Die Professur für islamische Kunstgeschichte am Institut für Kunstgeschichte lädt herzlich ein zum Vortrag von Professor Dr. Charles Melville (University of Cambridge und British Institute of Persian Studies) am 21. November 2023 um 18.15 Uhr in Seminarraum 1 des Instituts, veranstaltet in Zusammenarbeit mit dem ÖAW-Institut für Iranistik und dem Projekt Nomads‘ Manuscripts Landscape:  

Visualising Persian History: The Illustration of Persian Manuscript Histories

How did medieval chroniclers writing in Persian narrate their past and present history and – the main focus of this paper – how were the historical events depicted in the manuscripts in which their work was written? The research presented here concerns the illustration of Persian chronicles in manuscripts produced between the thirteenth and the early nineteenth century, but the history they cover goes back to the earliest memories of the Iranian past, the Biblical prophets and rise of Islam, reflecting the formative role of religion in shaping political history. Over this long span of time, artists (and sometimes the historians themselves) chose some events to be illustrated and others not. These choices, explored here, must tell us something about the Iranians’ own view of the significant moments in their history and how it was perceived.