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LANGUAGE

THE

OF

JA

THE

BIRDS

Persianmanuscriptof exceptionalinteresthas entered

the Museum'scollections.This is a copy of the Mantiq-al-tayr,

"The Languageof the Birds,"a mystical poem (in which the
birds, searchingfor a leader,are used as a symbol for mankind
in search of God) written by the twelfth-centurypoet Farid
al-din Attar. It was copiedby one of the great calligraphersof
the fifteenth century, Sultan Ali of Meshhed; the colophon
recordsthe date and place of its production:Herat, 1483; and
it is illustrated with eight miniature paintings of the finest
quality, four of which are contemporarywith the copying of
the text, while the others are additionsof the early seventeenth
century.The fifteenth-centurypaintingsare the productof the
court atelier at Herat, although it is not known if the patron
who commissionedthe work was the sultan, a memberof his
family, or his artisticallyminded vizier. The later miniatures
werepaintedin Isfahanat the orderof the SafavidShahAbbas,
who had the pages of the manuscriptremounted and given
brilliantly colored, gold-flecked margins. New, illuminated
opening pages were also added, and the whole was rebound.
Shah Abbas presented the completed volume in 1609 to the
family shrineof ShaikhSafiin Ardabil,whereonly the greatest
work would have made a worthy dedication.

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The manuscript's regal history and the exceedingly fine

quality of its calligraphy,illumination,and illustrationsmake
this a majoracquisitionfor the Departmentof IslamicArt. In
the following articles, two principalaspects of the miniatures
are discussed:their relationto the late fifteenth-centuryschool
of painting in Herat, and their relation-a peculiarand, as we
shall see, quite remarkablerelation-to the school of painting
that flourishedin early seventeenth-centuryIsfahan.
FRONTI

S PIECE:

ON THE COVER:

THE

METROPOLITAN

VOLUME

XXV,

MUSEUM

NUMBER

Detail of the miniatureshown on page 347

Detail of the miniatureshown in color on page 343

OF ART

Bulletin
MAY

I967

Publishedmonthly from October to Juneand quarterlyfrom July to September.Copyright

? I967 by The MetropolitanMuseumof Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York,
N. Y. oo028.Second classpostage paid at New York, N. Y. Subscriptions$5.00 a year.
Single copies fifty cents. Sent free to Museummembers.Four weeks' notice requiredfor
change of address. Back issues available on microfilm from University Microfilms,313
N. First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.AssociateEditor in Chargeof Publications:Leon
Wilson. Editor-in-chiefof the Bulletin:KatharineH. B. Stoddert;Editors of the Bulletin:
Suzanne Boorsch and Anne Preuss; Editorial Assistant:Joan K. Foley; Designer: Peter
Oldenburg.

The

Miniatures
Fifteenth-Century

M A R I E G. L U K E N S AssistantCuratorof IslamicArt

he manuscriptof TheLanguageof theBirdswas copiedin Heratin 1483 by Sultan

All of Meshhed.Accordingto contemporarysources,SultanAli had been summoned
from Meshhed,his birthplace,to workin the libraryof the last greatTimuridruler
and art patronin Iran, Husayn Mirza Bayqara(I468-I506), whose capitalwas the
city of Herat (nowin Afghanistan,but at that time partof the provinceof Khurasan,
within the Timuriddomainsof Iran). Calligraphers
were the artistsmost highly reMuslim
world, and an early seventeenth-centuryauthor stated that
gardedin the
is
"[SultanAli's]writing amongother writingsas the sun amongthe other planets."
It is not surprisingthat the four paintingscontemporarywith the calligraphyare of
comparablequality, and they are, indeed, amongthe finest examplesknown of the
late fifteenth-centurycourt style of Herat. The developmentof this style is in large
part attributedto the painter Bihzad, the most renownedname in the history of
Persianpainting.
In spite of the fameof this artist,whosereputationbeganin his own lifetime,relatively little that is definiteis knownabouthim. Kemalal-dinBihzad,to give his full
name,wasbornin the mid-fifteenthcentury,grewup underthe tutelageof the painter
MirakNaqqash,and workedfirst under the patronageof the famousvizier Mir Ali
Shir Neva'i, for whomSultanAli alsodid much workand who wasas greata patron
of the artsasHusaynMirza,as wellasan authorin his ownright.Later,like SultanAli,
Bihzadwas attachedto HusaynMirza'slibrary,presumablyuntil the sultan'sdeath

Contents
THE LANGUAGE
OF THE BIRDS
The Fifteenth-Century
Miniatures
MARIE

G. LUKENS

317

The Seventeenth-Century
Miniatures
ERNST

J. GRUBE

339

in I506.

The UzbektriballeaderShaibaniKhancapturedthe city of Heratin I507, but was

defeatedby the firstSafavidprince,ShahIsmail,in I5I0. Babur,the Timuridprince
who left his smallCentralAsiankingdomof Ferghanato foundthe Mughaldynastyof
India,mentionedin his memoirsthat ShaibaniKhan,whomhe consideredthe crassest
tookit uponhimselfto correctBihzad'sdrawings.Asidefromthisreference,
barbarian,
there is scantmentionof Bihzadduringthis period,and he is heardof againonly in
1522, at the time of his appointmentas headof the royallibraryin the Safavidcapital
of Tabriz.It is not knownwhetherhe had beentakenby ShaibaniKhanto the Uzbek
capitalat Bukhara,wherea Herat court style of paintingappearedin the earlysixteenthcentury,or whetherhe remainedin Heratuntil takento Tabrizat an unknown
date (but presumablynot long beforehis libraryappointmentthere). He is said to
have died in the year I535/36.
317

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OPPOSITE:

z. Thebeggarwhoprofessedhis
lovefor a prince.Dated
1487/88. Folio 28 of The
Languageof theBirds,copied
by SultanAli in Heratin 1483.
Colorsandgold on paper,
8 x 42
4 inches.FletcherFund,
63.2o1.28.Herethefence
turnsthe cornerat thefront in
thesamewayas in anotherof
the CairoBustanpaintings,the
sceneof the man spattered
withmud (Plate886 in Survey
of PersianArt)

Of concern here is the early part of Bihzad's working life - approximately the last
twenty years of the fifteenth century, when the style of painting associated with his
name had become the established norm.
That there is so little recorded about either the details of his life or the personality
of the man is not due to lack of contemporary historians but rather to their point of
view. In the Iran of this time there was not the passion for personality that exists in
the West. In fact, in this period artists were just beginning to sign their paintings
occasionally, and if they did so, it was done as inconspicuously as possible. The interest
of contemporarieswas not in the person himself, but in the degree of perfection he was
able to achieve within the accepted limits of his art. And if his was considered the
brightest light within the well defined order of the much used metaphor of the solar
system, his name would become synonymous with the highest achievement in future
generations. Thus, in this strongly traditionalist culture, when a writer wished to give
the greatest praise to an artist of his own time, his work would be likened to Bihzad's,
as Bihzad's had been likened to that of Mani, the founder of the Manichaean heresy
in the third century, whose great perfection in painting had become a tradition, although any specific evidence of this talent had probably been lost. Still, it was the
constant and continuing reference to Bihzad that led Western scholarson a determined
search for particulars to enable them to understand what it was about him that was
outstanding, hoping they could then separate his work from that of his fellow artists.

