Persian Paintings as Documents of Social History: Images of Craftsmen at Work

The virtual absence of written sources about the construction process in the medieval period makes Persian paintings a useful primary source. A small sub-set of paintings depict the process of building, six of which are examined in close detail, from a broad geographic range and dating from the period spanning the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. These include a painting attributed to Siyah Qalam, paintings from Herat, and a series of images from the Akbarnameh. By taking a wide view, observations about building sites, based on multiple unconnected examples, can help to illuminate the poorly understood construction process across the pre-modern Iranian world.