Chinese art began to shape Persian painting under the Ilkhanids, the Mongol rulers of Iran from 1256 to 1353, whose capital, Tabriz, was in direct contact with China along the trade routes of Central Asia. Persian painters took from China a softer line, lighter colour, new ways of placing figures in space, Chinese forms of trees, rocks, water and clouds, and creatures such as the dragon and the phoenix, and they fitted all of these into their own stories and their own way of painting.
This page explains how the contact happened, which manuscripts show it first, what Persian painters took and what they changed, and how the exchange went on under the Timurids and Safavids. It is part of our guide to contemporary Iranian and Persian painting.
Key takeaways
- The Encyclopaedia Iranica entry by Toh Sugimura says Chinese influence "cannot be observed" in Persian painting before the Ilkhanid period, although it was apparent in Iranian ceramics centuries earlier.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art says Ilkhanid painting took on "an altered and more Chinese depiction of pictorial space", with lotuses, peonies, cloud bands, dragons and phoenixes.
- The University of Edinburgh holds 70 illustrated folios of Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tavarikh, a world history made in Tabriz, and dates the manuscript to 1314.
- Harvard Art Museums says a page of the Great Ilkhanid Shahnameh shows the king Bahram Gur in a robe of European cloth, in a setting drawn with the conventions of Chinese landscape painting.
- The Iranica records that the Persian painter Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash went with an embassy from the Timurid prince Shahrukh to the Ming court of China in 1419 to 1422.
- The Iranica concludes that Persian manuscript painting kept its own themes, style, iconography and technique while it took in a considerable number of Chinese motifs.
Before the Mongols
Art moved between Iran and China long before the 13th century, and for a long time it moved mostly eastward. The Encyclopaedia Iranica entry by Toh Sugimura says Persian influence on Chinese art was at its height under the Tang dynasty (618 to 906), at the end of the Sasanian period and in the first centuries after the Islamic conquest. Sasanian art shaped Tang metalwork and the wall paintings in the tombs of Tang princes, where the image of a woman under a tree was taken from motifs on Sasanian silver vessels.
In the other direction, the Iranica says Chinese influence was strong on Islamic ceramics of the same period, and that no visible trace of it appears in the painting or metalwork of that time. A Chinese travel account records Chinese painters, weavers and potters in the Abbasid capital after the battle of Talas in 751, but no signed work by any of them survives. The Iranica adds that Seljuq artists could have borrowed East Asian forms from northern China, but so few Persian paintings of that time survive that no such borrowing can be identified.
Mongol rule and the court at Tabriz
The change came with the Mongol conquest. The Met says the Mongol invasions of Iran began in 1221, and that Hülegü, grandson of Genghis Khan, took the title Il-Khan, "lesser khan", below the Great Khan who ruled China. Mongol control of most of Asia, the Met writes, "created an environment of tremendous cultural exchange". After the Il-Khan Ghazan became a Muslim in 1295, Islamic art flourished again, and the Met says East Asian elements "absorbed into the existing Perso-Islamic repertoire created a new artistic vocabulary". The Met adds that paper and textiles let new designs pass easily from one medium to another.
The Iranica explains why Tabriz was the centre. The Ilkhanid capital was "in direct contact with China via the trade routes through Central Asia", and most Persian paintings in the "Chinese style" are assumed to have been made there. The Iranica names three court manuscripts that show the Chinese influence most clearly: a book on animals, the Manafi al-Hayawan of Ibn Bakhtishu, copied at Maragheh in 1297 or 1299 and now in the Morgan Library in New York; two fragments of Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tavarikh; and the Great Mongol Shahnameh.
The Jami al-Tavarikh of Rashid al-Din
The Jami al-Tavarikh, the "Compendium of Chronicles", is a history of the world as the Mongol court knew it. Its author, Rashid al-Din, lived from ca. 1247 to 1318. The University of Edinburgh Library describes him as a physician and court historian who served as vizier, or chief minister, to the Ilkhanid ruler, and who was executed in 1318. The Encyclopaedia Iranica entry by Charles Melville says the book covers the Turks, Franks, Jews, Chinese and Indians as well as Islamic and Persian history, which has led scholars to call it the "first world history". Rashid al-Din used informants from many peoples: a Buddhist monk from Kashmir named Kamalashri for the life of the Buddha, and Chinese, Uighur and other scholars living at the court.
