Empire: World History - 114. The Persian Renaissance

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

After conquering much of Eurasia, Timur showed no interest in building institutions and so after his death, like the Mongol Empire before it, the Timurid Empire soon fragmented and collapsed. However, some of Timur’s grandchildren took over parts of the Empire and ushered in eras of cultural advancement that matched that of the renaissance in Italy. Under the tutelage of Ulugh Begh, great developments in maths and science were made in Samarkand. Under the watch of Shah Rukh, beautiful artistic endeavours were undertaken in Herat. Some of the greatest artists of the Islamic world, such as Bihzad, came from this period. Listen as William and Anita discuss one of the golden ages of Persian culture. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. You know what? It was quite the romp we had in the last podcast, wasn't it? Timor. What a one.

A? A? I mean, good Lord. And I think if we were to sum up, we have a man who is a terrible. A complete psychopath. Ruthless. Yeah, complete psychopath. I think I might have said the word bastard quite a lot, actually, in the last episode. But he really was. He was peak, awfulness. And I love the... There's so much to love. Is it the heads of the beheaded Knights of Spittler being catapulted into their

gallies. I like that one. You loved that. Oh, you loved that, did you? I like the guys being rolled in clay and turned into 250 of them being made into a tower. That's imaginative. Yeah, I mean, I worry for you that the sentences constructed around I love the, but I mean, it was, it was quite vivid and it was quite shocking. Look here, Anita Anna, you and I wrote a book together where we competed to find horrors for each other in the archives. Yeah, no, that's true. But I mean, I can honestly say, I love beating you. I'm not, that's what it was. It was anything at all. You know, that was the competitive one.

But there was that awful story in a month's litany of horrors. This man, you know, Vlad the Impala has nothing on him. But, you know, when the little children are wheeled out and their white clothes holding the Quran, and he just mows them down with cavalry. You know, I first heard that story in CVAS on my very first trip in 1996 following Maca Polo. And I remember then thinking, who might be? mows down. Innocent babes.

Children in white clothes holding a Quran. Of his own faith and calling them infidels. But you know what else I found really beautiful about that story was that Seavast, you know, he can try and obliterate it. But you said, you know, archaeologists had uncovered so much of what he had tried to obliterate. And that is always the way, isn't it? It's empire built upon the bones of others. One day those bones will speak.

And I find that really moving. I tell you, and others, I mean, this is a different story. But do you remember last year when we were doing this? the Armenian genocide, we did all those stories of the Armenians being marched out. Well, Seavass is one of those cities that the Armenians had large population of, and they were marched out in the desert. And in 1986, when I first went to Sevas, there was a kind of lapidarium outside the Gokmadrasa, this wonderful psychological hospital, famous for using water, the sound of water, to cure people who were mentally unstable. And outside that, there was this labidarium where they had just piled up in the way, you know, around the Mediterranean,

and you find a bit of Roman statuary here, a Seljuk inscription here. And amid all the stuff, were a few Armenian gravestones and kachkas, these cross stones that the Armenians put up. And a year later, I came back to research further and take more notes. And everything was there, as I remember it, except the Armenian stones, which had gone. And there were still the sockets you could see where they'd been taken out. And they'd just mysteriously disappeared between that. I remember that was a moment I thought I've got, again, I've got to research this.

You must have asked where and who and how. I mean, did you ever get a where and who and how? They said, what? Never heard of it. Really? I mean, you point to the things they said, yoke. Really? Right.

You know, it's those relics. It's those little things, I think. You know, because often in this series, we talk about hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, destroyed, wiped out. But it's just one single thing could be talismanic. And I just remember I went to just very recently in Atlanta. This is for your wreath lecture life. Yeah, the wreath lectures. But it was like one shoe of one child who had been sort of, you know, transported.

And it's that kind of thing. It's just, I remember this was a turning point for me. I then went and did a project on the Armenians. I was working at that point for the Independent in the days when it had this wonderful magazine, which had wonderful, wonderful writers writing in it. And I managed to get a commission to go around the different Armenian communities, gathering before and after photographs of Armenian churches before the genocide and what was left today. And of course, many of them completely gone, converted into barns or turned to mosques or whatever.

