Studying the Concept of Moderation in the Painting "Urban and Rural Man" in Jami's Subhat al-Abrar with Transtextuality According to Gérard Genette

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Postdoctoral researcher, Iran National Science Foundation, Tehran, Iran.

2 Ph.D.Student, Department of Analytical and Comparative History of Islamic Art, Faculty of Art, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

 
Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s “Haft Awrang” manuscript, or the “Freer Jami” is the illustrated version of Jami’s “Haft Awrang” book, which is a series of poems about ethical philosophy in the form of allegorical and anecdotal stories. “Jami Freer” describes a period in the history of Iranian illustrations where royal workshops and the printing and publishing culture that arose from them among poets and painters enabled the painters to show their own religious and cultural interpretations of the text through their illustrations. Jami helped the reader understand the text better in addition to promoting morality, wisdom, and his own vision of an ideal society through the use of an Islamic perspective and references to Quranic concepts and by taking advantage of many contradictions and contrasts in his own poems and stories. Sabhat al-abrār (rosary of the pius) is one of the seven parts of Jami’s “Haft Awrang” (seven thrones in English) in the Masnavi form, which describes the central ideas, themes, and moral virtues of Sufism.
One of the most important studies in Persian art and literature is the reading of illustrations that have been depicted from Persian literature texts, which on the one hand describe the relationship between the illustration and the text, and on the other, due to their presentation along with other illustrations in a collection commissioned by the royal court, are influenced by their respective governments, which presents an obstacle. Transtextuality is the use of the study of earlier and later texts, historical sources, cultural and historical context, the Quranic verses and their meanings, and understanding the society in which the art was created in analyzing illustrations. These types of textual analysis are themselves transtextuality as parts of hypertextuality, and paratextuality. These hypertextual and paratextual analyses, in addition to the analysis of the different layers of meaning in a text, reveal why the artist chose certain topics or focused on specific themes. This comparative analysis reviews the overlap between the description and the extratextual evidence (two components of transtextuality) and the text’s threshold inf interpretation.In addition, it describes and analyzesdifferent layers of textual meaning emerging from other texts, which in themselves are the basis for the creation of the artwork. “The urban man and the looting of the orchard” illustration as peritext based on the paratext of “Rural man vs. urban man” derived from the themes of Quranic verses about wastefulness also covers themes such as harvest right and guest right. The illustration of the poem has enriched its thematic content here with an intertextuality in its transmutation since the written text has been adapted into visual text. This article shows the influence of the peritext in the depiction of the illustration in question via a multi-textual reading that analyzes the written and visual text, and it also defines the role of Ibrahim Mirza as the patron of the art by examining the paratexts of the illustration.
Research question: 
What is the relationship between the patron of the “Haft Awrang”, and the concept of moderation in the “urban man and the looting of the orchard”’ illustration?
Methodology: 
The methods employed for analyzing the illustration are paratextuality and peritextuality, which, in Genette’s words, are two aspects of transtextuality. This overview analyzes both the written and visual text in addition to enlisting the descriptive-analytical method. Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s “Haft Awrang” manuscript, or the “Freer Jami”, is the illustrated version of Jami’s “Haft Awrang” book, which is a book of poems about ethical philosophy in the form of allegorical and anecdotal stories. This illustrated manuscript is an obvious translation of the written text of the original Jami manuscript, and it uses intertextual references. “Jami Freer” describes a period in the history of Iranian illustrations where royal workshops and the printing and publishing culture establishing among poets and painters enabled the painters to remain faithful to the original text while also showcasing their own religious and cultural interpretations through their illustrations. Therefore “The Urban Man and the Looting of the Orchard” is illustrated beyond just the story of the “urban man vs. the rural man who took him to his orchard”.  Meaning the illustration has gone beyond simply depicting the poem. This article aims to reveal the other sources the painter resorted to by means of multi-textual study and employing the descriptive-analytical method to review historical and library sources, and furthermore, to reveal the relationship between the illustration and the text by examining the effect of paratexts and the illustration’s primary sources.
Results: 
Reviewing and studying the text of Jami’s poem and the illustration “The Urban Man and the Looting of the Orchard” to compare and contrast them in order to analyze the impact of the poem’s text on the illustration using peritext revealed that the visual text, in addition to being a faithful adaptation of the poem “Sabhat al-abrār”, has also used Quranic texts and verses. In fact, what inspired the visual depiction of ‘The urban man and the rural man who took him to his orchard’ is some of the Quran’s verses about wastefulness and its teachings about harvest and the harvest right, being  illustrated in “The Urban Man and the Looting of the Orchard”. In the illustration, the Safavid Prince is drawn in the center, who, as the patron of the manuscript, points towards moderation; this depiction of the Prince is an ode to him as the patron. On the other hand, the premature exile of artists from Shah Tahmasp’s court and the simultaneous appearance of the Prince, happening the artwork’s patron, in the illustrations and texts in this version of the manuscript are due to the fact that the painter indirectly wanted to both depict the illustration in tandem with the rest of the illustrations in this collection and declare his loyalty to his patron by showing his virtues and benevolence. According to the historical paratexts (primary sources and reports) and the handwritten texts mentioned in this version, the illustration was meant to show the good qualities of the Prince and the ruler of the time (King Tahmasp) by depicting their sense of justice and fairness. Depicting Sultan Ibrahim Mirza and the group of musicians in the center of the illustration harvesting the orchard whilst avoiding extravagance and indulgence and allocating the right to harvest to the poor and to their guests are signs of the crown’s sense of justice, reflecting that era’s social and political zeitgeist in addition to showcasing Islamic values and the Islamic influences on the illustration. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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References

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    URLs

    • https://asia.si.edu/exploreartculture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1946.12.188/, date access: 16/5/2023.
    • https://asia.si.edu/exploreartculture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1946.12.275/, date access: 20/05/2023.
    • https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1946.12.298/, date access: 21/5/2023.
    • https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1946.12.272/, date access: 16/05/2023.
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    • https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1946.12.272/, date access: 16/05/2023.
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    • URL8: https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=FS-7238_12&max=500, date access: 16/5/2023.
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