The Drew Shahnama

This manuscript ( Drew University Bound Manuscripts Collection, Item 58 ) is a medieval iteration of the Shahnama, a chronicle of the kings of Iran. The stories of the Shahnama come from an oral tradition that was written down by the Persian poet Ferdowsi in 50,000 rhyming couplets around the year 1000 CE. The Shahnama celebrates Persian kings and heroes from the mythical past through the seventh century. The Drew Shahnama is written in Persian on paper, and our research showed that it was likely painted in Shiraz in the fifteenth century CE with some later additions. With this research project we hope to add to the knowledge of Shahnama manuscripts worldwide, inspired by the online Shahnama exhibits at such institutions as the  Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge  and the  Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art .

Hundreds of illustrated Shahnama manuscripts survive from the medieval and early modern period. Two of the best-known examples are the fourteenth-century  Great Mongol Shahnama , one of the earliest illustrated copies, probably painted in Tabriz, Iran, and the lavish sixteenth-century  Shah Tahmasp Shahnama , also from Tabriz. The fifteenth-century Drew Shahnama, painted in Shiraz, Iran, dates between these two manuscripts.

The artist style, page layout, and color palette of the Drew Shahnama show an affinity to manuscripts painted in Shiraz, Iran, in the second half of the fifteenth century, such as the  Khavarannama manuscript  shown below, today in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. The style popular in Shiraz at this time has been dubbed the “Turkman Commercial Style;" the large number of manuscripts in this style suggested that the books were created for a commercial audience (for sale on the market) rather than at the request of individual patrons.

Strong points of comparison between these two images are the high horizon line in each image, the use of gold for the sky, the use of landscape elements like trees and clumps of flowers to organize the pictorial field, and the stacking of figures to show recession into space. Note specifically the figure in the lower left of the Drew Shahnama and the center of the Beatty Khavarannama who plays a musical instrument; the similarity in posture between these two figures suggests that the artists were using a common set of models. 

The bookbinding of the Drew Shahnama is not just functional to protect the book's pages; it serves as an intricate decorative surface and was intended to be a work of art on its own. The decoration of flowers and birds was painted by hand on pasteboard and then treated with lacquer to preserve and make it durable. This technique was derived from Chinese painting. Lacquer painting in Iran was applied not only to bookbindings but also to small objects like pen boxes. For other examples of these lacquer bindings, see  Princeton University Special Collections  and the  Aga Khan Museum  in Toronto. Lacquer bindings were popular throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and it is not unusual for a binding of a book to be replaced. Though the binding of the Drew Shahnama is undated, the style suggests a date in the  Qajar period  of Iranian history, eighteenth or nineteenth century CE.

Flowers

One element that is present in almost every image in Drew’s Shahnama is flowers. Throughout, these flowers are either in bunches of 3-5 or just a single flower. When looking closely at the flowers it can be seen that some are not stylistically the same. Just by looking at the flowers they can be categorized into about 4-6 different artists.

Trees

In Drew’s Shahnama there are very few trees present, the few that are present can be categorized into about 3 Artists.

Artist 1’s trees are only present in 2 images, 074, and 610, both are orange trees. These trees are distinctive from the others as they are orange trees and the pattern on the trunk is specific to this artist. Where the trunk meets the ground is also unique to this artist, as it blends the trees into the landscape. The leaves of these trees are contained within the shape of the foliage and the leaf pattern has the leaves pointing upward. The color palette and structure of these trees are similar to each other, whereas the other trees have darker or completely different colors and a different structure.

Artist 2’s Trees are present in images 474 and 978. At first glance these two trees do not look similar or that they would have been painted by the same artist, but looking closer these two trees are stylistically the same. They both have the same type of pattern on the trunk, exaggerated swirled knots on the entirety of the trunk. On the lower section of the foliage the leaves can clearly be seen outside of the border of the foliage. This artist also painted the branches close together, whereas Artist 1 had a more naturalistic presentation of how the branches separate out from the trunk into the foliage. 

The work of Artist 3, as mentioned before, is a single page taken from different Shahnama, therefore does not relate to the other images present in Drew’s Shahnama. This tree is unique in many aspects, there is a clear leaf pattern that radiates out from where the branches enter the foliage. The foliage of this tree has a clear line mapping the shape of the tree and where the pattern of the leaves are to end. Even though there is a distinction that this tree is on the top of a hill, unlike Artist 1 there is no blending of the trunk into the ground of the landscape. The trunk of this tree is also only a single color with no texture.

