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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2016
Studies of visual culture in the Persian-speaking world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries frequently discuss the literary contexts in which painting was often produced, yet scant attention has been paid to understanding how the visual can engage with the verbal beyond representing a sequential narrative. Arguing that paintings and literary texts are autonomous, yet can engage with similar ideas, this article focuses on a painting in the album TSMK H.2153 that is generally perceived to lie outside the frameworks of narrative poetry: ‘The Monastery’ (f.131b). The article investigates how the painting employs techniques of representation similar to those used in lyric and panegyric poetry, to connect individual motifs and thereby explore ideas. An engagement with the continuities between literary and visual cultures reveals a chronogram, giving the year in which ‘The Monastery’ was produced, and allows us to understand how it constructs a vision of unorthodox kingship.
I am grateful to Shahzad Bashir, Julia Bray, Dominic Brookshaw, Teresa Fitzherbert and Robert Hillenbrand for reading a draft version of this paper, to the anonymous referees for their comments, to Julian Raby for his initial encouragement, and to the Freer Gallery of Art and Topkapı Palace Library for supplying publication images.
2 Walsham, A., “‘Yielding to the Extremity of the Time’: Conformity, Orthodoxy and the Post-Reformation Catholic Community” in Lake, P. and Questier, M. (eds.), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560-1660 (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 222 Google Scholar.
3 That ‘The Monastery’ should be connected with a broader group of paintings in TSM H.2153 and H.2160 is evident from a number of stylistic elements. Grube, for example, termed the painting “an almost complete collection of all the types of the figures, save the monsters, that appear in the Istanbul paintings” ( Grube, E. and Sims, E. (eds.) Islamic Art 1 (New York, 1981) p. 8 Google Scholar). Indeed, the tortured hands and feet and bared teeth of a number of the figures in ‘The Monastery’ are highly reminiscent of the Siyāh Qalam humans and demons. A specific comparison with other paintings in the albums is provided by a figure depicted in the extreme right of the wall-paintings in the dome-chamber. Wearing a brown tunic exposed to the thigh, the figure can be compared with H.2160 f.65a, a study from the side of a male. In a separate image (H.2160 f.46b) the figure is given the bulbous hat worn by the male figure ringing the bells in ‘The Monastery’. For reproductions of H.2160 ff. 46b and 65a, see Grube and Sims, Islamic Art 1, Figs. 204-205.
4 Fazio, N., “Across Central Asia: Cultural Crossroads, Religious Interactions? The Monastery, H.2153 fol. 131v, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Istanbul” in Flüchter, A. and Schötlli, J. (eds.) The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and Institutions in Motion (New York, 2015), p. 233 Google Scholar.
5 “Across Central Asia”, p. 232 n. 30.
6 “The Iranian Painter, the Metaphorical Hermitage, and the Christian Princess” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 16, 2002, p. 45.
7 Masnavī-yi Maʿnavī, vol. 3 (ed.) A. A. Khismatulin (St. Petersburg, 2010), p. 305.
8 Brend in Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 125 has suggested that another painting in the group, H.2160 f.89b, may respond in part to a scene of the meeting with the Samaritan woman.
9 Dīwān (ed.) Y. Qarīb (Tehran, 1977/8), pp. 172-173.
10 Stillman, Y. K. and Stillman, N. A., Arab Dress: A Short History from the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times, second edition (Leiden and Boston, 2002), p. 111 Google Scholar.
11 Al-ḥawādith al-jāmiʿa wa-l tajārib al-nāfiʿa fī al-mi'a al-sābiʿa, (ed.) M. Jawād (Baghdad, 1932/3), p. 483. For the Jalayirid period, a discussion of the implementation of the Jizya is provided by Hindūshāh Nakhjivānī, Muḥammad b., Dastūr al-kātib fī taʿyīn al-marātib (ed.) Ali-Zade, A., (Moscow, 1974), Vol. II, pp. 248–251 Google Scholar, although no information on clothing restrictions is given.
12 Maʿsūd Saʿd Salmān, Dīwān (ed.) R. Yāsamī (Tehran, 1339s), p. 471, quoted in Schimmel, A., A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (Chapel Hill, 1992), p. 120 Google Scholar. Several different pseudo-scripts are visible on a leaf, books and scrolls held by the male figures. The one represented on the scroll held by the figure in brown on the highest balcony, for example, appears to be joined, like Syriac, whilst the one on the scroll held by his interlocutor in yellow is unjoined, as is more common in Hebrew.
