Iran's Mirror of the World
By SOUREN MELIKIAN
WASHINGTON — Rich and complex subjects drawn from ancient cultures in which the foundations of art are far removed from anything familiar to Western viewers are best served by small-size exhibitions.
In a page from Shah Tahmasp’s manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” Fereydun, who has mounted the throne of ancient Iran, is seen slaying the evil Zahhak, who usurped the crown.
The dazzling show of paintings taken from the Persian manuscripts of Ferdowsi’s Shah-Nameh, or “The Book of Kings,” put together at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery by the chief curator Massumeh Farhad, is a model of the genre. It covers three centuries from around the 1330s to the mid-17th century, with brief allusions to other periods.
Several paintings are staggeringly beautiful, particularly the six pages torn away from the monumental volume commissioned for the library of Shah Tahmasp when the young Safavid prince mounted the throne of Iran in 1524.
With their intense colors laid flat within contours of calligraphic fluidity traced by painters who often were also calligraphers, the images require close scrutiny
Ms. Farhad made no attempt to embark on a commentary of the paintings, which would be out of place in a show meant as a visual introduction for the general public, with no catalog other than a brochure freely distributed.
Each image says too much. I demonstrated in my book “The Song of the World in the Art of Safavid Iran” — written in French — that Iranian book painting translates concepts found in Persian literature. Many are visual metaphors.
Complicating matters further, the text in Iranian manuscripts provides the painter with a theme that the artist does not purport to “illustrate,” if only because it is often stated in just a few words. The painter uses the narrative as an excuse to submit his personal commentary by visual means.
In a page from Shah Tahmasp’s manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” Fereydun, who has mounted the throne of ancient Iran, is seen slaying the evil Zahhak, who usurped the crown. Although toppled by Fereydun, Zahhak manages to enter the palace, intending to murder the rightful king Fereydun. A court attendant raises her finger to her lips, a traditional Iranian gesture signifying intense surprise, called in Persian “biting the finger of amazement.” Fereydun has struck down his foe with a lion-headed mace, and the gilt iron beast itself rolls its eyes in wonder, introducing a surrealist note typical of Iranian thinking in general and art in particular. This is a way of saying that the entire creation feels delighted surprise at Fereydun’s feat.
Making the reading of the image more complex, Persian verses have been incorporated by the painter. This indicates that he was not only a calligrapher but a poet, as several artists were. The Persian couplet is written above the arched entrance to the throne room in gold lettering on a deep blue ground, in the manner of monumental friezes painted on revetment tiles from the 14th century on.
The couplet is not by Ferdowsi, who completed his Shah-Nameh before 1008, but by Daqiqi, a poet from the generation that preceded Ferdowsi’s. It is in the style of well-wishing verses addressed to kings and may have been part of Daqiqi’s own version of the “Book of Kings,” left unfinished when he was murdered: “May every deed of yours fulfill your wishes — May the Lord of the Universe [=God] be your Guardian.” Written above the murderous scene, these words aimed at any royal resident can be understood to hail Fereydun or to target Zahhak with lashing irony.
To the right, an equally traditional invocation to God in Arabic appears over the side entrance, “O You Who Opens Doors.” It is through this opening that Zahhak slipped into the palace after Fereydun had himself gone through it. Like the Persian verses, the Arabic invocation can be read both ways, as an invocation acknowledging Fereydun’s triumph, or as a statement hailing God, the Omnipotent, who opened the doors of the palace to the usurper Zahhak so that he might meet his rightful punishment at the hands of Fereydun.
Even the mural in shades of blue on the white stucco of the palace walls behind the throne emplacement have their charge of barely concealed irony. The lion downing the bull, painted twice, was a symbol of invincible royal might going as far back as the 6th century B.C. stone reliefs at Takht-e Jamshid (Persepolis in Western literature). But behind the bulls, jackals howl at the scene in a satirical manner well in tune with a famous collection of animal parables, Kalila wa Dimna, written in Arabic by the 8th century Iranian writer known under his pen name, Ibn al-Muqaffa’.
Deadpan irony creeps into the most solemn scenes at nearly all times, conveying the profound sense of relativity that underlies Iranian attitudes.
A page from another broken-up manuscript probably completed in the early 1330s depicts Eskandar, the mythologized figure of the historical Alexander the Great raising his eyes toward the Talking Tree. Transformed over time into a seeker of esoteric truth striving to arrive at the Fountain of Life in his peregrinations across the world, Alexander the Great approaches the end of his journey when he hears voices coming down from high up. Ferdowsi only mentions the human sounds. The painter supplies some human faces at the end of branches and throws in animal heads — hares, birds, including a hoopoe, which is the symbol of esoteric discourse — and all are fun figures, as if deriding Eskandar.
Ferdowsi’s Alexandrine parable signifies the limits, and the dangers, involved in looking for truth behind the veil of appearances. The painter flings his mockery in the face of Eskandar, the world ruler, and by implication at all rulers, often hailed by panegyrists as “The Second Alexander.”
