the eras of illumination in persian religious bibliopegy

persian manuscripts were produced during the second century until the forth one in iran. iranians had experiences about painting in pre-islamic era, so they played an important role in creating art works such as miniature, illuminated pages in islamic civilization after the emergence of islam. in the first centuries of emerging islam, beautiful transcription, ornamentation of quran were honors of newly muslim iranians and so they invented the method of illumination. generally book illumination was a supplement to calligraphy and improved the status of this valuable art in islam. the illumination has had a special position among other art works. because most of the manuscripts includes author mark and date and some of the final pages of the manuscripts consist of the place of transcript, the name of painter, the name of diwani galleries, or private workshops. in the next centuries a special kind of accepted miniature was applied besides illumination. at first these decorations were started with limited stainers especially pure gold but from the sixth century on, various colored elements were added as well and then an exact partition was created among the artists related to this art. so, scribes, painters, illuminators, tabulators, gold inlayers, builders of azure and other colors cooperated with each other in the field of bibliopegy. the calligrapher was also an illuminator and could be a painter. the gold inlayer was usually called illuminator and while the illuminator did calligraphy, he was called scribe. concerning the variety of designs and colors of illumination from the emergence to the completion of it in the next centuries, the illumination included especial eras and schools like painting and drawing with privileged features. in this article, appearance and evolution of illumination in persian bibliopegy have been researched and evaluated in 5 eras including the first centuries of the beginning of islam, seljukids, mongolians (and il-khans), timurid, safavid (and ottoman). to briefly talk about the specification of eras of illumination we can refer to the following cases: 1. the illumination was simple, without decorations and with limited colors in the third and forth centuries. 2.in the fifth and sixth centuries (seljukids) qur'an was illuminated gold-sprinkling and gold-spotting. in this era most of the illuminated manuscripts are qur'an. 3. in the seventh and eighth centuries (mongolians and il-khans) new decorated formats like circular medallion and arabesque were appeared. 4. in the eight and ninth centuries (timurid) the decorated designs have been continued in attractive details with more elegance. 5. the illumination in the tenth and eleventh centuries (safavid) has reached the high glory. the differences in colors, the more exact distribution of colors and getting the leaves and flora nature-oriented confirm this glory. 6. the illumination in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (afshari and zandi and qajar) has reached the high glory in terms of elegance, variety and plurality of schools. and in the second half of the thirteenth century this art has been limitedly continued. it has been faded because of the development of printing's industry in iran.