Manazir Journal is a peer-reviewed academic Diamond Open Access journal dedicated to visual arts, architecture and cultural heritage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Copyright (c) 2025 Nadia von Maltzahn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
This article examines the artistic practice of Lebanese painter Fadi Barrage (1939–88), focusing on the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period marked by his displacement during the Lebanese Civil War and his subsequent exile in Athens. Drawing on an intimate archive of unpublished diaries, sketches, and personal correspondence, the article explores how Barrage’s paintings functioned as both a refuge and a reflective process for navigating trauma, memory, and marginalization. Rather than depicting war-induced violence and desire directly in his paintings, Barrage developed a deeply personal visual language rooted in abstraction, which he referred to as “paint-feeling”—emotive compositions that concealed often erotic and affective content beneath layers of texture and form. Central to the discussion is Barrage’s conceptualization of “Fleisseh,” a term drawn from his childhood that came to denote both a real and imagined space of emotional safety, creative freedom, and queer desire. By engaging with Jill Bennett’s theory of empathic vision and Kirsten Scheid’s concept of taswir, the article situates Barrage’s practice within broader debates on representing trauma and the interactive creation of meaning through image-making. His paintings offer insight into how experiences of violence and queer desire are encoded in visual form, particularly when open expression is constrained by social or political contexts. This article brings new attention to an overlooked modernist trajectory in Lebanon, showing how Barrage’s personal notes and sketches reveal the ways artistic practice can serve as a means of emotional survival and a process for transforming trauma, displacement, and marginalization into an affective visual language.
Three colourful tapestries, made by Amine El Bacha and Antoine Saadé in 1984 and 1985, emphasize processes of creating connectivity in wartime Beirut. Their shared project of intermedial imagination and translation adapted Aubusson-style techniques to a modified loom embedded in a longer history of silk weaving in Lebanon. Their slow, creative process not only ensured the medium’s continuance during the war but was also an enlivening force that deepened their artistic affinity and friendship. Forged within an experience of forced displacement, this bond speaks to the entwinement of artistic process and modes of social and ecological connection. Based on personal testimonies and collections, this article reconstructs an intimate art history gleaned from the layered processes of making and remembering, in which picnics in nature, shared meals, and loom building form an integral part of the engagement.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jessica Gerschultz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Roundtable Discussion with Rose Issa and Mohammad El Rawas on the Exhibition Contemporary Lebanese Artists at London’s Kufa Gallery in Early 1988
In December 1986, Kufa Gallery opened in London’s Westbourne Grove. After exhibitions of Old Maps of the Arab and Islamic World (3–30 June 1987), three Europe-based Kurdish artists Walid Mustafa, Tahir Hamid and Karim Azad (15 July–8 August 1987), and an exhibition in memory of the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al Ali shortly after his assassination in London on 29 August 1987 (29 October–4 November 1987), Rose Issa dedicated an exhibition to Contemporary Lebanese Artists (15 January–24 February 1988). This exhibition took place during a period of war in Lebanon and in parallel with preparations for the landmark exhibition that was to take place at the Barbican Centre the following year, Lebanon—The Artist’s View (15 April–4 June 1989). Contemporary Lebanese Artists not only aimed to raise awareness about Lebanon’s artists and the country’s plight, but also to raise funds both for the artists and for the Lebanese Red Cross, which received part of the gallery’s commission. In this roundtable discussion, the main protagonists behind Contemporary Lebanese Artists, gallerist Rose Issa and artist Mohammad El Rawas, discuss the creation and reception of the exhibition.