2. Leftleaf of thedouble-page
frontispiecefrom the Bustanof
thepoet Sa'di copiedfor
HusaynMirza in Heratin
1488.Colorsandgoldonpaper,
page I2 x 82 inches. National

EgyptianLibrary, Cairo
3. Folio 37v of the Khamseh of
the poet Nizami copied in
Colors and gold on
paper, page 912 x 62 inches.
1494/95.

BritishMuseum, Or. 68io

318

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4. Folio i6r of the British Museum Nizami of I494/95 (Or. 68so)

320

The obvious sourcesto consult were contemporary or near contemporaryauthors.

Typical of the time is the descriptiongiven
by the historianKhwandamir,who was born
in Herat about 1475: "UstadKamal ad-Din
Bihzad. He sets before us marvelousforms
andraritiesof art;hisdraughtsmanship,
which
is like the brushof Mani, has causedthe memorialsof all the paintersof the world to be
obliterated,and his fingersendowedwith miraculousqualitieshavewipedout the pictures
of all the artistsamong the sons of Adam. A
hair of his brush, through his mastery, has
given life to the lifelessform."
Such lavish praisewas not, however,confined to Bihzad. In reference to Bihzad's
comteacher,the painterMirak,Khwandamir
mented,"He hadno equalin the art of painting and gilding, and uplifted the bannerof
in the art of calligraphy."
unsurpassedness
And of a pupil of Bihzad'she wrote, "Master
QasimAli, a painterof faces,is the creamof
the artists of the age and the leader of the
paintersof lovely pictures."
This lackof a helpfuldelineationof a painter's style cannot be entirely blamedon the
prose style in vogue at the time. Since the
aimof the miniaturepainterwasneitheroriginality nor individuality,and since everyone
wasthoroughlyfamiliarwith the tenetsof the
art, only a realconnoisseuror an artistmight
feel the need for more particularremarks.
Babur,mentionedabove as the founderof
the Mughaldynasty,fits the formercategory.
Unfortunately,in referencesto Bihzadhe remarked only that Bihzad painted bearded
faces well, while he criticizedhis unbearded
ones in having a greatly lengtheneddouble
chin.
To the latter category belongs Babur's
cousin,the authorMirzaMuhammadHaydar
Dughlat.His remarkson a painterof the previous Mongol period mention some of the
criteriaby whichpaintingwasjudged:"['Abd
al-Hayy]is unrivalledin purity and delicacy
and firmnessof brush,indeedin all the characteristicsof the art of painting.AfterKhwajah 'Abdal-HayycameShahMuzaffar[acontemporaryof Bihzad's in Herat, who died

young]and Bihzad,and after theseup to our the spell of the poetic ideal and bring the
own times there has been none like them." viewerbackto the realityof a harsh,aridland.
The innovationsin the late fifteenth-cenOf the three Heratartistshe wrote:
turyHeratstyle,of whichBihzadis considered
Bihzad.As a painterhe is a master,though the
prime mover, is the general freeing of
he does not come up to Shah Muzaffarin
from a ratherstatic formalism,
composition
delicacyof touch, but his brushis firmerand
and naturalnessin pose and
greater
diversity
he surpasseshim in his preliminarysketches
well
more individualityin face
as
as
gesture
and his groupingof his figures.
and
and
a
form,
greaterrangeof subjectmatQasim'Ali, portrait-painter.He is a pupil
of Bihzadandhis workscomecloseto Bihzad, ter, renderedmore intimately and dramatibut in this style [of painting]any expertcon- cally.While thesechangesseparatethe school
noisseurcanrecognizethat the worksof Qasim of HusaynMirzaBayqarafrom those of the
'Aliarerougherthanthoseof Bihzadand that precedingperiods,thereis no startlingdeparhis originaldesignsare more unsymmetrical. ture from tradition.
MawlanaMirakNaqqash.He is one of the
To makea positiveidentificationof a single
marvelsof the age, and he is the masterof
moredifficult,it wasoften the custom
Bihzad.His originaldesignsare moremature painter
in ateliersof this time for a masterand his
than thoseof Bihzad,thoughhis finishis not
pupilsto workon the samepainting,the masequal to that of Bihzad.
ter providingthe overallplan and doing the
One other importantcharacteristicof Bih- mostdemandingparts,thestudentcompleting
zad is mentioned by a seventeenth-century the remainder.Bihzadis mentionedas having
Turkishtraveler,who, speakingof a Turkish workedin this way, especiallyas an old man.
The fact that quite a numberof the paintpainter,said, "In picturesof battleshe may
be calleda secondBihzad."
ingsof thisschoolaresigneddoesnot confirm
From the foregoingexamplesit is evident authorshipfor one obvious reason:the presthat even in the eyes of his contemporaries enceof a signaturedoesnot, regrettably,mean
and their followers,the worksof Bihzadand its ownerput it there. Owing to the fame of
the other artistsof the Herat court were in Bihzadand the great demandfor his works,
very much the samestyle. In manyways this falsesignaturesbecamelegion,andwhilesome
style wasa continuationof that developedin are patently forgeries,with others it is exthe samecity underthe patronageof another tremelydifficultto be sure.
Timurid prince, BaysunghurMirza, in the
The one manuscriptwhoseminiatureshave
earlierpart of the century.Still continuedis now been pretty well acceptedas being the
the lyric quality that is the basisof so much workof Bihzadis the Bustanof the poet Sa'di,
of Persianpainting.Scenesstill take placein copiedat Herat for SultanHusaynMirzain
idealized landscapeswhere the background 1488 and now in the NationalEgyptian Liplaneis tilted up so the smalland delicatefig- braryin Cairo.In two of the six paintingsin
urescan be deployedwith equalclarityacross this manuscript,Bihzad'ssignatureis incorits surface,and where objects are depicted porated in the architecturaldecoration,as
from two points of view, either on the same is the date I488 (893 H.) for one and 1489
planeor as if lookingdownfromabove.There (894H.)for the second.Two othersaresigned
is still the loving attention to detail, in the but not dated, and the double-pagefrontisleavesand blossoms,in the decorationsof the piecehasan effacedsignature.As the style and
buildingsandtheirinteriors,andin the figures quality are consistentin all six, all are conthemselvesand theircostumes.The colorsre- sideredBihzad'swork. Since this is the only
mainbrightandclear,chosenfor theirdecora- manuscriptthat bearshis indisputablesignative effect ratherthan for realism,and there ture, other miniaturesattributedto his hand
are still no obscuringatmosphericeffects or must be comparedto these. The results of
diminishingdistancesor castshadowsto break such comparisonsare often less than success-

321

5. Folio 2I4r of the

BritishMuseum
Nizami of I494/95

(Or. 68so)

ful, however, since the Bustan contains only

four paintings aside from the frontispiece
(which, while exhibiting considerablefreedom
of detail, adheres to the conventional presentation of rulers and courtiers in frontispieces).
For example, there would be little basis of
comparison between any of the Bustan paintings and a painting of a battle, since there is
just one landscape in the Bustan, and that is
a pastoral scene.
Only one painting from our Language of
the Birds can be readily compared with one
from the Bustan: the scene of "a beggar who
professed his love for a prince" (Figure i) with
the left page of the Bustan frontispiece, showing Husayn Mirza at a feast (Figure 2). Both
take place in a fenced palace courtyard, with
a gate at the right and a building at the left.
Although the buildings are of different shape
they are much alike in patterns of brickwork,
tile and window decoration (including a window with vases in niches), roof pavilions, and
the use of panels with inscriptions. There can
be no doubt that these paintings are of the
same school. They are also practically identical in date, the text of the Cairo manuscript
having been finished in I488, and the Metropolitan miniature being dated in the inscription around the upper part of the building
1487/88 (892 H.).

