The Shahnama (Book of Kings), the Iranian national epic, was composed by Firdawsi and completed around 1010. It chronicles in verse the legendary and historical kings and heroes of the Persian Empire up to the Arab Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Illustrated manuscripts of the text, usually made under courtly patronage, only survive from the early fourteenth century onward; many of these were broken up in modern times for the sake of their paintings. Typically, the architectural settings and costumes of the depicted characters reflect the era in which the manuscript was made, drawing a connection between ancient kings and the then present-day court. On that account, the commissioning of such anachronistically illustrated manuscripts appealed to great kings and provincial rulers alike.
This illustrated page, from a now dispersed Shahnama made for Shah Isma‘il II (r. 1576−77), depicts a contest between the Sasanian monarch Shah Khusraw Parviz (Khusraw II, r. 590–628) and a would-be usurper, Bahram Chubina. The protagonists, who competed for the Iranian throne, are both wearing crowns. Bahram, the superior warrior, advances on foot toward a group of archers directed by Khusraw. One of Bahram’s men has fallen to the ground, foreshadowing Khusraw’s eventual victory with the aid of the Byzantine army.
Illustrated manuscripts like the Shahnama were the result of a collaborative effort, one that required wealthy, generally royal patrons who could afford the costly materials and large staff required. Such books were produced in the kitabkhana (literally, “book house”), an atelier combining the functions of scriptorium, workshop, and library. The Shahnama, divided into fifty sections, each devoted to a particular king, allowed for a wide range of illustrations. Over time, some sections of the text and certain scenes came to be repeated, while specific compositions were reused but with subtle variations. Here, in this otherwise fairly typical scene of the contest between Khusraw and Bahram, the face of the tumbling figure near the center of the composition with exposed buttocks is anomalous and perhaps represents the insertion of a contemporaneous person or event that would have been understood at the court of Shah Isma‘il.
