فهرست مطالب mohamadreza ghiasian

Solomon, as a prophet-king, who could command demons, wild animals, birds and wind, is one of the most important figures in Islamic art and culture. Although the earliest surviving paintings of Solomon in the Islamic world date back to the thirteenth century, from the late fifteenth century onwards, his images have been widely reflected in Persian art. Solomon was a symbol of justice and a legitimate kingdom in historical and literary texts as well as in the visual arts. This paper examines the earliest surviving images of Solomon in Persian art from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The most important questions of this research are the reason for the importance of Solomon in Iranian culture and also the evolution of his images in medieval Persian art. Early fourteenth-century examples show a simple composition of Solomon among human figures and demons. It can be said that in the examples of the Ilkhanid period, the number of the personages and demons is limited and almost no animals or birds are seen except the lions depicted under Solomon’s throne. From the end of the fourteenth century onwards, the number of human bodies and angels has increased, and a variety of real and mythical animals have been depicted. From the middle of the fifteenth century, the images of Solomon and the queen of Sheba were inserted in the double page frontispieces of the manuscripts. In contrast to the majority of the manuscript illustrations in the Persianate world, none of these miniatures is actually embedded within a text describing such an image. The extensive inclusion of Solomon’s images in the opening pages of manuscripts indicates Solomon’s importance in the Muslim culture as a figure who possessed both aspects of prophethood and monarchy, namely religious and secular. This was a desirable feature for many of the Persian rulers of the medieval period.During the Safavid period, images of Solomon became more widespread in different regions of Iran, especially in Shiraz. The main reason for the widespread popularity of Solomon’s images in Shiraz lies under the fact that some of the rulers of Shiraz had titles such as “varith-i mulk-i Sulayman (inheritor of the kingdom of Solomon)”. They employed this title, showing that they and the people of city, considered Solomon as their ancestor. On the other hand, In addition, the painters considered themselves as the heirs of Asif, who decorated Solomon’s throne and was skilled in painting, and thus, they sought to increase their social status. In terms of the number of scenes depicted of Solomon’s life, it should be said that most of the images depict him sitting on a throne among various creatures. After that, Solomon’s trick to see the legs of Bilqis and the death of Solomon are in the next positions.

One of the remarkable phenomena in the studies of Iran’s hthe centuries is the emergence as from 2010 of a concept called ruykard requiring university researchers to work in accordance with one of the Western philosophical theories, whereas the westerners themselves, despite their much longer history in the Islamic art studies, have hardly looked at the  centuries-old Islamic art from the perspective of  contemporary philosophers – except in special cases.The present article seeks (1) to trace back the beginnings of the formation of this outlook in Iran’s academic papers, (2) to find out the possible causes of the increasing prevalence of the idea of ruykard, and (3) to analyze its potential effectiveness. Due to the enormous variety of approaches and the wide range of artistic subjects, the degree of the efficacy of intertextuality and other similar theories in analyzing the Islamic arts has been investigated. Our findings reveal that the results of such academic papers make little contribution to the understanding of the Islamic works of art and the factors related to them.  Rather, they are more of instructional significance or represent a repeated explanation of intertextuality theory along with some examples. Thus, they do not appeal to the audience, and are little in accordance with any new discovery in the field of history of art and culture that could widen the boundaries of knowledge.

In museums and collections of Islamic art, there are silk textiles from the Safavid period that often bear inscriptions featuring the name of Imam Hussain. Despite their varying dimensions and potential diverse functions, most of these works have been classified as tomb covers without being examined collectively. This paper focuses on eighteen pieces, with ten of them dated between 1545 and 1740-41, specifically exploring examples from the eighteenth century. The research aims to address questions regarding the evolution of the content of inscriptions over time, its correlation with the Safavid period's history, as well as identifying the purpose and origin of these textiles. The investigation reveals that the production of these textiles aligned with the expansion of Muharram mourning practices, the construction of Husseiniyah buildings, and the establishment of endowments for Muharram rituals during the reign of Safavid Sultan Hussain. Until around 1710, Shiite references in the textiles were mainly expressed through ṣalawat-i kabira and a focus on Imam Ali, but afterwards, the prominence shifted to Imam Hussain's name. Through written sources, book paintings, and analysis of the textile inscriptions, it can be concluded that most of these textiles, particularly mourning banners (ʿalam), were likely created by artists from Kashan.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the increasing interest of the Europeans in the culture of the East, the first articles on Islamic art and culture appeared in German-speaking countries. In the mid- nineteenth century, some entries in German encyclopedias were devoted to Islamic art, and from the end of the century, the first monographs on Islamic architecture and ornament were published. These texts were written by historians of European art, who analyzed Islamic art and architecture based on European aesthetic principles. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientific studies in this area were started. Researchers such as Friedrich Sarre, Ernst Herzfeld, Ernst Kühnel and Richard Ettinghausen played an important role. By searching among German books and papers published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article seeks to answer the questions of how these studies were formed and evolved in Germany. It can be said that in the scattered research of the nineteenth century, no chronological development can be observed.
Among the important events of the first decade of the twentieth century, we can mention the publication of the first books on Persian architecture, carpets and metalwork, the establishment of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, and the exhibition of “Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art” held in Munich. This exhibition and its catalogue were a turning point in the academic studies of Islamic art not only in Germany but in the entire Western world. In the second decade of the century, the first scientific excavation in an Islamic site was done by Herzfeld, and the first comprehensive book on Persian painting was published by Fredrik Martin.
The first two decades of the twentieth century can be considered as the period of introduction and classification of Islamic art that researchers tried to establish chronology and attribute objects through stylistic comparisons and examination of their formal qualities. In the third decade, the meaning of the works based on historical and cultural contexts or the iconographic studies were followed in Hamburg, and after the rise of the Nazi Party, Ettinghausen continued it.