8. Detail of the left leaf of

a double-pagefrontispieceof a ZafarNameh
copiedin 1467.Herat
school, Iran, late xv
century.John Work

GarrettLibraryof the
JohnsHopkinsUniversity,T. L. 6.g50o,
fol. 83

9. Folio z8sv of a Mantiq-al-tayr

by thepoet Farid
al-dinAttar.Heratschool,Iran,latexv century.British
Museum,Add. 7735

6. TheMuseum's
miniatureshownin
Figurei

7. Detail of a miniaturefrom the

Khamseh of the poet Amir Khusrau
Dihlavi. Herat school, Iran, late
xv century. The Smithsonian
Institution,FreerGallery of Art,
Washington,D. C., 37.27

Io. Folio 16s, about I493, of a Nizami

copied in 7442. 5S x 3'6 inches. British
Museum, Add. 25900
i . Folio 157 of the BritishMuseum Nizami
of I494/95 (Or. 68io)
I2. Miniaturefrom a Nizami copied in

Shiraz in 1444/45. Shiraz school, Iran,

mid-xv century.John Rylands Library,
Manchester,Pers. MS 36. Illustration
from Plate XLI of Les Peinturesdes
manuscritstzmuridesby Ivan Stchoukine
(Paris, 1954). Photograph:Taylor & Dull

10

I3

14
.3. Detail oJ folio 34r of the Sadd I
Iskandarby Mir Ali Shir Neva'i,
copiedfor Sultan Husayn Mirza's
son in Herat in 1485. Bodleian
Library, Oxford, MS Elliot 287.
Illustrationfrom Plate LXIV of
PersianMiniature Painting by
LaurenceBinyon, J. V. S.
Wilkinson,and Basil Gray
(London, 1933). Photograph:
Taylor & Dull
14. Detail of the Museum's miniature shown in Figure i

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of I494/95 (Or. 68io)

,6. Folio 47a of the Haft Paiar from the

Khamsehof thepoet Nizami probably
copiedfor PrinceBaysunghur.Herat
school, Iran, about I430. Colors on paper,
9 x 44 inches. Gift of Alexander Smith
Cochran, 13.228.13

325

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The maindifferencebetweenthemis in the

figures,their groupingas well as their pose
and gesture. In the frontispiecethere is a
naturalnessthat gives an immediatequality
to what the figuresare doing, from the decantingof wine on the right-handpage, not
shownhere, to its inebriatingeffect on some
of the courtiers,including the sultan'sson.
Such relaxingof the usualformalityand rectitude of courtscenes,particularlyif they are
also frontispieces,was unheardof beforethis
period and seems to be a Bihzadianinnovation. The scenein The Languageof the Birds
lacksthis informalquality.The courtiersand
attendants,althoughdifferingin face and figure, and althougharrangedin a very satisfying composition,variedyet unified,still have
somethingarchaicabout them. Their placement seems arrangedrather than natural,
their gesturesformaland frozen,and so the
impressiongivenis lessthe depictionof a scene
at its most arrestingmoment than the repetition of a timelessformulafor a certaintype
of scene, howeverskillfullycarriedout. This
traceof an archaicqualityundoubtedlyled to
a mistakenreadingof the nameof the painter
Mirak in the inscriptionat the top of the
building.Actually,no nameis mentioned,the
inscriptionconsistingof a poetic line in praise
of the sultan.Still,an attributionof thispaint-

ing to Mirakis not inconsistentwith the little

that is knownabout him. He may even have
beenthe instigatorof the style associatedwith
his illustriouspupil Bihzad;in any case, his
reportedcloseattendanceuponHusaynMirza
confirmsthat he was at the very center of
courtactivity,andcontemporary
sourcesindicate his work does not compareunfavorably
with Bihzad's.It could then be assumedthat
his paintingstyle would be the one currently
in favorin the courtateliers,but might betray
certainarchaiccharacteristics,
becauseof the
artist'sbeingof an oldergeneration.With this
criterionin mind,one couldattributenot only
our miniaturebut many othersof the period
to Mirak.Such a claimwouldnot be weaker
than the generallyacceptedone that Mirak
was the author of the paintingsin a preBihzadianfifteenth-centurystyle found in a
manuscript,dated 1494/95, of the poemsof
Nizami in the British Museum (Figure 4).
This attributionis made on the strengthof
his name (though hardly his signature)appearingon someof thesepaintings;on the fact
that the MughalemperorJahangirstatedthat
an unspecifiedfive miniaturesin this manuscriptwere by Mirak;and on the assumption
that a memberof an oldergenerationwould
paint in a more archaicstyle. On the other
hand, one could as easilyargue that the few

11

1.
. r ft-*

-'

OPPOSITE

AND

RIGHT:

I7, s8. Men assemblingwood and a man

drowning. Folio 44 of the Museum's

Language of the Birds. Colorsand gold on
paper, colorplate actual size. FletcherFund,
63.21o.44

327

g9. Detail showingtwo wrestlers,

from the Gulistan by the

poet Sa'di probably copied
in Herat in 1486. Maurice
de RothschildCollection,
Paris. Illustrationfrom page
128 of Ars Islamica IV
(Ann Arbor, 1937).
Photograph:Taylor & Dull

of Bihzad himself, while Ivan Stchoukine

statesthat althoughit has Bihzadianfeatures
it is not by the master,as the figureslackanimation.Stchoukinealsopointsout the almost
exactduplicationof severalof thesefiguresin
a sceneof two wrestlersin a manuscriptdated
1486 of the Gulistan by the poet Sa'di, in the

20.

Detail of the miniatureof King Dara and the herdsmanin the Cairo Bustan

artistswhomcontemporaries
singledout with
Bihzad- Mirak included- probably painted
in the new style then in vogue at the court.
In orderto reachsomeconclusionone must
reviewthe controversialbut irresistiblegame
of "Did Bihzadpaint this?"that has beenindulged in with enthusiasmby every scholar
who has written on the subject. Becauseof
spaceonly thosepaintingsthathavesomeconnection with the four in our Languageof the
Birds-about which we too may ask, "Did
Bihzadpaintthese?"- canbe consideredhere.
One paintingin the BritishMuseumNizami is much closerto our sceneof the prince
and the beggarthan is the frontispiecein the
Cairomanuscript,and it is also a scene of a
petition beforea ruler (Figure3). The similarities,suchas the positionof the throne,the
foliageon the streambank,and some of the
of
attendants,areobvious.The representation
the peopleis somewhatdifferent,with greater
age and moreobesityapparentin the London
painting.The latteralsolacksprecisionin the
finishingof details,as can be seenparticularly
clearlyalong the barsof the fence and top of
the gate.Two renownedIslamicscholarsdiffer
in theirattributionof thispaintingin London.
RichardEttinghausenlistsit amongthe works
328

collectionof Mauricede Rothschildin Paris.

