Ming Studies

ISSN: 0147-037X (Print) 1759-7595 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ymng20

Representing Ming China in Fifteenth-Century

Persianate Painting

Yusen Yu

To cite this article: Yusen Yu (2018) Representing Ming China in Fifteenth-Century Persianate
Painting, Ming Studies, 2018:78, 57-73, DOI: 10.1080/0147037X.2018.1505587

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0147037X.2018.1505587

Published online: 27 Sep 2018.

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Ming Studies, 78, 57–73, October 2018

REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-

CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING
YUSEN YU
Cluster Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg University,
Heidelberg, Germany

This article preliminarily analyzes a corpus of fifteenth-century Persianate paintings

preserved in the Topkapi and Diez albums. It investigates the album paintings as the
pictorial evidence to the Persianate first-hand encounter with Ming China. The
paintings feature their emphasis on physiognomic verisimilitude of the painted
figures and faithful description of their props and clothing. As a totality, they formu-
late the proto-ethnographic knowledge on China in the Persianate consciousness of
this period. The last section on the representation of Chinese beauty, on the other
hand, shows how pre-existing stereotyped imagination merged with the first-hand
observation.
KEYWORDS: Ming China, Persianate painting, the Timurids, diplomacy, represen-
tation of the other

In the study of the pre-modern encounters between China and the outside worlds,
little attention has so far been dedicated to historical representations of China in
any foreign contexts before seventeenth century, although Chinese visualization of
“the other” in its tradition, especially various tribute illustrations (zhigong tu 职贡
图), has been frequently discussed. The following pages will focus on a selected
corpus of paintings produced, presumably from the Timurid realm (ca. 1370–
1507) and provide some preliminary observations on the visual typologies in the Per-
sianate representation of the Ming China. It argues that, these images, as a totality,
function as the “visual vestige of travel,”1 a term coined by Susan Babaie, i.e. the pic-
torial evidences of their first-hand experience of and observation on the “Great
Ming” (Daiming in Persian sources). In specific gender-oriented subjects, however,
the ways in which painted types were represented enormously referenced previously
existing stereotypes prevailing in the pre-modern Persianate cultural sphere.
Through the construction of these themes, China and the Chinese were visually con-
ceptualized in a Persianate context.
Persianate pictorial allusions to China (Khitay, Chı̄n, or Machı̄n)2 begun to
appear in manuscript illustration of Ilkhanid period, but they, including the
section on China in Rashı̄d al-Dı̄n’ Jāmiʿ al-Tawārı̄kh (Compendium of Chronicles),
suggest little concern for the physiognomic verisimilitude of the painted figures, as
well as accuracy in representing their habilatory details.3 This tradition of depicting
continued in the manuscript paintings of the Timurid period, as seen in the Timurid

© The Society for Ming Studies 2018 DOI 10.1080/0147037X.2018.1505587

58 Y. YU

added illustrations in Jāmiʿ al-Tawārı̄kh (H. 1653 and 1654), or Majmaʿ

al-Tawārikh (Compendium of Histories), written by court historian Hafiz-i Abru
and modeled after Rashı̄d al-Dı̄n, in which the Chinese figures seem to be rendered
in a repetitive manner,4 with relatively limited palette, suggestive of the painters’ dis-
interest in the visual likenesses of his subjects.
Another painting repertoire, which is the focus of this essay, represents a newly
formulated interest on representing Chinese figures in more faithful manner. Some
of them demonstrate the conscious emphasis on proto-ethnographic values. They
are found mainly in the albums preserved in the Topkapi Palace Library (H. 2153
and 2160) and the so-called Diez Albums in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. Com-
pared with the highly modularized figural motifs in the manuscript convention,
Chinese figures in album paintings can be identified based on often portrait-like ren-
dering of facial features and accurate description of props and clothing. They fur-
thermore differ from the centuries-later Safavid renderings of European figures,
which appear to be indistinguishable from representations of local Persians.5 There-
fore, the “Chinese-ness” of the painted figures is emphasized.
Three roughly classified categories, among extant examples in greater quan-
tities, will be discussed in this paper: larger-scale images that deal with the subjects
of Ming embassies, portrait-like depictions of the subalterns within the Ming
society, and more conventional renderings of Chinese women that resonate collec-
tive imagery of the motif rooted in traditional poetic context, each offering a fra-
mework to visualize China as the other in the albums as a newly emerging
mnemonic media.

