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These essays are the revised and updated version of four lectures given in the Yarshater Lecture Series, at SOAS in London in 2013. They concern some aspects of the arts from pre-modern Iran and India, namely, the “making of” of Persian illustrated manuscripts, the iconography of Kashan wares, the use and re-use of luster tiles in Ilkhanid Iran, and the glazed tiles made in three Indian sultanates (Delhi, Bengal and Malwa). These four topics share concepts of influence and impact, although inflected on different modes. The productions they embody represent many poles of influence, even if working on different scales, from the extensive diffusion of products, techniques, and systems to almost isolated productions.
Persian Calligraphy and related traditional arts of books make up the most important forms of Iranian-Islamic art, which are still living practiced traditions up to today. This volume puts together a first-of-a-kind handbook and contains the most important termini technici as well as expressions and techniques connected to the traditional art of Persian calligraphy (mostly Nastaʿlīq), calligraphy tools such as the reed pen, paper and ink as well as some related fields, like taẕhīb (illumination), tašʿīr (historiated painting), book binding, etc. The content is based on thirty prominent classical Persian treatises, composed between twelfth and twentieth centuries. All terms and expressions are followed by an English description and often accompanied by an illustration. These expressions, which are key to understanding old calligraphic treatises and many relevant sources on Islamic art, are meant to familiarise the reader with both common and forgotten techniques and terminology of calligraphic traditions. The volume addresses not only the artists and scholars of Iranian and Islamic art history, but also those, who are dealt with Islamic and Iranian manuscripts, manuscript cultures, codicology and palaeography.
Both the author and the editor of this volume are trained practicing calligraphers and illuminators, who learned the art of calligraphy and illumination through long, traditional study under masters of this art.
This book is the first full text and translation of a prosimetric tale from the rich repertoire of Central and West Asian bards to be published with ready access to recordings of both the prose narration and the sung verse. In Iranian Khorasan, bards known as bakhshi present tales that in other regions are performed wholly in a Turkic language with prose narration in Persian, Khorasani Turkish or Kurmanji Kurdish and most verses in Turkish. We compare portions of the full performance transcribed here with excerpts from two performances of Iranian bakhshis in the 1970s. Three introductory chapters and a commentary discuss musical and verbal dimensions of the bakhshi’s art in relation to relevant social, historical, and literary contexts.
Reproduction of an Archetype: Episodes of Urbanism 1945–1979
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In Modern Middle-Class Housing in Tehran – Reproduction of an Archetype, Rana Habibi offers an engaging analysis of the modern urban history of Tehran during the Cold War period: 1945–1979. The book, while arguing about the institutionalism of modernity in the form of modern middle-class housing in Tehran, shows how vernacular archetypes found their way into the construction of new neighborhoods. The trajectory of ideal modernism towards popular modernism, the introduction of modern taste to traditional society through architects, while tracing the path of transnational models in local projects, are all subjects extensively expounded by Rana Habibi through engaging graphical analyses and appealing theoretical interpretations involving five modern Tehran neighborhoods.
Author:
In Esoteric Images: Decoding the Late Herat School of Painting Tawfiq Daʿadli decodes the pictorial language which flourished in the city of Herat, modern Afghanistan, under the rule of the last Timurid ruler, Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r.1469-1506). This study focuses on one illustrated manuscript of a poem entitled Khamsa by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, kept in the British Library under code Or.6810. Tawfiq Daʿadli decodes the paintings, reveals the syntax behind them and thus deciphers the message of the whole manuscript. The book combines scholarly efforts to interpret theological-political lessons embedded in one of the foremost Persian schools of art against the background of the court dynamic of an influential medieval power in its final years.
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The Adventures of Shāh Esmāʿil recounts the dramatic formative years of the Safavid empire (1501–1722), as preserved in Iranian popular memory by coffeehouse storytellers and written down in manuscripts starting in the late seventeenth century. Beginning with the Safavids’ saintly ancestors in Ardabil, the story goes on to relate the conquests of Shāh Esmāʿil (r. 1501–1524) and his devoted Qezelbāsh followers as they battle Torkmāns, Uzbeks, Ottomans, and even Georgians and Ethiopians in their quest to establish a Twelver Shiʿi realm. Barry Wood’s translation brings out the verve and popular tone of the Persian text. A heady mixture of history and legend, The Adventures of Shāh Esmāʿil sheds important light on the historical self-awareness of late Safavid Iran.
Calligraphes et bibliophiles au temps des dynasties mongoles (Les Ilkhanides et les Djalayirides 656-814 / 1258-1411)
Cet ouvrage explore une période charnière de l’histoire du livre islamique et iranien: la période mongole envisagée dans le long terme, sous les dynasties ilkhanide et djalayiride. Il étudie la question de la maturation de la calligraphie arabe classique à travers la vie et l’œuvre de Yāqūt al-Mustaʿṣimī qui sont, pour la première fois, soumises à une analyse systématique, mettant en avant l’importance de son école et des maîtres bagdadiens pour les arts du livre des décennies suivantes. L’ouvrage se penche aussi sur les manuscrits des Ilkhans musulmans et du vizir Rashīd al-Dīn dans le cadre de la problématique de la naissance de la kitābkhānah et de l’affirmation du statut des calligraphes et des peintres sous les derniers Ilkhanides et les Djalayirides.

