 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to those who were here for last night's lecture, and a very warm welcome to those of you who are joining us tonight, just for this evening. My name is Nargis Farzad, and I'm the current chair of Center for Iranian Studies, who are hosting these amazing lectures, the Jam lecture series, which we started and inaugurated them in 2012. So it's a rather special year this year. I'll spare you the other bits of last night lectures for those of introduction for those who heard it. But I wanted to say that I'm sure you agree with me. In the spellbinding lecture of last night, Professor Robert Hillenbrand introduced us to the great Mongol Shah Nome and the importance of this extraordinary illustrated manuscript of Ferdowsi's Book of Kings, which for those of you who may not know of it, the one or two of you, who I'm sure will not admit to not knowing about this amazing book, is an epic poem whose composition took almost 30 years before it was presented to the Ghaznavid monarch in 1010. The book narrates the history of Iran from the dawn of time till the Arab invasion of Iran in the 7th century CE. Professor Hillenbrand drew our attention to the large scale and the style of paintings of this Shah Nome last night. Yes, I'm so sorry, I just somehow lost my place there. Absolutely. The manuscript that he dated to around 1330, and he spoke of the emotional intensity of the images, the eclectic style, the individuality of characters depicted, the artistic mastery, and the splendor of its illustrations. Professor Hillenbrand trained our eyes to focus on the broad color palette with the dominance of yellows and reds and opaque watercolors, as well as the gold and silver. The manuscript, which in its original form probably consisted of about 280 folios, I hope I took these notes down correctly last night, with 190 illustrations, although it is thought it was never completed, left Iran in the early 20th century and was broken up and its pages were scattered. And if I'm not mistaken, you mentioned that there now exists some 57 individual pages in a number of collections around the world. Having mesmerized us with the title of the talk last night, which was, what makes the great Mongol Shah Nome great, we need to find out why the evening tonight is entitled, What Problems Does the Great Mongol Shah Nome Pause? So to find out about that, please welcome Professor Hillenbrand to the podium. I want to reflect tonight on one of the best known works of medieval Iranian art, the great Mongol Shah Nome, but paradoxically, any closely focused study of it reveals not only huge gaps in information, but also deep seated problems that hinder our understanding of it. The familiar problems of date, provenance and patronage, have monopolized the attention of most scholars who have tackled this manuscript. Of course, it's plainly unwise to proceed with say, with any analysis, until such basic facts are established. But the corollary has been the neglect of many other curious aspects of this enigmatic masterpiece. For many specialists, the great Mongol Shah Nome has been for many decades, above all, a problem. For it so obstinately refuses to fit into what by general consent constitutes classical Persian painting. Small wonder then, that for far too long, widely admired and widely neglected, it has remained the elephant in the room so far as the history of Persian painting is concerned. That's a moral there. So let me get some basic information out of the way before we come to the meat of this lecture. The great Mongol Shah Nome was in the Royal Adjar Library in the later 19th century, before being illegally, I stress that word, spirited away around 1910 to Paris. There it fell into the hands of a pantomime villain, a Franco-Belgian dealer by the name of George Joseph de Motte, and at his behest, it was disbound so that the 58 paintings it then contained could be sold separately. He kept no record, damn him, of how it looked at the time or even how many folios it had, but thoroughly mangled it in several ways. Let's have a look at him, seen through the eyes of Matisse. Pages that had a painting on both sides, on both recto and verso, were split so that those paintings could be sold separately. He glued newspaper onto both sides and went, and of course, there was damage. The damage in one case has been hidden by writing. In the second case, it's just blank. He adds new extra text to disguise what had been done. It's hard to disentangle de Motte's interventions. They are a bleak commentary on the lengths to which greed can drive a man ostensibly dedicated to fine art. Scattered to the forewinds by de Motte and now preserved in 22 locations across the globe, these 58 paintings have offered all too few opportunities to be studied on block, and that's what the art historian wants to have the manuscript in front of him or her and to be able to study the whole thing. No possibility of that here. Five exhibitions in the past century have displayed a score of them, one third. But close prolonged study of a painting while you're standing up in a crowded exhibition is a pain on all counts, believe me. No information has come to light as to the date of the manuscript, where it was produced or the name of the patron. Most of the leaves which had no paintings have disappeared without trace. Conventional wisdom has settled on a date between 1320 and 1335 for it. On Tabriz, the Mongol capital in northwestern