Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, Persia)

• Illuminated Persian manuscript of five romantic and philosophical epics; jewel-toned miniatures and lyrical poetics of cosmic love and ethical transformation.

Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence

The Khamsa of Nizami, as an illuminated manuscript of five Persian epics (Makhzan al-Asrar, Khusrow o Shirin, Layla o Majnun, Haft Paykar, Eskandar-Nameh), embodies the convergence of poetic narrative, ethical self-formation, and visual enchantment. Foucault’s notion of the care of the self—understood as an ancient ethical and aesthetic task of cultivating the soul through exercises of truth, moderation, beauty, and interior transformation—finds deep resonance in this manuscript.

Each tale offers a reflective mirror for ethical subjectivation. The passionate ordeals of Layla and Majnun are not mere indulgences of emotion, but ascetic trials. Love becomes an ordeal of self-emptying and spiritual intensification, echoing Foucault’s idea of askēsis—not repression, but a stylized practice of self over time. Similarly, Alexander's journey across mythic and philosophical landscapes in Eskandar-Nameh is less about conquest and more about epistemic and ethical curiosity—an ancient technē tou biou (technique of life).

The manuscript itself, visually adorned with lapis blues, gold, vermilion, and detailed figural compositions, acts as a space of subjectivation. Its aesthetic form does not merely depict; it transforms. To read, to gaze, to recite—each becomes a ritualized act of shaping one’s subjectivity. Through Foucault’s lens, the Khamsa is a device of self-fashioning—its calligraphic rhythm and miniature tableaux orchestrate a choreography of the self in relation to truth, ethics, and beauty.

Moreover, this work subverts rigid binaries between eroticism and spirituality. The love between Khusrow and Shirin, or the seven princesses of Haft Paykar, is sensual and sublime, testifying to what Foucault calls the aesthetics of existence—a mode of life turned into a conscious artwork. The Khamsa, therefore, is not simply a literary masterpiece, but a Foucauldian artefact of subject formation, where the self is both reader and manuscript—inscribed, edited, adorned.