Dragons on the Silk Road: Legitimacy, Myth, and Material Culture in Four Objects

Introduction

From adorning bowls and pestles to occupying the folios of illuminated manuscripts, dragon iconography along the Silk Road is one of the most pervasive artistic motifs. The Silk Road was not just a route for luxury goods and the silk for which it is named, but also mythology, knowledge formation, and cultural exchange. Each culture that uses the iconography applies it to its own place in time and space. The dragon then served as a flexible epistemological tool, adaptable to any individual’s narrative, ranging from a cosmological force to a symbol of legitimacy and intellectual inquiry through a shared visual language.

A Shifting Form

In each depiction of the dragon in this collection, the shape remains largely the same, though with some regional differences. It retains what could be classified as classic motifs, with a consistent coiled, serpentine form, regardless of whether its exact design reflects what art historian Persis Berlekamp calls a “Chinese-style,” or a sea monster like al-tannin. In each depiction, the dragon is associated with power in different forms: either beneficial or potentially dangerous. It is perhaps one of the most instantly recognisable iconographic forms on the Silk Road across various cultures and geographies, which could be adapted to a wide range of cultural needs. Its form was often dual in intention, as Abbas Daneshvari points out in Of Serpents and Dragons in Islamic Art and Related Animals: An Iconographic Study, “The dual symbolism of the dragon […] communicates the ruler’s significance as the light that is both beneficial and immolating; and also as the darkness that is both destructive and protecting.”¹ The dragon, across these objects, is a clearly multifaceted force that communicated meaning through a shared visual language that was recognizable across cultures.

To Slay A Dragon

One of the strongest common motifs in the dragon’s symbolism is that its defeat by a heroic force is a feat worthy of kingship. Folio 434v from the Shahnama, or Book of Kings, ca.1530, titled “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” depicts this aptly.² The dragon is one of the many challenges that Isfandiyar must face on his road to kingship, as set out by his father. This challenge comes from a longstanding tradition in Persian mythology, where a ruler must slay a dragon to prove their strength, wit, and magical or spiritual value. As Abbas Daneshvari writes, most cultures possess some variety of the titular dragon-slaying myth, through which a monarch is accepted as legitimized: “A king is legitimized,” he notes, “by his supernatural ability to slay a dragon.”³ This myth and facet of legitimacy is one echoed throughout objects on the Silk Road, where the slaying of supernatural beasts like dragons represented a kings authority and power in action.

Dragons as Cosmology

Beyond destruction or legitimacy, dragon iconography could also represent a larger cosmological system as a symbol of rulership. The object that perhaps best represents this is titled “Bowl with Dragons,” dated 607 AH/1210 CE, likely produced in Iran. The objects coiling serpents whose heads meet concentrically around the bowl have been cited as a depiction of al-Jawzahr, a pseudo-planetary dragon entity believed to both cause and reverse eclipses by swallowing the moon and sun.⁴ First noticed by historian Willy Hartner in his 1932 article “The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies,” it was believed to serve as an eighth planet, a cosmological entity that was also believed to cause eclipses.⁵ Though modern scholarship on the entity is undergoing a turn, with modern Islamic art historians like Sheila R. Canby arguing that astronomers in the Seljuq era knew that the eclipse dragon was not an actual planet, yet it was still viewed that the dragon itself may have served an iconographic function as a symbol of ruling itself.⁶ Either way, as Oya Pancaroǧlu notes in “Socializing Medicine: Illustrations of the Kitāb al-diryāq,” imagery of al-Jawzahr can, “[…]in many cases, be read as images of the triumph of light over darkness or good over evil, as the two ‘planets’ are always seen to emerge unscathed from their temporary eclipse by the ‘dragon’.”⁷ As many of the historical interpretations of this imagery conclude, this object represents how mythological traditions could be portrayed in art to convey not only protection, but also strength, astrological knowledge, and the legitimacy of a ruler.

Dragons as Apotropaic Symbols

Beyond the slaying of these dragons as a site of legitimacy, they can also be viewed as an apotropaic symbol, a protective and orderly figure. The object “Mortar and Pestle made for Abu Bakr ‘Ali Malikzad al-Tabrizi”, a mortar of Iranian provenance from the late 12th-early 13th century, showcases this well.⁸ With Arabic script around the rim that offers wishes of benefits to the owner, the item would have been seen as a site of good fortune. The mortar also engages with more cosmological and mythical sources of well-wishing through the inclusion of the iconography of the pseudo-planetary dragon known as al-Jawzahr. The imagery of al-Jawzahr would have carried vital apotropaic properties to members of the Iranian elite. The combination of metalworking with an astrologically and mythologically significant figure would have served to embed the luxury item within a larger cosmopolitan culture that valued metalworking as an elite status symbol.⁹ The Seljuks, a nomadic people originally from Central Asia, can be viewed as participating in a shared visual culture and intellectual tradition through their depiction of al-Jawzahr, bridging cosmological force with apotropaic benefits.

