The Earliest Datable Mughal Painting
An Allegory of the Celebrations for Akbar's Circumcision at
the Sacred Spring of Khwaja Seh Yaran near Kabul (1546 AD)
[Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin -
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Libr. Pict. A117, fol. 15a]
Laura E. Parodi and Bruce Wannell
text and photos © asianart.com and the author except as where otherwise noted
November 18, 2011
Photographs of the painting: courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz; high resolution details of the painting by Christine Kösser. Photographs of Khwaja Seh Yaran, Istalif and Khwaja Khizr by Ustad 'Abdu Naser Sawabi.
(click on small images for large images with captions)
Fig. 1
The subject of the painting has remained more elusive. Some scholars have suggested a connection with an historical event in the reign of Humayun - ranging from an excursion to the orange groves near Kabul in 1550 AD [5] to celebrations for the heir-apparent Akbar's circumcision in 1546 AD [6] - while others have interpreted the content as essentially allegorical. [7] In this essay, we shall propose a new interpretation, based upon a detailed inquiry conducted on the painting itself, on relevant textual passages, and on a site outside Kabul. Special attention will be devoted to the painting's numerous unusual features, from the prominent inclusion of women and children to the peculiar choice of rocks and trees. We will suggest the painting is at once the recollection of an historical event and an allegorical tableau connected with Humayun's recent reinstatement on the throne, datable to c. 1546 AD. The artist skilfully combined identifiable characters as well as recognizable landscape features with symbolic, metaphorical and literary references. Bruce Wannell's survey of the site demonstrates that, however transfigured by the artist with an expressive intent, the setting for this striking picture is real and still visible today, though perhaps not for long. By publicizing our findings, we not only hope to spark a debate on the significance of the mid-sixteenth century Kabul atelier in the context of Mughal as well as Persian painting, but to demonstrate the necessity to approach the physical landscape of Afghanistan with a willingness to explore the cultural associations that still pervade it, lest they disappear in the face of "developers."
Historical contextualization: Humayun's patronage of painting
Laura E. Parodi
Humayun's life and cultural achievements are often portrayed in deceptively simple ways. In surveys of Mughal art (not to mention Mughal history) he often makes little more than a complimentary appearance. His loss of the throne after a decade and his untimely death by a trivial accident, coupled with the fact that he spent most of his regnal years outside the borders of modern India or Pakistan (or, historically, the British Empire) have not contributed to his popularity with scholars. These have unsurprisingly found Humayun's dynamic father Babur (r. 1494-1530, with interruptions) and charismatic son Akbar (r. 1556-1605) more appealing. The very nature of the textual sources available has probably contributed to discourage those interested in “facts” more than the history of ideas. Khwandamir's verbose but by no means vacuous account of Humayun's early institutions [8] and the firsthand testimony provided by three tadhkiras covering the remaining twenty years of his reign contain a wealth of information on ceremonial, beliefs and material culture, but have been used for a minute fraction of their potential, and often repetitively. [9] The Bāburnāma, which covers the decades immediately preceding Humayun's reign, is seldom cited in relation to it, although it too contains crucial information. [10]
From the point of view of nineteenth-century British historians, Humayun's decade in Kabul may well have appeared as an “exile” (from the geographical area they were concerned with); but this position is untenable today. [11] From the art-historian's point of view, there is no question that the decade between 1545-55 AD when Humayun was based in Kabul was seminal for the Mughal school of painting. Nor had Timurid patronage in Kabul begun then. Chahryar Adle has provided a compelling reconstruction of the activity of courtly patrons in Kabul between the reigns of Ulugh Beg II (1469-1502) and Humayun - including the seldom considered intervening periods under Babur (r. in Kabul 1504-30) and Kamran (c. 1540-45 and 1547-49). [12] Although the evidence he gathered does not (by his own admission) unequivocally support the continuing existence of a kitābkhāna during those decades, it does show that the Timurid princes who successively ruled the city continued to employ specialists in the arts of the book. [13] Evidence for patronage in Kabul during the first half of the sixteenth century (including building activity, which has similarly escaped most discussions of Mughal palace complexes) is by no means absent, even if admittedly painstaking to piece together. To further complicate matters, although several passages in textual sources indicate that Humayun had artists in his service - and possibly even a fully-fledged, if small, kitābkhāna - during the first decade of his reign, no works may currently be dated before his reinstatement in Kabul in late 1545.
Until potential candidates for an earlier dating are identified from among the manuscripts and paintings presently classified as products of the late-Timurid or possibly the Shaybanid school, it is only from the few surviving works produced for Humayun in Kabul between 1545 and 1555 that scholars may be able to assess the early steps of Mughal painting. It is usually taken for granted that the Mughal school originated in Humayun's encounter with the Safavid Shah Tahmasp, whose court workshop produced some of the absolute masterpieces in the history of Persian painting. Indeed, a few years later, c. 1549 - after returning to Kabul several months after losing his throne once more to his brother Kamran - Humayun famously invited two Safavid artists to join him in there: Mir Sayyid ‘Ali, descended from the sayyids of Tirmidh, and ‘Abdussamad, most probably a Shirazi master. [14] But assuming Mughal patronage of painting stemmed exclusively from Humayun's encounter with Tahmasp - as some scholars have implied in the past - would be a gross overstatement. Sayyid ‘Ali and ‘Abdussamad were neither the first nor the only artists employed by Humayun and his kin: Khurasani artists trained in the late-Timurid atelier such as Darwish Muhammad, a pupil of Shah Muzaffar, and a Bihzad disciple named Mulla Yusuf [15] were possibly working for Humayun and certainly for the Chagatays from an earlier date: [16] Darwish Muhammad, for example, taught painting to Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (d. 1551), [17] who was in Humayun's retinue until he set off to conquer Kashmir in 1540. There is no sign of these two painters having ever been employed in the Safavid royal atelier - which may be one reason few scholars have even considered them. [18]
Dust Muhammad for his part - to whom the Berlin painting has been ascribed - was unquestionably already in Kabul at the time of Humayun's arrival: in a letter to Rashid Khan (the ruler of Kasghar) written in 1552, Humayun himself states that the artist had “long been in [his] retinue” (nisbat-i qidam-i mulāzimat dārad, which Adle renders as “vieux compagnon du souverain”). [19] Bayazid Bayat adds that “Mulla Dust,” as he names him, “had joined Mirza Kamran's retinue on account of his fondness for wine, which he was unable to give up.” [20] This, it has been suggested, seems a reference to Tahmasp's “first repentance” and his consequent prohibition of gambling, drinking and other reprehensible practices; [21] but a full historical contextualization has, to the best of my knowledge, never been attempted.
If, as Adle has convincingly suggested, Dust Muhammad (the painter) is to be identified with Bihzad's most talented pupil, he had probably remained his close associate and would have benefited from the master's exemption from such regulations. [22] Adle further suggests Dust Muhammad may have departed after the death of Bihzad in 942 H / 1535-36 AD. [23] But if so, we may add, his original intention may well have been to reach Humayun's court in Delhi. Soon after Tahmasp's repentance in 939 H / 1533-34 AD, Humayun had founded a city by the eloquent name of Dinpanah (Asylum of Faith), where he summoned the remainder of the Timurid elite along with artists and intellectuals. [24] Although Kwandamir presents the project as the result of divine inspiration, there is little doubt that the city was built in response to the Safavid's religious turn. Dinpanah's core buildings were well underway by 1534, and construction probably continued for a while afterwards (unfortunately no sources cover this period in detail). But very soon, Humayun found himself engaged in military campaigns culminating in his loss of Hindustan in 1539-40. On his way to Humayun's court, Dust Muhammad would doubtlessly have alighted in Lahore, where Kamran was based at the time (a fact, again, apparently overlooked by previous scholars). Once there, the master was probably advised not to proceed further and consequently joined the prince's retinue. Humayun also eventually betook himself to Lahore, but Kamran did not hand over the city to him nor allow him to proceed in state to Kabul, forcing him to seek asylum with Tahmasp. [25] Although partly conjectural, this scenario would account for Dust Muhammad's departure and his choice of Kamran as a patron better than a purported flight to Kabul (where Kamran, incidentally, only moved his headquarters after Humayun's flight from Hindustan in 1540 [26]).
Assuming Dust Muhammad was trained by Bihzad in Herat, he must have been about sixty-five at least at the time of Humayun's reinstatement on the throne in 1545: this would also account for Humayun's decision to recruit new masters a few years later. Darwish Muhammad for his part, according to Mirza Haydar Dughlat, had been trained by Shah Muzaffar - who had died young and certainly before the Safavid conquest of Herat: he must therefore have been even older. [27] Darwish Muhammad is not mentioned among the artists who set out for India with Humayun in 1554; Dust Muhammad is - along with Mir Sayyid ‘Ali and ‘Abdussamad - but that is the last time we come across his name. [28] Scholars have always assumed that the two younger masters were more capable and superseded him, but Humayun's wording in his letter to the Khan of Kashgar does not support this view: it is Dust Muhammad, not them, who is hailed as “Mani of the Age.” [29] It is more probable that he had reached retirement age around the time when the campaign was launched, and just as likely he may have died along the way. As a first-generation pupil of Bihzad, if he had played even a minimal role in Akbar's kitābkhāna, his name would have been recorded in Akbari sources. Indeed, as we shall see, he was not forgotten by Humayun's descendants, but he simply never worked for the Mughals in Hindustan after Humayun's return to Delhi and is therefore not mentioned in that connection. For the purposes of this essay, there is no need to delve into this topic; suffice to suggest that Dust Muhammad's death (or his retirement) may easily account for the ascent of the two younger masters, to whom scholars have possibly attributed too much authority in retrospect, based on their subsequent career under Akbar.