13 The words zandvāf and zandkhvān can also both mean ‘nightingale’ or ‘ring-dove’, on the basis of the analogy which compares the song of these birds to ritual recitation.
14 The image is fairly common. Jahān-Malik Khātūn, for example, writing in late fourteenth-century Shiraz, compares ‘azure-clad monks’ (rāhibān-i azraq-pūsh), bound by their girdles, to the heavens bound by the Milky Way. Dīvān (eds.) P. Kāshānī-Rād and K. Aḥmadnizhād (Tehran, 1995), p. 8.
15 Awfī, Lubāb al-Albāb (eds.) E. G. Browne and M. Qazwīnī (London, 1903) II, p. 35. See also Schimmel, A., “Christianity vii: Christian Influences in Persian Poetry” in Encyclopædia Iranica, Vol. V, fasc. 5 (Costa Mesa, 1991), pp. 342–344 Google Scholar.
16 Armenbibeln based on an architectonic layout date from as early as c.1300, for which see Cornell, H., Biblia Pauperum (Stockholm, 1925), pp. 69–71 Google Scholar and plates 20-21. Points of comparison are, however, far clearer with the Topkapı Armenbibel. See Deissmann, A. and Wegener, H., Die Armenbibel des Serai: Rotulus Seragliensis Nr. 52. (Berlin, 1934)Google Scholar, plate 5, for a scene in which one prophet holds a scroll and another cradles a book. Although Deissmann and Wegener suggest that the rotulus dates to c. 1450, they note (p. 30) that the representative techniques are characteristic of the late fourteenth century.
17 J. Raby, “Samson and Siyah Qalam” in Grube and Sims (eds.), Islamic Art 1, pp. 160-163. For further comparisons between male figures in ‘The Monastery’ and representations of Old Testament prophets, see Alte Pinakothek 10395 ( Schawe, M., Alte Pinakothek: Altdeutsche und altniederländische Malerei (Munich, 2014), p. 216)Google Scholar, a painting which may itself respond to earlier book illustrations.
18 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, pp. 126 and 130. A full study of the frontispiece is provided by Hillenbrand, R.: “Erudition Exalted: The Double Frontispiece to the Epistles of the Sincere Brethren”, in Komaroff, L. (ed.), Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden and Boston, 2006), pp. 183–212 Google Scholar.
19 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 132.
20 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 131.
21 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 133.
22 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 131. For a reproduction of Add. MS. 16561 f.60a, see D. J. Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years (London, 2005). p. 246 and cat. 208.
23 Roxburgh, D. J., “Heinrich Friedrich Von Diez and His Eponymous Albums: Mss. Diez a. Fols. 70-74”, Muqarnas, Vol. 12 (1995), p. 135 Google Scholar n.34. For reproductions, see İpşiroǧlu, M. Ş., Saray-Alben: Diez'sche Klebebände aus den Berliner Sammlungen (Wiesbaden, 1964)Google Scholar, plate IL; Lentz, W. and Lowry, G. D., Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., 1989)Google Scholar, cat. no. 69.
24 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 130.
25 For a reproduction and commentary, see Richard, F., Splendeurs persanes: manuscrits du XIIe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar, cat. 40.
26 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 122.
27 As Çağman notes, the calligraphic works in H.2153 and H.2160 date from 1291 to 1511-12, whilst the paintings date from the first half of the fourteenth century to the death of the Aqquyunlu Sulṭān Yaʿqūb in 896/1490; the works may have been formed into a collection in Tabriz under Yaʿqūb (Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, pp. 32-34). In addition to the studies cited throughout this paper, a condensed bibliography of scholarship on the corpus that includes ‘The Monastery’ may add: Akimushkin, O. F. and Gray, B. (eds.), The Arts of the Book in Central Asia: 14th-16th Centuries (London, 1979), pp. 172–176 Google Scholar; 242-243; Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, pp. 188-189; O'Kane, B., “Siyah Kalam: The Jalayirid Connections”, Oriental Art 49/2, 2003, pp. 2–18 Google Scholar; Sims, E., Peerless Images: Persian Painting and its Sources (New Haven, 2002), pp. 190–191 Google Scholar. M. Ş. İpşiroǧlu does not include ‘The Monastery’ in his facsimile of the ‘Siyāh Qalam’ corpus, Siyah Qalem: vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe der Blätter des Meisters Mehmed Siyah Qalem aus dem Besitz des Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi und der Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (Graz, 1976). This is discussed in the review by Rogers, J. M., BSOAS 41/1 (1978), pp. 171–173 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also idem, “ Qalam, Siyah”, in Persian Masters: Five Centuries of Painting (ed.) Canby, S. R. (Mumbai, 1990), pp. 21–38 Google Scholar.
