“Great” is a word that comes easily to mind while handling this book. The author and publishers were apparently determined to make readers appreciate the greatness of this 14th-century version of the Iranian national epic. Included in the more than 500 pages are nearly 300 unique illustrations (more, including close ups) reproduced in actual or larger than actual size, taking advantage of the book’s large format, one foot wide and more than a foot high. The quality of the reproductions are excellent, bringing to life the gold, lapis lazuli and vermilion lavishly employed by the master painters.
But Robert Hillenbrand also sets himself the challenge of getting the reader to understand why the Great Mongol Shahnama is such an important work of art, as important for Iranian painting as Rafael’s or Michelangelo’s Roman production were for Italian painting. How well can we appreciate this, separated as we are by centuries and culture from the hands that produced the work?
Readers will be delighted with the copious illustrations, which reveals some of the paintings to be true masterpieces.
That we are studying this work at all is surprising. It would be easy to overlook the Mongol-era Shahnama, which has come down to us only in a fragmentary and damaged form. Smuggled out of Iran by a cabal of corrupt dignitaries and international art dealers, the book turned up in Paris in the 1910s in the hands of Georges Demotte. Indeed, an early generation of students knew the book as the Demotte Shahnama.
The Belgian antiquarian broke the book up, taking pictures off of the underlying paper support and even cutting some double page illustrations in half. Almost all of the original text pages with its exquisite calligraphy were lost. The paintings wound up scattered far and wide: 58 of them exist in 22 different locations. Even illustrated pages have disappeared. Although no one really knows for sure, they may number in the 100s. The title page, the seals of previous owners, any dedicatory matter are missing, leaving us guessing the provenance and the names of the patron and his artists. Low-quality, black and white illustrations of the dispersed paintings discouraged enthusiasts and scholars for decades.
Yet based on the great size and quality of the surviving paintings, we can surmise that such a work could only have been commissioned by the Mongol overlords of Iran, the Ilkhanids themselves, in the 2nd half of the 14th century. At the height of their powers, having accepted the religion and the language of their subjects, the Ilkhanids became great exponents of Iranian culture. Creating a kingly version of the national epic conformed well to their dynastic ideology.
To produce a fittingly kingly work, the Ilkhanids spared no expense, gathering the greatest painters, giving them the finest materials, and most importantly, providing them with a large format in which to deploy their skills. Until this Shahnama, much book illustration in the Middle East appeared as marginal decoration, with small figures and designs squashed into the spaces around the text. In the expanded space, the artists of this book ran riot with colors, movement and emotions that until then had been almost impossible to express.
The Shahnama recounts a series of heroic tales of victories and defeats, intrigues and illicit love, faithfulness and betrayal. Pathos pours out of these paintings. It is easy, using the large scale enlargements in this book, to recognize the deep emotions in the faces and gestures of the personages depicted—much easier than reading these paintings from behind a glass case in a museum. For the first time, most readers will be readily convinced that he or she is in the presence of a great work of art.
The Mongol era of Iran brought Iran into much closer contact with both Europe and China. The death of the hero Esfandiyar, for example, evokes an Italian Pietà.
Hillenbrand shares his deep reading of the paintings, surveying antecedents in earlier Iranian and Arabic illustrations and decorative arts, as well as sounding out the ideological choices of the artists, their emphasis of certain scenes of the epic and certain characters. The painters clearly sought to satisfy their Mongol patrons through emphasizing the connections between the episodes of the epic and current events of the Mongol regime. Kings and kingship are the main focus, as opposed to the epic’s principle hero Rustam, a non-royal, who gets very little attention in this version of the manuscript.
The Mongol era of Iran brought Iran into much closer contact with both Europe and China, though Iran has never been isolated from either the west or the east. Hillenbrand shows several convincing instances of inspiration from western art, which would have been brought to Iran by Italian or French diplomats seeking alliances with the Mongols. The death of the hero Esfandiyar, for example, evokes an Italian Pietà. Chinese influence, long identified in Persian painting, turns up only in the decorative elements of the pictures, since the key technique deployed in Chinese painting, “leaving blank” 留 白, is unsuited to illustrated books.
Readers will be delighted with the copious illustrations, both from the Shahnama itself and related works, in vivid color and often under generous magnification. It reveals some of the paintings to be true masterpieces, easily compared with Italian primitives. Heavy damage and shoddy repair of some of the illustrations reproduced here does not detract from the masterful composition and drawing skills of the artists.
Hillenbrand’s voice is perhaps more suited to the lecture room than to a lengthy book—one can occasionally weary of his donnish observations. Nevertheless, he has a sure eye and leads one with a steady hand through the massive amount of erudition required to fully appreciate this work.
In the end Hillenbrand makes compelling arguments for calling the Mongol Shahnama “great”. Readers may even qualify this edition as a great work of art history. If they balk at the price, US$130, they should recall that the Welch-Dickenson survey of the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama (The Houghton Shahname) sold for US$600 at publication in 1976. A reprint now goes for 2,500 dollars, while the original edition costs much more. The Great Mongol Shahnama might be a great deal.