The World of Shah ʿAbbas

Alireza Anisi
University of Oxford

Madrasa Khan at Shiraz

Abstract: This paper aims to describe the Madrasa Khan and its role in the architectural history of madrasa in Iran. The monument is located in the Ishaq Big area, one of the oldest parts of Shiraz city. The building underwent several restoration operations; however, its original feature is still clear.

The construction of this monument started in 1021/1612-13 by order of Allahvirdi Khan, the governor of Shiraz and was completed by his son in 1024/1615-16. This monument, due to its architectural design, decoration and its large scale, can be mentioned as a major madrasa in Iran.

The architectural style of the monument is generally a continuation of the Timurid tradition, but in detail shows some new features, which influenced the design of later madrases in Iran.

Biography: Alireza Anisi received his PhD last year from the University of Edinburgh and was also awarded a Post Doctoral scholarship by Barakat Trust at the University of Oxford. He is the author of numerous articles, "The Davzda Imam mausoleum at Yazd", Journal IranXLVII forthcoming, 2009."The Friday mosque at Simnan", Journal Iran XLIV (2006, "Masjid-i Tarikhana at Damghan", the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, vol. XIV, (Tehran, 2006), "The Masjid-i Malik in Kirman", Journal Iran XLII (2004), "Restoration of the Golestan Palace", Tavous III (2000) and Criteria for Regional, Rural and residential Designs; Khuzistan Province (Tehran, 1992).

 

Shahzad Bashir
Stanford University, USA

"Remembering the Sufi Past During the Reign of Shah ʿAbbas"

Abstract: It is generally accepted that the Qizilbash Sufi supporters of the Safavid house suffered a demotion in their public roles during the reign of Shah ʿAbbas. Mindful of their influence over affairs of the state during the rule of his predecessors, the Shah took active steps to curtail their powers and, at least occasionally, subjected them to harsh persecution. This paper will attempt to throw new light on the Sufis' place in the Safavid empire (in the court as well as in other circles) by considering how works produced during the reign of Shah ʿAbbas depict the king's Sufi ancestors ranging from Shaykh Safi ad-Din Ardabili (d. 1334) to Shah Isma'il (d. 1524). The working presumption is that, as in the writing of all history, the way authors in a given period portray figures of the past reflects obliquely on those who live contemporaneously with them. What is said about Sufis of the past in ʿAbbas's time can, therefore, bring us to a more complex understanding of the situation of actual Sufis (Qizilbash as well as others) active during the king's reign. In addition to the main topic, the paper will argue for greater methodological self-awareness in the way we read Islamic sources for the sake of writing intellectual and social history.

Biography: Shahzad Bashir is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nurbakhshiya Between Medieval and Modern Islam (2003), Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis (2005), and numerous articles on Timurid and Safavid history. He is currently finishing a book entitled Bodies of God's Friends: Sufis and Society in Medieval Persianate Islam.

 

Dr. Barbara Brend
London

Gentlemen of Leisure: influence of the Shah ʿAbbas single-figure style received in Mughal India.

Abstract: A celebrated type of painting in and about the time of Shah ʿAbbas is the depiction of fashionably-dressed, single-figure studies destined for albums.  The figures are predominantly male, though women are included; they have no discernable narrative connections, but instead are shown at ease, in relaxed postures; they are provided with a few objects indicative of a leisured mode of life; and they may be surrounded by hints of landscape drawn in gold.   Conversely a celebrated type in the Mughal world, is the single-figure courtier portrait.  Developed under Akbar (1556-1605) and continued under Jahangir (1605-27), these studies were probably first intended for administrative purposes, but by the seventeenth century they came to be used in the illustration of recent history; they portray particular individuals, whose names are often known to us.  Male figures are shown standing with few attributes other than their weapons; they are normal against a plain turquoise-green background; they are evidently ready for duty.

About the early seventeenth century influences from the Persian type are received into the Mughal world, which works on them with its characteristic ability to create new fusions.  An event which must be of some importance in the process is the embassy sent by Jahangir to Isfahan in 1613, including as it did the painter Bishndas.  The embassy was not, however, the sole vector.   A particularly interesting example of the fusion appears to be the British Museum's 'Babur seated in a chair, and reading' (1912.9-17.04).

