with Professor Ernest Tucker who will give us an in-depth look at the reign of Nader Shah and his break with tradition and reimagining of Iran and the relationship between the Shah and Shah and other rulers. Our second panelist, Janet O'Brien, will approach the Nader Shah's reign from the perspective of royal portraiture and what light that sheds on the notion of the king's authority. And our final panelist is Kianush Motoghadi who also pursues a topic of art, looking at its use as a medium for displaying royal themes in the Karja period. So beginning with Professor Tucker, he is at the US Naval Academy where he's been teaching history since 1990. He's published three books on Iran and the Ottoman Empire and his articles appeared in a wide variety of scholarly journals, fictionaries and encyclopedias. He's consulted for a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations and he's traveled extensively in the Middle East and led several student groups to the region including one of midshipment to Israel in 1992 and another of American undergraduates to Syria in 1998. Professor Tucker's current research focus is the history of early modern Iran and the Ottoman Empire as a window on the complex situations faced by Muslim societies in the early modern world and most recently he's written a chapter in a forthcoming Routledge Volume, the Safafid world on Safavid Iran's relations with other Muslim empires and rulers. So moving now to Janet, Janet O'Brien is at the Courtauld Institute of Art University of London and she's in her final year as a doctoral student and the recipient of the Sudevar Memorial Foundation grant. Janet is the current Smithsonian Institution pre-doctoral fellow at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington. She previously served in curatorial positions at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and she's a contributing author of Bestowing Beauty, Masterpieces from Persian Lands, Selections from the Hussein Afshar Collection. This is in 2020. Now Keyanyush Motagedi is an artist and Islamic art historian. His publications include books and articles in the fields of Persian ceramics, calligraphy and culture arts and he was awarded in scholarships in both 2017 and 2018 from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication for his research. Projects that Keyanyush has worked on include L'Empire des Roses exhibition at the Louvre-Long Art Museum in 2018 and his most recent research in the field is the study of royal wall painting and rock reliefs from the Karja period. So I will just before I hand over to Professor Tucker, I just want to remind I'll be sending notes to speakers reminding you of timing towards the end of your lecture and just to remind people that they need to write their questions and please put your name but also which speaker you're addressing your question to. I'm sure it will be obvious but it just makes it easier to sift through them and I'll do my best to make sure as many as possible get answered. So Ernest Tucker, can I please hand over to you now to start the panel. Yes and Sarah, thank you so much for your sponsorship of this wonderful conference and to Charles Melville and to the suit of our foundation as well. My great thanks to all of you. I also wanted to give my paper in memory of Michael Axworthy who Charles had mentioned but he was a great friend of mine and a great scholar of 18th century Iran and all things Iranian so again a kind of a salute to him. Okay so I wanted to talk about an idea of Iran and in this case the idea of Iran of Nader, Nader Shah.  They evolved from late Safavid times through the early Qajar period that we've been hearing about already. His path to power prompted him to depart quite radically from concepts of Iran developed under the Safavids. Visions of Iran in the Safavid Haiti of course fused traditions and tropes from a rediscovered pre-Islamic Persian past with the legacy of the Turkman nomadic heritage all against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving early modern 12 Rashi Iranian religious identity. These diverse parts of Safavid identity helped frame an image of Safavid Iran often now seen as the precursor of more modern visions of the nation. By late Safavid times any idea of Iran had come to include powerful but distinct spheres of religious and secular identity. Both were supported by the dynasties Farh, our royal reputation that endured long after its material collapse at the hands of the insurgent Hotiki Afghan horsemen in October 1722. Nader's meteoric rise from obscurity in the 1720s, his seizure of power and erasure of the vestiges of Safavid authority in the 1730s, the defeat of the Mughals at Karnal just north of Delhi in 1739 and continuing challenge to the Ottomans for control of Iraq and the Caucasus in the 1740s gave him the opportunity to reimagine Iran considerably. The evolution of his own idea of Iran appears through the evidence of contemporary chronicles and sources as his attempt to create an invented tradition to borrow a term familiar from other historiographies of the early modern world. His chroniclers ultimately portrayed his project as the rebuilding of a Timurid style world empire in which Iran would shine as the jewel in the crown of a united Umma with distinctive Persianate, Turkomongal and Islamicate aspects. In this system other Islamic rulers specific to the Mughals and the Uzbeks were to become subsidiary Shahs under Nader as Shahanshah, a concept harking back both to the pre-Islamic Persian practice as well as to the Turkomongal tradition of step governance. Overlaid on this was the vision of a reunited Muslim Umma with 12 worshias and brought back into the fold as a fifth madhab, our right of Sunni Islam. Such an invention of tradition seems designed to get beyond the long period of sectarian discord that had accompanied Safavid rule. The Ottomans played important roles in both these components of Nader's new idea of Iran. In the Turkomongal tribal context presumed Ottoman lineage ties to Nader were construed as familial with Nader framed as the younger brother to the Ottoman Sultan as the older brother of common Turkic or Turkmen ancestry. In the religious context Nader offered to recognize the Ottoman ruler's status as guardian of Meccan Medina as well as his general role as leader of the Sunni world in return for official Ottoman approval of Nader's reimagined version of Shiism as a more integral part of the Sunni world. These various parts of Nader's new idea of Iran sought thus to transcend the limitations of the Safavid idea of Iran. Ultimately of course Nader's project was quite short-lived given his brief but tumultuous 11 years as monarch. Nader's reign has been depicted as principally a time of brutal tyranny whose impact on Iran in the region was defined by what he destroyed and ruined or as a moment when a powerful ruler however flawed and cruel took control in a way that definitely marked Iran's entrance into the early modern world. Nader's attempts to invent a new idea of Iran even if transitory had several enduring legacies. His time on the throne greatly widened a divide between royal and religious authority in Iran that had begun under the Safavids and continued into Khajar times. Nader's conclusion of the 1746 Qurdan peace treaty with the Ottomans also paradoxically created a space for Iran in an Islamic community of nations that pre-saged Iran's place in the modern world. An examination of the phases in this evolution of Nader's idea of Iran even if never really implemented may add depth through our overall understanding of the long-term historical impacts of his rule. Nader's story in all of its aspects took place in the period of Safavid demise so it might be useful to begin with the idea of Iran at that time. It is no secret and other panelists have commented on this that Safavid identity had been shaped from the dynasty's beginning through its support for and connections to Shi'ism. Seen early on in Syais Mahil's well-known allusions in mystical Turkish poetry of his descent from the 7th Shi'im on Musa Al-Khazim. As Safavid Shi'i identities evolved through the 16th and 17th centuries Iran grew into a great center of Shi'i learning forging strong ties to Shi'i communities and scholars around the Muslim world particularly in India, Lebanon and Iraq. The Safavid era's embrace of older Persianate forms of literary and poetic traditions embodied in their new versions of the Shah Naameh which we've talked about a little bit later versions of that and other classic poems completed and deepened this period's idea of Iran as well. These literary excursions were in turn uniquely augmented by the creativity of other genre of Safavid intellectual achievement epitomized by works produced by the philosophers for example of the school of Isfahan. All of this fell into sudden turmoil with the arrival of the Hotiki Afghans in the collapse of the Safavid dispensation in 617-22. These staunchly Sunni horsemen must have been quite perplexed by their sudden capture of the Iranian heartland, a situation that ultimately only lasted a few years. Their conquest certainly did not allow the Afghans really enough time to forge any meaningful idea of Iran to displace the earlier version kept alive as has been noted by various Safavid pretenders and claimants appearing in the 1720s and 1730s. Uncertainty about the idea of Iran thus hovered over the country just as Nader first rose to prominence, a situation that might have given him more room for his own innovative ideas to develop as he proceeded to rise in importance as a military leader. One of Nader's earliest military achievements in the state of Horasan was to defeat one of the area's main warlords, Malik Mahmood Sistani in 1726. Sistani had begun to construct his own novel idea of Iran with sovereignty being justified by claimed descent from an eclectic mix of ancient royal families such as the Kayanids as well as later Islamic dynasties such as the Safarids. Nader made his own name first as a loyal commander in the struggle to restore the Safavid order. He became one of Safavid Tathmasp's second main commanders in campaigns against invading Afghan and Ottoman armies. Gaining an initial reputation for military competence in Tathmasp's service, Nader's own continuous string of victories together with a growing perception of Tathmasp's weakness persuaded him soon to oust Tathmasp as we know and install his infant son as a figurehead given the reginal name Abbas III. One of the major chronicles of Nader, the Toriqa al-Alam-e-Roy-e-Naderi of Muhammad Qaza Mardvi foreshadows the emergence of Nader's own idea of Iran in his account of how Nader replaced Tathmasp with Abbas. On the whole, Mardvi's work reveals him to have supported the Safavids as Iran's legitimate rulers. Mardvi's work shows that he first saw Nader as the Safavid's worthy champion but then as doomed after he usurped them no matter what his military prowess might have been. In Mardvi's version of Abbas's accession, he has Abbas begin to cry when he receives the crown. Mardvi reports that Nader told his followers that by crying, Abbas was indicating that he, quote, wanted to rule over the Afghans of Kandahar and the Ottoman sultan. Mardvi then had to affirm, as Abbas requested, I will throw reins around the necks of the Ottoman sultan Hussein Shah Afran, Muhammad Shah of India and Abulfez Khan ruler of Turan and make them serve his magnificent court. I will have prayers recited and strike coins in the name of the sovereign Safavid prince. Although Mardvi's work reveals a clear pro-Safavid slant here, his account also foreshadows the development of Nader's own idea of Iran. Mardvi has Nader articulated an idea of Iran that dominated the Ottomans, Afghans, Mughals, and Uzbeks, figurative center of an Umat governed by empires linked through Turkomongol lineage ties. To tie this more closely to Nader's legitimacy, he has a ruler. Mardvi and other contemporary chroniclers also record how Nader tried to make connections with the legacy of Timur, the epitome of a Turkomongol Islamic ruler whom he sought to emulate through his