A workshop that made two copies a year
Rashid al-Din founded a quarter of Tabriz, the Rab'-e Rashidi. The Iranica says that in an addition to its endowment deed, dated 9 August 1309, he ordered two copies of the Jami al-Tavarikh to be made every year, one in Arabic and one in Persian, and sent to cities of the Arab world and Iran. The copies were meant to be illustrated. The earliest that survives is part of an Arabic copy dated 1314, now divided between the University of Edinburgh and the Khalili Collections.
Edinburgh's catalogue calls its part, Or MS 20, "one of the supreme masterpieces of Persian book painting", with 70 illustrated folios, and says the scriptorium of Rashid al-Din "gathered artists from all parts of the Mongol empire and beyond". The library's exhibition text of 2014 adds that "elements of Byzantine, Chinese and other Islamic traditions are all evident in the illustrations", and that the manuscript "marks the birth of a new and distinguished style within Persian painting". The book later reached the Mughal court in India, was divided in two in the mid-1700s, and was given to Edinburgh University Library in 1876.
What the Chinese influence looks like in these pages
The Iranica gives examples from the part of the 1314 copy that the Royal Asiatic Society in London once owned. A page showing the sacred tree of the Buddha uses light, subdued colour that comes close to the single-tone look of Chinese ink painting. Other pages, among them Moses scolding the makers of the golden calf and a scene from a summary of the Indian epic Ramayana, spread their figures sideways across a wide, low picture, as Chinese hand scrolls do, and let figures break through the frame. The Iranica says this horizontal format was adopted from Chinese hand-scroll painting.
The Great Mongol Shahnameh
The Great Mongol Shahnameh is a copy of Ferdowsi's Book of Kings made at the Ilkhanid court. The Encyclopaedia Iranica entry by Priscilla P. Soucek says it was probably commissioned by Rashid al-Din's son Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad in c. 1335. Its large format and its Chinese motifs link it to the Jami al-Tavarikh, and the Iranica says its paintings are exceptional for the way they show emotion, grief above all, through gesture and setting. The manuscript was later taken apart for sale in Paris. Harvard Art Museums counts 57 surviving illustrations, the Iranica 58. Our page on the Shahnameh in painting tells the stories in it.
Harvard owns the page Bahram Gur Fights the Horned Wolf. Its catalogue says the king "wears a robe made of European fabric to slay a fearsome horned wolf in a setting marked by the conventions of Chinese landscape painting", and that the court in Tabriz "teemed with merchants, missionaries, and diplomats from as far away as Europe and China". Sugimura's Iranica entry points to other pages. In Alexander and His Warriors Fighting a Dragon, the painter lays several planes of the picture one over another. In the Battle of Alexander with the Dragon, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, figures stand in overlapping rows to suggest depth. In Alexander Builds the Iron Rampart, in the Sackler collection in Washington in the Iranica's account, the view is from above, which the Iranica suggests may come from the basic view of Chinese painting.
What Persian painters took from China
The Iranica lists the borrowings in detail. The table sums them up with the examples it names.
Chinese elements in Persian painting, with the examples named in the Encyclopaedia Iranica
| Element |
What changed in Persian painting |
Example named by the source |
Source |
| Line and shading |
A softer, more sinuous line and shading replaced bold outlines filled with flat colour |
Lion and Lioness, Manafi al-Hayawan, Morgan Library |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Colour |
Lighter, subdued colour close to Chinese ink painting |
The Sacred Tree of Buddha, Jami al-Tavarikh |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Space and depth |
Planes laid one over another, overlapping rows, a view from above |
Alexander pages of the Great Mongol Shahnameh |
Encyclopaedia Iranica; Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Picture format |
Wide, low compositions like hand scrolls; figures crossing or cut by the frame |
Moses and the Golden Calf, Jami al-Tavarikh |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Landscape |
Gnarled trees with dead branches, stylized rocks with double outlines, whirling water with crested waves |
Ilkhanid manuscripts; Bahram Gur Fights the Horned Wolf |
Encyclopaedia Iranica; Harvard Art Museums |
| Clouds |
Curling ling zhi clouds and cloud bands |
Skies from the Ilkhanid period on |
Encyclopaedia Iranica; Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Animals |
Dragon, phoenix, qilin (a horned creature with split hooves) and crane |
Landscape settings in Ilkhanid painting |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Flowers |
Lotuses, peonies, bird-and-flower painting |
Reza, Bird on a Branch, ca. 1610 |
Metropolitan Museum of Art; Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Costume |
The "mandarin square" on the caftan; later the "cloud collar" |
Ilkhanid and Timurid figures |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
Landscape was the largest change. The Iranica explains that the Chinese sense of harmony in nature had produced a full tradition of landscape painting, while Persian painters, "accustomed to a harsher environment", painted idealized settings they expected to find only in paradise, with the human figures as the main subject and the background only suggested. Chinese landscapes led them to paint the blasted trees, rocks, waves and clouds listed above. The Iranica says all these forms were known in Song and Yuan painting and appeared on 14th-century Chinese blue-and-white porcelain and textiles.
