Content area
Full Text
Bihzad: Master of Persian Painting Ebadollah Bahari
London: I. B. Tauris, 1996, 272 pp, index, illus. 65
"Is not the beloved's slender waist thinner than Bihzad's brush?" This rhetorical question by the poet Bedil was intended in the form of a tribute to the great painter. For long after his death Bihzad was celebrated as the paragon of miniature painters in discriminating centres of the Islamic world, where his illustrations of the classics of Persian poetry were not only admired but paid the ultimate compliment of imitation.
Born around 1460, Bihzad flourished in the Timurid capital of Herat during the reign of Sultan Husain Bayqara, with the discerning patronage of Mir Ali Sher Navai, the chief minister and himself a great poet and literary figure. Naqshbandi Sufi influence was very marked at the court, and hardly surprisingly it was a persistent feature in Bihzad's painting. He was a close associate at court of the great contemporary poet Jami who was also a Naqshbandi follower.
The author Ebadollah Bahari emphasises the spiritual elements contained in Bihzad's paintings, which have been missed or neglected by most Western art historians....