Iran, as the place of production, and on either Vizier of Sultan Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler, or to that Sultan himself as the patron. The project came to an abrupt end, unfinished upon the untimely death of the Sultan in 1335, poisoned by his wife. There were later disastrous interventions. I will draw the veil of discretion over them. They're 19th century work. But the word unfinished is, as will become clear, pregnant with implications. So far so good. This brief history is enough to make it plain that the detailed study of this manuscript bristles with too many problems to touch on meaningfully in a single lecture. So I'll limit myself to four problematic issues. These revolve in turn around innovation, the production process, the number of illustrations, and the manuscript's legacy. Much of this material is not dealt with at length in my recent book on this manuscript. Tonight I will investigate the issues around innovation under three interrelated headings, size, propaganda, and teamwork. The sheer size of the manuscript is the most obvious innovation. No other illustrated shah-naame of any period comes close. The original dimensions are irretrievably lost thanks to the radical refashioning of the manuscript in 19th century Iran, which involved encasing the text, the text block in fact, together with its attendant paintings, in a broad frame of 19th century Russian paper. The paper historian Jonathan Bloom has estimated that the original sheets of the manuscript measured some 80 by 60 centimeters. That means that when it was opened, a double page spread of the great Mongol shah-naame would have measured about one meter, 30 centimeters across, including the binding. Now excuse me for using a vulgar visual aid. Imagine a book this size. Imagine reading it. This takes us well beyond the limits of comfortable reading. You could not hold this book on your lap for any length of time. Its sheer weight plus the binding would necessitate a book stand. And it's not only the reader's muscles that would be sorely tried. Actually reading the text would involve constant movement, either of the book itself or of the reader's body. In practical terms then, it would have been physically taxing to come to close grips with this book. Now some of you in this audience will have consulted Kreswell's great volumes on early Islamic architecture. Allow me to confess how much I hate consulting those books and all because it's a physical challenge to do so. How much more I would have consulted them if only they'd been half the size and half the weight. A Kreswellian volume measures some three square meters and weighs seven and a half kilos. But it is a mere pygmy beside the Greco-Mongol charname which would originally have been well over three times as big, measuring some 10 and a half square meters. So this charname in bound form must have approached the weight of 20 kilos, which is the luggage you're allowed onto a plane. It's not certain whether the original was planned to comprise two volumes or just one. The project was never completed. So only the residue, a mere torso, was bound at an unknown date. But it's relevant here to recollect that the copy of the Quran believed to have belonged to the Caliph Uthman in the 650s was kept for centuries in the great mosque of Korodaba and venerated as a relic. And it required two men to carry it. Not many scholars have a sideline in weightlifting. Clearly mammoth size carries with it significant disadvantages. No wonder that this format, like the mammoth itself, became extinct. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And so I must hope that my own book on this charname, which weighs in at a mere four kilos, will not remain unread for that reason. The huge size of this charname is integral to a brand new aesthetic of book production in Mongol Iran that has its parallel in both contemporary architecture in Tabriz and in luxury Korans. But that size had to be justified by something more than huge empty margins on three of the four sides of a typical leaf. In this respect, the manuscript followed current fashion as can be seen in both contemporary and earlier Korans. The option taken up in some of the imperial Mongol Korans was to enlarge the script very substantially so that the sheer size of the letters proclaimed the sacred status of the text. Something similar could have been done in this charname, but it was not. Its text block had 31 lines of text disposed in six columns. And thus its format, though larger, does not diverge markedly from that of contemporary charname manuscripts on the left, as you can see. But presumably the images themselves had to be in proportion to the unprecedented scale of this book. And once that decision had been made at the outset, the next challenge was how to fill the spaces, set aside for the images. That was indeed problematic. The simplest option of all would have been a pro-Rata enlargement of stock images, but that would instantly have revealed their threadbare quality. Imagining that from a small charname. Besides, many of the scenes illustrated in the great Mongol manuscript were new. And even when the painters were constrained to follow existing models, one can sense that they were under pressure to introduce novel features, the sheer variety of tone, of composition, of color in successive enthronement scenes, and also in scenes of single combat or battle. Or monster slains, all cases in point. The extra