What Persian painters changed
Persian painters chose what fitted their own taste. The Iranica says that "only those aspects that were particularly compatible with local tastes were emulated and adapted", and that painters tended "to borrow small isolated elements from Chinese painting and to reorganize them". A flowering branch behind a fence, a Chinese motif, might be set beside an ordinary Persian group of figures.
The meanings changed too. The Iranica says the Chinese symbolic and mythological meanings of the animals were largely unknown to Persian painters, who gave the images stories from their own heritage. The phoenix took the place of the Simorgh, the great bird of the Shahnameh, in paintings such as The Simorgh Carrying Zal to His Nest in the Alborz Mountains, where the Persian bird is drawn in the form of the Chinese one. Our page on symbols in Persian painting explains what the cloud bands, dragons and the Simorgh mean in Persian art.
Later writers gave these creatures a place in Persian ornament. The Iranica entry on the Safavid painter Aqa Mirak says the writer Sadeq Beg Afshar, writing between 1576 and 1602, called him the supreme master of janvar-sazi, a type of painting built on four creatures of Far Eastern origin: the dragon, the simorgh, the lion and a bovine creature called the gav-ganj. The Iranica says these creatures appear on Safavid book covers, textiles and wall paintings.
The Timurids and the Ming court
Contact went on after the Mongols. Timur himself died in 1405 while preparing to invade China, according to the Met. The Iranica says that in the 15th century the Timurid and Ming courts kept up diplomatic and trade relations by sea in the 15th century, and that many works of art and a number of artists travelled between the two countries. The painter Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash went with an envoy of Prince Shahrukh to the Ming court in 1419 to 1422 and left a written account of the trip, preserved in a history by Hafez-e Abru.
Albums and drawing
Chinese paintings on silk reached Iran and were copied in the Timurid workshops. The Iranica describes the "Fatih albums" in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, which hold original Chinese drawings and prints on silk and paper beside Persian copies, with Buddhist, Taoist, historical and literary subjects. Many of these pages were independent pictures, and the Iranica suggests that the album itself, new in Iran in the Timurid period, may have been inspired by Chinese models. Our page on Persian miniature painting explains the muraqqa, the Persian album.
Chinese ink painting also changed Persian drawing. The Iranica says Chinese ink painting and baimiao hua, drawing in ink without shading, led to fine ink drawings in the margins of a book of poems by Sultan Ahmad Jalayir, from the early 15th century, now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.
Under the Safavids
Bird-and-flower painting, a Chinese genre, became popular under Shah Abbas I, who ruled from 1588 to 1629 in the Iranica's dating, and stayed in favour until the 19th century. The Iranica names Reza Abbasi's Bird on a Branch, ca. 1610, in the Seattle Art Museum, and Birds, Butterflies and Blossoms by Shafi Abbasi, 1651 to 1652, in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Trade with China shaped other crafts in the same years. The Met says Shah Abbas settled 300 Chinese potters and their families in Iran to profit from the fashion for Chinese ceramics, and that imitations of Chinese blue-and-white ware were popular in Safavid pottery. Our history of Persian art places these periods in order.
How to recognise Chinese elements in a Persian painting
These checks follow the list in the Iranica.
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Look at the trees and rocks. Twisted trunks with dead branches, and rocks drawn with a double outline, follow Chinese landscape painting.