28 D. J. Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, p. 432.
29 Melikian Chirvani, “The Iranian Painter”, p. 45.
30 Melikian Chirvani, “The Iranian Painter”, p. 46.
31 Melikian Chirvani, “The Iranian Painter”, pp. 47-48.
32 Ahmad, Q., ‘A Note on the Art of Composing Chronograms’, Islamic Culture 46/1 (1972), p. 163 Google Scholar, provides a survey of types of buildings that traditionally include epigraphic chronograms. See also de Bruijn, J. T. P., “Chronograms” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, (ed.) Yarshater, Ehsan, V/5, (New York, 2008), pp. 550–551 Google Scholar. For comparisons with chronograms in Arabic, see T. Bauer, “Vom Sinn der Zeit: Aus der Geschichte des Arabischen Chronogramms” Arabica, T. 50, Fasc. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 501-531.
33 For the correspondences between letters and numerical values, see Krotkoff, G., “Abjad” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, (ed.) Yarshater, Ehsan, I/2 (New York, 2008), pp. 221–222 Google Scholar.
34 Ghelichkhani, H. R., Zarafshān: Farhang-i isṭilāḥāt va tarkībāt-i khushnivīsī, kitāb-ārāyī va nuskha-pardāzī dar shʿir-i fārsī (Tehran, 2013), p. 603 Google Scholar.
35 See Ahmad, ‘A Note on the Art’, pp. 164-165, for the standard structure of chronograms. In addition to the meanings of ‘outcome’ or ‘end’, ʿāqibat is glossed by Anvarī, Ḥ. Farhang-i Buzurg-i Sukhan (Tehran, 1381 s)Google Scholar as natīja, ‘result’.
36 Ghelichkhani, Zarafshān, p. 605.
37 Ghelichkhani, Zarafshān, p. 606.
38 Yazdī, Manẓūmāt (ed.) I. Afshār (Tehran, 1386s), pp. 55-56.
39 Lewisohn, L., A Critical Edition of the Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi (London and Tehran, 1993), p. 10 Google Scholar. Khalvatī is described in Mīr Sayyid Aḥmad's preface to the Amīr Ghayb Beg Album as a master “of the realm of calligraphy”. See Thackston, W. M., A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, 1981), p. 354 Google Scholar, and Roxburgh, D. J., Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-century Iran (Leiden, 2001), p. 235 Google Scholar. For Khalvatī’s poetic activities under the takhalluṣ Mashriqī, with biographical information germane to his life as a calligrapher collated from Ibn Karbalā’ī, see Lewisohn, L., “The Life and Poetry of Mashreqi Tabrizi”, Iranian Studies 22, 2/3 (1989), pp. 99–127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Naṣr, Tazkīra-yi naṣrābādī (ed.) V. Dastgirdī, third printing (Tehran, 1982), p. 549.
41 Naṣr, Tazkīra-yi naṣrābādī, p. 481. A similar formula appears in Tārīkh-i Quṭbshāhī, as translated by Minorsky, V. “The Qara-qoyunlu and the Qutb-shahis (Turkmenica, 10)” BSOAS, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1955), p. 68)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who neither cites the original Persian nor deciphers the chronogram.
42 For other examples see Ṣadrī, M., Ḥisāb al-jummal dar shʿir-i fārsī (Tehran, 1378 s) pp. 59 Google Scholar; 63. In Chapter 1 of Nakhjivānī, Mawwād al-tawārīkh (Tabriz, 1343s) see pp. 1,3,12, 14, 25-27.
43 Chodkiewicz, M. (ed.) Les Illuminations de la Mecque (Paris, c.1988), p. 66 Google Scholar
44 Al-Fuṭūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Cairo, 1974) III, pp. 88-99. See also Chodkiewicz (ed.) Les Illuminations, p. 66
45 Ḥāfiẓ, Dīwān (ed.) Qarīb, pp. 86-87.
46 Quoted by Dikhudā, Lughatnāma (Tehran, 1947-1974) Vol. ‘J’: p. 98.
47 Melvin-Koushki, M., The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Sa'in al-Din Turka Isfahani (1369-1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early Timurid Iran PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2012, p. i Google Scholar.