career. Nader's striking coronation ceremony and the plans of Mughan in the spring of 1736 formed the true beginning of the evolution of his idea of Iran. This coronation was designed to allow him to decouple royal legitimacy in Iran from claims of Imami lineage, our support for the particularities of Shiism, as a way to distinguish Iran from its neighbors. It was also an effort to again invent tradition by assembling in this case a kural tie, gathering an imitation of a venerable Turkomongol ruling tradition. At this occasion, Nader called for integrating Shiism into Sunni Islam as a fifth rite or mazhab to enjoy the same status as the conventional four Sunni legal schools. He proposed that 12 or Shiism be redefined as the mazhabi jafari in recognition of the importance of jar farasadak, the sixth imam. Shi differences from the various Sunni legal schools would henceforth be treated as minor divergencies just as differences between other legal schools had been tolerated for centuries. This new idea of Iran unveiled at Mughan departed from Safavid tradition in many ways. In religious terms, it drew in a basic appeal to the commonalities of the Umma to argue for the equal status of all Muslims. Such a reimagining of Shiism would have nullified the classic Ottoman justification for war against the Safids as heretics. It would also have provided Iran's ruler a more legitimate status and connection with activities tied to pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina and to various sites in Iraq, specifically the control of the annual Hajj caravan with its tax and trade revenue potential. To symbolize this unity, Nader introduced a new cap with four folds, the Kola Hennadri. Its symbolism has variously been interpreted as alluding to the four rightly guided caliphs, which is one interpretation, in place of the 12 red pleats of the headgear designed to honor the 12 imams, R of the Kizlbash. R is a visual reminder of the four great contemporary Muslim domains, Iran, the Ottoman Empire, the Uzbek Empire, and the Mughal Empire. This Kurultai also invoked the step tradition of approving a new tribal leader through a conclave of elders who recognized him in the ceremony. At Nader's Kurultai, it was not only in the symbolage of the representatives of the ruling nomadic class though, the warrior class of the Turkic tribal groups, but delegations from all communities under his rule, sedentary nomadic Muslim and non-Muslim. Such a gathering also offered in addition to how to recall Turkomongal tradition, a distant echo of pre-Islamic Persian tradition of simultaneous rulership that Michael Axworthy had talked about in his books, over a vast panoply of subjects reflected so famously at Persepolis. Nader presented this proposed juxtaposition of religious and cultural identities in an embassy dispatched to the Ottomans a few months after Mughal in 1736. Seeking Sultan Mahmoud's the first acknowledgement of Nader's accession to the throne, the Iranian ambassador described the religious component of Nader's new ideas. He called on the Ottoman ruler in his capacity as servitor of the two holy places, the Hadam al-Hadamin al-Shadafain, to erect a new pillar at the Kaaba, commemorating the Jafri-Iran providing proof of its equal status with other rights at this principal meeting ground of the Islamic umma. Nader's emissary also invoked the Turkomongal tradition talking about Nader's membership in the Ile Jalile Turkman. Later Iranian documents reused this phrase repeatedly as a reminder of his broad lineage connections to the Ottomans, Mughals, and Central Asian rulers. Okay. Raghup, the Ottoman participant in this in this embassy, noted that the first letter he wrote, Nader had written to him, was not written in Persian in fact, but in Iranian Turkish, Iran, Turkisi. Nader stated in it that in the time of Chinggis Khan, the leaders of the Turkmen tribes who left the land of Tehran and migrated to Iran and Anatolia, were said to all be of one stock and one lineage. At that time, the exalted ancestor of the dynasty, the Ottoman sultan, the Ottoman antecedents, had a Danitoli and our ancestors settled in the provinces of Iran. Since these lineages are interwoven and connected, it is hoped that when the sultan learns of this, he will give royal consent to the establishment of peace. Okay. So Nader even held out in negotiations or his emissary held out in negotiations with the Ottomans that he might even entertain being considered a special vassal along the lines of the Crimean Khan and that's a whole other story. But in any case, the Ottomans were unimpressed after several days of talks with his new idea. I think it would be anachronistic and misleading to read this invocation of Turkish blood ties now as some sort of protopan turkism though.  The fullest articulation of his religious idea took place in Najaf in Iraq in 1743 and the political reformulations took shape after his defeat of the Mughals and the rulers of Central Asia. Continued Ottoman skepticism about Nader's concept reflected how much Ottoman desires to resurrect the Safavid idea of Iran, at least in the way the Ottomans construed this drove Ottoman policy in Iran for decades after the fall of Isfahan. They pursued this either by intermittently promoting Safavid. Pretenders to the Iranian throne are securing peace with Nader at various times, at all possible, to restore the Safavid status quoanti. Ottoman persistence testifies to their enduring nostalgia for the time of the Safavids, which is interesting. Everyone so far in this conference seem to have nostalgia for the Safavids, so that's a common theme despite all the differences. In the end, Nader became compelled to accept the broad parameters of the Ottoman invasion when he signed the Treaty of Khurdan, as we'll mention in a couple of minutes. So the idea of Iran, Nader's idea of Iran and the conquest of India. The impact of his conquest of India on his idea of Iran can be seen in these contemporary documents. After the Battle of Karnal, where he defeated the Mughals, his letters began describing him as Shah and Shah over the Mughal Emperor Nasreddin Muhammad, whose title now became Shah Muhammad, following his restoration of sovereignty. Nader treated the Uzbek ruler Abulfez Han in a very similar fashion, renaming him Abulfez Shah, which sounds strange in the Central Asian context, but that was the idea, to establish a symmetry with the Mughals. And all these different things continued to emerge after the conquest of India. Okay, the other piece that becomes really obvious here is Nader's attempt to associate himself with the phar, or the royal reputation of Timur and his descendants. This theme, present in so many of the contemporary chronicles of Nader and in his own court documents, came into special focus upon his victory over the Mughals, depicted as parallel with Timur's own victories in India. Nader took pains to recognize the Mughal ruler's status as legitimate based on the Mughals' Timurid ancestry. And then all this connection just gets more and more emphasized. Okay. And of course, his court chronicler, after glossing over the devastation caused by the infamous Delhi massacre, immediately shifts to recounting an event designed to increase happiness, the marriage of a Mughal princess to Nader's son Nasrullah. The other major contemporary chronicler Marvi's description of this marriage also provides an occasion for him to discuss Nader's the Turkman concept I mentioned before. Marvi, the chronicler Marvi has Nader proclaimed, since the exalted lineage of the imperial deputy, meaning Nader, is Turkman, and the Mughal Padi Shah, who is the wellspring of eloquence, is also Turkman. There is no separation between them. Although there was an awareness of general ethnic ties between Timur and the Turkmans, as members of the, such Turkmens as members of the Ashar tribe, such a bold assertion of kinship and an official document constituted an invention of tradition even more substantial than the links earlier adduced between Nader and the Ottomans. Okay. And then we get into the discussion at Najaf, where the clearest presentation of his religious proposals took place in late 1743 at the Iraqi shrine city there in a conclave between Iranian Ottoman and Central Asian Ulema. And he was, one of the witnesses there was a guy named Abdullah Suwaiti, who presented his view of Nader's ideas from the perspective of a Sunni religious official in the Ottoman Empire. It's, of course, very revealing that the Iranian spokesman at Najaf used his arguments to justify Nader's new concept similar to one's employed by the Iranian ambassador to the Ottomans in 1736. Nader simply wanted the Ottomans to accept legally and officially that Iranian Muslims could be considered Sunni without any discussion of theological intricacies. As a result, a Suwaiti and the other participants in the council signed a document at the conclusion of the meeting that hardly mentioned any reconceiving of 12 Urshizm as the Jaffer must have focused on the confirmation of mutually held principles of Islam. Okay. As Suwaiti closes his account of this meeting with a strong feeling that the entire gathering felt like nothing more than an exercise in Tahrir or Tahrir, the ritual, the simulation. Perhaps creative use of Tahrir might be one way for, you know, devout Iranian Shi'i clerics to manage their own acceptance of Nader's proposal. As Suwaiti's invocation of Tahrir might help explain how Nader proposed to avoid exploration of the more problematic aspects of his new religious ideas in either domestic or foreign context. This Ottoman account confirms the persistence and intensification, though after the conquest of Iran, if Nader's campaign to get the Adams to accept the new idea of Iran he had been pushing since 1736. Suwaiti basically suggests that by 1743, Nader had extended his constant political legitimation based on his success in the East and India. The end of conflict between Nader and the Ottomans came kind of quietly. Both sides were depleted and exhausted by 1745. Nader finally sent peace proposals in which previous demands about the Jaffre Maastaf were admitted. As his great grip on Iran weakened in 1746 with revolts springing up around his realm, he became more willing to accept Ottoman terms for lasting peace settlement. He finally signed the Treaty of Cardan, which essentially was a restatement of the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab. It restored the borders of that time and was an important guarantee to the good treatment of Iranians making the Hajj. Pogromij are going to the Atabat Shrine cities of Iraq. This treaty signaled the end of conflict between the Ottomans and Iranians and cleared the way for the Ottomans to recognize Nader. We can go on and discuss all the intricacies of the treaty, but the point is it was a treaty to protect Iranians based on recognition of their common Islamic background with the Ottomans. Okay, so where did this leave us? Basically, Nader's diplomatic achievement was soon followed by the total disintegration of his regime, so that was a problem. This in turn became part of the general upheaval across the Muslim Ummah during the 18th century with the greater and greater involvement of European powers. Nader's idea of Iran, despite its failure to take root, did set the stage for more modern ideas to take shape beginning in Qajar times as we've seen already in some of the panels before. The questions it raised too about the nature of relationships across the sectarian divides of the Muslim Ummah as well as its attempts through an invention of tradition to redefine relationships between Iran and the empires around it are issues that continued to confront Iran over the next few centuries as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a fabulous talk and a great introduction to our second panel. Now, at the moment, the questions are open, but I don't seem to have anything there yet. Perhaps while we wait and see if any come in, which I'm sure they will. I just wanted to ask you, I was kind of picking up things as you went along, which resonated a little bit, although I'm absolutely an expert on the Qajar period myself, but you talked about harking back to pre-Islamic Iran and you mentioned, well obviously there's the image of the Shah-N Shah, but then you also mentioned his association, associating himself with the far. And I wondered if you could say anything about that or about the sort of symbolism and obviously that he wasn't associating it with the pre-Islamic caste, was he? He was just going back as far as either Timurid or Safavid. I don't know. Well, I think it's all kind of mixed together in a way. It's this freestanding fire that is kind of floating out there, ready for the great warrior to grasp. And I think it's important that you mention the fire because it's a way for Nader to get around the problem of him being descended from very ordinary warriors north of Mashhad. That's where he's from, right? But the fire is kind of this light that can come down to him. And the idea is that it came down to him in the same way that it came down to Timur. And that Timur, there are all kinds of legends, and I've written articles about this, talking about his connections to magical meetings and dreams of Timur and this, the Kalatenadri. So, son, he had done this wonderful work on the Nader's shrine place that he tried to create in the Kalatenadri, which was designed to somehow be a follow-on to Timur. So the fire, I think, is very much an Islamic fire that is connected with maybe a Timurid fire, if we could even say that. But certainly with many, many connections to the pre-Islamic world, too. Not maybe so specific, but a lot of names and connections and places that are enshrined with the others, too. