CONSIDERING THE EVIDENCE: Islamic CIVILIZATION in Persian Miniature Paintings (+20, practice)
INTRO: Iran, homeland of the ancient Persian Empire and its successors, entered the world of Islam rather differently than did Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa. In the latter regions,converts to Islam gradually abandoned their native languages, adopted Arabic, and came to be seen as Arabs. In Iran or Persia, by contrast, Arab conquest did not involve the cultural Arabization of the region, despite some initial efforts to impose the Arabic language (see Map to the right). By the tenth century,the vast majority of Persians were Muslims, but the Persian language, Farsi (still spoken in modern Iran), flourished, enriched now by a number of Arabic loan words and written in an Arabic script. In 1010, that language received its classic literary expression when the Persian poet Ferdowsi completed his epic work, the Shahnama (The Book of Kings). A huge text of some 60,000 rhyming couplets, it recorded the mythical and pre-Islamic history of Iran and gave an enduring expression to a distinctly Persian cultural identity.
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That culture had an enormous influence within the world of Islam. Many religious ideas of Persian Zoroastrianism—an evil satanic power, final judgment, heaven and hell, paradise—found their way into Islam, often indirectly via Jewish or Christian precedents. In Iran, Central Asia, India, and later in the Ottoman Empire, Persian influences were pervasive. Persian administrative and bureaucratic techniques; Persian court practices with their palaces, gardens, and splendid garments; Persian architecture, poetry, music, and painting—all of this decisively shaped the high culture of these eastern Islamic lands. One of the Abbasid caliphs, himself an Arab, observed: “The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day.We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour.”
Prominent among the artistic achievements of Persian culture were miniature paintings—small, colorful, and exquisitely detailed works often used to illustrate books or manuscripts. One art historian described them as “little festivals of color in images separated from each other by pages of text.” This artistic style flourished especially from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, when Persia was invaded and ruled by a succession of Mongol or Turkic dynasties. These invasions, especially that of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, were highly destructive. Great cities were devastated, libraries burned, and artists forced to flee. But the new rulers also proved to be generous patrons of the arts and served as carriers of Buddhist and Chinese artistic forms that enriched Persian painting.
During these centuries, the artists who created these Persian miniatures drew heavily on Persian mythology, poetry, and history as subjects for their paintings. Landscapes, influenced by Chinese techniques, also appeared in Persian miniatures. Scenes from the life of the Prophet Muhammad were likewise among the themes explored by Persian artists, although explicitly Islamic subject matter was represented in only a small proportion of these paintings. Particularly helpful to historians, images of daily life also found a place in Persian miniature painting, providing glimpses into social life in the Arab or Persian centers of Islamic civilization.
Prominent among the artistic achievements of Persian culture were miniature paintings—small, colorful, and exquisitely detailed works often used to illustrate books or manuscripts. One art historian described them as “little festivals of color in images separated from each other by pages of text.” This artistic style flourished especially from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, when Persia was invaded and ruled by a succession of Mongol or Turkic dynasties. These invasions, especially that of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, were highly destructive. Great cities were devastated, libraries burned, and artists forced to flee. But the new rulers also proved to be generous patrons of the arts and served as carriers of Buddhist and Chinese artistic forms that enriched Persian painting.
During these centuries, the artists who created these Persian miniatures drew heavily on Persian mythology, poetry, and history as subjects for their paintings. Landscapes, influenced by Chinese techniques, also appeared in Persian miniatures. Scenes from the life of the Prophet Muhammad were likewise among the themes explored by Persian artists, although explicitly Islamic subject matter was represented in only a small proportion of these paintings. Particularly helpful to historians, images of daily life also found a place in Persian miniature painting, providing glimpses into social life in the Arab or Persian centers of Islamic civilization.
VISUAL SOURCES: 1 & 2, dating from the early to mid-sixteenth century and measuring about eight by eleven inches, illustrate this focus within Persian miniature painting. Visual sources such as these are often most revealing in their detail, as artists depicted elements of daily life not often recorded elsewhere. Both of them, however, are idealized images that reflect enduring values within the Islamic world rather than referring to specific times or places.
