Epic Images and Contemporary History

Epic Images and Contemporary History PDF Author: Oleg Grabar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226305851
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description

Epic Images and Contemporary History

Epic Images and Contemporary History PDF Author: Oleg Grabar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226305851
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description


Shahnama

Shahnama PDF Author: Robert Hillenbrand
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351548921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Shahnama: The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings presents the first comprehensive examination of the interplay between text and image in the celebrated Persian national epic, the Shahnama, written by the poet Firdausi of Tus. The Shahnama is one of the longest poems ever composed and recounts the history of Iran from the dawn of time to the Muslim Arab conquests of the seventh century AD. There is no Persian text, in prose or poetry, which has been so frequently and lavishly illustrated. Offering fresh insights through a range of varied art-historical approaches to the Shahnama, the essays in this volume reveal how the subtle alterations in text and image serve to document changes in taste and style and can be understood as reflections of the changing role of the national epic in the imagination of Iranians and the equally changing messages - often political in nature - which the familiar stories were made to convey over the centuries.

The Diez Albums

The Diez Albums PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004323481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
The five Diez albums in Berlin, acquired by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez in Constantinople around 1789, contain more than 400 figurative paintings, drawings, fragments, and calligraphic works originating for the most part from Ilkhanid, Jalayirid, and Timurid workshops. Gonnella, Weis and Rauch unite in this volume 21 essays that analyse their relation to their “parent” albums at the Topkapı Palace or examine specific works by reflecting upon their role in the larger history of book art in Iran. Other essays cover aspects such as the European and Chinese influence on Persianate art, aspects related to material and social culture, and the Ottoman interest in Persianate albums. This book marks an important contribution to the understanding of the development of illustrative imagery in the Persianate world and its later perception. Contributors are: Serpil Bağcı, Barbara Brend, Massumeh Farhad, Julia Gonnella, Claus-Peter Haase, Oliver Hahn, Robert Hillenbrand, Yuka Kadoi, Charles Melville, Gülru Necipoğlu, Bernard O'Kane, Filiz Ҫakır Phillip, Yves Porter, Julian Raby, Christoph Rauch, Simon Rettig, David J. Roxburgh, Karin Rührdanz, Zeren Tanındı, Lâle Uluç, Ching-Ling Wang, and Friederike Weis.

Reconstructing the Reality of Images

Reconstructing the Reality of Images PDF Author: Maria G. Parani
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004124622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
This examination of realia in Byzantine religious painting provides valuable information on Byzantine dress, household effects and implements, while introducing at the same time an alternative, literally 'objective', approach to the study of the formative processes of Byzantine art.

Every Inch a King

Every Inch a King PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004242147
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
The role of kings, the source of their authority and the nature of the practical restraints on their power have exercised political and religious philosophers, historians, competing candidates for rule and subject populations from the time of the earliest documented human societies. How the kingly image is created and presented and how the ruler performs his or her function as the source of justice are among the topics addressed in this volume, which also covers the role of queens in maintaining dynastic succession yet being the target of tales of adultery. This volume is of particular interest in bringing together studies of kingly power from Cyrus the Great and Alexander in the ancient world to Shah Abbas in the seventeenth century, and covering the European Middle Ages as well as Iran and the Muslim world.

Studies in the Islamic Decorative Arts

Studies in the Islamic Decorative Arts PDF Author: Robert Hillenbrand
Publisher: Pindar Press
ISBN: 1915837154
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Islamic artists channelled their energies not into easel painting and large-scale sculpture, but rather into what Western scholars, obeying a very different hierarchy of art forms, rather disparagingly term the decorative arts or even the minor arts. In point of fact, some of the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art are in the media of ceramics, metalwork, textiles, ivory and glass. Often the images they bear express a complex set of meanings, for Islam inherited much material from the iconographic systems of earlier civilizations, notably those of the ancient Near East and of the classical world. Islam also developed its own distinctive vocabulary of signs and symbols. Accordingly, questions of iconography and meaning bulk large among the studies gathered together in the present volume. These studies, written over a period of almost thirty years, and taken from a wide variety of published sources, deal with aspects of the decorative arts from Spain to India and from the 7th to the 17th century. They focus in turn upon ceramics and metalwork; on coins, carpets and calligraphy; and on carving in wood and ivory. They are arranged under three headings. The first comprises general surveys of the field covering the content of these arts and confronting the challenges they present, such as the Islamic approach to three-dimensional sculpture. The second deals with questions of iconography and meaning, while the third comprises a series of studies devoted to specific media such as ivory, woodwork and numismatics. This volume therefore offers not only a general introduction to some of the problems posed by Islamic art, but also readings of key objects in an attempt to explore their meaning; and finally, an in-depth focus on individual objects representing specific genres and media.