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now, I've reminded and reminded myself that actually we're waiting until the end to take the questions. But that's really interesting. And I'm sure people are saving up to the end. So we'll move now to Janet. In fact, we're, we are right on time because you finished a tiny bit early. So now, thank you and over to Janet. Oh, Brian. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you, Chance, for organising the event. And I'm sorry about the light on my face. I've timed it really well so it hits right in the middle of my face. I apologise. But I would also like, of course, to thank the Sudevan Memorial Foundation for allowing me to participate in this symposium among more learned and esteemed scholars and his hard act to follow Professor Tucker being the authority in Nadeh Shah's history. And also, and also just to say thank you for the Memorial Foundation for generously supporting my research together with other funders. So if I may go to now share my screen. I hope you can see that. Okay. Sarah, can you see that? Because actually I can't see myself. I can't see your screen. Yes. Yes. No, that's perfect. Yeah. That's better. Sorry about that. Okay. Two months ago, I stumbled upon this print of the Motherland figure leaning on Reza Shah of the Palafi dynasty. It was made for the Parsi community in Bombay in 1924, a time when Reza Khan, as he was then known, was actively seeking their support for his nationalist project and encouraging their repatriation. Loaded with evocation and rhetoric, this image deserves a deeper unpacking, which I plan to do at a later point. What intrigues me most, however, is the appearance of Nadeh Shah in the top right corner. And this image is modeled on an oil painting in Tehran and I'm showing you a detailed view in the bottom right. Parsi's derived their Suraistian identity from ancient Iran and representations of Cyrus, Darius and Shafu are expected. And they're Cyrus and then there's Darius and Shafu. But why is Nadeh Shah here, the only ruler from the Islamic period? Like the ancient greats, Nadeh was celebrated for his vast empire and his conquest of India would have been a source of pride for the Parsi's. He was also said to be a great hero to Reza Shah, his self-styling as Iran's saviour further played into Pallavi's brand of nationalism, which explains his instructions to Reza Shah, which I've typed up on the right and translated, to protect motherland against the enemy of Iran. What this print also demonstrates and what's pertinent for this talk is the powerful resonance of Nadeh's image almost two centuries after his rule. Thanks to his many portraits, the extent of which had never been seen before him, Nadeh's instantly recognisable image has become a symbol of Iran's victory and imperial glory and in this case a constituent part of the idea of Iran for Reza Shah and the Parsi's. The extraordinary lasting power of Nadeh's image to the present day is attested by its many iterations across a range of media. He is recreated in the flesh in theatres, heroicised in a bronze sculpture, animated in children's books and cartoons and he battles on in the virtual world of video games. The resemblance to the early portraits of Nadeh is a testament to a three-century long visual lineage. Yet with the exception of Leila Debo, Abuola Sudefa and Adele Adamova, authors of Persian painting texts have paid a little attention to Nadeh and dismissed the turbulent Ashari period as an era of artistic darkness. The visual legacy of Nadeh began with a number of portraits created after his Delhi conquest of 1739, some during his reign and others not long after his death in 7047. I should discuss some of them in just a moment that viewing them side by side here allows us to observe that despite the different settings, styles and media, a very specific iconography of Nadeh has emerged. They share a remarkable consistency not only in terms of his four-point hat and jewels looted from Delhi, but also his proud chested, arms akin both swagger, his unflinching gaze and resolute look. His face turned towards the right to show off his jet-gay, which is the further agred one on the right to signal his sovereign status, and his head slightly tilted back to give an air of pride and awe that defeats the Contra. It is this depiction from his early portraits that has endured to the present day the image that has come to be recognized as Nadeh. The legend of Nadeh began with his meteoric ascent from a tribal soldier to a commander-in-chief of Tom of the Second, and eventually deposing the puppet Shah above the Third to find the Aftar dynasty in 1736. His conquest formed an empire from the Caucasus to India, and earned him admirers among great conquerors, including Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. Nadeh's invasion and plundering of India generated a frenzy of reports from St Petersburg to Istanbul in the London newspaper and propelled him into global infamy. Armed with a war chest overflowing with the riches of India, his next target was the Ottomans, and here are two engravings published in London, very shortly after the Indian conquest, showing Nadeh bursting onto the stage and threatening the Ottoman Sultan. And it was also speculated that he planned to expand his empire as far west as Europe and as far east as China. Such radical change in the political landscape of Iran motivated the makeover of the royal image, chief of which is the deployment of portraiture. My thesis investigates why Nadeh's portraits were novel, specifically how they decoupled the Shah from the collective ruling body, and how that visual breakup is linked to contrasting notions of rule between Nadeh's self-referential brand of authority and the dynastic institution of the Soviets. It's not feasible in the short paper to introduce the full corpus of Nadeh's images. Instead, I shall focus on his single portraits created in Iran and how they embody his personality-driven and self-reliant image. I begin with this life-size oil portrait from Iran, circa 1740, now at the BNA. It's the earliest extant monumental portrait of an Iranian ruler, and I'm showing you here on the right the scale and how monumental and unusual it won't exist at this time. David de Bois has attributed it to the painter Muhammad Rezaei Hendi, who was active in Iran and India in the mid-18th century, and his works comprise royal portraits from the Ashared and Mughal courts. While there's no information to ascertain if this was ordered by Nadeh himself, the meticulous rendering of luxury royal objects from the birds on the enamoured hilts of the dagger and the sword, the Kundan designs of the jeweled items, to the gold and silver thread in the carpets, and the double twists of the prayer beads as they rest on the carpet, suggest that it was likely a royal commission, and Nadeh might have even sent for it. We know from textual records that he ordered multiple paintings of himself after the Delhi conquest. As for his intended function, again we have no information, but Iran had a very long tradition of figurative wall painting. Also, according to travelist accounts, Nadeh's palaces in Esfahan, Mashhad, Ghasveen and Bershar were decorated with figurative paintings, and traces remain in Gathre Hoshid or Sun Palace in Kalat. One could picture this portrait adorned one of his palaces, and his triumphal message would have made it a fitting choice for an audience wall. Indeed, this portrait is perhaps the most pronounced visual representation of Nadeh's Indian victory, the event that made him, in the words of the contemporary English writer Jonas Hanway, the most powerful of all the monarchs of the East. Nadeh is depicted in the conventional kingly pose that lends him a regal bearing, and he wears the four pointed hat he created to signify his new dynasty. But unlike representations of other Iranian rulers, Nadeh is draped in looted jewels from Delhi seated on a Mughal carpet in Mughal tent. Bearing the fruits of his conquest, Nadeh's body functions as a resplendent monument of his triumph in India. The deployment of the king's body in Persian painting as the single site of power was a trend that emerged under Nadeh. In this portrait, his body dominates the tight space and commands out full attention. His doggie torso, wide girth and bulky thighs exude masculine strength and robustness. His masculinity is further amplified by his strong and well-defined face and a full perfectly groomed beard. The present portrait closely resembles eyewitness descriptions of his imposing presence and manly appearance, and would have been readily recognized by those who had met him. But more significant is the focus on his body and what that means. An Islamic thought, bodily perfection of the king is indexical of the health of the body politic, and their ample examples in primary sources of Nadeh's physical vigor, self-discipline and ability to endure hardship among his soldiers. In the VNA portrait, and in others such as the one on the right, Nadeh, who was in his early 50s, is depicted in the fullness of health and metaphorically in command of his political body. His vitality, strength and manliness are core attributes of Javanadi, which literally means young man. It's a person concept that encompasses the ideal qualities of a warrior and is associated with invincible heroes such as Rustam, national defender in the Sharnameh, and Ali, warrior par excellence of Islam. Nadeh's perfect and powerful body also evokes the Islamic notion of Anzane Khomeil, the perfect man who is a manifestation of God. Nadeh's physical strength, visualized through the solidity of his painted body, is in market contrast to the more flatly rendered bodies of Safavid Shahs. The slender frames of Safavid rulers may be associated with the articulation of the legitimacy which was dependent more on the role as the head of the royal household and ruling corporation and less on their battle-tested prowess. And this is borne out pictorially by the dominance of audience scenes over battle scenes in Safavid representation. For Nadeh, a warrior king has legitimacy rested on his persona as a victor and protector of India, of Iran, he needed to project a visually powerful body and his heavily built figure bears more resemblance to the ideal male body type in Iran and India, his conquered land, where a firm-wasted or calmer bound body was a marker of battle readiness and manliness. Also in India, unlike Iran, portraiture had long been a