EḴTĪĀR MONŠĪ, ḴᵛĀJA, a master calligrapher of the chancery taʿlīq style from Herat (fl. mid 10th/16th cent.). Eḵtīār never left his native city and worked, according to Qāżī Aḥmad, for thirty years on the chancery documents of the Safavid prince Sultan Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda, who was appointed governor of Khorasan in 943/1536 and later ruled as shah from 985/1578 to 996/1588. Examples of his work are held by museums. One specimen of Ḵᵛāja Eḵtīār’s work, dated Ramażān 959/August-September 1552, has been published by Shen Fu, Glen D. Lowry, and Ann Yonemura but misattributed to Kamāl-al-Dīn, who was a copyist (moḥarrer). The claim made in Dāʾerat al-maʿāref-e fārsī (I, p. 68) that, in a signed piece of his caligraphy, Eḵtīār Monšī calls himself from Gonābād (al-Jonābāḏī) in Khorasan is untenable at this time, because the article fails to name the source of the information or where the piece in question is preserved
Bibliography:
Qāżī Aḥmad, p. 49; tr. T. Minorsky, p. 91.
S. Fu, G. D. Lowry, and A. Yonemura, From Concept to Context. Approaches to Asian and Islamic Calligraphy, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 140.
(W. Thackston)
Originally Published: December 15, 1998
Last Updated: December 9, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. VIII, Fasc. 3, p. 291
