"The Angel Surush Rescues Khusrau Parviz from a Cul-de-sac", Folio 708v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp

Seven Folios from Shah Tahmasp's Shahnama

Although not the largest royal manuscript produced for Shah Tahmasp of Iran, the Shahnama (Book of Kings) ranks as the most important. Its 258 paintings by fifteen artists, working from the early or mid-1520s until the mid-1530s, form a compendium of Safavid painting from the first third of the sixteenth century. A veritable classroom for the great and lesser masters of Iran, the Shahnama project brought together artists from East and West who subsumed their regional styles into a Safavid idiom defined by perfect brushwork, complex, multifigure compositions, brilliant color, and lively characterization.

Martin Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch have described a scenario for the circumstances surrounding the commission of the manuscript, proposing that Shah Isma‘il I ordered a deluxe Shahnama for his first-born son, Tahmasp, in 1522, when the prince returned to Tabriz after six years in the former Timurid capital at Herat.[1] Alternatively, Shah Tahmasp may have ordered the manuscript in 1524 to commemorate his accession to the throne in that year, for the commissioning of opulent illustrated manuscripts to mark the coronation of a new ruler was a long-established practice in Iran.[2] Qadi Ahmad, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, states that as a prince, Tahmasp studied painting with the preeminent Tabriz artist, Sultan Muhammad.[3] Assuming this student-teacher relationship developed from 1522 on, Shah Tahmasp himself may have arrived at the idea of commissioning an imperial Shahnama at the suggestion of Sultan Muhammad. Since by 1522 Isma‘il I had succumbed to the alcoholism that killed him, his motivation for ordering such a manuscript is more difficult to divine. Welch claimed that an earlier royal Shahnama, on which Sultan Muhammad had begun production at the behest of Shah Isma‘il as a gift for Tahmasp, was never finished because its style was too foreign to the young Tahmasp, who had been reared in Herat and was familiar with the painting of the great Bihzad and other late Timurid artists.[4] However, such a supposition relies not only on dating the earlier, unfinished manuscript to about 1520, rather than five years earlier,[5] on the basis of style but also on accepting the notion that Tahmasp at the age of eight could tell the difference between the Herat and Tabriz schools of painting and prevail upon the artists at the Safavid court to abandon their project.

Dickson and Welch have posited three phases of production for the manuscript. During the first, Sultan Muhammad would have been director of the project, followed in 1527 by Mir Musavvir, who was in turn succeeded in the early 1530s by Aqa Mirak, a contemporary and close friend of Shah Tahmasp. While the sequence of paintings generally follows this chronology—the earliest works appearing at the beginning of the manuscript—some were added later near the beginning or replaced earlier versions of the same scene.[6]

The sixty thousand couplets that constitute Firdausi’s Shahnama chronicle the reigns of both the historical pre-Islamic kings of Iran and their legendary predecessors. Thus, the Sasanians appear in the final chapters. Certain underlying aspects of Iranian kingship remained the same for the later kings as for their forebears, including the belief that each legitimate ruler was imbued with the kingly aura, or farr. This painting (cat. 138F) illustrates that principle. Khusrau Parviz, escaping from a potential usurper, Bahram Chubina, has fled up a narrow gorge. Reaching an impasse, Khusrau prayed to God for help and instantly the angel Surush appeared on a white charger and whisked him to safety. After he witnessed this rescue, Bahram Chubina realized that his quest for the throne was doomed.

Dickson and Welch have attributed this painting to a great-nephew of Bihzad, Muzaffar ‘Ali, who spent his whole career working for Shah Tahmasp.[18] His earliest paintings appear in the Shahnama, but he went on to contribute to all the major royal commissions during Tahmasp’s reign. He "died not long after the Shah,"[19] around 1576, having not only produced illustrations for manuscripts but also having helped, in the 1550s, to decorate the walls of Tahmasp’s new palace in Qazvin. A masterful painter of horses, Muzaffar ‘Ali produced compositions such as this one that appear to fly apart, with rocks jutting every which way. Unlike his meticulous uncle Bihzad, Muzaffar ‘Ali was extremely painterly in his brushwork, particularly on the rocks, almost as if he were experimenting with wash technique rather than conforming to the more typical Safavid penchant for saturated colors.