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Look at the sky. Curling, knotted clouds and long cloud bands came from China in the Ilkhanid period.
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Look at the water. Scalloped patterns, whirlpools and crested waves are Chinese forms.
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Look for the creatures. A dragon, a phoenix, a qilin or a crane points to a Chinese model, even when the story is Persian.
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Look at the costume. A square of gold embroidery on the chest of a robe, or a shaped collar, follows Chinese dress.
These forms in our gallery's work
Some of these forms appear in classical Persian painting made today. The product page for Kamal al-Din Ghotb's Siyavash Passing Through the Fire, dated 2026 and 40 by 30 cm, describes blue and white cloud scrolls running behind the flames and "a winged dragon-creature in fine line" in a sepia panel in the left margin. His Muraqqa': The Gold Shamseh, an album page, includes two gol-o-morgh, or flower-and-bird, panels of crimson roses and yellow poppies with birds, and a black-ink drawing of long-tailed birds moving through foliage. See the Kamal al-Din Ghotb collection.
Frequently asked questions
When did Chinese art begin to influence Persian painting?
Chinese art began to influence Persian painting under the Ilkhanids, the Mongol rulers of Iran from 1256 to 1353. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says Chinese influence cannot be observed in Persian painting before that period, although it was strong on Iranian ceramics centuries earlier. The first clear examples are court manuscripts made in and near Tabriz from the 1290s.
Why did Chinese art reach Iran under the Mongols?
Chinese art reached Iran under the Mongols because branches of one Mongol dynasty ruled both lands, and the Il-Khans of Iran ranked below the Great Khan in China. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says Mongol control of most of Asia created tremendous cultural exchange, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica says Tabriz was in direct contact with China through the Central Asian trade routes.
What is the Jami al-Tavarikh?
The Jami al-Tavarikh, the Compendium of Chronicles, is a history of the world written for the Ilkhanid court by the vizier Rashid al-Din. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says it covers the Mongols, Turks, Franks, Jews, Chinese and Indians as well as Islamic history. Its earliest surviving illustrated copy, an Arabic version dated 1314, is divided between Edinburgh and the Khalili Collections.
Who was Rashid al-Din?
Rashid al-Din was a physician, historian and vizier at the Ilkhanid court, who lived from ca. 1247 to 1318, according to the University of Edinburgh Library. He wrote the Jami al-Tavarikh, founded the Rab'-e Rashidi quarter of Tabriz, and ordered two copies of his history to be made there every year. He was executed in 1318.
Where are the oldest illustrated pages of Rashid al-Din's history?
The oldest illustrated pages of Rashid al-Din's history are in the University of Edinburgh Library and the Khalili Collections. Edinburgh's part, catalogued as Or MS 20, has 70 illustrated folios. The library dates the manuscript to 1314, reports that it passed through the Mughal court in India, and records its gift to the university in 1876.
Who probably commissioned the Great Mongol Shahnameh?
The Great Mongol Shahnameh was probably commissioned in c. 1335 by Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, son of the historian Rashid al-Din, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica. The Iranica links its large format and Chinese motifs to Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tavarikh, and praises its paintings for showing grief through the gestures of the figures and the settings around them.
What did Persian painters take from Chinese landscape painting?
Persian painters took gnarled trees with dead branches, stylized rocks with double outlines, whirling water with crested waves and curling ling zhi clouds from Chinese landscape painting, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica. The same forms appeared on 14th-century Chinese porcelain and textiles. Persian painters used them as settings for their own stories, where people remained the main subject.
How did Chinese painting change the way Persian painters showed depth?
Chinese painting taught Persian painters new ways to show depth. The Encyclopaedia Iranica names planes laid one over another, figures in overlapping rows and a view from above, all seen in the Great Mongol Shahnameh. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the result as "an altered and more Chinese depiction of pictorial space" in Ilkhanid painting.
What did the Chinese phoenix become in Persian painting?
The Chinese phoenix became the model for the Simorgh, the great bird of the Shahnameh, in Persian painting. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says the Chinese meanings of such animals were largely unknown to Persian painters, who fitted the images to their own myths, as in paintings of the Simorgh carrying the child Zal to its nest in the Alborz mountains.
Who was Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash?
Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash was a Persian painter who went with an envoy of the Timurid prince Shahrukh to the Ming court of China in 1419 to 1422, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica. His account of the embassy survives in a history by Hafez-e Abru. The Iranica says many works of art and artists travelled between the two courts in that century.
What are the Fatih albums?
The Fatih albums are albums in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul that hold Chinese drawings and prints on silk and paper beside Persian copies of them. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says their subjects range from Buddhist and Taoist to historical and literary, and suggests that the Persian album itself may have been inspired by Chinese models.
What is janvar-sazi in Safavid painting?
Janvar-sazi is a type of Safavid ornamental painting built on four creatures of Far Eastern origin: the dragon, the simorgh, the lion and the gav-ganj, a bovine creature. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says the writer Sadeq Beg Afshar called the painter Aqa Mirak its supreme master, and that these creatures appear on Safavid book covers, textiles and wall paintings.
References
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xii. Mutual Influences in Painting. Toh Sugimura, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 15 December 1991; Internet Archive copy of 7 April 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. The main source for the page: the exchange before the Mongols, Tabriz, the Chinese elements in Ilkhanid painting, what Persian painters changed, the Timurid embassy, the Fatih albums, ink drawing and bird-and-flower painting.
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The Art of the Ilkhanid Period (1256 to 1353). Suzan Yalman, based on work by Linda Komaroff, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published October 2001; Internet Archive copy of 20 April 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. The Mongol conquest, cultural exchange under the Mongols and the new Chinese motifs in painting.
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JAME AL-TAWARIKH (English: Compendium of Chronicles). Charles Melville, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 15 December 2008, last updated 28 October 2013; Internet Archive copy of 25 June 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. The scope of the history, its informants, the endowment deed of 1309 and the 1314 copy.
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Jami al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), 714 A.H. (1314 C.E.), Or MS 20. University of Edinburgh Library Heritage Collections. Undated. Accessed 27 September 2026. The 70 illustrated folios, the scriptorium in Tabriz, the Khalili portion and the history of the manuscript.
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The World History of Rashid al-Din, 1314. A Masterpiece of Islamic Painting. University of Edinburgh Library and University Collections. Published 14 July 2014. Accessed 27 September 2026. Rashid al-Din's life and the Byzantine, Chinese and Islamic elements in the illustrations.
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DEMOTTE SHAH-NAMA (English: the Demotte Book of Kings). Priscilla P. Soucek, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 15 December 1994, last updated 16 October 2015; Internet Archive copy of 21 September 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. The probable patron and date of the Great Mongol Shahnameh, its Chinese motifs, its expression of grief and its 58 known paintings.
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Bahram Gur Fights the Horned Wolf, illustrated folio from a manuscript of the Great Ilkhanid Shahnama, 1960.190. Harvard Art Museums. Undated. Accessed 27 September 2026. The 57 surviving illustrations, the court at Tabriz and the Chinese landscape setting of the page.
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AQA MIRAK. Priscilla P. Soucek, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 15 December 1986; Internet Archive copy of 29 August 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. Janvar-sazi and its four creatures of Far Eastern origin.
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The Art of the Timurid Period (ca. 1370 to 1507). Suzan Yalman, based on work by Linda Komaroff, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published October 2002; Internet Archive copy of 11 April 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. Timur's death in 1405 while preparing to invade China.
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Shah Abbas and the Arts of Isfahan. Marika Sardar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published October 2003; Internet Archive copy of 16 March 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. The 300 Chinese potters settled in Iran by Shah Abbas.
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The Arts of Iran, 1600 to 1800. Marika Sardar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published October 2003; Internet Archive copy of 2 March 2026. Accessed 27 September 2026. Safavid imitations of Chinese blue-and-white ware.
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Siyavash Passing Through the Fire: Original Persian Miniature in Oil and Gold by Kamal al-Din Ghotb. VanArtHub. Undated. Accessed 27 September 2026. The cloud scrolls and dragon-creature in the painting, its size and year.
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Muraqqa': The Gold Shamseh, Original Persian Miniature by Kamal al-Din Ghotb. VanArtHub. Undated. Accessed 27 September 2026. The flower-and-bird panels and the ink drawing of birds.
Checked 27 September 2026. If something here is out of date, write to us and we will correct it.
