[CT]introduction

326 For a reproduction see B. Âtâbây, Fehrest-e divânhâ-ye khati-ye ketâbkhâné-ye saltanati(Catalogue of literary manuscripts in the imperial library) (Tehrân: Zibâ Press, 2535), vol. 2, pp. 846-47. The manuscript was completed on the fifth of Jomâdâ I A.H. 833/January 3, 1430.

327 See H. Fazâ'eli, Ta`lim-e khatt (Teaching calligraphy) (Tehrân: Sorush Publications, 2536), p. 265, for an account attributed to Ja`far on the gradual development of nasta`liq. Ja`far seems to have been a pupil of Mir `Ali-ye Tabrizi's son, `Abdollâh. In a calligraphy included in the Golshan album (no. 1663-64) kept in the Golestân Library, Tehrân, Ja`far wrote in lieu of signature: "Copied by . . . Ja`far the scribe . . . along the style of the originator, `Ali as-Soltâni, son of Hasan . . . in Herât"; Bayâni, vol. 1, p. 120. Soheyli has noted that there were two scribes called Mir `Ali, both contemporary: one is the son of Hasan, the other the son of Eliyâs who copied the manuscript of Homây-o Homâyun for the Jalâyerid Soltân Ahmad (British Library, Add. ms. 18113); see Qâzi Ahmad-e Qomi, Golestân-e honar (Garden of talents), ed. A. Soheyli (Tehrân: Bonyâd-e Farhang-e Iran, 1352), pp. xvi-xviii.

328 Bayâni also noted Ja`far's merit in the traditional scripts and his weakness in nasta`liq when judged by later standards; Bayâni, vol. 1, p. 118.

329 Bayâni records a poem written by Ja`far on Bâysonghor's death; ibid., vol. 1, p. 117.

330 See the `Arzédâsht, a progress report on the atelier's activities from Ja`far to Bâysonghor, in Lentz and Lowry, p. 364.

331 The epithet noyân is used for Qara-Yusof when he is named in the seal of his grandson Pir-Budâq (see cat. no. 43), as on his coinage; see M. Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam (London: Hawkins Publications, 1977), p. 266.

332 Qara-Yusof himself used the title Khâqân when addressing Shâhrokh in a letter circa 1419; see Asnâd va mokatebât-e târikhi-ye Iran (Iranian historical documents and official letters), ed. A. H. Navâ'i (Tehrân: Bongâh-e Tarjomé va Nashr-e Ketâb, 1341), p. 173.

333 Only the colophon of the 1417 Makhzanol-asrâr has survived in the Diez Album (fol. 74) of the Orientabteilung, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz. It reads: "Has served for its writing . . . Ja`far the hâfez [reader of Qorân] from Tabriz . . . on the fourteenth of Rabi` II of the year 820 [1417] in Yazd, city of the worshipers, may God protect it"; see B. Gray, ed., The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 14th-16th Centuries (Paris: Unesco, 1979), p. 23. The first known dated manuscript copied by Ja`far for Bâysonghor is a copy of the Khosrow and Shirin of Nezâmi dated A.H. 824/1421 kept in the State Public Library, St. Petersburg (Ivan 93, B 1332). Two other works copied by Ja`far, a Khamsé of Nezâmi dated A.H. 823/1420 at the British Library (Or. ms. 12087) and a Divân of Hâfez copied in 1418 in the Topkapi Sarây Library, Istanbul (R.947), do not give any information on their patron or their city of execution.

334 Ahmad b. Hosayn b. `Ali-ye Kâteb, Târikh-e jadid-e Yazd (New history of Yazd), ed. I. Afshâr (Tehrân: Iran-zamin Press, 2537), p. 111.

335 Usage of the word `âlamiyân (of the people of the world) in conjunction with shâh or shâhzâdé (king or son of king) became popular in Âq-Qoyunlu times. A similar formula was used on a horse chamfron made for Prince Yusof Âq-Qoyunlu, brother of Ya`qub; it is presently in the Sheikh El-Ard collection. Its inscription reads: "Bé rasm-e khazâné-ye Shâhzâdé-ye `âlamiyân Soltân Yusof" ([Made] for the treasury of Soltân Yusof, prince over the people of the world); see Sotheby's, Oct. 12, 1988, lot 96.

336 Qâzi `Isâ was the son of the vizier Shokrollâh, who had been Ya`qub's teacher; Khândamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 431.

