Handicrafts of Great Khorasan

Handicrafts of Great Khorasan

A Mystical Analysis of “A Son Crying over His Father's Death” Painting, Based on Yaqzah (Awakening) from Abdullah Ansari's Point of View

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Ph.D. in Comparative and Analytical History of Islamic Art, Department of Advance Art Studies, Faculty of Visual Art, Faculties of Fine Arts, Tehran University, Tehran Iran
2 Professor, Department of Advance Art Studies, Faculty of Visual Art, Faculties of Fine Arts, Tehran University, Tehran Iran
3 Associate Professor of Painting and Sculpture Department, Faculty of Visual Art, Faculties of Fine Arts, Tehran University, Tehran Iran
Abstract
Attar's Mantiq al-Tayr is one of the influential literary texts in Persian and world literature, and many copies have been made of it, most of which are illustrated. One of these copies is Mantiq al-Tayr, preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, which dates back to the Timurid period and the Herat school. Due to the technical importance of the manuscript and Behzad's participation in it, as well as the high quality of the manuscript's illustration and the many mystical points included in the manuscript, we decided to examine it. In the present study, an attempt has been made to examine the relationship between the story of the manuscript "A son crying over his father's death" by Behzad and the text of "Manazil al-Sa'irin" by Abdullah Ansari, and its aim is to discover the hidden relationships between the theme of "Yaqzah" or awakening from Sage of Herat's point of view, with the entirety of the story of the manuscript and the way its characters function. Overall, by studying the manuscript, it was found that Attar, Behzad, and Sultan Ali have shown in the best possible way how to learn from the people of hell. Attar's poems refer to gathering provisions for the hereafter, and in this regard, Behzad, by showing a conversation between a grieving boy and a kind-hearted Sufi, emphasizes the necessity of doing good deeds before one's time passes, and all other elements (human and animal) in the painting also confirm this. Sultan Ali's phrase "The grave is a door through which all people enter" at the entrance to the cemetery is also very effective in completing the hidden message in the painting, namely, making the most of the remaining life. The present research has analyzed the painting qualitatively, with a descriptive-analytical approach, and using library resources (real and virtual).
Keywords
Subjects

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  • Receive Date 25 June 2024
  • Revise Date 05 September 2024
  • Accept Date 28 November 2024