- Title
- Giv fights Lahhak and Farshidvard, Page from a Manuscript of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi
- Date Made
- 1494/A.H. 899
- Period
- Timurid (1370-1506)
- Medium
- Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- 9 1/2 × 6 in. (24.13 × 15.24 cm)
Frame: 20 × 15 × 1 1/2 in. (50.8 × 38.1 × 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.75.24
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Islamic
- Curatorial Notes
Battle is a major theme of the Shahnama (Book of Kings), the Iranian national epic, which tells of the pre-Islamic kings, whose reigns are often punctuated by warfare, and the heroes who fight on their behalf. As this painting from a late fifteenth-century Shahnama manuscript demonstrates (also see M.85.237.71), illustrators rarely shied away from depicting the battlefield violence described throughout the poem. Here, Iranian and Turanian soldiers in the heat of pitched battle gallop over the corpse of a slain trooper as one soldier pierces the side of his enemy with a spear. Notably, the figures sport armor and weapons not of the epic’s ancient setting but of the period in which they were painted.
- Selected Bibliography
- Çakir Phillip, Filiz. "A Reflection on Armour of Then and Now." In Iranian Art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic: Essays in Honour of Linda Komaroff, edited by Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom and Sandra S. Williams. Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
