u/Rashiq_shahzzad

I’ll be making a longer post on Persian and Byzantine influences on early Islamic civilization particularly what happened after the Arab conquests and how these older imperial cultures shaped the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.

One of the things I find fascinating is how much of what we now instinctively identify as “Islamic” has deeper roots in the pre-Islamic societies that Islam encountered and absorbed.

The conquests did not simply erase the cultural worlds of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Their political institutions, court culture, administrative practices, clothing, artistic motifs, architecture, concepts of kingship, and literary and intellectual traditions continued to exist. sometimes almost unchanged, sometimes transformed, and sometimes given distinctly Islamic meanings.

The result was not a clean break between a supposedly “pre-Islamic” past and an entirely new Islamic civilization. It was a process of adaptation, continuity, transformation, and synthesis.

So when we look at something centuries later and call it simply “Islamic,” it is worth asking: how much of this actually originated with Islam, and how much represents older Persian, Byzantine, Roman, Arabian, and other traditions that were incorporated and reinterpreted within Islamic civilization?

That history is much more interesting than the idea of civilizations appearing out of nowhere.

I want this to push back against both sides of the usual polemics.

On one side are the apologists who present everything we recognize today as “Islamic” as though it emerged purely from Islam itself as if the civilizations conquered by the early Muslims had no sophisticated cultures, institutions, traditions, or intellectual worlds of their own before the Arab conquests.

On the other side are polemicists who claim that Islam simply destroyed the native cultures of the societies it conquered, leaving no meaningful continuity behind. And then there is the claim that Islam had no culture of its own and merely took everything from others.

All versions flatten a much more complicated history.

Before the emergence of Islamic civilization, there were already numerous highly developed civilizations with their own cultural traditions. As the Muslim world expanded, it came into contact with these societies and incorporated, absorbed, adapted, and transformed elements of their existing cultures.

The result was not simply “pre-Islamic culture surviving unchanged,” nor was it a civilization created from nothing. It was the formation of a Islamic cultural world out of multiple older cultural traditions.

Persian, Byzantine, Roman, Arabian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Central Asian and other traditions could survive, change, merge and acquire new meanings within an Islamic framework.

So when we look at something centuries later and call it simply “Islamic,” we should remember that its history may extend far deeper than Islam itself.

That doesn't make it “not Islamic.” It shows how Islamic civilization actually became what it was: through continuity, interaction, adaptation and transformation not cultural creation in a vacuum, and not cultural annihilation either.

​

The paintings illustrate Iskandar's legendary pilgrimage to the Ka'ba in Mecca. In Persian literature, Iskandar is portrayed as a devout pilgrim, a just king, and sometimes as the Qur'anic figure Dhu'l-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns"). Over the centuries, the depiction of this scene evolved. Early paintings often showed Iskandar as a passive bystander, while later versions increasingly emphasized his role as a devout pilgrim performing rituals. This shift reflects a broader trend of expanding the shrine's setting and focusing more on religious performance in the illustrations.

Marianna Shreve Simpson

From Tourist to Pilgrim: Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in Illustrated

>Shahnama Manuscripts Notwithstanding its brevity, Firdausi’s account of Iskandar’s visit to the Ka‘ba in Mecca was depicted regularly in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama from the fourteenth century to early modern times. An examination of these illustrations reveals the extent to which poetical and pictorial narratives diverged over the centuries, with an increasing expansion of the shrine’s setting and emphasis on ritual performance and with Iskandar evolving from a passive bystander to a devout hajji. This study also offers a telling instance of the way the representation of a Shahnama scene could be transformed in response to another poetic text, specifically the Khamsa of Nizami.