337 Ibid., p. 432.

338 Ibid., p. 431. Ya`qub ordered that no farmân would be legitimate unless adorned with Najmoddin's signature. A farmân of Soltân Ya`qub dated A.H. 893/1488, giving tax-exempt status to endowments to the Mansurié school of Shirâz, bears acknowledgments from Qâzi `Isâ (signed as `Isâ son of Shokrollâh), his brother and deputy Shaykh `Ali (signed as `Ali son of Shokrollâh), and Najmoddin Mas`ud's seal imprint (a verse that contains the word an-najm); see Modarresi, Farmânhâ-ye Torkamânân, no. 22, p. 106.

339 J. Aubin, "Etudes safavides I, Shah Ismail et les notables de l'Iraq persan," JESHO 2, pt. 1 (1959), pp. 37-81.

340 V. Minorsky, "The Aq-Qoyunlu Land Reforms," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 (1955), p. 455.

341 Khândamir says that although he survived, Najmoddin Mas`ud had no official function in the government (Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 436). Bayâni says that he was poisoned in the power struggle between Bâysonghor son of Ya`qub and Rostam Beyg but does not give a source (Bayâni, vol. 4, p. 272), a contention refuted by the inscription here, since the struggle between the two Âq-Qoyunlu princes preceded Ahmad's accession by some four years.

342 Bayâni, vol. 4, p. 272.

343 The polo player is almost identical to a horseman depicted in a Jalâyerid manuscript of Nezâmi produced in Baghdad and dated 1386 and 1388 (British Library, Or. ms. 13297, fol. 19a). For a discussion of Jalâyerid manuscripts, see N. M. Titley, Persian Miniature Painting (London: British Library, 1983), pp. 56-57.

344 See I. Stchoukine, "La peinture … Yazd au début du XV siŠcle," Syria 43 (1966), figs. 5-6, and Lentz and Lowry, no. 59.

345 Kamâl had opted not to return to his native city of Khojand but to remain in Tabriz on return from a pilgrimage. He was taken by Toqtamish Khân to Sarây but returned after four years to the Jalâyerid court at Tabriz; Azar-e Bigdeli, Âtashkadé (Fire temple), dated A.H. 1258/1842, private collection.

346 Bayâni, vol. 1, p. 69.

347 Ibid., p. 72. The manuscript (Trk ve Islam Eserleri Mzesi, Istanbul, Ms. 1927) was copied in Mashhad and was perhaps commissioned by Pir-Budâq as he was returning from Herât after the brief occupation of 1458.

348 For more information on the western style, see Bayâni, vol. 2, pp. 384-86. Numerous calligraphic specimens of `Abdorrahim are included in an album assembled for Soltân Ya`qub (Topkapi Sarây Library, Istanbul, H.2153); see a reproduction in M. S. Ipsiroglu, Siyah Qalem (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlasanstalt, 1976), pl. 1; see also 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), pls. 71-72. Under Ya`qub, `Abdorrahim signed his name as `Abdorrahim-e Ya`qubi; his pen name was Anisi (companion [to Soltân Ya`qub]); Bayâni, vol. 2, p. 384.

349 Y. Zokâ, "Khâvarânnâmé: Noskhé-ye khatti va mossavar-e muzé-ye honarhâ-ye taz'ini" (Khâvarânnâmé: The illustrated manuscript at the Museum of Decorative Arts--Tehrân), Honar va Mardom 20 (1343), pp. 17-29. `Ali's face has been repainted, probably in the late nineteenth century. It had most likely been erased by a religious zealot who considered the depiction of the imam's face blasphemous.

350 B. W. Robinson, Islamic Painting and Arts of the Book (London: Faber and Faber, 1976), pp. 160-61.

351 For a complete discussion of the style, see B. W. Robinson, "The Turkaman School to 1503," in Gray, Arts of the Book, pp. 215-47.

352 Sayyeds had arrived in the coastal provinces by the Caspian Sea and established local dynasties as early as the ninth century A.D.

353 The death of Esmâ`il's elder brother Soltân `Ali Pâdshâh has been said to have occurred as early as the end of 1493, after which Esmâ`il escaped to Ardabil and then Gilân (Qâzi Ahmad-e Ghaffâri, Târikh-e jahânârâ [World-adorning history] [Tehrân: Hâfez Publications, 1343], p. 263, and Khândamir, Habibossiyar, vol. 4, p. 441); however, the Ahsanottâvarikh lists the event under 1494 (Hasan Beyg-e Rumlu, Ahsanottavârikh [Best of chronicles], ed. A. Navâ'i [Tehrân: Heydari Press, 1357], pp. 11-23; see also Woods, Aqqoyunlu, pp. 289-90). Esmâ`il's arrival in Lâhijân (Gilân) could not have been later than 1494, as the chronicler Qazvini, writing in 1541, states that Esmâ`il departed in 1494 for Gilân, where he stayed until 1500 (Yahyâ son of `Abdol-latif-e Qazvini, Lobottavârikh [Essence of chronicles], ed. S. J. Tehrâni [Tehrân: Khâvar Publishers, 1315], p. 240).

