Chastisement of a Pupil

Chastisement of a Pupil

If the date of 114 inscribed on this painting refers to A.H. 1014 (1605–6 A.D.), it would mean that Muhammad Qasim was already established as an artist by the middle of the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I. Thanks to a reassessment by Adel Adamova, Muhammad Qasim is now considered a slightly younger contemporary of Riza-yi ‘Abbasi.[1] Massumeh Farhad’s study of the art patronage of ghulams (slaves from the Caucasus who converted to Islam and formed a cadre loyal to the shah) has reasonably proposed that Muhammad Qasim, Muhammad ‘Ali, and Muhammad Yusuf were all active in Mashhad in the first half of the seventeenth century.[2] Most likely, Muhammad Qasim found patrons in Isfahan as well, since his portrait Shah ‘Abbas I and a Pageboy from 1627 suggests that the artist was well known at the Safavid court.[3] Yet, his absence from the early seventeenth-century texts of Qadi Ahmad and Iskandar Beg Monshi implies that he was working in a city other than Isfahan and did not have a reputation in court circles until the 1620s. According to Farhad, the artist’s death date of A.H. 1070/1659 A.D. is mentioned in the Qisas al-khaqani (The Imperial Annals) of Wali Quli Shamlu.[4]

As the earliest reliably dated work of Muhammad Qasim, this tinted drawing of the bastinado, the punitive beating of an unfortunate student’s feet, contains many of the defining stylistic characteristics associated with the artist. Beardless youths have rounded cheeks, which become more pronounced over time. Large plane trees or variant species framing elements of the composition reappear in numerous works for the rest of his career, most notably in many of his illustrations to the 1648 Windsor Shahnama.[5] The stippled ground, fleshy clumps of low vegetation, jutting rocks with striated and cross-hatched contours, and even a fondness for blue linings on sleeves and skirts all recur throughout Muhammad Qasim’s oeuvre. While evidencing some illusionistic European techniques such as modeling, Muhammad Qasim’s style was far more conservative than that of the artists working in Isfahan, who embraced Indian as well as European influences. Over time his draftsmanship strengthened, and tentative passages were minimized.

A.-S. Melikian Chirvani has noted the allusion in this painting to the school scenes in Nizami’s poem "Layla and Majnun." He suggests that the lines the young boy at the lower left is writing, "I say love and I weep bitterly / I am an ignorant student: this is the first lesson," remind the viewer of the lovelorn Majnun, even though they are not from the original text.[6] Beyond the literary reference and exaggerated facial expressions of the figures, the scene provides a small window into how children learned to read, write, and burnish paper, including those occasions when the lesson had to be beaten into them.

Sheila R. Canby in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Adamova, Adel T. in Hillenbrand 2000, pp. 22–23.

2. Farhad, Massumeh in Babaie et al 2004, pp. 129–33.

3. Canby 2009, pp. 250–51.

4. Massumeh Farhad in Treasures of Islam. Exhibition, Musée Rath, Geneva. Catalogue by Toby Falk and others. London, 1985, no. 89.

5. Robinson, B[asil] W[illiam], and Eleanor Sims. The Windsor Shahnama of 1648. London,2007, for example pls. 2, 26, 96.

6. Melikian-Chirvani 2007, p. 392.


Chastisement of a Pupil

Muhammad Qasim has taken a piquant little vignette of a pupil being punished with the bastinado (probably stemming from earlier versions of illustrations of mosque schools) and turned it into the focal point of his drawing. The school scene, from which most other similar compositions were derived, is found in the popular story of Layla and Majnun from Nizami's Khamseh.[1]

In addition to reading and writing, these scenes invariably show a figure burnishing paper, as in the scene of Layla and Majnun at school from the Museum's Khamseh of Nizami of 1524–25.[2] A wonderful painting of a school held outdoors, dated to the early sixteenth century, shows, among other activities, a figure polishing paper as well as paper drying on a line.[3] A later painting, attributed to Mir Sayyid 'Ali, also depicts a mosque school and includes both the figure polishing paper and another being bastinadoed.[4]

In Muhammad Qasim's drawing, a youth in the foreground is polishing paper in the same pose as the other examples cited while the second foreground figure is writing calligraphic exercises. Two other youths hold the stick to which the victim's feet are tied. The schoolmaster applying the bastinado is very characteristic of Muhammad Qasim' s mature figure type, as is the elderly dervish type on the left. The kind of thick plant in which the blossoms resemble the leaves can be found in many paintings and drawings by this prolific artist, as can the cloud-band decoration on one of the youth's costumes. The thick-trunked tinted tree with its stylized foliage like paper cut-outs also appears in many of the examples of Muhammad Qasim's work. He has signed the drawing along the right edge and dated it 114, the equivalent, if another digit is added, to 1692–93, rather late in the long span of productivity of this artist. The style of Muhammad Qasim and of two other mid-seventeenth-century artists, Muhammad 'Ali (MMA no. 13.228.34) and Muhammad Yusuf, derived from the, at that time, innovative style of Riza 'Abbasi.

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. For a derivation, see for example, a school scene in a manuscript of Sa'di's Gulistan dated 1486, with the bastinado being administered in the foreground; Stchoukine, Ivan. Les Peintures des Manuscrits Timurides. Paris, 1954, pI. LXXVI.

2. Chelkowski, Peter. Mirror of the invisible World. New York, 1975, miniature 5; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.222.7, folio 129a.

3. See Martin, F.R. The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey from the 8th to the 18th Century. London, 1912, pI. 80, from Leningrad.

4. Lowry, Glenn D., and Susan Nemazee, A Jeweler's Eye: Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection. Washington, D.C., 1988, fig. 59, ca. 1540.

Inscription: Signature in Persian, in nasta‘liq script, on the right-hand side of drawing:
رقم خاکسار محمد قاسم سنه ۱۰۱۴
The humble Muhammad Qasim drew it [in the] year A.H. 1014 [ A.D. 1605–6]

(Translation from "Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," 2011, p. 226)

Ph. Walter Schulz, Leipzig (in 1910); [ Gustav Crayen, until 1911; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 34.

Musée du Louvre. "Le Chant du Monde : L'Art de l'Iran Safavide," October 1, 2007–January 7, 2008, no. 147.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. II, ill. table 166.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 34, pp. 78–79, ill. pl. 34 (b/w).

Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. Encyclopaedia Iranica vol. 7 (1996). p. 545, ill. pl. XLII (b/w).

Hillenbrand, Robert, ed. "Studies in Honour of Basil W. Robinson." In Persian Painting from the Mongols to the Qajars. Pembroke Persian papers, vol. 3. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000.

Babaie, Sussan, Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad. "New Elites of Safavid Iran." In Slaves of the Shah. Library of Middle East history, vol. 3. London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004. pp. 129–33.

Melikian-Chirvani, Assadullah. "L'Art de l' Iran Safavide 1501–1736." In Le Chant du Monde. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2007. no. 147, pp. 392–93, ill. (color).

Canby, Sheila R. Shah 'Abbas: The Remaking of Iran. London: British Museum Press, 2009. pp. 250–51, (related: Musee du Louvre, MAO 494)).

Babayan, Kathryn. The City and Anthology : Erotism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2021. pp. 92–94, ill. cover (color), fig. 2.3 (b/w).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 153, pp. 226–27, ill. p. 227 (color).