Criticism of art in Tīmūrīd and Safavīd historical texts

By studying and examining general, dynastic, and sultanic chronicles in the Timurid and Safavid periods, we see an increasing attention to art and artist in them. This attention includes a range from scattered references in some historical texts of the Tīmūrīd period to dedicating an extensive section to the class of artists in the texts of the late Safavīd period. Each historian, depending on his period and approach, has dealt with art and artists during political discussions and events, and has described and judged them. The current research was aimed at analyzing the historical texts of Persian art, and sought to answer the question, how historians criticized, and judged art and artists? The research method is descriptive-analytical, with a focus on content analysis and the method of collecting information is library based. The findings of the research show that historians have used different methods such as enumerating moral and behavioral characteristics, proximity to the royal family, technical characteristics of the works, comparison with each other, the material value of the works and the opinion of the audience. The result of the research shows that these criteria can be identified in the form of four trajectories or branches of historiography by focusing on each of the four main components of art criticism, i.e. artist, work, society and audience. These trajectories include the historiography branch of Hāfez Abro and Samarqandī, who paid attention to the artist in the light of politics; Khāndmīr, Romelū and Wāle Esfahānī branch focusing on the artist, Bābor and Doghalāt branch or the Indo-Mongolian branch focusing on the work of art and Būdaq Monshī and Eskandarbeik branch focusing on the society and the audience.