354 Rumlu, Ahsanottavârikh, p. 120.

355 Ibid., p. 20.

356 Sakisian estimated that some twenty (or more) paintings had been dispersed in the early twentieth century; for more on the manuscript, see Robinson, Islamic Painting, p. 160. S. C. Welch mentions a second manuscript of Shâhnâmé that was copied in February 1496 for Kârkiâ Mirzâ `Ali, which is now preserved in the Topkapi Sarây Library, Istanbul (H.1491); see M. B. Dickson and S. C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), vol. 1, p. 239.

357 Robinson, Islamic Painting, pp. 160-61.

358 Ibid.

359 In Shi`a beliefs, the Prophet Mohammad's cousin and son-in-law, `Ali, was considered the legitimate successor of the Prophet, and `Ali and eleven of his descendants, collectively known as the Twelve Imams, were the spiritual leaders of the Muslim community. Esmâ`il's actual proclamation went little beyond recognizing `Ali as the legitimate successor to the Prophet and cursing the first three caliphs as usurpers. See M. M. Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Safavids (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1972), p. 6, and Hasan Beyg-e Rumlu, Ahsanottavârikh (Best of chronicles), ed. A. Navâ'i (Tehrân: Heydari Press, 1357), p. 86.

360 For a portrait of Shâh Esmâ`il, see J.-L. Bacqué-Grammoont, Les ottomans, les safavides et leur voisins, contributions a l'histoire des relations internationales dans l'Orient Islamique de 1514 … 1524 (Nederlands Historich-Archaelogish Institut Te Isanbul, 1987), p. 16.

361 See W. M. Thackston, "The Diwan of Khata'i: Pictures for the Poetry of Shah Isma`il," Asian Art (Fall 1988), p. 37.

362 Esmâ`il's grandfather, Jonayd, had married Khadijé Beygom, Uzun Hasan Âq-Qoyunlu's sister. When Jonayd died, his father, Soltân Haydar, was brought to the Âq-Qoyunlu court where he remained for ten years. Haydar later married Uzun Hasan's daughter Halimé, who gave birth to Esmâ`il. J. E. Woods, The Aqqoyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976), p. 119.

363 Ibid., p. 161. Esmâ`il's Shi`a opponents were shown no greater mercy: the entire ten-thousand-man garrison of Kiâ Hosayn Cholâvi, a formidable Shi`a adversary, was put to the sword, and two officers roasted alive and reportedly eaten; see Qâzi Ahmad-e Ghaffâri, Târikh-e jahânârâ (World-adorning history) (Tehrân: Hâfez Publications, 1343), p. 268; R. M. Savory, "The Consolidation of Safavid Power in Persia," Der Islam 41 (1965), pp. 71-94.

364 Esmâ`il's grandmother, Khadijé, Uzun Hasan's sister, was a granddaughter of Maria Komnene of the same Greek family of Trabzon; see Woods, Aqqoyunlu, pp. 216, 225.

365 See J. Aubin, "Etudes safavides I, shah Ismail et les notables de l'Iraq persan," JESHO 2, pt. 1 (1959), pp. 37-81.

366 Woods, Aqqoyunlu, pp. 173-78.

367 By male descent Esmâ`il was Kurdish and ethnically considered to be Iranian; see Mazzaoui, Origins of the Safavids, pp. 48-51.

368 Bacqué-Grammoont, Les ottomans, les safavides, p. 29.

369 Ibid.

370 Ibid., p. 233.

371 The genealogy on fols. 10r and 11v, reads: Shaykh Safioddin Abol-Fath Es-hâq, son of Shaykh Aminoddin Jabreil, son of Sâleh, son of Qotboddin Ahmad, son of Sâlehoddin Rashid, son of Mohammad the reciter of Qorân, son of `Avaz, son of Firuz Shâh Zarrin-Kolâh, son of Mohammad, son of Ebrâhim, son of Ja`far, son of Esmâ`il, son of Mohammad, son of Ahmad-e A`râbi, son of Abu Mohammad al-Qâsem, son of Abol-Qâsem Hamzé, son of imam Musâ al-Kâzem, son of imam Ja`far as-Sâdeq, son of imam Mohammad Bâqer, son of imam Zaynol-`Âbedin `Ali, son of imam, the lord of the martyrs, Abu `Abdollâh al-Hosayn, son of `Ali, Commander of the Faithful.

