Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 ART UNIVERSITY OF ISFAHAN
2 Department of Handicrafts, Faculty of Handicrafts, Art University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
3 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences, University of Guilan, Guilan, Iran.
Abstract
In the aftermath of Arab conquest of Persia, Iranians were afflicted with some feelings of inferiority. The first important political activity of Iranians after Sasanid collapse, was their participation in Mokhtar’s uprising, to avenge the murder of third Shiite Imam. Anti-Ummayad movement of Iranians, continued and reached to the point of replacing Ummayads with Abbasids. The most powerful leaders of Abbasid revolution in the eve of victory were Abu Salama and Abu Moslem, and the former was to bring Alids to the power instead of Abbasids. Therefore, Abbasids in the first year of their rule, ordered Abu Moslem to kill him and some years later, they killed Abu Moslem too. Abu Moslem passed away but his name remained alive, as a Javānmard in futuwwa culture and as an Ayyār in folk literature. Afterwards in the third century of Hijra, a javānmard artisan whose name was “yaqub ibn al- layth”, quitted his job as an artisan and became Ayyār which means bandit in this context. He gradually became commander, ruler and finally the most powerful man of the caliph, but in some point he stopped obeying the caliph and finally invaded his army. He was the first Persian king to invade a caliph after Sassanid collapse.
In some Safavid paintings, mythological and historical kings and knights of Iran or a high-ranking lady, are seen riding a horse, while an axe holding footman, named Ayyār and Shāter , serves as their forerunner, and in some cases, this man is looking after his master’s horse. The purpose of the present article is to reconstruct the discourse that such men were related to, through tracing for the nationalistic, religious and political meanings and implications of the image of Ayyār for the people of Safavid era .The research, in the framework of Vandijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis, tends to describe and analyze the data related to the term Ayyār in Persian language and the image of Ayyār in Safavid paintings. It concludes that, if Safavid painters depicted Ayyārs in their works, Safavid kings had such men among their servants, and the axe wielding men who played a violent role in the religious transformations of Shah Ismail’s reign, were apparently the same axe holding Ayyārs depicted in Safavid paintings. Men whose axes are reminiscent of “Abu Muslim’s” axe, claim to be taught by the prophet Khidr, or having esoteric sciences, to legitimize their violent deeds. The image of Ayyār , for the people of Safavid era, who were culturally aware of the matter, was the symbol of a discourse rooted in pre-Islamic Iran, and thus related to Shiism in an ambiguous way. Tending to rebuild the Persian identity and authority in post-Islamic period, this discourse developed in a culture coming out of the above-mentioned image. Ayyārs were well-known in Safavid era, to the extent that, despite Ferdowsi’s silence about them, Safavid painters depicted Ayyārs in Shāhnāmeh illustrations.
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