VISUALIZING DIPLOMACY
Pictorial scenes of Chinese envoys bearing gifts, visually to fill in details textual list-
ings of objects, demonstrate the increased the presence of the Ming embassies in
Central Asia and Iran during the fifteenth century.6 Recorded in the Veritable
Records of the Ming (mingshilu 明实录), from 1395 to 1463, a total number of
twenty official embassies were dispatched to the Timurid courts in Samarqand
and Herat.7 The members in the Ming embassies to the Timurid realm consisted
of three types of bureaucrats: the eunuchs, the mid- to high-rank military officers,
and the lower-level civil officials. The surviving samples show that only the military
officers were depicted in paintings, testifying that they constituted the largest group
among the Ming embassies in general.
In Timurid images, the Ming embassies often appear in pairs or trios, as contrast
to later Ottoman, Safavid or Mughal grander representations of similar gift-giving
scenes with more descriptive details of foreign entourage,8 although the actual
number of the Ming entourage reached to hundreds. A detached double-page fron-
tispiece (Figure 1), possibly from a Timurid copy of Shahnāma or the Book of Kings
made for Prince ʿAbdallāh,9 illustrates a trio of Ming envoys on the upper-left corner
of the whole composition, which depicts a princely hunting scene. Their physiog-
nomic verisimilitude much concerns the painter.10 Their thin moustache, reminiscent
of painted officials in contemporaneous Ming paintings of bureaucrats, obviously
differs from the heavy beard of the Timurid nobles. Their black headgears, called
the wushamao (black gauze cap), as well as their robes embroidered with rank
badges, also attest their official status.
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 59

FIG. 1. Ming officers seated in princely feast in a garden, folio from the double-page frontis-
piece of a Shahnama of Firdausi, fifteenth century, Shiraz, Iran, Cleveland Museum of Art
(1956.10.a), cited in Eleanor Sims with Boris I. Marshak and Ernst J. Grube, Peerless
Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
2002), 115.

The attendants, in the lower left seem to, along the river, transport Chinese por-
celain, presumably brought by the Ming embassies. Whereas the Timurid nobles
kneel on decorated carpets situated in a closer place to the prince under the tent,
the Chinese envoys knelt in a row on the ground, suggestive of their lower esteem
received in this courtly gathering. Although the composition itself follows the manu-
script narrative convention in terms of special organization, the image does serve as
a record of the reception towards Ming embassies, on which most official textual
sources are silent. Indeed, its documentary value is testified by one of the poems
composed by the Ming envoy Chen Cheng 陈诚 (1365–1457), Arrival at the
Garden of Ulugh Beg the King of Samarqand (zhi samaerhan guozhu wulubo
guoyuan 至撒马儿罕国主兀鲁伯果园), in which he describes his astonishment at
the Persian custom that the king “sits across-legged on the ground when he receives
audiences.”11
Motifs in other, more standard, Timurid image of receiving gifts from foreign
ambassadors, as a distinct genre, share two basic features that are relatively easy
to identify: one is the exotic beast, often gigantic in shape; the other is one or two
foreign envoys, with their habilatory elements, such as hats, faithfully rendered
(Figure 2). They are characteristic of the relatively larger size (compared with
common manuscript illustrations), the performative rendering, and a sense of
exotica that the subject matters represent. The mechanism of such image making,
as well as its agency, mirrors that of many Ming court paintings of similar subjects.
Their parallel visual strategies and even shared aesthetic preference remind us of the
complexity of the making of gift-presenting images from Eurasian perspective,
especially given that such images were also objects on circulation across boundaries.
60 Y. YU

FIG. 2. Timur Receiving Gifts from the Egyptian Ambassadors, left-hand folio (fol. 399b) of
a double-page composition manuscript of the Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Dı̄n ʿAlı̄ Yazdı̄, 1436,
Worcester Art Museum (1935.26), cited in Gifts of the Sultan: The Art of Giving at the
Islamic Courts, ed. Linda Komaroff (New Haven and London: Yale University Press and
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011), 106.