primary mode of representing kingship and the production of royal portraits was undergoing a revival under the reigning Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah. The painter of this oil portrait in the VNA, Muhammad Rezoey Hendi, was a portraitist himself active in both Iran and India. Some of Nadeh's portraits were also painted by Indian core artists and the many Mughal portrait albums that Nadeh carted back to Delhi might have inspired his painters in Iran to create a single portrait of Nadeh in their own visual language and technique. However powerful a body is, unless it is plucked in royal attributes, it remains the body of a mortal. Nadeh's body functions as the ultimate showcase for the exotic looted jewels like the public exhibition he put on Hina Harat of his war trophies, including the peacock throne and the gift-laden embassies he sent to the Russian and Ottoman courts to announce his victory. The sparkling spoils can also be viewed literally and metaphorically as the luminosity of Nadeh's divine glory or far. As Abu al-Asrullah writes, victories over non-Iranians generated the most potent of all farce. It could hardly be more potent than the far-earned from defeating the richest empire in the world. Contemporary viewers would have been awestruck by this unprecedented display of jewels on the Shah's body. Persian painting up until now rarely showed the kings be decked with jewelry and this image heralded the gem-encrusted bodies in Gaudo paintings like Fatali Shah's. I also argue that Nadeh was desirous of body markers that would project him as the universal sovereign for peoples of different cultures and religions in his expanding empire. Chief among these royal signs is the substitution of the turban with his crime-like hand and diadem. It's not just a brick from the south of it past, but also to visually signal himself as king of kings Shah and Shah. A contemporaneous portrait of Nadeh painted by Mughal court painter Mohamed Penaugh declared itself as the image of king of kings John Sheet like Nadeh Shah. The new title is also inscribed on objects associated with his Indian victory including a rupee coin, a ceremonial axe and several priceless gemstones from Mughal treasury. The prayer beads being a symbol of piety in various religious traditions represent Nadeh to a multi-faith audience in his empire as the king of faith Shahadeen and honorific that appears on a coin from his coronation. The beads are made more prominent not just by its presence in several of his portraits but by his virtual absence in prior depiction of Iranian rulers. Nadeh's wish to establish a symbol of kingship that would be recognized across religious lines was fully aligned with his call for unity of Sunni and Shiite Muslims at his coronation as well as the deliberately non-sectarian pronouncements on his coins and seals. In another oil portrait now hung in the British library Nadeh assumes a standing pose more typical of a European monarch. Significantly this is the first portion portrait depicting a Shah in a European three-quarter stance. Nadeh's thrusting elbows known as the Renaissance elbow is a sign of masculinity that calls to mind portraits of Henry the Eighth and it's of course also an established kingly pose in Persian painting. This blending of Persian and European royal postures is fitted in painted oval which was involved in Europe as a framing device for portraits or a portrait series of great men. We might consider this portrait in the context of the thriving culture of portrait collecting in 18th century Europe and how it might have been intended as a diplomatic gift perhaps to place Nadeh in a gallery gallery of illustrious kings. Little is known about his actual audience except that it was brought back from India by Henry Vensetard who entered the service of the East Indian Company in Madras in 1746 and rose through place Robert Clive as the governor of Bengal. We know from contemporary correspondence that one of several portraits of Nadeh was presented to the British president of Madras in 1740 soon after the Delhi conquest. It is likely that the British library portrait was a similar gesture. I should also say that the V&A portrait earlier also brought back to the UK from India and it too might have been a diplomatic gift as an alternative to my earlier suggestion of it being displayed in one of Nadeh's palaces. Such a gift as a British historian has suggested might have served to keep Nadeh at the forefront of the British authorities' calculations and reminded them of his political and military presence in the subcontinent. For someone whose legitimacy rested entirely on his achievements on the battlefield, equestrian imagery was essential to his identity. These images combined both Persian and European archetypes of the victorious warrior King on horseback. They evoked the Persian notion of Shivori or Jaffa Mardi and his parallel concept in early modern Europe. They also have in common a landscape setting unlike paintings of individual equestrian figures in the Saffavik period which tend to be devoid of background. Here I argue that the visual connection between the body of Nadeh and the land of Iran underscores his self-image as the protector of Iran-Zamin. In the Shawma-Meye Nadehri by Muhammad Aliyeh Tusi, who accompanied Nadeh on campaigns, Iran-Zamin is depicted as a Shawma-Meye-like land liberated by Nadeh, akin to Faridun driving Zahok, a surrogate for the invading Arabs out of Iran-Zamin. According to Abu Zanwar Nath, Tusi uses the term Iran-Zamin to denote a politically conceived entity whose prosperity and order are dependent on Nadeh coming to the rescue. Indeed, the concept is explicitly proclaimed on a coin commemorating his coronation. It defines his identity as Nadeh of Iran-Zamin and the conqueror of the world. Whether he's being portrayed as a national saviour or world conqueror, the self-centric nature of Nadeh's image mirrors his highly personalised polity with no hereditary lineage to boast, Nadeh built a personal brand of authority around his own military genius and charisma. His self-reliance was widely noted as his obituary in the London paper reads, not being dependent on anyone but himself or the crown, he was resolved to manage it by his own will without any external help. The notion of the self as the sole source and symbol of power is expressed by his own chronicler, Mizo Mardi Hone, as the Robo-D, quote, the transient blade owes its excellence to his temper, not to the iron mine. After divine grace, his prevailment is by his own sword, end quote. This exclusive focus on the Shah's body would have been a novelty as a single royal portrait were virtually absent in Safavid Iran. From the two-century rule of the Safavids, we only have portraits of Abbas the first and his beloved page here on the left in which Abbas's body is treated as a private object of his beloved intimate gaze rather than public spectacle of kinship. And there's also on the right an Indianized portrait of Shah Suleiman attributed to Sheikh Abbasi, but I found no other single portraits of Safavid Shahs painted in Iran during their lifetime. This is all the more perplexing considering single-figure painting was experiencing phenomenal popularity in the 17th century and the most powerful members of the ruling elite, including several grand pantheos, are among those portrayed. This begs the question why the Shah is missing from the new genre. The persistent dearth of royal portraits amid such a flourishing period in portrait making stands as an art historical quandary and the explanation I believe lies not in where the Shah is absent but rather where he is present. Safavid Shahs are embedded in courtly gatherings and scenes of historical event. The most well-known are probably the audience scenes in the Chalice Street Palace in Esfahan. By featuring the Shah of Esfahan at the apex of a repeated triangular arrangement, these paintings form a pictorial cel-salae of dynastic continuity as kinship migrates from Ta'amab to Abbas I and Abbas II in a self-perpetuating royal machinery. The anonymity of the support cast of courtiers and the unchanging visual hierarchy, contrary to evidence of actual changes in ceremonial protocols, create the impression of an eternal body politic that outlasts the lifespan of the Shah. According to Kantarowicz in his analysis of the doctrine of the kinship bodies, the body corporate is eternalized in two ways horizontally as the plurality of persons collected in one person and vertically as the plurality in succession. The Chalice Street group scenes combine both dimensions into an emphatic image of the immortal corporate body. These paintings also promote the Golan and Higamani as the face of the Safavid power structure, including front row grandees, beardless eunuchs and young Georgians wearing fervorimed hats. Seated in the highest and nearest place of the Shah, the physical closeness binds the elite slaves to the royal master into one corporate body. Such inseparability reflects the discourse of 13th century philosopher Nasser al-Dinay II C on the body politic in which he equates household slaves with the hands, feet and eyes of the body. The Shah, acting as the head and soul of the body politic, must balance the different functionaries in order to maintain its well-being and the triangular composition may serve as a visual metaphor for the power equilibrium between the Shah and his court. The physical proximity is also a pictorial articulation of the Shi'i ethos of sociability of the Shah, which was a mark of the Safavid charisma derived from the 12th emin. The Chalice Street scenes are the most monumental expressions of the Safavid body corporate, but thereby no means an isolated experiment. Group painting served as the predominant if not exclusive mode of royal representation in the second half of the 17th century. Among them is a small series of court gatherings by Ali Goliyeh of Adol in the St. Petersburg album, including these two. In my thesis, I argue that they may represent the most powerful members of the Ondarun or inner household and serve as a counterpoint to the grand vision of the Birun or outer court in the Chalice Street paintings. In Safavid paintings, kingship is represented as a shared offers with the Shah at his apex. This collective body has all but disappeared from Nadi's images. He is still depicted in the familiar Europeanized style of the late Safavid period and in the traditional Sita-amounted pose, but with a stockier body type and his own royal attributes. This figure of the Shah, however, had been transplanted from the horizontal frame of the historicized painting to the vertical format of a single portrait. What was once a militarized figure within a pluralized entity is now single, monumental and whole. The Safavid politic with the Shah as the head has thus been visually decapitated and dismembered, liberating the Shah's body to stage his one-man show. The breaking away of the king from the other court bodies echoes Nadi's strategy to purge the bureaucratic establishment. A soldier at heart and an outsider with no claim to dynastic legitimacy, Nadi harboured a suspicion of a fissure dune. The Ghazalbosh roots of his Afshar clan may also have may have added to his contempt for the Safavid model of centralized administration dominated by the Golan class. As Abbas Amunath has observed, Nadi's disgust for the machinery of government was evident in his consistent crushing of the old Safavid bureaucracy and haphazard replacement of it with a military elite. The isolation of Nadi's body can also be viewed as divergence from the Shi ethos of sociability and accessibility practiced by Safavid Shahs. Unlike the Safavids, Nadi's charisma was not dependent on staging a show of hospitality. In fact, he is rarely, if ever, depict in a feasting scene. Rather, Nadi's portraits emphasize his far-earned from conquests as well as the other as well as other warrior attributes such as Jaffa Mardi I have discussed earlier. These immortal qualities reside in his individual capacity as Shah and together they grant dignity and sanctity to his office and confer