The Effect of Persian Epics on Persian Miniature

Persian miniature has always been accompanied with Persian literature and affected by it. Among them, epic literature has always been considered significant for miniaturists, and the most famous examples of it, Ferdowsi's Shāhnāme, has always been illustrated by them. As artists have always had a long relation with Shāhnāme and they were familiar with the details and characteristics of its poems, their miniatures became proper representations for the epic texts. The effects can be observed and studied in different faces of the miniatures. Literary techniques and imageries used in poems, heroes’ moral characteristics, and also qualities such as the rhythm of epic poems, hyperbole, narrating several stories which go together, battle between kindness and badness, and immortality are the cases that their illustrations can be seen in Persian miniatures.