Walters Shâhnâmeh 2

Walters Shâhnâmeh Miniature Paintings: Windows into Iranian Culture PowerPoint File #2 Pages from Walters Ms. W.600 with several pages from Mss. W.601/602/603 Shâhnâma [Book of Kings] (1010 CE) by Ferdowsi (940-1020) slides and commentary by

Michael Craig Hillmann, Persian Studies www.Academia.edu/MichaelHillmann with

Jim Hillmann, Sculptor and Painter www.jimhillmannart.com

• See www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W600 -601-602-603/description.html for a description of the manuscripts and folio numbers for the images presented here.

• The written commentary accompanying slides does not appear in live presentations of the PowerPoint show. A DVD of the show with written commentary is made available to attendees

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• This painting depicts the mythological king Hushang, Kiyomar’s grandson and successor to the Iranian throne, who avenged the death of his father Siyâmak, whom the Black Demon had killed.

• Hushang is credited with the discovery of fire.

• Shâh ‘abbâsi motifs that appear in Safavid Persian carpet designs and religious architectural decoration appear on the wall/curtain behind Hushang.

• Freer-Sackler online at www.Asia.si.edu/explore/shahnama summarizes and illustrates with miniature paintings the stories of Kiyomars, Hushang, Jamshid, Zahhâk, Feraydun, Zâl, and Rostam.

• Walters Ms. W.602, 17th century 2

[manuscript page title:]

“The reign of Jamshid as king was 700 years” Hushang is succeeded by his son Tamuras, whose son Jamshid is the greatest of the earliest group of kings called Pishdâdi. The Persian name for the famous Achaemenid ruins north of Shirâz called Persepolis is Takht-e Jamsjhid [throne of Jamshid], intimating association in the popular Iranian imagination of epic myth with national history. One Iranian explanation of the association of Jamshid with the Achaemenid ruins at Persepolis is that Persepolis was so grand that it must have involved more than human genius and engineering. Because of Jamshid’s unique association with demons, therefore, only he, with their help, could have had such an architectural marvel constructed.

• Another explanation is Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâmeh, which treats the historical Sâsânids (224-651 CE) but not the Achaemenid (559-330 BCE), served as history for many Iranians for centuries. This meant, absent a history of the Achaemenids, Iranians looked to the legendary and mythological early 3 rulers of Iran for the builder of Persepolis.

• Jamshid succumbs to ambition and pride and consequently loses divine blessing [farre izadi]. This enables the devil-controlled Zahhâk, son of the Arab king Mardâs who was a victim of patricide, to conquer Iran and ascend the throne. That Zahhâk, an embodiment of evil, is Arab is significant in the ethnic self-identity of Persian Iranians, who consider themselves Indo-Europeans.

Meanwhile, an Iranian youth called Faridun, destined to overcome Zahhâk, is hidden from the evil king. Faridun receives the support of a warrior-blacksmith called Kâveh. Together they overwhelm Zahhâk.

Faridun eventually divides the world among his three sons. He gives Iran to his youngest son Iraj, while Western lands go to the oldest son called Sâlm, and Central Asia and China to the middle son Tur. The latter region came to be known as Turân. But Salm and Tur become jealous of Iraj and kill him. Faridun prays for vengeance that comes through Manuchehr, the son of Iraj's daughter and a relative of Faridun.

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• Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

• Nariman’s son Sâm brings his own son Zâl down from the mountain where the latter was raised by the mythological phoenix-like Simorgh. Zâl’s son is Rostam, Iran’s most famous warrior-hero.

• Simorgh appears in the upper left corner of the • Simurgh • The dome in the painting is a reminder of the fact that most miniature paintings depict objects and clothing of the age when the painting is painted rather than the age of the story or scene in question. 