eternal life on his body politic. Nadi is now the personification and soul embodiment of kingship. The early portraits of Nadi served as prototypes for a long line of later iterations into the 19th century and beyond. In the interest of time, I had to leave these out of the talk, but I am happy to answer any questions later. And here's some more. My principal aim of this paper was to give you a sense of the novelty and longevity of Nadi's imagery and how it was reinvented from the Safavid mode of royal representation. But the visual legacy of Nadi goes far beyond his own images. His portraits promoted an aesthetic valorization of the Shah's body and this new impulse of self-display led to the establishment of single portraiture as the principal mode of royal image-making in the Zand and Ghoja periods. Abu Hassan Bustafie, Ghafariye Khoshani, who painted a number of portraits of Karim Khani Zand, seems to have closely modelled these portraits of the Zand founder here on the right on Nadi's. And in these seated portraits of Karim Khan and the first two Goddural rulers, Agamoham Khan and Fat Ali Shah, you can see the unmistakable DNA they share with the V&A portrait of Nadi. In her paper, Persian painting in the 18th century, tradition and transmission, Leila de Bois presents her important investigation into the familial and student-teacher relationships of 18th century artists. Based on her work, I argue that the painters of Nadi's portraits hailed from a lineage which may be biographical or stylistic, stretching back to the late Salfavid royal workshop or extending forward to the Zand and Ghoja periods and in some cases both. The work of connections enabled the painters to reformulate the Salfavid past to create novel compositions and to carry the innovations in royal portraiture into the Zand and Ghoja future. I have to disperse any lingering misperception that these later portraits sprang from European painting. They were homegrown creations that emerged from the works of Nadi's image makers. They drew inspiration from sources as diverse as Iranian, Indian and European royal imagery to devise a competitive style befitting Nadi's world conquering rhetoric. Thank you. And right in scale, we're going to have to wind up very quickly now. I have four lines left. So the variety in scale from album page to live size and in the medium from oil on canvas to watercolor and paper and ink drawing also speaks to an enthusiasm to search for the new. Ultimately these painters created more than just portraits of Nadi. They envisioned a new body of the Shah, powerful, dominant and tethered from the court, a body that stands by itself as an exclusive site of ruling power. By doing so, they ushered in a modern vision of kinship as Iran faced into the 19th century. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Janet, for another fascinating talk and wonderful powerpoint. So now we will move, you'll take questions at the end. I won't interrupt with the question and we'll move straight on to Kianush Motaqedi. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm trying to share my screen. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Kianush Motaqedi and today I will be addressing you on a subject from Chelsea to go to St. Paul's, the evolution of royal wall painting during the reign of Fatali Shah. Before I start, I would like to say thank you to the Sudavar Memorial Foundation and also to my colleague at the idea of Iran conference, Professor Charles Milby, Professor Sarah Stewart for the invitation, for the invitation to present my article. And I'm honored to be a part of this session. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Leila Diba for her comments and valuable guidance and also a special thanks to my friends and colleague Dr. Negar Habibi. The Qajar period is most astonishing periods of Iran's artistic history in the field of painting. From a historical perspective, Iran underwent drastic changes in its cultural and socio-political environment during the Qajar period. However, the power of art patronage in directing artists and thus in shaping the history of art in Iran in the Qajar period cannot be overlooked. Wall painting was a prominent art form for displaying royal themes and monumental works in the 18th century. There were many murals in palaces and buildings of that period which are now sadly mostly destroyed. However, some descriptions, pictures or even a few restored buildings are available for observation and study. Qajar wall painting could actually be regarded as a transmission of a pre-existing tradition during the Safavid era, having manifested itself in hunting, feast and battle scene, notably at Chelsutun Palace in Isfahan. Such a time on a tradition continued into subsequent eras in the Afshurid and Zan dynasties, with it taking a more narrative function for the impressive display of the ruler's authority shortly thereafter. While Zad art may be seen as a local school in Shiraz, Qajar art become national. In fact, the focus of post-Safavid paintings has gradually shifted to Qajar painting. This achievement was a consequence of Qajar political inclination. Before delving into main subject of this lecture, I would like to mention some aspects of history of wall painting and its evolution up to 18th century. This topic has a long history dating back to the pre-Islamic period in Iran, the tradition of wall painting underwent a revival during the Islamic period from the Sajuk era onwards. An example of this could be seen in the murals of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi's palace in Lashkari Bazar. Thereafter, the decoration of Timurid and Safavid palaces and buildings provided an opportunity for the formation of a new artistic genre through the beautification of the interiors of royal buildings and the houses of the elites. Isfahan, as the capital of the Safavid, undoubtedly created the opportunity for the development of wall painting tradition, which had already been established in Ghazni, in this context. And as a result of the style of palace building developed by Shoah Abbas in Isfahan, as well as his patronage of arts, the tradition of wall painting evolved dramatically. According to Susand Baba'i, the location and themes of wall paintings at Chelsutun palace were governed by a deliberate scheme. In this scheme, the events documented the relations between the Safavid court and its eastern neighbors, royal feast, and literary terms of romance. In this palace, wall painting constitute the most important part of the palace's decorative program. Thematically, the narrative paintings at the Chelsutun palace can be broadly divided into four categories. Prominence amongst these are historical scenes and the proto-royal of kings. The Safavid painter chose a specific ceremonial format as a more effective visual means to deliver a political message. After the fall of Safavid in 1722, Shoah Abbas's legendary statues were enhanced by virtue of comparison with what followed. For most of the rest of the 18th century, the lives of Iranian were blighted by chaos, war, and extortion. With the rise of Nader Shah, with the rise of actually the Afshar dynasty, its founder Nader Shah established his reign. This coincided with the Battle of Karnal in the late 1730s. Kalaten Naderi was a fertile land in Khorasan, where Nader built his utopia and monuments. Today, a record of the city and its building remains from the Nasser-Din Shah's period, from which we can obtain detailed information on the buildings and gates of that period. According to historical records, most of the times Nader lived in camps in Urdu, of which we have no more traces. Putting aside Kalaten Naderi, we should note that Nader was also not a great builder of palaces. The palaces he built in Kalaten Naderi have been entirely lost because they were made from wood. Hence, we cannot know how they were decorated. One of the famous buildings in the Naderi period that we do have a trace of is its so-called Urchi Palace. Today, we have found some very few figurative wall paintings, the one that Janet shows, but most of the ornaments from that period are some vegetal motifs beside the bird and flowers Golomur or Golobulbool, designed in Indian style that are painted on the walls of this palace. It should also be noted that some of these ornaments were added to the monument after Nader Shah's reign. The only period of peace in 18th century Iran was during the reign of Karim Khan Zand in Shiraz. Karim Khan, who preferred the title Regent Vakil to Shah, did not demand that his painters beautify his appearance even in monumental canvases. He was happy to show at the informal and unpretentious gathering in a modest architectural setting. The tone of most of the paintings that show Karim Khan does contrast sharply with the later glorious images of Fatali Shah and his court. According to Basil Robinson, during this period Shiraz was the place for the formation of style that some 50 years later would progress under the reign of Fatali Shah. The best example of this in its early stages are probably the murals in Parse Museum and Haftanon mansion. Most of the Zand buildings during the reign of Karim Khan were decorated with murals. In Parse Museum, we can see an oil painting of Karim Khan Zand, Audience Hall. However, another version of its another version of its preserved in Agha Khan Museum. And also recently I found another one inside Iran. It's preserved in the treasury of Nyawaran complex, which is very, very interesting. It's exactly similar to the one that you could see here. This monumental portrait of Karim Khan Zand and his kinsmen is an official image of a ruler. It looks decidedly less formal than the large single figure portraits of Fatali Shah from the early Ghadjar period. This is not the same concept as showing king or ruler in the splendor of his court. We can infer from the study of murals in the Zand era that the tradition of rural wall painting on plaster in which the king was portrayed in the middle position of the work reappeared in a new form and function on the cotton wall paintings of Zand building in Shiraz. Interestingly, when the Ghadjar came to power, they deliberate sought to portray themselves as a revival of the Safavid state and pre-Islamic dynasties because they knew how much this resonated with the Iranian people. Consequently, Agha Muhammad Khan appropriated both the monuments and the visual language of Safavid power. With the rise of the Ghadjar dynasty, Tehran was chosen as the new capital of Iran and fundamental changes occurred in its urban structure subsequent to which the construction of a number of building and monuments, a close examination of Ghadjar large-scale paintings and monumental works for newly building palaces and some religious buildings demonstrates that they were political in a sense and in their theme. Although Tehran was chosen as a capital of Iran during the reign of Agha Muhammad Khan, he returned to his birthplace Astarabad to build his residential palace and audience hall. According to historical documents, murals in the Sari palaces with monumental theme were a collection of painting we took as their subject the battle and victories over the enemies were former kings such as Shah Ismail Safavi and Nader Shah Afshar. This might remain as what Asif Ashraf mentioned about the Ghadjar Kurnlaka. The commission of such paintings in the Ghadjar palace was nothing but the continuation of the wall painting tradition and the homage to traditional ornamentation by the Safavids palace Safavids in palaces like Cheil Sotun. Up to this date, we still cannot observe any murals of Agha Muhammad Khan portraits on the walls of Astarabad buildings and what dominates is the depiction of Safavid and Afsharid rulers. However, only two decades later, this tradition was continued with the patronage of Fatali Shah as the second Ghadjar monarch. The first manifestation of this was the wall painting by Abdullah Khan in Soleimani Palace in Karaj in 1812 to 1813. Portraying Agha Muhammad Khan beside his brothers and kinsmen in an idealized manner. Interestingly, in this painting, we can see the peacock