Rustam Sleeping while Rakhsh Fights a Lion

Sultan Muhammad was a Persian painter at the

Safavid Safavid Iran or Safavid Persia (), also referred to as the Safavid Empire, '. was one of the greatest Iranian empires after the 7th-century Muslim conquest of Persia, which was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty. It is often conside ...

court at

Tabriz Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the List of largest cities of Iran, sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quri Chay, Quru River valley in Iran's historic Aze ...

under Shah

Ismail I Ismail I ( fa, اسماعیل, Esmāʿīl, ; July 17, 1487 – May 23, 1524), also known as Shah Ismail (), was the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Safavid Iran, Iran, ruling as its King of Kings (''Shahanshah'') from 1501 to 1524. His re ...

() and Shah

Tahmasp I Tahmasp I ( fa, طهماسب, translit=Ṭahmāsb or ; 22 February 1514 – 14 May 1576) was the second shah of Safavid Iran from 1524 to 1576. He was the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum. Ascending the throne after t ...

(). He served as the director of Shah

Ismail Ishmael ''Ismaḗl''; Classical/Qur'anic Arabic: إِسْمَٰعِيْل; Modern Standard Arabic: إِسْمَاعِيْل ''ʾIsmāʿīl''; la, Ismael was the first son of Abraham, the common patriarch of the Abrahamic religions; and is cons ...

's artists’ workshop and as the first project director of the ''Shahnameh'' of Shah Tahmasp. He gave painting lessons to Tahmasp when he was the crown prince. Sultan Muhammad’s style was initially based in the Turkman courtly idiom. Sheila R. Canby writes that around 1515, he was perfecting scenes of “man and animal inhabiting a natural world of roaring winds, lush and frenzied vegetation and rocks resembling grotesque faces”, of which his painting “Rustam Sleeping while Rakhsh Fights a Lion” from an unfinished ''

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,00 ...

'' is an example. In the 1520s however, Sultan Muhammad was influenced by the more sedate and subtle late

Timurid Timurid refers to those descended from Timur (Tamerlane), a 14th-century conqueror: * Timurid dynasty, a dynasty of Turco-Mongol lineage descended from Timur who established empires in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ** Timurid Empire of C ...

mode practiced at

Herat Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safēd ...

; his compositions became more orderly and architectonic. Sultan Muhammad’s painting “The Court of Gayumars” is widely considered the “crowning achievement” of the ''Shahnameh'' of Shah Tahmasp. It has been estimated that the artist worked on the painting for three years. In 1544,

Dust Muhammad Dust Muhammad (or Doust Muhammad) was a Persian painter of miniatures, calligrapher, and art historian, active from about 1510 to 1564. Later in life he worked in India. Early career Dust Muhammad was born in Herat in the late 15th century, alth ...

described it as “such that the lion-hearted of the jungle of depiction and the leopards and crocodiles of the workshop of ornamentation quail at the fangs of his pen and bend their necks before the awesomeness of his pictures,” making it one of the few individual paintings to be referenced in any sixteenth century text. Other than the ''Shahnameh'' of Shah Tahmasp, Sultan Muhammad may have contributed to an illustrated manuscript of the ''Story of Jamal and Jalal'' of Muhammad Asafi that was copied by the scribe Sultan Ali Qayini in 1502–3 at

but then travelled west. He was also among the few distinguished artists to contribute to an illustrated manuscript of the ''Khamseh'' of Nizami that was copied by the scribe Shah Mahmud of Nishapur at

and produced between 1539 and 1543. Furthermore, he decorated the borders of many other fine

manuscripts. Sultan Muhammad was a native of

. He was the father of the artist Mirza Ali, who also contributed to the ''Shahnameh'' of Shah Tahmasp, and the grandfather of the painter and illuminator Mir Zayn al-'Abidin, who was active in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. He died before 1555.

References

{{authority control Persian miniature painters 16th-century Iranian painters