Biography: Dr. Barbara Brend is an independent scholar, in London, with a particular interest in Persian and Mughal painting and manuscript illustration.  Publications:  Islamic Art, British Museum Press, 1991; The Emperor Akbar's Khamsa of Nizami, British Library, 1995; Perspectives on Persian Painting: Illustrations to Amir Khusrau's Khamsah, RoutlegeCurzon, 2003;  (forthcoming) Muhammad Juki's Shahnamah of Firdausi.

 

Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
British Museum

'Safavid coins: continuation and change'

Abstract: The first Safavid ruler, Shah Isma'il, adopted the monetary system of the Timurids and the Turkmen tribes. The shahi was the main silver coin and the ashrafi, which was initially produced in modest quantities, was the gold denomination. Shah ʿAbbas I introduced a new silver denomination, the 'abbasi. Copper coins were minted independently by local governors and were not controlled by the central authority.

The large number of mints at the beginning of the Safavid period seems to have decreased towards the end of the dynasty. The inscriptions on the early Safavid coins were predominantly in Arabic and listed the Shi'ite imams, but Tahmasb I introduced Persian phrases and emphasised his allegiance to Imam 'Ali. This is then further developed under Isma'il II, ʿAbbas I and the later Safavid rulers.

Biography: Vesta Curtis is responsible for the British Museum's collection of pre-Islamic Iranian coins (from the third century BC until the middle of the seventh century AD), which includes both Parthian and Sasanian coins. She also looks after coins of the Islamic world beginning with the Umayad and ʿAbbasid period and including coins of the Samanid and Buyid, Seljuk, Mamluk, Ayubid and Fatimid, Ilkhanid and Timurid, Safavid and Qajar dynasties.

She is also involved in two major coin projects. The Sasanian Coin Project is a collaborative project with the National Museum of Iran in Tehran which aims to produce catalogues of the Sasanian coins of the third to seventh centuries AD in the collections in Tehran and London. The Parthian Coin Project is a multi-institutional project with will catalogue coins of the third century BC to the third century AD in Vienna, Tehran, Paris and Berlin.

 

Willem Floor
Washington, DC

Shah ʿAbbas - free trader or mercantilist?

Abstract: This presentation will contrast the open-border trade policy of the Shah ʿAbbas with his increasing control over an important part of the economy of Iran, both measures aiming to increase his cash revenues to finance his wars with the Ottomans and his capital investments in buildings and arts. This seemingly mercantilist approach to the economy, i.e., to get hold of much of the cash generated by the economy, is, however, contradicted by other measures that he took or did not take. The result of his economic policy, therefore, is a mixed bag, which was not continued by his successors, who took other measures to satisfy their need for cash.

Biography: Willem Floor studied development economics, non-western sociology as well as Persian, Arabic and Islamology from 1963-67 at the University of Utrecht. In 1971 he received his doctoral degree from the University of Leyden in 1971. From 1968-83 he worked for the Dutch Ministry of Development Cooperation, partly in Africa. 1983-2002 he has been employed by the World Bank as an energy specialist. At the moment he is an independent scholar, having published more than 30 books and 220 articles on the socio-economic history of Iran, including his book: The Economy of Safavid Persia. His most recent books include: A social history of sexual relations in Iran and Labor and Industry in Iran 1850-1940.

 

Robert Gleave
University of Exeter

Religion and Law in the Reign of Shah ʿAbbas: Shaykh Baha' al-Din al-'Amili's legal project.

Abstract: Baha' al-Din al-'Amili (or Shaykh-e Baha'i as he is more commonly known, d.1030/1621) was the major intellectual figure of Shah ʿAbbas's reign. His achievements in the hard sciences, mathematics, philosophy, mysticism and literature have all been the subject of investigation by secondary authors, as has his political importance, his origins and his influence at court.  One element of his voluminous literary output which has not been subjected to comprehensive analysis is his jurisprudence.  He produced many commentaries on major works of fiqh; he acted as legal advisor to Shah ʿAbbas; he composed his own independent works of law; and his abbreviation of legal theory (usul al-fiqh) was recognised as being a set text in seminary curricula.  This paper seeks to address a number of questions concerning Shaykh-e Baha'i's legal activities - the principal question concerns whether or not he hoped to provide the Shah (and through him, the Safavid state more generally), a blueprint for a society regulated by Shi'i law.  For example, Shaykh-e Baha'i's fiqh work, Jame'-ye ʿAbbasi, was the first major work of Shi'i law in Persian.  Can the work be read as an attempt to persuade Shah ʿAbbas (for whom it was written) that the administration of justice within Safavid Iran should be more thoroughly "Shiitized", with the work itself acting as a statute book for the kingdom's judges?  Additional questions regarding Shaykh-e Baha'i's conception of his own role (as the Shah's leading mujtahid) in any reform process, and whether or not there is any coherence in Shaykh-e Baha'i's jurisprudence.  The figure of Shaykh-e Baha'i enables us to examine Shah ʿAbbas's religious policies, and evaluate the so-called "Islamisation" of both state and society which allegedly characterised his reign.

