Asian and African studies blog

To celebrate our new series of South Asian seminars and especially the focus on food with Neha Vermani's talk this evening Mughals on the menu: A probe into the culinary world of the Mughal elite I thought I would write about our most ʻfoodyʼ Persian manuscript, the only surviving copy of the Niʻmatnāmah-i Nāṣirshāhī (Nasir Shah's Book of Delights) written for Sultan Ghiyas al-Din Khilji (r.1469-1500) and completed in the reign of his son Nasir al-Din Shah (r.1500-1510). We are planning to digitise this manuscript in the near future but meanwhile I hope some of these recipes will whet your appetite.

Recipes for samosas (see below) with illustrations showing cows being milked (right) and Sultan Ghiyas al-Din seated on his throne (left), attended by servants (British Library IO Islamic 149, ff4v-5r)

This beautifully written and illustrated work was composed for the Sultan of Malwa Ghiyas al-Din Shah Khilji who ruled from 1469 to 1500. According to the ʻAdilshahi historian Firishtah[1] this colourful ruler shortly after his accession,

...gave a grand entertainment; on which occasion, addressing his officers, he stated, that as he had during the last thirty-four years been employed constantly in the field, fighting under the banners of his illustrious father, he now yielded up the sword to his son, in order that he might himself enjoy ease the rest of his days. He accordingly established within his seraglio all the separate offices of a court, and had at one time fifteen thousand women within his palace.

These included teachers, musicians, dancers, embroiderers, women to read prayers, and persons of all professions and trades. 500 female Turks, dressed in men's clothes, stood guard on his right, armed with bows and arrows, and on his left, similarly, 500 Abyssinian women also in uniform, armed with firearms. This might seem quite an extravagent description but it is confirmed by the paintings and recipes in the book which describe in detail the methods for cooking luxurious savouries and sweetmeats, for preparing medical remedies, for making perfumes[2] and for going on expeditions, whether in battle or hunting.

The Ni’matnāmah is undated and there are many unanswered questions about the format it has today. The first few leaves have been added later and there is no expected author’s introduction. The main work appears to end on folio 161v and then a new section begins on folio 162v which has the title Kitāb-i Niʻmatnāmah-i Nāṣirshāhī (‘Nasir Shah’s book of delights’). Altogether at least 15 leaves are missing which were extracted at various different times before it was acquired by the East India Company after the fall of Seringapatam in 1799. It seems most likely that the first part of the work at least was written in the latter part of Ghiyas Shah’s reign and then perhaps the second section was added after his son had taken over in 1500. The 50 illustrations demonstrate a fusion of Persian ‘Turkman’ Shiraz influence of the second half of the fifteenth century with a progressively Indic style, especially in the use of colours and the style of the costumes and architecture.

A flavour of the Niʻmatnāmah
We are very fortunate in having a published facsimile (albeit black and white) and translation of the Niʻmatnāmah made over the course of several years by Norah Titley after her retirement from the British Library in 1983. Below I quote her translations alongside some of the illustrations.

A recipe for samosas (ff. 4v-5r, see above)

Mix together well-cooked mince with the same amount of minced onion and chopped dried ginger, a quarter of those, and half a tūlcha [a measure] of ground garlic and having ground three tūlchas of saffron in rosewater, mix it with the mince together with aubergine pulp. Stuff the samosas and fry (them) in ghee. Whether made from thin course flour bread or from fine flour bread or from uncooked dough, any of the three (can be used) for cooking samosas, they are delicious. (Titley, p. 4)

Preparation of rice water (British Library IO Islamic 149, f.32r)

A recipe for making broth

Another recipe for the method of  pīchha, namely the surplus water that is removed from the cooking pot after cooking rice and separating it. Put mūng pulse into the water and boil it. Chop fresh sandal and take its juice. Put the myrobalan and cardamoms into it and cook it. Put in salt. When it is cooked add some mint leaves and serve it. (Titley, p. 17)

Ghiyas Shah watching preparations for sherbert (British Library IO Islamic 149, f.66r)

A recipe for making sherbet

Another recipe for sherbet: mince coconut and leave it (to soak) in sweetened water. Strain off the coconut milk and, if desired, put the syrup in it and also mangoes if so wished. Then drink it with bhāt and add fresh ginger, onions, lime juice, cardamoms, cloves, pepper, turmeric and fenugreek and flavor it with asafoetida. Then drink it with bhāt [cooked rice or maize]. (Titley, p. 32)

Ghiyas al-Din watches the process of cooking green vegetables (British Library IO Islamic 149, f.79v)

A recipe for cooking greens

Another recipe for green vegetables: boil vine greens in dūgh and water. Then take them off, squeeze them well and open them out and fan them. Then having roasted and ground cumin, salt and sesame seeds, add them. (Titley, p.38)

Ghiyas al-Din eats a betel chew (British Library IO Islamic 149, f.100v)

On the uses of and recipes for betel

The qualities of that tanbūl are that the teeth are strengthened, diseases of the tongue, lips, gullet, throat and windpipe are prevented, as is inflammation of the chest. All the foregoing diseases are prevented and the intellect is strengthened, the eyes made bright, the quality of hearing is improved, the nose is purified, halitosis is banished and all illnesses are repelled. Hair becomes longer and shinier and is strengthened, broken bones mend and food that is bound up in the stomach is dissolved and digestion of food is assisted. Phlegm is prevented, the stomach is soft and an appetite for food is enhanced and it makes for a life of beauty and chastity. Coarse wind that may be in the stomach is relieved. It is astringent so bile and excess blood are decreased and phlegm is prevented. Blood is purified, ejaculation is delayed, gripes are cured and the stomach is tightened. If it is rubbed on the skin of the body, leprosy is driven away and the colour of the skin is made white and bad odours are prevented. It is the jewel of the mouth, the mouth is purified and the ardour of passion is increased. (Titley, p.50)

This universal panacea is followed by a list of 57 separate ingredients consisting of flowers, herbs, nuts and spices.

Left: Ghiyas al-Din on a hunting expedition (IO Islamic 149, f.159r)
Right: perfumes being distilled (IO Islamic 149, f.111v)

The history of the Niʻmatnāmah
The details of what happened to the Niʻmatnāmah between the time of its completion ca. 1500 and its arrival in London after the fall of Seringapatam in 1799 are far from clear. However there are some facts of which we can be certain. An inscription on folio 196v mentions that the manuscript was inspected on 24 Sha’ban 978 (21 Jan 1571). Unfortunately there isn't any indication of where this was done.

Flyleaf with the abraded circular seal of Sultan Muhammad ʻAdil Shah, r.1627–1657 (British Library IO Islamic 149, f.Ir)

Another inscription on folio 1r reads: “Niʻmatnamah on the science of medicine in naskh writing, in a red binding, from the possession of Malik Almās, entered the court library on 22 Rab I 1044 (15 Sept 1634)”. A similar inscription, dated eight days later, occurs on the flyleaf (above). These were previously thought to be Mughal inscriptions but the wording is identical to inscriptions used by the ʻAdilshahi librarians. Moreover the large circular seal on the flyleaf can now be identified conclusively as the circular seal of Sultan Muhammad ʻAdil Shah who ruled in Bijapur from 1627-57. The seal itself is not very clear but can be read by comparing it with a better preserved copy on a manuscript from Bijapur. It contains the sajʼ (coin legend in verse):
Dārad az luṭf-i ḥaqq sar afrāzī
Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh ghāzī    
“By the grace of God he has eminence, Sultan Muhammad Shah the conqueror.”

