Safavid Arts

Although several portraits of Shah Ismail I – the founder of Safavid State of Azerbaijan are known today, there are no detailed research works on the true author of these portraits, when and under what circumstances they were painted. For the first time, the identification of the portraits was classified according to two different criteria: the first for outward signs (clothes, ornamental accessories, hat, etc.) and the second for anthropometric signs. The image of Shah Ismail I was analyzed comparatively with the portraits of Yavuz Sultan Selim, their different peculiarities were revealed.

The infrequent sighting of female nudes in Persian painting quickly has one’s attention. Shortly after the arrival of Europeans to the new capital of Isfahan and the distribution of prints of their engravings in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, we begin to see the emergence of more detailed and realistic Persian female nudes in first the reclining and then the seated positions. This paper will be examining a small group of single-sheet and wall paintings of seated semi-nude female type from Isfahan to find out why and how this motif was adapted to Persian painters’ repertoire. My research reveals how the female seated nude implied a visual understanding and appreciation of European practices and norms, which were channeled by not only the presence of engravings and Europeans themselves, but through Armenian artists with expertise in European mode of painting and knowledge of their cultures from travels and from their shared dwellings in Isfahan’s Armenian quarter of New Julfa.

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.

LA vision du PRoPhètE dAniEL suR quAtRE bêtEs dAns LE LEctionnAiRE dE hEt'um ii par Emma Chookaszian université Paul-valéry montpellier 3 université d'État d'Érévan L'une des plus luxueuses et mystérieuses scènes du manuscrit, « La vision du Prophète daniel sur quatre bêtes », décore de haut en bas la marge du folio 129a du Lectionnaire écrit et illustré en 1286 sur l'ordre du roi het'um ii 1. cette représentation est, comme les autres images mar-ginales de ce manuscrit, un exemple incomparable dans la peinture armé-nienne. sa particularité n'est pas seulement le thème, dont quelques exemples sont connus, mais aussi le style qui est, dans l'art arménien, une totale innovation. Au-dessus de la marge de la page, dieu le Père est dessiné dans le médaillon rayonné, et la vision elle-même se développe dans la marge laté-rale. Au-dessus de la page un ange s'approche de l'image de daniel endormi horizontalement, et le touche de la main. Au-dessous on peut distinguer avec difficulté, dans l'image marginale, les quatre bêtes entrelacées avec des dessins feuillus et des formes animales. La première ressemble à un lion, la deuxième à un ours, la troisième à un léopard ; la quatrième a de grandes dents en fer et ses dix cornes forment un demi-cercle autour de la tête. même si, naturellement, cette image n'est pas la représentation littérale de la vision, cependant le miniaturiste a tout fait pour donner à la scène une impression percutante. dans la prophétie de daniel la première bête est décrite ainsi : « La première ressemblait à un lion, et avait des ailes d'aigle. Pendant que je regardais, ses ailes ont été arrachées, elle a été soulevée de terre et mise debout sur ses pattes comme un homme, et un coeur d'homme lui a été donné » 2. dans l'image du Lectionnaire de het'um, la tête et les ailes du lion sont clairement visibles, mais les ailes ne ressemblent pas beaucoup 1 Érévan, maténadaran m. maštoc', manuscrit 979, folio 129a, image 1. 2 La prophétie de daniel 4-5.

Composed ca. 1415, the poem Makhzan al-Asrar (“Treasury of Secrets”) by the Timurid court poet Mir Haydar Khwarazmi is an eastern Turki nazireh, or “imitation,” of Nezami’s mystical masnavi of the same name, composed about two-and-a-half centuries earlier. A limited number of manuscripts containing Mir Haydar’s text have garnered art historical attention: they include a renowned copy dated 1478 and executed on decorated Chinese papers (New York Public Library, Spencer Pers. ms. 41), as well as several illustrated versions from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. CBL T 433, produced in the 1630s, is an extraordinary copy that has yet to be sufficiently studied. Its thirty folios, framed by luxurious pink-dyed margins with flowering vinescroll designs in gold, contains an illustrative suite of seven paintings with figures conspicuously left in reserve, a technique that is occasionally observed in other Persian poetic manuscripts from the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The eighth and final painting depicts a youth holding a letter, the text of which appears to document the manuscript’s patronage by Manuchehr Khan (in office 1624-1636), the second of three successive governors of Mashhad from the Qarachaghayid family of gholams. This preliminary study aims to situate T 433 within the historical context of its production and patronage, while also considering the significance of its striking visual language in relation to other manuscripts of Mir Haydar’s poem and its reception in the later Safavid period.

