Mir Imad Hasani

Mir Emad, born Emad al-Molk Qazvini Hasani, is perhaps the most celebrated Persian calligrapher, in whose hand the nastaʿliq style is believed to have reached its highest elegance. ¹ The Encyclopaedia Iranica gives his life as about 961 to 30 Rajab 1024 AH — about 1554 to 15 August 1615 CE — born in Qazvin to a family of Sayfi Hasani sayyeds long associated with the Safavid court as librarians and accountants. ² His specimens are kept in museums and libraries from Tehran and Mashhad to Istanbul, Paris and St Petersburg. ²

Modern authors report that he studied calligraphy under three well-known calligraphers — Isa Beg Rangkar, Malek Deylami and Mohammad-Hosayn Tabrizi — though the Encyclopaedia Iranica warns that contemporary sources do not substantiate this education; the English article gives the same sequence as his training and his move to Tabriz. ^{2 1} From Tabriz he travelled for years through Ottoman Turkey, the Hijaz, Aleppo and Baghdad, copying manuscripts at Qazvin between journeys — Asadi's Garshaspnama in 981/1573 and Sa'di's Golestan and Bustan in 998/1589 — and by 1004/1595-96 he was a scribe in the Semnan library of Farhad Khan Qaramanlu. ²

After Farhad Khan's execution in 1007/1598, Mir Emad withdrew to Qazvin, then presented himself to Shah Abbas at Isfahan, and for sixteen years he was, with Ali Reza Abbasi, one of the two most prominent calligraphers of the court. ² Iranica traces his fall not to doctrine but to character and rivalry: his adamant belief in his own superiority wearied the shah, a campaign in the royal library worked to discredit him, and his reckless unflattering poems enraged Abbas further. ² His copies from these years include a Divan of Hafez dated 1003/1594-95, Golestans of 1021/1612 and 1023/1614, and a collaboration with the painter Reza Abbasi in 1023/1614. ² The treatise Adab al-Mashq, a technical guide to nastaʿliq, was later attributed to him, though Iranica assigns it to his contemporary Baba Shah. ^{2 1}

In the end, Iranica writes, the shah "made Mīr ʿEmād's alleged Sunni inclination an issue and implicitly approved his murder"; he was brutally assassinated on 30 Rajab 1024/15 August 1615, on his way to the bathhouse according to the English article, which names his killer as Masoud Bek Mesgar Qazvini and says his pupil Aboutorab Esfahani finally buried him at Isfahan after days in which no one dared. ^{2 1} On the question behind the killing, the sources do not speak with one voice: the Persian article's religion section reports that most tazkira-writers and historians hold his madhhab to have been Sunni and count it among the causes of his death, and then cautions that no independent document or evidence exists for it, noting that he repeatedly copied the Nad-e Ali prayer in honour of Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him) and praised the Prophet ﷺ's family wherever named. ³ No source names a legal school for him, and this record preserves the Sunni attestation — an accusation in his lifetime, a tradition after it — without adopting it. ^{1 4}