Visual Source 1 offers a window on the life of desert pastoral nomads of Arabia. The style of both clothing and tents indicate that this is an Arab nomadic encampment. The image focuses the viewer’s attention on the two older men seated inside the elaborately decorated blue tent in the lower left. Seven cups are lined up in front of the men at the bottom, together with their lids, perhaps to keep the beverage warm or the bugs out. The red tent at the left is decorated with a simurgh, a legendary Persian winged creature with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion, said to have lived so long that it had acquired universal knowledge. Outside the tent of the woman at the right of the painting are her slippers, and above her another woman tenderly feeds her child. In perhaps the only directly Islamic reference in the painting, the old man approaching the washerwoman holds prayer beads in his right hand. Notice also some apparent Chinese influence in the painting. The presentation of rocks, clouds, and twisted trees reflects features of Chinese landscape painting, while the blue-and-white ceramic bowl near the woman washing clothes suggests some trade with China.
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- Q1: What specific features and activities of nomadic life does the painting portray? What marks this image as an idealized version of an Arab camp? What features of nomadic life may have been omitted?
- Q2: Do the writing implements at the very bottom left of the painting— books, a pencase, an inkwell—offer a clue to the discussion that the two men may be having?
- Q3: What social distinctions are revealed in this painting?
- Q4: What differences in the lives of men and women are suggested in this image?
- Q5: What other details do you notice as you study this miniature painting?
Visual Source 2, unlike the rural scene of Visual Source 1, corresponds to no identifiable story or narrative within the urban landscape. Also a sixteenth century painting, it reflects the urban bustle and commercial sophistication of Islamic civilization. Here buildings replace tents as the major structures in the painting. Nine separate sources of light—lamps, candles, and torches—mark this as a nighttime scene, but in Persian painting, unlike in European art, light does not reflect on people or objects and does not cast shadows.
Three distinct sections of the painting illustrate various elements of city life. On the left and bottom of the image, a young prince holds court in his court pavilion attended by various turbaned courtiers. Above and to the right of the court scene, characteristic urban activities unfold along a city street. Finally,in the upper left a woman lounges on the balcony of an urban dwelling, while another woman speaks to an older turbaned man. Notice also the mosque in the upper right corner,inscribed with a well-known saying of Muhammad: “He who builds a mosque for God, God will build for him a dwelling in Paradise.” There is also an inscription above the building in the lower right from the fourteenth-century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz: “The pupil of my eye is your nesting place; be kind, alight, for it is your home.” As in Visual Source 1, intriguing details abound: the garden seen through the window in the arched pavilion; various types of musical instruments; the headscarves on women and the henna decorations on their hands; the elaborate geometric designs on buildings; the prayer beads in the hand of the young boy in front of the mosque.
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- Q4: In what ways are the activities shown in the painting idealized?
- Q5: How might you understand the inscriptions of Muhammad and Hafiz in the context of this painting?
- Q6: What details do you find most striking in Visual Source 2?
Visual Source 3 is a Persian miniature painting that moves from ordinary life to religious imagination. While explicitly religious themes appear only infrequently in these paintings, the most common religious subject by far was that of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey, said to have taken place in 619 or 620. The Quran refers briefly to God taking the prophet “from the sacred place of worship to the far distant place of worship.” This passage became the basis for a story, much embellished over the centuries, of rich and deep meaning for Muslims. In this religious narrative, Muhammad was led one night by the angel Gabriel from Mecca to Jerusalem. For the journey he was given a buraq, a mythical winged creature with the body of a mule or donkey and the face of a woman. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, he led prayers for an assembly of earlier prophets including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Then, accompanied by many angels, Muhammad made his way through seven heavens into the presence of God, where, according to the Quran, “he did see some of the most profound of his Sustainer’s symbols.” There too Allah spoke to Muhammad about the importance of regular prayer, commanding fifty prayers a day, a figure later reduced to five on the advice of Moses.
From the beginning, Muslims have been divided on how to interpret this journey of the Prophet. For most, perhaps, it was taken quite literally as a miraculous event. Some, however, viewed it as a dream or a vision, while others understood it as the journey of Muhammad’s soul but not his body. The Prophet’s youngest wife, Aisha, age 9, for example, reported that “his body did not leave its place.” Visual Source 3, dating from the early sixteenth century, is one of many representations of the Night Journey that emerged within Persian miniature painting.
From the beginning, Muslims have been divided on how to interpret this journey of the Prophet. For most, perhaps, it was taken quite literally as a miraculous event. Some, however, viewed it as a dream or a vision, while others understood it as the journey of Muhammad’s soul but not his body. The Prophet’s youngest wife, Aisha, age 9, for example, reported that “his body did not leave its place.” Visual Source 3, dating from the early sixteenth century, is one of many representations of the Night Journey that emerged within Persian miniature painting.
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