The village of Quhrud in the mountainous area of Kashan has two historical mosques, ‘Ali and Kallah, both from the Ilkhanid period. Among these, Masjid-i ‘Ali is of considerable significance due to the presence of hundreds of lustre star tiles and an exquisite wooden door dated 700AH. The unique Ilkhanid door of the mosque has thirteen inscriptions in Persian and Arabic languages, and the background of the writings and the leaves of the door are decorated with vegetal and geometric motifs. This paper tries to answer the questions of what is the content of the inscriptions on the door and what image does it give of the religious, cultural and historical situation of Kashan region at that time? Thus, while analyzing the content of all the inscriptions of the door, the patron of the mosque, ‘Abd al-Wahid, and the artist, Muhammad Naqqar Isfahani and some of his other works have been introduced. In one of the inscriptions, the patron talks about a dream in which Imam ‘Ali ordered the construction of the mosque. This Shiite theme has a remarkable resemblance with the inscription of the Ilkhanid lustre tile of Qadamgah-i ‘Ali in Kashan. Unlike the latter inscription, which tends towards the religious Shiism, the text of the Quhrud door shows devotion to Imam ‘Ali and the Prophet’s family. However, these tendencies have finally led to a belief in later periods. Finally, this door can be interprated as an important document of the founder’s feelings, motivations and religious and moral tendencies.

Although the history of making complicated water clocks in the Islamic world dates back to the early centuries, the oldest known example from Iran is the observatory clock of the Rukniyeh School in Yazd, dated 1324. Afterward, around 1473, Fakhr al-Din ‘Ali Kashi built a water clock for the glorious ‘Imadi complex in Kashan. Two decades later, Muhammad Hafiz, the Isfahani inventor, innovated a clock for this complex that was one of the first mechanical clocks of its kind in the Oriental world. During the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I, with the vitiation of Muhammad Hafiz’s clock, another clock was built by Mulla ‘Inayat. These watches also had artistic values, and when an hour had elapsed, a handful of cardboard animal and human figures started to move in it. Based on primary sources, this paper analyzes the three clocks of the ‘Imadi complex in Kashan and seeks to answer such questions as the historical evolution of these watches, their typology, and the reasons for the continuation of the clocks’ prosperity for two centuries. We can say that Mulla ‘Inayat’s clock was a revival of Fakhr al-Din ‘Ali’s clock and was from one of the six types of water clocks invented by al-Jazari. When the mechanical clock of Muhammad Hafiz was disrupted, and no one could restore it, they inevitably turned to a local clock technique familiar with that, which could operate it. The survival of the clock of the complex for about two centuries was not possible except through the creation of an endowment institution, and its current costs were covered by the various estate dedicated to it.

This paper examines cuerda seca tomb tiles from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century in the two shrines of Sultan ‘Ata-bakhsh and Sultan Mir Ahmad in Kashan. The first example belongs to a late sixteenth-century tomb, painted in two shades of cobalt blue against a white background. From the seventeenth century, at least four tombstones remain that are decorated with vegetal motifs on a yellow background, some of which interestingly lack any text. Early eighteenth-century examples include a number of tomb tablets consisting of four mud-brick tiles with a mihrabi frame. The few surviving works from the Qajar period are either made of blue and white tiles or of cuerda seca tiles with floral patterns. The main question in this research is documenting the formation and evolution of cuerda seca tomb tiles of Kashan and their difference in form and content from lustre tombstones of the early Safavid period. In terms of content, attention to Persian elegies can be seen as so significant that they replaced Arabic phrases used in previous periods. Regarding form, the investigated examples show more emphasis on decorative motifs, in contrast to text, as was used in lustre tiles.

