Shah Abbas, the remaking of Iran
Sheila R. Canby
British museum press
This exhibition is one or a series devoted 10 rulers who have shaped the world. and whose legacy is still significant today. There can be no doubt that Shah 'Abbas I, who transformed Iran in the years around 1600, is one such ruler. Presenting him to a modern public is not entirely straightforward. European monarchs: arc generally familiar to us through mass-produced official portraits. Shah Abbas. as a Muslim ruler, left no public paintings or sculptures of his likeness, not even on his coins. So in exhibition. apart from a few small. private portraits, we have to approach him and assess him on his achievements. They were remarkable.
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Contents
List or contributors / 1
List of lenders / 1
Iran Heritage Foundation Foreword - Vahid Alaghband / 2
Director's Foreword Neil MacGregor / 3
Acknowledgements / 5
Map / 7
Chronology Fahmida Suleman / 8
Introduction / 12
1 Isfahan: The Public and Private worlds of Shah 'Abbas / 22
Catalogue entries 1-49 / 38
The Ritual Life of the Shrines - Robert Cleave / 88
Sites of Pilgrimage and objects of Devotion - Kishwar Rizvi / 98
2 The Ardabil Shrine / 116
Catalogue entries 50-91 / 130
3 The Shrine of Imam Riza al Mashhad / 186
Catalogue entries 92-108 / 198
4 The Shrine of Fatimeh Ma'sumeh at Qum / 220
Catalogue en tries 109-23 / 228
5 The Legacy of Shah 'Abbas / 252
Catalogue entries 124-8 / 256
Glossary / 262
Bibliography / 265
Illustration Acknowledgements / 270
Index / 271
DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD
This exhibition is one or a series devoted 10 rulers who have shaped the world. and whose legacy is still significant today. There can be no doubt that Shah 'Abbas I, who transformed Iran in the years around 1600, is one such ruler. Presenting him to a modern public is not entirely straightforward. European monarchs: arc generally familiar to us through mass-produced official portraits. Shah Abbas. as a Muslim ruler, left no public paintings or sculptures of his likeness, not even on his coins. So in exhibition. apart from a few small. private portraits, we have to approach him and assess him on his achievements. They were remarkable.
Like his contemporary, Elizabeth I of England, he inherited in difficult circumstances an unstable country that had recently redefined its religion and was surrounded and threatened by powerful enemies. Like her, he was able to create a compelling sense of a distinctive national identity (of which Shiism was to be a key component); but 'Abbass's Iran.unlike England, accommodated other faiths, and the Christian Armenian communities are a significant part of his achievement, and indeed of this exhibition. Like Elizabeth, Shah 'Abbas also fought off foreign invasion, presiding over a series of critical military victories, and a huge expansion of international trade.
Elizabeth's England, however, was on the edge of the world she had to address. Iran was at its centre. Shah 'Abbas made his capital at Isfahan a crossroad, a crucible of international culture and commerce. Paintings on his palace walls show Turks and Chinese, Indians and Europeans: it is hard to imagine any other city of the time where they could have met and mingled with such ease.
It was during Shah 'Abbass's reign that Persia fully entered European consciousness, as trade. diplomacy and military expansion multiplied the contacts between Isfahan and the capital cities of Europe. Ever since, it has been of the greatest importance to Europeans to study, and understand the history and culture of Iran. This exhibition will, we hope, contribute to that process. My colleagues and I are grateful to the Iran Heritage Foundation and its Chairman Vahid Alaghband for their generous support of the exhibition, the latest in a long series of joint projects with the British Museum to present Iranian culture to the widest public in London.
Above all, we should like to thank our many colleagues and friends in Tehran who have: encouraged and helped us, and have sent some of their great treasures to enable us to present this account of Shah 'Abbas and the country that he reshaped.
Neil MacGregor
Director
The British Museum
Introduction
This catalogue and exhibition centre on the mercurial figure of Shah 'Abbasl of Iran, who ruled from 1587 to J629. Known today as 'Shah 'Abbas the Great', this king lran sfoffilcd Iran from an inward-looking realm, riven by tribal strife and threatened by powerful enemies on its eastern and western flanks, to a secure prosperous centre of international trade and cultural exchange. To achieve such success, Shah 'Abbas needed to operate on many levels - political, social, economic. military and religions. This book aims to show how. in the process of uniting his country, Shah 'Abbas also stimulated his artists to create a unified style manifested across the media, from tiles and wall decoration in his palace, mosques and shrines to carpets, textiles and the arts of the book.
The wide range of beautiful and unusual works in this book and exhibition includes artefacts of two types: those produced during and immediately after the lifetime of Shah 'Abbas and objects of earlier periods or similar pieces that he once owned and gave away as charitable donations. These pieces tell the story of a shift in perceptions of value, the political uses to charitable donations, and the development of a new artistic style that was an important badge of identity for Iran in the period of Shah 'Abbas.
