Formal and Symbolic Study of the Bird’s Motif in Baysonghor Shahnameh and Haft Awrang Jami (Based on the Views of Islamic Thinkers)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 , grduateda of Master's degree in Islamic Art (Studies of painting and writing of Islamic art) Faculty of Handicrafts, Isfahan Art University, Iran

2 Instructor and Faculty Member of Handicrafts Faculty, Isfahan Art University,

10.22070/negareh.2022.14393.2758

Abstract

Birds are a symbol of the spirit and soul of the speaker and have esoteric and spiritual meanings in many literary and mystical works and this is because of their ability to fly and communicate in the sky. The bird motif is also one of the motifs that appeared with the emergence of illustrated manuscripts in the history of Iranian painting; it has a significant presence in painting of different periods and is considered as one of the most widely used designs. Among them, the Timurid era in the school of the Previous Herat (version of Baysonghor Shahnameh) and the Safavid era in the school of Mashhad (version of Haft Awrang Jami), have the motif of a bird. The art of Iranian painting and manuscript illustration has had a deep connection with literature from the beginning, and birds are present in the works of great Islamic scholars and thinkers. Birds have taken on a symbolic and mystical load due to their physical characteristics and natural features in the mystical poems and stories of Islamic thinkers. The first example of the presence of the bird symbol in the works of thinkers is in Avicenna's treatise Al-Tair. Other thinkers in whose works the symbol of birds is present include Ahmad and Mohammad Ghazali, Sanai, Attar and Rumi, great mystics and Sufis of the fourth to the seventh centuries AH, who were all born in Khorasan, and only Suhrawardi was raised in Khorasan. Interestingly, Ferdowsi and Jami, whose works are the subject of this study, also belong to the Khorasan region. Greater Khorasan (the cradle of the great mystics in different Islamic eras) was in ancient times a region that stretched from the east to Transoxiana, and from the west to the southeastern shores of the Caspian Sea.  The school of Herat and the school of Mashhad have been related to the region of Greater Khorasan for a period of about 130 years, and both versions of Shahnameh of Baysonghor and Haft Awrang Jami are court and royal versions. Since the Shahnameh of Baysonghor and Haft Awrang Jami both belonged to the Greater Khorasan region, the cradle of art and mysticism in the first centuries of Islam, it seems important that in drawing the bird motif, which is one of the almost constant motifs of Iranian painting, the school of Mashhad could have influenced the Haft Awrang Jami version of the Herat school (version of the Shahnameh of Baysonghor). The purpose of this study is to achieve the symbolic concepts of motif of the bird in these two versions along with formal and structural analysis. The main question is what are the meanings of motif of the bird in the two versions of the Shahnameh of Baysonghor and Haft Awrang in terms of form and symbolism? What are the differences and commonalities of motif of the bird in the two versions? What are the influential factors on differences and commonalities of motif of the bird in the two versions? In terms of purpose, this research is a fundamental research. Research method is descriptive-analytical and comparative, among qualitative research, and method of data collection is library research. The results show that the highest number of the bird’s motif of Baysonghor Shahnameh belongs to Clamator glandarius and Pica pica, and in Haft Awrang Jami, the highest number belongs to Streptopelia turtur and Luscinia megarhynchos. In terms of structural analysis, the bird’s motif of Baysonghor Shahnameh is often not placed on the composition of the paintings, which includes an oval shape and does not have a symbolic aspect in the paintings. In contrast, the bird’s motif of the Haft Awrang Jami is in many cases placed on the composition of the paintings, which often includes a spiral form and in some cases, it has a symbolic aspect. Since the Shahnameh of Baysonghor is an epic work, not a mystical one, and has been compiled and illustrated at a time when the influence of mysticism on painters is not yet evident, it cannot be said that most of its birds have symbolic and esoteric meanings in the world of meaning. In contrast, in version of Haft Awrang Jami, due to the long history of painters, mystics and thinkers in relation to each other, which dates back to the time of Sultan Hussein Bayqara, Behzad and Jami in the late Timurid period and continued until the late Safavid period, it can be said that the painters, by influencing the poems of Haft Awrang's stories and the symbolic background of birds in the works of mystics before their time, tried to create an exemplary world with eternal concepts from the world of truth, and the theme of birds in this regard has benefited.

Keywords

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Negareh Journal
Volume 18, Issue 67
September 2023
Pages 47-67

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History

  • Receive Date: 16 July 2021
  • Revise Date: 01 January 2022
  • Accept Date: 19 January 2022

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