The preparation of two memorial tiles in the early Safavid era for a tiled minbar in the Jami’ Mosque in Kuhpayeh, a small town near Isfahan, has raised questions and leads into ambiguities. One of these tiles is a lustre ceramic plaque which was produced in Muharram 935/September in 1528 in Kashan; the other is a blue-and-white tile that was produced eight months later in Ramadan in 1528in Qomsheh. The content of the first tile depicts radical (Ghulat) Shiism, and the second indicates a moderate Islamic tendency about Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Prophet’s Houshold. This article through an introduction of architectural and artistic elements of the Jami’ Mosque of Kuhpayeh, based on a field study, seeks to analyze the content of the tiles installed in the minbar and mihrab of the mosque. Based on the cultural and religious setting of central Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasb, this paper proposes a new theory about the reason for the preparation of two memorial tiles for a single minbar. The findings show that the main reason for ordering the second tile is the customer’s anxiety about the phrase “Hu al-A’li al-a’la” --used for Imam Ali and some leaders of the Hurufi movement-- at the top of Kashan’s lustre tile Since it was considered an extremist and illegitimate slogan. Therefore, in Kuhpayeh, which was one of the Nuqtavi centers, and some of its elders such as Abu al-Qasim Amri were blinded by this accusation, the patron of the minbar, Haj Iskandar, ordered another tile with a moderate content. Also, these two tiles reveal the industrial and artistic relations of several cities such as Kashan, Qomsheh, and Kuhpayeh in the center of Iran that are influenced by Shiite beliefs of that time.

The sixteenth century was the peak of the migration of Persian manuscripts from Iran to the Ottoman territory. The reason was, on the one hand, the interest of the Ottoman sultans in Persian literature and, on the other hand, it was partly due to the wars and extensive political relations between the Safavids and the Ottomans then. The wars led to the looting of Azerbaijan’s libraries, and the Safavid policy of peace promoted the official presentation of books to Ottoman sultans. In addition, some manuscripts were transferred to the Ottoman land by merchants, immigrants, and refugees. By applying codicological studies of the manuscripts, this paper examines the migration of Persian books to the Topkapi Palace from the late fifteenth century to the decline of the Safavids at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The most important question in this research is to show the different ways of such migration and its connection with the political relations between the Safavids and the Ottomans. It can be said that from the Battle of Chāldirān in 1514 up until the conclusion of the 1590 peace treaty that coincided with the military supremacy of the Ottomans, the largest volume of manuscripts was transferred. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the victories of the Safavids, the entry of Iranian manuscripts into the Ottoman Empire almost ceased, although limited wars and the occupation of some border cities by Ottomans led to the looting of libraries, including the one at the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din in Ardabil

The history of textile in Kashan dates back to the millennia BC. In the Islamic era, it was one of the most important centers for the production of silk and cotton fabrics. One of the textiles that was produced in Kashan from the Safavid era onwards was called chit (i.e. chintz). Chintz is the art of block stamping on calicoes. This technique, which was a cheap way to imitate brocade and embroidery, was popularized in Iran and India from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Since these cheap goods were produced for everyday use, very few examples and historical documents have been survived. This paper with examination of a newly discovered document belonging to first Pahlavi era, surveys the characteristics of chintz production in Kashan. This research has been done by using library and documentary materials and descriptive-analytical and historical methods. One of the most important questions is the technical and artistic features, the prevalence and the reason for the decline of Kashan Chintz production. The document presented in this paper shows that in 1938, at least eighteen Chintz making workshops were active in Kashan, which indicates the widespread prosperity of this art in Kashan. This document was in fact a trade agreement for the payment of taxes, so that everyone should pay taxes based on their share in the chintz production of the city. Compared with Isfahan productions, Kashan chintz, especially those printed in two colors, can be considered as imitations of carpets. One of the main reasons for the degeneration of Kashan chintz in the second Pahlavi era was variety of items produced in the textile factories of the city.

One of the less-introduced types of the visual arts of the Qajar and Pahlavi periods is the painted ceramic beehive covers. These lids, approximately 23 cm in diameter, were installed on wicker hives of about 85 cm long and had a hole for the crossing of the swarm. This article introduced dozens of these lids that were made from the late Safavid period to the first Pahlavi era. The most important aims of this research were the identification of the place of production, a thematic classification of the paintings and inscriptions, and an analysis of their content. It can be said that these works can be classified into three general groups: non-illustrated inscribed examples, religious paintings and secular paintings. Among the inscribed works, some prayers have been written that should be considered as an amulet to ward off calamities from the products. Moreover, some prayers and Quranic verses are related to increasing the blessing of the crop and also repelling the evil eye. In addition to several Shi’ite inscriptions, all the identified religious paintings are also related to the Shi’ite beliefs. The religious paintings include images of the Duldul (prophet’s mule, which was presented to Ali ibn Abi Talib), Khamsa, and shrines of Shiite imams. Among the secular paintings, the most frequent are the images of animals, showing them in hunting scenes or in the motif of the tree of life

