Among the scores of exquisite things in Shah 'Abbas: the Remaking of Iran, one manuscript illustration seems to tell a big story on one A4-size sheet. In the very early 1600s, around the time that Shakespeare in Twelfth Night nodded to the riches of the Safavid ruler with his mention of "a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy", the court artist Habib Allah added new illustrations to a late 15th-century copy of the famous mystical poem, Attar's "Conference of the Birds". One of these paintings depicts, in sumptuous traditional style, the hoopoes, peacocks, herons, ducks and hawks as...
photo: Creative Commons / Ham
