The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting 9781474437455

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art Series Editor: Professor Robert Hillenbrand Titles include: Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran Sussan Babaie The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting Lamia Balafrej Text and Image in Medieval Persian Art Sheila S. Blair The Minaret Jonathan M. Bloom Reframing the Alhambra: Architecture, Poetry, Textiles and Court Ceremonial Olga Bush The Wonders of Creation and the Singularities of Painting: A Study of the Ilkhanid London QazvÈnÈ Stefano Carboni Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran Yuka Kadoi Rum Seljuq Architecture, 1170–1220: The Patronage of Sultans Richard P. McClary The Dome of the Rock and its Mosaic Inscriptions Marcus Milwright The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi‘is and the Architecture of Coexistence Stephennie Mulder China’s Early Mosques Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/esii

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING Lamia Balafrej

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Lamia Balafrej, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Trump Medieval by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Malta by Melita Press A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 3743 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 3745 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 3746 2 (epub) The right of Lamia Balafrej to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498) Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

Contents

List of Figures vii List of Platesix Acknowledgements xi Series Editor’s Foreword xv INTRODUCTION  Painting about Painting

1

PLATES25 CHAPTER 1 Pictorial Preface

43

CHAPTER 2 Writing on the Image

75

CHAPTER 3 Potential World

108

CHAPTER 4 Calligraphic Line

150

CHAPTER 5 Wondrous Signature

184

EPILOGUE Manuscripts in Motion

214

Bibliography 228 Illustration Acknowledgements 248 Index251

Figures

1.1

Double-page frontispiece, Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l‑Ma‘ali Nasr Allah 44 1.2 Double-page frontispiece, Shahnama of Firdawsi 46 1.3 Double-page frontispiece, Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l‑Ma‘ali Nasr Allah 48 1.4 ‘Timur Holding an Audience in Balkh in 1370’ 50 1.5 Portrait of Sultan Husayn Mirza 51 1.6 Double-page frontispiece of a manuscript. Gulshan album55 1.7 ‘Story of the King of Kashmir’ 57 1.8 ‘Feast by a Stream’ 61 1.9 Scene of a Safavid gathering 66 1.10 Detail of Plate III 69 2.1 Detail of Plate XIII 76 2.2 Detail of Plate XIII 77 2.3 ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage to Humayun’ 82 2.4 Detail of painting shown in 2.3 83 2.5 Detail of Plate XII 85 2.6 Detail of Plate XII 86 2.7 ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ 93 2.8 ‘The Gnostic has a Vision of Angels Carrying Trays of Light to the Poet Sa‘di’ 95 3.1 ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ 109 3.2 ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ 112 3.3 Extracts from the poetry of ‘Attar, Firdawsi and Nizami with illustrations 116 3.4 ‘Isfandiyar Kills Arjasp in the Brazen Hold’ 119 3.5 ‘Mahzun and Mahbub in a Garden’ 121 3.6 Detail of Plate XI 125 3.7 Detail of Plate VI 126 3.8 Composite album page with a fifteenth-century study sheet and two small pieces of calligraphy 127 3.9 Plate XI with mastar130

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3.10 Stencilled page with angels from a fifteenth-century safina of poetry 3.11 Page of decoupage, Diwan of Sultan Husayn Bayqara 3.12 Marbled paper 3.13 Wine cup of Sultan Husayn Bayqara 4.1 Detail of Plate XIII 4.2 Detail of Plate XIII 4.3 Brass vessel inlaid with silver 4.4 ‘Mounted Rider’. Diez album 4.5 Detail of drawing shown in 4.4 4.6 Tughra of Uzun Hasan 4.7 Drawings. Timurid workshop album 4.8 Drawings and paintings. Timurid workshop album 4.9 Detail of drawing shown in 4.8 4.10 Detail of Plate X 4.11 Detail of Plate XI 4.12 Detail of Plate XII 4.13 Manuscript folio. Diwan of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir 5.1 Detail of Plate X 5.2 Detail of Plate XI 5.3 Detail of Plate XII 5.4 Detail of Plate XIII 5.5 Illuminated frontispiece, Majmu‘a of Rashid al-Din 5.6 Detail of illumination shown in 5.5 5.7 Detail of illumination, Shahnama of Firdawsi 5.8 Glazed ceramic with signature of Fakhr-i ‘Ali 5.9 Detail of painting, Shahnama of Firdawsi 5.10 Detail of ‘Celebration of Eid al-Fitr’ 5.11 Detail of ‘Earthly Drunkenness’ 6.1 Double-page frontispiece, Bustan of Sa‘di 6.2 ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ 6.3 ‘Ghurid Tyrant in a Village’

137 139 140 141 151 152 158 159 160 161 162 165 166 167 168 169 171 185 185 186 187 190 191 192 193 194 199 200 218 221 224

Plates

All plates show the Cairo Bustan: late Timurid copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di; Herat (?), c. 1488, for Sultan Husayn Bayqara; 55 folios, 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio), 21 × 17 cm (written surface); Cairo, Dar al‑kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22. I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI

Outer side of binding’s upper cover Inner side of binding’s upper cover Left-hand page of illustrated frontispiece Right-hand page of illustrated frontispiece Left-hand page of first illuminated frontispiece Right-hand page of first illuminated frontispiece Left-hand page of second illuminated frontispiece Right-hand page of second illuminated frontispiece Text page ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ Text page with colophon Text page added in the early sixteenth century Last page of the Cairo Bustan with seals

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Acknowledgements

This book’s first incarnation was a doctoral thesis defended in 2013 at the Université Aix-Marseille I. I am especially grateful to my PhD advisor, Yves Porter, who has taught me a great amount about Persian painting. Conversations with Sussan Babaie, Eloïse Brac de la Perrière and Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen before, during and after my PhD defence have been crucial to the evolution of the dissertation into a book. Much of the final typescript was written during a year spent as a 2017–18 Art Histories fellow at Berlin’s Forum Transregionale Studien. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Hannah Baader, Gerhard Wolf, Georges Khalil and the whole team at the Forum for this opportunity, as well as the fellows for enriching and challenging my ideas. I was fortunate to be affiliated with the Museum of Islamic Art during my fellowship year. My thanks go to the museum’s ­director, Stefan Weber, and to Claudia Pörschman. I begun transforming the dissertation into a book when I was an Assistant Professor of Art History at Wellesley College from 2013 to 2017. I am grateful to my former colleagues there, especially Margaret Carroll, Nikki Greene, Alice Friedman and Louise Marlow for their support and enthusiasm, as well as the staff of the art department and the art library for their help with locating documentary resources. The last edits were completed at the University of California, Los Angeles. I am thankful to the faculty, staff and students of the Art History department, NELC, and the Islamic Studies Program for welcoming me as a new colleague and for all the productive conversations that have followed. I am grateful to Robert Hillenbrand for his interest in the book, together with Nicola Ramsey at Edinburgh University Press. It has been a pleasure to work with a team of people there, including Kirsty Woods and Eddie Clark, and with copyeditor Anna Stevenson. I am deeply indebted to the two anonymous reviewers and to Robert Hillenbrand whose insights and suggestions have been essential in improving my argument and finalising the typescript. Many institutions have supported my research in earlier stages. My dissertation took a decisive turn during a four-month fellowship

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at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC). I owe a special debt of gratitude to Massumeh Farhad for her generosity and guidance. My thanks go also to Nancy Micklewright, head of Public and Scholarly Engagement. A year later, a Coleman fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) provided an ideal environment in which to finish writing the dissertation. I am grateful to the Senior Manager of Academic Programs, Marcie Karp, to Sheila Canby for hosting me in the Islamic Art department and to Maryam Ekhtyar for serving as my advisor. I must also thank the following institutions for supporting field work and the purchase of image rights: the university Aix-Marseille I, the Barakat Trust (Oxford), Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), IFEA (Institut Français des Etudes Anatoliennes, Istanbul), INHA (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris), LA3M (Laboratoire d’Archéologie Médiévale et Moderne en Méditerranée, Aix-en-Provence), the dean’s discretionary fund at UCLA, Wellesley College, and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation. I am thankful to the many curators and librarians who gave me access to their collections, especially Amy Landau (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD), Dr Sobhi, Dr ‘Atif, Dr Abdallah and Dr Qatr who gave me access to the Cairo Bustan and its reproductions (Dar al-Kutub, Cairo), Mary McWilliams and Mika Natif (Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA), Elaine Wright (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin), Ay∞e Erdo©du, Esra Müyessero©lu and Kadriye Özbıyık (Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul), Jorge Rodriguez (Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon), Ursula Sims-Williams and Muhammad Isa Waley (British Library, London), Annick Desroches and Courtney Stewart (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Sophie Makariou (Musée du Louvre, Paris), Adèle Sini and Annie Vernay-Nouri (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris), Tim Kirk, Christina Popenfus and George Williams (Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC). Aspects of this work received helpful criticisms at various conferences, invited lectures and informal conversations. It is a privilege to thank Niv Allon, Cristelle Baskins, Emily Beeny, Nourane Ben Azzouna, Deniz Beyazit, Meredith Cohen, Anne Eusterschulte, Beate Fricke, Abdullah Ghouchani, Dipti Khera, Marissa Klee-Peregon, Max Koss, Miwon Kwon, Adeline Laclau, Heping Liu, Venugopal Maddipati, Khalida Mahi, Sophie Makariou, Lauren Mancia, Saloni Mathur, Nino Nanobashvili, Sarada Natarajan, Hana Navratilova, Steven Nelson, Jay Oles, Petra Raschkewitz, Sugata Ray, Simon Rettig, David Roxburgh, Matthew Saba, Jeffrey Saletnik, Saygin Salgirli, Avinoam Shalem, Wendy Shaw, Marianna Shreve Simpson, Abolala Soudavar, Bronwen Wilson and Ittai Weinryb. It would not have been possible to finish the dissertation, let alone the book, without the support of my friends, especially Annalisa Assaadi, Mehdi Balafrej, Corentin Bourdeaux, Nicole Bryant, Sabine

acknowledgements

Caminade, Markus Kneer, Codruta Morari, Clément Rabourdin and Sima Shakhsari. Special thanks go to Immy Humes whose friendship has shaped this book in so many ways; Jenny Olivia Johnson for turning the q-non into an epic adventure and for helping with the final revision; and Aurélie Moioli and Mathias Verger for the Conference of the Birds. My deepest appreciation goes to my brother, Yassine Balafrej, and to my parents, Amina Nadim and Taha Balafrej, whose love and support have buoyed me throughout my peregrinations.

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Series Editor’s Foreword

‘Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art’ is a venture that offers readers easy access to the most up-to-date research across the whole range of Islamic art. Building on the long and distinguished tradition of Edinburgh University Press in publishing books on the Islamic world, it is a forum for studies that, while closely focused, also open wide horizons. Books in the series, for example, concentrate in an accessible way, and in clear, plain English, on the art of a single century, dynasty or geographical area; on the meaning of works of art; on a given medium in a restricted time frame; or on analyses of key works in their wider contexts. A balance is maintained as far as possible between successive titles, so that various parts of the Islamic world and various media and approaches are represented. Books in the series are academic monographs of intellectual distinction that mark a significant advance in the field. While they are naturally aimed at an advanced and graduate academic audience, a complementary target readership is the worldwide community of specialists in Islamic art – professionals who work in universities, research institutes, auction houses and museums – as well as that elusive character, the interested general reader. Professor Robert Hillenbrand

INTRODUCTION

Painting about Painting

What follows focuses on Persian manuscript paintings produced in late fifteenth-century Herat, in today’s Afghanistan, during the reign of the late Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. c. 1470–1506). Studies of Persian manuscript paintings are often concerned with their illustrative function – how the paintings visually translate the texts they accompany – as well as the role that court-sponsored manuscripts played in reflecting royal authority. By contrast, this book argues that late Timurid painting also served as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, linking painting to painter and raising questions about authorship, medium and representation. By juxtaposing the images with contemporary sources that illuminate the setting and the terms for their reception, I show that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work. Visual richness and linear exactitude, for example, were designed to highlight the artists’ ‘powerful minds and precision of execution’ in the words of the Timurid historian Ghiyath al-Din Khwandamir (c. 1475–1534).1 Instead of connecting painting to patron, or seeing through the image into a pre-existing, external text, the late Timurid beholder was invited to observe pictures as invented worlds and manual fabrications. Late Timurid painting, then, was not simply the passive residue of a past artistic performance. Rather, it actively shaped its reception as a trace of the artist’s work. Profusion of details and excessive attention to form functioned to produce this effect of self-reflection, focusing the viewer’s attention on the painter’s imagination and craftsmanship. Such pictures also participated in a theory of authorship, one that emphasised the artist’s creative power and manual dexterity. As the genitive – both subjective and objective – of the title ‘The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting’ suggests, late Timurid painting defined authorship as making, at once an imaginative process and a manual endeavour. While this inquiry considers a wide range of visual and textual materials, from calligraphy to metalwork to poetry, it is centred on the close, microhistorical analysis of the Cairo Bustan, a manuscript copy of the Bustan (The Orchard) of Sa‘di made around 1488 in Herat

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

for the late Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara and now kept in the National Library of Cairo (hence its appellation as the Cairo Bustan).2 The Cairo Bustan is one of the most important manuscripts in the history of Persian book arts. Its paintings are signed in the name of Bihzad, perennially considered a paragon of excellence in painting. In addition to providing the first complete analysis of this manuscript and its pictures, this study demonstrates that the Cairo Bustan’s paintings constitute an example of artistic selfreflection. Using visual, material and verbal means, including visual abundance, linear precision, inscriptions on the image and signature, Bihzad shifted painting from an illustrative device and an attribute of royal power to a self-reflective image, designed to convey discourses about its making and its authorship. As such, this study requires a double shift in the modern understanding of self-reflection. First, it implies that self-reflection did not necessarily manifest itself through iconic means. Bihzad did not use self-portraiture nor did he represent images within images. He did not use indexical modes of self-representation either. Brushstrokes are often impossible to detect. The painting’s surface is so polished that it seems almost self-made. The painter left no personal traces of manual labour. Instead of using his likeness, or allowing his paintings to display individualised marks, the artist, as I demonstrate in this study, engaged with authorship in aspects of colour, line and composition. In doing so, he explored the symbolic potentialities of the picture’s material and visual configurations – the idea, for example, that visual density points to a maker’s ‘powerful mind’, to use Khwandamir’s expression. Self-reflection, moreover, did not necessarily proclaim late Timurid painting’s autonomy from social and political considerations. It was neither simply a tool of self-reference, pointing back at an artist, nor a purely self-contained phenomenon, turning the medium onto itself. Rather, self-reflection invested painting with social and political agency, moving the painter from marginality to centrality. In fact, it was bound up with the painter’s access to cultural representation at the late Timurid court. As paintings circulated, the artist’s ‘skill and rank increased’, as the memorialist and poet Zayn al-Din Mahmud Wasifi (1485–1551 or 1566) wrote about the painter Bihzad, and ‘with every new miniature he painted, the countenance of victory and attainment showed itself from behind the veil of the Unknown’.3 Painting was an agent of empowerment, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed. This introduction first provides information on the historical context of late Timurid Herat, underscoring the cultural and institutional circumstances that might have influenced the emergence of self-reflection in painting. I then turn to late Timurid painting’s visual characteristics, examining ways in which they define an aesthetics of self-reflection and considering how such an argument both

introduction

draws upon and departs from previous scholarship. The third section contains a description of the Cairo Bustan as well as an outline of this book. The introduction ends with a summary of my argument and the methodological principles that underlie it. The Power of Intricacy at the Late Timurid Majlis The turn toward pictorial self-reflection in late Timurid painting did not take place all at once, nor did it affect the whole manuscript production of Iran and Central Asia. As I will suggest throughout this book, this shift unfolded progressively from the late fourteenth century onward, mainly in court-sponsored manuscripts produced and circulated at the Jalayirid, Turkmen and Timurid courts, before crystallising in late Timurid Herat. Several factors account for the intensification of painting’s self-reflective quality in the late Timurid period, including the expansion of the bases of patronage, late Timurid poetry’s taste for technical sophistication, and the institution of the majlis and its emphasis on performance and virtuosity. Forged by the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (1336–1405) around 1400, the Timurid empire initially stretched from Syria to Uzbekistan.4 It began disintegrating in the middle of the fifteenth century under the strain of internecine struggles and western Iran’s Turkmen dynasties.5 By the end of the century, the empire had shrunk to parts of Khurasan, a region of eastern Iran.6 The Timurid dynasty did not survive Sultan Husayn’s reign, quickly coming to an end with the Uzbek invasion of Herat in 1507.7 But despite the dynasty’s political decline, late Timurid Herat was at least until the 1490s a major economic and trade centre. Agricultural productivity and trade of luxury commodities such as silk provided its elite with major financial resources.8 Late Timurid Herat was also known for its brilliant cultural scene. Along with other members of the court, Sultan Husayn continued the Timurid tradition of patronage, supporting artists, poets and scholars. According to Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483–1530), a cousin of Sultan Husayn and founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, Sultan Husayn’s sons ‘were good enough as company and in social matters, in conversation and in parties’, but ‘were strangers to war, strategy, equipment, bold fight, and encounter’.9 The late Timurids shifted ‘the focus of their energies from the battlefield to the arts’, as Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry summarised.10 There may have been a correlation between political decline and the surge of cultural activity, as Maria Subtelny has suggested. A form of privilege called the suyËrghål encouraged the decentralisation of economic and political power, which itself allowed, in Subtelny’s terms, a ‘broadening of the bases of patronage’.11 The suyËrghål was a land grant carrying with it full fiscal immunity.12

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Allotted exclusively to relatives and military commanders under Timur and his son Shah Rukh, it was extended to other dignitaries under Sultan Husayn as a means to maintain the support of the elites. As a result, by the end of the fifteenth century, almost the whole territory of eastern Iran had been turned into suyËrghåls.13 The fragmentation of the land resulted in the dispersal of political authority, which in turn stimulated patronage. One of the most powerful patrons was Sultan Husayn’s vizier, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i (1441–1501), also a poet and statesman.14 According to a contemporary source, ‘so many matchless and excellent calligraphers, singers, musicians, painters, gilders, artists, writers, composers of enigmas, and poets thrived under his patronage that it is not known whether as many have ever been in evidence at any other time’.15 Other patrons included members of the Turkic military elite and Tajik (sedentary Iranian) representatives.16 Intellectuals themselves were granted privileges and acquired tremendous wealth. The Sufi shaykh of Samarqand Khwaja ‘Ubayd Allah Ahrar (1404–90) is said to have owned almost 300,000 pieces of land.17 The poet and spiritual guide ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414–92) was given several property and tax privileges. In addition to his many suyËrghåls, he enjoyed immunity for all personal taxes.18 Personal incomes grew and cultural activity flourished. Contemporary writers describe a unique atmosphere of intellectual and artistic emulation. According to Babur, ‘[Sultan Husayn]’s time was a wonderful age; in it Khurasan, and Herat above all, was full of learned and matchless men. Whatever the work a man took up, he aimed and aspired at bringing that work to perfection.’19 Hundreds of poets from all social backgrounds lived in late Timurid Herat.20 Many belonged to the category of the commoners, mard-i ‘ammÈ, and included potters, bakers and drapers.21 Professional and non-professional poets would come together in the majlis, a form of social gathering and a site of literary competition, where poets, literati and patrons tested each other’s verbal dexterity.22 Although it has mainly been studied in its most formal manifestation – the majlis-i ‘ålÈ of the ruler – the majlis could in fact be held at all levels of society and in different settings, from bazaar shops to private houses. In his memoirs Badåyi‘ al-waqåyi‘ (Wondrous Events), Zayn al-Din Mahmud Wasifi (1485–1551 or 1566), a non-elite, middle-class poet from Herat, recalls gathering with friends in the shop of Amani, a seller of chickpeas and a nonprofessional poet.23 Another time, a similar meeting was organised in the shop of a bookbinder, Mulla Zada.24 According to the same source, literary assemblies could also take place after the Friday prayer in the Friday mosque of Herat.25 Poetry was a means of social promotion. The mastery of difficult poetic forms allowed poets to climb to higher, elite gatherings. Technical sophistication, in fact, defined late Timurid poetry.

introduction

Literary historians have noted the epoch’s obsession for verbal intricacy, conveyed ‘through the use of difficult meters, rhymes or words, or internally by means of unusual images, comparisons and other rhetorical devices’,26 as Maria Subtelny summarised. The command of difficult poetic forms was a means of social promotion. ‘At that time,’ Wasifi wrote in his memoirs, ‘the ultimate goal and highest aim of all accomplished people was to come to the attention of Mir ‘Ali Shir,’27 the influential patron of the period. The grasp of sophisticated verbal games was the surest way to achieve this goal. Wasifi himself managed to gain access to Mir ‘Ali Shir’s majlis by fashioning a reputation as an expert solver of mu‘amma, or poetic riddle (he practised a lot, read poetic treatises and sought advice from confirmed poets).28 The art of mu‘amma consists of encrypting a hidden meaning, usually a proper name, into a couplet of lyrical or panegyric verses.29 These can be rather conventional, as in this example, dedicated by the Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din Yazdi to his friend Taj al-Din: ‘As long as it is captivated by the beloved’s face, / this heart is dishevelled and confused’ (tå giriftår-i rË-yi jånån ast / Èn dal åshufta va parÈshån ast).30 The verses treat of a common theme of lyrical poetry – the alienation caused by love. The riddle, though, is not easy to decode. Numerous treatises were devoted to the deciphering of mu‘amma. Here the first hemistich gives away the word Tåj. The first two letters of the name open the poem, while the word rË (face) indicates that the following letter, ‘j’, also belongs to the solution. In the second part, the last two words ‘dishevelled’ (åshufta) and ‘confused’ (parÈshån) enjoin the reader to scramble the hemistich’s opening words, ‘Èn dal’, to discover the word al-DÈn, which completes ‘Taj al-Din’ – the name of the poem’s recipient, a dear friend of the author. Conflating the riddle’s solution with the name of the poem’s dedicatee, Yazdi’s mu‘amma was not simply a play of form. The poem acted as a gift, a testimony to the author’s affection for his friend Taj al-Din. This example encapsulates the pragmatic value of late Timurid poetry – its role in mediating and fostering social relationships. Shared and discussed at the majlis, riddles, moreover, served to intensify the collective dynamic of the gathering, fuelling literary pleasure, interest and competition. This book argues that late Timurid painting, as exemplified by the Cairo Bustan, had a mu‘amma-like quality: the painter used content and form to encode himself into the fabric of his own work, therefore allowing his emergence, if not as a powerful figure in the social networks of late Timurid Herat, then at least as the subject of painting. The picture’s overall effect of sophistication disengaged painting from the illustrative purpose usually associated with it, turning it instead into a means of empowerment and self-representation. Influenced by the late Timurid culture of intricacy, artists transformed manuscript

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painting into a self-reflective object, embodying and mediating ideas about medium, image and authorship, and enabling the painter to enter the field of pictorial representation. The majlis played a major role in this shift.31 By the late fifteenth century, it became the main cultural institution of the Timurids, encapsulating and fostering cultural and intellectual emulation in late Timurid Herat. Mainly studied as a courtly literary assembly, the late Timurid majlis, I argue in this book, had formative effects on painting as well. The circulation of the painted page at the majlis reinforced its quality as object – instead of its function as a means of representation. It subjected pictures to the orators’ sagacity, turning the image into an object of exchange and evaluation. And it exposed painting to the notion of performance – both the orator’s and the painter’s – understood in the sense of virtuosity. Foreseeing painting’s presence at the majlis where visual artists could be, like poets, gauged for their skills, artists emphasised visual and material elements that could be linked to the painting’s production, instead of the exterior text that images were supposed to illustrate.32 Examining the image as an object that circulated in the context of the majlis and beyond, this research links representation and materiality, the painting’s inherent features, with the conditions of its visibility. Self-reflection marked the painting’s engagement with its social function, shifting the medium from a network of signs to a ‘system of action’; to borrow Alfred Gell’s words, a system ‘intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it’.33 Painting was endowed with a ‘practical mediatory role’:34 it became a vehicle of upward mobility, a form of social currency, circulated at the majlis to enhance the painter’s authority.35 In the late Timurid period, artistic self-reflection emerged at the intersection of picture theory and material history, relating the object’s internal qualities to its external effects of social distinction.36 Aesthetics of Self-reflection Late Timurid paintings were still enclosed within a manuscript, but they became much less numerous. They also spread vertically across the page, thereby reducing the space allocated to text.37 As Lisa Golombek pointed out, these changes reflected ‘the growing independence and importance of the paintings’.38 While the picture expanded laterally, taking over the manuscript page, it was also filled with extra-textual figures, to use Chad Kia’s recent expression,39 with motifs that bear no apparent relationship to the surrounding text. All images exceed any verbal substrate, but here the painting’s illustrative structure seems deliberately challenged. Late Timurid painting further developed in depth, through a process of miniaturisation. As a result, it ‘takes longer to see’: visual density introduces duration in the beholder’s experience, as David

introduction

Roxburgh noted about the visual complexity of Jalayirid and Timurid paintings.40 Details draw the eye in. They require a mode of perception that Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), the tenth-century Iraqi scholar and author of Kitåb al-manåΩir (Book of Optics), would have called ‘contemplative’, their features appearing ‘only after they have been scrutinized’.41 As a combination of spatial contraction and temporal expansion, a proliferation of details makes us pause and think, creating a distance from both text and reality.42 This is not to say that these paintings did not engage with meaning; rather, it is to stress that they tested the limits of the illustrative approach. The paintings convey abundance but also regularity, perfection and minuteness. The ‘new style of miniature’ is characterised by ‘the perfection of techniques of color and composition’, as Maria Subtelny has noted.43 Compositions are constructed like diagrams: motifs are depicted frontally and on the same scale. Their finish erases the signs of their making: we behold a set of seemingly enamelled, brilliant blocks of colour, each outlined by an impeccable line of black ink. The pictorial plane is so abstractly constructed, raised beyond the contingencies of human observation, and its surface so polished, that the painting seems autonomous, almost self-made. As every chapter of this book will further attest, this visual mode constitutes a shift from earlier Timurid artworks which served as examples of conspicuous consumption, meant to distinguish the patron.44 ‘If you have doubts about our grandeur,’ a Timurid historiography enjoins its readers, ‘look at our edifice.’45 Through large-scale objects and historiographical illustrations, early Timurid art and architecture emblematised the Timurid ruler.46 Within manuscripts of Persian poetry, Timurid painting served to highlight the patron by illustrating courtly themes.47 Late Timurid painting reversed this paradigm. ‘Pictorial reality’ was ‘no longer consciously manipulated for dynastic purposes’, as Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry wrote in their landmark 1989 exhibition catalogue on the Timurids.48 Although this turn has been widely recognised, we still lack a holistic analysis of its material and visual aspects, and an interpretation of its historical significance. Noting late Timurid painters’ ‘search for technical perfection, with an emphasis on purely formal qualities that overwhelmed all other concerns’, Lentz and Lowry have proposed a formalist interpretation: retreating ‘from the iconic façade of earlier imperial works’, late Timurid painting ‘was treated more inwardly as a purely sensory illusion with no overt political agenda, a fleeting moment in time’.49 While this analysis does acknowledge that late Timurid painting shifted away from the royal patron, it also denies the medium any social stakes. Focusing solely on visual analysis, this interpretation, moreover, obscures the question of how Timurid viewers might have engaged with the new style of painting.

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The most recent scholarly work on late Timurid painting has focused on the extra-textual figures. For Thomas Lentz, this phenomenon signals a painting geared towards realism.50 For Chad Kia, extra-textual figures correspond to Sufi symbols, inflecting our reception of the image towards a mystical reading.51 These interpretations will be examined in Chapter 3; suffice it to say for now that neither reflects historical modes of spectatorship. Contemporary sources prove indifferent to realism.52 They do not seem to have developed an interest in mystical iconology either.53 What, then, did late Timurid viewers see? How did they engage with visual plenitude, perfection of execution and linear precision? Signatures and inscriptions addressing aspects of the paintings could also be embedded in the compositions, insisting that viewers approach the pictures in relation to their making, that paintings be seen as ‘what remains from the painter’, to quote one such inscription.54 Following the paintings’ verbal indications and using contemporaneous sources that reveal the terms for the paintings’ reception, I show how visual density and technical refinement formed an aesthetics of self-reflection, pulling the viewer away from the story illustrated in the picture and instead inviting them to interrogate the painting’s production. At the majlis, ‘spectators with a critical eye’55 (nåqidån-i baßÈr), to use the fifteenth-century writer Dawlatshah Samarqandi’s expression, who were ‘viewers with a subtle eye’56 (mubaßßirån-i nuktidån), in Khwandamir’s phrase, saw through content to form and craft. For late Timurid viewers, as I propose in Chapter 3, visual profusion enriched the painting’s range of reference beyond the necessities of illustration, destabilising its mimetic qualities in order to heighten the painter’s talent in taßwÈr (the activity of image making). Linear exactitude, meanwhile, demonstrated the artist’s command of ta˙rÈr (the art of the line), as I suggest in Chapter 4.57 Abundance of details and precise contour decoupled the image from its representational operations, pointing instead to the painter’s imagination and manual control. For late Timurid observers, intense workmanship and superfluous detail called attention to the formation of painting as both object and image. Artists, in turn, seem to have anticipated this reception, using density and fineness to emphasise their skill. Showcasing the painter’s ability to imagine and materialise a multiplicity of forms, the picture emphasised artistic process in both its perceptual and physical dimensions. As I argue in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5, Bihzad and other artists also added poetic inscriptions as well as signature to ensure that medium and maker occupy the centre of any description. Late Timurid painting’s self-reflection has thus far escaped the attention of Islamic art historians. That paintings appeared mostly within manuscripts makes it difficult to recognise their self-­ referential quality. Manuscript culture was crucial to the

introduction

development of Persian painting: pictures were used from the mid1250s as visual translations of Persian texts, including poetic and literary materials. The juxtaposition of text and image within the manuscript has thus led modern scholars to define Persian painting as illustrative.58 Hence the number of studies devoted to the emergence, development and alteration across time and in various contexts of the illustrative cycles of major literary works such as the Shahnama of Firdawsi59 or the Khamsa of Nizami.60 Scholars of Islamic art, moreover, have developed few means to detect self-reflection in art. Although there are many publications on painters, these have focused largely on stylistic and biographical considerations. An example directly relevant to this project is Ebadollah Bahari’s monograph on the life and works of the painter Bihzad.61 Such research has primarily aimed to link paintings to individual artists. It has not addressed the representation of authorship within pictures. Scholars such as Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom have noted the presence of signatures in the paintings’ details, thus laying the ground for my own inquiry.62 I propose to take their studies on signature further, by examining signatures not only in their referential value but also in their visual, descriptive qualities and their ability to fashion an artist’s image. In the field of Islamic art more generally, scholars have most often addressed image and object theories in Islam through text. Gülru Necipo©lu and David Roxburgh have done foundational work on aesthetics in medieval and early modern Islamic sources, and I am deeply indebted to their studies.63 But while emphasising textual documents, these inquiries do not explore the question of how artworks could convey, visually and materially, discourses about artistic process. One exception has been the study of prosopopoeia (a figure of speech in which an inanimate thing is represented as speaking) in Islamic art, notably by Avinoam Shalem and Olga Bush.64 Inscriptions that make objects and monuments speak about themselves often emphasised the artefact’s function and played an important role in fashioning the object’s reception.65 Prosopopoeia, though, remains a textual device. No study in the field of Islamic art has so far attempted to engage the question of how objects themselves, in their visual and material structures, reflected upon their purpose. But self-reflection, I argue in this study, manifested itself inside the pictures as well, in aspects of execution, composition and representational content. The Cairo Bustan There are several reasons for choosing the Cairo Bustan as this project’s centrepiece. The Cairo Bustan is the only surviving illustrated manuscript that can be attributed with certainty and in its entirety to Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s patronage.66 In fact, as I show below,

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it displays and centres its historical context with rare, astounding precision, not only in the colophon but in the paintings themselves. Naming patron, painter and calligrapher, and alluding to the contemporary poet ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, no other Persian illustrated manuscript contains as much information on the circumstances of its making and viewing as the Cairo Bustan. It is also the earliest manuscript I know of that brings together all the strategies developed in Persian painting from the 1390s onward to emphasise artistic performance, and which will be successively analysed in this study – the presence of a double-page painting opening the manuscript that challenges the conventions of the royal frontispiece (Chapter 1), the depiction of epigraphs addressing aspects of the paintings (Chapter 2), extra-textual figures (Chapter 3), linear exactitude (Chapter 4) and the artist’s signature (Chapter 5). The Cairo Bustan is a long-admired and yet under-studied manuscript, primarily known for containing the only surviving genuine signatures of the painter Bihzad. The earliest mentions of the Cairo Bustan in modern scholarship include brief remarks by F. R. Martin in 1909 and 1912.67 The manuscript was then shown in 1931 in the international exhibition of Persian art at Burlington House in London.68 This event provoked a surge of scholarly interest, more specifically in the signatures of the painter Bihzad. Since then, the Cairo Bustan’s paintings have mainly been used to illustrate Bihzad’s life and work.69 This research, by contrast, illuminates many other, hitherto unexamined aspects, each explored in a different chapter – the marginalisation of the patron in the opening paintings, the use of pictorial inscriptions, the multiplicity of extra-textual figures and the calligraphic treatment of the line – all employed by the painter to foreground his work and assert his authority. If the Cairo Bustan constitutes an example of pictorial self-reflection, it does not, however, constitute the pivot around which the history of Persian painting turned. Pictorial self-reflection did not emerge all at once, nor did it develop in a linear way. Many of the strategies used to foreground artistic process, including the painting’s evenness, the steadiness of the line and the artist’s signature, can be found from the late fourteenth century onward in court-sponsored manuscripts. Each feature appearing in the Cairo Bustan will thus be placed in a chain of examples, starting with Jalayirid specimens produced at the turn of the fifteenth century and including early Timurid manuscripts and albums, paintings made for the Turkmens and later examples produced in Safavid Iran and Uzbek Bukhara. This chain not only provides a genealogy for the Cairo Bustan but also reflects the displacement of manuscripts from one courtly context to another, a movement that prompted several distinctive stylistic elements to appear and reappear in different historical periods. Persian painting cannot be subsumed into a homogeneous category or a single linear narrative. Even within the tradition of

introduction

court-sponsored painting to which the Cairo Bustan belonged, multiple styles coexisted at the same time and could be reused in different periods. This is true for the Jalayirid period, and for any Timurid or Turkmen production of the fifteenth century. Stylistic heterogeneity could exist within the same manuscript, where highly wrought images could alternate with much simpler illustrations.70 Instead of a vertical, successive model, the stylistic history of Persian illustrated manuscripts suggests a horizontal, polycentric map, with no fixed origins but multiple beginning and exit points, and several possible trajectories, as collections were formed, dismantled and circulated. The Cairo Bustan, then, does not represent the only example of pictorial self-reflection nor the only way to arrive at an understanding of that phenomenon. It is neither a turning point nor a climactic moment but a case within a complex social and artistic history. The integration of the artist into pictorial representation was indeed a process. In the title of this book, the word ‘making’ calls attention, through the present participle, to the open-ended, dynamic aspect of this development. By contrast with ‘rise’ or ‘emergence’, ‘making’ designates an ongoing activity, a process of artisanal fabrication, embedded in a network of makers and models, with neither a clear beginning nor an end. Centring the analysis on a single manuscript, my aim is also to move away from the systematising impulse that has characterised the study of Persian painting, the tendency to knit together large corpora of manuscripts and paintings into unified stylistic categories such as ‘Timurid painting’, often using dynastic periods as the basis for such classifications. To broad histories and sweeping textual enquiries, this work opposes a focused description of late Timurid painting, emphasising its local, singular and idiosyncratic aspects, while also relying on a large array of historical documents to reimagine its reception.71 To focus on one object is to resist generalising, while acknowledging that sustained, scrupulous attention to the details of a limited set of artefacts can shed light on subtle, elusive moments of change. By concentrating on the Cairo Bustan, I hope to offer a glimpse of how artists have attempted to destabilise dominant paradigms. With only fifty-five folios, each measuring 30.5 × 21.5 cm, the Cairo Bustan is a reasonably sized, convivial volume, easy to handle and leaf through. Given its manageable size and weight, it could undoubtedly be viewed at the majlis, passed from hand to hand. The manuscript could sit, splayed open, atop a reader’s upturned palms. It is also possible that loose folios were passed around, before the quires were bound together into a complete manuscript. As we will see in Chapter 3, Wasifi does mention that Bihzad once brought to the majlis of Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i ‘a painted page’ (ßa˙Èfa-È mußavvar) representing a garden.72 He does not mention a codex, only an

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individual painting. In any event, both scenarios allow for an experience of close examination. Closed, the Cairo Bustan appears tightly encased in a leather binding that was added later (the movements and transformation of the codex over time are addressed in the epilogue) (Plates I and II). The transition from cover to text is extraordinarily elaborate and unusually long. After two blank pages, the reader-viewer discovers a series of lavishly decorated frontispieces, deployed across the first four folios, elongating and dramatising the reader’s entrance into the text (Plates III to VIII). The first frontispiece depicts a royal gathering in a palace’s courtyard (folios 1b–2a, Plates IV and III). At the centre of the left page is the manuscript’s patron, the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara (folio 2a, Plate III). Before the king, members of the court form a lively circle. They are playing music and drinking alcohol. One of them is holding an open manuscript. On the right page, the beholder is invited to the feast’s backstage, where servants are preparing the beverages (folio 1b, Plate IV). At the upper left, a man stands out. He is wearing a fur-trimmed hat. Placed alone on a carpet and surrounded with blue and white porcelain and gold dishes, he might be Sultan Husayn’s son and successor, Badi‘ al-Zaman.73 Then appears a double illuminated page displaying the same composition on each half (folios 2b–3a, Plates VI and V). Blue and gold interlacing cartouches unfold around a gilded, central lobed medallion. Each cartouche contains scrolls of flowers and stylised half-palmettes, sometimes also birds. Framing both pages, the frieze of lobed, dome-like patterns creates a mirroring effect, adding an element of axial symmetry. Just as the opening painting does, this frontispiece produces a double effect. With its lavish use of gold and lapis lazuli, it is an example of ‘conspicuous consumption’, a means of social distinction, emphasising the royal patronage of the book.74 But the double page is also a work of intricacy, one that highlights the precision of the illuminator’s hand and his capacity to include a great array of motifs. One last, richly illuminated frontispiece follows (folios 3b–4a, Plates VIII and VII). In the middle of each page, text can be read: the Bustan of Sa‘di finally starts, with eleven verses laid out in nasta‘liq script. The Bustan continues on the verso of the frontispiece’s second leaf (folio 4b, Plate IX). The 21 × 17 cm jadwal (known as ‘rule-borders’ or ‘rulings’ in the field of codicology)75 contains fortysix verses written over twenty-three lines and four columns. A fine line in gold ink outlined in black separates the columns of text. The parallel lines framing the jadwal were added later, when the text was remargined in gold-sprinkled paper. The Bustan (Orchard) of Sa‘di Shirazi (d. c. 1292) is a didactic poem.76 A long mathnawi (poem written in rhyming couplets)77 of approximately 4,000 verses, it consists of a preface and ten chapters,

introduction

each deploying a succession of short stories interspersed with moral advice.78 Generally labelled as literature of advice or didactic literature, this poem is a multifaceted, polyvalent text.79 Mixing different patterns of speech, styles and literary genres, it interweaves epic tales with humorous anecdotes, narrative poems with proverbs and mythical stories with philosophical statements. Although Sa‘di’s works were widely diffused and circulated,80 the Cairo Bustan is the earliest surviving illustrated copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di to have been produced in a courtly context.81 This is not so surprising. The Bustan is a peculiar choice for a kingly manuscript. While several stories deal with government, more than half the poem ignores royal history, focusing instead on themes such as love, education, speech and the life of dervishes. Courtly manuscripts usually expressed, both in text and painting, kingly concerns, often as a means to underscore the relation of art to patronage. Copies of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi, an eleventh-century epic poem about the lives and deeds of the pre-Islamic kings of Iran, were thus preferred. The focal point of courtly production, they often fulfilled a twofold task: to illustrate the Shahnama and to reflect the power of their royal patrons by amalgamating, in the image, the stories of past kings with contemporary events.82 In the Cairo Bustan, only the first painting bears a royal theme. It represents the king Darius and his encounter with a herdsman (folio 10a, Plate X).83 In the second painting, ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, a true dervish, mistaken for a beggar, is forbidden entrance to the sacred precinct (folio 26a, Plate XI).84 The third picture, ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, is about a poet who was once excluded from the court of a judge, again on the basis of his poor appearance (folio 30b, Plate XII).85 The fourth and last painting, ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, is about the desire of Zulaykha for Yusuf (the story derives from the biblical tale of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife), and her rejection by the prophet (folio 52b, Plate XIII).86 Each painting stages an encounter between a powerful character – the king, the mosque’s guardian, the judge and the prophet Yusuf – and a marginal character – the herdsman, the beggar, the poet and Zulaykha. Instead of privileging royal figures, the stories foreground power imbalance. Sa‘di’s Bustan is, moreover, known for its literariness or selfreflective quality. Many passages comment upon the structure and function of the Bustan, pointing to its multilayered, duplicitous ethics – for example when the poem is compared to a date whose sweet first layer protects a more central, enigmatic kernel.87 A few stories stage a character named Sa‘di, and this is in fact the case in ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, where the poet is revealed at the end of story to be the Bustan’s author himself. By choosing the Bustan and by depicting its author in the third painting, the Cairo Bustan emphasises the theme of artistic self-reflection. And self-reflection

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is clearly paired with social concerns, since the author is portrayed as a marginal figure. The paintings are also remarkable for the sheer amount of contextual information they present. Two of them bear a hijri date of completion: 894 in the third painting (from the last three weeks of December 1488 to the end of November 1489), and 893 in the last one (from the last two weeks of 1487 to early December 1488). All four paintings contain the signature of the painter Bihzad, subsumed into the pictorial field as a visual motif. In the first painting, for instance, it is inscribed in gold on the black velvet quiver of the horse rider (Figure 5.1). Integrated within the image, dates and signatures frame the paintings as the achievement of a historical artist. They affirm that painting cannot be separated from painter. As I argue in Chapter 5, the signature’s placement and form construct an idealised image of its maker, at once historicising and glorifying the artist, and announcing the reception of Bihzad as the paragon of excellence in Persian painting. Even more surprising than the painter’s declaration of authorship is the implicit reference within two paintings to the contemporary poet ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami. Although the text copied in the manuscript is the Bustan of Sa‘di, the last painting illustrates another text: Yusuf wa Zulaykha, written by Jami in 1484–5, slightly before the Cairo Bustan was produced.88 In two paintings, representations of epigraphs further draw on Jami’s poetry, as we shall see in Chapter 2. Jami was a giant of Persian literature, a writer and spiritual guide who was closely associated with late Timurid Herat.89 His literary work was known for its intertextuality. Often quoting and imitating past authors, Jami looked back at canonical works and poetic conventions, rewriting them into new versions and through this gesture of reuse portraying himself as ‘the seal of the poets’,90 as Qajar critics later wrote. The inclusion of his work in the Cairo Bustan thus constitutes a prolongation of Jami’s own poetics of reuse and emulates his interest in historicity and intertextuality. The Cairo Bustan is strikingly enmeshed in the late Timurid cultural scene. At the other end of the manuscript, following the last verses of the Bustan, the colophon gives the name of the calligrapher and a date of completion (Plate XIV): ‫تمت علی ید العبد الفقیر المذنب سلطان علی الکاتب غفر ذنوبه و ستر عیوبه فی اواخر رجب‬ ‫المرجب سنه ثالث و تسعین و ثمانمایه‬ Completed by the hand of the poor, sinning slave Sultan ‘Ali alKatib, may [God] forgive his sins and cover his faults, at the end of Rajab in the year 893 [end of June or early July 1488] Sultan ‘Ali al-Katib, also known as Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520),91 was one of the most famous calligraphers of the period, as well

introduction

as a poet and writer.92 A ubiquitous figure in both contemporary and later historiographical sources, he was considered the best calligrapher of all time, ‘attain[ing] such a perfect level of expertise’, in Khwandamir’s words, ‘that he abrogated the calligraphy of masters past and present’.93 Preserving Sultan Husayn’s portrait and name, Bihzad’s paintings, Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi’s calligraphy and Jami’s words, through a wide array of visual and verbal marks, the manuscript gathers the most prestigious members of late Timurid Herat. All four personalities lived in Herat when the manuscript was made and were active members of Sultan Husayn’s court.94 In a letter to Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi, Sultan Husayn praised the talent of his addressee: ‘We have written the page of his hopes with the pen of affection, drawn the pen of abrogation through the calligraphy of former masters, and consider him above all others in that art.’95 Sultan Husayn was also close to Bihzad, whom he chose as the main painter of his court, according to the memorialist Wasifi.96 He granted Jami many privileges, as earlier noted, and Jami, in turn, dedicated several poems to him.97 A microcosmic replication of late Timurid Herat, the Cairo Bustan, especially in its paintings, points to its possible reception in the context of a majlis, where calligrapher, painter, poet and patron would be present. As suggested by the manuscript’s illustrated frontispiece representing a royal gathering (Plates III and IV), Sultan Husayn would preside over the assembly. Probably meant to be read or spoken by the historical beholder, Jami’s inscriptions further anchor the paintings in their surroundings. In both form and content, they mimic how a contemporary viewer, perhaps the poet Jami himself, might respond to the image. Addressing aspects of the artistic process, they exemplify a way of seeing that focuses on the painter. In the following chapters, I examine the strategies used in the Cairo Bustan to shift our attention to the artist. Chapter 1 focuses on the royal frontispiece. While court-sponsored manuscripts often began with a courtly image praising the ruler, here the frontispiece marginalises the king. By challenging some of the genre’s conventions, it starts undoing the link between painting and patron. In the second chapter, I describe and analyse the epigraphs represented in the paintings. While inscriptions had customarily emphasised the patron, in the Cairo Bustan they highlight aspects of the paintings and announce their reception by the contemporary poet. Chapter 3 turns to the issue of illustration, examining how the paintings depart from Sa‘di’s text. Extra-textual figures, together with aspects of composition and execution, work to heighten the painter’s creativity, while suggesting a form of ideal mimesis, raising the painting and its maker above worldly status. In Chapter 4, I move from image to medium, to consider the linear qualities of the paintings. I argue that

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contours work to foreground the artist’s calligraphic talent and to inflect a relationship between line and painter. Chapter 5 addresses Bihzad’s signatures and how they construct artistic authority. The epilogue addresses the Cairo Bustan’s later history, showing how it was circulated and transformed over time, and how its visual features were adopted and adapted in various contexts, from Safavid Tabriz to Uzbek Bukhara to Khalji Mandu. Poetics and Politics of Self-reflection One of the methodological principles underlying this study is that pictorial self-reflection is not necessarily achieved through pictorial illusion or indexical means. Art historians such as W. T. J. Mitchell have used the word ‘metapicture’ to refer to an image that can ‘provid[e] a second-order discourse that tells us something about [itself]’.98 Although crucial for my research, studies of metapictoriality have generally focused on iconic modes of self-referentiality. My research, by contrast, explores symbolic means of self-reflection. In late Timurid painting, artists did not depict paintings within paintings nor did they represent themselves in self-portraits. Traces of their gestural efforts are, moreover, often hard to discern. The pictorial surface is so brilliant and smooth that no matter how close one looks, the painting shows no visible brushstrokes. All man-made artefacts bear traces of their makers but in the late Timurid era, the painting was conspicuously depersonalised, manipulated in such a way as to look almost machine-made. Yet painting was meant to convey a portrait of the painter. This is a problem of semiotics. How can a sign represent a figure without showing a face or a bodily trace? Verbal elements such as the signature can easily fulfil that role, and indeed they were used in the Cairo Bustan to secure the relation of painting to the artist Bihzad, but this study is also concerned with visual and material elements. How might line, colour or composition express something about their maker if they cannot be traced back to an individual hand? If in fact they strive to do the exact opposite, elevating the artist into a metaphysical, ideal entity? An essential argument of the present study is that late Timurid painting explores what one might call the symbolic possibilities of the medium. Form describes the artist through visual and material characteristics – the regularity of the composition, the fluidity of the line, the opacity of the colours – and this inference can only be drawn from cultural conventions, from the knowledge, for example, that the line’s steadiness is a sign of its maker’s morality. As I propose in Chapter 4, the artist is not portrayed using the figurative, a mode of signification in which meaning is recognised or produced through resemblance. Rather, the figure of the painter is conveyed through material, sensory configurations.99

introduction

The analysis of self-reflection in the absence of ‘obvious’ modes of self-representation such as self-portraiture can thus only be ­contextual – this book’s second methodological statement. Persian painting took on a self-reflective quality not just on its own or with textual inscriptions but within an elaborate system that included a wide range of materials from architecture to calligraphy to poetry, historical modes of spectatorship at the majlis and contemporary discourses of authorship. The study of pictorial self-reflection requires a mode of close examination,100 but in the case of Persian painting, self-reflection was a relational notion: neither entirely inscribed in the painting nor completely exterior to it, it did not precede the viewer’s engagement with the painting but rather was induced by it. In a way, any painting embodies a discourse about its making as long as there are beholders who can make it speak about itself. Persian painting anticipated the relational quality of self-reflection by translating contemporary discussions of authorship into formal and compositional decisions. I also argue that self-reflection was a means of social promotion; that its essential purpose was to insert the artist in the social and cultural rituals of the majlis. Circulated in courtly gatherings, and emphasising artistic process instead of illustrative content, painting allowed the artist to emerge in the field of representation. But this development, I further suggest, does not necessarily manifest an actual subversive force. It would be tempting to analyse the focus on the artist as a form of political contestation, reversing the hierarchy of patron and painter. This shift, however, was limited to courtly context. Taking place within the confines of the majlis, the emphasis on the artist was authorised and sanctioned by the patron. Even as it seemed to depart from the order of patronage and the tradition of illustration, late Timurid painting, while achieving a form of symbolic reversal, remained an integral part of courtly culture. Late Timurid painting, in fact, glorified the artist’s work. Because the painting’s finish effaces the signs of manual fabrication, the painted page appears as a gem-like object, a set of precious stones. As I argue in Chapter 3, painting was motivated by a paradoxical goal: to attest to the artist’s accomplishment but also to appear miraculous, inimitable. The making process was both enhanced and confounded. Challenging our ability to fully grasp its causality, painting, as I propose in Chapter 5, functioned to produce ‘ajab, ‘a state of bewilderment that comes to people as a result of their incapacity of knowing the cause of something’ according to the thirteenth-century writer al-Qazwini.101 Painters were often praised for the ‘sheer wizardry and miracle’ of their work, to quote the sixteenth-century poet and artist Sadiqi Beg Afshar.102 And, according to Zayn al-Din Mahmud Wasifi (1485–1551 or 1566), the most ‘enchanting and marvellous’ painter in late Timurid Herat was the author of the Cairo Bustan’s paintings,

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Bihzad, who was chosen by Sultan Husayn as the main artist of his court ‘from among the artisans of this craft and the magicians of this profession’.103 Defying efforts at comprehension and emulation, painting turned artist (hunarmand) into magician (si˙r-åfarÈn), and craftsmanship (ßan‘at) into mastery (ustådÈ). Pictorial self-reflection was a means of empowerment, not simply providing the artist with visibility but imbuing him with authority, both worldly and transcendental. Notes 1. Khwandamir, 1989, 205. The Persian text reads: ‫قوت ذهن و دقت طبع‬ (Khwandamir, 1954, 4:84). 2. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22. The manuscript contains fiftyfive folios, measuring 30.5 × 21.5 cm. A regular text page contains a written surface measuring 21 × 17 cm, with four columns of twentythree lines penned in a single hand in nasta‘liq on a white polished paper. The rectangular panels of text are set within gold-sprinkled margins and outlined in a set of rulings. Margins and rulings were added later. 3. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 208. 4. On Timur’s conquests, see Manz, 1989. For an overview of the Timurids, see Manz, 2007; Subtelny, 2010. It is worth noting that the Timurids commissioned several historiographical texts about their own history (Woods, 1987; Bernardini, 2008). 5. On the Turkmen dynasties, see Woods, 1976. 6. On Sultan Husayn and late Timurid Herat, see Subtelny, 2007. For a general introduction to the political and cultural context of this period, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 239–301. 7. On the early sixteenth century and the transition to Uzbek and Safavid rules in Herat, see Szuppe, 1992. 8. Subtelny, 1988, 488. 9. Quoted in Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 298. 10. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 299. 11. Subtelny, 1988, 480. 12. Lambton, 1997. 13. Subtelny, 1988; Szuppe, 1992, 65. 14. Subtelny, 1980; Subtelny, 1993. 15. Quoted in Subtelny, 1988, 492. 16. Subtelny, 1988, 492–3. 17. Szuppe, 1992, 65. 18. Subtelny, 1988, 484. 19. Babur, 1996, 221. 20. Subtelny, 1983, 124. 21. Subtelny, 1979, 78; Losensky, 1998, 137. 22. On the majlis in late Timurid Herat, see Subtelny, 1979, 162; Roxburgh, 2001b, 67; Ergin, 2013, 72–5. For the majlis between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries, see Brookshaw, 2003. I return to the majlis in the Introduction as well as in Chapter 2. 23. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:291. 24. Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:138–9; quoted in English in Kia, 2012, 6.

introduction

25. Subtelny, 1983, 135. 26. Subtelny, 1986, 60. 27. Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:373–4. 28. Wasifi devoted several pages to this episode, in fact the entirety of chapter 13 (Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:372–90). 29. As such, the mu‘amma has ‘both a surface meaning (the literal sense of the verse) and an encoded meaning (the name)’, as Paul Losensky wrote (Losensky, 1998, 158). 30. Losensky, 1998, 158. For other examples, see Subtelny, 1986, 75–6. 31. On the majlis, see note 22. 32. Artists imbued painting with artistic reflexivity, to use a notion that has been mobilised by cultural historians to define texts and images that emphasise ‘their own production, their authorship, their intertextual influences, their textual processes, or their reception’. A convenient summary of the ways in which the notion of ‘artistic reflexivity’ has been used in visual studies can be found in Stam et al., 1992, 204. 33. Gell, 1998, 6. 34. Ibid., 6. 35. On art as an instrument of social distinction and ‘a misrecognized form of social difference’, see Bourdieu, 1979. 36. Painting served as an ‘actant’, to use Bruno Latour’s concept, as an object to which action was delegated. An actant ‘stands in for an actor and creates an asymmetry between absent makers and occasional users’ (Latour, 1999, 189). On this notion, also see Latour, 2005, esp. 70–1. By examining painting as an agent of social distinction, my research combines Pierre Bourdieu’s sociologism (Bourdieu, 1979, analyses the social function of art but does not consider the role played by the object’s materiality in the production of social distinction) with Bruno Latour’s materialism (which concentrates on objects as circulatory agents, enmeshed in horizontal, hybrid networks of humans and nonhumans, but generally does not take into account the power dynamics that shape and control those networks). 37. Painting can also take over the margins. Margins had been used for painting and drawing for at least a hundred years (Brend, 2000). 38. Golombek, 1972, 23. 39. Kia, 2006; Kia, 2009; Kia, 2012. 40. Roxburgh, 2003, 27. 41. Quoted in Necipo©lu, 1995, 203. 42. As such, it displays ‘the inadequacy of the verbal’, to use Susan Stewart’s characterisation of the miniature (Stewart, 1993, 52). 43. Subtelny, 1983, 126. As Yves Porter has demonstrated, one major change is the use for the painting’s composition of the mastar, the grid employed by calligraphers for the text’s layout (Porter, 2009). The mastar will be explored in Chapter 3. 44. ‘Conspicuous consumption’, a notion that equates wasteful spending with social and political prestige, is borrowed from Veblen, 1899. 45. This is a quotation from the Ma†la‘ al-sa‘dayn wa majma‘ al-ba˙rayn (The Rising of the Two Stars and the Meeting of the Two Seas) by Kamal al-Din ‘Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi (1413–82); quoted in Roxburgh, 2005, 74. 46. This view has dominated the art-historical scholarship on the Timurids (see for instance Lentz, 1985; Lentz and Lowry, 1989; Sims, 1992). It has informed the study of court-sponsored literature too. ‘Every ruler