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Zâl in the court of Mehrâb of Zâbol Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century • During Manuchehr's reign, his leading warrior-hero, a man called Sâm who ruled a region called Zâbolestân, fathers a white-haired son. Embarrassed at his son, Sâm abandons him on a mountain where he is raised by a phoenix-like bird called Simorgh. Sâm later accepts his son, now a handsome warrior, and calls him Zâl. Zâl falls in love with Rudâbeh, the daughter of Mehrâb, the king of Kâbol and a descendant of the Arab Zahhâk. Their child, born through Caesarean section assisted by Simorgh, is the chief Iranian legendary hero Rostam, who protects the Iranian throne for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, after Manuchehr's death, his son Nowzar is to succeed him, but while still a prince is killed by the Turânian ruler Afrâsiyâb. Nowzar's son Zâv rules Iran briefly thereafter.

Nowzar's death renews the bitter strife between Iran and Turân. Lacking a prince of royal blood after Zâv's death, kingless Iran faces chaos. And Afrâsiyâb launches a great attack against it • a floral Persian carpet underfoot and a curvilinear pattern with arabesques on a blue field above • Cypress trees • balance and symmetry • no single-point perspective • hues of green used • gold on beige

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Rostam choosing and subduing his Raksh

• Zâl, however, learns of a prince living in the mountains and sends Rostam to bring him back to ascend the Iranian throne. The prince is Kayqobâd, the founder of the Kayâni dynasty.

Kayqobâd is succeeded by his son Kaykâvus, during whose reign occurs the famous story of Rostam and his son Sohrâb. .

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Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

• Zâl’s son Rostam, the Iranian monarchy’s chief paladin, slays the White Demon.

• Rostam is recognizable owing to his babr-e bayân.

• Rostam’s horse Rakhsh stands to the side; they are inseparable.

• On a later trip, Raksh disappears while Rostam is resting and Rostam has to travel on foot to Samangân, a city on the border of Irân and Turân. Samangân’s king welcomes Rostam and hosts him at his palace.

That night the king’s daughter Tahmineh, who has become infatuated with Rostam after hearing of his exploits, comes to Rostam’s room, and offers herself to him. They spend the night together and Tahmineh, who had promised to find Rakhsh, informs Rostam that Rakhsh has been found. Rostam leaves Samangân and Sohriab is born nine months later. A dozen years later, after learning from Tahmineh who his father is, Sohrâb decides to find and prove himself to his father by raising an army with Afrâsiyâb’s support, defeating the incompetent Iranian king Kaykâvus, and form an ruling partnership over Irân with his father.

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Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

• As fate, an active force in traditional Iran, would have it. Rostam, who has hidden his identity so that the Iranians could pretend he was alive should he die at the hands of this formidable, new and young adversary, his own son Sohrâb, whom he does not recognize.

• Also as fate would have it, in their third, one-on-one encounter, Rostam overcomes Sohrâb and slays him with a dagger.

• Much about this tragic, dramatic scene is decorative, the perfect balance and symmetry of the human and animal figures, including the battle drummers and trumpeter atop the mountain behind the combatants. It’s as if what has happened is part of patriarchal universe as it should be, the iranian patriarchs, king and paladin emerging victorious and energized by the blood of the next generation.

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• Walters Ms. W.601, 17th century

• four wavy horizontal swaths of color: purple, orange, green, and gold • horses paired to the left and right in the middle ground • a kneeling Rostam has shed his babr-e bayân • a dying Sohrâb on the ground in the same direction as the lines of four swaths • color composition, e.g., light purple Rakhsh, Sohrâb’s clothing , and the hills in foreground, has nothing to do with colors as the occur in nature • the painting can affect an observer who is thinking of Ferdowsi’s poetic recounting of this fatal and tragic encounter of Sohrâb with his father Rostam.



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• Walters Ms. W.602, 17th century

• Rostam kills Sohrâb • • The tree in the middle ground disappears behind the top part of the text and reappears behind the top part of the painting’s frame.

• • 

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Depictions of Rostam mortally wounding his Sohrâb in Walters Mss. W.600 and W.602

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Walters Ms. W.602, 17th century

Siyâvash plays polo in front of Afrâsyâb

• After the story of Sohrâb comes the story of Kaykâvus's son Siyâvosh.