The second smaller seal has so far defied interpretation! However there is no reason to think it is a Mughal seal nor that the manuscript has in fact any Mughal connection at all.

Sultan Muhammad ʻAdil Shah's seal (British Library Bijapur 207, f.1r)

As for the previous owner Malik Almas, there was someone of this name in Golconda who died in 1674. He served as a steward of Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah (r.1580-1612) and in the reign of Sultan ʻAbd Allah (1626-72), he became superintendent of buildings[3]. In 1633 Muhammad ʻAdil Shah married Sultan ʻAbd Allah's sister, Khadija Sultana, so if this the same Malik Almas, a possible scenario might be that the Niʻmatnāmah came to Bijapur from Golconda with Khadija, perhaps as a wedding present?

From Bijapur the manuscript was acquired by Tipu Sultan and came as part of his collection to the Library of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street, London between 1806 and 1808. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any identifiable record of it in the contemporary lists of Tipu's Library (see my earlier blog Revisiting the provenance of the Sindbadnamah) nor in the printed catalogue of the collection by Charles Stewart (A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore. Cambridge, 1809).

Further reading
Norah M. Titley, The Niʻmatnāma Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu. London, 2005.
Jeremiah P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India. London, 1982, no. 41.

I am grateful to colleagues Saqib Baburi and Keelan Overton for discussing some of the problems with me.
Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Collections

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[1] John Briggs, History of the rise of the Mahomedan power in India, till the year A. D. 1612 / translated from the original Persian of Mahomed Kasim Ferishta, Vol. 4. London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829.
[2] By chance William Dalrymple has just published an article in the Economist's 1843 magazine “Scents and sensuality” on ittars and perfumes, particularly mentioning their use in the Niʻmatnāmah.
[3] See SA Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan. Reprinted Delhi, 1992, pp.102-4).

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Today's post is from guest contributor and regular visitor to Asian and African Collections, Sunil Sharma, Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature at Boston University

British Library Or.7094 is an illustrated copy of the late Ottoman Turkish poetic work, Fazıl Enderunlu’s Zenanname (ʻBook of Womenʼ), which describes the positive and negative qualities of the women of the world along with satirical and moralistic parts at the end. The text is a poem in mesnevi form that was completed in 1793. I became interested in this work because typologies of women began to appear in Mughal and Safavid poetry and painting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and there was the possibility of doing comparative scholarship across Persianate cultures.

The opening of the Zenanname by Fazıl Enderunlu (British Library Or.7094, ff.1v-2r)

The British Library copy of the Zenanname appears to be dated 1107 (1695/96)[1], but this is obviously a mistake since it wasn't completed until almost a century later. Additionally, Norah Titley (see below, pp.39-40), points out that there is a historical anachronism with respect to the earlier date because “the French woman in folio 43r is wearing a costume connected with the French revolution, i.e. post-1793”. The manuscript includes thirty-eight paintings[2], and all but the first and last two depict women of various ethnicities and nationalities. Another almost identical copy of this work is located in Istanbul[3]. The text was printed numerous times in the nineteenth century, albeit without illustrations, and has been fully or partially translated into modern Turkish, French, and English, though none of these are entirely faithful or idiomatic.

French woman in a costume of the French Revolution (British Library Or.7094, f.43r)

The women in the Zenanname represent every type known to the Ottomans from their empire and beyond. The paintings show women who are from a particular place or part of a community, comprising Indian, Persian, Baghdad, Sudan, Abyssinia, Yemen, Maghrib, Tunisian, Hijaz, Damascus, Syrian, Anatolian, the Aegean Islands, Spanish, Istanbul/Constantinople, Greek Christian, Armenian, Jewish, Gypsy, Albanian, Bosnian, Tatar, Georgian, Circassian, Christian, German, Russian, French, English, Dutch and American (from the New World). Not all of these women are praised by Fazıl, some are lampooned for their sexual behavior or nature in misogynistic terms. In these verses on the Englishwoman, translated by the Ottoman literature scholar E.J.W. Gibb - to whom this manuscript previously belonged -, the poet celebrates the beauty of this type (Gibb, pp. 241-2):

O thou, whose dusky mole is Hindustan,
Whose tresses are the realms of Frankistan!
The English woman is most sweet of face,
Sweet-voiced, sweet-fashioned, and fulfilled of grace.
Her red cheek to the rose doth colour bring,
Her mouth doth teach the nightingale to sing.
They all are pure of spirit and of heart;
And prone are they unto adornment’s art.
What all this pomp of splendor of array!
What all this pageantry their heads display!
Her hidden treasure’s talisman is broke,
Undone, or ever it receiveth stroke.

Right: an English woman carrying a basket of flowers and wearing a tall green hat, similar in shape to the Welsh national hat
Left: Dutch woman with her hands in a muff, against a snow-covered landscape (British Library Or.7094, ff.43v-44r)

The Zenanname was actually a companion volume to a work Fazıl Enderunlu composed first, the Hubanname (Book of Beauties), in 1792-93, which is a catalogue of the boys of the world[4]. The text of these works is related to the şehrengiz genre (shahrashub in Persian), although much more sexually explicit. Most şehrengiz poems of this kind described the young lads of a city, but there was at least one Ottoman Turkish poem written in the sixteenth century on women, the prostitutes of Istanbul, by ‘Azizi. The images in the Zenanname, on the other hand, are related to the genre of costume albums produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries[5].

Fazıl Enderunlu, also known as Fazıl Bey, was initially employed at the Ottoman court as a poet but was let go from his position after being implicated in a romantic scandal. He found patrons outside the court for his later works in order to “try to accommodate and gratify the interests and literary tastes of a socially and culturally diverse network of men and women” (Hamade, p. 155). The reception of Fazıl’s works alternated between a great deal of popularity in the nineteenth century to being suppressed at various times.


A woman of Istanbul wearing high pattens (nalın), Rumeli Hisar (?) in background (British Library Or.7094, f.28v)

A woman of the ʻNew Worldʼ (British Library Or.7094, f.44v)

Two of the paintings that show groups of women, rather than individuals, are recognizable and they, or their counterparts in the Istanbul copy of the manuscript, have been reproduced quite frequently. Both depict people from the new bourgeois classes who are engaged in various activities in non-courtly spaces. One of these is found on f.7r and is described thus by Titley:

General view of women taking their recreation in a park. Includes one woman smoking, another on a swing, others entertained by musicians (def and fiddle players) who have a monkey. Bostanci wearing blue şalvar and a red barata. Women are wearing entaris and feraces with kuşaks and takkes. Kiosks, water and fountain in the background and a covered ox-cart.