Nauʿi Khabushani’s Suz va Gudaz (“Burning and Melting”) received much attention in the Safavid period. The story comprises the Hindu practice of sati. According to this tradition, after the death of a man, his widow burns herself by joining her deceased groom on the funeral pyre. Although many Persian poets have referred to sati in their poems, Nauʿi Khabushani, Amir Hassan Dihlavi and Mujrim Kashmiri are the only poets who have composed independent works on sati. By the sixteenth century, because of the migration of many poets to India, some of the Indian themes, like sati, entered into the Persian poetry. The wealthy Mughal patrons provided an attractive incentive for the Persian poets and artists.  Although the sati was a bitter and dolorous tradition, its theme of “the unity of lover and beloved” was accepted by the Persian poets. Nauʿi’s Suz va Gudaz, which is a rather unusual subject for a Persian text, enjoyed great popularity in Iran, so that at least five illustrated copies of the text survive. Subsequent to Shahnama, Suz va Gudaz was the most popular illustrated text in later Safavid Iran. The poem, which is modeled after Nizami’s Khusrau va Shirin, recounts the story of the love of a Hindu youth and his marriage. When he rides towards his beloved’s house, and crosses an old bazar, the buildings collapses, burying him and his companions alive. The bride accompanies her groom’s coffin and immolated herself on the funeral pyre. When her friends fail to dissuade her, the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who had heard about the event, promises to adopt the bride and provide her with every comfort, but she remains steadfast in her decision. Thus, the Emperor asks his son Daniyal to accompany the bride to the funeral pyre. This paper, which seeks to survey the reason of the widespread popularity of this text in the Persian art of the seventeenth century, introduces the illustrated manuscripts of the Suz va Gudaz, and in particular focuses on a codex preserved in the Walters Art Museum. Based on historical evidence, the reason of the popularity of Nau‘i’s work can be traced in an event that occurred during the conquest of Qandahar in later Safavid period. Vali Quli Shamlu, the court historian of Shah Abbas II, recounts the story of the death of one of the officials of the Mughal emperor during the siege of the Qandahar fort. His faithful wife decided to commit sati on the funeral pyre. Shamlu detects parallels between this incident and the story of Nau‘i’s poem. He claims that this event inspired Nau‘i to compose a poem. Thus the popularity of the Suz va Gudaz, was in large part related to the commemoration of the single most important military victory of Shah Abbas II.   The poem, which is modeled after Nizami’s Khusrau va Shirin, recounts the story of the love of a Hindu youth and his marriage. When he rides towards his beloved’s house, and crosses an old bazar, the buildings collapses, burying him and his companions alive. The bride accompanies her groom’s coffin and immolated herself on the funeral pyre. When her friends fail to dissuade her, the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who had heard about the event, promises to adopt the bride and provide her with every comfort, but she remains steadfast in her decision. Thus, the Emperor asks his son Daniyal to accompany the bride to the funeral pyre.This paper, which seeks to survey the reason of the widespread popularity of this text in the Persian art of the seventeenth century, introduces the illustrated manuscripts of the Suz va Gudaz, and in particular focuses on a codex preserved in the Walters Art Museum. Based on historical evidence, the reason of the popularity of Nau‘i’s work can be traced in an event that occurred during the conquest of Qandahar in later Safavid period. Vali Quli Shamlu, the court historian of Shah Abbas II, recounts the story of the death of one of the officials of the Mughal emperor during the siege of the Qandahar fort. His faithful wife decided to commit sati on the funeral pyre. Shamlu detects parallels between this incident and the story of Nau‘i’s poem. He claims that this event inspired Nau‘i to compose a poem. Thus the popularity of the Suz va Gudaz, was in large part related to the commemoration of the single most important military victory of Shah Abbas II.

