talent to the test, took aim at the arrows of the other masters’pens.”^11 Thus
painting is rendered as a competition. The arrow as metaphor enables an
eloquent rhetoricalflourish, in that successful literary criticism in Arabic
often used the metaphor of an arrow hitting its target.^12
The three artists publicly announce their intention to decorate the new,
sublime pavilion of the king, and invite other artists to join in competition
to decorate the fourth wall. But they lay a trap to humiliate challengers:
they paint a stream and a fountain gushing sweet waters. When their
competitors fail to recognize the ruse, they leave, and the three artists are
left unable to understand this example as a mirror of their own pride.
When Manifinds out, he rushes to the competition, where“He entered the
mansion of the aforesaid three masters and at their direction, obtained and
was delivered of the task offilling a jug from the fountainhead of
expertise.”^13 Thus the fountain becomes not simply a visual image, but
also a trope for knowledgeflowing from master to student. Mani, a master
himself, recognizes the fountain for what it is: he is not fooled by the false
knowledge of illusionism, and sees the broken jars of those who have come
before him. The narrative breaks into verse for emphasis:
Atfirst glance, it looks as if it’sflowing.
Its pure water is surging out.
Everyone reaches out with no hesitation.
With broken pieces of jugs, everywhere isfilled.^14
With his“wonder working reed pen, the pillar of the workshop of Artang,
whose sable-tip was of the same quality and color as [the robes of] Jangiz
Khan, and which...was a non-corroding weapon like the sword of
Pashang”(from the Shahnameh), Mani paints the maggot-ridden dog
carcass, echoing the scene related by Nizami. Mustafa‘Ali celebrates
Mani’s prowess in verse:
The carcass is missing not one iota,
[Lack of] bad smell, it seems, is its [only] defect.^15
By painting the carcass in the fountain of false knowledge, Mani doubles
the ruse of the other masters, much as the Egyptian artist in al-Maqrizi’s
narrative augments, rather than contradicts, the intellectual prowess of the
Iraqi, and much as the mirror in the competition of the artists of Rum and
China ameliorates the painted wall (seeChapter 5). Still, the group persists
(^11) Akın-Kıvanç, 2011 : 277. (^12) Lelli, 2014 : 203. (^13) Akın-Kıvanç, 2011 : 277.
(^14) Akın-Kıvanç, 2011 : 278. (^15) Akın-Kıvanç, 2011 : 278.
Mustafa‘Ali and the Allegory of the Artists 163