And this was the first, I think, that directed me towards from the Holy Mountain. It was a big moment for me. We're going to crack on with this, of course, but it's that kind of the whispering from the past and how sort of bearing witness and poets and painters and artists and more lately photographers who were there on the scene, who, you know, whatever has been erased cannot be erased. And this is the case, you know, across the entire Middle East, wherever you go, there are now these solid nation states which are existing on the ruins of what had been a very multi-ethnic region. And in Turkey, the Greeks and the Armenians are missing in Greece. The Turks are missing. In Israel, the Palestinians are missing. And so on. And you find governments

rewriting history by changing the place names, turning Arabic names into Turkish ones or Turkish ones into Arabic ones or Arabic names into Hebrew ones. And this sensation of a very multi-ethnic past being replaced by these monoethnic nationalisms which are there today. But you still have the empty chair at the dining table and the empty chair speaks so loudly. Or the socket of the catch car. Yeah. Anyway, look, this is much happier because after the death of Timor, hyacinth bouquet of history. You just sort of like sounded very

nouveau rich and very blingtastic and try to recreate palaces and gateways and gilded beauty. And there was this amazing description you had of this forest of gold with instead of jewels, rubies and emeralds. I was very taken with that, actually. That sounded straight out the Arabian nights.

But he was sort of the tasteless start of what becomes something that is full of taste and inspiration. And this is This is the way history works, again, these miraculous things, how because of education, because of money, people like Timor coming from very simple backgrounds, often very bloodthirsty lives, produce children and grandchildren, highly educated, thirsting for learning,

and this extraordinary renaissance that takes place in Central Asia in the immediate aftermath. Yeah, so you say Renaissance, and that, you know what, it's that phrase also that stuck with me from the last episode. the Oriental Medici. Robert Barron's phrase, yeah. Yes, this is accurate because, well, let's start to talk about this, because Timor's successors proved to be some of the greatest scholars in East Seats of Islamic history. I think it's fair to say that, where he ripped up and destroyed the old global order, changed the complexion of the world between the Mediterranean to India.

It's almost as if they are trying to put a fragrance together in this rather wonderful mosaic of art culture. Who do you want to start us off with, when we, talk about the Timorids, who are the progeny of Timor and those who came after. Well, there's also, I think you should talk about in a sense this sort of cultural mulch, which is left in the aftermath of Timor, because wherever he went, whatever he destroyed, he would bring the craftsman, the artist, the calligraphers, back to Samarkand. Oh, yes, that's right. He took the falconers and massacred everyone else. Yeah, exactly. Trades people, glass blowers.

Well, that means that when Timor dies on the verge of planning his massive invasion, of China, which never happened. You have in the surroundings of Samakhan and in this area of what's now Uzbekistan, an astonishing pool of talent. Also, a lot of money among the rulers to spend it and commission wonderful things. And this is exactly what happens. And the person I'd love to talk about first is Ullugbed. Ullubbed. Ullub is this extraordinary grandson of Timur, who not only commissions brilliant works of astronomy, mathematics and science from the tens of thousands of scholars that he funds, but he also researches and writes it all himself. And he provides financial aid to 10,000 students at 12 institutions of learning that he found

between Samakand and Herat and Shai Sabbs and all these Timurid centers. And fully 500 of them are specialising in mathematics. Again, this is not something that you expect the grandest of Timor to be, to be funding. Can I just say my husband would thoroughly approve. This is money well spent. He would. He would. Absolutely. Very, very good. He's a great man for numbers. And yet we shouldn't be surprised because the man after whom the algorithm is named Alquharismi is from this region too. This is an area that is famously at the center of the study of science mathematics. And it's a place where a lot of Indian ideas coming up from the great Indian mathematicians like Ariabata and Brahmagpta

