Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon

Object Overview

This object is folio 434v from the landmark codices known as the Shahnama, or Book of Kings, ca.1530. Titled “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” by art historians today, it is believed to have been painted by Qasim ibn ‘Ali, an artist from Shiraz active in the Safavid court in the 16th century. The author of the story the folio recounts is attributed to Abu’l Qasim Firdausi, a well-known Persian poet active in Tous, Iran, in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. The folio is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Object number 1970.301.51. The illustration and decorative Arabic are done in opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper, creating a refined illuminated manuscript rendition of the classic story. Unfortunately, in the modern age, the whole of the Shahnama is dispersed in museums throughout the world, though individual folios like this one provide a rare glimpse into the intention and beauty of the full codex. The folio presents the slaying of the dragon as a victory over the personification of chaos, whose defeat reaffirms the legitimacy of the victor.

Narrative

This painting depicts the third of seven challenges that the folk hero Prince Isfandiyar faced on his mythical journey to Turan. Each challenge was meant to be a test for his future ascension, as “his father set increasingly difficult challenges for him to meet before he would agree to abdicate and raise him to the throne”.¹ In this folio, he confronts a dragon blocking his path forward, with jagged beige rocks serving both to draw the viewer’s eyes to the central confrontation and remind us that there is no escape should the prince fail. The fierce beast sits coiled within a nest of clouds reminiscent of Chinese designs, with a gaping maw ready to consume the prince and his chariot. However, the prince had anticipated this and had fitted a special box to contain him, outfitted with external spears that would kill the dragon when it consumed his device. The folio depicts the moment just before the dragon consumes Isfandiyar, and is, as a consequence, slain. The triumph of Isfandiyar in slaying the beast thereby reaffirms his legitimacy, as he had to consider the broader usages of strategy and wit to best his foe, skills that would well befit a future ruler. Within the larger Persian tradition, to slay a dragon is to defeat chaos and destruction itself, engaging in conversation with the dragon-slaying saints of Christianity, such as Saint George. As the Islamic art historian Abbas Daneshvari notes, most cultures possess some variety of the dragon-slaying myth, through which a monarch is accepted.² “A king is legitimized,” he notes, “by his supernatural ability to slay a dragon.”³To destroy the embodiment of evil and chaos, thus bringing order into the realm, is a widely regarded facet of kingship that this folio aptly depicts.

Conclusion and an Exchange of Gifts

The Shanamah, and this folio by extension, played a key role in the vital diplomatic avenue on the Silk Road: the exchange of gifts. As a historian of Islamic art, Sinem Casale notes in Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639, this object was a part of a much larger gift procession presented by the Safavid king to the newly enthroned Ottoman sultan Selim II (r. 1566–74) in 1568.⁴ The gift-giving mission, as Casale points out, was one with the strict goal of peace amidst a time of conflict within the Islamic world, where Shah Tahmasp needed to appear as a legitimate and powerful, but subservient, ruler in the eyes of the Ottoman sultan.⁵ Shah Tahmasp presented the object as a multilayered, flexible gift whose cultural symbolism and intent could adapt based on its audience, thereby reaffirming the sultan’s position as master of a cosmopolitan world.⁶ Objects like folio 434v, “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” therefore increase the sovereign authority and control of the holder, where scenes of heroic triumph over exotic and dangerous beasts of chaos project ideals of strength, wit, and order.

Bibliography

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

• Casale, Sinem Arcak. Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.

• Firdawsi, Abu al-Qasim. “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” fol. 434v, from the Shahnama (Book of Kings), ca. 1530. Opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed April 5, 2026. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452160.