Commentary:

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The Beheading of Siyâvash Walters Ms. W.600

• Siyâvosh's murder at the hands of Afrâsyâb's warriors Garsivaz and Gerui is partly the result of his father's bad judgment and the machinations of his father's consort Sudâbeh.

Consequently, Rostam curses Kâvus, kills Queen Sudâbeh, and takes an oath to destroy Turân, which has renewed its longstanding feud with Iran after Siyâvosh's death. Rustam conquers Turân, but its leader Afrâsiyâb escapes to China.

Commentary

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Walters Ms. 602 Rostam battles Afrâsiyâb

• Commentary figures disappear under the text and beyond the borders •

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Walters Ms. W.601

The Iranian paladin Gudarz welcomes Kaykhosrow back to Iran

• The Iranian court discovers that Siyâvosh has a son named Kaykhosrow living in Turân. The warrior Giv finds him and brings him back to Iran where he takes over the throne from his grandfather Kaykâvus, who had grown incapable of ruling in old age. Kaykhosrow sees avenging his father Siyâvosh's death as a royal mission. Such events as the romance of Bizhan and Manizheh and Rostam's combat with the demon called Akvân also take place in Kaykhosrow's reign.

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• Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

The page’s framed heading reads: “birun âvardan-e rostam bizhan-râ az châh” [the extracting by Rostam of Bizhan from a/the well];

Commentary: • shape of well at ground level and underground • positioning of Rostam and Bizhan and the rope apparently above the ground •

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Depictions of Rostam’s rescue of Bizhan from a well Walters Mss. W.600 and W.601



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•Walters Ms. W.601

Commentary:

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Walters Ms.W.602, 17th century

Rostam rescues Bizhan from a well.

Commentary:

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Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

The legendary Kayânid king Kaykhosrow and his army attack the devil fortress called Bahman.

Commentary:

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Lohrâsp enthroned.

•Kaykhosrow spends years in war against Turân, finally seeing to it that Afrâsiyâb is put to death.

Kaykhosrow then decides to abdicate the Iranian throne and take up the life of a dervish. He names a prince called Lohrâsp to succeed him and then forsakes the court for the wilderness. At his death Kaykhosrow ascends into the heavens. Lohrâsp's son Goshtâsp tries to persuade his father to abdicate in his favor. Failing in that, Goshtâsp goes into selfexile in Rum and there, his identity a secret, participates in various adventures and marries the princess of Rum. He then reveals his true identity and leads an army back to Iran to demand the throne.

Lohrâsp abdicates but not until after the prophet Zoroaster appears and converts the monarch to Zoroastrianism.

• floral medallion and cartouche enclosed rectangle • arabesques over blue in the canopy • Persian carpets

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• The page’s boxed heading reads: “shekâyat-e ruzgâr farmâyad” [he says in complaint about the times/fate] Gustaham fights Lahhâk and Farshidvard • • 

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A grandson of Afrâsiyâb called Arjâsp attacks Iran because of the change in religion. Goshtâsp's son Esfandiyâr leads the Iranian army to victory over the Turânians. Esfandiyâr asks his father, who was as ill-suited to kingship as Kaykâvus, to abdicate in his favor. Goshtâsp refuses and has the crown prince imprisoned. This encourages Afrâsiyâb's grandson Arjâsp to attack Iran again.

This time he kills the retired monarch Lohrâsp, destroys many Zoroastrian temples, and abducts Esfandiyâr's two sister-wives. Again promised the throne by his father Goshtâsp, Esfandiyâr undertakes the defeat of Arjâsp and the rescue of his sister-wives

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• a folio from an illustrated Shâhnâmeh manuscript dated c.1330-1340 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) • the combat of Rostam and Pulâdvand • The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp: The Persian Book of Kings, edited by Sheila Canby (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014) “features an illustrated ‘Who’s Who’ to help readers identify major characters in the epic.”

