"The Four Knights of Kai Khusrau in the Mountains", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)dated 741 AH/1341 CE
Having given up his throne, the just king Kai Khusrau rode into the mountains with a band of his paladins and vanished at a spring, after warning them to turn back before the snow came. More about this work
About this work
Having given up his throne, the just king Kai Khusrau rode into the mountains with a band of his paladins and vanished at a spring, after warning them to turn back before the snow came. The knights who stayed behind were caught in a blizzard and died. This page comes from a Shahnama dated 1341 and made in Shiraz, where painters of the period worked in a bold, economical style, with the text set in columns around the picture. Ferdowsi’s epic of the kings of Iran, completed around 1010, was the most frequently illustrated book in the Persian-speaking world.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Watercolour
- Pigment in gum arabic, thinned with water and laid in transparent washes. Nothing white is painted: the light is the paper showing through.
- Ink on paper
- Ink made from soot and animal glue, ground with water on an inkstone. A single brush can give a hair-fine line or a broad wash, and nothing can be corrected.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 36.113.2
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Codices
- Department
- Islamic Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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