(b. Quchan, Khorasan, date unknown; d. Tabriz, 3 March 1877), celebrated calligrapher and stone carver, as well as poet and author.
He lived as a dervish and spent much of his time traveling, with long sojourns in the Ottoman empire and Egypt. He also traveled to Central Asia, Afghanistan and India, where he met with and instructed many calligraphers.
SANGLAKH, MIRZA MOHAMMAD-?ALI KORASANI (b. Quchan, Khorasan, date unknown; d. Tabriz, 17 Safar 1294/ 3 March 1877), celebrated calligrapher and stone carver of the 19th century, as well as poet and author. Sanglakh’s professional career spanned the reigns of three Qajar monarchs, namely, Fath-?Ali Shah, Mohammad Shah, and Nasher-al-Din Shah. According to the preface (dibacha) to his Tadkerat al-kattatin, Sanglakh lived as a dervish and spent much of his time traveling, with long sojourns in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. He also traveled to Central Asia, Afghanistan and India, where he met with and instructed many calligraphers, gaining a considerable following as a result. He left behind numerous examples of his calligraphy that he produced during these trips.
Mirza Sanglakh was a master of the nasta?liq and shekasta scripts (FIGURE 1). His most famous and perhaps finest artistic contribution is an inscribed slab of carved marble of about 3.70 by 1.25 m., the entire surface of which is covered with Arabic and Persian poems and the epithets of the contemporary Ottoman monarch inscribed in fine nasta?liq script. The stone was originally intended for the tomb of the Prophet Mohammad in Medina, and took Mirza Sanglakh eight years to complete while he was in Egypt (Qazvini, p. 108; Karang, p. 73). He apparently had hoped to have it sent to Medina through the good offices of the Ottoman Empire, but the financial support that he expected did not materialize, and he refused to sell it for the prices he was offered. He eventually managed to bring it to Tabriz with the financial support of Mirza Jafar Khan Moshir-al-Dawla and Mirza ?Abd-al-Rahim Khan, the Persian consul in Tbilisi. In Tabriz, it was eventually placed on a wall in the tomb of Sayyed Ebrahim, near the grave of Mirza Sanglakh. Mirza Sanglakh is also the author of a number of other epigraphic works in nasta?liq script, several of which were dedicated to the Mohammad-?Ali Pasha Mosque in Cairo. His major literary achievement is Emtehan al-fozala?, also known as Tadkerat al-kattatin, a two-volume biographical dictionary of calligraphers written in a bombastic style that is filled with obscure Persian and Arabic vocabulary (Qazvini, p. 107; Bayani, p. 799; FIGURE 2). It was first published by the author in an exquisitely lithographed edition, with the calligraphy of Mohammad-?Ali b. Jalil Tabrizi and illumination by Mirza Mohammad-?Ali Modahheb of Isfahan (2 vols., Tabriz, 1874). He also authored a number of lesser known books, the most notable of which are Borj-e jawaher and Dorj-e zawaher (two collections of poems that were bound together in one book and published in Cairo in 1856; Moshar, III, Cols. 367-8) and Majma? al-awshaf (a collection of poems about him by others; see Bayani, p. 799).
Tadkerat al-kattatin is one of a handful of biographical dictionaries of calligraphers written in the 19th century. The book is divided into the following four sections: ancient and modern calligraphers, the account of the author’s travels, his pupils, and finally Ottoman calligraphers. Although the travel section and the account of his pupils are undoubtedly from the pen of Mirza Sanglakh himself, Mehdi Bayani, having compared this book with the one by Mohammad-Saleh b. Abu Torab Eshfahani, has concluded that much of the material included in Tadkerat al-kattatin had been directly taken from the former work and concealed under a blanket of florid language filled with impertinent and even uncouth vocabulary (Bayani, pp. 799-800; for an example see Qazvini, p. 107). Mohammad Qazvini, who described Sanglakh as a fine calligrapher indulging in silly self-flattery (he referred to himself as Aftab-e Korasan “the Sun of Khorasan” and Dana-ye Iran “the Sage of Iran”), considered this book devoid of any historical merit (Qazvini, pp. 106-7; Storey, p. 1077).
Source: iranica.com