48 Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane 1403-1406 translated by Guy Le Strange (London, 1928), p. 154. The image connects with the broader involvement of Tabriz in Christian apocalyptic thought, for which see Preiser-Kapeller, J., “ Civitas Thauris: The Significance of Tabriz in the Spatial Frameworks of Christian Merchants and Ecclesiastics in the 13th and 14th Centuries” in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th-15th Century Tabriz, (ed.) Pfeiffer, J. (Leiden and Boston, 2014), pp. 251–301 Google Scholar.
49 Fleischer, C., “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries” in Bağcı, S. and Farhad, M. (eds.), Falnama: The Book of Omens (London, 2009), p. 235 Google Scholar.
50 For the importance of lettrism to many forms of intellectual inquiry in this period, see C. Fleischer, “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences”, and M. Melvin-Koushki, The Quest.
51 Ritter, H., “Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frömmigkeit, II: Die Anfänge der Ḥurufi-Sekte,” Oriens 7/1, 1954, pp. 1–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Algar, H., “Horufism” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, (ed.) Yarshater, Ehsan, 12/5, pp. 483–490. (New York, 2008)Google Scholar
53 Ritter, “Studien”, p. 4
54 Melvin-Koushki, The Quest, p. 237.
55 Bashir, S., “Enshrining Divinity: The Death and Memorialization of Fazlallah Astarabadi in Hurufi Thought”. The Muslim World 90/2000, 3/4, p. 292 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fażlallah's mission began with a vision of Jesus in a bathhouse, for which see Ritter, “Studien”, p. 12.
56 Bashir, “Enshrining Divinity”, p. 292.
57 Bashir, “Enshrining Divinity”, p. 302. For a brief biography of al-Aʿlā, see Algar, H., “ʿAlī al-Aʿlā”, in Encyclopedia Iranica, (London, 1982 Google Scholar) Vol. I/8, p. 858.
58 Bashir, “Enshrining Divinity”, p. 293; Ritter, “Studien”, p. 28.
59 See, for example, Kiya, S., Vāzhanāma-yi Gurgānī (Tehran, 1951), p. 229 Google Scholar, an excerpt of the Bāb-i Masīḥ from the Jāvidānnāma.
60 Ritter, “Studien”, p. 30.
61 Quoted in Huart, C. and Tevfiq, R. Textes persans relatifs à la secte des Horoufis (Leiden and London, 1909), p. 269 Google Scholar. It is worth noting that a further two published album paintings, H.2160 f.52b and H.2160 f. 69b, depict figures with bells. See Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1: Figs. 428-429. The word nāqūs generally refers to metal bells, or the metal or wooden clappers used in several denominations of Christianity, and “the large bell which Christians hang from the roofs in the middle of their churches and strike on Sundays, from early in the morning until the people leave prayer” (Dihkhudā). From the perspective of any painter working with the semantic fields of poetry, bells may have provided a clearer representation of Christianity than an illustration of the actual ritual practices of the different Christian denominations present in the Persian-speaking world at this time, which included Armenians, Dominicans, and Unitores, alongside the Church of the East. For an overview of Dominican communities in Iran, see Loenertz, R. J., La société des frères péregrinants: étude sur l'orient dominicain (Rome, 1937)Google Scholar.
62 Quoted in Huart and Tevfiq, Textes persans, p. 271.
63 Qiyāmatnāma (Universitätsbibliothek Basel MS. M VI 73): f. 13a.
64 Qiyāmatnāma (Universitätsbibliothek Basel MS. M VI 73): f. 13b.
65 For a reproduction, see Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, Fig. 187.
66 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū Zubdat al-Tawārīkh (ed.) Sayyid-Javādī (Tehran,1380s) III, p. 170.
67 Mīrkhvānd Tārīkh-i Rawżat al-Ṣafā, (Tehran, 1338s) Vol. 6, pp. 554-555; 558.
68 Manz, B. F., Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge and New York, 2007), p. 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives the date of the second battle as Spring 810/1408. This is in accordance with Faṣīḥ Khvāfī, Mīrkhvānd, Samarqandī (see Thackston, A Century: p.122 n.21) and Ḥāfiẓ Abrū.
