Power and Politics of Representation: Picturing Elite Women in Ilkhanid Painting

Abstract

The first half of the fourteenth century was a discrete period in Ilkhanid Iran during which paintings that pictured elite Mongol women in their true courtly milieu, participating in courtly life and in their contemporary place within societal hierarchies, were produced. It will be argued that a correlation existed between the power wielded by these women in Mongol socio-economic and political spheres and their depictions as formative, important members of the ruling elite; and that the decrease, and ultimate halting, of such representations coincided with changes in their political, cultural and social power. Using Ilkhanid enthronement scenes in the Diez and Istanbul albums to illustrate how visible and prominent the Khātūns were, a fact corroborated by written testimonials of visitors to the Mongol courts, this paper then examines how such images became symbols of legitimacy for later Il-Khans as well as later Persianate rulers in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. It will be argued that the image of an enthroned royal Ilkhanid couple carried the weight of political and dynastic legitimacy, and that the inclusion of the Mongol Khātūn was integral to this symbolic importance.