The Morgan Library & Museum

A page from the Shah Abbas Bible, in Latin with Persian & Judeo-Persian marginalia, now kept at the Morgan Library in NYC.

Also known as the Crusader Bible, the Morgan Picture Bible, and the Maciejowski Bible, it was a present to Safavid Shah Abbas who had the Persian marginalia written to describe the scenes & stories. 

It is not only one of the greatest medieval manuscripts in the Morgan, it also ranks as one of the incomparable achievements of French Gothic illumination.

The Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian Inscriptions

The Crusader Bible was originally a picture book. Subsequent owners, however, felt a need to have the subjects identified. After the death of Louis IX (1270), the manuscript went to Italy, where the Latin inscriptions were added in the fourteenth century. Fourteen of the scenes were incorrectly identified.

After Shah Abbas received the book in Isfahan as a diplomatic gift in 1608, he had the Persian inscriptions added. After Afghans sacked Isfahan and its Royal Library in 1722, the book fell into the hands of a Persian-speaking Jew, who added the Judeo-Persian inscriptions.

These inscriptions did not depend upon each other, and only the Judeo-Persian inscription correctly identified the episode in which Jephthah agreed to sacrifice the first person who met him on his victorious return to Maspha, who was his only daughter (fol. 13). The Latin inscription connected the episode with Gideon, and the Persian inscription mistakenly said it was Gideon’s daughter. English translations of all the inscriptions can be found in this online exhibition.

The miniatures represent one of the greatest visualizations of Old Testament events ever made. Some of the stories and their heroes are well known, but there are also accounts of less familiar Israelites who fought for the Promised Land—tales that resonate to this day. There are incredibly violent battle scenes in which the implements of war are so accurately depicted they could be replicated. And there are scenes of everyday life, love, hate, and envy, as well as adultery, rape, and murder—all set in thirteenth-century France >>>