69 Kursīnāma (British Library Or. 6379): f. 198b, where the following lines give the dedicatee of the work:
The versification of the Kursīnāma, by the grace of God (Fażlallah), / Was completed in the age of the king who is the refuge of the faith
The king M, ʿ, t, ṣ, m / Who is the sign of the doubled seven, O judicious man
The locus where the secret of the prophets’ sciences is made manifest / The lion-like king whose nature comes from the grace of God (Fażlallah)
Although Ritter has suggested that these lines refer to Qara Yūsuf (“Studien zur Geschichte”, p. 52), it is possible that the Muʿtaṣim named here is the last Muẓaffarid, who came to Tabriz in order to mobilise forces against the Timurids, and who was actively involved with the Ḥurūfiyya. Muʿtaṣim was appointed governor of Hamadān and Luristān by Qara Yūsuf, and would go on to be actively involved with the Mushaʿshaʿ in Khuzistan. For a brief biography of Muʿtaṣim, see Binbaş, E., Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (ca. 770s-858/ca. 1370s-1454): Prophecy, Politics, and Historiography in Late Medieval Islamic History PhD dissertation, Chicago University, 2009, pp. 284–286 Google Scholar.
70 Ritter, “Studien”, p. 31 n.1.
71 Kursīnāma (British Library Or. 6379): f. 168a. C.f. Ritter, “Studien”, p.31.
72 Quoted in Kiya, Vāzhanāma, p. 295, and Ritter, “Studien”, p. 27.
73 Kursīnāma (British Library Or. 6379): f. 149b. C.f. Ritter, “Studien”, p. 22.
74 Universitätsbibliothek Basel MS. M VI 73: ff. 79a.
75 Mudām means ‘continually’, or wine that is drunk continually, cup after cup.
76 The idea of emotional communities is developed and discussed in Rosenwein, B., Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 2006)Google Scholar
77 Fazio (“Across Central Asia”, pp. 243-244) draws attention to the presence of tughs in the painting. Although of Turkic origin, the depiction of tughs does not necessarily connect the painting with Transoxiana, as is exemplified by Timur's use of them during the Georgian campaign.
78 Yazdī, , The History of Timour-Bec, known by the Name of Tamerlaine the Great, emperor of the Moguls and Tartars: being an historical journal of his conquests in Asia and Europe. Bell, E. et al. (eds.) (London, 1723)Google Scholar II, pp. 311-312.
79 Fazio (“Across Central Asia”, p. 228), suggests that the seated figure may be a representation of the dedicatee.
80 For a discussion of Jahān-Malik Khātūn, see Brookshaw, D. P., “Odes of a Poet-Princess: The Ghazals of Jahān-Malik Khātūn”, Iran 43 (2005), pp. 173–195 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
81 Brookshaw, “Odes”, p. 182.
82 This is the ghazal accompanying Sulṭān Muḥammad's c.1533 painting (Harvard Art Museums 1988.460.2) that is formally compared with ‘The Monastery’ by Brend (Grube and Sims (eds.), Islamic Art 1, p.126).
83 Komaroff, L., “The Epigraphy of Timurid Coinage: Some Preliminary Remarks”, American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 31 (1986), p. 216 Google Scholar.
84 Manz, Power, p. 20.
85 Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū III: pp. 185-216, and Faṣīḥī, Mujmal-i Faṣīḥī (Mashhad, 1339-41s), pp. 175-177. See also Manz, B. F., The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989) p. 139 Google Scholar.
86 Faṣīḥī, p. 180, noting the editor's comments on p. 179.
87 Mīrkhvānd 6: 557. See also Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 131-137.
88 Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū III, p. 191.
89 Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū III, p. 190.
90 Komaroff, “The Epigraphy”, p. 217.
91 Binbaş, Sharaf al-Dīn, pp. 342-343. The kind of messianism constructed in ‘The Monastery’ is also far from the ideology developed for and by Iskandar Sulṭān, which compared him to the Shīʿī Mahdī of the Last Days. For a full study, see Binbaş, ‘Timurid Experimentation with Eschatological Absolutism: Mīrzā Iskandar, Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī and Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī in 815/1412’ in Mir-Kasimov, O. (ed.) Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam (Leiden and Boston, 2014), pp. 277–307 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
92 For Shāhrukh's role as the mujaddid and the shaping of the intellectual climate in Herat during his rule, see Subtelny, M. and Khalidov, A., “The Curriculum of Islamic Higher Learning in Timurid Iran in the Light of the Sunni Revival under Shāh-Rukh”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 115, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1995), pp. 210–236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
93 Subtelny and Khalidov, “The Curriculum”, p. 212.
94 Shāhrukh's relationships with the Muslim intellectual communities of his time are discussed in Binbaş, “The Anatomy of a Regicide Attempt: Shāhrukh, the Ḥurūfīs and the Timurid Intellectuals in 830/1426-7”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, June 2013, pp. 1-38.