In this interview, Lebanese artist Greta Naufal (b. 1955) looks back at her beginnings as an artist during the 1980s, reflecting on her education and early exhibitions within the context of the ongoing war in Lebanon. Initially drawn to science, her passion for art had already taken root during her teenage years through painting workshops at ALBA, where she studied under Guvder. The practice of painting became an intuitive form of expression, later deepened by her engagement with theoretical texts and visits to museums in Europe. Despite societal and institutional challenges, she pursued Fine Arts at the Lebanese University’s Raouche campus, where she was mentored by prominent Lebanese artists such as Aref El Rayess, Yvette Achkar and Amine El Bacha. Naufal recalls both moments of inspiration and instances of gender discrimination. Her formative years were shaped by resilience, passion and a deep connection to painting. In 1985, the artist travelled to Paris to pursue a PhD at the Sorbonne under Marc Le Bot, with a research proposal on the impact of war on Lebanese artists. Despite her efforts, Le Bot never responded, and she returned to Beirut due to escalating violence. Over the following years, her art continued to respond to her lived experience, shaped by war. Exhibitions like The Way of the Cross (1986) and Nine Months (1987) focused on survival, maternity and loss. She was part of pivotal events like Beirut Tabaan (1989), which fostered cross-sectorial artistic collaboration. Her works evolved into installations and performances, such as the 1993 happening in a ruined cathedral. She sees herself as a link between generations, concerned by the erasure of artists who remained during the war, emphasizing the lasting relevance of resistance and time.
Les trajectoires des artistes du « Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient »
Copyright (c) 2025 Perin Emel Yavuz, Claudia Polledri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
This article examines the curatorial activities of Janine Rubeiz during the Lebanese Civil War , highlighting her efforts to sustain cultural production amid crisis. This serves as an entry point in the analysis of Rubeiz’s use of art as a medium for political and social engagement. Drawing on concepts such as art agency and exhibitionary sociality, the article situates the two large-scale exhibitions Liban 78 and Beirut Tabaan and the gallery she opened at her own flat as dynamic, relational spaces that transcended traditional art displays to assume a deeper role. These initiatives, while heralding the social importance of culture in times of crisis, provided artists and audiences with opportunities to confront and renegotiate understandings of belonging, community, and the memory of the war . Ultimately, the essay challenges the assumption that periods of conflict disallow artistic and intellectual endeavours. In doing so, it contributes to the analysis of art’s presence and role during the Lebanese Civil War , opening research terrain previously obscured by the focus on postwar artistic production and critique.
Copyright (c) 2025 Flavia Elena Malusardi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Trajectoires artistiques, engagement et héritage du peintre Hamed Abdalla (1917–1985)
In this interview, Samir Abdallah retraces the many trajectories in the life of his father, the Egyptian painter Hamed Abdalla, between Egypt, Europe and the Arab world, as well as his work, which has been the subject of renewed interest since the 2000s. In the background, we can also trace the political tensions and conflicts that have marked relations between the Arab world and Europe, and which have undoubtedly influenced the reception and recognition of the painters of Arab modernism, to which Hamed Abdalla belongs. This exchange was also an opportunity to highlight Samir Abdallah’s political heritage. His documentaries bear witness to his father’s commitment to the Palestinian question.
Copyright (c) 2025 Claudia Polledri, Perin Emel Yavuz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Ahmed Hajeri is a French artist of Tunisian origin who lives and works in Paris. Born in 1948 in the village of Tazarka, in the Cap Bon region, he grew up in a very modest rural family. Orphaned at a young age, he initially trained as an electrician before moving to France at twenty. In Paris, while working as an electrical assembler, he applied for a draftsman position with the architect Roland Morand, who collaborated with Jean Dubuffet. Recognizing Hajeri’s talent, Morand introduced him to art and paved the way for him to become a painter. Following his 1978 debut exhibition at Galerie Messine, Hajeri fully embraced his artistic career. He gained early recognition from both audiences and Tunisian institutions during his first Tunis exhibition at Galerie Médina in 1985, later participating in numerous international shows. His works are now part of French public collections (CNAP), the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, the National Fund of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of Tunisia, as well as private collections worldwide. Without formal academic training, Hajeri has developed a distinctive oeuvre that transcends trends, existing at the intersection of the real and the imaginary. His compositions feature floating figures, an anthropomorphic bestiary, and elements of Carthaginian civilization. Drawing inspiration from childhood memories and dreamlike states, he creates paintings, drawings, and poems imbued with imagination and mystery. This portrait, based on interviews and unpublished archives, chronicles the artist’s journey between Tunis and Paris, examining the themes and influences that have shaped his work and its critical reception.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nadia Chalbi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Dr. Demir Fitrat Onger, collectionneur du groupe du Gymnase à Paris
After the WWII, Turkish artists of the École de Paris played a significant role in the Parisian art scene, actively participating in the debates between abstraction and figuration. Turkish painters and sculptors exhibited at major salons such as the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, asserting their presence within the Parisian avant-garde. Their interactions with influential figures in modern art, as well as participation in key exhibitions, testify to their integration into the French artistic milieu. The long-neglected memory of this generation is today preserved thanks to many players in the art world. Dr. Demir Fitrat Onger, who built up a major collection and maintained close ties with these artists, is one of them. His testimony sheds light on their contribution to artistic modernity, but also on their bohemian lifestyle and lack of recognition.
