"The Combat of Rustam and Ashkabus", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

The Combat of Rustam and Ashkabus

Ashkabus, with the arrogance of a mounted cavalier, scorned Rustam for coming to fight him on foot, but Rustam shot Ashkabus's horse out from under him so that he, too, became a foot soldier. Impervious to his foe's arrows, Rustam then shot Ashkabus with such force that the arrow penetrated up to its plume. The artist has chosen to illustrate the climactic moment when Rustam's arrow has just pierced Ashkabus, who reels backward from the impact. Behind Rustam stands a warrior with a chain mail aventail attached to his helmet so that only the eyes are visible. The warrior's presence, like that of the dust cloud, indicates that this is an event taking place within the framework of a battle between the opposing Iranian and Turanian forces. The mounted warrior at the left, throwing up his hands in a gesture of dispair, lets the viewer know what a blow the death of Ashkabus is to the Turanian side.

The encounter depicted here, very popular with later illustrators, also appears in the First Small Shahnama, where it is far less dramatically rendered.[1] There, Ashkabus is standing before his dead horse, but has not yet been shot himself. Rustam, holding a bow not yet bent, is seperated from him by a tree that acts as a barrier to the action. An odd coincidence is that in both miniatures the horse of Ashkabus is white, although color is not specified in the poem. Perhaps a popular version of the combat existed in the fourteenth century that indicated a white steed.

In the 1330 Inju'id Shahnama in Istanbul this confrontation is pictured with the least detail. Rustam, on the right, has just shot Ashkabus, who is falling backward from the impact. His dead horse lies in the foreground, in front of a large tree with outsized palmette foliage resembling artichokes.[2] Again, the three paintings clearly belong to different schools.

Mary Lukens Swietochowski in [Swietochowski and Carboni 1994]

Notes:

1. Simpson, M. S., The Illustration of an Epic; The Earliest Shahnama Manuscripts. New York, 1979, fig. 70 (from the Chester Beatty Library, Ms. 104.21).p. 355, not illustrated.

2. M. S. Ipsiroglu, Das Bild im Islam. Vienna–Munich, 1971, no. 28 (Istanbul, Topkapi Sarayi, Hazine 1479, f. 30b)

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. 19.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, p.14, ill. vol. 2, pl. 16.

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. 19, pp. 72, 78, 94–95, ill. pl. 19 (color).