The Dīvān of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir and the Diez and Istanbul Albums

Chapter 18 The Dīvān of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir and the Diez and Istanbul Albums

Massumeh Farhad

The Diez and Istanbul albums include Ranging from carefully observed figural an exceptional body of paintings and compositions to studies of Chinese motifs drawings from the latter part of the four- and European subjects, the images vary in teenth century and the early fifteenth scale, subject matter, and style. Together, century when the Jalayirid dynasty con- they offer invaluable insight into the cre- trolled much of western Iran and eastern ative imagination and artistic processes Iraq. Among these works, the large-scale of the Jalayirid period. The importance of folios from the so-called Great Jalayirid pen and ink drawings as a form of artistic Shāhnāma have received considerable expression is further attested by a series scholarly attention, while the ink draw- of marginal compositions in a Dīvān of ings (qalam siyāhī) are lesser known.1 Sultan Ahmad Jalayir (r. 1382–1410) in the Freer Gallery of Art (F1932.29–37). This 1 For a discussion of folios from the Jalayirid paper is intended as a series of preliminary Shāhnāma, see Nurhan Atasoy, “Four Istanbul observations on Jalayirid drawings in the Albums and Some Fragments from the Diez and Istanbul albums and their rela- Fourteenth Century Shahnamehs”, Ars Orientalis tionship to the images in Sultan Ahmad’s 8 (1970), pp. 19–48; Dorothea Duda, “Die Dīvān with the aim of underlining the piv- Buchmalerei der Ğalā‘riden (2. Teil) Die Malerei otal role of this body of work in the larger in Tabrīz under Sulṭān Uwais und Ḥusain”, history of the arts of the book in Iran.2 Islam 49 (1972), pp. 153–220; Bernard O’Kane, “Siyah Qalam: The Jalayirid Connection,” Oriental Art 49/2 (2003), pp. 2–18; and Serpil Bağcı, “Shahnama Folios in the Palace Albums: Remains of a Jalayirid Manuscript”, forthcom- ing; see also O’Kane’s article in this volume. For articles on early drawings, see Armenag Sakisian, “Persian Drawing,” Burlington Magazine for Art, New York 1989; David J. Roxburgh, “Persian Connoisseurs 69/400, (1936), pp. 14–20; Ernst Drawing, ca. 1400–1450: Materials and Creative Kühnel, “Malernamen in the den Berliner Procedures”, Muqarnas 19 (2002), pp. 44–77, Saray Alben”, Kunst des Orients 3 (1959), pp. and ibid., The Persian Album 1400–1600: From 66–77; Marie Lukens Swietochowski, “Drawing”, Dispersal to Collecting, New Haven and London Encyclopaedia Iranica 7 (1996), pp. 538–39; 2005. Marie Lukens Swietochowski and Sussan Babaie, 2 The author, in collaboration with Ali Ferdowsi, is Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of working on a monograph on the Freer Dīvān.

Figure 18.1 Left-hand folio of an Audience Scene, from a Jāmiʿ al-Rashīdī, Iran, fourteenth century. SBB-PK, Diez A fol. 70, p. 20.

Ink Paintings in the Diez Albums on the silhouetted male and female court- and the Reign and Patronage iers against a blank background is clearly a of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir deliberate choice, for folios from other ver- sions of the same text depend more exten- Interest in the expressive quality of the sively on opaque watercolor, resulting in a line is already evident in some of the earli- different visual effect.4 est images in the Diez albums. Assembled By the second half of the fourteenth towards the beginning of A fol. 70, the century, artists had largely abandoned the illustrations originally belonged to a mon- type of line and color compositions seen in umental copy of the Jāmiʿ al-Rashīdī, an the Jāmiʿ al-Rashīdī folios in favor of either early fourteenth-century compendium of polychrome illustrations or pure pen and chronicles. A typical example is the left- hand folio of an audience scene, where the figures are defined in black, red, blue, or may belong to the first volume of the Tārīkh-i brown contours and augmented with light Ghazānī, written for Ghazan; see “Illustrationen washes of color (fig. 18.1).3 The emphasis zu Rašīd al-Dīn’s Tā’rīkh-i Mubārak-i Ġazānī in den Berliner Diez-Alben,” in L’Iran face à la dom- ination mongole, ed. Denise Aigle, Tehran 1997, 3 Other folios from the same manuscript are Diez pp. 295–306. A fol. 70, p. 10, no. 1; Diez A fol. 70, p. 11, no. 1; 4 TKS H. 2153, fol. 23r; see Filiz Çağman and Diez A fol. 70, p. 21; and Diez A fol. 70, p. 23, no. Zeren Tanındı. Topkapı Saray Museum: Islamic 1. Karin Rührdanz has proposed that these folios Miniature Painting, Istanbul 1979, fig. 3, no. 9.