Marbled paper, historically known as abri, meaning ‘cloudy’ or ‘clouded’ in Persian and often called abro bad, ‘cloud and wind’ in Iran today, is a type of decorative paper made by dispersing colors on the surface of a liquid bath, manipulating them with various implements, then carefully laying a sheet over top to capture the floating design. The popular use of this type of paper, especially for qiṭa’at calligraphy and poetic compositions, became widespread throughout the Persianate world during the 16th and 17th centuries CE.
The late Annemarie Schimmel published several Persian couplets referring to marbled paper and primarily interpreting the metaphor of clouds as representative of tears and rain. Najib Mayil Haravi, Iraj Afshar, and Hamidreza Ghelichkhani, among others, have subsequently published further couplets, expanding the range of themes discussed by Schimmel. Taken together, there are some thirty-five poems featuring this trope, prompting a fresh analysis.
Most of the couplets are of the shiveh-ye tāzeh or ‘fresh style’, also known as sabk-i Hindī, or ‘Indian style’ genre of Persian poetry. The appearance of this poetic trope coincides with the rise in popularity of marbled paper, likely due to technical advancements made in India at that time. Strikingly positive or intensely negative views are expressed by some of the poets, who either extol or deplore the qualities marbled paper evoking the art’s vibrant and colourful to strange, unfamiliar, and exotic qualities that is so often characteristic of the sabk-i Hindī genre. Other poems range from a panegyric by Danish Mashhadi to personal, even intimate descriptions of despair in exile by Salim Tehrani. Tughra-ye Mashhadi elevates marbled paper above music, while Sa’eb complains that such paper is cheap, miserly, and false; a cloud that bears no real rain.
Kalim Kashani makes a startling comparison between a scene of a duck on a frozen river in Kashmir to a type of marbled miniature painting, often ascribed to the Deccan, while in a wistful, self-deprecating satirical elegy written at the end of his life, Ashraf Mazandarani compares marbled paper to the frailty of his own body. The latter adds greater nuance to the interpretation of Indian marbled drawings of starving horses, sometimes ridden by equally emaciated, Majnun-like rider. Finally, one couplet written on the surface a marbled pattern refers directly it, furnishing valuable insight into the anonymous poet’s own personal view of the paper he used.