Copyright (c) 2025 Perin Emel Yavuz, Ekin Akalın https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
This article examines the curatorial approaches and exhibition practices of Beirut’s Sursock Museum during the 1980s, a decade marked by civil war and socio-political fragmentation. Following a seven-year closure, the museum reopened in 1982 and resumed a limited but symbolically charged programme. The study explores how the institution navigated inclusion, representation, and legitimacy in this fraught period, focusing on logistical constraints in a divided city, the formalist strategies of group exhibitions—especially the Salons d’Automne—and shifting criteria for artistic recognition. Drawing on archival material, press coverage, and curatorial documents, it positions the museum’s wartime programming as a case of institutional resilience, symbolic manoeuvring, and cultural gatekeeping. Particular attention is given to the perspectives of excluded or self-excluded artists, such as Mahmoud Amhaz, Mohammed al-Kaïssi, and RoseVart, whose critiques complicate the museum’s claims to neutrality. By interrogating jury composition and the political and aesthetic implications of their choices, the article contributes to debates on institutional critique, historiographic curating, and canon formation during conflict, reframing the 1980s as a contested terrain of curatorial agency and cultural significance rather than a lost wartime decade.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ashraf Osman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
During the upheaval of the early civil war months in Lebanon in 1975, Mona Hatoum (b. 1952) found herself stranded in London, where she decided to study art. In the early 1980s, she graduated from the Slade School of Art, where she immersed herself in postmodern thought and the concurrent development of critical theory in the United Kingdom. Inspired by artistic movements challenging the norms of contemporary British art, she shaped her artistic approach by blending the artistic, social, and political realms. The ideas of Rasheed Araeen gave her a conceptual framework, exploring his reflections on Third World art, postcolonialism, questions of identity, and the notion of “black artist” in the United Kingdom. This article aims to examine Hatoum’s involvement in British Black Arts through her activities with Rasheed Araeen, presenting a fresh analysis of key works that assess their critical impact. While she is now a globally recognized artist, there has been limited research dedicated to the phase of her life when she existed on the fringes of art history during her youth in Beirut, then working in the then-contested field of performance and video, and often being considered a migrant artist, or as she once wrote: a black one. Drawing from an exclusive interview with the artist, this article offers an intersectional approach to both western art history and that from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, shedding new light on this crucial period in her artistic development and its broader implications for understanding diverse artistic narratives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Joan Grandjean https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
This article explores how the Iraqi artist Jamil Hamoudi articulated Western modernity and Iraqi and Arab artistic traditions through his work and writings. By examining his career, it highlights the dynamics of exchange and transformation that shaped the post-war Parisian art scene. Hamoudi developed a unique abstract vision that brought Arabic calligraphic traditions into dialogue with Mesopotamian aesthetic references, creating a distinctive approach to abstraction. His critical and theoretical engagement reflects his desire to integrate Arab artists into a global artistic dialogue without confining them to labels or exoticizing categories. In doing so, Hamoudi navigates a Parisian cosmopolitanism that proves to be less open than it initially seems.
