The Šāhnāma of Firdawsī

Abstract This paper discusses the stylistic and iconographic links between a Safavid copy of the Šāhnāma of Firdawsī (d. 1020) with illustrations dated to the 1520s, and four different centers from the Turko-Persian world in the beginning of the sixteenth century: Herat, Tabriz, Istanbul, and lastly Shiraz. It emphasizes that these artistic exchanges are not just visible through common stylistic characteristics or artists’ nisbas , but also through subtle influences that can be traced across different traditions of book arts, thus providing a nuanced understanding of how the interactions and stylistic overlaps between different manuscript centers may not always be straightforward or unidirectional, but instead reflect a complex web of artistic exchanges and continuities.