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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
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