Copyright (c) 2025 Zouina Ait Slimani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
In 1982, Jamil Molaeb exhibited woodcut prints in West Beirut, capturing life during the Lebanese Civil War . His series Akhir al-zalam, awwal al-fajr (The End of Darkness, the Beginning of Dawn) stood out for its portrayal of wartime experiences. Molaeb’s work drew on regional artistic influences, particularly those of Palestinian artist Mustafa al-Hallaj, highlighting the interconnectedness of artists in the region affected by conflict. This exhibition stood out for its exploration of war themes through the medium of woodcut prints, a choice reflecting both artistic intent and the material realities of wartime Lebanon. This paper examines the relationship between the visuality of black-and-white prints and the representation of war motifs in Lebanese art during the civil war . The prevalence of war-themed prints and posters shaped the visual culture of Lebanon, yet the genre faced limited commercial appeal, pushing artists and galleries back toward mainstream art. By analysing these dynamics, this paper reconsiders how Lebanese artists documented and engaged with the civil war through underrepresented artistic media.
Copyright (c) 2025 Çiğdem İvren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
The paper examines the development of art galleries and exhibition spaces in Lebanon since the beginning of the civil war in 1975 and throughout the 1980s, with a particular interest in the shifts and changes that occurred as a result of the hostilities. This includes the dissolution of Beirut as an artistic centre and the gradual decentring of spaces and activities outside the capital. While the focus is on the decade of the 1980s, the analysis will look at developments that began earlier in order to contextualize them. One gallery in particular, Galerie Damo, will be examined in detail, including its founding history, mission, and exhibition programme. The gallery began operating after the first phase of the civil war in 1977 and serves as an example of exhibition activity outside the capital. It relied largely on artists who had exhibited extensively in various art galleries, cultural centres, and other spaces in Beirut before the war, and is therefore well suited to analysing the ruptures that occurred after 1975, as well as possible continuities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Monique Bellan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Saliba Douaihy, Shafic Abboud, and Saloua Raouda Choucair were three Lebanese artists who traveled to Paris in the process of becoming canonical artists in their home country. But Paris was not their only destination. For all three of these artists, their intercity movements produced an experience of cosmopolitanism that was circulatory and nonhierarchical. This cosmopolitanism did not flow only one way. Rather, it pooled as artists took advantage of opportunities to travel and moved back and forth between different transnational hubs. This article explores how cosmopolitanism operates, as a pattern of movements and a mode of exchange, and questions the connections among cosmopolitanism, modernism, and abstraction. Drawing on recent scholarship to define cosmopolitanism as a mixture of languages and a density of encounters, I argue that artists such as Douaihy, Abboud, and Choucair exemplified the linguistic phenomenon of heteroglossia in the visual arts. These artists approached abstraction not as a style to imitate but rather as a language to use, one easily interchangeable with the others they already spoke fluently. I propose that if we, too, approach abstraction, metaphorically, in linguistic rather than stylistic terms, then we will develop the tools to reformulate modernism as expansively global.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kaelen Wilson-Goldie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
(Re)producing an ‘Islamic-Byzantine’ Artist
This article challenges the interpretation of Fahrelnissa Zeid’s (1901–1991) mid-century abstract production as influenced by Islamic and Byzantine art. The study analyzes culturalist presentations of the artist’s exhibitions in Paris galleries (1949–1969) and later international exhibitions (1990–2024), comparing them with the artist’s own statements and alternative reviews. I argue that both twentieth century and contemporary interpretations of her abstract practice are orientalist in character. The original elision of her voice reflected mid-century colonial ideology and promoted a new Parisian lyrical abstraction movement, while contemporary interpretations elevate globalized exhibitions’ marketing over scholarship. These culturalist interpretations exclude Fahrelnissa Zeid from modernism’s narratives by framing her practice as a-historic cultural atavism. I argue that Fahrelnissa’s approach to abstraction was shaped by her preoccupation with all-encompassing other-worlds. Her transition to abstraction followed a figurative expressionist phase and was triggered by paradigm-shifting visual shocks, leading to a two-decade gestural expressionist production. Fahrelnissa Zeid’s artistic vision also differs from some Global South modernist artists’ practice who sought to hybridize their national cultural imageries with European visual styles.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adila Laïdi-Hanieh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
