The White Dīv captures and blinds Kay Kāvus, by Muḥammad Zamān, from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma)

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The White Dīv captures and blinds Kay Kāvus, by Muḥammad Zamān, from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma). Against all advice, king Kay Kāvus decided to invade Mazandaran, where he and his army were magically blinded by the spells of the White Div (or demon), and are now being kept captive. They will have to be rescued by the hero Rustam. Comically unrefined, the White Div nonetheless has a resigned air as he addresses his foolish prisoner. This folio belongs to a later campaign of artwork, led by the Isfahan artist Muḥammad Zamān, to add dramatic new illustrations to an older manuscript in the Safavid royal library. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in nasta`liq script, with illuminated panels (on recto), painting (on verso) and gold-painted borders, from the Book of Kings (Shāhnāma) by Abū al-Qāsim Firdausī (d. 1020), manuscript attributed to the early reign of Safavid Shah `Abbās I (r. 1587-1629), Qazvin or Isfahan, Iran, undated, c. 1590-1600, this painting (and possibly entire folio) added as part of the intervention led by Muḥammad Zamān, 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 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.