are mixing with ideas from the Persianate and the Greek world. And it's in Central Asia that all this comes together. And Uluq Beg in the 1410s to the 1420s invests in this. He builds these madrasas, which are not just institutions of religious learning, but it's exactly the same sort of time as this is happening at Oxford and Cambridge when you've got what had started off as basically theological colleges are beginning to branch out into empirical sciences. The same is happening in Samarkand. Well, what I love is, isn't this at the Regasang Square in Samakhan, there's this great madrasa, which is a place of learning, and normally theological learning. He inscribes into the door the words of the Prophet Muhammad, and I'll just, I'll say it. It's a Hadith, right? The search for

knowledge is the duty of every Muslim. So a statement of intent, you know, enter here and learn some stuff. It's pretty blunt, isn't it? And we know a great deal about this madrasa because not only do we have several chroniclers and foreign visitors like the Spanish ambassador recording all this, but we also have the letters of Ulugbe's great friend who he makes the kind of rector of the madrasa, who's a guy called Kazizade Rumi. And he is one of the great astronomers of the period and he directs his students towards the sciences, especially mathematics, but also astronomy. And Olubeg also support scholars who are interested in history and literature as well as music. And so it's, I mean, you know, this astonishing moment in history.

Well, I mean, one of the most delicious aspects of all of this is that he has the power and he has the money, power and cash to make this happen. But also he is obviously an enthusiast because, you know, he sets up all these classrooms and he gets the best teachers of the land to come and teach. But he turns up almost every day to sit in the class and, you know, put his hand up to ask questions. And he doesn't mind being contradicted, which is even more extraordinary. We consider what Timor would have done to anyone. Can you imagine? Has anyone got any other opinions? Off with your head.

But yeah, no, but he wasn't like that. Okay, that is interesting. So he builds on the work of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda, again, we should say it means from Quarazam, which is the area to the east of Samakand. Also within modern Uzbekistan, the area around Kiva. So Al-Qarizmi is from the same patch of land. And Ulugbeg makes it his job to take Al-Kharizmi's books on mathematics forward. A lot of Al-Qarizmi's work is based on clarifying and simplifying ancient Indian work on astronomy.

So you've got these two great founding fathers of Indian mathematics, Ariabata, Brahmagpta, Ariabata writing, I think, in the second century. And Brahmagpta, is it the fourth or fifth? Anyway, that sort of era of history. Brahma Gupta working out of Rajasthan, out of Niemann Abu, producing extraordinary work and defining the properties of zero. Yes. You know, it's like the goodness gracious me sketch, our dear friends, Sanjibasca, who we adore. Hello, Sanjee, if you listens to this podcast. But, you know, saying that zero, Indian, I mean, it was Indian. Is that, I mean, can you just confirm?

In this case, it actually is. In fact, my new book, The Golden Road, which deals with some of this, is actually rather like an extended Sanjibaska sketch. Indian. Oh, he's going to love it. It's not Royal Family Indian or Leonardo India nor Christianity Indian, but it is zero Indian. Absolutely. Okay, well, I'm glad about that.

But, I mean, the reason that mathematics is very important here in the court at the Timorids is that they are involved in something that is going to be so important, transformative. And we still rely on it today, which is this process. of calculating with decimal fractions? Because until that, I mean, that was just a vague concept, or he just refines it, or what's the position in decimalise fractions? So there's two things going on here. One is, I think, just the basic love of extending the boundaries of knowledge, and particularly this project of mapping the heavens. But there's also a reason for this, a practical reason for this, is that at this time, not just in Central Asia

and the world of Islam and India, but in Western Europe, there is a strong belief that the stars determine your future. So this is partly an exercise in what in Sanskrit is called Jotisa, which is a science that encompasses both astronomy and astrology, which we think of as two completely different things. But at this point, both at East and West are fused together. So the idea is that if you study the stars and really understand what's going on in the heavens, you can predict the future and plot your path in this world with greater confidence. And Kazi Zadeh Rumi, who is Ulogbeg's chief of the madrasa, publishes extraordinary work on the d'escel system, on chords and signs, and solving cubic equations, and computes the sign to one degree of accuracy that's not surpassed for two centuries. And he writes a book called a treatise on the cord and sign, also another called a key to arithmetic, in which he works out the value of pie to a greater degree of precision than either the Greeks.

