Illicit Behavior and the Demonic: Legal, Literary and Visual Evidence

The notion that the paintings’ depiction of demons reflects the influence of non-Islamic culture on the level of ideas is in need of qualification. Ideas about demons, most frequently termed jinn, shayāṭīn or ʿafārīt in Arabic, were central to mainstream Islamic culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially when it came to discussions of human ethics. In particular, jurists often emphasized the demonic nature of behavior that they considered to be illicit (ḥarām), either by likening those who transgressed to demons, or by describing the processes that led to illicit behavior as demonic possession. The close mental link between abnormal behavior and demonic possession is underscored by Arabic lexicography: the word majnūn, for example, generally translated as “unsound of mind or intellect,” means “possessed by demons,” and the related word junūn signifies both possession and the pursuance of evil acts.Footnote ²⁷ Similarly, the noun ghūl connotes both a kind of desert demon or devil and “anything by reason of which the intellect departs.”Footnote ²⁸ Shayṭān can mean the Devil himself, a demon, or “any blameable faculty, or power [or propensity] of a man,” with Lane giving the idiom rakibahu shayṭānuhu, lit. “his demon mastered him,” to signify “he was, or became, angry.”Footnote ²⁹

Images of demonic possession were pursued with particular vigor in discussions of the consumption of the intoxicants wine (Ar. khamr, with the root meaning of “intoxicant”) and cannabis sativa (Ar. qannab hindī) known by a plethora of names depending on how it was prepared and consumed, including ḥashīsh in Arabic and hashish, bang and dugh-e vahdat in Persian.Footnote ³⁰ Descriptions of the cannabis plant as “the Devil’s herb” (ḥashīshat al-shayṭān) appear to have been a trope in Arabic writing of the Mamluk period (1250–1517),Footnote ³¹ while representations of frequent users of hashish liken them to demoniacs (addā bi-him al-ḥāl ilā al-junūn).Footnote ³² Such mental images are of relevance for our discussion of the Siāh Qalam paintings, since several of them appear to treat the consumption of intoxicants.Footnote ³³

Most obvious in this regard is H.2160 f.10a (Figure 5), which depicts three male figures eyeing a cannabis plant with a certain cupidity.Footnote ³⁴ Beyhan Karamağaralı remarked that another painting depicts two men carrying pouches used to hold hashish (H.2153 f.38b—IA1 fig.310).Footnote ³⁵ Contrary to Karamağaralı’s analysis, hashish does not appear to have been smoked prior to the Safavid period (1501–1736), but generally to have been roasted, ground, mixed with other ingredients and consumed as a kind of pill, or to have been roasted, filtered, adulterated with other ingredients and drunk.Footnote ³⁶ For example, the often comic Cairene poet, ḥadīth man and performer Ibn Sūdūn (d. 868/1464) describes sampling hashish, presumably in the form of a pill, out of a porcelain jar, before doing a sketch for his host.Footnote ³⁷

A third Siāh Qalam image (H.2153 f.90a—IA1 fig.301) depicts a man consuming something from a vial, regarded with horror by the two figures who surround him. The man’s tongue can be clearly distinguished from the vial. While analyses of this painting have tended to focus on technical similarities with figural depiction in the visual culture of China, the men’s emaciated bodies also recall later depictions of drug users. For example, an image that is now in the British Museum (1940,0713,0.49, ascribed to the Punjab Hills, eighteenth century), depicts a gathering of bhang users (Figure 6). Among the figures shown is an emaciated man sitting on his haunches, who bears comparison with the figure to the right of H.2153 f.90a. The emaciation of the figure in the Pahari painting may stem from opium usage.Footnote ³⁸ Several additional images depicting the emaciation caused by the excessive consumption of opium are well known to modern scholarship, including “The Dying ‘Enāyat Khān” (dated 1618, Bodleian, MS. Ouseley Add. 171 f.4b), depicting a Mughal courtier wasted by opium and alcohol addiction.

Figure 6.

“A Gathering of Bhang Users”.

