1.
Herat
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Herat is the third-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 436,300, and serves as the capital of Herat Province and it is linked with Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif via highway 1 or the ring road. It is further linked to the city of Mashhad in neighboring Iran through the town of Islam Qala. Herat dates back to the Avestan times and was known for its wine. The city has a number of sites, including the Herat Citadel. During the Middle Ages Herat became one of the important cities of Khorasan and it has been governed by various Afghan rulers since the early 18th century. In 1717, the city was invaded by the Hotaki forces until they were expelled by the Afsharids in 1736, after Nader Shahs death and Ahmad Shah Durranis rise to power in 1747, Herat became part of Afghanistan. It witnessed some political disturbances and military invasions during the half of the 19th century. Herat suffered from destruction during the Soviet war in the 1980s. Herat lies on the ancient trade routes of the Middle East, Central, the roads from Herat to Iran, Turkmenistan, and other parts of Afghanistan are still strategically important. As the gateway to Iran, it collects high amount of revenue for Afghanistan. The city has an international airport, Herat is a regional hub in western Afghanistan in close proximity to Iran and Turkmenistan. The city has high residential density clustered around the core of the city, however, vacant plots account for a higher percentage of the city than residential land use and agricultural is the largest percentage of total land use. Herat dates back to ancient times, but its exact age remains unknown, during the period of the Achaemenid Empire, the surrounding district was known as Hariva, and in classical sources the region was correspondingly known as Aria. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the district is mentioned as Haroiva, the name of the district and its main town is derived from that of the chief river of the region, the Herey River, which traverses the district and passes some 5 km south of modern Herāt. Herey is mentioned in Sanskrit as yellow or golden color equivalent to Persian Zard meaning Gold, the naming of a region and its principal town after the main river is a common feature in this part of the world—compare the adjoining districts/rivers/towns of Arachosia and Bactria. The district Aria of the Achaemenid Empire is mentioned in the lists that are included in various royal inscriptions, for instance. Representatives from the district are depicted in reliefs, e. g. at the royal Achaemenid tombs of Naqsh-e Rustam and they are wearing Scythian-style dress and a twisted Bashlyk that covers their head, chin and neck
2.
Timurid Empire
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The empire was founded by Timur, a warlord of Turco-Mongol lineage who established the empire between 1370 and his death in 1405. He envisioned himself as the restorer of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. In the 16th century, Babur, a Timurid prince from Ferghana, invaded Kabulistan and established a kingdom there. Timur conquered large parts of Central Asia, primarily Transoxiana and Khorasan, from 1363 onwards with various alliances, acting officially in the name of Suurgatmish, the Chagatai khan, he subjugated Transoxania and Khwarazm in the years that followed. The western Chagatai khans were continually dominated by Timurid princes in the 15th and 16th centuries, Timur began a campaign westwards in 1380, invading the various successor states of the Ilkhanate. By 1389, he had removed the Kartids from Herat and advanced into mainland Persia where he enjoyed many successes and this included the capture of Isfahan in 1387, the removal of the Muzaffarids from Shiraz in 1393, and the expulsion of the Jalayirids from Baghdad. In 1394–95, he triumphed over the Golden Horde, following his campaign in Georgia. Tokhtamysh, the khan of the Golden Horde, was a rival to Timur in the region. He also subjugated Multan and Dipalpur in modern-day Pakistan in 1398, Timur gave the north Indian territories to a non-family member, Khizr Khan, whose Sayyid dynasty replaced the defeated Tughlaq dynasty of the Sultanate of Delhi. Delhi became a vassal of the Timurids but obtained independence in the following the death of Timur. In 1400–1401 he conquered Aleppo, Damascus and eastern Anatolia, in 1401 he destroyed Baghdad and this made Timur the most preeminent Muslim ruler of the time, as the Ottoman Empire plunged into civil war. Meanwhile, he transformed Samarkand into a capital and seat of his realm. Timur appointed his sons and grandsons to the governorships of the different parts of his empire. After his death in 1405, the family fell into disputes and civil wars. Due to the fact that the Persian cities were desolated by wars, the cost of Timurs conquests amount to the deaths of possibly 17 million people. Shahrukh Mirza, fourth ruler of the Timurids, dealt with Kara Koyunlu, but, Jahan Shah drove the Timurids to eastern Iran after 1447 and also briefly occupied Herat in 1458. After the death of Jahan Shah, Uzun Hasan, bey of the Ak Koyunlu, by 1500, the divided and wartorn Timurid Empire had lost control of most of its territory, and in the following years was effectively pushed back on all fronts. Persia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Anatolia fell quickly to the Shiite Safavid dynasty, secured by Shah Ismail I in the following decade
3.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
4.