space now available because of size left ample room for the inclusion of telling details as well as room to recompose the whole idea. Enough of size. Let me now touch briefly on the element of propaganda. It's clear that this was not a book to be read continuously or to be poured over. That would involve too much physical discomfort. A huge dizzyingly expensive book, not intended to be read, must have had some other primary purpose. It was essentially a display copy of the charname, meant to be appreciated at a distance. And the mere size of it was a knockout blow. But it's more than that. It's an attempt constrained by the methodology available at the time to make the book something new, do something new. And its colossal size was part and parcel of that object, for it signalled in unmistakable visual terms the unique importance of this manuscript. It did much more than celebrate Phaedos's text or exhibit the work of the best painters of the time. It was an instrument of propaganda aimed at Persian and Mongol alike. Of course, that audience was very small. One might argue that this makes the very notion of propaganda somewhat counterproductive. After all, propaganda tends to be aimed at the masses. But in this case, the audience comprised the ruling elite of the land. Once they had received the messages of this manuscript, that information could trickle down to many more people. Simply by existing then, this object proclaimed the might and the wealth of the Mongol state in a way that everybody who saw it would immediately understand. But it also honoured Persian national sentiment. And this could be construed as a major step forward by the Mongols. Indeed, it was both an acknowledgement of that reality and a commitment to it by the Mongol state. It was a testament of rapprochement and acculturation. And the insertion of multiple covert references to episodes in the history of the Mongol dynasty in Iran over the previous century could even be termed a hijacking of this most beloved Persian text for Mongol consumption. And it might also have been an olive branch. In 1339, the seasoned administrator, Hamdala Moustofi, described the impact of the Mongol Holocaust of the 1220s as follows. There can be no doubt that even if for a thousand years to come, no evil should befall the country, it will not be possible to repair completely the damage and to bring back the land to the state in which it was formerly. Indeed, the trauma that the Mongols inflicted on the Persian psyche is still remembered to this day. And modern scholars have calculated that northeastern Iran, namely Horasan, has still not recovered today the agricultural productivity it had in pre-Mongol times. Gioveni, the top Persian official of the 1290s, put it more succinctly. Amadand, Kandand, Sohtand, Kushtand, Bardaand, Raftand, they came. They uprooted, they burnt, they slaughtered, they plundered, they departed. Now the destroyers had morphed into creators. And this copy of the Persian national epic was perhaps intended as a monumental memorial of that transformation. A century earlier, the Persians had indeed lost the war, but now they had won the peace. My second sub-theme of innovation is teamwork. It is in this politico-cultural context that the teamwork that made this Sharnameh possible falls into place. For this is emphatically not an example of a luxurious private patron, some patriotic Iranian ordering the illustration of a book by a fine painter with the help of a few lesser lights. It is a state enterprise under state control, the production of a state atelier funded by the state and located in the state capital of Tabriz. All this increased the prestige of the entire project, while also loading a heavy weight of responsibility on the shoulders of whoever was in overall charge. A man we might term the project director, of whom more or none. He had to find the necessary scholars, scribes, painters, illuminators, and other craftsmen. It's likely enough then that dozens of experts, quite apart from the necessary administrators and accountants, were required to run this project successfully. In particular, to execute the enormous cycle of perhaps 216 unusually big paintings was of course a task far beyond one or two painters, however talented they were. The project director had to create a large team with no room for hacks. How did he pick them? He had a very recent experience of illustrating multiple copies of the Vizier Rashida Dean's monumental world history in his purpose-built Tabriz atelier would have been invaluable. Word of mouth about this splendid charname would have spread quickly so that likely candidates would have flocked to Tabriz. And whatever way they joined the team, they would very quickly have learned the need for coordinated teamwork. The size, complexity, and sheer number of the paintings required, and the likelihood that speed was of the essence makes it probable that more than one person worked on a given painting. The necessary microscopic and even laboratory examination required to distinguish different hands has not even begun. Certain features such as the depiction of architecture, costume, armor, weapons, horses, furniture recur so often in these paintings that it would have been sensible to delegate their depiction to painters who specialized in one or other of such features. There are plenty of European parallels for this. A few other painters, presumably the leading masters, among whom were men of genius, would