A re-mounted image in the Bahram Mirza album (H. 2154, fol. 34r and 33v, the
Topkapi Palace Library) (Figure 3), showing two Ming military officers and a
white steed, exemplifies the fluidity in terms of provenance. The lion insignia on
their badges respectively shows the status of the as a first or second-rank military
officer, and the other as a third or fourth-rank.12 The composition, representing
the officer of higher rank in front leading the steed by the bridle, sensitively captures
the hierarchy, demonstrates the painter’ familiarity and sensibility with his subject. A
mid-sixteenth-century inscription, added by the album maker Dust Muhammad,
claims that it is “from the collection of good works by the Chinese masters.”
Although no single Chinese painting survives in Persianate collections that can be
paired with a recorded textual response,13 its compositional resemblance to Ming
paintings of auspicious subjects, such as Tribute Giraffe from Bengal in the Palace
Museum, Taipei, supplemented by the Timurid mentioning of a horse painting
brought by the Ming embassy to Herat,14 helps to attribute it to certain early
Ming court painter,15 although more likely it is one of the many Persian copies of
the original work.
The painting differs from the Tribute Giraffe from Bengal, and a series of other
Ming court works of similar subject matters of tribute beasts,16 in two important
yet neglected aspects, the one concerns the format and size: a standard Ming
court hanging scroll, in which format they are commonly mounted, features its
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 61

FIG. 3. Remounted painting of Two Ming Military Officers with a white horse, album leaf,
pigment and silk, 39.9 × 28.2 cm (figures), 49 × 30.4 (horse), Ming China or Persian copy in
Central Asia or Iran, ca. 1400–1500, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 2154, fol.
33b–34a, cited in David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to
Collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 296–297.

sheer size, in which lengthy inscriptions recording auspicious deeds, composed by

favored court officials, occupy sometimes half of the whole composition, but the
re-mounted album image under consideration, as a totality, merely measures
about 50 by 58 cm. It’s supposedly accompanying inscription, if its Chinese prove-
nance is accepted, had been trimmed from the original work during the album-
making process; with new frame and Persian ascription being added, the original
image had thus been transformed into a picture that properly fits in the local tra-
dition of viewing in the album context.
Judging from extant specimens, commonly on Ming tribute paintings, the tribute
animals are being lead in single file by the foreign tribute bearers, often with big mus-
tache and coded items of clothing such as turbans and belts, reminiscent of earlier
Tang to Yuan paintings depicting barbarians bringing tributes. The painter of the
album painting, on the other hand, faithfully depicts the historical episode, accord-
ing to Timurid accounts, that the mighty steed was in fact brought back to China by
a returning Ming embassy to Herat, and therefore the conventional position of the
“barbarians” is replaced by the Ming military officers. With any original indicative
texts being absent, however, the current remaining part, i.e. the sole pictorial com-
position, seems suggestive of the Ming officers paying tributes to the Timurids, pro-
vocatively pointing to a different conceptual direction.
We do not know since when the original Chinese inscription had been detached
from the picture, but when it was compiled and remounted into the current
album during the mid-sixteenth century, the original context of this image may
have been forgotten. The image and its now reversed semantical message must
have aroused tremendous interests among the Timurid and later audiences and pain-
ters. Two additional Persian copies of the same composition are preserved in
H. 2153, an earlier album from the Topkapi Palace Library (fol. 123a and 150a)
(Figures 4 and 5). The two identical copies on silk reveal the hitherto unexplored
afterlife of the mysterious Ming painting. They are applied with highly contrasting
and bright saturated pigments of green and green, suggesting the higher degree of
62 Y. YU

FIG. 4. Two Ming Military Officers, album leaf, pigment and silk, ca. 47 × 33 cm (figures),
Persian copy after a Ming painting, Central Asia or Iran, ca. 1400–1500, Topkapi Palace
Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153, fol. 123a.

localization or Persianization during the process of repetitive copying, to enhance

the visual experience of the composition to meet local aesthetics in terms of appre-
ciating a painted image.17 What also matters here is the dismantlement of the
“horse” part from the original composition, clearly indicating the stronger interest
aroused by the Ming figures to Persianate viewers, for whom albums are supposed
to be made. In theory at least, the two high-quality copies might potentially be, or
have been, juxtaposed with any pictures of other animals, to artificially compose
a scene of Ming officers presenting tribute animals.
What “Timurid” observations of Ming officials furthermore interests lie in their
difference from the visual trope of self-representation within the Ming literati
circle. The latter, as the court work The Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden
(xingyuan yaji tu 杏园雅集图) shows, portrays Ming officials as men of dignity
and elegance, seated or standing in highly literati-taste garden, surrounded by
various kinds of antiques and scholarly paraphernalia, suggesting their cultural
and political prestige; on the contrary, in the Timurid representations, the martial
aspect of Ming officers is highlighted. A painting on silk from the Diez Albums
(Figure 6), probably produced in early fifteenth century, depicts, in a manner that
echoes the Ming court painting repertoire of which themes are attributed as the
Xuande Emperor’ hunting,18 two Chinese officers, probably Ming envoys residing
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 63

FIG. 5. Two Ming Military Officers, album leaf, pigment and silk, ca. 47 × 33 cm (figures),
Persian copy after a Ming painting, Central Asia or Iran, ca. 1400–1500, Topkapi Palace
Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153, fol. 150a.