Women relaxing in a park (British Library Or.7094, f.7r)

The interest in showing people of different backgrounds and classes “mixing and mingling in the private gardens of the capital” is corroborated by other paintings from this period (Artan & Schick, p.160), and especially “from the last quarter of the sixteenth century onwards, crowded picnic scenes in the countryside show men and women--including some amorous couples--enjoying food, drinks, and music” (p.161). Paintings showing women in a hamam and the male residents of a neighbourhood outside a brothel depict the activities of ordinary people. Unfortunately the hamam scene (f.49r) is now missing from this manuscript[2] but the corresponding scene in the Istanbul manuscript is reproduced quite often in published scholarly works and on the internet as a visual document of Ottoman social history.


Scene outside a brothel at night. Two women looking out of windows. Seventeen men thronging the area outside, two knocking on the doors (British Library Or.7094, f.51r)

Gibb was not impressed by Fazıl’s poetic skills, but he appreciated the distinctive nature of his work in which, he wrote, “we have not only the revelation of a marked individuality, but the veritable treasury of the folk-lore of the author’s age and country” (Gibb, p.223). The paintings in this manuscript have brought attention to this text, but Fazıl’s works await a detailed study in their proper cultural and historical context. Indeed, there is no literary work quite like it in any courtly Persianate tradition.

I would like to thank Ursula Sims-Williams for her observations on the dating of this manuscript and Sooyong Kim for his insights into the text as a literary work.

Sunil Sharma, Boston University

Further reading
Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Tülay Artan and Irvin Cemil Schick, “Ottomanizing pornotopia: Changing visual codes in eighteenth-century Ottoman erotic miniatures,” Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 157-207.
E.J.W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry. Vol. IV, ed. E.G. Browne. London: Luzac & Co, 1905.
Shirin Hamade, The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.
Norah M. Titley, Miniatures from Turkish Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings in the British Library and British Museum. London: British Library, 1981.

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[1] Norah Titley actually gives the date as 1190 (1776/77) but that is too early. It looks more like 1107 and must just be a careless mistake, perhaps for 1207.
[2] Originally there were 40 illustrations but two were regrettably stolen some years ago: f.46v: “Birth of a baby in a Christian household” and f.49r: “Scene of women in a hammam.”
[3] T. 5502, Istanbul University Library. Titley notes yet another copy dated 1790, with a single painting of a Jewish woman, in the British Museum, 1946.0209.0.1.
[4] For a painting from this manuscript see Folio from a Hubanname (the Book of the fair) by Fazil-i Enderuni (d. 1810).
[5] For more on this topic, see William Kynan-Wilson: A Turkish Souvenir: The Dryden Album and Anglo-Ottoman Contact.

In tonight’s episode of Treasures of the British Library (Sky Arts, 21.00 Tuesdays), Julia Donaldson, writer and author of The Gruffalo, talks to Dr Muhammad Isa Waley about one of our most engaging Persian manuscripts, a copy of the Anvār-i Suhaylī or ʻLights of Canopusʼ - the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina - which was copied for the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-27).

The decorated opening of the Anvār-i Suhaylī, completed in 1610/11 (Add.MS.18579, ff.2-3)


The Anvār-i Suhaylī, is a 15^th century version of a story of two jackals, Kalilah and Dimnah, by the Timurid author Ḥusayn Vāʻiz̤ Kāshifi. It is based on a collection of interrelated fables, mostly about animals, set within a frame story, which became best known in the West as the Fables of Bidpai and was first published in English in 1570 as The Morall Philosophie of Doni.

The fables owe their origin to India where they are best known in Sanskrit as the Panchatantra, but it was largely through the Arabic translation by Ibn al-Muqaffāʻ (died c. 757) that they became so popular in Persian. The story describes how the Sasanian king of Iran, Anushirvan (Khusraw I, r. 531-579), heard of a book treasured by the kings of India which had been compiled from the speech of animals, birds, reptiles and wild beasts. Anushirvan sent his physician Burzuyah on a mission to India to discover the book and Burzuyah returned with a copy which he translated into Middle Persian. The original translation is lost but the stories were re-translated into Arabic and Syriac, and then from Arabic into Persian and other languages.

At the end of the 15th century the Timurid Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara (r.1469-1506) asked Ḥusayn Vāʻiz̤ Kāshifī to produce another, simplified, version in Persian and it was this which subsequently became the most popular, especially with the Mughal Emperors in India who commissioned several luxurious copies.


The eloquent crow successfully persuades the assembly of birds not to elect the owl as their leader. Artist: Ḥusayn (Add.MS.18579, f.201v)

The manuscript featured in Julia Donaldson's programme was created for the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and completed in AH 1019 (1610/11) though its 36 miniatures were probably painted earlier while Jahangir, as Prince Salim, held court in Allahabad. The paintings are mostly ascribed to well-known Mughal artists and two are personally dedicated to Prince Salim and dated AH 1013 (1604/5).

As in the story of the Gruffalo, a mouse hero features several times in the Anvār-i Suhaylī (see our blog The Cat and the Rat: a popular Persian fable). To mark the programme we have selected a few of the other stories to illustrate the charm of this ever popular work. This manuscript has now been digitised and you can read the whole work here.

The story of the young falcon (watching from the rocks) who usurped the position of the king's favourite falcon. This painting is dated AH 1013 (1604/5) and signed by the artist Aqā Muḥammad Riz̤ā who describes himself as the ‘disciple of padshah Salim’ (Add.MS.18579, f.36r)

In this illustration to the story of the lion and the hare, the clever hare reports to the ferocious but stupid lion that the reason he was late for his appointment to act as the lion's dinner was because he had been delayed by an even more ferocious lion. The lion asked to be taken to this potential rival and the hare took him to a well. On seeing his own reflexion the lion jumped in and drowned. Artist: Durga (Add.MS.18579, f.77v)

The duplicitous jackal Dimnah tricks the ox Shanzabah into thinking that his ally the lion has turned against him and is about to eat him (Add.MS.18579, f.87v)

Two sandpipers had built their nest by the sea. When the sea carried their young away they complained to the other birds. Their king, the Simurgh, collected a huge army together and forced the sea to give the young birds back, thereby humiliating him — the moral being that one neglects even the humblest creature at one’s own cost (Add.MS.18579, f.104r)

The story of the king of Yemen and his servant who stole a golden dish but was ultimately forgiven. Artist: Aqā Riz̤ā (Add.MS.18579, f.331v)

Further reading

Eastwick , Edward B. The Anvár-i Suhailí, or the Lights of Canopus: Being the Persian Version of the Fables of Pilpay, or the Book “Kalílah Und Damnah”. Hertford: Austin, 1854.
Wollaston, Arthur N. The Anwár-i-Suhailí; Or, Lights of Canopus, Commonly Known As Kalílah and Damnah. London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1877.
Wilkinson, J. V. S. The lights of Canopus: Anvār i Suhailī. London: The Studio, 1929.
J.P.Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire: Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library. London: The British Library, 2012, pp. 88-92.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

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In a recent post in our Medieval Manuscripts blog (Every People Under Heaven), Cillian O'Hogan wrote about the early 13th century Harley Greek Gospels and the 12th century Melisende Psalter and its ivories which are currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a stunning exhibition Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven. With some 200 exhibits from 60 lenders from all over the world, the exhibition tells the story of Jerusalem, a polyglot city and cultural centre during the Crusades, the rule of the Ayyubids and the Mamluk Empire. In this post I will highlight one of our Arabic loans, Add.MS.11856, a translation of the four Gospels, copied in Palestine in 1336.