Sheila R. Canby in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Dickson and Welch 1981, vol. 1, p. 4; Welch 1972, p. 53.

2. Robert Hillenbrand contended that, by the early sixteenth century, illustrated Shahnama manuscripts had gone out of fashion as commemorative volumes for new rulers. However, his suggestion that fifteenth-century rulers commissioned only illustrated books of mystical or love poetry did not take into consideration the major works on the wars of Timur, the Zafarnama, or the religious manuscript, the Mi‘rajnama, produced for the Timurid sultan, Abu Sa‘id. Hillenbrand, R. in Melville 1996, pp. 54–56. Both Shah Tahmasp’s successor, Shah Isma‘il II, and his successor, Shah ‘Abbas, commissioned illustrated Shahnamas at the start of their reigns, which suggests that the choice to embark on such a project was connected to their identity as Safavid rulers, distinct from their Turkmen and Timurid predecessors.

3. Ahmad ibn Mir Munshi al-Husaini. Calligraphers and Painters: A Treatise by Qadi Ahmad, Son of Mir- Munshi (circa A.H. 1015/A.D. 1606). Translated by V[ladimir] Minorsky. Smithsonian Institution Publication 4339. Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, vol. 3, no. 2. Washington, D.C., 1959, pp. 180–81.

4. Welch 1972, pp. 48–54, 60; Dickson and Welch 1981, vol. 1, pp. 34, 45.

5. Canby 1993, pp. 79–80, dates the painting to about 1515–22.

6. Dickson and Welch 1981, vol. 1, p. 5; Welch 1972, pp. 62–63, 84.

18. Dickson and Welch 1981, vol. 1, p. 155.

19. Beg Monshi, Iskandar. History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great (Tarik-e ‘Alamara-ye ‘Abbasi). Translated by Roger M. Savory. 2 vols. Persian Heritage Series, 28. Boulder, Colo., 1978, vol. 1, p. 271.

Inscription: In Nasta’liq script-- verses from the Shāhnama of Ferdowsī:
پادشاهي خسرو پرویز (story of rule of Khusrau Parviz)

(Abu’l-Qasim Ferdowsi,The Shāhnāmeh, ed. Djalal Khalqi- Muṭlagh, Mazda publishers in association with Bibliotheca Persica, Costa Mesa, New York, 2008, vol. 8, pp. 144–45).

Shah Tahmasp, Iran (until 1568; gifted to Selim II); Sultan Selim II (Turkish), Istanbul (from 1568); Sultan Selim III, Istanbul (by 1800); Baron Edmond James de Rothschild (French), Paris (by 1903–d. 1934); his son, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris and Geneva (1934–d. 1957); his son, Baron Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild, Paris and Geneva (1957–59); [ Stiebel Ltd., New York, until 1959; sold to Houghton]; Arthur A. Houghton Jr., New York (1959–70; gifted to MMA)

Migeon, Gaston. "Exposition des Arts Musulmans au Musee des Arts Decoratifs." Les Arts no. 16 (1903).

Welch, Stuart Cary. A King's Book of Kings: the Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972. p. 197.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Richard Ettinghausen. "Islamic Painting." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 36, no. 2 (Autumn 1978). p. 26, ill. (color).

Dickson, Martin, and Stuart Cary Welch. The Houghton Shahnameh. Vol. vols. I & II. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1981. vol. II, ill. pl. 255 (b/w).

Canby, Sheila R. Persian Painting. London: British Museum Press, 1993. pp. 79–80.

Melville, Charles, ed. Safavid Persia : The History and Politics of an Islamic Society. Pembroke Persian papers. London - New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996. pp. 54–56.

Canby, Sheila R. The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp : The Persian Book of Kings. Madrid, 2011. p. 275, ill. (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 138F, pp. 7, 202–8, ill. p. 206 (color).

Canby, Sheila R. The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp : The Persian Book of Kings. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014. pp. 317, 324, ill. fol. 708v, full-page ill. p. 317; detail p. 324.