be responsible for plotting out and possibly executing certain compositions. Attempts have been made to name these artists, Ahmadi Musa, Amir Dolot Yair, Shamsuddin, Abdul Hay, on the basis of the 1545 account of the librarian, Doust Muhammad, but their active careers ceased, well, we don't know about ceased. Certainly long post-dated, 1335. I wonder whether the traditional master pupil relationship which has so often been invoked as the model for plotting change is any more useful in Persian painting than it is in calligraphy. Perhaps the great Mongol shanami was more likely the outcome of a massive and prolonged tea method whose detailed interactions, it seems, cannot now be recovered in detail. Obviously, not all paintings were of equal importance. So perhaps there was both an A team and a B team. Probably multiple paintings were being worked on simultaneously so as to ensure that the schedule of work was met in timely fashion and did not falter. Some modern scholars who have guessed how long the project was underway and how many artists took part have differed wildly in their estimates. As to chronology, Sudavar has proposed that it was launched in 1315 before Abu Sa'id came to the throne in 1317, though a date up to a decade later is also plausible. Gray guessed a maximum of six artists working for at most three years. Stukin proposed 12 artists whose output he divided into 18 subgroups working over a period of some 80 years. A theory that no subsequent scholar has espoused. The project, though, was almost four times bigger than either of them had envisaged and that misapprehension compromises their conclusions. It's worth reflecting briefly on what such tightly knit and closely overseen teamwork might imply. Ideas and techniques would be shared either openly or by stealth. The close proximity within which members of the team worked meant that everyone concerned could learn something from everyone else. What to do and also what not to do for young painters to work closely alongside masters of their craft was inspiring. It was an ideal environment for teaching and learning. Competition and emulation were in the air. It was a hot house. The exhilaration of playing a part in producing the grandest book of the age, Bread, Pride and Desprey de Coeur and inevitably, the pace of change quickened vertiginously. The paintings themselves offer convincing proof that their creators were encouraged to put their own interpretation of the text and its implications into the picture that they were creating. So the painter could become the pictorial equivalent of a literary critic. And thus, a radically new approach to book illustration came into being. So much for the problems connected with innovation. These justifiably gobble up the lion's share of the problems posed by this manuscript. Taken together, they suggest that the project was trying to do too much all at once. For there were also plenty of other problems to solve and that takes me to my second main theme, the production process itself, which must have posed some truly daunting challenges. The participants in this project were pushing the envelope on all fronts and some mistakes and failures were inevitable, though we can disagree about which they are. This was a new kind of shaname and it demanded correspondingly new approaches if it were to succeed and the problems generated by the project as a whole were far too complex to be left to the painters alone. Someone had to work out a schedule, not just of time but of content and of people management. The large number of craftsmen involved made it imperative, as I said earlier, that some sort of project director was appointed, perhaps the first of his kind. Moreover, the number and difficulty of the tasks would have been beyond the powers of any one person to perform alone, especially if he were working against the clock. So a supporting team was required, even if he himself bore the ultimate responsibility. Now, who might this person have been? No contemporary evidence exists which can shed light on this question. Two later clues are worth mentioning, one from Timurid and one from Safavid Times. A document, known as the Arzadasht, preserved in Istanbul and dated 1429, was drawn up by one Jaafar Atabrizi, a noted calligrapher for the Timurid prince by Sungur. This document lists in detail the projects on which the various artists in the atelier in multiple crafts and techniques were engaged. It seems reasonable to infer that Jaafar was in charge of the atelier. The Safavid evidence is harder to interpret. It consists of a tantalisingly brief and ambiguous statement by the librarian Dost Mohamed in his preface to an album dedicated to Prince Bahram Mirza, dated 1545. It reads, after significantly paying homage to both European and Chinese painters, that in the reign of Abu Sa'id, I quote, Master Ahmad Musa lifted the veil from the face of painting and the style of depiction that is now current was invented by him. Here is a picture attributed to him. Clearly, this painter was important enough to be remembered two centuries later. But to go further than this, for example, to identify him as the guiding spirit behind the manuscript or even its organiser is to speculate. Similar speculation has identified three painters, Sultan Mohamed, Mir Mousavid and Ava Mirok, as the successive directors of Shah Tahmasp's Great Shah Nome produced two centuries later. And that same Shah appointed the painter Bechzad to