The Qajar dynasty in Iran represents a period of profound transition, defined by an intense encounter with European modernity, technology, and science. This era witnessed the introduction of the telegraph, the printing press, and modern educational institutions like the Dar al-Funun. Among the most impactful technologies introduced was photography, which arrived in Iran barely three years after its official invention in France. It was immediately embraced by the court, particularly by Naser al-Din Shah, who made it a royal hobby and a tool of statecraft. This new technology, however, required a new form of technical literature to explain its complex chemical processes. This necessity emerged within a culture that possessed one of the world's most sophisticated and ancient scribal and book-art traditions. This study investigates the unique body of texts produced to meet this need: the photography education manuscripts of the Qajar period. It situates these objects at the precise intersection of emerging technology and ancient craft, examining them not for their chemical content, but as physical artifacts of the Qajar book arts.
The central problem this research addresses is the scholarly gap concerning the formal, artistic, and craft-based nature of Qajar photography manuals. They have been treated as transparent vessels for technical information, rather than as artifacts of sana'i (industrial arts) in their own right. This study, therefore, asks: How were these highly technical, "modern" texts physically produced within the traditional Qajar scribal workshop? Was a text on chemistry treated with the same artistic regard as a manuscript of poetry? Moreover, what can their physical form tell us about their intended function, audience, and status? To answer this, a qualitative, descriptive-analytical methodology was employed. The research involved a comprehensive archival and library survey to identify the complete corpus of these texts. Each manuscript was then examined (either physically or through high-resolution surrogates) to document its codicological data: dimensions, materials (paper, ink, binding), paleography (script style and scribal identification), and artistic features (illumination, rulings, illustration). This formal data was then analyzed and contextualized within the known practices of Qajar book production.
The most significant and widely circulated text from this corpus is unquestionably the Ketab-e Aks (Book of Photography), authored in 1863 by Mahalati, a chemistry professor at the Dar al-Funun, by direct order of Naser al-Din Shah. While previous research had noted approximately five copies of this work, this study's archival investigation successfully identified 8 previously undocumented copies, bringing the total number of known exemplars to 13. This discovery provides a unique dataset for comparative analysis. This corpus of 13 copies reveals a fascinating diversity. It includes: a copy dated 1279 AH, scribed by Seyyed Kazem Tabataba'i and presented to the prince Yamin al-Dowleh (Zell-e Soltan); a copy from 1280 AH presented to E'tezad al-Saltaneh; a copy by the professional scribe Mohammad Ali Tehrani (1285 AH) that features a gilt-illuminated heading, a rare decorative feature; and a copy scribed in 1293 AH by the renowned Qajar calligrapher Sheikh Mohammad Baqer Golpayegani. This variation confirms the text's importance and its circulation among the highest levels of the Qajar elite and bureaucracy.
Analysis of the 14 manuscript traditions, particularly the 13 Mahalati copies, reveals that their physical form was dictated entirely by function and audience, not by subject matter. The most critical finding relates to calligraphy. The Mahalati textbook, a formal scientific text from the Dar al-Funun, predominantly uses the highly legible Naskh script (7 of 13 copies). This choice, consistent with Naskh's traditional use in significant religious and scientific texts such as the Qur'an, suggests that photography was considered a formal and esteemed science. In stark contrast, nearly all other photography texts—which were often personal translations, authors' private copies (like Larijani's), or brief technical notes (like the one attributed to Naser al-Din Shah )—were penned in the faster, more quotidian Nastaliq or Shekasteh-Nastaliq scripts. The second significant finding concerns the book arts.
The vast majority of these manuscripts are aesthetically austere, lacking the illuminations, intricate rulings, and decorative bindings characteristic of Qajar literary manuscripts. Most are bound in simple leather or cardboard and written on European paper. Decoration is often limited to simple red ink for titles. The exceptions, however, prove the rule. The few highly decorated copies, such as the aforementioned gilt-headed Mahalati or the Elm-e Akasi by Sani al-Saltaneh (written for the Shah with multi-colored rulings and a green velvet binding), were clearly identified as "presentation copies". Their artistic value depended on their patron (the King), not on their subject. Finally, despite the visual nature of photography, illustrations are almost absent. The Resaleh-ye Photography manuscript uniquely features colored images, likely collaged from foreign sources, suggesting that photography was conceived and taught as a textual, chemical process rather than a visual art.
This research concludes that Qajar photography manuscripts are not a homogenous group but a functionally diverse collection. Their physical forms—from script to decoration—acted as precise markers of their intended use. The study differentiates between: 1) formal scientific textbooks, characterized by the Naskh script; 2) personal or practical notes, characterized by Nastaliq; and 3) luxury presentation copies, defined by their decorative bindings and illumination. This study is the first to provide this codicological framework and, in doing so, discovered new primary sources for this field. These findings demonstrate that even a revolutionary modern technology was immediately assimilated into the established, centuries-old hierarchies of the Persian scribal tradition. This tradition, however, was on the precipice of change. The last known Naskh-script copy of the Mahalati text is dated 1294 AH. One year later, in 1295 AH, the first lithographed manuals appeared. This precise chronology marks the symbolic and practical moment when the press replaced the scribe, and the era of the Qajar photography manuscript came to an end.