The Shāhnāma
or Book of Kings by Manṣūr Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī Ṭūsī narrates the legendary history of the kings of the world and of Iran, in about 50.000 verses. It starts with the first king on earth, the mythical Pīshdādī king Gayūmarth, and ends with the last Sasanian king Yazdigird III, who was defeated by the Arabs in the middle of the seventh century.
Thousands of manuscript copies of the Shāhnāma were made. Notaby from the fourteenth century onwards, we witness a steep rise in the production of Shāhnāma manuscripts. It coincides with the rise of Turco-Mongol dynasties in West and Central Asia, who generously patronized Persian literature, historiography and art. For these rulers, both the content of the Shāhnāma and its vehicle, the often richly illuminated and illustrated manuscript, served as a confirmation of their royal claims. By commissioning manuscripts, they had themselves written into the Shāhnāma tradition, for example via extensive dedications or via paintings depicting them.
The illustrators of such expensive manuscripts were professional painters who worked according to certain rules with regard to the structure of the Shahnama. The Shahnama Project found, for instance, that they kept to fixed "breaklines" in the text: certain verses signalled the place for an illustration. Colour was also used to structure the text and help the reader find his bearings.
About this manuscript
Title: Shāhnāma
Classmark: Or. 494
Author: Manṣūr Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī Ṭūsī
Copyist: ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kātib
Format: Codex
Date of creation: 15 Ramaḍān 840/ 24 March 1437
Language(s): Persian
Script: Nastaʿlīq
On folio 1a we find a medallion-shaped ornament, a so-called shamsa. Folio 1b has an illuminated heading (ʿunwān) followed by the prose preface of Abū Manṣūr (ff 1b-7a), the tenth-century author of a now lost prose Shāhnāma. This so-called ‘older’ preface often features in manuscript copies of Firdawsī’s Shāhnāma.
This prose preface is followed by a double-page illustrated frontispiece (ff 7b-8a), showing a princely reception in a garden.
Folios 8b and 9a are illuminated pages (sarlawḥ); the opening verses of the Shāhnāma on these illuminated pages are framed by verses ascribed to Ibn Yamīn.
Misra
The top and the bottom of each illuminated page contains a hemistich (miṣrāʿ)
written in gold letters, in a white oval form placed in a blue floral
border with accents of red, white and gold. The opening verses are
written in black against a white background and surrounded by
cloud-shaped brown-golden lines.
These illuminated pages count eleven verses or distichs (bayts) in two columns; one hemistich or miṣrāʿ per column. In the following folios the text is divided over four columns, with 25 lines - amounting to 50 bayts - per folio.
Apart from the double page illustrated frontispiece, the manuscript
contains 18 illustrations (ff 11b, 24b, 49a, 67a, 89b, 114a, 133b, 151b,
180a, 204a, 240b, 259a, 268b, 296a, 318a, 354a, 385a, 419b). These are
not full-page illustrations, but typically take up half a page in a
stepped form, often exceeding the margins of the text block. Eight
illustrations have been subject to repainting.
Further reading Farhad Mehran. Mapping Illustrated Folios of Shahnama Manuscripts: The Concept and Its Uses. In: Shahnama Studies II. The Reception of the Shahnama. Edited by Charles Melville and Gabrielle van den Berg. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012, 235-266. https://doi-org.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/10.1163/9789004228634_013
A number of the illustrations have been repainted. Which ones and how do you think they can be recognized?
The illustration on folios 11b, 24b, 49a, 89b, 133b, 151b, 204a, and 259a have been repainted, while folio 67b has been retouched (according to Eleanor Sims, ‘Towards a Study of Šīrāzī Illustrated Manuscripts of the “Interim Period”. The Leiden Šāhnāmah of 840/1437,’ Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie, Anno XV (LXXVI), 2-1996, pp. 611-625). The repainted folios are much brighter, and the paint has not the granular quality the untouched paintings have.
What colour is the ink used in the rubrics? What would this indicate? A regular text page in this manuscript has four columns and 25 lines. How do rubrics affect this structure?
The ink used in the rubrics is either blue or gold. The variation could indicate a kind of subdivision, main titles introducing a new episode versus subtitles indicating stories within that episode. But that does not seem to be the case here. The different colours add to the variety on the pages. The rubrics take up some space on the folio, usually equivalent to four verses across the two middle columns.
The champion Rustam features in six of the eighteen paintings of Or. 494. What strikes you in the way he has been depicted in these six paintings?
On folio 49a (‘Rustam killing the White Elephant’) he is depicted as a young boy without a beard. On 67a (‘Rustam killing the White Dīv), 89b (‘Rustam and Suhrāb wrestling’), 180a (‘Rustam captures the Khāqān of Chīn with a lasso’) and 204a (‘Rustam rescues Bīzhan from the pit’) he has a beard and is very recognizable because of his hat, a panther or leopard’s head, white with black spots. This panther-hat, and the coat which belongs to it, is called the babr-i bayān. On folio 318a (‘Rustam killing Isfandiyār’), he is depicted as a non-specific warrior. For those who are familiar with the story, the wounded eyes of his adversary, prince Isfandiyār, would be a pointer; famously, Rustam kills Isfandiyār with a forked arrow.
Compare the illustrations in the Leiden manuscript with illustrations in some of the manuscripts in the Shāhnāma Project Database. What can you say about the sequence of illustrations in the Leiden manuscript in the viewer?
As indicated in the lesson, six of the eighteen paintings depict Rustam. This is in accordance with the majority of illustrated Shāhnāma manuscripts: the adventures of Rustam belong to the most popular stories of the Shāhnāma. An all-time favourite in manuscript painting, according to the data in the Cambridge Shāhnāma Project Database, is story of Rustam killing the White Dīv (folio 67a); a second favourite is the story of Rustam and Suhrāb (folio 89b). Another popular scene to paint is the Sasanian king Bahrām Gūr hunting with his slave girl Āzāda (folio 385a). Less commonly depicted is the story of Iskandar and Gūshbistar at Bābil (folio 354a).