The earliest surviving images of the prophets in Persian painting date back to the thirteenth century. This paper, which examines the portraiture of the prophets in the painting of the mid thirteenth century onwards, addresses the question of the distinction between the prophets and other peoples in the paintings. Finding the starting point of depiction of holiness halo and its evolution in Persian painting is also question of great significance. Considering the formal evolution, the visual examples of this epoch of two hundred years have been surveyed in four periods: thirteenth century to the early fourteenth century, form the Rab‘-i Rashidi to the end of the Ilkhanids, Jalayirids, and early Timurids. In the art of the thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries, according to ancient traditions a disc halo was depicted around the heads of all humans (and sometimes even animals), and thus the prophets have no certain distinction with others. The difference between the Prophet Muhammad and other people in the paintings of this period is only in having two long tresses. It was during this period that, under the influence of Baghdad painting, prophets wear a certain garment called shamal, which later in the paintings of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh became one of the most important features of the portraiture of the prophets. In the second period, under the influence of Buddhist and Byzantine art, the holiness halo was formed. The earliest known example of the halo of holiness is the image of Moses in the Arabic copy of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh (dated 1314), which is drawn not in a circle but as the rays of the sun. Apparently the establishment of the aura of holiness took place in a copy of the Mi‘rajnama, which was produced for the last Ilkhanid ruler, Sultan Abu Sa‘id Bahadur. The images of the Mi‘rajnama, which were dedicated to the depiction of the heavens, provided an opportunity to enter the golden halo of holiness into the portraiture of the Prophet Muhammad. Although in the paintings of this manuscript the halo of holiness is depicted as a golden cloud around the head or the whole body of the Prophet, in the painting “Muhammad enters the seventh heaven” he has a flaming halo. This work can be considered as the earliest surviving example of drawing a flaming halo for the prophets in Persian painting, which has continued for several centuries. In the paintings of this manuscript, all the prophets have a flaming halo around their heads, but Muhammad, who is “The light of lights”, has a much bigger halo. During the Jalayirid era, a fiery halo, which had been emerged in one of the paintings of the Ilkhanid Mi‘rajnama and was rooted in Buddhist iconography, became prevalent. Finally in the early Timurid art, this fiery halo was followed more seriously and with more elaborate decorations.

Two main approaches in studying Islamic art are perennial philosophy and historical perspective, which sometimes are in contradiction with one another. Historical discourse examines works of art based on contextual factors such as history, culture and society. In this approach, the analysis of artistic works is based on an accurate description of the work and the presentation of hypotheses happens through a scientific methodology. On the other hand, the perennial philosophy, by criticizing the fundamentals of modernity, puts its underlying principles on mystical concepts and with an idealistic view, introduces the discussion of traditional metaphysics of art in the field of Islamic arts. This paper through a descriptive-analytical method compares distinctive readings of these two approaches from seven examples of Islamic tiles and pottery. For this purpose, the opinions of the known thinkers of both approaches regarding the discussed examples have been compared to reveal their different views in the analysis of handicrafts. The most important question of this research is to identify the differences between the readings of these two approaches in studying the Islamic pottery. The data for this study has been gathered through library research. It can be said that the historians of Islamic art, based on the factors of time, geography, culture and politics, have done countless research on the artistic works of different periods. On the other hand, the studies of the followers of the perennial philosophy are mostly based on concepts and generalities about the manifestations of religious art; a method which can hardly be applied for the analysis of handicrafts.

Among the numerous chronicles that have narrated the history of the Pishdadian during the Ilkhanid period, Rashid al-Din’s Jami‘ al-tawarikh has unique features that are not found in the works of his predecessors. A century after Rashid al-Din, Hafiz-i Abru, imitating him, compiled the Majma‘ al-tawarikh in a much larger volume. This paper seeks to identify the sources of Rashid al-Din and Hafiz-i Abru, as well as to analyze and compare the structure of this part of their book with each other, as well as earlier chronicles. In order to identify the sources used by them, in addition to the Shahnameh, the works of twelve historians from the tenth to the fourteenth century were examined. Although Rashid al-Din follows the model offered by Tabari, who narrates the history of kings during the stories of the prophets, he is the first historian to divide his book into four chapters based on the four classes of Persian kings. Hafiz-i Abru has chosen another model, in which the histories of kings and prophets were narrated separately, but he combined it with the structure invented by Rashid al-Din, and thus his book has a more systematic structure. Compared to the earlier works, the structures of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh and the Majma‘ al-tawarikh are so that they emphasize the importance of kings over prophets.

One of the unknown artists of Kashan during the Safavid era was Mohammad Tahir Naqqash Kashani. Historical sources have called him a poet who trained some students, and his main profession has been naqshbandī (i.e. painter of textile motifs). Although some of his verses have been narrated in several texts, they have not been collected and edited. In primary sources and modern studies, five takhallus (i.e. pen name) have been mentioned for him, but in the present paper the authenticity of one of them is only confirmed. Since he was a painter, some scholars have attributed to him some mural paintings, but the accuracy of this claim has not been confirmed. Moreover, an inscription in thulth script on cuerda secatiles with his signature shows that he has also been involved in calligraphy. Since no research has been done on this artist so far, various texts have attributed different professions to him: poet, nagshband, calligrapher, painter, potter, illuminator, and paper maker. However, some evidence shows that he has only had the first four professions. Therefore, the most important question in this article is to identify Tahir’s works based on his signed works and, also, to study and analyze their characteristics. In this article, five ghazals written by the artist himself, a list of his poems as well as some of his art works are published for the first time.