Source: British Museum 1940,0713,0.49. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

For jurists such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), the primary problem with the consumption of intoxicants was the user’s subsequent loss of reason (al-ʿaql), and hence their vulnerability to malign forces. A passage from one of his fatwas is worth giving in extenso, as it highlights the connection made between the loss of reason and the demonic:

Ibn Taymiyya’s representation of illicit behavior emphasizes several simple themes. Firstly, in the eyes of some legal authorities, a number of behaviors, including the consumption of intoxicants, dancing and either playing or listening to music, were directly linked to demonic possession because they were perceived to hinder rational thought.Footnote ⁴⁰ It is possible that the Sufi practices of audition (samāʿ) and dance are Ibn Taymiyya’s express target. Secondly, in Ibn Taymiyya’s representation, the idea of demonic possession does not appear to be an extended metaphor, but rather the description of a process that was supposed to occur in the physical world.

Just as Ibn Taymiyya associates aspects of human behavior that he deemed illicit with the presence of demons, a number of the Siāh Qalam paintings develop parallels between human and demonic actions. Thus several images depict people or demons either grinding substances or holding drinking vessels. One painting (H.2153 f.135a) (Figure 4) and another unfinished image (H.2153 f.70a—IA1 fig.290) depict men with a pestle and mortar, while hand-operated querns are used by two demons in another painting in Siāh Qalam style, the Metropolitan Museum’s 68.175 (Figure 7). A further four “Siāh Qalam” images (H.2153 f.34b—IA1 fig.248; H.2153 f.112a—IA1 fig.278; H.2153 f.39b—IA1 fig.209; Freer 37.25—IA1 fig.210) depict demons with either metal or porcelain cups or vessels, and H.2153 f.29b (IA1 fig.477) depicts a man with a cup. While it is true that any number of scenarios can be envisaged concerning what is being ground and what is being drunk in these images, the tropical association between demons and the consumption of intoxicants may lend support to the notion that the substances being prepared and consumed in the paintings are illicit. Contemporary textual discussions of the methods for preparing hashish relate that is was first ground, and that it could be drunk in liquid form.Footnote ⁴¹

Figure 7.

Metropolitan Museum 68.175.

Source: Image in the Public Domain.

In addition to the Siāh Qalam paintings depicting humans and demons grinding substances and drinking, a number depict the two groups dancing (H.2153 f.64b—fig.3; H.2153 f.34b—IA1 fig.304) playing music (H.2153 f.37b—IA1 fig.311; H.2153 f.112r—IA1 fig.278; Freer 37.25—IA1 fig.210) or brawling (H.2153 f.165b—IA1 fig.212; H.2153 f.109b—IA1 fig.213; H.2153 f.31b—IA1 fig.245; H.2153 f.37a—IA1 fig.307; H.2153 f.37b—IA1 fig.246), all behaviors characterized by some as immoral, and hence conducive to the presence of demons. It is possible that images such as H.2153 f.129b (IA1 fig.249) and H.2153 f.101a (IA1 fig.299), depicting demons carrying off men, engage with the idea of demonic possession that we have seen reflected in the work of Ibn Taymiyya.

The connection between illicit behavior and the demonic can be extended to other paintings in the Siāh Qalam group. The large handscroll depicting frenzied demons dismembering a white horse (H.2153 f.40b) can be compared with an image from India, of a much later date but relatively stable iconography, which makes aspects of the album painting explicit (Figures 1 and 8).Footnote ⁴² Sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 1982, the painting, given a provenance of nineteenth-century Kotah, depicts a horde of demons feasting. In the foreground, a troop of devils slaughter and dismember animals including a camel, a lion and two rabbits, just as the demons in the Siāh Qalam handscroll rip apart the horse. In the background of the Kotah image, one demon carries grapes, another holds a painted or glazed vessel and a third carries a metal cup, indicating the presence of wine. In the centre ground, two demons filter bhang into a basin through a muslin sheet, a porcelain vessel at their feet. To the left, bhang is being roasted in a cauldron by another couple of demons. In the background, the presence of a human figure with a baby, who is being carried by a demon, invites us to interpret the painting as an evocation of the “demonic” forces at play in the human consumption of intoxicants. Within the overlapping cultural contexts present in India, the image can be understood in different ways—as a satire, or perhaps as a devotional painting, since cannabis consumption is associated with Śiva and Śaivite practicesFootnote ⁴³—but either interpretation is based on the premise that demons and the demonic represent uncontrolled forces that flourish when reason sleeps. I would contend that, like the painting from Kotah, the Siāh Qalam handscroll also engages with ideas concerning the “demonic” nature of the use of intoxicants.Footnote ⁴⁴

Figure 8.

“Demons feasting.” Kotah.

Source: Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s Inc. © 1982.

