Lunchtime Seminar – 17 March – Amanda Leong

The Many Faces of Female Alterity in Illustrated Manuscripts and Metalwork of Mongol Iran

Amanda Caterina Leong (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

 

It is a well-known fact that elite women in the medieval Mongol world, particularly in Mongol Iran, were powerful. This paper explores how female power was visualized, staged, and disciplined in the visual arts of the Ilkhanid (1256–1353) and the post-Ilkhanid dynasties in Iran. Drawing on illustrated manuscripts produced from these periods, I argue that Mongol Iranian visual culture articulated female power through the framework of alterity: a controlled, temporary inversion of established hierarchies. I focus on four recurring figures of gendered alterity: the female assassin, the female javanmard (manly youth), the female admonisher, and the lady with the mirror. I trace how they simultaneously challenge ideal gendered norms, expose anxieties about sovereignty, and their ultimate contribution to the consolidation of hegemonic rule. Furthermore, by exploring the Courtauld Bag, a luxury inlaid metalwork bag that is said to have been commissioned and used by a Mongol khatun in Iran, I explore how a female patron could challenge the grammar of alterity, to intervene in the visual politics of her own representation, asserting authority on terms that resist containment.