Double page opening to the Gospel of St. Matthew. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, ff. 1v-2r)

Portrait of St. Matthew followed by the translator's prayer and introduction to the Gospel of St. Matthew. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, ff. 2v-3r)

Although the Bible may have been translated into Arabic as early as the late seventh century, it was during the eighth and especially the ninth centuries that translations were made under Christian patronage. These were produced in the multilingual monastic communities of Palestine. The earliest surviving dated manuscript of the Gospels in Arabic is dated 859 and is in the library of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai (Griffith, p. 113). In his 'Abridged List of the Arabic Gospel Manuscripts' Hikmat Kashouh (below, pp. 55-8) lists 18 copies in the British Library collections of which the oldest, Add.MS.14467, dates from the 10th century. Add.MS.11856 is a copy of what became known as the Arabic Vulgate version which, translated from Greek, Syriac and Coptic, developed by the 13th century and remained the standard Arabic version until modern times.

Opening to the Gospel of St. Mark. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 59r)



Portrait of St. Mark. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 59v)

Our manuscript, Add.MS.11856, was completed on 20 Jumada I AH 737 (25 Dec. 1336) and includes four portraits of the evangelists, a double page illuminated heading at the beginning and three single page headings at the start of the following Gospels. The copyist was Yūsuf ibn Walī al-Dawlah Mīkhāʼīl ibn Faḍl Allāh, the Treasury scribe (kātib al-khizānah). Originating in Palestine, the manuscript had various owners, one being the early Albanian writer and national hero Peter Bogdani (ca. 1630-89), Archbishop of Skopje and alumnus of the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, Rome, to which he subsequently presented it. It was acquired in 1841 by the British Museum as part of the collection of Samuel Butler (1774-1839), Bishop of Lichfield.

Opening to the Gospel of St. Luke. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 95r)

Portrait of St. Luke. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 95v)

Perhaps the most striking feature of this manuscript is its illumination and decoration which clearly demonstrate the cosmopolitan nature of the community in which it was written. Each Gospel is introduced by a portrait of its author holding a copy of the book, but whereas these portraits are based on Byzantine models, the opening and the introductory leaves to each Gospel are richly decorated in a carpet page design - so called because of its close resemblance to intricately woven carpets - which is in keeping with Qur'ans dating from the Mamluk period. The opening of each Gospel consists of two illuminated bands containing the title above and below while the central panel is filled with an abstract geometrical pattern. Decorative rosettes in the margins complete the design.

Opening to the Gospel of St. John. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 157r)

Portrait of St. John. Palestine, 1336 (BL Add.MS.11856, f. 157v)

The exhibition Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven is open at the Met. until 8 January 2017. If you don't have the opportunity to go in person, there is a detailed catalogue available by the exhibition curators Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb.

This manuscript has now been digitised and will shortly be available on our Digitised Manuscripts site, so watch this space for more details!

Further reading

W. Cureton and C. Rieu, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars secunda, codices arabicos amplectens. London: British Museum, 1846-71, pp. 11-13.
Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb, Jerusalem, 1000-1400 : every people under heaven. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.
Hikmat Kashouh, The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: the Manuscripts and their Families, Berlin: De Gruyter, c2012.
Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: the Scriptures of the "People of the Book" in the Language of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, c2013.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies, with thanks, for help, to Colin Baker

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Being invited to give a series of three lectures on this wide ranging topic at a seminar at the Universita di Ca’ Foscari in Venice in July 2016, it seemed a good opportunity to write a blog highlighting the interesting material in the British Library. Here are discussed such images in Mughal and Deccani painting.

Yogis and other types of ascetics are found in Mughal illustrated historical manuscripts showing encounters recorded in Mughal histories between the emperors Babur, Akbar and Jahangir; and also in indivdual album paintings. From the Mughal point of view more or less all Hindu ascetics were classed as yogis since they all practised bodily asceticisms of some kind or another. The Mughal concern with naturalism towards the end of the reign of Akbar to some degree accounts for what appears to be the accuracy of the early Mughal images of ascetics and yogis. Early Mughal pictorial representations of yogis have as Jim Mallinson points out (Mallinson, “Yogis in Mughal India”) enormous value as historical documents on account of the accuracy and consistency of their detail, overwriting in many instances what can be gleaned from the conflicting literary traditions. It is obvious, he writes, that a variety of traditions shared ascetic archetypes and freely exchanged doctrines and practices.

Ascetics being shaved at Gurkhattri in 1505. Detail from painting by Gobind from a copy of  ʻAbd al-Rahim Khan’s Persian translation of the Baburnamah, 1590-92  (British Library Or.3714, f.197r)

In the account in his autobiography, the Baburnamah, of his first raid into Hindustan in 1505, Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in 1526 when he overthrew the Lodi Sultans of Delhi, mentions the well-known cave of Gurkhattri near Bigram (Peshawar) with its then-famous great banyan tree: ‘It was a holy place for yogis and Hindus, who came from faraway places to cut their hair and beards there’[1], but did not visit it at that time.

In 1519, in the course of another incursion, he managed to visit it.

... reaching Bigram, went to see Gurh Kattri. We entered a small, dark chamber like a monk’s cell and after passing through the door and down two or three steps, we had to lie down to get in. It was impossible to see without a candle. All around was an unending pile of hair and beard that had been clipped there. Many chambers like the ones in madrasas and caravansaries surround Gurh Kattri. The first year I came to Kabul ... I went to the great banyan tree in Bigram and was sorry not to have seen Gurh Kattri, but it turned out not to be much to be sorry for.[1]

Ascetics at Gurkhattri in 1519. Detail from painting by Kesu Khurd from  the Baburnamah, 1590-92  (British Library Or.3714, f.320v)

The sacred site at Gurkhattri was clearly in the hands of the Nath yogis, followers of Gorakhnath’s Hathayoga system. Nath yogis can be distinguished by the horn worn suspended round the neck, by the fillet worn round the top of the head and in their leaders by the necklace suspended from the shoulders to which are attached strips of cloth. They also wear cloaks often patched, but they do not have any sectarian marks, although they later became Shaivas. Note that at this stage Nath yogis wear hooped earrings through their earlobes and have not yet become the Kanphat or Split-ear yogis who split the actual cartilege of the ear. Other characteristics that mark them out is their long matted hair, piled up into jatas or loose, their nakedness or nearly such, and the smearing of their body with ashes. Note also the yogapattas or meditation bands and the fact that some seem still to wear the sacred thread.


A shepherd offers flowers to a holy man. Attributed to Basawan, c. 1585 (British Library J.22, 13)

Alongside these historical manuscripts individual album paintings were also being produced in the Mughal studio in Akbar’s reign. Some of them poke fun at the ascetic tradition as had long been traditional in Indian culture, as in Basavan’s study from around 1585 of a poor shepherd offering flowers to a grotesquely bloated ascetic as he stalks by unheeding; he is followed by an acolyte whose body is as thin as his master’s is the reverse.

