Document Type : Research Article

Author

• Fatemeh Shirazi

Faculty member of Handicrafts Department, University of Sistan and Baluchistan, Zahedan, Iran.

Abstract

Problem Statement: Khamsah of Nezami is one of the greatest books of Persian literature, which has been highly regarded by the miniature artiste of different times due to its romantic and lyrical poems; beyond this, it provides a salient context for field of social history and presents the cultural status of women in specific historical eras. The visual lived reality illustrated by the women images in Khamsah of Tahmasebi, including customs, traditions and socio-cultural conditions of them in the Safavid era, can be well studied in these miniature paintings. these representations are in somehow expressing the conditions of daily life of women in their historical transition. Research Method: To get the research aim, the theory of different fields` influences on creating artworks by Pierre Bourdieu was applied to discuss the extent of the influence of historical and social fields of Safavid in illustrating women images in Khamsah of Tahmasbi. However, the question here is that: 1. what aspects of women lives in the Safavid era are presented in the miniature paintings of Khamsah Tahmasbi and 2. which social and historical fields have been influenced by it? We conclude that the images of women in Khamsah Tahmasbi, due to the strict supremacy of the Shah and the Safavid court, the "court women" are mostly depicted and, contrary to the views of traditionalists, who believe in presentation of an imaginary world, many public customs and beliefs, or the realities of Safavid society are represented by them.

Keywords

• Khamsah Tahmasbi
• Miniature Painting
• Social history
• Pierre Bourdieu

Main Subjects

• socialhistory and art

Extended Abstract:

 The Visual Lived Reality of Women and its Representation in Miniature Paintings of Khamsa Tahmasbi

1. Introduction

Khamsa or Panj Ganj (Five Treasures) is one of the most significant and valuable epic poems of Hakim Ne(i)zami Ganjavi. Khamsa has five rhymes (Makhzan al-Asrar, Khosrow and Shirin, Layla and Majnun, Haft Peykar, Iskandar-nāmeh ), which strongly represents the role of women and their presence. Nezami, by adopting a positive approach and honoring women in Khamsa, encounters with the common adverse vision of society about women. The great number of women and his attention to the characteristics and various aspects of women role in the mentioned rhymes indicate the high position of women in mind of Nezami. Moreover, Khamsa has always been the focus of miniature artists at different historical times, specifically during the Safavid era. In spite of a similarity between these literary sources (Khamsa of Nezami), the illustrated poems represent diverse characteristics of different historical times, as each characterizes cultural, social, political and economic context of its own society, due to their own historical fields, and presents a unique and independent image of women in each era. However, in some studies on Iranian miniature, the origin of this kind of painting is also found in mystical texts, as the researchers relate them to a space beyond the miniature context, to an imaginary and spiritual world where they try to analyze them.

By looking carefully at the images of Khamsa of Tahmasbi as a significant work on the history of Iranian miniature, we can clearly study the cultural and social conditions manifested in these works, in consistent with the lived realities and daily life of women of the Safavid era. Therefore, in this research, it has been tried to analyze part of the historical resources (Iranian women in miniatures) based on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu. He believes that for analyzing an artwork, the way of its creation must be considered, as any artwork would be influenced by different social, political and economic fields of its own creation; therefore, without recognizing these fields and their inter-connections, it would not be possible to properly understand and analyze any artwork. An artwork is emerged as the consequence of conflicts between various spaces or fields including scientific, literary, cultural, social and historical ones that are in somehow related to a work or influence it, whether directly or indirectly (adopted from Stones 2000: 366). Therefore, in this article, the miniature paintings of Khamsa have been studied from the point of lived reality and the conditions governing the life of women in these kind of paintings, as well as the manner of different fields in influencing the work. These miniature paintings are carefully analyzed in terms of the degree of socio-cultural influence and also the role of sponsors- or even influencers who might order an artwork- in creating a work to eventually address the basic question that what features of the social and cultural conditions of women in the Safavid era are presented by women's lived reality in the miniature paintings of Khamsa Tahamasbi, for today's audience?

Research Background: In a book written by Yasini (2012), "Image of a woman in Miniature", the idea of ancient miniature artists about the image of a woman has been addressed. The author has studied the spiritual characteristics of women from Islamic, mystical and literary perspectives. Darabi, in her thesis entitled "The Archaeology and History: An image of Women in Miniatures of Tabriz School and Safavid Period's Texts" in 2005, by analyzing the appearance characteristics of women's paintings in the three illustrated versions of The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasbi, Khamseh of Shah Tahmasbi and Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's "Haft Awrang, examined the position and place of women and the evolution of their covers in images. In a similar study, Hejazi has analyzed the socio-cultural conditions of women in Safavid era in a book titled "Zaifeh" (2002). She has shown the issues and problems the women were faced during that time and addressed their social status which was established by referring to number of documents.

Research method: The current study is based on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the influence of different fields in creating artwork; The research aim is to achieve the social-cultural background of women during Safavid era by analyzing the miniature works of Khamsa Tahmasbi. The general approach for studying these miniature works of Khamsa is descriptive and analytical method.

Discussion and Conclusion: The results show that in most of these miniature works, the artist has tried to establish the main structure of the picture in connection with the literary text. The court's monetary support indicates its influence on portraying the luxurious and courtly class of women, as there are more pictures of the women who were dressed in decorated clothes with precious accessories and ornaments compared to the ordinary women who are mostly out of the context. It can be said that all these events were in the service of presenting the power, glory and honor of the king and the court. By analyzing the lived reality presented in the miniature paintings, it was found that these pictures strongly represent the socio-cultural conditions of the women in the court of Safavid era (according to the itinerary of travelers), as the usual women were less noticed by miniature artists; this finding represent that contrary to the traditional view, the Iranian miniature pays more attention to the ‘imaginal world’ (Mundus Imaginalis) than ‘world of ideas’, and the artist is entirely influenced by the fields that affect his/her mind and work.