detailed – iTourismA

Chogan has been popular among the kings and Iranian grandee in the past and its name as an aristocratic sport is derived from that. Chogan, known also as polo, is a sporting team game with horses and a version of the modern polo game. It was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. For the first time, Chogan was played during Achaemenians in Iran. As Achaemenians extended their borders to far and vast geographical spots, this ancient Iranian game found its way to other countries too. Chogan as one of the amusing activities between kings, rulers and wealthy people.

Kar Namag Ardashir Pabakan, is a middle Persian prose tale written in Sassanid Era. It narrates the story of Ardeshir I, the founder of this dynasty. It’s the first written document that mentions Chogan as an Iranian game. The theme of Chogan has been used widely in different areas of art and literature. For example, it’s been mentioned in the poems of Ferdowsi, Rudaki, Nezami, Sa’di, Hafez, and other great Persian poets. It has been also the theme in many valuable Persian miniatures and the designs on the potteries.

Chogan was played differently back then. Horse riding was more of a military and warfare practice. Therefore, this entertainment included horses’ military style marching and riding war horses. As the time went by, Chogan changed to the present day style. Polo firstly just had a recreational function in order to show the Iranian military horses talent. Chogan is a strategic game that requires physical readiness and skill for both riders and horses, just like a miniature battle. In the past, it was a play where the Persian riders exhibited their skills in riding, fighting, and playing as well as the fighting skills, speed, and agility of their horses. The horses of Chogan are called polo ponies. Since horse riding was a military practice in the past, Persians believed the horse that can do well in Chogan, can do well in the war too.

Today, in Chogan, ponies are full sized horses used for this traditional Iranian game. In Persian, they are referred to simply as Chogan horses. They should be equipped with safety gears to be ready for the races. They are supposed to have special leg wraps to be protected against the mallets. The line attached to the curb bit must be adjusted in a comfortable and free, so that ponies can be easily levered.

A Persian miniature is a small painting, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works and it is briefly a richly detailed miniature painting which depicts religious or mythological themes from the region of the Middle East. The techniques are broadly comparable to the Western and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, which probably had an influence on the origins of the Persian tradition. Miniature painting became a significant Persian form in the 13th century, and the highest point in the tradition was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, and has many modern exponents.

Miniatures are much the best-known form of Persian painting in the West. Several features about Persian miniatures stand out. The first is the size and level of detail; many of these paintings are quite small, but they feature rich, complex scenes which can occupy a viewer for hours. Classically, a Persian miniature also features accents in gold and silver leaf, along with a very vivid array of colors. The perspective in a Persian miniature also tends to be very intriguing, with elements overlaid on each other in ways which sometimes feel awkward to people who are accustomed to the look and feel of Western art. The Persian miniature was probably inspired by Chinese art, given the very Chinese themes which appear in some early examples of Persian miniatures. Many of the mythological creatures depicted in early Persian art, for example, bear a striking resemblance to animals in Chinese myth. Over time, however, Persian artists developed their own style and themes, and the concept of the Persian miniature was picked up by neighboring regions.

Kamal al-Din Behzad Heravi was a painter of Persian miniatures and head of the royal ateliers in Herat and Tabriz during the late Timurid and early Safavid periods. He is equally skilled with the organic areas of landscape, but where he uses the traditional geometric style Behzad stretches that compositional device in a couple ways. One is that he often uses open, unpatterned empty areas around which action moves. Behzad’s most famous works include The Seduction of Yusuf from Sa’di’s Bustan and paintings from the British Library’s Nizami manuscript particularly scenes from Layla and Majnun and the Haft Paykar.

The Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent.

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Chogan

Persian Miniature