Such mockery is daring. In all manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” the characters wear the garb not of the Pre-Islamic period with which the Shah-Nameh deals, but of their own time. Ancient history was the metaphor of the present.
Three decades ago, two scholars sought to determine the correspondence between the Shah-Nameh paintings belonging to the manuscript from which “Alexander Arriving at the Talking Tree” was removed and historical events and characters of the late Ilkhanid period, when the Mongol rulers were about to leave the Iranian scene. They treated the allusions to contemporary politics as an extraordinary occurrence.
In fact, allusions to the present were the rule in Iranian courts where kings lived in an ever-present visual and auditive Shah-Nameh environment.
Just as a Koran cantor, in Persian “Qoran-Khan,” was appointed to the king, so did every ruler, however modest, have his Shah-Nameh cantor, reciting in a modulated chant verses from the “Book of Kings.” In their 13th- and 14th-century palaces, the rulers gazed at friezes of glazed ceramic revetment tiles carrying excerpts from the Shah-Nameh. Some of the verses were adapted from the third to the second person singular in order to address the royal resident in the palace.
Even though most of the historic rulers of Iran were not of Iranian stock, but of Turkic parentage, all sought models in the Shah-Nameh. They were hailed by the literati singing verses in their praise as the “Second Jamshid,” or the “Second Keykhosrow,” and other similar titles coined after admired Shah-Nameh royal characters, mythical or historical.
The sultans and kings of Iran so thoroughly identified with their Shah-Nameh models that some would ride out to combat reciting verses from this stylized History of the World with Iran at its center. The 14th-century historian Shabankare’i recounts the story of a prince of the Shabankareh called Naser ad-Din Gudarz (the latter name born by a Shah-Nameh heroic figure) mounting a horse called Kheng (named after the horse of another Shah-Nameh hero, Rostam) who recklessly rode into enemy ranks and died reciting Shah-Nameh verses.
Reciting the Shah-Nameh was not confined to the aristocracy. It fascinated society at all levels. As recently as the 1960s, in the Kabul area of present-day Afghanistan, where ancient aspects of Iranian culture continued unchanged, villagers in remote valleys gathered to listen to Shah-Nameh verses chanted by the only man who could read.
Visitors gazing at the painted pages displayed with an impeccable sense of balance and rhythm can contemplate images in which a whole nation saw for 1,000 years the mirror of the world and its own collective fate within it.
Shah-Nameh: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Until April 17.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — Rich and complex subjects drawn from ancient cultures in which the foundations of art are far removed from anything familiar to Western viewers are best served by small-size exhibitions.
In a page from Shah Tahmasp’s manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” Fereydun, who has mounted the throne of ancient Iran, is seen slaying the evil Zahhak, who usurped the crown.
The dazzling show of paintings taken from the Persian manuscripts of Ferdowsi’s Shah-Nameh, or “The Book of Kings,” put together at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery by the chief curator Massumeh Farhad, is a model of the genre. It covers three centuries from around the 1330s to the mid-17th century, with brief allusions to other periods.
Several paintings are staggeringly beautiful, particularly the six pages torn away from the monumental volume commissioned for the library of Shah Tahmasp when the young Safavid prince mounted the throne of Iran in 1524.
With their intense colors laid flat within contours of calligraphic fluidity traced by painters who often were also calligraphers, the images require close scrutiny
Ms. Farhad made no attempt to embark on a commentary of the paintings, which would be out of place in a show meant as a visual introduction for the general public, with no catalog other than a brochure freely distributed.
Each image says too much. I demonstrated in my book “The Song of the World in the Art of Safavid Iran” — written in French — that Iranian book painting translates concepts found in Persian literature. Many are visual metaphors.
Complicating matters further, the text in Iranian manuscripts provides the painter with a theme that the artist does not purport to “illustrate,” if only because it is often stated in just a few words. The painter uses the narrative as an excuse to submit his personal commentary by visual means.
In a page from Shah Tahmasp’s manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” Fereydun, who has mounted the throne of ancient Iran, is seen slaying the evil Zahhak, who usurped the crown. Although toppled by Fereydun, Zahhak manages to enter the palace, intending to murder the rightful king Fereydun. A court attendant raises her finger to her lips, a traditional Iranian gesture signifying intense surprise, called in Persian “biting the finger of amazement.” Fereydun has struck down his foe with a lion-headed mace, and the gilt iron beast itself rolls its eyes in wonder, introducing a surrealist note typical of Iranian thinking in general and art in particular. This is a way of saying that the entire creation feels delighted surprise at Fereydun’s feat.
Making the reading of the image more complex, Persian verses have been incorporated by the painter. This indicates that he was not only a calligrapher but a poet, as several artists were. The Persian couplet is written above the arched entrance to the throne room in gold lettering on a deep blue ground, in the manner of monumental friezes painted on revetment tiles from the 14th century on.