Whetherthe paintingsin this manuscriptare
by Bihzador not has been the subjectof intensecontroversy.To returnto ourminiature,
however,one might reasonablyconcludethat
it waspaintedby a differentartistin the same
atelieras the BritishMuseumpainting.
The two figuresstandingtogether by the
fence in our painting appearexactly duplicated but reversedin anotherminiaturefrom
the Nizami (Figure 5) and severalmore details, such as the buildings,are also similar.
This secondpaintingin the BritishMuseum
is countedby both Ettinghausenand Stchoukine as the work of Bihzad.Other figuresin
this Nizami miniatureappearin other manuscriptsof the sameHeratschool.For example,
to namejust one, the man in the foreground
with his legs wrappedwith cloth and leaning
on a short staff is repeatedin reversein the
frontispieceof the ZafarNameh(Figure8) in
the JohnWork GarrettLibraryof the Johns
Hopkins University. The same figure reappears, again reversed,in a painting in the
Freer Galleryin Washington(Figure7). He
is repeatedyet again,not reversed,in an unin the
datedmanuscriptof the Mantiq-al-tayr
BritishMuseum(Figure9), which is painted
in a moreprovincialor archaicstyle but must
be of much the sameperiod.
The stridingman in the lower right-hand
corner of our miniature (Figure 14) is identi-

cal, save for facial type, turban,and quiver,

to one at the upperrightof a paintingin the
Bodleian Library in Oxford (Figure 13), from

a manuscriptwritten by the Vizier Mir Ali

Shir, and copied at Herat in I485 for the sul-

tan'sson.Two figuresin the foregroundof the

latterminiatureappearagainin anotherpainting from the same work (folio 7a). The last
paintingin this Oxfordmanuscriptbearsthe
nameof Bihzad'spupil QasimAli. There has
been much discussionof the validity of this

inscription(andof similarones in the British

MuseumNizami):someauthorsbelievingthat
becauseof theirquality the paintingsmust be
by Bihzad, others, that since QasimAli was
taught by Bihzad and considerednearly his
equal, they could indeed be by him.
The noted IslamicscholarErnst Kiihnel,
findingthreeof the figuresfromanotherpainting in the Bodleianmanuscriptrepeatedin the
CairoBustan(almostuniversallyacceptedas
the work of Bihzad),felt that Bihzadwould
not have copied the work of his pupil, and
that the Bodleian paintings, which he acceptedas beingby QasimAli, musthave been
paintedlater than thosein the Bustan.
This leadsto a crucialpoint in the investigation. Bihzad, if one accepts the majority
opinion,copiedone of his own compositions,
BahramGur killing the dragon.The earlier

whenwholecompositionswerefoundsuitable,
they werecopiedwithoutqualm,as weresingle figures,groups,trees,rockformations,animals, and buildings,either in part or as a
whole.In short,anythingand everythingwas
copied.The inescapableimplicationsare that
sketchbookswere readilyavailableand heavily reliedon in the ateliers,that traditionwas
strongandoriginalitynot a criterion,and that
individualitywasof so little importancethat
paintingswere rarelysigned,and in any case
were probablyoften a joint project.All this
beingso, ProfessorKiihnel'sobjectionthat a
masterwould be loath to copy his pupil beof the same
comesinoperative;the appearance

21.

Folio 144v of the British Museum Nizami of 1494/95 (Or. 68io)

version (Figure Io) is in another Nizami man-

uscript in the British Museum, whose text

was copied (the place is not indicated) in 1442;

the miniatureswere added later and one is

dated I493. The second version (Figure ii)
is in the Nizami of I494/95 discussed above.

Both of these, however,particularlythe earlierone, followalmostexactlythe composition

of the same scene (Figure 12) in a Nizami that
is dated I444/45 and is painted in a quite

differentstyle- that typicalof a mid-century

schoolwhosecenterwas Shiraz,a city at the
other end of the countryfrom Herat. There
is nothing to indicate that Bihzador his fellows saw this particularShiraz manuscript.
More likely is the assumptionthat the composition was simply an accepted and satisfactory way of depicting this scene, known
equally to the mid-centuryand later artists.
Another miniature in the Nizami of 1494/95
(Figure 15), again generally attributed to

Bihzad, also appearsto have been basedon

an earlierprecedent:it seemsto have had as
its inspirationa painting of the same scene,
nymphs bathing (Figure i6), done by the
Herat school of Prince Baysunghurabout
1430. Details of architecture and foliage in

the Nizami bathing scene are very close to

some in the painting of the prince and the
beggarin The Languageof the Birds(Figure I).

From these examplesit becomesclearthat

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elementsin differentpaintingsand different OPPOSITE:

andthepreparation
22. A funeralprocession
of a grave.Folio 35 of the
manuscriptsimpliesnot simplythat a painter
the
Birds.
Colors
and gold on paper,9% x 52
Museum's
Languageof
copiedhimselfor someoneelse, but that the
Fletcher
inches.
Fund,63.210.35
paintersworkingtogetherhadin commonthe
sourcesavailableto that atelier.
The sceneof anotherpaintingin TheLanguage of the Birds(Figure 17) is laid in hills
and mountains,with a rushing torrent between in which a man is drowning;the coat
and turbanat the lower left, by the water's
edge,presumablyindicatethathe enteredthe
torrent there. Only a figure on the further
bankis awareof his plight. The groupin the
foreground,while the oldest restson a rock,
is busycuttingwoodand loadingit on a donof a grave.Heratschool,Iran,
23. A funeralprocessionand thepreparation
key, all quite obliviousto the dramabeing
late xv century.Colorson paper,94 x 68 inches.The WaltersArt
enacted on the other side of the mountains
Gallery, Baltimore, IO.678
that surroundthem.
This scene does not appearto be a popular subjectfor illustration.No exact parallels
with other paintingsof the school of Herat
have been found, though there are general
similarities.For example,the one landscape
in the CairoBustan(Figure20) is fairlysimilar, with an intrusionof mountainsin the
middle of the picture, and less jagged hills
at the horizon.The mountainsmay also be
comparedto two paintingsin the Nizami of
I494/95, in one of which (Figure 21) the tree

on the mountainresemblesthat on the background hill in our painting,and the placement of smallstoneswith grasstufts growing
from theirfarsidesis alsoalike.Thereis even
a hunchedold manwho is of the samevintage
as the one on the rock in our miniature,although the latter is better drawnand more
successfulas a personality.The man in our
paintingbracinghis foot againstthe load on
the donkey to tighten the rope is very close
in facial type to the foremostof two noncourtlyfiguresin the miniaturein the Rothschild Gulistan(Figure 19). The effort of the
wood gatherer'saction, contrastedwith the
patient passivity of the donkey, gives the
scene a spontaneityand naturalnesshitherto
rarein Persianpainting.Such incorporating
of detailsof daily life into the art of picturemakingwasone of the importantinnovations
generallyattributedto Bihzad,and,certainly,
this paintingcan be comparedto any of the

24. Detail of the miniatureof the beggarbefore a mosque in the Cairo Bustan.
The beggarand the doorman are repeatedin reverseat the lower right
of Figure 26

25. Detail of the Museum's miniatureshown in Figure 23. Here thefigure at

the lower right is the same as in Figure 27

school of Bihzad and not lose by the comparison.