be in charge of the Royal Library, though his exact responsibilities vis-à-vis those who produced manuscripts remain unclear. In sum, it seems plausible enough that oversight of the Great Mongol Shah Nome project could have been entrusted to an artist. But it would also have been prudent to appoint others, including professional administrators, accountants and specialists galore. The principal challenge of project management, such a superintendent would have had to face, was drawing up a schedule of work and keeping to it as the project developed, which in turn demanded the most rigorous critical path analysis. That would have included choosing the most appropriate location for the work, ensuring the procurement of materials, selecting the various specialists and determining the choice of illustrations. Let me look at these issues in turn. Choosing where to work was perhaps the least of his worries. This was a manuscript for the court, and there was already a functioning court atelier in a specially built suburb of Tabriz, the Mongol capital, named Urrabi-Rashidi after its founder, the most powerful vizier in the land, Rashida Deen. Here, multiple copies of his great world history were copied, and close by was another intellectual, cultural and educational hub founded by the Ilhan Ghazan Khan. And so it's likely that the manuscript was produced in one or other of these two centres within easy reach of major libraries, which could be consulted by members of the team. At the outset, the provision of materials was crucial to fulfilling the ambition to make this book look like no other, shah-nome. Nothing but the best would do, and presumably no expense was spared. Materials of all kinds, including brushes, galams and inks, were required in abundance. The purchase of pigments in sufficient quantities, especially those that were costly, hard to obtain, rarely used and perhaps unfamiliar, would take time, energy and resourcefulness, as well as money. The extraordinarily wide palette employed for which no other contemporary Islamic manuscript offers a parallel was the result. The provision of paper, elephant folios of outsize scale, might have required special authority. Both artists and calligraphers would have been allotted specific paintings and sections of text, respectively. Other specialists would have worked on sizing and polishing the paper and executing the illumination of rubrics and captions. The project director was perpetually having to look ahead. He had to oversee and coordinate the work of numerous specialists involved and follow a strict timetable. He had to predict and thereby to avoid difficulties and to delegate. Hardest of all perhaps was the selection and supervision of the painters. The art historian, Yvonne Struckin, estimated, as I said, that at least 12 artists were involved in this manuscript. Among them were several of the highest calibre, men who took Persian painting in new and unexpected directions as in this painting. Such artists, even if they did not yet enjoy the status that their successors did, for example, none of them signed their paintings, will have had minds of their own and might not have appreciated being disciplined by the project director if they lingered too long over a given painting. Herding cats is a tall order. If the cats are in competition with each other, the task is all the harder. A further challenge would have been to maintain a consistently high standard as the project progressed. Two centuries later, the successive project directors of the great Tahmasp Shahnomi conspicuously failed to achieve that aim. The images in the later part of that manuscript are further and further apart than they were at the beginning and their quality is often humdrum. The écla of the opening folios, the one on the left, gradually faltered and eventually fizzled out in anti-climax. But some of the finest paintings in the great Mongol Shahnomi are from the final section of Phaedosis text covering the Sasanians. It therefore seems that the Ilkhanid project director did not follow the order of the text in allocating specific episodes to specific painters. The number of illustrations raises the third of the four problems to be considered today. In all probability, it was for the project director, perhaps with some key support from specialists in the Shahnomi text and in the history of the ruling dynasty, to determine what episodes in Phaedosis text should be illustrated and to discuss the interplay of word and image with the artists as a painting gradually took shape. All that required him to have a vision of the epic as a whole and of its meanings. This is a problem that modern art historical scholarship has sidestepped. Of course, the programs developed in other manuscripts, including other illustrated Shahnamis, would help. But the grand scheme of this manuscript called for well over 200 images as many as 216 and thus far, far more than any other contemporary Shahname, most of which had half that number or even a quarter of that number. So the project was venturing into unknown territory with no models to consult. To invent new compositions for so many episodes was hard enough. But that took, that that task had still wider resonances. Was it the intention to have lots of standalone illustrations or were the paintings designed to interact with each other, each with a part to play in some underlying pattern? Such questions would have taxed the imaginations of everyone concerned. Beginning