372 A sayyed is actually a descendant of the Prophet's grandsons, Hasan and Hosayn, by male descent.

373 Several categories of renewers are considered: the Sufi shaykhs, the caliphs, Islamic jurists, and rulers. A later hand, seemingly rejecting the whole theory, tampered with the text on fol. 6r and added signs of negation that render the hadith incorrect.

374 See A. Kasravi, Maghâlât-e Kasravi (Kasravi's essays) (Newport Beach, Calif.: Gutenberg Publications, n.d.), pp. 218-53. Kasravi points out incongruent stories that had been modified or added to the original text, observing that all early documents refer to Safioddin (and his immediate successors) as shaykh and never as sayyed or mir; that according to the contemporary historian Mostowfi "the people of Ardabil adhered to the Shâfe`i (a Sunni branch) and were followers of Shaykh Safioddin," thus arguing that the shaykh himself must have been a Sunni; and that had he been a Shi`a, Safioddin would have certainly proclaimed it under the Il-Khân Uljâytu (r. 1304-17) who became a staunch supporter of the Shi`a cause. See also Mazzaoui, Origins of the Safavids, pp. 46-51.

375 The revised version was written by Abol-Fath al-Hosayni. He states that "he had received a royal command from Shâh Tahmâsb to revise and correct the Safvatossafa." See Kasravi, Maghâlât-e Kasravi, p. 227.

376 This Allâh-Qoli Soltân is possibly the son of Ja`far Soltân Tâlesh-e Kangarlu who, in the 1580s, was involved in operations against the Turkamans resisting Uljâytu; see J. J. Reid, Tribalism and Society in Islamic Iran (Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1983), p. 158. Being of the Tâlesh clan, the earliest to support the Safavids and the most loyal to their cause, he would have been a natural candidate to become keeper of the Ardabil Shrine.

377 Eskandar Beyg, vol. 1, p. 19. The `Âlamârâ-ye Shâh Esmâ`il (World-adorning history of Shâh Esmâ`il), ed. A. Montazer-Sâhah (Tehrân: Bongâh-e Tarjomé va Nashr-e Ketâb, 1349), p. 26, whose tales often border on folklore, specifies that in his dream, Haydar was ordered by the first imam, `Ali, Commander of the Faithful, to give the tâj to his followers. Another version of the manuscript specifies the precise manner of cutting the scarlet fabric; see C. Adle, "Entre timurides, mogols, et safavides: Notes sur un chahnamé de l'atelier-bibliothŠque royal d'Ologh Beg II … Caboul (873-907/1469-1502)," in Drouot (Daussy-Ricqles), June 15, 1990, p. 145.

378 Rumlu, Ahsanottavârikh, p. 11; Ghaffâri, Târikh-e jahânârâ, p. 263.

379 See, for instance, B. W. Robinson, Persian Paintings in the John Rylands Library (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1980), p. 219, no. 650.

380 Woods, Aqqoyunlu, pp. 181, 296.

381 See, for instance, L. Fekete, Einfuhrung in die Persische Paleographie (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiado, 1977), nos. 18, 21.

382 See, for example, ibid., pls. 66, 67, 71, 74.

383 Amir Khosrow was born into a family of military commanders (hezâré), which, displaced by successive Mongol invasions, sought employment with the soltân of Delhi. For a biography, see Wahid Mirza, The Life and Works of Amir Khosrow (reprint; Delhi: Idarah-i Adabyat-i, 1974).

384 Amir Khosrow's first patron was Prince Mohammad, son of Soltân Balbân, who met a tragic death campaigning against the Mongols, an event Amir Khosrow eulogized in one of his most remarkable poems; ibid., p. 56. See also Abdol-Qâder b. Malekshâh Badauni, Muntakhab al-tawarikh (Selected histories) (reprint; Osnabrck: Biblio Verlag, 1983), pp. 138-54.

385 The river's name has been read in many ways: Saru, Sarju, Sarav, etc. The spelling in this manuscript gives the reading Sar-ow, literally "water-head."

386 The Qerânossa`deyn is a versified story in a masnavi mode composed after Nezâmi's Makhzanol-asrâr (Treasury of mysteries), circa 1170.

