[CT]introduction

222 Bābor criticized Behzād's renderings of beardless faces, while praising those of Shāh-Mozaffar; see Baburnama, p. 291.

223 Behzād used the same feature in Birth of a Prince (cat. no. 35) and in the British Library Khamsé of 1494 (Or. ms. 6810). But his timidly notched version hardly converts the square into an eight-pointed star.

224 Behzād died in 1535 (see Qāzi Ahmad-e Qomi, Golestān-e honar [Garden of talents], ed. A. Soheyli [Tehrān: Bonyād-e Farhang-e Iran, 1352], p. 135) and was, in lunar years, more than seventy according to Budāq-e Qazvini (Javāherol-akhbār [Jewel of the chronicles], photocopy of a manuscript from the State Public Library, St. Petersburg [Dorn 288], courtesy of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, p. 111a). In A.H. 887/1482 he must have been in his late teens.

225 This Golestān has only three paintings and one double-page illumination.

226 Mohammad-Haydar Dughlāt qualified only one painter--Mansur--as "master." Jahāngir's information and terminology derive from the same Teymurid tradition as that of Mohammad-Haydar Dughlāt.

227 Nezāmi-e Ganjavi, Divān-e kāmel (Collected works), ed. Dr. Mo`infar (Tehrān: Zarrin Publishers, n.d.), pp. 522-23.

228 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 362.

229 See M. G. Lukens, "The Language of the Birds," Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (May 1967), p. 325; Lentz and Lowry, pp. 376-79.

230 F. Cagman and Z. Tanindi, The Topkapi Saray Museum: The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts, trans. and ed. J. M. Rogers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), no. 64. The attribution here to Behzād is due to the recurrence in the composition of a number of faces familiar from other paintings, the grayish tone of all colors, and the position and shape of the horses.

231 Martin, Miniature Painting and Painters, pls. 60-61.

232 Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pp. 120-41.

233 This painting (fig. 15), originally from Nezāmi's Layla and Majnun, was enlarged on three sides in Mughal India to fit into an album page. The attribution to Behzād rests on features typical of his work, including the grayish marble decorated with lighter arabesques, figures and faces that recur in other works, and the calligraphic style of the architectural inscriptions. For a full illustration, see Lentz and Lowry, p. 281. This appears to be the earliest dated painting attributable to Behzād.

234 Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pl. 73.

235 Ibid., pl. 85.

236 The Bustān painting has generally been attributed to Behzād. Although most of the detail painting, especially the architectural elements and the door, seems to be the work of Behzād, the overall design appears to have been directed by his master and tutor Mirak, the head of the royal library-atelier. For an illustration, see Lentz and Lowry, p. 260.

237 Another possible reading for the right panel is: "Allāho akbar" (God is great). The "mobārak bād" inscription is also used around the canopy tent of the Cairo Bustān frontispiece, but in a different configuration.

238 The homāy is a legendary bird, akin to the simorgh, with royal and auspicious connotations.

239 Even a close follower of Behzād like Shaykhzādé would be content with fewer and shorter panels, generally in naskh script only; see, for instance, cat. no. 73c.

240 Hamidé Bānu, wife of Homāyun, was the daughter of Shaykh `Ali-ye Jāmi, a descendant of Shaykh Ahmad-e Jām; at the Safavid court she had befriended the princess Soltāno. See Riazul-Islam, Indo-Persian Relations (Tehrān: Iranian Culture Foundation, 1970), p. 31.

241 The Bustān is kept at the General Egyptian Book Organization in Cairo (Adab Farsi 908); see Lentz and Lowry, no. 146.

242 In the colophon of a Divān of Amir `Ali-Shir (Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Tashkent, Ms. 1995), the calligrapher Soltān-Ali-ye Mashhadi specifically mentions "for the treasury of Soltān Hosayn." See Miniature Illustrations of Alisher Navoi's Works of the XV-XIXth Centuries (Tashkent: Fan Publishing, 1982), pp. 11, 31.

243 Such is not the case in a similar scene from a Golestān in the Durham University Library (Ms. Or. Pers. 1, fols. 25v, 26r) presumably contemporary with this manuscript, where no single courtier stands out. See B. W. Robinson, "The Durham Gulistan: An Unpublished Manuscript," Oriental Art 22, no. 1 (1976), pp. 52-59. The date A.H. 878 in the colophon of the Durham manuscript, however, has clearly been tampered with. It may be of slightly later date and produced in Transoxiana.

244 Mahmud-e Mozahheb was active almost a half-century later in the 1530s.

245 Sām Mirzā, Tohfé-ye Sāmi (The Sāmi present), ed. V. Dastgerdi (Tehrān: Forughi Bookshop, 1352), p. 179; see also Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 3, pp. 594-95. Amir `Ali-Shir's father had been in the services of Abu-Sa`id (Tohfé-ye Sāmi, p. 179).