>Among the many memorable figures who populate the Shahnama, certainly no one looms larger in the epic’s “historical” portion than Iskandar, Persian avatar of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. As is well known, Firdausi’s Iskandar narrative builds on—or at least follows upon and variously paral-lels—older Arabic and Persian sources, which in turn have been linked to the Alexander “biography” or “romance” of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Another impor-tant reference is the Qur’an, with its passages in Sura 18 related to Dhu’l- Qarnayn, the Two-Horned, and long associated (albeit not universally accepted) with Alexander. The relations between the multiple ancient and medieval accounts about the Alexander and Iskandar cognates, including the Shahnama nar-rative, remain the subject of intensive investigation and extensive publication,attesting to the fascination that this complex historical-cum-legendary figure—whose identity and image range from ruthless foreign invader and conqueror to indefatigable explorer and legitimate and just Persian king possessing. divine glory (farr), and ultimately to ideal Muslim hero, ruler, sage and even prophet—continues to exert on the scholarly imagination today. Notwithstanding the active industry of Alexander/Iskandar studies, relatively little has been written pertaining to the Shahnama episode of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba and even less to the long, albeit sporadic, history of its pictorial representation that forms the subject of this essay.2 Admittedly, the story seems to be minor one, taking place, as it does, between more eventful expeditions in Iskandar’s East–West adventures. Following a successful military campaign in India, Iskandar and his troops set out at dawn with drums rolling and trumpets blaring. Firdausi describes their destination as “the house that Ibrahim built and called by God the Bait al-Haram or House of Holiness ... the place of worship before any others existed ... where God causes you to worship and to remember him.” As he approaches Mecca, Iskandar is welcomed by company of local nobles, lead by Nasr, a descendant of Isma‘il, son of Ibrahim, who tells Iskandar how, in the recent past, the region was ravaged by a tyrannical invader and his army. Now that tyrant’s successor, an unjust and mean king named Khuza‘a, controls all the land from the shrine (i.e., the Ka‘ba) to the Yemen, oppresses its inhabitants and allows his followers to fish in the Red Sea. After hearing all this from Nasr, Iskandar and his forces kill as many of Khuza‘a’s followers as they could find, including children. He then frees the Hejaz and the Yemen from their oppression and re-establishes the authority of the tribe of Isma‘il (i.e., Nasr’s people). Iskandar then goes on foot to the Bait al-Haram, causing the people to rejoice. Along the way, Iskandar’s treasurer showers dinars at his every step.3

The Illustration of Firdausi’s Narrative

>To turn now to the illustration of this short but hermeneutically-challenging episode and to the art historical substance of this essay. Some twenty represen-tations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba are known today in Shahnama manuscripts dating from the fourteenth through the later seventeenth century.16 Over half of these date from the fifteenth century and belong to manuscripts painted in so-called Turkman style. Curiously, the episode seems to have been of little inter-est during the first half of the Safavid period, that is, from c. 1500 to 1590; at least, it does not appear in any of the many extant illustrated Shahnama volumes dating from those decades. When its representation resumed at the end of the sixteenth century, it was in Shahnama manuscripts made in Shiraz, the book-making center where the pictorial tradition of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba began in the fourteenth century and that produced most of the fifteenth-century volumes containing this scene.17 Whatever their origins, all the known examples depict the same narrative moment—specifically, when Iskandar arrives at the Ka‘ba, recounted by Firdausi in two verses at the very end of the episode.18 Interestingly, the majority of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrations are preceded by or incorporate verses that come at the beginning of the episode, and are often accompanied by an illuminated rubric or heading that functions like a superscript caption.19 It turns out that not only is there variation in the placement of the illustrations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba vis-a\`-vis the relevant epic verses, but also, and more to the point here, an increasing divergence over the centuries between the poetical and pictorial narratives.

>In short, the representation of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama developed out of the confluence or convergence of distinctive textual sources and artistic models coming together in the locus of an actual and familiar sacred site and its attendant rituals. In this respect it seems to be unique in the history of Shahnama illustration. Just as Alexander of Macedonia morphs into Iskandar of Iran, so Firdausi’s “incredible” story (given that it chal-lenges historical credulity) is transformed over the centuries into an pictorial nar-rative of a visit to the Ka‘ba that has little to do with its own poetic narrative and everything to do with imagery assimilated, on the one hand, from Nizami’s visions of the scene and, on the other, from the topography and architecture of Islam’s holiest site. By the late sixteenth century, the iconography had evolved to the point where Persian painters could have understood their task more as the representation of the Sacred Mosque and Ka‘ba during the hajj with a royal worshiper in attendance and less as the illustration of a Shahnama king visiting the house of God. In other words, the poetic setting had become the pictorial subject. At the same time, the immediately recognizable locale in these Shahnama illustrations would allow contemporary readers or viewers to put themselves in the place and role of Iskandar, rendering, in the end, the Greco-Persian conqueror, ruler and seeker of truth as a quintessential “every-man” of the Islamic world.

