(c) 2016 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Rustam Fighting with Suhrab

author Ferdowsi (Tus, Iran, 935 CE)

illuminator Unknown

Date14th century

Place MadeShiraz, Fars province, Iran, Middle East

MediumGold and colors on paper

Dimensions17 x 17 cm (6 11/16 x 6 11/16 in.)

ClassificationsManuscripts

Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Accession numberP19w55

eMuseum ID718734

EmbARK ObjectID13429

TMS Source ID2362

Last Updated8/14/24

Status

Not on view

Web CommentaryThe leopard’s-head cap and tiger-skin coat on the figure on the left identify him as Rustam, the legendary hero of the “Shah-nemah” or “Book of Kings,” the great national Persian epic written in the tenth century by poet Ferdowsi. The text on the back of the miniature names Rustam’s opponent as Suhrab, his son by the Turanian princess Tahmina. The two men have refused to identify themselves, and the confrontation ends tragically as Suhrab, mortally wounded, reveals to his opponent the jeweled talisman which Rustam had given as a keepsake to his mother Tahmina many years earlier.

BibliographyNotesGilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 168, no. 6. (entitled "Two Warriors Fighting"; as from Persia or Transoxiana, 15th century, Mongol style)
“Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 8, no. 41 (13 Jun. 1965), p. 2. (as Mongol style, 15th century)
Thomas C. Witherspoon et al. Islamic Art from the Collection of Edwin Binney 3rd. Exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1966), p. 25. (as from an unidentified manuscript of the Shah Nameh of Firdausi; as Shiraz (?), 1st third of the 15th century; as from the same manuscript as cat. no. 29)
George L. Stout. Treasures from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1969), p. 148. (entitled "Two Warriors Fighting"; as from Persia, Transylviania, or Transoxiana, 15th century, Mongol style)
Yasuko Horioka et al. Oriental and Islamic Art: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1975), pp. 107-08, no. 47. (entitled "Rustam Fighting with Suhrab"; as a leaf from the Shah-nameh of Firdausi; as Persian, Shiraz (?), mid 15th century)
Alan Chong and Noriko Murai. Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2009), p. 36.
Benedict Cuddon. "A Field Pioneered by Amateurs: The Collecting and Display of Islamic Art in Early Twentieth-Century Boston." Muqarnas (2013), pp. 17-18.

ProvenanceNotesFrom the same unidentified manuscript of the Shahnameh as a second leaf, museum no. P19w54.
Collection of the art collector and design theorist Denman Waldo Ross (1853-1935), Boston by December 1913.
Gift from Denman Waldo Ross to Isabella Stewart Gardner, after 15 February 1914.