Dust Muhammad's training under Bihzad is indeed apparent from the Berlin page (see our discussion below), and in light of the evidence gathered above we should perhaps revise the view that the painters employed by Humayun were “Safavid” artists. Dust Muhammad in particular may perhaps more accurately be defined as a master trained in the late Timurid tradition who further developed his style (and - an important point in this context - the scale of his compositions) at the Safavid court. This is only one of several clues which suggest Humayun did not borrow the concept of a kitābkhāna wholesale from Tahmasp (although the scale and ambition of the Safavid atelier at the time of his visit would certainly have made an impression on him). Not only is evidence of a continuity with the late-Timurid workshop beginning to emerge, but it would be fair to assume that, as a Timurid, Humayun must have had well-developed ideas about painting long before his encounter with the Safavid Shah. [30] Chahryar Adle and Francis Richard must be credited for advocating continuity in Timurid patronage during the first half of the sixteenth century and for gathering evidence in support of this idea, which may now be further substantiated. As previously noted by various scholars, at least one quality Timurid manuscript - Muhammad-Juki's copy of Firdawsi's Shāhnāma - bears two seal impressions by Humayun and one by his father Babur. [31] Given the frequent downturns experienced by Humayun, this chance survival is almost miraculous and - along with another manuscript detailed below -should be regarded as an indicator of a much wider corpus of Timurid works from which Humayun had certainly formed a clear judgment of what he wanted from his painters. Although admittedly dictated or written some fifty years later, the memoirs covering Humayun's reign do mention illustrated manuscripts and albums at the Mughal court in the 1530s, even if they do not explicitly mention a kitābkhāna. [32] Such a reference only occurs later, in relation to Humayun's fatal accident shortly after his return to Delhi, and the text specifies that the library had recently been fitted. [33] But since Mirza Haydar Dughlat in Kashmir and Mirza Kamran in Lahore and Kabul sponsored artists during Humayun's exile, should we not assume that Humayun had himself employed artists and, given his ruler's status, had endeavored to set up a kitābkhāna in his early years of reign in Hindustan? [34]
The Timurid connection is not merely incidental to an understanding of early Mughal painting. The Berlin page considered in this essay adapts its composition from a Timurid model and contains further explicit citations from Timurid paintings, as we shall presently demonstrate. The citations not only index the artist's training and testify to his creativity, but they bear evidence to the high standards demanded by his patron. They are also an indication of what may have been collected by the Mughals in their early years of rule, complementing epigraphic and documentary evidence. [35]
The painting
Laura E. Parodi
Fig. 2
With these premises in mind, we may now proceed to examine the painting. Its attribution to Kabul in the mid-sixteenth century is secure and, as we shall see, our research suggests the work predates the arrival of Mir Sayyid ‘Ali and ‘Abdussamad by several years, being datable to shortly after Humayun's arrival in the city in 1545. The likeness of Humayun (Fig. 2) is fully compatible with that known from other portraits [36] and the painting contains numerous accurate depictions of the Tāj-i ‘Izzat, a headgear type reserved for members of Humayun's close circle and - I have elsewhere argued - most likely designed in response to the Safavid Tāj-i Ḥaydarī. [37] The Tāj-i ‘Izzat was discontinued by Akbar upon his coming of age - possibly at the time when he dispatched his father's former vizier Bayram Khan to Mecca - and it is not represented accurately by the next generation of artists in Akbar's atelier, who had not see actual examples. The Berlin painting is actually the most detailed surviving document of this headdress, modeled upon the headgear of Sufi orders and designed to reflect individual status within a sophisticated hierarchy. Note how, with only two exceptions, all the male figures in the Berlin painting wear variants of it: these range from a plain qalpaq - a common type of Central Asian headgear to this day - to more lavish versions embellished with scarves and feather ornaments (Figs. 3, 4), culminating in the ruler's own gold-brocaded Tāj (Fig. 5).
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Fig. 7
Fig. 8
The Berlin painting is remarkably large (c. 40x22 cm); it may even have dictated the size for the whole “Gulshan Album”: the overall folio is only slightly larger, at 41x25.5 cm. There is no provision for text panels, and along with size this suggest the painting was meant to be viewed indepedent of a manuscript. The composition is intricate, the detail minute and only revealed upon close scrutiny, when not exclusively under magnification. The painstaking execution indicates the painting required a long time, perhaps months, to complete. At face value, the artist presents us with a reception hosted on a rocky hillside that sees the participation of men as well as women and children. Upon closer scrutiny, the composition appears closely modelled upon “Iskandar visiting the Hermit,” an illustration from a 900 AH (1494-95 AD) copy of Nizami's Khamsa, a manuscript copied for Amir Ali Farsi Barlas, possibly in Herat, that was at one time in the Mughal library and is currently in the British Library collections (Fig. 8). [40] Even though the manuscript does not bear any inscriptions or seal impressions predating the reign of Jahangir, a connection is suggested by the striking similarity of the two compositions (despite the difference in scale - the Khamsa manuscript measuring only 25x17 cm). On the basis of its style, dating and the biographical information available about its patron, this copy of Nizami's Khamsa has been plausibly ascribed to the late-Timurid atelier, possibly in Herat. Because of the close iconographic connection between the two paintings (discussed below), I am inclined to explain the connection not merely as the result of a transmission of models but as a direct adaptation of the Timurid page, with an expressive intent, which would imply its presence in Humayun's library. “Haftwad and the Worm” also appears to reproduce features from the Khamsa page, albeit more freely. A similarity between “Haftwad and the Worm” and the Berlin painting had been noted before, [41] but this more intricate connection deserves closer attention. It may have important implications for our assessment both of Dust Muhammad's work and, more generally, of artistic practice in this period: these may well be the chance survivors of a wider Bildfamilie.
Similar to “Iskandar visiting the Hermit,” in the Berlin painting Humayun is positioned toward the foreground rather than the center. Our attention is drawn to him mostly by the gesture of the man identified as Hindal: the boy's portrait held up to Humayun actually plays the role of a visual catalyst for the entire composition (Fig. 5). Humayun's attitude suggests an official occasion: he is seated cross-legged - a posture typical of receptions in state [42] - and holds the sleeve of his qabā'; some of his guests similarly grasp a kerchief hanging from their belts (signalling either a vow or a fine point of etiquette - I am unsure which). The small boy in the portrait is virtually unanimously regarded as Humayun's son and heir-apparent Akbar, and the presenter's identification with Mirza Hindal - Humayun's youngest brother and his main ally at the time of his reinstatement in Kabul - has never been disputed. A certain “family air” between the two men has even been pointed out; Humayun's face was lost as it travelled to the India! Art and Culture exhibition in 1985, [43] but the similarity may be assessed on the basis of the illustration contained in the catalogue (compare Figs. 2 and 5). This identification is further supported by details of dress and etiquette, as further detailed below.
Humayun's relatively peripheral position within the composition suggests he may not be the main or sole protagonist of the event commemorated; although one might also argue that Iskandar or Haftwad's daughter are similarly displaced and therefore possibly a hallmark of this particular artist or of his artistic lineage - an issue that deserves further attention. In spite of this, since Humayun is the most readily recognizable figure in the Berlin painting, and partly due to a (probably excessive) scholarly focus on rulers and their purported concerns for “legitimization,” all scholarly interpretations have revolved more around him than around other areas of the composition.
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
While several details are suggestive of a formal reception, a degree of informality is also apparent in the “rustic” setting [50] and the presence of women and children. A more detailed discussion of the man standing in attendance behind Humayun (Figs. 2, 5), whom I have provisionally included among Humayun's “bodyguards,” will be provided below. A group of junior attendants is seen behind him, one of whom holds a flower in his hand (Fig. 4); their clothes, attitudes and attributes are sufficiently individualized to have made them recognizable in their own time, but their identification appears difficult today. Their young age and the position they occupy in the painting suggests they might be Humayun's temporarily out-of-service arms-bearers, who were usually chosen from among the sons of the begs and amīrs. At a more formal reception, a group of arms-bearers would have occupied a similar position. [51] Also worthy of note are the horse's groom, dressed in the same hue of green as Humayun, and the imperial horse's padded saddle, in the very same hue of green (Fig. 10). Next to the groom is a smaller figure, whose face appears as the result of early seventeenth-century overpainting, perhaps in an attempt to repair damage (all the faces in this painting are inherently fragile, as is often the case with mid-sixteenth-century works - most notably from Bukhara). The figure itself is precisely modeled upon Safavid menial attendants such as those seen in “Haftwad and the Worm” (Fig. 7); his Safavid red kula is somewhat out of place in this Mughal setting.
Fig. 11
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The middle field of the painting is dominated by a group of women (Fig. 12), closely guarded by eunuchs (Fig. 3); they appear engaged in a parallel reception, as was customary on such festive occasions. [52] Nothing more than a formal resemblance connects these women with those in “Haftwad and the Worm” (Fig. 7), and there is certainly no intention on the part of the painter to stigmatize them negatively: as we shall see, these must be sisters and consorts of Humayun. Some strange slanting rocks balance off this section of the composition on the viewer's right side; directly above them, three small boys are seen behind trees (Fig. 13), watched over by two women under the protective shelter of the rock elephant (Fig. 11). At the same level as the elephant and to the viewer's left, the shape of a woman lying down with a child beside her - its legs and arms outstretched - may be discerned in two further rock formations (Fig. 14); they are a virtually exact stone replica of images recording the birth of royal or prophetic children, known from Mughal as well as much earlier examples. [53] Above them is a cave from which water gushes out. More water is seen trickling down from a cleft situated above the elephant; after circling around the patch of ground occupied by the children, the water opens up into a small pool behind one of the eunuchs, then continues its course down to the painting's foreground. The vast majority of the trees would seem to be arghawān (Cercis griffithii) (Fig. 13) - a choice of botanical species that is to the best of my knowledge unparalleled and therefore presumably significant. Two more tree species are depicted, yet are almost drowned into the landscape and only detected upon close scrutiny: two young willows, positioned behind the eunuchs, and four pomegranate trees, intertwined with the three arghawān lined up along the lower left border and that in the bottom right corner.
The prominent inclusion of arghawān suggests a link with the site of Khwaja Seh Yaran on the northwestern edge of the Shomali Plain north of Kabul, which hosts the more famous garden site of Istalif (Fig. 15). At the latter site, traces of the original watercourses were in recent years noted by the Kabul office of the Agha Khan Trust for Culture and were subsequently bulldozed by a local commander to build the new Uluswali administrative centre, destroying valuable archaeological evidence in the process (Fig. 16). Both Istalif and Khwaja Seh Yaran are mentioned in the Bāburnāma: Babur did not fail to appreciate this lush agricultural valley, replete with sacred springs and - perhaps more importantly for him - breathtaking views. Equally importantly, as is testified by repeated mentions in early Mughal sources, the valley was a strategic outpost which connected Kabul to major routes. [54] Khwaja Seh Yaran and Istalif were both developed by Babur, and he dwells upon both sites at relative length. Babur mentions two types of arghawān in the area: a “red” (qızıl) one, which must be Cercis griffithii (fig. 17) - a species similar to the Judas tree - and a “yellow” (sarığ) one, known by a local name but unidentified from a botanical point of view. [55] Bruce Wannell's recent survey of the site (see his account below) essentially confirms this suggestion. The trees seen in the Berlin painting bear only purplish-red flowers, and the round leaves of Cercis griffithii are exactly reproduced. It is worth noting that the bright yellow leaves interspersed with the green ones - so yellow, in fact, they have been occasionally mistaken for oranges [56] - may not have been yellow originally. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that the “yellow” color is applied over the green leaves. I suspect this was originally another shade of green. “Yellow” trees are a relatively frequent encounter in both Timurid and Safavid painting, including quality manuscripts such as the mid-fifteenth century Shāhnāma of Muhammad-Juki (Fig. 43) or Tahmasp's Khamsa, [57] where there is hardly any doubt that the yellow results from the loss of a blue pigment in the original green hue, most likely indigo. [58]
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Babur mentions two other tree species at Khwaja Seh Yaran besides arghawān: oak (balūṭ) and plane (chenār). [59] He further notes that local lore associated the trees with three unspecified saints connected with the site (Khwaja Seh Yaran meaning: The Three Holy Companions). Since three distinct tree species were present at Khwaja Seh Yaran or in its vicinity - in addition to the willows Babur himself planted, most probably by the water and with an aim to consolidate the banks [60] - one wonders why only one species dominates the painting, and then such an unusual one. The possibility of a connection with an historical episode suggests itself: Bayazid Bayat mentions the arghawān groves at Khwaja Seh Yaran in a fragmentarily preserved passage of his Tārīkh-i Humāyūn which ends with the word āyīnbandī, usually understood as adornments for a festive solemnity. The missing sentence occurs in connection with the account of the forty-day tooy (solemn festivities) for the circumcision of the heir-apparent, Akbar. [61] The tooy was organized in the spring of 1546, more precisely around the Nawruz (the Persian New Year, coinciding with the spring equinox), traditionally regarded as an auspicious time for such celebrations. [62] This would agree well with the presentation of a small boy's portrait and would contribute to explain why Humayun occupies a relatively peripheral position, with twice as much space taken up by the ladies, children and natural as well as visionary landscape features. A connection with Akbar's circumcision was previously suggested by Robert Skelton [63] on the basis of the portrait presentation, the presence of women and children and the green clothes worn by Humayun (Fig. 5) and one of the ladies (Fig. 12), whom he proposed to identify with Akbar's mother, Hamida Begim. Green clothes, Skelton reminds us, are mentioned in another textual passage: in her account of the same circumcision tooy, Humayun's sister Gulbadan Begim mentions a group of people, including notably some young girls, that were ordered to wear green clothes and “go up on the mountains.” [64] The two passages are discussed at greater length by Bruce Wannell below. Although Gulbadan's account provides no further explanation, the suspicion of some kind of folk ritual connected with fertility is strong and further supported by Wannell's survey, as we shall see. That green is used with an expressive intent in the painting is further signaled by the use of the same hue for the imperial horse's saddle and its groom's clothes (Fig. 10).
