Drawing on the rich resources of the San Diego Museum of Art as well as on other collections, this paper discusses the iconographic development of two frequent figures in Persian and Arabic manuscripts, Solomon and Majnun, in relation to the creatures that surround them, though in very different settings. The Court of Solomon provides an ideal venue for an orderly depiction of animals and other beings, demons and jinns, in a celebration of order, degree, and decorum: a full orchestra paying homage to a divinely blessed Prophet-King. The Court of Majnun is more of an austere alfresco party, where intimacy replaces awe and subjugation without robbing the King of Love from his own particular aura of power and grandeur. In contrast to Solomon's court, with its Noah's Ark catalogue of all creatures great and small, the animals, which curl around Majnun as companions and act as chorus to his grief, vary in number, position and species from illustration to illustration. By studying the illustrations against their literary context (Qur'anic and Qisas al-anbiya' motifs and their later elaboration in verse and prose narratives in the case of Solomon; and in the work of the 12th century Persian poet Nizami and subsequent writers in the case of Majnun), in Persian and Indian manuscripts, the paper aims to show the variety of ways in which the relationship between human beings and animals were expressed and developed in different regions and periods and how the illustrations often serve as commentaries and invite the onlooker/reader to interpret the polysemous text in a certain way. The paper will conclude by pointing to some further paths of research, and the wider context of animals and birds and their changing symbolic significance in Persian art, by placing the above debate within other perspectives on Persian art, including, as well as of course the relatively well-researched Kalila and Dimna repertoire, the sometimes illustrated Conference of the Birds by the 12th century Persian mystic poet 'Attar where the birds themselves have their own court, with human beings relegated to subsidiary narratives and the mythical of Simurgh as the sought-after but allusive ideal monarch.