throne on which the king is seated in the usual pose with a jewelry and a sword. But we know that this throne was built after Agha Muhammad Khan during the reign of Fatali Shah. Applying such an element could be considered an interesting innovation by court painter Abdullah Khan. Fatali Shah, Agha Muhammad Khan's nephew, the governor of Shiraz, came to power after his uncle. This period could be regarded as the heyday of royal portraiture in the art history of Iran. When he began his rule, Fatali Shah viewed himself as the right to the tradition of Persian kingship rooted in the past. In contrast to Karim Khan who modestly called himself Vakilo Roayah, Fatali Shah called himself Shahansha, the king of the kings, like Nader. Evidence of both construction and iconography inspired by Iran's pre-Islamic heritage can be traced in the architecture and decoration of the period of Fatali Shah's reign and gradually become a strong socio-cultural and artistic movement lasting until the end of Qajar period. Leila Diba comments that through the constant ordering and displaying of this of his portrait and his court in these paintings, particularly in murals, Fatali Shah Qajar sought to consolidate his power and monarchy. Such a royal intention has strongly manifested itself in various murals, some records of which could be traced from different sources in palaces such as Negaristan Palace, Khurshid Mansion, Eshrat Ain Palace and also Soleimani Palace in Karaj. Fatali Shah's most impressive achievement in his early years of kingship was probably the creation of balance between two ideas, ancestral theme and the support of Shia ideology. This made it possible for him to gain the approval of religious authorities, by restoring and constructing religious buildings as well as continuing his ambitious project in building glorious royal palaces in the form of terrestrial paradises. All this would result in the development of wall painting as well as rock reliefs. In royal residence paintings function as a unit of a rich array of decorative programs. Battle and hunting scenes stood amongst the common theme in the wall paintings of the royal residence. The present example that you can see here displays a portrait of the young equestrian Shah Fatali Shah in Ganje conquest Azerbaijan as a victorious king. This painting was once located on the wall of the Tanabi Palace in Golestan. If we are to present a categorization of the royal portraits and your monumental themes during the period of Fatali Shah, we can list under three groups. The first is the single image of the like portrait of Sita's ruler on the throne. The second shows the ruler in hunting and battle scene and the third group would be entortment scene dedicated to a special intervention theme called Salam ceremony or royal reception. The latter was pioneered by chief painter Nagosh Boshi Abdul-Lokhan and was considered a symbol of power and legitimacy of the Ghazars for about three decades. Such a theme and composition in painting was considered a prototype for other painters of the time and manifested itself in other art media as well. As we know, the idea of portraying royal receptions and royal entornment with courtries and distinguished guests standing humbly in rows dates back to the ancient times. Such a theme can be seen in accommodate partian and Sasanid reliefs in which the king is located in the center of the work looking at the viewers whilst courtries and servants flank him. Such a time on a tradition continued right into the Islamic period in art media such as illustrated manuscript and stucco carving. An example of latter can be seen in a stucco work relief in Seljuk ruler Togrol discovered in Rey and now which is preserved in the Museum of Philadelphia. It may be fitting before describing the Salam ceremony from royal residence of Ghom to briefly define the style of this monumental wall painting within its generally history. The direct supervision of the Shah means Fatali Shah over the painters shows his awareness of the importance of this subject. At the beginning of Fatali Shah's reign, Abdullah Khan resumed his career as a chief court painter and when he was young he was given the commission to carry out a monumental wall painting of the ruler and his court for the Negaristan Palace in Tehran as you could see. Abdullah Khan was probably born between 1781 to 1786 late Zan period. He started his career as a young artist in a concursions with the reign of Agha Muhammad Khan but flourished during Fatali Shah's period. The considerable evidence for the artistic contribution of Abdullah Khan over the six decades had previously led to an investigation of his role in the establishment and development of the royal wall painting Safa Salam in the 19th century. The formation of such a new theme in the art of that period and in particular in the murals of the palaces was mostly for the purpose of representing the power and legitimacy of Qajar. This life-size wall painting was prepared for the reception hall of the Negaristan Palace by Abdullah Khan in 1812 to 1813. Some experts however have suggested that this work is of an imaginary new year reception. The innovation of his style appeared once more in Soleimaniya Palace in Karaj. In this palace he exhibited two large wall paintings including Fatali Shah and his sons as well as Agha Muhammad Khan and the leaders of the Qajar tribes on the facing wall. He could see a picture of Fatali Shah in the Soleimaniya top. Fatali Shah had very firm beliefs about religious issues. He would make a several pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Shia Imams. The religious statues of Qaum city as the tomb of Hazrat Masoome Imam Reza's sister was an immense at the time that Fatali Shah would go there when he was traveling to the other central cities in Iran. In 1808 he ordered the construction of the residential building and a great palace near the shrine. He would recite there in his visits to Qaum. This palace was called Emarete Divani, it means governmental mansion. According to Henri Dalmani traveled Shah restored this holy place in 1810 and he also added a guest house and hospital constructed next to the shrine. For his last years of rulership Fatali Shah appointed his 28th son Kekav Usmirzal to the governorship of Qaum in 1832. Kekav Usmirzal constructed a royal audience hall and order for his large wall painting with a theme of a royal reception in recognition of his father. The painting that you're looking at was completed during the last two years of Shah's life. There were 150 figures in the painting who were the Shah's sons and grandchildren. Unfortunately this palace was abundant after Fatali Shah's death and was on the verge of destruction during the reign of the subsequent ruler Muhammad Shah. They dedicate later during the reign of Nasir Din Shah the building underwent partial restoration. According to Etezado Duleh the restoration began in 1879 and continued until 1884. In his diary Nasir Din Shah recorded some interesting accounts of this building and its wall painting the last of which dated back to 1887. Furthermore other Qajar dignitors such as Etemado Salsane in 1884 and Farid el-Mulkahamedani in 1906 have also provided accounts of this mural this monumental work. The building and its halls were destroyed by the order of Ayatollah Borujerdi in 1954 for the aim of renovation and expansion and a mosque was replaced. Fortunately before destruction some experts tasked themselves with detaching the paintings from the wall and transferring it to another location. The detached painting was carried to Tehran in 54 plaster blocks. The pieces were preserved for some time in treasury of parliament of Iran Majlis-e-Baharistan and in 2005 they were transferred to the treasury of Golisam Palace. Finally in 2015 the murals was brought out after 60 years of storage and the pieces were relocated on the walls of Negarestan Palace Museum in 2017 following two years of restoration. The wall painting of the royal mansion Groom is a masterpiece and could be regarded as a quintessence of the of all former achievements in paintings during Fatalisha's reign. The paint this painting like its other predecessors once again depicts Fatalisha in a seated position on the Picachtron Tachta Tawus exactly like the works of other leading court painters such as Mehr Ali and Mirza Baba. The figure of the Shah in the center is flanked by his elder sons in order of hierarchy. The first figure on the left is the crown prince Abbas Mirza who passed away a couple of months after the computation of this painting. The last years of Fatalisha's reign brought about a period of hardship and conflicts for the Qajar governments. This crisis was due to the difficult situation provoked by internal and external tensions. Abbas Mirza's heavy defeat by Russian in addition to other hardship resulted in poor condition for the country especially in its central and eastern parts. Under such an unfavorable circumstances the act of creating a great work of art was nothing but an attempt to showing and strengthen family ties as well as maintain the legitimacy of the Qajars. If we take a look at the calm face of the Shah and the glory of his court we can recognize the image of power embodied here. But who would be the painter of such a masterpiece? The actual size of this painting was far greater than what we can observe today. In stylistic terms it is hieratic, extremely lavish and commensurate. In the original work there were 150 figures but today we can only see 99. The artist's signature was to be inscribed underneath the work but unfortunately there is no trace of it now. We cannot even find any trace of its painter in the documents available. In my opinion the present wall painting in terms of style and composition is fairly similar to two other murals in Nagaristan and Soleimani palaces. Incidentally the present painting share close affinities and its composition the figure poses and other elements in the scene to the rock relief in Shadr-e which is known as a Naqsh-e-Khagan the portrait of the Shah. You could see and comparison these two together. This is from Shadr-e on the top on the bottom. Interestingly this rock relief was completed in 1832 to 1833 according to the to accounts and documents the relief in Shadr-e was done under the supervision of Abdul-Laqan and he actually should be considered the artist who initiated a new theme in painting called Royal Reception. As a collective result we can attribute the wall painting from Qom to Abdul-Laqan because at the same time in 1832 and 1833 he was working on two parallel projects in which he used the same methods and a style to compose a royal scene. Moreover in 1833 Abdul-Laqan was commissioned by Fratali Shah to design his tombstone for the Qom Shrine which can also be proved that he may have stayed in that region for a while. Thank you for your attention. Keanush thank you so much for a wonderful talk, a really colorful beautiful powerpoint and also for finishing on the dot of four o'clock. So we now have questions for everybody and I'm going to go right into those because there are a lot. It would I think be good to try and and more or less allocate 10 minutes to each speaker. I'm going to go in chronology because the questions are fairly straightforward and they go to in that order. So starting with Ernest Tucker I thought perhaps you could take two together and those two came from Susanne Barbeille and Anthony Wynne. Let me just find them. I think for some reason my first lot of questions seem to have disappeared. Ernest do you have those questions? Let me take a look let's see. I definitely had Susanne Barbeille unless you answered it by in writing. I did write her. Oh you did okay and then so Anthony Wynne was roughly you may have answered him as well because that was more or less on the same. It was talking about cities I suppose. That's right that's right. Well I guess my quick my quick answer to that is I think you know not like all the great nomadic sovereigns and monarchs had this mobile capital that went with him. I mean this is a something that even the Safavids had of course too. I