The connection with Akbar's circumcision feast and some fertility ritual is additionally strengthened by the visual links Dust Muhammad establishes between the water gushing out of the rocks at various points (note also the shape of the cave at the top left), the mother-and-child rock figures, and the women and children. For several years I had been hoping to check out the possibility of Khwaja Seh Yaran being the setting recreated in this painting. I am deeply grateful to Bruce Wannell for accepting to join me in this research adventure: with his knowledge of Afghanistan, his language skills, his profound familiarity with Persian literature and history, and the additional bonus of an interest in gardening, I could not have found a better research companion. By the most curious coincidence, his report from Khwaja Seh Yaran eventually reached me on the very eve of my departure to Berlin to examine the painting. But then, Humayun himself would not have regarded this as a coincidence. I like to think that he would be pleased, if not necessarily with our interpretation, at least with the effort we put into telling the story of our journey into an artwork and a landscape that doubtlessly meant a lot to him.
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The Landscape of Khwaja Seh Yaran as Represented by Dust Muhammad and as recorded by Textual Sources (Gulbadan Begim and Bayazid Bayat)
Bruce Wannell
In 2008 I read a passage from the Bāburnāma which prompted a week-end excursion from Kabul in search of Babur's oak trees. When we eventually found the site, it commanded from the shade of surviving oak trees a splendid view, as in most sites chosen by that Emperor (Figs. 15, 18). I give the passage here in Wheeler Thackston's translation, accompanying it with photographs taken by Ustad ‘Abdu Naser Sawabi on the occasion of a more recent visit (on which more below):
...a league or a league and a half above the flatland in a hollow in the foothills is a spring called Khwaja Seyaran. The spring and vicinity are surrounded by three types of trees. In the middle of the spring are huge plane trees that give magnificent shade (Figs. 19, 20, 21). To either side of the spring on the hills at the base of the mountains are many oak trees (Fig. 22). Aside from these two oak groves there are no oaks at all in the mountains to the west of Kabul. In front of the spring, the direction of the flatland, is a large grove of Cercis (Fig. 23). There are no other such groves in this province. They say that these three sorts of trees are miracles of the three saints for whom the spring is named. I had the spring surrounded with stonework plastered and mortared into a ten-by-ten pool, such that the sides would form symmetrical, straight benches (Fig. 24) overlooking the entire grove of Judas trees. When the Judas-trees blossom there is no place in the world to equal it. There are also many yellow Judas-trees, and in the foothills they blossom together with the red Judas-trees. Southwest of the the spring is a constantly flowing stream, a half-mill in force, that comes from a valley. I had a channel dug for this stream and had it brought to the hillock to the southwest of Seyaran. Atop the hillock I had a large round platform installed (Figs. 25, 26). All around the platform were planted willow trees. It turned out to be a very beautiful spot. A little higher up from this platform on the side of the hillock I had a grape garden constructed. The date of the channel was found in the chronogram juy-i-khosh. [65]
Fig. 23
Fig. 24
Fig. 25
The abjad count for the chronogram is: 3+6+10 + 600+6+300 = 925 AH -28+622 = 1519 AD.
In early summer 2010, I was again in Kabul and received a request from Laura Parodi to check the landscape of Khwaja Seh Yaran against a painting attributed to Dust Muhammad and conjecturally dated to 1546, which could be associated with the Emperor Humayun's festivities for the circumcision of Akbar followed by a visit to Khwaja Seh Yaran (Fig. 1). The event is recorded in the Memoirs of Bayazid Bayat:
The purpose for the celebration was solely to celebrate the circumcision of Prince Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar Mirza. At that time the prince was four years old and had not yet reached his fifth year. Several days later the Emperor set out to tour Khwaja Reg-i-Ravan ... From there he went to tour the redbud groves at Khwaja Seyaran. [66]
Interestingly, as mentioned above, the last sentence is fragmentarily preserved and contains the word āyīnbandī (spelled ā'īnbandī), usually understood as adornments for a festive solemnity. It may therefore have referred to a more elaborate celebration than the English translation suggests.
The event is also echoed in Gulbadan Begum's Memoirs which give a slightly different version:
[Humayun] sent some people to Kandahar to bring Hamida Banu Begim. After she came, Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar Padshah's circumcision ceremony was held, and preparations for a banquet were made. Eighteen [sic, but see discussion below] days after Nauruz a celebration was held, and everybody put on green clothes. Some thirty or forty girls were ordered to put on green clothes and go up on the mountains. On the first day of the new year, they went up on Haft Dadaran [lit. ‘Seven Brothers’] Mountain, and there they passed most of the time in ease and pleasure. [67]
It is not my business to weigh up the probable interpretations and harmonizations of these different texts, only to point out some elements that still exist in the landscape today and are echoed in the miniature.
The green clothes, worn in the miniature by the Emperor Humayun, his Queen, the groom and the padded saddle on the royal horse may refer to rituals of fertility or spring, as in the European medieval May Day ceremonies.
The stone platform seen in the miniature is echoed in Babur's account of some 25 years earlier, and still exists, recently restored, around the sacred oak of the shrine (Figs. 25, 26). An archaeological survey would be needed to determine if the stone platform is in its original place, or indeed if there is any trace of the original watercourses. The local stone is dark grey with streaks of white and reddish brown and is locally accounted among the best building stone of the Kabul area - which, with rapidly encroaching urbanization, poses a serious threat to the surival of this shrine, as also to several other elements of the historical cultural landscape along the foothills west of Kabul.
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The ladies' party of the miniature was echoed in a mela of ladies and small children which was happening on the stone platform (Figs. 25, 26) the day I went to see the landscape at Khwaja Seh Yaran again in the summer of 2010. Ladies wishing to have children tie knots to the ancient oak (Figs. 17, 27, 28) and vow to give a feast if they give birth and the child survives. Afghanistan, due to the prevalent practice of childbirth at home on a heap of freshly-dug (and often tetanus-infected) earth with only a village mid-wife in attendance, has some of the highest infant and mother mortality in the world. Usual days for ladies' visits are Thursdays and Saturdays - we were there on a Saturday and saw dozens of women and children, feasting on the stone platform (Fig. 25), then walking to the higher of the springs (Fig. 29), reputed to have healing properties - to fulfil their vows.
The “stone cradle” (sang-i gahawara) refered to by pilgrims was found under the oak tree with its flags and knotted cloths, though at present without the shape or original function of a cradle, being actually a Timurid-style box-cenotaph recently removed from a position lower down the slope. But it certainly formed part of the (superstitious) rituals of the shrine and is reflected in the painting in the shape of a stone woman holding a child as if offering it to the spring (Fig. 14).
Fig. 30
Immediately above it in the top left-hand corner of the painting is a cave out of which runs a stream (Fig. 30). This corresponds to the cave said - by a local shrine attendant whom we found smoking his waterpipe in an orchard below (Fig. 31) - to be the cave where the Imam-i A‘zam was born, and where the waters had especially healing properties. He related an anecdote of a miraculously rapid healing of skin rash and boils of a colleague who cooked large cauldrons of food for the main pilgrimages. This cave is located south of the tree shrine and further up the slope, and is called “Oak Spring” (chashma-i balūṭhā) (Figs. 32, 33). The water is gathered below it into a recently concreted rectangular basin where locals still come to fetch water (Fig. 34), in spite of there being many water sources closer to the villages. No-one locally was at all keen to talk about the Seh Yar (= Three Friends / Three Saints) or the trees associated with their miracles - this may be an effect of the more self-conscious and stricter Islamic orthodoxy promoted by the recent years of ideological warfare. Although Babur's failure to mention the three saints may signal that, already by his time, the names may have been forgotten.
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Another narrow cleft out of whose base runs pure drinking water exists further north and lower down the slope (Figs. 35-38), though now divided at half its height by the dirt road that has been built up to the shrine (Figs. 39, 40). It corresponds to those in the miniature where a child prince is about to beat what appears to be a cowering slave-boy (more on this in Laura Parodi's discussion below) under the supervision of his nurses (Fig. 13).
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The typical rock formations jutting out at a raised diagonal of about 20° are seen both at the nearby open-air shrine of Khwaja Khizr (Fig. 41) and in the miniature (Fig. 42) - it is an element of real local landscape taken and worked up into a stylistic “signature.”
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The rock elephant (Fig. 11) was immediately recognized in the painting by the Herati miniature ustād who came with me to take photographs as being an allusion to the desired or imminent reconquest of India. This is consistent with current scholarly interpretation. However, an earlier passage in Gulbadan Begim refers to the dream in which Akbar's birth was predicted to the anxious Emperor by the green-clad saint Ahmad of Jam, known as Zhinda-Pil or large and furious elephant. [68] The saint was Humayun's and Akbar's own maternal ancestor, making the connection all the more significant. [69] This interpretation, I believe, gives a more convincing explanation of the stone elephant in the painting, which seems to be protecting the group of children immediately below, increasing the probability of an identification of one, probably the central figure, with Akbar.
As regards the trees mentioned by Babur: his oaks still stand (Fig. 22), now only about eight in number, though many were cut down in past years of war and fuel shortages, and already in the sixteenth century were part of a remnant forest which was not renewing itself due to climate change and dessiccation. On the other hand, arghawān (Cercis griffithii) (Figs. 17, 23) has spread to become a scrub common as weeds. The “yellow arghawān” mentioned by Babur was not recognized as such by locals: mixed on the slopes with the true red-purple arghawān is a similar yellow flowering shrub which is called by the local name “ghuzpacha,” whose botanical species could not be ascertained. This name has currency as far north as Jebel Saraj, but not further south to Kabul, according to the son of the former Head Gardener (Baghban Bashi) of Paghman. The only old and large plane trees I saw (Figs. 19-21) were at the springs, water tanks and shrines of Istalif a little further south along the foothills. At Khwaja Seh Yaran, many mulberries (Figs. 24, 29) have been planted more recently, along with pomegranates and some other fruit trees. The Berlin painting suggests pomegranates were already present at the site by Humayun's reign - perhaps planted by Babur, as we know was the case at the Bagh-i Wafa'. [70] Willows are fast-growing and are often planted along water courses to make the banks firm. It is interesting that mostly one species of these trees is represented in the painting.
The thirteenth day after Nawruz (the Afghan and Persian spring equinox and beginning of the new year) is normally devoted to spending the day out of doors, feasting and also making wishes for the coming year's marriages etc. This implies at least the possibility of a misreading or corruption - hijdah, eighteen, for sīzdah, thirteen - in the text of Gulbadan.
The written identification of Mirza Hindal who is offering a child's portrait to his brother the Emperor Humayun (Fig. 5) would echo the feast given in Kabul itself rather than the slightly later picnic excursion to Khwaja Seh Yaran - but such telescoping is perhaps not uncommon in visual representations of the period.
