The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c13.106
The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehlī c13.106
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c13.106
It is widely believed that the art of painting did not exist at the court of the sultans of Dehlī: this is a misconception. We read of mural paintings from the very beginning.⁶ The Calcutta Art Gallery possesses a picture of a music party at the court of Sulṭān Muḥammad bin Tughluq painted by Shāhpūr of Khurāsān in 1534; the artist describes his work as ‘a copy.’ A modern critic discovers in the picture “the simple delight in the beauty of Nature, and the whole-hearted desire to be one with it, which breathe in the paintings of Ajanta and the sculpture of Borobudur.”⁷ In fact Shāhpūr must have caught this spirit from the original, which, one may assume with confidence, was painted at Dehlī. Fīūrz Shāh mentions that he stopped the practice of painting the