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47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

of Central Asian Islamic history,’ Maria Subtelny wrote, ‘sought to make his court a cultural showplace through patronage, especially of literary activity’ (Subtelny, 1983, 130). Sims, 1992; Hillenbrand, 2010. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 298–9. Ibid., 298–9. Lentz, 1990, 40. Kia, 2006; Kia, 2009; Kia, 2012. The mystical inflection had already been explored in Milstein, 1977 (Rachel Milstein, however, analysed mysticism only in the stories illustrated and did not consider the extra-textual forms). The point was already noted in Roxburgh, 2000b, 122–3. Iconology, the pairing of images with texts and discourses, works well for Renaissance painting (it goes back to the sixteenth century and was explained in works such as Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, published in 1593), but might not so easily apply to other pictorial traditions. The classic study of this method is Panofsky, 1995. On the applicability of this method to non-Western art, see Blier, 1988. This is one of the inscriptions appearing in Plate XII, a painting dated 894/December 1488–November 1489. Transcription, translation and further analysis are provided in Chapter 2. Dawlatshah Samarqandi, 1901, 380. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:19. In a well-known ekphrastic passage, the sixteenth-century artist and writer Dust Muhammad used both ta˙rÈr and taßwÈr as parameters to define and evaluate a painter’s talent. The passage describes a famous painting, ‘The Court of Gayumars’, by the Safavid artist Sultan Muhammad: the painting is such ‘that the lion-hearted of the jungle of depiction (taßwÈr) and the leopards and crocodiles of the workshop of drawing (ta˙rÈr) quail at the fangs of [Sultan Muhammad’s] pen and bend their necks before the bewilderment (˙ayrat) of his picture’ (Dust Muhammad, 2001, 16). Dust Muhammad further emphasised visual abundance and variety in the description’s closing verse: ‘with the pen of his fingertips, on the tablet of vision, [Sultan Muhammad] has drawn a different form at each and every instant’. For concise histories of the early development of Persian painting and its illustrative function, see Golombek, 1972; Swietochowski, 1974; Ettinghausen, 1981; Blair, 1993; Grabar, 2006; Roxburgh, 2017. For the earliest illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama of Firdawsi, see Simpson, 1979; for an overview of Shahnama illustrations, see Simpson, 2004. For Timurid illustrations of the Shahnama, see Sims, 1992; Hillenbrand, 2010. See, for example, Soucek, 1971. Bahari, 1996. Such studies include Blair and Bloom, 1999; Blair, 2015. I examine the issue of the artist’s signature in Chapter 5. Roxburgh, 2001b; Necipo©lu, 2015. See also Rabbat, 2006. Shalem, 2010; Bush, 2015; Bush, 2017. Shalem, 2010; Bush, 2015; Bush, 2017. An illustrated copy of the Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali does contain a dedication page assigning the manuscript to Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s library: Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, 1467–8, attributed to Herat, copied by Shir ‘Ali, 539 folios, 23.5 × 15.2 cm (folio) (Sims,

introduction

1973; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 147). However, the manuscript might have been made in several stages. As scholars have argued, the six double paintings it contains might have been added around 1480 (Sims, 1973). Moreover, Herat is not mentioned in the colophon and the calligrapher’s identity remains unclear. A copy of the Khamsa of Jami might also have been produced in the royal workshop of Herat. I have not examined it, however, and it is not clear from the main publication referencing it whether it bears any explicit reference to Sultan Husayn: Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 709, dated 1481–2, with two paintings (Godard and Gray, 1956). 67. Early mentions in modern scholarship include Martin, 1909, 4 and Martin, 1912, 1:113. For entries about the Cairo Bustan in catalogues of the National Library of Egypt, see al-Êaråzi, 1968, 21–7; Barakat, 2008, 46–53. 68. Wilson, 1931, 236, case no. 543, manuscript B. 69. Wilkinson, 1931, plates II, III and IV; Sakisian, 1931, 169, plates XXXIV and XXXV no. 2; Binyon et al., 1933, 85–6, no. 83, plates LXVIII–LXXI; Anand, 1977; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 146; Bahari, 1996; Shukurov, 2009. Bihzad occupies a central place in Barry, 2004. This book has, however, been criticised for its lack of scholarly rigour and its orientalist inclination. See Barbara Brend’s review (Brend, 2007). For a recent discussion of Bihzad’s importance in the history of Persian painting (also framed as a critique of Barry’s book), see Shukurov, 2009. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for sharing this reference. 70. This was the case with masterpieces as well, including the celebrated Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp (Canby, 2011). 71. A ‘thick description’ would be another way to characterise this study’s approach. The expression is borrowed from Geertz, 1973. 72. The full passage is in Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149–50; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 208. 73. Brend, 2005, 83. 74. This is Thorstein Veblen’s phrase. See note 44. 75. Gacek, 2009, 229. 76. Sa‘di is one of the most celebrated poets of Persian literature. Most biographical information about him has been collected from his own writings, in particular from the Bustan and the Gulistan (Rose Garden). Several stories stage a character named Sa‘di. From the Bustan, we learn that Sa‘di was born in Shiraz, that he lost his father when he was still very young and that as a teenager he left for Baghdad to study at the school founded by the Seljuq vizir Nizam al-Mulk, the madrasa Nizamiyya (for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 7, story 121; for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 7, 153). Most stories, though, seem imbued with legend. For a quick overview of his life and works, see Losensky, 2012. Recent biographies include Yohannan, 1987; Diya’, 1994; Katouzian, 2006. Less critical is Massé, 1919. On the issue of autobiography in Sa‘di’s writings, see Keshavarz, 1994. On the famous and probably fictional episode of Sa‘di’s visit to the Hindu temple of Somnath in India (for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 8, story 140; for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 8, 176 sq.), see Akhtar, 1934; Homerin, 1983. 77. On the poetic form of the mathnawi, see Bruijn, 2000b. 78. I use the Persian edition of the Bustan established by Ghulam-Husayn

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Yusufi (Sa‘di, 1981) and the English translation by G. M. Wickens (Sa‘di, 1974). On the Bustan, see Wickens, 1990. 79. One of the most compelling analyses of the Bustan is Fouchécour, 1986, 311–48. 80. According to Ahmad Monzavi, more than 1,000 copies of Sa‘di’s works have survived, including 140 copies of the Kulliyat (Complete Works) (Monzavi, 1969–71, 3:1861 sq.), 400 copies of the Bustan (Monzavi, 1969–71, 4:3347 sq.) and 322 copies of the Gulistan (Monzavi, 1969– 71, 5:3602 sq.). According to Fouchécour, copies of the Bustan and the Gulistan of Sa‘di are more numerous than copies of the Shahnama of Firdawsi or the Khamsa of Nizami (Fouchécour, 1986, 328). One can also measure the popularity of Sa‘di from the abundance of translations and imitations of his works. On a translation of the Gulistan in Turkish Chagatay, see Erkinov, 2002. Quotations from Sa‘di’s poetry were widely used from Ottoman Turkey to Central Asia. From the fourteenth century onward, rulers from Shiraz left epigraphic inscriptions on the ruins of the palace of Darius in Persepolis, many of which were verses from the Bustan of Sa‘di (although he fails to identify the source as the Bustan, see Melikian-Chirvani, 1971). In Turkey, a verse from the Bustan can be found in the mosque of Mehmed I in Bursa (Taeschner, 1932, 144; I would like to thank Khalida Mahi for this reference). In Central Asia, the use of verses by Sa‘di was widespread, for example as funerary inscriptions (on cenotaphs dating to the fifteenth century in the necropolis of Chår Bakr near Bukhara, see Babajanov and Szuppe, 2002, 37–9 and 47–50). 81. One must signal, however, that the Cairo Bustan was preceded by several court-sponsored copies of the Bustan that were not illustrated, and by a few illustrated copies of the Gulistan. A copy of the Kulliyat (Complete Works) of Sa‘di dated 1409 has been attributed by Francis Richard to Muzaffarid patronage (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 816; Richard, 2013). An illustrated copy of the Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa‘di was made for the Timurid prince Baysunghur in 1426–7 (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Per. 119; on this manuscript and its paintings, see Lentz, 1985, 314–27; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 41; Hillenbrand, 1996; Roxburgh, 2005, 66–8). The Gulistan was composed shortly after the Bustan (Sa‘di, 2008). It consists of a prosimetrum, a text mixing prose and poetry, with eight chapters addressing a wide variety of themes, including secular, religious and courtly topics. Illustrated extracts from the Gulistan appear in one of the anthologies made for the Timurid prince Iskandar Sultan (r. 1409–14) in 1411 (Lisbon, Gulbenkian Museum, L. A. 161; Soucek, 1992). One should note, moreover, that an unillustrated copy of the Bustan was included in the margins of the anthology made for Baysunghur in Shiraz in 1420 (Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4628; Enderlein, 1991). Beyond the Timurid realm, three other princely copies must be mentioned. An unillustrated manuscript containing both Bustan and Gulistan was made in 1467 for the library of the Ottoman ruler Mehmet II (London, British Library, Add. 17330; Rieu, 1879–83, 2:601–2). A compilation of 150 verses from the Bustan was started in 1478 for the Turkmen prince Sultan Khalil. Its two paintings were completed at the Safavid court (Houston, Art History Trust Collection, nos 48 and 71; Soudavar, 1992, nos 48 and 71). Finally, an unillustrated copy of the Gulistan was finished in

introduction

1481–2 in Shamakhi, Shirvanshah, for Farrukh Yasar (London, British Library, Or. 4120; Rieu, 1895, no. 249). 82. A well-known example is the Great Mongol Shahnama usually dated to around 1330. Fifty-eight paintings have survived. They are now scattered among public and private collections (Blair and Grabar, 1980). As Abolala Soudavar has demonstrated, the paintings work at once to illustrate the Shahnama and to chronicle events from the life of the Ilkhanids (Soudavar, 1996). The Timurids picked up on this idea for their own copies of the Shahnama (Sims, 1992). 83. Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 1, 25–6; English translation in Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 1, story 2. 84. Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 3, 88–9; English translation in Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 3, story 47. 85. Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 4, 104–7; English translation in Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 4, story 66. 86. Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 9, 195–6; English translation in Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 9, story 154. 87. The verse reads: ‘Like dates, the skin is incrusted with sweetness, / But open it up, and there’s a kernel inside!’ (Sa‘di, 1974, verse 128). 88. Jami, 1997–9, 2:17–209. Yusuf wa Zulaykha is sometimes dated 1483. Another date, 1484–5, appears in the form of a chronogram at the end of the text. This poem is a mathnawi and it belongs to Jami’s Haft awrang (The Seven Thrones), a collection of seven long mathnawis. For a brief overview of Jami’s life and works, see Losensky, 2008. 89. In the last two decades of his life, Jami mainly lived in Herat. He was a faithful supporter of Sultan Husayn, standing by his side when members of another Timurid branch threatened to reclaim Khurasan. He was also the spiritual counsellor of Sultan Husayn’s vizier, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i. Jami was a member of the Naqshbandiya, a Sufi order that was particularly powerful in Khurasan and Transoxiana, and a pupil of the influential Naqshbandi leader Khwaja ‘Ubayd Allah Ahrar. Jami, Sultan Husayn and ‘Ali Shir ‘constituted a religious, military, and administrative “triumvirate” governing Khorasan’ (Losensky, 2008). 90. Losensky, 1998, 171. 91. According to the Timurid historian Khwandamir, he died in Mashhad in 1513–14 (Khwandamir, 1954, 3:1523–4). 92. For a list of manuscripts signed by or attributed to him and a list of primary sources, see Båyåni, 1944, 1:241–66. For a recent overview of his life and time, see Roxburgh, 2015. 93. Khwandamir, 1989, 225–6. 94. They all knew each other. Sultan ‘Ali and Bihzad were colleagues and friends. A quatrain by Sultan ‘Ali attests to the calligrapher’s affection and longing for Bihzad, who seemed to have missed Sultan Ali’s gatherings all too often: ‘My dear, cherished son Bihzad used to visit me from time to time. He is my life personified, but for a lifetime now he has not thought of me’ (quoted in Roxburgh, 2015, 115). 95. Thackston, 2001, 51. 96. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:144–5; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 170. 97. Losensky, 2008. 98. Mitchell, 1994, 38. A metapicture is characterised by a ‘poietic of self-reflection’ to refer to another important work on self-reflection in painting (Stoichita, 1993). For a study of metapictoriality outside the

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Western tradition of art, see Hung, 1996, esp. ‘Coda: Metapictures’, 237–59. 99. This is what Jean-François Lyotard has called the figural, as opposed to the figurative (Lyotard, 2010). 100. As W. T. J. Mitchell argued about metapictoriality, when it comes to studying how images reflect upon their ontological status and the process of their making, description must be an important tool of investigation (Mitchell, 1994, 38). 101. Al-Qazwini, 1977, 31. 102. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:261. 103. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:144–5; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 170. It is worth quoting the full passage here: ‫سالطین روزگار و خواقین عالی مقدار از برای تحشیذ طبع و تفریح خاطر که جمعیت حضور باطن‬ ‫ همواره جمعی از‬،‫عامهء رعایا ورفاهیت و سرور خواطر کافهء برایا بدان منوط و مربوط است‬ ‫] و لهذا پادشاه‬...[ ،‫مصوران سحر آفرین و نقاشان بدایع آیین را در پایهء سریر اعلی باز داشته‬ ‫مغفور مبرور نور هللا مرقده از میان هنرمندان این صنعت و سحر آفرینان این حرفت استاد بهزاد‬ ‫نقاش را که مصوران هفت اقلیم سر تسلیم پیش او فرود آورده بودند و صورت دعوی مسلمی را‬ ‫ اختیار فرموده بود‬،‫علی العموم بدو سپرده بودند‬ The sultans of the age and the mighty khaqans have always retained a group of enchanting and marvellous miniaturists in the service of the Lofty Throne in order to sharpen their wit and recreate their minds – something on which the peace of mind and tranquillity of heart of all their subjects is dependent – and they have always shown them favour […] And it is for this reason that the late Padishah [Sultan Husayn Bayqara] – May God illumine his tomb – chose Ustad Bihzad, the miniaturist, before whom the painters of the Seven Climes bowed their heads in submission and to whom they, without exception, entrusted (the image of) the claim of acquiescence, from among the artisans of this craft and the magicians of this profession.

Plates

26

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate I  Outer side of the upper cover of the Cairo Bustan’s binding. Shiraz (?), late 16th or early 17th century. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22.

plates

27

Plate II  Inner side of the upper cover of the Cairo Bustan’s binding. Shiraz (?), late 16th or early 17th century. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22.

28

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate III  Left-hand page of illustrated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488, for Sultan Husayn Bayqara. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 2a.

plates

Plate IV  Right-hand page of illustrated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488, for Sultan Husayn Bayqara. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 1b.

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate V  Left-hand page of first illuminated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 3a.

plates

31

Plate VI  Right-hand page of first illuminated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 2b.

32

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate VII  Left-hand page of second illuminated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 4a.

plates

Plate VIII  Right-hand page of second illuminated frontispiece from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 3b.

33

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate IX  Text page from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, 1488, copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Katib. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio), 21 × 17 cm (written surface). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 4b.

plates

35

Plate X  ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488, signed by the painter Bihzad. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 10a.

36

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate XI  ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, c. 1488, signed by the painter Bihzad. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 26a.

plates

Plate XII  ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, dated 894/ December 1488–November 1489 and signed by the painter Bihzad. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 30b.

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate XIII  ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, dated 893/December 1487–November 1488 and signed by the painter Bihzad. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 52b.

plates

39

Plate XIV  Text page with colophon from the Cairo Bustan. Herat, dated end of Rajab 893/end of June or early July 1488, copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Katib. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 54b.

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Plate XV  Text page from the Cairo Bustan, added in the early sixteenth century. Tabriz, 1513, copied by Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Kirmani. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 55a.

plates

Plate XVI  Last page of the Cairo Bustan with seals. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 55b.

41

CHAPTER ONE

Pictorial Preface

The Cairo Bustan opens with a double painting (Plates IV and III).1 This is an illustrated frontispiece: a pictorial entryway into the manuscript, greeting the viewer before the text begins. We see a celebration in a royal palace. Courtly life was a common theme of Persian frontispieces, but here the subject is rendered with unusual comprehensiveness. A multitude of foreground figures are dispersed across the pictorial field. Reading from right (folio 1b, Plate IV) to left (folio 2a, Plate III), which is how Persian manuscripts unfold, we identify different aspects of a festive reception: from the making of alcohol on the upper right, to the preparation of flasks of wine below, to the actual gathering on the left page. The gaze moves through space successively, as though directed by a single tracking shot, taking us from the outskirts of the palace to its inner courtyards. Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the royal patron of the Cairo Bustan, appears at the end of this trajectory. He is depicted in the middle of the left folio, robed in green and kneeling in a three-quarter pose. As smooth as that movement is, the accumulation of figures also creates a contrary, fragmenting effect. Each scene can be examined independently. Myriad details draw the eye, interrupting its linear movement, constantly delaying the viewer’s encounter with the ruler. Royal frontispieces were expected to provide a more focused composition. Timurid manuscripts from the first half of the fifteenth century codified the genre: a painting starting on the right folio with the ruler in majesty; unfolding to the left with lines of courtiers, ordered like decorative patterns; and an inconspicuous setting (Figure 1.1).2 Even when replete with figures, the frontispiece was supposed to project a sense of wholeness and harmony reflective of the king’s glory. In the late Timurid Cairo Bustan, rather than appearing in the manuscript’s first page, the ruler is located in the left folio. Instead of striking a hieratic pose, he is interacting with a man. The latter, moreover, is not paying much attention to him. In fact, no one in the painting is looking at the king. Placed at the end of the gaze’s trajectory, isolated from his guests, the patron lies outside the world of visual exchange.

Figure 1.1  Double-page frontispiece from a copy of Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l-Ma‘ali Nasr Allah. Herat, 1429, for Baysunghur. 28.7 × 19.7 cm (folio). Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, R. 1022, folios 1b–2a.

pictorial preface

Meanwhile, many details press for our attention, such as the expansive, elaborate field of objects and architectural decoration. Covered in the tiniest arabesques, the royal carpet, for example, is not so much an image of a rug as a panel of minute illumination, reminding us that the painting is not only a representation of a monarch, but a display of artistic virtuosity. We are also struck by the picture’s humour, most efficiently conveyed by the inebriated figures. Disrupting the symbolic cohesion of the royal image, the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece gestures towards multiple meanings. At first sight, it promises a celebratory portrait of the court. But the intricate, animated picture marginalises the king. Depicting him with an inattentive courtier, it starts telling a story and suggesting a lesson. The narrative can be interpreted as a mystical allegory, a highly unusual theme at the time for a royal frontispiece. The seriousness of such interpretation, however, is almost instantly upended by the painting’s humour. In this chapter we move from one reading to another, showing how the frontispiece at once builds on and resists prior conventions, opening up several lines of interpretation. In addition to earlier models, we also turn to the frontispiece’s pictorial reception. In sixteenth-century readaptations, aspects of the original painting were reproduced; others were obliterated. These choices reflect readings that we can project back onto the painting, thus further highlighting the frontispiece’s semantic complexity. The frontispiece functions as a pictorial preface, introducing a mode of seeing and placing the question of interpretation at its heart. The pictorial and the political, moreover, mingle closely. Semantic instability comes with a kind of transgression, a liberation from the ordered formula of the courtly frontispiece. By upsetting from the start the codes of royal representation, the Cairo Bustan equates visual abundance with the instability of meaning and the possibility of change. A Royal Frontispiece To fully comprehend the originality of the Cairo Bustan’s opening pages we must first look at the history of the Persian royal frontispiece and trace the circulation and reception of possible models. The royal frontispiece is a genre of Persian painting that developed from the Arabic frontispiece at the turn of the fourteenth century. But while the latter emphasised scholarly pursuits, its Persian successor foregrounded princely authority, as Marianna Shreve Simpson and others have shown.3 An early example appears at the beginning of a copy of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi dated 1330 and attributed to Shiraz (Figure 1.2).4 It already contains the main elements of the Cairo Bustan: the king is centrally enthroned in the

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Figure 1.2  Double-page frontispiece from a copy of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. Shiraz (?), 1330. 14 × 22.5 cm. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 1479, folios 4b–5a.

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middle of the left folio; before him, dancers and musicians perform and rows of attendants and courtiers, deployed across the double painting, form the royal entourage. Fourteenth-century frontispieces were available to Timurid artists. This specific Shahnama was part of the library of Shah Rukh (1377– 1447), son and successor of Timur (Shah Rukh’s seal appears twice in the manuscript).5 Another double-page frontispiece was kept in the so-called Timurid workshop album.6 Assembled in Herat shortly after the death of the Timurid prince Baysunghur (1397–1433), son of Shah Rukh, the album contains texts, drawings, calligraphies and paintings mostly made between the 1400s and the 1450s. But it also preserves earlier material, including the enthronement frontispiece, usually dated around 1300. The left folio features a crowned ruler, seated cross-legged on his throne and holding a cup. Represented on a smaller scale, a cohort of dignitaries and servants surround the monarch. A table with wine containers is set in the lower left corner. The folio on the right, which is much less legible, depicts an exterior scene, perhaps a procession.7 Two Timurid frontispieces, both made for Baysunghur, show thematic continuities with these earlier examples. The first opens a copy of Kalila wa Dimna that was made in Herat in 1429, and depicts a royal gathering in a blossoming garden (Figure 1.1).8 The prince, who, scholars have shown, represents Baysunghur himself, appears in the right folio – an important variation from earlier models.9 Surrounded by attendants, Baysunghur is seated on a carpet, wine cup in hand. In the foreground, musicians perform on both sides of a table loaded with wine bottles. The composition continues in the left folio, with four servants carrying tables at the bottom and a packed row of figures aligned with the prince. The gutter separating the pages stresses the gap between ruler and ruled, as Robert Hillenbrand noted.10 Exclusion also comes with subordination: although placed outside the royal half of the frontispiece, the courtiers are turned towards the prince. Baysunghur also appears in the frontispiece of the Shahnama made for him in 1430, in the top-centre of the right folio, mounted on a horse and watching a royal battue.11 Clusters of courtiers are seen hunting. This is not a new theme – hunting already appears in the Stephens Shahnama, a manuscript dated 1352–3.12 In Baysunghur’s painting, however, movement is more vividly rendered. In the left folio, two horsemen ride along steep descending diagonal lines, breaking the horizontal layering of the composition. In the lower half of the frontispiece, poses and gestures echo each other in reverse, as if mirrored across the middle of the page, creating further rhythm through their combined effects of repetition and variation. The only portion of the picture that seems to escape temporal and spatial movement is the royal portrait. Protected by a parasol, holding a cup of wine, the prince appears distant, unmoved by the theatricality of the hunt.

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It is not clear whether Baysunghur’s manuscripts and the fourteenth-century paintings were still in Herat when the Cairo Bustan was made. A lot happened between the death of Shah Rukh, who designated no official heir, in 1447 and Sultan Husayn’s ascension to the throne in 1469.13 The Timurid ruler of Samarqand, Ulugh Beg (1394–1449), son of Shah Rukh, pillaged the city in 1448. Abu’lQasim Babur (1422–57), son of Baysunghur, managed to create some political unity for a few years but his death in 1457 was followed by months of succession struggle. Another Timurid prince, Sultan Abu Sa‘id, took Herat that same year, restoring a semblance of peace over Khurasan and Transoxiana. Jahanshah Qara Qoyunlu, the Turkmen ruler of Western Iran, however, briefly occupied Herat in 1458. His son Pir Budaq participated in the attack. He may have become acquainted with Timurid manuscripts during this episode. The manuscripts commissioned by Pir Budaq, especially between 1460 and 1466 when he was governor of Baghdad, bear the undeniable influence of Baysunghur’s library.14 In fact, they make up for the missing link between early and late Timurid manuscripts. A copy of Kalila wa Dimna today kept in Tehran and attributed to Qara Qoyunlu Baghdad draws on the style of Baysunghur’s books while announcing the frontispiece of the Cairo Bustan (Figure 1.3).15 The ruler appears in the right folio surrounded by courtiers in a festive gathering. A row of trees on a golden sky topped by swirling clouds constitutes the

Figure 1.3  Double-page frontispiece from a copy of Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l-Ma‘ali Nasr Allah. Baghdad (?), c. 1465. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 827, folio numbers unknown.

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background to the picture. Important changes have also occurred. An outdoor terrace has replaced the flowering backdrop of Baysunghur’s frontispieces. The Cairo Bustan uses a similar setting, although in a reversed order. We recognise the stone wall framing the ruler’s space and the open fence used for the other terrace. Also anticipating Sultan Husayn’s page is the depiction of a broader scope of activities. Independent scenes include, in the bottom left, the triangular group of interacting courtiers, and, next to it, the scene of the attendant pouring wine into presentation flasks. In the right folio, the guardian at the gate foreshadows the doorman of the Cairo Bustan. Double-page paintings were not limited to frontispieces and could be found within historiographical manuscripts. In a copy of the Zafarnama (Book of Victory) of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, executed for Sultan Husayn not long before the Cairo Bustan, a series of double pictures illustrate the life and deeds of Timur (1336–1405). In one, Timur is holding an audience in Balkh in 1370 on the occasion of his assumption to the succession to the Chaghatay Khans, the descendants of the Mongol conqueror Chingiz Khan (d. 1227) (Figure 1.4).16 This event granted him political legitimacy. Dressed in green and surrounded by members of the court, he is sitting on his throne before a trellis tent and an awning. From the use of green for the ruler’s robe to the textile architecture, this page constitutes another source for the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece. In addition to indexing a tradition of royal double-page pictures, Sultan Husayn’s depiction incorporates norms of royal portraiture, a pictorial genre that developed in fifteenth-century Iran and Central Asia. Portraiture was characterised ‘by a marked tension between descriptive realism and idealized convention’, as Gülru Necipo©lu summarised.17 Realism can be detected in Sultan Husayn’s bodily features, including the slanting eyes, the squared face, the fringed beard and the slight embonpoint, as Barbara Brend noted.18 The same traits appear in another portrait of the ruler later attributed to the painter Bihzad (Figure 1.5).19 Some of these features are also echoed in a description of Sultan Husayn by his cousin and future founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483–1530): ‘His eyes were slanted, and he had the build of a lion, slender from the waist down.’20 The identity of the king is further asserted through text. In the left folio, a benedictory inscription indicates Sultan Husayn’s name and titles. Placed in the middle of the awning within a lobed, cruciform medallion, it was written in green with the ruler’s name copied in gold: ‫اللهمه اید دولة السلطان االعظم ابو الغازي سلطان حسين بهادر خان‬ Oh Lord ensure the prosperity of the kingdom of the sultan Abu’lGhazi Sultan Husayn Bahadur Khan21

Figure 1.4  ‘Timur Holding an Audience in Balkh in 1370’ from a copy of the Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi. Herat (?), 1467–8 and c. 1480. 23.5 × 15.2 cm (folio). Baltimore, MD, The John Work Garrett Library, The Sheridan Libraries, The Johns Hopkins University, folios 82b–83a.

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Figure 1.5  Portrait of Sultan Husayn Mirza, folio from an album. Herat (?), c. 1500–25, attributed to Bihzad. 34.3 × 32.7 cm (folio). Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of John Goelet, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier, 1958.59. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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In both form and content, the inscription recalls the use of illuminated dedicatory pages, most often placed before the illustrated frontispiece.22 In the late Timurid copy of the Zafarnama mentioned earlier, the ruler’s name appears in a dedication page. Inscribed within a polylobed medallion (shamsa), a long inscription assigns the manuscript to Sultan Husayn’s library: ‘for the library of the most generous, the exalted Abu’l-Ghazi Sultan Husayn Bahadur Khan, may God make his rule and dominion and generosity eternal.’23 Inserted within the illustrated frontispiece, juxtaposed with the patron’s likeness, the benedictory inscription of the Cairo Bustan confirms the frontispiece’s genre as a royal portrait. Portraiture was also an occasion for the display of royal insignia, as Necipo©lu has shown.24 In the Cairo Bustan, symbols of power include the turban wrapped around a red cap with a royal aigrette, the regal belt, as well as the gesture of flower-holding.25 In Bihzad’s individual portrait of Sultan Husayn, we see a dagger and a compass, attached to the belt (Figure 1.5). These insignia emphasise, respectively, the king’s military power and his interest in the arts. Sultan Husayn is also shown holding a handkerchief in his emerald-ringed hand.26 Kneeling on both knees, the sultan’s pose, moreover, recalls his ancestor Timur who, for lack of a direct genealogical link with Chingiz Khan, could not be depicted in the royal cross-legged pose but had to be represented in a kneeling position marking his secondary rank.27 Preserved in the Timurid workshop album cited earlier, an illustrated genealogical tree datable to around 1405–9 depicts Timur kneeling on both knees in a three-quarter pose and holding a handkerchief.28 His descendants are represented enthroned, either cross-legged or with both feet on the ground depending on the Chingizid affiliation of their mothers. The tree emphasises Timur’s son Miranshah through his central placement and the use of double parallel lines relating him to Timur, an indication that this genealogical work may have been made for Miranshah.29 In both the Cairo Bustan and the later individual portrait attributed to Bihzad, Sultan Husayn’s depiction, then, refers to the founder of the dynasty. The intent was perhaps to remind viewers of Timur’s military achievements at a time when the empire was in decline, as Necipo©lu suggested.30 The turquoise-green colour of the sultan’s garment, as Brend noted, also connotes royal status through its visual resemblance to jade, a favourite stone of the Timurids, and by the aural resemblance between the Persian words for ‘turquoise’ (fÈrËza) and ‘victory’ (fÈrËzÈ or pÈrËzÈ).31 Moreover, it symbolises heaven, and thus the ruler’s control over the cosmos. In a description of Sultan Husayn’s assumption to power in 1469, the Timurid historian Khwandamir compares the throne to ‘the Turquoise Throne of the Sun and the Moon’.32 More cosmic imagery appears in the frontispiece as we read the

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Persian inscription that runs on the edge of the tent’s dome, right above the ruler’s head: ‫کیوان از مالزمان درگاه تو باد‬ ‫خورشید کماج خیمه جاه تو باد‬ May Saturn belong to your court May the Sun constitute the perimeter of the royal tent33 And indeed, inscribed in gold, towering over the court, the sultan’s name rises like the sun into the frontispiece’s upper margin, providing more radiance to the ruler’s majesty. From Hierarchy to Dispersal Yet the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece also runs counter to its Timurid and Turkmen models, and destabilises the rules of royal representation. At least two aspects are at odds with fifteenth-century conventions: the location of the ruler in the left folio and the inclusion of his portrait into a narrative sequence. The Cairo Bustan reverts to a page order that had not been used in Persian painting since the end of the fourteenth century.34 This could signal an antiquarian bent. The frontispiece cites and mixes a diverse body of sources, asserting its genealogy and its historical consciousness, portraying itself as the culminating point of Persian royal imagery. But this configuration can also prove disorienting, especially for viewers accustomed to encountering the king in the frontispiece’s right-hand page. Compared to Baysunghur in the beginning of Kalila wa Dimna (Figure 1.1), Sultan Husayn does not clearly stand out. In Baysunghur’s frontispiece, the king is given visual pre-eminence through his location at the centre of the first page, and he is seated alone on his carpet. His body is depicted in a frontal view, and he is the only character to enjoy such privilege. Echoing the illuminated edges of the double frontispiece, the rug’s borders further define the prince’s portrait as a separate, embedded image, enhancing the prince’s aura. Baysunghur is the focal point of the painting. For a beholder used to Timurid frontispieces, Sultan Husayn is quite hard to locate. The eye has first to wander through the right folio before moving to the facing picture. On the way, the host of figures that inhabit each page can easily distract the viewer. The Turkmen Kalila wa Dimna does show secondary scenes (Figure 1.3).35 The Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece, however, takes this phenomenon to another level. Turned into a multiplying image, it represents several facets of courtly life at once. Within each scene, characters display a wide array of postures, activities, states of mind, social ranks and ethnic groups. Take for example the image in the upper right. It features two Indian figures. Wearing an utpati hat, the man

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is holding two flasks of liquor on a stick, while the woman is watching a liquor distillation process. Although peripheral, through its novelty this image functions like a magnet, attracting and thus also derailing our attention. The ruler no longer holds the centre of the composition. In prior frontispieces, he would be consistently placed at the intersection of the courtiers’ gazes. Bodily positions would also orient the figures towards the king (Figure 1.1). In the Cairo Bustan, by contrast, none of the attendants are engaging with the sultan. The courtiers placed before him form a separate circle, both physically and emotionally, as they seem transported by the music and the wine into some other realm. In the facing page, each character is absorbed in a distinct task. Even the sultan’s son is looking away from his father. No one in the painting seems to attend to Sultan Husayn, not even the character to whom he is handing a flower. The second unusual aspect of the frontispiece is the inclusion of the king in a narrative scene. The king is usually enthroned alone or with a spouse. Even when he interacts with a figure, for example a servant handing him a cup of wine or a plate of food (Figure 1.1), his attitude is hieratic. The image presents an image of hierarchy, often by placing the secondary character beneath the ruler and outside the royal carpet. In the Cairo Bustan, Sultan Husayn is kneeling towards a male youth seated with him on the same rug. The painter has diverted the royal conventions of pose (the kneeling position), placement (on a carpet) and gesture (the flower-holding posture), turning them into elements of a more trivial narrative. The story they partake in does not enhance the ruler. The young man to whom he is offering a flower does not seem to fully register the royal attention. While his right hand reaches out to the sultan, his head leans in the opposite direction. Instead of acknowledging the king’s presence, he is listening to a third character. There is no other surviving frontispiece showing a ruler engaging with a youth in such an ambivalent way. Preserved on two different pages of an album presumably compiled in the early seventeenth century for the Mughal emperor Jahangir and known as the Gulshan album, a later interpretation of this very frontispiece reprises several elements, including the king, now placed in the right folio (Figure 1.6).36 To the left, standing before the red curtain, the character in green with the fur-trimmed hat recalls Badi‘ al-Zaman. Next to him, the man holding a towel resembles the servant standing by the tower in the late Timurid frontispiece. Some elements have been borrowed from the text paintings of the Cairo Bustan, including the man in blue stretching a turban, a citation of the judge’s attendant in the third text painting of the manuscript (Plate XII). An attribution to Bihzad can be seen on the open safina (an anthology of poetry of oblong format) that two women are beholding in the first

Figure 1.6  Double-page frontispiece of a manuscript. Gulshan album. 40 × 25 cm (each folio). Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 1663, pages 55 and 62.

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page’s lower right corner. The inscription is probably not a genuine signature, but it further attests to the picture’s affiliation (real or perceived) with late Timurid painting. While it uses the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece as a source of inspiration, the Gulshan album’s image also corrects some of its unusual features, shifting back to the conventions of the fifteenth century. The king is located in the right folio. He is not inserted into a specific narrative. Instead of offering the flower to the character before him, he is now simply contemplating it. A woman has replaced the male youth. Fully turned towards the ruler, she is presenting him with a bouquet in a vase. The painting as a whole features a common, formulaic courtly gathering. Different scenes are represented but they form passive, colourful patterns, like the flowers scattered around them. Attendants and courtiers are represented on a slightly lower scale compared to the ruler. Herding visual abundance into a balanced composition, the picture projects a sense of order and harmony, clearly contrasting with the Cairo Bustan’s animation. Searching for clues to understand the scene of Sultan Husayn, one is tempted to expand the comparative material to illustrative paintings. Two examples come to mind. The first belonged to a copy of the Anwår-i suhaylÈ (The Lights of Canopus) dated by Abolala Soudavar to the years around 1500 (Figure 1.7).37 The text is a collection of fables written by the Timurid author Husayn Wa’iz Kashifi at the end of the fifteenth century under the patronage of Sultan Husayn. It draws on Kalila wa Dimna, both its eighth-century Arabic version by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ and its twelfth-century Persian variant by Abu’lMa‘ali Nasr Allah.38 As in the Cairo Bustan, the king is engaging with two characters: a kneeling youth in red who is conversing with the ruler and a man standing behind him who puts his hand on the youth’s shoulder. The accompanying text does not include any narrative. It describes the king of Kashmir, emphasising his wealth and his military power.39 The painting thus constitutes a frontispiece of sorts; and, just as in the Cairo Bustan, it goes beyond the conventions of royal portraiture by depicting the king in an informal conversation. Despite this commonality, however, there remain crucial differences between the two images. In the illustration of Anwår-i suhaylÈ, the youth is not turning his head away from the sultan. He does not intrude into the space reserved for the monarch. All characters direct their gaze to the throne. In contrast with the Cairo Bustan, hierarchy and order are preserved. Another comparable image appears in a copy of the Man†iq al-†ayr (The Speech of the Birds) of ‘Attar (1145–1220).40 Executed in Herat in 1487, it shows a composition similar to the Cairo Bustan’s. Dressed in green, kneeling on both knees, a ruler is enthroned at the centre of the composition. He is turned toward a visitor, accompanied by a courtier. According to the text, a beggar has fallen in love with the

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Figure 1.7  ‘Story of the King of Kashmir’ from a copy of the Anwar-i suhayli of Husayn Wa’iz Kashifi. Herat (?), c. 1480. 16.7 × 9.7 cm (jadwal). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.155.

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king of Egypt. In the scene represented in the painting, the king asks him to choose between exile and death. The beggar chooses exile and, as a result, will be executed. The king later declares that he would have become a dervish, venerating the beggar had the latter chosen death, as that choice would have testified to devotional, rather than carnal, love.41 Despite similarities with the Cairo Bustan, the painting of the Man†iq al-†ayr leaves no doubt about the power relationship between king and beggar. The ruler is placed slightly above. Represented with bare feet, the poor man puts his hand on his chest, either showing his submission to royal authority or protesting his sincerity. With one hand on the beggar’s shoulder and the other on a dagger, the courtier behind him has a threatening presence, announcing the beggar’s imminent beheading. The Cairo Bustan, by contrast, destabilises pictorial and social hierarchies. It does not emphasise the guest’s subordination to the king. The guest’s pose, in fact, mimics Sultan Husayn’s stance, as though mirrored across the middle of the carpet. It also differs from it. The man’s head turns to a third character, who leans towards him as a servant would. Who is the young man who usurps our attention and threatens to overpower the king? Why is he looking away from Sultan Husayn? Mystical Twist Far from constituting a hagiographical portrait of Sultan Husayn, the frontispiece burdens the reader with the enigma of what the royal scene might mean. We are also intrigued by its juxtaposition with the gathering of courtiers at the bottom. Before the sultan, members of the court are playing music and drinking. While feasting was a common theme of Timurid frontispieces, this particular example stands out for its insistence on the effects of inebriation. Intoxicated courtiers are seen tearing at their clothes, holding their heads or falling into their fellow courtiers’ arms. One man is also reading from an open book. The scene might represent a mystical ceremony, perhaps a sama‘, a ritualised musical performance that often involved playing music, singing poetry and dancing, and during which mystics would experience trance and ecstasy.42 Intense emotional transports played an important role in a mystic’s education: as experiences of alienation and disempowerment, they constituted a necessary stage in the pursuit of divine wisdom.43 Seen in a spiritual light, the scene of Sultan Husayn might read less as a realistic portrayal confronting Sultan Husayn with a volatile courtier than as a mystical allegory of love. The ruler would stand for the mystic, and his interlocutor for God himself. In Arabic and Persian Sufi literature, the young, beardless boy constitutes an embodiment of divine beauty,44 and mystical encounters are often

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framed in homoerotic terms.45 The composition, in a way, reverses the Man†iq al-†ayr’s painting: the ruler has become the lover while the guest stands for the beloved, hence the ambiguity of their power relationship. In Sufism, the contemplation of the beloved is indeed a metaphysical experience. This is known in Persian literature as shåhidbåzÈ (‘playing the witness’), the witnessing of divine presence in worldly manifestations. As early as the tenth century, Sufi masters discussed the possibility that God might appear in finite, contained forms that humans could grasp, including the form of young males.46 Shåhid-båzÈ was both a literary and an actual practice, linking the contemplation of external reality to an understanding of divine beauty.47 More generally, love is an allegory of the seeker’s search for spiritual union. An important feature of Sufi doctrines at least since the tenth century, ‘ishq or passionate love is considered the highest aim of Sufi seekers, the last station on their way to transcendence.48 Love is an attribute of God, manifesting itself through beauty. The mystic’s quest for love prompts a wide array of feelings, including alienation, as can be read in Sa‘di’s Bustan: ‘Once Love has come, speak no more of intelligence / The ball is but a captive in the polostick’s hand.’49 A stock image of Sufi Persian poetry, the metaphor of the ball and the polo-stick refers to the captivity of the lover who is played, manipulated by the beloved. In another image of the lover’s annihilation, the lover is compared to a moth, and the beloved to a candle: ‘The candle indulges not the moth’s condition / See, then, how it burns before all assembled.’ 50 The beloved does not spare the lover any pain. What results from this ordeal is the consumption of the moth, its dissolution into the beloved’s flame. Yet this dangerous love is precisely the key to the lover’s liberation, ‘for if He destroys you,’ the Bustan further suggests, ‘you will be everlasting.’ Sufi love is the guarantee that selfish, earthly life can be dissolved into divine plenitude: ‘Alone that grants you acquaintance with Truth / Which first grants you release from self’s own hand.’51 The frontispiece, then, would depict the ruler as a Sufi seeker, and the guest as the beloved, resisting the sultan’s love through his paradoxical attitude. Such spiritual reading is not unreasonable, given Sultan Husayn’s relationship to mysticism. Of the few surviving manuscripts that bear undisputable evidence of a link with his royal workshop and library, the majority contains mystical poetry. His library included the works of the poet and spiritual guide ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414–92).52 The earliest surviving royal copy of the Mathnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), perhaps the most famous Sufi poet, also belonged to Sultan Husayn.53 A safina assembling ghazals of various poets including Hafiz and Jami has been attributed to the same workshop.54

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Sultan Husayn might have formed his taste for mystical manuscripts in the years around 1450 when, still a teenager, he lived at the court of Abu’l-Qasim Babur, the son of Baysunghur. Compared to his father’s library which emphasised didactic works in a pragmatic rather than spiritual vein,55 Babur’s contained several anthologies of mystical poetry,56 announcing the domination of Sufi literature in the late Timurid workshop. Sultan Husayn was surrounded by spiritual figures such as Jami who channelled the influence of the Naqshbandi order at the court. In two chancery documents, Sultan Husayn himself claimed descent from the Sufi master Khwaja ‘Abdallah Ansari (d. 481/1089) who was venerated since Shah Rukh’s time as the saint of Herat: ‘In accordance with the Qur’anic verse, “He has an ancestor, a great shaikh”, an extremity of one of the branches of the pure trees of our lofty lineage stems from that exalted root (i.e., Khvaja Abd Allah Ansari).’57 Along with evoking the image of Timur, Sultan Husayn’s portrait would thus emphasise the ruler’s mystical genealogy. One later pictorial reinterpretation of the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece confirms that it could prompt a mystical reading (Figure 1.8).58 It accompanies a ghazal of Hafiz, a mystical poet from the fourteenth century whose poetry began to be illustrated in the sixteenth century. Executed around 1525 in Uzbek Bukhara where Timurid manuscripts and paintings were commonly emulated, the picture reproduces several figures from the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece. In the lower left corner, one recognises the man falling into his companion’s arms and, to the right, the character tearing at his robe. At the left edge of the page, the figure seated by a stream of water, pressing a napkin to his mouth, with an empty cup of wine falling from his right hand, also seems to have been transferred directly from the Bustan. The poem closely follows the conventions of the mystical ghazal developed by Hafiz in the fourteenth century. Set in a tavern, and featuring a cup-bearer (såqÈ) and a minstrel, it describes a hedonistic context: ‘The house is calm, the såqÈ friendly and the minstrel witty / It is the season of joy, the time for wine, and age of youth.’59 Bacchic and erotic themes mingle, reflecting upon the treacherous nature of the world and the difficulties of the mystical pursuit of love. The ghazal ends with an evocation of the poet, who offers his verses to a moon-faced lover.60 The painting renders the poem’s setting and emphasises its last verse. Presiding over a joyous assembly, the poet is reading from an open safina to a young man, perhaps the såqÈ himself, who is handing him a cup of wine. A celebration of wine and love, Hafiz’s poetry constitutes a likely textual substrate of the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece. It was particularly popular at the late Timurid court. A number of copies of Hafiz’s work were produced in late Timurid Herat, including an anthology penned by Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi, the copyist of the Cairo Bustan.61

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Figure 1.8  ‘Feast by a Stream’ from a copy of the Diwan of Hafiz. Bukhara (?), c. 1525. 23.2 × 14.6 cm (folio). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.168.

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Hafiz’s Diwan (Collected Poems) was, moreover, re-edited under the patronage of the Timurid prince Faridun, son of Sultan Husayn.62 According to the recension’s preface, Faridun gathered hundreds of copies of Hafiz’s poetry before setting out to edit the text with friends and scholars. The depiction of the ruler with a youth also echoes contemporary mystical literature. It anticipates the Majålis al-‘ushshåq (The Assembly of Lovers), a collection of imaginary love stories starring legendary and historical personalities. Modern scholars have attributed the work, dated 1503, to Husayn Gazurgahi, a disciple of Jami and a boon companion of Sultan Husayn.63 Lovers include famous Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi and Jalal al-Din Rumi, mythical kings like Solomon, historical rulers such as the Seljuq sultan Malikshah, and late fifteenth-century figures such as Jami, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i and Sultan Husayn himself, to whom the last chapter is devoted.64 The stories appear to treat worldly love, most often using homoerotic language. They are framed, however, by an introduction about mystical love reminding us of the narratives’ allegorical dimension. The Majålis al-‘ushshåq began to be illustrated in Shiraz in the second half of the sixteenth century, as Lale Uluç has shown.65 Paintings emphasise courtly gatherings and assemblies of scholars and mystics. They often include scenes of intoxication. In a painting made in 1580, the man in red lying in his friend’s arms seems to be a quotation from the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece.66 Representations of couples abound. Often surrounded by animated crowds, they are conversing, playing chess, exchanging books or bathing. In a painting from the same manuscript, Sultan Husayn’s vizier Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i is seated with a young man in a pavilion.67 He is handing him a pomegranate, and the beloved is hastening to accept the gift. But there is no doubt here about the youth’s stance. The scene projects a sense of tranquillity and enjoyment that the Cairo Bustan lacks. Sultan Husayn’s frontispiece was crucial to the emergence of mystical iconography in the sixteenth century. Its readaptations, however, left aside its most unusual features, including the posture of the king’s companion. In foregrounding mystical themes, they also sacrificed the frontispiece’s visual multiplicity to a specific meaning, in a way that retrospectively highlights the semantic density of the Cairo Bustan. Humour and Irony The frontispiece presents a wide array of images that do not translate into a single interpretation. While frontispieces usually focus on royal pastimes, this one mixes a courtly celebration with a mystical gathering. Some of its details flirt with ambivalence, creating surprise and instilling tension. Perhaps the beloved’s reluctance to fully submit to the sultan’s attention was meant to symbolise the

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difficulties of the mystic’s quest. But it also foregrounds the ruler’s vulnerability, challenging a whole tradition of portraiture whose main aim was to glorify the king. Another unusual aspect of the frontispiece is the emphasis on alcohol consumption. Drinking was an integral part of Timurid culture, and textual sources highlighted that aspect of courtly life. In the Zafarnama, Yazdi describes an outdoor gathering near Samarqand in 1404: from end to end were goblets of jade and crystal filled with wine, koumiss, honey, muthallath, liquor, and sherbet. The pages of time that glittered with night and day were inscribed with myriad designs of gaiety and glad tidings. […] When the princes and noyans, in accordance with the custom and ritual, drained one after another their goblets filled with ruby-red wine, and the ritual of toasting was completed, trays laden with more food and multitudes of more various edibles were set than can be described.68 Of a party organised by Sultan Husayn’s son, Muzaffar Mirza, in 1516–17, Babur wrote: the pleasure cups were filled and the cupbearers began to circulate and offer them to the guests, who started gulping down the clear wine as though it was the water of life. The party grew heated as the wine went to people’s heads.69 But despite these textual notations, the representation of inebriated figures remained rather uncommon in illustrations. Intoxication could appear in the iconography of mystical literature (Figure 1.8) but never in royal frontispieces, where courtiers are usually depicted in an orderly fashion. Breaking with the rather serious appearance of Timurid frontispieces, inebriation adds an element of humour. Amusing details include the inebriated guest who is leaving the scene with the support of two other characters on the right, and the overturned ewer spilling wine on the floor at the bottom of the lefthand page. There is also a suggestion that the sultan’s companion himself might be intoxicated. His figure echoes the silhouette of the inebriated guest being carried out of the palace. In addition to wearing similar clothes, their heads are both tilted at a sharp angle. This visual parallel may have no particular meaning, but it does intensify the viewer’s uncertainty in interpreting the scene. The painting was designed to baffle its viewers from the moment they opened the book. Near the thumb that the reader has just placed at the bottom right, the first image they see, although marginal, already points to drama. On the palace’s threshold, a man wearing black, perhaps a beggar, is refused entrance. Threatened by a guard

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who is about to beat him with a stick (or may have already), the undesired guest falls back towards the beholder into the lower margin of the page. Instead of discovering a royal portrait, we are faced with a rather unwelcoming scene. This image might highlight the exclusiveness of the court. But it also adds to the peculiarities of the frontispiece. Gates are not uncommon in depictions of architectural settings. Sometimes an armed guardian would be standing by the door, as in the Turkmen Kalila wa Dimna mentioned earlier.70 The Cairo Bustan, however, turns a stock image into an animated, ambiguous scene. Why align the viewer’s entry into the royal frontispiece with an image of expulsion? This is a puzzling choice for a painting that showcases devotion and spirituality. The inscriptions surrounding the door inject more irony into the scene. Written in Kufic script, right above the entrance, an Arabic inscription reads: ‫ابواب الملوك قبلة الحاجات‬ The kings’ doorways are the Mecca of the needy71 Around the gate, a frieze of cartouches displays more writing. Persian verses describe the palace as a site of compassion: ‫ز رفعت فرش این طاق زر اندود‬ ‫گذشت از هفت سقف گوهر امود‬ The coating of this golden vault was plastered with dignity Like a string of pearls, generosity is threaded into all seven domes Inscriptions talk about generosity, but the image shows a different reality. Such irony was usually absent from royal representations. Largely inspired by this painting, the double picture of the Gulshan album does not replicate the gateway scene, an indication that the latter detail may have been indeed perceived as a dissonance (Figure 1.6). Counterbalancing mystical life with social criticism, the scene of the beggar complicates the general theme of the picture. A frontispiece within a frontispiece, it also announces one of the Cairo Bustan’s defining aspects: the use of details, visual and textual, to unsettle generic expectations. The scene is all the more ironic since it parallels the sultan’s portrait. Both poor man and ruler are depicted in a situation of refusal: just as the beggar is kept out of the palace, so too the sultan is ignored by the beloved. While it might signify obstacles and thus add to the mystical inspiration of the frontispiece, the juxtaposition of social injustice and mystical pursuit sounds a polemical note, instilling doubt about the court’s spirituality. The implicit critique resonates with a quotation of Sultan Husayn’s cousin, the Mughal emperor

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Babur, who denounced in his memoirs the excessive consumption of wine at the late Timurid court: For the nearly forty years he was king in Khurasan not a day passed that he did not drink after the midday prayer, but he never had a morning draught. His sons and all his military and civilian men were addicted to drinking and lived with inordinate revelry and debauchery.72 A later image magnifies the satirical tone of the Cairo Bustan (Figure 1.9).73 The painting opens the Bahram Mirza album, a collection of calligraphies, paintings, and drawings assembled in 1544–5 in Tabriz by the calligrapher Dust Muhammad for the Safavid prince Bahram Mirza (1517–49).74 Although he is wearing the typical Safavid headgear with its red spike, the kingly figure in the upper left bears a striking resemblance to Sultan Husayn in Bihzad’s portrait (Figure 1.5). As scholars have suggested, the latter image may have belonged to the same album, since it bears a Safavid caption box that resembles the notations added by Dust Muhammad.75 Common features include the kneeling pose, the fine garment decorated with a cloud-collar, the belt with its dagger and compass, the aigrette in the turban, and facial features like the fringed beard and slanted eyes. But in contrast with Sultan Husayn’s portrait and with the frontispiece of the Cairo Bustan (which was also present in Tabriz in the early sixteenth century, as the epilogue shows), the frontispiece has a mordant quality; Sheila Blair calls this picture a ‘joke’.76 A barren landscape has replaced the splendid, luxurious palace. By contrast with the slender, delicate figures of late Timurid painting, the attendants appear cramped in their clothes and graceless. The inscriptions on the picture’s upper edge accentuate the mocking tone. The ruler is named ‘Watermelon Sultan’ (QårbËz ßul†ån), a nickname that seems to point to his corpulence.77 In the front row, the man dancing in the middle is named ‘Rare Dancer’ (Êurfa raqåß). This is another ironic appellation, highlighting the character’s lack of agility. At the upper left, the man wearing a dark cloak and a scholar’s turban wrapped around a red cap is smaller in scale. He might represent the marginalised Sufi, or the eye of morality, watching the excesses of the court from afar; unless, as his name ‘Sir Reverence’ (Haybat åghå) seems to suggest, he was meant to signify the complicity of religious authorities. In any case, this is a satirical image, ‘a parody of courtly gathering’, as David Roxburgh put it.78 The painting served several purposes. It was likely intended to denounce the debauchery of either the Safavid or the late Timurid court. This would not be surprising given that it was made by the Safavid emperor himself, Shah Tahmasp, who was known to have repented of wine drinking at several points in his rule.79 The painting was, moreover, a gift from the emperor to his

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Figure 1.9  Scene of a Safavid gathering. Bahram Mirza album. Tabriz, 1520s–1530s, by Tahmasp al-Husayni for Bahram Mirza. 25.1 × 24.1 cm (painting). Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2154, folio 1b.

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brother Bahram Mirza, the album’s owner. As such, it is a testimony to the role of art in addressing but also mediating social relationships at the court. The painting opens the Bahram Mirza album, acting as a frontispiece to an album that engages the history of art. In the album’s preface, Dust Muhammad traces the genealogy of painting back to the prophet Daniel, who invented portraiture by copying the Chest of Witnessing (ßandËq al-shahåda), ‘a chest containing several thousand compartments, in each of which was a piece of silk on which was a portrait of one of the prophets’.80 God made the portraits for Adam, who had asked to see the prophets. Opening the album, in itself a collection of images that evokes the Chest of Witnessing, Shah Tahmasp’s painting might symbolise the culmination of the tradition of portraiture. In its satirical tone, it also offers a critical response to the genre of the royal portrait, raising questions about its place in the history of Islamic painting. Finally, by offering a parody of the courtly frontispiece, it testifies to painting’s ability to form, reform and subvert its conventions. From Patron to Painting The Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece anticipates several aspects of Shah Tahmasp’s picture, from the thematic emphasis on alcohol consumption to the painting’s function as a pictorial preface. More than a carrier of royal imagery, it works as a critical introduction to the history of the Persian frontispiece, not simply as the sum of its various codes but as a playful, dynamic reshuffling of its rules. Thus it lays out questions about the genre’s meaning and the role of painting more generally. If painting is no longer about the patron, then what is it about? If not the ruler, who has agency here? A visual mode seems to correspond to our indecisiveness about how to interpret the frontispiece: the painting’s intricacy and abundance, which constantly shift our attention. We experience uncertainty because the painting does not resolve into a coherent visual whole. Thwarting our desire for a cohesive image, the picture trains our eyes for an aesthetic of the detour. Such a visual experience also challenges the unity of painting and patron. While the patron in prior frontispieces was instantly recognisable, now a swirl of images pushes him to the periphery. Compared to earlier models and later adaptations, the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece stands out for its staggering visual richness. It reads less as a kingly representation than as a catalogue of motifs. While frontispieces would foreground either a natural garden, with the possible inclusion of textile architecture as in the Zafarnama (Figure 1.4), or a built terrace as in the Turkmen example mentioned earlier (Figure 1.3), the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece includes both a terrace and a garden and presents a combination of soft and solid

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architecture. In the left folio, a trellis tent and an awning appear in a built courtyard that also features a brick tower, while at the back, a door offers a glimpse into a garden that further expands to the right. The frontispiece plays with the limit between painting and illumination. While the Cairo Bustan’s tent and awning resemble the Zafarnama’s double page (Figure 1.4) – similar animated scrolls of animal heads run across the tent’s dome – the Cairo Bustan displays a much richer repertoire, mixing figural, geometric, vegetal and epigraphic patterns. The awning’s borders, for example, are covered in a frieze of inscriptions in Kufic, repeating the words ‘blessed be he’ (mubårak båd). Its central field is composed of interlacing blue and gold panels, unfolding from the central lobed medallion that bears Sultan Husayn’s benedictory inscription. Scrolls of flowers and stylised half-palmettes, sometimes accompanied by an animal, either a bird or a quadruped, fill out each cartouche. With its intricate decoration and its lavish use of gold and lapis lazuli, the page may be seen as an example of conspicuous consumption, emphasising the royal patronage of the book. Gold and blue bear cosmic connotations, providing the image of the ruler with a celestial aura.81 But the decor is also a distraction from iconography. A work of intricacy, it demands a long examination. Covering the brick walls and carved woodwork is an open-ended field of tiny, almost imperceptible geometric motifs, hexagonal and triangular shapes interlacing to form a regular, systematic tessellation. These motifs do not reflect actual architecture. What meaning, then, can one extract from their proliferation? In the same tower, a projecting window features a display of ceramics. Each piece is set in an arch-like niche. We see blue vases and green jugs, and a group of white containers with blue decorations. As well as representing the luxury of the court, this miniature porcelain house (chÈnÈ-khana) projects an idea of painting as a source of visual and material delight.82 Instead of looking through the screen, the beholder is invited to wander around, as though examining an ornamental surface with no representational depth, or a case of ceramics, detached from any context. The frontispiece sets three aims: to challenge the codes of Persian painting; to disrupt the connection between patron and art; and to foreground the pictorial medium. In the history of the Persian frontispiece, the Cairo Bustan marks a change. This is a change from the expectation that painting should celebrate the patron to the realisation that it might also be about painting itself. This shift is verbally inscribed within the image. Some of the inscriptions emphasise the ruler, underscoring the link between art and patronage, as earlier noted. But others focus exclusively on the picture.83 In the left, crowning the tower and marking the transition from frontispiece to text, at the moment when the viewer has finished looking at the frontispiece, ready to turn the page, one reads (Figure 1.10):

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Figure 1.10  Detail of an inscription from the illustrated frontispiece of the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate III). Herat, c. 1488, for Sultan Husayn Bayqara. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 2a.