The couplet is not by Ferdowsi, who completed his Shah-Nameh before 1008, but by Daqiqi, a poet from the generation that preceded Ferdowsi’s. It is in the style of well-wishing verses addressed to kings and may have been part of Daqiqi’s own version of the “Book of Kings,” left unfinished when he was murdered: “May every deed of yours fulfill your wishes — May the Lord of the Universe [=God] be your Guardian.” Written above the murderous scene, these words aimed at any royal resident can be understood to hail Fereydun or to target Zahhak with lashing irony.
To the right, an equally traditional invocation to God in Arabic appears over the side entrance, “O You Who Opens Doors.” It is through this opening that Zahhak slipped into the palace after Fereydun had himself gone through it. Like the Persian verses, the Arabic invocation can be read both ways, as an invocation acknowledging Fereydun’s triumph, or as a statement hailing God, the Omnipotent, who opened the doors of the palace to the usurper Zahhak so that he might meet his rightful punishment at the hands of Fereydun.
Even the mural in shades of blue on the white stucco of the palace walls behind the throne emplacement have their charge of barely concealed irony. The lion downing the bull, painted twice, was a symbol of invincible royal might going as far back as the 6th century B.C. stone reliefs at Takht-e Jamshid (Persepolis in Western literature). But behind the bulls, jackals howl at the scene in a satirical manner well in tune with a famous collection of animal parables, Kalila wa Dimna, written in Arabic by the 8th century Iranian writer known under his pen name, Ibn al-Muqaffa’.
Deadpan irony creeps into the most solemn scenes at nearly all times, conveying the profound sense of relativity that underlies Iranian attitudes.
A page from another broken-up manuscript probably completed in the early 1330s depicts Eskandar, the mythologized figure of the historical Alexander the Great raising his eyes toward the Talking Tree. Transformed over time into a seeker of esoteric truth striving to arrive at the Fountain of Life in his peregrinations across the world, Alexander the Great approaches the end of his journey when he hears voices coming down from high up. Ferdowsi only mentions the human sounds. The painter supplies some human faces at the end of branches and throws in animal heads — hares, birds, including a hoopoe, which is the symbol of esoteric discourse — and all are fun figures, as if deriding Eskandar.
Ferdowsi’s Alexandrine parable signifies the limits, and the dangers, involved in looking for truth behind the veil of appearances. The painter flings his mockery in the face of Eskandar, the world ruler, and by implication at all rulers, often hailed by panegyrists as “The Second Alexander.”
Such mockery is daring. In all manuscripts of the “Book of Kings,” the characters wear the garb not of the Pre-Islamic period with which the Shah-Nameh deals, but of their own time. Ancient history was the metaphor of the present.
Three decades ago, two scholars sought to determine the correspondence between the Shah-Nameh paintings belonging to the manuscript from which “Alexander Arriving at the Talking Tree” was removed and historical events and characters of the late Ilkhanid period, when the Mongol rulers were about to leave the Iranian scene. They treated the allusions to contemporary politics as an extraordinary occurrence.
In fact, allusions to the present were the rule in Iranian courts where kings lived in an ever-present visual and auditive Shah-Nameh environment.
Just as a Koran cantor, in Persian “Qoran-Khan,” was appointed to the king, so did every ruler, however modest, have his Shah-Nameh cantor, reciting in a modulated chant verses from the “Book of Kings.” In their 13th- and 14th-century palaces, the rulers gazed at friezes of glazed ceramic revetment tiles carrying excerpts from the Shah-Nameh. Some of the verses were adapted from the third to the second person singular in order to address the royal resident in the palace.
Even though most of the historic rulers of Iran were not of Iranian stock, but of Turkic parentage, all sought models in the Shah-Nameh. They were hailed by the literati singing verses in their praise as the “Second Jamshid,” or the “Second Keykhosrow,” and other similar titles coined after admired Shah-Nameh royal characters, mythical or historical.
The sultans and kings of Iran so thoroughly identified with their Shah-Nameh models that some would ride out to combat reciting verses from this stylized History of the World with Iran at its center. The 14th-century historian Shabankare’i recounts the story of a prince of the Shabankareh called Naser ad-Din Gudarz (the latter name born by a Shah-Nameh heroic figure) mounting a horse called Kheng (named after the horse of another Shah-Nameh hero, Rostam) who recklessly rode into enemy ranks and died reciting Shah-Nameh verses.
Reciting the Shah-Nameh was not confined to the aristocracy. It fascinated society at all levels. As recently as the 1960s, in the Kabul area of present-day Afghanistan, where ancient aspects of Iranian culture continued unchanged, villagers in remote valleys gathered to listen to Shah-Nameh verses chanted by the only man who could read.
Visitors gazing at the painted pages displayed with an impeccable sense of balance and rhythm can contemplate images in which a whole nation saw for 1,000 years the mirror of the world and its own collective fate within it.
Shah-Nameh: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Until April 17.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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