Biography: Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.  His research focuses on Shi'i Islam, and in particular the intellectual history of the Safavid period.  He is author of Scripturalist Islam: The History and Doctrines of the Akhbari School of Imami Shiism, Leiden: Brill, 2007 and Inevitable Doubt: Two Theories of Shi'i Jurisprudence, Leiden: Brill, 2000 as well as numerous papers on Safavid religious history and thought.  He has been co-investigator on the AHRC/ESRC "Shah ʿAbbas: the Remaking of Iran" project since January 2008.

 

Edmund Herzig
University of Oxford

Non-Muslims of Isfahan during the reign of Shah Abbas I and his successors

Abstract: During the reign of Shah Abbas I the international diplomatic and commercial relations of the Safavid Empire entered a new and intense phase. The court of Abbas his successors hosted a series of embassies from as far afield as Moscow, Lisbon and the Hague. The age witnessed the first diplomatic exchanges between Iran and a number of European countries, bringing Christian ambassadors and their retinues to Isfahan for often lengthy visits. Shah Abbas I and his successors also permitted Christian religious orders to establish themselves in the capital.

At the same time, international commerce grew vigorously and brought to Isfahan merchants from as far afield as Europe's Atlantic coast and the further shores of the Indian Ocean. The royal court provided a market for foreign luxuries and curiosities, while the capital's bazaars thronged with foreign merchants, including many non-Muslims. The Safavid court and royal workshops employed non-Muslim artists, craftsmen and others in a variety of specialist roles.

These new, or newly numerous, visitors from abroad, augmented the established non-Muslim communities of the realm: the Chrisitians, Zoroastrians and Jews, who had inhabited parts of the lands that constituted the Safavid Empire for centuries or even millennia. The situation of these communities underwent significant changes during the Safavid era. The adoption and imposition of Twelver Shi'ism by the dynasty brought alterations to their legal status, while the social engineering of Abbas I involved the resettlement of minority communities in various parts of the realm, notably in Isfahan and its environs. Most famously, it led to the foundation of an Armenian Christian suburb - New Julfa - replete with churches and monasteries, on the outskirts of the capital. During the reigns of his successors, the number of these 'native' non-Muslims was augmented as new arrivals, drawn to the prosperity and opportunities of the capital, joined the established communities.

This paper considers the history of the non-Muslims of Isfahan during the reign of Abbas I and his successors, exploring in particular their often precarious status, balanced between inconsistent royal patronage and protection on the one hand, and, on the other, intermittent bouts of pressure and persecution instigated or justified by Muslim jurists, and fueled by public hostility and the material interests of members of the court and elite.

Biography: Edmund Herzig is Masoumeh and Fereydoon Soudavar Professor of Persian Studies. He has worked on the political and economic history of Iran in the Safavid age and especially on the Armenian merchant community of New Julfa, the Armenian suburb of the capital city, Isfahan. His research interests extend also to the contemporary period, and he has published a number of articles on the foreign and regional relations of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is currently co-editing a Cambridge History of Inner Asia in the Modern Age. Before coming to Oxford he was Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House.  He completed his DPhil degree in the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Oxford in 1991 and his BA degree in Russian and Persian in Cambridge in 1981.

 

Linda Komaroff
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA

Chinese Porcelains from the Ardabil Shrine: Collecting, Collections, and Display

Abstract: The practice and pursuit of art collecting is only rarely considered within the context of the pre-modern Islamic world-indeed, in Joseph Alsop's wide-ranging, monumental study the occurrence of Islamic collecting is characterized as late, limited and lacking any form of grand tradition. But as David Roxburgh's careful consideration of Timurid and Safavid albums has demonstrated, such albums were veritable portable art collections, whose compilation and assemblage can provide rare insight into courtly taste and aesthetic perceptions. This cultural practice reflects a purpose not unlike our own modern-day art museums, namely to collect, preserve, display, and even to interpret and inform. 