The features of landscape, natural and human, as well as the fertility folklore still attached to it, make me think that the c. 1546 miniature, however stylized, telescoped or concertinaed, or indeed the landscape, however damaged by war and neglect and dessication, are genuinely related: here is a representation of a real event that happened at the spring shrine of Khwaja Seh Yaran. Further research into an area of necessarily feminine folklore as well as into the art-historical implications of this representation, I leave to others better qualified than myself.
Discussion
Laura E. Parodi
The discovery of such precise correspondences between the painting and the actual landscape at Khwaja Seh Yaran was to a large extent unexpected: all I had been hoping to find was Judas trees and a cave with water! An even more unexpected finding was the folklore associated with fertility rituals, suggesting a larger role for the women in the Berlin painting than has hitherto been assumed, and confirming beyond doubt that Robert Skelton's suggestion of a connection with Akbar's circumcision was sound.
This said, Dust Muhammad adopted a sophisticated visual strategy, where recognizable landscape features and participants' portraits are skilfully woven into a given composition - the “Iskandar and the hermit” in Amir Farsi Barlas's copy of the Khamsa, mentioned above (Fig. 8) - along with further allegorical and metaphorical references. The painting cannot, therefore, be reduced to the mere “photographic record” of an excursion in the hills of Khwaja Seh Yaran - although it does seem to record a historical event. What, then, is its exact subject? In our conversations about the painting following his survey of the site, Bruce Wannell aptly suggested a conflation of space as well as time (referred to as “telescoping,” above). This concept certainly applies to the landscape features, given that natural elements pertaining to various parts of the valley overlooked by Khwaja Seh Yaran are recombined within the framework of the Herat composition. There is an intriguing parallel with Babur's textual descriptions of his gardens - consider only his account of the Bagh-i Wafa', which is paratactic with no hint at the spatial relationship between the garden's parts. [71] Dust Muhammad's work, one could argue, would seem to be a recollection whose content is ultimately more intricate than the sum of its parts. As regards time, I agree with Wannell that the presentation of Akbar's portrait is more likely to have occurred in connection with the main circumcision feast in Kabul. But in Dust Muhammad's composition the presentation of Akbar's portrait is at once formally a visual catalyst, and contentwise one of the devices that project the event beyond the plane of the here and now. As Friederike Weis has observed, the iconography is closely reminiscent of, and in all likelihood modelled upon, “Sam beholding Rustam's Portrait” in Muhammad-Juki's copy of the Shāhnāma, a splendid mid-fifteenth-century Timurid manuscript bearing the seal impressions of Babur, Humayun and their immediate descendants. [72] While the presence of the late-fifteenth-century British Library Khamsa in Humayun's library remains conjectural, for the Muhammad-Juki Shāhnāma it is undoubted. Interestingly, the manuscript bears two distinct seal impressions by Humayun: one in a more archaic thuluth, closely resembling his father Babur's own seal (r. 1494-1530, with interruptions); the other in what may well be a Safavid-inspired, elegant nasta‘līq interspersed with tiny floral motifs. I take these seal impressions to signal two distinct moments in Humayun's reign: his intial accession in 1530 and his return to the throne in 1545. In this scenario, a “quotation” from the manuscript would have been all the more appropriate, reminding the viewer of Humayun's reconnection with his dynastic heritage (comprising both throne and kitābkhāna). However, I would argue that the Timurid “quotation” functioned not merely as a formal expedient but as a means to convey relevant meaning. This becomes apparent once the participants in this reception are identified on the basis of textual sources and dress code.
Fig. 43
As noted by Friederike Weis, in Firdawsi's account Sam beholds a doll reproducing the features of his extraordinary grandson, the hero-to-be Rustam; the doll is replaced by a two-dimensional portrait in Muhammad-Juki's copy (Fig. 43). Weis also points out precise iconographic parallels between Sam in the Timurid painting and the Berlin Humayun: both sit cross-legged, right hand outstretched and left hand holding their clothing (Fig. 5). [73] I fully agree with her suggestion, and for my part have long been wondering about the precise meaning of this gesture, but have not found a satisfactory explanation. Weis interprets the Berlin painting as essentially allegorical and more specifically as a celebration of dynastic continuity and future success for the heir-apparent. [74] This also finds me in agreement, but the abundance of details that firmly connect the painting with a historical occurrence and a physical landscape prompts me to refine this suggestion. Weis herself seems to question some of the prevailing scholarly opinions - most notably, the identification of Humayun's three guests with his brothers. Although she does not propose an alternative interpretation, she observes that the purported presence of Kamran and Askari in this painting is “at first glance... surprising” in light of the political challenges they had repeatedly staked against Humayun. [75] As mentioned earlier, based on the details of headgear, only one of Humayun's three guests may actually be identified as his brother. For the other two figures, based on all the information collected in the course of this research and of Weis's suggestion of a connection with “Sam beholding a portrait of Rustam,” an alternative identification may now be proposed.
The two guests (Fig. 9), as I have pointed out, would appear to be respectively a “ruler” not subject to Humayun's authority, and a member of his intimate circle who is probably not a man of the sword. That the first is a Timurid prince - a mīrzā - is suggested by logic (a circumcision feast is after all primarily a family event) and historical circumstances. Interestingly, sources name only two male participants in the 1546 circumcision tooy explicitly: Hindal Mirza and Yadgar-Nasir Mirza. The latter was the son of Nasir Mirza, a half-brother of Babur's and, in accordance with Timurid practice, he would have been more or less regarded as a “brother” by Humayun; [76] not only that, but he was at least nominally the legitimate heir to the Ghazni throne. This would reasonably account for his attire and possibly also for the presence of armed men at this relatively intimate “family reception.” Yadgar-Nasir Mirza was at the time regarded as an ally by Humayun - especially since the latter had temporarily lost the support of Mirza Sulayman of Badakhshan - but he was also increasingly perceived as a potential contender for the Timurid throne: accordingly, not long afterwards, Yadgar-Nasir was sentenced to death after a formal trial. [77]
Although neither Gulbadan nor Bayazid Bayat mention other guests of honor at the 1546 AD circumcision tooy, it is still possible to suggest an identification for the remaining figure on the basis of iconography and historical circumstances. But before that, one should note the relative position and importance of the three guests: our unnamed man is positioned directly behind Hindal and his tall body dwarfs the Timurid prince (Fig. 9). He may be wearing no feathered pins and altogether simpler clothes (although the gold cloud-collar tracery suggests his jāma might be made of crimson silk), but his relatively plain Tāj qualifies him unequivocally as a member of Humayun's intimate circle. His delicate cloud-collar precisely echoes - or is echoed by - that worn by Hamida (Fig. 12), in turn a variation in a minor key of the sumptuous brocaded appliqué collar decorating Humayun's qabā' (Fig. 5). In light of these details and of Bruce Wannell's identification of the elephant as a metaphor for Ahmad-i Jam, Akbar's tutelary ancestor-saint, I am strongly inclined to suggest we have here a portrayal of Hamida's father, Mir Baba Dust. [78] As a Khurasani shaykh, Hamida's father should not be expected to wear any emblems of royalty; yet as the heir-apparent's maternal grandfather and dynastic connection to the lineage of Ahmad-i Jam, his figure unsurprisingly towers above the adjacent Timurid prince - doubtlessly reflecting their respective build, yet interestingly also their respective perception in Humayun's eyes. Mir Baba Dust is also seated closer in ceremonial terms to Humayun and directly behind Hindal, whose akhūnd or spiritual mentor he had been and in all likelihood still was. [79] From behind the latter's shoulder, one may see him gaze directly at the little portrait. The identification will appear all the more plausible when we consider the key iconographic role played by his figure within the composition. In the suggested Timurid model, “Sam beholding Rustam,” the boy's portrait is handed out to Sam feet first, so as to allow the grandfather to behold his offspring. In the Berlin painting, the portrait is about to be handed over to Humayun, but is turned in the opposite direction. In so doing, Dust Muhammad places the image directly under the eyes of the purported Mir Baba Dust: it is only logical to conclude that the man is the boy's grandfather. Other details further support this hypothesis. Weis notes, for example, how in “Sam beholding a portrait of Rustam,” both grandfather and grandson are seated in the cross-legged position befitting rulers; [80] by contrast, in the Berlin painting, only Humayun is seated cross-legged, while Akbar is shown seated on his heels like the figure I have proposed to identify as Mir Baba Dust. Not only that, but the boy is wearing similar clothes - implying perhaps an emphasis on saintly status, rather than royalty. [81]
Given the almost exact correspondence between the clothes worn by Mir Baba Dust and those seen on the likeness of his grandson, it would seem natural to identify Akbar with the similarly attired boy at the top of the painting (Fig. 13). Weis among others establishes such a correspondence between the boy and the portrait; [82] but the identification is not without problems, some of which she seems to be aware of. To begin with, the small boy in the painting wears a gold Tāj - whose surface is, not unlike Humayun's headgear, delicately punched to enhance its brilliancy and allow it to stand out against the gold background (now full of charming craquelures) (Fig. 5). The tiny headgear may even have been decorated with a diminutive black feather pin (unless the black mark beside it, with its fringed edges, is a stain: even magnification has not allowed me to resolve the issue). By contrast, the similarly attired boy further up the page wears a simple yellow qalpaq. What is even more suspicious is the fact that he holds a bow and arrow in the manner of an arms-bearer; [83] this suggests he is in attendance of the boy positioned at the center of the group. The latter's clothes are relatively more elaborate (note especially the scarf wound around his Tāj), but still admittedly feature no gold. An elaborately decorated sword nonetheless hangs from his belt, and he seems to be holding a stick in his hand with which he addresses (punishes?) a small African boy. The iconography is puzzling, to the extent that one wonders whether its content is historical or allegorical. Given that the African boy wears a qalpaq - the most basic manifestation of the Tāj-i ‘Izzat - I am inclined to think he is an actual historical figure: a boy servant of Akbar's, and by no means a menial one. He may well be a young eunuch, destined to make a respected career at court: compare his clothes with the attire of the two eunuchs guarding the ladies in the same picture. [84] A menial servant, it must further be stressed, would not have been entitled to wear the Humayuni mark of distinction. [85]
The boy with a sword is not only more centrally placed, but the stream that ties together various parts of the composition originates directly above his head; its line is continued by the rift that divides the stone elephant's body in two, while the water itself circles around the meadow and opens up in a pool at the boy's feet before continuing its course towards the foreground, where - as mentioned previously - it emerges from right under the presentation portrait. Two nurse-maids (anäkäs) ostentatiously exchange a small fruit directly above the boy's head in what seems to be an auspicious gesture. The fruit is simple and round, a little too small to be an orange perhaps, but certainly not an apple or pomegranate. The latter fruits are perhaps more readily associated with royalty, but oranges piled on trays are a frequent feature of sixteenth-century receptions in Bukhara painting, [86] and fruit trees that might be citrus are sometimes prominently included in Timurid pictures, “Sam beholding Rustam” being a notable instance. [87] Whether some royal overtones are implied remains to be established conclusively.
If the boy with a sword is indeed Akbar - something I am not entirely convinced of, neither from the point of view of dress code nor from the point of view of age (he looks possibly somewhat older than three and a half, although the crimson-clothed boy looks even older) - then one of the two nurses is in all likelihood the powerful Maham Anaka. [88] In a page from a c. 1590-95 copy of the Akbarnāma, her build and attire (yellow silk and large white headscarf) are remarkably similar to those worn by one of the women in the Berlin painting. [89] The other nurse must also have been a prominent figure at court, and it would be interesting to pursue her identification.