Horses

Even more so, the repetition of certain poses the artists have chosen for the illustration of many of these horses point to elements of workshop practice used in the production of the Drew Shahnama.

Other horses appear in a more stationary form, complete with a moderate appearance and a lack of brightly colored garments.

Within this style of illustration, horses are either still or positioned in a slight diagonal leap, like in Image 168.

Sometimes a figure is riding the horses, such as with Image 168 above, while at other times, the horses are parked off to the side without a person riding them, as seen in Image 896 below.

Facial Characteristics

Slight differences and similarities can be noted in depictions of facial structure throughout the Shahnama. These become indicators of separate artists working on these images.

At other times, the variances located in the Drew Shahnama point to how the artists approach difference, such as with the following image that contrasts an artist’s depiction of Persian figures with a portrayal of South Asian figures.

Here, facial structure has been executed in a similar fashion as the previous examples comparing facial characteristics, but the artist has applied a darker shade to the figures on the right. This provides some insight into the artists’ approach to difference in this coding of ethnicity that has been performed through the color palette.

Unique Images

Color

Certain variations characteristic to the the artists of the Drew Shahnama can be located by observing the color palette that these artists were working from.  By looking at the predominant color of a chosen illustrated scene, one can note subtle differences that operate to create distinction between what is being depicted and who has done the depicting.  For instance, by compiling images with a large presence of a select color, such as the greens displayed here, these differences become overwhelmingly apparent and lend to modes of recognizing distinct artists’ hands.

For example, the green chosen for Image 928 and Image 914 looks to be the same and so does the styles the images have been drawn in.

As a comparison, one can see how the greens of Image 284 and Image 822 vary slightly, as do the styles of drawing.

Here, one can see the slight variation in shade between the greens used by the artists of these two images. Despite this, style, composition, and the type of paper used visually link the two.

We can tell that some sections of the manuscript came together or were put into this Shahnama at different points in time because of the extent of varying damage to the pages.

Some pages show large areas of water damage.

Inconsistencies in how damage has registered across the Shahnama point to a remarkable difference among individual pages in relation to each other.

• The noted patterns of damage suggest that the pages of text had already incurred damage by the time the image pages were placed into the manuscript. This means that the pages of pasted images were added to the manuscript later on.

• The lower corner staining indicates that additional later damage occurred to both text and image pages after their compilation. These patterns in the visibility of damage could point to a variance in the age of pages in relation to each other.

• A special treatment to some of the paper is also suggested through a visual comparison between pages as well as from the sheen observed on image pages (see section on Types of Paper for more), meaning that a characteristic difference associated with the individual types of paper used might have repelled some of the damage, causing the fainter appearance of damage that one can take note of in Image 537 (see above comparison).

As seen in the previous section there is a lot of damage to Drew’s Shahnama; water damage, stains, ink, rips, and holes. All throughout there have been repairs wherever it has ripped or a large hole has formed. A large hole had gone through multiple pages and it was repaired with a large patch, but still wrinkled the page and is a different color to the original paper. These patches can be seen in the detail of 443-445. Whoever did the repair did not just patch it, but also wrote in the missing text missing. A similar patch made can be seen in the details of 873 - 877, the hole started large in 877 and got progressively smaller, which can be seen from the size difference of the patch from 877 to 873.

Another type of repair that can be seen throughout the are little repairs where there have been small rips or tears. The small patches are carefully and sparingly placed, some pages have many of these small patches, most of the time grouped in the same area. This type of patchwork can be seen in the images to the right. Similar to the small patch work, wherever the gold from the pages, mostly the frame of the text, there can be some patches that run along where the gold has eaten through the page. In the images below, the patches run along the frame can be seen clearly. Wherever these types of patches are present, it is common to see the person who repaired it has written the text over the patch, making the text seamless and readable.

Based on how we were able to categorize artist hands through a recognition of subtleties and characteristic marks in their drawings, we surmise that at least six to seven artists played a role in the production of this manuscript. That figure becomes slightly complicated by the Shahnama’s status as a compilation manuscript, which means that some of the collaboration might not have been direct between the artists as a collective since some pages seem to have been taken from different manuscripts.

Future research on this manuscript might consider, among other topics, its script, the identity of the artists, the choice of images from the Shahnama, the ownership history of the manuscript, and the composition of the pigments (using technology such as Visible Spectroscopy).

Rita Keane is a professor of Art History at Drew University.

Maura Kelly (CLA 2024) is an Art History major, minoring in museum studies.

Avianna Miller (CLA 2023) is a Studio Art and Media & Communications major, minoring in Art History, Photography, and Film Studies.