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This dissertation conducts the first systematic study of illustrated Shahnama manuscripts from Qajar Iran (1789-1925). The Shahnama is a Persian epic, composed by the poet Firdawsi (940-1020 or 1025) in the eleventh century. Over time, the Shahnama became the most frequently illustrated Persian text and manuscript copies of the epic continued to be made in nineteenth-century Iran. However, rather than studying the continued production of illustrated manuscripts, scholarship on Qajar Iran has thus far privileged monumental oil paintings, photography, and lithography. I propose that in nineteenth-century Iran, illustrated Shahnama manuscripts were a potent tool for the ruling class and other ambitious individuals to express and build their identity, lineage, and power, despite the availability of other—and more public—ways to communicate the same message. A vibrant network of manuscript painters, who also worked in other media, produced these illustrated Shahnama copies in dialogue with novel forms of cultural production. Specifically, I argue that illustrated manuscripts and lithographed editions of the epic were created by overlapping circles of artists and they demonstrate how Iran and India were part of a shared cultural zone. By explaining how these two media existed in a dialogical relationship, affecting one another, this project challenges the narrative of teleological progression from one medium to the next. I center my discussion around eleven illustrated Shahnama examples and examine the manuscripts both as individual units and as interrelated parts of a group. I focus on their contexts of production, including patronage, intended audience, and artist workshop and pedagogical relationships. In Chapter 1, I study two early-nineteenth-century illustrated manuscripts (Or. 4906 in the British Library and Lewis O.58 in the Free Library) and explain how each underscored the Qajars’ royal identity and dynastic legitimacy during a period of intense competition for the throne and territorial instability. Chapter 2 explains that military leaders and elite administrators were key drivers of illustrated Shahnama manuscript production. I anchor my discussion around MS 535 in the Matenadaran Library in Armenia to outline how non-royally-commissioned manuscripts mirror the patrons’ political aspirations. Chapter 2 also traces the shared motifs that link one manuscript to another and shows that Shiraz was a major production center for illustrated Shahnama manuscripts. The visual repetitions and adaptations I identify in these manuscripts show that the period’s landscape of artistic production was a tightly woven network of artists’ pedagogical and working relationships. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Shahnama books from the latter half of the nineteenth century, including lithographed editions printed in Bombay and illustrated manuscripts made in Iran. Images in these books display the flexibility of the artists as they began to work on both manuscripts and lithographed books; developed unique compositions rooted in the cultural and economic ties connecting Shiraz and Bombay; and expressed artistic agency and authorship as they produced for a speculative market. The four chapters together offer a fresh perspective on the Qajar dynasty’s imperial and ideological usages of the epic, the period’s active non-royal patronage and vibrant workshop practices, and Qajar society’s cultural connections to India, all of which distinctively contributed to building a visual language unique to nineteenth-century Iran.

Unlike in the Ottoman world, the exercise of judicial power in nineteenth century Qajar Iran was not contingent upon formal appointment by the political authority. In accordance with the dominant Ṣūlī theory, it derived from the perceived intellectual ability of a cleric to infer the ruling of God (Ḥukmullāh) from the sources of Twelver Shī'ī law through deductive effort (ijtihād). Like the Ottoman qāḍī, the Qajar Uṣūlī jurist or mujtahid known as Ḥākim-i shar' in a judicial context had both notarial and adjudicative powers. The Qajar jurist could thus authenticate, register, annul legal documents and act as an arbiter in lawsuits. The Qajar jurist could also, however, issue a legal opinion. This was the role of the muftī – a separate judicial office in other parts of the Islamic world. Qajar jurists exercised their extensive judicial powers through a network of informal sharī'a courts, which they came to operate in most Iranian towns and cities largely independent of direct state control. While the notarial aspects of the Qajar sharī'a court have received some scholarly attention, this study aims to investigate the role of the jurist and his ruling (Ḥukm-i shar') in sharī'a litigation (murāfa'a pl. –āt).