FIG. 6. Two Ming officers on hunting, album leaf, pigment and silk, Central Asia or Iran, ca.
1400–1500, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preus-sischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, ms. Diez
A, fol. 70, p. 15.
64 Y. YU

in the Timurid courts, mounted on handsome horses, full of tension, chasing after a
pair of deer. One carries a falcon in his hand. Strikingly reminiscent of the Ming
court works is the rendering of the background landscape with rocks stretching to
the lake, with randomly clustered wild plants. But unlike figures in Ming counter-
parts who are, as David M. Robinson observes, in full Mongol-style clothing, the
Ming figures in the Diez painting wear standard Ming official uniforms, although
the badge on the chest is wrongly rendered in certain decorative motif, which
suggests its Persianate provenance. As in other examples, through properly render-
ing clothing elements, the emphasis on the “Chinese-ness” of the painted figures is
successfully achieved by Persian painters

ETHNOGRAPHIC LENS
Another Persianate painting repertoire that takes Chinese secular figures as subject
matters are exclusively found in the album context. The album H. 2153, “a veritable
assemblage of ‘wonders’” in Gülru Necipoğlu’ words,19 comprises a critical mass of
imagery that stage various Chinese figures, views and activities. Previous scholarships
confine their focuses to the discussion of them as the so-called chinoiserie manifes-
tations in this period. The documentary value of these images, as well as the motiv-
ation for such representation, has been overlooked. Linking these images with the
previously discussed group of Ming embassies painting, one generic feature is
shared: the portrait-like renderings of the facial features and garments of the
Chinese figures depicted. Some comprise perhaps the earliest category of “portrait”
in Persianate context in its full sense. Their Chinese-ness is purposefully highlighted.
The second feature, among these paintings, is their common lack of any background.
The current preliminary observation of this corpus of materials suggests these images
as a sub-genre produced in the pre-modern Persianate proto-ethnographic lens.
Among the highly realistic “studies” of Chinese character is a half-length portrait
of a possible Ming government clerk (Figure 7), which hitherto surprisingly receives
little scholarly attention. The figure’s costumes are clearly reminiscent of those wore

FIG. 7. A Ming government clerk (?), album leaf, pigment and paper, Central Asia or Iran,
ca. 1400–1500, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153, fol. 48a.
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 65

by the figures on the Water and Land Ritual paintings from the Baoning Temple,
Shaanxi Province. He wears a brimmed hat, which should be the boli hat
(bolimao 钹笠帽), the most popular hat worn by the Mongols and their subjects
during the Yuan dynasty. But the painting is more likely to be a fifteenth-century
Persian work, judging from its similar paper ground to other more datable works
preserved in the albums. Recent investigation on textual sources demonstrates
that, during the Ming period, many items of Yuan clothing continued to be
widely consumed among different classes of the Ming society.20 Among them, the
boli hat, also called damao (大帽 big hats) in Ming sources, worn by the painted
figure in the album painting, were especially popular among government clerks
(xuli 胥吏) and family servants (jiapu 家仆),21 both of whom seemed to have been
unlikely to travel so far to Central Asia.
Upon closer inspection, all faithful portrayals reveal the painters’ acute obser-
vations of his subject. Represented in his full front, his cheeks are sunken and his
cheek-bones prominent, the flesh tones of the face appearing highly realist, with
marked three-dimensional effect. The meticulous reproduction of physiognomic
details suggest the Persian painter must have painted from life, representing an indi-
vidual person, more possibly a Ming government clerk, that he encountered some-
where in China. Previous studies have noticed the representation of ethnicities in
several album paintings, through attempted efforts in analyzing the garment types
wore by the painted figures, or objects that surround.22 It may even further be
argued that these representations are correctly evidence confirming how specific eth-
nographic type appeared. This image interestingly appears, another example of the
Timurid-Ming visual parallel, very reminiscent of Ming album paintings that record
the facial features and dress of visitors to the Ming court, one of which, “The Chief-
tain Baoguiyoudesheng” (toumu baoguiyoudesheng 头目宝圭由德胜), that depicts
local ruler from China’ southern part, is collected in the Palace Museum,
Beijing.23 Whether and how they are connected deserves a future study.
The “ethnographic” nature of this portrait is further intensified given its juxtapo-
sition to a painting of the dark-skinned demon-like figure that belongs to the
so-called Siyah Qalem (Black Pen) group. The subjects of the Siyah Qalem paintings,
taking up the traditions from nomadic Central Asia, consists of nomads, dervishes,
or demon-like figures performing specific daily activities, displaying various degrees
of ethnic physical features that might be related to the Turkic world in nomadic
Central Asia,24 a cultural sphere that either belonged to a by-gone era or considered
of lower civilization under the rule of the Chaghatayid “Moghuls.” Besides, studies
of European or Frankish figures are too included in the albums in question,25
let along numerous images depicting the (Ilkhanid) Mongols on enthrone,26 as
well as local or “Persianate” figures on hunting, banquet, and other scenes taken
from manuscript tradition. The albums paintings, therefore, to differing degrees, for-
mulate a proto-ethnographic picture that conforms to the Timurid perception of the
worlds and peoples around them during the fifteenth century.
The motivation of the painters’ praxis to depict “ethnographic” subjects is also
evident in his excessive depictions of the subalterns within the Ming society.
Judging from the proportion of such images in the whole album works that deal
with Chinese subjects, figures in certain laboring activities, with profession-specific
props and clothing, should have particularly attracted Persian painters. The figures
appear to pose as representatives of their class and occupation and engage in
66 Y. YU

