Rustam im Kampf mit dem Weissen Div Akhvan sowie weiteren Rostam-Szenen

Textes

Rustam is one of the most popular heroes of the Shahnama, the Book of Kings. In it, Ferdausi tells how Rustam must perform seven heroic deeds, the last of which is to kill the White Div and cut his liver out of his body to heal the blind Shah Kai Kavus. Rustam receives help from his hostage Olad, whom Rustam has tied to a tree, revealing to Rustam the appropriate time to defeat the White Div.

The iconography of the scene has remained more or less the same over the centuries, it is also one of the most frequently illustrated episodes from the Shahnama.

Several characteristic features of this page speak for its origin in Shiraz. Attributes, such as the extension of the illustration beyond the type area, the nebulous outline of the lines of text in interspersed flowers on gold, as well as the inclusion of other figures not mentioned in the text, all strongly indicate that its provenance was the Shiraz School.

In the Safavid period, Shiraz could already look back on a long tradition of painting. This creative cultural heritage was reinforced in the late 1560's by a commercial boom in manuscript production, resulting in illustrations visibly gaining in quality and converging with courtly painting in Qazvin and Mashhad. The development of the Schiraz School specifically, which expanded so magnificently in the period from 1570 to 1590, is probably also connected with Prince Muhammad, who was governor of Shiraz from 1572 to 1578 before ascending to the Persian throne as Ismaʿil II.
7. novembre 2022