Lahore circa 1590National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Very early in the sixteenth century the region became the battle ground of three principle forces. Shah Ismael Safavi created a fusion of Shia Islam with the remnants of the Aqquyunlu Turkmen tribal confederation that we call the Safavid Persians. The main opponent of the Safavi in this area were the Shaybanni Uzbeks . The Uzbeks were the remnants of the Golden Horde and were moving into the area that had been held by the Timurids. Caught in the middle were the Timurids. Among many Timurid princes two major ones emerged Badi’Uzman Mirza son of Husayn-i-Bukara Mirza and a noble prince from the Ferghanna valley Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur. Badi’ Uzman Mirza was forced to leave Herat with artists and artisan and migrate to Tabriz. What is usually referred to as Safavid art is the result of transplanting the Timurid court to Tabriz and can more accurately be described as Safavi/Timurid transitional art until the ascendancy of Shah Abbas. The other major Timurid Prince Zahiruddin Babur made his way to Kabul, where he established himself as king. He and his descendants eventually esistablished what we call the Mughal Empire, which took in at various times most of present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The Timurid artists and artisans were in a state of flux for much of the xteenth century. The Safavi were Shia Moslems, while the majority of Timurids were Sunni. Badi’Uzman Mirza found life intolerable under the Safavi and left Tabriz for Istanbul when the city was captured by the Ottomans. Badi’Uzman Mirza was able to arrive in Istanbul with much of his court (and treasure) intact. Rather than as a prisoner, he enjoyed the hospitality of the Sunni Ottoman until his death. The impact of the Timurid court on the art and artistic expression of Ottoman art was profound but, alas outside the scope of this article. Many artists stayed in Tabriz but, the warfare between the Ottomans and the Safavid kept things in a disrupted state. By 1533 Tahmasp had outlawed those things expressly forbidden such as smoking Hashish and fornication. In 1536 he closed the brothels and the wine shops. 3 By the 1540s Shah Tahmasp was in a major religious revival and he issued the Edict Of Divine Repentance. This virtually eliminated any major artistic expression at the Safavid court. The edict was so all encompassing that any attribution to Qazvin must be suspect and carefully examined. The break-up of the imperial atelier sent Tahmasp's remaining artists scrambling for new patrons. Many of the artists landed at the court of Ebrahim Mirza. While seen as a Safavid Prince Ebrahim Mirza also maintained sanctuary and sustenance to the art of this transitional period. In "Art of the Persian Court" Abolala Soudavar names the Court of Ebrahim Mirza as the dominant force in Persian art in the second half of the sixteenth century. 4. Three things signal the end of the Timurid/Safavi transitional period; the murder of Soltan Ibrahim Mirza, the break-up of his court, and the ascendancy to the Persian Throne of Abbas Safavi (Shah Abbas the Great) . A discussion of whether Abbas was the beginning of the decline of the Persian art form or the zenith of the art form will have to wait for another day. Many other artists sought refuge at the Mughal court.First established at Kabul the Mughal court by the end of the sixteenth century had moved to northern India. Zahiruddin Babur was a cultured man who felt equally at ease with art or poetry, as he did on the field of battle. Babur kept a diary of his inner most thoughts and it has passed down to us intact as the Baburnama. An intimate portrait of the man, his life, and loves, his battles, and his challenges, this book allows us to realize the culture that spawned an incredible artistic movement. Babur passed his love of the arts down to his son Humayun. Humayun was a refugee in Persia at the court of Tahmasp Safavi Safavi. Tahmasp was a man torn between the worldly pleasures of life as Shahinshah of Persia on one hand and his view of his role as head of the Shia community on the other. By the mid sixteenth century Tahmasp began to turn his back on the pleasures of this world. Humayun who was able to regain his throne in Kabul was able to lure some of the more ambitious artists to his court. This is a point of confusion oft times in many accounts. Many see this as an Indian King importing Persian artists to a foreign land. What this really was was a reestablishment of the Timurid empire and the reestablishment of Timurid court art. The court art of a Timurid potentate is Timurid.
So, with this as back ground let us now examine the Mughal Animal Carpet of the National Gallery of Art. On a visual examination of the carpet certain identifying points are apparent. The length to width ratio (length greater than twice width) is generally thought to be indicative of an older piece. There is extensive use of pink on red which is taken to be a sign of Indian provenance. The repertoire of animals is drawn from two source types. While there are traditional Persianate Fantastic Animals there are also realisticly drawn animals realistically drawn animals most common on the Indian sub-continent, i. e. elephants, cheetahs, black bucks, a rhino, and a crocodile. Based on these primary clues a tentative attribution of Classic Era Mughal carpet, then becomes the working assumption. Or to follow a methodology established by the one of the United States greatest living scholar in the field of classical carpets it appears to conform to the guidelines to be considered an Eiland Type two Mughal Carpet. To test this assumption, we then separate out the individual artistic elements in the carpet and compare them to a group of over 4000 images of Islamic and related art in our PMA data pool. For instance when we survey the crocodile in the carpet it is necessary to examine every image in the database to see if there is any image that is related to the crocodile. Even though we make certain preliminary assumptions we test against the entire database so as to avoid skewing our returns. This gives us the opportunity to see if what we see in the rug is what we may reasonably expect to see in a classical Mughal carpet. Authors Note:If this were a book or a magazine you would know to start at the first page and read to the end. However, this is the Internet so things are a little different. Where you see a hyperlink that indicates a new page. At the bottom of this page you will see links that take you to the rest of the article. You will also notice links scattered through the article, think of them as footnotes. By the way some of the most important parts are buried in those footnote type pages. I realize that to most of you who have gotten this far you do not need to be told, but for the newcomers I hope this helps. By the way the presentation of this article is very dependent upon the art work. Consequently there are a large number of illustrations and we have tried to make it as easy to view as possible. The problem is that the load time for our pages can be substantial, but hopefully after viewing them you will agree that they are worth the wait. Technical Description, Fantastic Animals, Realistic Animals , Elephants, Rhinoceroses, and Camels, Mughal and Related Carpets, The Widener Mughal Animal Carpet Borders, Mughal and Related Carpets, Conclusion, 1. Cleaves, Francis Woodman. The Secret History of the Mongols. (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982). 2. The question of whether to use the common term Mughal or the perhaps more descriptive term Timurid plagued me up until the final stages of the project. One of my most important sources for background information on sixteenth and seventeenth century India was Richards' "the Mughal Empire". (Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.). Professor John F. Richards of Duke University uses Mughal and Timurid interchangeably in his book and on the basis of his work I was prepared to shift my attributions abandoning Mughal and adopting Indian Timurid as the descriptive phrase for this class of rugs. In a conversation with Professor Richards, he suggested that his book had not set a standard for usage and that to prevent confusion he suggested that I stick with Mughal. While I am inclined to accept the Professors usage as the standard I defer to his suggestion. Richards, John F. Telephone Conversation: October 16 1997. 3. Welch, Stuart Cary. Persian Painting Five Royal Safavid Manuscripts of the 16th Century. New York: George Braziller, 1976. p. 20 - 22. 4. Soudavar, Abolala. Art of the Persian Court. New York: Rizzoli, 1992. p. 221. 5. Okada, Amina. Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court. Translated by Deke Dusinberre, (New York: Harry N. Abrahms, Inc. Publishers, 1992), p. 12 and plate 3. For Further Reading: Thanks and best wishes, J. Barry O'Connell Jr. |
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