· Figures 1, 2, and 5: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1431 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, catalogued as Ms. Hazine 1479.

· Figures 3 and 4: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1480 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, catalogued as Per. 157.370.

· Figure 6: This is from a Shahnama manuscript likely produced in Shiraz, Iran, in the mid-16th century. It is now in the Khalili Collections in London, catalogued as MSS 771.

· Figure 7: This is likely from a Shahnama manuscript produced between 1580 and 1600. A related painting is attributed to a manuscript in the British Library in London (catalogued as I.O. Islamic 741).

​

The paintings illustrate Iskandar's legendary pilgrimage to the Ka'ba in Mecca. In Persian literature, Iskandar is portrayed as a devout pilgrim, a just king, and sometimes as the Qur'anic figure Dhu'l-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns"). Over the centuries, the depiction of this scene evolved. Early paintings often showed Iskandar as a passive bystander, while later versions increasingly emphasized his role as a devout pilgrim performing rituals. This shift reflects a broader trend of expanding the shrine's setting and focusing more on religious performance in the illustrations.

Marianna Shreve Simpson

From Tourist to Pilgrim: Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in Illustrated

>Shahnama Manuscripts Notwithstanding its brevity, Firdausi’s account of Iskandar’s visit to the Ka‘ba in Mecca was depicted regularly in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama from the fourteenth century to early modern times. An examination of these illustrations reveals the extent to which poetical and pictorial narratives diverged over the centuries, with an increasing expansion of the shrine’s setting and emphasis on ritual performance and with Iskandar evolving from a passive bystander to a devout hajji. This study also offers a telling instance of the way the representation of a Shahnama scene could be transformed in response to another poetic text, specifically the Khamsa of Nizami.

>Among the many memorable figures who populate the Shahnama, certainly no one looms larger in the epic’s “historical” portion than Iskandar, Persian avatar of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. As is well known, Firdausi’s Iskandar narrative builds on—or at least follows upon and variously paral-lels—older Arabic and Persian sources, which in turn have been linked to the Alexander “biography” or “romance” of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Another impor-tant reference is the Qur’an, with its passages in Sura 18 related to Dhu’l- Qarnayn, the Two-Horned, and long associated (albeit not universally accepted) with Alexander. The relations between the multiple ancient and medieval accounts about the Alexander and Iskandar cognates, including the Shahnama nar-rative, remain the subject of intensive investigation and extensive publication,attesting to the fascination that this complex historical-cum-legendary figure—whose identity and image range from ruthless foreign invader and conqueror to indefatigable explorer and legitimate and just Persian king possessing. divine glory (farr), and ultimately to ideal Muslim hero, ruler, sage and even prophet—continues to exert on the scholarly imagination today. Notwithstanding the active industry of Alexander/Iskandar studies, relatively little has been written pertaining to the Shahnama episode of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba and even less to the long, albeit sporadic, history of its pictorial representation that forms the subject of this essay.2 Admittedly, the story seems to be minor one, taking place, as it does, between more eventful expeditions in Iskandar’s East–West adventures. Following a successful military campaign in India, Iskandar and his troops set out at dawn with drums rolling and trumpets blaring. Firdausi describes their destination as “the house that Ibrahim built and called by God the Bait al-Haram or House of Holiness ... the place of worship before any others existed ... where God causes you to worship and to remember him.” As he approaches Mecca, Iskandar is welcomed by company of local nobles, lead by Nasr, a descendant of Isma‘il, son of Ibrahim, who tells Iskandar how, in the recent past, the region was ravaged by a tyrannical invader and his army. Now that tyrant’s successor, an unjust and mean king named Khuza‘a, controls all the land from the shrine (i.e., the Ka‘ba) to the Yemen, oppresses its inhabitants and allows his followers to fish in the Red Sea. After hearing all this from Nasr, Iskandar and his forces kill as many of Khuza‘a’s followers as they could find, including children. He then frees the Hejaz and the Yemen from their oppression and re-establishes the authority of the tribe of Isma‘il (i.e., Nasr’s people). Iskandar then goes on foot to the Bait al-Haram, causing the people to rejoice. Along the way, Iskandar’s treasurer showers dinars at his every step.3