246 W. M. Thackston, A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: The Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989), p. 376.

247 See M. E. Subtelny, "Centralizing Reforms and Its Opponents in the Late Timurid Period," Iranian Studies 21, nos. 1-2 (1988), pp. 123-51.

248 See Ghiyāsoddin b. Homām Khāndamir, Dasturol-vozarā (Chronicle of the viziers), ed. S. Nafis (Tehrān: Eqbāl Press, 1317), p. 415.

249 Ibid., pp. 405, 408.

250 Ibid., p. 415.

251 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 348.

252 See, for instance, O. F. Akimushkin and A. A. Ivanov, "The Art of Illumination," in Arts of the Book, p. 49, fig. 25.

253 Soltān Hosayn commissioned Soltān-`Ali-ye Mashhadi to copy most of his manuscripts. In a letter addressed to him, the soltān first praised him lavishly but at the end scorned him for having mutilated his poems while copying them; see Bayāni, vol. 1, p. 246.

254 Ibid., p. 252; trans. W. Thackston.

255 The Armenian dealer who called himself Monsieur Yervant, Company Telefiān, has written (in a pleasant nasta`liq script) that the manuscript was purchased in 1913 for "export," presumably to Europe.

256 Belonging to a family of bakhshis (Uyghur scribes and administrators; see Thackston, Century of Princes, p. 358), `Ali-Shir probably would have been perceived as an administrator rather than an amir.

257 See de Lorey, "Behzad," pp. 41-42; Grube, Classical Style in Islamic Painting, pl. 36.1; Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pp. 73-74.

258 See Binyon et al., Persian Miniature Painting, no. 81.

259 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 348.

260 Ibid.

261 The manuscript is at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Ms. Elliot 287, fol. 34a). For an illustration see B. Gray, Peinture persane (Geneva: Skira, 1961), p. 119, and Lentz and Lowry, p. 296.

262 Other paintings that should be considered for attribution to Hāji Mohammad are: The Celebration of the Birth of Majnun, in a manuscript of the Khamsé of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (no. 163, fol. 104b; for a reproduction see Gray, Arts of the Book, p. 187); The Tribes of Majnun and Layla Fighting (fol. 110b), from the same manuscript; and The Dancing Dervishes, a single page from a Divān-e Hāfez now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (17.81.4; for a reproduction see B. Lewis, ed., The World of Islam [London: Thames and Hudson, 1976], p. 129).

263 See Binyon et al., Persian Miniature Painting, pl. 70b.

264 Both paintings are attributed by Stchoukine to Behzād. They are from a set of manuscripts of Amir `Ali-Shir Navā'i's collected poems kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Ms. Elliot 287, fol. 7; Ms. Elliot 339, fol. 95v). See Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pls. 72-73.

265 Baburnama, p. 291.

266 See also the eyes of the top two horses in Dārā and the Herdsman (fol. 10a) in the Cairo Bustān and some of the faces in Men Assembling Wood and Man Drowning from a manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.210.44), the only painting of that manuscript attributable to Behzād in both design and execution. Reproduced in Lukens, "Language of the Birds," pls. 17-18, 20.

267 Qāzi, Golestān, p. 134. The appellation Mirak is a name deriving from the Persian epithet mir, which is equivalent to the Arabic sayyed (descendant of the Prophet).

268 Fols. 1v and 2r (Martin, Miniature Painting and Painters, pl. 94), fol. 16r (Lukens, "Language of the Birds," fig. 4), fol. 39v (Lentz and Lowry, p. 277), fol. 62r (Martin, pl. 95b).

269 The correctness of the attributions to Behzād can be stylistically verified by comparison with his four signed miniatures in the Cairo Bustān; see Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pp. 78-80.

270 Qāzi, Golestān, pp. 133-34.

271 Bayāni, vol. 1, pp. 199-200.

272 Ibid., pp. 201-202.

273 Ibid.

274 Zurmandihā refers to certain body-building exercises and wrestling matches practiced in the "gymnasiums" (zurkhāné) with the goal of determining a champion wrestler.

275 The Persian text in this section is unclear. I have relied on the zurkhāné term mil-gereftan (a sort of weight lifting) to define the text: "Az in jahat [bā] gereftan-e [mil-o chomāq-dāri (or tokhmāq-dāri)], aksar, zurmandihā rā varzesh mikard."

276 "Tārikh-e Rashidi," pp. 167-68.

277 Although the term mowlānā is used indiscriminately by other chroniclers, especially in conjunction with the names of calligraphers, Mohammad-Haydar Dughlāt's precise language reveals Mirak's special status among his colleagues.

278 Compare, for instance, the very crude and bold geometrical drawings of Mirak for the open woodwork on the dais in cat. no. 37 versus those of Behzād in cat. no. 35 and Shāh-Mozaffar in cat. no. 36a.

