Kingship in Persian cultural history
The notion of kingship and its legitimacy has permeated Iranian history, culture, literature and art for millennia, in both pre-Islamic and Islamic times. It can be traced in numerous media, from architecture and town planning to coins, from rock reliefs to book painting. It is the principal theme of the Persian national epic, the Book of Kings (Shahnama), completed by Firdausi c. A.D.1010, an epic poem of some 60,000 couplets that records the history and pre-history of Iran and its heroes and their exploits. The various manifestations of kingship can be traced in many chronicles, in visual symbols, in official documents and in inscriptions. It generated a popular literary genre, the Mirror for Princes. The deeds of kings dominate many works of Persian literature, such as the Gulistan of Sa‘di and the Khamsa of Nizami.
One important aspect of the centrality of kingship in Persian culture has been the royal patronage of illustrated manuscripts of these and other major works of Persian literature, on the one hand, and the non-literary uses of these texts on the other. This research theme thus invites the investigation of the image of the ruler in Persian literature and political thought, and, conversely, the royal patronage of art and material culture that sustained the projection of this image.