Inside Medieval Iran: The art of a Civilization

Iran (officially the Islamic Republic of Iran) is a vast and historically significant country in Southwest Asia. It was known as Persia until 1935 and boasts one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, with cultural roots that date back thousands of years and include major empires such as the Achaemenid and Safavid dynasties. Modern Iran is a theocratic republic, created in 1979 after the monarchy was deposed and religious authority became integral to the political structure.

Its capital is Tehran, and its population is approximately over 90 million people. Iran has a diverse ethnic population, including Persians, Azeris, Kurds, and others, with Persian (Farsi) being the official language. Geographically, it is huge and mostly dry, with significant oil and natural gas reserves that make it vital in regional and worldwide energy markets. Let’s look at medieval Iran!

The text below is the excerpt from the book Art and Civilization of Persia (ISBN: 9798894058641), written by Vladimir Lukonin and Anatoli Ivanov, published by Parkstone International.

The Islamic conquest of Iran brought not only religious transformation but also a profound restructuring of Iranian society. It eliminated long-standing restrictions – not just theological, but also socio-political. The rigid estate-based divisions of Sassanian society were dissolved, and with them, the Zoroastrian ideological framework that had shaped much of pre-Islamic art.

The once hieratic themes of Sassanian art – kings depicted as divine figures, aristocratic warriors and hunters imbued with cosmic symbolism – were stripped of their propagandist content. Kings became simply kings; hunters, simply hunters; animals, birds, and plants returned to their natural essence. This symbolic simplification, paradoxically, expanded the creative vocabulary. Freed from religious and ideological constraints, a vast repertory of motifs – many originating in foreign cultures – was reabsorbed and reinterpreted. Art in medieval Iran, like that of the broader medieval world, increasingly favoured ornamentation, rhythm, and abstraction.

Yet Iranian culture did not simply dissolve into a generalized Islamic culture. On the contrary, beginning with the Iranian cultural renaissance of the 10th – 11th centuries, Persian influence grew to such an extent that the New Persian language emerged as a second literary language of Islam alongside Arabic. Under Iranian influence, Islam developed into a genuinely multilingual and multinational civilization.

In this context, the region of Khurasan played a pivotal role. During the 7th – 9th centuries, this vast eastern province – which encompassed parts of present-day northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northwestern Afghanistan – became a crucible for the formation of Islamic Iranian culture.

One of the earliest and most visible consequences of the Arab conquest was a mass migration of Arab populations into Iranian urban centres. Many new military encampments evolved into cities. By the 10th century, Arabs formed the majority population in cities such as Qum.

The spread of Islam and the Arabic language followed close behind. During the first two centuries of Islamic rule, Khurasan witnessed the transformation of the Arabs’ tribal religion into a more universal faith – Islam as the religion of a vast, multiethnic Caliphate. Simultaneously, the Arabic of the Qur’an and of the early Arab tribes evolved into a literary language. Persian converts played a key role in this linguistic and theological transformation. The region was also instrumental in the development of Shi’ism, especially its esoteric branch, Ismailism, which would have a lasting influence on Iranian religious thought.

Another crucial development during the Abbasid era was the formal inclusion of Persians into the Islamic religious and political order. Previously, under the Umayyads, the Islamic community in Iran was largely Arab, and Persian converts were seen as second-class Muslims. The Abbasid revolution helped end this stratification. Many dihqans – members of the former Sassanian aristocracy – converted to Islam while retaining, or even enhancing, their status and influence.

The emergence of New Persian literature during this period was a transformative cultural milestone. Persian literary expression, rooted in rich oral and poetic traditions, became the foundation upon which a distinctively Persian figurative art could develop. The prerequisites were already present: the narrative complexity and stylization of late Sassanian visual art; enduring mural traditions in eastern Iran and Central Asia; and the influence of Christian iconography from the eastern provinces of Byzantium.

It is important to note a fundamental distinction between the art of medieval Iran and that of contemporary Europe. In Western medieval art – before the Renaissance – the primary subjects were religious: God, saints, miracles, and sacred history. In Persian art, by contrast, it was the human figure – in all its narrative, poetic, and heroic dimensions – that occupied centre stage. Its themes were drawn not from theology, but from national epics and lyrical literature: legendary kings, warriors, poets, lovers. Prophets and saints appeared only sporadically.

At the dawn of the Caliphate, traditional art forms – such as metalwork, seals, stucco decoration, textiles, and coinage – initially maintained their iconography. Early Islamic rulers, for instance, continued to mint coins in the Sassanian style, simply overlaying the image of the king with the Islamic declaration of faith: “In the name of Allah.” Some coins even portrayed the ruler in Sassanian regalia, preserving a visual continuity while asserting religious change.

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