplinary team will unravel the objects biography and the artisans workshop palette, which can be used to research other falnama in the future.
Fig. 1 (left) Al Ar-Rida (Sjah of Khorasan), de Waterpeople and the Demon, Falnama folia 10 of 35, WM-71803-10 (middle) The Sun, folio 2, WM-71803-2 (right) Day of Judgement, folio 30, WM-71803-30, Collectie Wereldmuseum Rotterdam.
Preliminary material research by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) indicates that several painting alterations and conservation treatments have taken place. The OMEN research aims to disentangle the physical layers of each page using high resolution photography and multi-spectral UV-Vis-IR imaging (with VSC8000 and Phase One Rainbow, fig. 2). Technical imaging and state-of-the-art material analysis, such as RAMAN, FTIR, and MA-XRF will be performed in the laboratories of the RCE in Amsterdam and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. The research will focus on materials and techniques applied to produce the Falnama, its conservation history, transcription of the texts and owner stamps (fig. 3). The material analyses will be directed by the interdisciplinary research team of conservation scientists, curators, provenance researchers, codicologists and conservators during a two-day international round table meeting, where preliminary results of the first material study ever done on a Falnama will be shared and discussed with renowned scholars in the field of Iranian, South Asian and Ottoman manuscripts. The participants involved will be committed to an open data approach, in which sharing information can benefit researchers and communities worldwide.
The OMEN project will bring back the focus towards the object, its context of production and its (re-)making. This is a shift in focus from an object that suited a predefined museological narrative in the 1990’s resulting in stereotyping the Islam, into a narrative that originates in the object, which aims to contribute to the decolonization of the Wereldmuseum.
Fig. 2 Multi spectral imaging of folio 22, detail WM-71803-22, Collectie Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (Photos VSC 8000, RCE).
Fig. 3 (left) Transmitted light with IR with 20 visible seals and (right) VIS photo with corresponding locations, folio 4, WM-71803-4, Collectie Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (Photos with VSC 8000, RCE).