A Study on the Evolution of the Structure of Safavid Album Prefaces

As the evidence shows, writing preface to Persian works is a tradition that goes back to the first literary or historical works after Islam. With the emergence of various literary and historical forms such as a collection of poems, memoirs or dynastic and royal histories, preface writing also evolved and according to the subject or other political and religious factors, different parts of it changed. On the other hand, as a result of the great attention of the Ilkhanids and subsequent governments, especially the Jalayrians, to art and artists, numerous literary and historical works were made and illustrated. The Timurids, by following their example, tried to develop and flourish these arts as much as possible. In the meantime, a new genre called the album, consisting of calligraphic pieces and images, was created; the oldest example of which belongs to the era of Shahrokh and to Prince Baysonghor Mirza. Based on this, it seems that it was the Timurids who first came up with the idea of making an album. Since then, and over the next four centuries, many albums have been made up of calligraphy pieces, images, or a combination of both. Likewise, it seems that adding a preface to the beginning of the album is also a Timurid innovation. Because the first known preface of the album, which is detached from its album and written by Sharaf al-din Ali Yazdi, is the preface of the album of Khajeh Abd al-Qader, a famous musician and calligrapher in the courts of Jalayerians and Timurids. The preface was probably written between 807 AH and 822 AH. The fact that, on what basis Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi wrote this preface, and whether or not it had a prior pattern are somewhat obscure to us. The second existing album preface was written with a relatively long distance from Yazdi's preface, i.e. in 897 AH, which was also separated from its album and is preserved in the collection of essays of its author, Khajeh Abdollah Morvarid. After that, there are no other album prefaces until the first preface of the Safavid album, that is, the preface of Dust Mohammad (951 AH). In the Safavid period, we see a coherent tradition of preface writing on albums, which lasted more than a hundred years. Like the literary and historical prefaces, these prefaces were changed under the influence of many factors, and their structure gradually became more complex, and new structural components were added to them. The aim of the present study is to determine the evolution of the structural components of the album prefaces of the Safavid era. In fact, the main issue of the present study is that over time, in what ways has the structure of the album prefaces of the Safavid era changed, and what is the nature and extent of these changes? To answer the main question and achieve the purpose of the research, descriptive-analytical method was used and to better explain, adaptation and content analysis were used. The method of collecting materials is library-based. The statistical population of the study, in addition to the two Timurid prefaces, namely the preface of Ab al-Qader Maraghi and Mir Ali Shirnavaei, includes eight Safavid prefaces, which are the preface of Dust Mohammad, the preface of Qutb al-din Mohammad Qisi khwan, preface to Shahqoli Caliph Mohrdar’s Album, the preface of Malik Daylami and the prefaces of Shams al-din Mohammad Wasfi, Mohammad Mohsen, Mirak Salehi and Morteza Qoli Shamlu, which were probably written on personal Albums. The explanation is as follows: first, the possible effects and received influences, the general structure of the literary and historical prefaces and the prefaces of the Timurid albums are examined. Then, by examining the content of the prefaces of the Safavid albums, their structural components are extracted and matched. Then, through quantitative content analysis, the rate of change of the main structures of the prefaces (Praise, Argument, History and Description) over time is analyzed. The results show that the authors of the album prefaces in the Safavid period came up with a new design. Two structural components (art history and description of the album) were added to connect the preface with the album as much as possible. In fact, the history of structural changes in the Safavid album prefaces is the history of solving the problem of this connection and establishing a balance between these two components. Finally, the combination and balance of these two components were concluded in the preface of Morteza Qoli Shamlu; a preface that solved this problem, not through the equality of these two components, but through the use of literary and linguistic figures. The personalization of the albums has not been without effect on the fading of some components, such as philosophy of art and its legitimacy, and the importance of others, such as the description of the album.