Legitimizing Art in the Prefaces of Tīmūrīd and Safavīd Albums

In addition to the numerous goals mentioned for Albums Prefaces, they were also an opportunity for writers and artists to defend the existence of art and artist. The present study tries to pay attention to this part of the albums prefaces and answer the question that what methods did the authors of the albums prefaces in the Tīmūrīd and Safavīd periods use to legitimize art? The purpose of this study is to analyze the historical texts of Persian Art in order to determine the methods of legitimizing art by the authors of the albums prefaces in the mentioned periods. In this way, a descriptive-analytical method was used. The statistical population of the research includes all the prefaces of the albums in the Tīmūrīd and Safavīd periods, which have dedicated a part of the text to this issue. This includes six prefaces. The method of collecting information is library-based. The findings show that for the first time, Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī, by making changes in the structure of the prefaces, paved the way for writing the preface on the album. In Continue, by examining the content and arguments of the authors of the albums prefaces of Tīmūrīd and Safavīd periods, their methods of legitimizing art were extracted and compared in a table. The results show that the authors of the preface have used five methods to legitimize art, which are: 1. The Ontological Method: legitimacy through the place of art in the system of existence; 2. Functional Method: legitimacy through the functions of art in society; 3. Intrinsic Method: legitimizing by proving the unique and legitimate basis for art; 4. Historical Method: legitimizing through a reputable person and the Master-Student chain, and 5. Narrative Method: legitimizing art by using Hadīths and narrations about the merits of dealing with art.