The Illustration of Firdausi’s Narrative

>To turn now to the illustration of this short but hermeneutically-challenging episode and to the art historical substance of this essay. Some twenty represen-tations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba are known today in Shahnama manuscripts dating from the fourteenth through the later seventeenth century.16 Over half of these date from the fifteenth century and belong to manuscripts painted in so-called Turkman style. Curiously, the episode seems to have been of little inter-est during the first half of the Safavid period, that is, from c. 1500 to 1590; at least, it does not appear in any of the many extant illustrated Shahnama volumes dating from those decades. When its representation resumed at the end of the sixteenth century, it was in Shahnama manuscripts made in Shiraz, the book-making center where the pictorial tradition of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba began in the fourteenth century and that produced most of the fifteenth-century volumes containing this scene.17 Whatever their origins, all the known examples depict the same narrative moment—specifically, when Iskandar arrives at the Ka‘ba, recounted by Firdausi in two verses at the very end of the episode.18 Interestingly, the majority of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrations are preceded by or incorporate verses that come at the beginning of the episode, and are often accompanied by an illuminated rubric or heading that functions like a superscript caption.19 It turns out that not only is there variation in the placement of the illustrations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba vis-a`-vis the relevant epic verses, but also, and more to the point here, an increasing divergence over the centuries between the poetical and pictorial narratives.

>In short, the representation of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama developed out of the confluence or convergence of distinctive textual sources and artistic models coming together in the locus of an actual and familiar sacred site and its attendant rituals. In this respect it seems to be unique in the history of Shahnama illustration. Just as Alexander of Macedonia morphs into Iskandar of Iran, so Firdausi’s “incredible” story (given that it chal-lenges historical credulity) is transformed over the centuries into an pictorial nar-rative of a visit to the Ka‘ba that has little to do with its own poetic narrative and everything to do with imagery assimilated, on the one hand, from Nizami’s visions of the scene and, on the other, from the topography and architecture of Islam’s holiest site. By the late sixteenth century, the iconography had evolved to the point where Persian painters could have understood their task more as the representation of the Sacred Mosque and Ka‘ba during the hajj with a royal worshiper in attendance and less as the illustration of a Shahnama king visiting the house of God. In other words, the poetic setting had become the pictorial subject. At the same time, the immediately recognizable locale in these Shahnama illustrations would allow contemporary readers or viewers to put themselves in the place and role of Iskandar, rendering, in the end, the Greco-Persian conqueror, ruler and seeker of truth as a quintessential “every-man” of the Islamic world.

· Figures 1, 2, and 5: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1431 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, catalogued as Ms. Hazine 1479.

· Figures 3 and 4: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1480 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, catalogued as Per. 157.370.

· Figure 6: This is from a Shahnama manuscript likely produced in Shiraz, Iran, in the mid-16th century. It is now in the Khalili Collections in London, catalogued as MSS 771.

· Figure 7: This is likely from a Shahnama manuscript produced between 1580 and 1600. A related painting is attributed to a manuscript in the British Library in London (catalogued as I.O. Islamic 741).

​

Naqš-e Rostam inscription (KNRm), §§63–64 from

Stone inscriptions of the Mobedan Mobed shrines includes Pahlavi text, spelling, Persian translation, and notes. Pg.no 109

Dr. Dariush Akbarzadeh

There are four Kirdīr inscriptions overall:

KNRb — Naqsh-e Rajab

KNRm — Naqsh-e Rostam the one containing the famous vision

KSM — Sar-e Mashhad

KKZ — Kaʿba-ye Zardošt

Kirdīr, Naqš-e Rostam inscription (KNRm), §§63–64; parallel KSM 38–40; reconstructed/edited by Gignoux and analyzed by Skjærvø.

>Kartīr is known from his inscriptions in Fārs at Naqš-e Rajab (KNRb), to the left of the investiture relief of Ardašīr (r. 224-239/40); Naqš-e Rostam (KNRm), to the right of Šāpūr I’s (r. 239/40?-272?) triumphal relief, behind the horse; Sar-e Mašhad (KSM), near the ancient Achaemenid road from Susa to Persepolis and west of the village of Jerra (lat 29°16′53″ N, long 51°51′22″ E), above a relief thematically connected with the inscription; and below the Middle Persian version of Šāpūr I’s trilingual (Middle Persian, Parthian, Greek; ŠKZ) inscription on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt (KKZ), the tower facing the rock reliefs at Naqš-e Rostam. KNRm and the mostly identical KSM contain KKZ, which does not contain the vision narrative (see below), while KNRb is a summary of the principal ideas in the longer inscriptions.

