In his ‘Ajā’ib al-makhluqāt wa gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt, The Wonders of Creation and the Singularities of Existing Things, a major encyclopaedic work, Zakariya al-Qazwini (d. 1283) describes the giraffe as a composite animal, referred to in Persian as the “camel-cow-panther”. He details its hybrid features: the head of a camel, bovine horns, and a leopard-like spotted coat. He reports traditions according to which it would result from the crossing of several species. This vision, blending observation and imagination, illustrates the medieval fascination with hybrid creatures within the cosmographical literature of the Islamic world.

Several versions of this encyclopaedia were copied and recopied in Iran and India in the centuries following its creation, remaining highly conservative in their reproduction of the pictorial cycle. This folio comes from an Arabic version and most likely dates to the seventeenth century, during the Safavid period. Two other Timurid folios depicting the giraffe are in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (inv. F1954.88) and in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg (inv. Ms E-7 fol. 180). See also no. 387.