Dress code may also be used in support of Skelton's identification of the woman dressed in green as Akbar's mother, Hamida Banu Begim. She alone from among the women is being homaged by an attendant, who offers her a fresh flower (close examination suggests this might be a pomegranate blossom that has lost some of its color) (Fig. 12). I have already pointed out the chromatic and iconographic links established between the woman and Humayun, most notably the use of green (first pointed out by Skelton) and the cloud collar (connecting her with the figure I have tentatively identified as her father, Mir Baba Dust). But the key iconographic detail is the black egret plume in her headgear: none of the other women wear this hallmark of royalty. Her face, sadly damaged today, is a remarkable attempt at individualization for the time, comparable to Humayun's own portrait and those of his guests. The fact that two of the other ladies wear diadems and richer ornaments compared to her should not detract us from this identification: textual sources testify that royal consorts of non-Timurid descent were regarded as of lower rank compared to Timurid princesses. To be even more precise, Gulbadan's record of the seating order at Hindal's marriage feast (Agra, 1534 AD) demonstrates that non-Timurid consorts followed in rank not only the rulers' sisters (as I would suggest is the case here), but even their own daughters. [90] The clothes the purported Hamida is wearing are perfectly consistent with her dual capacity: on the one hand, as a non-Timurid, she may not have been entitled to wear conspicuous gold jewelry; but on the other, as the heir-apparent's mother, she alone wears a cloud-collar and black egret plume and - appropriately - receives homage on her son's circumcision. Based on the same principles, the lady in white at the right end of the group must be a Timurid princess: note in particular the chain of delicate gold flowers strewn across her chest, almost identical to that worn by the purported Yadgar-Nasir Mirza (Fig. 9). Unfortunately, the princess's face and white dress are now badly damaged. [91] The lady in black next to her must also be a Timurid princess: accordingly, she is not only shown wearing a diadem but the pattern on her dress is the same as that of Humayun's qabā' and the lining of Hindal's jāma. These must be two of Humayun's four sisters, three of whom were Gulbadan and her two full sisters, who were also full sisters of Hindal and, I have elsewhere suggested, were descended from Ahmad-i Jam on their mother's side. [92] Since Ma‘suma Sultan (a full Timurid) and Gulrang Begim (Gulbadan's full sister) are last mentioned in a passage relating events in Agra in 1535 AD, [93] we may presume the two ladies are Gulbadan and Gulchihra - the latter (Gulbadan's other full sister) being the more senior. [94] The lady seated on the ground next to them could not be another Timurid princess, as she is wearing no diadem and her clothes are less sumptuous. Babur's only surviving widow, Dildar (Gulbadan's and Hindal's mother) may by then have been too old to take part in this excursion. A more plausible candidate would be Bikä Begim, who doubtlessly participated in the 1546 AD celebrations. [95] I have elsewhere noted that Bikä, who had not followed Humayun in his flight (and had possibly been captured by Sher Khan at Chausa) had escorted Babur's remains to Kabul, and is always mentioned before Hamida in Gulbadan's memoirs. [96] Our understanding of court protocol is insufficient to state definitively which of them would have been regarded as Humayun's “chief queen,” given that one was the seniormost wife at the time and had performed outstanding service to the Timurid family by escorting Babur's remains to Kabul, while the other was the heir-apparent's mother. Both had their own garden quarters in Kabul. [97] While most of this discussion consists of speculation based on dress code, it may hardly be questioned that Hamida must have been the female protagonist of a painting connected with her son's circumcision. At the time, Humayun most likely had only these two wives: his first wife Gulbarg had been dispatched to Mecca following her brother's desertion, [98] while Mahchüchük (who was to become the mother of Mirza Muhammad Hakim, for several years the virtually independent ruler of Kabul during Akbar's reign) is first mentioned by Gulbadan in her account of the second taking of Kabul - usually understood to have occurred in 1549. [99] Finally, the two eunuchs guarding the ladies cannot be precisely identified, since only Mahchüchük's eunuch Shihab is explicitly mentioned in sources on the account of his bravery. [100] This, however, indicates that the women had personal eunuchs in attendance: consequently, even though only two of them are depicted here, a few more may have been present at the actual celebration.
One figure we would definitely expect to see in the painting, given its subject, is Hamida's brother Khwaja Mu‘azzam. As Akbar's taghāī (maternal uncle) he would have been regarded as a surrogate father for the boy and in that capacity he represented the heir-apparent's strongest connection to the saintly lineage of Khurasani shaykhs. [101] Under ordinary circumstances, a taghāī would have been a senior guest at a circumcision party; but Khwaja Mu‘azzam was apparently still a boy at the time of Humayun's exile in Iran [102] and must have been in his late teens at the time of Akbar's circumcision. I am therefore inclined to identify him with one of the youths standing or seated behind Humayun. [103] Among them, the attendant standing immediately behind Humayun stands out (Fig. 5): he is dressed in the same patterned silk as his master, wears an elaborate Tāj-i ‘Izzat and Humayun sits unarmed in close proximity to his sword - a sign of great intimacy and trust. [104] The face of this figure was reworked already in Jahangir's time and even this second version has suffered severe damage in recent decades, as may be seen from a comparison between the present situation (Fig. 5) and the 1985 exhibition catalogue (Fig. 2). Any hypothesis on the sitter's identity must therefore rely exclusively on dress and historical circumstances. Importantly, we can no longer assess whether the youth's gaze was originally directed towards the portrait - but from his position, it may well have been. If this was the case, then the portrait would have been even more of a visual catalyst for the entire composition. Interestingly, a figure similarly placed and wearing identical gaiters is seen in another Humayuni painting, known as Princes of the House of Timur and originally depicting a reception at court. [105] A detailed discussion of the latter falls beyond the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that, in that context, the figure (damaged and conspicuously overpainted) is surrounded by some of Humayun's arms-bearers and junior attendants, with more arms-bearers standing directly opposite them. As mentioned, the boys further to the right might also be Humayun's arms-bearers. [106] While Mir Baba Dust seems to have remained a purely spiritual figure, [107] Khwaja Mu‘azzam followed his sister, joining Humayun's household and accompanying him in some of his perambulations, including his sojourn in Iran. During the few years since his sister's marriage into the Timurid family and despite his young age, Khwaja Mu‘azzam had by 1546 already distinguished himself for outstanding service: first by retrieving Humayun's jewels when they were stolen [108] and subsequently with military feats. For example, Bayazid Bayat recalls how during Humayun's campaign to reconquer Kabul in 1544-45: “The arms bearers had made outstanding showings in battle under the leadership of Khwaja Mu‘azzam, the uncle of Mirza Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, one day before Hajji-Muhammad Koki fought Mirza Sulayman's vanguard in Andarab, and several of them were wounded.” [109] The arms-bearers in question were Tahmasp's - as further explained by Bayazid Bayat: [110] the Shah had sent them over for Humayun to assess their ability; but the connection is intriguing.
Conclusions: Hypotheses on the Painting's Content
Laura E. Parodi and Bruce Wannell
On the basis of the evidence provided, it becomes apparent that the painting is at once a recollection of the thanksgiving at Khwaja Seh Yaran following Akbar's circumcision, and a means to celebrate his lineage and foretell a bright future for him.
Akbar's circumcision feast was organized only a few months after Humayun seized the Kabul throne and regained supremacy within the Timurid family; Kamran had fled but was not pacified and soon managed to recover what he regarded as his ancestral domain, while Mirza Sulayman of Badakhshan was soon to rise up in arms against Humayun. The tooy must therefore be regarded as a means to impress the Timurid elite but also the notables and people of Kabul, in order to secure their support for Humayun. Extant sources - written from the winner's point of view - cannot help us gain a sense of the respective popularity of Humayun and Kamran in Kabul, but it is unlikely that Kamran's swift return to the city would have occurred without some insider assistance. In other words, Humayun was probably not the local favorite from among Timur's scions.
It is all the more interesting, then, that Humayun's artist chose to emphasize Akbar's maternal descent in the painting over his Timurid lineage. While the latter was shared by all descendants of Timur - making the competition more and more difficult as generations passed, [111] saintly charisma was probably unique to Humayun and his lineage (and certainly not shared by Kamran, whose mother was a Begchik Mughal). [112] A similar strategy had supported the Safavids' rise to power a few decades earlier, and one of the present authors has elsewhere argued that a marriage policy involving an alliance with the shaykhs of Jam was in all likelihood inaugurated not by Humayun but by his father Babur, in the years immediately following the rise of Isma‘il Safavi. [113] The same shaykhs may have had a much earlier record of intermarriage with the Chagatays, which in turn probably accounts for Babur's decision (for the purposes of this study the issue has not been investigated in detail). [114]
The emphasis on Akbar's maternal lineage possibly accounts for the somewhat off-center position occupied by Humayun and for the numerous co-protagonists involved - several of whom we have identified as members of the family of Ahmad-i Jam, whether real or metaphorical (the stone elephant and mother-and-child group). However, it may be argued that the artist did perhaps include a flattering detail which, in a sense, restores Humayun's primacy. As signaled earlier, Humayun is shown seated on a “carpet” and against a “bolster” that are both made of black stone. Here too, the artist has probably transfigured some actual features of the Khwaja Seh Yaran site (see Bruce Wannell, above). Yet the viewer's mind inevitably goes to Gayumarth, the first mythical king of humankind. As with the general composition and the adaptation of “Sam beholding Rustam,” it is likely that the painter based this depiction on a manuscript illustration familiar to his master. This remains to be identified and may possibly be lost to us. [115] Judging from the information thus far assembled by the Shahnama Project, Gayumarth seems to be rarely shown seated on a stone of this shape. Far more frequently the king is depicted sitting on a spread-out animal hide, more rarely enthroned and even less frequently, seated on a rug; a stone shaped like the “inner core” of the rug Humayun is seated on is occasionally found but is altogether unusual. [116] This appears to be another metaphorical reference the artist weaved into his work. The “stone carpet” for its part, with its sharp edges, seems unprecedented and - although doubtlessly a visual pun on the carpet more usually seen in outdoor princely receptions - it may well transfigure an actual stone platform at Khwaja Seh Yaran (see Wannell, above). Although Babur admittedly only mentions a round platform there, a rectangular platform is seen and used for gatherings to this day.
Picturing Humayun as Gayumarth in this context may have been a flattering allusion to his role as the ultimate controller of the forces of nature, all the more amplified by the setting of Khwaja Seh Yaran and its surrounding valley. Green, in turn, also recalls Khwaja Khizr (the “Green Saint” typically associated with fertility in popular Islam), whose name is associated with another spring in the valley. But perhaps the most intriguing connection comes from the artist's reliance on “Iskandar and the Hermit” from the British Library Timurid Khamsa for the general composition. If this is accepted as a rhetorical device rather than a mere formal expedient, potential further layers of meaning become apparent. In Nizami's text and even more so in Jami's interpretation of it (Jami being an extremely popular author with both the Safavids and Mughals at the time), “Iskandar and the Hermit” becomes a parable of temporal power acknowledging the superiority of spiritual power. [117] In the British Library Khamsa the king, dressed in green (who, it has been suggested, may reproduce the features of Sultan-Husayn Mirza himself), is kneeling before an ascetic who is crouching inside a cave. In the Berlin painting, Humayun, dressed in green, is seated as befits a king but ambiguously endowed with rock versions of a king's paraphernalia: he is, in other words, both a king and an ascetic (especially when we consider his maternal descent). Quite possibly - if we accept the pun on Gayumarth - Humayun is here also a figure endowed with special powers of control over the primeval forces of nature (including perhaps the cave itself and the fertility connected with the site). In a reversal of the model, in Dust Muhammad's work it is Humayun who is being visited and paid homage to. In “Iskandar and the hermit,” the cave is positioned in the foreground and a city - its antithesis - in the upper left corner; in the Berlin painting, the cave replaces the city at the upper left corner. If a precise moral is thereby implied, it is not easily deciphered today; but the pun on saint, king, and cave is hard to miss.
