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Ilkhanid Frieze Tile with Faridun Riding Birmaya, Takht-i Sulaiman, Iran, late 13th century.
Title: Kashan Ware Tile with Figures and Animals
Description: The central figure on this Kashan ware tile represents Faridun, a legendary Iranian king whose brave feats are extolled in the Shahnama, as he rides his favourite mount, a cow named Birmaya, while holding an ox-headed mace. The writing that runs underneath Faridun and his two attendants comes from a different section of the Shahnama, suggesting that the artist who decorated this tile was not necessarily concerned with maintaining a close correlation between image and text.
Date: late 13th century
Medium: fritware with underglaze and luster decoration
Dimensions: 28.3 × 29.1 × 2.6 cm (11.1 × 11.4 × 1")
Current location : Walters Art Museum
Accession number: 48.1296
Place of creation: Iran
Object history: Dikran Kelekian, Paris and New York
1911: purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore
1931: bequeathed to Walters Art Museum by Henry Walters
Source: Walters Art Museum
Fig. 107 (cat. no. 95). Frieze tile with Faridun and two attendants, Iran (Takht-i Sulaiman), 1270s.
Fritware, overglaze luster-painted.
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (4.8. 1 296)
95 Fig. 107
Frieze Tile with Faridun and Two Attendants
Iran (Takht-i Sulaiman), 1270s
Fritware, overglaze luster-painted
28 x 28cm (11 x 11 in.)
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (48.1 296)
Faridun is a heroic figure in the Iranian national epic, the Shahnama, who is destined to overthrow and succeed the evil ruler, Zahhak (see cat. no. 164.). As revealed to Zahhak in a dream, the cause of his downfall would be a youth bearing an ox-headed mace. The scene in the central register of this tile shows Faridun, armed with his ox-headed mace and accompanied by two attendants, perhaps on his way to do battle with Zahhak.1 Faridun’s humpbacked bovine mount is presumably Birmaya, the miraculous cow whose milk had nourished him, although at this point in the narrative sequence Birmaya had in fact already been slain by Zahhak. The pair of Persian couplets inscribed below this scene, in the lowest register of the tile, is from the Shahnama but from a part of the text unrelated to the Faridun story.2 Whether visual or verbal, imagery from the Shahnama, with its emphasis on kingship and legitimacy, was appropriate to a royal residence such as Takht-i Sulaiman, even if the palace’s chief occupant—the Ilkhan Abakha (r. 1265-82)—was himself less than familiar with the epic and its symbolic connotations. Although this tile was not excavated at Takht-i Sulaiman, fragments of a tile produced in the same mold were uncovered at the site.3
1. Walters Art Gallery 1936, fig. 2; Giuzal’ian 1949, pl. 4; Simpson 1985, fig. 15.
2. Giuzal’ian 1949, pp. 77-78; also see Simpson 1985, p. 139.
3. The fragments were of a monochrome turquoise glazed tile rather than of one in luster; see R. Naumann and E. Naumann 1976, pp. 51-52; Masuya 1997, pp. 530-31. For another nonexcavated luster tile in Philadelphia, probably from the same mold, see Simpson 1985, fig. 16.
Source: The Legacy of Genghis Khan Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia 1256-1353