A Nath yogi as a border decoration. Mughal, 1605 (British Library Or.14139, f. 100v)

By 1605 studies of yogis had become so commonplace that they could be added to the marginalia round illustrated manuscripts, as with this nearly naked Nath yogi tending his fire, complete with horn and earrings, from a manuscript of the Divan of Hafiz that was copied by Sultan ‘Ali of Mashhad but beautified with marginal studies at the beginning of Jahangir’s reign. Pictures of yogis were especially useful for Mughal artists since their nakedness could be used as an exercise in depicting the volumes of the human body or alternatively their voluminous robes for an exercise in modelling.

Although Akbar was interested in all religions and especially those of his Indian subjects and of course had numerous Sanskrit texts translated into Persian, it is his son Salim afterwards Jahangir who seems to have had a specific interest in yoga and ascetic practices, although the Library has no representations relevant to Jahangir here. Instead there are several studies of Nath yogis and other ascetics living in remote places (for example Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, nos. 25-27, 45-46).

Two ascetics from the Album of Dara Shikoh. Attributed to Govardhan, c. 1610 (British Library Add.Or.3129, ff.11v, 12r)

It was Jahangir’s grandson, Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, born in 1615, who was most famously involved with Hindu philosophy and ascetics. Here are two facing pages from Dara Shikoh’s Album, compiled in the early 1630s just before his marriage, showing two ascetics in yogic postures, attributed to the great artist Govardhan early in his career around 1610. Both wear long beards and have their uncut hair twisted up on to their head: the one of the right has a Vaishnava sect mark and holds up a manuscript page, the one on the left holds a rosary.

A group of Nath yogis. Ascribed to Mas’ud, Mughal, 1630-40 (British Library J.22, 15)

Govardhan’s famous study from the 1630s, formerly in the Cary Welch collection, of four nearly naked ascetics seated beside a fire seems to have served as inspiration for this study of Nath yogis by Mas’ud, which reproduces in mirror reverse Govardhan’s shrine on the hill and the tree with a group of ascetics seated before a fire. A young ascetic is bringing them food.

An imaginary meeting between Dara Shikoh and Kamal, the son of Kabir. Mughal, early 18^th century (British Library J.19, 1)

Dara Shikoh is often represented in later paintings meeting ascetics, normally Muslim ones such as Mian Mir and Mulla Shah, but occasionally also Hindu as here. The accompanying inscription suggests that this is Dara Shikoh with La‘l Sahib, who was born in Malwa in the reign of Jahangir, among whose disciples was Dara Shikoh. The ascetic however in his white robe patched with pieces of variously coloured cloth, his sacred thread and his particular turban with a black fillet wound round a white kulah appears again in an important mid-17^th century painting in the V&A Museum showing ten earlier Hindu mystics seated outside a Sufi shrine, where he is named as Kamal and seated beside his supposed father, the 15^th century religious reformer Kabir. Both paintings are reproduced in Binyon and Arnold 1921, pls. XVII-XIX and XXII, who note that the two figures are the same but separate their identities according to the inscriptions. Kamal is mentioned in various hagiographical accounts of Kabir’s life and appears more of a spiritual than a biological son, but if he lived it was certainly earlier than Dara Shikoh. His presence here with Dara Shikoh adds weight to Elinor Gadon’s supposition (Facets of Indian Art, p. 157) that this prince was the patron of the V&A picture.

A royal ascetic. Deccani, Bijapur, c. 1660 (British Library, J.16, 2)

Artists in the Deccani studios were no less interested in portraying yogis than their Mughal counterparts, and they also developed the artistic idea of the female yogi or yogini. The Library’s only 17^th century image of a Deccani yogi is this magnificent and engimatic study of a royal ascetic wearing the patchwork robe of a yogi, seated on a tiger skin beside a fire and with the crescent moon linking him with the great yogi Shiva himself. His sword, dagger, club and fakir’s crutch (no less useful as a weapon than a support for meditation) suggest he might be one of the warrior ascetics who roamed India in bands in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

A female ascetic with devotees. Farrukhabad, c. 1770 (British Library J.66, 5)

Yogis and ascetics continued as the subjects of paintings in the late 18^th century, but now from the schools of Bengal and Awadh. Images of female ascetics became increasingly common in the later 18^th century. They normally wear long gowns and have their hair piled up on top of their head or wear a turban. They live out in the open with other yogis and attracted devotees just as did their male counterparts, as in this example from the variation of the Awadhi style from Farrukhabad in western UP. Here a group of women have brought fruit and flowers to such a one, watched by other ascetics. A small śivalingam beside her being perpetually lustrated indicates her orientation.

A noblewoman visiting a group of ascetics. Murshidabad, c. 1770 (British Library Add.Or.5607)

In another painting from Murshidabad, a noblewoman has brought her child to a hermitage where live two male ascetics, one old the other young, who sit there telling their beads, while a female ascetic, naked to the waist, supports herself on a swing and smokes from a nargila. The fire beside her suggests she is undergoing mortification, standing up supported by the swing while she exposes herself to the heat of the fire. Female ascetics leaning on swings are a feature of several other late 18^th century paintings. The whole concept of Hindu female asceticism in India has only fairly recently become the focus of scholarly attention, specifically of anthropologists studying modern communities, but unless we are to believe that these pictorial studies are fantasies, then it clearly is a phenomenon known for several centuries.

Further reading:
Binyon, L., and Arnold, T.W., The Court Painters of the Grand Moguls, Oxford, 1921
Diamond, D. ed., Yoga: the Art of Transformation, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, 2013
Losty, J.P., Ascetics and Yogis in Indian painting: the Mughal and Deccani tradition, 2016
Mallinson, James, ‘Yogis in Mughal India’, in Diamond, D. ed., Yoga: the Art of Transformation, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, 2013, pp. 68-83
——— ‘Yogic Identities: Tradition and Transformation’, 2013
Skelton, R., et al. eds., Facets of Indian Art: a Symposium held at the Victoria and Albert Museum April-May 1982, London, 1986
Falk, T and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts, Emeritus

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[1] W. M. Thackston. The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (Washington D.C., 1996), pp.186 and 285

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Twenty more Persian manuscript treasures now online

Regular visitors to the Treasures Gallery of the British Library will know that the wall case displaying Indian book arts has recently had a change of display. On exhibition are eight folios from the Dara Shikoh Album (Add.Or.3129), one of the great treasures of the Asian and African department, which are discussed in this blog. The album is known to have been compiled by Dara Shikoh (1615–59), the eldest son and heir of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, from the inscription in the prince’s hand on folio 2 dated 1056/1646–47. The inscription records the gift of the album to his wife Nadira Banu Begam, his cousin and the daughter of Sultan Parviz, whom he had married in 1633.

Dedicatory inscription written by Dara Shikoh, dated 1056/1646-7 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.2r)

The inscription reads: īn muraqqa‘-i nafīs ba-anīs-i khāṣṣ u hamdam u hamrāz ba-ikhtiṣāṣ Nādirah Bānū Bēgam dādah [shud az] Muḥammad Dārā Shikōh ibn Shāh Jahān pādshāh-i ghāzī sannah 1056 (‘This precious volume was given to his dearest intimate friend Nadira Banu Begam by Muhammad Dara Shikoh son of Shah Jahan emperor and victor, year 1056/1646–47’).