Mapping the Ottomans

Mapping the Ottomans PDF Author: Palmira Brummett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316300250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Simple paradigms of Muslim-Christian confrontation and the rise of Europe in the seventeenth century do not suffice to explain the ways in which European mapping envisioned the 'Turks' in image and narrative. Rather, maps, travel accounts, compendia of knowledge, and other texts created a picture of the Ottoman Empire through a complex layering of history, ethnography, and eyewitness testimony, which juxtaposed current events to classical and biblical history; counted space in terms of peoples, routes, and fortresses; and used the land and seascapes of the map to assert ownership, declare victory, and embody imperial power's reach. Enriched throughout by examples of Ottoman self-mapping, this book examines how Ottomans and their empire were mapped in the narrative and visual imagination of early modern Europe's Christian kingdoms. The maps serve as centerpieces for discussions of early modern space, time, borders, stages of travel, information flows, invocations of authority, and cross-cultural relations.

Studies in the Islamic Arts of the Book

Studies in the Islamic Arts of the Book PDF Author: Robert Hillenbrand
Publisher: Pindar Press
ISBN: 1915837146
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
The studies collected in this volume, some of them rather difficult of access, date mostly from the last fifteen years and focus primarily on Persian book painting of the 14th to the early 16th centuries. In this period Iran dominated the art of book painting in the Islamic world. The articles reprinted here examine various aspects of this, the golden age of Persian painting. They range from the period of Mongol rule, when the impact of Far Eastern themes and modes radically transformed the heritage bequeathed to Iran by Arab painting - a textbook case of the clash of civilisations - to the dawn of the modern era and the swansong of the classical style of Persian painting under the early Safavids. Yet other articles focus on the roots of book painting in the themes and styles developed in painted ceramics, on medieval Qur'anic calligraphy, on bookbinding and on the remarkably original variations played on the hitherto hackneyed theme of the figural frontispiece by Arab painters. Two major leitmotifs are explored in this selection of essays. One is provided by the constantly varying interpretations of the Shahnama (The Book of Kings), the Persian national epic, and especially the tendency of painters to interpret this familiar text in terms of contemporary politics. The other is the interplay of text and image, which highlights the tendency of painters to strike out on their own and to leave the literal text progressively further behind while they develop plots and sub-plots of their own. These enquiries are set within the context of a concerted effort to explore in detail how Persian painters achieved their most spectacular visual effects. In its combination of general surveys and closely focused analyses of individual manuscripts, this collection of articles will be of interest to specialists in book painting and in Islamic art as a whole.

Piety and Politics in Qajar Iran

Piety and Politics in Qajar Iran PDF Author: Nahid Massoumeh Assemi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755652657
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The Takkiyya Mu'avin al-Mulk is a building complex in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, dedicated to the annual commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn ibn 'Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680, an event of seminal significance to Shi'i Islam. Private takkiyyas built by social elites were a phenomenon of the Qajar period, with their construction motivated by a political quest for legitimacy. This book examines the intersection of art and architecture, popular piety, and the politics of legitimation. Through an examination of the building and its decorative programme, it addresses issues of patronage, Shi'i iconography and popular religious practices during the early 20th century in Iran. It further argues for the role of takkiyyas in creation of a sense of community and group identity; the formative stage of the emergent idea of nationhood at the time, amongst those who frequented them.

The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art

The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art PDF Author: Sara Kuehn
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004209727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This book is a pioneering work on a key iconographic motif, that of the dragon. It examines the perception of this complex, multifaceted motif within the overall intellectual and visual universe of the medieval Irano-Turkish world. Using a broadly comparative approach, the author explores the ever-shifting semantics of the dragon motif as it emerges in neighbouring Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. The book will be of particular interest to those concerned with the relationship between the pre-Islamic, Islamic and Eastern Christian (especially Armenian) world. The study is fully illustrated, with 209 (b/w and full colour) plates, many of previously unpublished material. Illustrations include photographs of architectural structures visited by the author, as well as a vast collection of artefacts, all of which are described and discussed in detail with inscription readings, historical data and textual sources.