Dragons as a Site of Knowledge Formation

Marking a departure from the more mythological and fantastical elements of the previous objects in this theme, folio 73v from The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence casts the dragon as a beast that is wholly categorizable.¹⁰ Attributed to the artist and scholar Zakariya al-Qazwini, created in Wasit, Iraq, in 1280, the folio depicts al-tannin (literally ‘the dragon,’ or ‘the sea monster’). This was a fearsome creature that Qazwini lists under existing sea creatures, naming its eating habits and habitat as though it were a real creature in a common motif of Islamic literature. As art historian Persis Berlekamp notes in Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam, Qazwini’s intention in including the creature amongst other ‘real’ creatures serves as a distinct intent of knowledge formation.¹¹ The classification of the beast makes it more immediately ‘real,’ in a similar manner to the bestiaries of Medieval Europe. Berlekamp further contends that Qazwini’s intention was for readers to note that “no matter how unlikely an oddity might seem, much is to be gained from seeking and acknowledging whatever truth it contains,” reinforcing this folio’s place amidst larger Islamic and Silk Road scholarship engaging with myth as a legitimate source of knowledge formation regardless of its fictitious nature.¹²

“No matter how unlikely an oddity might seem, much is to be gained from seeking and acknowledging whatever truth it contains.¹²”

Conclusion

Across all of these objects, the iconography of the dragon undergoes transformative shifts in meaning, reflecting the dynamic cultural exchanges along the Silk Road. In “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” the dragon functions as a narrative obstacle on the way to kingship; to slay it is both required and encouraged as an important facet of the slayer’s legitimacy to rule. In the bowl, the dragon is a far more cosmological force, offering protection and benefits rather than chaos and death in an inverse of the first. In the mortar, we are instead directly presented with an image of the dragon as a protector and magical beneficiary; it remains a fearsome, apotropaic force, but it is placed within a much larger system of cultural conversation that in many ways reduces its ferocity. In The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence, al-tannin represents an entirely categorizable entity in contrast to the rest. It is presented as real, observable, and a legitimate site of knowledge. Throughout each of these widely different portrayals, the dragon is still instantly recognizable, and though its form and meaning have shifted, it remains a shared cultural concept across cultures. This speaks to a much larger truth of the Silk Road: it was not just a route through which luxury goods were exchanged; it also represented the cross-national network through which ideas were constantly shifting and adapting to space and time. The dragon in each of these is not simply a mythological creature, but rather an iconographic symbol for articulating power and authority, understanding both the cosmos and astrological forces, and ultimately a way to categorize and formulate knowledge itself.

Bibliography

-Ballian, Anna. “Three Medieval Islamic Brasses and the Mosul Tradition of Inlaid Metalwork.” Μουσείο Μπενάκη 9, no. 9 (2013): 113–122.

-Berlekamp, Persis. Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

-Canby, Sheila R., et al. Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.

-Daneshvari, Abbas. Of Serpents and Dragons in Islamic Art and Related Animals: An Iconographic Study. Santa Ana: Mazda Publishers, 2021.

-Hartner, Willy. “The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies.” Ars Islamica 5, no. 2 (1938): 112–154.

-“Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon.” Folio 434v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp. Attributed to Abu’l Qasim Firdausi; painting attributed to Qasim ibn ‘Ali. Ca. 1530. Opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 1970.301.51. Accessed April 5, 2026. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452160

-“Bowl with Dragons.” Ca. 607 AH/1210 CE. Stonepaste; glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, with part of the inscription scratched in luster. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 61.40. Accessed April 9, 2026. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451636.

-“Mortar and Pestle Made for Abu Bakr ‘Ali Malikzad al-Tabrizi.” Late 12th-early 13th century. Bronze; inlaid with silver and black compound. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 91.1.527a, b. Accessed April 8, 2026. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/444529.

-Pancaroğlu, Oya. “Socializing Medicine: Illustrations of the Kitāb al-diryāq.” Muqarnas 18 (2001): 155–172.

-“The Tannin.” Folio 73v from The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence. Attributed to Zakariya al-Qazwini. Wasit, Iraq, 1280. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS cod. arab. 464