Given the sheer size of the painting - comparable only to the most ambitious works from the royal Safavid or (later) Mughal atelier - one also wonders what the purpose and original context of such an inspired composition might have been. As mentioned, the painting would have required several weeks or possibly months to complete. That it is the work of a single master is testified by the underlying drawing, now exposed where the surface has flaked off - particularly in correspondence of areas featuring a high proportion of white, presumably lead, pigment. These include Yadgar Nasir Mirza's turban and, interestingly, Humayun's face (Figs. 9, 5). Using the same taut line, the artist would seem to have sketched out both the numerous folds of the turban and Humayun's beard. Based on our current information on atelier practice in the sixteenth century, this qualifies as a rare instance: faces were not usually sketched out at all, but painted after the composition had been colored. This is especially true of manuscript illustration, where different artists were often responsible for the different stages (sketching out, gilding, coloring, and the addition of faces). But a similar sequence must have been standard even for works executed by a single master, if we are to judge from the Infrared information thus far available, which usually reveals no underlying drawings for faces. Humayun's beard is an exception that deserves consideration in the study of artistic practice.
If the work of a single master completed in the course of several months, the painting could not have been ready for presentation during the celebrations for Akbar's circumcision. It may of course have been commissioned as a record of the event for posterity; but the creative effort the artist put into it seems less the outcome of a royal commission and more of an attempt to impress his patron. This suggests a presentation painting that the artist planned ahead in connection with some relevant occasion. Priscilla Soucek and Robert Skelton have both discussed instances of Nawruz paintings - works that were made explicitly for presentation during the celebrations for the New Year. One such painting bears the name of ‘Abdussamad, one of the Safavid masters employed by Humayun, and a date corresponding to 1551 AD. [118] Could the Berlin painting have been presented on the Nawruz of the year following Akbar's circumcision? Another suitable occasion would have been provided by Akbar's fourth solar birthday later that same year (October 1546). But, given that Humayun had instituted an annual festivity to celebrate his accession already early in his reign, [119] the Nawruz of 1547 AD appears more probable. Either way, the painting - along with a few other examples – is yet another instance that suggests materials later collected in albums found their first raison d’être in celebrations, and the will to produce something new and wondrous. The topic is worth pursuing more systematically.
Ultimately, although the clever reworking of composition and display of rhetorical devices must be credited to the talented Dust Muhammad, whom Humayun respectfully calls “Mawlana Dust Musawwir” and describes as the “Mani of the age,” “rarity of the age” and “without equal” in various book-related arts, [120] the resulting allegory must have been in harmony with Humayun's beliefs and expectations, as well as those of his court circle. The painting, in other words, is at once a mirror of the Timurid elite's preoccupations at the time and of the prevalent taste. We may well subsume the former under the label of “legitimization,” but this would not do Humayun good service. In spite of all the hardship he endured and the years he spent on the battlefield, Humayun was by nature and descent a man of intellect. By re-telling the story of the gathering at Khwaja Seh Yaran and its transfiguration into an allegorical tableau, we hope to have done some justice to one of Asia's most refined patrons in the sixteenth-century. A patron who could converse on a par with Shah Tahmasp and Bahram Mirza, share fine works of art from his collections with the Khan of Kashgar, including most notably a selection of five from a doubtlessly wider corpus of European prints; [121] a man who even in his direst moments could pause and wonder at the beauty of a bird, perhaps seen as a good omen, and order to have its image captured (but the bird itself released). [122] More importantly, we hope to have suggested that an inquiry into surviving works of the Kabul atelier is both worth pursuing and relevant to a better understanding of the Mughal school, and may in fact reposition it in relation to its Timurid and Safavid counterparts. In this respect, it is worth noting that Dust Muhammad's legacy may have extended beyond his lifetime: the Mughals did in fact continue to favor artists belonging to Bihzad's artistic lineage, such as Farrukh Beg. The latter had been trained by Shaykh Muhammad, who in turn had been a pupil of Dust Muhammad in Khurasan. [123] That Dust Muhammad and Farrukh Beg were both employed by Safavid patrons is perhaps an index of the continuing reverence for Bihzad at both courts more than a sign of Mughal subordinacy to the Safavid model. [124]
Finally, we hope to have demonstrated that the roots for the painting's iconography are in the physical and cultural landscape of the Kabul region, where the artist had been based for several years. Although we may never know the identity of the “Three Holy companions” or determine whether there was a perceived relationship between them and the lineage of Ahmad-i Jam, the place and its associations are an integral part of the message conveyed by this picture. The Berlin page not only points to the refinement Humayun demanded of his artists, but demonstrates his open-mindedness toward local traditions: a foretaste of attitudes found in his more famous descendants. In this age of rampant fundamentalism and ruthless iconoclasm, one just wishes there were more of Humayun's kind.
Credits and Acknowledgements
Laura E. Parodi:
I wish to thank the staff at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for their exquisite courtesy: they did everything in their power and more to facilitate my examination of the painting. I am especially indebted to Christoph Rauch and Nicolé Fürtig, and to Christine Kösser, the Staatsbibliothek’s photographer, who put my last-minute request for high-resolution details of the painting before her other commitments and did such a good job.
This research would never have been possible without prior efforts by other scholars. I am especially indebted to Robert Skelton, who first proposed an association with Akbar's circumcision and thereby sparked this research, and to Friederike Weis with whom I had a most pleasant and stimulating chat about the painting's iconography.
I also wish to thank Theresa Fitzherbert and all the other colleagues and friends who provided comments when I previously presented my ideas on the painting as they gradually developed: at a study day on Text and Image I co-organized with Francesca Orsini at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in October 2007; at a talk I delivered at Harvard University's Department of Indian and Sanskrit Studies on March 4, 2009 (organized by Sunil Sharma: several lives will not suffice to repay the debt I owe him for his encouragement and support); at the May 2010 Symposium on Portraiture in South Asia (National Portrait Gallery, London); and at a lecture delivered for the AKPIA@Harvard Lecture Series on 4 November 2010.
Finally, I wish to thank Bruce Wannell once more for accepting to share this research adventure. It has been a pleasure to work with him. This is hopefully only a foretaste of more research to come!
Bruce Wannell:
My thanks to Laura Parodi for suggesting this most enjoyable excursion, to Rory Brown and Ustad ‘Abdu Naser Sawabi for accompanying me (Fig. 44), to Nader for driving me (Fig. 45) and offering us trays of fresh white mulberries cooled in the stream.
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Footnotes
1. On which see Kambiz Eslami, “Golšān album,” in Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, Vol. XI, p. 104.
2. Libr. Pict. A117, fol. 15a.
3. Ernst Kühnel und Hermann Goetz, Indische Buchmalereien aus dem Jahángîr-Album der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin, 1924), pp. 44-45, pl. 32, col. pl. 4.
4. The most detailed discussion to date is found in Chahryar Adle, “Les artistes nommés Dūst-Muḥammad au XVIe siècle,” Studia Iranica 22/2 (1993), pp. 219-96.
5. James L. Wescoat, Jr., “Gardens of invention and exile: the precarious context of Mughal garden design during the reign of Humayun (1530-1556),” Journal of Garden Design 10/2 (April-June 1990), pp. 106-16.
6. Robert Skelton, “Iranian Artists in the Service of Humayun,” in Humayun’s Garden Party: Princes of the House of Timur and the Origins of Mughal Painting, ed. Sheila Canby (Bombay, 1994), pp. 42-43.
7. Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), pp. 175-78.
8. Khwand Amīr Ghiyās al-Dīn Ibn Humām al-Dīn Husaynī, Āthār al-Mulūk bi zamīma-i khātima-i Khulasāt al-Akhbār wa Qānūn-i Humāyūnī, ed. Mir Hashim Muhaddith (Tihrān, 1372 sh. [1993 AD]), 257-307; Qānūn-i-Humāyūnī of Khwāndamīr, tr. Baini Prasad (Calcutta, 1940).
9. An example is Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005), who in her discussion of Gulbadan’s text (pp. 50-68) adds very little to what Beveridge had done a century earlier. Cf. Annette Susannah Beveridge’s Introduction and Appendixes to her editions of the Humāyūnnāma: The history of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-nāma). By Gul-Badan Begam (Princess Rose-body) (London, 1902) and Bāburnāma: The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur) by Zahiru´d-dīn Muhammad Bābur Pādshāh Ghāzī (London, 1921). The tadhkiras have recently made available to a wider scholarly audience in Three Memoirs of Humayun, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), 2 vols. bound in one. Thackston and myself are currently working on a Sourcebook of Early Mughal Ceremonial due to see the light as a Muqarnas Supplement between 2013 and 2014.
10. In this essay, we shall refer to the trilingual edition: Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr., Sources of Oriental Languages & Literatures 38, general ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin (Cambridge, MA, 1993); a more widely available English translation is The Baburnama – Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Washington, D.C. / London, 1996).
11. The idea is so deeply ingrained in the popular perception that even the recent film Jodhaa Akbar emphasizes Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu’s fifteen-year separation from her son Akbar, when in reality they were parted for less than three years between the late spring of 1543, when Askari Mirza seized the little prince (then a few months old) and the Nawruz of 1546, when Hamida was summoned from Kandahar to join the festivities for Akbar’s circumcision, discussed in this essay. Humayun for his part had returned to Kabul and rejoined his son, sisters and the remainder of his family and household (uruq) already by November 1545. The “fifteen-year exile” properly applies only to Humayun’s absence from Hindustan; but Hindustan was not crucial to Timurid self-representation at that time. For Humayun’s contemporaries, his loss of the throne would only have been effective during the year or so he spent as a refugee at the Safavid court; but even then, the Timurid lineage had remained in possession of the Kabul throne in the person of Humayun’s brother Mirza Kamran.
12. Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 167-222.
13. See Chahryar Adle, “Entre Timourides, Mogols et Safavides – Notes sur un Châhnâmé de l’Atelier-Bibliothèque Royal d’Ologh Beg II à Caboul (873-907/1469-1502),” Art Islamique et Orientalisme – Vente aux Enchères Publiques (15 Juin 1990), Drouot-Richelieu (Paris, 1990), pp. 136-48, esp. p. 140.
14. There is no evidence to support the view that Mir Sayyid ‘Ali’s father Mir Musawwir ever worked for Humayun. I discussed the issue in Laura E. Parodi, “Tracing the Protagonists of an Elusive Atelier,” lecture delivered for the AKPIA@Harvard Lecture Series, Harvard University, November 4, 2010.
15. Mirza Haydar Dughlat, Tarikh-i Rashidi: A History of the Khans of Moghulistan, ed. and tr. by Wheeler M. Thackston. Sources of Oriental Languages & Literatures 38, general ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 131; Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 39; English, p. 29.
