Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c18.5

c18.5

Of all the illustrated manuscripts of the Mughals that have been handed down to us, the fragments of the *Amir Hamzah* preserved at the South Kensington and Vienna Museums are the earliest. Much of this stupendous work, as we have already seen, was executed in the reign previous to that of Akbar, so that a strict classification would refer to it as belonging to the school of Humayun. Begun by the Tabrizi artist Mir Sayyid Ali about the year 1550 in Kabul, at the latter emperor’s order, it was probably not finished until twenty-five years later, at Agra, under Akbar’s régime. In spite of the long period it took to complete the manuscript, and the great political changes that occurred while it was in progress, the same style of work was maintained throughout the whole series of 1,375 paintings which form its illustrative portion. As would be expected the style is fundamentally Persian, although there is much in it which shows an atmosphere and environment different from the productions of either the Timurid or Safavid schools. One of the pages is reproduced on Plate VII, and illustrates the general character of the painting; on the reverse of each folio is a written description of the incident depicted, the whole comprising the story or ‘Romance of Hamzah’ (*Dastan-i-Amir Hamzah*). Hamzah was the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, and the ‘Romance’ is a fantastic narrative founded on the original adventures of this hero. As records of the life and customs of the early Mughals the pictures are unique. Unfortunately in many of the paintings the faces have been clumsily obliterated by a later zealot, but except for this they are in an excellent state of preservation. They display quite plainly the circumstances in which they were produced, the general scope of the work being devised by Mir Sayyid Ali in his inimitable Safavid style, but in the actual painting he was assisted by others, either Persians or Indians. Apart from any other qualities that it may possess, the *Amir Hamzah* is of importance in providing that definite connecting link between the Persian and Indian schools.¹