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DEPICTIONS of BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI in Thejamlc AL-TAVARIKHAND the MAJMA C AL-TAVARIKH

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DEPICTIONS of BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI in Thejamlc AL-TAVARIKHAND the MAJMA C AL-TAVARIKH SHEILA R. CANBY DEPICTIONS OF BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI IN THEJAMlc AL-TAVARIKHAND THE MAJMA C AL-TAVARIKH In th e nearly twenty years since I first met Oleg Graba r, Buddhism in Iran aro und 1295. All we can say is that the much has chan ged in th e world, not th e least in Iran. style of the work combines ele me nts of thirteenth-een­ The era of Islamic fundam entalism has drawn atte ntion tury Arab painting - the treatment of drapery, for ex­ to Iran's Shi'iite majority and to its recently persecuted ample - with some traits associated with earlie r Central religious minorities. Its Bah ai, J ewish , and Zoroastrian Asian painting and that the inclusio n of a Tibetan Bud­ populations rem ain there tod ay, but Mani ch ean s, Bud­ dhist monk verifies th e presence ofsuch figures at Tabriz dhists, and several sects ofChristians had also continue d in the 1290's. Most likely th is painting and a badly dam­ to live in Iran after the advent ofIslam. By the thirteenth­ age d procession scene to which it is attac he d functione d century Buddhism had receded to its far-eastern fringes, as a frontispiece for a manuscript, but we have no way of where it was really little more than a mem ory, and, in th e knowing whether it was a Buddhist or a Muslim tract. space of the hundred years between the 1220's and the Possibly the enth ro ne d figure is mean t to represen t the 1320's the Mongols had conquered Iran , introducin g Buddha himselfas King ofth e World, but suc h an ide nt i­ new ideas and customs fro m Central Asia and the Far fication is by no mean s certai n. Th e vertical format ofthe East. At the I1khanid capital of Tab riz different Mon gol page conforms to that of the Muslim arts of the book. rul ers adhered to different religions. Some followed The lack of Buddhist monumen ts and images fro m Mongol shamanist beliefs; others married Nestorian Mongol Iran is directly connec ted with Ghazan Khan 's Christian women and had Christian lean ings, and still conversion to Islam in 1295. Apparently Ghazan Khan others converted to Buddhism. was convinced by one of his generals, a Muslim called Lack of sources hinders us fro m fully understanding Nauruz, ofthe expediency ofado pting Islam . At the time the nature and impact of Buddhism on thi rteenth-een­ Ghazan was battling his cousin Baidu for the th rone and tury Iran. Yet, we can assume that the religion was fully contro l of the I1khanid lands. The value of lead ing Mus­ tolerated and encouraged fro m the reign of Arghun lim troops as a Muslim and defeating "the last non-Mus­ (1284-91) to Ghazan Khan 's conversion to Islam in 1295. lim leader'" of Iran was not lost on Ghazan. By th e fall of From Marco Polo, am on g othe rs, we know that Tab riz in 1295 Ghazan had captured and executed Baidu and had th e thirteenth century was highly cosmo politan.' As a taken full control of th e em pire. Despi te his Buddhist major trading center on east-west and north-south trad e upbringing and the Buddhist temples he had erec ted in routes it lured merch an ts, scientists, artists, and men of Khurasan , Chazan 's first royal decree was for the de­ talent fro m all over the civilized world, much of which struction ofall church es, synagogues, and Buddhist tem­ was then controlled by th e Mon gols. J. A. Boyle has ples in Tabriz, Baghdad , and throughout the rea lm. noted that Chinese ph ysician s were at the cour t of Gha­ Because of the good favor th ey had earlier enjoyed, the zan Khan alon g with Chinese artists, who he assumes Buddhists were the hardest hit by this proclam ation. worked mostly in Buddhist temples." Few traces of th ese Man y converted to Islam or fled eastward toward Central temples exist today, althoug h portabl e objects suggest­ Asia, China, and Tibet. Even so, textu al and artistic ing a Buddhist presen ce have been foun d in Iran. " sources lead us to assume that the Buddhist community Only one painting has survived that even remo tely of Tabriz did not disappear all at once, but dispersed suggests a Buddhist contex t fro m the time before Gha­ gradually in the years