Abstract
Miniatures dedicated to the hero Rustam are often the heart of iconographic programs in the 15thcentury , under the Timurids and Turkmen. The presentation focuses on this emblematic figure from Ferdowsi's Shāhnāme, which evokes that part of the Saka epic integrated into Iranian legends, while questioning both the pictorial elaboration of this figure and the functions it played in illuminated copies.
One of the first features emphasized by the miniaturists is the foreign identity of the hero, depicted as red-haired and bearded, an archaic, violent and brutal figure, in dichotomy with that of the impeccable and perfect king. Rustam the Saka is linked to ferocity, to the blood that inaugurates his birth, and embodies the second function in the service of the kings of Persia. He is the black hunter whose haft khwān (seven feats) are carried out on the frontiers, the author of singular military exploits indebted to his exceptional vigor. Along with his father Zāl, he also brings aid and advice to the kings of Persia, but above all he embodies the king's surrogate body, confronting the impure in the form of otherworldly or frontier characters like himself, monsters, dīv-s, sorcerers, cannibals..
If the origin of the kings of the Zabūlistān is Seistan, the region of the Helmand River, Rustam is de facto the guardian of the royal glory that resides in the waters (O. Davidson), from which perhaps comes his waterproof garment, imputrescible like the skin of beavers (S. Shahbazi); moreover, both the hero and his family are at least, onomastically, linked to the waters.
However, it is in the black/white opposition underlined by various works (W. Hanaway, Dick Davis) that the character is built, in relation to his father Zāl, albino, master of wisdom and magician, ward of the Sīmurgh who is also the mentor of her son to whom she offers the famous palangina (the panther-skin garment) and the protection of the mysterious bird.
Despite a tragic fate attributed to his use of magic, his pride and perhaps the outdated values he and his family embodied, the "elephant-bodied" hero remained popular with the Turco-Mongol princes and aristocrats who commissioned his illuminated manuscripts, so much so that the painter of the Shāhnāma of Bāysunghur Mirza, grandson of Tamerlan (Tehran, Gulistan Palace Museum, ms 716, dated 1435), paid him a discreet tribute, presenting his tomb in the image of that of the great Tīmūr, with whom an obvious analogy seems to be built up through the images.