A third painting in TheLanguageof theBirds
shows a funeral scene in the foreground and
the preparing of a grave in the background
(Figure 22). The story is that of a prince who,
on completing a palace, was warned by a sage
that a crevice in it would let in the angel of
death, Asrael.
There is a single, undated miniature in the
Walters Art Gallery (Figure 23) that at first
glance seems close to this one. Careful inspection reveals many minor differences and
some major ones. In our painting the picture
space is narrower but deeper, and the tree at
the top has been allowed to grow up into the
margin. (Its awkward appearance is due to
the remounting, since it has been roughly silhouetted and pasted on the new margin, a
rather distracting red-brown gold-flecked paper. The Baltimore miniature has also been
remounted, as the cutting of the top indicates.) The facade in the foreground has been
pushed back (Figure 25), enabling the mourning figures to move in greater depth, though
at the same time they are grouped more closely
together. The domed structure at the left of
the Baltimore painting does not appear, while
the gate is higher and, further along, the wall
is recessed to break the monotony. All the
undecorated areas of the facade in the Walters
miniature would suggest that it was never finished, which is confirmed by a comparison of
the trees and stream banks in the two paintings. In the Baltimore picture, for example,
one can see the faint indication of where the
deep hollows in the tree trunk were to be.
Some of the faces and costumes in these two
paintings are not the same, as in the case of
the figures working on the new grave (though
they are alike in pose and action). The coffin is
differently decorated in each, and the ground
itself is quite dissimilar. In our painting the
old man extending a sympathetic hand stands
at the steps of the door, where he seems in direct communication with the mourners, while
in the other miniature he is so far in the
foreground as not to seem looking at the approaching figures at all. The color schemes are
also disparate: the Baltimore scene is painted

mainly in blues and greens,giving a rather

sombereffect,whileoursis in warmer,lighter
colors.

Althougha comparisonof these two paintings reveals an unmistakabledifferencein

quality,not whollyattributableto the incompletenessof the one, their relationshipstill
posesa question.Lessrefinementin the drawing of the figuresand in the decorativedetails^'
could point to an artist who had not yet
reached the state of maturity and delicate
perfectionof the other-or it could mean a
less accomplishedcopyist. The improvement
in thecompositionin theMetropolitan's
painting, however,doesstronglysuggestthatit was
paintedlaterthanthe Waltersminiature,and,
conversely,a lesstalentedpainterwouldhardly be likely to abandonwhatmight be considereda perfectcompositionfor a lesssuccessful
one, when the other was beforehim for the
copying.But even if it can be agreedthat the
Baltimoreminiatureis earlier,the questionof
whetherthe artistof the paintingin ourmanuscriptimprovedupon his own work or another's, in view of the communalattitude
of the ateliers,would be extremelydifficult
to answer.
The lowerpartof ourminiature(Figure25)
echoes, in reverse,one in the Cairo Bustan

;
_

.
''
'-.

26. Folio i35v of the BritishMuseum Nizami of I494/95

(Or. 68so). Notethesimilarityof theyouthtearinghis

clothesin theforeground,heredisplaying
grief,to theonte
at the rightedgeof thefrontispieceof the CairoBustan
overcomewithemotiona,t
(Figure2), who is apparently
thereadingof poetry

27. Detail of the WaltersArt Galleryminiatureshownin Figure23

333

LEFT:

28. Folio i74v of the Zafar Nameh in

the John Work Garrett Library (T. L.
6.1950)

(Figure 24). It also has close affiliations with

another funeral scene, or rather a mourning
scene (Figure 26), in the British Museum
Nizami of I494/95. Almost identical, but reversed, is the standard-bearer. His hunched
shoulders, his hand holding a handkerchief to
his round face, and the bulging of his clothes
at the waist are all more closely related in
these two manuscripts than this figure in our
manuscript is related to its counterpart in Baltimore. Similarly, the man on the roof with
his hands to his ears in the Nizami is closer,
particularly in costume detail, to one of the
foreground figures in the Metropolitan miniature than the latter is to the Walters one.
The mourning scene is one of the miniatures
from this British Museum Nizami listed by
Dr. Ettinghausen as being by Bihzad himself,
while Dr. Stchoukine attributes it to a pupil.
In attempting to attribute paintings to
Bihzad or to a student of Bihzad, because of
the lack of real evidence almost every writer
on the subject has -sometimes unconsciously,
it seems - worked from the following premise:
Since Bihzad was allegedly the outstanding
artist working in Herat during the reign of
Husayn Mirza Bayqara, the best paintings of
this school must be by him. Although the use
of the superlative in art is, in the last analysis,
subjective, there have still been many debates
between scholars on the subject of which
paintings, by careful study and comparison,
appear best and are consequently attributable
to this great master. By this criterion, the
funeral scene in our manuscript, like the one
of the woodcutters, has every claim to the
name of Bihzad.
The last of the fifteenth-century paintings
in this manuscript (Figure 30), showing scenes
LEFT

AND

OPPOSITE:

29, 30. A ruralscene.Folio 49 of the Museum's

Language of the Birds. Colorson paper,
7h x 53 inches. FletcherFund, 63.21o.49

* 1>^

AJ _#4,4%.00
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uma^g~r1
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i.

31. Detail of the Museum'sminiature

shown in Figure 30
of plowing and melon weighing, while still
related to the other three, seems definitely
by a different hand, as there is a change in
overall flavor-more of a genre quality, a 32. Folio 9r in Album H 2155. Proba7bly
Bukhara school, Iran, xvi century
greater feeling of air and space. The depiction
of the bright-eyed little dog and the different
Topkapi Serayi Library,Istanbul
kinds of melon is the result of acute observation on the artist's part, and infuses this scene
with a rare touch of naturalism. Another unusual element is the figure squatting behind
the tree trunk (Figure 29), which, in pose,
features, and dress, as well as dragon-headed
crook, appears to have been taken intact from
Chinese religious art. There is no figure so
close to an Oriental original in other miniatures of this school; while Far Eastern borrowings were not uncommon in Iran, artists
:
*.
tended to copy entire Oriental works (as int
the early Timurid period) or to adapt indi[
vidual Chinese motifs, such as the cloud band
_,
or stylized peony and lotus, to their own use,,
modifying them in the process.
'
The flowers along the stream bank at the
back are executed with characteristic Persian
delicacy, and closely resemble those beyond
the gate in the scene of the prince and the
beggar (Figure I) or those across the stream
at the right edge of our funeral scene (Figure 22). The tree, while not startlingly different from that in the latter miniature, is less
crisp in outline and has more shading. The
landscape is also different from the one behind
the woodcutters: there is a softer edge and

