Page 238 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Chapter 26 The many ways in which Iran was connected to China over
the centuries, both by land and by sea, complicates the
Looking East, Looking isolation of any particular period of that relationship. This
ambiguity is especially pronounced for the period 1400–50
West: The Artistic due to the lingering presence of East Asian visual symbols
that had been popularised in Iran during the time of
Connections of Ming Mongol domination from the middle of the 13th century to
the middle of the 14th century. When we see a 15th-century
China and Timurid Iran painting from Iran or Central Asia that includes Chinese
elements, it is often difficult to know whether these should be
viewed as a lingering reflection of the Mongol era, or newly
acquired features deriving from more recent contact with
Priscilla Soucek Ming China.
Although Mongol governmental control over Iran had
collapsed by the 1350s, the cultural and artistic legacy of the
Ilkhans, the branch of the Mongol dynasty who had ruled
Iran, survived to varying degrees in the regional successor
states that were created within its former boundaries. In
some cases the consistent use of a similar design or motif in
both the Mongol and Ming periods, such as the association
of dragons with governmental authority, underscores the
cultural continuity in significant aspects of the visual
vocabulary of the region. For example, dragons and
long-tailed birds appear prominently in the decoration of a
Mongol palace erected in north-west Iran in the 1250s and
are also featured in court paintings of the post-Mongol
1
period. These same creatures appear repeatedly in the
court arts of 15th-century Iran. For example, golden dragons
embellish the white umbrella carried over the head of a
prince in an early 15th-century painting from Tabriz that is
thought to depict a local ruler of the Jalayirid dynasty that
ruled the region between the collapse of the Ilkhanid
Mongol state and the rise of the Timurids (Pl. 26.1). As will
2
be demonstrated below, dragons are also associated with
royal power in paintings made for various members of the
Timurid dynasty.
The period of 1400–50 under discussion coincides with
Timurid domination over Iran and Central Asia. It opens
with the final years of Timur’s life (who died in 1405) and
encompasses the entirety of the reign of his son and eventual
successor, Shah Rukh (r. 1407–47). Timur’s empire had been
created by reconnecting the fragmented polities that arose
as successors to the Mongol Empire in Iran and Central
Asia. Unfortunately, he devoted more energy to these
conquests than to converting his extensive holdings into a
stable and integrated state. As a result, shortly after his death
the various regions of his empire began to pursue more or
less independent paths. Consequently, regional variations in
artistic production began to appear as different local rulers
gave varying degrees of importance to patronage of the arts;
local artistic connections with China also differed in form
and content.
Timur’s life extended only to the first five years covered
by the exhibition at the British Museum, but the impact of
his conquests and of his attitude towards artistic production
can serve as a point of departure. In important respects the
fundamental objective of Timur’s conquests was to
reconstruct the Mongol empire with the presumed goal of
making his own family its legitimate rulers in perpetuity.
This objective is evident not only from the focus of his

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