with the project director, was he content to emphasize storytelling or was it part of his purpose to highlight core themes? For example, kingship, loyalty, justice, piety, generosity, adventure, valour or statecraft. In short, was there a program for the entire body of illustrations with some underlying iconographic intent? And could the patron, the person who paid for the whole enterprise have had a say in this? Such questions must remain unanswered for the moment even if paintings that are probably from this Sharnami and are preserved in post-Ilchanid albums are factored into the argument. What remains is a mere torso. There's not enough evidence. The fact that about two-thirds of the illustrations planned for the book were not completed or were not even begun and in any case are lost without trace makes it very difficult to guess how the sequence of paintings was organized. Huge portions of the narrative structure of the Sharnami are devoid of illustrations in this manuscript. There's no other Sharnami that has this amount of gaps. Those gaps include the earliest kings, the reigns of Kei Kaus and Kei Kubad with the stories of Siavush, Bijan and Manijae, the middle and end of the Sasanian period and above all and inexplicably most of the story of Rustam which is the very backbone of the epic. A Sharnami without Rustam is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The very detailed coverage of some episodes of the text in the sequence of paintings is a further indication of how much has been lost. The stories of Zal, Iskandar, Ardashir and Bahrangur are strongly highlighted in the pictorial sequence and that in itself suggests in the interests of balance that other key episodes or reigns were also richly illustrated or intended to be so. Clearly, some bunching was intentional but on the other hand inconsistent coverage or inappropriate emphases were also undesirable and the project director clearly had a further and utterly unheralded commission which was to find correspondences large and small between Ferdowsi's text and events in the history of the ruling dynasty and to ensure that they were brought out in some of the paintings Zal, Iskandar has argued. This created an unpredictable subtext or subplot throughout the entire sequence of illustrations. It is well nice certain that further correspondences would have been highlighted in the paintings that are now lost and were left unfinished or never even begun and recent work by young Iranian scholars has brought several of these to light. In brief then the decision to have well over 200 illustrations of unprecedented size confronted the project team with some formidable demands that called for unflagging vision powers of invention iconographic subtlety deep familiarity with Ferdowsi's text and plenty of political subwoofer. The fourth and last set of problems I want to consider today concerns the legacy of the great Mongol Shah Nome. Several scholars have expressed surprise at how relatively little impact it had on subsequent Persian painting. Yet it must have created a huge stir in the fraternity of artists who joined forces in creating it and its scale and ambition would have made it a talking point among some sections of the court. Despite this it is astonishingly difficult to pinpoint its legacy though some scholars have proposed that tenuous traces of its manner can be found in three paintings of around 1500. Here's one of them with its possible source the suicide of Shirin. So the question remains how did this Shah Nome come to be forgotten so quickly? Several possibilities come to mind some are based on known facts others are mere are more speculative. The first possible reason is the political chaos that engulfed the Ilhanid kingdom on the death of Abu Sa'id in 1335. The scramble for power was prolonged and bloody. Some of the collateral damage impacted on book painting among other arts. The court atelier ceased to function and was probably disbanded. So the mature artists who were responsible for some of the best paintings in this Shah Nome were deprived of the court patronage on which their art depended. They had to make another kind of living. The very existence of a court atelier under the successor dynasty the early Jalaya Rids has been hotly disputed even if it did exist in the 1350s no major illustrated manuscripts can be associated with it. The principle example of Iranian book painting in the 1350s the Garshasp Nome of 1354 shows only occasional awareness of the great Mongol Shah Nome. It took the best part of a generation for a new atelier to be founded under the Jalaya Rids with an accompanying new manner. And it's worth remembering that their empire was much smaller and less wealthy than that of the Ilkhanids. Moreover, their uncertain grip on power created an instability that worked against continuity. The fortunes of war made Sultan Ahmad move his court from Tabriz to Baghdad and back and then go on his wanderings again. Weak is my arm in war Fleet is my foot in flight equipped. All this points to a severe gap in the master-pupil relationship. Much of the technical know-how and more broadly the experience gained in creating the epoch-making paintings scattered throughout this manuscript was probably lost in the appropriate physical context in which to transmit it. The Safavid Librarian Doust Mohammed in his potted history of Persian painting written in 1544 he is the Persian Vazari glosses over this problem. And then