Exploration of Mythical Duty-Consciousness of Devs in the Works of Mohammad Siyahghalam

The dev, in mythological beings, is often depicted as malevolent and tyrannical throughout various eras. Due to some of the dev's duty-consciousness characteristics, such as shape-shifting, reversibility, and proficient enchantment, they have attracted the attention of artists in the depiction of some books and other artistic works. In this regard, Mohammad Siyahghalam, a renowned artist of the 8th century AH, and according to many researchers, Ghiath al-Din Mohammad Nagghash, who was sent by Shahrokh to China as part of a political delegation and was tasked with documenting his experiences and observations during this trip, have repeatedly incorporated devs into their works of art. In his depictions, he had multiple reflections on portraying the character of the dev and frequently utilized devs in his collection of works. Furthermore, in these illustrations, Siyahghalam addresses some of the duty-consciousness of the dev, which, from a mythological perspective, mainly involve performing various tasks and functions of the dev. These duty-consciousness have witnessed changes in the character and functions of the dev over different periods, from mythological times to historical periods. The main objective of this research is to investigate the duty-consciousness of the dev in the works of Siyahghalam and compare them with their mythological duties. The present research method is of a descriptive-analytical nature and involves collecting library data through tools such as bibliography extraction, image interpretation, and analyzing various tasks of the dev in tables, presenting findings in statistics. To this end, 28 images by Mohammad Siyahghalam from the Topkapi Museums in Istanbul, the Farer Art Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have been systematically collected. In the first step, there is a general introduction to this dev, followed by the categorization of various tasks and duty-consciousness in different tables. Subsequently, the obtained results are analyzed statistically, and finally, a conclusion is reached. This research aims to answer the question of what duty-consciousness Mohammad Siyahghalam had and to what extent they have remained faithful to their mythological character based on these duty-consciousness. The results obtained classify the dev's duties based on duty-consciousness into eight categories: conflict, occupation, transportation, theft, dance, drinking, wandering, and debate. Among these, the dev's most significant duty-consciousness are related to occupation, where the dev is shown in the act of performing actions such as cutting a tree trunk (deforestation), spinning, and rescuing, grinding, as well as stealing actions. Another significant duty-consciousness is theft. The conclusion drawn is that despite Mohammad Siyahghalam's use of his experiences from traveling to China and recording his observations and humanizing the devs in his Devs, the characteristics and behaviors of the four devs remain faithful to the mythical traits of devs, of which a significant part such as fighting like Anast Dev and Aeshm Dev, stealing like Drivi Dev, drinking wine like Saurva Dev, and on the other hand, deceiving like the Aktash Devs, Fariftar, and Kasvish, and debating like Spazg Dev, generally have their roots in the devic and misleading nature of these creatures.