Abu'l Qasim Firdausi | "Rustam Falls in the Spear-Lined Pit", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

Title: "Rustam Falls in the Spear-Lined Pit", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

Author: Abu'l Qasim Firdausi (Iranian, Paj ca. 940/41–1020 Tus)

Date: ca. 1330–40

Geography: Attributed to Iran, probably Isfahan

Medium: Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper

Dimensions: Page:
H. 8 in. (20.3 cm)
W. 5 3/16 in. (13.2 cm)
Painting:
H. 1 7/8 in. (4.8 cm)
W. 4 1/4 in. (10.8 cm)

Classification: Codices

Credit Line: Bequest of Monroe C. Gutman, 1974

Accession Number: 1974.290.30

Rustam Dies and Rustam Avenges His Own Impending Death (1974.290.30 and .31)

Rustam was lured, with his brother Zavara, to the hunting fields of Kabul by its king and his treacherous half-brother, Shaghad, who had arranged for the deaths of the brothers by creating pits lined with spears and covered with brush over the course they were sure to ride. Rustam and Rakhsh, his faithful steed, fell into the pit and were impaled. Mortally wounded, Rustam raised himself to look out of the pit, saw Shaghad and knew him to be the culprit. Rustam asked Shaghad to string his bow and hand him an arrow so that he might ward off marauding animals until he died. Shahgad complied and, exulting, hid behind a tree. In spite of his pain and his wounds Rustam shot an arrow through the rotten trunk and into his murderer, killing him and thus avenging his own death. Zavara died in another pit. Usually the moment of Rustam's revenge is the scene chosen by illustrators.

These two miniatures (1974.290.30 and .31), on opposite sites of the same leaf, are close in composition and, as they are part of one episode, may be described together. Each has a red ground. The first has a slightly stepped format. In both pictures the pit--large and centered in the first, smaller and at the right in the second--is shown as a mound with a hole at the top through which Rustam emerges and with a section at the front sliced off to reveal his steed in its depths. This is already a characteristic device. In both paintings the spreading foliage of the sturdy tree suggests the existence of a benevolent nature in an otherwise starkly brutal scene. The lava-like rock at the left of the second miniature is derived from Chinese prototypes.

This unhappy event is illustrated in the First and Second Small Shahnamas but neither miniature has been published.[1] It is also found in the 1330 Inju'id Shahnama in Istanbul and among the illustrations from the 1341 dispersed Inju'id Shahnama, but these miniatures, too, are unpublished.[2]

Mary Lukens Swietochowsky in [Swietochowsky and Carboni 1994]

Notes:

1. M. S. Simpson. The Illustration of an Epic: The Earliest Shahnama Manuscripts. New York, 1979, pp. 373 (Chester Beatty Library, Ms. 104.43), 379 (Louvre, MAO 344r).

2. J. Norgren and E. Davis, Preliminary Index of Shah-Nameh Illustrations, Ann Arbor, 1969, n.p. (listed as "Rustam Slays Shaghad then Dies"; Istanbul, Topkapi Sarayi, Hazine 1479, and The Art Institute of Chicago, 34.117).

Ph. Walter Schulz, Leipzig, Germany (by 1914); Professor O. Moll, Düsseldorf, Germany ; Monroe C. Gutman, New York (by 1929–d. 1974; bequeathed to MMA)

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images: Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s," February 1–May 1, 1994, no. 36.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, pp. 74–75.

Masuya, Tomoko. "The Condition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Small Shahnama and the Reconstruction of its Text." In Poetry and Epic Images, edited by Marie Lukens Swietochowski, and Stefano Carboni. New York, 1994. pp. 129–45.

Swietochowski, Marie, Stefano Carboni, Tomoko Masuya, and Alexander H. Morton. Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images : Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. no. 36, pp. 114–15, ill. pl. 36 (b/w).