Among the Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh manuscripts produced in the Rabʿ-i Rashidi, four copies have survived: one in Arabic and three in Persian. A century after their transcription, all these manuscripts were in the possession of the Timurid ruler, Shahrukh. Since these manuscripts were incomplete, Shahrukh ordered Hafiz-i Abru to complete the Persian copies. In the process of completion of one of these codices, considerable changes were made both in the text and the images. Since the Timurids were staunch followers of Sunnism of the Hanafite school of jurisprudence, the study of their manipulation in the section on the early Islamic history would have been of great significance. This investigation, which is a result of the examination of the original manuscripts held in the Topkapı Palace Library, was conducted with the application of comparative and codicological methods. In a textual examination, it explains the importance of codicological studies of the manuscripts, their life history and migrations for the process of their edition. This paper also compares the images added to these codices in the Ilkhanid and Timurid periods. The main questions are as follows: To what extent has Hafiz-i Abru manipulated the text of the Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh? Among the images of the Rashidun Caliphs, which caliph was more important to the Timurids and why? Some evidence shows that the recent printed edition of the Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh is in fact Hafiz-i Abru’s Majmaʿ al-Tawarikh that has been mistakenly identified as Rashid al-Din’s work. As a result, it can be stated that in the manuscripts completed by Hafiz-i Abru, there is a certain emphasis on Abu Bakr. This is evident in Hafiz-i Abru’s manipulation of the text, as well as in the images depicting the Rashidun Caliphs.

Although zīlūproduction has been mentioned in the historical texts of the tenth century, the surviving examples belong to the sixteenth century onwards. Some scholars have considered a zīlūwoven in Maybod and dated 808/1405 as the earliest known zīlū, but they have mistaken in reading the date and it belongs to the Safavid period. The only known pre- Safavid zīlūis preserved in the Hermitage museum. Historians of Islamic art believe that this zīlūbears no date and introduce it as one of the masterpieces of Ilkhanid art. This paper with careful scrutiny of both artistic style and inscriptions offers a new suggestion for its weaving date. It can be hypothesized that this zīlūhas been woven in Ramadan 808/1406 in Nūshābād, a small town near Kashan. Thus it can be considered as the earliest dated zilu surviving from Islamic Persia. One of the important questions concerning this zīlūaddresses its function. Although other scholars considered this flatweave as a saf – carpet with repeated niche designs that may have been intended for large congregational mosques, use of Quranic inscriptions in a carpet, which would be trodden on by feet would have been disrespectful. Regarding the content of the inscriptions shows that it probably was a prayer rug and connects it to sufi circles.

The story of the giant ʿUj, which was rooted in Israʾiliyyat, has penetrated into the works of Muslim authors since the early Islamic period. The earliest sources of these legends were a group of mostly converted Jews. In Islamic texts, ʿUj is regarded as an infidel confronted with the prophets, and thus symbolises the adversaries of the true religion throughout history. He was so tall that at the time of the Flood, the water only reached up to his knee. When he was hungry, he plunged his hand into the sea and brought out fish which he could roast by holding them in front of the sun. He was killed by a strike of Moses’ staff to his ankle bone. This legend received much attention from the Persian artists of the medieval period. Images of ʿUj beside Noah’s ark, and especially his combat with Moses can be found in books on history, Qisas al-anbiya, Ajaʾib al-makhluqat and Falnama. This paper surveys the origins and development of ʿUj’s legend in Islamic culture, and on the other hand, analyses the evolution of the iconography of ʿUj in Persian art. What have been penetrated into the Islamic texts are those narratives which are rooted in the Talmud not the Bible. In the Bible, ʿUj, who was left of the remaining Rephaim, is described as a giant of realistic dimensions, while in the Talmud he became a figure of monstrous proportions. The oldest known illustration of ʿUj in Islamic art, which dates to 1280, shows a bearded giant, wearing short trousers, while striding to the left. In the early fourteenth century, a part of the sun was added to the iconography of ʿUj that indicates the attempt of the artist to represent his stature comparable with the height of the sun. It seems that the most important epoch in establishing the iconography of ʿUj was the Jalayirid period. For the first time, the Jalayirid artist depicted the half-naked ʿUj with a short skirt, black beard and an oval rock around his neck. This icon was frequently utilized in the Persian painting of the following centuries. The depiction of ʿUj, who wears a short skirt, is reminiscent of the traditional representation of demons in Central Asian art. The interest of the Timurid artists in depicting the giant ʿUj is evident from the fact that they added his figure into the iconography of Noah’s Ark. They portrayed ʿUj standing beside the ship with a fish in his hand. Most of the Timurid images to the combat between Moses and ʿUj follow the iconography that was established under the Jalayirids. In the sixteenth-century paintings, the gestures of ʿUj are based on those of the earlier centuries, and the height of ʿUj is still four time larger than Moses. However, the exception is the Falnama paintings, which show Moses’ stature approximately half that of ʿUj. Based on Safavid aesthetic, in the background of these illustrations, an urban landscape or a group of onlookers was added to the paintings.