The large and exceptional group of Chinese porcelains, which Shah ʿAbbas presented to the Ardabil Shrine in 1611, also represents a form of collecting and collection(s) ultimately intended for display in the shrine's chini khana. Neither the porcelain collection nor its exhibition in specially constructed niches is unique to Shah ʿAbbas but rather represent earlier traditions documented at least to the Timurid period, as for example Vasifi's charming account of the havoc created when a cat was inadvertently let loose in the garden chini khana of Mir 'Ali Shir Nava'i.

Like the assembling of contemporary albums, the amassing of Chinese porcelains by princes and notables for purposes of display seems to represent a specific aesthetic impulse and cultural practice, which may shed further light on the art history of the Timurid and Safavid periods. This paper therefore will reconsider the Ardabil porcelains from the vantage points of collecting and display, including their precedents in the Timurid and earlier Safavid periods.

Biography: Linda Komaroff has served as LACMA's curator of Islamic art since 1995. She is the author or editor of several books, and has written numerous articles and book chapters on various aspects of Islamic art, with a special focus on Iran and Central Asia. Her exhibitions at LACMA include Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphy from the Sakip Sabanci Collection, Istanbul (1999), and The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (2003). She is currently working on a major international loan exhibition entitled Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts.

 

Rudi Matthee
University of Delaware, USA

Shah ʿAbbas and the Qizilbash: The Struggle over Fars and Kerman 

Abstract: Modern research on Shah ʿAbbas I tends to focus on the latter part of his reign, the period after 1600, for which scholars have a combination of a large number of indigenous court chronicles and numerous reports written by Western visitors at their disposal. This is the period when the shah, having spent more than two decades campaigning to conquer and re-conquer most of Iran-zamin, appeared to have the upper hand in the never-ending struggle for power.

This paper will examine an important episode in the earlier period, the time when the shah, in seeking to establish hegemony over Iran, was faced with formidable opposition in the form of warlords who served and acted as subordinates while incessantly scheming to maximize their power and landed property. Mostly relying on Persian-language sources, it examines how, following his execution of kingmaker Murshid Quli Khan in 1589, the Shah took on the semi-independent Qizilbash rulers of the south and established control over Kerman, Yazd and Fars, thus preparing the ground for his later attempts to incorporate the Persian Gulf littoral.

This conflict involves the tangled history of the intrigues of tribal rulers such as Bektash Khan Afshar and Ya'qub Khan Dhu'l Qadr, and the shah's ultimate success in bringing them down. Shah ʿAbbas's victory heralded significant administrative and military power for a new elite, the ghulams, for it resulted in the appointment of Allah Virdi Khan as governor of Fars. ʿAbbas's struggle with these Qizilbash leaders also illustrates his strategy of setting up and playing off local rulers against one another in order to establish of his own supremacy.

Biography: Unidel distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern History, University of Delaware, 1993-present.  Taught at the University of Denver, 1991-93. BA and MA in Arabic and Persian Language and Literature, University of Utrecht; Ph.D., Islamic Studies, UCLA, 1991. Author of The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), received prize for best non-Persian language book on Iranian history, 1999, from the Iranian Ministry of Culture. Author of The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2005), received the 2006 Albert Hourani Book Prize and of the Saidi Sirjani award for best book on Iran, 2004-05; Iqtisad va siyasat-i khariji-yi 'asr-i Safavi, trans. and ed. Hasan Zandiyeh. (Tehran, 2008)). Co-editor (with Beth Baron), of Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Mazda, 2000); and co-editor (with Nikki Keddie), of Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (University of Washington Press, 2002). Many articles on Safavid and Qajar Iran on issues of political, socio-economic and material history. Forthcoming publications: Persia in Crisis: The Decline of the Safavids and the Fall of Isfahan, forthcoming from I.B. Tauris in 2009; edited book (with Jorge Flores): Portugal and Iran in the Safavid period.

 

Charles Melville
University of Cambridge

A year in the life of Shah ʿAbbas I: an historiographical approach

Abstract: This presentation will focus on a single year in the reign of Shah ʿAbbas, with a view to analysing and comparing the way events (and opinions) are presented in the historical record. As many of the chroniclers of ʿAbbas's reign organised their material in annals, we will select and present a year that is covered by as many historians as possible, both contemporary and later, in an attempt to discern any shift in opinion about what was important or how it was interpreted. A great deal of ʿAbbas's reign was spent in military activity in all four directions from Iran's borders, but we will attempt to isolate a period of relative calm and focus on internal affairs. We will pay particular attention to the chronicle of Fazli Beg Khuzani Isfahani, the Afzal al-tavarikh, a contemporary record but completed after ʿAbbas's death, drawing attention to the information preserved there that is not found elsewhere. This still unpublished text, and others only recently edited and printed, have still to be fully absorbed into the narrative of Shah ʿAbbas's reign

