Traditions & vernacular · 1843–2012 · Middle East & North Africa
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)
Also known as Persian Popular Narrative Imagery (Qajar Lithographed Books & Coffeehouse Painting), Qajar lithographed book illustration, Chāp-e sangi illustration (Persian lithograph illustration), Coffeehouse painting (Naqqāshi-ye qahveh-khāneh), Khayāl-pardāzi ("dream-work", the coffeehouse painters' own term)
Iran's popular picture-stories in two media. From 1843, lithographed books printed handwritten Nastaʿlīq verse and pen drawings in one process: framed scenes in ruled text columns, hatched and dotted. Mirza Ali-Qoli Khoi, the most prolific illustrator, drew over 2,000 scenes for epics, romances and Karbala martyrologies in 1846–55. From the 20th century Hossein Qollar-Aqasi, Mohammad Modabber and pupils, heirs to storytellers' screens (pardeh) and taʿziyeh, painted epic and Karbala cycles on canvases for coffeehouses where storytellers performed, each figure named, into the 2010s.
Use it with care
Many of these images depict Imam Husayn, his family and the martyrs of Karbala, whose mourning is at the heart of Shiʿa devotion, and coffeehouse paintings of Karbala still hang in tekyehs and are shown during Muharram; some lithographs also depict the Prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims consider forbidden. The lithographers often veiled the faces of the Prophet, ʿAli and Husayn or ringed a holy face with a halo, so keep that convention and never supply a face for the Prophet, ʿAli or Husayn. Do not use these figures as decoration, parody or throwaway packaging, and have any Persian or Arabic text, including names of God, the Prophet and the Imams, read by a fluent reader. Coffeehouse paintings are the work of named painters and their pupils, so credit them, and commission Iranian painters and calligraphers rather than tracing their work.
01
How it works
- Write the text and draw the pictures for the same lithographic print, so that columns of Nastaʿlīq verse, ruled frames and illustrations lock together on one page in a single black ink, the scribe slanting lines of verse to fill any space left around a picture.
- Build tone with pen hatching and dots instead of colour: hatch the ground, floors and air, and fill an empty sky with dots, as the illustrators customarily did, so that each framed scene reads as densely filled.
- Draw stock figures from the Persian painting repertoire: stereotyped beauties, a finger to the lips in bewilderment, and the villains of Karbala, such as Shemr, with boar's teeth; veil the faces of the Prophet, ʿAli and Husayn, or ring a holy youth such as Qasem with a halo, often the only sign that a battle is sacred rather than epic.
- Head chapters with illuminated panels and frame scenes with ruled borders; in a de luxe edition fill the margins too, as the Khamsa of 1848 does with almost 300 tiny fabulous creatures in triangles.
- On coffeehouse canvases, gather a whole Shahnameh or Karbala cycle into one large oil painting in bright colour, with several episodes side by side, the climax sometimes in a larger central panel, and each figure and event named beside it, so that the cycle reads with or without a storyteller (naqqal) in front of it.
Lithographic presses of Tehran and Tabriz, Iran, from the 1840s; then the coffeehouses and tekyehs of Tehran, where Hossein Qollar-Aqasi, Mohammad Modabber and their pupils painted in the 20th century, carrying on storytellers' painted screens (pardeh), taʿziyeh and tekyeh wall painting, and, in Qollar-Aqasi's case, the training of his father's tile-design workshop
02
Its design choices
From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.
- Layout & composition
- Space & hierarchy
- Colour
- Form & shape
- Surface & texture
- Medium & production
- Tone & intent
- Avoids
- Generous white space, Isolated object, Typography only, Straight photography, Non-representational, Ornament-free
Palette
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Typefaces
Nastaʿlīq written by the lithographic scribes (kātebs), for verse and prose
Naskh, used for the Qur'an and some lithographed texts
Hand-painted name labels beside each figure in coffeehouse paintings
Known for
Maktabi, Leyli va Majnun (1259 AH/1843), the earliest illustrated Persian lithographed book
Mirza Ali-Qoli Khoi, Khamsa of Nezami (completed Shawwal 1264/September 1848; calligraphy by ʿAli-Asghar Tafreshi)
38 narrative illustrations by Marzolph's 1997 count (39 in his later one), a large picture of the lithographic press at work and almost 300 tiny fabulous creatures in triangles in the margins; for B. W. Robinson the most lavishly decorated Persian lithographed book
Mirza Ali-Qoli Khoi, 57 illustrations to the first Shahnameh lithographed in Iran (Tehran, colophon 1267 AH/1850), in four columns of verse written by Mostafa-Qoli Soltan Kajuri, with teeth bared for agony and wrath, a hallmark of his alongside tiny flying birds and a simple meandered frame
Jowhari, Tufan al-boka, a Karbala martyrology that Mirza Ali-Qoli Khoi illustrated in more than ten editions between 1848 and 1855
Ostad Sattar, 57 illustrations to the Tabriz Shahnameh of 1275 AH/1858, in six columns of verse written by ʿAskar-Khan Ordubadi
Mohammad Modabber, Journey of Moslem b. ʿAqil to Kufa (c. 1950), oil on canvas, 204 × 253 cm, in 30 numbered panels with the martyr's death in the largest, central one (National Museum of Iran, Tehran)
Hossein Qollar-Aqasi, The Killing of Sohrab by Rostam (mid-20th century), oil on canvas, 122 × 189 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2022.171.1
Mohammad Farahani (1937–2012), Qollar-Aqasi's protégé, oil and reverse-glass scenes from the Shahnameh and Karbala
Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran
03
Where it comes from, and what it’s close to
Before it
The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.
After it
The styles that grew out of it.
No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.
Alike in its design choices
Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.
04
Sources
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'Ḵoʾi, Mirzā ʿAliqoli', Encyclopædia Iranica (2015), https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khoi-mirza-aliqoli
- Olimpiada P. Shcheglova, 'Lithography i. In Persia', Encyclopædia Iranica (2009), https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/lithography-i-in-persia
- Ulrich Marzolph, Narrative Illustration in Persian Lithographed Books (Brill, Handbook of Oriental Studies 60, 2001)
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'Mirzā ʿAli-Qoli Xuʾi: Master of Lithograph Illustration', Annali (Istituto Orientale di Napoli) 57/1–2 (1997), pp. 183–202, https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/files/37Marzolph_Mirza-Ali-Qoli-Khoi.pdf (Khamsa of 1848, 38 illustrations; Robinson's 'most lavishly decorated'; Khoi's signature features, p. 193; hatching for ground, floor and air)
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'Illustrated Persian Lithographic Editions of the Shâhnâme', Edebiyât 13/2 (2003), pp. 177–198, https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/files/55Marzolph_Shahname.pdf (Bombay model of 1846; dotted skies; empty space customarily filled with dots or lines; stereotyped beauties and bared teeth in Khoi's Shahnameh)
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'Lithographic Illustrations of the Qajar Period as a Source of Inspiration for Contemporary Iranian Art', in Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artists, https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/files/62Marzolph_Lithographs-Contemporary.pdf (Khamsa of 1264: 39 illustrations, the press picture and almost 300 fabulous creatures in triangles; Mesghali)
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'The Pictorial Representation of Shiʿi Themes in Lithographed Books of the Qajar Period', https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/files/88Marzolph_ShiiteThemes.pdf (veiled faces and haloes; Shemr's boar's teeth)
- Ulrich Marzolph, 'Bahram Gur's Spectacular Marksmanship and the Art of Illustration in Qajar Lithographed Books', https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/files/41Marzolph_Bahram-Gur.pdf (the finger to the lips in bewilderment; page layout and diagonal lines of calligraphy)
- Ulrich Marzolph, project page 'Mirzā ʿAli-Qoli Khoʾi', https://wwwuser.gwdguser.de/~umarzol/mirza-ali.html (active 1846–55, more than 2,000 illustrations)
- Ulrich Marzolph and Roxana Zenhari, Mirzā ʿAli-Qoli Khoʾi: The Master Illustrator of Persian Lithographed Books in the Qajar Period (Brill, 2022, 2 vols)
- University of Michigan, History of Art, 'Coffeehouse Painting (Naqqashi-ye qahveh-khaneh)', exhibition text, https://khamseen-emamzadeh-yahya-varamin.hart.lsa.umich.edu/en_coffeehouse.php
- Mehdi Abedi and Michael M. J. Fischer, 'Revolutionary Posters and Cultural Signs', Middle East Report 159 (MERIP, 1989), https://www.merip.org/1989/07/revolutionary-posters-and-cultural-signs/
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hussein Qular Aqasi, 'The Killing of Suhrab by Rustam', M.2022.171.1, https://collections.lacma.org/object/224786
- Wikipedia, 'Hossein Qollar-Aqasi' (his father, the tile-pattern designer Ali-Reza Qollar-Aghasi, and his workshop training), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Qollar-Aqasi; 'Mohammad Modabber', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Modabber; 'Mohammad Farahani' (oil and églomisé works, Reza Abbasi Museum), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Farahani
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