279 See Lentz and Lowry, p. 277, no. 140.

280 This attribution is stylistically consistent with the other paintings of the 1494 Khamsé bearing Mirak inscriptions underneath; see Stchoukine, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, pp. 78-80.

281 Sakisian deciphered the ending letter "sh" in the half-erased lower left cartouche on the doorway of the painting of the right page which suggested the signature "Mirak-e Naqqāsh" (A. B. Sakisian, "La miniature … l'exposition d'art persan de Burlington House," Syria [1931], p. 169); Stchoukine gives the work to Behzād, Peintures des manuscrits timurides, p. 75.

282 The decoration of the two buildings on the frontispiece are essentially Behzādian: star-shaped ivory-encrusted motifs on the doors, whitish floral arabesques on gray and pink stone, inscription panels around the doorway fitted into a series of cartouches divided by rosettes (on the right-hand page), and minutely drawn geometrical patterns for the brickwork and the wooden panels, which are frequently encountered in Behzād's works and almost never in works attributable to Mirak alone.

283 The illogical, overpowering disposition of the royal tent and canopy and the crowded, unorganized group of figures are uncharacteristic of Behzād. The Bustān's frontispiece displays the same non-Behzādian figural groupings as well.

284 The Chaghatāyid headgear seems to have been worn by the Turkish military classes, in contrast to the white turban favored by the Persian-Tājik religious and administrative community.

285 The same elegant silhouette and seated posture were also used to depict the man seated on the upper part of the right page of the Cairo Bustān frontispiece.

286 See Khāndamir, Dasturol-vozarā, p. 404.

287 Ibid., p. 436.

288 Ibid.

289 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 612.

290 Khāndamir specifically states that Afzaloddin had built "mosques, madressés, khāneqāhs, and public baths"; ibid., p. 220. I have therefore preferred to interpret the word manzel in the inscription as a khāneqāh, a hostel where dervishes stayed, rather than a caravansary.

291 Khāndamir, Dasturol-vozarā, pp. 429, 436.

292 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 219.

293 See, for instance, L. Golombek and D. Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pl. 70.

294 See, for instance, H. Fazāeli, Atlas-e Khat (Script atlas) (Esfahān: Zibā Press, 1350), pp. 208-10. The main difference between the two scripts is the ratio of curved to straight lines, which is sometimes approximated as 2:1 for sols and 3:1 for mohaqqaq. Sols is more circular and has deeper curves; mohaqqaq is less curved, and has flatter letters and almost straight lines for verticals.

295 Khāndamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 348.

296 Ghiyāsoddin b. Homām Khāndamir, Makāremol-Akhlāq (Noble traits of character) (facsimile; London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1979), pp. 176v-177r.

297 Lentz and Lowry, p. 262.

298 The name could read as Bannā'i, since the father of the poet was a bannā (mason); however Z. Safā has argued that because of meter considerations in his poems, the correct reading is Banā'i. See Z. Safā, "Banā'i," in Encyclopaedia Iranica (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975-), vol. 3, pp. 667-68.

299 Zaynoddin Mahmud-e Vāsefi, Badāye`ol-vagāye` (Uncommon happenings), ed. A. Boldrev (Tehrān: Iranian Cultural Foundation, 1349), vol. 1, p. 469.

300 S. C. Welch, Royal Persian Manuscripts (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), p. 29.

301 The monumental inscription naming Soltān Hosayn on fig. 18 is in nasta`liq, a script that in 1492 was mastered by very few calligraphers and never used by a contemporary Herāti painter in monumental decoration of Teymurid times.

302 See I. Stchoukine, "Les images de Soltan Hosayn dans un manuscrit de son divan de 897/1492," Syria 53 (1976), p. 144; Cagman and Tanindi, Topkapi Sarāy Museum, no. 33; and M. B. Dickson and S. C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 25-26.

303 F. Cagman, "The Miniatures of the Divan-i Hseyni and the Influence of Their Style," in Fifth International Congress of Turkish Art Proceedings, ed. G. Fehér, Jr. (Budapest, 1978), pp. 231-59.

304 None of the four paintings of the 1492 Topkapi manuscript is integral to the manuscript design: two have been added as a double-page frontispiece at the beginning, one occupies a blank space at the end of the text, and the last one is on the following page, below the colophon. The authenticity of the 1485 Paris manuscript has been questioned by Stchoukine, who dates its paintings to the mid-sixteenth century; see Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits timurides, pp. 70-71.