‫زهی قصری که قندیل زجاجش اسمان امد‬ ‫هر خشت گلی از فرش بساط او جهان امد‬ What a beautiful achievement this palace is, through the windows of which skylight passes Each mud brick composing its tiling comes from the Earth84 This is a panegyric of the palace. While it can be linked to the patron, it can also be read as a description of the painted object. The inscription blurs the line between the painting that contains the architecture and the architecture it depicts. In the following pictures of the Cairo Bustan, several inscriptions, incorporated within the pictorial field, work to reinforce this effect, emphasising the medium as the focus of our interpretation and providing a ­framework with which to continue our analysis of the paintings. Notes   1. The Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece has been analysed by Barbara Brend (Brend, 2005). This chapter builds on Brend’s observations, especially on the ways in which the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece departs from previous pictorial norms. But it also differs from Brend’s article in its overall interpretation of the frontispiece. While Brend still sees the double picture as an encomium of the ruler, this chapter argues for the opposite, showing how the image marginalises the ruler. The frontispiece announces the shift from patron to artist that the Cairo Bustan’s paintings exemplify and thus acts as a pictorial preface for the whole book. The rest of the scholarship on the frontispiece has mainly focused on artistic attribution. The right page might have included a

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signature, now covered in gold, in one of the cartouches surrounding the door. According to Armenag Sakisian, traces of the inscription were still visible in the early twentieth century and included the word ‘amal (work) at the beginning and the letter sÈn or shÈn at the end, perhaps closing the word naqqåsh (painter) (Sakisian, 1931, 169). Sakisian concluded that this was the signature of Mirak Naqqash, who was the head of the royal library in Herat (Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15). Scholars including Barbara Brend have generally followed this attribution. Given that the inscription is now invisible, I cannot confirm this hypothesis.  2. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, R. 1022, folios 1b–2a: Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l-Ma‘ali Nasr Allah, Herat, October 1429, copied by Shams al-Din Baysunghuri, 146 fos, 28.7 × 19.7 cm (folio), 25 paintings (Robinson, 1970; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 21).   3. The royal frontispiece was ‘a genre of Persian painting’, as Marianna Shreve Simpson has noted. It developed at the turn of the fourteenth century when the pictorial frontispiece shifted ‘away from the author topos and towards the princely or royal topos’ (Simpson, 2006, 229). On the Arabic frontispiece, see Hoffman, 1993; Pancaro©lu, 2001; Hillenbrand, 2006. For late-fifteenth and sixteenth-century frontispieces, see Ba©ci, 1995.   4. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 1479, folios 4b–5a: Shahnama of Firdawsi, 1330, attributed to Shiraz, copied by Hasan ibn ‘Ali ibn al-Husayni al-Bahmani (Ça©man and Tanındı, 1986, 51; Simpson, 2006, 220–1 and 231, plate 17).  5. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 1479, folios 95a and 221a (Ça©man and Tanındı, 1996, 147, note 29).   6. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 60b (Ip∞iro©lu, 1967, figure 11; Ip∞iro©lu, 1971, figure 23; Fitzherbert, 2001, 35–52).   7. Fitzherbert, 2001, 50.   8. On this manuscript, see note 2.   9. Lentz, 1985, 86–7 and 94–7. 10. Hillenbrand, 1992, 87. 11. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716: Shahnama of Firdawsi, Herat, 1430, copied by Ja‘far al-Baysunghuri, 346 fos, 38 × 26 cm (folio) (frontispiece reproduced in Rajabi, 2005, 42–3; on this manuscript, see Hillenbrand, 2010). 12. In the so-called Stephens Shahnama dated 1352–3 and attributed to Shiraz, the frontispiece is divided into an interior and an exterior scene (Washington, DC, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, lent by Mr and Mrs Farhad Ebrahimi, LTS1998.1.1.2 and 1.1.3; Simpson, 2006, figure 36). On the left, the ruler is enthroned with his spouse. They are surrounded by rows of figures, including a group of musicians playing before them. The right folio represents a scene of hunting. The king is aiming at a pair of deer. In the foreground, galloping in the opposite direction, mounted riders are chasing their prey. At the top, a man is struggling against a cheetah or a leopard. Separating each horizontal layer is a row of mountain peaks. 13. Szuppe, 2003. 14. Roxburgh, 2005, 159; Roxburgh, 2014. 15. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 827 (Robinson, 1958a, figure 1; Robinson, 1991, 19–31). 16. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, Garrett collection, folios 82b–83a (reproduced in Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 266–7): Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din

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‘Ali Yazdi, 1467–8, attributed to Herat, copied by Shir ‘Ali, 539 folios, 23.5 × 15.2 cm (folio) (Sims, 1973; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 147). The manuscript contains six double paintings, presumably added around 1480. 17. Necipo©lu, 2000, 24. 18. Brend, 2005, 84. 19. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums, 1958.59 (Brend, 2005, plate 9; www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/216273 [accessed January 2017]). 20. Thackston, 1989, 253. 21. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 22. Simpson, 2006, 220. 23. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, Garrett collection, Zafarnama, folio 1a. 24. Necipo©lu, 2000. 25. Ibid., 27. 26. Ibid., 27. 27. Ibid., 25. 28. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folios 33b–34a. 29. For a description of this genealogical tree and further references, see Binba∞, 2011, 509–14. 30. Necipo©lu, 2000, 27. 31. Brend, 2005, 84. Jade was known as the Turks’ ‘victory stone’ since at least the eleventh century. Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Biruni (973–1048) noted that Turks ‘decorated their swords, saddles, and belts with it, desirous of gaining victory over their contestants and opponents’ (quoted in Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 221). Mined near the city of Nishapur, turquoise was also prized by the Timurids. On its use and value under the Timurids, the Safavids, the Ottomans and the Mughals, see Khazeni, 2014. 32. Quoted in Soudavar, 1992, no. 29. 33. I could not decipher the second verse. 34. Brend, 2005, 83. 35. On the Turkmen Kalila wa Dimna, see note 15. 36. The double page belongs to the Gulshan album (Muraqqa‘-i gulshan). It is on two different pages of the section of the album kept in the Gulistan Palace Library in Tehran (page 55 and page 62, both reproduced in Rajabi, 2005, 432–3). On the Gulshan album, see Eslami, 2001. 37. Houston, Art History Trust Collection, no. 37. The painting was attributed by Abolala Soudavar to Mirak Naqqash and dated around 1485 (Soudavar, 1992, no. 37). 38. On Wa’iz Kashifi, see Subtelny, 2003. On the Anwår-i suhaylÈ, see Ruymbeke, 2003; Ruymbeke, 2016. 39. The passage might belong to chapter 5, story 5, whose text starts with the same words: ‘Kardan said, “I have heard that in the country of Kashmir there was a great king, who possessed such a treasure that it was too heavy even for mighty mountains to support, and such an army that the thought of reckoning its numbers never entered the idea of the intellect which observes the slightest minutiæ”’ (Kashifi, 1854). 40. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 63.210.28 (www.metmu seum.org/toah/works-of-art/63.210.28 [accessed December 2017]). The painting is dated 1487. On this manuscript, see Bahari, 1996, 87–91; Kamada, 2010. 41. Kamada, 2010, 135–6. 42. Sama‘ probably developed out of Qur’anic recitation (Schimmel, 1975,

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180 sq.; Knysh, 2000, 323). For a survey of Arabic and Persian Sufi sources on sama‘, see Avery, 2004. The dominating Sufi order in late Timurid Herat, the Naqshbandiyya, was not in favour of artistic performance and allowed neither music nor sama‘ (Schimmel, 1975, 365–6). Nevertheless, musicians were important members of the court and music an integral part of the majlis. In the section of his memoirs about late Timurid Herat, Babur gives a list of musicians and notes the importance of music in social gatherings (Thackston, 1989, 268). The calligrapher of the Cairo Bustan, Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi, once invited Sultan Husayn to a majlis. In the invitation, he mentioned that he had also invited musicians, calligraphers and illuminators (Båyåni, 1944, 1:247; Soudavar, 1992, 86). 43. Knysh, 2000, 323. 44. Ritter, 2003, 484. 45. Wafer, 1997; Kripal, 2001. 46. As defined by Lloyd Ridgeon, shåhid-båzÈ is ‘a ritualized activity that was grounded on a belief that God may be seen by contemplating pleasant faces that bear witness to divine beauty’ (Ridgeon, 2012, 4). On shåhid-båzÈ, also see Shamisa, 2002; Ritter, 2003; Ingenito, 2013. 47. Shåhid-båzÈ was as common as it was controversial because of accusations of hulul, the belief in the incarnation of God (Ridgeon, 2012, 11–13). 48. For a brief summary of and further references on the emergence of the concept of love in Persian Sufism as well as a description of the various stages of love in early Persian Sufism, see Ernst, 1999. Also see Abrahamov, 2003. 49. For the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, verse 1851; for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, verse 1802, which reads: ‫چو عشق آمد از عقل دیگر مگوی كه در دست چوگان اسیرست گوی‬ 50. For the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, verse 1379; for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, verse 1334, which reads: ‫نبخشود بر حال پروانه شمع نگه كن كه چون سوخت در پیش جمع‬ 51. For the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, verse 1960; for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, verse 1903, which reads: ‫تو را با حق آن آشنایی دهد كه از دست خویشت رهایی دهد‬ 52. A copy of the Kulliyat (Complete Works) of Jami bears the seal of Sultan Husayn Bayqara on folio 420 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 822: Kulliyat of Jami, 1490–1, copied by Darvish Muhammad ibn Amir Sarkh ibn Amir Shaykh, 620 folios, 35.2 × 27.1 cm [folio]; see Blochet, 1905–34, no. 1676). A copy of the Khamsa of Jami might have been produced in the royal workshop of Herat: Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 709, dated 1481–2, with two paintings (Godard and Gray, 1956). 53. Istanbul, Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi, no. 1989: Mathnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Herat, dated 1483, 330 folios, 25.8 × 17.5 cm (folio) (Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 99). 54. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 2101:

pictorial preface

Anthology of ghazals, dated 1473, copied by Mir ‘Ali (Richard, 1991, 265). 55. Roxburgh, 2001a. 56. Examples include: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, N.F. 140 (anthology of mystical poetry, c. 1449); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, N.F. 141 (collection of mystical poetry, dated 1455, Balkh, copied by Muhammad al-Jami); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, N.F. 442 (Divan of Hafiz, dated 1455, Balkh, copied by Muhammad al-Jami). On these manuscripts, see Duda, 1983. 57. English translation by Subtelny, 2007, 46. 58. Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, no. 77b (Soudavar, 1992, no. 77b). This comparison was also suggested by Soucek, 2003, 154. 59. Hafiz, 2002, 18. 60. It reads: ‘If that moon be the buyer of Hafiz’s pearls, at every breath / The rebec’s pleasant sound will reach Venus’ ear’ (Hafiz, 2002, 18). 61. Tehran, Majlis Library, no. 969: Divan of Hafiz, dated 1489–90, copied by Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi (Meisami, 2002). 62. Meisami, 2002. 63. On this text and its illustrations in sixteenth-century Shiraz, see Uluç, 2000, 117–38. 64. Soucek, 2003, 154. 65. Uluç, 2000, 117–38. 66. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1150, folio 53a (a reproduction of the manuscript is available at gallica.bnf.fr [accessed January 2017]). 67. Ibid., folio 239a (for a reproduction, search the manuscript at gallica.bnf. fr [accessed January 2017]). 68. Thackston, 1989, 97. 69. Ibid., 273. 70. On the Turkmen Kalila wa Dimna, see note 15. A contemporary example of a guardian standing at the door can be found in a copy of the Khamsa of Nizami made in Herat in 1494–5 (London, British Library, Or. 6810, folio 214a; www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?ref=Or_6810 [accessed January 2017]). 71. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me improve my original translation. 72. Thackston, 1989, 253. 73. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2154, folio 1b (Roxburgh, 2005, figure 131): Bahram Mirza Album, assembled in 1544–5, Tabriz, 149 folios. 74. On the album, see Roxburgh, 2005, chapter 6. 75. Roxburgh, 1996, 787–8. 76. Blair, 2014, 214. 77. The king’s nickname is followed by ashÈk aqåsÈ, which is the name of a small town in the Gilan province in Iran. Read as a nisba indicating the man’s provenance, ashÈk aqåsÈ matches a kingly figure with a provincial origin, thus adding to the humorous, parodic tone of the image. Facing the princely figure is ‘Dear Treasure the Saqi’ (Tu˙fa jån såqÈ), an appellation that highlights the man’s status as the king’s lover while referring to the mystical trope of the cup-bearer (såqÈ). 78. Roxburgh, 2001b, 70. 79. Newman, 2006, 31–2.

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80. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 12. For an analysis of Dust Muhammad’s account, see Roxburgh, 2001b, 171–4. 81. Brend, 2005, 81–2. 82. The Timurids did commission porcelain houses. A famous example is the chÈnÈ-khana constructed for Ulugh Beg (1349–1449), a grandson of Timur, in Samarqand (Babur, 1996, 86). 83. According to earlier observers, the double frontispiece’s right page also contained the painter’s signature, placed in the last medallion of the inscription running around the main gate. Unfortunately, the inscription is not visible today. See note 1. 84. I would like to thank Abdullah Ghouchani for helping me decipher this inscription.

CHAPTER TWO

Writing on the Image

‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, the Cairo Bustan’s last and arguably most famous painting (Plate XIII), does not offer the figurative abundance of the manuscript’s frontispiece (Plates IV and III). We see only one pair of figures: Yusuf and Zulaykha, who originate in the biblical characters of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (the story also appears in the Qur’an and was reworked in many Arabic and Persian texts).1 Zulaykha has failed to seduce the prophet but still holds onto him, pulling at his arm and robe as he attempts to flee. Although human presence has been dramatically reduced, the eye is yet again seized with indecisiveness. The gaze might try to examine the scene at the upper right, but it finds itself constantly redirected to the maze-like, somehow unfathomable architecture of Zulaykha’s palace. Moving from the gate in the foreground, to the courtyard and stairs in the middle ground, to the upper register where the scene takes place creates a dramatic pathway, and yet the building remains difficult to decipher. The viewer is confronted with a discrepant assemblage of perspectives. The palace’s exterior façade, with its staircase and side balcony, is viewed in elevation, while Yusuf and Zulaykha’s chamber appears in cross-section. Walls, doors and windows are depicted frontally, while the flooring of the exterior courtyard and interior rooms is seen from above. Looking more closely, one discovers a wealth of geometric and vegetal motifs, each one drawn frontally as though a distinct, separate entity. Instead of examining an architectural representation, one beholds a catalogue of ornaments – scrolls of arabesques, geometric patterns – that does not match actual architectural decoration. Depending on the scale of the viewer’s engagement, the painting can change quite dramatically, reminding us that the image only takes shape with the beholder’s participation. Seen from afar, it retains an iconographic and narrative coherence. But a closer mode of examination loosens the composition from its illustrative purpose, turning the painting into a page of illumination. The complexity of the building may have a narrative function: visualising Zulaykha’s chase of her beloved throughout her palace. ‘Imply[ing] the passage of time as well as a sequence of space’, the

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picture is ‘punctuated by visual barriers’, ensuring suspense and highlighting the ‘eventual dramatic climax of the literary text’, as Robert Hillenbrand wrote.2 The architecture may also embody a symbolic path into love. As we shall see, the painter has illustrated a mystical version of the story, in which Zulaykha represents the lover and Yusuf the beloved. By preventing a full, global apprehension of the setting, the picture may evoke mystical time and the Sufi seeker’s infinite pursuit of divine unity. With no centralised view to direct itself, the gaze wanders around the painting, re-enacting the mystic’s endless quest. Several competing interpretations seem possible here, but as I show in this chapter, the Cairo Bustan’s paintings do offer explicit, verbal clues about how they should be approached, resolving hermeneutic conflicts through the use of writing. In ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, an inscription in riqå‘ script, painted in white within blue cartouches and framing the vaulted room of the ground floor, greets the visitor with a Persian verse (Figure 2.1): ‫اگر نظارگی انجا گذشتی‬ ‫ز حسرت در دهانش اب گشتی‬ If a spectator were to pass by His mouth would start to salivate The inscription designates the building as a place of visual delight, staging on the other side of the pictorial field a viewing experience where the image fills the beholder with admiration. It points to the pleasure of seeing as the painting’s principal aim, while implicitly

Figure 2.1  Detail of an inscription from ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XIII). Herat, painting dated 893/December 1487–November 1488 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 52b.

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locating the source of our enjoyment in the artist’s talent. Crowning Zulaykha’s palace at the upper right, another inscription, in thuluth script, guides the viewer (Figure 2.2): ‫صفای صفهایش صبح اقبال‬ ‫فضای خانهایش گنج امال‬ The purity of its lines is like the morn of good fortune The space of its rooms is like the treasure of hope

Figure 2.2  Detail of an inscription from ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XIII). Herat, painting dated 893/December 1487– November 1488 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 52b.

As in the preceding example, it is not clear if the inscription addresses Zulaykha’s palace or the painting itself. In any case, what the beholder who reads the verse is actually examining is not the palace but the painter’s creation. With its two hyperbolic comparisons, the inscription, moreover, highlights two aspects of the painting: its graphic quality (the ‘purity of its lines’) and its capacity to generate images (for example, a building with ‘the space of its rooms’). It suggests that we see artistic process both in the painting’s technical execution and in its representational content. This chapter shows that in two of the Cairo Bustan’s paintings, the artist used epigraphs to make the viewer’s experience cohere around a celebration of the painter. The inscriptions mark a shift from patron to artist. While in early Timurid art and architecture, writing presented buildings and paintings as forceful emblems of royalty, in the Cairo Bustan it compliments the maker. As a commentary on the painting, the inscriptions also address the beholder (naΩårigÈ) and the institutional setting in which the paintings might be received and examined. As this chapter reveals, the words were extracted from the poetry of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, who was living in Herat when the Cairo Bustan was made. Appearing as ad hoc comments, these quotes from a contemporary poet stage a model for the pictures’ reception, a scenario in which the painting would circulate among influential figures such as Jami, prompting responses about the painting and positing the artist as the subject of his art. The Tradition of Royal Epigraphy Inscriptions were not new in Persian painting.3 But before the Cairo Bustan, they were mainly used to relate painting and patron. One of the earliest surviving examples is the frontispiece of an Ilkhanid copy of Bal‘ami’s Tarjama-yi tårÈkh-i ÊabarÈ (Translation of Tabari’s History) known as the Freer Bal‘ami.4 Surrounded by courtiers, a

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Mongol ruler attends a scene of beheading. At least three decapitated bodies can be seen, their heads rolling at the ruler’s feet. Written in naskh on a golden background, a Qur’anic verse runs at the top of the image (Qur’an 38:26). The first three words have been torn away, but the complete sentence would have read: ‘O David, indeed We have made you a successor upon the earth, so judge between the people in truth.’5 The inscription works as a caption to present the iconography of the frontispiece: a portrait of the ruler as judge. Equating Mongol rule and Muslim wisdom, it also points to the restoration of Islamic rule under the Mongol ruler Ghazan Khan between 1295 and 1304, as Tereza Fitzherbert has shown.6 Inscriptions become more common at the turn of the fifteenth century. Their use is extended beyond the frontispiece to the illustrative paintings of the manuscript. Most of them emphasise the patron. An early Timurid example belongs to a copy of the historiographical text Majma‘ al-tawårÈkh (The Assembly of Histories) by Hafiz-i Abru (d. 1430),7 made in Herat in 1425 for Shah Rukh (1377–1447), son and successor of Timur. Shah Rukh’s name appears on the first folio, in an illuminated medallion (shamsa) containing an ex-libris, as well as in a seal impression of his library.8 These are paratextual indications of the patron’s identity. Shah Rukh’s name also appears within the historiographical text, in a painting representing an Indian ruler.9 An epigraphic frieze crowns the architectural space. It contains the titles of Shah Rukh, written in Arabic: The most mighty Sultan, the master of the necks of the nations, the Lord of the Kings of the Arabs and Persians, the shadow of God on the lands, the Steward of sea and land, the Sultan, Son of the Sultan, Shah Rukh Bahadur Khan, may God prolong his kingdom and sultanate.10 Integrated into a painting that portrays another ruler, Shah Rukh’s name augments the image’s referential range. The inscription adds a layer of time. It places at the heart of our experience of the historiographical image an awareness of the painting’s own historicity. It also inflects the painting’s content, challenging its illustrational purpose, asserting that any kingly representation can be read as an image of the Timurid ruler. Inscriptions abound in the manuscripts made for the Timurid prince Baysunghur (1397–1433), son of Shah Rukh, while remaining rare in other courtly productions of the period. Apart from short, generic blessings, I have found no examples in the manuscripts made in Shiraz for the Timurid princes Iskandar Sultan (r. 1409–14) and Ibrahim Sultan (1394–1435), or in Turkmen painting. In Baysunghur’s manuscripts, we encounter three kinds of inscriptions: good wishes addressed to an anonymous ruler; votive inscriptions referencing

writing on the image

pictorial elements; and historical inscriptions, including foundation inscriptions, in the name of Baysunghur. Poetic verses are often in Persian and can be attributed to poets such as Sa‘di (1213–92) or Salman Savaji (1309–76). Historical inscriptions are usually in Arabic. All function to assess a link to the historical patron. The first kind is frequent and may have been transmitted to the Timurids via Jalayirid examples. The inscription ‘Eternal power and prosperity’11 can be read on a Jalayirid painting that was remounted in a manuscript commissioned by Baysunghur.12 It also appears on a painting made by Timurid artists for another book of Baysunghur, a copy of the Chahår maqåla (Four Discourses) of Nizami ‘Aruzi,13 and again, with a slight variation (‘May power and eternity be yours forever’),14 in a copy of Humay wa Humayun of Khwaju Kirmani dated 1427–8 and made for the same prince.15 Another group of inscriptions employs elements of the picture to mediate its votive content. A painting of the Gulistan of Sa‘di executed in 1426–7 features a verse from a qasida (ode) of Sa‘di.16 The verse praises the king’s palace and uses a benedictory tone: ‘May the palace of your Majesty be so high that no bird / Other than Huma may fly and cast its shadow over it.’17 The epigraphy identifies the architecture as a royal structure. The story, however, takes place in a different setting. It stages Sa‘di himself, and his encounter on a hot summer’s day with a cup-bearer (såqÈ), here rendered as a woman. In an allegory of divine inspiration, the cup-bearer appears miraculously to the poet, with a goblet of water to quench his thirst.18 While the illustration addresses artistic creativity, the inscription, again, inflects our reading, redirecting our attention towards a princely context, away from the mechanisms of art making. The connection between painting and patron is made even more explicit in Baysunghur’s Shahnama.19 In a painting illustrating a story about a legendary dynasty of ancient Iran, an Arabic foundation inscription ascribes the building to Baysunghur’s patronage: ‘The construction of this monument was commissioned by the great sultan, the just and generous king, aid of the sultanate, the world and religion, Baysunghur Bahadur Khan, may God perpetuate his kingdom.’20 Baysunghur is now represented by his proper name. A shortened version of the same inscription appears in an illustration of the meeting of Gulnar and Ardashir, the founder of the Sasanian empire: ‘The construction of this building was commissioned by the great sultan Baysunghur Bahadur Khan, may God perpetuate his kingdom.’21 Compared to Shah Rukh’s inscriptions in the Majma‘ al-tawårÈkh, Baysunghur’s inscriptions further strengthen the link between image and ruler. Employing the deictic ‘this’ and the format of the foundation inscription, they ascribe both the image and its architectural content to royal patronage. Appearing in paintings about ancient Iran, they also conflate the time in the picture with the time of the picture, subjecting both art and history to Baysunghur’s authority.

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Timurid monumental epigraphy was characterised by a similar ‘conscious equation between patrons and monuments’, as Roxburgh put it.22 On the palace of Aq Saray commissioned by Timur in Shar-i Sabz in 1395–6,23 one inscription reads: ‘Oh Benefactor of the People, long may you rule like Sulayman. May you be like Nuh in longevity! May this palace bring felicity [to its tenant]. The Heavens are astonished at its beauty.’ Blessings to the sultan are articulated to a praise of the building. On the same monument, we read further: ‘The Sultan binds his enemies with [the chains of] his good deeds. Whosoever turns to him gains satisfaction. The fame of his good deeds, like a sweet odour, is ubiquitous. His goodness is evident. His face is clear and his motion agreeable.’24 The inscription goes beyond reference. It does not simply designate a person, but provides a description, turning the building into a portrait, both corporeal and moral, of the emperor Timur. Contemporary courtly poets and historians were often asked to compose the text of the epigraphy. Built around 1415 by Shah Rukh, the fortress of Herat, for instance, was ornamented with extracts from the panegyric poem that the Timurid historian Hafiz-i Abru had written for the building’s inauguration.25 This practice was common in Islamic royal architecture. Poems were composed for specific structures, such as the palace of Samarra in the Abbasid period26 or the Alhambra palace in Nasrid Granada.27 They were inscribed on the monument or performed on the architectural site, ‘celebrating the structure and its patron and adding an aural dimension’ to the architecture, as Paul Losensky and other scholars have shown.28 While only a small fragment of its epigraphic version remains visible today,29 Hafiz-i Abru’s poem survived in manuscript copies of his historico-geographical work.30 After defining the lineage of Shah Rukh, it presents a description of the citadel through cosmographic images and comparisons with other iconic buildings, while also tying monument to patron. Invested with the king’s strength and power, the building, like its patron, is expected to escape the vicissitudes of time: ‘The passage of time will not destroy it; It will not be subject to calamities / Calamities cannot touch the king.’31 Architecture, again, is defined as an extension of the ruler’s body. From painting to architecture, early Timurid visual culture emblematised the patron. The Timurid ruler stood as the centre of everything one could see. Inscriptions functioned as shifters, displacing the meaning of art from its iconographic content to the exterior context of its patronage. They acted like a pointing finger, diverting the gaze away from the image’s content towards the ruler’s grandeur. In contrast, the inscriptions of the Cairo Bustan draw the attention back to the picture, locating art’s proper end as the expression of itself. As we explore the Cairo Bustan within its art-historical context, we must analyse one further example: a painting from the famous

writing on the image

Jalayirid copy of Khwaju Kirmani’s Three Mathnawis.32 A landmark in the history of Persian painting, this manuscript was made in 1395–6 in Baghdad for the Jalayirid ruler Sultan Ahmad (r. 1382–1410) and would have a lasting impact on Persianate painting. One of its compositions served as a model, directly or indirectly, for at least two Timurid paintings, one made in 1431 and the other in 1445–6.33 In the sixteenth century, the manuscript was revisited in the workshop of the Safavid prince Bahram Mirza in Tabriz. A few illuminated pieces were then added,34 and a painting was removed and placed in the Bahram Mirza album.35 The manuscript’s circulation and transformation testify to its importance for artists and patrons of the time. As Sheila Blair suggested, it may have been available to the painter of the Cairo Bustan too.36 Several of its most salient, groundbreaking features were indeed emulated in the Cairo Bustan, including the pictorial representation of monumental epigraphy and the artist’s signature (the latter aspect is addressed more thoroughly in Chapter 5). Most architectural representations of the Jalayirid copy of Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis display epigraphic ornaments.37 They are mainly contained in the first mathnawi, which recounts the love story of Humay, son of the king of Syria, and Humayun, daughter of the emperor of China. In the painting showing Humay at the court of the Chinese king, an Arabic inscription in Kufic script, executed in white on a deep blue floral background, crowns the royal edifice.38 It presents the titles of the sultan – either the depicted ruler or the patron’s manuscript, Sultan Ahmad Jalayir: ‘The great sultan, shadow of God on Earth.’39 At the top left, running along the edge of the exterior façade, a Persian inscription in gold thuluth on a light blue background reads: ‘Blessed be this fortunate foundation.’40 The first adjective, humåyËn, here translated as ‘blessed’, is a homophonic pun on the main protagonists’ names, Humay and Humayun.41 The dedication to the building thus bears an allusion to its princely status. Together with the first inscription, it accentuates the royal aura of the painting. The last picture of the mathnawi, ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage to Humayun’, introduces a slight variation in an epigraphic programme otherwise entirely devoted to princely themes (Figure 2.3).42 At the top left, we read another anonymous royal Arabic inscription in Kufic script: ‘the great sultan, master of the necks of nations’.43 But to the right, inscribed in gold thuluth on a plain dark blue background and more legible than the antiquated, spindly Kufic script, more Arabic text can be read: ‘This abode is the Ka‘ba of hope / This gateway is the qibla of prosperity.’44 The deictic ‘this’ (hadhihi) produces an effect of auto-reference. We no longer read about the ruler. Instead, we are invited to look at the painting for its architecture. The inscription is particularly eulogistic. It consists of two hyperbolic comparisons,

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Figure 2.3  ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage to Humayun’ from a copy of the Three Mathnawis of Khwaju Kirmani. Baghdad, 1396. 28.4 × 17.8 cm (painting). London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 45b. © The British Library Board.

writing on the image

Figure 2.4  Detail of the signature of Junayd Naqqash from ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage to Humayun’ from a copy of the Three Mathnawis of Khwaju Kirmani (reproduced in Figure 2.3). Baghdad, 1396. London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 45b. © The British Library Board

associating elements of the building with the Ka‘ba, the main sanctuary of Islam, and the qibla, the direction of prayer. The painting not only claims our attention: it also calls for aesthetic devotion. Following the inscription’s lead and looking more attentively into the architecture, one finds, exactly aligned with the royal titles and thus further counterbalancing them, the artist’s signature, inserted into the building as a piece of carved and pierced stucco, painted in red and decorating a window grille (Figure 2.4). The signature claims that this is the ‘work of Junayd the royal painter’.45 It was placed on a vertical axis with the queen Humayun and, further down, with the blood-stained bridal sheet, proof of the queen’s virginity, crudely displayed to both the viewer and Humayun’s female entourage. One is tempted to read the signature, also inscribed in red, as an echo of the queen’s sheet: as a mark of rupture, an event introducing the painter into the realm of courtly painting. The painting is split vertically into two parts. In both halves, Junayd has incorporated into the princely portrait a sign indicating his work. At the right, the scene of Humay is topped by praise of the painted building, with no mention of royal patronage. At the left, the depiction of the queen and the royal epigraphy are accompanied by the artist’s signature. Text is used to redirect our attention twice: from painting to patron, and from patron to artist. The interplay between text and image makes this painting an ideal model for the Cairo Bustan. The link between the two

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manuscripts alerts us to the difficulties of using a linear account of Persian painting. Instead of a progressive evolution from Jalayirid to early Timurid to late Timurid manuscripts, the examples that have survived form a discontinuous representation of Persian painting’s history. Our investigation thus cannot be about a moment of origin: it must determine not when but how self-reflection was deployed in the Cairo Bustan. Although we cannot pinpoint with exactitude which models the painter used, it is clear that he considered various examples, probably spanning the Ilkhanid and the Timurid eras, and including Jalayirid manuscripts. His aim was clear: to look for ways not to repeat but to disrupt the equation of painting and patron. Praise for the Painter The third and penultimate painting of the Cairo Bustan, ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, is dominated by a monumental iwan, a large vaulted room opening onto a courtyard (Plate XII). The iwan is framed with a lavish pishtaq (the contour of the arched opening) covered in scrolls of flowers and epigraphic inscriptions. The vertical axis of the vaulted space was left empty, except for a few books occupying the centre of the picture. Wearing large gowns and turbans wrapped around coloured caps, scholars are seen here and there. Verses of Sa‘di’s Bustan appear in textboxes at the right and at the bottom of the page. We read about a lawyer ‘raggedly arrayed and meanly provided’ who ‘once took his place within the judge’s court hall’.46 Displeased by the appearance of the lawyer, the judge summons him to leave. While some attendants express their disagreement, the lawyer speaks up and delivers a forceful speech. His eloquence confounds the judge, forcing him ‘to quit his gown and turban, and to send them to him graciously to do him honour’, a gesture that acknowledges the lawyer’s talent and his moral superiority. In the left foreground, the painting shows the story’s acme, the moment when, through the presentation of the turban, the social hierarchy between the arrogant judge and the poor lawyer is reversed. According to the text, the lawyer refuses the gift, asking the judge not to place upon his head ‘delusion’s fetters’. He then disappears. The story is about the vanity of worldly things and the necessity of forging identity and meaning beyond appearances. Later, the assembly finds out that the lawyer is a poet named Sa‘di. By portraying Sa‘di as a marginal intellectual, the poem offers a reflection on the poet’s social status. It constitutes, in fact, a selfreferential praise of the text, since Sa‘di is portrayed as an orator of consummate talent. The painting emphasises both aspects. The poet, wearing rags, is excluded from the central field of the composition: he stands in the right corner of the picture, outside the

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writing on the image

frame of the judge’s iwan. A clear line, created by the right edge of the pishtaq, separates Sa‘di from the judge and his court. Meanwhile, the poet is aligned with his own verses, which cascade above his head. Though standing at the margin, he is the source of what we read and see. The epigraphic inscriptions further echo Sa‘di’s text, both their moral lesson and how they provide the painting with a voice. At the back of the judge’s iwan, written in gold riqå‘ in a rectangular panel placed above the window, the shortest one is a verse from a ghazal of Hafiz (Figure 2.5):

Figure 2.5  Detail of an inscription from ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XII). Herat, painting dated 894/December 1488–November 1489 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 30b.

‫درین رواق زبرجد نوشته اند بزر‬ ‫که جز نکویی اهل کرام نخواهد ماند‬ On this topaz arch has been written in gold That only the good of generous people will remain47 The presence of the deictic term Èn (this) conflates the concrete riwåq (arch) the poem refers to with the architecture the painting represents, and thus with the painting itself. ‘Written in gold’ both in the poem and physically, in the painting the inscription addresses its materiality, as well as the gesture of the painter, who has inserted the verse within the composition. This is an inscription about an inscription – and the act of its making. The second hemistich presents the inscription’s content, the idea ‘that only the good of generous people will remain’. In addition to echoing Sa‘di’s story, the line implicitly draws a portrait of the painter as a generous, pious man. The painting we behold while reading Hafiz’s verse is, after all, a trace of its maker: it is what remains from his efforts and discipline. Because it is there, graspable by our eyes and hands, an indubitable, palpable repository of the painter’s work, like Sa‘di’s poem or Hafiz’s verse, it is a testimony to the artist’s morality. If Hafiz’s verse can be read as a portrait of the painter, the second, more monumental epigraphic inscription offers an explicit panegyric of the artist (Figure 2.6). It is composed of seven verses of a qasida (panegyric poem) from ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami’s collection of poems Fåti˙at al-shabåb (Opening of Youth).48 Running along the full circumference of the pishtaq, the first six verses appear in a frieze of thirteen cartouches, written in white riqå‘ on a blue background. The seventh and last verse was copied in thuluth in the rectangle

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Figure 2.6  Detail with inscriptions from ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XII). Herat, painting dated 894/December 1488–November 1489 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 30b.

spanning the front of the arch. Its large gold letters stand out from a deep blue background enhanced with red scrolls of half-palmettes. The seven verses read: ‫حبذا قصری که ایوانش ز کیوان برترست‬ ‫قبه واالی او باالی چرخ اخضرست‬ ‫سر کشیدست انچنان باال که گویی چرخ را‬ ‫کنگر اطراف بامش شرفهای افسرست‬

87

writing on the image

‫چرخ بر معمار او گاه عمارت عرضه کرد‬ ‫خشت مهر و مه که این از سیم ناب آن زرست‬ ‫گفت خشت سیم و زر اینجا نمی ارزد بهیچ‬ ‫بر زمین افکن که فرش ساحتش را در خور‬ ‫شاخ و برگ نقشهایی صفحه دیوار او‬ ‫در علو منزلت با شاخ طوبی هم سرست‬ ‫بهر استاد مقرنس کار او هر بامداد‬ ‫گج سرشته مهر ز اسفیدج صبح انورست‬ ‫ز انچه فایض مانده از نقاش رنگ امیز او‬ ‫یک سفال الجورد این گنبد نیلوفرست‬ What a beautiful achievement the palace is, whose iwan is superior to Saturn Its distinguished cupola reaches the heights of the firmament Its summit is so elevated that it seems as high as the sky The crenellations of its roof’s cornice are like the edges of a crown The sky has provided the architect with a construction site The bricks of pure silver and gold are the moon and the sun To talk about its silver and golden bricks is worth nothing in comparison It is only fair that its tiling unfolds on the earth Branches and leaves are painted on the page of its walls It is of such high rank that its summit reaches the branches of the tree of Paradise Each morning the builder makes the muqarnas Mixing gypsum with the white lead of the glowing morning What remains from the painter who mixes the pigments Is this blue ceramic of the azure dome The inscription was chosen to appear as though purposely written for the painting or for the setting represented. It comments on the iwan that dominates the composition, foregrounding its height, the crenellation of its cornice, the bricks it was made of and the ceramic tilework of its decoration. The poem, moreover, moves from the overall structure of the iwan, with its dimensions and construction materials, to the blue facing of ceramic tiles, thus shifting from

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structure to surface, and from building to painting. The palace’s walls are compared to a page. In the last verse, the blue (låjward) of the dome’s ceramic resonates with the lapis blue dominating the painting. The description seems to refer as much to an imagined building as to the painted page. Makers are emphasised: the architect (mi‘mår), the master builder (uståd) who makes the muqarnas and, last but not least, appearing on the iwan’s front and crowning the architecture, the painter himself (naqqåsh). Each is an agent bound to a process of making, especially the master who ‘makes the muqarnas’ and the painter ‘who mixes the pigments’. The poem foregrounds a link between work of art and artist (an idea Hafiz’s verse had already suggested), inviting us to define the painting as a trace of the artist, as ‘what remains from the painter’. The result is described in hyperbolic terms. The domed palace is a celestial building. Its height equals the sky’s. Its walls reach out to the trees of paradise. The architecture is likened to jewellery. The crenellation of its cornice evokes a crown. Made with silver and golden bricks, the building is covered with precious metals. It is luxurious, but also magical, constructed with morning light in lieu of white lead. As a panegyric (qasida), the inscription eulogises the artist, more specifically the painter, who concludes the poem and also appears in the larger script of thuluth, pre-eminently placed on the pediment. Written in gold, the verse about the painter echoes Hafiz’s inscription at the back of the iwan, thus drawing a parallel between painter and dervishes. The historical painter is actually nominally present. Bihzad’s signature can indeed be read between the sixth and the seventh verses of Jami’s poem, closing the iwan on the left, at the moment when the poem shifts from the blue cartouches of the pishtaq to the larger inscription of the iwan’s superstructure. Asserting the painter’s individual identity, it is accompanied by a date: ‫عمل العبد بهزاد فی سنه اربع تسعین و ثمانمیه‬ Work of the slave Bihzad in the year 894 [from the last three weeks of December 1488 to the end of November 1489] In designating the painting’s context of making, Bihzad’s signature resonates with the historical inscriptions found in Baysunghur’s manuscripts, mimicking their desire to anchor the painting in its social environment. But it also considerably departs from it, by placing artist rather than ruler at the centre of art’s historicity. The patron, in fact, was deliberately excluded from Bihzad’s inscription, as one realises upon reading the complete version of Jami’s poem. Seven verses were selected out of the twenty-five lines

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that constitute the complete qasida. All belong to the first part of the poem, in which Jami describes a palace. The second part offers an encomium of the patron, Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the Timurid ruler for whom the manuscript of the Cairo Bustan was made: ‫شاه ابو الغازی معز ملک و دین سلطان حسین‬ ‫کز سرابستان جاهش نه فلک سک منظر است‬ ‫سقف قصرش با ملمع نقشها باالی چرخ‬ ‫همچو باالی زمین این طارم پر اختر است‬ The ruler Abu’l-Ghazi, pride of the world and religion, Sultan Husayn, Whose rank is equivalent to this palace, whose image cannot be equalled by the sky The ceiling of the palace, whose paintings’ riddle is superior to the sky And to the earth, is a dome full of stars49 In the complete version of the poem, the account of the palace functions to praise Sultan Husayn. Indeed, it constitutes an example of wasf or description – wasf was not simply an objective description of the visual so much as a discourse of praise, lauding the object’s owner and thus mainly found in the poetic tradition of the qasida.50 The description of art and architecture within the qasida genre, including in Timurid and Safavid poetry, was most often bound to a praise of the royal patron.51 In poetry, objects and monuments were conceived as emblematic portraits of the ruler.52 As often in the qasida, then, Jami’s description of architecture was meant as a symbol of Sultan Husayn’s power: it could not exist outside the purpose of glorifying the patron. Thus it would have been only appropriate for the painter to quote the second part of the poem, especially since Sultan Husayn was also the Cairo Bustan’s patron. Instead, the artist chose to focus exclusively on the descriptive beginning. Omitting the verses that justify the architectural description, he not only challenged the tradition of royal epigraphy, he also subverted the genre of the royal qasida and its usage of wasf, derailing its expected function and turning it into a panegyric of the artist. This was a self-conscious, deliberate choice. The inscription is unique to this manuscript. It does not appear on actual buildings, nor can it be found on portable objects. In fact, no late Timurid monumental inscription has yet been proven to be from Jami’s poetry53 (Hafiz, by contrast, was much more common).54 Even in late Timurid metalwork, which was replete with poetic inscriptions, only two objects among the thirty-seven specimens catalogued by Linda Komaroff bear verses of Jami.55

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The painter thus probably picked the verses directly from a manuscript, unless he knew them by heart (which is not unlikely given his acquaintance with Jami’s poetry, which, as I discuss below, is largely demonstrated by his use of Jami’s version of the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha instead of Sa‘di’s for the last painting). As Francis Richard has shown, copies of Jami’s Diwan were widely available: they were produced across Timurid and Turkmen realms and even beyond, in the Ottoman Empire.56 Jami’s Diwan was a companion book. In his ÓabÈb al-siyar (Beloved of Careers), the Timurid historian Khwandamir recounts how an emissary of Mir ‘Ali Shir, Amir Husayn, would leaf through Jami’s poetry to entertain himself during his travels.57 Jami’s Diwan was also edited several times in the second half of the fifteenth century, for example in 1463 in Herat, and again in 1468 and 1475.58 And it began to be illustrated as early as the 1480s.59 Linda Komaroff has explored the hypothesis that artists could choose the content of the inscriptions they used. In Timurid metalwork, a certain correlation can indeed be established between an individual metalworker and particular sets of verses inscribed on portable objects.60 For instance, among the three metal jugs signed by Husayn ibn Mubarakshah in the 1480s, two of them feature the same verses from a ghazal of Qasim-i Anwar (d. 1433–4).61 In other examples, the metalworker mentions explicitly in his signature that he not only decorated and inlaid the object but was also responsible for the epigraphy, an indication that he might have selected its content.62 The epigraphy of Timurid metalwork foreshadows the Cairo Bustan’s inscriptions.63 While earlier Iranian wares were mostly marked with benedictory inscriptions addressed to the object’s owner, for example to the ruler (sometimes including his titles), late Timurid metalwork witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of Persian poetry, as Komaroff has shown.64 In most cases, the verses make reference to the object itself. Some came from the poetry of contemporary authors. On a candlestick base dated 1475–6, one can read a verse by Salihi, a late-fifteenth-century poet from Khurasan: ‘If you, O candle, some night become my companion, / What prayer is better than the one – May you glow.’65 In the complete poem, the object is used as a metaphor. The candle enhances the beloved’s beauty by comparing them to light. It alludes to their irresistible attractiveness, conjuring up another image of lyrical poetry: the viewer, or the lover, as the moth, attracted by the candle’s flame at the risk of their own life.66 This is also an image of mystical love, of the lover in their quest of the union with God.67 Written on the object, the verse can be received ‘as a type of pun, meant to be appreciated by those who used or viewed the object’, as Komaroff noted.68 More specifically, it reads as an address to the object we behold. Instead of praising the companion, the verse

writing on the image

now praises the candle. The relationship of candle and beloved has changed. The candle is no longer subordinated to a description of the beloved. Rather, the beloved serves as a personifying metaphor for the candle’s beauty. Through operations of selection and placement, the artist turns an image of reification (the lover as candle) into a tool of personification (the candle as lover). The Cairo Bustan attests to an analogous process of rewriting that aims to centre the object and to emphasise painting’s materiality. The Art of Jawab This manipulation recalls late Timurid literary practices by which poets like Jami himself would imitate older texts. A significant part of the literary production of late Timurid Herat was in fact devoted to the emulation of past literary models. Most often, literary forms and structures were reused, while the thematic content was adjusted to contemporary literary and intellectual interests.69 This recalls André Lefevere’s notion of rewriting, defined as ‘the adaptation of a work of literature to a different audience, with the intention of influencing the way in which that audience reads the work’.70 These practices of rewriting were known as istiqbal (reception), jawab (response) or tatabbu‘ (imitation). By the end of the fifteenth century, all three words were used interchangeably and for different poetic forms, whether the ghazal, the qasida or the mathnawi.71 Jami based a large part of his works on past models. His Baharistan (Spring Garden) is presented in the preface as an imitation of the Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa‘di.72 The Baharistan and the Gulistan are similar in their formal aspects:73 both consist of a prosimetrum, a text mixing prose and poetry; they have the same outline, deploying eight chapters; and both use the image of the garden in their titles to characterise their structure. Thematically and stylistically, however, they remain quite different. While the Gulistan combines anecdotes and aphorisms of both secular and religious content, the Baharistan is a collection of biographies, providing portraits of saints, Sufis, philosophers and poets, and as such belongs to the genre of the biography (tazkira). That Bihzad was familiar with the art of jawab is demonstrated in the last picture of the Cairo Bustan, ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, which constitutes a visual response to Sa‘di’s text (Plate XIII). The narrative scene depicted here – Zulaykha grabbing the fleeing Yusuf – does not exactly correspond to Sa‘di’s poem.74 Although the opening verses of the text describe Zulaykha ‘drunk with the wine of love, hung by the hand on Yusuf’s skirts’, an image that coincides with the moment chosen in the picture, the narrative does not primarily deal with this scene. In Sa‘di’s text, Yusuf is not fleeing. His concern, rather, is with another gesture that Zulaykha had just performed: covering a marble idol that she owns, to prevent it from witnessing

91

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the seduction scene. Her gesture prompts Yusuf to realise that God might be watching as well. Bursting with anger, he asks Zulaykha to back off and adds: ‘You before a stone became ashamed: Let me feel shame before the Pure Lord Himself.’ The narrative ends there and the text continues with a lesson on the necessity of fearing God. The painting shows little effort to provide an accurate rendition of Sa‘di’s text. The idol, which constitutes the narrative’s catalyser, did not make its way into the picture. The image, moreover, contains elements absent from the text, such as the intricate building and the key Yusuf is holding. Devoid of Sa‘dian elements, the painting deviates from other illustrations of the same scene. In a copy of Sa‘di’s Kulliyat (Complete Works) dated 1527 and made in Shiraz, the picture is much closer to the text (Figure 2.7).75 It shows the interior of a room, with Zulaykha and Yusuf but also the idol, covered by a dark veil. In the Cairo Bustan, the painting illustrates another text: not Sa‘di’s, but an extract from Yusuf wa Zulaykha, a long poem written by Jami in 1484–5, only a few years before the painting was made.76 While Sa‘di’s poem is limited to twenty-one verses focusing on the episode of the idol, Jami’s text is a mathnawi of several thousand verses. Jami’s version also stands out for its mystical tone. In Arabic and Persian traditions, the story usually relies on the Qur’anic version, in which Zulaykha personifies the temptation of sin while Yusuf represents the ideal believer, who resists sinning for fear of God.77 In Sa‘di’s poem, Zulaykha is thus compared to a wolf and Yusuf to her prey. In Jami’s version, by contrast, Zulaykha is a positive character. She stands for the Sufi seeker who, in their initiatory journey, must wrestle with the inaccessibility of the beloved, personified by Yusuf. Her earthly love is ‘a manifestation of love for God’ and her lust a desire for knowledge and truth, as Gayane Merguerian and Afsaneh Najmabadi have written.78 Jami’s text includes the episode of the idol that Sa‘di narrates but it also features, immediately following it, the moment illustrated in the painting. After Yusuf realises that one should fear God just as Zulaykha fears the idol, he decides to flee and starts running through Zulaykha’s palace. Although Zulaykha had locked every room in the building, doors miraculously open before him. When they arrive in the last room, Zulaykha, in a last attempt to retain Yusuf, throws herself at him and tears his robe. The painting renders the text in a detailed fashion, including the metaphor of the key in Yusuf’s hand:79 ‫چو گشت اندر دویدن گام تیزش‬ ‫گشاد از هر دری راه گریزش‬ ‫بهر در کامدی بی در گشایی‬ ‫پریدی قفل جایی پره جایی‬

‫‪93‬‬

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‫‪Figure 2.7  ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from a copy of the Kulliyat of Sa‘di.‬‬ ‫‪Shiraz, 1527. 25 × 15.5 cm (folio). The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore,‬‬ ‫‪MD, W.617, folio 173b.‬‬

‫اشارت کردنش گویی به انگشت‬ ‫کلیدی بود بهر فتح در مشت‬ ‫زلیخا چون بدید آن از عقب جست‬ ‫به وی در آخرین درگاه پیوست‬ ‫پی باز آمدن دامن کشیدش‬ ‫ز سوی پشت پیراهن دریدش‬

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When, with swift footsteps he began to run, Doors in his flight he opened every one. Each door when he approached to open it, Locks here, bolts there, in every place were split. Point with his finger, he need do no more, In his hand lay the key of every door. She saw, and in pursuit Zulaykha sped, In the last chamber caught him as he fled. Seizing his skirt to bring him back she flew, And from behind she tore his vest in two. By choosing to illustrate Jami’s version, the painting bears witness to a particular reception of Sa‘di in late Timurid Herat. Sa‘di’s poetry is protean and multidirectional, lending itself to different readings, from the didactic to the mystical to the humorous;80 but at the end of the fifteenth century, poets seem to have favoured a mystical reading. Jami played a crucial role in this reception. Sa‘di is portrayed as a Sufi guide in Jami’s mathnawi entitled Sub˙at al-abrår (The Rosary of the Pious) and dated 1482. This mathnawi consists of forty sections mixing moral discourses and anecdotes. The third section deals with versified speech (kalåm-i manΩËm) and its paradox. Jami contends that poetry is torn between its inability to describe the divine and the necessity of praising God. In the anecdote, a devotee dreams of Sa‘di being rewarded by angels for a verse in which he exalted divine creation.81 The verse is so beautiful that ‘the soul could find in it a link to the Beloved / and intelligence a ray of spiritual education’.82 Painters picked up on this story. Several Safavid illustrations have survived, emphasising the scene in which Sa‘di is visited by the angels of inspiration (Figure 2.8).83 Thus Sa‘di’s work epitomises mystical poetry: it achieves formal perfection while fulfilling a theological role. By illustrating Jami, the painting gives to Sa‘di’s text a new inflection, aligning his poetry with the mystical taste of the time. It reveals an effort to actualise, visually, the manuscript’s content (as Yves Citton has suggested, an actualising reading seeks to adapt the original text to contemporary taste and interests, instead of trying to uncover the original meaning or the author’s intentions, thus deliberately fashioning an anachronistic interpretation of the source).84 This is, again, a self-conscious choice. That the painter has specifically engaged with the practice of jawab is further indicated within the painting in the choice of the epigraphic inscriptions, which come from the same Yusuf wa Zulaykha of Jami, as earlier noted.

writing on the image

95

Figure 2.8  ‘The Gnostic has a Vision of Angels Carrying Trays of Light to the Poet Sa‘di’ from a copy of the Haft awrang of Jami. Iran, 1556–65. 34.2 × 23.2 cm. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Purchase – Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1946.12.147.

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The interplay of word and image is extraordinarily sophisticated. Jami’s verses fulfil several functions. Extracted from Yusuf wa Zulaykha, they point to the pre-given text that inspired the painting. Inserted within a manuscript containing a previous version of the same story, they also stage a performance of literary jawab, allowing us to read both Sa‘di’s text and a rewrite by Jami, while using painting to mediate the act of rewriting. We do not know if Jami actually used Sa‘di’s poem as a basis for his mathnawi. Jami did, however, acknowledge the impact of Sa‘di’s poetry on his work in general, if not specifically, on his Yusuf wa Zulaykha. As mentioned earlier, he wrote the Baharistan using formal aspects of Sa‘di’s Gulistan. In his collection of poetry, Fåti˙at al-shabåb (Opening of Youth), he wrote this self-referential verse: ‘Of these new verses Khurasan has become full of sugar / As though a sweet verse of Sa‘di had arrived from Shiraz.’85 Jami compares his work (the new verses composed in Khurasan) to Sa‘di’s (written in Shiraz). The resemblance stems from poetry’s physical mobility. Sa‘di’s ‘sweet verse’ from Shiraz was brought to Khurasan and dissolved into Jami’s poetic art, hence the latter’s sweetness. The metaphor of solvation points to the practice of jawab, which reworks old material into new forms. The result does not obliterate its original model: rather, the new poem preserves a taste of the past, as its sweetness indicates. Inserted into the Bustan of Sa‘di, the illustration of Jami performs a similar intertextual operation. In a gesture akin to archaeology, it reveals the historical layers of contemporary poetry. At the Majlis The epigraphic inscriptions of ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ address the painting’s reception. Emphasising the reaction of the beholder (naΩårigÈ) whose ‘mouth would start to salivate’ upon looking at the architecture – the ‘purity of its lines’ and the ‘space of its rooms’ – the inscriptions constitute a verbal response to the picture. Thus they operate a double actualisation: by using Jami’s text, they actualise Sa‘di’s poem; but they also actualise Jami’s poetry itself by transforming it into a potential commentary on the painting. As such, they lend an aural dimension to the image. Mimicking the response of a passerby who, they suggest, could well be Jami himself, they recall through their actuality and liveliness the institution of the majlis. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the term majlis designated a kind of salon, a gathering of poets, scholars and patrons that could also include artists and musicians. These assemblies were more or less formal, ranging from the suhbat, a rather casual majlis, to the majlis-i ‘ali, closer to a courtly audience.86 They were often described as platforms for oral literary performances, during which poetry and other literary forms could be recited, analysed or composed.

writing on the image

Jawab was practised in written literature, but also orally at the late Timurid majlis. According to Zayn al-Din Mahmud Wasifi (1485–1551 or 1566), Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i (whose majlis was one of the most prestigious of the time) once asked some poets of Khurasan to imitate a ghazal of Jami.87 Wasifi also mentions a majlis at the new Uzbek court at Samarqand in the early sixteenth century, during which he was asked to elaborate a response (jawab) to a panegyric poem (qasida). The attendants wrote down the poem of Wasifi, who then received a generous reward.88 Read as examples of jawab, transforming a royal panegyric into a panegyric about the artist, the epigraphic inscriptions of the Cairo Bustan mirror, or announce, their (desired) reception at the majlis. They project the image of a gathering during which scholars and literati would discuss the painter’s achievements, responding to the painting as they would to a poem. This is not pure fantasy. Illustrated books were presented in royal gatherings as early as the thirteenth century. Ibn al-Fuwati (1244–1323), a historian and librarian who worked for the Abbasids and the Ilkhanids, noted that in 1261–2 an illustrated copy of the Shahnama was presented to Hulegu (1217–65), the founder of the Ilkhanid dynasty.89 A few centuries later, Wasifi remembers a ceremony of book presentation in early-sixteenth-century Bukhara. The event took place at the majlis of the Uzbek sultan ‘Ubayd Allah. The centrepiece was a copy of the Kulliyat (Complete Works) of Katibi penned by the famous calligrapher Sultan Muhammad Khandan, a pupil of Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi.90 ‘Ubayd Allah was so pleased with it that he declared the manuscript of ‘equal value to the conquest of Nishapur’.91 Paintings and calligraphies were also examined at the Safavid majlis. Pointing to the majlis of the Safavid sultan Shah Tahmasp, the calligrapher Mir Sayyid Ahmad indicated in his album preface dated 1564–5 that ‘calligraphies [khu†Ë†] and paintings [ßuwar] were discussed in His Majesty’s paradisiacal assemblies and celestial gatherings’.92 In another album preface dated 1560–1, Malik Daylami, a poet and calligrapher, affirmed that all dignitaries of the empire liked to ‘converse with the learned and train their minds upon the perusal of books [mu†åla‘a-yi kutub]’ and through ‘the examination of calligraphies [mulå˙aza-yi khu†Ë†]’. This was the case with Amir Husayn Beg, a treasurer of Shah Tahmasp who ‘despite his exalted positions and grand task, [was] inclined to sit with men of learning and socialize with people of skill and perfection’. ‘During these conversations,’ Malik Daylami continued, ‘occasionally he engage[d] in practicing precise nasta‘liq script, which, as is agreed by all people of sobriety and learning, is the freshest herb of the garden of calligraphy, which is half of learning.’93 To return to the late Timurid context, we know that Bihzad himself, the painter of the Cairo Bustan, presented a picture to the majlis of Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i, the powerful vizir of Sultan Husayn.

