Re-reading the Narrative in Ibrahim Sultan’s Shahnama Based on Paul Ricoeur`s Philosophical Hermeneutics Theory

A manuscript of Ibrahim Sultan`s Shahna­ma available at the Bodleian Library of Oxford, representing the full range of vi­sual features of the Shiraz School at the age of Ibrahim Sultan Timuri (817-838 AH) which has the symbolic aspects and semantic trends of painting and the po­tentiality to be interpreted based on phil­osophical hermeneutics. It seems that an­alyzing the visual element and re-reading the narrative in this version, through Paul Ricoeur`s philosophical hermeneutics is an effective step towards an in-depth understanding of the content features of painting in one of the schools and il­lustrated manuscripts of Iran. The pur­pose of this study, which has descrip­tive-analytical method, is to answer this question: How is the narrative in Ibrahim Sultan’s Shahnama paintings re-readable with Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneu­tics? The results indicate that some of the paintings, in addition to narrating of the Shahnama, have content independence and social, cultural and advertising func­tion and they have established some sort of content interaction between the visual elements of the paintings and the political and historical themes of this era.