• Anything more than communication of meaning in handwriting speaks to decorativeness; for example, the nasta’liq script in the Qazvini-Ghani edition of Hâfez’s Divân (1941).

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•Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

• Rostam is wrestling the Turanian warrior Pulâdvand and lifts the latter over his head.

The Turânian king Afrâsiyâb summons the Turanian warrior/div/hero chieftain Pulâdvand from China to confront and defeat the Iranian warrior-hero Rostam who has caused Turan so much damage. Pulâdvand marches to Iran, defeats several Iranian heroes, and only Rostam can stop him. They fight and agree to one-on-one combat which turns to wrestling. Rostam prevails, but Pulâdvand somehow escapes and returns to Afrâsiyâb. Rostam and his army follow and the Turanians have to flee to China.

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Walters Ms. W.602 •Rostam slays Esfandiyâr

• Goshtâsp refuses to relinquish the throne to Esfandiyâr unless the latter brings the hero Rostam back to the Iranian court in chains.

Esfandiyâr marches against Rostam who tries to dissuade the Iranian prince from a confrontation. That failing, the two warriors meet in one-on-one combat. The mythical bird Simorgh, invoked by Rostam's father Zâl, reveals that the otherwise invincible Esfandiyâr can be killed if shot through the eyes with a special two-pronged arrow. Rostam kills Esfandiyâr after again entreating him to abandon his attempt to take him away in chains. On his deathbed, Esfandiyâr entrusts his son Bahman to Rostam. Back in Iran, Goshtâsp makes Bahman his successor.

Rostam himself dies shortly thereafter, tricked by his half-brother Shaghâd.

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• Walters Ms. W.600

• Rostam kills Esfandiyâr with an arrow into his eye, the latter’s only vulnerable spot.

• Esfandiyâr is the third promising and noble young man to suffer death during Rostam’s era, in two cases slain by Rostam himself. The others are Rostam’s son Sohrâb and Kaykâvus’s son Siyâvash. These deaths have led some critics to see “sonkilling” as a cultural phenomenon in Iranian mythology, by which action the elders get rejuvenated and stay in charge and the cultural status quo and rulersubject relations remain.

• In earlier paintings, Rakhsh is grey, while he is reddish brown in this painting.

Rostam is always recognizable owing to his babr-e bayân.

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• Walters Ms. W.601, 17th century

• Rostam, dying together with his horse Rakhsh in a pit his half-brother Shaghâd designed, shoots Shaghâd dead with an arrow.

• In a famous modernist Persian poem called “Rostam’s 8th Trial,” Mehdi Akhavân-e Sâles (1928-1990) opines that Rostam could have extracted himself from the pit into which he and his horse Rakhsh had fallen, the latter impaled on wooden spears facing upwards from the pit’s bottom. But, when Rostam saw that Rakhsh was mortally wounded, he realized that his days as a paladin had come to an end insofar as an Iranian warrior-hero cannot perform without his horse.

• •  29

Depictions of Rostam’s death inWalters Mss. W.602 and W.603

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After ascending the Iranian throne, Bahman attacks Zâbolestân and destroys Rostam's family in vengeance for the death of his father Esfandiyâr. At Bahman's death, his daughter Homây, pregnant with her father's son, succeeds to the Iranian throne. Engrossed in ruling, Homây abandons her infant son in a chest in water. Called Dârâb, the child is rescued and given his rightful place as king. At this point in Ferdowsi's Shâhnâmeh, the quasi-historical narrative section begins. Dârâb is succeeded by his son Dârâ, both of them presumably figuring as paralleling the historical Achaemenid dynasty (559-330 BCE), about which Ferdowsi curiously does not recount any narratives.

