"Isfandiyar's Fourth Course: He Slays a Sorceress", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi

Isfandiyar's Fourth Course: He Slays a Sorceress

Illustrations of Isfandiyar's encounter with the witch closely resemble Rustam's, but the story is different. Rustam did not know that the beautiful maiden who appeared before him was in fact a sorceress, while Isfandiyar did, and came prepared. After plying her with wine, he threw a magically unbreakable steel chain around her neck and then struck her with his sword.

In this miniature, the artist has presented a delightful scene. Isfandiyar is seated in the foreground beneath a tree inhabited by birds, strumming his lute. At the foot of the tree is a pond with a duck swimming in it and on the other side of the pond stands a beautiful maiden. The hero's horse is beside her at the left. It is traditional in this scene, as is for representations of Rustam and the sorceress, for the witch to be shown in her true and hideous form, but the fresh approach found in this manuscript is again manifest here.

This Fourth Course is pictured in the Freer and the First and Second Small Shahnamas but the illustrations in only the first two manuscripts are published.[1] In the Freer version the witch in her hag-like form is in the center; Isfandyar, with raised sword, is at the right; and his horse is higher up on the left. The First Small Shahnama shows the sorceress in the form of a tiger with the chain around his neck, facng the hero with his raised sword. Illustrations of Isfandiyar and the sorceress tend to follow the iconography of Rustam and the sorceress, where the latter is also depicted as a hideous hag, but these scenes can be differentiated by Rustam's tiger-skin curass.[2] Again, the Gutman miniature stands alone.

Mary Lukens Swietochowski in [Swietochowski and Carboni 1994]

Notes:

1. M. S. Simpson. The Illustration of an Epic: The Earliest Shahnama Manuscripts. New York, 1979, nos. 9 (Freer Gallery of Art, 30.5), 10 (Chester Beatty Library, Ms. 104.35); for the Second Small Shahnama see p. 379 (RISD, 44.302v).

2. A. T. Adamova and L. T. Giuzal'ian, Miniatiury rukopisi poemy "Shakhname" 1333 goda. St. Petersburg, 1985, no. 10 (from the 1333 St. Petersburg Inju'id Shahnama). In the 1330 Inju'id Shahnama in Istanbul the sorceress is shown twice, as a comely damsel and as a horrible witch.

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. 33.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, pp. 74–75, ill. vol. 2, pl. 16.

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. 1834, ill. vol. V, pl. 832C (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. 22, p. 30, ill.

Ettinghausen, Richard. "Islamic Art." MMA Bulletin vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1975). p. 13, ill. (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. 33, pp. 73, 79, 110–11, ill. p. 111 (color).