FIG. 8. A Ming carter, album leaf, pigment and paper, Central Asia or Iran, ca. 1400–1500,
Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153, fol. 73a.

professional activities such as laboring, transporting objects, dancing and playing

musical instruments. One painting, of two Chinese young carters (arābchı̄)
(Figure 8), deserves special attention for its depiction conforms to some accounts
of Ghiyāth al-dı̄n Naqqāsh. In his description of the postal stations (yām)
between Sukju (modern Jiuquan 酒泉) to Qamju (modern Zhengye 张掖), he men-
tions in great details of the Chinese boys who were in charge of the horses, and who
pulled the vehicles (chefu 车夫):

Their number was very great, for they fasten ropes to the vehicles and those
very boys place them across their shoulders and pulled them on . … The
boys are all handsome with artificial Chinese pearls in their ears and their
hair knotted on the crown of their head. The horses supplied by them are pro-
vided with saddles, bridles and whips.27

The painting, among many other examples, seems to illustrate the correlation to the
texts of Ghiyāth al-dı̄n Naqqāsh. Other examples from the albums also suggest their
possible connection with the so-called Khatāy-nāma (Book on China) written by
certain ʿAlı̄ Akbar Khaṭāʾı̄.28 To what extent the paintings preserved in the albums
corresponds to those texts, however, still requires a separate thorough investigation
in the future.29
Questions arise by whom these paintings were commissioned and for what pur-
poses. Obviously, these pictures were not meant to illustrate any traditional epics
and romances. A preliminary analysis of this unusual corpus of materials reveals
that they possibly act as visual reminiscences of the frequent long-distance travels
of the Persian embassies and merchants to Ming China. As the “journal”
(rū z-nāma) of the Timurid painter Ghiyah al-Din Naqqash suggests, the Timurid
artist was charged with an ambassador’ job, writing accounts of what he saw on
the “situations and customs (owzāʿ va rusū m)” of China during their diplomatic mis-
sions.30 It, then, seems natural to speculate that they also visually reported their
observations to their princely employers through their best-commanded skills in
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 67

depicting. As supplementary to the written records, the extant painting repertoire, as

the visual commentaries on Chinese “situations and customs” in the Ming realm,
provides offers distinct, if not entirely different, parameters of cultural meaning in
its transcultural representation of the other.

