6 Manuscripts


THE GREAT MONGOL SHAHNAMA


A


n Epic of Kings: Te Great Mongol Shahnama, is the latest exhibition at the National


Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC on the first imperial copy of Iran’s national epic, Firdowsi’s Book of Kings,


probably the most


celebrated of all medieval Persian manuscripts. Te Shahnama recounts the story of Iran from the beginning of time through the fall of the Sassanian empire in the 7th century. Firdowsi’s (circa 935-circa 1020) masterpiece in Persian verse was written around the year 1000, and tells the stories of the heroes and kings of pre-Islamic Iran, rich with exploits of love and betrayal, courage and


war. Tis epic remained


extremely popular in Iran with the first-known illustrated copies dating to the Ilkhanid period, under the Mongol rulers of Iran (1256–1353). Te Great Mongol Shahnama, also known as the Demotte Shahnama, was created in Tabriz between 1330- 36, then capital of the Ilkhanate. As no illustrated copies of


the Shahnama are known from before the early 1300s,


the


manuscript probably did not have had an established iconography, leaving the Ilkhanid patron of this version to commission the best artists at court to freely experiment with the choice of pictorial events, styles, and themes. It is considered a masterpiece as much for its impressive scale (folio size 60 x 40 cm), as for its exceptional paintings. It exemplifies the remarkable artistic originality that flourished under Ilkhanid rule, a period traditionally associated with upheaval and destruction rather than creativity. Te morals and ethics contained


in the manuscript are about, and directed at, kings. It is essentially a guide of how (or how not) to rule, but it is far from the dry text one might assume it to be. Instead, guidance is provided by example, by means of captivating and often highly amusing tales of kings and heroes slaying fire-breathing dragons and other monstrous beasts, foolish kings attempting to fly, wizards magically conjuring up snowstorms to defeat the opposing army, and of Alexander the Great’s failed attempt to find the Fountain of Youth. Tese illustrations emphasise historical kings of Iran’s past include


Sassanian monarchs,


the pre-Islamic such


as


Ardashir I, Bahram Gur (Bahram V), and Kasra Anushirvan (Khusraw I Anushirvan). Tese figures served as role models to the Ilkhanid rulers, and the manuscript’s impressive paintings demonstrate how the Ilkhanids inserted themselves into Iran’s history. Te Ilkhanid rulers supported the


traditional Iranian idea of kingship with the Persian concept of monarchy reigning over this empire as ‘Te Kingship of the Land of Iran’, which upheld the idea of a


‘national state’, showing autonomy, rather than a vassal state. Te Great Mongol Shahnama


exists today in the form of just 57 illustrations (out of a possible 280 original folios) in public and private collections. In the early 20th


ASIAN ART | SEPTEMBER 2024 |


Detail of a folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdowsi. Recto: Iskandar builds the iron Rampart; verso: text, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Arthur M Sackler Collection, purchase: Smithsonian Unrestricted Trust Funds, Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program, and Dr Arthur M Sackler


#AsianArtPaper | asianartnewspaper | asianartnewspaper |


Folio of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdowsi. Verso: Ardashir captures Ardavan; verso: text: Kavus Journey to Barbaristan, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Arthur M Sackler Collection, purchase: Smithsonian Unrestricted Trust Funds, Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program, and Dr Arthur M Sackler


The arts of the book in the Ilkhanid period reached unparalleled levels


century, circa 1910, the Paris dealer Georges Demotte bought the Ilkhanid manuscript from another dealer, who had brought it out of Tehran, where it was thought to have been in the royal library of the Qajars (1789-1925). Te famous 19th-century photographer Antoin Sevrugin (1851-1933), was a photographer to the Qajar royal family and had photographed the manuscript while it was still bound, but records suggest that members of the royal household had started selling manuscripts from their dynastic collections from around 1908. Demotte dismantled the manuscript, splitting some folios with illustrations on both sides – selling the resulting two leaves individually. He then commissioned new text pages to paste on the backs of the undamaged split leaves; when these were damaged, the salvaged image was pasted onto a newly commissioned folio, as a result, some paintings are unrelated to the accompanying text, while others have incomplete text. Te Ilkhanate was established by Khan


Hulegu (d 1265), the


grandson of Genghis Khan (and a brother of Kublai Khan), who had eliminated the Assassins in Iran, sacked Baghdad in


1258, and


destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate to rule from Transoxiana to Syria. In spite of this tumultuous period, by the middle of the 14th century, the region had regained relative peace, as the invaders had settled and intermarried with the local populations and began to adopt habits and customs from these new lands alongside their own ancestral culture. Tey also kept their nomadic way of life until the end of the dynasty, travelling the regions of central Iraq, northwest Iran, and the modern lands of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Te descendants of Hulegu ruled


Persia for approximately 80 years, tolerating multiple religions alongside Islam, including Shamanism,


Buddhist, Asian Art Newspaper and


Christianity. A religious shift between 1291-1316 saw the majority of Mongols convert to Islam, however, the Mongol court remained Buddhist with


Islam


ultimately only being adopted as the state religion in 1295. Te Ilkhanate began to fall apart by the end of the 13th century with the Ilkhanate falling into decline between 1256- 1335, and 1336-1356, after facing rebellion, invasions, and disease. As Stefano Carboni (now Director


of AGSW), wrote for the Department of


Islamic Art, Te


Metropolitan Museum of Art, in his essay Te Art of the Book in the Ilkhanid Period, ‘Te arts of the book in the Ilkhanid period reached unparalleled levels, not only in quantity but also in quality. Te new rulers gave impetus to book production after they settled in their capitals of Maragha, Tabriz, and Baghdad and developed an interest in historical writings as a means to further their claim to rule over a foreign land. Not surprisingly, they chose the


Shahnama as a sort of official dynastic history in which the Ilkhanids identified themselves with kings and heroes of the Iranian past. Te Mongols’ attitude toward the power of the word and the image, however, is not sufficient to explain the unprecedented use of high-quality paper, the richness of illumination, the refinement of calligraphy, and the blossoming of illustration that Iran and Iraq witnessed during the Ilkhanid period. Te Mongols clearly brought with


them an excitement about the art of painting. Local artists readily absorbed the new artistic influences from China,


transmitted through


scrolls and drawings and integrated them into the type of painting with which they were most familiar, book illustration. At the end of the 13th century, the early integration of foreign elements was awkward. Within


two decades, however, artists had created a new eclectic


Detail of a folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdowsi. Verso: Ardashir captures Ardavan; verso: text: Kavus Journey to Barbaristan, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, purchase: Charles Lang Freer Endowment


Detail of a folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdowsi. Recto: Iskandar (Alexander) and the talking tree; verso: text. National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, purchase: Charles Lang Freer Endowment


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24