Rustam Kills the Dragon

This representation is titled Rustam Kills the Dragon. It is a folio of the Shahnameh illustrated by Shah Ismail II after the original by Ferdowsi created in 1010. The history behind this piece is that Shah Ismail II's father and grandfather had also been very interested in the epic Shahnameh. This in turn peaked Ismail II’s interest. Unfortunately, he died before completing the manuscript. As a result, many artists contributed to completing it, including Siyavush, Sadiqi Beg, Naqdi, Murad Dailami and Mihrab.

This folio is from the sixteenth century and is made of watercolour, gold silver and ink on paper. The paper mainly features a large image but also has 8 small textboxes. It depicts a man, a dragon and a hose all on a cliff. The dragon is being beheaded by a man and is also being bitten by a horse his shoulder. The dragon is still spewing some poison from it’s mouth and has the shape of a large brown reptile. In Islamic literature tradition, the dragon is depicted as a large frightening serpent (Al-Rawi 2012).  This demonstrates that the dragon has the traditional form for this culture. The man is seen wearing protective armour and the horse is clearly domesticated since it is clad with a saddle. The scene seems to be taking place on a mountain or cliff. Something interesting is that although they are battling the dragon, none of the surrounding greenery has been affected. For instance, the flowers are trees are in place. 

This image was dated from 1576 to 1577 and produced in Qazvin Iran. The context of the image is also similar because Rustam was a brave and clever warrior like Sekandar. The story behind this recreation is that Rustam was on his way to rescue Kay Kavus from the White Div of Mazandaran. On his way to rescue him, he had to overcome seven dangers. Rustam fighting the dragon was the third of the seven perils. When his horse Rakhsh bit the dragon on the shoulder, Rustam used the opportunity to cut off the dragon’s head. This demonstrates that Rustam was also using clever tactics to defeat a dragon similar to Sekandar.