Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi

Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi was born in the mid-fourteenth century in Maragha, in north-west Iran; no source consulted establishes a precise birth date, and estimates for the year vary (circa 1353 in one modern reference database, circa 1360 in a 2017 profile), so the birth year is left unconfirmed here. His father, Ghiyas al-Din Ghaybi al-Maraghi, a Sufi polymath and musician, gave him his first training in music and religious recitation and made him a hafiz. He was later brought into the Jalayirid court himself, serving under Sultan Shaykh Uways and Sultan Jalal al-Din Husayn, before moving into the orbit of the Timurid court.

He composed at least four major works. Jami al-Alhan, a comprehensive musical encyclopedia, was completed around 1405 and later revised. Maqasid al-Alhan (The Purports of Music), written between 1418 and 1421 and dedicated to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, is his best-documented treatise; only two autograph copies are known to survive, one later offered at Christie's and the other held at the Razavi Library in Mashhad. A third treatise, Kanz al-Tuhaf, is now lost, and a fourth, Sharh al-Adwar, is a commentary on Safi al-Din al-Urmawi's earlier Kitab al-Adwar. He wrote across Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

He died in 1435 in Herat, then under Timurid rule and now in present-day Afghanistan; the month is sometimes given as March 1435, though that detail is not consistently supported across major sources and should be treated as approximate. One passage in the English Wikipedia article names Samarqand as his place of death, which conflicts with its own infobox and with Wikidata, Christie's, and Daily Sabah, all of which give Herat; Herat is treated as the better-supported value here.

Modern scholarship treats Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi as the foremost Persian writer on music of his era. H. G. Farmer's entry in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, quoted in Christie's own cataloguing of his manuscript, calls him "the greatest of the Persian writers on music." A 2017 Daily Sabah profile places him third in a lineage of Islamic music theorists after al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, describing him as "known as the 'third grand master' of Islamic music tradition, after al-Farabi and Ibn Sina." His standing rests on sustained service to three ruling houses, the Jalayirids, the Timurids, and the Ottomans, and on the survival and continued study of his treatises, which remain reference points for scholars of maqam theory.

Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi's "market" is the market for rare Islamic manuscripts, not for paintings or sculpture, and it is extremely thin. The only documented auction appearance located is an autograph manuscript of Maqasid al-Alhan, dated to 29 Safar AH 826 (11 February 1423) in its colophon, catalogued for sale by Christie's. The exact sale date and price are not disclosed in the accessible catalogue record, so neither can be confirmed here. Christie's catalogue note describes it as one of only two known copies written in the author's own hand, the other held at the Razavi Library in Mashhad. No source located discloses a hammer price or identifies a subsequent higher sale by this author, so no confirmed all-time auction record can be stated.

Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi is a historical music theorist and composer, not a contemporary artist with a conventional auction track record, and no catalogue raisonne, gallery, or estate represents him. Supply is defined by manuscript survival rather than production: only two autograph copies of his best-known treatise are known to exist, one held at the Razavi Library in Mashhad and the other previously offered at Christie's, and the single documented auction appearance in the research available is a Christie's lot for that manuscript, for which neither the sale date nor the price is confirmed in accessible sources. Anyone considering a transaction involving his manuscripts should expect this to be governed by Islamic manuscript specialists and codicological scholarship rather than by the pricing patterns typical of the modern and contemporary art market, and should treat any pricing or dating claim beyond the manuscript's documented description as unconfirmed.