or Chinese had done, and greater than any European was to do for another 150 years. Can I just ask, does this centre of learning become a magnet, as others we've talked about in the past, particularly when we talked about the Ottoman series. These places become magnets to clever people from all around the world are drawn. Is that the case here too? And also a model, because in India, Rajah Jai Singh based his gentlemanas on Ulugbeg's astronomy. I've read this. I'm sure one of our listeners, if I'm wrong, will correct me. Aware that I'm walking a slightly thin ice here. But I think that's right, that Rajaj Singh is

looking to Ulug Begg's work when he's building his gentlemanas in Jepo and in Varanasi and in Ujjay, the three observatories that he builds. But also was very, very exciting about this period. It's to the timurids that we owe the first kind of analog calculator known to man. used for doing, and the mathematicians among you will know what this means, we can just ooh and are at this as if we're looking at a firework display, but linear interpolation. I'm going to talk to my husband about this afterwards. I'm sure it sounds very important, but it is still used in mathematical astronomy today and invented a planetary equatorium for identifying the position of the celestial sphere at any

planet at any one time. Now, this predates telescopes and computers and calculations. That's a pretty extraordinary thing to have done. So what they do is that they build this enormous three-story circular observatory in Samankan, topped with a massive sort of mega sextant, which is carefully calibrated and over 100 feet in radius. And this may look like a sort of just a big sort of astronomical equivalent of Timur's sort of, you know, football-sized playing field mosque. Palace to his wife, yeah. But no, it actually produces extraordinary results.

And they produce a whole set of new tables, the Zidge tables, 300 pages of charts and quantitative data. And they fix with precise figures the location of 992 stars. That's amazing. And this is all being done in Samarkand in the 15th century. We're all brought up with Galileo and all these extraordinary things. We're just not taught the extraordinary advances made by these people. But he understood also data, the value of data, because he compiles all this stuff in a compendium called, is it Zij?

Collection of Astronomical tables. Zidj are the astrological tables. They just meet tables. Okay. And you get these being produced by churismi in Baghdad in the 7th, 8th centuries at the time of the House of Wisdom. And Ullugbeg is taking this forward. And what's fascinating is that, you know, there are these moments in history when all these things come together. You get it in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. You get it in Britain at the time of Newton. You get it in Ujjjain in India at the time of Brahmagopta. But not often is Samakhan and the Timurids included in this list. What's left in Samakhan today? I mean, if you go now, what will you see?

There's a lot left. It's an extraordinary place to visit because not only do you have the remains of the observatory and the remains of Timor's sort of vanglorious mosques and palaces. But you also have what is very, very clearly the inspiration behind the sort of mogul architecture, which will take root in India in the next century. And there's a whole hilltop filled with mini Taj Mahals. Really? And it is architects from Samakand and Herat who go and build Humayans' tomb and the Taj in generations to come. That's amazing. Yeah, exactly the same shape of white dome that reaches its finest flowering at the targe. So you see on a sunset, you see just a silhouette of mini-mahals.

How does it work? Well, in this case, they're mini ones. They're all sort of house size rather than, you know, sort of mega-palis size. How spectacular, though. But how spectacular? How wonderful. Look, let's take a break here because when we come back after the break, I want to talk to you about Herat and to talk to you about one of Timur's grandfell.

and Sharuk, not Khan, but Sharuk and his great doings as well. So join us after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about this fabulous place of learning, Samarkhan. But I want to talk about Harat now and another one of the descendants of Timor. We're talking about Sharuk. He's the grandson of Timor. Like Aloubek, he's a grandson. So what happens is that when Timor takes very little interest in institution building, So even faster than the previous set of Mongols, the whole thing falls apart politically and shatters into fragments. And one grandson, Buleg, gets Samakhand and another grandson, Sharuk, gets Herat. And if you like, if Samakand is the center of science and it's the MIT of Central Asia at this period, then Herat is the center of the arts.