think the problem was he really never had enough time to put a city together. My theory is it might have been Mashhad had he had another 10 years or something and of course Kalat itself had the makings of a of a city complex too. So I think maybe it just was a factor of you know time. He didn't have enough time maybe. That's just a theory but it's it's interesting to think he's not normally you have sort of a city to display your nomadic amazement and you come back to it now and again mostly you're in a camp you know so yeah anyway. Great well thank you and then there was there were another two on looking back to the Safavid period from Laura Zuccaro and Masoud and they one Laura's was about nostalgia with the Safavid empire and what caused the change. So basically how long did the Ottoman fascination nostalgia? The Ottoman peace yeah I think the Ottomans kept it going as long as they could. I think they kind of there was an attempt to kind of keep it going. I've written an article about this too in the Afshar at successors to Nader. They tried hard with that that didn't quite work then they tried to kind of final gasp with us with Ahmed Shah Durrani who was sort of the pseudo ruler of northern Iran with Shah Rukh as his vassal in a way but I think that yeah and I think that after that and certainly by the Qajar period they had they had things were sort of anew but this goes to the point of Nader changing the equation a little bit and I think that Janet's and Kinnish both show the artistic version of this that he changed the imagery and he changed the the way things were thinking and I think the the Ottomans had to change in that regard too. So that's how I would answer that. It's a great question. Yeah thank you and then and then this is a slightly different approach but this is from Masoud what are your thoughts about the role and influence of religion in Nader's idea of Iran in relation to the Safavid. Oh it's it's very important it's back to the thing that I was mentioning about this Mashabi Jaffari and the whole discussion about that and I would again I don't mean to be disingenuous but I could turn him to my book on about that so yeah and I think that it's a very very important piece of the puzzle absolutely yeah. I'm just wondering what who you've written back to in answer to the questions but there was also I know that Charles had an observation he wanted to make in response to your talks so Charles perhaps you'd like to ask. Oh thank you well if there's time it was really partly linking up what Ernie was talking about with something in Asif Ashraf's paper at the beginning of the day and I mean of course we all know that her Karzin Mavi started off you know pro Nader and ended up against him it's quite an interesting development and I just thought it'd be interesting to sort of link that with what we were talking about with Asif if any of the you know how the chroniclers may have started off being in favor of the Karjars and then we're beginning to see the warts and it's really just an observation linking up the two panels in a way because comparative historiographical trajectory you know yeah exactly I mean it's interesting you know the start may be all fantastic all this legitimacy and here we go and then you know suddenly things go wrong and it doesn't look quite so good I just wonder if this is going to crop up in the in the later Karjar historiography as well which I'm not familiar with well I think it's also and Janet points this out in some of the pictures that she presented these wonderful pictures of Nader much later on like this this Parsi Indian version of Nader I love that fantastic picture but but you know the point is there's a nostalgia then for Nader weirdly enough is the point you know it's a successiveness so I think that's a really interesting comparative nostalgia and comparative disillusionment you know yes you know right thanks thanks very much thank you the papers all hung together basically actually yeah there is another um there is another question um from Ali Abderazai for for Ernest um about self-definition and view of the other how did Persia and specifically Nader himself view Europe at the time um and the question goes on given the fact that he tried to build a navy and using some western engineers occasionally can we assume that on some level um uh he given the western political scientific and technological advances he tried to appreciate western or european achievements yeah that's a fantastic question and it's something that I'm really sort of working on at the moment and it's it's clear for example the most clear evidence of that I think is on the Caspian where he really tries to you know he has obviously this naval project in the Persian Gulf that he puts he tries to get the Dutch and the British to kind of kind of give any course goes to Bombay and his ships made in Bombay as well so I think absolutely he was tapping into this naval expertise of the of the Gulf he himself had this idea of taking these wonderful forests of Mozambique and making this navy in the Caspian and somehow getting those those wonderful timbers to the Persian Gulf so I think absolutely he had a lot of these plans you know he had a lot of interest and I think his window into this his kind of partners in crime were the Russians in a way and I think this is where the the Caspian link it's so important the Ostrahand link and the and the link with the Russians and all of the technology there so it's it's it's absolutely a critical part of him of his discussion so yeah absolutely but but it's something I I'm working on so more to follow right yeah okay well thank you I think we might move on then to the questions for Janet and if there are any more that come in we we can obviously fit these at them and at the end of this time so Janet again thank you so much for your for your talk lots of questions and some have come in on the Facebook feed as well so I thought perhaps we could start with there are three I was going to say the surnames because you can find them more easily Salor Frederick and Mehreen so these are questions loosely related to each other I would say well the first one from Salor actually is to do with the name of the poet of the lines quoted in the first slide the Razor Shah slide but that's that's a separate issue the second question relates to the others and it's to what extent can we claim that the new portrait of Nader and the new body politic was under the influence of western portraits so that relates to your image of Henry Henry VIII and then we go on to Masoud I've lost but Mehreen you mentioned the asks you mentioned the jewellery worn by Nader Shah in 1740 portraits representing his conquering of the moguls can we also see this in the new types of imperial portraiture that you discuss the single image of the ruler in the equestrian portrait which were already established imagery associated with royal mogul portraits so this goes obviously to the moguls and then yeah you may you may have answered the question um from Frederick because that also related back to yes sorry influence of european portrait posture and yeah the first question about the poet I mean because that's just a that's this is a quick one yeah um the the poster or the print gives the name of al-ghamiz al-habib al-han from Shiraz but I don't know whether he was responsible for designing the the the image or whether he actually also wrote the verses as well um it doesn't really say so that's kind of all I could glean from um from from from the image itself um but I'm happy to if um there's some way we can get the email I'm happy to send on the link of the website that has that image if that's any help thank you in terms of you know I think I have doubt with you know briefly uh uh elements or inspirations from Europe or mogul India certainly they are very present and it's it's snow um I suppose you know anyone's familiar with personal painting know that um going back in south of it the the european nice style the the farangese or see it you know it's been there for quite a while so um obviously painters have been looking at european and prints and paintings and imagery and not to I mean I am very um I think try to resist any temptation to just simply say oh you know that's european influence or movable influence and that's kind of appropriate from this and that it's never quite like that they kind of selected elements that that would suit whatever purpose that they they they um they're working on and um as you can see from even the south of it painting a european nice paintings but um I mean in my thesis of course we can't really get into this there are very specific the equestrian imagery some of them there are very um almost direct connection to certain images in the west that's for sure um but again you know I would argue that you know it's taking certain elements and making it their own using their own style using their own technique and likewise for the movable indian side I have explained or mentioned various elements that I felt would have contributed to Nordic images um but um and and you know the and the the idea of this um sort of hybrid indol person aesthetic that actually um as Susan talked about in in her paper of the Kalas the pavilion um and and also um early we saw in the slide in the building the indian stone carving and the this sort of hybrid um aesthetic you can see that in the across the full corpus of of the images of noray um so you know that it's quite clear and and to point out that all his paintings whether single portraits or group ones they were all painted as far as I can see after the daily conquest so obviously the india uh victory the indian victory was a pivotal moment um so the connection with india it's clear um but again you know in india they didn't have um oil painting um that came from you can see it came from europe but it was already established in the late south of the period we have large I think um and later d boys written about it and and and ellen the sims had also written about it and these large and oil paintings I'm from the late south of the period it's just the main change is you know getting those oil portraits to put kings as well as you know the the other um elite members of the south of the court and and and of other um parts of S1 so I think that would be my answer to you know different inspirations whether it's coming from europe or mobile india good well thank you uh of course the all the parsi um portraiture comes very directly from europe so much much later but it's it's interesting to know where the other you know where the earlier um influences have come from there's a question from um lindsay allen um which I think we can answer the amortage um portrait and the yes and the horse I did actually look at that because the painting is dated and the date it's um it it's sort of aligned with the very end of a three-year campaign of nadesh in and dhokestan and and and that area notorious for the really tough terrain and that could be part of the reason why ultimately he didn't you know that campaign failed and it was sort of like a status quo um at the end of the three-year campaign um so that could be one I mean we're never going to know but that that that's one of my guesses and the other one it it could be and you know people can tell me you know that it's wrong it could be um maybe referencing where he was actually from um which is a very mountainous area as well um you know near kalat or you know um so so that that that would be my other guess but of course I don't I don't really know and the inscription um it it doesn't uh that doesn't give you any clue okay thank you um now we have two questions that have come in from Hyunjin Cho they're both quite long um so he'd like to know a bit more about um the art the what happened to Nardeshah's images in the 19th century the afterlife as he puts it particularly the context of the album of paintings and calligraphy um the one with the painting signed by Mohammed Sadi and the landscape backgrounds of both the portraits he finds fascinating um and then the second part of his question is um about the about your