This book explores a pivotal period in the history of the book in the Islamic world and Iran, i.e. the Mongol period viewed in a long-term perspective, under the Ilkhanid and the Djalayirid dynasties. It examines the issue of the maturation of classical Arabic calligraphy through the life and work of Yāqūt al-Mustaʿṣimī, which are for the first time subjected to a systematic analysis, highlighting the importance of his school and the Baghdadi masters for the arts of the book of the following decades. The study also looks at the manuscripts of the Muslim Ilkhans and the Vizier Rashīd al-Dīn in the context of the birth of the kitābkhānah and the rise in the status of calligraphers and painters under the last Ilkhanids and the Djalayirids.

From 17th Century Drawings to Spacecraft Imaging
If any scientific object has over the course of human history aroused the fascination of both scientists and artists worldwide, it is beyond doubt the moon. The moon is also by far the most interesting celestial body when it comes to reflecting on the dualistic nature of photography as applied to the study of the universe. Against this background, Selene’s Two Faces sets out to look at the scientific purpose, aesthetic expression, and influence of early lunar drawings, maps and photographs, including spacecraft imaging. In its approach, Selene’s Two Faces is intermedial, intercultural and interdisciplinary. It brings together not only various media (photography, maps, engravings, lithographs, globes, texts), and cultures (from Europe, America and Asia), but also theoretical perspectives.

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Une étude sur les peintures dites farangi sāzi, leurs milieux et commanditaires sous Shāh Soleimān (1666-94)
Author:
In ʿAli Qoli Jebādār et l’Occidentalism safavide Negar Habibi provides a fresh account of the life and works of ʿAli Qoli Jebādār, a leading painter of the late Safavid period. By collecting several of the artist's paintings and signatures Habibi brings to light the diversity of ʿAli Qoli Jebādār's most important works. In addition, the volume offers us new insights into both the artistic and socio-political evolution of Iranian society in the last days of pre-modern Iran. By carefully consulting the historical sources, Negar Habibi demonstrates the possibility of a female and eunuch patronage in the seventeenth-century paintings known as farangi sāzi, while suggesting the use of the term "Occidentalism" for those Safavid paintings that show some exotic and alien details of the Western world.

ʿAli Qoli Jebādār et l’Occidentalisme safavide offre un nouveau récit de la vie et des œuvres de ʿAli Qoli Jebādār. Recueillant plusieurs peintures et signatures de l'artiste, Negar Habibi expose à la discussion de divers titres royaux de l'artiste. ʿAli Qoli Jebādār et l'Occidentalisme safavide approfondit également nos connaissances sur l'évolution artistique et socio-politique de la société iranienne à l’aube du modernisme. En consultant sans cesse les sources historiques, Negar Habibi montre la possibilité du patronage féminin et eunuque dans les peintures connues sous le nom de farangi sāzi au XVIIe siècle, tout en suggérant l'utilisation d'un nouveau titre comme l'Occidentalisme pour ces peintures safavides qui montrent des détails exotiques et étrangers appartenant au monde occidental.




Shahnama Studies III focuses on the hugely successful afterlife of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, completed by the poet Firdausi around 1010 AD. This long epic grew out to be an icon of Persian culture and served as a source of inspiration for art and literature, leaving its traces in manifold ways. The contributors to this volume each treat an aspect of the rich legacy of the Shahnama and offer new insights in Shahnama manuscript studies, the illustration of the Shahnama, the phenomenon of later epics, and the Shahnama in later texts and contexts.