95 Binbaş, Sharaf al-Dīn, p. 310.
96 Binbaş, Sharaf al-Dīn, pp. 310-311. For a full study, see Bashir, Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nūrbakhshīya between Medieval and Modern Islam (Columbia, 2003).
97 Binbaş, “The Anatomy”, p. 1.
98 For a survey of relations between Shaykh Uvays Jalāyir, his ministers and Fażlallah, see Mir-Kasimov, O., Words of Power: Ḥurūfī Teachings between Shi'ism and Sufism in Medieval Islam. The Doctrine of Faḍl Allāh Astārābādī (London, 2015), pp. 10–11 Google Scholar; Bashir, S., Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis (Oxford, 2005) pp. 19–20 Google Scholar.
99 Minorsky, “Jihān-Shāh Qara-Qoyunlu and His Poetry (Turkmenica, 9)” BSOAS, Vol. 16, No. 2 (195), p. 274.
100 Minorsky, “Jihān-Shāh”, p. 274.
101 Binbaş, “The Anatomy”, p. 20.
102 Bashir, “Enshrining Divinity”, pp. 301-302. The earliest published, surviving Qaraqoyunlu chancellery documents to deal with relations between the state and non-Muslim communities date, as far as I am aware, from the reign of Jahānshāh. One, issued by his wife Khātūn Jān Bīgam in 866/1461, exempts the Armenian monastic community at Aghvān from paying the jizya, stating that this had been policy since the time of Shaykh Uvays Jalāyir (d. 1374). See Ṭabāṭabā’ī, M., Farmān-hā-yi Turkmanānān-i Qaraqoyunlu va Aqqoyunlu (Qum, 1352 s), pp. 33–38 Google Scholar.
103 Metsobets'i, T'ovma, History of Tamerlane and His Successors tranlated. Bedrosian, R. (New York, 1989), p. 60 Google Scholar.
104 T'ovma Metsobets'i, History of Tamerlane, p. 64.
105 Mīrkhvānd, 6, 560-561. The passage is discussed by Wing, P., The Jalayirids and Dynastic State Formation in the Mongol Ilkhanate. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2007, p. 308 Google Scholar, and in Savory, R., “The Struggle for Supremacy in Persia after the death of Tīmūr”, Der Islam 40 (1965), p. 37 Google Scholar.
106 H. L. Rabino di Borgomale, “Coins of the Jalayir, Kara Koyunlu, Mushaʿshaʿ, and Ak Koyunlu Dynasties”, Numismatic Chronicle 1950, p. 111. There is some variation in the date for the actual ceremony of enthronement. Tārīkh-i Quṭbshāhī, for example, places it in 812 (Minorsky, “The Qara-qoyunlu and the Qutb-shahis”, p. 58). It is, however, clear from the same source that Sulṭān Aḥmad's symbolic investiture of Pīr Budaq took place in 810 (Ibid).
107 Thackston, A Century of Princes, p. 127.
108 Mīrkhwānd 6: 549. See also Roemer, “The Turkmen”, pp. 161-162, in Jackson and Lockhart (eds.) The Cambridge History of Iran Vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge, 1986).
109 See Savory, “The Struggle”, p. 37.
110 See Wing, The Jalayirids, p. 307.
111 Mīrkhvānd: 6: 560.
112 Mīrkhvānd: 6:561. The passage is discussed by Wing, The Jalayirids, p. 309.
113 British Library IO Islamic 3022: f.149b.
114 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III: 446. While according to Mīrkhvānd and Tārīkh-i Turkmāniyya, the enthronement took place in 810/1407-8, a point on which the coinage agrees, Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (III: 446) includes the enthronement itself under events of the year 817, and Samarqandī places it in 814, after the murder of Sulṭān Aḥmad (Maṭlaʿ al-Saʿdayn (ed.) ʿAbd al-Ḥassan Navā’ī Vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 155). As Pīr Budaq is reported to have pre-deceased his father in 816, the dating of Ḥāfiẓ Abrū’s account seems unlikely. Samarqandī’s account may reflect an attempt to confirm Pīr Budaq's undivided rule after the death of Sulṭān Aḥmad.
115 Mīrkhvānd: 6:561.
116 British Library IO Islamic 3022: f.152r.
117 Quoted in Minorsky, “Jihān-Shāh”, p. 294.
118 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III: 446.