following Ghazan Khan 's decree." zan Khan 's conversion to Islam in 1295.4 This work (fig. Not only for eigners, but also Irani an s, were attracted 1) shows a rul er enthrone d with a Buddhist monk, ap­ to Ghazan Khan 's court, of which the most renowne d parently a Tibetan , at the right presenting him with a member was Rashid ai-Din . Born in Hamad an abo ut j ewel. Detached from its origina l place in a manuscript, 1247, Rashid al-Din came to Tabriz as a court physician . this page divulges little info rmation abo ut the state of By 1298 he had converted fro mJ udaism to Islam and had 300 SHEILA R. CANBY illustrating of books, the compilation of the Jamic al­ Taodrikh. took place. According to Rashid al-Diri's plan, one Persian and one Arabic copy of the four-volume [ami': al-Taudrikli were to be produced each year. These were then sent to cities throughout the Ilkhanid realm. We must assume that the annual production ofcopies of the[ami': contin­ ued from about 1305 until 1318, the year of Rashid al­ Din's death. In that year the Rabci Rashidi was looted as a result of Rashid al-Diri's execution at the hands of Uljay­ tu's successor, Abu-Sa'iid. This certainly resulted in the destruction of one of the world's great libraries and probably ofsome of the copies of theJamic. Of the twen­ ty-four or so original copies, only two fragments have sur­ vived. This paper will examine the illustrations of the Buddha Sakyamuni from one of these fourteenth-een­ tury fragments of the [ami': al-Taudrikh. as well as several fifteenth-eentury illustrations from a related manuscript. The fragment of theJamic in which the illustrations of the Buddha occur was completed in 1314, eight years lat­ er than the other extant fragment, which is now in the Edinburgh University Library." Written in Arabic, both fragments contain sections of the third and fourth vol­ umes of the[ami'; consisting of the histories of Muham­ mad and the caliphate, China, Hind and Sind, the Franks and theJews. Although they overlap to a certain degree, only the 1314 manuscript contains the history of India (Hind and Sind) in which the life of the Buddha is recounted. Formerly in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society and now in private hands, the 1314 manu­ Fig. I. An enthroned ruler. Right page of a detached double-page script includes twenty-one chapters under the heading, frontispiece. Iran, ca. 1295.Topkapi Palace Library, H. 2152, fol. 60b . "The Life and Teaching of Buddha.?" The three illustra­ tions in this section are the earliest of the small group of been appointed deputy to the vizier and court historian. depictions of the Buddha Sakyamuni in Persian paint­ Rising rapidly to the post ofjointvizier, he began the first ing. of his great historical works, the updating ofJuwayni's Before proceeding to the paintings, let us briefly con­ History of theMongols. Even before the completion of this sider the text. Rashid ai-Din states unequivocally that this history in 1307, Uljaytu, who succeeded Ghazan Khan in source for the life of the Buddha was a Kashmiri Bud­ 1304, had commissioned him "to compile a general his­ dhist priest named Kamalashri. Although KariJahn, the tory of the world as known to the Mongol court begin­ leading specialist on the text of the Jamic al-Taodrikh, ning with Adam and the patriarchs and including the states that Kamalashri was "otherwise completely history of the Chinese, the Franks, and the Indians."? unknown.t''" a person ofthat name is mentioned byJean Needless to say, Rashid ai-Din enlisted the help ofa large Naudou as the author of a number of minor works that staffofscholars, calligraphers, and artists to produce this were translated into Tibetan by one Gzon-nu ses-rab the [ami': al-Taudrikli (World History) . As part of a general lo-ca-ba of On in the fourteenth century.II Possibly the building boom in Tabriz in the late twelfth and early thir­ latter Kamalashri was the same as Rashid al-Diri's man. In teenth century, Rashid ai-Din endowed a whole quarter any event, Kamalashri's account consists in part of cer­ in the city, the Rab'ii Rashidi, which included palaces, tain familiar events in the Buddha's life presented in a mosques, and his famous scriptorium. In this scripto­ form which often differs from the standard Indian, Tibe­ rium, a combined library and atelier for the writing and tan, or Far Eastern versions. Jahn has suggested that.
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