It is possible that another group of the Siāh Qalam paintings represent the experiences of consumers of intoxicants. So-called “red eye” (conjunctival injection), in which the blood vessels on the surface of the sclera dilate, is consistent with the presentation of cannabis consumers, a point that was picked up by a number of writers.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ibn Sūdūn, again, has a mawāliyā poem on his experiences of taking a hashish pill.Footnote ⁴⁶

“Red eye” (Pers. chashm-e sorkh) is also mentioned frequently in Divān-e asrāri, a collection of poems on hashish and its users written by Fattāhi Nishāpuri (d. 852/1448, also known as Toffāhi and Sibak).Footnote ⁴⁷ To give one example from the many:Footnote ⁴⁸

Conjunctival injection is evident in a number of Siāh Qalam paintings. In H.2153 f.64b, two demons with bloodshot eyes dance wildly (Figure 3). H.2153 f.27b depicts demons abusing a donkey, the bloodshot vessels on their eyeballs clearly visible (IA1 fig.276). H.2153 f.39b shows one demon with conjunctival injection offering a kind of metal flask to another demon, the whites of whose eyes are clear, perhaps implying that the contents of the flask are responsible for creating red eye (IA1 fig.209). An image formerly in the Vignier collection depicts a male and a female figure subduing a demon with bloodshot eyes (IA1 fig.295).Footnote ⁴⁹ Another Siāh Qalam painting depicts six traveling figures (H.2153 f.55a) (Figure 2). That the employment of the color red is not an aspect of style is to be concluded from the fact that the eyes of one of the figures are free from any red coloring. The eyes of the remaining five figures are all red, although in this case the color seems to be concentrated on and around their pupils. While the figure on the donkey stares ahead in a daze, two others look back at what would appear to be one man carrying another, their arms forming a confusing mass, in which it is difficult to distinguish their limbs. I would suggest that the mass of limbs may represent the men’s confused perception, rather than being a technical mistake on the part of the artist.Footnote ⁵⁰

Finally, there is a scene which has been conceived of by modern scholarship as representing an “encampment” (H.2153 f.8b—IA1 fig.282). The painting depicts a bare patch of land, populated by grazing horses, scrapping dogs, five humans—one of whom is evidently wealthier than the other four—and clustered objects. Some of the objects, such as a saddle, a quiver and flasks, suggest that the group is away from home, and others, like the cauldron and basins, imply that the men have stopped in a rural location. The basins are piled with shapeless white forms. As with representations of objects in the other Siāh Qalam paintings, these shapeless white things can be envisaged in different ways. It has been suggested that they are bundles of fabric and that the men are washing them,Footnote ⁵¹ yet while this is possible, the image displays distinct similarities with later Safavid and Mughal representations of “wine and bang” gatherings, held in open, rural spaces and attended by figures from a variety of backgrounds.Footnote ⁵² Such scenes often include dervish figures alongside men of obvious wealth, and depict the process of filtering bang through muslin into large bowls, or the adulteration of bang with wine. In one such image (MFA Boston 14.649) a male figure in the center of the composition filters bang through a piece of cloth, grasping the folded cloth with two hands, holding it parallel to his chest, and wringing it over a basin (Figure 9). This is done in an identical manner by a figure in the top left of the Siāh Qalam composition who sits on his haunches.

Figure 9.

MFA Boston 14.649. Francis Bartlett Donation of 1912 and Picture Fund.

Source: Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This is not to argue that all the Siāh Qalam scenes of human activity are supposed to represent the preparation or consumption of intoxicants, and without further evidence such a standpoint cannot be justified in relation to a number of scenes depicting people conversing (e.g. H.2153 f.38b—IA1 fig.296; H.2153 f.52a—IA1 fig.302; H.2153 f.128a—IA1 fig.306) or those of people engaged in construction (e.g. H.2153 f.141b—IA1 fig.308; H.2153 f.33a—IA1 fig.255; possibly H.2153 f.38b—IA1 fig.279). However, even in these scenes, comparisons between human and demonic behavior are still evident. For example, we may wonder why the human craftsmen of H.2153 f.141b are given a parallel in a painting of two demons sawing a tree, which has been pasted onto the a side of the same folio (H.2153 f.141a—IA1 fig.277). Further suggestive parallels include the image of two men who appear to be fighting over a donkey (H.2160 f.14a—IA1 fig.280) and the previously discussed painting of two demons doing the same (H.2153 f.27b—IA1 fig.276).