This article aims at examining one of the most splendid anthologies produced for the Timurid ruler, Iskandar b. Umar Shaykh. The three separated parts of this anthology are kept in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, the Istanbul University Library, and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. It contains prose and poetry texts collected, and even sometimes authored, by the scholars and learned men at Iskandar’s court. Based on the size, page layout, contents and calligraphic styles of the book, this article provides evidence indicating that the afore-mentioned manuscripts originally belonged to a two-volume anthology. The portions in the Istanbul University and the Wellcome Institute help us gain a better understanding of the styles and functions of illuminations and paintings in the water damaged and repaired Lisbon Anthology. In preparing this anthology, which is of particular importance among the Timurid manuscripts, there participated artisans who had earlier worked for Sultan Ahmad Jalayer in Baghdad and Tabrizi and later had remarkable impact on the art of book production in Herat.

One of the main reasons of building Qadamgāhs (literally meaning the place of foot or the place of stepping) was the dreams a believer had of a saint. There are a large number of such buildings in Iran. In some cases, the dreams are inscribed on tablets in order to preserve the dream for future generations. This paper introduces five lustre ceramic tablets, which contain records of such dreams. The texts of two of them have been preserved completely, and significantly show astonishing similarities. The first is dated back to 1312 AD and belongs to Qadamgāh of Mehrīqābād. Its text mentions that Fakhr alDin Hasan Tabari saw Imam Ali in a dream ordering him to build a shrine. According to the text of the second tile in Qadamgāh-i Khezr in the village of Yazdelan in 1607, someone saw Khezr in a dream who orders to reconstruct a ruined domed building. This article examines the differences and similarities between these two tablets from the Ilkhanid and Safavid periods, and analyzes them in detail. It can be said that these two tablets have a common content that have been written with the aim of documenting the reconstruction of a religious building borrowing the Iranian and Shi'at themes. These two examples show that the tradition of recording dreams on lustre tiles was not only prevalent at the glorious era of lustre production, but also extended to three centuries later.

Although Kashan was one of the main centers of lusterware production in the Islamic world during the Ilkhanid period, from the middle of the fourteenth century this industry declined in the city. Afterwards, at the end of the fifteenth century, once again, we witness the prevalence of making luster tiles in Kashan, but with different forms and contents. This article introduces 15 tiles which were produced between the years 1478 and 1560. These tiles were generally in the form of inscribed tablets with such functions as tombstone and mihrab, and were installed on the walls of religious buildings such as mosques and shrines. This paper, besides introducing two unknown luster tiles, surveys the content of all the known samples. It also tries to determine the difference between the luster tiles of this period and the Ilkhanid samples in terms of form, use, and content. Moreover, the relationship between the content of these tiles and the religious beliefs of the Iranian people at the beginning of the Safavid era has been addressed. The results show that in contrast to the Ilkhanid samples in which Quranic phrases constitute the main content, the luster tiles of this era are influenced by Shiite beliefs.

The bibliophile character of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh (r. 1405–1447) and his patronage of historical, religious, poetical and scientific books in Herat are well known. He commissioned his court historiographer, Hafiz-i Abru (d. 1430) to compose a series of historical and geographical works. Hafiz-i Abru was also commanded to complete several fragmentary copies of the Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh, which had been transcribed for Rashid al-Din (d. 1318) in the early fourteenth century. One of these Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh manuscripts is preserved in the Topkapi Palace Library with the inventory number of “Hazine 1653” and is in part an autograph of Hafiz-i Abru. Since the pre-Islamic part of Hazine 1653 was missing, Hafiz-i Abru replaced the missing part with the first volume of his own Majmaʿ al-Tawarikh. Some years later, a further manuscript was copied from Hazine 1653 and nowadays is known as the “dispersed manuscript.” The contents of these two manuscripts are almost identical and thus their pre-Islamic sections comprise the first volume of Hafiz-i Abru’s Majmaʿ al-tawarikh and their other sections consist of Rashid al-Din’s Jamiʿ al-tawarikh. These two manuscripts are the only surviving illustrated copies of the Majmaʿ al-tawarikh. The Dispersed Manuscript is one of the eight surviving illustrated books produced for Shahrukh. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the manuscript was transferred to the West, and for the first time, as a whole was included in the International Exhibition of Persian Art in the Pennsylvania Museum in 1926. Evidence shows that immediately after the exhibition of 1926, the manuscript was divided into two fragments and found its way into collections of Emile Tabbagh in Paris and Parish Watson in New York. These two dealers of oriental art dismounted the manuscript and started to sell the illustrated leaves before 1928. The dispersal of the codex in more than fifty public and private collections around the world restricted the opportunity for its careful examination by scholars. The book once had 407 folios, of which one hundred fifty are illustrated. Presently, 238 unillustrated folios of this manuscript belong to the Art and History Trust Collection, and the illustrated leaves are widely dispersed. After seven years of research, 146 illustrated folios have been identified. By means of comparison of the text and images of this codex with Hazine 1653, which was copied by Hafiz-i Abru, three distinct groups of painting can be discerned. The first is the established “historical style of Shahrukh,” but the second and the third styles posses several problems. Careful examination of the text and image shows that these paintings have been executed over the text, and as a result, at the location of these miniatures a considerable amount of the text is missing. Moreover, in most of the cases, these repetitious or stereotyped compositions bear no relation to the text. This paper, which surveys the history of the manuscript, shows that approximately half of the illustrated leaves of the dispersed manuscript are manipulations done by the greedy European dealers of oriental art in the early twentieth century.

