Page with a rectangular text box with 4 columns of text interrupted in the middle by a painting. Outdoor scene with trees and a hill, pale green field, white rocks and a gold sky.Figure on an armoured horse aims an arrow at a pale grey-blue unicorn already riddled with arrows. Behind, three turbanned horsemen watch, one biting his finger.
AKM54, Bahram Gur Kills a Rhino in India, from a manuscript of The Book of Kings (Shahnameh) by Firdausi

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AKM54, Bahram Gur Kills a Rhino in India, from a manuscript of The Book of Kings (Shahnameh) by Firdausi, Back

© The Aga Khan Museum

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Bahram Gur Kills a Rhino in India
From a manuscript of Shahnameh (The Book of Kings)
  • Accession Number:AKM54
  • Creator:Scribe: `Abd al-Dha`if Sultan `Ali Shirazi
  • Place:Iran, Shiraz
  • Dimensions:
  • Date:1494
  • Materials and Technique:opaque watercolour, gold, silver, and ink on paper

The exploits of Vaharam the Fifth (r. 420–38), a historical king of Iran’s pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire (224–651), were spun into legend by medieval Persian authors.[1] In the literary tradition, he is remembered as Bahram Gur. The word gur means “onager,”[2] referring to a kind of wild donkey that the monarch is renowned for having slaughtered using an elaborate archery technique. In one legend from the Shahnameh, Iran’s national epic, the king of India enlists the hunter-king to slay a menacing horned wolf-like creature known as a karg. While the term karg is often translated as “rhinoceros,”[3] rhinos are not native to Iran. It is clear that the artist was unsure about how to render the fantastic karg, and so he chose to depict a horse-like creature with a massive single horn. 

 

— Michael Chagnon


Notes
[1] WL Hanaway, Jr., “Bahram V Gor in Persian Legend and Literature,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, III/5, 514–22, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bahram-05-lit.
[2] گور gor (n.d.) in Francis Joseph Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/steingass.
[3] کرگ karg (n.d.), in Steingass, https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/steingass.


References
Hanaway, Jr., WL.“Bahram V Gor in Persian Legend and Literature,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, III/5, 514–22, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bahram-05-lit
Steingass, Francis Joseph. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/steingass/ 

Note: This online resource is reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis. We are committed to improving this information and will revise and update knowledge about this object as it becomes available.

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