Spain : An illustration from the Tale of Bayad and Riyad, Al-Andaluz (Islamic Andalucia, late 12th century)

Hadith Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ (The Story of Bayad and Riyad) or Qissat Bayad wa Riyad is a 13th-century Arabic love story. The main characters of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from Damascus, Riyad, a well educated girl in the court of an unnamed Hajib (vizier or minister) of 'Iraq (Mesopotamia) and a 'Lady' (al-sayyida).

The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arab presence in Spain. The sole manuscript is in the Vatican Library, where it is catalogued as Codex Vat. Arabo 368.This fragment of the medieval love story of Bayad and Riyad may have been taken from Tunis by the troops of Charles V. It is one of the rarest and most singular Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican collection.

Written in maghribi script, it was probably copied in Spain in the first half of the thirteenth century from an eastern manuscript of the Baghdad school. The miniaturist, however, adapted the original illustrations to a western setting and changed oriental architectural details to Spanish ones.

This codex remains one of the only known examples of Muslim figurative painting in Spain. In the page shown here, we see Bayad receiving a letter from Riyad in the house of three women. The appearance of the house is clearly western rather than eastern.

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

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