Cambridge University Library

Exhibitions

Keeping Time

A Persian manuscript of the'Wonders of creation'

Zakariya, 1208 or 9-1283. 'Aja'ib al-makhluqat. 1566
MS Nn.3.74

Calendars of the Near East

This copiously illustrated Persian manuscript was made in 974 of the Hijrah [i.e. A.D. 1566] and is a translation of the cosmography, or `Wonders of creation', originally written in Arabic by the thirteenth-century geographer Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini. The miniature shown here illustrates the path of the sun's rays interrupted by the globe of the Earth at the time of a lunar eclipse.