The Path of Pilgrimage

One and the same path is shown here at once in three states, not one after another but all at once. Below, along a pale stony road, a caravan moves: a pilgrim on a donkey, his hands folded at his chest, keeps a silent dhikr right there in the saddle; behind him on a camel is a pious elder, and ahead, riderless but laden with baggage, runs a camel — as though faith drew the caravan farther than the visible guide. Travellers on foot trudge after them, each in his own reverie. A little higher, on a green meadow, is the opposite pole of the same path: the sama, the sacred dance of the dervishes. An elder in green whirls so frenziedly that his turban has flown from his head and lies on the ground — and the turban here is no trifle, it is one's face, one's rank, the very 'I' that in the dance is the first to be let go. Beside him a dervish in orange has raised his hands in a trance, musicians drive on a doira and two wind instruments, urging the whirling on. At the top of the hill is the third state: a patterned tent where three men converse unhurriedly, resting from the road, and nearby a saba of water hangs from a tripod. Labour, frenzy, and repose — three different answers to one and the same call. It took seven months to bring all three together on a single sheet without losing a single face on this crowded road. About the work The miniature belongs to the genre of the multi-figure allegorical composition, widespread in the painting of Maverannahr of the 16th–17th centuries, where pilgrimage (ziyarat) served as an occasion to show at once several facets of the spiritual path on a single sheet. The scene of the sama (the sacred Sufi whirling) appears here for the first time in the collection — a subject rare for intimate sheets, of direct, bodily ecstasy rather than its metaphor. The margins, executed in gold painting on a sandy ground, are peopled with cranes, deer, hares, and foxes — the master's habitual device of unfolding around the central scene a separate, quiet world of nature. The miniature was created by the master Davlat Toshev, for whom the pilgrim's road became an occasion to show that one comes to a single goal by the body, by the mind, and by its complete renunciation. Details Base: Natural handmade Bukhara silk paper (90% silk, 10% cotton) Technique: Tempera, watercolour, natural plant and mineral pigments, gold leaf (23 carat) Unique piece