A Study and Retrieval of Polo Stick Based in Timurid Era Miniatures and Manuscripts

The Polo is an ancient game and sport belonging to Iran, and despite its long history, there is little recorded information about its principles, rules, equipment and clothes. It seems that Timurid rulers did not appreciate čawgān (game of polo) as before, and that concentrated their focus on reconstruction of the country, and this seems logical regarding the fact that Timurid dynasty is contemporary to Mongol's invasion during Ilkhan era. As a result we can witness the growing interest of Timurid court to architecture and its related arts in great number of remaining works. Thus there were not proper conditions for growing and development of čawgān in Timurid dynasty, and Timurid court did not have enough time and interest for team sports such as čawgān (similar to Safavid period). Nevertheless, due to the great interest of Teimurid princes to literature, we can witness a great variety and numerous poems with the subject matter of čawgān in this period. According to the results of present research, there are 264 cases of ''čawgān'' and 27cases of ''sawlajān'' (cognate of ''čawgān'') were found in poems of this era and based on the finding of the studied Timurid miniatures, there are three forms of polo mallet looking like curved cane =“á” ,similar to “L” form and “V” form(with an open angle). Present paper has selected study cases by asking this question that: what was the changing procedure of the polo stick and ball in the Timurid miniatures and the reason why, this paper has gathered the previous related research works using the library, documental and internet resources and in the next stage, gathered the old texts and illustrated pages related to the polo game and refining them in terms of the validity of documents and containing the date. Finally, after collecting data, the differences and similarities between them have been analyzed. Present paper is a descriptive-analytical one, using the library, observation and interview techniques.