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A statesman of great wealth, Mir ‘Ali was an active patron.94 He ordered the construction and donation as waqf (endowment) of almost 370 buildings in Khurasan, including mosques, water tanks, bridges and public baths, and renovated important historical buildings, such as the Friday mosque of Herat.95 Artists and poets benefitted greatly from his financial support. ‘No other such patron and protector of men of parts and accomplishments has ever been known,’ Babur noted in his memoirs, adding that ‘few are heard of as having helped to lay the good foundation for future excellence he helped to lay’.96 According to this and other sources, he also supported the painter Bihzad, the calligrapher Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi, and the poet Jami.97 According to Wasifi, Bihzad once ‘brought to the paradisiacal and heaven-adorning majlis of the great emir, Amir ‘Ali Shir (May God refresh his soul!), a painted page [ßa˙Èfa-È mußavvar]’.98 The painting represented a scene ‘adorned [åråsta] with a blooming garden with many different [gËnågËn] trees with beautiful variegated [ßËrat-i bËqalamËn] birds in their branches, while on every side there were flowing streams and blossoming rosebushes’. In the middle of the setting ‘stood the pleasant figure of the Amir leaning on his cane, with plates full of gold in front of him for distribution as gifts’. The picture is a frontispiece of sorts, showing the painting’s recipient, Mir ‘Ali Shir, standing in a garden with plates full of gold. As becomes clear by the end of Wasifi’s extract, the painting visualises its own reception. Mir ‘Ali Shir’s reaction to the picture recalls the inscriptions of ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, the careful observation of the painting leading to a feeling of admiration: When his excellency the Mir saw [mushåhada [namËd]] and observed [mulå˙aΩa namËd] the forms [ßËrathå] of that delicate page, it adorned the gardens of his heart with the roses of happiness and the banks of the pools of his mind with the trees of gladness and contentment, while from the nightingale of his character on the branches of enjoyment there came the sound of ‘Bravo!’ … Mir ‘Ali then turned to his guests and asked them ‘to define [ta‘rÈf] and describe [tawßÈf] [the] remarkable painting with all [their] wittiness [kha†ir]’. Four figures spoke up: Fasih al-Din, Sahib Dara, Burhan and Muhammad Badakhshi. Wasifi was quite precise about the relationship of each participant to Mir ‘Ali. Fasih al-Din was ‘Mir’s teacher’ and ‘one of the most eminent men of Khurasan’. Sahib Dara was ‘the Mir’s companion and friend’. Burhan was ‘the chief of the wits and a model for the people of Khurasan’, ‘constantly exchanging witticisms with his excellency the Mir’. Muhammad Badakhshi was known for his wittiness and sense of humour: ‘the wits of Khurasan nicknamed [him] “the Mir’s wit-maker”, and he was very successful in this role.’ In other sources, they were characterised as boon companions (pl.

writing on the image

mulåzimån, nudamå’ or julaså’) of Mir ‘Ali and regular attendees of his majlis. They were also his advisers (sing. mustashår).99 According to the historian Khwandamir, Sahib Dara spent most of his life with Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i. When the latter passed away in 1501, he was appointed head of the library of Sultan Husayn.100 Wasifi was actually a relative of his, a relationship that might explain Wasifi’s precise knowledge of late Timurid Herat despite his youth at the time (he was born in 1485 and met Mir ‘Ali Shir only once, in 1500–1 when he was sixteen, shortly before Nawa’i’s death).101 Some of this information might have been transmitted to him in Uzbek Bukhara by relatives and other members of the Timurid court who fled to Transoxiana after the fall of Herat. Muhammad Badakhshi, known as a poet102 and a man of great wit,103 was also present in Bukhara when Wasifi completed his memoirs in 1538–9. At the majlis, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i charged his guests with the task of defining (ta‘rÈf) and describing (tawßÈf) Bihzad’s painting with great wit. Using the trope of verisimilitude, Fasih al-Din started off, ‘when I saw those blossoming flowers, I wanted to stretch out my hand, pick one and stick it into my turban.’ The flowers looked so real that the viewer was compelled to grasp them. Sahib Dara went on in the same vein: ‘I too had the same desire, but (then) it occurred to me that if I stretched out my hand, all the birds would fly off the trees.’ These quotes have sometimes been used to argue for the realism of late Timurid painting.104 This is a far-fetched conclusion, for they address neither the style of the painting nor the conventions of representation used to create an effect of reality. To say that depicted objects look real does not necessarily mean that they were represented in a naturalistic way.105 This majlis’ attendees were indeed poets and orators, not art historians or connoisseurs attending to style and quality. They played with literary themes and conventions, including illusionism, with the aim of showcasing their rhetorical talent rather than producing a neutral, objective representation of the image. Probably transmitted through Hellenistic texts, illusionism was commonplace in Arabic and Persian literature.106 Several anecdotes in the Khamsa of Nizami (1141–1209), for example, address the illusionistic power of painting.107 These include the episode during which the prophet Mani, on his way to China, was deceived by a trompe-l’oeil painting – a crystal pool with an image of undulating water depicted on its surface that Mani mistook for a basin of water, breaking his pitcher against the glass.108 The topos of illusionism was less a response to a painting’s style than a panegyric comment on the painter’s creative talent – in Mani’s story it served to praise the Chinese artists who devised the optical trick. Above all it highlighted the painter’s magical power, his ability to enliven the image, collapsing the distinction between art and life,

99

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

thus also demonstrating the prophetic status of his practice. In the Qur’an, Jesus is granted the power to breathe life into a bird shaped from clay as a sign of his prophetic status (for example, in Qur’an 5:110). Artists and poets picked up on this story. In Khosrow wa Shirin of Nizami, the painter Shapur defined his art thus: ‘When I depict a head on a body, the body comes to life; when I add wings to a bird, the bird flies away.’109 A similar image was used in 1564–5 by the calligrapher Mir Sayyid Ahmad to evoke Bihzad: ‘His picture of a bird is so charming that, like Jesus’s bird, it comes to life.’110 Like Jesus, Shapur and Bihzad could impart life into matter, emulating divine causation.111 As I suggest in Chapter 3, the trope of illusionism was not about the iconic resemblance of the image to reality but about the painter’s prophetic capacity to fabricate, and not merely reflect, a world: and this was a rhetorical way to laud the artist, not an attempt at scientific, objective description. The attendees of Mir ‘Ali’s majlis used verisimilitude to flatter Bihzad and to show off their own rhetorical dexterity. Their responses were less about an external object, whether poetic or pictorial, and more about their own positions in the social nexus of late Timurid Herat. This appears even more clearly from the interventions of the last two participants, who chose to reflect upon the power dynamics of the gathering. Burhan responded about the impossibility of responding: ‘When I looked at [it], I held back my hand and my tongue and I kept silent for fear that His Excellency the Mir might become angry and frown.’ Perhaps Burhan wanted to seize the gold represented in the painting. In effect, his response was an act of selfcensorship, one that highlighted Mir Ali’s authority. Muhammad Badakhshi found the attitude reprehensible: ‘If it were not unseemly and impudent, I would take that stick out of His Excellency the Mir’s hand and hit you over the head with it.’ In denouncing Burhan’s response, Badakhshi showed his deference to Mir ‘Ali. The responses constituted a form of jawab, using and transforming (and actualising) the painting’s content to address the speakers’ own present. They also had a pragmatic value: beyond their hermeneutic dimension, they allowed orators to create, assess and challenge social relationships within the majlis. This is another commonality shared by the art of jawab which served to mediate, through the practice of rewriting, ‘an intricate web of interrelationships and interdependencies between poets of different generations and distant localities’, as Maria Subtelny wrote.112 Responses to the image were turned into responses about the act of commenting and its social stakes. At the majlis, wittiness was not just a vehicle of entertainment and pleasure: it was a tool of social empowerment – and thus also of exclusion. Wasifi recounts an episode when one of the attendants, Sadr al-Din Yunus, was excluded for having missed a joke made by Mir ‘Ali. Worst of all, he laughed to conceal his ignorance:

writing on the image

Just by looking at Sadr al-Din Yunus’s face, the Mir knew that he was laughing [only] in imitation [of the others] and that he did not grasp the point of the joke. He asked him, ‘What would you be laughing at?’ He blushed and lowered his head / Confused he did not breathe a word. […] The Mir went on: ‘Some people know only three types of laughter. One type is like the laughter of Mir Sadr al-Din Yunus which is in imitation [of others]. Another [type] of laughter is [that which] comes [only] after reflection. And still another laughter is that which says to itself of the first [type], “How asinine it is!”’ 113 For Mir ‘Ali, the servile laughter of Sadr al-Din Yunus was an example of psittacism, of mechanical and repetitive speech, the opposite of the art of jawab, which ought to be, just like the last two types of laughter, a self-aware, organic response. In the end, Mir ‘Ali felt rather satisfied with the performance of his guests: ‘Friends, you have said beautiful words that had deep meanings.’ Each member of the majlis was rewarded. Bihzad received ‘a horse with saddle and bridle and a fitting outfit’ and each of the speakers ‘a valuable [set of] clothes’. What the painting predicted, with its depiction of Mir ‘Ali standing in the middle of golden plates, actually came true: the painting served as a form of currency, mediating social relationships and prompting the patron to distribute rewards. The Cairo Bustan offers a parallel to Wasifi’s anecdote. Visually, the frontispiece sets up the stage for the manuscript’s circulation at the majlis of Sultan Husayn. Inside the book, inscriptions propose a way to define and describe its painted pages. In these responses, the paintings, like Mir ‘Ali’s companions, speak about themselves and promote their maker. They reflect upon, if not reinforce, their function as an ‘index’, as ‘an object from which the observer can make a causal inference of some kind’, in the explanation of Alfred Gell, and more specifically ‘an abduction of social agency’, in this case of the artist’s.114 Placing the painter at the centre of the interpretive process, the inscriptions endowed him with authority, foreshadowing his rise at the late Timurid court. And indeed, ‘day by day and hour by hour’, as Wasifi further noted, ‘[Bihzad’s] skill and rank increased, and with every new miniature he painted, the countenance of victory and attainment showed itself from behind the veil of the Unknown’.115 Although made of text, the epigraphic inscriptions propose, moreover, a way of looking rather than reading, directing our gaze from text to painting. What do these pictures want us to see? The inscription of ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ heightens two aspects of the painter’s work: his imaginative talent, manifested in ‘the space of the rooms’, and his manual dexterity, indicated by ‘the purity of the lines’. The following two chapters were written in response to these instructions:

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they examine, respectively, the process of image making (taßwÈr) and the graphic quality of the paintings (ta˙rÈr). Notes 1. Qur’an 12:21–35. For an overview of Arabic and Persian versions of the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha, see Merguerian and Najmabadi, 1997. On this tale in world literature, see Yohannan, 1968. For paintings illustrating the story of Yusuf in the Islamic world, see Baer, 2007. The tale has biblical and Midrashic predecessors that might themselves originate in pre-biblical Egyptian stories (Goldman, 1995). 2. Hillenbrand, 1992, 78. On Bihzad’s treatment of space and architecture, also see Shukurov, 2009, esp. 230–1. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for sharing the latter reference. 3. While inscriptions on non-paper-based objects have been broadly studied, the representation of epigraphic inscriptions in manuscript paintings has received little scholarly attention. In fact, I do not know of any published study that focuses specifically on this topic. For Timurid monumental epigraphy, see Golombek and Wilber, 1988; Shayaste-Far, 2001; Roxburgh, 2016. For the epigraphy of Timurid metalwork, see Komaroff, 1992b. For broad overviews of and case studies about the use of Persian inscriptions in Islamic art and architecture, see Melikian-Chirvani, 1971; O’Kane, 2009; Blair, 2014. Significant research has been done on epigraphy in ceramics (see, for example, Pancaro©lu, 2002, 59–75). For inscriptions on monuments and portable objects, mainly from the medieval Mediterranean, that use prosopopoeia to make the objects speak about themselves, see Shalem, 2010; Bush, 2015; Bush, 2017. 4. Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, F1957.16, folio 1a (http://www. asia.si.edu/collections/edan/object.php?q=fsg_F1957.16, accessed Janu­ ary 2017). For a thorough analysis of this painting, its state of conversation, iconography and style, see Fitzherbert, 2001, 20–58. 5. The inscription reads: ‫يا داوود ان جعلناك خليفة في االرض فاحكم بين الناس بالحق‬ 6. Fitzherbert, 2001, 54. 7. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 1653: Majma‘ al-tawårÈkh of Hafiz-i Abru, dated 1425, 435 folios, 54.2 × 37.7 cm (folio), 142 paintings (Ettinghausen, 1955). 8. Ettinghausen, 1955, figures 1, 2 and 3. 9. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 1653, folio 429b (Ettinghausen, 1955, figure 4). 10. For Arabic text, see Ettinghausen, 1955, 34. 11. The inscription reads: ‫العز الدائم و اإلقبال‬ 12. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 362, folio 113b (O’Kane, 2003, plate 77): Kalila wa Dimna of Abu’l-Ma‘ali Nasr Allah, text copied in 1430–1 by Ja‘far, 173 folios, 24.5 × 15.7 cm (folio). On the reuse of Jalayirid paintings by Timurid artists, see Roxburgh, 2005, 141–3.

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writing on the image

13. Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, no.  51.37.50 (Sims, 1974–5, painting reproduced p. 406). This is a detached page. The codex is in Istanbul, Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi, no. 1954: Chahar Maqala of Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi, dated 1431, Herat, fifty-one folios, 22.1 × 15 cm (folio), ten paintings. 14. The inscription reads: ‫دام لك العز و البقاء‬ 15. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, N.F. 382, folio 53a: Humay wa Humayun of Khwaju Kirmani, dated 1427–8, sixty-seven folios, 24 × 14.5 cm (folio), three paintings (Duda, 1983, 1:91–3). 16. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Per. 119, folio 36b (Hillenbrand, 1996, figure 9). 17. The first word is difficult to decipher. The couplet reads: ‫قصر؟ معالیت چنان باد که مرغ‬ ‫نتواند که برو سایه کند غیر همای‬ For the whole poem, see http://ganjoor.net/saadi/mavaez/ghasides/ sh53/, accessed January 2017. 18. Sa‘di, 2008, 114. 19. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716: Shahnama of Firdawsi, Herat, 1430, copied by Ja‘far al-Baysunghuri, 346 folios, 38 × 26 cm (folio) (Hillenbrand, 2010). 20. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716, p. 62. The painting can be found in this online database of Shahnama paintings: shahnama. caret.cam.ac.uk, accessed January 2017. The inscription reads: ‫امر ببناء هذه العمارة السلطان االعظم و الخاقان‬ ‫االعدل االكرم غياث السلطنة و الدنيا و الدين بايسنغور‬ ‫بهادر خان خلد هللا ملكه‬ 21. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716, p. 469 (reproduced in Rajabi, 2005, 64; Hillenbrand, 2010, 102). The inscription reads: ‫امر ببناء هذه العمارة السلطان االعظم‬ ‫بايسنغور بهادر خان خلد هللا ملكه‬ 22. Roxburgh, 2005, 74. This equation is not a new phenomenon. For architecture as metonymy of the ruler in the ancient Near East, see Winter, 1993. 23. Golombek and Wilber, 1988, no. 39. 24. For the Persian text, see M. S. Andreyev, 1900, 36 and 114–15; English translation in Masson et al., 1978, 117. 25. O’Kane, 1987, no. 1 and p. 116. 26. Meisami, 2001b, 69–78. 27. Motoyoshi, 1999; Bush, 2006. 28. Losensky, 2011, 198. Also see Meisami, 2001a, 21–54; Losensky, 2003; Losensky, 2004, 195–216. 29. O’Kane, 2009, 123, figure 4.5. 30. Hafiz-i Abru, 1970, 13–15. For an English translation, see O’Kane, 1987, 116–17.

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31. O’Kane, 1987, 117. 32. London, British Library, Add. 18113 (www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_18113, accessed January 2017). On this manuscript, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 13; Porter, 2009; Blair, 2014, 172–227. 33. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 316, figures 1a, 1b and 1c. The three paintings are: London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 18b (Three Mathnawis of Khwaju Kirmani, Baghdad, 1396); St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, VP–1000, folio 112a (Khamsa of Nizami, made for Shah Rukh in Herat in 1431); Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 781, folio 73b (Khamsa of Nizami, made in Herat in 1445–6 for Ismat al-Dunya, wife of Muhammad Juki ibn Shah Rukh). The Hermitage Khamsa is even more tightly linked to an anthology that was made for Iskandar Sultan in Shiraz in 1410 (London, British Library, Add. 27261). On this point and on the process of replication, see Adamova, 1992. 34. See, for example, the illuminated shamsa in the name of Bahram Mirza: British Library, Add. 18113, folio 79a. 35. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2154, folio 20b (Blair, 2014, figure 5.11). The page was first published in Prentice, 1981. 36. Blair, 2014, 213. Also see Blair and Bloom, 1999, 59. 37. See British Library, Add. 18113, folios 12a, 18b, 45b and 91a. 38. British Library, Add. 18113, folio 12a. One can conveniently zoom into the high-resolution digital reproductions available online at www. bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_18113, accessed January 2017. 39. The inscription reads: ‫السلطان ضل هللا في األرض‬ 40. The inscription reads: ‫همايون باد اين فرخنده بنياد‬ 41. The pun was noted in Fitzherbert, 1991, 151, note 104; and again in Porter, 2009, 365, note 13. 42. London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 45b. One can conveniently zoom into the high-resolution digital reproductions available online at www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_18113, accessed January 2017. 43. The inscription reads: ‫السلطان األعظم مالك رقاب األمم‬ 44. The inscription reads: ‫هذه الدار کعبه االمل‬ ‫هذه الباب قبله االقبال‬ 45. The inscription reads: ‫عمل جنید نقاش سلطانی‬ 46. For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 4, 104–7; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 4, story 66. 47. Hafiz, ghazal no. 176. It is interesting to note that this verse appears in Mashhad on a monument dated 1455 and known as the Masjid-i shah (Shayaste-Far, 2001, 86–7). Both the function of the building and its patron remain unclear (Golombek and Wilber, 1988, no. 95). 48. Jami, 1999, 1:106–8. 49. Jami, 1999, 1:107. 50. Sumi, 2003, esp. introduction. On the description of objects in poetry and epigraphic inscriptions in Islam, also see Shalem, 2010.

writing on the image

51. A Safavid example is the Khamsa of ‘Abdi Beg on the palaces and gardens of Shah Tahmasp (Echraghi, 1982, 117–26; Losensky, 2003). 52. In some cases, descriptions could also highlight the poet. The poem would then read as a double portrait of patron and poet (Sumi, 2003, chapter 5). 53. A mosaic-faience inscription on the Ghar-i Darvishan in Herat is sometimes thought to be from a quatrain of Jami (Shayaste-Far, 2001, 94). But as Bernard O’Kane has noted, the quatrain is nowhere to be found in the collected works of Jami (O’Kane, 1987, 363). For an English translation of the quatrain, see Golombek and Wilber, 1988, no. 80. The inscription is reproduced in O’Kane, 2009, 143–4, figure 4.19. There is another misunderstanding around an inscription mentioned in Khwandamir, 1954, 4:176–7. The inscription appears at Gazurgah on the dome of the tomb of one of Sultan Husayn’s nephews, Kichik Mirza. But contrary to what Golombek and Komaroff have claimed (Golombek, 1969, 85 and note 44; Komaroff, 1992b, note 19), this is not a verse of Jami. As O’Kane has shown, it is an imitation of a quatrain of Suhayli (O’Kane, 2009, 142–3). 54. On the use of Hafiz’s poetry in Timurid epigraphy, see Komaroff, 1992b, 144; Soucek, 2003, 151–2. 55. St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, IR–2004: small bowl, c. 1475–6 (Komaroff, 1992a, no. 16). The present whereabouts of the second example are unknown. The object used to be in the Raymond Johnes collection (A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, 1974, figure 1; Komaroff, 1992a, no. 37; O’Kane, 2009, 136). About these inscriptions, also see Ivanov, 1971. One must also note that among the thirty-seven specimens listed by Komaroff, nine display Sa‘di’s poetry and five present verses of Hafiz. For portable objects with verses of Hafiz, see Komaroff, 1992a, nos 1, 2, 11, 22 and 29. The verses rarely repeat. Different poetic forms are represented. In addition to the ghazal, Linda Komaroff mentions the mulamma‘ (Komaroff, 1988, 94). For metalwork with verses of Sa‘di, see Komaroff, 1992a, nos 21, 30, 32 and 35. Verses of Sa‘di are sometimes combined with verses of Firdawsi and Daqiqi (Komaroff, 1992a, nos 18 and 19). Other poets include Qasim-i Anwar (Komaroff, 1992a, nos 7 and 10) and Salihi (Komaroff, 1992a, nos 15 and 36). There are two sorts of inscriptions: votive, benedictory inscriptions presenting good wishes to the owner; and inscriptions addressing the object, its form and function, often through lyrical and mystical images. 56. Richard, 2003b, 61–77. 57. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:351; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 225. The manuscript was in fact a gift, brought by the Timurid envoy Amir Husayn to a member of Sultan Ya‘qub’s court, Qadi ‘Isa, and to Sultan Ya‘qub himself. 58. Richard, 2003b, 65. 59. Kia, 2008. 60. Komaroff, 1992b, 146–8. 61. Ibid., 148. 62. Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I.6052: vessel dated 1505 (Komaroff, 1988, figure 16). 63. This is not surprising given the connection between metalwork and book arts (Komaroff, 1992b, 154–5). On the common visual vocabulary of metalwork and manuscript painting, see Komaroff, 1992a, 104. 64. Komaroff, 1992a, 64 sq.

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

65. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, IR–2005 (Komaroff, 1992a, 65). 66. For an example in Persian poetry, see this verse in the Bustan of Sa‘di: ‘The candle indulges not the moth’s condition / See then, how it burns before all assembled’ (Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 3, verse 1851). 67. For comments and references on mystical love, see Chapter 1 of this book. 68. Komaroff, 1992a, 65. 69. This is in line with André Lefevere’s definition of rewriting as ‘the adaptation of a work of literature to a different audience, with the intention of influencing the way in which that audience reads the work’ (Lefevere, 1982, 4). 70. Ibid., 4. 71. Subtelny, 1986, 62–3 and note 33; Zipoli, 1993; Losensky, 1998, 137 and 191–2. 72. Jami, 1988; Sa‘di, 2008. 73. Losensky, 1998, 171. 74. For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 9, 195–6; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 9, story 154. 75. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.617, folio 173b: Kulliyat of Sa‘di, dated 1527, Shiraz, ten paintings (www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/ WaltersManuscripts/html/W617/, accessed January 2017). 76. The point was already made in Golombek, 1972, 28; also see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 292–5. For the Persian text of Yusuf wa Zulaykha, see Jami, 1997–9, 2:17–209. This poem belongs to the Haft awrang (The Seven Thrones), a collection of seven long mathnawis. On Yusuf wa Zulaykha and its illustrated copies, see Simpson, 1997, esp. 116–47 and 381–3. On illustrations of the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha in Islamic art, see Baer, 2007. 77. On the character of Zulaykha and its reception in the Islamic tradition, see Stowasser, 1994, 50–6; Merguerian and Najmabadi, 1997. 78. Merguerian and Najmabadi, 1997, 497. 79. Jami, 1997–9, 2:136, verses 2478–82. 80. Fouchécour, 1986, 311–48. 81. Jami, 1997–9, 1:579. 82. Jami, 1997–9, 1:579, verse 477. 83. Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, FGA46.12. On this painting and other illustrations of the same story in Safavid manuscripts, see Simpson, 1997, 148–51 and 380. 84. Citton, 2007. 85. Jami, 1997–9, 1:351. 86. On the majlis in Herat, see Subtelny, 1979, 162; Roxburgh, 2001b, 67; Ergin, 2013, 72–5. For the majlis between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries, see Brookshaw, 2003. 87. Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:347. 88. The passage is mentioned in Subtelny, 1979, 158. 89. Ibn al-Fuwati, 1995–6, no. 2694. On Ibn al-Fuwati, see Deweese, 2006. The presentation of the book to the ruler was also a common theme in painting, particularly in frontispieces. The person writing in the book was more likely to be the author of the text rather than a calligrapher. For an example from the Ilkhanid period, see Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 204, folios 1b–2a: Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Juvayni, dated 1290 (Richard, 1997, 41). 90. The episode is mentioned in Subtelny, 1979, 160.

writing on the image

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Subtelny, 1983, 141. Thackston, 2001, 28 Thackston, 2001, 19. On Mir ‘Ali Shir, see Subtelny, 1993. Subtelny, 1991. Babur, 1996, 214. Nawa’i was also well-versed in the art of jawab. As Babur noted, ‘he wrote six books of poems [mathnawi], five of them in imitation of the Khamsa,’ while the sixth, ‘entitled the Lisån al-†ayr [Tongue of the Birds], was in the same metre as the Man†iq al-†ayr [Speech of the Birds].’ He also ‘put together four collections [diwans] of odes … [and] a collection of his letters, imitating that of Mawlana ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami’ (Babur, 1996, 214). 98. The full passage is in Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149–50; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 208. 99. Subtelny, 1979, 108. 100. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:349–50. 101. Subtelny, 1979, 157. 102. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 161. 103. Babur, 1996, 225. 104. Roxburgh, 2000b, 122. 105. In fact, description can be quite divorced from its object, especially when deployed in a literary performance. On this point, see Wood, 1995, 335–6, who argues that ‘description disfigures its object’, in line with Hegel’s definition of description as ‘not yet a process motivated by the object’ but ‘by the description itself’. 106. For examples in Arabic and Persian literature, see Porter, 1995. On literary tropes about painting and painters in the Islamic world more generally, see Soucek, 1972; Porter, 1992, 135–42; Lameï, 2001; Roxburgh, 2001b, 178. Famous examples of illusionism appear in Roman literature, for example in Pliny the Elder, 1985, 65, 77 and 87. 107. These anecdotes were repeated and quoted in later sources. For an example from the sixteenth century, see Dust Muhammad, 2001, 12. 108. Roxburgh, 2001b, 178. 109. Quoted in Porter, 1995, 227. For a French translation, see Massé, 1970, 25. 110. Thackston, 2001, 27. 111. On this point, also see Chapter 5 of this book. 112. Subtelny, 1986, 68. 113. Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:395–7; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 214. 114. Gell, 1998, 13. 115. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 208.

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CHAPTER THREE

Potential World

‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ has begun to demonstrate how difficult it is to connect late Timurid paintings to the text surrounding them in the manuscript (Plate XIII). Although ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ accompanies a story from the Bustan of Sa‘di, it draws less on Sa‘di’s text than on ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami’s version of the tale of Yusuf and Zulaykha, as shown in Chapter 2. The distance that separates the painting and the text cannot, however, be attributed simply to a change of literary source. The architecture, for example, does not follow Jami’s text, which describes seven domed mansions with marble floors, gold pillars, doors of ebony and ivory, as well as frescoes across the walls, depicting various images of Yusuf and Zulaykha.1 None of these elements is present in the Cairo Bustan’s picture. The painting’s departure from the text cannot be imputed to an interest in realism either. As an architectural representation, the image resists easy comprehension – it is impossible to imagine what the building actually looks like. Take, for example, the space where Yusuf and Zulaykha are depicted. One might read it as a cross-section. We are inside a room. At the back we see the doors that Yusuf needs to unlock in order to escape. The space, however, is framed by a decorated arch, seemingly open onto the exterior. It can thus also be read as an elevation view of an iwan-like space, instead of the closed room the story demands. A single image allows for different, contradictory readings. Blurring the limits of inside and outside, it defies visual synthesis.2 Illustrations of the same story in other manuscripts show a much more centred, tame composition. An earlier version discards the palace altogether, focusing instead on the two main characters (Figure 3.1).3 Two women are watching the scene, channelling our attention toward the story. The setting is inconspicuous. It uses a common backdrop of Persian narrative painting: a meadow, with scattered flowers and a row of trees, closing the composition. In a Safavid copy of Yusuf wa Zulaykha of Jami dated 1533–4, the palace is present, but it has been reduced to a single, hexagonal structure, framing the protagonists.4 In line with Jami’s description, Zulaykha’s room is covered in frescoes representing the two lovers. Both examples use

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Figure 3.1  ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Shiraz (?), 1459–60. 16.9 × 10 cm (folio). London, British Library, Or. 14832, folio 83b. © The British Library Board.

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the setting as a passive, illustrational frame, designed to enhance the culminating moment of the plot. In Bihzad’s painting, by contrast, the architecture competes with the text, moving us away from literary interpretation, addressing instead our visual experience. It functions less as a tool of interpretation than as an optical device, dividing our attention and multiplying the eye’s points of contact with the page. In the first two paintings of the Cairo Bustan, another strategy was used to pull our attention away from the story: the proliferation of ‘extra-textual’ forms, as Chad Kia has characterised them,5 of figures that do not seem to illustrate the text contained in the manuscript (Plates X and XI). The area devoted to the story occupies only a small portion of the picture. Meanwhile, a multitude of independent, generic scenes, showing no apparent link to the story, spread across the pictorial field, derailing the main narrative. In this chapter, I argue that visual abundance destabilised illustration in order to reference taßwÈr, the process of image making. It had an effect of self-reference, pointing away from the painting’s content toward the process of artistic creation. Instead of projecting a stable, comprehensible whole, painting was turned into a relentless source of images, the result of the painter’s active imagination. Aspects of composition and technique further laud the artist’s creative power. The painting has a grid-like structure: motifs are rendered at the same scale, regardless of their position in real space, and placed side by side, each in a distinct cell. The eye does not move into depth; rather, we read across the pictorial plane, moving from one cell to another, as though reading around an atlas of forms. Displaying to the viewer a smooth, uniform surface, the painting, moreover, conceals evidence of brushwork, obscuring its making process. Balanced order and an even surface, I argue in this chapter, assimilate the image to an uncreated object, and the artist’s creativity to divine causation. Extra-textual Figures in the Cairo Bustan In a verdant meadow, topped by a dry, rocky landscape and a gilded sky, human figures alternate with flocks of horses (Plate X). This is the first text painting of the Cairo Bustan. It accompanies the second story of the Bustan of Sa‘di.6 While on a hunting expedition, the prince Darius gets lost and comes across a stranger. He is ready to shoot an arrow at what is assumed to be an enemy, when the man speaks up, introducing himself as the keeper of the king’s own horses. Surprised by Darius’s unfamiliarity with his own people, the herdsman sermonises the king: he tells him that a just ruler should know an enemy from a friend. The scene was meticulously illustrated in the lower left. The painter has used gestures, forms of non-verbal communication, to

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bridge the gap between the verbal and the visual. While the poem introduces the beginning of the herdsman’s speech by the verb ‘to say’ (guftan), the painting signals discourse through the movement of his hands. Darius is depicted with his bow and arrow lowered, a posture that visualises the king’s understanding of his ‘faulty judgment’. Gestures translate the characters’ shifting roles. They depict the transformation of the herdsman from a mistaken enemy to a counsellor, and that of Darius from an unjust king to a disciple, thus visually articulating the moral of the tale. But the painting is also filled with figures that are not mentioned in the text. One man is guarding a flock of horses, while another is resting on the grass, pouring water from a hanging goatskin. Each character seems to be absorbed in a distinct, independent activity with no impact on the main narrative scene.7 Other details might distract the viewer, including the horses and the variety of their appearances and attitudes, or the upward movement of the rocks emerging from behind the king. In contrast to the king and the herdsman, whose postures, attributes and gestures are informed by Sa‘di’s poem, the rest of the composition escapes such textual determination. There is an implicit, invisible discrepancy between the solid textual anchorage of the encounter scene and the free-floating images of the setting. On the one hand, the painter has closely followed the text. On the other, he has expressed a great inventiveness. Although they enhance the context of transhumance to which the herdsman belongs, the secondary figures do not partake in the plot. They are arbitrary and superfluous. Imagine the picture without the crosslegged character or the horseman: one would still be able to identify the story. Devoid of this pastoral context, the painting, in fact, would be more faithful to the king’s viewpoint, since the ruler fails to identify the herdsman. By giving the setting away, the picture corners the king while also spoiling the suspense of the story. In other versions of the same story, the extra-textual figures often do not exist. In a copy of the Bustan made in Herat in 1525, the painting is limited to two characters, Darius and the herdsman, shown conversing in a meadow (Figure 3.2).8 The secondary figures have disappeared, together with the rocky landscape and the second flock of horses. The painting, moreover, restores social hierarchy. In contrast with Bihzad’s painting in which the herdsman is in the centre while Darius holds a lower position, the ruler now occupies the upper half of the painting and dominates his servant. Compositional strategies have a political stake. The strong axiality of the Safavid painting and the absence of extra-textual figures focus vision on the ruler. The Timurid composition, by contrast, evaporates visual, narrative and social hierarchy. There is no central focus that would help us order our gaze. Instead of a stable, unified whole, the painting offers an assemblage of discrete vignettes. Decentralised and dispersed, it shifts our attention away from royal presence.

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Figure 3.2  ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Herat, 1525. 22.5 × 14.5 cm (folio). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.165.

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A similar competition between text and image takes place in the second illustration of the Cairo Bustan, which depicts a mosque (Plate XI). At the bottom, one can see the gateway zone with a scene of ablution and two other characters standing by the door. Opening onto a courtyard, the interior space presents to the right a domed iwan (vaulted porch) with a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of prayer) and an open gallery to the left. Jutting out from the wall, a wooden minbar (pulpit) separates both areas. Here and there worshippers are shown praying, meditating, reading, conversing. Sa‘di’s poem is about an old beggar who, upon seeing a doorway, raises his voice and asks for charity.9 A man confronts him at the gate and refuses him entry. Nevertheless, the beggar decides to stay near the mosque, raising his hands and imploring God. A year later, when on the point of death, he says, babbling with joy: ‘Who knocks at the Generous One’s door, to him is opened.’10 The story is a Sufi allegory. The beggar stands for the disciple who aspires to union with God. Patience and suffering resolve themselves in death, when the seeker dissolves into divine plenitude. The textual scene takes place in the lower part of the picture. Just as in ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, the illustration is contained in a restricted zone. It is isolated, set against the lower margin of the page. Meanwhile, the contextual zone, which represents the interior of the mosque, dominates the painting. Again, there seems to be a tension between the accuracy of the illustration and the gratuitousness of the setting. In the former, gestures, clothes and spatial disposition transcribe the power relationship between the beggar, represented with bare feet on the ground, wearing rags and holding out a bowl, and the guardian of the mosque, a seemingly pious man, with his white beard, turban and long stick, and who is placed higher. In the mosque, figural and architectural motifs are not so tightly linked to the text. Of all the elements depicted there, only the door and the mihrab are mentioned in Sa‘di’s poem. The setting could be different or even removed. Despite its descriptive function, it does not advance the narrative. The emphasis on the mosque, in fact, contradicts the story since the beggar is not supposed to recognise the building, at least not before the guard reveals the identity of the site. In order to foster the reader’s empathy for the marginalised figure, in Sa‘di’s text the interior of the mosque remains concealed. The representation of the gaze further intensifies the caesura between context and text, image and illustration. None of the surrounding characters is looking at the main scene, no matter how poignant it is. In illustrative pictures, secondary characters are not rare. But they often look at the main scene, helping the viewer to focus on the narrative (see, for instance, Figure 1.1 and Figure 3.1).11 In ‘The Beggar and the Mosque’, each figure is immersed in a separate activity. Take, for example, the closest character to the textual scene, the man performing ablutions by the waterway. Turning his back to

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the beggar, he seems to be in a different space, as though separated from the main scene by an invisible wall blocking views and sounds. In the lower right, a character in yellow, depicted in a three-quarter view from the back, is shown resting. His face is half-concealed by his shoulder. Curled up on the interior edge of an arched opening, at the limit between illustration and setting, he seems asleep. By averting his eyes from the main scene, he personifies the image’s lack of interest in the primary narrative. Moving from the textual scene, to its immediate surroundings, to the interior of the precinct, the gaze discovers another sleeping character, placed at the exact centre of the picture. His garment singles him out too. He is the only character wearing blue, a colour often associated with mourning and melancholy in Persian painting and literature.12 Humour, though, is not absent from the scene. Aligned with the beggar along the central axis of the page, the sleeping figure and his indifference offer a stark, ironic contrast to the gravity of the main scene. Instead of directing the eye towards the story, the dispersed, inward-looking gaze of the secondary characters suggests new visual possibilities: it encourages a multidirectional movement across the page, empowering the all-seeing gaze of the viewer. The peripheral figures also look trivial. Their degree of generality disrupts the specific genre of the Sufi tale. Against and around a scene about death and faith, the painter has flooded the painting with insouciant characters, puppet-like figures performing repetitive gestures. The extra-textual figures constitute almost a parodic, anticlimactic counterpoint to the gravity of the poem. The integration of Sa‘di’s story within the familiar setting of the mosque dissolves the Sufi lesson into a larger picture of daily routine and appearances. The painter has used a fragmenting device, splitting the painting into two parts. On the one hand, the picture offers the expected traditional motifs – or motives, images indeed motivated by the text. On the other, it displays a host of generic figures, whose presence does not translate into a clear narrative. The motivated zone, moreover, appears limited, contained and peripheral, constantly threatened by an ever-expanding setting. With no previous knowledge of the text, the scene of the beggar and the guardian is simply indistinguishable from the other figures, which feature similar characteristics in size, scale, randomness of placement and narrative potential. In fact, the peripheral position of the illustration and its similarity with the other figures fuse it with the rest of the picture. The fracture between text and image is only visible to the reader-viewer who knows the text. The painting appears first and foremost as one dense surface of interlocking motifs and forms.

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Challenging Illustration in Persian Manuscript Painting Extra-textual forms did not appear all at once, nor did they affect the production of Persian painting in a progressive fashion. One finds late Timurid and Safavid paintings that stick closely to the text (Figure 3.2). Meanwhile, earlier examples can show a wealth of non-illustrative scenes. The heterogeneity of the visual evidence threatens any system that seeks to generalise about Persian painting. On the one hand, then, paintings could be strongly illustrative.13 The illustrative model is best exemplified by an album page of the early fifteenth century (Figure 3.3).14 In three double columns, we read extracts from three mathnawis: the Man†iq al-†ayr (The Speech of the Birds) of ‘Attar (1145–1220), the Makhzan al-asrår (The Treasury of Mysteries) of Nizami (1141–1209) and the Shahnama of Firdawsi (c. 935–1020). Each column starts with a title and ends with the word ‘finished’ (tamm), signalling that it constitutes a complete whole. From right to left, the titles announce three different stories: ‘the dervish who fell in love with Shah Zada after Shaykh ‘Attar’15 ‘the fable of the hunter, dog and fox after Shaykh Nizami’16 and ‘the victory of Rustam over Puladvand after Firdawsi’.17 Interestingly enough, the text does not offer the full sequence of events. In each case, it consists of a selection of verses, compiled from the complete edition of the mathnawi, and highlighting the main elements of the narrative. The last column, for instance, presents forty-six lines of a story that originally unfolds over a hundred verses.18 The selection emphasises the beginning of the story, repeating the first eight verses of the complete version to pose the initial situation – the battle between Rustam’s army and Puladvand’s troops. The following verses, however, omit major segments of the original text, including lengthy descriptions and analepses, to concentrate on the duel between Rustam and his enemy. The compilation focuses on the last action, the moment when Rustam seizes Puladvand and dashes him to the ground. Through a process of selection, the multilayered, polytemporal story of Firdawsi was turned into a linear, almost monoscenic narrative. The accompanying painting reveals the same pattern: it focuses on one single scene, the most important one – Rustam lifting up Puladvand, ready to smash him to the ground. There is almost a one-to-one correspondence between text and image. The painter proceeded in a way analogous to that of the compiler. There is a minimum of description or narrative. We do not have much information on the fight’s setting. The landscape, similar in all three paintings, is unremarkable. The aim was to centre the viewer’s attention on Rustam’s victory. The image comes as close as the title – ‘The Victory of Rustam over Puladvand after Firdawsi’ – to offering a snapshot of the story’s culminating event. Painting and text approximate a theatrical performance, slowing down the narrative speed to

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Figure 3.3  Extracts from the poetry of ‘Attar, Firdawsi and Nizami with illustrations. Anthology of Iskandar Sultan. Isfahan, c. 1413. 32.2 × 25 cm (sheet). Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, B. 411, folio 161b.

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align the time of narration with the duration of the event, and the temporality of the viewer’s experience. This was probably also the model used for princely representations in wall paintings, as can be inferred from a textual account describing Timur’s no-longer-extant wall paintings in early-fifteenth-century Samarqand.19 According to the Damascene writer Ibn ‘Arabshah, who was in Samarqand between 1401 and 1409, the paintings covered all aspects of the ruler’s public life: 20 ‫ وهيئات‬،‫صور في بعض هذه القصور مجالسه وأشكال صورته تارة ضاحكة وأخرى عابسة‬ ،‫ والسادات والعلماء والكبراء‬،‫ ومجالس صحبته مع الملوك واألمراء‬،‫ وصور محاضراته‬،‫مواقعاته‬ ‫ ووفودها بالخدمات من سائر األقطار إليه وحلق مصايده وكمائن مكايده‬،‫ومثول السالطين بين يديه‬ ‫ وصورة أوالده‬،‫ وصورة انتصاره وكيف انكسر عدوه وانهزم‬،‫ووقائع الهند والدشت والعجم‬ ،‫ ومطربي إيناسه‬،‫ وسقاة كأسه‬،‫ وكاسات خمرته‬،‫ ومجالس عشرته‬،‫ وأمرائه وأجناده‬،‫وأحفاده‬ ‫ مما وقع له‬،‫ وخواتين عصمته إلى غير ذلك‬،‫ وحظايا حضرته‬،‫ ومقامات تغزالته‬،‫وتغزالت مقاماته‬ ‫ مدى عمره المتقارب المتدارك‬،‫من صورة حادثة في الممالك‬ In some of these palaces, [Timur] had depicted his assemblies and his own likeness, now smiling, now austere, and representations of his battles and sieges and his conversation with kings, amirs, lords, wise men, and magnates, and Sultans offering homage to him and bringing gifts to him from every side and his hunting-nets and ambushes and battles in India, Dasht and Persia and how he gained victory and how his enemy was scattered and driven to flight; and the likeness of his sons and grandsons, amirs and soldiers and his public feasts and the goblets of wine and cup-bearers and the zitherplayers of his mirth and his love-meetings and the concubines of his majesty and the royal wives and many other things which happened in his realms during his life.21 The wall paintings worked like a continuous scroll, deployed to showcase a series of monoscenic images. They sought to achieve comprehension and immediacy. Everything was shown: ‫ لمن كان في عالم‬،‫ وقصد بذلك اإلفادة‬،‫ ولم ينقص من ذلك شيئا ً ولم يزد‬،‫كل ذلك كما وقع ووجد‬ ‫الغيب عن أحواله بالشهادة‬ all that was known that happened, and he omitted or exaggerated none of those things; and therein he intended, that those who knew not his affairs, should see them as though present. The images acted as windows opened onto history, as pictorial signs transparent to their meaning. They produced an effect of reality, playing with the boundaries of representation and presence, transforming viewers into witnesses. Moving the audience along in a linear fashion, the paintings, moreover, emulated the fixed, unchanging pace of theatrical time. Viewers were meant to feel as if they had

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encountered the real Timur, in the here and now of their present. Concealing the barriers of time and materiality, the wall paintings were meant to create the illusion of an unmediated representation of the past.22 The Cairo Bustan’s paintings propose a different experience. The image is broken up into a constellation of scenes (Plates X and XI). Representing several moments at once, it complicates linear time. Instead of looking through the screen, the gaze wanders around the pictorial field. Most scenes, moreover, like the man watching his herd of horses in the first painting, are not singular but iterative: instead of telling us what happened once, they present repetitive actions. Each model fulfils a different function. Compositional unity was used for royal images and narrative illustrations because it allowed viewers to grasp immediately the painting’s representational content. Late Timurid painting presented a challenge to this structure. Going beyond what was necessary to convey the primary narrative, it used visual excess to test the limits of illustration and to foreground painting as material process. Jalayirid, early Timurid and Turkmen examples paved the way, announcing the two main strategies used in the Cairo Bustan: the complication of spatial representation and the proliferation of figures. ‘Celebrations for the consummation of Humay’s marriage to Humayun’ from the Jalayirid copy of Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis made in 1395–6 shows two different spaces, separated by the vertical axis of the page: the king’s domain on the right and the queen’s space on the left (Figure 2.3).23 The painting is rich with figures and objects. We see a wealth of patterns, dispersed across the textile and architectural decoration. The painting, however, remains focused on the story. Although numerous, the figures are not extra-textual: they belong to the princely setting. The profusion of details connotes the luxury of the court, further strengthening the royal theme. But the main ingredients for late Timurid painting are there: a vertical painting, spreading across the manuscript page at the expense of text, offering an intricate display of forms, which, as well as representing a story, allows for visual experience that takes longer. Foreshadowing ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, the illustration ‘Isfandiyar Kills Arjasp in the Brazen Hold’, from the Shahnama of Baysunghur made in 1429, features an elaborate building: the fortress of Arjasp, king of Turan (Figure 3.4).24 Isfandiyar, who was tasked by his father, the king of Iran, with killing Arjasp, is seen in the upper right of the painting, slaying his enemy. His aim is to liberate his sisters, represented in the middle of the picture, who were captured and imprisoned by Arjasp. The fortress ‘vividly evokes the hero’s difficulties in penetrating the castle’s successive lines of defense’, as Robert Hillenbrand noted.25 As a space of captivity, it announces Zulaykha’s palace, whose fragmented appearance creates ‘a metaphorical space that conveys Yusuf’s anxiety’, as David Roxburgh wrote.26

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Figure 3.4  ‘Isfandiyar Kills Arjasp in the Brazen Hold’ from a copy of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. Herat, 1430, for Baysunghur. 38 × 26 cm (folio). Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716, page 401.

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But ‘Isfandiyar kills Arjasp’ also differs from Bihzad’s painting. The architecture of Arjasp’s fortress retains its coherence. It consists of a succession of nested spaces, creating a sense of depth. From the bridge in the foreground, to the first and second gates in the middle ground, to the audience hall in the upper right, there is a clear optical path, leading us to the main event. ‘Yusuf and Zulayha’, by contrast, pushes architectural representation to the limits of comprehension. There is a greater struggle between surface and depth, as the image constantly oscillates between ornamental design and architectural space. The change is paralleled, again, by a shift from patron to artist. In Baysunghur’s painting, the epigraphic inscriptions emphasise the ruler: ‘This depicted fortress is unique among created things; May God grant long life to its prince and prosperity to its governor.’27 In ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, as shown in Chapter 2, they eulogise the artist’s work and highlight the pleasure of looking. A Turkmen painting from a copy of the Khamsa of Jamali made in Baghdad in 1465 provides a further point of comparison (Figure 3.5).28 The two main protagonists, Mahzun and Mahbub, are seated in a garden. In the foreground, separated by a wall, and thus invisible to the principal characters, five extra-textual figures have been added – they are not mentioned in the text, and their inclusion is not directly relevant to the narrative. At the door, a guard threatens a visitor with a stick, an image that anticipates the Cairo Bustan’s frontispiece, in which a similar scene greets the beholder (Plate IV). Meanwhile, another man is climbing up the wall to peek into the garden. On the one hand, these figures emphasise the secrecy of the amorous encounter. On the other, they are arbitrary and contingent. At the left, two spectators direct our gaze to the exterior scenes, insisting that we note the scenes’ presence (one of them holds an index finger to his mouth, a gesture signifying his astonishment, allowing us to see a reflection of our surprise as we discover the extra-textual images). They provide a model of how to look, in which the viewer would focus first and foremost on the painting’s periphery. Why this competition between illustration and non-illustration? The scholarship of Persian painting has persistently focused on the extra-textual figures. Chad Kia, for instance, has considered their Sufi symbolism, arguing for a hidden, mystical meaning.29 One of his key examples is ‘Majnun on Layla’s Tomb’, made in 1494.30 The text is illustrated in the lower half of the composition, with an image of the hero Majnun on his lover’s grave. Meanwhile, the upper half is filled with elements that are absent from the author Nizami’s text, mainly scenes of nomadic life. We see, for example, seated on the horizon line and turning his back to the viewer, a man playing the flute. According to Kia, the flute player is a reference to the song of the reed, a ubiquitous image in Sufi literature, symbolising the lament of the mystic on the separation with God.31 The flautist

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Figure 3.5  ‘Mahzun and Mahbub in a Garden’ from a copy of the Khamsa of Jamali. Baghdad, 1465. 31 × 25.2 cm (folio). London, British Library, IO Islamic 138, folio 125b. © The British Library Board.

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would thus constitute a gloss on the text of Nizami, suggesting a mystical reading of Layla and Majnun’s love story. This iconological approach, however, can only be applied to a limited number of figures and paintings. It is not clear what Sufi allegories could correspond to the woman spinning the wheel or the character milking the cow (Kia proposes to read the wheel and the milk as mystical symbols but he does not offer an interpretation of the figurative scene as a whole). In the Cairo Bustan, no Sufi trope can help account, for instance, for the man pouring water from the goatskin in ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ (Plate X) or more generally for the paintings’ ornamental richness which, together with the figural elements, works to disrupt the narrative. Kia’s argument only applies to a few figural images and leaves unexplained the overall intricacy of late Timurid painting. Limiting the pictures to their visual dimension, Kia’s thesis also fails to account for aspects of materiality and execution which, as I suggest below, cannot be separated from ­iconographical considerations.32 For other scholars, such as Richard Ettinghausen, late Timurid painting marked the emergence of a ‘realistic genre’ in the tradition of Persian book painting,33 visible through the thematic content of the pictures. ‘In the course of the second half of the fifteenth century,’ Oleg Grabar pointed out, ‘new themes from the everyday life transform, at least partly, the epic or romantic themes into likely episodes from a real life.’34 Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry have characterised this realism in formal and stylistic terms, noting ‘an interest for the portrait, a heightened sense of naturalism, and livelier compositions that depict the figures in a relatively animated movement’.35 Yet the term ‘realism’ is not an obvious choice. ‘The contemporary audience made no mention of [the] features’ highlighted by Glenn and Lowry, as David Roxburgh has noted.36 The same can be said of Kia’s approach: contrary to Renaissance Europe, primary sources from Iran and Central Asia show no traces of the iconological method that he has relied on.37 Contemporary viewers did not seem to have cultivated any interest in detecting concealed, symbolic meanings. Although extracted from an everyday-life context, the extra-textual figures, moreover, convey a sense of abstraction rather than realism. Stylistically, it is hard to perceive an interest in optical naturalism. Saturated with lines and colours, late Timurid paintings are opaque surfaces rather than transparent windows. Instead of relying on a single-point perspective, they display a multifocal juxtaposition of figures, each seen through a distinct viewpoint and at the same scale, regardless of their position in the real world. Examining visual but also material aspects of the paintings and using a wide range of textual sources revealing some of the terms for the paintings’ reception, this chapter proposes a new argument. The visual density of the paintings, I suggest, was designed to project an

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image of variety and comprehensiveness. In its proportioned, geometric composition, the paintings do not reflect the world as we see it: they achieve a form of generality which, far from confining the picture to a representation of daily routine, was meant to raise the medium above its worldly humble status. Extra-textual forms, moreover, developed in concert with a pursuit of technical perfection. With its smooth, polished surface, the painting obscures the process of its making. Producing an effect of ‘all-at-onceness’, it works to place itself beyond the laws of materiality. Instead of reflecting the world, it appears to be a transcendent image, pointing to God’s design. Severing its ties from both text and reality, emulating an uncreated image, painting, I argue, interrogates its ontological status, associating artistic imagination to divine creation. A Plate of Variegated, Minute Forms ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ dazzles with variety (Plate XI). One can see at once the interior and the exterior of the mosque. Inside the mosque, both the inner courtyard and the inside chamber with its prayer niche are visible. The characters form a comprehensive catalogue of the many activities that take place in a mosque. From hand gestures to garments to tile work to arabesque scrolls, every square inch of the painting proposes something different to look at. The picture defines a visual mode predicated on abundance and minuteness that includes, as well as human figures, a wealth of decorative elements. Filled with variegated shapes and images, the painting further achieves a form of omniscience. Instead of a monofocal perspective of the mosque, the painter has represented different parts of the architecture with a mix of perspectives, offering the viewer unlimited access to the building. From bottom to top, we first look down at the gateway zone, before moving upwards to an aerial view of the tiled floor of the courtyard, and down again, at the top, to a frontal view of the mosque’s interior. It is as if we were seeing through the walls and allowed an impossible perspective of the mosque, viewing all sides of the architecture at once, from its walls to its dome, from the open courtyard to the interior of the iwan to the decoration of the mihrab. In contemporary sources, quantity and variety emerged as two consistent aesthetic qualities of Bihzad’s works. Describing a painting presented by Bihzad at the majlis of the Timurid patron and vizier Mir ‘Ali Shir, Zayn al-Din Mahmud Wasifi (1485–1551 or 1566) noted that it had ‘many different species [gËnågËn] of trees’, ‘beautiful variegated [ßËrat-i bËqalamËn] birds in their branches’ and, ‘on every side’, ‘flowing streams and blossoming rosebushes’.38 The plural form, applied to every noun, highlights multiplicity.

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Adjectives like ‘different’ or ‘variegated’ together with spatial indicators such as ‘on every side’ amplify the sense of visual profusion. The Persian terms used to connote variety in this quote are gËnågËn, which can be translated as ‘different’, and ßËrat-i bËqalamËn, which expresses ‘an image of diverse appearances’. GËnågËn and bËqalamËn were frequently used in Arabic and Persian literature to describe portable objects and, more specifically, surface effects. BËqalamËn is a contraction of the expression abË qalamËn usually employed to designate polychromatic textiles, as well as animals and birds with an iridescent skin or plumage.39 Whether applied to animate or inanimate objects, it describes an object’s changing visual quality, its multicoloured, iridescent and reflective appearances. GËnågËn, a term contracting two occurrences of the word gËna (colour), is close to the term rangarang (multicoloured) and refers to polychromy. According to the dictionary Dehkhoda, it is also a synonym for mutanawwi‘ (varied, variegated). GËnågËn and bËqalamËn emphasise chromatic variety. Bihzad’s painting is compared to a piece of shimmering textile, with a rich colour palette and a brilliant sheen. In ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, more forms emerge as we shift our visual engagement from a fast, identifying glance to a slower, closer mode of looking. Examining the main protagonists, the eye is drawn into the decoration surrounding doors and windows. Following the spiralling arabesques, the beholder discovers other ornamental patterns, for example right behind the door in the geometric decoration of the minbar’s woodwork. Overwhelmed by the minbar, the gaze moves sideways and attempts to find some rest in the seemingly monochromatic floor of the iwan, only to discover that it is in fact covered in the most subtle, in fact almost invisible lines, arranged in symmetrical, concentric triangles. From extra-textual figural elements to geometric details, the eye is struck by the inexhaustible, incredible plenitude of the pictorial field. A quick glance suffices to identify the setting. But the image constitutes an optical feat that demands a much longer, deeper visual engagement. It takes time and close inspection to pinpoint the patterns that adorn the wall behind the minbar. From afar, this little patch of orange wall looks plain. It is in fact composed of microscopic geometric motifs drawn in red (Figure 3.6). The patterns follow a six-fold design, based on the implicit intersection of two triangles, and reveals interlocking variations of arrow shapes and T-shapes.40 These patterns do not necessarily imitate the architectural ornamentations of contemporary Timurid buildings, which favoured fourfold and fivefold geometric design, as Eric Broug has noted. Instead, they recall the repertoire of metalwork, where they serve to create texture.41 Because it is so fine, the design is hardly visible to the naked eye. One has to use a magnifying glass or zoom into the digital

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reproduction. In reality, the wall is only a few millimetres wide. Its widest corner, at the top left, could fit on a fingernail. And yet the painter endeavoured to execute, with only the brush, hundreds of tiny strokes, each drawn without a ruler and without raising the pen from the paper. ‘In precision of form [Bihzad] is hairsplitting, and this is no exaggeration,’ said the Timurid historian Khwandamir in the early sixteenth century. To the incredulous viewer, he added: ‘If you do not believe me that he is perfectly skilled in his art, / Open Figure 3.6  Detail from ‘The Beggar your eyes in justice and look at the unbeliev- at the Mosque’ from the Cairo able pictures.’42 The ‘hair-splitting’ precision Bustan (reproduced in Plate XI). of the details testifies to Bihzad’s dexterity Herat, c. 1488, painting signed by and functions to elicit a feeling of awe. the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar Density and minuteness are often noted in al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 26a. primary sources as two important aesthetic criteria, not just in painting but also in illumination. In an earlysixteenth-century source, the historian Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499–51) describes an illuminated frontispiece executed at the end of the fifteenth century for Sultan Husayn Bayqara: ‫موالنا محمود تذهیب از یاری بهتر کرده است بغایت نازک کرده است دیباچهء برای مرزا‬ ‫سلطان حسین تیار کرده است و ناتمام مانده در انجا هفت سال کرده است چنان باریک ساخته‬ ]‫است که در مفاصل بند رومی که شاید مقدار نیم نخود بوده باشد در انجا یکماهه زر ساخته [که‬ ‫ باشد که همه را گذارده او شستمان کرده‬،‫پنجاه برگ اسلیمی شمرده شده است‬ Mawlana Mahmud has done extremely fine illumination that has surpassed that of Yari. He has prepared a frontispiece for Mirza Sultan Husayn, but it is unfinished. He laboured on it for seven years and made it so intricate that in the joints of the band-i rËmÈ43 patterns, each of which may be half a chickpea in size, he has made of gold a yellow yakmåha44 such that fifty vegetal arabesques45 can be counted – and he has placed and tinted them all. 46 In this close reading of the illuminations, the narrator moves from frame to detail. After pinpointing the general configuration of the page, with its geometric, interlacing composition, he describes the content of the cartouches, offering a close analysis of what he calls the mafåßil – at once the articulations and the details of the composition. The double illuminated frontispiece of the Cairo Bustan invites a similar description (Plates V and VI). In the central field, we see blue and gold interlacing cartouches. Unfolding from a central, lobed

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Figure 3.7  Detail from the first illuminated frontispiece of the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate VI). Herat, c. 1488. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 2b.

medallion, the cartouches form an open-ended tessellation. But when seen up close, the overall arrangement of the page is quickly forgotten in favour of the details that fill in each compartment (Figure 3.7). We discover symmetrical floral and foliage scrolls, lacing together a dazzling catalogue of vegetal forms, both stylised and naturalistic, including leaves, buds in varying stages of development and flowers, some seen face on and others in profile. Close scrutiny reveals an obsessive attention to variety. Leaves range from short and plain to long and bilobed motifs (called halfpalmettes), which may also feature notched contours, spirals at the basis of their lobes and curling tips. Floral patterns display lotus shapes, as well as carnation-, peony- and geranium-like flowers. While illuminated pages were usually limited to vegetal and geometric motifs, the frontispiece includes several birds, intertwined with spiralling stems and stylised clouds. We can identify geese, both female and male, and the fantastical phoenix, with its elaborate plumage. As in Bihzad’s paintings, the eye is drawn in, marvelling at the proliferation of forms, counting and naming each pattern. Intricacy and abundance fashion a scenario of reception where close looking creates a sense of wonder. Illuminations and paintings abound with forms and yet each motif can be discerned and named, even at very close range. Neither proliferation nor miniaturisation impedes legibility. According to Muhammad Haydar Dughlat, the sixteenth-century painter Mawlana Darwish Muhammad ‘made a picture of a rider who has picked up a lion on a spear’, and ‘the entire [picture] fits on the end of a grain of rice’.47 No matter how small it is miniaturised, the scene retains its representational illusion.

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Figure 3.8  Composite album page with a fifteenth-century study sheet and two small pieces of calligraphy. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2160, folio 55a.

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This is linked to what Robert Hillenbrand has called ‘the artist’s grasp of interval’ in Timurid painting.48 Whether in Bihzad’s paintings or in the illuminations, just as on a scientific plate, the signs have been arranged with enough space between them so that they can each be singled out and grasped by the eye. Even as the picture is filled with details, there is no overlap between them, no mixing or blurring. Each painting, moreover, contains different centres, each viewed frontally. We do not read through the image but back and forth across the pictorial field, moving from one vignette to another, from one cartouche of illuminations to the next. A mosaic of frontal viewpoints, the composition is polycentric and multifocal. Like an atlas, it seems to have been conceived as a display case or a catalogue, as an object designed to show and indicate – in this case, a wide variety of forms. As such, the painting recalls the medium of the album, which developed at the same time. Albums preserve a mixture of paintings, drawings and calligraphies, representing different stages of the design process.49 One album page includes a fifteenth-century study sheet and, at the top, two small pieces of calligraphy extracted from different manuscripts (Figure 3.8).50 The study deploys various motifs, including animal heads, both real and fabulous, human figures wearing different clothing and headgear, as well as, interspersed between them, isolated, stylised palmettes. Most figures are painted in opaque colours but some elements, such as the crane at the top left, are drawn in a monochrome technique in ink. The study constitutes a visual catalogue of motifs, views, colours and techniques. Interestingly, the motifs are oriented away from the centre and towards the outer edges of the album page, in a way that enhances the display function of the sheet. As indicated by the hands depicted at the bottom right, the viewer is invited to turn the page, as though indeed it were a plate, anti-clockwise, and look at each motif separately, from the page’s outer edges. The paintings of the Cairo Bustan can be read in a similar way: as a collection of forms, in which each motif stands on its own, while contributing to a general effect of variety. Ideal Mimesis If variety and detail do not impede visibility, they do not yield to realism either. The paintings resist the randomness of reality. Despite variations in age, posture or clothing, the human figures, for example, have the same size, body shape and proportions. This consistency creates harmony and beauty, recalling the fourteenthcentury calligrapher ‘Abdallah Sayrafi’s description of calligraphic proportions: ‫در صفحه تناسب حروف کردن مستحسن است و در سطری واجب است‬

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On the page, the letters’ proportionality produces a pleasing effect and suits the line.51 Proportionality in painting results from the use of a grid called the mastar. The grid was originally developed to guide the calligrapher’s hand in writing. It is composed of several horizontal lines, placed at regular intervals, each corresponding to a line of text. The lines are blind; they were traced either with a dry point or by pressing on the threads of a ruling board (mistara or satara).52 Painters started using the mastar53 at the end of the thirteenth century to organise the composition, creating, as Yves Porter has noted, the ‘geometric normalisation’ of the painting.54 In the Cairo Bustan, the mastar is composed of twenty-three lines and was used to construct both text and image (Figure 3.9). In the paintings, it clearly determines the size and scale of the human figures. A face, for instance, fits within one interline, while standing figures are deployed across six or seven lines. The grid has the effect of homogenising the figures. It also ensures that similar motifs are represented at the same scale, regardless of their position in the composition. The mastar functions to contain the randomness and contingency of the world, turning the accidental variations of reality into balanced patterns. Persian painting relies on abstraction and conceptualisation, rather than mere observation. The world is viewed not empirically but platonically. Instead of depicting a particular face, the painter has represented its structural characteristics, focusing on its rotundity and its proportions to the body.55 Emphasising general qualities as opposed to incidental specificities, each form constitutes an ideal concept rather than a realistic portrait. Each form, in fact, is a sura (pl. suwar), a word often used in arthistoriographical writings in combination with the word ma‘ni (meaning) to designate, in line with Neoplatonic conceptions of the image,56 the embodiment of an idea.57 In an often-cited quotation from the end of the sixteenth century, the Mughal vizir Abu’l-Fazl explains: What we call form [pl. ßuwar] leads us to recognize a body; the body itself leads us to what we call a notion, an idea [ma‘nÈ]. Thus on seeing the form of a letter, we recognize the letter, and this again will lead us to some idea. It is similar in the case of what people term a picture.58 As Priscilla Soucek and others have shown, sura resonates with the Neoplatonic notion of ideal mimesis defined by Plotinus in the third century: The arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitating natural objects, for to begin with, those natural objects

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Figure 3.9  ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ with mastar, from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XI). Herat, c. 1488, signed by the painter Bihzad. 30.5 × 21.5 cm (folio). Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 26a.

