The Mongol invasion in the i3th century proved unexpectedly fortunate for the art of book production in western Asia. Hulagu and his successors not only took pains to promote it in every pos sible way, but also brought it into contact with the highly developed painting of the Far East, and directed it towards new subjects, with the important effect of immensely enlarging the painters' outlook. The main tendency was now to the pictorial representation of historic events and legendary episodes, in world histories conceived on a large scale, and the principal result of acquaintance with the works of the Chinese masters of the Sung period was to enhance the feeling for landscape. In manuscripts of the early 14th century we see the foreign stimuli combining with older traditions, until in course of time there developed a new Perso-Mongol style of painting which reached a high standard in the two capitals of the Ilkhans, Baghdad and Tabriz. The captions were now no longer in Arabic, but generally in Persian, and the whole art of miniature painting was soon persianized when the great national epic of Firdusi and other poems, such as those of Nizami and Khwadju Kirmani, became increasingly common in illustrated copies. New and effective uses were here found for de vices of composition, and, moreover, the arrangement of the verses in vertical columns, which could be broken up wherever desired, made possible a much more intimate and aesthetically satisfying conjunction of picture and text than had ever till then been known. Heroic scenes from the Shahnamah, sentimental themes from Khosrau and Shirin, Leila and Majniin, etc., were then for the first time expressed in characteristic forms.
When Timur altered the whole political complexion of western Asia, there arose, beside the two centres already named, a third and highly productive centre—his capital of Samarkand, where, in addition to the miniature book-illustration in body-colour, the separate sheet bearing a light ink sketch, usually picked out in gold, came again into favour through the stimulus of Far Eastern example. Of Arabic texts there were at this period only the cos mography of Qazwini and a few astrological treatises, which seem to have been produced with loving care in Western Turkestan. To the Baghdad school of calligraphy belongs the credit of having, about 1300, developed the lapidary style of the Cufic Korans into a rounded form, and brought this to the ripest degree of orna mental beauty in the majestic turner variants. In the production of the magnificent Korans of the age of the Ilkhans, with their large size and their few and incomparably imposing lines of script, Persian masters were certainly concerned ; and they carried to Tabriz and Samarcand the new principles they had learnt in this school for the decoration of the holy book, especially the rich arabesque illumination. Timur's chief secretary, Emir Moham med Bedr ed-Din of Tabriz, has an immense reputation as a mas ter of all forms of writing, and two of the great Mongol emperor's grandsons,Ibrahim Mirza and Baisonqur Mirza, were very famous calligraphers. The latter, who unfortunately met an early death in 1434, also earned much honour by founding the Academy of Artistic Book-Production at Herat in connection with his library; for years it employed 4o calligraphers, besides numerous illu minators and painters. In this academy the Persian texts were no longer written in naskhi, but in nestaliq, an offshoot of the old cursive character, invented by the celebrated Mir Ali of Tabriz.
All the 4o masters of Herat were directly or indirectly his pupils, and towards the end of the century the style of calligraphy in vented by him found its most splendid representative in Sultan All of Meshed (d. 1513), the protege of the famous poet and minister Mir Ali Shir Newai and friend of the great poet, Jam'i.
The preference that painters displayed for subjects drawn from the national literature, and the enthusiasm with which they steeped themselves in the magic of their native countryside, give to Persian painting of the Mongol period a romantic note which often chimes with the atmospheres we find in our own contem porary western Gothic. In the East, however, the purely decora tive and impersonal character of the pictures continued, whereas in Europe they were gradually diverted from their original pur pose by the influence of wall-painting and panel-painting. It was at this time that the harmony between picture and text reached the highest imaginable degree of perfection, and in turning the leaves of the extant manuscripts we are continually astonished at the skill with which the painters fitted their subjects into spaces allotted to them quite arbitrarily by the calligraphers. At the beginning of the 14th century the backgrounds were still care fully coloured red, but subsequently a rich blue became general, and it was not until the end of the period that a gold background came into favour ; the other colours were predominantly bright and lively. The incidental landscape is generally of a steppe-like character ; jagged rocks, isolated trees, and little brooks rippling among stones and bordered by growing flowers, are the essential features of almost all open-air scenes, and only occasionally is the mysterious atmosphere of the forest or the luxuriance of a flower garden depicted. The highly effective motif of a tree in blossom, which is often used in smaller pictures, is obviously taken from Chinese models of the Ming period. We know that, particularly under the Timurids, contact with the Far East became increasingly frequent.