- Title
- Rakhsh Saves Rustam from a Lion (recto), Text (verso), Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)
- Date Made
- circa 1500
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 4 3/4 x 6 1/8 in. (12.07 x 15.56 cm); Sheet: 14 x 9 3/4 in. (35.56 x 24.77 cm)
- Accession Number
- 39.12.72
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
The Shahnama (Book of Kings) is an epic Persian poem composed by Firdausi (or Ferdowsi; circa 934-1020) in circa 977-1010. It narrates the legendary and historical past of the Persian Empire until the Arab Muslim conquest in the 7th century. Shahnama manuscripts were frequently produced throughout the Islamic world, including in South Asia. This folio relates stylistically to a late 15th-century Sultanate Shahnama in Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (for example, see 17.1360).
In the illustration, the hero Rustam is asleep on some rocks beside a stream. He wears a white leopard head-helmet, tiger skin-jacket, and orange trousers. He has a quiver of arrows suspended from his belt and holds an ox-headed mace (gorz). Rustam is accompanied by his faithful steed, Rakhsh (Lightning or Luminous), a mighty colt who is described in the text as rose-colored but envisioned here as spotted gray. Rakhsh is trampling an attacking lion (portrayed in the Persianate convention without a full mane), which had planned to devour him and then his dozing master Rustam. The light gray landscape is festooned with clumps of daisy-like flowering plants and a gnarled old tree. The rocks on which Rustam slumbers are multihued and abstract in formation. The folio was later remounted with an outer border decorated with gold scrolling vines. The verso is a page of text in nastaliq script.
Another rendition of this episode attributed to Bijapur, circa 1610 is in the San Diego Museum of Art (1990.437.1).
- Selected Bibliography
Pal, Pratapaditya, Thomas W. Lentz, Sheila R. Canby, Edwin Binney, 3rd, Walter B. Denny, and Stephen Markel. "Arts from Islamic Cultures: Los Angeles County Museum of Art." Arts of Asia 17, no. 6 (November/December 1987): 73-130.
