Portrait of Shah 'Abbas hawking
Mughal India, late AD 1600s
This portrait shows Shah 'Abbas I
(1571–1629) of Iran. His head is wreathed in a halo as
he stands in the foreground before a landscape.
Shah 'Abbas was the fifth shah of the Safavid
Dynasty and ruled Iran for 42 years. In this time he quelled a
civil war, built a new capital (Isfahan), established trade and
land policies that stimulated the economy and oversaw a renaissance
in arts and architecture. His defeat of Iran’s Uzbek enemies and
signing of a peace treaty with the Ottomans helped established the
country’s largest empire for 1000 years.
Although portraits of Shah 'Abbas ceased to be
popular in Iran in the 1700s after the fall of the Safavid dynasty,
his name remained untarnished in India. When this work was painted,
Mughal India was politically and militarily weak, but its artists
glorified the past by portraying the early Mughal sultans and other
renowned monarchs, such as Shah 'Abbas.
Portraits of Shah 'Abbas alone or with Khan
'Alam, the ambassador of Mughal India, entered this pool of images
of bygone rulers that were so popular in the late 1600s and 1700s
in India.