Two Camels Fighting

Camels Fighting

Watching combat between domesticated animals, from oxen to elephants to camels, was a traditional pastime of the court. Persian artists were particularly drawn to camel fights, probably because of the artistic possibilities inherent in their naturally undulating shapes. The depiction of a camel fight, allegedly by the great Behzad, seems to have been the progenitor of a series of such pictures produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In this very accomplished and highly finished drawing, two camels with intertwined necks are thrusting against each other. The bells around their necks and the richly designed saddle covers, one with a pair of simurghs flying through clouds and the other with a mounted falconer and a mahout before an elephant, indicate that these are highly prized animals. A keeper struggles to pull his charge away. Presumably, the keeper of the right-hand camel, not shown in the drawing, has had the rope pulled out of his hands.

The encounter has been placed in a conventionally wild landscape, hardly the appropriate setting for a staged combat, but forming framing devices that surround the meticulously observed camels. The profile of a youth in a fur cap can be seen to the left of the towering rocks, and the head and upper torso of a man in an elaborately tied turban (apparently observing the camel fight) appears to the right of the rocks. The delicacy of the drawing of both figures contrasts with the rugged contours of the rocks in which the usual animal profiles are concealed.

In the so-called Behzad drawing of about 1525 in the Gulestan Palace Collection in Tehran, the keeper on the left also tries to pull his camel away, although his rope is attached to its foreleg rather than to its halter, as in the Museum's drawing.[1] The keeper on the right carries a raised switch, but whether this is intended to encourage or discourage his charge is difficult to determine. A wilderness setting has been provided and an observer is also present. A faithful copy of the Behzad drawing was made by the Jahangiri artist Nanha in 1608/09.[2] The collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan contains an enchanting variant of the camel fight, dated to the second half of the seventeenth century.[3] A most extraordinary drawing of a camel, while not engaged in combat, but struggling to break its hobbles, was signed by the artist Mu'in Mussavir in 1678.[4]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. Binyon,Lawrence, J. V. S. Wilkinson, and Basil Gray. Persian Miniature Painting. London, 1933, pI. LXXXVII, A. 132.

2. Ibid., pI. LXXXVII, B.133.

. See Welch, Anthony. Collection of Islamic Art: Prince SadruddinAga Khan, 4 vols. Geneva, 1972 and 1978, vol. I, IR.M. 36.

4. See Pope, Arthur Upham, and Phyllis Ackerman, editors. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present. London and New York, 1939, vol. V, pt. 2, pI. 924 A.

George D. Pratt, New York (by 1933–d. 1935); Vera Amherst Hale Pratt, New York (life interest 1935–45)

Venice. Fondazione Giorgio Cini. "Miniature Islamiche dal XIII al XIX Secolo," 1962, no. 89.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 18.

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. 89, pp. 112–13, ill. pl. 89 (b/w).

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 18, pp. 46–47, ill. pl. 18 (b/w).