Historical and Technical analysis of the Pilgrimage-letter of Imamazadeh Hashem in Aran & Bidgol

Pilgrimage-letters are one of the outstanding instances of calligraphers’ works which, on the one hand, have been survived owing to their sanctity, sacredness and applicability, and on other hand, have been damaged and decayed as a result of frequent use. This paper aims at historical and technical analysis of the Pilgrimage-letter of Imamazadeh Hashem in order to discern the techniques and materials used in its fabrication, and to conduct comparative and historical study on this work as well as getting acquainted with its calligrapher.
This Pilgrimage-letter is penned by Mahmoud Modir Al-Doleh, a prominent calligrapher lived during the reign of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar in the thirteenth century AH, and consists of three components including wooden board, paper liner and cloth bed. The materials used in the Pilgrimage-letter of Imamazadeh Hashem were discerned using scientific and laboratory studies of wet chemistry as well as FT-IR analysis. The data derived from the FT-IR analysis indicated that this Pilgrimage-letter is made of cotton fabric, protein adhesive and animal glue. Having conducted reflective optical microscope studies, it emerged that the board of the pilgrimage-letter is made of wood of fir tree. The results obtained from wet chemistry experiments revealed that the pilgrimage-letter has been written in Oak gall ink with vermillion and gold color.