CHINESE BEAUTIES REVEALED

The last category, nonetheless, suggests the impact of the collective memory, provid-
ing another mode of representation that was blended with older stereotyped forms
of knowledge, mostly manifested in literary form. When Ghiyah al-Din Naqqash
was received by the Ming emperor Yongle (r. 1402–24) during his stay in the
Ming capital, he paid attention on the emperor’ female attendants “with faces like
the moon.” What seemed to have left a strong impression on him was that “their
necks and faces were bare (ʻāriẓ kushānde).”31 Before that, he also noticed the
beauty of the women in other towns on his way to Beijing. The revealed beauty
of Chinese women naturally attracted his attention, given that, as Chen Cheng
observed, women in Timurid Herat “were vailed in white silk, only with their eyes
slightly revealed.”32 Ghiyah al-Din Naqqash’ cultural “clash” might explain Persia-
nate fascination of representations of Chinese beauties in poetic and visual contexts.
In Persian poetry, “Chinese” beauty,33 vied with “Greek” (rū mı̄) beauty, is seen as the
ideal,34 of which certain facial features such as the moon-like face are also applied in
depicting Persian female characters. Chinese princesses, as embodiment of exotica,
appear among the characters in Persian epics and romances. Among them, to just
name a few, include the mistress of the sandalwood dome in Neẓāmı̄’s Seven Beau-
ties (Haft Paykar),35 and the Chinese princess to whom a Persian prince fell in love in
Khwājū Kermānı̄’ Homāy and Homāyū n.36 Numerous pre-Timurid painted rep-
resentations, mostly in manuscript illustrations, also demonstrate special interest
in depicting episodes that involve Chinese beauties, such as the scene of Mihran
Sitad Selecting a Chinese Princess from the Great Mongol Shahnama, although
they does not deal with the subject of Chinese women per se.
During the fifteenth century, outright representations of Chinese female figures,
very probably as part of the “proto-ethnographic” painting project that has been dis-
cussed before, appeared in Persianate painting and seemed to have got immediate
popularity, given so many semi-single folio examples of female figure paintings
are still extant in the albums. Their resemblance to Chinese vernacular painting
genre of beautiful women (meiren hua 美人画) or gentle-women painting (shinü
hua 仕女画), often done by professional painters in workshops, is evident.37Sugi-
mura Toh’ pioneering investigation already clarified some of the possible mimetic
sources of secular or religious themes.38
A special emphasis is paid on the physical characteristics of painted figures. The
ways in which their facial features are painted, of which stereotypes may be
derived of Chinese female compositions on silk,39 reference poetic descriptions.
One composition, found in the album H. 2153, must have been of special interest
or success for painters within some specific workshop, for it appears four times in
different paper and silk copies preserved in that album (H. 2153, fol. 42a, 146b,
148a, and 150b), among which one on fol. 146b is inscribed to the master
painter Shaykhı̄ Naqqāsh (Figure 9). It is a depiction of two women seated on a
bench, which looks like a Chinese kang (炕) or Persian dı̄vān. As in many Chinese
68 Y. YU

paintings of gentle women, the women on the left of the composition represented as
avid readers,40 while the other, holding a fan and seated in the position of “royal
ease”,41 listens. The female figures are represented with arched eyebrows and
almond eyes set in a round face, reflecting the pre-Ilkhanid fashion for the East
Asian type of face, the so-called moon-face or māh-rū y, developed in the course of
the spread of Buddhism in Persianate cultural sphere.42 It was not based on the
depictions of actual individuals in a realistic way, rather mirrors a Persianate imagin-
ation on Chinese beauties.
Same can be seen in the depiction of the so-called “narrow eye” (tang-chashme)
of the female figures. In Persian poems, it is an attribute of East Asian women.
For instance, in Neẓāmı̄’s Haft Paykar, Bahrām’ slave girl Dilārām is a
narrow-eyed Tatar, who is also mentioned to come from Chı̄n (China).43 On
the contrary, another idealized, more localized, symbol of feminine beauty is
associated with the “wide-eyed” angel-like beings in the Qur’an (hū ri) and
Persian poetry (hū ri, malekeh and pari), the chaste maidens restraining their
glances and untouched before them by any man or jinn.44 Although in pre-
seventeenth century Persianate paintings, the depictions of Persian women also
follow the “narrow-eyed” convention, this specific physical feature was closely
associated with East Asian beauties.
A visible difference that sets the female depictions apart from previously dis-
cussed categories of Ming embassies and others is the lack of clear indications
of specific locality and temporality. As Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt notes, these
paintings feature the general lack of background details except some floral vign-
ettes. The composition purely concentrates on central figural subjects; their
motionless poses further strengthen the static atmosphere.45 In addition,
Vollmer also observes that the costume depictions reveal “a kind of fanciful inten-
tion on the part of the artist,” and “an odd mixture of period features,” which he
labels as Chinoiserie.46 The same conclusion may also be drawn in terms of the
depiction of hairstyle.