Safavid dynasty
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The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
5.
Tabriz
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Tabriz is the most populated city in the Iranian Azerbaijan, one of the historical capitals of Iran, and the present capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Located in the Quru River valley between the ridge of the volcanic cones of the Sahand and Eynali mountains, Tabrizs elevation ranges between 1,350 and 1,600 metres above sea level. The valley opens up into a plain that slopes down to the eastern shores of Lake Urmia,60 kilometres to the west. With cold winters and temperate summers, the city is considered a summer resort, Tabriz is named Worlds Carpet and Crafts City, it is also appointed as the exemplary tourism city in 2018 by Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. With a population of 1.6 million, Tabriz is the biggest economic hub, the population consists mostly of Iranian Azerbaijanis and the most spoken language in the city is Azeri Turkish. Tabriz is a heavy industry hub for automobile, machine tools, refineries and petrochemical, textile. The city is famous for its handicrafts including hand-woven rugs and jewelry, local confectioneries, chocolates, dried nuts, and traditional food of Tabriz are recognized all around Iran as some of the best Iranian food. Tabriz is also a hub and a site for some of the most prestigious cultural institutes in the northwest of Iran. The city contains many historical monuments representing the transition of Iranian architecture in its long historical timelines. Most of the historical sites in the city belong to Ilkhanid, Safavid. From the early era, the city was pivotal in the development, movement. From the 19th century, it became the most important city in the country in numerous respects, as the closest Iranian hub to Europe, many aspects of the early modern modernisation in Iran started in Tabriz. During almost the entire Qajar period, it functioned as the seat for the prince as well. According to some sources, including Encyclopædia Britannica, the name Tabriz derives from tap-riz, in AD297, it became the capital of Tiridates III, king of Armenia. However, this story has an origin and no ancient source has recorded such event. This is based on accounts of Vardan, the Armenian historian in 13th century, the early history of Tabriz is not well-documented. The earliest inscription about Tabriz, referring to the city as Tarui or Tauris, is on the Assyrian King Sargon IIs epigraph in 714 BC, Tabriz has been chosen as the capital for some rulers commencing from Atropates era and his dynasty. A recent excavation at the site of the Iron Age museum, in the north of the Blue Mosque site, more likely the city has been destroyed multiple times either by natural disasters or by the invading armies
6.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
7.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
8.
Ali-Shir Nava'i
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Mīr Ali-Shir Navai, also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAlī-Shīr Herawī was a Turkic poet, writer, politician, linguist, mystic, and painter. He was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature, Ali-Shir Navai was born in 1441 in Herat, which is now in north-western Afghanistan. During Ali-Shirs lifetime, Herat was ruled by the Timurid Empire, Ali-Shir belonged to the Chagatai amir class of the Timurid elite. Ali-Shirs father, Ghiyāth ud-Din Kichkina, served as a officer in the palace of Shāhrukh Mirzā. His mother served as a governess in the palace. Ghiyāth ud-Din Kichkina served as governor of Sabzawar at one time and he died while Ali-Shir was young, and another ruler of Khorasan, Babur Ibn-Baysunkur, adopted guardianship of the young man. Ali-Shir was a schoolmate of Husayn Bayqarah who would become the sultan of Khorasan. Ali-Shirs family was forced to flee Herat in 1447 after the death of Shāhrukh created a political situation. His family returned to Khorasan after order was restored in the 1450s, in 1456, Ali-Shir and Bayqarah went to Mashhad with Ibn-Baysunkur. The following year Ibn-Baysunkur died and Ali-Shir and Bayqarah parted ways, while Bayqarah tried to establish political power, Ali-Shir pursued his studies in Mashhad, Herat, and Samarkand. After the death of Abu Said Mirza in 1469, Husayn Bayqarah seized power in Herat, consequently, Ali-Shir left Samarkand to join his service. Bayqarah ruled Khorasan almost uninterruptedly for forty years, Ali-Shir remained in the service of Bayqarah until his death on 3 January 1501. Ali-Shir Navai led a lifestyle, never marrying or having concubines or children. Ali-Shir served as an administrator and adviser to his sultan. In Herat, he was responsible for 40 caravanserais,17 mosques,10 mansions, nine bathhouses, nine bridges, among Ali-Shirs most famous constructions were the mausoleum of the 13th-century mystical poet, Farid al-Din Attar, in Nishapur and the Khalasiya madrasa in Herat. He was one of the contributors to the architecture of Herat, which became, in René Groussets words. Under the pen name Navai, Ali-Shir was among the key writers who revolutionized the use of the Turkic languages. Navai himself wrote primarily in the Chagatai language and produced 30 works over a period of 30 years, during which Chagatai became accepted as a prestigious, Navai also wrote in Persian, and, to a much lesser degree, in Arabic
9.