In the first decades of the 20th century, which were the heyday of exporting Persian antiques to the Western museums and collectors, forgeries of artworks became a prevalent phenomenon. The items most frequently forged were illustrated manuscripts because they procured higher prices. Forging manuscripts also occurred in classical periods, but it was different in nature from that in modern era. The most significant difference of forgeries in modern era from the classical periods is that in the latter case, the forger deceives his customers(and then the researchers) and tries not to leave any trace of himself, and do his work skillfully enough so that it appears as a genuine antique object. By classifying forgeries of illustrated manuscripts into two groups of “producing whole manuscripts” and “manipulating old manuscripts”, this paper addresses the question of how and why manuscripts were forged. Then, with a focus on the manipulation of old manuscripts, it explains various ways of adding miniatures to illustrated and unillustrated books.

The Safavid dynasty (1501-1722) is associated with some of the most exquisite works of miniature ever produced in Iran. In terms of significant political and social events, this era can be considered as a turning point in the history of Persian art. One of the considerable events that occurred during this period was the expansion of relations with Europe, the reflection of which might be found in paintings. Moreover, the unsteady royal patronage of miniature painting, especially in the second century of Safavid rule, resulted in the emergence of other patrons of art. The role of these new patrons, who were mostly merchants, professionals and officials, altered the types and content of Safavid miniature paintings. The artists produced single page paintings and drawings, which were not intended for inclusion in literary texts but were rather designed for exquisite albums. This new form of miniature was created most often under the direction of a painter or calligrapher. They grouped together calligraphy, miniatures, drawings, and also ancient works of art. The increased attention to the single page and album making is one of the characteristics of later Safavid art. It was in this context that new subject matters like theater and popular entertainments were chosen by the painters. This paper, which studies theater and popular entertainments in the Safavid period in two groups of religious and non-religious, tries to answer the question of their representation in paintings and drawings. Of the religious types of drama only several examples of dancing dervishes can be mentioned. Among the non-religious examples, attacking animals and other kinds of playing with animals are most often illustrated. The significance of this type of popular entertainment is revealed from the fact that the most famous painters of the later Safavid period like Riza Abbasi (d. 1635), Mu‘in-i Musavvir (d. 1693) and Muhammad Ali have depicted such themes. Whereas most of the talented painters worked for the royal courts, Riza Abbasi, the chief painter of the court of Shah Abbas I (r. 1587 - 1629), since around 1603 held a non-conformist attitude and depicted scenes of everyday life and popular entertainment. In this period of his life that Sheila Canby have referred to as the “rebellious” period, Riza veered away from his courtly life and employment, associating with dervishes, wrestlers, and musicians. One of the most talented followers of him, Mu‘in-i Musavvir, was as prolific a painter like his master. They have portrayed several cases of a monkey riding a lion or ram and also scenes depicting a monkey-trainer (or qarrad). By the beginning of the seventeenth century, several representations of dancers dressed in goat skins, some of which drawn by Muhammadi Heravi, had survived. Muhammad Ali, the well-known Isfahan painter of the mid-seventeenth century, has also depicted animals specially trained for circus performances. Of the other examples of non-religious drama, several miniatures in manuscripts and albums that depict scenes of royal clowns, dancing ceremonies, wrestling matches and playing polo, have survived. It seems that in spite of the fact that Safavid rulers were staunch supporters of Shiʿi Islam, none of the religious ceremonies like taʿzīa was illustrated during their rule. In fact, most types of drama in the Modern sense were formed outside of the royal courts and were not patronized by the Safavid rulers.