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are themselves imitations; then, we must recognize that they give us no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Reason-Principles from which Nature itself derives, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own, they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking.59 Sura does not reflect reality: while it can lead to the identification of an actual object, it ultimately points to the idea underlying it.60 According to the court painter and poet Sadiqi Beg Afshar (d. 1609– 10), the task of the artist is to see ‘beyond the rules of sight’ and to discover how, by the art of painting (ßËratgarÈ), ‘what [is] intrinsically real within a meaning (ma‘nå) [can] be represented, to all appearances, through its external form (ßËrat)’.61 ‘With their gazes held firmly on Creation,’ Mir Sayyid Ahmad wrote in the preface of a Safavid album dated 1564–5, artists ‘transcribe a copy from every prototype.’62 Artists have access to ideal forms, prototypes comparable to ‘the mould used in building or the loom used in weaving’, in the expression of the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun.63 As a result, the images they produce are models rather than copies, representations of the ideas from which reality is made rather than reflections of what already exists.64 Painting takes us back and forth between existence and essence, shadow and substance, producing ‘a bright, pure, luminous world, beyond the reach of terrestrial sight’, as Yves Porter wrote.65 Form, in fact, is the only way of making meaning intelligible to the eye, as Awhad al-Din Kirmani (d. 1237–8) wrote in a poem that was also quoted by ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414–92) in his Nafa˙åt al-uns: With the eyes of the head we witness forms Because the trace of [any] meaning [must] appear in a form. This world is a form and we [have the shape] of figures One can only see the meaning [behind the figures] through the form.66 It is in light of this Neoplatonic inspiration that the literary trope of illusionism should be approached. Painters were often described as magicians, manipulating the boundaries of representation in order to create lifelike images. A letter describing the court of the Timurid sultan Iskandar Sultan in early-fifteenth-century Isfahan introduces the artist Mawlana ‘Abd al-‘Ali in these terms: among the experimented artists in fine arts (ßan‘at), especially those who are part of the royal library, [is] Mawlana ‘Abd al-‘Ali whose hand, when it draws portraits (ßurat-nigår), bans the name of Mani and whose qalam’s tip produces magical effects and gives a soul to paintings.67

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In the sixteenth century, Sadiqi Beg Afshar used the same topos to praise the late Timurid painter Shah Muzaffar: When drawn to picture animate life, his achievements were sheer wizardry and miracle. When minded to portray a certain person, his creative imagination could penetrate to the inner man beneath. And none could truly distinguish between original and likeness – unless, perhaps, purely physical considerations of motion were invoked.68 In the various eulogies written about Bihzad, the lifelike quality of his paintings was a recurrent theme. According to Khwandamir, Bihzad’s brush ‘has imparted life to inanimate forms’.69 ‘His picture of a bird’, in the words of Mir Sayyid Ahmad, ‘is so charming that, like Jesus’ bird, it comes to life’.70 This verse alludes to a story of the Qur’an. With the permission of God, Jesus shaped a bird from clay before breathing life into it. The miracle was predicted by the angel Gabriel when he appeared to Mary to announce the nativity of Jesus in Qur’an 3:49. God, Gabriel presaged, would make Jesus a messenger (rasËl), who would then say: ‫أني قد جئتكم بآية من ربكم أني أخلق لكم من الطين كهيئة الطير فأنفخ فيه فيكون طيرا بإذن هللا‬ Indeed I have come to you with a sign from your Lord in that I design for you from clay [that which is] like the form of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird by permission of Allah. The miracle, like the curing of the blind man and the leper mentioned in the same sËrat (chapter), demonstrates Jesus’ prophecy. It is mentioned again in very similar terms in Qur’an 5:110. This is an anticipation of God’s address to Jesus on the day when God will assemble the prophets: ‫] إذ تخلق من الطين كهيئة الطير بإذني فتنفخ فيها فتكون‬...[ ‫يا عيسى ابن مريم اذكر نعمتي عليك‬ ‫طيرا بإذني‬ O Jesus, Son of Mary, remember My favour upon you […] when you designed from clay [what was] like the form of a bird with My permission, then you breathed into it, and it became a bird with My permission. The miracle of Jesus’ bird is a reenactment of God’s own creation. Twice in the Qur’an, we read that God created ‘a human being from clay’, ‘proportioned him’ and ‘breathed into him of His soul’ (Qur’an 15:28–9 and 38:71–2). Just as Jesus’ creation, Bihzad’s art is licit, and it is divinely inspired, as Mir Sayyid Ahmad suggested. As well as addressing the

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appearance of pictures, illusionism was used to legitimise the art of painting and to highlight the artist’s prophetic status. Poetry too was thought to be of divine origin, and paintings helped to visualise this idea. Sa‘di is represented as a God-inspired poet in Jami’s Sub˙at al-abrår (The Rosary of the Pious). The topic was illustrated in Safavid painting. Symbolising divine inspiration, angels are depicted carrying trays of light to Sa‘di (Figure 2.8).71 A similar painting comes from the Jalayirid copy of Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis.72 It illustrates the story of a young prince who saw an angel in his dream.73 The prince is sleeping at the centre of the iwan. The angel appears at the back, framed by a window. To the right, more angels are standing among swirling clouds, presenting gifts and golden trays. As the first painting of the Diwan, the picture would have acted as a pictorial preface, offering a portrait of the poet as divinely inspired, as Teresa Fitzherbert has suggested.74 The page was later removed from the manuscript in the early sixteenth century and inserted into the album of Bahram Mirza, where it served to highlight the connection between artistic process and divine inspiration.75 This perspective is provided by the preface of the album, which heavily insists on the prophetic origins of painting, as David Roxburgh has shown.76 Like poets, painters too could be considered as prophets. The Timurid historian Khwandamir (c. 1475–1534) characterised Bihzad as ‘a creator (maΩhar) of marvellous forms and a revealer (maΩhar) of rare artistic manifestations’.77 The word maΩhar connotes the artist’s ability to move beyond the illusions of reality and to unveil the essence of things, and his capacity to abstract from reality the concepts that have shaped the actual world. It also highlights the prophetic quality of such skill, its ­similarity to the act of revealing divine truth. In the Qanun al-suwar (Canons of Painting), Sadiqi Beq realised his artistic vocation after hearing an inner voice, which ordered him to pursue the practice of art. Overwhelmed with joy, Sadiqi Beq evoked Bihzad as a saint, a divine model, whose inspiration could help him become a painter of ideal forms: ‘I clung to but one profound hope: to be inspired by a touch of the Bihzad. And then, bare of illusory passions, I could paint the bazaar-world of pictured things with the sole idea of drawing near to their real nature.’78 This ‘real nature’ of things that the painter attempts to approximate is not actual reality. The aim is not to create a painting filled with likenesses of real objects but, rather, to imagine the ideal world: in a gesture similar to God’s creation, to produce the moulds from which reality was (or can be) made. Uncreated Image and Potential World Variety and idealism, combined with the diagrammatic composition of paintings, evoke a legendary, ubiquitous subject of Persian

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literature known as the Arzhang or Arzhangi (sometimes also transliterated as Artang). Associated with Mani, the third-century founder of Manichaeism, the Arzhang is often defined as a painted portable object, either a book of paintings or a painted textile, as Stephano Pello has shown in his recent lexicographical survey of the Arzhang in medieval Persian dictionaries.79 In the mid-fourteenth-century dictionary DastËr al-afå∂il, Arzhang is defined as ‘a painting on a curtain where Mani the painter had drawn the images of the whole world’.80 In the mid-sixteenth century, Dust Muhammad similarly described the Arzhang as a silk on which Mani painted ‘the likenesses (ßËrat) of humans, animals, trees, birds and various shapes’.81 Whatever the medium, whether an album page or Bihzad’s painting, Mani’s Arzhang comprises a broad array of forms, encompassing human, animal and vegetal elements and figurative and abstract motifs. In its encyclopaedic ambition, Mani’s Arzhang intersects and overlaps with many other literary themes, as Pello has further suggested. In the Farhang-i JahångÈrÈ, one of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the Persian language, composed in India in the early seventeenth century, it is compared to a book in which Tanglusha or Lusha, normally identified as the first-century scholar Teucer of Babylon, collected ‘likenesses, paintings, illumination motifs, geometric decorations, and other techniques and artifices invented by him in the field of drawing and painting’.82 Like Mani’s Arzhang, the book of Lusha is an anthology of the artist’s work. Mixing different techniques and motifs, it demonstrates the artist’s mastery and imagination. In the early-fourteenth-century dictionary Si˙å˙ al-furs, Arzhang is conflated with the mythical ‘picture-gallery of China’.83 Sometimes related to actual Manichean structures known as manistans, supposed to contain a room for the display of images, or to the painted caves of Dunhuang located on the Silk Road in China, the ‘picturegallery of China’ is characterised by its comprehensiveness. As Dust Muhammad noted, it was known ‘to contain images of all existing things’,84 which might also explain why it was compared to or even confused with the Arzhang. In Timurid and Safavid art historiographical documents, Mani’s attribute is designated as the ‘law˙-i artangÈ’ or the ‘Artangi Tablet’.85 This appellation emphasises the painting’s tabular aspect. One can imagine the Arzhang as a tablet, partitioned into different cells, each containing a painting or a drawing. In contrast with a book and its linear, successive progression, the tablet offers the possibility to catch a glimpse of the totality of an artist’s work, thus achieving both comprehensiveness and synchronicity. In Dust Muhammad’s account, Mani’s painting is also characterised by a form of ideal mimesis, its various shapes ‘occur[ing] only in the mirror of the mind through the eye of imagination’. Dust Muhammad compares the Arzhang to a ‘page of possibility’.86

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Like an architectural plan, the Arzhang is a design for a potential creation, not a reflection of reality. Its mimetic quality should not be confounded with a form of realism. Rather, the painting constitutes a prognostication of the future, a collection of the ideal forms from which the world can be produced again. Lifting the veil on the essence of things, it was used by Mani as a miracle to demonstrate his status as a mediator of Truth.87 Variety, potentiality and the painting’s tabular quality further link Mani’s Arzhang and Bihzad’s pictures to another object: the Preserved Tablet of God (al-law˙ al-ma˙fËz in Arabic and law˙-i ma˙fËz in Persian).88 This object is mentioned in a self-referential passage of the Qur’an (85:21–2): ‫بل هو قرءان مجيد‬ ‫في لوح محفوظ‬ Yet this is a glorious Qur’an In a tablet preserved The verse can be read in at least two different ways: either the Qur’an is preserved on an actual tablet, or the tablet serves as a metaphor highlighting the eternal, inalterable nature of the Qur’an. It is also hard to decide from this verse whether the adjective ‘preserved’ applies to the Qur’an or to the tablet. The latter interpretation, however, has usually been preferred, giving rise to the concept of the ‘Preserved Tablet’. A multivalent, widespread motif in exegetical and literary sources, the ‘Preserved Tablet’ designates the pre-existent, eternal version of the revealed Qur’an. It sometimes also refers to the recordings of Creation, to a site containing all that exists and will exist. Summarising the exegetical tradition, Daniel A. Madigan noted that the Tablet was thought to contain ‘the characteristics of everything created, and everything about creatures, the length of their lives, their allotted sustenance, their actions, the verdict to be pronounced on them, the eventual punishment for their actions’.89 In the Qur’an, another image is the ‘open book’, which records all things, down to the grain lying hidden in the darkest corner of the world (Qur’an 6:59): ‫و عنده مفاتح الغيب ال يعلمها إال هو و يعلم ما في البر و البحر و ما تسقط من ورقة إال يعلمها و ال‬ ‫حبة في ظلمات األرض وال رطب و ال يابس إال في كتاب مبين‬ And with Him are keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls without His knowledge, nor a grain in the darkest [recess] of the earth, nor any thing green or seared that is not recorded in the open book.

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In Timurid and Safavid art historiographical sources, divine creation and the medium of painting often allegorise each another. Khwandamir characterised God as ‘the painter of eternity’, depicting ‘with the pen of divine favour the human album in the best form’, thus ‘bringing into existence the forms of the ever-changing workshop’.90 Dust Muhammad described God as an artist ‘using the hand of Mercy and the pen’, ‘paint[ing] masterfully on the canvas on being’.91 Conversely, painting could be described in terms that recall God’s creative power. Dust Muhammad described a painting by Bihzad’s rival, the Safavid painter Sultan Muhammad, as a ‘tablet of vision’ (law˙-i baßar) on which the painter, ‘with the pen of his fingertips’, ‘has drawn a different form at each and every instant’.92 Containing the designs of all things, the ‘tablet of vision’ resembles the ‘open book’ or the ‘Preserved Tablet’ used in the Qur’an to characterise God’s creation. ‘What the artist represents does not correspond to what he sees’; rather, his aim is to reveal ideal forms, perhaps ‘the archetypal forms recorded on the “Preserved Tablet”’, as David Roxburgh suggested.93 The characterisation of God as an artist painting on the ‘canvas of being’ conveys a paradox. When Dust Muhammad speaks of the ‘tablet of being’ and the ‘page of existence’, or when he describes God’s ‘mirror of creation’ as a ‘locus of manifestation for names and traces’,94 he uses material objects to designate immaterial archetypes. God’s design, however, was supposed to be uncreated. While leading to the material world, God’s process of creation escapes time. The same holds for the Qur’an: although bound up in the materiality of sound, the Qur’an is believed to be uncreated. A similar tension between creation and uncreatedness can be detected in the Cairo Bustan’s paintings, which function to conceal any trace of brushwork.95 After the execution of the underdrawing, the pigments were applied in a homogeneous, unmodulated way, creating a composition of flat, dense colours, enlivened by flashes of gold. The palette is dominated by primary colours, made with minerals and inorganic pigments: blue, made from lapis lazuli; vermilion red, made from mercury sulfide; and green verdigris, made from copper acetate. Pigments were also mixed to create different shades, for example for the faces and the garments.96 But whatever the colour, one cannot see through the paint: this opacity is characterised as jismÈ in Persian sources, an adjective that means ‘corporeal’, ‘substantial’ or ‘thick’.97 After the execution of the outline, applied around each block of colour as a continuous line of black ink, the painting was finally polished with a burnisher.98 A highly controlled composition, set with a myriad of intense, brilliant pieces of colour, Bihzad’s paintings have a gem-like quality that recalls Timurid lapidary arts (Figure 3.13). Shining like a gemstone, with its enamel-like, polished surface, the painting looks self-made or as though stamped onto the page, conjuring up the notion of the

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Figure 3.10  Stencilled page with angels from a fifteenth-century safina of poetry. 19 × 8.2 cm (folio). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1798, folio 72b.

acheiropoieton, the icon made without hands – in Byzantine culture, such images were thought to be made by angels.99 By the end of the fifteenth century, the aesthetics of uncreatedness had developed across different media and techniques of book arts. One can think, for example, of stencilling (‘aks), used in Persian books as early as the end of the fourteenth century (Figure 3.10).100 In late Timurid Herat, stencil makers were as famous as painters – Kepek ‘Akkas al-Harawi was praised by the author and calligrapher of the album preface, Shams al-Din Muhammad Wasfi, as ‘the rarity of the age’.101 In stencilling, the artist uses an intermediary sheet of paper with a design cut from it, before applying pigments through the cut-out holes of the stencil onto a surface. As a result, motifs are not drawn by the hand of the artist. They are produced by the contrast between void and colour, either negatively when the ground is coloured, or positively, when the ground is left blank. A small, oblong anthology of Persian poetry from the mid-fifteenth century proposes a wide range of experiments on the decorative potential of paper. Extremely fine paper alternates with coloured pages dyed in ochre, purple and salmon, as well as imitations of marbled paper using bands of red and brown colourants. A double folio displays symmetrical, stencilled motifs in its margins (Figure 3.10). A pair of confronted angels, enmeshed with scrolls of stylised clouds, animal heads and floral designs, emerges from a sprayed paper ground. The figures are left in reserve while the ground is pigmented, reversing the technique of painting. Stencilling is like painting without a brush, as primary sources put it.102 Decoupage, or paper cutting, was another technique that entailed the removal of its makers’ bodily traces.103 One of the most

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astonishing examples is a late Timurid copy of Sultan Husayn’s Diwan (Collected Poems) made around 1490 in Herat and now partially dispersed (Figure 3.11).104 The calligraphy was made entirely from negative decoupage. The text copied by the calligrapher’s hand in a bold nasta‘liq script at seven to ten lines per page was cut out with a penknife, before the page was laid over a second sheet of coloured paper. As a result of this superimposition, the lines of text are both hollow and coloured. Literally emptied of the calligrapher’s presence, the text appears as though entirely made of paper, with no trace of penwork. According to visual evidence, Persian marbled paper developed at the same moment. The earliest documented example, two sheets of paper in the Kronos collection in New York, was executed in fifteenth-century Iran (Figure 3.12).105 Marbling starts by floating paint on the surface of a mucilaginous liquid.106 Because the colours are lighter than the liquid, they spread across the surface. The painter can manipulate them in order to form patterns. A sheet of paper is then laid out on top of the liquid to capture the image. Marbling produces a great variety of shapes without the use of a brush. This technique was often employed to represent marble in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds. In a description by the tenth-century poet Ibn Buhturi, the striped marble of the Abbasid palace of Samarra is compared to ‘streaks of rainclouds arrayed between clouds, dark and light, and striped, coming together and mingling’.107 Timurid stonework worked towards the same aim: manifesting uncreated images. This is stated explicitly in the epigraphic inscription of an agate cup that belonged to Sultan Husayn (Figure 3.13):108 This cup, which gives good news of rose-coloured wine, is [worth] more than a thousand of Jamshid’s goblets. When it is filled with rosy wine, you would say it is a cloud lit by the brilliance of the sun. This cup, which you can see pouring draughts like a cloud, is a sea with whirlpools on every side. No, no, since it is constantly full of agate wine, it is a mountain that is a mine of molten rubies.109 In addition to affirming the vessel’s purpose as a wine cup, these verses describe, proleptically, the aesthetic experience of the viewer. Specifically, they foreground the metaphoric possibilities of the vessel. Filled with wine, the cup evokes other materials such as rubies. Exposed to light and held at different angles, it reveals a glowing, iridescent surface, traversed by undulating patterns of light. With its ripple effects and reflective qualities evoking waves of light and water, it conjures ‘a cloud lit by the brilliance of the sun’ or ‘a sea with whirlpools on every side’, producing an atmospheric spectacle.

potential world

Figure 3.11  Page of decoupage from a copy of the Diwan of Sultan Husayn Bayqara. Herat (?), c. 1490. 22.5 × 13.3 cm (folio). New York, Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund, 45.4.3.

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Figure 3.12  Marbled paper. Iran, 15th century. 20.2 × 11.8 cm. New York, Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections.

potential world

Figure 3.13  Wine cup of Sultan Husayn Bayqara. Herat, 1470. Carved agate, 5.5 cm (height). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.27.

The cup is a reservoir of latent pictures or ‘potential images’, as Dario Gamboni puts it.110 Sultan Husayn’s cup is also compared to Jamshid’s goblet. This is the Persian version of a ubiquitous motif in medieval and early modern Islamic literature: the world-showing cup, a magical vessel that could reflect the world.111 In the Shahnama of Firdawsi, ancient Iranian kings use it as a divinatory tool to foresee events and discover inaccessible truths. The concave form of the cup analogised the form of the heavens, and ‘thus invoked deliberation on the nature of magical vision and reflection’, as Oya Pancaro©lu noted.112 The comparison with Jamshid’s glass enhances the reflective power of Sultan Husayn’s cup, its ability to reveal unknown images and its capacity to shape its users’ subjective responses. Bihzad’s paintings manifest, similarly, a generative model of vision, where looking produces new images. These images work to transcend actual or past reality. Just as Jamshid’s cup visualises the future, painting represents a ‘potential world’, to use a notion recently redefined in literary theory. A ‘possible world’ is ‘not a world ramifying from the actual state of affairs, but a world logically and ontologically parallel to the actual world’, Ruth Ronen wrote.113 Scholars developed this notion in reaction to the dominant approach to mimesis, wherein representation remains subordinated to the actual world (this approach has also dominated the scholarship of

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Persian painting – both realism and mystical symbolism foreground the image as an illustration of pre-given elements, extracted from either nature or text).114 Possible-world theory asserts, by contrast, that art can create a plurality of fictional ontologies. In the Cairo Bustan, painting has the same ambition: projecting an ideal reality, parallel to the actual world. It thus acts as a commentary on pictorial reference, contradicting causal theories of the picture – the idea that the image, as a representational device, refers back to some exterior meaning. In trying to convince viewers that they are looking at a tablet of ideal, primordial forms, the painting aspires to resemble, not reality itself, but the matrix from which reality was produced and can be produced again. Persian painting interrogates its ontological boundaries. Is it a created image? Or an uncreated thing? And who is this painter who can compete with God? We move from created object, to uncreated picture, to creative subject. While trying to define its relationship to text, world and God’s creation, painting also functions as a vehicle of self-display. The artist’s hand, it asserts, is guided neither by previous models nor by textual aids. Rather, the painter uses his internalised knowledge of the ideal world. In ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, Bihzad does not rely on Jami’s text to determine the plan and the decoration of the palace (Plate XIII). His representation of space does not reflect any known architecture. But the palace, a multifaceted image, is a testimony to his indefatigable imagination. It stages a mode of image-making that connects artistic inspiration to God’s creation. If Bihzad does not illustrate Jami’s text in a literal way, he does compete with the designer of Zulaykha’s palace, fashioning the picture to say of the painter what Jami claimed about the palace’s architect: ‫به نقش آفرینش چون زدی رای‬ ‫شدی از خامه لوح هستی آرای‬ When he turned his thoughts to making pictures, By his pen he adorned the tablet of being.115 Notes 1. For Jami’s text, see Jami, 1997–9, 2:125, verses 2227–68. 2. As such, the painting recalls the phenomenon of the multistable image ‘whose primary function’, W. T. J. Mitchell wrote, ‘is to illustrate the co-existence of contrary or simply different readings in the single image’ (Mitchell, 1994, 45). 3. London, British Library, Or. 14832, folio 83b: Bustan of Sa‘di, dated 1459–60, perhaps made in Shiraz, eighty-seven folios, 16.9 × 10 cm (folio), four paintings (Waley, 1998, 51). 4. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 45, folio 91b: Yusuf wa Zulaykha of Jami, dated 1533–4, seven paintings (Stchoukine, 1959, no. 13).

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5. Kia, 2009, 5; Kia, 2012, 2. 6. For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 1, 25–6; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 1, story 2. 7. These independent scenes were described by Robert Hillenbrand as a recurrent feature of Timurid painting: ‘Most common of all, perhaps, are scenes in which the figures are caught in mid-activity, silhouetted in some distinctive pose with clear space all around them’ (Hillenbrand, 1992, 92). 8. Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, 73: Bustan of Sa‘di, dated 1525, probably made in Herat, copied by Qasim ibn Shadi Shah, 157 folios, 22.5 × 14.5 cm (folio) (Soudavar, 1992, no. 73, figure 73a). 9. For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, chapter 3, 88–9; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, chapter 3, story 47. 10. Sa‘di, 1974, verse 1803. 11. On the representation of beholders in Persian painting, see Saviello, 2015. 12. Priscilla Soucek, ‘Color’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.irani caonline.org/articles/color-pers-rang (accessed January 2017). 13. Another example of illustrative painting is in a late-fifteenth- to earlysixteenth-century copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Each picture focuses on the story, only depicting the characters cited by the text (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.620, folio 25a; www.thedigitalwalters.org/ Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W620/ [accessed January 2017]). 14. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, B. 411, folio 161b: anthology, dated 1413, Isfahan (Roxburgh, 1996, 632–41; Roxburgh, 2005, 106–17 and figure 64; Wright, 2012, 171–2). 15. The title reads: ‫عاشق شدن درویش بر شاه زاده از گفتار شیخ عطار‬ 16. The title reads: ‫حکایت صیاد و سگ و روباه از گفتار شیخ نظامی‬ 17. The title reads: ‫کشتی گرفتن رستم با پوالدوند از گفتار فردوسی‬ 18. For the complete version, see Firdawsi, 1992, verses 1205–1312. For an English translation, see Firdawsi, 1905–25, 3:257 sq.   The selection reads: ‫چو خورشید بنمود تابان درفش معصفر شد آن پرنیان بنفش‬ ‫تبیره برآمد ز درگاه شاه بابر اندر آمد خروش سپاه‬ ‫بپیش سپه بود پوالدوند بتن زورمند و ببازو کمند‬ ‫بیامد بنزدیک ایرانیان بر آمد یکی تذکر؟ و از میان‬ ‫چو صف برکشیدند هر دو سپاه هوا شد بنفش و زمین شد سیاه‬ ‫تهمتن بپوشید ببر بیان نشست از بر زین؟ ژنده پیل ژیان‬ ‫برآشفت و بر میمنه حمله برد ز ترکان بیفگند بسیار گرد‬ ‫ازان پس غمی گشت پوالدوند ز فتراک بگشاد پیچان کمند‬ ‫خروشی برآمد ز ایران سپاه نماند ایچ گرد اندر آوردگاه‬ ‫بگفتند با رستم کینه‌ خواه که پوالدوند اندرین رزمگاه‬ ‫بزین بر یکی نامداری نماند ز گردان لشکر سواری نماند‬ ‫که نفگند بر خاک پوالدوند بگرز و بخنجر بتیر و کمند‬ ‫چو بشنید رستم دژم گشت سخت بلرزید برسان برگ درخت‬ ‫بدو گفت کای دیو ناسازگار ببینی کنون گردش روزگار‬ ‫بدو گفت پوالدوند ای دلیر جهاندیده و نامبردار و شیر‬ ‫نگه کن کنون آتش جنگ من کمند و دل و زور و آهنگ من‬ ‫چنین گفت رستم بپوالدوند که تا چند ازین بیم و نیرنگ و بند‬ ‫ز جنگ آوران تیز گویا مباد چو باشد دهد بی گمان سر بباد‬ ‫چو بشنید پوالدوند این سخن بیاد آمدش گفته های کهن‬ ‫بدو گفت کای مرد رزم آزمای چه باشیم برخیره چندین بپای‬

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‫عمودی بزد بر سرش پیلتن که بشنید آواز او انجمن‬ ‫چنان تیره شد چشم پوالدوند که دستش عنان را نبد کار بند‬ ‫چو پوالدوند از بر زین بماند تهمتن جهان آفرین را بخواند‬ ‫که ای برتر از گردش روزگار جهاندار و بینا و پروردگار‬ ‫گر من شوم کشته بر دست اوی بایران نماند یكی جنگجوی‬ ‫چو مگر تشد ان در ؟ پوالدواند برستم چنین گفت کایی دیو بند‬ ‫بکشتی گرفتن دلم را هواست بدو گفت رستم که شاید رواست‬ ‫بکشتی گرفتن نهادند روی دو گرد سرافراز و دو جنگجوی‬ ‫میان سپه نیم فرسنگ بود ستاره نظاره بران جنگ بود‬ ‫که پوالدوند و تهمتن بهم برآویختند آن دو شیر دژم‬ ‫چو شیده بر و یال رستم بدید یكی باد سرد از جگر برکشید‬ ‫پدر را چنین گفت كین زورمند که خوانی ورا رستم دیوبند‬ ‫هم آکنون سر دیو پوالدوند بخاک اندر آرم ز چرخ بلند‬ ‫بدشنام بگشاد خسرو زبان برآشفت و شد با پسر بدگمان‬ ‫عنان برگرایید و آمد چو شیر بوردگاه دو مرد دلیر‬ ‫نگه کرد پیکار دو پیل مست درآورده بر یکدگر هر دو دست‬ ‫بپوالد گفت ای سرافراز شیر بکشتی گر آری مر او را بزیر‬ ‫بخنجر جگرگاه او را بکاف هنر باید از کار کردن نه الف‬ ‫نگه کرد گیو اندر افراسیاب بدان خیره گفتار و چندان شتاب‬ ‫بیاد همی دل بیافروزدش بکشتی درون خنجر آموزدش‬ ‫بدو گفت رستم که جنگی منم بکشتی گرفتن درنگی منم‬ ‫شما را چرا بیم آید همی چرا دل به دو نیم آید همی‬ ‫وزان پس بیازید چون شیر چنگ گرفت آن بر و یال جنگی نهنگ‬ ‫بگردن برآورد و زد بر زمین همی خواند بر کردگار افرین‬ ‫خروشی بر آمد ز ایران سپاه تبیره زنان برگرفتند راه‬ ‫بابر اندر آمد دم کرنای خروشیدن نای و صنج و درای‬ ‫تمت‬ 19. Several primary textual sources mention these and other wall paintings in Timurid palaces. Authors include the Spanish ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo, the Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi and the Mughal emperor Babur. For references and a discussion of these sources, see Golombek and Wilber, 1988, 1:38 and 175–6; Lentz, 1993; Golombek, 1995. In the mausoleum of Shah-i Zinda built for one of Timur’s sisters, Shirin Agha, non-figurative wall paintings have survived (Golombek and Wilber, 1988, 1:242–3 and 2: figures 63–5). Traces of wall paintings can be seen in the madrasa built for Saray Mulk Khanum around 1397 in Samarqand (Golombek and Wilber, 1988, 1:254–5 and 2: figures 63–5; O’Kane, 2005). 20. Ibn ‘Arabshah might have seen the wall paintings. He was eleven years old when Timur invaded his city, Damascus, in 1400. With other members of his family, he was taken captive and brought to Timur’s capital, Samarqand. He stayed there between 1401 and 1409, thus long after Timur’s death. After a few years of peregrinating, he returned to Damascus in 1422. In 1427–8, he began to write a book about Timur. On his life and works, see McChesney, 2006. 21. Ibn ‘Arabshah, 1979, 331; English translation from Ibn ‘Arabshah, 1936, 309–10. 22. Illusionism was not specific to wall paintings. In the Khamsa of Nizami, for example, portraits too were expected to challenge the limits between representation and presence, between image and person. Shirin falls in love with Khosrow upon seeing the latter’s portrait as the result of a presumed identity between the painting and

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the object represented in it (on this point and for further examples, see Porter, 1995). 23. London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 45b. One can conveniently zoom into the high-resolution digital reproductions available online at www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_181 13 (accessed January 2017). 24. Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 61 or no. 716, p. 401: Shahnama of Firdawsi, Herat, 1430, copied by Ja‘far al-Baysunghuri, 346 folios, 38 × 26 cm (folio) (Hillenbrand, 2010). 25. Hillenbrand, 1992, 78. 26. Roxburgh, 2003, 25. 27. The inscription reads: ‫هذه قلعه منقشه لیس فی الکائنات تالیها طیب؟ هللا عیش امیرها خلد هللا ملک والیها‬ 28. London, British Library, IO Islamic 138, folio 125b: Khamsa of Jamali, dated 1465, Baghdad, 210 folios, 31 × 25.2 cm (folio), six paintings (www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=IO_Islamic_138 [accessed January 2017]). On the manuscript, see Robinson, 1976b, 16–23 and plates 74–9; Orsatti, 1996. Before Basil Robinson connected it to Turkmen book arts, the manuscript was first attributed to the so-called ‘school’ of Bihzad at Herat, so strong are its similarities with late Timurid painting. 29. Kia, 2006; Kia, 2009; Kia, 2012. 30. The painting is in London, British Library, Or. 6810, folio 144b: Khamsa of Nizami, copied in 1494–5 in Herat, 303 folios, 25 × 17 cm (folio), twenty-two paintings (Bahari, 1996, 129–56; www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Or_6810 [accessed January 2017]). 31. Kia, 2012. 32. Chad Kia focuses on late Timurid painting because the historical context of the late fifteenth century shows an increased interest in Sufi literature. Mystical imagery does surface in the paintings and its emergence in the pictorial field is certainly linked to the pervasiveness of mysticism during that period. One must note, however, that extra-textual figures were not limited to this particular period. In the anthology of Iskandar Sultan made in Shiraz in 1410–11, a painting shows Layla and Majnun fainting at their meeting (London, British Library, Add. 27261, folio 131b; www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?ref=Add_MS_27261 [accessed January 2017]). Around the scene, the painter included images of an encampment similar to those of the later Timurid image that Kia has discussed. These motifs were repeated throughout the fifteenth century, as can be seen in Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 378. How can one attribute a fixed, historically situated meaning to images that have circulated across contexts without discussing the significance of such itinerancy? Another way to look at the extra-textual figures would indeed be through the notion of repetition. Figures could be replicated in different contexts (compare, for example, Plate IV and Figure 2.7). ‘Even paintings that appear to be composed of carefully observed details from life,’ Lentz and Lowry noted, ‘are usually pastiches of elements from other paintings’ (Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 278). In both painting and calligraphy, imitation ‘shows a self-conscious engagement with a visual past, an art history conceived not only in terms of generations of practitioners but as

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

a history of style’, Roxburgh added (Roxburgh, 2005, 144). Albums and textual sources indeed point to an active, self-aware practice of reuse. In the workshop of Baysunghur, the calligrapher Mawlana Shams made a facsimile of an older manuscript, presumably by the master ‘Abdallah Sayrafi (Thackston, 2001, 45). According to Dust Muhammad’s sixteenth-century preface, Baysunghur once asked his artists to copy a Jalayirid manuscript ‘in exactly the same format and size and with the same scenes depicted’ (Dust Muhammad, 2001, 13). Reuse, scholars have argued, was a means to signal artistic continuities and to construct a pictorial tradition. The artist ‘had to show not only that he followed tradition and respected his predecessors,’ Adel Adamova wrote, ‘but that he also merited comparison with earlier masters and that his skill was not inferior to theirs’ (Adamova, 1992, 73–4). Beyond its illustrative purpose, through a process that resembles quotation, painting worked to create filiations between painters across time and space. In later Indian art, painters devised a similar strategy with what Molly Aitken has called ‘responding images’ (Aitken, 2010, chapter 4; I would like to thank Dipti Khera for suggesting this reference). This phenomenon echoes the practice of jawab described in the preceding chapter, by which poets would imitate past works to inscribe themselves in a genealogy of writers. This argument should not be dismissed. But it cannot be generalised either. For one thing, it is not always possible to identify a source. This is especially true for the Cairo Bustan, which constitutes the earliest surviving illustrated copy of Sa‘di’s Bustan to have been produced in a courtly context (see the introduction of the present study). Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the saying goes. However, illustrations of the Bustan were not common at the time. Courtly workshops were busier producing copies of the Khamsa of Nizami and the Shahnama of Firdawsi. The stories depicted in the Cairo Bustan were only rarely illustrated until the Cairo Bustan. No earlier version of ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ has survived. The second painting, ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, is unique: I have found no other illustration of this story in any of the published collections of Persian manuscripts. Ettinghausen, 1981, 61–2. Grabar, 1999, 122–4. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 289. Roxburgh, 2000b, 122–3. On iconology, the pairing of images with texts and discourses, see the Introduction to this book, note 53. Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149; English translation by Subtelny, 1979, 208. The passage is analysed in greater detail in Chapter 2 of this book. According to Lisån al-‘arab, an Arabic dictionary written in the fourteenth century, abË qalamËn designates ‘a garment that takes on the appearance of various colors when the sun shines upon it’ (Saba, 2012, 194). For a drawing featuring this kind of motif, see Broug, 2013, 110, figure 4.42. Ibid., 109–10. Khwandamir, 1914, 157; English translation based on Thackston, 2001, 42. Thackston translates the quote’s first verse slightly differently: ‘in precision of nature he is hair-splitting, and this is no exaggeration.’

potential world

43. The expression band-i rËmÈ designates a type of pattern, but it is hard to propose a more precise translation. Some scholars identify this motif with a knot pattern (on this term and its use in sixteenth-century art historiographical sources, see Porter, 2000). Like Thackston, I prefer to keep the Persian transliteration. 44. The meaning of yakmåha is not clear; in the context of this description, it might designate a type of cartouche. Given the lack of information on this term, following Thackston, I prefer to keep the Persian transliteration. 45. Thackston’s translation reads: ‘fifty islimi tendrils’. Islimi appears in an earlier source, the ‘arzadasht, the progress report of Baysunghur’s kitabkhana, dated around 1430. Following Thackston’s translation of the ‘arzadasht and the work of other scholars, I have chosen to translate islimi as ‘arabesque’ (Thackston, 1989, 324; Necipo©lu, 1990, 138; Porter, 2000, 113). 46. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 169. My English translation is based on Thackston, 1989, 362. At the end of the quote, following Thackston, I use ‫ او شستمان کرده‬instead of ‫دست بآن کرده‬. 47. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 169; English translation based on Thackston, 1989, 362. 48. Hillenbrand, 1992, 97. 49. One of the earliest surviving albums was assembled during the first half of the fifteenth century (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152; Roxburgh, 2005, 93–106). 50. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2160, folio 55a. A reproduction of this folio will be published in the forthcoming facsimile edition of two Topkapı albums (H. 2153 and H. 2160) by Filiz Ça©man and Selmin Kangal (Istanbul: Mas Matbaacılık). 51. Quoted in Porter, 2003, 57. 52. Déroche, 2000, 171–8; Porter, 2003; Blair, 2006, 47–8; Gacek, 2009, 203–4 and 231–2. 53. We use the word mistara or satara for the tool that produces the grid, and the word mastar for its product. This is based on Yves Porter’s reading of a primary source, the Tu˙fat al-mu˙ibbÈn, written by a calligrapher from Shiraz, Siraj al-Shirazi, in 1454 (Siraj al-Shirazi, 1997; Porter, 2003, 57–8). 54. Porter, 2003, 67. The use of the grid in paintings and illuminations was first established in Adle, 1975. For more references and an analysis of the mastar in Timurid painting, see Stchoukine, 1954, 143–54; Chapman, 2003. The latter noted that geometry and mathematics were mostly used for the artificial world (architecture, for example), not for the representation of nature. While this observation might hold for the few paintings that Chapman selected, it cannot be generalised. Chapman’s argument, moreover, is based only on formal and visual analysis; she does not use intellectual and cultural history to corroborate her thoughts. 55. As such, the painter is pushing to its limits the process of visual perception by which the world is transformed into ‘form categories’, as Rudolf Arnheim has suggested. According to Arnheim, these ­categories ‘can be called visual concepts because of their simplicity and generality’ (Arnheim, 1971, 37). 56. Neoplatonism had been widely diffused in the Islamic world since at least the ninth century when Hellenistic philosophical texts were

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translated into Arabic. According to one of the earliest known Islamic sources with a clear Hellenistic inflection, the tenth-century Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, music and calligraphy, for example, convey ideal meaning through proportions and harmony (Necipo©lu, 2015, 30–1). 57. Porter, 1995, esp. 220–1. 58. Porter, 2000, 112. 59. Quoted in Soucek, 2000, 101. 60. This was also suggested by Robert Hillenbrand in his analysis of space in Timurid painting: ‘space,’ he wrote, has been ‘transfigured and operates as a quasi-Platonic ideal’ (Hillenbrand, 1992, 97). 61. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:261. 62. English translation by Roxburgh, 2005, 192. 63. Necipo©lu, 1995, 208. 64. On Neoplatonic conceptions of artistic activity in Islamic thought, see Necipo©lu, 1995, chapter 11; Roxburgh, 2001b, chapter 6; Necipo©lu, 2015. 65. Porter, 2000, 113. 66. Quoted by Ridgeon, 2012, 21. 67. Translation based on Richard, 1996, 57. 68. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:261. 69. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:362; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 226. 70. English translation by Thackston, 2001, 27. 71. Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, F1946.12.147 (http://archive. asia.si.edu/collections/edan/object.php?q=fsg_F1946.12.147 [accessed October 2017]). On this painting and other illustrations of the same story in Safavid manuscripts, see Simpson, 1997, 148–51 and 380. 72. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2154, folio 20b (Blair, 2014, figure 5.11). 73. H. 2154, folio 20b, 31.3 × 19.5 cm (folio). 74. Fitzherbert, 1991, 139. 75. Prentice, 1981. 76. Roxburgh, 2005, 274. 77. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:362; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 226. The Persian sentence reads: ‫استاد کمال الدین بهزاد مظهر بدایع صور است و مظهر‬ ‫نوادر حنر‬ 78. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:260. 79. Pello, 2013. Also see Roxburgh, 2001b, 174–180. 80. English translation by Pello, 2013, 255. 81. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 12. 82. English translation by Pello, 2013, 256, with minor modifications. 83. Pello, 2013, 257. 84. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 12. 85. Ibid., 12. 86. Ibid., 12. 87. Ibid., 12. 88. For references and definitions, see Madigan, 2004. Although scholars have noted its use in primary textual sources dealing with artistic practice (a recent example is Necipo©lu, 2015, esp. 47 and 49), the concept of the Preserved Tablet has rarely been related to visual material. One exception is Alexander, 1989. The object studied by Alexander is a late-sixteenth-century Ottoman breastplate with a pectoral disk bearing a Qur’anic inscription mentioning the Preserved Tablet.

potential world

89. Madigan, 2014. 90. English translation by Thackston, 2001, 41. 91. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 4. 92. Ibid., 16. 93. Roxburgh, 2005, 192. 94. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 4. 95. The point was also noted in Roxburgh, 2000b, 124. 96. On pigments and their origins, see Barkeshli, 2013. 97. Porter, 1992, 100–1. 98. On the entire process, see Porter, 1992, 100–3. 99. On the acheiropoieton and other myths of ‘unpainted’ paintings in Christian cultures, see Belting, 1994. 100. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1798, folio 72b: anthology of Persian poetry, c. 1450 (Richard, 1997, 83, no. 49). On the technique of stencilling, see Porter, 1992, 50–1. For a general introduction on the techniques used to decorate poetic anthologies, see Roxburgh, 2009. For more examples from the fifteenth century, see Roxburgh, 2005, 153–7. 101. Thackston, 2001, 34. 102. Porter, 1992, 59. 103. Roxburgh, 2005, 165–71; Blair, 2006, 55–6; Schmitz, 1993. 104. New York, Brooklyn Museum, 45.4.3: folio of poetry from the Diwan of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, c. 1490 (www.brooklynmuseum.org/open collection/objects/57526 [accessed January 2017]). For a brief presentation of the Diwan and more reproductions, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 148. 105. New York, Kronos Collections: marbled papers (Haidar and Sardar, 2015, 160–1, figures 72a and 72b). The Iranian provenance is indicated by a Persian inscription added in Mandu, India, in 1496. The inscription also carries the earliest mention of the Persian term abri (clouded) used to designate marbled paper. 106. Porter, 1988; Porter, 1992, 51–6; Roxburgh, 2005, 149–79; Blair, 2006, 54–5; Benson, 2015. 107. Milwright, 2005, 214. 108. Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, no. 32: wine cup of Sultan Husayn, dated 1470 (Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 150; Soudavar, 1992, 92–3, no. 32). 109. Soudavar, 1992, 93. 110. Gamboni, 2002. 111. Berlekamp, 2011, 91–7. 112. Pancaro©lu, 2007, 34. 113. Ronen, 1994, 91–2. 114. This framework has been borrowed from the field of philosophy, where it has been debated at least since Leibniz. For a survey of current philosophical debates on possible-worlds theories, see Menzel, 2016. 115. Jami, 1997–9, 2:125.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Calligraphic Line

Surrounding each chromatic field, a continuous, tightly controlled line defines figures and motifs (Plate XII). Just as in the smooth, opaque colours composing the paint surface, individual expression is hard to see. Traced with no hesitations, uniform and precise, the line appears almost machine-made, hiding any obvious traces of involuntary movement or spontaneous gesture. With their polished surface and their steady lines, the Cairo Bustan’s paintings work to efface the signs of their making. As though a depersonalising project, they seem to transcend the temporal and bodily conditions of human industry. Linear exactitude, moreover, enhances the legibility of the pictures. Because it is so clearly delineated, every detail can be associated with a linguistic referent. However small, each motif can easily be named. Late Timurid painting, it seems, presents itself as a collection of concepts rather than a record of bodily activity, creating the fiction of an unmediated access to the ideal world. Yet, as well as presenting measured, idealised forms, the Cairo Bustan’s paintings also demand to be subordinated to the artist’s manual labour. As seen in Chapter 2, pictorial epigraphs define the paintings as ‘what remains from the painter who mixes the pigments’, to quote the verse written on the iwan of ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ (Plate XII and Figure 2.6). The paintings convey a complex ambivalence. Their evenness, symmetry and finish may erase the marks of their manual fabrication, yet the same features suggest an intensity of movement and labour. According to the historian Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499 or 1500–1551), Mawlana Mahmud needed seven years to complete an illuminated frontispiece for Sultan Husayn. The result was a work of intricacy, described as an endless source of patterns.1 The physical cost of technical virtuosity was not negligible. Having worked on a frontispiece illumination, Mawlana ‘Ali’s ‘eyes were sore for a few days’, according to the progress report of Baysunghur’s workshop written around 1430.2 It is through a painstaking, time-consuming process of manufacture that the image appears to be made in a mechanical way.

calligraphic line

151

If perfection of execution did obliterate individual traces of the maker’s hand, for contemporary viewers, as this chapter argues, it did not efface the maker’s presence. While technical exactitude conceals physical identity, it also highlights the painter’s virtuosity, in effect hyperbolising the artist’s hand. Punning with the resonance between purkår (skilled workmanship) and pargår (a pair of compasses), court painter and poet Sadiqi Beg Afshar (d. 1609–10) asserted that an artist’s skill ‘must encompass the fine art of drawing circles of maximum precision’.3 In the late fifteenth century, Ustad Baba Hajji was asked to demonstrate his talent at the majlis, by ‘draw[ing] fifty semicircles, all [as though drawn by] a compass, without the slightest differentiation’.4 The artist succeeded, for ‘not one was larger or smaller by so much as a hair’s breadth’. As in the quotation of Sadiqi Beg, the artist demonstrates his talent by approximating, with only the hand, the precision of a compass. Manual dexterity empowers the individual artist. A similar performance takes place within the paintings of the Cairo Bustan. From wall dados to wooden doors and window screens, ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ is an assemblage of geometric compositions, each viewed frontally, deployed like a handscroll on a flat surface to display its maker’s craftsmanship (purkår) (Plate XIII). The wooden panels, for example, serve as stages of artistic performance, as much as, or more than, door flaps and window screens. At the bottom of the left banister, the first panel shows an arrangement of hexagons, each divided into twelve sections and filled with a central, six-pointed star (Figure 4.1). The composition does not resemble actual geometric design because of the presence of lines cutting through the motifs. These lines belong to the grid that serves to generate the design instead of the design itself. Similarly, although circles are not usually employed as patterns but rather as underlying figures, they appear in the doorway at the top of the stairs (Figure 4.2). Devoid of any mimetic quality, radiating lines and full circles demonstrate the dexterity of the artist who is able to execute geometric forms freehand, without a ruler or a pair of compasses. As well as representing legible motifs, the painting displays an incredible density of Figure 4.1  Detail from ‘Yusuf and exact, identical shapes, only visible to the Zulaykha’ from the Cairo Bustan viewer equipped with a magnifying glass. In (reproduced in Plate XIII). Herat, painting dated 893/December their precision and minuteness, they reveal 1487–November 1488 and signed the hand’s steadiness and exactitude. Looking by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar at the linear attributes of the paintings instead al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio of their representational content, and using 52b.

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

contemporary sources that link perfection of execution to the maker’s morality, this chapter focuses on the line as a vehicle of artistic representation. Such an argument stems from a close reading of primary textual sources that emphasise, in addition to aspects of his imagination (a point already discussed in Chapter 3), the strength of the visual artist as a draftsman. According to contemporary accounts, viewers turned to the line to evaluate an artist’s work, whether in painting, illumination, calligraphy or contour drawing. ‘Spectators with a critical eye’ (nåqidån-i baßÈr), as Dawlatshah Samarqandi called them,5 ‘viewers with a subtle eye’ (mubaßßirån-i nuktidån),6 ‘who can see in a fair manner’ (az ruy-i inßåf),7 to use Khwandamir’s words, practised a form of close, critical viewing. They examined the expressive qualities of the work, designated in the sources as uslËb (style),8 †ab‘ (character) 9 or awßåf-i taßwÈr (the qualities of pictorial art).10 Specifically, they focused on the graphic quality of the visual arts. If painting functioned to highlight a painter’s visionary power, it also worked to showcase his manual dexterity. And the line seems to have constituted the privileged site for such an interpretive shift, moving viewers from mind to hand and from sight to touch. Figure 4.2  Detail from ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XIII). Herat, painting dated 893/ December 1487– November 1488 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 52b.

The Arts of Tah·rıˉr

Completed between 1541 and 1547, the Tarikh-i rashidi (The History of Rashid) of Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499 or 1500–1551) offers a rare insight into the late Timurid artistic scene.11 Muhammad Haydar did not witness the last decades of the Timurids. He was, however, related to them as a member of the Dughlat family, a branch of the Mongol house of Chaghatay to which Timur belonged (although through a different branch, the Barlas’). He was also a maternal cousin of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483–1530), the future founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. As a member of the Turco-Mongol aristocracy, he served several rulers, including Babur in Kabul and the Mongol prince Sa‘di Khan in Fergana. The Tarikh-i rashidi testifies to these connections. It can be considered ‘a combination of official history and memoirs’, as Maria Subtelny has suggested.12 In the first book of this two-volume historiography, several pages are devoted to the rule of Sultan Husayn Bayqara. They offer a collection of some forty short biographical entries for important members of the Timurid court, including spiritual guides, poets, calligraphers and painters. Appearing within

calligraphic line

an autobiographical chapter about Muhammad Haydar’s father, the passage constitutes both a thematic and a formal digression. It was added, as the narrator asserts, to give a sense of the cultural achievements of his father’s epoch.13 The narrator, as he himself wrote, made extensive use of external sources.14 Thus it seems quite plausible that the passage was extracted from a biographical book (tazkira), perhaps written by a Timurid author.15 Muhammad Haydar’s text has often been used to reconstitute the life of individual artists.16 Our aim is different: uncovering the aesthetic terms in which the works of these artists could be viewed.17 The description of painters and draftsmen begins with two Timurid painters: Shah Muzaffar from the late fifteenth century and his father, Ustad Mansur, who was active around the middle of the fifteenth century at the court of the Timurid ruler Abu Sa‘id. About the painter Mansur, we read: ‫قلم نازک باریک دارد که بغیر شاه مظفردیگر قلم هیچ کس بآن نازکی نیست اما چیزی خشک‬ ‫تراست گرفت و گیرها را بغایت محکم ساخته‬ He possesses a fine, thin brush, and aside from Shah-Muzaffar, no one else has had a brush of such a fineness; however, it is slightly drier [than Shah-Muzaffar’s]. He does combat scenes very forcefully.18 We then move to Ustad Mansur’s pupil and son, Shah Muzaffar: ‫قلمی دارد در غایت نازکی و صافی و مالحت و پختگی که چشم بیننده خیره ماند‬ His brush has such a fineness and clarity and possesses such grace and maturity that the eye of the beholder is astonished.19 Notions of fineness, clarity, dryness and grace foreground visual and material aspects of the line, such as its width, weight, speed and regularity. It is not clear whether the text refers to painting or drawing, but whatever the medium, the description focuses on graphic qualities, as opposed to chromatic aspects or iconographic content. The following entry is about Bihzad. Here, aspects of draftsmanship – the precision, delicacy and strength of the hand – are clearly observed in the medium of painting: ‫وی مصور استادست اگر مقدار شاه مظفر نازک دست نیست اما قلم این ازوی محکم تراست‬ ‫طرح و استخوان بندی آن ازوی بهترست‬ As a painter he is a master. Although his hand is not so delicate as Shah-Muzaffar’s, his brush is more forceful than the former’s but the former’s underdrawing and articulation are better than his.20

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Afterwards, the text broadens its historical scope, turning back to the Ilkhanid period (1256–1335) and its iconic master painter ‘Abd al-Hayy:21 ‫] در‬...[ ‫در قدیم االیام در سلسله خواقین هالگوهی که باد شاهان عراق اند خواجه عبد الحی‬ ‫صفائی قلم و نازکی و محکمی بلک در اهمه اوصاف تصویر مشل وی پیدا نشده است‬ Long ago in the time of the Hulaguid khans who were emperors of Iraq there was Khwaja Abdul-Hayy. […] In clarity of brush, fineness and solidity, indeed in all characteristics of painting, he has had no peer.22 Artistic evaluation, again, relies almost exclusively on an apprehension of the line and its plastic qualities, isolated from context and meaning. Works on paper, whether drawings or paintings, are approached as a web of lines, as a display of non-representational contours. They appear less as images than as material objects, evaluated for their ‘clarity’, ‘fineness’ and ‘solidity’, considered to be the ‘characteristics of painting’. Despite its figurative content and its controlled execution, drawing and painting elicited a mode of interpretation that moved from motif to line, from sign to hand. The contour is approached as a furrow, inscribed into the paper by the movement of the hand, precise and measured. The hand serves as a tool, labouring away at the perfectly outlined image. In Muhammad Haydar’s account, the body’s synecdoche is indeed the hand, but also the instrument. The qalam (whether the reed pen or the hair brush) is endowed with the aesthetic characteristics of the artist’s work. What is described as fine, clear or graceful is the tool itself, not just the result of its endeavour. This figure of speech, known as metonymy, displaces our attention from work of art to instrument, thus reflecting an aesthetic reception that concentrates on making processes. Foregrounding labour instead of product, it defines the line less as an autonomous object than as the result of a physical effort. The metonymy of tool highlights the manual quality of the drawing, as well as the tactile rather than strictly visual or even intellectual aspects of such labour. This interest in the line was rather novel. Textual sources would highlight issues of representation and illusionism, emphasising chromatic and kinetic qualities of the picture, instead of linear contours. In the early fifteenth century, the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi recounted an artistic contest supervised by the Fatimid vizier in the middle of the tenth century.23 Two artists were asked to make a wall painting. After the first proposed to paint a dancer as if she were emerging from the wall, the second claimed that he could paint a dancer that would seem to retreat into the wall. They both succeeded, using chromatic oppositions – white on black in the first instance and yellow on red in the second – to create the illusion of movement.

calligraphic line

In Persian poetry, paintings possess a certain representational power. In the Khamsa of Nizami, the prophet Mani tries to collect water from a painted pool, tricked by the mastery of Chinese artists.24 In another passage, Shirin falls in love with Khosrow through the examination of his portrait, because painting creates an illusion of presence.25 The sources of Muhammad Haydar, by contrast, challenge the emphasis on representation and illusion to highlight the opposite term: artistic process instead of product. Rather than reading through the image, they maintain the gaze at the surface of the medium, preventing us from traversing the screen. This is not to say that the trope of illusionism simply disappeared. As discussed in Chapter 3, it was an enduring topos, one that the Cairo Bustan’s painter carefully reflected upon and even reinforced. But Timurid written and visual sources affirm another aesthetic interest: an attention to linear attributes and graphic qualities, aspects that highlight the artist’s manual skill as well as his intellectual power. Image-making, as such, resembles writing. The same vocabulary is used for the art of calligraphy, for example when describing Ja‘far and Azhar, two calligraphers from the early fifteenth century: ‫موالنا جعفر کند و شکسته نوشته است اما محکم و بمالحت و پخته اما موالنا اظهر با وجود این‬ ‫لطافت که مذکور شد درست نوشته است اما دست ناهمواری دارد‬ Mawlana Ja‘far writing was heavy and broken yet it was solid, graceful, masterful and mature, while Mawlana Azhar, the delicacy that has been mentioned notwithstanding, wrote correctly but his hand was uneven.26 The line is the common denominator of drawing, calligraphy and painting.27 It defines a transmedial aesthetics, an aesthetics of ‘ta˙rÈr’, as we would like to call it. Meaning both ‘outline’ and ‘writing’, used in sources to address painters and calligraphers alike, ta˙rÈr defines painting and writing as forms of visual writing.28 Ta˙rÈr resonates with the concept of writing as defined by Roland Barthes. ‘What constitutes writing,’ Barthes suggested, ‘is not the sign […] but, much more paradoxically, the cursivity of the discontinuous’. Writing and drawing are also both governed by the hand, ‘which bears down and advances or hands back, in short the hand which plows’.29 The link between writing and drawing is at the heart of Ustad Baba Hajji’s anecdote quoted in this chapter’s introduction. His assignment – drawing fifty semi-circles as though by a compass – resembles a calligraphic performance. For one thing, calligraphy, more often than drawing or painting, would be practised in social gatherings. A Safavid writer and calligrapher, Malik Daylami, wrote that Amir Husayn Beg, a treasurer of the Safavid sultan Shah Tahmasp, occasionally engaged at the majlis ‘in practicing precise nasta‘liq script,

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which, as is agreed by all people of sobriety and learning, is the freshest herb of the garden of calligraphy, which is half of learning’.30 The motif of the semi-circle, moreover, bears a direct allusion to the script of nasta‘liq. It mimics the letter nun (‫ )ن‬of the Arabic alphabet, with its semi-circular, open shape, a letter that students of nasta‘liq used to repeat in calligraphic exercises.31 Nun further recalls the round inkpot of the calligrapher. This comparison is suggested in the Qur’an itself, in the verse opening Surat al-Qalam (Chapter of the Pen): ‘Nun, by the pen and what they write’ (Qur’an 68:1). The verse evokes an image of angels, dipping their pen into the nun-shaped inkpot.32 Highlighting the saintly origin of calligraphy, it foregrounds, as noted by the Timurid historian Khwandamir, ‘the perfect nobility of writing’.33 The mechanical execution of Ustad Baba Hajji was also a trait associated with calligraphy, a tightly codified art form. In proportioned scripts, each letter is measured with the qalam’s rhombic dot, itself determined from the thickness of the qalam.34 Scripts produced different visual effects, depending on their size and their degree of curvature. Artists learned calligraphy by repeating the exact shapes of letters, transforming their bodies into instruments. At the turn of the fifteenth century, a student in Cairo had ‘to draw and form the letters well, as he learns them by sensual perception, becomes skilled in them through practice in writing them, and learns them in the form of scientific norms’, historian and traveller Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) noted.35 Calligraphy was considered ‘a spiritual geometry that is made manifest through a corporeal instrument’, to use a proverb quoted by the sixteenth-century calligrapher Shams al-Din Muhammad Wasfi and which appears to have been in circulation in the Islamic world since at least the tenth century.36 Calligraphy, it thus seems, informed the art of drawing and painting, infusing these techniques with a sense of proportion, and instilling into the draftsman a pursuit of linear perfection. The amalgamation probably took place in the kitabkhana, the institution of the workshop-cum-library where all artists of the book worked together, exchanging motifs and aesthetic ideas.37 A single artist, in fact, could practise all three techniques. In the decree of his appointment as head of the workshop of the Timurid prince Ibrahim Sultan in Shiraz, Khwaja Nasir al-Din Muhammad Muzahhib is described as an accomplished calligrapher who ‘thanks to the excellence of his calligraphy (˙usn-i kha††) and the grace of his outlining (ta˙rÈr), achieved a perfect writing’. But he was also, continues the decree, a master in the art of illumination (tadhhÈb) and painting (naqqåshÈ), for in both techniques he ‘surpassed the rest of his peers and emulators’.38 According to Dust Muhammad, the painter Khwaja Mirak Naqqash, also described in various sources as the master of Bihzad39 and the head of the royal library in Herat,40 first practissed writing (mashq-i kha††), before taking up outlining (ta˙rÈr) and illumination

calligraphic line

(tadhhÈb) and finishing his career as a master of depiction (taßwÈr).41 He was also a famous epigrapher (the historian Khwandamir claimed that ‘most of the epigraphic inscriptions in the buildings of Herat are by him’42). And we know from the same Dust Muhammad that Bihzad, the Cairo Bustan’s painter, emulated Miraq Naqqash’s versatility, cultivating his talent in all three areas of depiction (taßwÈr), illumination (tadhhÈb) and outlining (ta˙rÈr).43 From paper to architecture, from drawing to epigraphy, lines flourished across media and techniques. Timurid architecture paralleled the development of Persian painting. Size was no longer a dominating feature. Timurid buildings from the middle and the end of the fifteenth century were much smaller in scale than Timur’s monumental constructions. They stood out instead for ‘the harmony of their proportions’ and the ‘perfection of their finish’, as Bernard O’Kane noted.44 Although few late Timurid buildings have survived, decorative patterns can be examined from the panels added to the Ghurid structure of Masjid-i jåmi‘ in Herat. On the portal of the mosque, the mosaic-faience spandrels display a symmetrical composition that resembles illuminated pages.45 The motifs are linear: lines define leaf-shaped cartouches and, within them, arabesques and scrolls of flowers. Metalwork further testifies to the cross-media, linear regime of late Timurid visual culture. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, metalware followed a different model, privileging figurative motifs, rendered in large-scale inlaid decoration.46 Early Timurid objects were also monumental in size.47 Manifesting, through scale, the link between art and patron, they emblematised the ruler’s grandeur. As Linda Komaroff has demonstrated, late Timurid production reversed the scale of earlier metalwork: the decoration was miniaturised and reduced to linear motifs, made with strips of sheet metal or wire (Figure 4.3).48 The function of the line shifted. The large inlays of gold and silver that used to shape figural motifs like horses and riders (what Komaroff calls ‘spatial inlays’) shrank, replaced by intricate networks of linear inlays. As a result, writes Komaroff, ‘figural imagery is almost entirely absent from Timurid metalwork.’49 Instead of serving as contours for figurative motifs, the line becomes an object of expression in its own right. This phenomenon was probably shaped by the arts of the book, and by the culture of the Timurid workshop, where motifs were translated across media using paper as the central currency of visual exchange, as Linda Komaroff further suggested.50 The linear decoration of late Timurid metalwork resembles the kind of geometric and vegetal compositions seen in illuminated frontispieces (Plates V and VI). Linear inlays served to delineate interlacing cartouches and medallions and to draw, within these fields, scrolling floral and leaf patterns (Figure 4.3). Epigraphic inscriptions, more­ over, were incorporated into the linear design, further highlighting the

157

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Figure 4.3  Brass vessel inlaid with silver. Herat (?), 1505. 12.7 cm (height). Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I.6052.

versatility of the line. Interestingly enough, the development of the inlaid style was concomitant with a burst of signatures – Komaroff has catalogued no fewer that thirteen signed examples of Timurid inlaid metalwork.51 Just as in painting, drawing and calligraphy, the line was tied to the expression of artistic identity. Expressive Drawing The calligrapher and draftsman Muhammad ibn Mahmudshah alKhayyam, active in the first half of the fifteenth century, copied an Ilkhanid ink-on-paper drawing from the fourteenth century representing a Mongol rider mounted on a horse (Figure 4.4).52 The prototype is preserved in the Timurid workshop album, a collection of calligraphic specimens, genealogical charts, drawings and paintings, assembled at the Timurid court of Baysunghur and now kept in the Topkapı Palace Museum.53 That it served as a direct model cannot be proven, but its presence in the Timurid workshop album suggests that it was available to early Timurid artists. The two drawings,

calligraphic line

159

Figure 4.4  ‘Mounted Rider’. Drawing from the Diez album. Herat (?), c. 1430. 23.6 × 30 cm (drawing). Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Diez A folio 72 S13.

moreover, have similar dimensions, and a grid, revealed by a pattern of blind lines, seems to have been used to keep the proportions of the composition. Yet they also differ from one another. As can be seen from the folds of the garment, for example, Muhammad al-Khayyam introduced a sense of variety absent from the prototype and its ‘repetitive patternlike treatment’, as David Roxburgh noted.54 The proportions of rider and horse were altered, resulting in a ‘kind of naturalism’ as well as a more ‘robust figure’. More internal details appear, for instance on the saddle near the warrior’s right foot. Another crucial difference lies in the calligraphic manner of the Timurid drawing. Variation does not just apply to the visual motifs; it can be seen in the density of the ink, the thickness of the line and the pace of the brushwork. With the power of his brush, Muhammad al-Khayyam transformed the Ilkhanid model into a more dynamic, livelier composition. His brushwork is also considerably thinner. In the tails of the horses, for instance, the Timurid version features a greater density of finely drawn lines.

