This illustrated folio comes from a manuscript of the ‘Ajā’ib al-makhluqāt wa gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt, the famous cosmography by the Iranian author al-Qazwini (d. 1283). Another folio from the same manuscript is in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums: according to its accompanying record, the manuscript colophon (whose present location is not recorded) was copied in Yemen, in southern Arabia, in 1640 or 1643 (Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, inv. 1960.44, exhibited at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 9 April–5 September 2022).

A folio from the same passage of text, decorated with the same birds and attributed to Iran or Anatolia in the early fifteenth century, is in the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington (inv. F1954.104). Indeed, the illustrated programme of this famous text changed very little over the centuries and across different geographical areas. Here, the birds appear in alphabetical order according to their Arabic names (ʿuqāb, ʿaqʿāq, ʿanqā). The ʿanqā bird is depicted as a two-headed eagle, an ancient motif found notably in Byzantine and Sasanian iconography. It is also often associated with the phoenix and the Persian mythical bird, the simurgh.

This is a rare example of seventeenth-century Arabian manuscript illumination, of which very few examples survive today, and it is furthermore preserved in excellent condition.