Female Artistic Patronage in Pre-Modern Iran

The main scope of this paper is an attempt to define the position and weight of noble women in Iranian cultural heritage during the late early modern decades before the Qajar Dynasty (1786-1925). Considering that female artistic patronage existed in the Safavid period (1501-1736), this presentation will note this continued activity into the later Afsharid (1736-96) and Zand (1750-94) periods.
The second half of the17th century coincided with significant economic and political roles of the household of Shah Suleiman (1666-1694) in the Safavid state, which could have expanded female artistic patronage. Some farangi sāzi (lit. making of European [style]) paintings of this time could have possibly been ordered by the royal harem to show the significance of the royal women within the Safavid institution. The decline of the Safavids in 1722, however, brought some 50 years of instability and chaos to Iran, even if Nader Shah (1736-1747), and soon after Karim Khan Zand (1760-1779), brought back some short instances of calm and steadiness, during which artistic creations flourished again. The so-called Afsharid and Zand styles include a diverse range of architectural and artistic projects, such as single-page paintings, the muraqqas (illuminated albums), and lacquer objects.
One may wonder if Afsharid or Zand women, like their Safavid counterparts, had any role in these creations. Do the objets d’art remaining from this time support historical assumptions concerning female patronage? Or was it rather an inactive historical phase, during which the social and political instability drew women back from the foreground until the arrival of Qajars and the reemergence of women in Iranian cultural and political scenes? We have, for instance, no precise documentation of female artistic patronage, but since Iranian royal women had always participated actively, not only in the political affairs of various monarchies but also as patrons of art and architecture, it would be logical to hypothesize that female patronage remained active, as tradition had mandated.