I would therefore not go so far as to argue that the Siāh Qalam paintings are primarily concerned with the use of intoxicants, but I would suggest that most of the paintings depict a community, real or imagined, some of whose actions, including the consumption of intoxicants, were deemed by onlookers to be ripe for satire. In this regard it is worth noting, along with Robinson, that the word siāh, in addition to its primary meaning of “black,” has the secondary significance of “drunk”;Footnote ⁵³ not only “drunk,” but “intoxicated to the point of being out of one’s mind” (mast tāfeh az khud bi khabar).Footnote ⁵⁴ The word also means “sinful.” The name Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam may therefore point to an artist with the first name Mohammad, who specialized in the technique of pen-and-ink drawing known as qalam siāhi, but it can also be understood as a joke on the subject matter of the images that he, or those who painted in his manner, produced.Footnote ⁵⁵

While a distinction should be made between the environment in which the Siāh Qalam paintings were produced and the new contexts created by the selection and arrangement of the images in albums H.2153 and H.2160, there is limited evidence that some of the paintings were understood by the albums’ compilers as engaging with ideas about illicit behavior. On H.2153 f.40b (Figure 1), for example, the scene of demons dismembering a horse is juxtaposed with quotations reflecting ideas and phrasing found in aḥādīth: “Avoidance of the abode of deception is one of the marks of reason … It is an attribute of honor to shun whatever disgraces you and to choose whatever is an ornament to you” (inna min ʿalāmāt al-ʿaql al-tajāfī ʿan dār al-ghurūr … Min al-murūʾa ijtinābuk mā yashīnuk wa ikhtiyāruk mā yazīnuk). On H.2153 f.64b (Figure 3), the image of demons engaged in dancing and audition is juxtaposed with the garbled text of a whispered prayer (munājāh), one of whose verses appeals to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib as the speaker’s refuge against “the temptation of the self and its accursed demon” (min sharr ghayy nafsī wa shayṭānihā al-rajīm).

Targets of Satire: Moderate and Antinomian Sufis

If the Siāh Qalam paintings can be considered satirical, whom might they satirize? It is relatively difficult to create an objective history of intoxicant usage in the area of our enquiry during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, since the kinds of documentation that the historian would wish for are often absent, no longer extant, or unpublished. Nevertheless, a number of literary and documentary sources in Persian create a general impression that hashish and bang were associated in people’s imaginations with two contexts: that of courtly culture, and that of Sufism in both its “moderate” and antinomian incarnations.Footnote ⁵⁶ Proverbs reflecting the stereotypical association between Sufis and hashish usage include: “The green leaf [i.e. hashish] is the dervish’s gift,” and Fattāhi’s Divān-e asrāri imagines hashish as the offspring of a founding father of the antinomian Qalandariyyeh movement, Jamāl al-Din Sāveji.Footnote ⁵⁷

Continuities with literary representations of Sufism may be of relevance for the Siāh Qalam paintings. For example, in the Ten-Chapter Epistle, a collection of intentionally subverted definitions by the often satirical poet and prose-writer ʿObeyd-e Zākāni (d. ca. 770/1370), banj is glossed as “what brings Sufis to ecstasy.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Other, suggestive definitions from the same work gloss the word sheykh (presumably in the sense of a Sufi sheykh) to mean “the Devil” (Eblis); the Devil’s “deception” (talbis) to mean “the words that [the sheykh] speaks on the nature of the material world”; “temptation” (al-vasvaseh) to mean “what [the sheykh] says concerning the afterlife”; “the demons” (al-sheyātin) to mean the sheykh’s followers.Footnote ⁵⁹ ʿObeyd’s representation is not the first of its kind. Over a century and a half earlier, the judge and preacher Abu Tāher Yahyā b. Tāher b. ʿOsmān ʿOwfi (active Transoxiana, late twelfth century) lamented in an edifying poem the pernicious influence of men of “Turkic, Byzantine and Indian manners” in Transoxiana, Sufis associated with the ideas of Bāyezid (Bestāmi) (d. 261/874 or 264/877–78), Shebli (d. 334/945) and Joneyd (d. 298/910) who, he claimed, had defiled the city’s mosques and influenced lordly men to take up wine, bang and gambling with dice.Footnote ⁶⁰

While an intentional stereotype, ʿObeyd’s association between Sufis and illicit behavior may reflect trends in contemporary society. Evidence for this thesis is provided by an extant Jalāyerid decree (farmān), addressed to the administrative heads of the Safavid order at Ardabil.Footnote ⁶¹ Written at the insistence of the head of the shrine, the decree, which was issued in 773/1372, orders the administrators to desist from harassing the local villagers and requisitioning their mounts, to stop extorting tax revenue that legally belonged to the state from the local tanners and butchers, and for them and their disciples (moridān) to refrain from introducing forbidden heresies (bidʿat) into the area; prostitution and the consumption of wine are mentioned explicitly.

