Document Type : Original/Research/Regular Article
Authors
1
PhD Islamic Art
2
: Corresponding author . Associate Professor at the School of Art and Architecture
3
Department of Visual Information, Faculty of Art, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Lithography illustration ushered in a critical age in Iranian culture, art, and literature, and its spread played a crucial role in scientific and information instruction. Significantly, the religious books were widely printed and available to the general population and reciters of religious poems. One of the religious lithography-illustrated books from the Qajar era that has survived in several copies is Asrar al-Shahadah, by Sarbaz Borujerdi. In his Divan, the poet has described the life, birth, death, martyrdom, and glorification of the Infallible Imams. The oldest known illustrated version of this book goes back to 1852, the subject of the current study. This edition features 71 black-and-white illustrations and Nastaliq calligraphy, and its scribe was Abdul Hossein bin Haji Ibrahim. It was printed at the Mirza Ali Akbar printing house. The illustrator of this edition is not included in the National Library of Iran, although Aligholi Khoei's signature is visible on the book's illustrations. Although this edition is more accurate than those released in older periods, no study has been done on the edition known as Asrar al-Shahadah pictures. The present research introduces and examines the pictures of this book by analyzing the images of this book, particularly its three folk tales, as well as the religious narratives and visual aspects of the paintings.
This research aims to identify the illustrated edition of Asrar al-Shahadah in the National Library of Iran and analyze the religious and visual narratives of three common folk tales of Ashura during the Qajar era. This research employs descriptive, analytic, and documentary methods and aims to answer the question, "What are the factors of the imagery in the three stories from Asrar al-Shahadah, and what visual and thematic characteristics does it possess?" Additionally, based on the statistical population of 4 samples of book illustrations, this research examines the first lithographic illustrated edition of Asrar al-Shahadeh (1852), which is on display in the National Library of Iran. It refers to the three anecdotes of Zafar the Jinni, the King of India, and the Lion in Karbala, challenged by academics and believed to be among the widely accepted and inaccurate legends. These stories are not referenced in credible historical texts and were taken from the literature of the Qajar period. In Asrar al-Shahadah, one of this era's most significant cultural aspects for emphasizing the mourning of this event and its mood is the emphasis on subsidiary narratives whose veracity is hugely dubious and the spotlighting of these narratives even more than the primary narratives.
This edition has vivid coloring and rich punctuation to produce the volume of organs and things as one of its aesthetic characteristics. The holy light aura surrounding Husayn ibn Ali's head as a symbol of innocence and appears in various instances as extended linear and triangular radii is another distinguishing element. This edition depicts, in general, the tragedy of Ashura, the war scenes of the Imam's companions, and the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali. The events of Husayn ibn Ali's battle are not depicted, but other sequences of the Ashura incident portray the Imam being wounded by an arrow and talking with people based on various tales or popular and distorted interpretations. Some religious books, such as Rozatol Shohada, which people have embraced in rituals since the Safavid era, made their way into other religious books of the Qajar era. At the same time, folk stories and unreliable narratives about the events of Ashura led to the perpetuation of erroneous accounts of the events of Ashura in written and pictorial form.
The distortions of Ashura and the misleading stories on the Karbala incident are erroneous interpretations derived from the rise of Husayn ibn Ali, and several scholars have researched and written about these acts throughout history.
The Qajar era marked the beginning of efforts to correct Ashura's distortions. Al Lu'lu wal Marjan (1901), written by Muhaddis Noor, is regarded as the first work by a Shia scholar to challenge Ashura's misconceptions. After him, Abbas Qomi, the author of the book Muntahi al-Amal (1931), and Muhammad Baqir Khorasani Birjandi (aka Muhaddis Birjandi, died in 1933) authored critiques against the inaccuracies of Ashura in these sources. Morteza Motahhari also examined the distorted Ashura occurrences in his book Hemaseye Hosseini, and he labeled linguistic distortions, falsification of historical accounts, and inaccurately citing the Karbala tragedy as spiritual distortions. To this, image distortions that were derived from false texts or widely held visual perceptions of the event might be added.
In addition to those described by Ulrich Marzolph, the results indicate that further lithography-illustrated editions of this book can be found in other Iranian libraries. The three illustrated narratives presented in this book are among the accounts that lack valid narrative validity and are among the twisted tales in Ashura. All three images have used the text of Asrar al-Shahadah and descriptions of narrations featured in many books, particularly Qajar sources, but in other elements, they have employed the usual techniques and iconography of Qajar art. In addition, the method of archaism, attention to various mythology, and the impact of western culture on depicting exotic animals have made these images possible. The images varied and were comparable to Asrar al-Shahadah's text and the narrations. The subject, the narrative of the incident, and the main characteristics of the objects and people in the image are identical, but the artist has gone beyond the book's scope and even the narratives it references by paying attention to the details and using his imagination to create images. Visual techniques, such as framework compositions as a helpful indicator and circling composition to center the story on Husayn ibn Ali, have been included in narratives to portray various concepts. The expansion and lack of crowding in the Imam's body's backdrop indicate his isolation and loneliness, and the concentration of visual components on the narrative's central issue is to draw attention to the scene and characters.
According to the artist's perspective and focus on the story of recent centuries, the king of India is characterized in a different location in the second tale. The tale of "Lion in Karbala," in the view of the Haram doves around the body of Husayn ibn Ali, connects the narration of 1400 years ago to the present and depicts the incident from several perspectives in one picture. The artist tries to demonstrate his faithfulness to the narrative text, but he also applies his creative mind, far from the book and the narration, and his imagination to express the visual sermon in this manner. It has been attempted to portray many concepts of visual methods, such as frame compositions as a symbol of support, rotating composition to spin the narrative of Husayn ibn Ali, and expansion and lack of crowding the backdrop of Husayn ibn Ali as a symbol of his loneliness and isolation.
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