The Sleeping Dervish

At the foot of a colossal pomegranate, whose branches bend under the weight of countless fruit — an image of abundance so complete that the tree might well be called a tree of paradise — sleeps a grey-bearded dervish. His head rests on his folded arms, his face serene: the body is given over to sleep, while that which truly stays awake in a man has gone off to contemplate other bounds, not visible here. Around him life does not fall still: in the very heart of the crown a nest is woven, a blue bird feeds its nestlings, unaware of the old man asleep beneath it. Three hoopoes are not mere passing guests but sentinels on different tiers: one on the left branch, one on the right, the third close to the ground — as if the righteous man's sleep were guarded at once from above and below. A striped cat sits by the brook and gazes at the birds spellbound, without a single hunter's movement — it is not a ruler's order that subdues it but the very peace flowing from the sleeper, as if holiness spread further than words and turned into the very air the animals breathe. Nearby, curled into a ball, sleeps a small furry creature — as though it had taken the man's sleep upon itself. By the water ducks swim, indifferent, like this whole garden, to the fact that somewhere there is another, less merciful world. Forty days went into drawing out every pomegranate on this tree without disturbing a single second of this sleep. About the work The miniature belongs to the intimate genre of the single portrait of a righteous man, widespread in the painting of Maverannahr of the 16th–17th centuries, where a dervish's sleep is traditionally read not as rest but as a special state: the body reposes, while the heart, according to legend, does not sleep. The composition is almost devoid of action — a rare case for the collection, where the whole meaning of the sheet rests on the stillness of a single figure and the abundance of the life surrounding it. The wide mount is executed in the technique of ebru marbled paper, with green-and-yellow swirls and airy bubbles that echo the green of the robe and the foliage of the tree. The miniature was created by the master Davlat Toshev, for whom the sleep of a righteous man became an occasion to show that the true peace of one man is able to quiet a whole garden. 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