336

.~.
..;

straighteroutline to the hill on the horizon,

againwith some shading,and thereis lessinternaldetail- fewergrasstufts, smoothersur:,
.;
faces.The color scheme-a rathereven light
beige-separates it even further from the
woodcuttingscene,with its variegatedblues,
late * clavenders,
and pinks. Of roughlycontemporarymanuscripts,this landscapeseemsclosest
to some of those in the ZafarNamehof the
Garrett collection (Figure 28), in general
shape and simplificationof the horizon, in
sparsityof groundcover,and in its even color
tone- but the ZafarNamehwas retouchedin
India,whichmakescomparisondifficult.
This fourth miniaturefrom The Language
of theBirds,like the funeralscene, hasdifferent activities takingplace in foregroundand
background,but hererelatedlessby composition than by their ruralcharacter.These two
groups,furtherseparatedby interveningfigures and by a stream,appearagain in a sixteenth-centurypaintingin an albumin Istanbul (Figure32), probablypaintedin Bukhara.
In spite of the closenessof the copy, its static
qualitywidelyseparatesthispaintingfromits
prototype,as doesthe weakeningof the drawing of the figures,who now not only have a
puppet-likeappearance,but seem arbitrarily

leaf. Qazvinschool,Iran,
33. Album
3.Album

taurin school,Iran,
Art
xv leanf
century. e
Wa9ters
Glate Baltimore,
ThrW 749
Gallery,

34. Detail of the Museum'sminiature

shownin Figure30

placedin theirsetting.
A drawingthat must be fromnear the end
of the sixteenthcentury (Figure 33), in the

WaltersArt Gallery,showsthe persistenceof

this theme.Here the manat the plowis at the
top of the drawing,and only the threefigures
weighingmelonsappearat the bottom. The
style of drawing-not to mention the vogue
in dress-has changedconsiderably,but the
persistenceof position, pose, and gesture is
still a reminderof the traditionalcharacter
of Persianpainting.
The interrelationshipof individualpaintingsin variousmanuscriptsof this schoolis so
closeandintricatelywoventhat to disentangle
eachseparatethreadis impossible.Wholecompositionsas well as individualelementsapparently served as models and were accessible
even to outsideartists.Indeed,the particular

praisegiven in separatesourcesto the original

compositionsof Bihzadand Mirakimpliesthe
customaryuse of existingmodelswheresuitable, and the necessityfor originalcompositionsonly whereno traditionalone wasreadily
available.In quality,thesefourTimuridminiaturescomparefavorablywith othersof this
Herat schoolof painting,which was so often
called the school of Bihzad. But, while his
may have been the guidinggeniusresponsible
for annealingthe effortsof this unusuallytalented group of artists into a homogeneous
style, we should think of Bihzad less as an
identifiableindividualthanasa representative
of his fellow artists,or, as it were, chairman
of the board.

REFERENCES

Sir Thomas Arnold, Bihzad and His Paintingsin

the Zafar-namah Manuscript (London, I930).

Sir Thomas Arnold, Paintingin Islam (Oxford,

I928). The quotationsof Khwandamirare taken from pp. 139 and I40.

~~
.;C

I'i:-

sw..

"'. ' ,'

" ,k

; ,

-oR.t.^^~C
..-1-~:~
^%a-A^

LaurenceBinyon, J. V. S. Wilkinson,and Basil

Gray,PersianMiniaturePainting(London,1933).
The quotation of Mirza MuhammadHaydar
Dughlatis takenfromp. 190; the Turkishtraveler'sremarkappearson p. 83.
Ernst Kiihnel, "History of Miniature Painting
and Drawing"in Surveyof PersianArt, A. U.
Pope, ed., III (London and New York, 1939),
p. I867.

Eustachede Lorey, "Behzad:Le GulistanRothschild" in Ars Islamica IV (Ann Arbor, i937),

pp. 122-143.

RichardEttinghausen,"Bihzad"in Encyclopedia
of Islam,new ed., I (LeidenandLondon,I960).
V. Minorsky,trans.,Calligraphers
and Painters,A
Treatiseby Qadi Ahmad, Son of Mir-Munshi
(circa A.H. IOI5/A.D.

1606) ("Freer Gallery of

Art OccasionalPapers") (Washington,D. C.,

1959). The praise of Sultan Ali's calligraphy
occurs on p. 102.

Ivan Stchoukine,LesPeintures
desmanuscrits
timurides (Paris, I954).

The

Seventeenth-Century

Miniatures
E R N S T J. G R U B E

Curatorof Islamic Art

hen The Languageof the Birds attracted the attention of the Safavid Shah Abbas
as a possible gift to the family shrine in Ardabil, it was incomplete. There were four
spaces in the text, obviously intended, when the manuscript was written by Sultan Ali
of Meshhed in I483, to be used by the Timurid painters of the royal atelier in Herat
for their illustrations. For reasonsunknown, only four paintings were executed at that
time. The other spaces remained unused.
Herat was taken by the Uzbeks in I507, an event that destroyed the Timurid house,
and then in I5I0 Shah Ismail, first ruler of the Safavid dynasty that had come to power
in northern Iran at the beginning of the century, defeated the Uzbeks. Shah Ismail
not only carried off the painters still remaining in Herat but what survived of the
royal library after the two sacks of the city. Our manuscript must have been among
those books. It apparently remainedin the Safavid royal library when this was removed
from Tabriz to Qazvin, which became the capital in 1548, and later to Isfahan, which
became the capital in I598. It was in Isfahan, the last great center of Eastern Islamic
culture in the seventeenth century, that Shah Abbas, some time before I609, the
year the manuscript entered the Ardabil shrine, ordered its completion.
The pages were provided with new marginsof various colors, gold-flecked. A frontispiece was designed and executed by one of the masters of the period, Zayn al-Abadin
of Tabriz. Paintings were added in the empty spaces, one of them signed by a master
of the Isfahan atelier, Habib Allah of Meshhed. The manuscript was put into a new
tooled and gilded binding. Each page was stamped with the library seal of Shah Abbas,
the word waqf (signifying "religious donation") was written upon the frontispiece
and each of the eight paintings, and the manuscript was ready for the shrine as a
truly royal gift.
The paintings added at the command of Shah Abbas are of exquisite quality and
baffling style. Baffling because, except for one, they have very little to do with the
style current in Isfahan around i6oo. This was the period when the great calligrapher
and painter Riza-i Abbasi had developed to a rarely surpassed height a brilliant, if
extremely mannered and at times somewhat sweetish, style of painting. It had origi339

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin

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natedin Qazvinin the timeof ShahTahmasp,

