Mulla Muhammad Amin Khurasani

By Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Burhanpur, 1615

I do not
understand what is written in these pages
or the script
in which they’re written.

I bind
as the calligrapher copies.
He reads the words,
I the paper, the size, the inks.

Notes:

An expert in the art of paper marbling and a renowned bookbinder and illuminator, Khurasani worked in the library of Abd al-Rahim Khan-i-Khanan (1556–1627). Rahim was a poet, translator, and military general, fluent in Chagatay Turkic, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Braj. His library, one of the great private libraries of the Mughal period, would have held books in all these languages.

Source: Poetry (March 2022)