Biography: Charles Melville read Arabic & Persian at Pembroke College, Cambridge (1969-72) and following graduation read for an MA in Islamic History at London SOAS (1972-3). He then worked as a research assistant at Imperial College, London, on a project investigating earthquakes in Iran (1974-82). This also became the subject of his PhD dissertation (Cambridge, 1978). He was appointed lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge in 1984 and a Fellow of Pembroke College the following year. In 2001 he was appointed Reader in Persian History and Professor in 2008.  He is a Council member of the British Institute of Persian Studies and Chairman of the Research Sub-committee, and member of various other societies and editorial boards in Europe and the USA, most recently acting as President of The Islamic Manuscripts Association (TIMA). Publications include A history of Persian earthquakes (CUP, 1983), and The Persian Book of Kings. Ibrahim Sultan's Shahnama (Oxford, 2008; with F. Abdullaeva), and edited works such as History and Literature in Iran (1990), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. VII (1991), Safavid Persia (1996) and Shahnama Studies I (2006). He is the author of numerous articles and studies on Persian history, particularly in the Mongol and Safavid periods; current research interests include mediaeval Persian historiography and the illustration of Firdausi's Shahnama and other historical chronicles.

 

Andrew Newman
University of Edinburgh

' "When the Great Prince ceased to live Persia ceased to prosper":  later verdicts on the reign of 'ʿAbbas I'

Abstract: Elsewhere we have noted the field's tendency to rely uncritically on foreign travellers' accounts and post-Safavid sources for discussions of the 'decline' and 'fall' of the dynasty. Although Chardin arrived in Iran some decades after ʿAbbas I's 1629 death, his judgment on the reign of the 'Great Prince' and his successors has long been the basis - explicitly or otherwise - of western scholarship's judgment on the accomplishments of ʿAbbas and later shahs.

This paper first reviews the conventional assessments of ʿAbbas I offered by Western scholars and the sources of these assessments. It then offers the first of a series of discussions of the judgements of ʿAbbas offered in the post-ʿAbbas Persian sources.

In her study of historical writing during ʿAbbas' own reign Sholeh Quinn noted that the agendas and backgrounds of history writers, which varied widely, were subjects worthy of discussion before their accounts could be accepted at face value.  Indeed based on detailed examination of a number of key sources, Quinn noted that the accounts of given events often, if not usually, varied widely. She also detailed the extent to which history writing evolved over the period.

This paper will suggest, first, that history-writing in the later Safavid period also appears to have gone through different stages and, secondly, that the authors of such sources as are available were less interested in ʿAbbas and his legacy than scholars in the field of Safavid studies since its inception.

Biography: Andrew Newman is Reader in Islamic Studies and Persian at the University of Edinburgh. He has published two monographs, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London: I B Tauris, 2006), and The Formative Period of Shi'i Law: Hadith as Discourse Between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000). The former was awarded the International Book of the Year prize in 2008 in the field of Islamic Studies. He has also authored some 10 articles on aspects of Safavid and Iranian society and Shi'ism. He is presently writing an introductory volume on Twelver Shi'ism for Edinburgh University Press.

 

Mahnaz Rahimifar
National Museum of Iran

Investigation of the Sarih-al Milk of the Shrine of Sheikh Safi-al din Ardebili

Abstract: The Ardabil Shrine is a valuable memorial of Sheikh Safi-al Din Ardebili, a mystic and ancestor of the Safavid kings.

This Shrine was built in 1334 A.D by his son, Sheikh Sadr-al Din Musa. After the Safavids gained the throne in 1501, the Safavid kings added buildings to the Shrine which they decorated very precisely and its area developed up to 2100 square metres. In some parts of the building, like the Chini Khaneh, precious vessels of silver and gold and also porcelains from China donated by Shah ʿAbbas were kept.

Others precious objects in this collection are manuscripts. Sarih-al Milk is one of the valuable manuscripts containing documents, deeds and endowments of the shrine. Sarih-al Milk was written by Ahmad Ghavami Shirazi and Mohamad Taher Esfshani in the Safavid period.

Three copies of this invaluable work are kept in the National Museum of Iran.

In this paper, this invaluable manuscript will be studied.

