Jaimee Comstock-Skipp
Current Projects:
Currently writing a monograph on illustrated Abu’l-Khayrid (Shaybanid) manuscripts and dispersed pages from 16th-century Central Asia provisionally titled 'Scions of Turan: The Abu’l-Khayrids (Shaybanids) and Illustrated Manuscripts in 16th-century Transoxiana'.
Organiser of the workshop (April 2026): Peregrinations of Plenipotentiaries, Pilgrims, Pedlars, Pedagogues,Poets, and Painters: Literary Exchanges between Ottoman Anatolia and Inner Asia.
Courses Taught:
Middlebury College-Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
Oxford Humanities Program: Undergraduate course—Alexander the Great in Manuscript Arts from the Medieval to the Early Modern Periods
Biography:
Jaimee Comstock-Skipp holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies with a specialty in Islamic civilizations, and the Arabic and Persian languages. She obtained a first MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (Massachusetts, USA), and a second MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art (London, UK), where she studied Mongol through Safavid book arts predominantly from Iran. She completed her PhD at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies: Persian & Iranian Studies(2022) writing a dissertation on illustrated epic and biographical manuscripts of the Abu’l-Khayrids, and their diplomatic exchanges between courts within Central Asia and the broader Turco-Persianate sphere encompassing Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals. She has held visiting fellowships at the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre (Oxford, UK) and the Warburg Institute (London, UK). She is currently a Junior Research Fellow tutoring in Persian at New College, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies between 2024—2027.
Research Centres and Projects:
Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East
Research Interests:
Arts of the book, illustrated manuscripts, early-modern period, Turco-Persianate history, Abu’l-Khayrid (ShaybanidUzbek) dynasty
Publications:
“From the Khan to the Sultan: the Abū’l-Khairid Shāhnāma in the Topkapı (H.1488) and manuscript production and presentation under ʿAbdullāh bin Iskandar Khan,” published in Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World (Volume 40, 2023 [released 2024]): 273-314.
“The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the Historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) Arts of the Book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War,” Journal of Art Historiography, edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati (Issue 28, June 2023).<http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/comstock-skipp.pdf>
“ ‘To be an Infidel or an Unbeliever…’ Five Wise Men: Edmund Dulac, W.B. Yeats, and the Magi,” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 3, no. 2 (2013): 307-28. Issue “Intuiting the Past: New Age and Neopagan Medievalisms”, edited by Karolyn Kinane. <https://relegere.org/relegere/article/viewFile/582/676>
“From the World's Fair to Disneyland: Pavilions as Temples,” The Open Arts Journal 2 (Winter 2013). Issue What is a Pavilion?, edited by Joel Robinson. <http://openartsjournal.org/issue-2/2013w05jkcs/>
“Design transfers and working methods (design process, kitabkhana),” in the section “Knowledge exchanges in technologies and materials” in Architecture, monuments and urbanism, Part I: Architectural influences along the Silk Roads. UNESCO Thematic Collection of Cultural Exchanges along the Silk Roads series published by UNESCO (Paris, 2025): 237-254. <https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000393649?posInSet=4&queryId=N-41fdb71d-79ba-43ee-af77-5dfce0fbed55>
“The Samarqand Shāhnāma in Cambridge’s Ancient India and Iran Trust: Echoes from Khurasan and Whispers of Bukhara,” published in The Central Asian Manuscript Heritage in Cambridge University’s Collections, Part Two, The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan series vol. LXXIII (Tashkent: Silk Road Media, 2024).
“ШОҲНОМАИ ТУРКӢ ДАР ИНСТИТУТИ ХОВАРШИНОСИИ ВА МЕРОСИ ХАТТИИ АКАДЕМИЯИ УЛУМИ ҶYМҲУРИИ ТОҶИКИСТОН ВА ДАСТНАВИСҲОИ ХАТТӢ АЗ ХУРОСОН ДАР ОХИРИ ҚАРНИ 16-YМ” (In Tajiki: “The Turkic Shāhnāma manuscript in the Center of Written Heritage at the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, and manuscripts from Khurasan in the late 16th century”) and “Amending the Origins of ‘The Bukhara School’: Shibanid (Abulkhairid) Arts of the Book in the 16th Century.” In A Life Devoted to Science: Collection of Articles Dedicated to the Memory of Mamadwafo Baqoev (1931-1972), edited by Shamsiddin Muhammadiev, et al., 233-242, 278-296 (Dushanbe: Donish, 2024).
“Turk amongst Tajiks: the Turkic Shahnama translation located in Tajikistan and manuscript production during the Abu’l-Khairid annexation of Khurasan (1588–1598),” [peer-reviewed] published in Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia, edited by Gabrielle van den Berg and Elena Paskaleva, 53-89 (Leiden: Brill, 2023).
“Liberating the ‘Turkoman Prisoner’: An Assessment of Bound Captives in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Persianate Works on Paper,” [peer-reviewed] in Iranian/Persianate Subalterns in the Safavid Period: Their Role and Depiction. Recovering ‘Lost Voices’, edited by Andrew J. Newman, 1-63 (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2022).
Blogs, Podcasts, Popular Media
Lording over the Centre of Asia: Manuscript Arts of the Abu’l-Khayrid (Uzbek) Khans. International Institute for Asian Studies, The Newsletter No. 95 (Summer 2023): pp. 28-29.
Blog—“From Georgian Slave to Safavid Master: Some Possible Additions to the Corpus of Siyavush Beg Gurji.” British Library Asian and African Studies Blog 09 May 2022
Podcast—The Barakat Trust: The Epics of Heroes. Arts in Isolation: S02. Episode 4. 28 October 2020
Blog—“Loose pages and lacquer covers: illustrations to Shahnama manuscripts in the National Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands.” Research Center for Material Culture—Volkenkunde Museum, 2019
“Art Deco Sartorientalism in America: Persian Urban Turbans and Other Versions.” Chitrolekha International Magazine on Art and Design 1, no. 3 (2011).
Other links:
