Rustam's horse Rakhsh fights a lion while Rustam sleeps, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

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Rustam's horse Rakhsh fights a lion while Rustam sleeps, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi. Pausing during a long journey, the hero Rustam sleeps while his brave horse Rakhsh fights and kills a lion. On waking up, Rustam scolds the horse for risking his own life as well as their mission to Mazandaran, to save the king of Iran from the White Div. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, pasted to card, Persian text in nasta`liq script, with painting (unfinished) and gold-painted borders (on recto), and blank verso, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Abu al-Qasim Firdausi (d. 1022), folio possibly produced Qazvin, Iran, c. 1590-1600, this painting worked as part of an intervention led by Muhammad Zaman, Isfahan, Iran, 1675-1676. This is one of twenty-two folios in the Chester Beatty, all from the same partial copy (possibly never fully completed) of Firdausi's Shahnama: 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, Faridun and his descendants, and Rustam.