Shahnama Studies II: The Reception of Firdausi S Shahnama

364 Pages·2012·21.517 MB·English

by  Melville, Charles(Editor)

Shahnama Studies
II
Studies in
Persian Cultural History
Editors
Charles Melville
Cambridge University
Gabrielle van den Berg
Leiden University
Sunil Sharma
Boston University
VOLUME 2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/spch
Shahnama Studies
II
The Reception of Firdausi’s Shahnama
Edited by
Charles Melville
Gabrielle van den Berg
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover Illustration: ‘Kai Kavus in his flying machine.’ Topkapı Saray Museum Library, Istanbul, H. 1486,
fol. 71r.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shahnama studies II : the reception of Firdausi’s Shahnama / edited by Charles Melville, Gabrielle
van den Berg.
p. cm. — (Studies in Persian cultural history ; v. 2)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21127-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Firdawsi. Shahnamah. I. Melville, C. P.
(Charles Peter), 1951- II. Van den Berg, Gabrielle Rachel, 1967-
PK6459.S52 2012
891’.5511—dc23
2012003074
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ISSN 2210-3554
ISBN 978 90 04 21127 8 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 22863 4 (e-book)
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contents v
Dedicated to the memory of
OLEG GRABAR
(1929-2011)
vi contents
contents vii

CONTENTS
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   ix
List of illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  xv
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   xix
Colour Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . following xx

Introduction
Charles Melville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1
PART ONE
THE RECEPTION OF THE ShahnaMa: LATER EPICS

Tracking the Shahnama Tradition in Medieval Persian Folk Prose
Julia Rubanovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Demons in the Persian Epic Cycle: The Div Shabrang in the Leiden
Shabrangnama and in Shahnama Manuscripts
Gabrielle van den Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Faramarz’s Expedition to Qannuj and Khargah: Mutual Influences
of the Shahnama and the Longer Faramarznama
Marjolijn van Zutphen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Influence of the Shahnama in the Extended Version of arday
Virafnama by Zartusht Bahram
Olga Yastrebova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Picturing Evil: Images of Divs and the Reception of the Shahnama
Francesca Leoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
PART TWO
THE ShahnaMa IN NEIGHBOURING LANDS
The Reception of Firdausi’s Shahnama Among the Ottomans
Jan Schmidt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
viii contents
The Illustration of the Shahnama and the Art of the Book in Ottoman
Turkey
Zeren Tanındı . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
The Shahnama of Firdausi in the Lands of Rum
Lâle Uluç . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Bahram’s Feat of Hunting Dexterity as Illustrated in Firdausi’s
Shahnama, Nizami’s haft Paikar and Amir Khusrau’s hasht Bihisht
adeela Qureshi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The Samarqand Shahnamas in the Context of Dynastic Change
Karin Ruehrdanz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
PART THREE
MANUSCRIPT STUDIES

Mapping Illustrated Folios of Shahnama Manuscripts: The Concept
and Its Uses
Farhad Mehran. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Shahnama Kings and Heroes in ‘aja’ib al-Makhluqat Illustrated
Manuscripts
Bilha Moor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
PART FOUR
ORAL TRADITIONS: FIELD REPORTS

Sistani Legends about Rustam and his Descendants
Ivan Steblin-Kamensky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

The Oral Variant of the Story of Barzu Amongst the Tajiks of Boysun
Ravshan Rahmoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

The Shahnama Oral Tradition in Contemporary Iran: The Cases of
Firuzkuh and Khurasan
Evangelos Venetis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
contributors ix