Biography: Mahnaz Rahimifar studied Archaeology at the University of Tehran and has worked at the National Museum since 1988. She was the curator of its History and Luristan Department before moving on to the Seals and Coins Department. And she is now the head of the Museum's Islamic Art Department. Whilst conducting her research on Mythology and Islamic Art History, she has written several articles and was involved in several excavations, the latest project Tang-e-Bolagi (Pasargad 2005).

 

Francis Richard
Universite de Paris, Sorbonne

Shah ʿAbbas and the Catholic missionaries: Diplomacy and its cultural implications

Abstract: When Shah ʿAbbas, after 1603, received in Isfahan the Augustinian and Carmelites monks, it was a political gesture towards Spain and the Pope. But it may have been of inconsiderable religious significance in the eyes of the shah, even if controversy was one of the intellectual occupations of the scholars at the court. In fact, the monks were not only - for some of them - ambassadors but also religious propagandists and they were protected by the Persian crown. It is interesting to see the diplomatic missions of these different religious figures during Shah ʿAbbas reign, with their successes or misfortunes. The presence of religious houses in Isfahan gave a very positive image of the Persian monarchy, tolerant and open toward Europe. The case of the Capuchines is interesting: these French envoys came from a land which was allied to the Ottoman, but the monks came to ʿAbbas with political and even military propositions, showing the possibility of a new Franch policy.

The encounter of the Persians and the European missionaries at the time of Shah ʿAbbas played a considerable role in the intellectual, religious and cultural history. We will try to give a short inventory and evaluation of this encounter. It seems that it was for Iran an opportunity to become more familiar with some aspects of the western Christianity. It was also, as it seems, the time of great dreams and illusions, before having an adequate view of the specificity of the Shi'a state, at one side, and of the real power of the West with its numerous divisions, at the other side.

Biography: From 1974 to 2003, Dr. Richard was Keeper of the Persian manuscripts in Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris) ; from 2003 to 2006 in charge of the Department of Islamic Art in Musée du Louvre ; since 2006 scientific director of the Bibliothèque des langues et civilisations (Paris).

His publications include many articles about Persian manuscripts and miniatures, and the following books: Catalogue des manuscrits persans, I, Ancien fonds , Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, 1989, 434 p. et VII Planches; Raphaël du Mans, missionnaire en Perse au XVIIème siècle, 2 vol.,Paris, l'Harmattan, 1995 (Moyen-Orient et Océan Indien, IX, 1-2); Les cinq poèmes de Nezâmi, un chef d'œuvre manuscrit  persan du XVIIème siècle, Paris, Anthèse-BnF, 1997, 96 pages  (réédition Paris, Bibliothèque de l'image, 2001); Scribes et manuscrits du Moyen-Orient, sous la direction de François Déroche et Francis Richard, Paris, BnF, 1997, 399p.; Splendeurs persanes, manuscrits du XIIe au XVIIe siècle, Paris, BnF-Le Seuil, 1997, 239 pages, ill. en coul.; Le Livre persan, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003, 94p (Conférences Leopold Delisle); with Alastair Hamilton, André du Ryer and Oriental Studies in Seventeenth-Century France, Londres, The Arcadian Library-Oxford University Press, 2004, 192p, ill.; Le Siècle d'Ispahan, Paris, Gallimard, 2008;  Catalogue des Manuscrits persans de la BnF. T. II, Supplément persan 1 à 1000, 3 vol., in preparation.

 

Kishwar Rizvi
Yale University, USA

Architecture and the Representation of Kingship during the reign of ʿAbbas I

Abstract: The portrait of the Safavid the king was constructed through various means: textual, visual and spatial.  In the sixteenth century all three modes were employed to create an image of imperial authority in which the shah was depicted simultaneously as a charismatic leader, a pious believer, and a noble emperor.  The representations chosen by panegyrist, poets, painters, historians and architects were often composite, based on sources about Islamic ruler-ship as well as on Iranian archetypes; the Safavids emulated their Timurid predecessors while mimicking the rituals of sovereignty enacted by their immediate neighbours, the Mughals in Delhi and the Ottomans in Istanbul.  This composite image was displayed in the manuscripts the shahs commissioned, the palaces and mosques that they built, and the urban structure of their majestic capital cities. 