The artistic itinerary of Nejad Melih Devrim (1923–1995), a Turkish artist who settled in Paris in 1946, raises questions about his relative oblivion in France despite a promising career. An actor in the “new trends” of post-war Parisian art, he often embodied a synthesis between Turkish artistic traditions and the modernity of the École de Paris, an orientalist reading of his work that reduces it to a simple fusion of Western and Byzantine influences. However, his career, marked by his cosmopolitan location and his choice of exhibitions abroad, bears witness to a more personal and independent style. Despite gaining recognition in Paris and taking part in numerous salons, his departure for Poland in 1968 marked the beginning of his oblivion in France. Although his work is being rediscovered, notably at the Centre Pompidou, it remains relevant to reevaluate Nejad Melih Devrim's place in a globalized art history, taking into account his cosmopolitan context.
Copyright (c) 2025 Clotilde Scordia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Les voyages à Paris d’Edgard Naccache, Mahmoud Sehili et Néjib Belkhodja
At the heart of this article is the oblivion of Maghrebi artists, and Tunisian artists in particular, in art historical narratives produced in the West, despite their active presence in Paris after the Second World War. Under the French protectorate and in the aftermath of independence, travel grants enabled these artists to train in Paris, where they discovered the avant-gardes and abstraction, and contributed to the spread of these movements in the Maghreb. The article focuses on the careers of Edgard Naccache, Mahmoud Selihi and Nejib Belkhodja, who, although recognized by some critics and galleries in Paris, remain largely obscured in Western historical accounts. Their contribution to the Parisian art scene has remained marginal in the major narratives of art history, which have often ignored modern North African art. This study documents this erasure, contributing to the reflection on the reasons for the lack of visibility of modern non-Western artists.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alia Nakhli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
The Reinvention of Padishah-i Islam in the Visual Representations of Ghazan Khan
This article discusses how the visualization of Mahmud Ghazan, the sixth Ilkhanid ruler, was employed to construct and propagate his image as the Padishah-i Islam (King of Islam), thus justifying him both as king of Iranshahr (land of Iran) and the legitimate successor of the Prophet Muhammad. In a quest for visual translations of the Ilkhanid concept of Padishah-i Islam—an inseparable combination of the Persian notion of ideal kingship and prophethood—several illustrations from the Diez albums representing Ghazan or events of his reign have been identified, two of which have become subject to detailed iconographic analyses. Two approaches to the visualization of Ghazan as Padishah-i Islam can be considered here. The first is Ghazan’s birth scene where the visual narrative is covered in various formal and semantic layers; transformed into a symbolic narrative of a holy birth associated with those of the prophets. The second appears in the scene of Ghazan’s enthronement, probably once illustrated as an unknown manuscript’s frontispiece, the images’ composition and components appear as a visual panegyric poem which applies an elaborate visual language that elevates Ghazan to the level of a divine king.
Copyright (c) 2023 Latifkar Azadeh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
The Sacred King in the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama
This paper aims to trace the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian concept of “royal divine glory” (farr) through its visual translations within the Iranian manuscript cultures in the Safavid period, specifically in the illustrations of the Shahnama-yi Shahi in the 16th century. Reviewing the longue durée idea of Iranian kingship perceived within the Safavid royal ideology in the reigns of the first two monarchs, we delve into the Shahnama paintings to see the artists’ assets for showing the divinity and dignity of Iranian kings and how they managed to mark a difference between the profane and Shiite iconographies. We took as case studies nine illustrations of Zahhak’s story, the most tyrannical legendary King in Shah Tahmasp’s Shahnama. Indeed, to analyse the artistic manifestations of the Royal farr, we examined the scenes where the “true” king is literally absent.