119 Mīrkhvānd: 6:560.
120 Rabino di Borgomale, “The Coins”, p. 113.
121 Rabino di Borgomale, “The Coins”, p. 114.
122 Mir-Kasimov, Words of Power, pp. 267-268.
123 Mir-Kasimov, Words of Power, pp. 267-268.
124 Bashir, “Enshrining Divinity”, p. 300.
125 Kursīnāma: (British Library Or. 6379): f. 156b.
126 Brookshaw, D. P., “Mytho-Political Remakings of Ferdowsi's Jamshid in the Lyric Poetry of Injuid and Mozaffarid Shiraz”, Iranian Studies 48/3 (2015), p. 474 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Brookshaw notes (p. 476), the term vāris-i mulk-i Sulaymān “had unmistakably dynastic connotations”.
127 Brookshaw, “Mytho-Political Remakings”, p. 474. Solomon can be equated purposefully with Jamshīd, who was carried through the air by the demons, and objects such as the magic signet ring can be associated with both figures. The locus classicus of the Jamshīd story is Firdawsī, Shāhnama (ed.) Muṭlaq (Tehran, 1389s) I, pp. 40-41.
128 For a reproduction, see Sims, Peerless Images, p. 326.
129 See, for example, Grube, E. and Mazzi, G., Miniature islamiche nella collezione del Topkapı Sarayı Istanbul (Padova, 1975), pp. 119–121 Google Scholar. A variant, though not incompatible viewing is offered in Shatzman Steinhardt, N., “Siyah Kalem and Gong Kai: And Istanbul Album Painter and a Chinese Painter of the Mongolian Period”, Muqarnas 4 (1986), pp. 60–66 Google Scholar.
130 Grube and Sims, Islamic Art 1, p. 8.
131 Sims, Peerless Images, pp. 324-325, who describes the two ‘Palanquin’ paintings as part of the “group of ‘problem pictures’ in the Istanbul albums”.
132 The child with its back to the viewer wears a ‘fairy’ hat, while the two smaller ones go bear-headed.
133 Of the six children whom Qarā Yūsuf would eventually privilege (Roemer, ‘The Turkmen’, Table IV in Jackson and Lockhart, The Cambridge History of Iran), four are mentioned by Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (III, p. 227) as participating in the battle against Abā Bakr and Amīrānshāh: Pīr Budaq, Shāh Muḥammad, Iskandar and Asfand. They would all have been small children at the time. A fifth figure whom I have been unable to identify, Shāh Budaq, is also mentioned by Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (Ibid.).
134 Sims, Peerless Images, p. 326.
135 When pronounced or written, alif and lām give, excluding repetitions, the letters alif, fā’, lām and mīm. See Bashir, S., “Deciphering the Cosmos from Creation to Apocalypse: The Hurufiyya Movement and Medieval Islamic Esotericism” in Amanat, A. and Bernhardsson, M.T. (eds.) Imagining the End: Visions of the Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London, 2001), pp. 174–175 Google Scholar.
136 Bashir, “Deciphering the Cosmos”, p. 177.
137 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III, p. 227.
138 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 122. For a reproduction of BL Add. 18113, f.45v, see Sims, Peerless Images, p. 202.
139 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III, p. 232.
140 Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III, p. 233. It is worth noting that the Arabic word ḥilla has, in addition to the meaning of ‘waystation’, that of ‘absolution’, a state granted by the Eucharist in several denominations of Christianity. I have considered the possibility that the entire painting could be a rebus for al-Ḥilla.
141 The date usually accepted is 812. See P. P. Soucek, “Eskandar b. 'Omar Šayx b. Timur: A Biography” Oriente Moderno Nuova serie, Anno 15 (76), Nr. 2, La Civiltà Timuride Come Fenomeno Internazionale. Volume I (Storia — I Timuridi e l'Occidente) (1996), p. 80.
142 Yazdī, Ḥasan, Jāmi’ al-tawārīkh-i ḥasanī: Bakhsh-i tīmūriyān pas az Tīmur, (Karachi, 1989), p. 24 Google Scholar. Soucek, “Eskandar”, p. 84, suggests that paintings may have been included among Sulṭān Aḥmad's gifts.
143 Wright, E. J., The Look of the Book: Manuscript Production in Shiraz, 1303-1452, Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Paper n.s. Vol. 3, (Seattle, 2012), pp. 89–90 Google Scholar.
144 Soucek, Illustrated Manuscripts of Nizami's Khamseh: 1386-1482 PhD dissertation, New York University, Department of Fine Arts, 1971, p. 263.
