Affirmation the Unity of the Identity of Muhammad-e Siyah Qalam and the Painter Ghiyas-uddin By the Comparative Study of the Illustration "Immortals Liu Haichan and Li Tieguai" of Siyah Qalam and Chinese Works

Necessity of case-by-case researches about Siyah Qalam`s works in order to clarify her identity is felt. One of these paintings depicts two Chinese priests with the caricatural quality. There were similar Chinese samples of the paintings of this priests in the Khanbaliq, the capital of China, during the time of Ghiya-sddin's visit to there. In his book The "School of Herat", Yaghub-e Azhand attributes this image to the priests who Siyah Qalam had seen them in China. In this book, according to the Ghiyas-uddin Mohammad`s travelogue and Mohammad-e Siyah Qalam`s works, he elaborates and analyzes the hypothesis of the unity of the identity of these two Iranian painters. Although his study was detailed, due to the scope of the issue, a comparative study of each of the works which attributed to Siyah Qalam, still requires further studies for definitive proof of this hypothesis. His conclusions about the identity of these two Iranian painters on the one hand, and the obvious similarity between the mentioned illustration of Siyah Qalam and some Chinese paintings in the capital, on the other hand, makes the hypothesis that the illustration was depicted during the courtesy visit by Ghiyas-uddin from a workshop or treasure house of the Ming court from the works of Chinese painters such as Yan Hui and Shang Shi. Therefore, the present study, in the historical method, by examining the data related to the aforementioned work of Siyah Qalam and Chinese samples and their structure, theme, time and place of creation, answers to these questions that what is the topic of the work of two priests attributed to Mohammad-e Siyah Qalam? What was the artist's model in illustrating this work? When and what point of China has this illustration drawn? The statistical population of the study was a collection of Chinese paintings on the subject of two Taoist characters, Liu Haichan and Li Tieguai, and the aforementioned illustration of the Siyah Qalam. Therefore, this paper seeks a tripartite comparative study of the text of the painter Ghiyas-uddin's travelogue, the aforementioned work and some related Chinese paintings. This study will address three historical, thematic, and artistic aspects of the problem, so that historically the route of travel and the place of recreation of this work by the Iranian artist, thematically, content and subject matter of the work and its relation to Chinese narratives and the similar subjects in Chinese works, and artistically the structure and form of the mentioned work and the works of the Chinese painters will be examined. Answering these questions serves the aim of this study, which emphasizes the unity of the identity of Mohammad-e Siyah Qalam and the painter Ghiyas-uddin. The results of the study show that the subject of the Siyah Qalam`s work is the two priests of the Taoism school, named Liu Haichan and Li Tieguai, which are first mentioned in this study. It also proves that this painting is a copy or a new composition by the Iranian artist inspired by similar Chinese works depicted in the Ming dynasty court, Khanbaliq.