"Bizhan Slaughters the Wild Boars of Irman", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

Folio from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi

This folio illustrates the culminating moment in the tale of Bizhan and the boars of Irman, one of the many stories of heroic exploits contained in the Shahnama (Book of Kings). In this tale, Bizhan offers his help to the tribe of Irman—a region lying on the border between Iran and Turan—when a delegation from that land asks for Kai Khusrau’s assistance against the hordes of ferocious boars plaguing their forests. The illustration is a faithful rendition of the verses preceding it, which describe how an armor-clad and mounted Bizhan pursues and slays the wild boars. In spite of the illustration’s loose style and simple layout, the painting eloquently conveys the magnitude of Bizhan’s task by minimizing the landscape and multiplying the number and size of the boars that the hero must slaughter.

This succinct, incisive pictorial style distinguishes the earliest surviving illustrated versions of the Shahnama, which date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The manuscript from which this page derives is now dispersed, but its colophon bears the date A.H. 741/1341 A.D., with a dedication to Qiwam al-Daula wa’l- Din Hasan.[1] Qiwam al-Daula (ca. 1303–1357) was the vizier of the Injuids, who emerged as more or less independent rulers of the Iranian province of Fars in the decades preceding and immediately following the fall of the Ilkhanid dynasty.[2] The surviving folios from this codex shed light on the sophisticated nature of the original manuscript, which is, however, not comparable in quality or complexity to the almost contemporary illustrated version of the same text commissioned by the Ilkhanid Abu Sa‘id (r. 1317–35), known as the Great Mongol Shahnama.[3] At the same time, the fact that an increasing number of officials decided to commission illustrated copies of the Persian epic testifies to the growing interest in the ancient royal traditions of Iran.[4]

Francesca Leoni in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

1. Lowry, Glenn D., et al. An Annotated and Illustrated Checklist of the Vever Collection. Washington, D.C., 1988, pp. 69–70.

2. Eighty illustrated pages are currently scattered among private and public collections. Seven are in the Metropolitan Museum (in addition to this folio, acc. nos. 29.160.21, 36.113.1–3, 57.51.35, and 57.51.36), while the dedication page is in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (no. S86.0110).

3. See cat. no. 57 in this volume (MMA no 33.70).

4. At least seven manuscripts can be attributed to the Injuids, and four of them are copies of the Shahnama (Carboni and Komaroff 2002, p. 217). A list of these manuscripts is provided in Grube, Ernst J. Persian Painting in the Fourteenth Century: A Research Report. Istituto Universitario Orientale, Supplemento, no. 17, agli Annali, 38, no. 4. Naples, 1978, pp. 15–16 and no. 43.


Bizhan Slaughters The WIld Boars of Irman


The Shahnama, or Book of Kings, written in Persian verses by Abu al-Qasim Firdausi (ca. 935–ca. 1020) and dedicated to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, was completed in 1010. The text is based on stories of ancient heroes and kings of pre-Islamic Iran, which in the context of the period can be understood in terms of an Iranian revival marked by interest in a national history. This epic remained one of the most popular throughout the Islamic world, with the first-known illustrated copies dating to the Ilkhanid perid.

The source of this folio is a dispersed copy of the Shahnama, of which about 150 folios (104 with illustrations) are known to exist in private and public collections. It is the only extant illustrated codex that carries the name of an Injuid patron and that can therefore confidently be assigned a Shirazi origin. Its colophon, in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. (Vever Collection, S86.0110, S86.0111),[1] names the dedicatee as the vizier al-Hasan Qavam al-Daula wa al-Din, who died in Shiraz in 1353 and was one of the patrons of the celebrated Persian poet Hafiz (1325/26–1390). With this codex as a comparative point of reference, therefore, three other copies of the Shahnama (complete and dispersed) and two other codices can be attributed to Injuid-controlled southern Iran.[2]

The style associated with Injuid illustrations is an unusual one, even though it was clearly influenced in its later phase, in the 1340s and 1350s, by mainstream Ilkhanid painting. Uncomplicated compositions, scant attention to detail, and the use of flat red or yellow backgrounds without any indication of depth are compensated for by a certtain liveniness and monumentality that make these illustrations both appealing and distinctive. Although often mentioned in studies of Persian painting, the small group of Injuid illlustrated manuscripts has yet to be fully explored.