study of the portraits of Nardeshah and could you say a little bit more about representation of Nardeshah in manuscript painting compositions um so that's another uh yeah um those are I mean I I could really sit here and I'd love to talk about all those but those are quite lengthy discussions I'm afraid um and some of them you know I I hate I I couldn't talk about some of this 19th century paintings the one one of those it's a fascinating painting which is a frontist piece in the British library um of Nardeshah's portrait and and his four-point hat was morphed into the gojo black cat and I think that's you know it's it's fascinating how his image was being taken and and used for various purposes and and agendas and that particular manuscript um fascinating but of course I can't really get into all of that um and like what's and manuscript painted yes um I only addressed um single portraits in this talk but of course there are also um group scenes in which unlike the Savavits he's not with a full court he's tends to be with his sons um so sort of the the family body politic outcourt and then and there are of course uh illustrations to manuscripts of the there are a few of them of the Torihe Naderi so I am I talked about previously in another talk and um and of course um there are dozens of these portraits from um India and I've recently given a talk about that as well um and but it's it's um it's you know they are sort of you know I can get another three or four talks out of them so I don't think it's very unfair for the other speakers for me to talk about them um you know but I'm happy to um discuss you know if I can get the contact details of the person that I'm happy to talk about um more with that person okay well there may be time to return to that uh I perhaps now we'll um uh move on to questions addressed to Key Anish Matagati um there's the first one from Susanne Barwaii I'm just looking yeah there's just one um and also inviting comments from the others on the historiographic um historiographic tendency to attribute Kajah self representation either to European sources which you've asked um the audience to moderate or to the pre-Islamic sources Naderi is clearly an important transitional phase uh she says so do and others perhaps would like to contribute to that answer as well after you can you did you hear did you hear me for that question from Susanne Barwaii I think we've seemed to have lost you are you muted by any chance looks like he's from Janet uh sorry did you hear did you hear the question oh for me I thought it was um sorry I thought I'm so sorry it is it is for Key Anish sorry it's for Key Anish Matagati yes and then and then Susanne has invited others to come in but Key Anish you're muted so you need to unmute yourself or Aki could you unmute Key Anish please I think Key Anish is lost connection so we'll have okay okay um I don't know if anyone else has any would have any comments on that question because the rest of the questions are he's back again Key Anish can you hear us hello hello yeah yeah yeah great I have some problem with the pure connection here so I I asked a question addressed to you by Susanne Barwaii whether you could um uh comment on the historiographic tendency to attribute Kaja's self-representation to either European sources which Janet asked us to moderate or the pre-Islamic sources and she adds Nader's clearly an important transitional phase okay thank you thank you Dr. Susanne Barwaii of course I believe that most of the I mean Kaja painting the mural one at the beginning of Fatah al-Ishara inspired by the pre-Islamic one because as you know when Fatah al-Ishara was young he was a governor of the Shiraz and he had this opportunity to to visit those you know those reliefs from Susanne and Aqamani over there I mean all around the Shiraz and Fars Province so the artist who had been working with him working for his atelier also had this knowledge of the the composition of the those rock reliefs and I showed you a picture that you could see exactly painter like Meher Ali start to copy the motives copy the appearance the manner of the sitting on the chair and I think this this ancestral team is much more in I mean influenced on these kind of painting but of course after a while mostly at the end of Fatah al-Ishara's reign we had a more connection with Russia and also other countries and it's possible to see this which which as a result you could see this Europeanist European style of painting is flourished at the end of Fatah al-Ishara mostly in Muhammad Shah and Nasser al-Nusrah is completely completely changed the the the characteristics of the Iranian painting mostly I'm talking about the murals figurative murals but of course you could see the similarity with the manuscripts exactly the same things happen for the Nader Shah that Janet mentioned as you could see we couldn't find a very I mean too many number of the murals from Nader Shah but we have some manuscripts which is always connected with India and I could add this to the Janet that according to my research I understand that I found some evidence of in Calotan Naderi partly built by Indian architect and also painters so I think at the beginning of the Fatah al-Ishara we are more attached to the pre-Islamic thing that's why we have some reliefs remember that we don't have a relief and rock relief for more than 1000 years and Fatah al-Ishara is a person who is sponsored and understand the the value of the rock relief to to show themselves in the luxurious way and it is still remained for us well thank you well on the subject of your rock reliefs there's a question from Kevin Gerd Hill do the rock reliefs and wall paintings show significant differences in genre and theme or or simply in medium actually we had a very similar parallel way between the murals and rock reliefs most of the times these these rock reliefs which we know from the Fatah al-Ishara we still have eight one some of them are all around Tehran as a capital at that time designed by the person Abdullah Khan which I mentioned the the court painter the chief court painter designed the rock relief and also he paint for the murals so in this case you could see the similarity between these two concepts and as I result for this my my lecture I understand that we could also attribute the the Qom mural which recently found it's somehow it's attributed to Abdullah Khan because at the same time the mural in Qom and rock relief in Sharia it was in progress at the same time so yes I mean both murals and rock reliefs are affected and always has gone with in parallel way. Thank you there's a question for you from Firuza, Firuza Melville, thanking all of the panel for beautiful talks and this is for Yuki Anush she says I assume there are no Khusro and Jahangir among the princes in the Nagaristan panels that's her question are there are there are that she's assuming there are no Khusro and Jahangir in the Nagaristan mural or the Qom mural in the she says in the Nagaristan panels actually we have some photos remain from as you know the the the garden and the part of these buildings in Nagaristan demolished many years ago and we just have some pictures which is the only source that we could study that mural but in the Qom in the business new mural that I present we have these two also and remember that the mural in Qom the number of the princes in the mural in Qom in original painting was 150 and definitely all these children and you know the Fatali Shah has lots of children and all of these children and grandchildren was in Qom but in the Nagaristan I have to check again because we have some pictures we don't have a complete picture we have some copy which we have some watercolor copy from that and we could check on that also it would be helpful good and there wasn't over this is another one from Firuza but this is actually for Janet what asking what the attitude to Nadir Shah in it was or is in modern India so because the first slide showed some sort of cover of of an Indian children's book with Nadir on the cover so perhaps Janet you that's addressed to you yeah I looked at this question and when I was doing a talk recently on Nadir's Indian portraits and I was looking around I suppose I was looking at contemporary time and also into the 19th century and it depends on who you're looking at because I was wondering how come that there's so many Indian portraits of Nadir being portrayed as a posh Shah even though you know with all the brutality on the killings and everything I think you know there's certainly even local historians at the time they weren't particularly sympathetic towards Mohammad Shah and they saw him as someone who just was inept in what he was trying to and actually abdicating his responsibility over his people and but then there are also lots of people that the local leaders in the regions they were already even before Nadir came on the scene they were already rebelling and actually to the point where it's kind of widely accepted that a couple of them they were actually they actually incited Nadir to come and come to Delhi and take down Mohammad Shah so that was the sort of environment that you're looking at so and I think from that you know one one can work on why was Nadir Shah being included in some of these series of Mughal rulers in the form of a Mughal emperor himself and also because there's another side to the question a lot of these Indian portraits were also found in British collections and of course I also talked about the British colonial agenda in that you know to try to get my head around what was going on but you know so but going back to to you know what did I don't know about modern day India what did the think of Nadir Shah you know I think they would look back and say that that's a traumatic period and there's actually also there's a Bollywood movie about him there was also a musical with musical actually it's quite funny it's I didn't watch it by saw the abstract about it that it's actually they just pretended that the local people they there was an uprising and they managed to chase Nadir Shah out of India so you know there's a mix of I think emotions of feelings about it and so that's that's all I could I had leaned from okay well thank you I think we might just we've got two minutes try it's again it's for you um Janet a quick uh answer if you can um but it's come off the Facebook stream so it's um what is the reason for connecting the muscular figure of Nadir Shah to the Javan Mardi is it a moral concept or is there any document indicating Nadir's relationship with Javan Mardi or any text that describes him as such I mean like a lot of things there are no documents to say you know Nadir was into this concept of that concept I think you know a lot of this you're trying to to think of you know the the the political environment and conditions at the time but the idea of of Javan Mardi I've read I mean I I don't profess that I'm knowledgeable in it but from what I've read it includes both physical and moral traits of um of the idealized warrior um so um and I have um you know uh written quite a bit about that in in in my thesis so it isn't just the moral or just the physical but certainly there are physical elements in it um which I I you know I I can try to associate I think there's a recent book that was published it's an edited volume um on Javan Mardi and I think you know in the opening I say it's one of these really fluid concepts that no one can come up with a definitive you know meaning to what it is but you know from uh certainly and you know from what I I could see that there are there's a strong physical element actually connected and actually stemmed from the the the um the military side of of the the idea of the man good well thank you well I have omitted um all the uh all the thank yous and the compliments that have also flowed in with the questions I rather tended to um focus on the questions and thank you very much all of you for for your answers and engaging with everybody and for fabulous talks so now um I will say goodbye and we'll have a break for half an hour very good thank you thank you thank you so much bye