By scrutinizing every possible Persian and European written source on the subject, Negar Habibi discusses the paintings known as farangi sāz, and in particular those of ʿAli Qoli Jebādār, one of Iran’s most important Safavid artists of the 2nd half of the 17th century. En resserrant plusieurs sources écrites persanes et européennes, Negar Habibi discute des peintures connues sous le nom de farangi sāzi, spécialement celles de ʿAli Qoli Jebādār, l'un des artistes emblématiques de la 2ème moitié du XVIIe siècle.

Shahnama Studies III focuses on the hugely successful afterlife of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, completed by the poet Firdausi around 1010 AD. This long epic grew out to be an icon of Persian culture and served as a source of inspiration for art and literature, leaving its traces in manifold ways. The contributors to this volume each treat an aspect of the rich legacy of the Shahnama and offer new insights in Shahnama manuscript studies, the illustration of the Shahnama, the phenomenon of later epics, and the Shahnama in later texts and contexts.

Now available in Open Access thanks to the support of the University of Helsinki. Khwadāynāmag. The Middle Persian Book of Kings by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila analyses the lost sixth-century historiographical work of the Sasanians, drawing on a large number of Middle Persian, Greek, Arabic, and Classical Persian sources. The Khwadāynāmag is often conceived of as a large book of stories, comparable to Firdawsī's Shāhnāme, but Hämeen-Anttila convincingly shows that it was a concise and dry chronicle. He also studies the lost Arabic translations of the book, which turn out to be fewer than...

In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists engaged with European art and techniques from the 1580s-1630s. Using visual and textual sources, this book argues that artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history. A reevaluation of illustrated manuscripts and album paintings incorporating landscape scenery, portraiture, and European objects demonstrates that the appropriation of European elements was highly motivated...

In Lives of the Prophets: The Illustrations to Hafiz-i Abru’s “Assembly of Chronicles” Mohamad Reza Ghiasian analyses two extant copies of the Majmaʿ al-tawarikh produced for the Timurid ruler Shahrukh (r. 1405–1447). The first manuscript is kept in Topkapı Palace and the second is widely dispersed. Codicological analysis of these manuscripts not only allows a better understanding of Hafiz-i Abru’s contributions to rewriting earlier history, but has served to identify the existence of a previously unrecognised copy of the Jamiʿ al-tawarikh produced at Rashid al-Din’s...

The Sea of Chronicles is an English translation of the ninth and tenth chapters of the historiographical work entitled Muḥīṭ al-tavārīkh by Muḥammad Amīn b. Mīrzā Muḥammad Zamān Bukhārī. The work is a valuable source in particular for the study of the late seventeenth-century Central Asian political, cultural and religious history. The ninth chapter offers accounts of the Timurid, Abulkhayrid/Shaybanid and the first four Ashatrkhanid khans. The tenth chapter which is the most original and important chapter of the work presents a detailed account of the life and time of the...

In Central Asia, Muslim shrines have served as community centers for centuries, particularly the large urban shrines that seem, in many cases, to have served as the inspiration as well for a city’s architectural development. In Four Central Asian Shrines: A Socio-Political History of Architecture R. D. McChesney documents the histories of four such long-standing shrines—Gur-i Mir at Samarqand, Khwajah Abu Nasr Parsa Mazar at Balkh, the Noble Rawzah at Mazar-i Sharif, and the Khirqat al-Nabi at Qandahar. In all four cases the creation and evolution of the architecture of these shrines is...