In this folio the shah Kaikhusrau sent Bizhan, one of his champions, to help the Armenians eliminate the wild boars—"in numbers numberless, with tusks like elephants', and big as hills"[3]—that were wreaking havoc on crops and cattle. Single-handedly Bizhan freed the land of these dangerous animals, first with his bow and arrow, then with his sword.

The illustration is true to the narrative, which tells of Bizhan pursuing the boars until they charged him in the final moments of the fight.[4] The Iranian champion looks powerful in his armor, his body as well as that of his horse driven forward as if in full motion. The oncoming boars, however, do not seem especially strong or menacing, diminishing the sense of Bizhan's daunting task as a heroic mission. Such naïvité is common in Injuid illustrations and distinguishes them from Ilkhanid painting.



[Komaroff and Carboni 2002]

Footnotes:

1. Marianna Shreve Simpson. "A Reconstruction and Preliminary Account of the 1341 Shahnama with Some Further Thoughts on Early Shahnama Illustration." In Persian Painting from the Mongols to the Qajars: Studies in Honor of Basil W. Robinson, edited by Robert Hillenbrand, pp. 218–19, pls. 1, 2. Pembroke Persian Papers, 3. London and New York: I. B. Taurus in association with the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, 2000.

2. The first scholar to identify the colophon was Ivan Stchoukine. La Peinture iranienne sous les derniers Abbasides et les Il-Khans. Bruges: Imprimerie Sainte Catherine, 1936, pp. 93–94, no. XIX. For a recent study of Injuid illustrated manuscripts, see Elaine Julia Wright. "The Look of the Book: Manuscript Production in the Southern iranian City of Shiraz from the Early Fourteenth Century to 1452." 3 vols. Ph.D. diss. Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1997, esp. pp. 12–31.

3. Abu al-Qasim Firdausi. The Shahama of Firdausi. Translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner. 9 vols. London, 1905–25, vol. 3 (1908), p. 290, vv. 1070–71.


4. Swietochowsi, Marie Lukens and Stefano Carboni. Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images: Persian Paintings of the 1330s and 1340s. Exhib. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, p. 76, fig. 22.

Inscription: In Persian in nasta’liq script part of a poem from the Shāhnama of Ferdowsī, story بیژن و منیژه (Bīzhan va Manīzha).

There is a title on this page, but in the published edition of the Shāhnama the story appears under the title, فریفتن گرگین میلاذ بیژن را (Gurgin cheating … of Bīzhan).

(Abu’l-Qasim Ferdowsi, The Shāhnāmeh [The Book of Kings], ed, Djalal Khalqi- Muṭlagh, Mazda publishers in association with Bibliotheca Persica, Costa Mesa, California, and New York, 1997, vol. 3, pp. 312–15)

(A. Ghouchani, 2011)

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, New York (until 1929; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia 1256-1353," October 28, 2002–February 16, 2003, no. 11.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia 1256-1353," April 13–July 27, 2003, no. 11.

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. p. 76, ill. fig. 22 (color).

Rossabi, Morris, Charles Melville, James C. Y. Watt, Tomoko Masuya, Sheila Blair, Robert Hillenbrand, Linda Komaroff, Stefano Carboni, Sarah Bertelan, and John Hirx. The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353, edited by Stefano Carboni, and Linda Komaroff. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. no. 11, pp. 217, 247, ill. fig. 265 (color).

Sims, Eleanor, B. Marshak, and Ernst J. Grube. "Persian Painting and its Sources." In Peerless Images. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. no. 138, pp. 224–25, ill. p. 224 (color).

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. 58, pp. 89, 97–98, ill. p. 98 (color).

Gibson, Melanie, ed. "Essays in Honor of Robert Hillenbrand." In Fruit of Knowledge, Wheel of Learning. London: Gingko, 2022. p. 137, ill. fig. 1.