FIG. 9. Chinese maidens, album leaf, pigment and paper, Central Asia or Iran, ca. 1400–
1500, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153, fol. 146b.
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING 69

CONCLUSION
Whether the painting repertoire under consideration, at least part of them, acts as
the visual counterpart to any written records on Ming China remains yet to be con-
firmed, but the paintings in the albums provide a critical mass of imagery that
address the dynamics of the shifted emphasis on the manner of representing
China and Chinese society in the fifteenth-century Persianate world. Compared
with Ilkhanid counterparts, in many of the fifteenth-century depictions of Chinese
figures, portrait-like verisimilitude and descriptive accuracy reveals the frequent
encounters with the Ming court and its subjects. The range of subject matters also
expanded. On the other hand, the category of female representations, with whom
Persian painters indicated lower levels of acquaintance, suggests frequent references
to pre-existing stereotyped elements and resonates collective imagery developed in
literary context.
As the large assemblage of proto-ethnographic knowledge during the Mongol
period, manifested in written form in Rashı̄d al-Dı̄n’ Compendium of Chronicles,
the album materials as a totality formulate the ethnographic knowledge assembled
during the transformative period of the fifteenth century. Compiled folio-to-folio
with images of the Mongol, Frankish, Turkic and “Persianate” figures, the album
paintings on China may be seen as an enormous visual collection with ethnographic
connotation, offering a window into the way of seeing and engaging with Ming
China, part of the known world, in the Persianate consciousness. Persianate tra-
dition of “China literature” suddenly declined from the seventeenth century, when
the emerging fascination of European subjects was shared by the early modern
Islamic empires, the materials preserved in the albums thus witness a critical
period of transformation in the cultural history of China, the Islamic world, and
Europe.
The fifteenth-century Persianate representations of Ming figures also prelude
many later European representations of China and the Chinese, among which one
may recall the drawings from the Dutch traveler Johan Nieuhof’ China memoirs
in his An embassy from the East-India Company published in 1665 in Amsterdam,
which are considered to the first true-to-nature illustrations in literatures on
China.47 These illustrations became one inspiration for chinoiserie fashion in Euro-
pean context. To what extent they are comparable to and entangled with earlier Per-
sianate images of China is another significant issue to be hopefully addressed in its
own merit.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ENDNOTES
1 Babaie, “Visual Vestiges of Travel,” visual idiom in Iran and Central Asia,
105–136. 10–11.
2 For terminologies that refer to China, 3 For the Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh illustrations
see Akbarnia, Khita’i: Cultural of Chinese emperors and other subject
memory and the creation of a Mongol matters, see Kadoi, Islamic
70 Y. YU
Chinoiserie, 173–176. Even though,
proper renderings of certain details,
such as the Song-dynasty imperial head-
gear, show the painters’ general aware-
ness of Chinese imperial costumes, see
Berlekamp, Lo, and Yidan,
“Administering Art, History, and
Science in the Mongol Empire,” 66–68.
4 In both Hazine 1654 and 1653 manu-
scripts the depictions of the Chinese
emperors were executed in Shāhrukh’
workshop and are identical. All these
Timurid depictions of the Chinese
people emulate the models in its
Arabic version, see Ghiasian, “The
Topkapı Manuscript of the Jāmiʿ
al-Tawārikh (Hazine 1654) from
Rashidiya to the Ottoman Court,” 11.
5 Babaie, “Visual Vestiges of Travel,”
109–110.
6 The Mamluk giraffe sent to Timur is
also mentioned and illustrated in the
biography of Timur, the Zafarnama
(Figure 2), see Behrens-Abouseif,
Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk
Sultanate, 142.
7 Wende, Ming yu tiemuer wangchao
guanxishi yanjiu, 56–61.
8 On one Ottoman illustration of the
Safavid embassy, see Komaroff, “The
Art of the Art of Giving at the Islamic
Courts,” 17–19.
9 Robinson has identified it as the frontis-
piece to a Shahnama of jumādı̄ I 848/
