Turkman style

Turkman style is a style in Persian miniature painting that emerged in the 15th century. The British art scholar Basil William Robinson coined the term in the 1950s to differentiate this style from a more polished style made in courts of Timurid and Turkman rulers. It was given the name "Turkman" because the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu tribes, known as Turkoman, ruled western Iran in the second half of the 15th century, where the Turkman style was centered.

The quality of Turkman style was wide-ranging, with many fine early illustrations and some outstanding works belonging to the late 15th-century "metropolitan or royal Turkman styles", while there were also many creations of lesser quality, belonging to the so-called "commercial Turkman style".

Definition

In an effort to differentiate a specific painting style that flourished in Iran during the 15th century in the paintings created under the Timurid Empire, Western historians coined the notion of Turkman style in the middle of the 20th century. When Persian miniature painting was initially periodized in the 1930s, there were initial attempts to identify Turkman paintings. The German art scholar Ernst Kühnel used published samples from significant collections of Persian painted manuscripts to categorize the paintings of each era.

He included the paintings made under the Qara Qoyunlu in the division of the "Tabriz School," and considered them as an evolution of the styles developed under their predecessors, particularly the Jalayirids, in his article in Pope and Ackerman's Survey of Persian Art (1938–1939). With the publication of a study in 1954 by Basil William Robinson that offered stylistic standards for identifying what he termed "Turkman Commercial" and described its evolution up to 1505, the term became firmly established. Between the 1480s and the 1490s, the Turkman style thrived.