The previously accepted date of the inscription 1051/1641-2 has been revised by John Seyller, who has suggested a date of 1056/1646-7 on the basis of enhanced digital imagery (click here to see enhanced photo), and this revised date is accepted here. For a list of the contents of the album see Falk and Archer (Indian Miniatures, no. 68) who date it 1633–42 and Catalogue of India Office Select Materials. Only two dates are inscribed which can definitely be assigned to the period before Dara Shikoh's death, one on a painting by Muhammad Khan dated 1043/1633-34, the other in the previously mentioned dedicatory inscription.

After the fratricidal war precipitated by Shah Jahan’s illness in 1657, Dara Shikoh was executed by the victorious Aurangzeb in 1659, a few months after his wife had died while attempting to flee with her husband to Iran. The album came into the possession of Aurangzeb and attempts were made to blot out the memory of ‘the apostate’, as his rigidly orthodox brother regarded him. The inscription was obliterated with gold paint which has since worn away, allowing Dara Shikoh’s writing to reappear. After Dara’s death, the album was handed over to Pariwash, librarian to the Nawab ‘Aliyyah, on 21 Rajab, regnal year 3 (of Aurangzeb, i.e. 1661), according to the inscription on folio 1r. The title Nawab ‘Aliyyah, previously borne by Mumtaz Mahal herself, was awarded after the death of her mother to Shah Jahan’s eldest daughter and favourite Jahanara (1614-80), who became the Nawab ‘Aliyyah Padshah Begum Sahibah (Inayat Khan, Shah Jahan Nama, p. 3), as discussed in my forthcoming paper (Losty, ‘Dating the Dara Shikoh Album’).

The seventy-four folios with sixty-eight paintings interspersed with calligraphy and the gilt tooled leather covers represent the album almost in its entirety.  Five leaves are missing according to an early foliation, which may have included Dara Shikoh’s own calligraphy or other pages with inscriptions relating to him.

In the book accompanying the British Library’s 2012 exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, the present writer argued that the contents of the album, containing portraits of teenage princes and princesses, would most naturally fit into the time frame 1631-33 when Dara Shikoh was 16-18, between his engagement to his cousin, the postponement of the marriage owing to the death of his mother Mumtaz Mahal in 1631, and the eventual celebration of the nuptials in 1633 (Losty and Roy, Mughal India, pp. 124-37).  There is no need to argue, as almost all previous writers have done, that the contents of the album must be dated between the two inscribed dates of 1633 and 1642 (now 1647).

The paintings are arranged in facing pairs, as was normal in Mughal albums. The contents mostly consist of portraits of the aformentioned teenage princes and princesses, of holy men of various sorts, and studies of flowers and of birds. Ths inner album borders normally match, except where a folio is missing, and the outer borders all bear floral designs in gold. The paintings are all fairly simple and have sometimes been criticised for not matching the quality of the albums associated with the emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, but then as a princely album it would have been inappropiate to do so, any more than do the Salim and Khurram albums, compiled by the future emperors when princes.

Right: A prince pouring wine, ascribed to Muhammad Khan and dated 1043/1633-4 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.21v)
Left: a prince holding a turban ornament, attributed to Muhammad Khan, c. 1633 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.22r)

The otherwise uknown artist Muhammad Khan signed and dated one painting in the album of a prince dressed in Persian costume and its facing pair of a similarly dressed prince with an attendant can safely be attributed to the same hand. They are linked by similar backgrounds and by a frieze of exquisitely detailed flowers across the bottoms of the paintings. Despite their Persianate appearance, these paintings are not Persian, but nothing is known of Muhammad Khan’s origin or his other work. He is possibly a Deccani artist employed by the prince 1630-32 when the court was in Burhanpur and who returned to Agra with him. Some of the flower studies in the album can also be attributed to his hand.

Right: Dara Shikoh with a jewel, attributed to Chitarman, c. 1630 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.27v)
Left: lady with a wine cup, attributed to Bichitr, 1630-33 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.28r)

It was argued in the 2012 book that most of the princely portraits in the album were in fact of the young Dara Shikoh between the ages of 15 and 18 and also that while the court was in Burhanpur the prince had access to his father’s artists. Certainly Chitarman was in Shah Jahan’s employ in 1628 (his portrait is in the Kevorkian Album in the Metropolitan Museum, New York) before becoming associated with Dara Shikoh throughout the 1630s. These two portraits obviously form a pair and the young prince is holding up a sumptous jewelled pendant, a heart-shaped ruby or spinel surrounded by pearls and with a large pendant pearl, for presentation to the lady opposite. She is unknown of course, but was important enough to be painted in the latest style that is associated with the artist Bichitr around 1630, with its receding European landscape in grisaille as a backdrop, as in Bichitr's portrait of Asaf Khan from 1631 in the V&A.

Right: Dara Shikoh with a tutor, attributed to Chitarman, c. 1630 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.33v)
Left: Lady with a narcissus, perhaps Mumtaz Mahal, attributed to Bishndas, 1631-33 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.34r)

This pair of paintings, although now facing each other, cannot have been originally intended to do so since the inner borders do not match, although there is no break in the early foliation. The young prince seems to be about 12 from his size although somewhat older judging by his features. He holds out his hand to his tutor who seems to be about to hand him the book. The lightly painted drawing is typical of Chitarman’s work for the prince. The lady opposite, somewhat more mature than the majority of the female portraits in the album, wears jewels of imperial quality and stands with one hand on a prunus tree and the other holding a narcissus. That and the white narcissus growing before her, white being associated with mourning, suggest that this could be Dara Shikoh’s mother Mumtaz Mahal (b. 1593), who died in Burhanpur in 1631 giving birth to her 14^th child. The unrelated borders suggest a possible intervention by the prince, who rearranged the order of the folios in order for his mother to cast her benevolent gaze over his studies. The handling of her head and the prunus in the background suggest that this could be the work of Bishndas.

The Album is also famous for its exquisite studies of birds and flowers, and one of each category was selected for display, illustrated here within their original album mounts decorated with gold flowers.

The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) with a lily. Mughal, 1630-33 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.9v)

The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) is a medium-sized found throughout many parts of the world including South and South-east Asia. Such herons have a black crown and back, with the remainder of the body white or grey, their eyes are red, and legs yellow. Being relatively stocky, with shorter bills, legs, and necks than other heron species, they do not fit the typical body form of the heron family. Their resting posture is normally somewhat hunched, but when hunting they extend their necks and look more like other wading birds. These birds stand still at the water's edge and wait to ambush prey lurking in the water, mainly at night or early morning. All these characteristics are evident in our portrait of such a bird, hunched and stocky, its feet in the shallow water of a jhil.

Jahangir’s passion for natural history was not inherited by his son Shah Jahan and grandson Dara Shikoh. It was during the 1630s that flowers and floral arrangements with their decorative possibilities came to dominate Mughal textiles and the adornment of architecture and album pages. Hence the addition of an egregious lily has transformed the painting from a natural history study into a decorative album page.