Persian people
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The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
10.
Persian miniature
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A Persian miniature is a small painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a muraqqa. The techniques are comparable to the Western and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, the Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent. Persian art under Islam had never completely forbidden the human figure and this was partly because the miniature is a private form, kept in a book or album and only shown to those the owner chooses. It was therefore possible to be free than in wall paintings or other works seen by a wider audience. In Islamic art this is referred to as illumination, and manuscripts of the Quran, in later periods miniatures were increasingly created as single works to be included in albums called muraqqa, rather than illustrated books. This allowed non-royal collectors to afford a representative sample of works from different styles, the bright and pure colouring of the Persian miniature is one of its most striking features. Lighting is even, without shadows or chiaroscuro, walls and other surfaces are shown either frontally, or as at an angle of about 45 degrees, often giving the modern viewer the unintended impression that a building is hexagonal in plan. Buildings are often shown in complex views, mixing interior views through windows or cutaways with exterior views of parts of a facade. Costumes and architecture are always those of the time, many figures are often depicted, with those in the main scene normally rendered at the same size, and recession indicated by placing more distant figures higher up in the space. More important figures may be larger than those around them. The dress of figures is shown with great care, although artists understandably often avoid depicting the patterned cloth that many would have worn. Even when a scene in a palace is shown, the viewpoint often appears to be from a point some metres in the air. This is used in all the manuscripts for the court that constitute the most famous Persian manuscripts. The miniatures normally occupy a full page, later spreading across two pages to regain a square or horizontal landscape format. There are often panels of text or captions inside the picture area, the rest of the page is often decorated with dense designs of plants and animals in a muted grisaille, often gold and brown, text pages without miniatures often also have such borders. In later manuscripts, elements of the miniature begin to expand beyond the frame, another later development was the album miniature, conceived as a single picture rather than a book illustration, though such images may be accompanied by short lyric poems. The withdrawal of Shah Tahmasp I from commissioning illustrated books in the 1540s probably encouraged artists to transfer to these works for a wider circle of patrons
11.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
12.
Illuminated manuscript
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An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders and miniature illustrations. Comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted, islamic manuscripts may be referred to as illuminated, illustrated or painted, though using essentially the same techniques as Western works. This article covers the technical, social and economic history of the subject, for an art-historical account, the earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period 400 to 600, produced in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire. The significance of these works lies not only in their inherent artistic and historical value, had it not been for the monastic scribes of Late Antiquity, most literature of Greece and Rome would have perished in Europe. As it was, the patterns of textual survivals were shaped by their usefulness to the severely constricted literate group of Christians, the majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity. The majority of manuscripts are of a religious nature. However, especially from the 13th century onward, a number of secular texts were illuminated. Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls, a very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus, which does not last nearly as long as vellum or parchment. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment, beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century, Manuscripts are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages, many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting. There are a few examples from later periods, the type of book that was most often heavily and richly illuminated, sometimes known as a display book, varied between periods. In the first millennium, these were most likely to be Gospel Books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Romanesque period saw the creation of many huge illuminated complete Bibles – one in Sweden requires three librarians to lift it. Many Psalters were also illuminated in both this and the Gothic period. Finally, the Book of Hours, very commonly the personal book of a wealthy layperson, was often richly illuminated in the Gothic period. Other books, both liturgical and not, continued to be illuminated at all periods, the Byzantine world also continued to produce manuscripts in its own style, versions of which spread to other Orthodox and Eastern Christian areas. See Medieval art for other regions, periods and types, reusing parchments by scraping the surface and reusing them was a common practice, the traces often left behind of the original text are known as palimpsests. The Gothic period, which saw an increase in the production of these beautiful artifacts, also saw more secular works such as chronicles
