# "Tahmuras Defeats the Divs", Folio 23v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp > Sultan Muhammad - ca. 1525 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/sultan-muhammad/shahnameh-shah-tahmasp-tahmuras-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Sultan Muhammad - **Date:** ca. 1525 - **Medium:** Opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper - **Dimensions:** Painting: 28.3 x 18.6 cm (11 1/8 x 7 5/16 in). Full folio: 47 x 32.1 cm (18 1/2 x 12 5/8 in). - **Object type:** Manuscript - **Period:** Safavid Iran, Tabriz, ca. 1522-1535 - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Islamic Art - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A single leaf, folio 23 verso, from the grandest illustrated manuscript of Persia's national epic ever made: the Shahnama produced for Shah Tahmasp I in the royal Tabriz workshop between about 1522 and 1535. The painting, attributed to Sultan Muhammad, shows the legendary king Tahmuras defeating the divs and winning the art of writing from them as ransom, one of a cluster of early folios in which this painter staged the poem's founding-kings sequence as an argument for civilization arriving through royal conquest, at the very moment a new dynasty's workshop was asserting its own authority.The manuscript was sent as a diplomatic gift to the Ottoman Sultan Selim II in 1568, resurfaced in the Rothschild collection in Paris by 1903 after an undocumented gap of centuries, and was sold to the American collector Arthur A. Houghton Jr. in 1959. Houghton gave this folio to the Metropolitan Museum in 1970 as part of a larger gift of 78 illustrations, then spent the following two decades selling the remaining folios individually, an act described by one journalist as an extraordinary act of vandalism, before his heirs exchanged what was left of the physical manuscript with the Iranian government in 1994 for Willem de Kooning's Woman III. Folios from the same book are now scattered across at least a dozen public collections and the private market, where a single leaf has sold for more than seven million pounds.This folio's own story since 1970 is the simplest part of that history: it has never left the Metropolitan Museum, the one piece of a dismembered masterpiece that was never put back on the market at all. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1522-ca. 1535** The manuscript in production `[documented]` (origin) Produced in the royal kitabkhana in Tabriz, begun under Shah Ismail I and continued under Shah Tahmasp I. This folio, from the manuscript's opening sequence, is generally dated to about 1525 within that span. - **1535-1568** Safavid royal library `[documented]` (custody) Retained as a royal manuscript following completion, prior to the 1568 gift. - **1568** Sultan Selim II, Ottoman Empire `[documented]` (gift) Sent to Istanbul as a diplomatic gift, recorded arriving at the Iranian embassy in February 1568 accompanied by thirty-four camels of further gifts. - **1568-by 1800** Topkapi Palace library, Istanbul `[documented]` (custody) Held in the Ottoman royal library. A further step of custody, from Selim II to Sultan Selim III by about 1800, is reported in a Metropolitan Museum catalogue chain summarized in the sources consulted, but was not independently verified against a directly fetched primary Museum page for this record, and is flagged accordingly. - **by 1800-by 1903** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No source consulted documents how, when, or through whom the manuscript left Ottoman custody and entered the European art market. This is an undocumented gap of at least a century in the sources available for this record. - **by 1903-1934** Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (purchase or gift (mechanism undocumented in sources consulted)) First securely documented European private owner. Held until his death in 1934. - **1934-1957** Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris and Pregny (Geneva) `[documented]` (inheritance) By descent from his father. Held until his own death in 1957. - **1957-1959** Baron Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild `[documented]` (inheritance) Reported as a brief further step within the Rothschild family before sale; sourced to catalogue-chain material summarized in the sources consulted rather than a directly fetched primary record, and flagged for confirmation. - **1959** Arthur A. Houghton Jr., New York `[documented]` (purchase) Sold in New York, November 1959, through the dealers Rosenberg and Stiebel (reported elsewhere as Stiebel Ltd.), on the dispersal of the Rothschild manuscript holdings following Maurice de Rothschild's death. A purchase price of 350,000 dollars is reported in one source consulted and is not independently confirmed here. - **1959-1970** Arthur A. Houghton Jr., New York `[documented]` (custody, intact manuscript) Held as a bound manuscript. In 1974, after this folio had already left his hands, Houghton offered the remaining, by-then-incomplete manuscript for sale intact at an asking price reported at 28.5 million dollars; no buyer emerged at that price. - **1970-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (gift) This folio, together with 75 further folios carrying a total of 78 illustrations, given by Arthur A. Houghton Jr. in 1970; accessioned 1970.301.3. In continuous Museum custody since, with no recorded sale, exchange, or deaccession in the sources consulted for this record. ## Open questions - What is the manuscript remainder's specific current repository within Iran, following its 1994 return? Sources consulted confirm delivery to Iranian government representatives via the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art's negotiators, but not a specific museum, library, or palace as its present physical home. - How, when, and through whom did the manuscript