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Figure 4.5  Detail of the signature of Muhammad ibn Mahmudshah al-Khayyam from the drawing reproduced in Figure 4.4 (Diez album, Herat (?), c. 1430, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Diez A folio 72 S13).

There are various possible readings of this transformation. The precision of the drawing conveys a sense of trompe l’oeil, fulfilling the desire of a viewer who might want to reach out and touch the represented objects.55 But the drawing goes beyond the requirements of realism. There are details that might disrupt the mimetic illusion, such as the varying thickness of the diagonal planes that form the landscape, the moustache of the rider, curling up at its ends in a calligraphic fashion, or the feathery headgear, endowed with a texture that resembles fur. These small manifestations of excessive artistry move the picture beyond its iconographic signification, referring it back to the individual gesture of the artist. Muhammad al-Khayyam’s drawing contains another mark of artistic presence: at the bottom of the sheet, right of centre, his signature, carefully integrated into the plane of the landscape, where it mimics the tufts of grass (Figure 4.5). The signature features a calligraphic, knotted flourish, composed of the intertwinement of two successive letters, the last letter dål of Mahmud with the first letter shÈn of the following word Shah. This detail, as well as producing an echo between the signature and the surrounding vegetation, recalls fifteenth-century tughras – the stylised graphic intitulatio of rulers that was placed on official decrees, together with seals and stamps, as a means of authentication.56 It can be compared in particular to the tughra of the fifteenth-century Aq Quyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan: in both examples, the flourish works to individualise the signatory (Figure 4.6).57 The calligraphic turn in the art of drawing coincides with an affirmation of authorship. In its flowing appearance, Muhammad al-Khayyam proclaims that the contour is as much an image as the imprint of an individual artist. Yet Persian drawings from the period have mainly been approached as either training exercises or preparatory drawings providing the basis for later, more definitive works of art.58 A page from the Timurid workshop album features drawings made between 1400 and

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Figure 4.6  Tughra of Uzun Hasan (r. 1453–78). Farman. 15th century. Private collection.

1450 (Figure 4.7).59 Most of them contain designs for execution in other media. To follow the taxonomy established by Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry in their 1989 exhibition catalogue on Timurid art, they can be divided into a decorative and an illustrative category.60 At the lower left, we see a rectangular sheet with a geometric composition of vegetal designs – scrolls of leaves and palmettes are organised symmetrically into interlacing cartouches. The drawing can easily be related to the decoration of metal jugs produced in Herat: it belongs to the decorative group (Figure 4.3). Figurative drawings, on the other hand, have been associated with painting. They form the illustrative category. Small-scale examples usually present generic figures that could be replicated, with slight variations, across a large number of manuscript paintings: this could well be the case with the figures in the square sheet at the lower edge – the man reading from an open safina (an oblong manuscript) and the mounted rider who has just shot a deer with an arrow. Such images are common in Persian painting where they appear, respectively, in representations of scholarly and festive gatherings61 and in illustrations of epic and lyric poetry.62 On rare occasions, drawings can be matched with specific paintings. The drawing placed in the lower corner of the folio was executed in a light, sketchy line.63 Seated on a carpet, two characters are having a conversation. Entering the composition from the right, a third man walks towards them, carrying an object in his hands. The

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Figure 4.7  Drawings from the Timurid workshop album. Iran and Central Asia,­ c. 1400–50. 68 × 50 cm (folio). Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 87a.

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corresponding painting appears in an illustrated copy of the Gulistan of Sa‘di made around 1426–7 for the library of Baysunghur.64 The painting is similar to the preparatory drawing in both size and content. It features the same three characters in a garden, at night. The only notable difference lies in the reversal of the composition, an indication that the painting might have been created with a reversed pounce, executed after the drawing. The album contains much larger drawings. The sheet pasted at the upper left, for instance, represents a single figure. Yet it is twice as large as the sketch made for the Gulistan painting. Its dimensions, in fact, far exceed the largest manuscript paintings made at the time. Large-scale drawings have been read as cartoons for wall paintings, a tradition mentioned in textual sources but of which no extant examples have survived. For Lentz and Lowry, these drawings constitute a ‘vocabulary of types, a series of stereotyped images that are constantly repeated as individual units’.65 This interpretation, however, is not entirely satisfactory.66 Even if resemblances exist, we can only rarely identify the final product. To subordinate drawing to a final product is also to deny its expressive properties. The notion of the mediatory drawing reflects, moreover, a mimetic, discursive understanding of the image, limiting drawing to an iconographic content. Drawing, it suggests, produces images that can be replaced by words, as though the figure drawn at the upper left, for instance, was equivalent to the verbal notation of ‘a seated figure, turning their back to the viewer’. Especially when it represents figural motifs, drawing is considered as an illustrative device, a means to produce pictorial signs that are transparent to their meaning. The graphic style of Persian drawing has probably contributed to such a reading. The hard-edged, weighted line indeed appears as an outline, transforming matter, here ink and paper, into differentiated signs. Because it is so firmly outlined, every motif can be linked to a fixed signified. The precision of the line defines Persian drawing, setting it apart from expressive, abstract artistic productions that have as their aim to capture the artist’s body. On each album folio, and within each sheet, there are, moreover, clear intervals between the motifs. The difference between figure and ground is also emphasised. We seem to be dealing with a discontinuous system, one that foregrounds outlines, intervals and gaps so as to create, just as in linguistic communication, an articulated field of significations. Rather than registering a gestural performance, drawing is thus expected to generate visual signs. We recognise in this approach the classical conception of the outline as ‘a trap set by language’, as the graphic contour of invariant meanings.67 Displaying discrete, selfcontained forms, Persian drawing fashions a textual, informational space, designed to visualise words. In Nelson Goodman’s distinction between image and language, it would fit within the latter category.68

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As a catalogue of visual prototypes, the albums read less as a dense, infinite system than as an alphabet, as a finite, discontinuous system with a limited number of marks. Yet many fifteenth-century drawings appear to resist the category of the preparatory drawing and the linguistic approach to the image. They do not seem to match any paper-based or non-paper-based finished works of art. As noted by Lentz and Lowry, who included them in a separate category, characterising them as ‘pictorial’, they manifest elements usually absent from manuscript paintings and portable objects, such as ‘increased expression, freedom of line, and virtuosity’.69 They also manifest ‘a tendency toward fantastic transformation of conventional subjects’.70 Take, for example, folio 57a of the Timurid workshop album (Figure 4.8).71 All three categories are present. In the upper left, a small-scale drawing exhibits stereotypical images. The man on horseback looks quite similar to the mounted rider seen on folio 87a, with a small variation in pose suggesting a different moment, perhaps preceding the instant depicted on folio 87a – presumably he has just picked an arrow from his quiver and has not yet aimed at the animal, placed behind him. The decorative category is represented by a stylised, vegetal design, executed in a black line with touches of red ink, and similar in motifs and composition to the preceding example. The folio’s most enigmatic image is a black-ink drawing situated in the middle of the page. It represents a mesh of swirling leaves, delineated by a thick, fluid line (Figure 4.9). Often rendered in a lighter tone and confounded with the vegetation, a throng of animals can also be discerned. It includes waterfowls, hoopoes, a heron, a pair of monkeys and a snake. In contrast with more ‘illustrative’ drawings, wherein figural elements appear as discrete, independent units, here, vegetal and animal motifs are closely integrated, almost fused together. At the lower left, two monkeys are mounted on a wide, sprawling leaf whose lobes resemble animal paws or perhaps even faces, one of which, to the left, interlocks with a heron’s legs. These, in turn, are grabbed by a monkey, whose ear is bitten by the second monkey. Meanwhile, the latter claps the head of a snake whose body interweaves into the leaf. One motif is linked to another in one continuous, interlacing movement. This drawing clearly marks a distance from the illustrative image. Blurring the limits between the animal and the vegetal, the animate and the inanimate, the figurative and the ornamental, it reads less as a set of legible motifs than as a dense entanglement of lines. Instead of generating clear-cut visual signs, it stands out for its expressive qualities. We see not only vegetal and animal motifs but also the movement of the artist’s hand and the action of the wrist, changing direction, speed and inclination, to create a sinuous, fluid line. The drawing works to chronicle, and capture, the sensory work of the artist.

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Figure 4.8  Drawings and paintings from the Timurid workshop album. Iran and Central Asia, c. 1400–50. 68 × 50 cm (folio). Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 57a.

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Figure 4.9  Detail of a drawing from the Timurid workshop album (folio reproduced in Figure 4.8). Iran and Central Asia, c. 1400–50. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 57a.

Such expressive reading of the line should not be limited to the pictorial category. Even in the most tamed, conventional motifs, the line, I would like to argue, holds the potential to destabilise the apparent closure of the outline. My aim is not to deny the representational purpose of Persian drawing but to emphasise, by focusing on the liveliness of the line, the underexplored relationship of contour and sensation. Following the primary sources’ emphasis on the linear qualities of book arts, I would like to seek out artistic gesture within paintings usually approached as illustrative, to show that their system of representation, although seemingly articulated into differentiated signs, cannot be reduced to a pre-given text.72 Returning to the Cairo Bustan, having read Muhammad Haydar’s account of late Timurid artists and examined some drawings in the Timurid workshop album, one realises that the Cairo Bustan’s paintings can be seen in at least two different ways (Plates X to XIII). Approaching the line negatively, as the limit of a positive, nameable space, one sees standing figures, horsemen, architectural spaces. However, as we come closer to the contour, focusing on the line’s materiality, on its modulations and speed, the figurative dimension slowly disappears, superseded by an image of the artist’s gestural effort. Seen as an example of ta˙rÈr rather than taßwÈr, the paintings of the Cairo Bustan reveal their calligraphic quality. Emphasising line

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Figure 4.10  Detail from ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate X). Herat, c. 1488, painting signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 10a.

instead of ground, concentrating on contours rather than chromatic fields, the gaze can see, floating over the pictorial surface, a web of lines, connecting the painting to its maker. In ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, the scene to the right shows a man, cross-legged, pouring water into a cup (Plate X and Figure 4.10). From the man’s blue garment to the brown goatskin to the black cup, every motif seems defined by a smooth, flat area of unmodulated colour. Lines produce a different effect. We are struck by the precision of the straight lines supporting the hanging goatskin. Traced without a ruler, they testify to the steadiness of the artist’s hand. Upon closer scrutiny, further lines appear. The threads fastening the goatskin to the posts display an astonishing, almost unrealistic fineness. On the ground, quicker, lighter brushstrokes fashion microscopic, almost transparent tufts of grass. These lines attest to the minuteness of the draftsman’s work. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the goatskin, the sinuous edges of the purple cloak express the graceful curve of the wrist. In ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, the folds and edges of the scholars’ turbans, for instance, and their beards work in a similar way, pointing to the three characteristics of paintings that Muhammad Haydar defined: clarity of brush (ßafå’È-i qalam), fineness (nåzukÈ),

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Figure 4.11  Detail from ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XI). Herat, c. 1488, painting signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 26a.

and solidity (mu˙kamÈ) (Plate XI and Figure 4.11). In ‘The Poet at the Qadi’s Court’, the turban held in the foreground is the main protagonist of the story (Plate XII and Figure 4.12). As a gift from the judge to the ragged poet, it catalyses the transfer of power from one character to another, and perhaps also from viewer to maker. An object of material exchange, displayed in the foreground by a man who is not part of Sa‘di’s text and thus constitutes an invention of the painter, it can be read as a vehicle of artistic self-display: we are invited to gauge the meandering, flowing lines of the turban cloth, and to wonder at their thinness. Lines and contours were a display of skill and yet, to return to our initial paradox, they also concealed individual identity. The perfectly uniform line shows none of the irregularity or fatigue of the human wrist. As such, it poses a challenge to the modern, Morellian connoisseur who relies on involuntary traces to make artistic attributions. A method of indexical analysis established in the early nineteenth century by Giovanni Morelli (d. 1891), Morellian connoisseurship relates works of art with individual hands through the study of Grundformen, or fundamental forms – unintended traces unconsciously repeated by artists across their work, for instance in the way they shape an ear or a hand, and which betray their physical identity.73 Yet the late Timurid beholder could still discriminate between different artists. Muhammad Haydar noted that Bihzad’s hand was at once more forceful (mu˙kam) and less delicate (nåzuk) than Shah Muzaffar’s. In calligraphy, Ja‘far’s line is ‘solid, graceful, masterful,

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Figure 4.12  Detail from ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate XII). Herat, painting dated 894/December 1488–November 1489 and signed by the painter Bihzad. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 30b.

and mature’. Azhar’s hand, by contrast, can sometimes be ‘uneven’. Unlike Morelli’s, these are not objective criteria; they are evaluative.74 They reflect an aesthetic judgment more than a practice of visual analysis. As such, they can be used for different artists and applied to different periods, regardless of issues of individual and temporal difference. Muhammad Haydar’s artistic biographies play with the limits between literal and figurative descriptions of the line, confounding the formal features of the work of art with the moral qualities of the maker. Hence the insistence on the purity (ßafa’È) of the drawing, its delicacy (li†âfat), its grace (malå˙at) and maturity (pukhtagÈ).75 The aim of the line, as the Timurid calligrapher Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi said about the mythical inventor of Kufic script, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, ‘was not merely characters and dots, but fundamentals, purity, virtue’.76 In his advice to future calligraphers, Sultan ‘Ali uses a series of aphorisms to foreground the relationship between calligraphy and morality, highlighting that ‘purity of writing proceeds from purity of heart’ and that ‘writing is the distinction of the pure’.77 Appearing ‘clean’ and ‘light’, ‘solid’ and ‘mature’, to use again some of the terms privileged in contemporary sources, the line, for these observers, bears witness to the artist’s mood and personality, not to an individual hand.

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Persian drawing develops a relation of line to person that goes beyond their physical contiguity. It is more of a spiritual activity, attesting to a draftsman’s personality – his discipline, his rigour and his morality. Dawlatshah Samarqandi lauds the Timurid prince, Ibrahim Sultan, also a renowned calligrapher, by comparing the elegance of his calligraphy (lu†f-i kha††) to the graciousness of his character (lu†f-i †ab‘).78 Although artists did not draw likenesses of themselves (no self-portraits were produced at the time), they invested their works with traits of their character, as Sultan ‘Ali suggested. The result is as much a physical remnant of the artist’s gesture as a testament to their morality. In emphasising graphic qualities, painting became an emblem of the painter’s moral character. For contemporary viewers, the whole thrust of the line, then, was not just aesthetic: it was also ethical. But how is it, exactly, that historical observers could link a material object to its maker without using the artist’s likeness or examining unconscious traces of the hand? To use Charles Sanders Peirce’s terminology, the line in Persian drawing, painting and calligraphy was not approached as an icon resembling its maker.79 It was not approached as a fingerprint either, an index from which the observer could infer the presence of a single, historically situated artist. If the line did not reveal its signification through iconic or indexical means, how then did it evoke the artist? Lyrical Line My centrepiece for understanding how Timurid viewers could establish a link between line and artist is a copy of the Diwan (collected poems) of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir (r. 1382 and 1410), the last great ruler of the Jalayirid dynasty.80 Characterised by their controlled manner and their deep, brilliant palette, Ahmad Jalayir’s manuscripts constitute, as seen in earlier chapters, a turning point in the history of Persian book arts and will have a tremendous influence on Timurid manuscripts.81 Composed of some three hundred folios of unadorned text written in black ink on glossy white paper, the Diwan of Ahmad Jalayir contains, deployed in the margins of eight folios, a series of blackink drawings.82 The images show no direct connection to the text they accompany. In addition to challenging the expected illustrational function of figurative images in Persian manuscripts, these pictures constitute the first known examples of drawings conceived as autonomous works of art. Each drawing presents a harmonious integration of nature, animals and humans. One can see, in the lower margin of the first drawing, a farmer guiding water buffaloes and, before them, ducks swimming in a pond (Figure 4.13).83 Framed by reeds, the landscape oscillates between dry land and marsh. In the outer margin, it evolves into

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Figure 4.13  Manuscript folio from a copy of the Diwan of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir. Baghdad (?), c. 1400. 29.5 × 20.4 cm (folio). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Purchase – Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1932.30.

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a rockier terrain, with diagonal planes marked by rough, gnarled shrubs. Holding an infant, a woman walks with an elderly man toward the page’s outer space. Beneath them, two buffaloes are looking in the other direction. In the upper margin, surrounded by swirling clouds, a flight of geese traverses the page. Although legible, the figural drawing cannot be so easily linked to the text that stands on the same page. In the poem, the author has closely followed the conventions of the mystical ghazal. A poetic form of five to fifteen distiches or couplets, the ghazal developed a mystical trend in the fourteenth century, weaving into the poem’s customary emphasis on love an allegory of the divine.84 Here the first half of the poem stages an encounter of the narrator with their beloved.85 The scene takes place in a garden (gulistån) at dawn. Comparing their companion to a cypress (sarv), the poet wonders what water and what air might have nourished such beauty.86 In its second half, the poem conveys a mystical tone. As is customary in the mystical ghazal, the erotic introductory theme segues into a reflection about the pursuit of love (‘ishq), the passage of time and the final dissolution of the lover into divine plenitude.87 Love is a mystical allegory for the spiritual quest of God’s wisdom, wherein the lover stands for the Sufi seeker and the beloved for God. The poem is couched in figurative language. The cypress figures the beloved and the mystic is compared to a traveller (sålik). The accompanying drawing echoes some of these themes. The geese and the family walking through the page convey an idea of movement, allegorising the mystic’s journey. Other elements of the landscape project a sense of motion, including the convolutions of the clouds, the diagonal lines of the hills, the wake of the ducks and the movement of the reeds, quivering in the breeze. The topography itself is in constant flux: a field becomes a pond, which turns into a hilly landscape. Yet the drawing also departs from the text. There is no specific meaning in Sufi literature that can be associated with the representation of ducks and buffaloes, for instance, or with the image of the woman carrying her newborn. In fact, the latter scene appears in another Jalayirid picture, as a wall painting executed in grisaille,88 with no link to the painting’s subject matter – a sleeping prince visited by an angel.89 Used with two different texts, this is a circulatory motif, able to adapt to different meanings. Despite its emphasis on nature and movement, which can prompt a mystical interpretation, the drawing stands out for its generic aspect. In contrast with the ghazal’s multilayered structure, it presents a rather simple image of pastoral life. It also projects a sense of peacefulness, contradicting the poem and its emphasis on annihilation. Breaking from the illustrational paradigm that had shaped court-sponsored book paintings, the drawing creates an effect of surprise. Pulling our attention away from the literal content of the

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text, disappointing the viewer’s expectations, it creates an ‘aesthetic distance’, to use the notion that Hans Robert Jauss defined as ‘the disparity between the given horizon of expectations and the appearance of a new work’.90 Puzzled by the discrepancy between word and image, most scholars have concentrated on identifying the hidden literary source of the iconography, thus privileging again the mimetic paradigm mentioned earlier. The key study of the Diwan remains the 1977 article by Deborah Klimburg-Salter wherein she claims the drawings to be an illustration of the Man†iq al-†ayr (The Speech of the Birds) by the poet ‘Attar (1142–1220).91 ‘Attar’s poem is a collection of tales and moralistic anecdotes, framed by a story recounting the spiritual journey of a group of birds. The frame narrative is an allegory of the mystical pursuit of truth. According to Klimburg-Salter, the drawings of the Diwan illustrate the first six valleys through which the birds must travel before they can discover the Simurgh, the fantastic bird that represents God: the valley of the quest, the valley of love, the valley of understanding, the valley of detachment, the valley of unity and the valley of astonishment. No illustration was made for the seventh valley, the valley of nothingness, but such absence might be in itself illustrative of the text, which describes the valley as incomprehensible. Upon closer examination, one realises, however, that the drawings cannot so easily be linked to ‘Attar’s narrative.92 The second drawing represents two enamoured couples and might indeed point to the valley of love. The third one features a gathering of scholars, echoing the pursuit of knowledge addressed in the valley of understanding. But the other drawings do not so easily match the poem. To the extent that we interpret the first image as a representation of travellers, the drawing might represent the valley of quest. This reading, however, does not apply to all the characters depicted in the image. The fourth image, presumably an illustration of the valley of detachment, represents the exact opposite. Featuring a bustling nomadic camp, filled with earthly possessions from livestock to tents to food, it is a celebration of materiality. Unless it is that the images, through their enigmatic appearance, parallel ‘Attar’s allegory in the experience that they provide. Perhaps they were set ‘as so many surprises comparable to the surprising adventures of the search for salvation in Attar’s poetical account’,93 in Oleg Grabar’s words. Perplexing the viewer’s mind, generating multiple readings, they invite the beholder to a ceaseless hermeneutic labour, like the Sufi seeker in their pursuit of Truth. The pictures do not convey a single meaning but, rather, propose a detour to prolonged, concentrated meditation. This interpretation need not be discarded (and I return to it later), but I would like to suggest a different methodology, shifting the attention from representation to making, from the illusion of the

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image to the materiality of the line. We cannot do justice to the drawings unless we consider them together with another major novelty of the Diwan: the style and quality of its calligraphy. This manuscript is one of the earliest known court-sponsored manuscripts penned in nasta‘liq, a script that developed in the second half of the fourteenth century.94 From ta‘liq, an Arabic and Persian word meaning ‘hanging’ or ‘suspended’, nasta‘liq is characterised by a certain restlessness. In contrast with former calligraphic styles such as naskh, which was more rectilinear, the letters never quite sit on the baseline. Rather, following oblique lines, they seem to hang and swing, hooked up to an invisible point at their upper right. In fact, nasta‘liq closely echoes the line drawing in the same page of the Diwan. We are struck by the graphic quality of the calligraphy and the calligraphic flow of the drawing, which appears like a flourish, extended from the text. There are visual resonances between both art forms, in the ways in which the pen strokes of the nasta‘liq and the lines of the drawing, for instance, swirl or slant. The art of ta˙rÈr informs both text and image, centre and periphery, harmonising the page into one lyrical entanglement of lines. The drawing registers a wide array of rhythmic movements, equating every motif with a set of gestures. In the tufts of grass, one sees a quick, impressionistic brushstroke. The contour of textiles records a longer, more fluid movement. The bushes are quite heavy and dense, while the stems of the reeds express a lighter, almost immaterial touch. With every figurative element functioning as the residue of a specific hand movement, the drawing as a whole is a seismograph, measuring and recording the draftsman’s sensations. The lyrical drawing represents the topography of a landscape as much as it ­diagrams the artist’s performance. Each motif embodies a particular aspect of the draftsman’s skills. As such, the Freer drawing offers more than a seismograph; it herds the artist’s activity into regular, figurative patterns. We gain access to the draftsman’s mastery through the detour of figural representation, as though the artist needed figurative images in order to express the full range of their talent. Turning gestures into figurative motifs, Persian drawing recalls certain descriptions of calligraphy in Chinese sources. In the thirteenth century, a master calligrapher compared the attack, the moment when the tip of the brush hits the paper, to ‘the hare leaping and the hawk swooping down on its prey’.95 Trying to master the calligraphic movements of the Chinese characters tzu and pu, another artist imitated, with their hand, the movement of a flying bird. In a treatise written around the same time, the fourth-century calligrapher Wang Hsi-chih is said to have carefully observed geese, ‘because to form the characters, he took inspiration from the resemblance between the undulations of the neck and those of the wrist as it twirls the brush’. 96 These Chinese sources have encouraged me to compare

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the movement of the hand to the concept that it shapes. The image of the goose, for instance, with its long, flexible neck might represent at once the likeness of a goose, the undulations of the draftsman’s wrist and an image to which the action of the hand could be compared. The landscape, it seems, could be read as a metaphor for the artist’s calligraphic manner. I cannot offer textual evidence to prove the historical relevance of this comparison. The influence of Chinese art in Iran is, however, a well-known phenomenon.97 Jalayirid artists did emulate Chinese drawings.98 Several decorative innovations of the late fourteenth century can be partially attributed to Chinese prototypes.99 The emergence of drawing as an autonomous medium, and the calligraphic manner of the line, both visible in the Diwan of Ahmad Jalayir, might have been informed by the technique of Chinese ink painting.100 People, objects and ideas circulated from one territory to another. When the Jalayirid manuscripts were made, the first Ming emperor Hung Wu had just sent an envoy to Iran, with the task of distributing gifts to local rulers.101 Perhaps artistic tropes were also channelled through the same routes. That the line could provide the basis for metaphorical associations is in fact suggested by Persian lyrical poetry. This is no coincidence, for all three modes of expression – drawing, nasta‘liq script and lyrical poetry – seem to have developed around the same time. It is even possible that nasta‘liq was directly influenced by the poetic form of the ghazal, a highly stylised poem offering a mixture of courtly, erotic and mystical themes (the ghazal also dominates the Diwan of Sultan Ahmad). Nasta‘liq, which emerged in the second half of the fourteenth century when the mystical ghazal was developed by Hafiz, ‘may well have been affected by the emotion and mood of the poem, expressed through both its language and rhythm’, as Elaine Wright noted.102 Several verses of ghazal poetry allude to the consubstantiality of calligraphy, drawing and poetry. More specifically, they suggest a metaphorical reading of the line, for instance in the following verse, wherein Hafiz describes the beloved’s hair: ‫به بوی نافه‌ای کاخر صبا زان طره بگشاید‬ ‫ز تاب جعد مشکینش چه خون افتاد در دل‌ها‬ At the musk-pod scent which, at last, the Saba released from those curls, How blood rushed to the heart from the shining twists of their musky locks.103 The hair of the beloved is compared to a mesh of shiny black curls, one that recalls the twists of the nasta‘liq script and the sinuous line of Persian drawing. It is also likened to a bag of musk, whose

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perfume is liberated by the morning breeze (saba), an image that further alludes to both calligraphy and drawing, since black ink was sometimes perfumed with musk. The sense of smell, moreover, emphasises the tactile aspect of the mystical experience. The poem describes a haptic space, in which a breeze comes through, unlocking the lover’s hair. Loosening the curls, freeing the scent of musk, it suggests that we approach the beloved’s face as a calligraphic performance. The sinuous line, then, the scent of the ink and the shiny quality of the paper can be compared to the beloved. They do not only point to their makers’ gestural efforts; they might also evoke the mystical quest for love. Oleg Grabar’s interpretation of the Diwan’s drawings as catalysers of mystical contemplation could be applied to the material configuration of the page, not just to the forms represented on it. Dated to the end of the fourteenth century and attributed to the Herati poet Mawlana ‘Ali Badr, another poetic verse uses a more explicit link between mystical love and book arts, emphasising the visual and olfactory resonances between calligraphy and human figure: ‫خط مشکین تو بر صفحهء کافور عذار‬ ‫آیت حسن و جمال است مقرر گشته‬ The musky down on the camphor page of your cheek Is a verse (sign) of beauty scriven.104 The beloved’s face is compared to a manuscript page and their down to a line of calligraphy from which emanates the odour of musk. As well as recording the lyrical movement of the artist’s hand, lines could embody the poet’s object of desire, encoding the face of the beloved into the twists of the line, the smoothness of the paper and the scent of the ink. Looking at a drawing or a piece of calligraphy can be likened to shåhid-båzÈ (‘playing the witness’), a method of spiritual interpretation wherein the contemplation of material manifestations can lead to a mystical experience of the divine.105 Shåhid-båzÈ is grounded in the idea that God might appear in external reality, especially in pleasant forms such as the beloved’s face. The page resembles the face of the beautiful one, itself a sign of divine creation, a chain of comparisons encapsulated by these verses of Sa‘di – in which the poet also warns us not to confound mystical love with erotic pleasure, thus highlighting the metaphorical dimension of materiality: ‫چشم کوته نظران بر ورق صورت خوبان‬ ‫خط همی بیند و عارف قلم صنع خدا را‬ ‫همه را دیده به رویت نگران است و لیکن‬ ‫خود پرستان ز نشناسند هوا را‬

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When the eyes of short-sighted ones fall upon the beautiful page of your face They look at down, whilst the Gnostics see the pen of God’s creation. Everyone’s eyes stare at your face, but Self-worshippers do not distinguish the Truth from lust.106 A verse by Hafiz further links calligraphy to the poet’s body: ‫تیر عاشـق کـش ندانم بر دل حافظ کـه زد‬ ‫این قدر دانم که از شعر ترش خون می‌چـکید‬ Lover’s arrow tore and cleaved Hafiz’s heart I see his verses, with their wet ink, bleed.107 Associating ink with blood, Hafiz’s verses are likened to the poet’s own flesh. The wetness of the ink, most visible in the moment when the pen nib touches the paper, evokes the wound caused by the lover’s arrow. To pen Hafiz’s verse is to recreate the poet’s experience of love. The calligraphic line is not a passive object. Activated by poetry, it reveals the face of the beloved and the countenance of the poet. Body and line stand in a reciprocal relationship to one another: the hand inscribes the line that draws, metaphorically, a face. Examining the lyrical verve of the drawing, this chapter has emphasised the artist’s sensations rather than iconographic content as well as, with the guidance of historiographical writings and lyrical poetry, a series of associative images linking the line to the artist’s bodily movements, to the poet’s pursuit of divine love and to the beloved’s face. I am not suggesting that drawing has become illustrative again. In lyrical poetry, the line’s materiality evokes figurative motifs in a metaphorical way, prompting an association with these images through the viewer’s sensual engagement. These associations in effect are not there. They only emerge in the subjective experience of the beholder who considers the line as a platform for metaphorical elaboration. As primary sources reveal, whether in Timurid painting, Jalayirid drawing or lyrical poetry, the line reads less as the contour of a figurative image than an object producing symbolic meaning through its materiality. It does not necessarily form a textual space, a space in which words would point to exterior significations, regardless of their sonic quality.108 The calligraphic line conveys meaning through aspects of execution rather than textual content. Exceeding the figurative, its meaning as a moral portrait of the artist lies in its sensory configuration – the variations of its thickness, the fluidity of its execution, the precision of the hand.

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To return to our conundrum – how could the line represent the artist for Timurid viewers if it does not offer an icon of their face, and if it withholds individual traces of execution? The line seems to have evoked the artist not through self-portraiture or the evidence of a mere impression, but through the symbolic possibilities of the medium. Self-representation was not an inherent feature of drawing. Rather, it was relational: it lay in the equation between the line’s visual and material characteristics (such as weight and thickness), and the cultural and aesthetic values that shaped the contemporary viewer’s gaze (strength and regularity are testimony to the artist’s virtue). While allowing for the development of potential metaphorical meanings, the line lends itself to open-ended interpretations. If its meaning is not pre-given, by the same token it cannot be fixed. The line, in effect, is a disruptive force, continually preventing any attempt to reduce the material to the discursive. I have suggested an interpretation of the line as a moral portrait of the artist by historicising its reception, but that meaning is not immediately apparent, and it is not inscribed within the work of art. A viewer who does not have access to the cultural convention according to which calligraphy is connected to morality has no means to understand the line as a mode of self-representation. The Cairo Bustan’s artist, however, seems to have anticipated this difficulty. To make sure that we connect the paintings’ technical perfection to an individual artist, a sign was added: the signatures of the painter Bihzad, inserted into the details of the composition. Notes 1. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 169; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 362. 2. Persian edition and English translation by Thackston, 2001, 43. 3. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:262. 4. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 168; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 362. 5. Dawlatshah Samarqandi, 1901, 380. 6. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:19. 7. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 157. 8. Ibid., 1934, 167. 9. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:84 and 157. 10. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 167. 11. For a short biography of Muhammad Haydar, see Barthold, 1971. On the Tarikh-i Rashidi, see Arnold, 1930; Subtelny, 1979, 45–6; Roxburgh, 2001b, 39–40. 12. Subtelny, 1979, 45. 13. Thackston, 1989, 132. 14. At the beginning of his list of spiritual guides, the narrator indicates at several points that he used the biographical work of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, Nafa˙åt al-uns (Thackston, 1989, 119).

calligraphic line

15. The genre of the tazkira first developed to describe the life and works of poets, before it was extended to other professions. The earliest known examples are in Arabic. In Persian literature, a key example is Dawlatshah Samarqandi’s Tazkirat al-shu‘arå’ (Biographies of Poets) ˉ Samarqandi, 1901). On this genre, see completed in 1487 (Dawlatshah Subtelny, 1979, 19–38; Roxburgh, 2001b, 122–30. 16. Arnold, 1930; Soudavar, 1992, 95–8. 17. Previous scholarly explorations of historical terms include Sakisian, 1935; Porter, 1995, 221. 18. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 166; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 361. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. On this painter, see Soucek, 1982. 22. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 166–7; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 361. 23. This passage has been translated and commented upon several times. See, for example, Ettinghausen, 1962, 52; Porter, 1995, 223; Rabbat, 2006, 101–2; Saba, 2012, 204. 24. Roxburgh, 2001b, 178. 25. Porter, 1995. 26. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 162; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 349. 27. On the relationship between painting and calligraphy, see Roxburgh, 2002b; Rice, 2014. 28. Ta˙rÈr could also be used to describe the frame of the jadwal or the contours added by the artist to enhance a stencilled design (Porter, 1992, 57, 59 and 64). 29. Barthes, 1982, 199. 30. Thackston, 2001, 19. 31. Sakisian, 1936a, 19. 32. Porter, 2000, 109. 33. English translation by Thackston, 2001, 41. 34. Gacek, 2009, 7–8, 209. 35. Quoted in Roxburgh, 1996, 102. 36. English translation by Thackston, 2001, 32. The proverb also appears in the work of the Baghdadi author Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (c. 930–1023), where it is on one occasion attributed to Euclid (Rosenthal, 1971, 27, 40; on the attribution to Euclid, see ibid., note 5). 37. The main primary source on the Timurid kitabkhana is the progress report of the library-cum-workshop of Baysunghur written around 1430, the ‘arzadasht (petition) (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2153, folio 98a; Persian edition and English translation in Thackston, 2001, 43–6). On this document and on further aspects of the Timurid kitabkhana, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 159–236; Akimushkin, 1997; Richard, 2001; Roxburgh, 2005, chapter 3. Another important study of the kitabkhana is Simpson, 1993. 38. Richard, 2001, 97–8. 39. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 166–7. English translation by Thackston, 1989, 361. 40. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15. 41. Ibid., 15. 42. Thackston, 1989, 225.

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43. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15. 44. O’Kane, 1987, 107. 45. Ibid., plate 58.4. For other late-fifteenth-century examples, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 257. 46. See, for example, Carboni and Komaroff, 2002, figure 231. 47. See examples in Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 29–31. 48. Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I.6052 (Komaroff, 1988, 89–90; Komaroff, 1992a, cat. no. 13). For more examples, see Carboni and Komaroff, 2002, 189–93. 49. Komaroff, 1992b, 154. 50. Ibid., 154. 51. Komaroff, 1988, 98 and note 37. 52. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Diez A folio 72 S13 (Roxburgh, 2002a, figure 19). The drawing measures 23.6 × 30 cm. About this artist, see Roxburgh, 2005, 140–1. For a list of drawings signed by or attributed to him, see Roxburgh, 2002a, note 60. 53. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 50b (Roxburgh, 2002a, figure 20). The drawing measures 28.2 × 32 cm. The album is composed of ninety-eight folios, each measuring 68 × 50 cm. It is one of the earliest surviving albums. For a thorough analysis, see Roxburgh, 2005, 93–106. 54. Roxburgh, 2002a, 59. 55. Ibid., 59. 56. For a recent study of tughras in the context of Mongol and postMongol Iran and Central Asia, see Soudavar, 2006. 57. The farman where the tughra appears is in a private collection (Soudavar, 2006, figure 107). 58. This view is quite common. See, for example, Roxburgh, 2002a, 44: ‘most of the sheets of paper, cut to various dimensions and shapes on which they were drawn, functioned as intermediaries in a design process that led from sketches and exploratory designs to meticulously inked line drawings.’ 59. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 87a (Roxburgh, 2005, figure 42): album page, c. 1400–50, 68 × 50 cm (folio). 60. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 66. 61. See Figure 1.8 in this book (Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, no. 77b [Soudavar, 1992, no. 77b]). 62. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.228.13.1: ‘Bahram Gur’s Master Shot’ from a Khamsa of Nizami, copied around 1425–30 (www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/455054 [accessed January 2017]; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 379, figure 6b). 63. It contrasts with the sharp-edged line that usually dominates Persian drawing. Such difference in line weight might point to the drawing’s function as a preparatory sketch. 64. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Per. 119, folio 3b (Lentz and Lowry, 1989, colour reproduction p. 124). On this manuscript, see Lentz, 1985, 314–27; Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 41; Hillenbrand, 1996; Roxburgh, 2005, 66–8. 65. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 172–3. 66. As in all artistic practices, the creative process of Persianate book arts involved imitation and replication—this argument should not be dismissed. The progress report of Baysunghur’s workhop, the ‘arzadasht mentioned above, clearly attests to the practice of imitation

calligraphic line

(Thackston, 2001, 43–6). This document constitutes a verbal pendant of sorts to the Timurid workshop album. One learns, for example, that Khawja ‘Abd al-Rahim made designs or drawings (the word used in Persian, †urË˙, plural of †ar˙, means both) to be used by ‘binders, illuminators, tentmakers, and tilemakers’ (Thackston, 2001, 43). Another passage from the same source mentions that Khwaja Mir Hasan copied a design (†ar˙) for a saddle made by Mir Dawlatyar in the fourteenth century (according to an early-sixteenth-century preface, Mir Dawlatyar was famous for his ink-on-paper drawings), thus suggesting that drawing could also be a means for transfering design ideas across time periods. Using Khwaja Mir Hassan’s copy, two other artists, Mir Shams al-Din, who was Khwaja Mir Hasan’s son, and Ustad Dawlat Khwaja, executed the design in mother-of-pearl (Thackston, 2001, 44). 67. Louvel, 2011, 35. The expression ‘a trap set by language’ is by Yves Bonnefoy. 68. Goodman, 1968. For a convenient summary of Goodman’s theory, see Louvel, 2011, 40: ‘the image is part of a dense, even system, which provides an example of a continuous system akin to infinity. Each element is connected with the totality and derives from its meaning from the rest. […] Language, on the contrary, is a differentiated symbolic language which functions in a discontinuous way, as evidenced in the alphabet, which contains a limited number of well-separated letters. […] Language relies on a finite system due to the limited number of characters, whereas a dense system remains open to an infinite number of marks which are new, significant, and easy to integrate with the symbol.’ 69. Lentz and Lowry, 1989, 180. 70. Ibid,, 182. 71. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 2152, folio 57a. 72. Although the expressive dimension of the line has rarely been discussed, scholars have sensed the inadequacy of certain binaries such as preparatory and finished – an important step in a discussion of the function of drawing. Writing in 1936, Armenag Sakisian proposed to classify Persian drawing, †ar˙ in Persian, into two groups. He distinguished preparatory drawings, aßl-i †ar˙ in Persian, from drawings designed as finished works, which, he considered, should be approached ‘like easel-pictures’. But he also used the expression ‘line drawing’ instead of ‘sketch’ to characterise preparatory drawings, suggesting that any Persian drawing, regardless of its apparent level of execution, could be appreciated as a work of the line, not necessarily defined by a utilitarian value (Sakisian, 1936a, 19). 73. For a recent discussion of Morellian connoisseurship, see Davis, 2011, esp. chapter 4. On the broader epistemological context of the emergence of this method, see Ginzburg, 1980. Carlo Ginzburg relates the emergence of Morellian stylistic attribution in the nineteenth century to a positivist practice of indicial reading, also shared by scientific methods, police investigation and psychoanalysis. 74. Evaluative, non-objective terms were also used to judge poetry. See, for example, the discussion of poetic skill in the Chahar Maqala (Four Discourses) of the twelfth-century writer Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi (Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi, 1921). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion. 75. For more examples, see Roxburgh, 2008, 6.

181

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

76. Quoted in Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 108. 77. Quoted in Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 122. 78. Thackston, 1989, 34. For more references and a quick analysis of this passage, see Roxburgh, 2005, 70. 79. Charles Sanders Peirce divided signs into three categories: icons, indices and symbols. Each type of sign produces meaning in a different way: ‘There are three kinds of signs. Firstly, there are likenesses, or icons; which serve to convey ideas of the things they represent simply by imitating them. Secondly, there are indications, or indices; which show something about things, on account of their being physically connected with them. […] Thirdly, there are symbols, or general signs, which have become associated with their meanings by usage’ (Peirce, 1998, 2:5). 80. Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, F1932.29a–b and F1932.30– F1932.37: Diwan (Collected Poetry) of Ahmad Jalayir, c.  1400, 337 folios, 30 × 20.3 cm (folio), with eight pages presenting border drawings (Klimburg-Salter, 1977; Atıl, 1978, 11–27). 81. For other examples, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 15; Ça©man and Tanındı, 2011; Blair, 2014, 172–227. 82. In addition to the references given in note 80, reproductions can also be searched online on the website of the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, at https://archive.asia.si.edu/collections/edan/default.cfm (accessed December 2017). 83. Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, F1932.30: manuscript folio from the Diwan of Ahmad Jalayir, c. 1400, 29.5 × 20.4 cm (folio) (http:// archive.asia.si.edu/collections/edan/object.php?q=fsg_F1932.30 [accessed November 2017]). 84. Lewis, 1995; Meisami, 2003, 45–54; Bruijn, 2000a; Yarshater, 2006. 85. I would like to thank Abdullah Ghouchani for his help in transcribing this poem. This is the first verse: ‫دلبرا امشب جمالت را صفائی دیگرست ناظران را با لقایت ملتقائی دیگرست‬ 86. Verses 4 and 5 read: ‫در بالی قامت سرو تو گشتم مبتال چشم فتانت چه گویم خود بالی دیگرست‬ ‫در کدام آب و هوا پرورده اند این خوب را شهر خوبانرا مگر آب و هوائی دیگرست‬ 87. The final verse reads: ‫احمدا فانی شو اندر عاشقی مردانه وار در حقیقت نیستی را خود بقائی دیگرست‬ 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

This was first noted in Prentice, 1981. On this painting, also see Chapter 3 of this book. Jauss, 1982, 25. Klimburg-Salter, 1977. For reproductions, see Atıl, 1978, 11–27 and the museum’s website at http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/edan/object.php?q=fsg_F1932.31 (accessed January 2017). 93. Grabar, 2006, 231. 94. For a thorough analysis of the emergence of this script and further references, see Wright, 2012, chapter 4. 95. Quoted by Jean-François Billeter, 1990, 163.

calligraphic line

96. Quoted in ibid., 185–6. 97. For the earlier period of Mongol Iran, see Kadoi, 2009. On Chinese influence in the Persian terminology of the arts, see Shukurov, 2009, 226. 98. O’Kane, 1990–1, 221 and figures 7 and 8. 99. For decorative motifs, see Wright, 2012, 67–9. 100. Sugimura, 1991. 101. Soucek, 1988, 12. 102. Wright, 2012, 251–2. 103. This is the first ghazal of Hafiz, here translated using Meisami, 2003, 419 and an anonymous reviewer’s suggestion. 104. Quoted in Khwandamir, 1959, 101; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 114. 105. Shåhid-båzÈ was addressed in Chapter 1 of this book. For an overview of this topos and practice, see Shamisa, 2002; Ritter, 2003; Ridgeon, 2012; Ingenito, 2013. 106. Ingenito, 2013, 114. For the poem in Persian, see Sa‘di, 2006, 35. 107. This is Hafiz’s ghazal no. 240. 108. This is the textual space defined by Jean-François Lyotard: a space ‘formed so as to permit the recognition of significations, in the same way that words are spoken by the addressed for the addressee to hear them’ (Lyotard, 2010, 207).

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CHAPTER FIVE

Wondrous Signature

Looking attentively into each painting of the Cairo Bustan, the hair-splitting gaze can pinpoint one further detail, concealed among the smallest visual units of the composition: a signature in the name of the painter Bihzad. Carefully hidden in the paintings, the declaration of Bihzad’s authorship was made difficult to find. J. V. S. Wilkinson published the signatures in 1931 and recounts that he probably would have missed at least one of them if not for Ernest Kühnel and Armenag Beg Sakisian, two colleagues and Islamic art experts with whom he examined the Cairo Bustan: Two of the precious inscriptions were noticed by their quicker eyes before I saw them at all, and at least one of these would probably have escaped me altogether, as it has apparently escaped previously, all other Bihzad students who have seen the manuscript.1 The signatures were ‘in each case inserted in a different way, and in some unexpected manner’, Wilkinson further noted.2 In ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ (Plate X), the inscription was woven as a golden thread into the black velvet quiver of the king (Figure 5.1). In ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ (Plate XI), it can be read in the book that a mosque attendant is studying (Figure 5.2). In ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’ (Plate XII), it appears at the end of the monumental epigraphic inscription running around the vaulted porch (Figure 5.3). In the last painting, ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ (Plate XIII), it was shaped as a tile arabesque adorning Zulaykha’s palace (Figure 5.4). Integrated into the painting as a pictorial detail, embedded in the time and space of the scenes represented, the signatures confirm that as well as being illustrations of the Bustan, the paintings are the creations of Bihzad.3 Subsumed into the work of art, the inscriptions can be read as both signature and motif.4 They refer to the paintings’ context of making (since they name their author) while participating in their pictorial content (since they are woven into their fabric). Occupying the liminal space between object and subject, work of art and context, painting and frame, they blur the distinction between the outside

185

wondrous signature

and the inside of the paintings.5 Bihzad’s signature appears within an ambiguous image, at once symbol and icon, name and ornament. Another example of such an amalgamation of signature and work of art can be found in Persian poetry: the takhallus, the poet’s self-naming in the final or penultimate line of the ghazal (a short poetic form generally focused on separation and love).6 The first ghazal of the Diwan of Hafiz (d. 1390) ends with this verse: ‫حضوری گر همی خواهی از او غایب مشو حافظ‬ ‫متی ما تلق من تهوی دع الدنیا و اهملها‬

Figure 5.1  Detail of Bihzad’s signature from ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ from the Cairo Bustan (reproduced in Plate X). Herat, c. 1488. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 10a.

If you desire presence, Hafiz, do not be absent from him When you have found the one you desire, leave this world, and ignore it.7

The poet has inserted himself into the topic of mystical communion, which can only be achieved after renouncing the world. The division of the subject between worldly author and Sufi seeker is paralleled by the ambivalence of pronoun reference. While naming the writer, the verse-signature refers to Hafiz in the second person. It is an apostrophe to the poet, creating a distance between voice and author, and provoking ‘a violation of the integrity of the lyric “I”’, in the expression of Paul Losensky.8 It says simultaneously ‘I am the poet Hafiz’ and ‘you, Hafiz, are the mystic.’ The poet stages himself as a ubiquitous character, situated at once inside and outside the poem. The takhallus can hardly be taken as an autobiographical clue; it is a self-referential device, portraying the author as both the origin and the product of discourse. In the end, as Julie Meisami wrote in an analysis of this ghazal, ‘the ultimate object of desire’ is poetry.9 Bihzad’s signature also recalls Figure 5.2  Detail of Bihzad’s signature from the poetic technique known as ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ from the Cairo tajnÈs-i tamm (perfect paronoma- Bustan (reproduced in Plate XI). Herat, c. 1488. sia), a homonymic pun presented Cairo, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 26a.