The accusation of illicit behavior is also leveled by some Sufis against others. In the voluminous hagiography of Safi al-Din Ardabili (d. 935/1334), Safvat al-safāʾ, completed in 759/1358, Ebn Bazzāz (dates uncertain) introduces a number of akhbār about both “moderate” and antinomian Sufis in the Ardabil region, whose impropriety threw the pious conduct of Safi al-Din and his guide (morshed), Sheykh Zāhed, into relief. One figure, Hasan-e Mankali, the deputy and regent of Bābi Yaʿqubiān, is reported to have enjoyed using hashish and to have gathered together a group of qalandars, “unstable” men (muleh) and “similar kinds of people” into a band, whose authority was countered by that of Sheykh Zāhed.Footnote ⁶²

Another narrative from Safvat al-safāʾ takes place in a village called Puruniq, where a man by the name of Mohammad Razinān arrived out of the blue claiming to be a sheykh, enshrining his aura of spiritual authority among the villagers with the prophesy, later confirmed as true, that Soltān Mohammad (i.e. Öljeitü d. 716/1316) had died and Abu Saʿid had been made Ilkhan.Footnote ⁶³ When the matter was brought to the attention of Safi al-Din, he described it as a demonic state of affairs (in hālat-e sheytāni ast), and told his followers to search under Mohammad Razinān’s prayer-mat, where they would surely find a purse of hashish, since Razinān was an addict (nik-khvār). The people believed that Razinān was a miracle-worker (sāheb-e karāmāt) and did not wish to defy him, yet one evening a group gathered the courage to carry out Safi al-Din’s instructions and found that he was correct. With his reputation in tatters, Mohammad Razinān hot-footed it out of the village that night, never to be heard of again.

This literary and documentary evidence can be usefully compared with the Siāh Qalam paintings for several reasons. Firstly, it demonstrates that real-life events could provoke creative responses, which were on the one hand clearly art, but which on the other hand considered the potential of social change. The last narrative, concerning Mohammad Razinān, for example, has obviously literary aspects to it, intentionally or not recalling a maqāma by al-Hamadhānī, yet it forms part of a hagiographical text.Footnote ⁶⁴ Secondly, the texts bring into sharper relief aspects of social history that have proved a sticking point for the study of the paintings. They demonstrate that “moderate” Sufis, antinomian Sufis such as qalandars, peasant farmers and craftsmen all interacted with one another out of necessity. Indeed, scholarship suggests that, particularly with the rise of the Sufi orders, craftsmen and farmers were often tied to Sufi institutions.Footnote ⁶⁵ Such scholarship offers one way of bridging the gap between the findings of the researchers who have argued that the human figures represented in the Siāh Qalam paintings are craftsmen and farmers, and of those who have argued that they are “dervishes.”

As studies have highlighted previously, however, it is clear that not just one group is represented in the Siāh Qalam paintings. Several appear only once or twice: H.2153 f.106b depicts two men in the guise of Christian priests;Footnote ⁶⁶ H.2153 f.37b (IA1 fig.311) and H.2153 f.129b (309) depict qalandars, recognizable as such from their lack of facial or body hair. These men can be distinguished from other kinds of dervishes, who dance, sit on their haunches, argue or converse. Çağman argues that such figures could also be slaves.Footnote ⁶⁷ Manuals for the purchase of slaves such as al-ʿAynī’s al-Qawl al-sadīd fī ikhtiyār al-imā’ wa l-ʿabīd (A Guide Indispensable to Slaves Male and Female) testify to the variety of peoples sold into slavery in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including those from western Europe, Byzantium, India, Central Asia, North Africa, Ethiopia and the Red Sea littoral. Since al-ʿAynī discusses the nationalities that he perceived to make for productive members of the ʿolamāʾ, it is evident that non-Muslim slaves could be converted and integrated into religious life.Footnote ⁶⁸

Aspects of dress also help in the identification of a number of figures represented in the paintings. In H.2153 f.38b (IA1 fig.310), for example, the two dervishes carrying hashish pouches are recognizable from their capes, made from leopard and tiger skins. These capes appear to be the so-called pust-e takht, defined by Dehkhodā as animal skins made from either sheepskin or the fur of lions, leopards and tigers, which dervishes use as a cover or carpet when sitting and sleeping, and which they wear on their backs as they travel.