And it's one, I have to say, I mean, I've longed to go there ever since I read Robert Barron. wrote to Oxyana, which is another of my sacred text, Robert Barron, along with Stephen Ransom, was one of my gods when I was growing up. And I finally got to Herat when I was writing Return of a king. And it is the most extraordinary place. It's on the far west of Afghanistan, on the border of Iran, just over from Meshed and Iranian-Horasan. And it has a completely different field to the rest of Afghanistan. It's on the Harirud River. It's very green. There's a wonderful Sufi shrine outside on the hills where Babur goes and Robert Byron goes. But in the main centre of Herat is the remains of an extraordinary institution of learning. We've been amazed by the madrasas set up by

Ulukbek in Samakand. But in Herat, a woman ruler, Gohashad, sets up a college for women. So you get, again, extraordinary, the liberality of this, that you have serious commitment to women's education, higher education in this renaissance, in the 15th century, in the middle of Central Asia. And at the same time that Gohashad is commissioning the building of this college, she is covering it with the most exquisite tile work. And you go there today and all that remains, of this extraordinary college complex, which originally was this whole series of courtyards, like an Oxbridge college, one after another. All that's left now are the minarets from the mosque, and everything was blown up by, I'm ashamed to say, the British again, who blew it up, thinking it would make a good fortress for Zaris troops in the middle of the great game. And I think in the 1880s or, I mean, relatively recently, having made it through all sorts of other horrors, it's the Brits who set dynamite charges and blow up one of the most brilliant institutions of learning ever raised.

It's certainly one of the most beautiful institutions of learning. And when you go there today, you try to get to the towers. And when I went, there was a minefield which hadn't had the mines removed. So on one hand, you had these beautiful timid tiles lying, having fallen off the minarets in the ground, just loose on the ground, these gorgeous, gorgeous works of art. On the other hand, you had to take your life into your hand to go and see them. To go and get them. And can I just say, I mean, when you say the tiles, I think, you know, I'm looking at what remains there now. The great mosque still remains in Herat.

I don't know. Does that date to the same period? Same period. That's recently been very heavily restored. But it's the Musala, it's called. It's the remains of the madrasa for girls founded by Gohashad. Gohashad's mausoleum survived pretty well intact until the, 90s when one very ill-advised governor decided to restore it with modern bathroom tiles. So these

beautiful Timurid tiles were thrown away. No. So the Timurid tiles, I mean, you know what they are, but for those who don't, these are the intricate blue and white, aren't we? We were talking about tiles with gold, blue, white, green. There's all sorts of colors. There's dark, dark blues and extraordinary lavender blues, deep, dark blacks. And then geometric designs on top. And then geometric designs on top was sort of almost in gold or calligraphy, a beautiful things. Yeah, they are stunning. Anyone who has got the internet? Have a look now because they are really stunning. The Musala in Herat, H-E-R-A-T, they are extraordinary, extraordinary ruins.

Yeah, but this bathroom tile business, who did that? That's ridiculous. How could you even think that was a good idea? But the painting that goes on here is the thing that really distinguishes it. And there's this supreme painter who's called Kamlodin Bizad. And he becomes famous throughout the entire Islamic world as the great painter. What I suppose Leonardo or Michelangelo is to the Italian Renaissance, Bizad is to the Herat Renaissance. And he's famous partly for his portraits of officials and his amazing perception of human character.

He's one of the very first Islamic artists who can produce extraordinarily life-like portraits of living individuals that makes you feel you can actually perceive someone's character and understand what they were like. But he also does these very eccentric compositions. Persian art is often very formalized and stiff and still and silent. Bizad's creations are alive and vibrant and full of extraordinary. extraordinary, unexpected colours. There's a very cute story about Gorochard's mosque, which I just love, which is, you know, when she was buying up the land to create this thing. I mean, it's amazing that a woman has the agency, the money and the permission to do this at this time. And that we don't know her.

I mean, that, you know, how many people have heard of Gohashad? But I think this tells you a little bit about her. So there's a story goes that in the middle of this sort of complex of houses that people owned on the land that she wanted to build on. There was this one obstinate old lady who would not sell her cottage. She just refused. Completely wouldn't do it. So Gouashad had to intervene herself and say, just sell the cottage.