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as the final rhyme of the poem: the same sound produces two different meanings, and the doubling takes place at the end of the verse.10 This is the verbal equivalent of the twofold image containing Bihzad’s name, wherein the same visual unit contains two different images. The doubling is only visible to the gaze that moves from the macroscopic level of the picture to its details, and thus at the end of the gaze’s trajectory, just as the homonymic pun of the tajnÈs-i tamm emerges at the end of reading the full couplet of verses. Signatures were, moreover, extremely rare in the tradition of Persian painting. One barely sees a painter’s signature in a Persian manuscript, even when the book contains information on its patron and calligrapher, and even when contemporary primary sources identify the painters involved in its making.11 No wonder then that scholars did not so easily discover Bihzad’s inscriptions. Bihzad’s signatures are in fact the only surviving examples of signatures within Persian paintings in the fifteenth century, and they are the only ones naming Bihzad that we know of.12 Even more Figure 5.3  Detail of surprising, despite the circulation and impact of the Bihzad’s signature from Cairo Bustan in Iran and beyond, Bihzad’s signatures ‘The Poet at the Judge’s were only rarely emulated.13 Court’ from the Cairo Concealment, variety, ambiguity and uniqueness Bustan (reproduced in define Bihzad’s assertion of authorship. Yet these Plate XII). Herat, striking characteristics have rarely been addressed.14 painting dated 894/ Considered only for their verbal content, the signatures December 1488– November 1489. Cairo, have mainly been approached as signs of authenticity, Dar al-kutub, Adab fårisÈ enabling scholars to establish Bihzad’s manner and to 22, folio 30b. determine a wider body of paintings attributable to him.15 Almost all modern studies devoted to Bihzad have been driven by the mandate of Morellian connoisseurship: to correlate works of art with individual hands.16 The popularity of this paradigm in the field of Persian painting can be explained by several motivations, including the desire to live up to the Western celebration of the artist and ‘the saleability of the “nameable” artist’ in the art market, as David Roxburgh noted.17 There are serious limitations to the connoisseurial model and its documentary notion of signature. First, such an approach does not account for the visual aspects of the inscriptions. Why was the signature so artfully executed if its purpose was solely to indicate the artist’s name? Second, how can one infer from only the signature that Bihzad was the unique maker of the Cairo Bustan’s paintings? (In any event we still call it a signature since, following Rona Goffen, we define the notion as a declaration rather than a proof of authorship.)18 ‘Given the collaborative nature of manuscript painting

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187

and the non-expressive application of pigment,’ Roxburgh rightly asked, ‘how could one ever be sure of pinpointing those surfaces executed by an individual painter?’19 Before returning to the issue of artistic collaboration, which will be addressed at the end of this chapter, I would like to begin with no assumptions regarding the signatures’ function. Instead, I examine the inscriptions’ own terms, how they frame, enrich and complicate their meaning through their placement and form. The signatures may indicate Bihzad’s physical hand. In two instances, they are accompanied by a hijri date: the third painting is dated 894 (from the last three weeks of December Figure 5.4  Detail of 1488 to the end of November 1489) (Plate XII), and Bihzad’s signature from ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’ from the last one 893 (from the last two weeks of 1487 to the Cairo Bustan early December 1488) (Plate XIII). These dates denote (reproduced in Plate XIII). a historical impulse, the desire to create a conscious- Herat, painting dated 893/ ness of the painting’s historicity within the viewer. December 1487–November But in addition to historicising the painter, the sig- 1488. Cairo, Dar al-kutub, nature’s appearance provokes a complex visual expe- Adab fårisÈ 22, folio 52b. rience. Its ambiguity and minuteness elicit in the beholder a feeling of amazement. The hidden inscriptions transform the painting into a magical cup, a cryptic device where the smallest visual unit can reveal an unexpected message. Subsumed into the painting as a tiny, almost invisible motif, they also emphasise the painter’s virtuosity. Presented in a wide variety of forms, they highlight his creativity. The signature does not merely declare Bihzad’s authorship: it proposes a multilayered, elaborate description of the painter.20 Cross-media Signatures Bihzad’s signatures marked the painter’s accession to the field of representation, providing him with the kind of visibility that artists working in other media were already accustomed to. In medieval Islam, calligraphers had been signing their work since at least the late tenth century.21 As L. A. Mayer, Michael Meinecke, Sheila Blair and others have shown, glassmakers, woodcarvers, metalworkers, ivory carvers, potters, tile workers, builders and architects also used signatures.22 But marks of authorship remained unusual for the painter. The first surviving appearance of a painter’s name in an Islamic manuscript belongs to an Arabic book, a copy of the Maqamat of alHariri dated 1237.23 The calligrapher, al-Wasiti, was also the painter, a double competence that he emphasised in the colophon (the painter’s name therefore does not appear within the paintings, a major

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difference from Bihzad’s inscriptions).24 In Persian manuscripts, only two signatures seem to have preceded Bihzad’s.25 The first example can be found in a copy of the poetic work Warqa wa Gulsha executed in Konya in the middle of the thirteenth century.26 The painter, ‘Abd al-Mu’min ibn Muhammad, is also known from a textual primary source, the waqf (endowment deed) of the madrasa Karatay in Konya dated 1251.27 Written in large script on the painting’s golden background, the signature reads less as a pictorial motif than as a textual label. There is no evidence that Bihzad ever saw this painting. The second example is the signature of Junayd naqqash in the Jalayirid copy of Khwaju Kirmani’s Three Mathnawis, made in Baghdad in 1396.28 Inserted in the last painting of the first book, ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage to Humayun’ (Figure 2.3), the signature reads: ‘work of Junayd naqqash Sultani’ (‘amal Junayd naqqåsh Íul†ånÈ).29 It was disguised as an element of architectural decoration: a motif in red glass, built into a pierced stucco screen (Figure 2.4).30 In its dual nature as icon and symbol, it heralds the signatures of Bihzad and their ability to mingle with the picture. Its placement is also interesting. Located on the vertical axis that includes the queen at the bottom and a royal inscription at the top, it seems to suggest the painter’s presence at the court.31 After the demise of the Jalayirids the Three Mathnawis probably circulated in royal courts in Iran, as discussed in Chapter 2. In the sixteenth century, it was in the workshop of the Safavid prince Bahram Mirza. Several illuminated pieces were then added to it, and a painting was removed from the codex to be placed in the prince’s album.32 The transformation testifies to this manuscript’s importance for Safavid practitioners. The album’s preface does mention Junayd naqqash in its account of Persian painting – perhaps its author, Dust Muhammad, had seen Junayd’s signature in Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis, and perhaps the signature was known to other artists in the Safavid workshop.33 Bihzad too might have seen the Three Mathnawis’ signature before inserting his mark of authorship into the paintings of the Cairo Bustan. It is possible that the manuscript stopped in Herat in the course of its trajectory from Baghdad to Tabriz, just as many other Jalayirid books did, since their pictorial compositions were frequently reprised in Timurid painting.34 If Bihzad had seen the manuscript, the self-reflective quality of his signature would be enhanced: the signature would not only be a pictorial motif but a signature citing another signature. In any case, Bihzad’s inscriptions expand on Junayd’s. While Junayd’s name appears only once in the Three Mathnawis, Bihzad’s turns up in four paintings, each time in a different form. Junayd uses the word ‘Sultani’, acknowledging his affiliation with the ruler; Bihzad’s inscription drops the sobriquet, giving the painter more autonomy and liberating him from the

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structure of patronage, at least at the representational level of the signature. Bihzad, in adding his signature, probably drew on a wider range of techniques and media. One might think of illuminators’ signatures, which were more common and which developed in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries during the Ilkhanid period.35 In a copy of the Majmu‘a (Collected Works) of Rashid al-Din dated 1310–1, two different illuminators inserted their names into the decoration of the double illuminated frontispiece, inside the medallions jutting out from the middle of the central rectangular frame (Figure 5.5).36 This space was usually filled with feathery, petal-like motifs, unfolding and overlapping with each other, mimicking the petals of a blossoming rose. Here it bears two signatures whose colours and shapes echo the chromatic tonality of the page, as well as the frieze of shaded, voluminous petals surrounding the medallions. On folio 3b, one can read ‘work of the humble Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Baghdadi’ (‘amal al-‘abd al-∂a‘Èf Mu˙ammad ibn Ma˙mËd alBaghdådÈ) (Figure 5.6) while the opposing finial of folio 4a reads ‘work of the humble Muhammad ibn al-‘Afif al-Kashi’ (‘amal al-‘abd al-∂a‘Èf Mu˙ammad ibn al-‘AfÈf al-KåshÈ). Signature and illumination are so similar that they almost seem interchangeable, inviting us to re-imagine the whole page as one interlacing network of names. Active between 1417 and 1436 in the workshop of the Timurid prince Ibrahim Sultan in Shiraz, Nasr al-Din al-Sultani similarly employed an ornamental signature, hiding it in the illumination.37 In a copy of the Shahnama made for Ibrahim Sultan around 1435, the name ‘Nasr al-Sultani’ was meticulously inserted into a tiny band of golden interlacing lines framing the illuminated carpet page (Figure 5.7), right underneath the patron’s name, which appears in large script in the main text cartouches placed at the top and bottom of the central field.38 Bihzad’s signatures hence propose at least two analogies: they compare the painter to a pictorial motif while referencing examples of artists’ signatures in other media. Inserted into a book in the painting ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, Bihzad’s signature points to the well-known practice of self-assertion in the art of calligraphy (Figure 5.2). Turning up in the guise of an epigraphic inscription in ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, the signature further alludes not only to tilemakers but also to calligraphers, who were often responsible for making the model of the epigraphy used on buildings (Figure 5.3). The signature also imitates inscriptions found in architectural tilework that name architects, ceramicists and epigraphists. A wellknown Timurid example can be found in the mosque completed in 1418 in Mashhad for Gawhar Shad, Shah Rukh’s wife. The architect named is Qawam al-Din Shirazi. Active between 1410 and 1438, Qawam al-Din was ‘the first of the great architects in the Islamic world to acquire celebrity status’, as Sussan Babaie rightly noted.39

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Figure 5.5  Illuminated frontispiece from a copy of the Majmu‘a of Rashid al-Din. Iran, 1310–1. 52.3 × 38.2 cm. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 2324, folio 3b.

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Figure 5.6  Detail of the signature of Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Baghdadi from an illuminated frontispiece of a copy of the Majmu‘a of Rashid al-Din (reproduced in Figure 5.5). Iran, 1310–1. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 2324, folio 3b.

The inscription, made in tile mosaic, appears just as Bihzad’s does on the judge’s open hall (Figure 5.3), at the left foot of the rectangular frame surrounding an iwan.40 This is the main portal of the mosque: situated to the south, it leads to the prayer room, where the mihrab and the qibla wall are situated. The location of Qawam al-Din Shirazi’s signature is also remarkable because, while contained in a separate panel, it was placed at the end of the foundation inscription that runs around the frame whose last words are a signature of Baysunghur, attributing the conception of the inscription to the Timurid prince.41 In a way, the architect was made more visible: his inscription is closer to the ground, and written on horizontal lines, while the patron’s name, though inscribed in a larger script, is vertically oriented and placed slightly above eye level. We find again the pair of patron and artist, inserted into the tissue of the monument and competing for the viewer’s attention. Bihzad’s last signature, in ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, reads less as an epigraphic inscription than as an ornamental motif and recalls signatures used in architecture (Figure 5.4). During the second half of the fourteenth century, in the mausoleums of the necropolis of Shah-i Zinda in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, names were amalgamated with the decoration, anticipating Junayd Naqqash’s signature in the Three Mathnawis of Khwaju (Figure 2.4). The signature of an artist, perhaps

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Figure 5.7  Detail of illumination showing the name of Nasr al-Sultani from a copy of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. Shiraz (?), c. 1430–5, for Ibrahim Sultan. 28.7 × 20.4 cm (folio). Oxford, the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Ouseley Add. 176, folio 17a.

a ceramicist, was incorporated around 1350 as a vegetal scroll in turquoise-glazed ceramic on the façade of the mausoleum of Khwaja Ahmad, in the background of a monumental inscription surrounding the portal (Figure 5.8).42 The artist’s name, Fakhr-i ‘Ali, appears in the middle of a drop-shaped, polylobed leaf. The letters are written in such a minute, entangled way that they seem to constitute the veins of the leaf, or an extension of the scrolls surrounding it. Bihzad clearly appropriated the practice of signing from other crafts. The cross-media references at work in his personal sign emphasise that the painter is now on a par with other artistic professions; that like the calligrapher’s, the architect’s and the ceramicist’s, his identity can be discovered within the work of art; that the painter is a dimension arising in the beholder’s experience itself. Furthermore, Bihzad’s signatures counterbalance the presence of the ruler within the painting – like the epigraphic inscriptions studied in Chapter 2, they contest the link between art and patron. This is signified explicitly in the first painting through the signature’s placement on the king’s quiver: the painter locates himself in the royal image, inviting us to infer from a kingly attribute not the power of his owner but the presence of its maker (Figure 5.1).

wondrous signature

Figure 5.8  Glazed ceramic with signature of Fakhr-i ‘Ali. Samarqand, Shah-i Zinda, mausoleum of Khwaja Ahmad, c. 1350. Photo: Yves Porter.

Verbal motifs such as Bihzad’s signatures were not expected to deliver the artist’s name. In Timurid painting they were usually devoted to the ruler. The patron’s name was inserted in two paintings of a copy of the Shahnama executed in Herat at the end of the 1440s for the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki (1402–45).43 On folio 278a, the name ‘Muhammad Juki Bahadur’ appears in Kufic script above the door.44 On folio 296a, the inscription ‘the most mighty sultan Muhammad Juki’ (al-ßul†ån al-a‘Ωam Mu˙ammad JËkÈ) was threaded into a banner as a golden design (Figure 5.9), anticipating Bihzad’s first signature in the Cairo Bustan.45 With the pictorial integration of the patron’s name, the composition is brought into the time of the present, namely that of its Timurid reception, encouraging viewers to connect every motif to a royal origin. Bihzad’s inscriptions use the same tactic but modify its aim, replacing the patron with the artist as the main agent of pictorial representation. A Wondrous Sign The signature empowers the artist, and it also praises him. Its insertion within the painting lauds Bihzad’s creativity. The painter has invented a new disguise for each inscription, creating, with the same verbal content, an astonishing variety of visual forms. Timurid and Safavid art historians made a comparable use of ‘Bihzad’ in their texts, with a similar aim: to indicate the painter’s extraordinary inventiveness. The Timurid historian Ghiyath al-Din Khwandamir (c. 1475–1534) made the following pun:

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Figure 5.9  Detail of an inscription naming Muhammad Juki from a copy of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. Herat (?), c. 1440. 19.5 × 16.3 cm (folio). Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 239, folio 296a.

‫موی قلمت تا بجهان جهره گشاد‬ ‫بر جهرهء مانی رقم نسخ نهاد‬ ‫بس طبع که صورت نکو زاد ازو‬ ‫طبع تو ولی از همه آنها به زاد‬ When the hair of your brush revealed faces in the world It drew a line of abrogation across Mani’s countenance. Many are the talents from which were born beautiful forms But your talent was better born (beh zåd) than any of them.46 Writing around 1596, the Safavid scholar Qadi Ahmad employed another version of Khwandamir’s pun: ‫استاد زمان حضرت بهزاد است‬ ‫کو داد هنروری به عالم دادست‬

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‫کم زاد بسان مانی از مادر دهر‬ ‫باهلل که بهزاد ازو به زاد است‬ Bihzad is the master of the times, He has given a full measure of mastery. The Mother of Time has given birth to few of the rank of Mani But, by God, Bihzad is the best born (beh zåd) of her.47 Playing with the resonance between ‘Bihzad’ and the phrase ‘beh zåd’, which signifies ‘better born’, these verses encode the name of Bihzad as a homophonic pun. Just as in the paintings of the Cairo Bustan, Bihzad is incorporated into the fabric of the text. Hidden as a sound, it conveys at least two meanings. It emphasises the painter’s power of conception, from which ‘beautiful forms’ are born, while also announcing the birth of a mythical artist. Bihzad’s signatures allow viewers to visualise and dramatise the painter’s success in his art. Their minuteness and variety further call attention to two aspects of his talent: ta˙rÈr and taßwÈr, respectively explored in Chapter 4 and Chapter 3. Emphasising the painter’s ability to draw the most meticulous line and his capacity to invent new forms, the signatures define artistic authority as manual and intellectual authorship. A long panegyric poem written by the same Khwandamir about Bihzad can be read as a verbal, poetic pendant to the signatures: ‫مانی قلم خجسته آثار‬ ‫نیکو شیم حمیده اطوار‬ ‫استاد هنروران عالم‬ ‫در فن هنروری مسلم‬ ‫بهزاد یگانهء زمانه‬ ‫مانی بزمان او فسانه‬ ‫موی قلمش زاوستادی‬ ‫جان داده بصورت جمادی‬ ‫در دقت طبع مو شکافست‬ ‫وین حرف نه از سر گزافست‬ ‫تکمیل مهارتش در این فن‬ ‫باور اگرت نیاید از من‬ ‫بگشای نظر زروی انصاف‬ ‫بنگر صور بدیع اوصاف‬

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‫کآراست جمال این صحایف‬ ‫افزود کمال این طرایف‬ ‫در صورت خط و حسن تصویر‬ ‫زینسان و رقی نیافت تحریر‬ With a brush like Mani’s, felicitous in his works, Excellent in character, praiseworthy in his manners, Most accomplished of all artists in the world, Acknowledged master in his craft, Bihzad, unique in his age In whose time Mani has been relegated to fable Through his mastery the hair of his brush Has given life to inanimate form In formal precision he is hair-splitting And this is no exaggeration If you do not believe me That he is perfectly skilled in his art Open your eyes in justice And look at the unbelievable pictures That adorn these pages By which he has increased the perfection of these novelties With such calligraphic forms and beautiful depictions No page has ever been outlined48 Bihzad’s signatures encapsulate and, as a matter of fact, proleptically announce all characteristics attributed by Khwandamir to Bihzad, including the hair-splitting precision of his brush, the rarity of his accomplishment and the generative power of his art, capable of creating endless novelties. They also relay and condense the effects of the painter’s ‘unbelievable pictures’, executed in such a masterly manner that they produce an effect of surprise and a sense of awe. Khwandamir’s poem is an encomium in which Bihzad is portrayed as a myth, surpassing Mani, the third-century founder of Manichaeism and a legendary painter.49 Description (wasf) cannot be divorced from its laudatory, mythicising function, as noted in Chapter 2. Bihzad’s signs of authorship produce a similar effect of self-aggrandisement. Looking at each signature, we wonder at how a human hand could have possibly executed such a minute, impeccable detail. One can

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sense the physical intensity of the painter’s endeavour: the tension of his hand and fingers, of his eyes wide open when he inserts into the painting, hardly thinner than a thread of silk, the line of his name. Because of the painting’s density, it is not easy to re-imagine the artistic process from beginning to end. Where did the painter start? How did he manage to keep each tiny detail so clearly delineated while continuously adding more motifs? Bihzad’s pictures are ‘unbelievable’, as Khwandamir put it. They are ‘indescribable’, to use a more literal translation of Khwandamir’s expression badÈ‘-i awßåf: we know that they were manufactured, but we can hardly grasp how. Contemporary sources often insist on the beholder’s feelings of wonder and astonishment. The artist and author Dust Muhammad used the term ˙ayrat (bewilderment) to describe the effects produced by a Safavid painting.50 These expressions should not be taken as mere hyperbolic formulations, destined to foreground a painter’s talent. They can be tied to the notion of wonder, expressed by the Arabic word ‘ajab.51 In Lisån al-‘arab (The Tongue of the Arabs), the lexicographer Ibn Manzur (1233–1312) defines ‘ajab as ‘the denial or refusal of something that appears to you due to its lack of ordinariness’. ‘Man experiences wonder at something,’ he continues, ‘if its impression upon him is great and its cause is hidden.’ 52 As the thirteenth-century writer al-Qazwini put it, ‘ajab is a state of bewilderment that comes to people as a result of their incapability of knowing the cause of something.’53 In medieval Arabic and Persian literature, ‘ajab could be provoked by all sorts of objects, real and fabulous, animate and inanimate, seen and unseen. All sit at the limits of human knowledge, for ‘ajÈb, the marvellous, defies our understanding of causality. Fabricated objects could also be included in the list. In Kitåb al-buldån (the Book of Countries), written by the tenth-century historian and geographer Ibn al-Faqih and today known through an abridged version compiled a century later, ‘ajab applies to Chinese craftsmanship, products from Yemen, silks from the Caspian Sea, the church of Edessa and the name of Egypt.54 Al-Qazwini, on the other hand, defines the beehive, whose perfect geometric patterning can dazzle the most skilful engineer, as the paradigmatic example of wonder.55 Like the beehive, Bihzad’s details, including his signatures, were created materially. Yet it is hard to conceive how a human hand simply equipped with a brush could, with the precision of a bee constructing its habitat, design so many intricate patterns. Challenging human comprehension, Bihzad’s signatures can be described as ‘ajÈb, as wonder-arousing signs, because although they name a maker, they constitute a rare, inimitable feat. Thus they read less as signs of authenticity than as marks of uniqueness. This may also explain the signature’s rarity, especially after the example set by Bihzad. Despite the journeys of the Cairo Bustan

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and the diffusion of many of its artistic ideas across a wide territory from Safavid Tabriz to Uzbek Bukhara (a posthistory investigated in the epilogue), signing pictures does not become more common. Two exceptions, however, should be noted.56 They appear in a copy of the Diwan of Hafiz executed in Tabriz around 1525.57 In the painting illustrating a royal ceremony organised for Eid al-Fitr, the painter’s signature was incorporated into the embroidered decoration of the royal throne (Figure 5.10), thus echoing Bihzad’s inscription on Darius’s quiver (Figure 5.1).58 In the painting that represents a scene of revelry, a mark of authorship was placed in the cartouche above the tavern’s entrance (Figure 5.11).59 It simulates architectural ornaments, recalling Junayd’s signature in the Jalayirid copy of Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis and the signatures of Bihzad in the last two paintings of the Cairo Bustan. These resonances might not be fortuitous. As mentioned earlier, the copy of Khwaju’s Three Mathnawis circulated in Safavid workshops in the early sixteenth century. As we shall see in the epilogue, the Cairo Bustan was also in Tabriz around the same time. A few pages were then added to it. The painter of the Diwan of Hafiz is thus likely to have known both manuscripts. He probably decided to emulate the signatures of Junayd and Bihzad not only to assert his authorship but also to set up a dialogue with these prestigious names. The linkage is suggested visually through similarities of form, scale and placement. This painter was Sultan Muhammad – his signature reads ‘work of Sultan Muhammad ‘Iraqi’ (‘amal Íul†ån Mu˙ammad ‘IråqÈ) – one of the most famous artists of his epoch.60 Sultan Muhammad was described as the rival of Bihzad, sometimes also as his successor in the chain of masters of depiction, dethroning him, according to the sixteenth-century scholar Budaq Qazwini, just as Bihzad overthrew Mani.61 According to Dust Muhammad, he developed painting ‘to such a degree that, although it has a thousand eyes, the celestial sphere has not seen his like’.62 Like Bihzad then, Sultan Muhammad was the rarity of his age. And like Bihzad, he used the signature to assert his mastery, laying the ground for the creation of his own myth. Sultan Muhammad’s signs of authorship have three cascading effects. They depict the painter as a skilful, witty artist. As imperceptible, unique signs, they function to signify the painter’s inimitability. Examined together with their precursors, which probably served as models, they link Sultan Muhammad to Bihzad and Junayd, thus fashioning a historiography of Persian painting as a chain of mythical painters. Signature, it seems, served to transcend individual identity, transforming the artist from person to work of art to myth, and forging a constellation of luminaries across history. If the rhetoric of ‘ajab serves to shift the painter from craftsman to master, it also bears a religious meaning, interrogating the relation of artistic skill to God’s creation. ‘Ajab was first and foremost a lens

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Figure 5.10  Detail of Sultan Muhammad’s signature from ‘Celebration of Eid al-Fitr’ from a copy of the Diwan of Hafiz. Tabriz (?), c. 1525. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.42 (detail).

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Figure 5.11  Detail of Sultan Muhammad’s signature from ‘Earthly Drunkenness’ from a copy of the Diwan of Hafiz. Tabriz (?), c. 1525. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Gift of Mr and Mrs Stuart Cary Welch in honour of the students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College, jointly owned by the Harvard Art Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988.460.2. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

through which reality revealed its divine nature. As Mohammad Arkoun noted, the anagogical function of wonder, its ability to move us from the material world to the heavenly realm, stems from the Qur’an.63 Believed to be the word of God, transmitted to the prophet through the mediation of angels, the Qur’an is characterised in a self-referential verse as ‘a marvellous [‘ajÈb] recital’ (Qur’an 72:1), an expression that highlights the divine character of the Qur’an’s only seemingly material sounds. Medieval Arabic and Persian literature fully embraced this value of wonder as a sign of the divine. Encyclopaedias, travel books, geographical treatises and historical texts proposed endless inventories of things and events, covering all aspects of God’s creation from reality’s everyday, prosaic appearance to the most remote, inaccessible parts of the world, all working as proof of divine glory.64 In the writings of the Sufi philosopher al-Ghazali (1058–1111), works of literature, art and architecture played a similar role: the beautiful work of an author, the beautiful poem of a poet, the beautiful design of a painter-decorator or the building of an architect reveal also the inner beauty of these men. Just as the greatness of a poet, writer, or artist becomes all the more notable the more you know of the wonderful works of poetry, writing, and art, in the same way, miracles of the creation of God are a key to the knowledge of the greatness of the Creator.65 Beauty was a means of mystical transport, inducing ‘in those spiritually or intellectually inclined’, Gülru Necipo©lu summarised, ‘a contemplation of the wonders of creation, semiotically replete with the signs of divine wisdom’.66

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Bihzad’s artistry, defying our sense of man-madeness (as discussed in Chapter 3), suggests the artist’s divine inspiration. The painter’s sensuous and intellectual faculties do not simply produce beautiful objects; they point to God’s power. The profane and the sacred intermingle. If the signature is a tool of self-promotion, it also hints at the divine origin of the painter’s work. Perplexing the mind, highlighting the limits of our cognitive capacities, Bihzad’s self-image induces an experience of transcendental power. The link between art and divine creation is implicitly stated in the signature of the second painting of the Cairo Bustan (Figure 5.2), where it appears on a manuscript’s folio as a calligraphic text. A reader holding the book is pointing to the signature with his index finger. The gesture is also addressed to an interlocutor, testifying to the efficacy of the signature as an occasion for conversation. Appearing in a manuscript, the signature connects Bihzad’s practice to the art of calligraphy, denoting his ambition to partake in the culture of authorship that calligraphy had fostered for centuries. Yet it also raises the artist’s self-representation beyond the project of individual identity, as suggested by its placement. The manuscript on which the painter has inserted the sign of his authorship is probably not a random item. This book could well be a copy of the Qur’an, since we are situated in a mosque, and since this is the only book depicted there. A wondrous sign, Bihzad’s name is part of the Qur’an, that is, of God’s own speech; it is an element of God’s Preserved Tablet, dwelling among the ideas and forms that have engendered the world.67 The whole signature, ‘work of the slave Bihzad’, could also apply to the Qur’an itself. Bihzad would not only be an example of divine creation but a prophetic artist, an author comparable to the transcendent deity. Analogies between the artist and God were not rare. As the Brethren of Purity already indicated in the ninth century, technical perfection portrays the artist ‘in the likeness of the wise artificer, who is God’.68 As seen in Chapter 3, Bihzad was described by Khwandamir as ‘a creator (maΩhar) of marvellous forms and a revealer (maΩhar) of rare artistic manifestations’,69 that is, as a prophet. The Safavid painter and poet Sadiqi Beg considered him a saint (he wanted ‘to be inspired by a touch of the Bihzad’),70 while the Safavid author Mir Sayyid Ahmad compared Bihzad’s art to Jesus’ creation of a bird, an episode recounted in the Qur’an (‘His picture of a bird is so charming that, like Jesus’s bird, it comes to life’).71 These comparisons emphasise the artist’s power to animate matter. In the way in which they reveal themselves to the viewer, the signatures seem to embody a process of animation. It takes time and patience before one can pinpoint all four signatures: Bihzad’s name was meant to appear after sustained, scrupulous attention. Slowly rising to the painting’s inert surface, and linking painting to the artistic self, the signatures bring the picture to life, mimicking a

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process of enlivenment. Bihzad’s name further animates the painting through its changing appearance, transforming the painting into a multifaceted, anamorphic design. In literature too, we find evidence for a similar use of the artist’s proper name, as a poetic signifier designed to highlight the artist’s capacity to vivify matter. Such was the fate of ‘Yaqut al-Musta‘simi’, the name of the famous thirteenth-century master calligrapher, known since at least the fourteenth century as qiblat al-kuttåb, the cynosure of scribes.72 Yaqut al-Musta‘simi (d. 1298–9) lived in Baghdad.73 While a dozen manuscripts can be dated to his lifetime, hundreds of calligraphic specimens, produced in a large geographical area spanning Iraq to Central Asia, bear his name. Students and followers emulated his work for centuries, sometimes using his name as a signature.74 This phenomenon might point to a non-referential use of Yaqut’s name – to the practice of employing a calligrapher’s signature not simply to mark an indexical connection to the artist named but to draw a symbolic filiation. In Mihr wa Mushtari, a Persian mathnawi written in 1377, Assar Tabrizi praises the penmanship of one his two heroes, the prince Mihr, using the name of Yaqut as a personifying metaphor: ‫بر خطش که جائرا بود ازو قوت‬ ‫ز حسنش رفته در خط جان یاقوت‬ In his calligraphy which was nourishment for the souls, By his beauty, the soul of Yaqut has penetrated his writing.75 In this ode to Mihr’s calligraphy, the signifier ‘YåqËt’ is detached from the reference to the thirteenth-century artist and invested with different meanings. It becomes a wandering soul, inhabiting Mihr’s penmanship, infusing it with beauty. It also inspires the poet Assar Tabrizi himself, who uses it as a rhyme echoing the last word of the first hemistich, ‘qËt’ (nourishment). ‘YåqËt’ literally breathes music into the poem, nurturing its fabric with more musical and metaphorical resonances. Subsumed into the body of the image, the signature of Bihzad manifests the same metaphor: imparting life into matter. For a Critical History of Authorship Bihzad’s inscriptions refer to an individual author. Accompanied by a date, they situate the artist historically. Drawing on the practice of signing in other crafts, they correct the painter’s exclusion from traditional categories of authorship, allowing him to lay claim to authority. Against the traditional association of art and patron, they locate the origin of painting in the skill and knowledge of the individual painter, not in the ruler’s fiat. An interpretive perspective is

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enforced, in which painting is equated with a personalised, creative author. Yet the signatures’ placement and appearance complicate their referential task. A fleeting, chameleonic motif, Bihzad’s sign of authorship lacks the autographic quality that defines our modern understanding of signature. What is important in a signature is that the sign be stable and unique. Consistency guarantees authenticity, ensuring the causal link between the sign and the person it names. Integrated in the guise of an ornament, changing shape at each occurrence, the inscriptions of Bihzad, by contrast, seem to lack individuality. They differ from the signature of Muhammad ibn Mahmudshah al-Khayyam in a drawing analysed in Chapter 4, with its distinctive, personalising display of calligraphic flourish (Figure 4.5)76 or from tughras, the stylised graphic intitulatio of rulers that were placed on official decrees, together with seals and stamps, as a means of authentication (Figure 4.6).77 Bihzad’s signatures do not cultivate a consistent, singular look. Fused with the décor and not placed next to it, they seem rather impersonal. Instead of relating the object to its exterior context of production, they constitute an internal fold, turning the work onto itself. They transcend, in fact, historical reality, and clearly idealise the notion of authorship. Emphasising his astonishing craftsmanship and the power of his imagination, challenging the notion of causality, eliciting like the unbelievable beehive feelings of wonder and awe, the signature describes Bihzad as an extraordinary figure. Painting raises the painter’s talent beyond the limits of human knowledge, suggesting a link between his authorship and divine authority. The referent is magnified. The signature points to an exceptional entity as well as to a historical individual. There is even a suggestion that the artist would be an element of the Qur’an: a metaphysical concept, then, instead of a human being. The portrait of Bihzad conveyed by the signatures is so hyperbolic that it actually threatens the referential function of the proper name, the assumption that the proper name refers to an actual person.78 In the context of late Timurid Herat, ‘Bihzad’ might be Bihzad. But in the ideal world created by the paintings, the proper name is turned into an image, and Bihzad into a myth. While reducing the gap between painting and history, the signature of Bihzad also acts in the opposite way, intensifying the distance between image and reality. Art makes possible worlds ‘in which proper names can change their value’, as Ruth Ronen has observed.79 This is certainly the case with the Cairo Bustan. Here the signatures transform the artist Bihzad into the paragon Bihzad, the most authoritative figure in the canon of Persian painting. The metamorphosis took place in textual accounts as well, which often described Bihzad in hyperbolic terms, upsetting the modern understanding of the biographical genre. If they mention Bihzad

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abundantly, primary sources remain laconic, if not contradictory, on the details of his life, complicating the task of the modern, positivist researcher who must thus endeavour to separate ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’. Bihzad’s date of birth is not known, though scholars generally place it around 1450.80 As for his death, there are at least two different versions of its date and location. In his preface of 1544–5, Dust Muhammad reproduces a chronogram revealing the date of 1535–6 and indicates that Bihzad was buried in Tabriz.81 Writing a few decades later, Qadi Ahmad suggests, however, that Bihzad died in Herat and that he was buried nearby in Kuh-i Mukhtar.82 There is no consensus on Bihzad’s artistic training either. According to some, Bihzad was the pupil of the painter Mirak Naqqash,83 whom Dust Muhammad also considers to be Bihzad’s father.84 Meanwhile, Qadi Ahmad claims that Bihzad was an orphan, later brought up by Mirak Naqqash.85 For the Ottoman historian Mustafa ‘Ali in 1587, Bihzad was the student of Pir Sayyid Ahmad Tabrizi.86 The rest of Bihzad’s career is just as fuzzy, especially for the period following the Timurids’ demise. After the fall of Herat to the Uzbek ruler Muhammad Khan Shaybani in 1507, Bihzad may have lingered there for a little while. Qadi Ahmad, for example, affirms that Bihzad stayed in Herat until the beginning of Shah Tahmasp’s rule in 1524.87 Other sources, though, suggest he may have left earlier for the Safavid capital, Tabriz, to seek the patronage of Shah Isma‘il. According to one document, Bihzad was appointed head of the Safavid royal library in 1522.88 The names of Bihzad’s pupils also differ from one textual document to another. Dust-i Divani might have been one of Bihzad’s students, according to Qadi Ahmad.89 The poet and calligrapher Malik Daylami mentions Muzaffar ‘Ali, a painter based in Safavid Tabriz,90 while the Ottoman historian Mustafa ‘Ali asserts that Bihzad trained Shaykhzada, a famous artist who lived in Herat and Bukhara.91 In Muhammad Haydar’s collection of biographies, Qasim ‘Ali was another of Bihzad’s disciples.92 The same artist, however, was placed by Qadi Ahmad in a period prior to Bihzad’s.93 One could try to disentangle the contradictions of the sources in order to write a consistent account of Bihzad’s life, a history that would follow the modern biographical format with its linear and progressive structure. But these contradictions are also meaningful – they do not simply reflect a misunderstanding of reality or a propensity for misrepresentation. Like Bihzad’s signatures, they point to the ambivalent nature of authorship at the time, as a double process of historicisation and de-historicisation. The signatures mark the emergence of personalised authorship in painting, but they also describe artistic authority as impersonal and transcendent. Authorship was bestowed upon an individual person, but it also had an absolute, extra-historical nature, elevating the author to the level

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of an ideal figure – hence also the nebulous, mythicising structure of biographical writing and its hagiographic tone. Bihzad was recognised as a transpersonal, transhistorical entity even while he was alive. For Khwandamir, a contemporary writer who probably knew him, he ‘has abrogated the monuments of mortal painters, and his miraculous hands have effaced the depictions of human artists’.94 Bihzad was ‘the rarity of the epoch, the marvel of all the centuries’, Qadi Ahmad later wrote.95 As unique, wonderinducing signs, Bihzad’s signatures clearly indicated his wish for this praise, for the artist to be accorded authority comparable, as the second signature seems to suggest, to the divine author of the Qur’an. Authority then, was not simply cultural prestige, detached from metaphysical considerations. Authorship was understood at once as an activity of artisanal mastery and a pursuit of ­transcendental authority. If it is important to examine the signatures’ visual and discursive effects, it is equally important to consider them at some distance. Bihzad’s paintings summon up enchantment, but in doing so they also risk obscuring the complex causes of the object. This chapter has examined the ways in which Bihzad’s signatures visualise and historicise authority in painting. I would like to conclude by reading against the grain – by considering what the signatures hide, not simply what they say. Any declaration of authorship necessarily conceals the collaborative nature of art making. According to Dust Muhammad, Bihzad was an expert in three fields: depiction (taßwÈr), illumination (tadhhÈb) and outlining (ta˙rÈr).96 In the royal workshop, while labour was divided between a number of different craftsmen, talent easily circulated between them, prompting artists to develop multiple skills. Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Hijazi, who worked for the Timurids in early-fifteenth-century Shiraz, described that ‘a group of learned people without equal in the world – copyist, illuminator, illustrator, binder’ worked at the Timurid workshop, and that he himself ‘laid some claim [to proficiency] in these arts by virtue of [his] aspiration and ardour’.97 In the same period, Nasr al-Din Sultani, the artist who signed the illumination of the Shahnama of Ibrahim Sultan made around 1435 (Figure 5.7), was known to have been skilled in calligraphy, illumination and painting.98 But we also know that artists worked collectively and that the boundaries of individual authorship were not clear. According to a progress report of Baysunghur’s workshop, the celebrated ‘arzadasht (petition) written around 1430, three painters worked simultaneously on the paintings of a copy of the Gulistan (the manuscript has survived and is now kept in the Chester Beatty Library); while Amir Khalil was charged with the colouring of two sea scenes, Khwaja Ghiyath al-Din and Mawlana Shihab repaired some of the manuscript’s damaged paintings.99 Other sources suggest that

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different hands could intervene in the same picture, sometimes even in the same motif. On a drawing of the Bahram Mirza album, Dust Muhammad wrote that it was made ‘by the wonder of the age Master Bihzad and others’.100 Starting from the sixteenth century, attributive notes could indicate that human faces, for instance, were executed by a distinct hand (this is the art of chahra-gushå’È).101 It would be difficult to prove that Bihzad was the only artist involved in the making of the Cairo Bustan’s paintings. One source suggests that he may have worked with assistance. The La†å’ifnåma of Fakhri Sultan Muhammad, written around 1520, mentions that Bihzad once asked Darvish Muhammad Naqqash Khurasani, an expert in colouring, to finish his work, implying that Bihzad executed the drawing before Darvish Muhammad applied the colours.102 There seems to have been a distinction between the artist in charge of creating the design and the practitioner who produced the final work. According to the ‘arzadasht, Khawja ‘Abd al-Rahim, for example, made the ‘designs [pl. †urË˙, sing. †ar˙] for the binders, illuminators, tentmakers, and tilemakers’.103 A single motif, conceived by a particular artist, could be diffused across media by different hands. It could be reproduced on paper by various artists, for example by the pupils of the original painter, as a way to assert a master-pupil relationship. This was true for Bihzad, who copied earlier models and whose own work was later emulated by followers, as David Roxburgh has shown.104 Drawings produced in the early sixteenth century could bear two attributive notes – one for the original design and another for the act of drawing. Dust Muhammad himself copied a prototype by Bihzad and added captions to highlight the double authorship of the piece, ascribing the idea to Bihzad and the execution to his own hand: ‘Design [†ar˙] of Master Bihzad, work [kår] by Master Dust Muhammad.’105 Could Bihzad’s signatures, then, have addressed a notion of intellectual authorship and not the event of manual labour? Artists from the early Timurid period made copies of earlier works, and some, namely calligraphers, signed the original artist’s name instead of their own. Khwandamir indicates that Shams al-Din al-Harawi, a Timurid calligrapher, ‘signed many of his calligraphic specimens in the name of Yaqut al-Musta‘simi’ and that ‘the quicksighted ones who appreciate subtleties accepted this situation’.106 The copies were so good that experts validated the use of Yaqut’s name. According to Dawlatshah Samarqandi (d. c. 1500), the Timurid prince Ibrahim Sultan also employed Yaqut’s name: ‘It is well known that he wrote the records of Fars in his own hand, and his calligraphy was so good that he copied the writing of qiblat al-kuttåb [the cynosure of scribes] Yaqut al-Musta‘simi, sent it out and sold it, and not one keen-sighted critic was able to tell the difference.’107 In both quotations, despite the signature’s claim, the main protagonists are the Timurid calligraphers. Yaqut al-Musta‘simi plays a supporting role as a model, an element of comparison, a paragon

wondrous signature

indeed, but he is not the only referent the work of calligraphy points to. The trope of the perfect forgery was used not necessarily to reflect a demand for replicas of Yaqut’s works but, rather, to describe the talent of Timurid calligraphers. Could the signature of Bihzad have acted in the same way, not as a tool of authentication but rather as an instrument of self-praise for the artists who employed it? If it is difficult to determine Bihzad’s degree of participation in the paintings based only on the presence of his signature, the assertion of his authorship does, in effect, obscure the possibility of a collective dimension of art making. It also conceals the history of exchange and mobility that Persian painting reflects and necessitated, within the workshop and across time, in both its manual and intellectual dimensions. Several aspects of painting that the signatures lay claim to, including their visual variety, the miniaturisation of the painting’s content, the precision of the line and even the signature itself, had already appeared in Jalayirid and early Timurid painting, as seen throughout this book. It took not just one, but a host of artists and artisans to make the paintings of the Cairo Bustan. At least four different specialities were involved, and it is unlikely that Bihzad performed all of them, especially the less ‘artistic’ ones: †arrå˙È (drawing), rangåmizÈ (the application of the pigments), tadhhÈb (illumination) and jadwal-kashÈ (the execution of the frame).108 Many other craftsmen in all likelihood played a significant role in the making of the manuscript: those who ground the pigments and prepared the colours (˙all-kårån); those who worked the gold (zar-kËbån) and washed the lapis lazuli (låjward-shËyån); those who made or acquired the paper (kåghadh-gar); and those who fabricated the tools (the qaychÈchÈ, for instance, was responsible for making scissors).109 Their names, however, have been forgotten. The paintings worked as an archive only for the master. Signing was as much a step toward visibility as it was an act of appropriation (and this is true of any signature). In glorifying a single artist, the assertion of Bihzad’s authority in the Cairo Bustan intensified the signature’s work as an act of obliteration. Authorship was declared in paintings that concealed the temporality of human making. A painter was named and described but also simultaneously mythicised, raised above the laws of materiality. Meanwhile, a multitude of artisans remained anonymous, maintained outside the order of representation. The signature, then, acted as a complex, ambivalent tool, at once a means of artistic self-determination and a function of power. Notes 1. Wilkinson, 1931, 62. In 1909, F. R. Martin mentioned only one ­signature (Martin, 1909, 4).

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2. Wilkinson, 1931, 62. 3. The right page of the frontispiece examined in Chapter 1 might have included a signature, now covered in gold, in one of the cartouches surrounding the door. According to Armenag Sakisian, traces of the inscription were still visible in the early twentieth century and included the word ‘amal (work) at the beginning and the letter sÈn or shÈn at the end, perhaps closing the word naqqåsh (painter) (Sakisian, 1931, 169). Sakisian concluded that this was the signature of Mirak Naqqash, who was the head of the royal library in Herat (Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15). Scholars including Barbara Brend have generally followed this attribution. Given that the inscription is now invisible, I cannot confirm this hypothesis. 4. Bihzad’s signatures recall the phenomenon of the multistable image ‘whose primary function,’ W. T. J. Mitchell notes, ‘is to illustrate the co-existence of contrary or simply different readings in the single image’ (Mitchell, 1994, 45). The ambiguous motif introduces a ‘secondary effect of auto-reference,’ Mitchell continues – ‘an invitation to the spectator to return with fascination to the mysterious object whose identity seems so mutable’ (ibid., 48). 5. As such, they conjure up the notion of the parergon (what frames the work of art) as Jacques Derrida redefined it: ‘Neither work (ergon) nor outside the work [hors d’œuvre], neither inside or outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work’ (Derrida, 1987, 9). On Derrida’s reading of the parergon, also see Marriner, 2002. Examples of parerga include ‘the frames of pictures or the draperies on statues, or the colonnades of palaces’. These examples appear in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (quoted in Culler, 1982, 193). 6. Takhallus has multiple meanings. In Arabic poetry, for example, it was used to express the idea of ‘transition’ (Meisami, 2003, 5–76). As a device of self-naming, one of its earliest appearances is in Sana’i’s poetry (for further references on this point, see Meisami, 2003, 108). 7. English translation by Meisami, 2003, 418. 8. Quoted in ibid., 109. 9. Ibid., 427. 10. For a definition and an example, see Subtelny, 1986, 71–2. 11. We know the names of some of the painters who participated in Baysunghur’s copy of the Gulistan (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Per. 119, Herat, 1426–7) from the ‘arzadasht, the progress report of Baysunghur’s kitabkhana, dated around 1430 (for a Persian edition and an English translation, see Thackston, 2001, 43). None of the paintings, however, was signed. 12. No signatures of or attributions to painters have been found in Turkmen manuscripts. In Timurid examples, besides the Cairo Bustan, only two manuscripts indicate a painter’s name, but these notations are attributions, not signatures. The name is not folded into the composition: it appears in the colophon, together with the calligrapher’s name. It was probably inserted by the copyist rather than the painter. The first example is a copy of the Khamsa of Nizami made for the wife of the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki (1402–45), ‘Ismat al-Dunya (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 781). On this manuscript, see Tanindi, 2000 and Stchoukine, 1968. The shamsa bearing the name of ‘Ismat al-Dunya is reproduced in Tanindi, 2000,

wondrous signature

figure 1. The colophon is dated 1445–6 and gives the name of the calligrapher Yusuf al-Jami and that of the painter and illuminator, Khwaja ‘Ali al-Tabrizi. The second example is another copy of the Khamsa of Nizami dated 1446–7 (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 786; Stchoukine, 1967, see figure 2 for the colophon). The colophon states that the manuscript was copied by ‘Ali ibn Iskandar al-Quhistani and that it was illustrated and illuminated by Sultan ‘Ali al-Bavardi. No surviving primary source mentions these names. 13. I examine the circulation and impact of the Cairo Bustan in the epilogue of this book. 14. One exception is Blair and Bloom, 1999, 58–60 where Bihzad’s signatures are characterised as a ‘visual pun’. 15. This is the approach favoured, for example, in Wilkinson, 1931; Sakisian, 1932; Lorey, 1938; Schroeder, 1938; Naïmi, 1948; Stchoukine, 1954, 21–8; and more recently Bahari, 1996. For an overview of the various biographical narratives on Bihzad, see Ettinghausen, 1960; Soucek, 1989. 16. On Morellian connoisseurship, see Chapter 4, note 73 of this book. 17. Roxburgh, 2000b, 119. Priscilla Soucek also noted the tendency among scholars to align Timurid art on the model of Renaissance Italy (Soucek, 2001). 18. Goffen, 2001, 303, note 1. These questions were also raised in Blair and Bloom, 1999, 60. 19. Roxburgh, 2000b, 124–5. 20. The artist’s signature often differs from the modern understanding of signature as a tool of authentication. ‘Unlike my signature on a check,’ Rona Goffen writes, ‘the painter’s signature is not necessarily written by his hand and almost certainly does not replicate his signature as he normally wrote it, on letters or on documents.’ Goffen continues: ‘In real life, a signature is an autograph. In art, the signature promises that the work on which it is written is autograph, though we shall see that even that promise may be, as it were, compromised. In such situations, as Claude Gandelman explains, “the ‘Name,’ when one abstracts it from the signature which indicates it and ‘contains’ it, loses its ‘index’ character and becomes a ‘trade mark’”’ (Goffen, 2001, 303–4). The point has often been noted in Western art history but remains little studied in the field of Islamic art. Another important reference on this topic is Krauss, 1985. 21. An early example of a calligrapher’s signature appears in a dispersed copy of the Qur’an signed by ‘Ali ibn Shadhan al-Razi in 972 (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, no. 1434; James, 1980, nos 13–14). Some calligraphers were also responsible for the illuminations, a double competence that they sometimes mentioned in the colophon. Abu’lHasan ‘Ali ibn Hilal ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, better known as ibn al-Bawwab (d. 1022), claimed that he both copied and illuminated a copy of the Qur’an dated 1000–1 (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, no. K 16; Rice, 1955). 22. For an overview of the most significant examples of signatures across media in medieval Islam and for a bibliography of the earliest publications in which they appeared, see Blair and Bloom, 1999; Blair, 2015. For a recent study of signature in late Mamluk metalware, see Behrens-Abuseif, 2005. 23. For a list of the earliest known signatures in the Islamic tradition of

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painting, see Melikian-Chirvani, 1970, 79. The earliest example listed by Melikian-Chirvani seems to be a mistake, however. It is supposed to appear in a copy of the Kitab al-diryaq dated 1199 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 1964), but no painter is mentioned there. Pages 35 and 36 name the calligrapher only (on this manuscript, see Pancaro©lu, 2001). As Blair and Bloom have noted, the earliest surviving example of a painter’s name in a manuscript is the name of Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, which appeared in 1237 in a manuscript’s colophon (Blair and Bloom, 1999, 58). 24. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 5847, folio 167b. A digital reproduction of the manuscript can be browsed online at gallica. bnf.fr (accessed January 2017). The colophon reads: ‫فرغ من نسخها العبد الفقیر الی رحمة ربه و غفرانه و عفوه يحيى بن محمود بن يحيى بن ابي الحسن‬ ‫بن كوريها الواسطي بخطه و صوره آخر نهار يوم السبت سادس شهر رمضان سنة اربع و ثلثين و‬ ‫ستمايه‬ On this manuscript, see Grabar, 1984; O’Kane, 2012. Another example is the signature of Ghazi ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Dimashqi in an illuminated band resembling a titlepiece (unwan) at the top of the painting. This is a copy of the Maqamat of al-Hariri usually dated c. 1300 (London, British Library, Or. 9718, folio 53a; Mayer, 1942). 25. We do not include attributions and mainly focus on ornamental signatures, that is, declarations of authorship inserted within the pictorial composition as a motif. For two fifteenth-century attributions added by the calligrapher in the colophon, see the end of note 12. 26. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 841, folio 57b, reproduced in Melikian-Chirvani, 1970, figure 57. 27. Özergin, 1970. 28. London, British Library, Add. 18113. On this manuscript, see Lentz and Lowry, 1989, no. 13; Porter, 2009; Blair, 2014, 172–227. 29. London, British Library, Add. 18113, folio 45b. One can conveniently zoom into the high-resolution digital reproductions at www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_18113 (accessed January 2017). On Junayd Naqqash, see Brend, 2009. 30. Why the painter’s signature appears at that moment and in that form is an important question, but it is beyond the scope (and the methodology) of this book. As mentioned in the Introduction, this analysis is not so much concerned with issues of chronology. I focus on how and not when self-reflection was deployed in Persian painting and my platform for achieving this goal is the Cairo Bustan. Let us note, though, that ornamental signatures also appear with great consistency in architecture in the late fourteenth century (for examples, see Porter, 2011, 27–32). 31. On the royal inscription, see Chapter 2 of this book. 32. On Bahram Mirza’s album, see Chapter 2 of this book, including notes 34 and 35. 33. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 13. 34. On repetition as creative process in Persian drawing and painting, see Chapter 3 of this book, esp. note 32. 35. A copy of the Qur’an penned by the famous calligrapher Yaqut alMusta‘simi in 1295 contains the earliest signature of an illuminator who would be distinct from the calligrapher. The illuminator is

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Muhammad ibn al-Sa‘ati (Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, Nurosmaniye 9, folios 1b–2a, reproduced in Ben Azzouna, 2012, 141, figure 2). Yaqut al-Musta‘simi and Muhammad ibn al-Sa‘ati collaborated on another copy of the Qur’an (Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, E. H. 61). 36. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 2324, folios 3b–4a. On this manuscript, see Richard, 1997, no. 12. 37. As Francis Richard has shown, Nasr al-Sultani is probably the same as Nasir al-Din Muhammad Mudhahhib who was appointed head of Ibrahim Sultan’s workshop in 1432 and was also known to master calligraphy, illumination and painting (Richard, 2001). 38. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ouseley Add. 176, folio 17a (Abdullaeva and Melville, 2008, 56–7). 39. Babaie, 2011, 29. 40. Reproduction in ibid., 30. 41. For a translation of both inscriptions, see O’Kane, 1987, 123–4. 42. Porter, 2011, 190, figure 27. 43. Royal Asiatic Society, no. 239: Shahnama of Firdawsi, Herat, c. 1440, for Muhammad Juki, 491 folios, 34 × 23 cm (folio). For a monographic study of this manuscript, see Brend, 2010. 44. For reproductions, see Brend, 2010, 112–13. 45. Full painted page and detail of Juki’s name are reproduced in Brend, 2010, 116–17. 46. Khwandamir, 1914, 158; English translation by Thackston, 2001, 42. 47. English translation in Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 179. 48. Khwandamir, 1914, 157; English translation by Thackston, 2001, 41 with minor modifications. 49. On Mani, see the last section of Chapter 3. 50. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 16. 51. On the notion of ‘ajab and its relationship to the visual arts, see Necipo©lu, 1995, 213–14; Rabbat, 2006; Berlekamp, 2011; Saba, 2012. 52. English translation by Saba, 2012, 198. 53. Al-Qazwini, 1977, 31. 54. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani, 2014. 55. Al-Qazwini, 1977, 31. 56. For a few more examples of signatures, especially from the Uzbek realm, see Blair, 2015, 238 sq. 57. The manuscript originally contained at least four paintings, of which three have survived (the lost painting is reproduced in Welch, 1976, 21). On this manuscript, see Welch, 1976, 20–1 and 62–6; Welch, 1979, 118–29; Soudavar, 1992, 159–61; Soucek, 2003, 155. 58. Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, no. 59 (Soudavar, 1992, 159–61, reproduction p. 160). On this signature and its location at the foot of the royal figure, see Blair, 2015, 238. On this painting, also see Bahari, 2014. 59. The painting is co-owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and the Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA). The inventory number is 1988.430. A digital reproduction can be found online at www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1988.430 (accessed December 2017). 60. On this painter, see Soucek, 1990. 61. Quoted in Soudavar, 1992, 159. On the author and his book, Jawåhir al-akhbår, see Soudavar, 1992, 258–9, note 74. 62. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 16.

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63. Arkoun et al., 1978, 1–24; see also the transcript of the discussion that followed Arkoun’s paper in ibid., 25–60. 64. The point was demonstrated by Miquel, 1967, vol. 1, chapter 2. 65. Quoted in Necipo©lu, 2015, 33. Medieval theories of art were influenced by mysticism from the tenth century onward when Sufi philosophers such as al-Ghazali, as André Miquel has shown, counterbalanced the rationalising trends of early Islamic thought by focusing on the quest of inner, immanent meaning (Miquel, 1967). 66. Necipo©lu, 2015, 33. Also see Ettinghausen, 1947. 67. On the concept of the Preserved Tablet, see Chapter 3 of this book. 68. Quoted in Necipo©lu, 2015, 31. 69. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:362; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 226. 70. English translation in Dickson and Welch, 1981, 1:260. 71. English translation by Thackston, 2001, 27. 72. Sayrafi, 1993, 19. 73. For an introduction to Yaqut al-Musta‘simi’s life, work, and legacy, see Blair, 2003; Blair, 2006, 241–53. 74. This phenomenon was mentioned in James, 1988, 68; James, 1992a, 14; James, 1992b, 58–9; Roxburgh, 1996, 97–100; Roxburgh, 2005, 57. 75. For the Persian text and a French translation, see Richard, 2003a, 9. 76. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Diez A folio 72 S13 (Roxburgh, 2002a, figure 19). For a list of drawings signed by or attributed to Muhammad ibn Mahmudshah al-Khayyam, see Roxburgh, 2002a, note 60. 77. The farman where this tughra appears is in a private collection (Soudavar, 2006, figure 107). 78. This is the causal theory of the proper name outlined by Kripke, 1980. I would like to thank Markus Kneer for introducing me to this reference. For Kripke, reference is fixed in an initial baptism-like event, after which the name is passed from speaker to speaker. For an overview of this theory and various other theories addressing the proper name and the issue of reference in the philosophy of language, see Michaelson and Reimer, 2014. For a critical examination of the artist’s proper name in art, see Krauss, 1985. 79. Ronen, 2006. On possible-world theories in literature, see Ronen, 1994, 91–2. This notion was addressed at the end of Chapter 3 of this book. 80. For an overview of the various biographical narratives on Bihzad, see Stchoukine, 1954, 21–8; Ettinghausen, 1960; Soucek, 1989; Herrmann, 1990; Bahari, 1996. Primary sources include Khwandamir, 1914; Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 167–8; Khwandamir, 1954, 4:362; Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 179–80; Wasifi, 1970–2, 2:149–50; Babur, 1996, 226; Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15; ‘Ali, 2011, 264. Sources on Bihzad are also listed in Akimushkin, 2001. 81. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15. 82. Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 179–80. 83. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 167. 84. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15. 85. Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 180. 86. ‘Ali, 2011, 264. 87. Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 180. 88. Khwandamir, 1914, 159–61. The authenticity of this document has often been discussed (Bahari, 1996, 184–6). Meanwhile, another source

wondrous signature

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 00. 1 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

suggests a link between Bihzad and the Safavid ruler Shah Isma‘il (‘Ali, 2011, 222–3). It recounts Shah Isma‘il’s anxiety upon realising that he might lose Bihzad to the Ottoman emperor because of the SafavidOttoman war. Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 180. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 20. ‘Ali, 2011, 264. Muhammad Haydar, 1934, 168 Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 179. English translation by Thackston, 1989, 226. Qadi Ahmad, 1959, 179. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 15. Quoted in Necipo©lu, 2015, 29–30. Richard, 2001. For a Persian edition and an English translation, see Thackston, 2001, 43. Roxburgh, 2000b, 125. Porter, 1992, 155–6. Quoted in Ettinghausen, 1960. For a Persian edition and an English translation, see Thackston, 2001, 43. Roxburgh, 2000b. Ibid., 129. Khwandamir, 1954, 4:19; English translation by Roxburgh, 2001b, 125. Dawlatshah Samarqandi, 1901, 380; English translation by Thackston, 1989, 34. On this terminology, see Porter, 1992, 155. These words were more common in Mughal visual and textual documents (Seyller, 1987). These specialities are listed in Porter, 1992, 153.

