Art, Allegory and the Rise of Shiism in Iran, 1487–1565 by Chad Kia (review)

Evincing extensive research, Chad Kia's notes and bibliography constitute more than a third of Art, Allegory and the Rise of Shiism in Iran, 1487–1565. Conversely, his arguments are based on an analysis of twelve paintings, mostly from the late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. In the introduction, he asserts that Sufism was sublimated to an increasingly orthodox version of Iranian Shiism. Thus, his main aim "is to uncover the genesis, development and significance" of "an extraordinary trend in the history of Islamic art" circa 1487, one that also highlights "a neglected function of pictorial arts in the Persianate world" (6).

According to Kia, the locus of this groundbreaking stylistic turn in late Timurid Herat is a series of understudied enigmatic figures from didactic Sufi allegories. Derived from "stock images, metaphors and parables" of twelfthcentury Persian Sufi poetry, these "tropes" (e.g., spinning thread) were emblematic of "moral qualities and virtues adhered to and advocated by mystical, trade-guild, and other contemporary popular associations" (9). Further, he asserts that the decisive catalyst for "this iconographical innovation" was "the powerful impulse towards esotericism that dominated Persianate societies of the fifteenth century," one often expressed in poetic literary form while also spurring "many other religious innovations of the period" (11–12).

Apart from this new artistic style's complex origins, Kia is perhaps even more fascinated by its persistence in Safavid Iran within the context of the transregional spiritual zeitgeist:

The introduction of new figures into the iconography of Persianate painting, when considered in connection with the success across the Iranian plateau of Imami Shiism, will reveal their shared origins. Each … stems from the same socio-cultural developments in a fifteenth-century world dominated by varying intensities of esoteric beliefs in reincarnation, the transmigration of souls and in a leader invested with divine attributes. Whether it was the influence of Naqshbandi Sufi ideas in Timurid Herat, or the association of the Turkmen tribes of eastern Anatolia with the Safavid order in Ardebil, this was a period marked by heterodoxy, otherworldly beliefs, millenarian movements and "extremism."

(13)

Ideally, Kia could have explained how the Safavid genealogy was intertwined with the Sufism of Sheik Safi al-Din Ardabili, the namesake of their dynasty, somewhat earlier. Moreover, his use of the prefix "pseudo-Islamic" for the Sufi popular religious organisations is problematic (13).

That being said, Kia clearly and systematically advances his thesis in the ensuing five chapters of Art, Allegory and the Rise of Shiism. For instance, in chapter one, he presents a convincing argument for the historical context that led to the emergence of these cryptic images: "the discovery of hidden patterns as a pleasurable aesthetic and intellectual pursuit" among the elites and literati of Husayn Bayqara's court in Herat. Furthermore, he stresses that "the most pre-eminent Sufi poet" Abd al-Rahman Jami was the bridge of "mystical signification" between late Timurid Herat and early Safavid Iran (21–22). He also is highly critical of the perceived disconnect between the academic study of Persianate painting and Persian poetry:

Mysticism—or the ascetic-mystical mode of piety in Islam known as Sufism—so overwhelmed this most privileged of all Persian cultural productions that virtually any poem composed after the thirteenth century could be argued to harbour some mystical content, especially if composed during the so-called "classical" period of Persian poetry … Considering the predominance of mysticism as the principal form of piety in the Persianate world—especially after the thirteenth-century Mongol conquest—and the fact that some works like the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz came virtually to acquire sacred authority, the near-total avoidance of informed engagement with the subject in scholarly studies of Persianate painting is remarkable, even baffling.

(24)

Kia subsequently delves into an analysis of four manuscript illustrations from Farid...