Exotic flowers with butterflies. Mughal, 1630-33 (British Library Add.Or.3129, f.64r)

The album contains several studies of flowers that could pass muster as natural history paintings, albeit derived ultimately from European herbals (see my earlier post Mughal flower studies and their European inspiration), but many more are in a more decorative vein as here. This exotic plant with its double flowers, protuberant stigma and folded over toothed leaves could be intended for a lily or a hibiscus, but the intention of the painting is decorative, not naturalistic. The flowers are regularly spaced radially in the Chinese manner throughout the field and are linked by spiralling stems in the arabesque patterns that are also seen in the tulips at the base of Muhammad Khan’s painting of a prince above, as well as elsewhere in the album. Such floral patterns, still less the paintings of different flowers all springing from a single stem (e.g. Losty and Roy, Mughal India, fig. 86), did not make it into Shahjahani decoration in general and are possibly examples of artists’ early experimenting with such ideas before settling on the more familiar sprays seen in album borders and pietra dura work.  These ideas will be explored in a forthcoming paper.

Further reading:
Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981
Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan, trans. A.R. Fuller, ed. W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1990  
Losty, J.P., ‘Dating the Dara Shikoh Album: the Floral Evidence’, in Ebba Koch and Ali Anooshahr, eds., The Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan (1628-58) – New trends of research, forthcoming
Losty, J.P., and Roy, M., Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire – Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library, London, 2012

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Art, Emeritus

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The British Library holds over a thousand Jain manuscripts, most of which were collected in the 19^th Century, by Indologists and East India Company officials. In a recent blog, Pasquale Manzo, the British Library’s Sanskrit curator, gives an overview of these manuscripts, and news that 33 of them have been digitised.

One of the collectors mentioned in this previous blog is Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India. There are 21 Jain manuscripts, 18 of which are palm leaf manuscripts from Karnataka’s Digambara tradition, in the British Library’s Mackenzie Collection.

The outer ‘patli’ wooden boards of this manuscript are decorated with a blue and gold border, and with pink flowers and green leaves. A red silk cord runs through a hole in the palm leaves, which holds the manuscript together. When closed, the manuscript was secured by the cord, which was wrapped around the patli boards. The label recording the manuscript's despatch to London in 1825 is attached. (BL Mackensie XII.14 cover and label)

Illustrated folios from the Navagrahakundalaksana, in an 18^th Century palm leaf manuscript from the Digambara tradition, collected by Colin Mackenzie in Karnataka in the early 19^th Century (BL Mackenzie XII.14, ff. 2-3)

Palm leaf Digambara manuscripts like this are extremely rare, but what makes the Mackenzie Collection’s Jain holdings even more amazing is the other materials, such as drawings and transcribed oral accounts, which were gathered in Karnataka at the same time, between 1799 and 1810, when Mackenzie was conducting the Survey of Mysore.

Armed with a team of military draftsmen and Indian translators, Mackenzie’s attempts to learn about Jainism went beyond the standard Orientalist practice of collecting manuscripts. The draftsmen made drawings of a broad range of subjects, and the translators interviewed important members of the Jain community. Below are some drawings that were collected contemporaneously to the manuscripts and oral accounts.

North view of Vindyagiri Hill, Sravana Belgola (Karnataka), 17 August, 1806 (BL WD576)

Sculptures at Sravana Belgola (Karnataka), 1801 (WD1065, folio 57)

A Jain from Tumkur (Karnataka), May 1800 (BL WD1069, f.24) 

The drawings relating to Jainism in the British Library’s Mackenzie Collection are unique because they were gathered alongside such a wide variety of other materials at the same time and in the same region of India. Together, they provide a fascinating record of Jainism in Karnataka over 200 years ago.

Further Reading:
Balbir, Nalini...[et al], Catalogue of the Jain Manuscripts in the British Library: including the holdings of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: British Library and Institute of Jainology, 2006.
Boriah, Kavali Venkata. “Account of the Jains: Collected from a Priest of this Sect, at Midgeri: Translated by Cavelly Boria, Brahmen for Major C. Mackenzie.” Asiatick Researches, 9 (1809): 244-256
Howes, Jennifer. “Illustrated Jaina Collections in the British Library.” In Hegewald, J. Jaina Painting and Manuscript Culture, Berlin: EB Verlag, 2015: 245-66

Jennifer Howes, Independent Art Historian

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In a recent post I wrote about some of our loans to the exhibition The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination in Delhi. These included our Mughal illustrated Shāhnāmah (Add.5600). A direct benefit of participating in exhibitions such as this is that we have now been able to digitise it and make it available on our website.

The heroes Gīv and Pīrān bring Kay Khusraw from Turan to Iran to be crowned king. Artist: Shamāl (British Library Add.5600. f. 139v)

This copy of the Shāhnāmah is thought to date originally from the 15th century. Unfortunately it has no colophon but it was extensively refurbished in India at the beginning of the 17th century when the 89 illustrations were added. These are numbered consecutively 1-91, only lacking no. 37 which, together with a gap of about 150 verses, is missing at the beginning of the story of Bīzhan and Manīzhah between folios 201v and 202r. The manuscript was altered again in the first half of the 18th century when elaborate paper guards and markers were added. The magnificent decorated binding, however, dates from the early 17th century.

Rustam, glass in hand, prepares to eat a wild ass alfresco while Bahman contemplates killing him with a giant boulder. Artist: Banvārī (British Library Add.5600, f. 320v)

In his Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: 263-73, John Seyller expands Jerry Losty's view (Art of the Book: 122-3) that the paintings were added for the great statesman and patron ʻAbd al-Raḥīm Khān Khānān (1556-1627). The artists Qāsim and Kamāl are known to have worked for him and one of the paintings, ascribed to the artist Shamāl (f. 274r), is dated 1025 (1616/17) which places the Shāhnāmah in ʻAbd al-Raḥīm's studio at that time. The volume, Seyller suggests, was probably incomplete when ʻAbd al-Raḥīm acquired it. Thirty-five of the paintings were added directly to blank painting areas, leaving four completely empty (for example f. 446v). Some folios were replacements for missing ones. The remaining 55 original illustrations were covered with paper which was then painted over. Occasionally the original painting is visible from the other side, as in folio 338 illustrated below, or round the edges of the new paintings.

Right:  folio 338v showing the dying Rustam, impaled in a pit of spears, shooting Shaghad through the tree trunk. Left:  folio 338r, the other side of the same leaf showing visible traces of over-painted branches of a tree (British Library Add.5600, f. 338)

Left: folio 257r and right: folio 189r,  examples of original paintings showing round the edges

The artists of the Shāhnāmah
The 89 paintings are the work of seven named artists listed below. Follow the hyperlinks to go directly to the digital image. Details of the individual illustrations are available here.

