A Study of the Pictorial Narrative of Faridun’s Triumph over Zahhak as a Narrative Independent of Firdowsi’s Shahname, in the Material Culture from the 12th Through the 14th Century Century

Among the most eye-catching features observable on the cultural materials of 12th-14th centuries, are painted or drawn scenes which narrate a specific story and can be classified as “narrative motifs”. One of these narrative motifs are scenes which depict Faridun’s victory over Zahhak. These motifs bring the famous story of Zahhak in Firdowsi’s Shahname to the mind. Most researchers consider these motifs exactly in the same vein i.e.  as part of “Shahname-related motifs”. But this author is doubtful on asttributing these motifs to Firdowsi’s grand masterpiece. The main question here is to understand that how and in which regard this motif can be related to Firdowsi’s story of Faridun. To reach to an answer two kinds of evidence have been studied: pictorial narratives; and written narrative which describe the story of Faridun. For this reason, in the first step, all the depictions related to this story from the 12th through the 14th centuries, have been described. The repeated and distinctive motifs in these depictions have been discussed under the thematic subject termed the “Mace-wielding bull-rider”. In the second step, this thematic subject has been compared with written narratives from Firdowsi’s Shahname and the other historical sources. considering the fact that the main data used here are depictions that lack any written descriptions, the earliest illustrated manuscripts of Shahname were also studied so that we can reach a more comprehensive conclusion. In the last section, the author, by collating the pictorial and written documents, refutes the theory that takes the Shahname as the origin of the depictions of Faridun’s victory over Zahhak, and explain its as an independent and distinct narrative of Faridun’s Story.