387 Storey lists the following copies of Qerânossa`deyn written prior to 1514: two copies within volumes including other works of Amir Khosrow such as the Farhâd-o Shirin (Farhâd and Shirin), and one copy as part of a set of five works; see C. A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (London: Luzac & Co., 1970), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 499-500. In addition, B. Âtâbây gives one manuscript comprising eight works of Amir Khosrow, including the Qerânossa`deyn, dated A.H. 894/1488; see Fehrest-e divânhâ-ye khati-ye ketâbkhâné-ye saltanati(Catalogue of literary manuscripts in the imperial library) (Tehrân: Zibâ Press, 2535), p. 41.

388 Storey lists two single volumes of Qerânossa`deyn, both with unreliable dates, one marked as A.H. 907/1502? (India Office and Records, London, Ethé 1208), and one in the library of the Âstân-e Qods in Mashhad, catalogued as written in naskh and dated A.H. 912/1506; see Storey, Persian Literature, vol. 1, pp. 499-500. The Mashhad manuscript, with fifty-two folios and twelve couplets per page, is an abridged version. Judging from photocopies of its early pages, the script is not naskh but nasta`liq, and the illumination indicates a pre-Safavid Herât or Bokhârâ provenance in the first half of the sixteenth century.

389 One of the volumes, copied by Soltân-Mohammad-e Khandân, dated A.H. 921/1515, with four illustrations added later, is in the British Library (Add. ms. 7753); see N. M. Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts (London: British Museum Publications, 1977), no. 57; C. Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum (reprint; Oxford: Alden Press, 1966), vol. 2, p. 616; and I. Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits safavis (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1959), p. 142, pl. 14. Another volume, ex-Claude Annet collection, was copied in 1515 by Soltân-Mohammad-e Nur, with three paintings added a century later in Herât; see Sotheby's June 4, 1920, lot 65. A third is a manuscript dated A.H. 922/1516, copied by the same Soltân-Mohammad-e Nur, with contemporary illustrations (attributed here to Shaykhzâdé), and now in the Topkapi Sarây Library, Istanbul (H.871); see F. Cagman and Z. Tanindi, The Topkapi Saray Museum: The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts, ed. and trans. J. M. Rogers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), p. 160.

390 The attribution to Soltân-Mohammad-e Nur rather than his namesake Soltân-Mohammad-e Khandân rests on stylistic considerations. For instance, compare the last "yâ," the "shin," and the "alef-maddé" in this manuscript with those from the 1524 Metropolitan Museum of Art Khamsé of Nezâmi (13.228), as reproduced in P. J. Chelkowski and P. Soucek, Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), pp. 13, 26, 30, 36.

391 Rumlu, Ahsanottavârikh, p. 186, Ghaffâri, Târikh-e jahânârâ, p. 281. Tahmâsb was born eight days before the end of the lunar year A.H. 919/1514, and a manuscript commissioned on that occasion could only have been completed in A.H. 920/1514-15. `Âlamârâ-ye Shâh Esmâ`il, pp. 82-96, gives a lengthy account on the premature birth of Shâh Tahmâsb in the village of Renân near Esfahân, while Eskandar Beyg names Shâhâbad as the district where Tahmâsb was born; see Eskandar Beyg, vol. 1, p. 45. Renân could have been the original name of Shâhâbad as the latter literally means "village of the shâh."

392 In cat. no. 56a, at the bottom of the page preceding the illustration, a heading announces a poem in the ghazal form, in which all couplets should end in the same rhyme and the subject is usually purely poetical and unrelated to the story, while the couplets written in the painted area follow a different rhyming scheme. Thus in this case, deletion of the ghazal did not impair the flow of narration. Such is not the case for cat. no. 56b, where the deletion eliminated verses from the main text.

393 Sâm Mirzâ joined the royal encampment in Gandomân in the Bakhtiyâri district of Esfahân; see `Abdi Beyg-e Shirâzi, Takmelatol-akhbâr (Supplementary chronicles), ed. A. H. Navâ'i (Tehrân: Nashr-e Ney, 1369), p. 67.

394 M. Dickson, "Shah Tahmasb and the Uzbeks (The Duel for Khorasan with `Ubayd Khan), 930-946/1524-1540," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1958, pp. 193-97.

395 `Abdi Beyg appears to have been present at the Gandomân encampment, since subsequent to the princely encounter in 1531 and the skirmishes between Hosayn Khân-e Shâmlu and the regent Chuhé Soltân, the young `Abdi Beyg joined Hosayn's household and even served for a time as Sâm Mirzâ's secretary; he quit sometime prior to Hosayn's execution in 1533. See `Abdi Beyg, Takmelatol-akhbâr, pp. 17, 73.