International Journal of Arts 2018, 8(1): 1-12 DOI: 10.5923/j.arts.20180801.01 The Place of Text and Image Framing in the First Persian Illustrated Shahnamas (in the Eighth Century AH) Sahar Changiz 1,* , Hasan Bolkhari Ghehi 2 1 Department of Islamic Art and Humanities, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran 2 Department of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Iran Abstract After the Seljuk illustrated Shahnama, from which small and damaged leaves have been obtained, first Persian illustrated Shahnamas can be attributed to the eighth century AH which coincided with Ilkhanid period. In this period, there remain over 10 illustrated Shahnamas that have been spread leaf by leaf in museums and libraries around the world. With a comparative-historical approach, this research studies the position of writing and image in three Small Shahnamas and three Injuid Shahnamas. The authors aim to find the layout principles of the eighth century Shahnamas and to analyze the position of the text and images, and in particular combination and stair framing in them. In most illustrated pages, the use of text is more than the use of image, and text occupies larger volumes of pages—or text and image are used equally. It seems that for these types of unique designs, three objectives have been principally considered: creation of a variety of forms in the page configurations, embedding the position of the illustrated verse line and linking image frames with narrative thread. Keywords First illustrated Shahnamas, Ilkhanid, Image framing, Text framing, Combination frame 1. Introduction There has always been a strong link between Persian painting and book designing from the past. This link starts from old versions before Islam, like Manichaean books, and continues in a more complete way in the Islamic period. Even though in the early centuries of Islam, only religious books were decorated, scientific books and those on astronomy and literature were also gradually decorated and even illustrated. The Shahnama of Ferdowsi found a special place at this time because of its rich literary imagery. Almost in all schools of Persian painting, one can identify multiple instances of the Shahnama illustrated. However, first Persian illustrated Shahnamas, after the single Shahnama attributed to the Seljuks of which many leaves are damaged, are Shahnamas illustrated in the eighth century AH. During this period, due to the great interest of government leaders to develop and illustrate historical and mythical books, designing and painting in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi, which is full of epic and heroic themes, were also highly regarded in the Ilkhanid period 1 . Of course, Soudavar believes that the cause of the great attention to the illustration of Shahnamas, especially by the Injuid family 2 , “is seen in the influence of vassals from the Ilkhanid main court and the Abu Saidi's * Corresponding author: s.changiz@imamreza.ac.ir (Sahar Changiz) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/arts Copyright © 2018 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved Shahnama” [22]. These Shahnamas are provided in several art centers and have a particular way of designing. Unfortunately, “their leaves are very sparse and scattered in libraries and museums around the world” [21]. Perhaps the most important feature of these works is the special type of composition in their text and images. The relationship between specific text, images and framing seems to have affected the layout of images in the pages, in addition to the structure and composition of the images. The present study is an attempt to check the special and different framing and configurations of these illustrated Shahnamas. “The eighth century AH, especially from the late seventh century to the middle of the eighth century, during which about a third of the illustrated versions comes from the Shahnama, can be considered as the official start date of the Persian painting" [21]. 2. Objective The aim of this study was to identify the earliest examples of Persian Shahnama illustration. Its main purpose was to study the artists’ art and creativity in the eighth century AH—those who managed to create a collection of such valuable and admirable works, despite the limitations of tools, for example, small folio of some Shahnamas, as well as the constraints of time and place. The authors’ objective have been an attempt to understand their specific layout principles and analyze the position of text and images in them.