“Makotibot”. Collection

This collection, Makotibot, opens a rare world of written communication among the educated elite of Central Asia. The manuscript contains excerpts from letters by Alisher Navoi, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, and other notable figures, copied in 1667 by the calligrapher Khoja Muhammad ibn Mulla Fazil Muhammad. Such compilations belonged to the culture of insha – the art of composing letters, where not only information mattered, but also forms of address, titles, rhetoric, etiquette, and precision of language. They served to train future secretaries, diplomats, judges, and officials. On the open pages we see dense nasta‘liq script, red highlights for key words, and numerous marginal notes: the book continued to live in the hands of readers, commentators, and students. The Indian paper recalls the commercial and intellectual links between Mawarannahr and the Baburid world. The page layout itself shows how main text, marginal notes, and red rubrication transformed a letter into a model for study.
In Babur’s sector, this object is especially significant: it shows that the Second Renaissance was not only an age of poetry and architecture, but also a culture of documents, memory, and administrative language.