September 1444 (Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, sup. per. 494),
the work of a scribe Muḥ ammad
al-Sulṭānı̄, see Robinson, “Origin and
Date of Three Famous ‘Shāh-Nāmeh’
Illustrations,” 105; and Brend,
Perspectives on Persian Painting, 57–58.
10 Double-page frontispiece represen-
tations of this period suggest the trend
of realism, see Baer, The Human
Figure in Islamic Art, 33.
11 Cheng, Xiyu xingcheng ji 西域行程記
(Record of the Journey to the Western
Regions), 130.
12 I would like to express my gratitude to
Ms. Sally Yu Leung for her identifi-
cation of the exact status of the two
figures. Also see Vollmer, “Technical
and Ethnic Consideration of Costume
Depiction in the Istanbul Albums
H. 2153 and 2160,” 136.
13 Roxburgh, “Kamal al-Din Bihzad and
Authorship in Persianate Painting,”
122.
14 Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other
Documents on the History of
Calligraphers and Painters, 53.
15 Indeed, it is recorded by Yang Shiqi 杨
士奇 (1364–1444) that, on the fourth
year of the Zhengtong reign (1439), a
horse was given as a gift to the Ming
court from Samarqand. The Emperor
named the animal Ruibao (瑞鸨) and
ordered the court painter to make an
picture of it, cited in Jing, mingdai
huayuan yanjiu (Study of the Ming
Painting Academy), 75–76. Such
images of auspicious subjects were
also circulated between the court and
high-rank officials, see Lin, “Gifts of
Good Fortune and Praise-Songs for
Peace,” 125–128.
16 Among others, two unexplored works,
in the format of monumental hanging
scroll, are included: the anonymous
work of The Lion and His Keeper in
the British Museum, and the one on
paper, of even lower quality, of
Tribute Lioness from Samarqand cur-
rently, owned by Rossi & Rossi
Gallery, London.
17 This can also be observed in later
Safavid renderings of European
black-and-white prints, see Landau,
“Reconfiguring the Northern Europe
Print in Depict Sacred History at the
Persian Court,” 70–71.
18 Robinson, “The Ming Court and the
Legacy of the Yuan Mongols,” 386–
393.
19 Necipoğlu, “Persianate Images between
Europe and China,” 533.
20 Wei, “A Preliminary Study of Mongol
Costumes in the Ming Dynasty,” 165–
185.
21 The only surviving example of the
wide-brimmed hat is found in the
tomb of Prince Huang of Lu, see
Ming: 50 Years that Changed China,
70.
 REPRESENTING MING CHINA IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PERSIANATE PAINTING
22 See essays written by John. E. Vollmer,
David Nicolle, Géza Fehérvári and
Philip Denwood, Margaret Medley,
Barbara Brend, and Lisa Lolombek in
Between China and Iran.
23 I got acquired of this image and the
album to which it belongs from the cat-
alogue, Ming: 50 Years that Changed
China, 39.
24 Çağman, “Glimpses into the
Fourteenth-Century Turkic World of
Central Asia,” 148–190.
25 Necipoğlu, “Persianate Images between
Europe and China,” 531–591.
26 Melville, “The Illustration of the
Turko-Mongol Era in the Berlin Diez
Albums,” andKadoi, “The Mongols
Enthroned,” 221–275.
27 A Persian Embassy to China, 34–35.
28 ʿAlı̄ Akbar Khaṭāʾı̄, Khaṭāy-nāma:
sharḥ -i moshtahadāt-i Siyyid ʿAlı̄
Akbar Khaṭāʾı̄ moʿāsẹ r-i Shāh Ismāʿı̄l
Ṣafavı̄ dar sar zamı̄n-i Chin, ed. Iraj
Afshār, Markaz-i Asnad-i Farhang-i
Asya, 1978.
29 On the other hand, the texts pasted on
the same folio, among which are
poems written by Jāmı̄, does not seem
to relate to the image.
30 A recent study on the documentary
nature of the account, see Roxburgh,
“The ‘Journal’ of Ghiyath al-Din
Naqqash, Timurid Envoy to Khan
Balïgh, and Chinese Art and
Architecture,” 90–113.
31 A Persian Embassy to China, 56.
32 Cheng, Xiyu xingcheng ji 西域行程記
(Record of the Journey to the Western
Regions), 68.
33 It should be noted that here “Chinese”
refers to a Persianate collective, which
sometimes include Turkestan and
Tatar, as seen in occasional references
by Ferdowsi and Neẓāmı̄.
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR
Yusen Yu is a PhD candidate at Heidelberg University, Germany, working on the Persianate
reception of Chinese art in pre-modern Central Asia and Iran. His main research fields include
Asian and Islamic art.
Correspondence to: Yusen Yu Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies,
Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, Building 4400, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany. yuyusen@
outlook.com; yusen.yu@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de.