Copyright (c) 2023 Negar Habibi, Shervin Farridnejad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Iranian kings, or those who reigned in lands under Persian linguistic and cultural domination, followed the idea of a Just Ruler: a pious king who looked after his subjects’ divinity and spirituality in parallel to their earthly lives and needs. The Just Ruler extended righteousness and peace among his people while patronizing the construction of palaces, gardens, and new towns. The idea of a Just Ruler may be found in Sassanid monumental rock reliefs and written texts and then enriched and elaborated upon in the Islamic era by philosophers, poets, authors, and artists. This issue of Manazir Journal focuses on how art and architecture served the representation of the Just Ruler in Persianate societies from Central Asia to Eastern Anatolia from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Illustrated books, architecture, and photography show how different kings and rulers referred to the Persian ideas of the Just Ruler by patronizing new constructions, richly illuminated books, and in the modern era, employing mediums such as photography and lithography for nationalizing the king’s image.
Copyright (c) 2023 Negar Habibi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
This contribution is a commented portfolio of images gathered during fieldwork in Baghdad (February 2020). It aims to provide an overview of the murals which have been concentrated on Tahrir Square since the revolution of October 2019. These murals share some iconographic topics in common with the thawra (revolution) in Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and Beirut. Nevertheless, some semantic and iconographic registers are specific to Iraq, and divided into two main categories. The first one recreates “a city within the city” (ville en abyme) through composite unrealistic images of real places known to all; the second relates to the martyrology of Shiism, with portraits of historical imams, but also of “martyrs” killed during the repression in Autumn 2019. Contrary to the well-known official iconography since the 1958 Iraqi revolution, this new figurative expression is that of a young population predominantly Shiite (due to demography in Iraq), and it stems from a cultural and political substrate prone to rebellion—that of Hussein, long repressed by power. The style is often naive, at the antipodes of the concomitant Beiruti thawra street art, although crossing with other globalized graphic codes. It constitutes a vibrant popular culture and also signals a “Shiitization” of public space. Beyond traditional divisions, it finally proves to federate, in reaction to the iconoclasm of Daesh but also to the corruption that strikes the daily life and the future of millions of citizens.
Copyright (c) 2022 Caecilia Pieri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Ce que l’art fait à la ville en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient
Copyright (c) 2022 Marie Bonte, Marion Slitine https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
When asked to provide his son Nasrallah's genealogy during his marriage to a Mughal princess, Nader Shah replied, “He is the son of the sword, the grandson of the sword, the great-grandson of the sword, and so on for seven generations.” Nader and his successors, emerging from humble backgrounds and ending the prestigious Safavid dynasty's rule in Iran, faced a daunting challenge in legitimizing their rule. Unlike the Safavids, they couldn't rely solely on lineage or religious authority. While military victories played a role in their rise to power, it doesn't explain the enduring changes in Iran during this period. Art, architecture, and material culture became potent instruments in their quest for legitimacy. Palaces, ceremonial displays, and the adoption of Safavid customs conveyed regal status. Simultaneously, the construction and restoration of religious monuments portrayed devotion and highlighted distinctions from Sunni restoration and Turkish influences. Through grand structures, inscriptions, opulence, and generous gifts, rulers like Ashraf, Mahmud, and Nader embedded their legitimacy in the physical landscape, aiming to leave a lasting imprint in people's minds and assert their rightful sovereignty on the world stage.