The reign of the fifth Safavid shah, ʿAbbas I (d. 1629), has been characterized as the 'golden age' of Iranian art and culture.  At this time literature, the arts of the book, and architecture were construed as sophisticated representations of Shah ʿAbbas' power and authority.  Whether through the construction of the new imperial quarters in Isfahan or through barefoot pilgrimages to holy shrines, myriad aspects of the ruler's public and private ceremonial were presented in a coherent, if complex, manner.  The built environment, in particular, was an important source for the enactment of the expansive changes enacted both within the court and the empire at large.  This talk aims to situate the architectural production of this unique period of Iranian history within the broader context of Safavid religious and political ideology and to highlight its role in the fabrication of Shah ʿAbbas' imperial image.

Biography: Kishwar Rizvi is Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architectural History at Yale University. Her primary research is on representations of religious and imperial authority in the art and architecture of Safavid Iran. She has also written on issues of gender, nationalism and religious identity in the contemporary art and architecture of Iran and Pakistan.  She is author of The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, piety and power in early modern Iran (forthcoming).  She has also co-edited Modernism and the Middle East: Politics of the built environment (Washington University Press, 2008).  She is the recipient of grants from the Barakat Trust, Graham Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

 

Mohammed Hassan Semsar
Golestan Palace Museum

'Alireza-ye ʿAbbasi and a selection of his work

Abstract: 'Alireza-ye Tabrizi (ʿAbbasi) is considered to be one of the premier Persian calligraphers of the Safavid period. Ali Reza was born in Tabriz and received his calligraphy training from great masters such as Ala-e Bek and Mohammad Hassan-e Tabrizi. When Isfahan became the capital of Iran in 1598, he joined the court of Shah ʿAbbas, where he achieved prominence. Many of his outstanding calligraphy works can be found in the form of inscriptions in monumental structures of the Shah ʿAbbas era, such as Shaykh Lutfallah Mosque as well as in numerous calligraphy pages and albums.

In this lecture, in addition to introducing some of his monumental inscriptions, a selection of his works such as a newly discovered album including 24 pages of calligraphy, two pages of an album existing in Golestan Place Museum, as well as other works by 'Alireza-ye ʿAbbasi in Iranian museums and libraries will be introduced.

Biography: Mr Mohammed Hassan Semsar is Senior Consultant (Art & Architecture Department) and Member of the Supreme Academic Council in The Centre for Iranian and Islamic Studies, Da'irat al-Ma'arif-i Buzurg-i Islami (Encyclopaedia Islamica) as well as Senior Consultant at the Golestan Palace Museum. He is also Specialist in manuscripts, Historical and artistic items at the Sazman Miras Farhangi Keshvar, the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organisation. He has lectured at Tehran University and Tarbiat Modares University. He was Director of the Museum of Traditional Art and Head and later Head of the Golestan Palace Museum until his retirement in 1980. His recent publications include Golestan Palace Library: A Portfolio of Miniature Paintings and Calligraphy (with English text translated by Karim Emami, Tehran: 2000); Golestan Palace Library: Catalogue of Qajar Selected photograph (2000); Kamalulmulk (2004) and The Image of Tehran in the 19th century (2007).

 

Eleanor Sims
London

'Shah 'ʿAbbas's Gift of the Mantiq al-Tayr to the Ardabil Shrine'.

Abstract: In 888/1483, a celebrated scribe working in Herat, Sultan 'Ali, completed a luxurious copy of the poet Farid al-Din 'Attar's mystical poem Mantiq al-Tayr (usually translated as The Language of the Birds). Almost surely intended for the library of the Timurid ruler Sultan-Husayn Bayqara, for some reason it was left unfinished, having only half of its intended complement of paintings--four of eight; it remained unfinished for over a century.

At some point very early in the 17th century, Shah ʿAbbas I made of this unfinished Timurid treasure an inalienable gift to the family shrine at Ardabil.  He ordered the completion of its illustrative program in a fascinating variety of contemporary pictorial styles; and its 67 folios were then remounted in fashionably dark papers spattered with gold, a new double-page illuminated frontispiece was commissioned from one of ʿAbbas' favoured scribes, Zayn al-'Abidin, and the manuscript was rebound.  Splendidly accoutred, it was dedicated to the shrine in the year 1016/1607-8, each of the eight paintings being stamped with ʿAbbas' seal and inscribed with the word waqf. Remaining in Ardabil over two hundred years, the Mantiq al-Tayr somehow eluded Russian possession after 1837 and instead fell into private hands; in 1963, well over a century after the dispersal of the Shrine library, it was acquired for The Metropolitan Museum in New York City, which has lent perhaps the finest of the Safavid paintings to the London exhibition.