Just sell me the cottage. This is a great work that is going to go on here. And the old woman would only sell it under one condition that they name part of the mosque after her. Love that story. And that's why in Gorshad there is an old woman's mosque. And that is the reason because it was a promise made by God. Is that lovely? I love that.

I hope it's true. I don't know if it's true. but that's what they say anyway. So, I mean, this beautiful complex that was built by this one, it just made me really want to know much more about her. And the really frustrating thing is that a woman who has left such a rather marvelous footprint, and there are these lovely stories circulating about her, is that there is not much known at all.

You've got ballads sung about her in her art. But they all talk about Sharuk and his love for her, you know, that he loved her. And, you know, she's almost sort of the object. of love and devotion, but not much else about what she looked like, what she liked, what she disliked. Her brothers, though, I mean, obviously he really did treasure her because he made her brothers administrators in the Timurid court in her art as well, which is, you know, not always a given to the family of the wife. But Persian culture, Persian language elevated to such a high level under her, and her husband sort of gives her the space to do that. And even after

the death, I think, of her husband in 1447, she said, still there. You know, she's still maneuvering. I think she maneuvers her favorite grandson to take the throne. So she, she has sort of a de facto rule in a place which is now, you know, sadly, women have so little agency in Afghanistan these days as we know. I know. The contrast between the situation of the poor women of Afghanistan under Taliban rule and the fact that in this period here in the 15th and early 16th century, you have one of the most liberal and highly educated and humanistic women rulers in history. Yeah. Yeah. I went just to hopefully there'll be some more that can be dug up about this rather extraordinary woman. And hopefully the people of the women of Afghanistan

have an idea of who she was because she's almost sort of like a patron saint of women who want to learn. Now, this wonderful, sophisticated world at Harat, is described for us by the first of the Mughal Emperor's Babu, who as a young man, before he conquered India, went to Herat. And Babu, who's this incredibly sophisticated and intelligent diarist who writes his life in one of the great diaries of history, often compared with the diaries of peeps, for the only time in his life he ever felt himself like a sort of unsophisticated, mud-booted provincial is when he goes to Herat. And there's this charming passage when Babur describes the moment when they're serving duck in

his memoirs. And he confesses he doesn't know how to eat a duck. And he's watching how everyone's using their knives and forks. I mean, as with most dining out experiences, just avoid the bill. That's very funny. You'll get that. He stays so long in herat. That was a really funny joke.

Did you not get it? I did get it? It was good. It was very funny. There's another occasion when he goes to a party and he's never drunk and they're all drinking wine. And he says, my cousins were listening to the music of flutes and dulcimers, drinking, singing, dancing. And I knew nothing of this, he said, nothing of cheer or pleasure. And his cousins mock him for not drinking.

And this is what Babo says. He says, the party was altogether elegant. And it crossed my mind now when the meirsas were so pressing. and when, too, we were in a town so refined as Herat, where should we drink if not here, I thought? Here were all the chattels and utensils of luxury and comfort are gathered and in use. So I resolved to drink wine, and I determined to cross that stream. The social cups were filmed, the guests downed the wine as if it was the water of life, and when it mounted to their heads, the party waxed warm.

And you get this impression that Baba's completely dazzled. by the court at Herat and the brilliant Persianate cultural world that had been created around him. His was a wonderful age, wrote Babo, looking back on it. Khorasan and Herat were full of learned and matchless men. And this is my favorite line. In Herat, a man can't stretch his leg without touching a poet's backside. But with Babo, what happens is that he lingers so long in Herat, because he's so impressed by this extraordinary, sophisticated world, that he waits too long into winter through the autumn.

And as he's heading back to Kabul, he gets caught in a terrible snowstorm. Very nearly loses half his men, I think, in a court in this snowstorm and just makes it back to Kabul alive. But he writes so wonderfully about the sophistication of the world of Herat. And this is what he tries to reproduce when he has his own kingdom in India. Yeah, I'm going to take you just out of Herat and just take you on a little drive because I know there is a beautiful place that you have visited yourself and that completely blew you away, which is just beyond Samarkand. Shai Zubs.