Copyright (c) 2023 Mélisande Bizoirre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
In 1566, after Sultan Suleiman’s death, Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-1576) sent condolences and congratulations to Sultan Selim II (r. 1566-1574) along with several gifts, including a magnificent Quran and an exquisite illustrated Shahnama copy, noteworthy in Iranian art history. However, the letter accompanying these gifts has often been overlooked, perceived as containing mere courtesies. This letter marked a significant exchange between Safavid kings and Ottoman sultans, with participation from secretaries across Iran. Its authors aimed to portray an idealized king and their notable characteristics, demonstrating that the actions of these rulers (Sultan Suleiman, Sultan Selim, and particularly Shah Tahmasp) aligned with this ideal. Art-related activities were among these characteristics. The authors detailed the Safavid king’s palace, garden, and the artistic gifts to highlight their connection with the king’s ideal image. This article explores the letter as a literary and artistic medium, delving into its intricate rhetoric as a tool for representing royal authority. Additionally, it addresses how the authors’ descriptions of artworks as integral to the king’s image conveyed political meaning, illustrating how art reflected royal power in public and political spheres.
Copyright (c) 2023 Amir Maziar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
The Idea of the Just Ruler and the Art Patron in Persianate Calligraphy
Jaʿfar Tabrizi (1383–1455) is one of the most famous Timurid calligraphers and was the chief of prince Baysonqor’s (1397–1433) library. Under his supervision, some of the most prestigious Herati manuscripts were created. Muhammad Hussein Shirazi (1825-1900) is one of the Qajar calligraphy masters, honored with the title Katib al-Sultan (the King’s calligrapher). He copied some of the most prestigious Persian masterpieces during his lifetime. In the colophons of their numerous manuscripts, both calligraphers praised their respective princes and kings, providing a resource from which one may learn about the ideas of the just ruler as the governor and as the patron of the arts in the Timurid and Qajar periods. In reviewing these colophons, this article aims to identify the idea of kingship, especially in the patronage of the arts of the book and calligraphy, narrated and praised in two different historical and social contexts in the Timurid and Qajar periods; widely considered the golden ages of Persian calligraphy. This study shows how the tradition of patronage did endure for some five centuries.
Muhammad Hussein Katib al-Sultan Shirazi
Copyright (c) 2023 Hamid Reza Ghelichkhani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Copyright (c) 2023 Azade Latifkar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Reflection of Identity in the Mirror of Narrative Images
The concept of “Just Rule” historically served to shape a king’s image and bolster the monarchy’s structure, often emulated by courtiers seeking to be part of the inner circle and perpetuating the idea of a Just Ruler. Influenced by the king’s interests, figures like Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-1896) fostered monarchic strength through praises and art, particularly in the Nasiri era. These illustrations, blending literature and visual art, became sought-after for adorning manuscripts and enhancing printed books during this period. This study examines Nasir al-Din Shah's portrayal in the One Thousand and One Nights manuscript (1852-1859), overseen by Abul-Hassan Ghaffari, Saniʿ al-Mulk (d. 1865). Characters resembling Nasir al-Din Shah appear throughout the manuscript. The study aims to analyze these images in relation to the manuscript’s content and their role in the discourse on portrait illustrations. Additionally, it explores how the idea of Just Rule was perpetuated by the patrons and artists involved in creating this manuscript.
Copyright (c) 2023 Ali Boozari https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
Visualizing Kingship in a Time of Change
Despite artistic engagement with photography in Iran almost immediately after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, the field of Islamic art history has had difficulty accepting the modern period and the medium of photography as part of its discipline. Studies on painted Iranian portraiture have often stopped before the introduction of photography, and only in more recent years has photographic portraiture and its influence on painting been examined. Due to this nascent state of the field, large gaps exist even on more traditional topics, such as the question of royal portraiture. This article presents the first examination of photographic royal portraiture and the visualization of kingship during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). This topic, in comparison with earlier Iranian painted royal portraiture, has received considerably less attention. Photographic portraiture, together with printed and painted examples, from the reigns of the Qajar rulers Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848-1896), Muzaffar al-Din Shah (r. 1896-1907), Muhammad ʿAli Shah (r. 1907-1909), and Ahmad Shah (r. 1909-1925), will be analysed in connection with social and political developments in order to better understand the development of royal image making during a time of political turmoil.
Copyright (c) 2023 Mira Xenia Schwerda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0