145 Soucek, Illustrated Manuscripts, p. 250 n.33.
146 Ettinghausen, R., “Some Paintings in Four Istanbul Albums”, Ars Orientalis, Vol. 1 (1954), p. 98 Google Scholar. Ettinghausen's dating of the dispersed manuscript, initially ascribed to the fourteenth century, is based on a stylistic comparison with TSM H. 1653 (Ettinghausen, “An Illuminated Manuscript of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū. Part I”. Kunst des Orients II (1955), p. 36). The complexities of the paintings in the dispersed manuscript and their models have recently been discussed in Ghiasian, M. R., “The ‘Historical Style’ of Painting for Shahrukh and its Revival in the Dispersed Manuscript of Majma al-Tawarikh ”, Iranian Studies 48/6, 2014, pp. 871–903 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
147 P. Soucek, Illustrated Manuscripts, p. 257.
148 E. J. Wright, The Look of the Book pp. 165-167. The paintings may have been added in the opening decade of the fifteenth century (Ibid., p. 167).
149 Ibid., p. 167. Iconographic and formal points of comparison between the collection of Epics and the album corpus, including similarities with the scroll format, are discussed by Sims in Grube and Sims (eds.), Islamic Art 1, pp. 56-60.
150 P. P. Soucek, Illustrated Manuscripts, p. 212. See also Wright, Look, p. 343 n.155. A biographical note on the scribe, Mīr ʿAlī Tabrīzī, renowned as the inventor of Nastaʿlīq, is given by P. P. Soucek, “ʿAlī Tabrīzī (Calligrapher)”, Encyclopedia Iranica I/8, p.881.
151 Sims, Peerless Images, p. 124.
152 Wing, The Jalayirids, p. 307. For a study in favour of Timurid patronage, see Soucek, Illustrated Manuscripts, pp. 212-213.
153 This is the death date given in Tārīkh-i Quṭb-shāhī (Minorsky, “The Qara-Qoyunlu and the Qutb-Shahs”: 60). The period between 810 and 816 gives more than enough time for the production of a work as fine as the Freer Khusraw and Shīrīn. Attributions of the manuscript directly to the patronage of Sulṭān Aḥmad (Sims, Peerless Images, p. 124) have depended it being produced during the short period between Muḥarram and Rabīʿ al-Awwal 809/June-August 1406, when Sulṭān Aḥmad managed to briefly retake the city after returning from his period in Syria, or when he was in Tabriz for roughly four weeks, just before his death in 813/1410. See Ḥāfiẓ Abrū III, pp. 167-168, 399-400.
154 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 122.
155 Sims, Peerless Images, pp. 123-124.
156 Ettinghausen, “Some Paintings”, pp. 96-97. For a methodologically contrasting work that explores how artists may have responded to Chinese material, in this case in fourteenth-century Italy, see Arnold, L., Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and its Influence on the Art of the West (San Francisco, 1999), pp. 119–132 Google Scholar.
157 Clavijo, Embassy, p. 152.
158 Clavijo, Embassy, p. 159.
159 Clavijo, Embassy, pp. 160-161.
160 S. Blair, “Tabriz: International Entrepôt under the Mongols” in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge (ed.), J. Pfeiffer, pp. 325-327.
161 Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, cat. no. 220, p. 432.
162 Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, cat. no. 220, p. 432.
163 Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, p. 416.
164 Roxburgh (ed.) Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, p. 432.
165 For a brief summary of some events leading to the accumulation of material in Aqquyunlu Tabriz, see Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, p. 34.
166 Roxburgh, D. J. “Persian Drawing, ca. 1400-1450: Materials and Creative Procedures” Muqarnas, Vol. 19 (2002), p. 60 Google Scholar.
167 Adamova, A., “Repetition of Compositions in Manuscripts: The Khamsa of Nizami in Leningrad” in Golombek, L. and Subtelny, M. (eds.), Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1992), pp. 67–75 Google Scholar.
168 One such image is Shaykhī’s response to the picture of two Chinese ladies. Compare H.2153 f. 150b and H.2153 f.146b, Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1 Fig. 105 and Fig. 109.
169 Grube and Sims (eds.) Islamic Art 1, pp. 32-33.
170 See Woods, J. E. The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire Revised and expanded edition. (Salt Lake City, 1999), pp. 140–143 Google Scholar.
171 Woods, J. E. (ed.) Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-Ārā-yi Amīnī, Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1992), p. 57 Google Scholar and p. 272