>Kartīr’s inscriptions are the earliest indigenous written testimonies to the basic tenets of Mazdayasnianism (Zoroastrianism) since the Achaemenid inscriptions and antedate the written Pahlavi literature by some six hundred years (and the earliest manuscripts by some 1,000 years). They are therefore of the utmost importance for studying the Mazdayasnian tradition under the early Sasanians. Focus is on ethics (good or bad behavior), which, as in other major religions, is encouraged with reference to what awaits the soul after death: rewards for the good, punishment for the wicked. Because of their size and varied language, Kartīr’s inscriptions are also the most important documents for the knowledge of the early Middle Persian writing system, grammar, and vocabulary, matched only by Narseh’s inscription at Paikuli (ed. Humbach and Skjærvø) and the later Pahlavi Psalter (ed. Andreas and Barr, 1933; translated from Syriac).

>The purpose of the heavenly journey. The account of the journey up to paradise follows the pattern of the (much later) Ardā Wirāz-nāmag. Both are undertaken to regain confidence in the correctness of the traditional ritual practices in a time of doubt. According to the account of Wirāz, for 300 years after Zarathustra received the dēn, people had no doubt, but after the devastation caused by Alexander, whom the Foul Spirit had sent for this purpose, people came to harbor doubt, and rivals to the Mazdayasnian tradition began to proliferate. This lasted until Ādurbād, son of Mahrspand (see ĀDURBĀD Ī MAHRSPANDĀN), underwent the ordeal to prove the truth of this tradition. Some time after this, doubt again arose, and it was decided to send someone into the other world to verify whether the ritual gifts went to the gods or the demons and whether they helped the souls at all (Ardā Wirāz-nāmag 1.15, ed. Gignoux, pp. 38-39, 148; cf. Brunner, 1974, p. 99). Wirāz was given wine and hemp (mang) and went to sleep, and his soul went to the Činwad bridge and returned after seven days, after which Wirāz dictated the story of his journey to a scribe. Kartīr’s similar experience is summarized in the inscription at Naqš-e Rajab, where he explains how he implored the gods for a sign (nišān, also “proof”) to make him confident (wistāx) that paradise and hell exist and are the final abodes of the good and the bad, respectively. Moreover, the inscription was written in order that those who read it would likewise be more confident that the current practices were correct, but also for fame and prosperity to come to their bodies and “righteousness” (ardāyīh) to their souls in this world (astwand, lit. “with bones”), as happened to Kartīr.

KSM inscription below:-

>§28-30: A prince the color of dawn appears, more superb than the ones they saw at first, holding a *čayēn/čiyēn (see below) in his hand that then appears like a bottomless well (čāh) full of evil animals (xrafstar), over which a piece of wood (dār) lies like a bridge; the bridge now becomes greater in width than in length. Note that dār can also be “razor blade,” which is how the bridge is characterized in some versions of this narrative (Skjærvø, 1983b, pp. 299-301), but miniatures in the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag show a long tree trunk spanning the gulf to hell (see also Duchesne-Guillemin, 1962, p. 333). The *rehīgs are dismayed at the sight of hell, but are told not to worry and just keep reporting (§29). Similarly, Wirāz is distressed and frightened at the sight of hell and begs his divine guides not to take him there, but they reassure him (53.4, ed. Gignoux, pp. 98-99, 190-91).

Skjærvø, Prods Oktor. "KARTIR." Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published December 15, 2011

https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kartir/

The inscription of Naqsh-e Rajab (KNRb):-

>1) They saw that hellish condition and those many forms, then they were greatly terrified and... they were not from China? and there... and I said, "Do not be afraid, there is no escape for you; but what you see, tell (describe) it." And they said: "A bridge is placed over that well, and that woman and the man Kartir's companion went up to the well, went down to the well, and there a bridge stood before them, and that bridge became wider, and at the same time it appeared wider in breadth than in length, and that woman and that man..." Then let it be that I am warned by the

Stone inscriptions of the Mobedan Mobed shrines includes Pahlavi text, spelling, Persian translation, and notes. Pg.no 77

Dr. Dariush Akbarzadeh