چند سند تاریخی در باره  مرقعات ایرانی.
دیباچه ها واسنادی در باب خوشنویسان ونقاشان وصحافان از نامه نامی خواند میر
دیباچه بر مرقع بهزاد
دیباچه مرقع نوشته ابوالفضل علامی برمرقع شاهزاده سلیم جهانگیر
این نوشته بخشی از یک مقاله است به نام دیباچه چند مرقع که در اوراق عتیق منتشر شده است

ABSTRACT Western society appears inordinately keen on outdated and stereotypical tropes of Islamic architecture, talking of a ‘hidden world’ of Islam in which women are seen and not heard as they live their lives incarcerated in the harem. This trope of Western Orientalism has become entrenched in our culture through travel accounts, the writings of historical voyeurs such as Sir Richard Burton and the romantic/erotic imagery of nineteenth‐century Orientalist painters.This paper aims to dispel many of the preconceptions that are held regarding the Iranian harem and the role of women in Safavid society by addressing the status of elite Iranian women, but also placing them in the wider context and considering the evidence for lower‐class women who could simply not afford to live a cloistered life. There is also the case of non‐Muslim women whose religions forbade polygamy and who were therefore immediately placed outside the harem and, although Safavid Iran included significant numbers of Zoroastrians and Jews as well a handful of Hindus, this paper will concentrate on one particular religious minority; the Caucasian Christians who were such an integral part of Abbas’ great project that they were awarded a particular status in the city of Isfahan.

Our collaborative art historical project proposes new evidence for the active, multimedia reception of pre-Islamic antiquity in early modern Iran. Such processes of Iranian (and broader Middle Eastern) reception of antiquity place Persianate literature in a global antiquarian discourse that is predominantly associated with European humanism. We start our conversation with Mytens’ 1618 portraits of Thomas Howard and Aletheia Talbot, which show the English couple posed in front of their collections of western paintings and Classical sculpture. Less usually noted, but taking up equal space in the foreground are two contemporary Safavid carpets from Iran. Under Charles I, Iranian material culture, both contemporary and ancient, was part of a universe of commodified and esteemed objects alongside the European.

Our main sources are a select group of manuscript paintings produced in Safavid Isfahan between 1605 and 1657. We argue that some seventeenth-century narrative manuscript illustrations deliberately depicted figural stone reliefs inspired by Persepolis, the Achaemenid monumental capital. We reconstruct an explanatory framework to support this thesis, using a history of early modern engagements with antiquities and the contemporary political circumstances of the reign of Shah `Abbas I. The Safavid reframing of Persepolis coincided with increased European mercantile access to Fars, Persepolis and Isfahan, and also with the European “identification” of the site itself. This reconstruction of an aesthetic context for the monument’s reinterpretation centres Iran as the site of this historical thinking, rather than (solely) Europe.

As an ornamental element in the structures and manuscripts to convey a specific message, Whether applied in the buildings or in the manuscripts, paintings have always been of importance. Through studying paintings, one can identify the ideology, beliefs, social, political and cultural issues of the time. Of the cases worth considering while studying paintings are the female figures. Figures of women can be seen in different forms and subjects in the Islamic artworks in Iran. Although painting human figures was forbidden in the early stages of the Islamic era, there are found wall paintings including human figures in this period. During the Safavid and after the European entered Iran and the influence they brought about on Iranian art, there were created more paintings including a woman figure. This process continued until Qajar and caused more influences from the western art. Studies on the paintings belonging to the Safavid and Qajar periods show their specific characteristics in presenting women. This study aims to investigate the role and the conditions of the women during Safavid and Qadjar period through a study of paintings. The following results were obtained comparing the paintings belonging to the two periods using comparative and analytical methods: A) during Safavid period, as in the previous periods, the women’s faces have less make-up, and, in some features, one cannot differentiate between the male and the female figures. B) On the contrary, during Qadjar and due to the westernization, the intrinsic female features in the figures receive more attention, and one can easily observe that women start to be recognized and looked at as a gender.

This paper questions the notional delineation of thing and/from image, materiality and/from representation, by examining a vase made in late seventeenth-century Kerman (Victoria and Albert Museum, 1187-1893). Produced using a mold, the vase has two flattened surfaces, from which (literally) emerge depictions of a vase, executed in textured red-and olive-colored slip and framed by stalks of flowers in contrasting cobalt blue underglazes. In other words, it is a multisensorial and self-reflexive object, a vase that stages images of a vase. Until the last decade and a half, ceramic objects of early modern Iran formed the subject of only limited art historical study, focusing mainly on identifying formal and decorative prototypes or determining sites of production through connoisseurial and technological methods. A few recent studies have explored discursive and performative potential of seventeenth-century Persian ceramics through iconographic analysis of their (figural) decoration and investigation into their display (Golombek 2011; Babaie 2013). In a departure from earlier studies, this paper describes the ways in which the V&A vase establishes a dialectic between "thingness" and representation, and examines how this relates to the conception, perception, and formation of images in Perso-Islamic thought. At issue is the applicability of current methodological frames to the early modern Persianate artistic context.

