"Rustam is Thrown into the Sea by the Div Akvan", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi

Rustam thrown into the Water by the Demon Akvan


Cheered on by a squawking duck, Rustam—the principal champion of Firdausi's great eleventh-century Iranian epic the Shah-nama (Book of Kings)—fights for his life. In this episode Rustam, exhausted by his strenuous search for the terrible div Akvan, lies down for a nap. As Rustam sleeps, the div comes upon him, and with devilish care cuts out the turf around him and lifts him, ground and all, into the air. With gentlemanly consideration, Akvan then asks Rustam whether he would prefer to be flung to his death onto the mountaintops or drowned in the deep sea. Knowing that whichever he chooses, the demon will do the opposite, Rustam requests the former, whereupon Akvan tosses him into the sea. After battling with crocodiles, Rustam swims to freedom.

The artist portrays the scene with the utmost humor and economy. Akvan's arms have barely released his victim, yet his optimistic face is already shadowed by a hint of dismay. The jumble of waves calms obediently where Rustam swims, and although the weeds just beyond the nasty, lionesque water creature stab aggressively at the hero, the blossoms near him peep out in tender encouragement.

All the known miniatures from the manuscript to which this painting belongs, called the Schulz Shah-nama after the distinguished German scholar who once owned it, are in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are the best drawn, among the most vigorous, and probably the earliest of surviving pictures from the Sultanate period. The date of the miniatures can be hazarded on the basis of related early fourteenth-century material usually associated with Iran, a group that includes two now dispersed copies of the Shah-nama in a similar small format and illustrated in an equally lively but more fastidious style, with less stocky figures.[1]

Inasmuch as paintings of the early Sultanate period in India are extremely rare, one can do no more than speculate on the provenance of the Schulz Shah-narna. The bright, flat colors, with large areas of vermilion, look ahead to seventeenth-century pictures from Malwa, in Central India, which was annexed by 'Ala' ad-Din Khalji (r. 1296–1316) in 1305 and continued to be governed from Muslim Delhi until it became independent in 1401, three years after Timur's sack of Delhi. In all likelihood these small pictures belong either to the Khalji tradition or to that of the Tughluqs who succeeded them in 1320. They were probably painted either in Delhi or at Malwa, where the style spawned many stylistic descendants. The artist is likely to have been trained in Iran and to have undergone an emboldening change of style after he came to India. Already strongly Indian are the ruggedly patterned vermilion sky, the large flowers reminiscent of Western Indian painting, the well-observed elephants (which are unknown in Iranian painting), and the exhilarating overall gusto.

[Welch 1985]

Footnotes:

1. For the two small Shah-nama manuscripts, see Simpson, Marianna Shreve. The Illustrations of an Epic: The Earliest "Shahnama" Manuscripts. Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1979; Robinson, B. W. "A Survey of Persian Painting (1350–1896)." In Art et Société dans le Monde Iranienne. Ed. C. Adle. Paris, 1982, p. 21; Robinson, B. W. "Areas of Controversy in Islamic Painting: Two Recent Publications." Apollo 120 (1984), pp. 32–35.For another group of Shah-nama illustrations (Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin), which stands midway between the Schulz Shahnama and the other two small manuscripts, sec: lpsiroglu, Saray-Alben, pl. 1, figs. 1, 2; pl. 2, figs. 3-5; pl. 3, fig. 6.


Rustam is Thrown into the Sea by the Div Akvan

Rustam awoke to find himself still lying on the clod of earth on which he had fallen asleep but now it was held aloft by the div Akvan, who offered him the alternative of dying by being flung onto the mountains or into the sea. Rustam chose the mountains, believing that death on the hard rocks would be a worse fate and knowing that the div would do just the opposite. The div then threw Rustam into the sea. Rustam drew his sword and fought his way through the crocodiles to shore, as is so delightfully pictured in this miniature, where the crocodile is in the form of a lion. The div Akvan looks down on him with a leer from the upper-right corner, while two ducks are oblivious to the drama. The red grounds and its plants resemble those in the Mu'nis al-ahrar.

This illustration is original and unique. It is the very lack of outside influence in this and other miniatures in the Gutman manuscript that have led some scholars to suggest a provenance such as Sultanate India, remote from known artistic centers in Iran.

The illustrations of this story in the First and Second Small Shahnamas, and in all subsequent manuscripts, show Rustam prone on the clod of earth, held aloft by his tormentor.[1]

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, nos. 105 (Kraus Collection, no. 27), 106 (Freer Gallery of Art, 45.23).

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 Metropolitan Museum of Art. "INDIA !," September 14–September 14, 1985, no. 73.

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. 23.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, pp. 14, 74–75, ill. vol. 2, pl. 14.

Harari, Ralph, and Richard Ettinghausen. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Arthur Upham Pope. vol. I–VI. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. vol. III, p. 183, ill. vol. V, pl. 832E (b/w).

Dimand, Maurice S. "An Exhibit of Islamic and Indian Paintings." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n. s., vol. 14 (December 1955). pp. 85–102, ill. p. 85 (b/w).

Grube, Ernst J. "from Collections in the United States and Canada." In Muslim Miniature Paintings from the XIII to XIX Century. Venice: N. Pozza, 1962. no. 20, p. 29, ill.

Welch, Stuart Cary. India! Art and Culture 1300–1900. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985. no. 73, pp. 128–29, ill. p. 128 (color).

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. 23, pp. 98–99, ill. p. 99 (color).