leave Ottoman royal custody in Istanbul and reach the Rothschild collection in Paris by 1903? This is an undocumented gap of well over three centuries in the sources consulted. - Do the published figures for the manuscript's dispersal actually reconcile? Sources report 258 total illustrations, 76 to 78 folios (78 illustrations) given to the Met in 1970, roughly 118 to 120 retained by Houghton until 1994, and further folios sold at Christie's in 1976 and 1988; these figures do not cleanly sum to 258 across the sources consulted, and no single source reconciles them. - Is the reported 1959 purchase price of 350,000 dollars, and the reported 1974 asking price of 28.5 million dollars, confirmed by a primary sale record, or does it rest solely on the single secondary source (The Critic magazine, 2024) consulted for this record? - Has any scholar since Welch and Dickson (1981) proposed a different or a collaborating hand for this specific folio, as distinct from the wider chronology disputes that Soudavar (2016) addresses for the manuscript generally? No such proposal was found in the sources consulted. - What did the manuscript's production actually cost the Safavid treasury, in period terms, and how were its painters, calligraphers, and gilders paid? No payroll, contract, or workshop account for this manuscript was found in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for "Tahmuras Defeats the Divs", Folio 23v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp, accession 1970.301.3, object ID 452112. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API, object record for object ID 452112 (fetched directly; confirms isPublicDomain: true, credit line, medium, dimensions, department, and classification). - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, curatorial essay, "The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp". - [4] Wikipedia, "Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp". Tertiary source consolidating production history, the 1568 gift, the Rothschild-to-Houghton provenance chain, and the dispersal figures; flagged for replacement with Dickson and Welch (1981) and a directly fetched Metropolitan Museum provenance note where those remain unverified above. - [5] Michael Prodger, "Art of the deal", The Critic Magazine, November 2024. - [6] The Art Newspaper, "How a Persian manuscript was swapped for a Willem de Kooning owned by the Iranian government", 12 November 2024. - [7] The Art Newspaper, "The Book of Kings returned to Iran by US in exchange for de Kooning painting", 1 October 1994. - [8] Thomas E. Stone, "The Houghton Shahnameh, The Whole Is Greater Than the Parts but Sometimes the Parts are more Marketable: Book Destruction for Profit", The Books In My Life (blog), 2011. Personal opinion piece by a books/manuscripts writer; cited for its timeline detail and as a documented example of the critical reaction to the breakup, flagged as a secondary, non-scholarly source. - [9] Sotheby's, lot 78, "Faridun in the Guise of a Dragon Tests His Sons: Illustrated Folio (f.42) from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, Attributed to Aqa Mirak", Collection of Stuart Cary Welch Part II, 2011. - [10] Khalili Collections, "Ten Folios from the Copy of Firdawsi's Shahnamah Made for Shah Tahmasp" (MSS 1030). - [11] Wikimedia Commons, Category:"Tahmuras Defeats the Divs", Folio 23v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp (MET 1970.301.3), listing the Museum's photographs of this folio and their licensing. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Tahmuras Defeats the Divs.jpg, licence and metadata verification (Public Domain Mark, LicenseShortName CC-PD-Mark). - [13] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Shah Tahmasp's Shahnameh in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. - [14] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for "The Feast of Sada", Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp, accession 1970.301.2, object ID 452111. - [15] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for "Zahhak is Told His Fate", Folio 29v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp, accession 1970.301.4, object ID 452113. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, Category:"The Feast of Sada", Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp (MET 1970.301.2), listing the Museum's photographs of this folio and their licensing. - [17] Wikimedia Commons, File:"Zahhak is Told His Fate", Folio 29v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp MET DT11224.jpg, licence and metadata verification. - [18] Smarthistory, "The Court of Gayumars", on the folio now in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, consulted specifically to confirm this is a distinct folio from the one described in this record. - [19] Stuart Cary Welch, A King's Book of Kings: The Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp (Metropolitan Museum of Art / Thames and Hudson, 1972), full text consulted via the Internet Archive. - [20] Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1981). The landmark scholarly study of the manuscript; consulted here via a Cambridge University Press review listing giving its full collation and scope, not read in full for this record. - [21] Yale Books Blog, "The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp: Reconstructing a masterpiece of Iranian literature and art", on Sheila Canby's study of the manuscript. - [22] Wikidata, Q29385199, structured data entry for this folio. - [23] Wikipedia, "Sultan Mohammed" (painter). Tertiary source for the painter's biography and career; flagged for replacement with Dickson and Welch (1981) and Canby's scholarship where a primary or peer-reviewed account is needed. - [24] Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Sultan Muhammad". --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.