2-930-300 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Le Combat du Giaour et du Pacha, 1835. The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan. Inspired by a poem by Lord Byron, this painting represents the decisive fight between the Giaour, mounted on a black horse, and the Pasha Hassan, on his white horse. Giaour had fallen in love with Leila, a slave in Hassan's harem, but Hassan had discovered this and had her killed. The Giaour (an offensive Turkish word for infidel or non-believer) tears off the fabric covering the chest of the pasha to reach his heart with the sharp blade of his sabre. The pasha, with a dagger in his right hand, tries to repel his attacker with the other hand. The ferocity of the struggle is also expressed in the attitude of horses, the black horse biting the white horse, which, already injured in the thigh, tramples on a corpse.