Banvārī 26, (ff. 32v, 65v, 84v, 107v, 128r, 130r, 134r, 154v, 178r, 200v, 234v, 295r, 304v, 314v, 320v, 325v, 333r, 343v, 344v, 357r, 437r, 452v, 488v, 525r, 555v, 562v)

Bhagvatī 3 (ff. 28r, 68v, 338v)

Būlā 1 (f. 24v)

Kamāl 11, (ff. 54r, 88r, 156v, 211v, 264v, 346v, 353r, 361v, 464v, 551v, 578v)

Mādhū 1 (f. 12v)

Qāsim 25 (ff. 37r, 42v, 64r, 75v, 78v, 99r, 142v, 147v, 182v, 222v, 236v, 269v, 280v, 285r, 288v, 310v, 350r, 372r, 399v, 404v, 408v, 477v, 483v, 548r, 573v)

Shamāl 21 (ff. 18v, 51r, 116v, 139v, 169v, 176r, 180v, 183v, 189r, 197v, 244v, 250r, 257r, 274r, 277v, 364v, 385v, 411v, 419v, 506r, 538v)

Unattributed or erased 2 (ff. 387v, 402v)

An illustrious past
Lack of  ʻAbd al-Raḥīm's name in Add.5600 means we can only deduce his connection from other evidence, but luckily we have a bit more concrete information about what happened after it left his studio. The details, however, are far from certain and allow plenty of scope for future research!

The first piece of tangible evidence occurs in inscription A below, which records that the manuscript was given in 1625 to Muʻtaqid Khān who had been awarded this title by Jahāngīr when he was made chief huntsman (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ, vol. 1: 668-72). After Jahāngīr’s death in 1627, Muʻtaqid Khān was promoted to Ilāhvirdī Khān by Shāh Jahān as a reward for his loyalty at the time of succession. This explains inscription B written by Muʻtaqid, now Ilāhvirdī Khān (or Chelah as his name is in the inscription), which confirms that the Shāhnāmah had been a gift from Jahāngīr which he was now presenting to his brother Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd¹. The inscription is dated on the first of the month of Āzar, regnal year 8. Both John Seyller (“Workshop and Patron”: 264) and Jerry Losty (Art of the Book: 122-3) have interpreted this date as referring to the eighth year of Jahāngīr’s reign (November 1613) which is problematic. If the manuscript was presented to Ilāhvirdī Khān in 1613, then how could it have been in ʻAbd al-Raḥīm’s studio when the artist Shamāl completed his painting in 1616? Bearing in mind that inscriptions A and B presumably refer to the same person, the later inscription B, written after Jahāngīr's death, is surely more likely to indicate a date in Shāh Jahān’s reign equivalent to November 1635² referring to the time when Ilāhvirdī presented the book to Muḥammad Rashīd.

Portrait of Ilāhvirdī Khān (d. 1659), identified in a Persian inscription, c. 1680 (Johnson Album 64, 2)
 
Inscription C is unfortunately undated but records that the manuscript passed from Muḥammad Rashīd, Ilāhvirdī's brother, to his son Muḥammad ʻĀrif. It is accompanied by his seal.

Several others are mentioned in later inscriptions and seals, but Khān Jahān Bahādur, mentioned in inscription D can perhaps be identified with Aurangzeb's military commander Khān Jahān Bahādur Ẓafar Jang Kokaltāsh who was awarded the title Khān Jahān Bahādur in regnal year 16 (1672/73). The seal associated with this inscription is dated 1101 (1689/90). Khān Jahān Bahādur became Governor of the Punjab in regnal year 34 (1690/91) and remained there until summoned to court three years later. He died in 1697 (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ vol. 1: 783-91).

Portrait of Khān Jahān Bahādur (d.1697), identified from a Persian inscription, by the artist Hūnhār, c. 1690. See also Mughal India, pp.156-8 (British Library Johnson Album 18, 12)

The octagonal seal E on folio 1v is dated 1142? (1729/30) and belongs to Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur who was perhaps Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur Khvīshagī (d. 1743), a learned scholar and collector who was given the title Mutahhavar Khān after Aurangzebʼs death in 1707 (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ vol. 2: 333-43).

The most recent owner was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751-1830), famous for his grammar of Bengali, his support of Warren Hastings and also his promotion of the self-proclaimed prophet Richard Brothers. Halhed acquired a fine collection of oriental manuscripts mainly in Calcutta between 1776 and 1789 and sold them to the British Museum in 1795 and 1796 (Add.5569-5661).

 
Seals and Inscriptions³

Left: Add.5600, folio 2r; right: Add.5600, folio 1v

A (in gold): Ba-tārīkh-i hashtum-i māh-i Amurdād [ilāhī] sanah 20 julūs-i mubārak [...] [ba-m]uʻtamad Muʻtaqid Khān ʻināyat k[ardah]
Translation: On the 8^th of the month Amurdād ilāhī year 20 of the blessed accession [of Jahāngīr] (August 1625) [this book] was given to the trusted Muʻtaqid Khān

B (the left hand margin recopied at the time of repairs and added in [ ]): Īn Shāhnāmah rā ḥuz̤ūr-i ghufrān panāh Jahāngīr [pādshāh] bah kamtarīn-i ghulāmān Ilāhvirdī Chelah ʻināyat farm[ūdah būdand] bah tārīkh-i ghurrah-i māh Āzar ilāhī sanah 8 chūn mulk-i [bandah būd] [ba-]barādar-i ʻazīz Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd guzarānīd[ah shud]
Translation: The late Jahāngīr pādshāh had given this Shāhnāmah to the least of his slaves, Ilāhvirdī Chelah. On the first of the month of Āzar ilāhī year 8 (of Shāh Jahān = November 1635), since it was mine (lit. the property of this slave), it was presented to [my] dear brother, Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd

C: Min mutamallakāt al-muḥtāj ilá raḥmat Allāh al-Malik al-Ḥamīd, Muḥammad ʻĀrif ibn Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd…
Translation: From the possessions of one who needs the mercy of God the king the praised one, Muḥammad ʻĀrif son of Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd ...
This is followed by a seal (undated): Dīn-i ʻĀrif ibn Muḥammad Rashīd yāftah bar fayz̤-i ilāhī kilīd

D: Min mutamallakāt-i Muḥammad ʻĀdil ibn Muḥammad Saʻīd bin Muḥammad Ḥasan tamannā-yi⁴ Navvāb Khān Jahān Bahādur ba-qaymat-i haftṣad rūpiyah dar Lāhūr kharīd namūdah shud.
Translation: From the property of Muḥammad ʻĀdil son of Muḥammad Saʻīd son of Muḥammad Ḥasan, purchased for 700 rupees at Lahore at the desire of Nawab Khān Jahān Bahādur.
This is followed by a seal:  ʻĀdil hast ibn Saʻīd Khān 1101? (1689/90)

E: Octagonal seal: Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur 1142? (1729/30)

Further reading

John Seyller, “Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: The Freer Rāmāyaṇa and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ʻAbd al-Raḥīm”, Artibus Asiæ. Supplementum, 42 (1999): 263-73, 378.
J.P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India. London, 1982: 122-3.
J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire: Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library. London, 2012.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Collections

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[1] Ilāhvirdī Khān is known to have had one brother, Mukhliṣ Khān (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ, vol. 1: 668), but he may well have had others whom we don’t know about!
[2] The ilāhī era was in use for the first 10 years of Shāh Jahānʼs reign until 1638 (Stephen Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam, CUP 2013, p.131).
[3] I am grateful to my colleague Saqib Baburi for his help and patience with these inscriptions!
[4] I am grateful to John Seyller for this suggestion.

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