Transmutation of Sign Systems in Tabriz School of Painting in Safavid Era

Persian literature and painting have a close relationship with each other from the beginning; scientific texts, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, Nizami's poems, Saadi’s Bustan, Kalileh and Demeneh and many other instructive, mystical, romantic and epic texts of Persian literature are the main subjects of Persian painting. Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era, as one of the most prominent schools of painting in Iran, is not separated from this trend. Valuable manuscripts were created in Tabriz based on various epic, lyrical and fictional literary texts.
In order to interpret and understand paintings in a more appropriate way, it is necessary to know the characteristics and distinctions of Persian painting in every historical period, including the Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era. The permanent link between Persian literature and Persian painting is one of the most important gateways to the problem, which draws attention to the study of Persian painting as a type of Intersemiotic translation or Transmutation.
Intersemantic translation or transmutation, which was first proposed by Roman Jakobsen, means an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. Based on this concept and since a large amount of manuscripts that appeared in the history of Persian painting, including the Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era, are based on literary texts, a large percentage of Iranian painting manuscripts can be considered as a type of Intersemiotic translation.
The purpose of this research is to study the process of illustrating literary texts in Safavid Tabriz School based on the concept of Intersemiotic translation or Iransmutation. Another goal of this research is to recognize the factors affecting the mentioned process. The questions of this research are: 1. What are the mechanisms of the Transmutation of literary texts into paintings of the Safavid Tabriz school? 2. What are the factors affecting the mentioned process?
The method of this research is descriptive-analytical. The research data was collected by studying the documents available in the library. Among the paintings of Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era, nine cases have been selected in an improbable and purposeful way to check the validity of the presented qualitative issues. The data in this research is analyzed based on Roman Jakobsen's classification of different types of translation with a special look at Intersemiotic translation and Farzan Sejoudi's theories in layered semiotics (emergent approach to semiotics). After studying the process of Intersemiotic translation from the perspective of layered semiotics and obtaining the main mechanisms and factors affecting this process, the validity of the qualitative information presented will be evaluated on a set of samples that were purposefully selected from Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era.
The results of this research indicate that four general mechanisms are taking place in the Intersemiotic translation of literary texts into the manuscripts of Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era: Repetition, Innovation, Reproduction and Deletion. Also, the influencing factors on the mentioned mechanisms are: First, the story basis of the literary text. The story in a literary text creates a limitation for painters. In the manuscripts without story, the artist, using the threads of the literary text, went above creating an image based on a specific story and created unique manuscripts for the first time in the history of Iranian painting. In the manuscripts that have a specific story, the painters illustrated parts of the story, which is a good platform for illustrating historical issues and royal life. The second factor influencing the Intersemiotic translation process is the artist's creativity and cognitive knowledge. The third factor affecting the mentioned process is the change of media. The transformation of the visual medium of writing into the visual medium of a fixed image is one of the main changes. The last factor influencing the transmutation of sign systems in Tabriz school of painting in Safavid era is intertextual relations. In addition to the relationship between verbal text and visual images presented in the four general mechanisms, other intertextual relationships are also important. Although it is difficult and even impossible to identify all types of intertextual relationships, the relationships between the paintings of the Tabriz school and other schools of painting are the main factor of some of the most important features of this school.
The four mechanisms of the Intersemiotic translation process presented in this research and  the factors affecting the mentioned process can help researchers in similar studies in the field of visual arts, especially visual works related to literary texts.