Yes, could you tell us about that? Tell us about Shai Subs. Shai Subs is another palace built by Timor, but rather unfortunately the Uzbeks decided to turn it into a sort of theme park and knocked down half of it, restored the other half, in over restoration. and yeah, wiped out half the buildings to build a sort of merry-go-round and things. And so it's in the last 10 or 15 years. It's a very sad story.

When did you see it then? Did you see it before that? I saw it. No, after four or five years ago. After, okay. Well, what did you see? I mean, we're talking about sort of 20 miles away, some 20 miles away from Samarkand? Yeah, you leave Samarkand, you go over the mountains.

There's a wonderful pass at the top of which are all these kebab shops. There's rivers running down the mountains. and you sit on these sort of like charpoys, great big charpoys, over the rivers, so the river's running through your charpoys, you're eating your kebabs, and it's a wonderful spot. And at the bottom is Shai Subs and beyond is this other extraordinary place that I read about last time, the wonderful Timurid Mosque at Langa Otta. I mean, we've got an idea of, you know, sort of the building and the architecture,

but I want to know more about the sort of fine art. Tell me a little bit more about the painting of Herat. And I want to definitely know more about Bizarab. Tell me about him because he sounds fabulous. So for connoisseurs of Persian painting, many people would say that the greatest moment in all Persian painting is this period in Herat. And the symbol of that is the work of the great Kamaluddin Bissad, who is regarded as the, you know, the supreme Persian painter. But the irony is, while we have many people talking about how wonderful Bizzad, who is, you know, the supreme Persian painting. is, there are actually only a handful of surviving works by him, and they are wonderful. They have that sort of geometrical formality that you find in Persian miniature painting, but Bizad

somehow infuses that with both the sort of extraordinary etcher-like geometric game that he plays, and also his characters are just so full of life and humanity. And wherever you go in subsequent Islamic art, people refer back to Bizad. They look. look on him as the great artist. And it's very frustrating for us today because we have literally a handful of paintings by him. And they're clearly not his greatest works. They don't match to the reputation that he has by the diarist. But for example, Barbo, Barba talks about Bazaad as being the greatest painter of his day and being the greatest portraitist. Jihungia, the later Mughal emperor, also talks about how the best pictures in his collection in Delhi, many years later, are by

Bizarad. And he reappears over and over again in, I mean, as recently as modern novels, Ohan Pamuk in My Name is Red, refers back to Bizzad and the painters in my name is red talk about Bissad as as the current, the Michelangelo of Persian painting. But only a handful survive. You can look at them online. If you go even onto Bissad's Wikipedia page, you can see these extraordinary paintings. And they are wonderful. They have this, they are something very unexpected about them, the way that he organizes the geometry. And then in the middle you have these incredible portraits. I mean, I'm loving hearing about this art. I really am. And you tell it so well, you sort of put somebody in the middle of it all. But what is the legacy? What is left?

I mean, we touched upon, you know, the legacy for poor women who come from this great lineage where women presided over greatness and great beauty. But what else do we have left? So there's two things that happens to this renaissance. On one hand, a lot of the artists, including Bizad, are moved in the next bit of history down to Tabriz, where the Safavids commission the greatest work of, many people would say, of Persian painting, which is the Sharname of Shatamasp. And this is an extraordinary painted volume of the Shahnameh, now known as the Shahnameh of Shatamasp,

who was the son of Shatamal, who completed it. And for Shah Ismail, the Shahnameh, in exactly the way that Vester described it in her episode on Fardousi, the shana me was the embodiment of Persian culture. And the commanding red-haired Shah Ismail named all his male children after the heroes of the Shandami. And his commission of this magnificently illustrated version of the epic that bears the name of his son is part of that same effort. And he calls all. the greatest artists who have been working in Herat and he calls them to Tabriz, his capital, and he mixes them with the other great artists who've been working for his rivals,

