It is possible to find a religious explanation for his putting on a shirt embroidered with verses from the Qur'an when marching into battle, but not for the respect he showed to astrological predictions and the dreams he had, and to which he paid heed in reaching decisions. Such facets of his character are of course of no consequence in estimating his personality.
Of more interest is his relationship to art, especially representational art of various kinds; and this, of course, touches on religious issues in a number of respects. We are referring not to sacred architecture or its decor, mentioned above, but particularly to painting, which clearly implies some attitude to the Islamic prohibition of visual representation. Reference has been made to Tahmasp's service to book miniatures: we should add that as he grew old, and under the influence of increasing bigotry, he turned more and more away from this interest. The case was quite different with Shah 'Abbas. He seems to have shared neither the personal engagement of his grandfather nor his religious scruples.
It is natural that a man who had spent the greater part of his youth among the productions and abiding stimuli of Timurid art in Herat and Mashhad was not without sensitivity to the artistic expressions of his time. Indeed we can still see in the Shaikh Lutf -Allah mosque, with its textual scrolls and lacy roof ornamentation, a personal involvement of the shah in architecture and its development similar to that of his grandfather in the sphere of art; and with the transfer of the capital from Qazvin to Isfahan the workshops attached to the royal court also had to move, and the artists employed there along with them. Thus it came about that the great painter Riza-yi 'AbbasI was able in Isfahan to develop an entirely new style, differing from that of Qazvin, in whose traditions he had grown up and worked hitherto. It is plain that this sort of thing did not take place without the active interest and encouragement of the ruler.
The latter's influence, however, hitherto a decisive factor in artistic developments, begins — precisely under Shah 'Abbas I — to decline, and to decline in favour of commercial influences. This is most evident in the sphere of ceramics, textiles, and carpet designing, all of them up to this time areas of largely individual creativity. With the introduction of workshops for export production — a departure for which the shah was responsible — their products lost their value as individual artistic achievements and sank to the level of industrial products. This change was also felt in book illustration. What was now produced in this sphere was no longer made for the ruler alone, or at any rate for governors of princely rank in the provincial capitals, but also for other customers, who included parties with a commercial interest.
Recent attempts to rescue the Safavids from the odium of indifference to creative writing, if not indeed of its neglect or suppression, show that Shah 'Abbas took a positive attitude at all events to individual poets, for example to Sharaf al-Din Hasan Shifa'i (d. 1037/1628), whom he appointed poet laureate, or to Shami, whom he had weighed in gold as a sign of his recognition, and to Kamall Sabzavari (d. 1020/1611 —12), who celebrated his exploits in a verse epic entitled Shah-nama or 'Abbas-ndma. However, since relationships of this kind form the exception rather than the rule, they signify little. The criticism of Safavid poetry, whether justified or not, as lacking in originality, full of banalities and "endless verbal niceties" is not shaken by such evidence. Emigration of Persian poets, particularly to India, which had been going on at least since the time of Shah Tahmasp, did not cease under Abbas. Indian courts, at which the old interest in courtly poetry continued, offered at any rate better opportunities than Isfahan with its Safavid traditions, and not only for poets but for other artists such as calligraphers and miniature painters, whose success was largely dependent on the ruler's attitudes to aesthetic matters.
The shah's interest in the intellectual and artistic culture of his time is unmistakeably evident, sometimes in the form of unique works of art, and certainly also in the large number of artistic achievements that appeared. But it is also unmistakeably the case that this influence was exercised, if not exclusively, at any rate largely, to resuscitate an older heritage, that of the Timurids; in other words, it was not always based on original conceptions. And in addition, these reversions to the past, however impressive they may be when seen from a distance or at a casual glance, reveal on closer inspection a more or less hasty manner of execution, a lesser degree of thoroughness than the originals, and the use of less costly materials.
Cultural Icons in Early Modern Safavid Persia