Alexander then invades and conquers Iran and kills Dârâb. After a very brief recounting of Parthian times, the Shâhnâmeh takes up the story of the Sâsânid dynasty (224-651 CE), chief among the narratives of its founder Ardashir Pâpâkân, Bahrâm Gur, and Bahrâm Chubin. The book ends with an account of the Arab Muslim invasion and conquest of Iran, which brought the Sâsânid monarchy to an end with the death of Yazdgerd III in 651 CE. “The Murder of King Yazdgerd by a Miller” from a 1480 Shâhnâmeh manuscript at Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

• image

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Walters Mss. W.600 and W.602 Depictions of Alexander and the dying Achaemenid Emperor Darius III (ruled 336-330 BCE)

ď Ş

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• Walters ms. 600

• Alexander the Great (356-323), called Eskandar in Persian, and the dying Darius III (ruled 336-330 BCE), whose Achaemenid dynasty Alexander ended.

• Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâmeh offers no stories about the storied Achaemenid Empire (550330 BCE), and Ferdowsi presents the conqueror Alexander the Great as halfIranian.

•

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• Walters ms. 602?

• Alexander/Eskandar meets Rowshanak/Roxanna • • As the story goes in a 12th-century Persian prose romance called Dârâbnâmeh, the dying Kayânid Iranian king Dârâb asks Alexander to marry his daughter Rowshanak. But the latter raises an army to fight Alexander who captures her. She then escapes. Later, Alexander surprises Rowshanak while she is basthing [wiki] and she finally agrees to marry him. Alexander makes her queen of Persia, and she later helps him in battles in India and elsewhere. He dies in Egypt and she in Iran.  34

• After stories about mythological and legendary dynasties, kings, and paladins, Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâmeh relates semihistorical tales about the Sâsânid Empire (224-651 CE).

• This painting illustrates a scene in the story of Sâsânid monarch Bahrâm V (ruled 420-438) where he is feasting after hunting two lions.

•An idea-of-a-river river horizontally divides the painting into two. Two decidous trees and a cypress tree extend upward in the upper half of the paintingm and a mountain looms behind Bahrâm. The painting does not compete with Ferdowsi’s story-telling, but allow observers to rehear in their minds Ferdowsi’s words or reread them.

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Walters ms. 602

Ardashir (ruled 224-240), the first Sâsânid emperor recognizes his son Shâpur (ruled 4209/2-270/2) during a polo match.

Commentary:

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• Walters ms. 600

• Ardashir (ruled 224-240), the first Sâsânid emperor recognizes his son Shâpur (ruled 240/42-27/72) during a polo match.

• • •

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Walters Mss. W.600 and W.602 depictions of Shâpur, son of Ardashir, playing polo

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• This Persian miniature painting from a Shâhnâmeh manuscript depicts the Muslim Arab warrior Sa’d-e Vaqqâs killing the Sâsânid Iranian general whose name Rostam ironically echoes that of the chief Iranian paladin of legend. The assassination of the last Sâsânid monarch Yazdgerd III in 651 soon followed and the thousand-year history of pre-Islamic Iran came to an end.

• Two centuries after the Muslim Arab conquest, the neo-Persian language of today’s Iran emerged, written in Arabic script and containing thousands of Arabic loanwords. A new Persian literature also owed much to Arabic models, including conventional subjects, verse forms, and prosody.

• Some educated Iranians in the 21st century are still trying to remove Arabic loanwords from Persian and have produced dictionaries of so-called pure Persian words to that end.

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“The Murder of King Yazdgerd by a Miller” from a 1480 Shâhnâmeh manuscript at Chester Beatty Library, Dublin • Ferdowsi’si Shahnämeh ends with an account of the Arab Muslim invasion and conquest of Iran, which brought the Sâsânid monarchy to an end with the death of Yazdgerd III in 651 CE. • Iranian history has long meant for many Iranians fated stories of defeat following victories and a twofold sense on their part that the past was glorious and the present inglorious as they live after their time.

• At the same time, content not withstanding, this painting is yet another pretty Persian picture that Iranians, content notwithstanding, can bitterly-sweetly enjoy, life offering garden escapes from the harsh realities of foreign invasions, ruling class depredations, natural disaster, perennially inadequate water supplies.

