Farīdūn crosses the Tigris on his way to fight Ẓaḥḥāk, attributed to Reẓā `Abbāsī (d. 1635), from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma)

Reza `Abbasi, attributed to

Farīdūn crosses the Tigris on his way to fight Ẓaḥḥāk, from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma) by Firdausī. Riding off to Iraq to defeat the tyrant Ẓaḥḥāk, young prince Farīdūn leads his cavalry army across the deep river, watched by the punctilious ferryman in his boat. The ferryman has refused to carry the army across, because they do not have the correct permit. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in nasta`liq script, with illuminated rubric ("Farīdūn crosses the waters", on recto), painting (on verso), and gold-painted borders, from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma) by Abū al-Qāsim Firdausī (d. 1020), attributed to the early reign of Safavid Shah `Abbās I (r. 1587-1629), Qazvin or Isfahan, Iran, undated, c. 1590-1600. This is one of twenty-two folios in the Chester Beatty, all from the same partial copy (possibly never fully completed) of Firdausī's Shāhnāma: ten folios are in a modern binding, twelve are mounted separately. Most of these folios are not directly sequential, and fall into three sets, narrating the earliest kings, Farīdūn and his descendants, and Rustam.