Social Semiotics of The Resurrection Event in Safavid Miniatures

In describing Iranian painting, especially with religious and metamaterial subjects, the emphasis is always on introversion, the mysterious world, the mystery and the sacred realm of these works. But, despite the transcendent nature of these paintings, the human aspect and social contexts of the formation of these works should not be neglected. Because these paintings, in addition to the mission of expressing the truths of heaven, such a cultural atlas, also reflect the ideological space, historical context, political ideas and social contexts of their time and connect the two areas. Accordingly, the main issue in the present study is the study of resurrection-themed miniatures in the Safavid era and the realm of their rule and also their technical and content analysis from different and abandoned aspects. The aim is to identify the Safavid dynasty and to recognize its aesthetic patterns and dominant paradigms through the thematic miniatures of the resurrection. The method of research is descriptive and content analysis with the approach of social semiotics of the image, and information is collected through documentary sources and direct observation. The question is how the transition from visual structure to meaning has taken place in the miniatures of the event of the resurrection of the Safavid era? The results of the study showed that the semantic implications of the Qur'anic miniatures of the Safavid era can be found on two levels; first, as a translation of the Qur'anic text and concepts in explicit and implicit layers, and then, through research into the context of the production of works, in order to understand the hidden and indirect social meanings. The work of art is always a reflection of the social and cultural conditions of its time, and its form and content are the product of attachments to the artist's belief system, and the work belongs to a specific way of thinking or reflects the cultural and ethnic affiliations of the history and land in which it was produced. Applying the theoretical framework of social semiotics of image showed that this method is an effective tool in reading and multifaceted analysis of Iranian painting and can address the above issues. This method reveals the formal and textual meanings of the images, the textual layers and the social references of the images through formalistic study and syntactic structure of the images, modeling from the sources of their signs, and then cataloging and analyzing the existing explicit and implicit meanings. The finding is due to the dominant discourse influences in this period. In other words, the constant presence of mixed meta-maps and narrative representation in the visual form of all these works and sources of common signs such as vector, information value, framing and visualization of images, resulting from the prevailing discourse space and uniform social pattern in this era. Shiite discourse, the most important elements of which was Mahdism and Promise, with the intelligence of its custodians to legitimize the political structure, also infiltrated symbolic systems such as painting to use it as a propaganda tool to advance the diplomatic goals of Safavid rulers. Therefore, by using the tools of social semiotics analysis of images and by passing through visual structure, common sources of signs can be found in paintings influenced by the Safavid Qur'an, which proves the establishment of the same pattern in these paintings, and based on their effectiveness can be identified and interpreted from dominant discourse. It also explains that the main motive for creating these paintings depends more on the political spirit of the time than on the doctrinal goals, and in other words, reveals their self-creation; this means that at first glance, images seem to be a tool in the service of religion, but in fact they are a tool for political-propaganda exploitation and legitimation of the institution of power. In matters related to the hereafter, what is primarily discussed is the belief in the issue of resurrection and the principle of resurrection as one of the principles of Islam, but what is evident in the analysis of the context, reference to the social context of these images and even the choice of scene is a directional choice to convey the ideological message of text producers. For this reason, we encounter the primacy of the Shiite-oriented vision over the main narrative and the promised metaphorical atmosphere of the resurrection, which is influenced by social conditions and discourse conflicts of the first half of the Safavid period. The government was established with the intention of establishing political unity in Iran. The sources of semiotics, syntactic structure, and overall visual presentation in these paintings played a role in highlighting religious goals and political discourses, but the subject and content of concepts, has played a more significant role in motivating the creation and illustration of images in conjunction with the dominant discourse of society.