CONTRIBUTORS
GABRIELLE VAN DEN BERG studied Persian language and literature at
the University of Leiden and at the University of Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Her research focuses on the oral traditions of the Ismailis of Tajik
Badakhshan and classical Persian literature. From 1998 to 2001 she was
E.G. Browne lecturer in Persian at the University of Cambridge and in the
years following she was affiliated to the Cambridge Shahnama Project. In
2005 she was awarded a ‘VIDI’ grant from the Netherlands Organisation
for Scientific Research (NWO) to establish a research project on the
Persian epic cycle and the Shahnama of Firdausi with Marjolijn van
Zutphen and Evangelos Venetis. At present she is lecturer in Persian at
the University of Leiden.
FRANCESCA LEONI is currently the Yousef Jameel Curator of Islamic Art
at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford,
after holding posts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Rice
University. Her interests include the Islamic arts of the book in pre-mod-
ern and early modern times; cross-cultural exchanges between the
Islamic world, the Western world and Asia; and the history and circula-
tion of technologies. Among her recent publications are the exhibition
catalogue Light of the Sufis: The Mystical arts of Islam (Houston, 2010), co-
authored with Ladan Akbarnia; contributions to Gifts of the Sultan: The
arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, ed. Linda Komaroff (New Haven, 2011)
and Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic art in the Metropolitan
Museum of art, ed. Maryam Ekthiar, Priscilla Soucek and Sheila Canby
(New York, 2011); and the article “On the monstrous in the Islamic visual
tradition”, in The ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the
Monstrous, ed. Asa Mittman and Peter Dendle (Farnham, 2012).
FARHAD MEHRAN is an Independent researcher interested in the recon-
struction and dating of illustrated Shahnama manuscripts, and the statis-
tical analysis of text and image. Author of “The break-line verse: Link
between text and image in early Shahnama manuscripts”, in Shahnama
Studies I, ed. Charles Melville, Pembroke Papers 5 (Camb ridge, 2006), 151-
69.
x contributors
CHARLES MELVILLE is Professor of Persian History at the University of
Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Since 1999, he has been
Director of the Shahnama Project, and since 2006 he has been President
of The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA), both based in Cambridge.
His main research interests are in the history and historiography of Iran
in the Mongol to Safavid periods, and the illustration of Persian manu-
scripts. Recent publications include The Persian Book of Kings. Ibrahim
Sultan’s Shahnama (2008, with Firuza Abdullaeva) and Epic of the Kings.
The art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (2010, with Barbara Brend), and edited
volumes of Safavid Persia (1996), Shahnama Studies (2006), and ‘Millen-
nium of the Shahnama of Firdausi’ (Iranian Studies, 2010, also with Firuza
Abdullaeva); and “The illustration of history in Safavid manuscript paint-
ing”, in new perspectives on Safavid Iran, ed. C. Mitchell (London & New
York, 2011).
BILHA MOOR specializes in Islamic painting in the Department of
Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her PhD dissertation focused on 16th-century illustrated manuscripts of
‘aja’ib al-Makhluqat. In 2009 she served as research associate with the
Shahnama Project at the University of Cambridge. At present she teaches
Islamic art in the Department of Art History at the University of Haifa.
ADEELA QURESHI is currently completing a D.Phil. at the University of
Oxford, entitled “The hunt as metaphor in Mughal painting”. Her research
concerns the highly elaborate and diverse hunting practices of the
Mughals, which not only shed light on the many modes of hunting but
also on the many aspects of Mughal society. To date she has been a cura-
tor at the Keir Collection, London.
RAVSHAN RAHMONI was born near Boysun in the village of Pasurkhi in
present-day Uzbekistan. He studied Tajik philology at the Tajik State
University of Dushanbe, where he specialised in Tajik oral traditions, spe-
cifically from the Tajik-speaking regions of Surkhandarya in Uzbekistan.
From 1981 to 1985 he worked as a translator and a researcher in Kabul. In
1992 he established the Research Department for Anthropology (pazhu-
hishkada-yi mardumshinasi) at the Tajik State University of which he has
been the director ever since. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the
journal Mardumgiyoh, devoted to Tajik folklore studies. He has cooper-
ated with scholars from all over the world, amongst whom the anthro-