While leopard and tiger fur clothing are often connected with royal authority, they also have a known association with the claimed spiritual authority of Sufis, as can be seen in a painting from the Bodleian Majāles al-ʿoshshāq, (MS Ouseley Add. 24 f.79b) imagining the dervish followers of the poet Fakhr al-Din ʿErāqi.Footnote ⁶⁹ The painting depicts men either with the pust-e takht draped over one shoulder, or wearing more stylized leopard and tiger-fur trousers and wraps. One figure wears a hat made of white tiger fur. It is possible that, in certain contexts, hats of tiger or leopard fur are used as a kind of shorthand in painting to designate Sufis as a general class. Such hats are seen in a painting from a manuscript of ʿAttār’s Manteq al-Teyr (Metropolitan Museum 63.210.44) a consciously Sufi text illustrated in this case in the institutionalized Sufi context of late Timurid Herat, and in the frontispiece to Soltān Hoseyn Beyqarā’s copy of the Bostān of Saʿdi that is now in Cairo (Dār al-Kutub, MS Adab Fārisī 908, fols.1b–2a), again an image that represents a courtly environment in which Sufism was cultivated and institutionalized.Footnote ⁷⁰ Certain textual representations, such as Fattāhi’s Divān-e asrāri, describe pust-pushān (lit. “fur-” or “skin-wearers”) among the classes of Sufis who consume hashish.Footnote ⁷¹

If leopard and tiger fur clothing or hats can be understood as a shorthand designating Sufis, this may aid our identification of the figures in the Siāh Qalam paintings, since at least thirteen paintings depict people dressed in this manner.Footnote ⁷² These include both the “dervish” type, otherwise clothed in very little and depicted sitting on the ground, figures engaged in construction (H.2153 f.141b—IA1 fig.308), and the most common type depicted in the paintings, men wearing full-length outer coats and tall, bell-shaped hats (H.2153 f.141b—IA1 fig.308; H.2153 f.92b—IA1 fig.287; H.2160 f.52a—IA1 fig.292; H.2153 f.105a—IA1 fig.313). Tiger and leopard-fur hats are also seen in two of the larger, polychrome paintings in H.2153: the so-called “Procession” scene (H.2153 fols.3b–4a), and the scene of drunken figures transporting porcelain and metal vessels across a landscape (H.2153 f.130a). H.2153 f.37a (IA1 fig.307) is one of the few Siāh Qalam paintings to depict demons dressed in the garb of the humans. The image depicts two demons, one of whom is clothed in a long, leopard-fur cloak, watching a fight between another two. All four wear the tall hats that are characteristic of the human figures. It is tempting to view this image as further evidence that the demonic figures in the paintings are intended to parody the human ones.

In general, the bell-shaped hats worn by many of the male figures in the paintings are close to those of several Sufi orders, without being sufficiently homogenous to pinpoint one order in particular.Footnote ⁷³ Indeed, the hat worn by one male figure (H.2160 f.10a), ends in a flamboyant finial, suggesting, again, that the garb of these men is intended as a caricatured shorthand (Figure 5). This thesis is supported by a painting now in the Sackler Museum (S86.0061 f.101b), which has been dated to Tabriz ca. 1470, and which depicts a prince prostrating himself before a dervish.Footnote ⁷⁴ The dervish wears the long outer garment and tall bell-shaped hat with finial seen on the Siāh Qalam figures and, like many of them, he carries a staff.

Despite suggestions to the contrary, it appears unlikely that the men in heavy outer coats and tall hats could be antinomian Sufis, such qalandars or heydaris, whose dress, hair and behavior are generally represented in texts and later images in a uniform way: qalandars are described as being shorn of all facial and bodily hair and dressed in a bare minimum of clothing, and, as already discussed, only a couple of Siāh Qalam paintings depict figures that correspond exactly to this type.Footnote ⁷⁵ Heydaris lacked beards, cultivated long moustaches, and were infamous for wearing heavy iron rings, including on their genitalia, which they exposed.Footnote ⁷⁶ It therefore appears less likely that any of the figures represented in the paintings could be Heydaris. The suggestion made by Rogers that some of the men are Russian fur-traders is contradicted by Clavijo’s representation of a delegation to the court of Teymur of Christian fur-traders from the area under the authority of the Golden Horde.Footnote ⁷⁷ The men are described as being clad in tattered tabards of skins, and as wearing small hats attached by a cord to their chests, the overall effect making them look like “so many blacksmiths who had just left serving the forge.”Footnote ⁷⁸