16. “Chagatay” is here used as an umbrella term referring to both Mongol amīrs such as Mirza Haydar Dughlat and descendants of Timur, in accordance with sources from the reign of Humayun: see Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 35; English, p. 25.
17. Mirza Haydar Dughlat, Tarikh-i Rashidi: A History of the Khans of Moghulistan, ed. and tr. by Wheeler M. Thackston. Sources of Oriental Languages & Literatures 38, general ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 131.
18. Laura E. Parodi, “Tracing the Protagonists of an Elusive Atelier,” lecture delivered for the AKPIA@Harvard Lecture Series, Harvard University, November 4, 2010. Credit goes to French scholars for correcting this view: see Francis Richard, “An Unpublished Manuscript from the Atelier of Emperor Humāyūn, the Khamsa Smith-Lesouëf 216 of the Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-53, and Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 167-222, esp. p. 198.
19. Chahryar Adle, “Les artistes nommés Dūst-Muḥammad au XVIe siècle,” Studia Iranica 22/2 (1993), p. 250; Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 39; English, p. 28.
20. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 37; English, p. 27.
21. See Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: rebirth of a Persian empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 31-32.
22. Chahryar Adle, “Les artistes nommés Dūst-Muḥammad au XVIe siècle,” Studia Iranica 22/2 (1993), pp. 238ff.
23. Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 197-198.
24. Khwand Amīr Ghiyās al-Dīn Ibn Humām al-Dīn Husaynī, Āthār al-Mulūk bi zamīma-i khātima-i Khulasāt al-Akhbār wa Qānūn-i Humāyūnī, ed. Mir Hashim Muhaddith (Tihrān, 1372 sh. [1993 AD]), pp. 290-91; Qānūn-i-Humāyūnī of Khwāndamīr, tr. Baini Prasad (Calcutta, 1940), pp. 59-63.
25. Gulbadan Begim, Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 34; English, p. 35.
26. See Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
27. See Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), p. 198.
28. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 102; English, p. 79.
29. See Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 39; English, pp. 28-29.
30. As I have argued in “Tracing the Protagonists of an Elusive Atelier,” lecture delivered for the AKPIA@Harvard Lecture Series, Harvard University, November 4, 2010, and earlier in “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, pp. 135-57
31. Barbara Brend and A.H. Morton, Muhammad-Juki’s Shahnama (London, 2009).
32. See Laura E. Parodi, “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, pp. 135-57; Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 167-222; Francis Richard, “An Unpublished Manuscript from the Atelier of Emperor Humāyūn, the Khamsa Smith-Lesouëf 216 of the Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-53.
33. The Akbar Nāma of Abu-l-Fazl, tr. by Henry Beveridge (London, 1902-39; repr. Delhi, 1977), Vol. I, p. 656.
34. Chahryar Adle, “Les artistes nommés Dūst-Muḥammad au XVIe siècle,” Studia Iranica 22/2 (1993), p. 246, makes a similar point about Babur.
35. As gathered by Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 167-222; Francis Richard, “An Unpublished Manuscript from the Atelier of Emperor Humāyūn, the Khamsa Smith-Lesouëf 216 of the Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-53; Barbara Brend and A.H. Morton, Muhammad-Juki’s Shahnama (London, 2009).
36. See in particular Princes of the House of Timur. Most recently discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Princes of the House of Timur,” The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London, 2010), cat. no. 1.
37. The issue is more fully discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, pp. 141-5. A more accurate reconstruction of the historical circumstances that led to the adoption of this Sufi-inspired headgear may be found in Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
38. M. 126: see Sheila R. Canby, Princes, Poets and Paladins: Islamic and Indian paintings from the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan (London, 1998), no. 77.
39. M. 199: see Sheila R. Canby, Princes, Poets and Paladins: Islamic and Indian paintings from the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan (London, 1998), no. 29 and p. 2.
40. London, British Library, Or. 6180. See Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), cat. no. 140. Illus. ibid., 250 and passim.
41. See Martin B. Dickson and Stuart C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge, MA, 1981), Vol. I, pp. 120-121, although the discussion is flawed by Welch’s identification of Dust Muhammad with the calligrapher and compiler of the Bahram Mirza Album and his (rather surprising) assessment of him as a mediocre painter. See also Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), p. 207.
42. See Laura E. Parodi, “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a History of Mughal Audiences and their Depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems), ed. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosamaria Cimino (Ravenna, 2010), pp. 51-76.
43. I owe this information to a reliable source – a scholar who personally saw the shredded bits of Humayun’s face at the bottom of the frame when the page was on display at the exhibition. The painting had been photographed for the catalogue before it traveled, allowing us to assess the damage. The page is generally in good condition today but appears very fragile. Conservation work has recently been undertaken on the whole group of “Jahangir Album” pages in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, but the pages have clearly suffered in the past.
44. See in particular Stuart Cary Welch, India! Art & Culture 1300-1900 (New York, 1985), cat. no. 85; Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p. 178.
45. European velvet is mentioned by Khwandamir among the fabrics used in the manufacture of the Tāj-i ‘Izzat: Khwand Amīr Ghiyās al-Dīn Ibn Humām al-Dīn Husaynī, Āthār al-Mulūk bi zamīma-i khātima-i Khulasāt al-Akhbār wa Qānūn-i Humāyūnī, ed. Mir Hashim Muhaddith (Tihrān, 1372 sh. [1993 AD]), p. 283; Qānūn-i-Humāyūnī of Khwāndamīr, tr. Baini Prasad (Calcutta, 1940), pp. 49-59. The passage is discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, p. 142.
46. A similar ornament is worn by Sultan-Husayn Mirza in the frontispiece of the Cairo Būstān (General Egyptian Book Organization, Adab Farsi 908) and in a probably posthumous portrait of the same ruler at the Harvard University Art Museums (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, gift of John Goelet, 1958.59): illus. in Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Washington, D.C., 1989), cat. no. 146 and illus. p. 260; cat. no. 136 and illus. p. 243, respectively. It is also mentioned by Babur as qarqara otağası, which Thackston renders as “heron feather;” in the Khan-i Khanan’s Persian translation, this is repeated verbatim (otāgha-i qarqarā): Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai and English, p. 339; Persian, p. 338.
47. I have elsewhere discussed the Tāj and, more recently, the ichkiyān: see Laura E. Parodi, “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a History of Mughal Audiences and their Depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems), ed. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosamaria Cimino (Ravenna, 2010), pp. 51-76; id., “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea,ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, pp. 141-144.
48. See for example Martin B. Dickson and Stuart C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge, MA, 1981), Vol. I, nos. 71, 74, 83 (note the contrast with the black heron feathers on the king’s headdress in this particular example), 117, 151, exemplifying a wide range of combinations, and passim.
49. Historically, such a meeting only occurred once after 1540, when the throne of Hindustan was lost to the Surs: but interestingly, five – not four – participants are mentioned: besides Humayun and his three brothers, Mirza Sulayman of Badakhshan was also received as a “brother,” even though technically speaking he was a more distant relation. See Gulbadan Begim, Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, pp. 42-43; English, pp. 58-59.
50. Stuart Cary Welch was possibly the first to use this expression: India! Art & Culture, 144, though he applied it to the stone “throne” Humayun is seated on – for which we shall propose a different explanation.
51. Compare with Princes of the House of Timur: discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Princes of the House of Timur,” The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London, 2010), cat. no. 1.
52. At the Kabul feast for Akbar’s circumcision, the men’s reception was hosted in the Chaharbagh and the women’s party in the Orta Bagh: see Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 32; English, p. 23.
53. See for example the Birth of a Prince (Salim?): page from the Jahāngīrnāma, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (Inv. 14.657), illus. in Amina Okada, Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court (New York, 1992), fig. 191; or Ilkhanid examples such as the Birth Scene illus. in Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (New Haven and London, 2002), cat. no. 31 and fig. 134.
54. See for example Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 71; English, p. 52.
55. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai, p. 283; English, p. 282.
56. James L. Wescoat, Jr., “Gardens of invention and exile: the precarious context of Mughal garden design during the reign of Humayun (1530-1556),” Journal of Garden Design 10/2 (April-June 1990), pp. 106-16. This idea has been widely accepted: most notably, by Chahryar Adle, “New Data on the Dawn of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy,” in Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2000), p. 207; and Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p. 178.
57. Based on personal observation. Tahmasp’s Khamsa is British Library Or. 2265.
58. Pigment analysis so far conducted on early Mughal painting has shown that trees were usually painted with a mixture of orpiment and indigo: L.R. Lee, A. Thompson and V.D. Daniels, “Princes of the House of Timur: Conservation and Examination of an Early Mughal Painting,” Studies in Conservation 42 (1997), pp. 231-40, esp. p. 236. Due to its organic nature, indigo is inherently more fragile.
59. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai, p. 283; English, p. 282.
60. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai and English, p. 283.
61. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 32; English, p. 24.
62. Thus according to Bayazid Bayat, who dates Humayun’s arrival in Kabul to 10 Ramadan, 952 (November 15, 1545): Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 31; English, p. 23. Gulbadan dates Humayun’s entry into the Bala Hisar to November, 1544, and Akbar’s circumcision to when he was “five years old,” which would correspond to 1547 at the earliest: Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 56 and p. 57; English, p. 53 and p. 54, respectively. All three tadhkiras mention the tooy soon after the capture of Kabul and therefore it is Bayazid Bayat who seems most reliable. The Akbarnāma unsurprisingly follows his account and also dates Humayun’s capture of Kabul to November 1545: see Three Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 23, Thackston’s note 1. The spring of 1546 consequently appears as the most likely date for the circumcision tooy.
63. Robert Skelton, “Iranian Artists in the Service of Humayun,” in Humayun’s Garden Party: Princes of the House of Timur and the Origins of Mughal Painting, ed. Sheila Canby (Bombay, 1994), pp. 42-43.
64. Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 57; English, p. 54.
65. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr., Sources of Oriental Languages & Literatures 38, general ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, pp. 282-83.
66. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 32; English, pp. 23-24. The Persian reads: "U āz ānjā be-dawlat be-siyar arghawānzār be-khwāja siyarān [...] ā’īnbandī."
67. Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 57; English, p. 54.
68. Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 33; English, p. 34.
69. See Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38
70. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai and English, pp. 272-273.
71. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza, Baburnama, Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 1993), Vol. II, Chagatai and English, pp. 272-273.
72. Recently published with a brilliant accompanying essay by Barbara Brend and A.H. Morton, Muhammad-Juki’s Shahnama (London, 2009). A selection of pages were recently on display at the Asia Society in New York (“A Prince’s Manuscript Unbound,” February 9 – May 1, 2011).
73. See Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), pp. 177-178, for further details.
74. “So wie dem kleinen Rustam auf dem Bildnis schon der Heldenmut anzusehen ist, mit dem er Kay Kāwūs zur Rückkehr auf den Thron von Iran verhilft, so hoffte auch Humāyūn, dass sein Sohn Akbar ihn in naher Zukunft dabei unterstützen würde, den Thron von Delhi zurückzuerlangen.” Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p 178. We also discussed the issue in person in June 2010.
75. “Auf den ersten Blick ist es deshalb erstaunlich, auf der Miniature die drei Brüder friedlich vereint vor Humāyūn sitzend dargestellt zu sehen.” Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p 178.
76. Even a more distant relation such as Mirza Sulayman, the hereditary ruler of Badakhshan, was treated as a brother by Humayun: see See Gulbadan, Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, pp. 42-43; English, pp. 58-59.