the leaders of the white sheep, and the Ak Kayonlu, and he brings them together in Tabriz, and they work on this extraordinary, beautifully illustrated, massive, page-by-page, illustrated Shahnameh. and it's the most ambitious manuscript project arguably ever ordered by an Islamic ruler, the huge scale of the endeavour, which consisted of about 30,000 Nass-deleek couplets, arranged in 759 folios, was illustrated with no less than 258 full-page figurative miniatures, all of which now regarded as the great masterpieces of Persian art. and they're just so wonderful. You find under the white sheep that the artists of Tabriz and Shiraz had both sort of excelled

in a sort of dreamy, imaginative, fabulous style of miniature painting with flattened architecture, heightened colour, and sort of fantastic, weird landscape. And this expressionism was quite different from the, if you're like, psychologically penetrating, naturalistic, hyper-exact style that was produced by Bizad and his, co-painters in Timurid Herat. And these two traditions come together, working side by side on this vast new Shaname project, the two schools once so very distinct, gradually fused into what became an entirely new Safavid court style. And there's a very nice story just to finish this, because when Shaysmail loses the Battle of Chandaran and the Ottomans capture chunks of Safavid territory,

in Iraq. This is the moment it seems that this great volume falls into the hands of the Turks and it ends up in the Top Kappa Library. And then in mysterious and possibly not entirely innocent ways, it leaves Top Kapi and finds its way to America where it's bought on the art market by a man called Arthur Houghton who breaks it up and gives some pages to the Metropolitan Museum where they're exhibited in the 1970s. And it was one of the great landmark moments for Persian culture, when this extraordinary exhibition of masterpieces from the Shanameh Shatimus was put on at the Med. And there's an extraordinary end to the story, because after the Iranian revolution, there turned out to be a whole world of American modernist paintings that the Shah and his wife,

Empress Farah, had been collecting. And they just got put by the Mullers into a warehouse. And this included one great masterpiece of contemporary art, which is William Dekuning's, Woman 3. And the very racy London art dealer, Oliver Hoare, who is supposed to be a lover of Lady Di, Princess Diana. I thought, friend, do we know he was a boyfriend? Yes. That's what it all said. That's not a public to me. Right. That is quite solid. And he arranged an extraordinary swap between the William de Kooning, woman three, that had been sitting in a warehouse in Tehran, and the... The remains of the Shaname of Shatamask, which the pages that weren't in the Met Museum and hadn't been put on the art market, were given for sale or to swap for the decooning.

And there was this incredibly filmic moment on the tarmac in Vienna when one plane arrived from Tehran with Woman 3, the de Kooning painting. and another plane arrived from America with the Shandameh Shatamasp. And there, on the tarmac in Vienna airport, like a scene from a Le Carre novel, these two were swapped. And the great Shandamay of Shatamasb went home to Iran, where it remains. So that's one legacy. It goes to Tbris and becomes the basis and the inspiration for the art of the Safavids. And in a future episode, I think we're going to get Barnaby Roy.

on to talk more about the Safavids and Tabriz. But the other legacy is Babbo. Baba, you remember, as a young man, driven out of Samarkand, visits Herat and feels himself this sort of bumpkin in the presence of all his much, much more sophisticated cousins who know how to eat more sophisticated dishes, recite poetry with more Elan who are commissioning gorgeous mosques and poetry. and generally make him feel like a provincial. And it is the example of Herat that Babo takes to India when he conques it in 1526.

And many of the artists and the architects who go to form Mughal miniature painting and Mughal architecture are the products of this renaissance in Herat and Samarkand. It's been absolutely wonderful. William, thank you so very much. I envy you actually your footprints across the world. You've seen such wonderful things. These places are out there. I mean, Herat we can't get to, but Samarkand is not a difficult place to visit these days. Turkish airlines will take you there from London via Istanbul, very cheaply. Samakhan, Tashkent, these are extraordinary, extraordinary places to visit.

Well, with that piece of travel advice, that's it for this episode of Empire. Pack your bags. But do be back for the next one. Till then is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durepool. Thank you.