If the most common figural type depicted in the Siāh Qalam paintings, the men wearing full-length outer coats and bell-shaped hats, can be considered to caricature “mainstream” Sufis, I would contend that the actions carried out by these figures largely correspond with a field of ideas that we have seen reflected in documentary evidence and satirical literature of the mid-to-late fourteenth century in particular. Despite the lack of background detail given in the Siāh Qalam scenes, the representation of different types of figures across the paintings builds up a compound picture of a social world. Again, the preceding evidence suggests that this picture is not inconsistent with social environments in the fourteenth century. Documents such as the farmān of Soltān Ahmad Jalāyer discussed above, for example, show that more organized forms of Sufism were enmeshed with communities of farmers and tradesmen. Scholars including Jürgen Paul have demonstrated how the rise of Sufi orders in Iran depended on economic coordination with peasants, and Safvat al-safāʾ suggests that Sufis were often involved in building projects and trade in the fourteenth century.Footnote ⁷⁹

Viewing Contexts

For which kind of contexts may the Siāh Qalam paintings have been produced? The use of a scroll format for a number of the paintings does not necessarily indicate that they were created for recitals or performances, since it could represent a technical experiment with form. It is also possible that images which were initially consumed within performance contexts could have been repurposed and enjoyed within the context of the book, as the albums themselves demonstrate. Nevertheless, it is still tempting to think that some of the paintings may have been used originally either in the context of live theatre, where a speaker could have built a performance around them, or to entertain groups of viewers in the absence of a performer, on account of their large size, the single scene-like nature of each image, and factors such as highlighting in gold, which may have picked up candlelight.Footnote ⁸⁰ As has been noted often, the physical wear and tear incurred by some of the paintings suggests that they were manhandled frequently.Footnote ⁸¹

It has been argued on several occasions that the figures depicted in the Siāh Qalam paintings display similarities with the puppets of shadow theatre.Footnote ⁸² The argument appears difficult to defend when the paintings are compared with the puppets from Damietta which were published by Paul Kahle, and which have shaped modern scholarship’s understanding of the props used in shadow theatre.Footnote ⁸³ Nor do the figures depicted in the paintings display any great similarity with extant puppets employed in Iranian loʿbeh-bāzi.Footnote ⁸⁴

That said, while there is no particular reason to assume that the Siāh Qalam paintings must be tied to texts, they do lend themselves to comparison with the structures and farcical themes of some shadow plays, performed texts, and connected genres of writing. For example, the sketches in Ibn Sūdūn’s Nuzha that may have been performed take place in a single setting but introduce several sets of characters.Footnote ⁸⁵ One sketch revolves around an oneiromancer and his customers in the first half, and around a young man high on hashish, who appears along with his family, in the second half.Footnote ⁸⁶ Another bipartite sketch focuses on a wedding where the bride and groom have been fed intoxicating substances, and the bride’s younger brother demands to be put in a wedding dress, before being attacked by the guests.Footnote ⁸⁷ A third consists of an exchange of insults between a hunchback and a group of ẓurafāʾ (“refined” men).Footnote ⁸⁸ These sketches do not share an obvious plot with the paintings, but what they do have in common is a focus on the farcical interactions of small groups, which are often part of a larger set of circumstances. Just as the plots of the sketches can be structured by repetitive actions, like the interactions between the oneiromancer and each of his clients, so too elements recur from painting to painting. For example, several paintings depict groups of men traveling (H.2153 f.55a—fig.2; H.2153 f.124a—IA1 fig.341; H.2153 f.38b—IA1 fig.279), or figures with livestock (H.2153 f.27b—IA1 fig.276; H.2160 f.14a—IA1 fig.280; H.2153 f.23b—IA1 fig.281; H.2153 f.113a—IA1 fig.316; H.2153 f.38a—IA1 fig.317), or paired figures in conversation (H.2153 f.29b—IA1 fig.297; H.2153 f.106b—IA1 fig.298; H.2153 f.52a—IA1 fig.302).