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Conventions and Other Distinctive Features of Persian Miniature Paintings • • ˆ • • • • • Chinese facial features • clothing of era in the painting was painted • no realistic proportions of different sorts of figures • no expression on faces • gestures (finger mouth) communicating felt emotion

Remaining slides revisit Walters Shâhnâmeh paintings to elucidate cultural import with respect to two images and themes: Persian gardens and horses,

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• This painting above the text on the first page of the Walters Ms. W.600 Shâhnâmeh exhibits a biaxially symmetrical curvilinear pattern consisting of a floral field with floral pendants on the vertical axis, and floral corner elements. In short, the patterns depicts an imaginary, stylized or idealized, perfect garden. If the pattern included borders and measured 6 by 9 feet instead of 3 by 7 inches and consisted of a wool foundation and wool pile instead of opaque water color on paper, it would be a typical pre-modern floral medallion Persian carpet. The historical fact is the inspiration for such garden-design carpets came from two Safavid sources: book illumination and illustration and Muslim architectural decoration. This being the case, viewers of Persian miniature paintings might expect that most of those paintings and pages on which they appear relate to imagined ideal gardens, their calligraphy often also communicating garden elements.42

the right side of the double-page frontispiece of Walters Ms. W.602 Shâhnâmeh, 17th century.

• The whole page with its curvilinear floral elements, ordered central area, field, and borders communicates an impression of a Persian garden, the Perso-Arabic script couplets in the central area themselves garden elements.

• The floral elements also bring to mind Muslim religious architectural decoration, illuminated manuscripts of the Koran, and Safavid curvilinear carpets designs.

• Finally, the frontispiece implies that the experience of reading manuscript pages and looking at their paintings will have, in part. the character of a trip to a garden. Gardens offer an escape from a real world that weatherwise, healthwise, politically, and emotionally does not live up to an imagined ideal world, which the garden is. This may mean that as serious as many events in the Shâhnâmeh are, the beauty of the unrealistic garden makes even those events part of the escape.

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Walters Ms. W.600

•Ferdowsi himself describes the lives of his Shâhnâmeh heroes as mostly razm-o bazm [warring and feasting].

• Iranian culture has longed favored garden environments and picnicking as the setting and an important activity in the good life.

• This painting, with its idea-of-a-river river running through it, two symmetry-creating trees, its idea-of-a-mountain mountain top, and its largest man and central figure farthest away, takes the observers to an imaginary feast in an imagined country environment where flowers, good, music, dance, and conversation are far removed from their real world.

• miniature painting as an escape into a portable museum 44

• The cover illustration of a late 18th-/early 19th=century Persian carpet on Images of Paradise in Islamic Art (1991), depicts paradise, according to editors Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom • The English word paradise comes from the Persian word perdows or ferdows which denotes “garden” and “heaven.”

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Double-page frontispiece of a Koran manuscript (c. 1566-74)

• In a section called “Paradise and the Word” in Images of Paradise in Islamic Art, Blair and Bloom present photographs and describe this illuminated double-page frontispiece of a 16thcentury Koran (c. 1566-74). The frontspiece exhibits the same design as the frontispiece of Walters Ms. W.602 Shâhnâmeh presented above. Blair and Bloom view the design, including its calligraphy, as an artistic and devout illustration of paradise.

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• In a chapter called “Symbolism in Modern Persian Carpet Designs” in Persian Carpets (1984), Michael Craig Hillmann argues that Persian carpets with patterns of botanically unidentifiable floral field elements that disappear under the carpet’s border create perfect spring-time and paradise gardens. The existence of prayer carpets, such as in the cover illustration of Persian Carpets, with mehrâb-like arches in the upper field and featuring garden elements connects these designs to Islamic heaven. The fact that curvilinear Persian carpet floral and vegetal motifs such as shâh ‘abbâsi and eslimi [arabesque] appear in mosque decoration and in illuminated Korans–the inspiration for Persian carpets’ monumental formats originating in book/manuscript cover and page designs–is further evidence of the cultural import of those designs for Hillmann, who argues that garden compartment carpets and rectilinear carpet patterns such as the Tekkeh Torkaman gol design have the same content.