the father of Shah Abbas,and is associated
religionhe had abandonedfor her. Folio 22 of The Language of the Birds. Isfahan with Sadiqi-beg,at one timeTahmasp'skitabdar,or headof the royalatelier.Even an eye
school, Iran, before 1609. Colors and gold on paper, 78 x 412 inches. Fletcher
The text that appearsin a single column at the top right and in not trainedin studying Persianpainting,or
Fund, 63.210.22.
unfamiliarwith the peculiaritiesandfinesseof
four columns at the bottom was writtenby thefifteenth-centurycalligrapher,
Islamicpaintingin general,can immediately
but the space left for thepainting was not then used. A repairof the paper, visible
seedifferencesbetweenpaintingsin the "true"
in the streamnearthe two men at the left, must have been done in Isfahan shortly
beforethe painting was executed.Had the damage occurredbefore 1483, the page Isfahanstyle (Figure2) and at least three of
the paintingsin our manuscript(Figures4,
would not have survived;the calligrapherwould simply have substituteda new
one. Later, when Shah Abbas orderedthe completionof the manuscript,Sultan Ali's 7, 9). One of the paintings(Figurei), asmentioned,is in somerespectscloserto the Isfahan
calligraphywas consideredirreplaceable,and repairwas the only solution. The
style, particularlyin its figures.Here, espeIsfahan artistextendedthe staff of the man standingfarthestto the left across
theframe of the miniatureinto the added margin,thus confirmingthe composition's ciallyin the youngwoman,we see the typical
facialfeatures:oval shapeof the head,heavy,
late date. The word waqf (signifying "religiousdonation"), writtenon each
at times joined brows,narrow,slantingeyes,
page and painting of the manuscript,has been nearlyerasedhere, only part of
one letterremaining,halfway up thetreetrunk
prominentnose, smallbut full mouth, curly
hair.The solidcolorsof the garments- bright
reds,blues,yellows,andpurples- arealsocharacteristic,reflectingthe Safavidtaste of the
late sixteenthand earlyseventeenthcentury.
It is in the landscapethat an un-Isfahani
quality appears.The details are carriedout
with greatcare.Grasstufts areevenly spread
over the ground,as are smallrocksof varied
shape,accompaniedby leafyplants.The rocks
A Princeand a Dervish, by Riza-i Abbasi (died 1635), Isfahan school, Iran.
are coloredin curiousbrokentones of purBrushdrawingwith additionalcolor and gold, 7 x 92 inches.RogersFund,
ple, greenishbrown,and yellow. Particularly
of the
11.84.13. A typical example of the highly calligraphicstyle developedin the late strikingis the manneredrepresentation
sixteenthcenturyand generally adopted throughoutIran in the seventeenth
brook,the surfaceof whichis organizedinto
an intricate, highly stylized linear pattern.
This treatment,first developedin fifteenth-

OPPOSITE:

I. The Christianmaiden swooning when Shaikh San'an reconvertsto Islam, the

2.

century painting (for instance, Figure 17 in

the preceding article), demonstrates the tendency of the Isfahan painter to recreate, at
least in part, an earlier style. The banks of
the brook, deep green, are executed in a soft
stippled technique. Upon them, embedded in
large-leafed plants, are more of the oddly colored rocks. The attention to details and tendency to patternize on one hand, and to create atmospheric color effects by stippling and
breaking up of tones on the other, find few
if any parallels in the contemporary official
court style. The contrast between the tall,
bold, brightly colored figures and the soft, intricate, subtle landscape makes it clear, even
in this least exceptional painting of the four,
that we are dealing with a mixture of two
different and ultimately unrelated styles.

340

'4>h

.4.

341

3. A Young Officerof the Guard, by Habib Allah, Isfahan school, Iran.

Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Illustrationfrom Plate CIII,i85 of La
Miniature persane du XIIe au XVIIe siecle (Paris and Brussels, 1929)

miniatureopposite

OPPOSITE:

4. The Concourseof the Birds, by Habib Allah. Folio i of the Museum's

Language of the Birds. Colors and gold on paper, actual size.
FletcherFund, 63.2I10.1. The painting is signed on the small rock
centeredamong thefour geese

5. Signatureof Habib Allah. Detail of Figure 4

The divergencefrom the Isfahanstyle is

much more markedin the other paintings.
Even so, certain of their elements quickly
confirmthe late date. Practicallyall the human figuresin Figure9, for example,and the
youngwomanin the balconyin Figure7, are
as Isfahanias one might expect. The rest,
however,is unlikeanythingone wouldcount
on from Shah Abbas'scourt school. This is
especiallytrue of the landscapein Figure 7.
The softnessof the colorand the contrastbetweenthe greenof the gardenand the barrennessof the hills behindremindus of the first
painting.But therearestill morestrikingfeatures.One of these is the cut-downshrubor
bush,with leaflesstwistedbranches,set at the
edgeof the hill at the left, creatinga tortured
patternagainstthe golden sky. This shrubis
one of the most typical landscapeprops in
Herat paintingof the fifteenth century; indeed, it is found in very similarform in one
of the Timuridpaintingsof this manuscript
(Figure 17 of the precedingarticle). Other
landscapedetailsecho the earlypaintings.The
garden,for instance,is almosta counterpart
of the gardenin Figure i of the preceding
article,even to the use of a floweringcherry
tree and a fence of identicalconstruction.In
addition to these elementsthere are, in this
painting,motifs that areimpossibleto accept
asof the seventeenthcentury.The moststriking are the men approachingfrom the left on
the terrace.In physicaltype, dress,gesture,
andposition- tightlygroupedandplacedclose
to theframe- theyareso stronglyreminiscent
of Heratpaintingof the laterfifteenthcentury
that it seemsstrange,if not at firstsight inexplicable,that they shouldhave been painted
in Isfahanin the first decade of the seventeenth century.The gardener,standingnear
the cherrytree, is also clearlyderivedfrom a
fifteenth-centuryHeratmodel.
In the paintingshownin Figure9 the compositionand the architectural
settingarequite
unrelatedto the seventeenth-centurystyle.
The building, with its peculiarperspective
and intricatedecoration,the elaboratelytiled
terracewith pool and fountain,and the enclosingwallat the bottomareall motifstaken
342

LEFT:

6. Detail of Figure 7. The type of elaborate

decorativevaulting illustratedhere reached
its peak in architectureof the Timuridperiod

OPPOSITE:

7. Scene at a garden pavilion. Folio i8 of the

Museum's Language of the Birds. Colors
and gold on paper, 7s x 42 inches. Fletcher
Fund, 63.210.18. Probablypart of the
story of Shaikh San'an: on his way to Egypt,
Shaikh San'an sees the Christianmaiden
at the palace window. The word waqf is
visible on the hill to the left. Above it appears
the libraryseal of Shah Abbas

over from a paintingtraditionthat had been

profoundlyalteredin the earlySafavidperiod.
The paintingfarthestfromthe Isfahanstyle
(Figure4) is the finestand most beautifulof
the group. At first glance it could easily be
taken for a Timurid work. In spite of this
appearance,however,one of its elementsconfirmsits late date. To the right, beyond the
secondrangeof rockyhills, therestandsa man
with a gun -a gun of a type not developed
before the late sixteenth century. Like the
branchesof the tree at the left (and the staff
of one of the men in Figure i), the barrelof
the gun is painted onto the margin of the
page,proofthat the paintingwasaddedto the
manuscriptwhen the pageswere remounted.
The paintingis an astonishingtourde force.
The delicacyof the color, the beautifullyarranged composition,the almost unsurpassed
finesseof the brushworkall point to a tradition of paintingthat had been handeddown
from the earliestphaseof the Timuridcourt
ateliersin CentralAsiaand Herat. The floral
decoration,the rockformations,and the handling of the brook(so much like the brookin
Figure I) are highly reminiscentof Timurid
paintingsof the later fifteenth century, yet
this work is signed by Habib Allah, one of
344

