Similar
Islamic rider Gironaa
Summary
Image of a mounted figure, in Islamic dress, spearing a snake, from the Gerona Beatus. Folio 134v
The rider defeating the snake
The image, which is apparently totally unrelated to the storia and the explanatio, covers two thirds of the folio. Depicted on the right-hand side is a man upon his mount wearing a turban with ribbons flying in the wind, spearing the jaws of the large snake he is fighting. This figure is similar to the one seen earlier of Herod on horseback (f. 15v), but with more obviously Islamic elements: the cloth tied around his head waving behind him appears in Sassanian representations of governors on horseback. The simple tack shown in the Gerona Beatus is however closer to that of a horseman on a sixth-century Coptic fabric: a similarity increased by the fact that the horseman bears a spear rather than a bow, a typical Sassanian weapon. The use of stirrups also situates the rider in the Gerona Beatus after the Sassanian period. Although no riders killing snakes with their spears have survived in the iconography of Andalusia, there are models of horsemen spearing lions. D. Shepherd classified such topics within the iconography of the heavenly hunter symbolising Paradise.
The Sasanian Empire (224 – 651 CE, also given as Sassanian, Sasanid, or Sassanid) was the last pre-Islamic Persian empire, established in 224 CE by Ardeshir I, son of Papak, a descendant of Sasan. Zoroastrianism was the state religion, and at various times followers of other faiths suffered religious persecution. The Empire lasted until 651 CE when it was overthrown by the Arab Rashidun Caliphate. It is considered by the Iranian people to be a highlight of their civilization for, after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550 –330 BCE) at the hands of Alexander the Great in 330 BCE, Persian culture was sustained through the Parthian Empire (247 BCE – 224 CE) and reached its height in the Sassanian Period; there was not to be another state that truly felt ”Iranian" after its fall.
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