Methodology for Providing a Quantitative Index to Explain the Complexity of the Relationship between Human Figures and the Architecture in the Illustrations of Shāhnāmeh of Shāh Tahmāsebi

The glorious version of Shāhnāmeh of Shāh Tahmāsebi was written and illustrated in the Second Tabriz Safavid School (907-938 AH). According to the authors' research, out of 258 paintings in it, 74 have illustrated buildings that depict different areas of life, living spaces and interactions with different degrees of detail. The purpose of this study was to provide a way to quantify the complexity of the relationship between human figures and the architectural realm in terms of form in this version; For this purpose, after clarifying the concept of "complexity", the factors affecting it, including the number and variety of human figures in terms of gender and age, the number of components and area of the architectural realm and their relationship and interaction with the figures were considered and the function of the index "Complexity" was presented based on them. Calculating the value of the index in the drawings of this version, shows that the painting "Nightmare of Zahhāk" has the highest amount of complexity equal to 392, the painting "Isfandiyār’s Seven Labours" has the lowest value of 66, and the complexity index of 74% of the drawings is between 124 and 266.Following the approaches that have existed so far to understand the art of Persian painting, this method offers a new way to examine the drawings from a formal and structural point of view. By providing such indicators, it is possible to evaluate and categorize the paintings from various aspects, have a suitable solution for selecting, studying, as well as comparing them with paintings from other versions, and gain a better understanding of this precious heritage. This research is quantitative in terms of the nature of the data and is applied in terms of purpose, and data collection has been done by library method.