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- Mahmud of Ghazni (Nov. 2, 971–April 30, 1030), the first ruler in history to assume the title of " sultan," founded the Ghaznavid Empire.
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Apr 10, 2024 · Sultan Muhammad, one of the great Persian painters and the most notable artist of the Safavid school at Tabriz, Iran. He became a court artist under the patronage of Shah Tahmasp until the shah turned away from painting. His son, Mirza Ali (Muhammadi), was also a leading painter of his generation.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sultan Mohammed. Sultan Muhammad ( Persian: سلطان محمد) was a Persian painter at the Safavid court at Tabriz under Shah Ismail I ( r. 1501–1524) and Shah Tahmasp I ( r. 1524–1576 ). He served as the director of Shah Ismail 's artists’ workshop [1] : 31 and as the first project director of the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp.
- The Shahnama
- Safavid patronage
- Depicting figures
- Two centers of culture
- King of the world
- Dense with detail
- Additional resources:
This sumptuous page, The Court of Gayumars (also spelled Kayumars— see top of page, details below and large image here), comes from an illuminated manuscript of the Shahnama (Book of Kings)—an epic poem describing the history of kingship in Persia (what is now Iran). Because of its blending of painting styles from both Tabriz and Herat (see map below), its luminous pigments, fine detail, and complex imagery, this copy of the Shahnama stands out in the history of the artistic production in Central Asia.
[What is an illuminated manuscript?]
This particular manuscript of the Shahnama was begun during the first years of the 16th century for the first Safavid dynastic ruler, Shah Ismail I, but was completed under the direction of his son, Shah Tahmasp I in the northern Persian city of Tabriz (see map below). The Safavid dynastic rulers claimed to descend from Sufi shaikhs—mystical leader...
It is often assumed that images that include human and animal figures, as seen in the detail below, are forbidden in Islam. Recent scholarship, however, highlights that throughout the history of Islam, there have been periods in which iconoclastic tendencies waxed and waned.[1] That is to say, at specific moments and places, the representation of human or animal figures was tolerated to varying degrees.
[What is iconoclasm?]
There is a long figural tradition in Persia—even after the introduction of Islam—that is perhaps most evident in book illustration. It is also important to note that, unlike the neighboring Ottoman Empire to the west who were Sunni and in some ways more orthodox, the Safavids subscribed to the Shi’i sect of Islam.
[Explain Shi'i]
Although it is widely recognized that the conventions of what is sometimes termed “classical”[2] Persianate painting had become established by the fourteenth century, it is in the reign of Shah Tahmasp I that we see the most dramatic advancements in illumination and the arts of the book more generally.[3] His patronage of this specific art form is ...
There are several interpretive issues to keep in mind when analyzing Persianate paintings. As with many of the workshops of early modern West Asia, producing a page such as the Court of Gayumars often entailed the contributions of many artists. It is also important to remember that a miniature painting from an illuminated manuscript should not be thought of in isolation. The individual pages that we today find in museums, libraries, and private collections must be understood as but one sheet of a larger book—with its own history, conditions of production, and dispersement. To make matters even more complex, the relationship of text to image is rarely straightforward in Persianate manuscripts. Text and image, within these illuminations, do not always mirror each other.[8] Nevertheless, the framed calligraphic nasta’liq (hanging)—the Persian text at the top and bottom of the frame (image above) can be roughly translated as follows:
When the sun reached the lamb constellation,9 when the world became glorious, When the sun shined from the lamb constellation to rejuvenate the living beings entirely, It was then when Gayumars became the King of the World. He first built his residence in the mountains. His prosperity and his palace rose from the mountains, and he and his people wore leopard pelts. Cultivation began from him, and the garments and food were ample and fresh.[10]
In this folio (page), we can see some parallels between the content of the calligraphic text and the painting itself. Seated in a cross-legged position, as if levitating within this richly vegetal and mountainous landscape, King Gayumars rises above his courtiers, who are gathered around at the base of the painting. According to legend, King Gayumars was the first king of Persia, and he ruled at a time when people clothed themselves exclusively in leopard pelts, as both the text and the represented subjects’ speckled garments indicate.
Perched on cliffs beside the King are his son, Siyamak (left, standing), and grandson Hushang (right, seated).[11] Onlookers can be seen to surreptitiously peer out from the scraggly, blossoming branches onto King Gayumars from the upper left and right. The miniature’s spatial composition is organized on a vertical axis with the mountain behind the king in the distance, and the garden below in the foreground. Nevertheless, there are multiple points of perspective, and perhaps even multiple moments in time—rendering a scene dense with details meant to absorb and enchant the viewer.
One might see stylistic similarities between the swirling blue-gray clouds floating overhead with pictorial representations in Chinese art (image above); this is no coincidence. Persianate artists under the Safavids regularly incorporated visual motifs and techniques derived from Chinese sources.12 While the intense pigments of the rocky terrain seem to fade into the lush and verdant animal-laden garden below, a gold sky canopies the scene from above. This piece—in all its density color, detail, and sheer exuberance—is a testament to the longstanding cultural reverence for Ferdowsi’s epic tale and the unparalleled craftsmanship of both Sultan Muhammad and Shah Tahmasp’s workshops.
Notes
1.See Christiane Gruber, “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nūr): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting,” Muqarnas 16 (2009), pp. 229-260; Finbarr B. Flood, “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum,” The Art Bulletin 84, 4 (December 2002), pp. 641-659; Christiane Gruber, “The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet,” Newsweek (January 9, 2015).
2.For a helpful analysis of the historiographic ascription of the term ‘classical’ to Persian painting and the cultural hierarchy that was established largely by scholar-collectors in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Christiane Gruber, “Questioning the ‘Classical’ in Persian Painting: Models and Problems of Definition,” in The Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 2012), pp. 1-25.
Dec 6, 2023 · Dr. Phillip: [0:46] We have different physiognomy. We have Central Asian-looking faces, we have brown faces. It was important for Sultan Muhammad to depict many variety as possible who are included in the court of Kayumars. Dr. Zucker: [1:00] What we’re looking at is the first kingship, one that is described as being a place of harmony.
Aug 24, 2020 · The last autonomous Ottoman ruler to have made any significant contributions to the empires was Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876-1909) who took the scepter amidst the First Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire (1876-1878; an era of constitutional monarchy), which he put an end to in just two years, reasserting absolute monarchical control.
It depicts the Prophet Muhammad, who sits adjacent to the mihrab in a mosque, as well as the four Rightly Guided Caliphs and their companions, who are placed before him in the courtyard. One of the caliphs, probably ‘Uthman, is shown transcribing a text, which recalls his role in the compilation of the Qur’an, and another, probably ‘Ali ...
The Ottoman Empire was an Islamic polity that originated in early-fourteenth-century Anatolia. Islam had been established in Anatolia before the emergence of the empire, but between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries the religion spread with Ottoman conquest to the Balkan Peninsula and central Hungary. This does not mean that the population ...