The first chapter explores Shah 'Abbas's achievements in the context of Isfahan, the capital city he founded in 1598. Here the shah's vision for a new society took form. The city quarters he developed, the industries he promoted, and the religious monuments he sponsored all bear the imprint of a new approach to government, trade and faith. The visual manifestation of this change appears in the decoration of buildings and in a range of and acts produced in tile first three decades of the seventeenth century. Although Isfahan was not the only centre of production for textiles, carpets. ceramics or manuscripts, the distinctive artistic style of the. period of Shah 'Abbas is associated most closely with his capital.
However, very few of the extant objects in the 'Isfahan style' can be linked directly with a precise context in the capital city. For such a context we must turn to the major religious shrines of the period, where the art and architecture of Iran's Islamic past intermingle with the renovations and furnishings of the period of Shah 'Abbas. The chapters on the shrines are introduced by two essays: in the first Robert Gleave outlines the ritual practices of the Safavids, white in the second Kishwar Rizvi describes the architecture of the major shrines in the period of Shah 'Abbas. The second chapter of this book examines the dynastic heritage of Shah 'Abbas in the context of the Shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din at Ardabil in north-west Iran (fig. I)...
Fig. I Tomb or Sheykh Safi al-Din lshaq, Shrine of Shaykh Safi, Ardabil. Shaykh Safi died in 1334, and the brick and tile work decorating the exterior of his tomb tower are typical of the fourteenth century.
Lenders
Aran from the British Museum, the objects exhibited have been kindly loaned by a number of private and public collections and institutions. The British Museum would like to thank all the lenders for their generosity. The following is a list of lenders apart from those private lenders who wish to remain anonymous:
France
M. Pierre Jourdan-Barry, Paris
Department of Islamic Art, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Germany
Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Iran
Carpet Museum of Iran, Tehran
Chehel Sutun Museum, Isfahan
Decorative Arts Museum of Iran, Isfahan
Golestan Palace Museum, Tehran
Mir Emad Museum of Calligraphy and Writing. Tehran
National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran
Vank Museum, Isfahan
Italy
Private collection, Italy; 10 he donated 10 Matam,
Museum of Antique Textile Arts, Milan
Kuwait
Mr Hossein Afshar, Kuwait
Russia
The National Library of Russia, St Petersburg
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Switzerland
Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva
Department of Drawings. Musée d'Art et d'histoire, Geneva
United Kingdom
Trustees of the Berkeley Will Trust. Gloucestershire
The British Library, London
Dr Robert Elgood, Oxfordshire
The Keir Collection. Surrey
The National Archives. Surrey
Mr Yanni Petsopoulos, London
Victoria and Albert Museum London
United States of America
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Sheila R. Canby
Shah Abbas, the remaking of Iran
The British museum press
The British museum press
This book is published 10 accompany the exhibition at the
British Museum from 19 February 10 14 June 2009
© 2009 The Trustees of the British Museum
Text pp. 88-97 © 2009 Robert Gleave
Text pp. 98-1 15 © 2009 Kishwar Rizvi
Sheila Canby has asserted the right to be identified as the as the author of this work
First published in 2009 by the British Museum Press
A division of The British Museum Company ltd
38 Russell Square. London WCIB 3QQ
www.britishmuseum.org
A catalogue, record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN (cased) 978•0-7141-2456-8
ISBN (paperback) 978•0•7141-2452-0
Designed by Price Watkins
Printed in Italy by Printer Trento
Half Title: cat. no. 115 (pp. 236-7)
Frontis piece: cal. no. 110 detail (pp. 230-31)
Left and opposite: cat. no. 84 detail (pp. 174-5)
Opposite p. 1: cat. no. 13 (pp. 52-3)
p. 4: cat. no. 123 (pp. 250-51)
pp. 10-11: fig. 56 (pp.128-9)
Research funded by Ahrc and Esrc
Religion & Society
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Contributors
Major contributions by;
Robert Gleave
Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Exeter, UK
Kishwar Rizvi
Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture,
Yale University. USA
Additional contributions by:
Robert Elgood
Research Fellow. Eastern European, Islamic and
Asian Arms and Armour, The Wallace Collection, UK
E. K. Faridany
Independent Scholar. London, UK
Jessica Harrison-Hall
Curator, Department of Asia, British Museum, UK
Martin Royalton-Kisch
Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings,
British Museum. UK
Mahnaz Rahimifar
Head of the Islamic Art Department,
National Museum of Iran, Iran
Fahmida Suleman
Research Assistant, Department of the Middle East,
British Museum, UK
Jon Thompson
Former May Hamilton Beattie Fellow in Carpet Studies,
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK
