ʿABD-AL-ʿAZĪZ B. ʿABD-AL-VAHHĀB, painter of the Safavid period. According to the historian Qāẓī Aḥmad, both father and son were excellent painters from Kāšān. The son owed his artistic training to Shah Ṭahmāsp (930-84/1524-76) and was employed in the royal workshops at Tabrīz, but he was severely punished by the king for counterfeiting a seal, and had his ears and nose cut off. On the other hand, the historian Moṣṭafā-ʿAlī tells us that he was born in Isfahan, that Shah Ṭahmāsp was his pupil, and that he lost his nose for attempting to flee to India with another painter and a page.
A. Sakisian claims that the portrait of a prince in a black robe and a red cloak, holding a rose bud, is signed by his hand as follows: “painted by the humble ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz, pupil of the master Behzād” (unpublished, Istanbul. Topkapi Saray, Album no. 47936). The depiction of a ruler in his palace ayvān, with dignitaries, courtiers, and servants carrying and preparing food in the foreground, bears in the upper left-hand palace window the apocryphal signature “a work of the Ḵᵛāǰa ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz” (Plate II). This attribution is not in doubt, and the style and form of the signature are strongly influenced by Behzād. The ruler portrayed here could be Shah Ṭahmāsp (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. Pers. 1572, p. 2). More questionable is E. Kühnel’s attribution of two miniatures showing Jamšīd on his throne and Zaḥḥāk before Farīdūn (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. Pers. 489, fols. 558r and 566v), since they do not display the same artistic quality. But the painter may in fact have had a hand in their production.
Bibliography:
I. Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits Safavis, Paris, 1959, p. 26.
Qāżī Aḥmad, tr., pp. 30, 186, 188.
Moṣṭafā-ʿAlī, Manāqeb-e honarvarān, ed. Maḥmūd Kamāl, Istanbul, 1926, pp. 65-66.
E. Kühnel in Survey of Persian Art, p. 1873.
E. Blochet, Les enluminures des manuscrits orientaux de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1926, pp. 115ff., plates 64b, 65, 66.
Ḥabīb Eṣfāhānī, Ḵaṭṭ o ḵaṭṭāṭān, Constantinople, 1305/1887-88, p. 260.
A. Sakisian, La minature persane du XII e au XVII e siècle, Paris, pp. 112, 120-21.
(D. Duda)
Originally Published: December 15, 1982
Last Updated: July 13, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 1, pp. 97-99
D. Duda, “Abd-Al-Aziz B. Abd-Al-Vahhab,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/1, pp. 97-99; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abd-al-aziz-b-abd-al-vahhab (accessed on 12 January 2014).