Shah Abbas's court painters. We know this

artist through a number of signed works (Figure 3) that show him to be a proponent of
the Isfahan style, best exemplified by Riza-i
Abbasi.
The question we must now attempt to answer is why these paintings added by Shah
Abbas are not in the official court style of the
period -a fully developed style that was employed not only in contemporary paintings
and manuscript illustrations but in monumental wall paintings in the shah's palaces in Isfahan. The answer that comes first to mind
would be that Shah Abbas or his artists were
so deeply impressed with the Timurid paintings in the manuscript that they could not
but try to imitate their specific quality. However, this is not likely. The later miniatures
are not very close to the earlier ones-aside
from the details that have been discussedand more to the point, their Timurid resemblances have parallels in other paintings of
the early seventeenth century.
A number of late Safavid paintings have recently come to light that must be recognized
as inspired by Timurid models. The Museum
has acquired a double-page composition (Figure i I) and two single-page miniatures (Fig-

i-is:;iii
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BELOW

AND

OPPOSITE:

8, 9. The Martyrdomof St. John the Baptist. Folio 4 of

the Museum's Language of the Birds. Colors and
gold on paper, 7a4 x 42 inches. FletcherFund,
63.210.4. Ratherclose to the Isfahan stylein itsfigures,
particularlyin thefacialfeatures and curly sidelock
in front of the ear. The architectureand landscape,
on the otherhand, are in the olderstyle

ures13, 15)of this type, all froma singlemanuscript,and the specificmodels from which
theseworksderivecan be identified.
The double-pagepainting is copied, with
minorchangesin the placingof the figuresand
certainotheralterations,fromthe frontispiece
(Figure o) of the famousShahNamehmadein
Herat in I430 for PrinceBaysunghurMirza.
This manuscriptcameinto ShahIsmail'spossessionwhen he took Heratin I5Io, and ever
sinceit hasbeenone of the principaltreasures
of the imperialcollection,now in Teheran.
Availableto ShahAbbas'spaintersin Isfahan,
it clearlyinspiredthe creationof the singlepage miniaturesas well as the frontispiece.
However,the single-pageminiaturesare less
directcopies.They treattheirmodels(Figures
12, 14) ratherfreely, in fact, demonstrating
that we are dealinghere with a groupof Sathe earlierstyle,
favid paintersparaphrasing
ratherthan copyingit.
Althoughexact informationas to the date
and placeof productionof thesethreeSafavid
paintingsis lacking, an even more striking
exampleof the style can be preciselyplaced.
This is a ShahNamehcopied and illustrated
for ShahAbbasin Isfahanin 1614,five years
after our Languageof the Birdsentered the
Ardabilshrine.This ShahNameh,now in the
New YorkPublicLibrary,containsforty-four
paintings.A numberof themarealmostexact
copies of paintings in the Shah Nameh of
I430. Others may be consideredfree variations (Figure I6).
Thus we come to a secondand more likely
explanationfor the archaismof the four late
paintingsin our manuscript,which is that
around I600 there was a revival of a long
supersededstyle. No comparablerevival is
knownin Islamicpainting,and the reasonfor
thisone remainsa mystery.Whilemost of the
Safavidproductionof whatmay now be identified as the Timurid Revival seems to have
been inspired by the finest creation of the
early Herat school,the Shah Namehof BaysunghurMirza,the fourpaintingsin our Languageof theBirdsdocumentthe useof Timurid
motifsfrom the fully developedstyle of fifty
yearslater. In this, they are so far unique.

qp-_
e-

C.

ot.

1-

AA

r
. rl-

l.;

Ii
f

K I~Y1

~~~~~~c~~~~.............;
t--

L
_____

....

.~

......

,_

___

_;

I-*-.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.rC--

-?j

__

io. Hunting scene. Double-pagefrontispiece of the Shah Nameh madefor Prince Baysunghur
Mirza ibn Shah Rukh in Herat in 1430. Gulistan Palace Library, Teheran. This manuscript,
containing some of the finest paintings of the early Herat school, inspiredthe Safavid
paintersto revivethe Timurid style in Isfahan about 16oo

348

i.

Hunting scene. Double-pagefrontispiecefrom a Shah Nameh. Isfahan school, Iran, xvii

century. Colors on paper, each page 134 x 88 inches. FletcherFund, 64.135.1-2

13. Banquet scene in a gardenpavilion. From the Museum's

xvis-century Shah Nameh. Colorson paper, i38 x 98

inches. FletcherFund, 64.I35.3

12.

Kay Ka'us receivesthe divfrom Mazanderan, come to

him in the guise of a bard. From the TeheranShah
Nameh of 1430

350

s5. The Vizier Buzurghmihrdemonstratingthe moves of chess.

From the Museum's xvls-century Shah Nameh. Colors
on paper, 138 x 88s inches. FletcherFund, 64.135.4. The
Safavid painter hasfollowed his model in the Timurid
Shah Nameh of 1430 (Figure 14), but has added another
sceneto the composition,probablyrepresentingthe execution
of the hereticMazdak. Also, considerablechangeshave
been made in the architecturalsetting,and a great deal of
landscapedetail, absent in the model, has been added. It is
clear that the artistfollowed his model only in general
terms, treatingthe individual details quite independently
and recreatingratherthan simply copyingthe Timurid style

14. The Vizier Buzurghmihrdemonstratesthe moves of chessto

the Hindu envoy in the presenceof Shah Nushirwan.
From the TeheranShah Nameh of I430

351

I6. IsfandiyarKilling a Dragon.

From a Shah Nameh madefor
Shah Abbas in Isfahan in 1614.
Colors on paper, 14

x 98

inches. SpencerCollection, The

New YorkPublic Library,Astor,
Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Many oJ the paintings in this
manuscriptwerefashioned after
those in the TeheranShah Nameh
madefor BaysunghurMirza
in 1430. Otherslack models in
that manuscript.This one, which
has no known model, may be
considereda true recreationof the
Timurid style

352

Charles Vaurie, of the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of

Natural History, provided the following identifications of the birds shown on the
Cover and in Figure 4 of the second article. "They were not," Dr. Vaurie commented,
"drawn by an ornithologist."
i.

Hoopoe (Upupa epops)

2.

DomesticDoves
Turtledoves(Streptopelia)
IndianParakeet
CommonCrow(Corvuscorone)
OrpheanWarbler
(Sylviahortensis)
SarusCrane(Grusantigone)
DomesticGeese
Kestrel

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Io. Unidentifiable

Note

I . Probably Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug)

12. Phoenix (not the simurgh, which was

representedas the Chinesefeng huang,

also calledphoenixin English)
13. ProbablyBee Eater(Meropsapiaster)
14. Magpie (Pica pica)

15. Gray Heron (Ardea cinerea)

16. Peacock(Pavocristatus)
17. Rooster (Gallus gallus)

18. White Stork(Ciconiaciconia)

19. Goshawk (Accipitergentilis)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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An epithetof the hoopoe,or hudhudasit is calledin Iran,is Tajidar,"crownwearer,"

becauseof its crest. The crownand a "mysticmark"on its breastwere supposedto
indicateits specialrelationshipwith divinity. Most of the talesabout the hoopoerelate its role as King Solomon'smessengerand confidant.In TheLanguageof theBirds,
it leads the other birdsin the searchfor spiritualredemptionthat is the subject of
the poem.
There was a traditionthat anyonewhom the shadowof the wingsof the phoenix
passedover wasdestinedto becomeking; this legendperhapsexplainsthe outstretched
wingsof the phoenixdepictedhere.
M. G. L.

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