Two of the Museum’s six folios containing the miniatures belong together: GYJK. 96 and GYJK. 97 include excerpts from what might have been an abridged manuscript of the Haft Paykar, a poem from the
Khamsa of Abu Muhammad Ilyas Nizami Ganjawi (1141–1209). However, the accompanying paintings apparently do not illustrate the text: instead, they paraphrase illustrations from different, dispersed Safavid manuscripts from the 16th century. In the case of GYJK. 96, the archetype can be identified as a painting from the Matla’ al-Anwar of Amir Khusraw Dihlawi (1253–1325), now in the British Museum, London.
Some aspects of GYJK. 98 recall the style of the painter Mir Musawwir, particularly a single folio from a Nizami manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, dated 1524–1525, while some other characteristics of the same painting are reminiscent of a later, mid-16th-century illustration of Nizami, in Washington. So far imprecisely identified, the text of GYJK. 101 is obviously from the middle of a longer
poem, deceptively enshrined by an elaborate framing device which is normally reserved for opening folios, prompting us to suggest a commercially motivated upgrading of a manuscript leaf. GYJK 99. and GYJK. 100 are single-leaf compositions (i. e. not purporting to be from manuscripts): displaying elements which relate them to the style of late-16th-century Qazwin and 17th-century Isfahan, respectively. This group of Persian paintings was acquired by the Museum from the Székely-Hungarian orientalist and linguist Gábor Szentkatolnai Bálint (1844–1913), who collected them during his Asian travels in the 1870s, based on which it is reasonable to assume that they are 16th–18th-century compositions. Nevertheless, for a more accurate dating further research will be necessary, involving, among other things, a closer examination of the materials and techniques used for assembling the folios.

Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Persian Carpets, Aug 26-27, 1995. Published in conference volume (Islamic Republic of Iran Ministry of Commerce Export Deputy/Export Promotion Centre of Iran), pp. 61-68/patesl 28-40.
The paper suggests that the roots for early 16th century Safavid design can be found particularly in the tile work of Samarkand.

Comparative Analysis of Technical Developments in Papermaking during the Safavid Era
(10th, 11th and 12th century AH)
Paper has been closely associated with manuscript illumination over the course of history, playing a prominent role in bookmaking and miniature painting. Illuminated manuscripts owed their creation to the emergence of paper. Evidence suggests that papermaking, like many arts and crafts in Iran during the Safavid era (1501–1722), initially experienced a qualitative and quantitative growth only to decline in the end of the period.
Following a comparative design, the current research studies papermaking in the Safavid period based on technical manuscripts in the 10th, 11th and 12th century AH. This study is concerned with investigating technical developments, such as paper type, manufacturing techniques, fiber, tools and paper finishing process in the Safavid era.
We try to understand in what ways this process grew and declined in the early 10th century AH through mid-12th century AH. As such, by reviewing technical manuscripts of the era as well as contemporary scientific and art books, we make attempts to explore factors contributing to rise and fall of papermaking in Iran during the Safavid period.
Like many crafts, papermaking in Safavid Persia can be deemed as a Timurid heritage. In the 10th century AH, papermaking reached a qualitatively and quantitatively new stage of development, including standardization in thickness, size, technical qualities and color. Throughout this century, quality papers were produced in a wide variety with diverse decorations. Papermaking, however, underwent major changes in manufacturing techniques and decorations in the 11th century AH. During this century, paper variety diminished due to the increasing prevalence of imported papers. The 12th century AH marked the collapse of papermaking in Iran, during which time only a handful of low-quality types of paper were produced.
Keywords: papermaking, book illustration, Safavid era, technical factors, finishing process

This chapter investigates Adomeit Miniature Islamic Manuscript C12, a Safavid Qur’an preserved in the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Measuring 6.3 by 5.7 centimeters, the manuscript imbricates the amuletic function inherent to the Qur’an with a prognostic capacity through inclusion of a falnama (Book of Divination) attributed to the sixth Shi’i Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765). This chapter contextualizes the small-scale manuscript within Safavid bibliomantic practices, which reached their apogee during the reign of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76). In so doing, it contrasts a miniaturized specimen against alternate manuscript formats of Safavid falnamas, thereby assessing the impact of drastically reduced scale on the user’s divinatory experience.

