From “Foreword” to the Volume.

Scholars have favored various periodisations for mediaeval Persian painting. The simplest, and most widely accepted division has been by ruling dynasties, for it was precisely court art in feudal Iran which, as a rule, ‘set the tone,’ reflecting the interests and tastes of the wealthiest social groups, who had the means not only to maintain artists’ workshops but also to influence artists and their production directly. Minuter variants of this periodisation have also been suggested, based not on the dynasties, which ruled the country as a whole but on the concurrent activity, under one dynasty or another, of several schools or centers.

Both these criteria, based on the external conditions in which Persian painting developed, retain their full significance and must be taken into account. However, it is nonetheless important that its periodisation should take into account the state of painting at a particular stage in its development, that is, its internal characteristics, on which the direction of its development depended.

In the first three chapters, the author gives her view of the general course of medieval Persian painting, and the factors within it, which led to successive changes in both the content and the form of the representational arts. The fourth chapter is of somewhat different nature. As is well known many illustrated Persian manuscripts and albums of paintings and specimens of calligraphy (muraqqa‛) have been broken up by dealers and sold piecemeal. Scholars have now, however, came to understand that illustrated books or albums were envisaged as single, integral wholes, in which nothing but the complete cycle will give the possibility of comprehending the full depth of their contents and the artist’s real design. Work on the reconstruction of a number of important illustrated manuscripts has already proceeded successfully, but so far, there has been no systematic attempt to apply the method to albums. This fourth chapter is an attempt to reconstruct one of the most famous albums, the so-called St. Petersburg Muraqqa‛.