Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.4

c13.4

Among the many beautiful arts that were practised in certain famous cities of Eastern Asia, few attained a higher state of refinement, during a period that extended from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, than that of book illustrating. Manuscripts, finely written, and lavishly illuminated, found great favour with the ruling princes, who vied with one another in encouraging the production of such works of art. These manuscripts were often freely embellished with pictures illustrating the text, so that the brush of the painter was as much in demand as the pen of the writer. The cities chiefly famed for those proficient in the painter’s craft were Baghdad, Basrah, and Wasit in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Samarqand, Bukhara, and Herat in the fifteenth century, and Tabriz, Kazvin, Ispahan, and Shiraz in the sixteenth century. This art of illustration, which was distributed over a wide area, has been generally described by modern European writers as ‘Persian painting’. For several reasons a classification of this art into definite schools has presented unusual difficulties, one illustration of which will explain. It was customary in mediaeval times for poets and painters, writers and musicians, to be attached to courts, thus forming part of the brilliant assembly of talent which usually surrounded the throne of an Eastern potentate. In the rare periods of peace, men of genius were free to take service under any prince or noble who could show them the most generous patronage. But in times of war or invasion they were too often treated as treasured chattels, sometimes bartered as part of an indemnity, or more often carried away to distant lands to grace the capital of the conqueror. The intrinsic value of the leading calligrapher at the Safavid court was actually estimated by one of the Mughal emperors, for when Jahangir heard of the death of Mir ‘Imad, he is said to have wept for grief, exclaiming that ‘if Shah Abbas had sent him to me I would have paid his weight in pearls for him’.¹ But, as we shall see, Jahangir was an enthusiast and regarded the artistic gift as ‘more precious than rubies’. Learning, and the arts especially, did not always grow naturally like a language, but developed very much on the lines of patronage; talent often travelled far to find the home where it would be most highly appreciated. In these circumstances a geographical reference has been considered by most authorities to be the soundest basis for a definition of Persian painting. Even in such a classification, however, one fact must be borne in mind. It will be noticed that of the centres of the art of painting enumerated above, only four are situated within the dominions of modern Persia. Baghdad, Wasit, and Basrah are in Mesopotamia, Samarqand and Bukhara are in Turkestan, while Herat is in Afghanistan. But during one of its most famous periods, in the first centuries of the Christian era, the Persian empire, under the Sasanid dynasty, included all of these within its boundaries, as its territories extended from the Tigris on the west to the Oxus on the east. In its widest sense, therefore, to allude to the painting of these cities as Persian is historically correct.