Western society appears inordinately keen on outdated and stereotypical tropes of Islamic architecture, talking of a ‘hidden world’ of Islam in which women are seen and not heard as they live their lives incarcerated in the harem. This trope of Western Orientalism has become entrenched in our culture through travel accounts, the writings of historical voyeurs such as Sir Richard Burton and the romantic/erotic imagery of nineteenth-century Orientalist painters.

This paper aims to dispel many of the preconceptions that are held regarding the Iranian harem and the role of women in Safavid society by addressing the status of elite Iranian women, but also placing them in the wider context and considering the evidence for lower-class women who could simply not afford to live a cloistered life. There is also the case of non-Muslim women whose religions forbade polygamy and who were therefore immediately placed outside the harem and, although Safavid Iran included significant numbers of Zoroastrians and Jews as well a handful of Hindus, this paper will concentrate on one particular religious minority; the Caucasian Christians who were such an integral part of Abbas’ great project that they were awarded a particular status in the city of Isfahan.

چکیده
دوران شکوهمند صفویه از مهم ترین اعصار تاریخی ایران است. هنر صفویه نه تنها دارای عظمت و شکوه
فراوانی است بلکه بازتابی از اعتقادات و شرایط اجتماعی و سیاسی آن دوران می باشد، در واقع بخشی از اطلاعات
تاریخی صفویان در خلال کتیبه های مختلف آنها رقم خورده است که نیازمند بازخوانی و توجه کافی به آنهاست. در این
میان اصفهان به عنوان پایتخت دوره صفوی دارای ابنیه و کتیبه های متعدّد و مهمّی از این دوره است. اگرچه هنرمندان
بزرگ خوشنویس و کتیبه نگاری همچون علیرضا عباسی و محمدرضا امامی و عبدالباقی تبریزی پا به عرصه می گذارند
و هنر کتیبه نگاری را به عنوان یکی از هنرهای شاخص این عصر به اوج زیبایی و شکوه می رسانند اما این کتیبه ها
علاوه بر نمایش عالی ترین تکنیک استادکاران ایرانی، جنبه های مهمی از اعتقادات و شرایط اجتماعی جامعه عصر
صفوی را نیز بازگو می کنند و از این رو آنها را باید در شمار اسناد و منابع تاریخی لحاظ نمود. کتیبه های عصر صفوی
عمدتاً با رویکرد اعتقادی شیعی مورد بازخوانی قرار گرفته اند و کمتر به وجوه اجتماعی آنها توجه شده است. در این
مقاله سعی گردیده است که ابتدا کتیبه های عصر صفوی در بناهای تاریخی اصفهان که جامعه آماری مقاله را تشکیل
می دهند از حیث اهمیّت موضوعات اجتماعی معرفی و سپس با دسته بندی آنها بر اساس مضامین به کار رفته اجتماعی
بررسی گردند. کتیبه های موجود در بناهایی همچون مسجد جامع عباسی، مسجد شیخ لطف الله، مسجد جامع اصفهان،
مدرسه چهارباغ، تکیه میر، آب انبار مصلی و مسجد رکن الملک و... که دارای محتوای اجتماعی می باشند ابتدا بازخوانی
و در نهایت به روش تحلیل محتوا در حوزه تاریخ اجتماعی و مردم شناسی مورد مطالعه قرار گرفته اند.

Stemming from research into the objects for the exhibition 'Building Our Collection: Mughal and Safavid Albums,' (Museum of Islamic Art, Doha 17 September 2014-21 February, 2015), this talk examined the trajectory of the practice of collecting miniature paintings and calligraphic compositions into albums from Timurid Iran to the Mughal period in India and the British Raj.

In 2015, the Bulletin of the National Gallery Prague published a study introducing a portrait of hakīm Shifā’ī, the poet and court physician of Persian Shah ‘Abbās I, from the Collection of Asian and African Art of the National Gallery Prague, specifically in the context of a theory concerning the lost original of a portrait from the brush of perhaps the most iconic Persian painter, Rizā-yi ‘Abbāsī, and three other existing copies produced by the master’s pupils and epigones. The addition of a fourth portrait — currently in Prague — to a series of previously three known copies of the same work, which the study introduced, shed new light especially on the issue of dating Rizā-yi ‘Abbāsī’s original, as the Prague portrait was historically closest to it. Now, a fifth portrait can be added to the series of four, namely a painting from the collections of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library in Istanbul. The inscription and above all the date on this fifth painting of hakīm Shifā’ī require that the conclusions drawn in the abovementioned study be reviewed. At the same time, the entire series — now counting five extant versions of the same portrait, all depicting a specific subject that is in at least three cases identified by name in the inscription and evincing a high degree of formal similarity — represents one of the largest known series of copies of a portrait of a specific historical figure within 17th century Persian painting.