Sani‘ ol-Molk’s The Thousand and One Nights: A Study of Image Content and Visual Adaptation

This book examines The Thousand and One Nights by Abol-Hassan Khan Sani‘ ol-Molk Ghaffari (1813/1814-1867), of the content of the illustrations of the main story, the story of Shahrzad and Shahrbaz, as well as a codicological study of the manuscript. It intends to explain how Sani‘ ol-Molk complicates the visual frame by adaptive strategies that build on the relationship between presented objects inside an illustration and the meanings that could be conventionally attributed to them from outside of the image. Examining the illustrations of the manuscript shows how Sani‘ ol-Molk’s visualization of the main story of The Thousand and One Nights adds to the narrative and adapts it to convey meaning(s) that transcend the story the illustrations refer to.