Demons also appear to satirical effect in some texts that have been connected with performance culture by Shmuel Moreh.Footnote ⁸⁹ For example, in al-Maʿarrī’s (d. 449/1058) Risālat al-ghufrān, Abū Hadrash, the jinni interviewed by the epistle’s protagonist, shows up faults in human behavior by cataloguing his own misadventures on earth.Footnote ⁹⁰ In the paintings, figures such as the demon depicted in H.2153 f.48a (IA1 fig.244), who appears to be lecturing or haranguing the viewer, reinforce the impression of a satire on moral standards. If the paintings are to be connected to performance culture, then continuities with the themes and subject matter of plays and performed texts may be more significant than any formal similarities with extant puppets.

Limited documentation survives concerning satirical performance in Iran and the surrounding regions during the period of inquiry, but it is possible to infer that it was practiced. Ibn Dāniyāl (d. 710/1310), whose shadow play ʿAjīb wa gharīb could be described as a satirical representation of street life, was a native of Mosul, leaving that city for Cairo at the age of nineteen.Footnote ⁹¹ ʿObeyd-e Zākāni writes of buffoons (maskharegān) being invited to weddings and sessions of audition (samāʿ) in Mongol Iran.Footnote ⁹² Whether the comedy of their performance derived from them parodying their audience, or performing a “set,” is left unstated; by contrast it is clear that the maskhara in fifteenth-century Cairo consisted of the actor declaiming, while the audience surrounded him.Footnote ⁹³ ʿAlishir Navāʾi’s discussion of story-tellers in his Mahbub al-qulub suggests their presence in late fifteenth-century Herat.Footnote ⁹⁴ There is also a significant amount of comic poetry which may have been performed in environments such as informal gatherings (majāles). For example, Boshāq Shirāzi, a boon-companion of the Timurid governor of Shiraz, Eskandar Soltān (d. 818/1415), produced intentional travesties of the work of well-known poets, to humorous effect.Footnote ⁹⁵

The notion that the Siāh Qalam paintings must have been produced entirely outside elite contexts, because they do not represent the ruling classes, may not be accurate.Footnote ⁹⁶ Satire, parody and misbehavior have a long history as essential elements of courtly culture, including through the representation of the street, an issue of relevance given the interest of the Siāh Qalam paintings in representing life in open, or public, spaces. In a Persian-speaking context, ʿObeyd-e Zākāni, a poet with court affiliations, satirized the bourgeoisie and the urban poor. In an Arabic-speaking context, qaṣā’id sāsāniyya, describing and parodying the life of beggars on the street in often lurid terms, were penned by al-Aḥnaf al-ʿUkbarī (active tenth century) and Abū Dulaf al-Khazrajī (active tenth century) for the same courtly patron, al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād (d. 385/995), and the model was taken up again by Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. c. 750/1349) in the fourteenth century to describe the lives of beggars and fraudulent Sufis.Footnote ⁹⁷ In his qaṣīda, al-Ḥillī caricatures wandering tricksters who could be seen leading the people in their devotions at one time, and urging them to consume hashish and wine at another.Footnote ⁹⁸

There is also evidence that the boundaries between royal elites and the street were more permeable than is sometimes supposed. The entry on hashish in al-Maqrīzī’s (d. 845/1441) Khiṭāṭ, for example, has a short but revealing passage on Soltān Ahmad Jalāyer:

Al-Maqrīzī’s comments are intriguing because they suggest that, in the case of Soltān Ahmad Jalāyer, there was a degree of interaction between the royal retinue and the broader public, in this case in both Cairo and Damascus. The passage calls into question the notion that the Siāh Qalam paintings cannot have been produced for a courtly audience on the grounds that they do not represent royal subjects, both because it suggests that there was a degree of interaction between the people who made up a court and the inhabitants of cities, and because it reminds us that rulers and courtiers themselves were not always (or perhaps even primarily) interested in the rarefied and the serious.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Further evidence for interaction between royal retinues and the urban poor is provided by the historian al-Ghiyāth al-Baghdādī, who reports that Soltān Ahmad Jalāyer constructed a lodge for Qalandars (al-qalandarkhāna) above the bank of the Tigris in Baghdad, and that this building was used for a marriage by the royal gholām Bakhshāʾesh in the year 813/1410.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Since we can infer a degree of social interaction between courts and Sufi groups, and since the boundaries between courtly and popular culture may have been blurred at certain times, the paintings could be viewed less as an absolute condemnation of popular practices and more as a drier mockery of trends with which both courtiers and laymen would have been familiar.