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Late 20th-century Esfahân floral medallion and floral field carpet

• The arabesques, vines, and shâh’abbâsi motifs in this modern carpet carpet resemble resemble elements in the designs on mosque domes and shâh’abbâsi drawing

arabesque

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Shaykh Lotfollah Mosque dome exterior and part of Shâh Mosque interior dome, Royal Square, Esfahân, 17th century

• arabesques, called eslimi in Persian, as religious iconography

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• Walters Ms. W.600, 16th century

• Iranians battle the Turânians, their arch enemies • • 

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• Detail of a miniature painting depicting Sâsânid monarch Bahrâm Gur (ruled 420-438 CE) from a Shirâz Shâhnâmeh dated 1370. Gray, Persian Painting, p.

63.

• Nothing about Bahrâm, with his Chinese face and his 14thcentury CE garb (not 5th century CE), resembles any observed Indo-European Iranian ever, much less Bahrâm Gur. • For that matter, Bahrâm’s hand, his head size (vis-à vis his waist), the length of his arms, and the shape of his bow…

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• Walters ms. 603

• Shâpur and his prisoner, the king of Rum • Valerian?

•Iranian political power and glory during the Achaemenid (559330 BCE), Sâsânid 224-651 CE), and Safavid (1501-1722) monarchical eras resonate reassuringly with many 21 st-century Iranians, even those for whom monarchy is anathema. Those Iranians perforce incorporate dualities in their cultural personalities, even to the point of entertaining at different or in different moods otherwise apparently conflicting or mutually exclusive views.

• The Persian miniature painting tradition, initiated, conventionalized, and nurtured by royal court fiat and patronage and often consisting of graphic panegyric, was an elitist art form, a sort of portable museum which owners and others in the owners circle might view, and that one person at a time. This has changed in contemporary art, especialy in public mural.

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• A bas relief at Naqsh-e Rostam (an Achaemenid and Sâsânid necropolis 12 km northwest of Persepolis) depicting Sâsânid Emperor Shâpur I (ruled 240/2-270/2 CE) in 260 with the captured Roman emperor Valerian (253-259)



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Bahrâm Gur hunting with Âzâdeh

• The Glossary of Names in Davis’s Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (2006) cites approximately 35 women by name among approximately 500 proper names. Most are mothers, sisters, and wives of men cited by name. One of them kills a king and marries his successor, and another rules for four months.

• Âzâdeh and Sohrâb’s earlierfemale adversary Gordâfarid would appear to strike many readers as admirable because they had martial skills associated with male.

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• Sâsânid monarch Bahrâm V is better known as Bahram Gur, the word gur denoting onager, a sort of wild ass that Bahrâm was famous for hunting. The word gur also denotes “grave.” A famous Persian quatrain attributed to ‘Omar Khayyâm voices a perennial Iran notion that has long led educated Iranians to have a pessimistic side to their personalities, an antidote for which may be their long tradition of art depicting paradise gardens, spring scenes, and a world in which violence and tragedy are depicted as pretty.

The Khayyâmic quatrain reads: In that palace where Bahrâm grasped a cup, a deer has given birth and a fox has lived.

Bahrâm who hunted gur his whole life, have you see how the gur got Bahrâm?

detail from …..

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Rostam catching Rakhsh from a wild herd, Shâhnâmeh, Shirâz, c.1435, Bodleian Library, Oxford, in Gray, Persian Painting, p. 98.

• Rostam’s choice of a horse was careermaking, a paladin’s horse emblematic of his alacrity, determination, and

prowess as a warrior. In the Iranian version of chess, the knight is called asb [horse] and pawns are called piyâdé [food soldier].

