Cleveland Museum of Art

An Episode from the Story of the Sasanian King Khusrau and His Beloved Shirin, from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami (1141–1209) (verso)

Date: 1540–70
Medium: opaque watercolor, ink, gold, and silver on paper
Culture: Iran, probably Shiraz, Safavid period (1501-1722)
Department: Islamic Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

The Khamsa is a collection of five narrative poems, one of which is dedicated to the romance of Khusrau Parviz (590–628), a Sasanian king of Iran, and Shirin, his beloved Armenian princess. The lovers are seated in a nocturnal landscape, indicated by the dark blue sky dotted with stars, painted with now tarnished silver. Shirin serves figs and pomegranates, symbolic of fertility, to Khusrau as attendants bring more figs and wine. Next to Shirin’s black horse, the musician at bottom right plays a tanbur , a long-necked, fretted lute. Khusrau’s turban has the anachronistic baton worn by Safavid royalty and the egret feather, an emblem of nobility instituted by the Mongols in the 1200s.

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