Visualising Tamerlane: History and its Image. Issue 1 (2nd January 2019)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Visualising Tamerlane: History and its Image. Issue 1 (2nd January 2019)
- Main Title:
- Visualising Tamerlane: History and its Image
- Authors:
- Melville, Charles
- Abstract:
- ABSTRACT: The creation of Timur's kingly image was the work of his chroniclers and in particular the achievement of 'Ali Yazdi, whose literary masterpiece, the Zafarnama ("Book of Victory"), was commissioned by Timur's grandson, Ibrahim-Sultan, prince governor of Shiraz in southern Persia (r. 1415–1435). Yazdi's work became a byword for rhetorical elegance and was reproduced in many tens of manuscripts; some of these, including the first known copy, dated 1436, were illustrated. Within the corpus of illustrated manuscripts and the paintings they contain, I differentiate between royal or court commissions, such as those produced for Timur's descendants, and provincial or commercial ones produced in the next century, and the effect this may have had on the choice of scenes to illustrate. Among these, it is helpful to distinguish between "generic" scenes of battle, single combats, hunting and the ruler's court, and specific scenes of particular events, often found in a unique image, and their relationship with the written text. While these illustrations cannot be viewed as visual sources for the history of the events they depict, they can be regarded as evidence of how Timur's career was perceived and understood by subsequent generations.
- Is Part Of:
- Iran. Volume 57:Issue 1(2019)
- Journal:
- Iran
- Issue:
- Volume 57:Issue 1(2019)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 57, Issue 1 (2019)
- Year:
- 2019
- Volume:
- 57
- Issue:
- 1
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2019-0057-0001-0000
- Page Start:
- 83
- Page End:
- 106
- Publication Date:
- 2019-01-02
- Subjects:
- Timur -- Zafarnama -- propaganda -- patronage -- image creation
Iran -- Antiquities -- Periodicals
Iran -- Civilization -- Periodicals
955.005 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rirn20/current ↗
http://www.jstor.org/journal/iran ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/05786967.2019.1578543 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0578-6967
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 12422.xml