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EPILOGUE

Manuscripts in Motion

This epilogue opens up the historical boundaries of the Cairo Bustan to examine how the manuscript was moved, transformed and emulated in the decades and centuries following its creation around 1488. The focus is on the Cairo Bustan’s circulation and reception – on the chronology and the political conditions of its itinerary, the physical changes it underwent and the artists who might have encountered it along the way. The practice of cataloguing and the digitisation of resources have enabled us to bring together objects from different periods. But mobility long preceded these innovations. In premodern times, various factors facilitated the movement of artefacts, especially manuscripts, including political changes. As dynasties shifted, craftsmen and artefacts were moved, accompanying the transfer of authority from one site of political power to another. In the late fourteenth century, Timur deported artisans and scholars to his capital of Samarqand as a way ‘to buttress his newly established political pretensions’, as Maria Subtelny noted.1 Around 1420, his grandson Baysunghur brought Jalayirid artists and manuscripts from Tabriz to Herat. According to the sixteenth-century artist and writer Dust Muhammad, Baysunghur ordered ‘that after the pleasing manner of Sultan Ahmad [the last Jalayirid ruler] of Baghdad’s anthology, [artists] should produce a book in exactly the same format and layout and with the same scenes depicted’, a quotation that points to the link between stylistic replication and the ­translation of power.2 A copy of the Khamsa of Nizami (1141–1209), begun in the Timurid court of Herat for Abu’l-Qasim Babur (1422–57), a son of Baysunghur, testifies to the itinerant, multilayered nature of court-sponsored manuscripts at the time.3 According to the colophon, the calligraphy was begun by Azhar but was interrupted when Abu’l-Qasim died in 1457.4 The manuscript then went to the Turkmen realm. By 1467 it was in the possession of the Qara Qoyunlu prince Pir Budaq Mirza, who had probably taken it in 1458, when he participated with his father in the sack of Herat. Thereafter the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Sultan Khalil ordered the completion of the manuscript, perhaps in Tabriz,

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where he briefly succeeded his father, Uzun Hasan, in 1478. The calligrapher ‘Abd al-Rahim Khwarizmi, known as Anisi, was commissioned to finish the copying, and the painters Shaykhi and Darvish Muhammad were hired to execute the paintings. When Sultan Khalil died in 1478, only one section of the book was finished. ‘Abd alRahim Khwarizmi was able to complete the text at the workshop of Sultan Ya‘qub (r. 1478–90), Sultan Khalil’s brother. The paintings, however, were only finished under the Safavid monarch Shah Isma‘il (r. 1501–24). The manuscript was therefore created not in a single context, but in different cities, including Herat and Tabriz, and over a period of nearly a hundred years. Different patrons and artists participated in its making. As the Safavid colophon notes, ‘none of the [patrons] was able to achieve his goal or drink in fulfilment from the goblet of completion’ before Shah Isma‘il offered the care and stability needed to finish the book. The colophon, written at the Safavid workshop, emphasises the crucial role of the Safavid ruler, yet there is no attempt to deny or downplay the earlier participation of the others. Traces of transformation were also kept visible in the manuscript’s material fabric. The paintings display a variety of styles.5 Intermediary colophons were saved, testifying to the shifting political landscape (in the colophon of folio 148a, the calligrapher ‘Abd al-Rahim Khwarizmi signed al-Sultani in allegiance to Khalil Sultan before switching to the sobriquet of al-Ya‘qubi on folio 316a). Pluralism and change were fully acknowledged both in textual and material practices. The phenomenon of mobility also affected the Cairo Bustan, prompting the alteration of its codicological cohesion. Less than two decades after the manuscript was finished, the Timurid dynasty came to an end in 1507 with the Uzbek sack of Herat by Muhammad Shaybani Khan.6 The last Timurid rulers of Herat, Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s sons Badi‘ al-Zaman and Muzaffar Husayn, who ruled Khurasan jointly after the death of their father in 1506, fled to the region of Gurgan (Muzaffar Husayn died shortly after, while Badi‘ al-Zaman eventually fled to the court of Shah Isma‘il in Tabriz, and from there to Istanbul). In 1510, the Safavid ruler Shah Isma‘il marched to Herat, putting a halt to the Uzbek conquests in eastern Iran. In 1513, ‘Ubayd Khan returned to Khurasan but was defeated again. Despite a few other Uzbek attempts to retake the region, Khurasan remained dominated by the Safavids.7 It is during this period of relative instability that the Cairo Bustan was taken from Herat to Safavid Tabriz. There, a folio was added at the end of the book. Facing the last page of the Bustan, the recto presents a page of text similar in size to the late Timurid jadwal (Plate XV). The text’s layout, however, is slightly different. It consists of three columns, mostly filled with oblique lines of text. We read thirty verses from the Iskandarnama (the Book of Iskandar), one of

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the five books of the Khamsa of Nizami. The triangles formed by the corners of the various text compartments contain the page’s paratextual information. The scribe, Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Kirmani, copied the text in Tabriz at the end of March 1513. The same calligrapher produced a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di in 1509.8 This manuscript was intended to have three paintings. Only one was executed, and it was later seriously damaged. One can, however, still read an attributive note asserting that the painting was made by the ‘pen of Bihzad’ (qalam-i Bihzåd). Such notes became common in the sixteenth century. In this case, the painting’s poor state of conservation does not allow us to discuss the attribution or to speculate over the painting’s link to the Cairo Bustan. Its makers, however, had access to the late Timurid manuscript. Al-Kirmani’s addition is proof that the Cairo Bustan was carefully examined at the Safavid workshop of Tabriz and that Bihzad’s reputation spread on the wings of this particular codex. Al-Kirmani’s page offers a terminus ante quem for the Cairo Bustan’s remargination. Most folios, including al-Kirmani’s, were at some point inserted into gold-sprinkled margins (see, for example, plate IX). Rule borders were also added around the text. From centre to periphery, they consist of a tiny line of gold, a green line, a golden band and a blue line, with the first three borders outlined in black. Because they appear on the margins, the Persian notations that were inscribed around the paintings in red and black nasta‘liq and which describe the images’ content in generic terms (for example, at the upper right of Plate XI we read ‘vault and portico and domed room of the mosque’)9 could not have preceded the beginning of the sixteenth century either. At the back of al-Kirmani’s folio, in the middle of the page, we find the seal of the Safavid ruler Shah ‘Abbas II (Plate XVI). Dated 1053/1643–4, the imperial mark of ownership testifies that by the mid-seventeenth century, the Cairo Bustan was moved from Tabriz to Isfahan, the Safavid capital since 1596–7.10 The same page contains the modern stamp of Dar al-Kutub, the National Library of Egypt in Cairo, where the manuscript is now kept. Over centuries, the Cairo Bustan was physically carried from one capital to another. It moved though at least four prestigious collections: the library of Sultan Husayn in late Timurid Herat, the library of Shah Isma‘il in Safavid Tabriz, the library of Shah ‘Abbas II in Isfahan and the National Library of Cairo. The codex received its current binding at some point of this trajectory (bindings tore out with usage and were often replaced). The encasing is datable to the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century and is quite typical of the production of Shiraz, southern Iran (Plates I and II).11 It consists of pasteboards, first wrapped in black leather. Subsequently covered in gold decoration, the outer casing shines with the light reflected on its gilded, textured surface. The

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ornament was stamped onto the gilded leather using a rectangular, incised plate of half the cover’s size, impressed twice and top to tail. Appearing in varying degrees of relief, it is arranged in a rectangular field with a lobed mandorla at its centre and four corner-pieces. A frieze of elongated and cruciform interlacing cartouches runs along the edges. Across the field, cloudbands alternate with floral scrolls, rendered in lower relief. On its inner side, the cover reveals a colourful filigree decoration (Plate II). Leather was cut into openwork patterns and laid over a sheet of paper coloured in green, orange, brown, and deep and light blue. The main rectangular panel features a tessellation of interlacing, lobed cartouches, filled with scrolls of palmettes and half-palmettes. The frame recalls the cover’s outer side, with its band of lobed cartouches; here it is filled with stylised, instead of floral, scrolls. Although a later item, the binding enhances several aspects of the Cairo Bustan’s illuminated and illustrated pages: variety and abundance of motifs, attention to detail and a mode of making akin to stamping that erases the temporal signs of human industry. In its displacement, the late Timurid Bustan served as a model for books and paintings within and beyond the regions of its circulation. Mobility was not incidental: physically displaced, exposed to the gaze of generations of artists and patrons, the Cairo Bustan seems to have been made available for cultural transfer to different audiences. While the poem of the Bustan was hardly ever copied in courtly workshops before the late Timurid period, in the early sixteenth century copies of Sa‘di’s works exploded across the Persianate world. Paintings accompanying copies of the Bustan often drew on Bihzadian prototypes. Pictorial reception, however, was not a passive phenomenon; it was an act of selection and reinterpretation. Elements could be reprised and others eliminated. Take, for example, the frontispiece of a copy of the Bustan dated 1515 and made in Tabriz (Figure 6.1).12 The Cairo Bustan, either directly or indirectly through copies, seems to have served as a reservoir of stock motifs, which were copied and adjusted to the new image (Plates IV and III). On the left page, two courtiers hold a third inebriated man: we have already seen these figures on the right folio of the Cairo Bustan. At the bottom, two men holding sticks chase away a cluster of guests, an image in all likelihood adapted from the scene at the door of Sultan Husayn’s palace. But despite similarities with the late Timurid image, the Safavid painting reverts back to the dominant formula of the royal frontispiece: in an inconspicuous setting, the king holds the centre of the right-hand page, while courtiers perform standard activities. The composition of ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ proved particularly popular (Plate X). In an undated copy of the Bustan attributed by scholars to the royal workshop of Tabriz around 1515, a few elements from the Cairo Bustan have been reused.13 Although the

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Figure 6.1  Double-page frontispiece from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Tabriz, 1515. 24.5 × 16.5 cm (folio). Keir collection, III.215, on loan at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (loan number K.1.2014.134.A-C).

landscape is rather barren – it appears without its sprouting rocks and flowery meadow – the main scene has been carefully translated, including the herdsman’s hand gestures and the posture of the king, lowering his bow. To the right, an extra-textual figure can be spotted: the man seated cross-legged on the ground, pouring water from the goatskin, similar in its overall shape and placement to the same character in the Cairo Bustan. Pictorial mobility also lay outside the boundaries of the book’s trajectory. The Cairo Bustan resonated with particular force in Uzbek Bukhara, although we have no trace of its passage there. This is not surprising. A Turco-Mongol, Sunni dynasty of Central Asia founded by Abu’l-Khayr Khan (d. 1468), the Uzbeks adopted the Timurids’ system of patronage and perpetuated their cultural traditions.14 During his occupation of Herat from 1507 to 1510, the first great ruler of the Uzbek state, Muhammad Shaybani Khan (r. 1500–10), supported late Timurid poets.15 Once a regular member of Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i’s majlis, Fasih al-Din Sahibdara wrote a panegyric of the Uzbek khan when the latter entered Herat.16 The poet Muhammad Salih (d. 1534–5), assisted by Banna’i, another professional poet, was

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charged by the Uzbek ruler with the task of supervising the cultural activity of Herat.17 Late Timurid visual artists received equal attention. According to Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483–1530), the future founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, Muhammad Shaybani once ‘took a pen and corrected the handwriting of Mulla Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi and the drawing of Bihzad’.18 Babur’s account was probably meant to disparage a ruler who attempted to expropriate him. But the quotation nonetheless bears witness to Muhammad Shaybani’s engagement with the works of late Timurid artists. A portrait of him by Bihzad has survived.19 The painting follows the Timurid conventions of portraiture discussed in Chapter 1. The ruler is represented in the frontal cross-legged position that was reserved for the descendants of Chingiz Khan. Attributes of royalty include the handkerchief in his left hand and the archer’s thumb ring on the right hand.20 The scholar’s white turban and the objects placed before him – the pencase, the inkpot and the books – connote cultural refinement. After the conquest of Herat by the Safavids in 1510, ‘the chief medium through which the cultural traditions of Timurid Herat were transmitted to the Uzbeks’, as Subtelny noted, became the movement of artists, scholars and poets who emigrated from Khurasan to Central Asian cities such as Samarqand, Bukhara and Tashkent.21 The diaspora included the poet and memorialist Wasifi, who left Herat for Transoxiana in the winter of 1512–13. Wasifi recounts his flight in great detail, describing a caravan of some 500 intellectuals, artisans and musicians,22 fleeing the hostility of the Shi‘i Safavid-Qizilbash (most of them were Sunni and feared sectarian persecution).23 As a result, the cultural life of late Timurid Khurasan continued in Central Asia. The Uzbeks often asked former members of the Timurid court for information about Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s time, and they made sure to mimic its cultural patterns. They associated themselves, like the Timurids before them, with the Naqshbandiya Sufi order. They also replicated the institution of the majlis. Jami’s works were read out loud and commented upon. Attendees were tested in the art of mu‘amma and the practice of tatabbu‘ (imitation).24 Rulers practiced calligraphy and composed poetry.25 Bukhara, Muhammad Haydar wrote, ‘became such a centre of the arts and sciences, that one was reminded of Herat in the days of Mirza Sultan Husayn’.26 Following the invasion of Herat in 1535 by Muhammad Shaybani Khan’s successor, ‘Ubayd Allah Khan (1512–39), more artists left for Central Asia, including the calligrapher Mir ‘Ali Haravi and the painter Shaykhzada, who became a major artist of the so-called school of Bukhara.27 A number of attributive notes (some of which have been considered as signatures) posit his active presence in the

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Uzbek capital after the 1530s.28 According to the Ottoman historian Mustafa ‘Ali, Shaykhzada was originally trained by Bihzad – which might explain the visual affiliation of Uzbek paintings with late Timurid models.29 This declaration might be unlikely or hard to prove – as we have seen in Chapter 5, sources diverge on Bihzad’s artistic succession. It nonetheless reflects an early perception about cultural mobility between Timurid Herat and Uzbek Bukhara. A number of manuscripts were taken from Khurasan to Central Asia. At least six of those, initially unillustrated, were transformed during the rule of ‘Ubayd Allah’s successor, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (r. 1540–9), to include paintings.30 According to their respective colophons, five of them were penned by the late Timurid calligrapher Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi.31 This was the case of a copy of the Gulistan of Sa‘di transcribed in 1500 in Herat.32 At the Uzbek court, a folio from the original codex was extracted and replaced by two new folios. A new copy of the text was laid out on the recto of the first one and the verso of the second, while paintings were executed on the inner double page. The manuscript was also remarginated with stiffer, colourful margins, covered with golden drawings of animated floral scrolls, and epigraphic cartouches. These transformations are described at the end of the manuscript in a note added by the librarian Sultan Mirak: This book of the Gulistan, whose every page excites the envy of Paradise and is a source of jealousy to the studios of China, whose ‘blacks’ are light for the eyes of the masters of observation, and whose ‘whites’ are a joy to the hearts of the possessors of wisdom, was transcribed during the reign of the exalted monarch, the late deceased Sultan Husayn Mirza, whose home is in Heaven, by the miraculous and magical pen of Mawlana Sultan ‘Ali al-katib al-Mashhadi, and was perfected and completed by the decoration of the most eminent artists of the time and by the adornment of the greatest illuminators of the world during the happy reign of His Majesty the Khaqan […] Abu’l-Ghazi ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Bahadur Khan, may God Most High establish his sovereignty. Dated this holy month of Muharram in the year 954 [1547] by the diligent efforts of the slave whose head is in the dust, Sultan Mirak the Librarian.33 Mobility and transformation were perceived as opportunities for perfectibility, and as such could only add to a manuscript’s value. The Gulistan codex was then taken to the Mughal court in Delhi. Library entries were later obliterated, but we can still identify the seal of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. As was customary in Mughal libraries, attributive notes were added, including an attribution to Bihzad in the lower margin of the first pair of paintings.34 The attribution is mistaken since, as the librarian Sultan Mirak stated in his

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Figure 6.2  ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Bukhara (?), c. 1531, attributed to Shaykhzada, for Sultan ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. 22.6 × 12.8 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Philip Hofer in memory of Frances L. Hofer, 1979.20.19. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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note, the paintings were added by Uzbek artists in 1547. It nonetheless reflects a historical understanding of the manuscript’s affiliation, both in stylistic and physical terms, with late Timurid Herat. Once again Bihzad is magnified as the sole author, the original conceiver of the paintings of the Gulistan, despite the obvious anachronism of such attribution, and despite the flyleaf of Sultan Mirak clearly ascribing the work to the Uzbek workshop of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. At least five copies of Sa‘di’s work were produced in Uzbek Bukhara in the first half of the sixteenth century.35 They include a Bustan copied by the calligrapher Mir ‘Ali in 1531.36 An illuminated shamsa on the first folio presents an ex-libris in the name of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. Shaykhzada added the paintings around 1540. The pictures were partially repainted at the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir. ‘Darius and the Herdsman’ (Figure 6.2) is a mix of two earlier compositions, both already examined in this book: a Safavid painting focusing on the two main protagonists, separated by a tall, colourful tree (Figure 3.2),37 and the painting from the Cairo Bustan with its extra-textual figures (Plate X), carefully reprised by Shaykhzada and in fact amplified through the addition of one more peripheral character in the lower left. Several inscriptions articulate the codex’s biography. The manuscript, described as ‘a second garden of paradise and one of the rarities of the age with respect to calligraphy and depiction’, first belonged to Sultan Murad Mirza (1570–99), son of Akbar (1542–1605).38 Upon Murad’s death, it was transferred to Akbar’s library before moving to Jahangir’s collection, and then to Shah Jahan’s. The latter left a note ascribing the paintings to the library of his father Jahangir. Numerous librarians inspected the manuscript, with the last inscription dating to 1713–14. From late Timurid Herat, to Uzbek Bukhara, to Mughal Delhi, the signs of transfer and modification were not obliterated. Verbal notes and material practices such as repainting and remargination illuminated the object’s displacement. A blend of homage and triumph, mobility was kept visible; it increased the manuscript’s cultural prestige. Only a few years after the Cairo Bustan was finished, the same text was copied around 1500 in a fine nasta‘liq script by Shahsawar al-katib in Mandu, India (an inventory note provides the terminus ante quem of 1502–3).39 The manuscript is now kept in the National Museum of Delhi. It opens with an illuminated shamsa executed for Nasir al-Din Khalji (r. 1500–10) from the Khalji dynasty.40 Based in the Malwa Sultanate of India, now the state of Madhya Pradesh, the Khalji dynasty was founded by Mahmud Khalji (1436–69) and ruled over Malwa until 1531. With its tight, delicate intertwinement of arabesques and floral scrolls, and the chromatic domination of blue and gold, the illumination of the shamsa recalls the refinement of late Timurid book art. The Delhi Bustan constitutes one of the few manuscripts produced in India with a conspicuous link to late

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Timurid Herat, as Eloïse Brac de la Perrière observed (she actually mentions only one other example, a manuscript from Golconda dated 1572).41 The connection to Persian manuscripts is also visible through the use of the nasta‘liq script, which appeared in India in the mid-fifteenth century, although it did not spread until the sixteenth century.42 The manuscript deploys forty-three paintings executed ‘in a provincial version of the Timurid style of Herat’, Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom wrote.43 Richard Ettinghausen has similarly called the pictures ‘a simplified version of that practiced at Herat at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century under the direction and inspiration of Bihzad’.44 Looking beyond stylistic and codicological considerations, one discovers deeper affinities with late Timurid Herat, and more specifically with the Cairo Bustan, namely in the strategies used by the painter to emphasise the artist’s role. First, we find the artist’s signature. On the recto of the first folio, directly following the patron’s name, the signature was embedded in the finials surrounding the central illuminated headpiece that contains the book’s title and its author’s name. One reads: taßwÈr wa tartÈb ba ‘amal-i ÓåjjÈ Ma˙mËd (painting and composition are the work of Hajji Mahmud).45 Like Bihzad’s sign of authorship in the Cairo Bustan, the signature was subsumed into the visual fabric of the book. It marks the status of the artist, not just as a painter but also as an illuminator, thus also highlighting the porous boundaries between painting, illumination, and calligraphy, with their shared emphasis on the line (this is what we analysed in Chapter 4 as the art of ta˙rÈr). On folio 190a, a character holds a book where we can read another signature of the same artist: ‘amal-i ÓåjjÈ Ma˙mËd dar balad-i Mandu (work of Hajji Mahmud in the city of Mandu).46 The scene takes place in an interior space, and the book constitutes the focus of a conversation between two learned men.47 There are differences in phrasing with Bihzad’s signature in ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’ (Plate XI). In the Delhi Bustan, the artist has used Persian instead of Arabic and he has also mentioned the place of execution. But in form, placement and composition, the similarities are striking and too great to be simply attributable to a blind convergence. Some scholars have suggested that Hajji Mahmud was a painter from Herat (according to Ettinghausen, he might have emigrated to Malwa after Shaybani Khan’s conquest in 1507).48 He might have seen the Bustan’s signature and decided to emulate it in the Delhi Bustan. Another link to late Timurid Herat is the recourse to extra-textual figures. Illustrating the encounter of a tyrant with a humble countryman, the composition of folio 48a presents a cluster of vignettes, providing the main scene with a descriptive framework (Figure 6.3).49 From the upper right to the foreground, we see a muezzin calling for prayer, a mother breast-feeding her child and a group of dervishes.

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Figure 6.3  ‘Ghurid Tyrant in a Village’ from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di. Mandu, c. 1500, for Nasir al-Din Khalji. 35.2 × 24.5 cm (folio). Delhi, National Museum of India, 48.6 H./4, folio 48a.

epilogue

None of these elements is required by the story: they constitute extra-textual forms. Just as in the Cairo Bustan, the combination of both phenomena – visual abundance and the signature – invites us to connect the painting’s richness to the artist’s creative talent. The precise details of Mahmud Hajji’s connection to late Timurid Herat escape us for the moment. But we know that portable objects were exchanged between the Malwa Sultanate and the Timurids. According to a contemporary source, Mahmud Khalji of Malwa sent luxury gifts to the Timurid prince Abu Sa‘id in 1467, including vessels, jewels, silks, elephants and birds.50 And we know that works on paper were moved from Iran to India in the late fifteenth century. The earliest surviving marbled papers were in Mandu by 1496 (Figure 3.12). An accession note was added there. It describes the objects as ‘incomparable pieces of marbled papers from the treasures of Iran in the service of the sultan […] Ghiyath al-Din Khalji’, testifying to the admiration of the Khalji dynasty for Persianate book arts.51 We would need a ‘thick description’ of these objects to understand their historical and social function in Khalji Malwa.52 But the link to late Timurid Herat and its culture of intricacy cannot be denied, and it is at least possible that the connection was made, directly or indirectly, through the Cairo Bustan. Notes   1. Subtelny, 1983, 131; Roxburgh, 2016, 116–17.   2. Dust Muhammad, 2001, 13.   3. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum, H. 762 (Stchoukine, 1966; Tanındı, 2000, 149–50; Roxburgh, 2014, 175–6). Three paintings of this manuscript are now in the Keir collection (III.207–209; Robinson, 1976a, 178–9).  4. The colophon is on folios 316b–317a. For a Persian edition and an English translation, see Thackston, 2001, 50.   5. For reproductions, see Stchoukine, 1966; Robinson, 1976a, plates 19–21; Gray, 1979, 230–1.   6. On the early sixteenth century and the transition from the Timurids to Uzbek and Safavid rules in Herat, see Szuppe, 1992.   7. For the struggle over Khurasan, see Dickson, 1958.   8. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Per. 181 (Arberry et al., 1959–62, no. 181).   9. The inscription reads: ‫طاق و رواق و مقصوره خانه مسجد‬ 10. Shah ‘Abbas II ruled in Isfahan from 1642 to 1666. On Shah ‘Abbas II, see Matthee, 2014. 11. The Cairo Bustan’s encasing compares to the binding of another late Timurid manuscript, a celebrated copy of the Man†iq al-†ayr (The Speech of the Birds) of ‘Attar now kept in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (63.210.67). A digital reproduction of the binding can be found online at www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/63.210.67 (accessed January 2017). On this manuscript, its history and posthistory, see Kamada, 2010. 12. Keir collection, III.215 (Robinson, 1976a, 180, colour plate 22),

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currently on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art (loan number K.1.2014.134.A-C). 13. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Marsh 517, folio 9b (Robinson, 1958b, nos 686–88). 14. Although they imitated the Timurids, the Uzbeks also despised them, because the Timurids were not genuine Chingizids (Subtelny, 1983, 131–4). The Uzbeks, by contrast, were direct descendants of Chingiz Khan. The first great ruler of the Uzbek state, Muhammad Shaybani Khan (r. 1500–10), further strengthened his affiliation with the Chingizid line of Chaghatay through marriages with the relatives of Yunus Khan, a descendant of Chaghatay, Chingiz Khan’s son. 15. On the circulation of intellectual elites in post-Timurid Iran and Central Asia, see Szuppe, 2004. 16. Subtelny, 1983, 135. 17. Ibid., 135. 18. Quoted in ibid., 136. 19. Around 1544–5, the portrait was included in the Bahram Mirza album. It is now kept in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, 57.51.29. A digital reproduction can be found online at www.metmuseum.org/ art/colletion/search/451408 (accessed January 2017). For an analysis of the conventions of portraiture in this image, see Necipo©lu, 2000, 27–8. 20. Necipo©lu, 2000, 27. 21. Subtelny, 1983, 137. 22. Ibid., 137, note 79; Bashir, 2014, 540–1. 23. Wasifi, 1970–2, 1:5. 24. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Wasifi remembers a majlis at the new Uzbek court at Samarqand in the early sixteenth century during which he was asked to elaborate a response (jawab) to a panegyric poem (qasida) (English translation of this passage in Subtelny, 1979, 158). 25. Subtelny, 1983, 140–6. 26. Quoted in ibid., 148. 27. On this school, see Gray, 1979, 249–72; Soudavar, 1992, 205–21. 28. Porter, 1998. 29. ‘Ali, 2011, 264. 30. Examples include a copy of the Gulistan of Sa‘di (Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, no. 30) penned by Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi in Herat in 1500; a copy of the Khamsa of Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i (Windsor Castle, Royal Library, MS A/8) copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi in 1492; a copy of Yusuf wa Zulaykha of Jami (New York, Kevorkian Foundation, CXXXV) copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi in 1493; a copy of Tu˙fat al-a˙rår of Jami (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1416) copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi in 1499; another copy of the same text (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, no. 215) copied by Mir ‘Ali al-Husayni in 1509; a copy of the Ghazaliyyat of Shahi (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1960) copied by Sultan ‘Ali al-Mashhadi and dated 1514. 31. See preceding note. 32. Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, no. 30 (Robinson, 1963; Gray, 1979, 256–7; Seyller, 1997, 303–4). 33. Quoted in Seyller, 1997, 303–4. 34. The attribution to Bihzad is visible on folio 11b. 35. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11.134.2 (www.metmuseum. org/art/collection/search/446183 [accessed January 2017]); Lisbon,

epilogue

Gulbenkian Museum, LA 177 (Gray, 1979, 266–7); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément persan 1958 (Richard, 1997, no. 96; a digital reproduction of the entire manuscript is available at gallica.bnf.fr [accessed January 2017]); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Persan 257 (Richard, 1997, 148; a digital reproduction of the entire manuscript is available on gallica.bnf.fr [accessed January 2017]). See the following note for a fifth example. 36. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums, 1979.20 (Seyller, 1997, 281). 37. Houston, Art and History Trust Collection, 73 (Soudavar, 1992, no. 73, figure 73a). 38. Seyller, 1997, 281. 39. Delhi, National Museum, 48.6 H./4 (Ettinghausen, 1959; Brac de la Perrière, 2008, 280–1, no. 17 and plate 27). For a full transcription of the colophon, see National Museum of India, 1964, 94. 40. The shamsa appears on folio 1a. For an English translation of its textual content, see Ettinghausen, 1959, 42. 41. Brac de la Perrière, 2008, 230. 42. Ibid., 144. 43. Blair and Bloom, 1994, 162. 44. Ettinghausen, 1959, 42. 45. Brac de la Perrière, 2008, 281. 46. Ibid., 281. The painting illustrates the story of ‘the preacher with a speech defect’ (for the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, 166–7; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, story 132). 47. A cropped digital reproduction can be seen online at c8.alamy.com/ comp/B5WH0E/fly-leaf-of-bustan-i-sadi-islamic-book-illustration-inscr​ ibed-made-B5WH0E.jpg (accessed December 2017). 48. Ettinghausen, 1959, 43. 49. Brac de la Perrière, 2008, plate 27. For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, 1981, 42 sq.; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, 1974, story 15. 50. Siddiqui, 1985, 110. 51. Haidar and Sardar, 2015, 160. 52. The expression ‘thick description’ is borrowed from Geertz, 1973. It has inspired the approach used throughout this study, which explores the meaning of the Cairo Bustan by focusing on the local, singular context of late Timurid Herat.

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Illustration Acknowledgements

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Topkapı Palace Museum. Topkapı Palace Museum. Gulistan Palace Library. The John Work Garrett Library, The Sheridan Libraries, The Johns Hopkins University. 1.5 Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of John Goelet, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier, 1958.59. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1.6 Gulistan Palace Library. 1.7 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.155. 1.8 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.168. 1.9 Topkapı Palace Museum. 1.10 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 2.1 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 2.2 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 2.3 © The British Library Board. 2.4 © The British Library Board. 2.5 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 2.6 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 2.7 The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2.8 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Purchase – Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1946.12.147. 3.1 © The British Library Board. 3.2 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.165. 3.3 Topkapı Palace Museum.

illustration acknowledgements

3.4 Gulistan Palace Library. 3.5 © The British Library Board. 3.6 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 3.7 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 3.8 Topkapı Palace Museum. 3.9 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 3.10 Bibliothèque nationale de France. 3.11 Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund, 45.4.3. 3.12 Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections. 3.13 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.27. 4.1 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 4.2 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 4.3 © Museum für Islamische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Foto: Christian Krug. 4.4 Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Diez A folio 72 S13. 4.5 Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Diez A folio 72 S13. 4.6 Private collection. 4.7 Topkapı Palace Museum. 4.8 Topkapı Palace Museum. 4.9 Topkapı Palace Museum. 4.10 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 4.11 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 4.12 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 4.13 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Purchase – Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1932.30. 5.1 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 5.2 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 5.3 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 5.4 Dar al-kutub, Cairo. 5.5 Bibliothèque nationale de France. 5.6 Bibliothèque nationale de France. 5.7 The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 5.8 Photo: Yves Porter. 5.9 Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 5.10 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.42 (detail). 5.11 Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Gift of Mr and Mrs Stuart Cary Welch in honour of the students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College, jointly owned by the Harvard Art Museums and the

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Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988.460.2. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College. 6.1 Keir collection, III.215. Dallas, TX, The Dallas Museum of Art, loan number K.1.2014.134.A-C. 6.2 Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Philip Hofer in memory of Frances L. Hofer, 1979.20.19. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College. 6.3 National Museum of India. Plates All plates show the Cairo Bustan. Photographs are owned by Dar al-kutub, Cairo.

Index

Note: plates and illustrations are indicated by page numbers in bold ‘Abbas II, Shah, 216 ‘Abd al-‘Ali, Mawlana, 131, 150 ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 220–1 ‘Abd al-Hayy, 154 ‘Abdallah Ansari, Khwaja, 60 abstraction, 7, 122, 129 Abu Sa‘id, Sultan, 48, 153, 225 Abu’l-Khayr Khan, 218 acheiropoieton, 137 Adamova, Adel, 146 Aitken, Molly, 146 ‘ajab, 17, 197–202 Akbar, Sultan, 222 albums, 127, 128; see also Bahram Mirza album; Gulshan album; Timurid workshop album Alhambra Palace, Granada, 80 ‘Ali, Mustafa, 204, 220 ‘Ali Badr, Mawlana, 176 ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, 169 ‘Ali Mashhadi, Sultan, 14–15, 60–2, 97, 98, 169, 219, 220 Amir Husayn Beg, 90, 97, 155–6 anthology of Iskandar Sultan, 115–17, 116, 145 Anwår-i suhaylÈ (Kashifi), 56, 57 Aq Saray palace, Sahr-i Sabz, 80 architecture, 80, 124, 157, 189–92 Arkoun, Mohammad, 200 artistic authority, 2, 6, 16, 18, 101, 204–5 artistic collaboration, 186–7, 205–7 artistic gesture, 166–70, 174–5 Arzhang, 134–5 Assar Tabrizi, 202 authority see artistic authority;

political authority; royal authority authorship, 1, 6, 14, 17, 160, 168, 184–7, 202–7 ‘Attar, 56–8, 115, 173 Azhar, Mawlana, 155, 169, 214 Baba Hajji, Ustad, 151, 155 Babaie, Sussan, 189 Babur, Abu’l-Qasim, 48, 60, 214 Babur, Zahir al-Din Muhammad, 3, 4, 49, 63, 65, 98, 152, 219 Badakhshi, Muhammad, 98–100 Badåyi‘ al-waqåyi‘ (Wasifi), 2, 4, 5, 11–12, 15, 17–18, 97–101, 123, 219 Badi‘ al-Zaman, Sultan, 12, 54, 215 al-Baghdadi, Muhammad ibn Mahmud, 189 Bahari, Ebadollah, 9 Baharistan (Jami), 91, 96 Bahram Mirza, 65–7, 81 Bahram Mirza album artistic collaboration, 206 painting from Three Mathnawis, 81, 133, 188 preface, 133, 188 scene of Safavid gathering, 65–7, 66 Bal‘ami, Muhammad, 77–8 Barthes, Roland, 155 Baysunghur, 47–8, 53, 60, 78–9, 118, 158, 163, 191, 214 Bihzad chosen as main court painter, 15, 18

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Bihzad (cont.) entry on in the Tarikh-i rashidi, 153, 168 lack of biographical detail, 204 lifelike quality of paintings, 132–3, 201–2 portrait of Muhammad Shaybani, 219 portrait of Sultan Husayn, 49, 51, 52, 65 presents painting at the majlis, 11, 97–101, 123 signatures in the Cairo Bustan see signatures training and pupils, 204, 220 use of variety and quantity, 123–4 al-Biruni, Abu Rayhan Muhammad, 71 Blair, Sheila, 9, 65, 81, 187, 223 Bloom, Jonathan, 9, 223 Bourdieu, Pierre, 19 Brac de la Perrière, Eloïse, 223 Brend, Barbara, 49, 52, 69 Brethren of Purity, 201 Broug, Eric, 124 bËqalamËn, 123–4 Burhan, 98, 100 Bush, Olga, 9 Bustan (Sa‘di) biographical details, 21 Bukhara (1531) manuscript, 221, 222 Cairo manuscript see Cairo Bustan Delhi manuscript, 222–5, 224 description, 12–13 Herat (1525) manuscript, 111, 112, 222 quest for love, 59 Sa‘di appears as character, 13–14, 84–5 and self-reflection, 13–14, 84–5 Shiraz (1459–60) manuscript, 108–10, 109 story of Yusuf and Zulaykha, 91–6, 108 surviving copies, 22 Tabriz (1509) manuscript, 216 Tabriz (1515) manuscript, 217, 218

Tabriz (undated) manuscript, 217–18 unillustrated copies, 22 Cairo Bustan artistic collaboration, 205–7 ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 13, 36, 110, 113–14, 118, 123–5, 125, 130, 146, 167–8, 168, 184, 185, 189, 201, 223 binding, 12, 26–7, 216–17 circulation and reception, 214–25 colophon, 14, 39 completion date of manuscript, 14 completion dates of paintings, 14 ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 13, 35, 110–11, 118, 122, 146, 167, 167, 184, 185, 217–18, 222 extra-textual figures: ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 110, 113–14, 124; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 110–11, 122; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 108–10 folio added in sixteenth century, 40, 215–16 frontispieces: royal frontispiece, 10, 12, 15, 28–9, 43–69, 69, 101, 120, 217; first illuminated frontispiece, 12, 30–1, 125–6, 126; second illuminated frontispiece, 12, 32–3 historical context, 10, 14 humour and irony, 45, 62–7, 114 inscriptions: epigraphs referencing Jami, 14, 15, 77, 85–90, 94–6; ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 84–91, 85, 86, 150; response function of, 101; royal frontispiece, 49–53, 64, 68–9, 69; Sa‘di’s verses inscribed, 84–5; self-reflective effect, 2, 68–9, 76–7, 84–91, 150; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 76, 76–7, 77, 94–6, 101, 120 jawab, 91–6 linear exactitude: and artistic gesture, 166–70; ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 167–8, 168; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 167, 167; ‘The Poet at the

253

INDEX

Judge’s Court’, 168, 169; selfreflective effect, 2, 15–16, 150–1; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 151, 151–2, 152 mastar, 129, 130 ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 13, 37, 84–91, 85, 86, 150, 168, 169, 184, 186, 187, 189 references to Jami, 10, 14, 15, 77, 85–96, 108 remargination, 12, 216 seals, 41, 216 signatures: and the artist’s image, 9, 14, 16, 187, 193–202; and authorship, 202–7; ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 14, 184, 185, 189, 201, 223; Bizhad’s only known signatures, 186; concealment of, 184; crossmedia analogies, 187–93; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 14, 184, 185; dates, 14, 187; double signification of, 184–6; ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 14, 88, 184, 186, 187, 189; scholarly interest in, 9, 10; self-reflective effect, 2, 88, 184–5; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 14, 184, 187, 187, 191–2 size and format, 11–12 spatial complication, 110, 114, 118, 120, 142 Sultan Husayn’s patronage, 2, 9–10, 15 text pages, 12, 34 visual abundance: ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 118, 123–5, 125; binding, 217; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 118; destabilising effect, 45, 110; first illuminated frontispiece, 125–6, 126; royal frontispiece, 45, 67–8; selfreflective effect, 2, 110; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 13, 38, 75–7, 76, 77, 91–6, 101, 108–10, 120, 142, 151, 151–2, 152, 184, 187, 187, 191–2 calligraphy, 14–15, 97, 128, 155–7, 174–7, 187, 189, 201–2; see also inscriptions Chaghatay Khans, 49

Chahår maqåla (Nizami ‘Aruzi), 79 Chinese art, 174–5, 197 Chingiz Khan, 49, 52, 219 Citton, Yves, 94 colophons Cairo Bustan, 14, 39 Khamsa, 214, 215 Maqamat, 187–8 conspicuous consumption, 7, 12, 68 cosmic imagery, 52–3 Dara, Sahib, 98–9 Darvish Muhammad Naqqash Khurasani, 206 DastËr al afå∂il, 134 Dawlatshah Samarqandi, 8, 152, 170, 206 Daylami, Malik, 97, 155–6, 204 decoupage, 137–8, 139 dedicatory pages echoed in Cairo Bustan frontispiece, 52 Zafarnama (Herat, 1467–8), 20–1, 52 Derrida, Jacques, 208 destabilising effects, 8, 45, 53, 58, 110 divine creation, 94, 100, 110, 123, 132–3, 136, 142, 176–7, 200–1, 203 Diwan (Ahmad Jalayir), 170–6, 171 Diwan (Hafiz) Bukhara (c.1525) manuscript, 60–2, 61 ‘Feast by a Stream’, 60–2, 61 Tabriz (1525) manuscript, 198, 199, 200 takhallus, 185 Diwan (Jami), 90 Diwan (Sultan Husayn Bayqara), 138, 139 drinking, 12, 45, 58, 60–2, 63, 65 Dust Muhammad, 20, 65–7, 134–6, 146, 156–7, 188, 197, 204, 205, 206, 214 Dust-i Divani, 204 dyed paper, 137 early Timurid art, 7, 10, 77, 78, 80, 118, 157, 207

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THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

empowerment, 2, 5, 18, 100–1, 193 epigraphs see inscriptions Ettinghausen, Richard, 122, 223 extra-textual figures Bustan (Tabriz, undated), 218 Cairo Bustan, 108–11, 113–14, 122, 124 Delhi Bustan, 223–5, 224 Khamsa (Jamali), 120, 121 ‘Majnun on Layla’s Tomb’, 120–2 and realism, 8, 122 self-reflective effect, 6, 8 and Sufi symbolism, 8, 120 Fakhr-i ‘Ali, 192 Fakhri Sultan Muhammad, 206 Farhang-i JahångÈrÈ, 134 Fasih al-Din, 98–9 Fåti˙at al-shabåb (Jami), 85–7, 96 Firdawsi, Abu’l-Qasim see Shahnama (Firdawsi) Fitzherbert, Tereza, 78, 133 Friday mosque, Herat, 98, 157 frontispieces Bustan (Tabriz, 1515), 217, 218 Cairo Bustan: royal frontispiece, 10, 12, 15, 28–9, 43–69, 69, 101, 120, 217; first illuminated frontispiece, 12, 30–1, 125–6, 126; second illuminated frontispiece, 12, 32–3 Freer Bal‘ami, 77–8 Gulshan album, 54–6, 55, 64 Kalila wa Dimna (Herat, 1429), 44, 47, 53 Kalila wa Dimna (Turkmen), 48, 48–9, 53, 64, 67 Majmu‘a, 189, 190 royal frontispieces, 10, 15, 43–56, 44, 46, 48, 55, 63, 217 Shahnama (Herat, 1430, for Baysunghur), 47 Shahnama (Shiraz, 1330), 45–7, 46 Shahnama (Stephens, 1352–3), 47 Timurid workshop album, 47 Gamboni, Dario, 141 Gazurgahi, Husayn, 62 Gell, Alfred, 6, 101

gestures, 47, 52, 54, 110–11, 113, 201, 218 al-Ghazali, 200 ghazals, 59, 60, 85, 90, 91, 172, 175, 185 Ghazan Khan, 78 ‘Gnostic has a Vision of Angels’, 94, 95, 133 Goffen, Rona, 186 Golombek, Lisa, 6 Goodman, Nelson, 163 Grabar, Oleg, 122, 173, 176 Gulistan (Sa‘di) biographical details, 21 Herat (1426–7) manuscript (for Baysunghur), 163, 205 Herat (1500) manuscript, 220–1 imitated in Jami’s Baharistan, 91, 96 inscriptions, 79 surviving copies, 22 unillustrated copies, 22–3 Gulshan album, 54–6, 55, 64 gËnågËn, 123–4 ÓabÈb al-siyar (Khwandamir), 90 Hafiz, 59, 60–2, 85, 89, 175, 177, 185, 198 Hafiz-i Abru, 78, 80 Haravi, Mir ‘Ali, 219 al-Harawi, Kepek ‘Akkas, 137 al-Harawi, Shams al-Din, 206 al-Hariri, 187–8 Herat cultural scene, 3–6, 218–19 economic and trade centre, 3 fortress, 80 Friday mosque, 98, 157 majlis, 4–6, 97–101, 218 occupied by Jahanshah Qara Qoyunlu, 48, 214 patronage, 3–4 pillaged by Ulugh Beg, 48 Uzbek invasion, 3, 204, 215, 219 hierarchy, 54–8, 111 al-Hijaz, Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah, 205 Hillenbrand, Robert, 47, 76, 118, 128 homoeroticism, 59, 62 homophonic puns, 81, 185–6, 193–5 Hulegu, 97

255

INDEX

Humay wa Humayun (Kirmani), 79 humour, 45, 62–7, 114 Husayn Bayqara, Sultan ascension to throne, 48, 52 Bihzad’s portrait of, 49, 51, 52, 65 Cairo Bustan made for, 2, 9–10, 15 copy of Zafarnama made for, 20–1, 49, 52 chooses Bihzad as court painter, 15, 18 depiction in the Cairo Bustan frontispiece, 12, 43, 49–62 depiction of rule in the Tarikh-i rashidi, 152–3 Diwan, 138, 139 granting of suyËrghåls, 4 Jami’s qasida in praise of, 88–9 library, 52, 59, 99, 216 and mysticism, 59–60 patronage, 3, 9–10, 15, 56 wine cup, 138–41, 141 Ibn al-Faqih, 197 Ibn al-Fuwati, 97 Ibn al-Haytham, 7 Ibn al-Muqaffa’, 56 Ibn ‘Arabi, 62 Ibn ‘Arabshah, 117 Ibn Buhturi, 138 Ibn Khaldun, 131, 156 Ibn Manzur, 197 ibn Mubarakshah, Husayn, 90 ibn Muhammad, ‘Abd al-Mu’min, 18 Ibrahim Sultan, 78, 156, 170, 189, 206 iconology, 8, 20, 122 ideal mimesis, 15, 128–33, 142 Ilkhanid art, 77–8, 154, 158–9, 189 illusionism, 99–100, 131–3, 154–5 illustrative paintings/drawings, 1, 5, 9, 115–18, 161–4, 170 inscriptions Alhambra palace, Granada, 80 Aq Saray palace, Shar-i Sabz, 80 in architecture, 80, 189 Cairo Bustan: epigraphs referencing Jami, 14, 15, 77, 85–90, 94–6; ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 84–91, 85, 86,

150; response function of, 101; royal frontispiece, 49–53, 64, 68–9, 69; Sa‘di’s verses inscribed, 84–5; self-reflective effect, 2, 68–9, 76–7, 84–91, 150; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 76, 76–7, 77, 94–6, 101, 120 Chahår maqåla, 79 fortress of Herat, 80 Freer Bal‘ami, 77–8 good wishes offered to a ruler, 78–9 Gulistan, 79 historical inscriptions, 79 Humay wa Humayun, 79 Majma‘ al-tawårÈkh, 78, 79 on metalwork, 89–91 royal epigraphy, 77–84, 89 Samarra palace, 80 self-reflective effect, 2, 8, 68–9, 76–7, 84–91, 150 Shahnama (Herat, 1430, for Baysunghur), 79, 120 of signatures see signatures Three Mathnawis, 81–4 votive inscriptions, 78–9 intertextuality, 14, 91–6 intricacy, 5–6, 67, 68, 124–5, 150; see also miniaturisation; visual abundance irony, 64–5 ‘ishq, 59, 172, 176 Iskandar Sultan, 78, 115–17, 131, 145 Iskandarnama, 215–16 Isma‘il, Shah, 204, 215, 216 Ja‘far al-Baysunghuri, 155, 168–9 Jahan, Shah, 220, 222 Jahangir, 54, 222 Jahanshah Qara Qoyunlu, 48 Jalayir, Sultan Ahmad, 81, 170–6, 214 Jalayirid art, 3, 7, 10, 11, 79, 81–4, 118, 170–6, 188, 207 Jamali, 120 Jami, ‘Abd al-Rahman Baharistan, 91, 96 Diwan, 90 Fåti˙at al-shabåb, 85–7, 96 and intertextuality, 14, 91–6

256

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Jami, ‘Abd al-Rahman (cont.) Nafa˙åt al-uns, 131 property and tax privileges, 4, 15 referenced in the Cairo Bustan, 10, 14, 15, 77, 85–96, 108 Sub˙at al-abrår, 94, 95, 133 works included in Sultan Husayn’s library, 59 Yusuf wa Zulaykha, 14, 91–6, 108–10 Jamshid’s goblet, 141 Jauss, Hans Robert, 173 jawab, 91–6, 97–101, 146 Junayd Naqqash, 83, 188, 191, 198 Kalila wa Dimna (Nasr Allah) Arabic version (Ibn al-Muqaffa‘), 56 drawn on by Anwår-i suhaylÈ, 56 Herat (1429) manuscript, 44, 47, 53 Turkmen manuscript, 48, 48–9, 53, 64, 67 al-Kashi, Muhammad ibn al-‘AfÈf, 189 Kashifi, Husayn Wa’iz, 56 Khalil, Sultan, 214–15 Khalji, Mahmud, 222, 225 Khalji, Nasr al-Din, 222 Khamsa (Jamali), 120, 121 Khamsa (Nizami), 9, 99, 155, 214–15, 216 al-Khayyam, Muhammad ibn Mahmudshah, 158–60, 203 Khosrow wa Shirin (Nizami), 100 Khwandamir, Ghiyath al-Din, 1, 2, 8, 15, 52, 90, 125, 132–3, 152, 156, 193–7, 201, 205 Khwarizmi, ‘Abd al-Rahim (Anisi), 215 Kia, Chad, 6, 8, 110, 120 Kirmani, Awhad al-Din, 131 Kirmani, Khwaju Humay wa Humayun, 79 Three Mathnawis, 81–4, 82, 83, 118, 133, 188, 191, 198 al-Kirmani, Shams al-Din Muhammad, 216 Kitåb al-buldån (Ibn al-Faqih), 197 Kitåb al-manåΩir (Ibn al-Haytham), 7

Klimburg-Salter, Deborah, 173 Komaroff, Linda, 89–90, 157 Kufic script, 64, 68, 81, 169, 193 Kühnel, Ernest, 184 Kulliyat (Katibi), 97 Kulliyat (Sa‘di), 22, 92, 93 lapidary art, 136, 138–41, 141 Latour, Bruno, 19 al-law˙ al-ma˙fËz see Preserved Tablet of God Lefevere, André, 91 Lentz, Thomas, 3, 7, 8, 122, 145–6, 161, 163, 164 linear exactitude in architecture, 157 and artistic gesture, 160, 163, 166–70, 174–5 Cairo Bustan: and artistic gesture, 166–70; ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 167–8, 168; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 167, 167; ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 168, 169; self-reflective effect, 2, 15–16, 150–1; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 151, 151–2, 152 in calligraphy, 155–7, 174–7 demonstrative of the artist’s skill, 1, 8, 16, 150–2, 168 discussion of in the Tarikh-i rashidi, 152–5, 168–9 Diwan of Ahmad Jalayir, 170–6, 171 in drawing, 158–77 and lyrical poetry, 175–7 in metalwork, 157–8, 158 self-reflective effect, 2, 8, 15–16, 150–1, 177–8 symbolic of artist’s morality, 16, 152, 169–70, 177–8 ta˙rÈr, 8, 20, 152–8, 166–7, 174 Timurid workshop album, 158–64 uncreated effect, 150–1 Lisån al-‘arab (Ibn Manzur), 197 Losensky, Paul, 80, 185 love, 59, 60–2, 172, 176–7 Lowry, Glenn, 3, 7, 122, 145–6, 161, 163, 164 Lusha, 134 Lyotard, Jean-François, 24

257

INDEX

Madigan, Daniel A., 135 Mahmud, Mawlana, 125, 150 Mahmud Hajji, 223–5 Majålis al’ushshåq (attrib. Gazurgahi), 62 majlis, 4–6, 8, 11, 17, 96–101, 123, 155–6, 218, 219 Majma‘ al-tawårÈkh (Abru), 78, 79 Majmu‘a (Rashid al-Din), 189, 190, 191 Makhzan al-asrår (Nizami), 115, 116 Mani, 99, 134–5, 155, 196 ‘Majnun on Layla’s Tomb’, 120–2 Mansur, Ustad, 153 Man†iq al-†ayr (‘Attar), 56–8, 115, 116, 173 Maqamat (al-Hariri), 187–8 al-Maqrizi, 154 marbled paper, 137, 138, 140 Martin, F. R., 10 Mashhad mosque, 189–91 mastar, 129, 130 Mathnawi (Rumi), 59 mathnawis, 12–13, 23, 91, 92, 94, 115, 202 Mayer, L. A., 187 Meinecke, Michael, 187 Meisami, Julie, 185 Merguerian, Gayane, 92 metalwork, 89–91, 124, 157–8, 158, 161, 187 metapictoriality, 16; see also selfreflection Mihr wa Mushtari (Assar Tabrizi), 202 miniaturisation, 6–7, 45, 123–6, 151–2, 157, 187 Mir Sayyid Ahmad, 97, 100, 131, 132, 201 Mirak, Sultan, 220–1 Mirak Naqqash, 70, 156–7, 204 Miranshah, 52 Morellian connoisseurship, 168, 186 mu‘amma, 5, 219 Muhammad, Sultan, 136, 198 Muhammad Haydar, 125, 126, 150, 152–5, 168–9, 204, 219 Muhammad Khandan, Sultan, 97 Murad Mirza, Sultan, 221 Muzaffar, Shah, 132, 153, 168

Muzaffar ‘Ali, 204 Muzaffar Husayn, 63, 215 Muzahhib, Khwaja Nasir al-Din Muhammad, 156 mysticism, 8, 58–62, 76, 92–4, 120–2, 172, 176, 185, 200 Nafa˙åt al-uns (Jami), 131 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, 92 Naqshbandi order, 60, 219 naskh script, 78, 174 Nasr al-Din al-Sultani, 189, 205 Nasr Allah, Abu’l-Ma‘ali see Kalila wa Dimna (Nasr Allah) nasta‘liq script, 12, 138, 155–6, 174, 175–6, 216, 222 Nawa’i, Mir ‘Ali Shir, 4, 5, 11, 62, 90, 97–101, 123, 218 Necipo©lu, Gülru, 9, 49, 52, 200 Neoplatonism, 129–31 Nizami Khamsa, 9, 99, 155, 214–15, 216 Khosrow wa Shirin, 100 Makhzan al-asrår, 115, 116 Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi, 79 O’Kane, Bernard, 157 open book, 135, 136 Pancaro©lu, Oya, 141 panegyric, 69, 80, 85–9, 97, 195–6, 218–19; see also qasida paper cutting, 137–8, 139 parergon, 208 patronage, 3–4, 17, 56, 67–9, 77–84, 218 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 170 Pello, Stephano, 134 performance, 3, 6 Pir Budaq, 48, 214 Plotinus, 129–31 poetry divinely inspired, 133 homonymic puns, 185–6 and linear exactitude, 175–7 and the majlis, 4–5, 96 riddles, 5, 219 self-naming by poet, 185 and social promotion, 4–5 technical sophistication, 3, 4–5 political authority, 3–4, 214

258

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Porter, Yves, 129, 131 poses, 43, 47, 52, 54–8, 62, 65, 218, 219 potentiality, 135, 141–2 Preserved Tablet of God, 135–6, 201 proportionality, 128–9, 156 prosimetrum, 22, 91 prosopopoeia, 9 puns, 81, 151, 185–6, 193–5 Qadi Ahmad, 194–5, 204, 205 Qanun al-suwar (Sadiqi Beg), 133 qasida, 79, 85–9, 91, 97; see also panegyric Qasim ‘Ali, 204 Qasim-i Anwar, 90 Qawam al-Din Shirazi, 189–91 Qazwini, Budaq, 198 al-Qazwini, Zakariya, 17, 197 Qur’an, 60, 75, 78, 92, 100, 132, 135–6, 156, 200, 201, 203 Rashid al-Din, 189 realism, 8, 49, 108, 122, 135, 142, 160 repetition, 47, 114, 118, 145–6 Richard, Francis, 90 Ridgeon, Lloyd, 72 riddles, 5, 219 riqå‘ script, 76, 85 Ronen, Ruth, 141, 203 Roxburgh, David, 7, 9, 65, 80, 118, 122, 133, 136, 146, 159, 186–7, 206 royal authority, 1, 13, 45–7 royal epigraphy, 77–84, 89 royal frontispieces, 10, 15, 43–56, 44, 46, 48, 55, 63, 217; see also frontispieces royal insignia, 52, 219 royal portraiture, 49–53, 51, 67, 219 Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 59, 62 Sa‘di, Abu ‘Abdallah Musharrif al-Din ibn Muslih biographical information, 21 Bustan see Bustan (Sa‘di) Gulistan, 21, 22–3, 79, 91, 96, 163, 205, 220–1 Kulliyat, 22, 92, 93

and mysticism, 94, 95 surviving copies of works, 22 Sa‘di Khan, 152 Sadiqi Beg Afshar, 17, 131, 132, 133, 151, 201 Safavid art, 65, 66, 94, 95, 111, 115, 133, 134, 136, 197 Sakisian, Armenag, 70, 184 Salih, Muhammad, 218–19 Salihi, 90 sama‘ ceremonies, 58 Samarra palace, 80, 138 Sayrafi, ‘Abdallah, 128–9, 146 self-reflection and extra-textual figures, 6, 8 and inscriptions, 2, 8, 68–9, 76–7, 84–91, 150 and linear exactitude, 2, 8, 15–16, 150–1, 177–8 non-iconic means of, 2, 16–17, 177–8 in Sa‘di’s Bustan, 13–14, 84–5 shift towards, 3, 5–6, 10–11 and signatures, 2, 8, 9, 88, 184–5 and social promotion, 2, 6, 17 symbolic representations, 16–17, 177–8 and visual abundance, 2, 6–7, 8, 67–8, 110 Shah Rukh, 4, 47, 48, 60, 78, 79, 80 Shah-i Zinda necropolis, 191–2, 193 shåhid-båzÈ, 59, 176 Shahnama (Firdawsi) extracts in anthology of Iskandar Sultan, 115–17, 116 Herat (1430) manuscript (for Baysunghur), 47, 79, 118–20, 119 Herat (1440s) manuscript (for Muhammad Juki), 193, 194 illustrated copy presented to Hulegu, 97 illustrative function of paintings, 9 ‘Isfandiyar Kills Arjasp in the Brazen Hold’, 118–20, 119 preferred text for courtly production, 13 Shiraz (1330) manuscript, 45–7, 46

259

INDEX

Shiraz (1435) manuscript (for Ibrahim Sultan), 189, 192 signatures, 189, 192 Stephens manuscript, 47 world-showing cup, 141 Shahsawar al-katib, 222 Shalem, Avinoam, 9 Shams, Mawlana, 146 Shaybani Khan, Muhammad, 204, 215, 218–19 Shaykhzada, 204, 219–20, 222 signatures in architecture, 189–92 and artistic collaboration, 205–7 and the artist’s image, 9, 14, 16, 187, 193–202 and authorship, 186–7, 202–7 Cairo Bustan: and the artist’s image, 9, 14, 16, 187, 193–202; and authorship, 202–7; ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 14, 184, 185, 189, 201, 223; Bizhad’s only known signatures, 186; concealment of, 184; crossmedia analogies, 187–93; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 14, 184, 185; dates, 14, 187; double signification of, 184–6; ‘The Poet at the Judge’s Court’, 14, 88, 184, 186, 187, 189; scholarly interest in, 9, 10; self-reflective effect, 2, 88, 184–5; ‘Yusuf and Zulaykha’, 14, 184, 187, 187, 191–2 in calligraphy, 187, 189, 201 Delhi Bustan, 223 Diwan (Tabriz, 1525), 198, 199, 200 double signification of, 184–6 in illumination, 189 Majmu‘a, 189, 191 Maqamat, 187–8 Mashhad mosque, 189–91 in metalwork, 158, 187 in poetry, 185–6 rareness of in Persian art, 186, 188, 197–8 self-reflective effect, 2, 8, 9, 88, 184–5 Shah-i Zinda necropolis, 191–2, 193

Shahnama (Shiraz, 1435), 189, 192 Three Mathnawis, 83, 83, 188, 191, 198 Timurid workshop album, 160, 160 tughras, 160, 161, 203 Warqa wa Gulsha, 188 Íi˙å˙ al-furs, 134 Simpson, Marianna Shreve, 45, 70 social promotion, 2, 4–6, 17, 100–1 Soucek, Priscilla, 129–31 Soudavar, Abolala, 56 spatial complication Cairo Bustan, 110, 114, 118, 120, 142 Three Mathnawis, 118 stencilling, 137, 137 stonework, 136, 138–41, 141 Sub˙at al-abrår (Jami), 94, 95, 133 Subtelny, Maria, 3–4, 5, 7, 100, 152, 214, 219 Sufism, 8, 58–62, 92–4, 113, 120–2, 172, 200, 219 ßuwar, 129–31 suyËrghåls, 3–4 symbolism, 8, 58–9, 120–2, 142, 177–8 Tahmasp, Shah, 65–7, 97, 204 ta˙rÈr, 8, 20, 152–8, 166–7, 174, 195; see also linear exactitude tajnÈs-i tamm, 185–6 takhallus, 185 Tarikh-i rashidi (Muhammad Haydar), 152–5, 168–9 Tarjama-yi tårÈkh-i ÊabarÈ (Bal‘ami), 76–7 taßwÈr, 8, 20, 110, 157, 195 Three Mathnawis (Kirmani) ‘Celebrations for the Consummation of Humay’s Marriage’, 81–4, 82, 83, 118, 188 ‘Humay at the Court of the Chinese King’, 81 illustration of a prince seeing an angel in a dream, 133 inscriptions, 81–4 signatures, 83, 83, 188, 191, 198 thuluth script, 77, 81, 85, 88

260

THE MAKING OF THE ARTIST IN LATE TIMURID PAINTING

Timur, 3–4, 49, 52, 80, 117–18, 152, 214 Timurid workshop album decorative drawings, 161, 164 enthronement frontispiece, 47 genealogical tree, 52 illustrative drawings, 161–4 linear exactitude, 158–64 ‘Mounted Rider’, 158–60, 159 pictorial drawings, 164–6, 165, 166 preparatory drawings, 160–4, 162 signatures, 160, 160 tughras, 160, 161, 203 ‘Ubayd Allah, Sultan, 97, 215 ‘Ubayd Allah Ahrar, Khwaja, 4 Uluç, Lale, 62 Ulugh Beg, 48 uncreated effect, 2, 7, 16, 17, 110, 123, 136–42, 150–1 Uzun Hasan, 160, 215 variety, 122–7, 217 virtuosity, 3, 6, 45, 151, 187 visual abundance Cairo Bustan: ‘The Beggar at the Mosque’, 118, 123–5, 125; binding, 217; ‘Darius and the Herdsman’, 118; destabilising effect, 45, 110; first illuminated frontispiece, 125–6, 126; royal frontispiece, 45, 67–8; selfreflective effect, 2, 110 Delhi Bustan, 223–5 demonstrative of the artist’s skill, 1, 8, 110

destabilising effect, 8, 45, 110 Gulshan album, 56 self-reflective effect, 2, 6–7, 8, 67–8, 110 Three Mathnawis, 118 variety and comprehensiveness, 122–7, 217 wall paintings, 117–18, 154, 172 Wang Hsi-chih, 174 Warqa wa Gulsha, 188 Wasfi, Shams al-Din Muhammad, 137, 156 Wasifi, Zayn al-Din Mahmud, 2, 4, 5, 11–12, 15, 17–18, 97–101, 123, 219 al-Wasiti, 187–8 Wilkinson, J. V. S., 184 wonder, 17, 126, 197–202 world-showing cups, 141 Wright, Elaine, 175 Wu Hung, 175 Ya‘qub, Sultan, 215 Yaqut al-Musta’simi, 202, 206–7 Yazdi, Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali see Zafarnama (Yazdi) Yunus, Sadr al-Din, 100–1 Yusuf wa Zulaykha (Jami), 14, 91–6, 108–10 Zafarnama (Yazdi) dedicatory page, 20–1, 52 descriptions of drinking, 63 Herat (1467–8) manuscript, 20–1, 49, 50, 52, 67–8 made for Sultan Husayn, 20–1, 49, 52