one must reckon with discouragement with the psychological challenge posed by Mongolshanomi. It set the bar too high and that might well of course not just discomfort but a crushing sense of inferiority in those painters of the next couple of generations who might have seen it in plain English it might have led to a failure of nerve on their part. The mere sight of it perhaps even just the recounted memory of it which would have lost nothing in the telling may have helped to persuade the patrons and painters of the next generation or to rethink the art of Persian book painting in radical fashion. Whatever the reasons for it and despite occasional exceptions the illustrated book shrinks in size dramatically. The number of images is also slimmed down drastically and numerous other features either vanish or are for want of a better word tamed the panorama gives way to the miniature the broad brush treatment of people events, compositions landscapes yields to the obsessively careful microscopic treatment of detail understatement a certain distance and a sustained focus on immaculate technique replace the immediacy and violent action of Arshaname. In the world of later Jalalrid and especially classical Timurid painting a world often described in terms of fantasy fairy tale and filigree detail there was no room for the raw power of this Shahname whose heroes wield swords that draw blood in short the great Mongol Shahname stands as a warning about the dangers of overweening ambition on various fronts these include its production process its scale its expense which would have discouraged many a possible patron the sheer number of images and the unmatched aesthetic caliber of some of them all this might have gained it a reputation in some quarters as a white elephant moreover its unfinished state was itself a mute commentary of those who conceived it this might well have constituted a warning not to venture down the same path again at all events painting moved on in a different direction and effectively the manuscript yesterday's style ended up in the attic one particular aspect of its unfinished state deserves special attention in the context of its lack of legacy since it was left unbound in the royal atelier it would not be taken it could not be taken off the shelves and studied as a whole it was not easily accessible this may sound like a small point but it was decisive paintings tucked away in folders in a box are a lot less likely to be consulted so they were not readily available as a model but they obviously inspire later generations of painters moreover when such loose leaves are consulted their unbound state renders them vulnerable to damage that can be the case even when they're in an album if their album is frequently consulted by people who don't know how to handle such material properly it took only a few decades of intense exposure to the public from 1928 to 1963 for the signature of Ahmadi Musa on the trunk of the elephant there to disappear because people would say oh there it is and in the case of the great Mongolshan army the condition of many of the leaves with paintings unlike the leaves without paintings is notably poor now I have a good gander at this this damage cannot be laid at the door of Damat though ideally like to do so the degree of flaking of the surface paint which reveals the underpainting beneath the number of nicks and cuts the multiple creases that crisscross the painted surface speak of a history of casual neglect and even more casual handling these leaves have not been treated with enough respect there is no better protection for a book painting than an unread book and there's more a manuscript preserved in loosely form can't be leafed through rapidly nor is it convenient to go back to check a detail think of using a kindle a bound volume easily located to be consulted makes such tasks simple and a matter of moments so in the case of loose leaves kept in folders or boxes the viewer is constrained to look at them one by one and is therefore denied the cumulative impression so easily formed as you leaf through a bound volume so it was a decisive factor in depriving this manuscript of the legacy that it deserved and that also incidentally made it easier to remove paintings from their folders and insert them higgledy-piggledy brutally trimmed and contextless if they had text the text was removed into albums one can also understand why successive patrons left it unbound given that it was obviously so far from being finished just imagine an album consisting of multiple leaves like that some this way up some that way up some this way up it's mad to summarize then the very ambition of this manuscript on various fronts it's sheer size it's massive radical innovations it's obvious expense which state which was a solemn and eloquent warning to the unwary together ensured that its legacy was minimal time to finish clearly this great masterpiece poses problems galore but the glory is that by and large they were surmounted and to this day one can sense the pulsating energy that runs through the whole enterprise it was that energy coupled with a magnificent self-belief with a deep-rooted patriotism and dare I say a sense of destiny that ensured that no problem was unsurmountable the result is a shaname that is simply awesome and that exudes a unique charisma here anywhere in iranian art from ancient to modern times is the fari qiyani the numinous majesty of kingship made manifest thank you