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Because his name appears variously as Riza “Aqa Riza” and Riza Abbasi “scholars have question whether he was one person or two or three. To do justice to the study of Riza” one must first posses a general familiarity with
the history of Safavid Iran in the period leading up to shah Abbas’s reign. While written history sheds light on the influential occurrences and personages of Safavid era “Riza”s works bring to life the society united under Abbas. Stylistic
contrasts within the large body of works attributed to Riza have further complicated the question of his identity. Furtunately “epigraphic evidence in the form signatures and inscriptions on Riza’s work historical documentation and the style of the themselves combine convincingly to support the notion of Riza’s single identity. Besides the inscribed works which refer to Riza, the key primary documents for the study of his life and career are the biographical notices of three historian writing at the turn of sixties and seventies
centuries, Qazi Ahmad Qomi , Iskandar Munshi , and Valeh Isfahani. The analysis of Riza’s style points up certain congruencies of motif, pictorial treatment, attitudes to subject matter and embodiment of abstract principales. These notices are quated and discussed in this article.