77. See Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 35; English, p. 25.
78. Mir Baba Dust must have been about the same age as Humayun: Hamida was barely twenty years old at the time of Akbar’s circumcision, and her brother – later a prominent dignitary – only a boy at the time of Humayun’s sojourn in Iran some three years earlier. The circumstances of Hamida’s betrothal to Humayun are discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38. Hamida’s father is mentioned by Gulbadan in connection with the same circumstances: Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 36; English, p. 36. On Hamida’s brother, see Gulbadan’s account of an incident that occurred to the royal couple while in Iran, from which his young age may be evinced: ibid., Vol. I, Persian, pp. 51-4; English, pp. 49-51.
Mir Baba Dust was his honorary title; his personal name was Ali Akbar, as testified by a seal impression on suppl. persan 140 C, fol. 1 in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: illus. in François Déroche, Islamic Codicology – an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script (London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2005), fig. 143. Akbar’s name (properly Muhammad Akbar) must have been inspired by his maternal grandfather’s name.
79. Jawhar identifies Hamida’s father as Mirza Hindal’s akhūnd: Tadhkiratu’l-Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, translated from the Persian by Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 114; English, p. 100; Thackston’s renders this as “teacher” (ibid.), but I would argue in favor of a more precise identification as a spiritual mentor. From conversations between Humayun and Hindal’s mother Dildar, it may be deduced that Hindal was also a relation of Mir Baba Dust, although the precise degree is uncertain: see Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
80. Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p 177.
81. On the Mughals’ alliance with the house of Ahmad-i Jam, see Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
82. Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p 178.
83. Cf. Martin B. Dickson and Stuart C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge, MA, 1981), Vol. II, nos. 114, 258 and passim.
84. Also contrast this figure with the child attendants in an illustration to a manuscript of Nizami’s Khamsa ascribable to the mid-16th century Kabul atelier, where it has been suggested that Bahram Gur is in fact a very young Akbar: note how only the purported Akbar in that instance wears a Tāj. Illus. and discussed in Francis Richard, “An Unpublished Manuscript from the Atelier of Emperor Humāyūn, the Khamsa Smith-Lesouëf 216 of the Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-53, esp. pl. VIII. Compare also with the hierarchy of headgear seen in Princes of the House of Timur: Laura E. Parodi, “Princes of the House of Timur,” The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London, 2010), cat. no. 1.
85. See Laura E. Parodi, “Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea,ed. Antonio Panaino and Riccardo Zipoli (Milan, 2006), Vol. II, pp. 135-57; id., “Princes of the House of Timur,” The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London, 2010), cat. no. 1.
86. An example being the New York Public Library Spencer Pers. ms. 64, with a colophon stating it was copied for Mirza Kamran but with illustrations added in a c. 1570 Bukhara style. See Barbara Schmitz et al., Islamic Manuscripts in the New York Public Library (Oxford / New York / Toronto, 1992), no. II.15.
87. Cf. Friederike Weis, “Das Bildnis im Bild – Porträts und ihre Betrachter auf persischen und moghulischen Miniaturen,” in Taswir: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne, ed. Almut Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (Berlin, 2009), p 178.
88. She is repeatedly mentioned in The Akbar Nāma of Abu-l-Fazl, tr. by Henry Beveridge (London, 1902-39; repr. Delhi, 1977): see esp. Vol. II, p. 151, for a reference to her power, and Vol. II, pp. 274-5 for her death following her son’s disgrace and capital punishment.
89. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inscribed to La‘l with Sanwala’s assistance, IS.2:9-1896 (left half of a double-page composition recording the marriage of her son Adham Khan).
90. Compare with the list of guests at Hindal’s wedding provided by Gulbadan: Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 21; English, p. 22. The issue is briefly touched upon in Laura E. Parodi, “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a History of Mughal Audiences and their Depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems), ed. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosamaria Cimino (Ravenna, 2010), pp. 51-76. A detailed discussion will be provided in the Sourcebook of Early Mughal Ceremonial currently in preparation (forthcoming Muqarnas Supplement authored by myself and Wheeler M. Thackston).
91. White being always the most fragile color: see Laura E. Parodi, Frank D. Preusser, Jennifer H. Porter, and Yosi Pozeilov, “Tracing the History of a Mughal Album Page in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,” Asianart.com (March 2010) (http://www.asianart.com/articles/mughal).
92. Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
93. Gulbadan Begim, Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 24; English, p. 27. Gulbadan was by far the youngest.
94. Gulbadan informs us that, when Humayun sat in state in the Bala Hisar soon after his arrival in Kabul that “the Queen Mother Dildar Begim, Gulchihra Begim, and I paid homage to the emperor.” (Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston [Costa Mesa, 2009], Vol. I, Persian, p. 56; English, p. 53). Gulchihra is last mentioned by Gulbadan in connection with Hindal’s death in 1551 (ibid., Vol. I, Persian, p. 71; English, p. 66).
95. She too may have been a descendant of Ahmad-i Jam, but none of her offspring survived at the time, and she was in all likelihood too old to conceive again by then. On Humayun’s wives and Bikä’s lineage, see Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38. According to Gulbadan, the women’s banquet for Akbar’s circumcision in Kabul was hosted in Bikä Begam’s garden, a circumstance that suggests her more senior status: Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 57; English, p. 54.
96. See Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
97. See Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
98. Gulbadan, Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, pp. 42-43; English, p. 42.
99. Tadhkiratu’l-Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, translated from the Persian by Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 161-162; English, p. 136. Gulbadan was a prisoner in the Kabul citadel along with Bikä and Hamida; when Humayun arrived, the women “greeted Mahchüchük Begim, Khanısh Agha, and the wives [ḥaramān] who had accompanied the emperor on his campaign.” In the intervening period, Gulbadan informs us, Mahchüchük had given birth to a daughter. Humāyūnnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, translated from the Persian by Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 61; English, p. 57.
100. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, pp. 123, 124; English, pp. 97, 98.
101. Taghāīs commanded great respect and often played prominent diplomatic roles. The issue is discussed by Maria Eva Subtelny, “Babur’s Rival Relations: A Study of Kinship and Conflict in 15th - 18th Century Central Asia,” Der Islam 66 (1997), pp. 102-118, and more incidentally by Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
102. Jawhar, Tadhkiratu’l Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, pp. 51-4; English, pp. 49-51.
103. Based on a careful analysis of the who’s who in Gulbadan’s account of Hindal’s 1534 marriage feast, it appears that the more junior members of the family were seated to the host’s left. Gulbadan, Humāyunnāma, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Vol. I, Persian, p. 21; English, p. 22. I have summarized the issue in “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a History of Mughal Audiences and their Depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems), ed. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosamaria Cimino (Ravenna, 2010), pp. 51-76.
104. Ironically, Khwaja Mu‘azzam would later kill his own wife; after ascertaining his guilt, Akbar ordered him beaten senseless; he died in prison not long afterwards: Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, pp. 150-151; English, p. 120.
105. See Laura E. Parodi, “Princes of the House of Timur,” The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London, 2010), cat. no. 1.
106. Several textual passages in the tadhkiras testify that Humayun’s arms-bearers were the sons of his begs: see for example Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, pp. 72, 94; English, pp. 56, 73. Five or perhaps more of the arms-bearers are listed by Bayazid Bayat among the men that accompanied Humayun in his campaign to reconquer Hindustan in 1555 AD: id., Vol. II, Persian, p. 107; English, p. 84. He further mentions the death of “The Emperor Humayun’s chief arms bearer, Sultan Bayazid Beg’s son Sultan-Husayn Beg” during the Hindustan campaign: id., Vol. II, Persian, pp. 137-8; English, p. 109.
107. As suggested by his role as Hindal’s akhūnd: see Jawhar, Tadhkiratu’l Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 114; English, p. 100.
108. Jawhar, Tadhkiratu’l Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, pp. 51-4; English, pp. 49-51.
109. Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, pp. 36-7; English, p. 26.
110. Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, pp. 36-7, 40-1; English, p. 26, 29-30.
111. See Maria Eva Subtelny, “Babur’s Rival Relations: A Study of Kinship and Conflict in 15th - 18th Century Central Asia,” Der Islam 66 (1997), pp. 102-18.
112. I have discussed the issue in Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
113. See Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bībīs and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,’ Mediaeval and Modern Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies (Vienna, 2007), ed. Maria Szuppe, Anna Krasnowolska and Claus Pedersen. Cahiers de Studia Iranica 45 (2011), pp. 121-38.
114. See Maria E. Subtelny, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden / Boston, 2007), p. 196 and n. 22; Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge / New York, 2007), p. 224; Wheeler M. Thackston (ed.), genealogical chart on p. xxii of Khwandamir, Habibu’s-Siyar Tome Three, Part One: Genghis Khan – Amir Temür.
115. The section that would have included Gayumarth is sadly missing from the Muhammad-Juki Shāhnāma: see Barbara Brend and A.H. Morton, Muhammad-Juki’s Shahnama (London, 2009), p. 53. But given that at least two different models for the composition have been identified thus far, it is more probable that a third manuscript was the source for this reference.
116. See http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/workbook/W1533467?view=gallery&order=natural&index=0 or search ‘Kayumars’ on the main Shahnama Project webpage. It is striking that the one really close example illustrated on the Shahnama Project website is a virtually coeval Safavid manuscript of the Shāhnāma: http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/card/ceillustration:-598741192 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Suppl. persan 489), Qazwin or Tabriz (?), dated 953 Jumada II / c. August 1546. The issue deserves a separate study.
117. The topic is touched upon by Michael Barry, “Alexander’s Cave,” in Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzâd of Herât (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), pp. 252-385.
118. Discussed in Laura E. Parodi, Frank D. Preusser, Jennifer H. Porter, and Yosi Pozeilov, Tracing the History of a Mughal Album Page in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,’ Asianart.com (March 2010) (http://www.asianart.com/articles/mughal).
119. Khwand Amīr Ghiyās al-Dīn Ibn Humām al-Dīn Husaynī, Āthār al-Mulūk bi zamīma-i khātima-i Khulasāt al-Akhbār wa Qānūn-i Humāyūnī, ed. Mir Hashim Muhaddith (Tihrān, 1372 sh. [1993 AD]), p. 292; Qānūn-i-Humāyūnī of Khwāndamīr, tr. Baini Prasad (Calcutta, 1940), p. 63.
120. Thus in the cited letter to the Khan of Kashgar which was accompanied by works by artists from Humayun’s atelier. The text is preserved in Bayazid Bayat’s Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 39; English, pp. 28-29.
121. Bayazid Bayat, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. II, Persian, p. 39; English, p. 28. This detail seems to have escaped the attention of previous scholars.
122. Jawhar, Tadhkiratu’l Waqi‘āt, in Three Memoirs of Humayun’s Reign, ed. and tr. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa, 2009), Vol. I, Persian, p. 126; English, p. 109.
123. Budaq, cit. in Chahryar Adle, “Les artistes nommés Dūst-Muḥammad au XVIe siècle,” Studia Iranica 22/2 (1993), p. 242.
124. Laura E. Parodi, “Tracing the Protagonists of an Elusive Atelier,” lecture delivered for the AKPIA@Harvard Lecture Series, Harvard University, November 4, 2010. Laura Parodi is grateful to Abolala Soudavar, whose brilliant workshop “A Bustan of Sa’di of 1579” at the 2010 Biennial Symposium of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (Washington, D.C., October 2010) prompted her to think of this artistic lineage organically for the first time. See also Abolala Soudavar, “Between the Safavids and the Mughals: Art and Artists in Transition,” Iran 37 (1999), pp. 49-66, esp. pp. 85-86.