My presentation will consider further aspects of its Safavid refurbishing; analyze all four of the Safavid paintings; and discuss the volume with another waqf-donation to the Ardabil Shrine made at the same time, the volume of Conversations copied in 1010/1601-2, also illuminated by Zayn al-'Abidin, and shown in London in close proximity to "The Birds Elect the Hoopoe as Their Spokesman."

Biography: Eleanor Sims earned a doctorate in Islamic Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City and concurrently worked in the Islamic Department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In 1973 she joined a team of Italian specialists associated with IsMEO working in Iran, where she helped to document the restoration of the painted palaces of Safavid Isfahan.  She has taught Islamic and Indian Art History both in the US and in London; and she organized a travelling international loan-exhibition, "The Heritage of Islam," as part of the US celebrations of the Hijri year 1400, which was shown in Washington DC and other American cities between 1981 to 1983.  She has published over 60 articles and book reviews, primarily on illustrated Islamic manuscripts, and two books:  Peerless Images: Persian Painting and its Sources (London and New Haven, 2002), and--with the late B. W. Robinson and Manijeh Bayani--The Persian Book of Kings:  The Windsor Castle Shahnama of 1648 (London, 2007).  Her volume on Shahnama and other historical manuscripts in the Khalili Collection are forthcoming.

 

Tim Stanley
Victoria and Albert Museum

Safavid versus Ottoman

Abstract: The Safavids and the Ottomans were the two powers that dominated the Middle East in the 16th and 17th centuries. Their interactions are marked both by ideological confrontation - Shi'ite versus Sunni - and by cultural emulation. Both elements were present in Shah ʿAbbas's reign, although the Shah's success on the battlefield and in reorganizing his realm gave a new twist to their development in his time. His self-confidence allowed him to borrow freely from the Ottomans when it suited him, but in a period of retraction, the Ottomans became more cautious in their emulation of Safavid forms.

The evidence for this change in Ottoman-Safavid relations can be seen in ceramics, calligraphy, textile design and architectural decoration, for example. The products of ʿAbbas's time, both Safavid and Ottoman, can also be compared with those from earlier and later in the Safavid period to show how the balance of self-confidence, and the nature of artistic interaction, changed.

Biography: Tim Stanley is Senior Curator for the Middle Eastern collection in the Asian Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Since Tim joined the Museum from the Khalili Collection in 2002, he has been lead curator for both the traveling exhibition "Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the V&A" (2004 to 2006) and the V&A's new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which opened to wide acclaim in 2006. He is currently the Asian Department's lead curator for the V&A's new Ceramics Galleries, to be completed in September 2009.

 

Lale Uluç
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul

Illustrated Shiraz Manuscripts during the reign of Shah ʿAbbas I

Abstract: Illustrated Shiraz manuscripts from the sixteenth century outnumber those from all other Safavid centers combined. Some of this prolific production was extremely luxurious, although the degree of ostentation varied. From about the middle of the 1570s, Shiraz manuscripts begin to display a degree of richness that reaches its zenith in the 1580s when a remarkable number of illustrated manuscripts incorporate all the outward trappings of sumptuous court productions.

This paper will first demonstrate that Shiraz manuscripts were purposefully made to resemble royal manuscripts produced in the reign of Shah Tahmasp. To this end, Shiraz workshops spared nothing; the extensive use of costly materials and the appropriation of the courtly style of painting, of its fashions, and its architectural settings, bespeak of a concerted effort.

It will then discuss the Shiraz production during the first years of the reign of Shah ʿAbbas I and display the transformation it underwent after the Shah started enforcing a centralizing policy by reducing the power of the Turkman military elite.

Biography: Lale Uluç completed her Ph.D. in 2000, with Prof. Priscilla Soucek, at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and is currently teaching at Bogazici University in Istanbul. She is the author of numerous publications such as "A Group of Artists Associated with the "Asitana" of Husam al-Din Ibrahim," in Pearls from Water, Rubies from Stone: Studies in Islamic Art in Honor of Priscilla Soucek, ed. Linda Komaroff and Jaclynne J. Kerner, Artibus Asiae 66 (2006), Turkman Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors: Arts of the Book in 16th Century Shiraz (Istanbul: Is Bankasi Kültür Yayinlari, 2007), "The Common Timurid Heritage of the three Capitals of Islamic Arts," in Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi; 3 Capitals of Islamic Art: Masterpieces from the Louvre Collection (Istanbul: Sabanci University, Sakip Sabanci Museum, 2008).