Ibrahim Mirza

Biography

Ibrahim Mirza was a grandson of the founder of the Safavid dynasty, Ismail I (1487–1524) by Ismail's fourth son, prince Bahram Mirza Safavi (1518–1550), who was governor of Khorasan (1529–32), Gilan (1536–37) and Hamadan (1546–49), and also a commissioner of manuscripts. Two of his uncles and two of his brothers rebelled against Ismail's successor, Tahmasp I. Ibrahim Mirza, however, who grew up at court, was a long-time favourite of Tahmasp, and remained loyal, and was appointed governor of Mashhad at the age of 16, arriving there in March 1556. The appointment had a nominal element — Tahmasp himself had received his first governorship at the age of four — but was also political, connected to Ibrahim Mirza's mother, who came from the Shirvanshah dynasty.

In 1560, he married Tahmasp's eldest daughter by a concubine, Gawhar Sultan Begum (died 1577); they had one daughter, Gawhar Shad Begum (died 1587). Around the end of 1562 he was travelling to Ardabil to take up the governorship there, when he was reported to the shah for his reaction to a joke that angered the shah, and the appointment was switched to the much less important governorship of Qa'en, in Khorasan. In 1564 and 1565, he had to suppress a major tribal revolt of the Takkalu, who used a slave army numbering 10,000.

After a few years, Shah Tahmasp's anger had subsided, and Ibrahim Mirza was re-appointed Governor of Mashhad by 1566. He was removed again "within a year or two, apparently for his failure to assist in rescuing the shah’s besieged son, Solṭān Moḥammad Mīrzā". He was sent to govern Sabzevar until 1574 when, by now 34, he was recalled to the capital at Qazvin to serve as grand master of ceremonies (Eshik-aqasi-bashi). When Tahmasp died in 1576, Ibrahim Mirza was involved in the struggles at court over the succession, finally supporting the successful Ismail II, who appointed him keeper of the royal seal (mohrdār).

On 23 February 1577, Ibrahim Mirza was killed in Qazvin, along with several other princes, by the order of Ismail II in a general clear-out of potential rivals. As the new shah, Ismail II, who may have been mentally unstable after spending 20 years in prison, had soon alienated the Qizilbash who were powerful at court and especially his influential sister Pari Khan Khanum. The Qizilbash had begun to look to Ibrahim Mirza as a possible replacement for Ismail, who died on 24 November, supposedly after consuming poisoned opium.

Patron of the arts

Like other Safavid princes Ibrahim Mirza practiced as a poet, artist and calligrapher, and was a patron of poets, musicians and other artists, but he was especially important for the atelier he maintained for the production of illuminated manuscripts. When Shah Tahmasp, previously the leading patron of Persian painting at the time, ceased to commission manuscripts in the 1540s, Ibrahim Mirza's workshop was for a period the most important in Iran. As a poet he wrote several thousand lines, in Persian and Turkish.

The Freer Jami contains statements, by the two calligraphers who copied the text, that it was copied at Mashhad. Another source states that one of them, Malik al-Daylami, went with Ibrahim Mirza to Mashhad in 1556, and stayed for 18 months, before being recalled by the shah. He also tutored Ibrahim in calligraphy. Despite requests from the prince, Malik was not allowed back to Mashhad before his death in 1561 or 1562. The second calligrapher, Shah Mahmud Nishapuri, who had written the last major commission of Tahmasp, the Khamsa of Nizami, British Library Or. 2265, died in Mashad in 1564 or 1565.

There are 28 full-page miniatures, none signed or dated, but modern attributions (not always finding consensus among scholars) have been made to artists including Shaykh Muhammad, an important artist who is recorded as joining Ibrahim Mirza in Sabzavar, and after Ibrahim's death returned to working for the shahs. Shaykh Muhammad may have been responsible for the individualized faces in certain pictures, atypical of Persian painting, and looking forward to the Mughal miniature, a tradition that was beginning just in these years.

Other artists from Tahmasp's atelier joined the service of the Mughal emperor Humayun. Indeed, one artist, Mirza Ali, is claimed by Stuart Cary Welch and others to have contributed to the Freer Jami, while the theory of Barbara Brend that he was the same person as Abd al-Samad would place him working for Humayun and his son Akbar in just these years, first in Kabul and then in India. Another artist who worked for the prince was Ali Asghar, father of Reza Abbasi, the leading artist of the next generation, who was born around 1565, perhaps at Mashhad.

Welch suggests that some paintings were made in Qazvin by older artists, such as Aqa Mirak and Muzaffar Ali, who remained there and sent to Mashhad., but the account by another of the prince's calligraphers, Qazi Ahmad, though admittedly full of extravagant praise, makes it clear that Ibrahim Mirza took a good-sized contingent of artists and craftsmen with him to his posts, and spent much time among them. Other artists working on the manuscript have been given the titles of painters A and D, from their work on earlier manuscripts for Tahmasp. Ibrahim Mirza may also have commissioned manuscripts in Qazvin in the 1570s, the best period of production there. The miniatures in the book are crowded with figures, and in the example opposite textiles, too much so for many critics. It appears Ibrahim Mirza identified himself with Yusuf (Joseph) and the images of him are probably intended as portraits. The manuscript has been described as "the last truly great one produced under the Safavid dynasty".