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PERSIAN MINIATURES 157
1258 (the year of the eponymous establishment),
especially as they differ profoundly
from the recognized Mongol type. We know
that the pre-Mongol school was the heir of a
great decorative tradition and we have ;
good
reasons for believing that this tradition was
based on Sassanian, Sung, and Byzantine art.
We are therefore more or less in the position
of people who should be acquainted with the
work of Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, though
knowing very little of Byzantine art and its
primitive developments in the West.
Of this early period Mongol and pre-
Mongol we do not yet possess many examples;
but the student who turns to the Burlington
Magazine for July and August 1913 will see
reproductions from a superb manuscript of
the late thirteenth century, Mr. Pierpont
Morgan's " Manafi-i-Heiwan," and any one
who has the good fortune to know M. Claude
Anet or M. Vignier can probably be put in the
way of seeing some originals. He will discover
in the work of this early period two distinct
schools : one of which the running ibexes in
the
" Manafi-i-Heiwan "
is an example
obviously related to Sung ; the other of
which the " Kalila and Dimna " miniatures 1
(dated 1236), and the elephants
from the
1 In the collections of M. Henraux and M. Claude Anet.
Reproduced in the Burlington Magazine, October 1912.