Visual Elements of Islam Prophet (PBUH) life events in religious paintings of Jameá- al-Tawarikh

Illustration of historical and religious scenes is of high significance in Islamic versions of Iran’s illustration; different features have been manifested in these pictures during different periods of art. In Moghul era, because of the kings’ tendency toward Christianity and Christian factors, influences of byzantine painting was observed in the illustrations; but what is clearly evident with the Il-khans era is the strong influence of Chinese art, particularly the Yuan and Sung period, on Mughal painting. One could claim that Il-khans is the period of conflicting elements of Chinese, Iranian, Byzantine, and Arabic art. On the other hand, illustration of Islamic historical scenes became common in the books during Il-khans period, the period when Islam became the formal religion. As an instance, in the second volume of the manuscript version of Jameá- al-Tawarikh, written by Rashid-al-Din Fazl-allah (the minister to Ghazan Khan), one can see the presence of some descriptions of Muhammad’s life (PBUH). Some Byzantine and Chinese elements can also be observed in the illustrations of this manuscript. On the other hand, the artists of these illustrations have intended, in spite of all the foreign elements they had used in the paintings, to convey above all the work’s theme, and they have here and there turned to realism to do this job. They even illustrated the face of Islam’s Prophet (PBUH), something that was never seen before. In this article has been based on library studies of 12 paintings which have illustrated the life events of Islam’s prophet (PBUH) and which have been found in the manuscript version of Jameá- al-Tawarikh manuscript in the library of Edinburgh University as well as Naser Khalili’s collection, have been investigated in the present study. The reason this subject was chosen as the subject of this paper was to identify the foreign visual elements effective on the religious paintings of Il-khans period.