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“Rostam and his horse Rakhsh trapped in the pit of spears” Shâhnâmeh, Qazvin style, 1586 Persian Miniature Painting (1983, Plate 16) by Norah M. Titley

• In a Persian poem called “Rostam’s Eighth Trial”–he is famous for seven trialsin the Shâqhnâmeh–, prominent modernist Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavân-e Sâles (1928-1990) describes Rostam’s death and says that he could have escaped the pit and lived, but when he looked over at Rakhsh and saw that his steed was mortally wounded, he knew that his time was up.

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Where Have the Riders Gone? (2007) by Nasser Ovissi Persepolis columns and Mt. Damâvand in the background

• The painting appears to imply that Iranian culture today lacks the riders of yesteryear who led the Achaemenids and Sâsânids to imperial glory for Iran and whose mythological, legendary, and 58 quasi-heroes in Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâmeh protected the Iranian throne and nation.

from “The Ending of the Shâhnâmeh” (1958)

by Mehdi Akhavân-e Sâles (1928-1990) This harp, broken and out of tune, tame in the pale, old harpist's hands, sometimes seems to dream.

It sees itself in the Sun's luminous court as the rare beauty and beloved of Zoroaster or a coquettish intoxicated fairy in the pure, bright meadows of moonlight.

It sees false lights– the caravan of dead flames in the swamp on the mehrâb's holy brow.

In memory of the days of glory and pride and innocence it sings joyfully the sad tale of exile...

On ships of rage with bloody sails we are coming toward the century's capital to conquer, to open wide the wide, nine-folded nothingland of this insensitive dusty place with the dreadful clashing of our sharp swords, the frightening thundcr of our dreaded drums, the stone-splitting flight of our swift arrows, to snatch demons' life bottles from the spell of the hidden fortress from the hands of their sorcerer guards, to smash them on the ground...

We are the conquerors of fortresses of history's glory and witnesses of each century's cities of splendor.

We are mementos of the sad innocence of the ages,

We are narrators of cheerful, sweet tales, tales of clear skies, flowing light, the water, dark cold earth, the tales of the most joyous message from the limpid luminous streams of the ages, tales of deep woods, behind it the mountain, the river at foot, tales of a friend's warm hand on cold city nights.

We are the caravan of the cup and harp, gypsies our harp, strumming our lives, our lives poems and fables, intoxicated cupbearers in a drunken state.

O, where is the capital of the century?

We are coming to conquer, to open up its nothingland . . ."

This broken harp, heartsore and impossible dreamer, the singer of imagination's empty sanctuary, eternally cloaked with secrets, what stories it tells itself day and night.

O helpless, delirious one! Change the tune.

Zâl's son Rostam cannot escape his step-brother's will.

He is dead. He died. He died.

Begin the story of Farrokhzâd's son Rostam, the one whose groan seems to come from a deep well's depths.

He moans and weeps, 59 he weeps and says:

"Oh, from now on we resemble hunchbacked, old conquerors.

On ships of waves with sails of foam, our hearts bound by the memory of the lambs of splendor, in the fields of empty days, our blades rusty, worn out, and weary, our drums, forever silent, our arrows with broken feathers.

We are conquerors of cities gone with the wind.

In a voice too weak to come out of the chest, we are narrators of forgotten tales.

Nobody pays us heed or spares a copper for our coins, as if they were of a foreign king or of a prince whose dynasty has been overthrown.

At times we hope to awaken from this spell, like from the cave companions' sleep, we'll rub our eyes and say: “There it is, the golden rare palace of charming moming.

But, Daqyânus is immortal, o, o, alas."

coin of Yazdgerd III (ruled 632-651)

• The “false lights” are the deceptive promises of Islam. The first Rostam is the famous paladin who serves the Iranian monarchy for hundreds of years, but who ultimately suffers death at the hand of his step-brother. The second Rostam is the Iranian general whose army suffers defeat at the hands of the Muslim Arabs. Iranians, says Akhavân-e Sâles, have to change their tune because their traditional weapons do not work in the 20th century.

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