305 For a slightly later manuscript, see E. Atil, The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), p. 74.

306 For samples of the registers, see ibid., pp. 289-99.

307 Another Turkaman feature of the paintings is the four-lobed pattern on the robes of courtiers. Such gold-embroidered motifs seem to have been a western Iranian fashion. The embroidery motif is occasionally encountered in the paintings of the 1430 Shāhnāmé prepared for Bāysonghor (Golestān Library, Tehrān, no. 716, fols. 4, 13, 413, 572), but they are generally not lobed (see, for instance, Binyon et al., Persian Miniature Painting, pls. 44-50). The embroidery appears as late as 1445 in a Khamsé manuscript produced in Herāt (Topkapi Sarāy Library, H.781, fol. 48b); see Lentz and Lowry, no. 32, p. 163. The latter manuscript is illustrated by a certain Khājé `Ali from Tabriz, and the paintings are very much in the Jalāyerid-Turkaman tradition of Tabriz. Whether the fashion was imported from Tabriz or was occasionally followed in Herāt, by the fourth quarter of the fifteenth century no Herāti painting appears to display such a pattern, while Turkaman ones abound with it.

308 For a general discussion, see J. Hamilton, "Toqhuz-Oghuz et On-Uygur," Journal Asiatique (1962), pp. 23-63.

309 Five Oghuz clans--the Afshâr, Sâlur, Doger, Yive, and Qiniq--are attested in historical texts to have been in Islamic lands prior to the Mongol invasions. See J. E. Woods, The Aqqoyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976), p. 39.

310 Among the Qara-Qoyunlu the paramount clan was the Bahârlu, who were associated with one of the original Oghuz clans; within the Âq-Qoyunlu, the Bayândur, also an original Oghuz clan, were preeminent; see Woods, Aqqoyunlu, p. 41. Minorsky suggests that the Bahârlu had strong connections with the Yive, an original Oghuz clan; see V. Minorsky, "Bahârlu," in Encyclopédie de l'Islam, 2d ed. (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1960-), vol. 1, p. 947.

311 Khândamir says that Qara-Yusof would kneel in respect by his son and issue farmâns with the following heading: "Pir-Budâq Bahâdor Khân has ordered (yerliqindin), the victorious Yusof Bahâdor has said (suzumiz, relayed the order)"; see Ghiyâsoddin b. Homâm Khândamir, Habibossiyar (Dearest of chronicles), ed. Mohammad-e Dabir Siyâqi (Tehrân: Khayyâm Books, 1974), vol. 3, p. 576.

312 Ibid., p. 578.

313 See Woods, Aqqoyunlu, p. 257.

314 Ibid., p. 114.

315 Ibid., pp. 115-16.

316 Woods, Aqqoyunlu, pp. 127-28.

317 Ibid., p. 135.

318 Khândamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 74. Pir Budâq's military prowess prompted Jahânshâh to summon his son to Herât when the city was threatened by the Teymurid Soltân Abu-Sa`id in 1458.

319 Ibid., p. 84.

320 The poems are cited by the chronicler Dowlatshâh-e Samarqandi in his Tazkeratoshsho`arâ (Poets' memorial), circa 1487; trans. W. Thackston, in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge: The Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989), pp. 46-47.

321 Khândamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 86. This seemingly popular view was repeated by Dowlatshâh-e Samarqandi: "That unholy deed caused fortune to turn against him"; see Thackston, Century of Princes, p. 47.

322 The Il-Khânids used the Chinese "red seal" or âl-tamghâ (see cat. no. 9). The red seal used by the Jalâyerid Soltân Ahmad is also square, but its content is Islamic and its script is angular kufic, very much in the spirit of the Chinese seals. See J. Qâem-Maqâmi, Yeksad-o panjâh sanad-e târikhi, az Jalâyeriân tâ Pahlavi (One hundred fifty historical documents, from the Jalâyerids to the Pahlavis) (Tehrân: Iranian Army Press, 1348), p. 10.

323 The Qorân verse is sura 16, âya 90.

324 A seal imprint of Soltân Ya`qub is similarly composed with the same Qorânic âya for the the first half of the couplet; the second half reads, "Ya`qub son of Hasan son of `Ali son of Osmân"; see Modarresi-e Tabâtabâ'i, Farmânhâ-ye torkamânân-e qara-qoyunlu va âq-qoyunlu (Farmâns of the Turkaman Qara-Qoyunlu and Âq-Qoyunlu) (Qom [Iran]: Hekmat Publications, 1352), p. 106.

325 For comparison, see the shamsé of a manuscript of Divân-e Qâsemi (Collected poems of Qâsemi) prepared for Pir-Budâq in 1458 (Trk ve Islam Eserleri Mzesi, Istanbul, Ms. 1986; see Lentz and Lowry, p. 249). For a manuscript copied in Baghdad for Pir Budâq, see I. Stchoukine, "La peinture … Baghdâd sous Sultân Pir Budâq Qara-Qoyunlu," Arts Asiatiques 25 (1972), pp. 3-18.