A Glimpse into the Transition Between the Safavids and the Mughals

During the transitional period between the Safavids and the Mughals, significant changes occurred in art and artists. This transition ushered in new influences, styles, and techniques, resulting in a unique fusion of artistic traditions.

The Safavid Empire, which ruled Persia from the 16th to 18th century, had a strong emphasis on Islamic art, particularly in the form of intricate calligraphy and vibrant geometric patterns. However, with the rise of the Mughal Empire in South Asia during the same time period, a new cultural exchange took place.

Under the patronage of Mughal emperors such as Akbar and Shah Jahan, Persian artists were invited to India and introduced their artistic techniques to local craftsmen. This exchange resulted in a blending of Persian and Indian styles known as "Indo-Persian" art. This hybrid style is evident in many Mughal monuments such as the Taj Mahal.

Additionally, the arrival of European merchants during this time brought yet another influence on Mughal art. European paintings and engravings inspired Mughal artists to incorporate more realistic elements into their work while also retaining their distinct aesthetic.

This era also saw a shift in patronage towards secular art under Emperor Jahangir. Portraiture became popular among artists who were now free to explore themes beyond religious subjects.

Overall, this transitional period between two powerful empires resulted in a vibrant cross-cultural exchange that influenced the development of art and artists. The fusion of styles gave rise to unique masterpieces that continue to fascinate scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Between the Safavids and the Mughals: Art and Artists in Transition

By Abolala Soudavar 

Houston, Texas 

In the year 1544, the Mughal emperor Humayu-n  (r. 1530-40 and 1555-56) came to the Safavid court  seeking Shah Tahmasb I's help to recapture his king dom. Tahmasb (r. 1524-76) obliged and Humayuin  eventually recovered his throne. 

The political consequences of the Safavid  encounter notwithstanding, Humayin's visit is most ly remembered as a fortuitous event that launched  the development of the Mughal school of painting.  From an art historical perspective, its timing could  not be more propitious; Persian courtly painting had  reached new heights but, at the same time, the royal  Safavid library-atelier was sliding into disarray. It  thus prompted the departure of the celebrated  painters Mir Sayyid cAlh and CAbd al-Samad for the  Mughal court. Other artists followed suit. Some  remained there, and some came back and paved the  way for the migration of the next generation of  painters. 

This study focuses on the conditions that led to  three successive migratory waves between the Safavid  and Mughal courts from 1544 to 1585, with an  emphasis on the stylistic development of one partic ular third wave artist, the famous Farrukh Beyg. 

1. THE FIRST WAVE 

The discovery of Persian painting masterpieces  Humayun arrived in Iran accompanied by his  Khurasanian wife, 

Banui (d. 1604).1 Both 

were interested in illustrated manuscripts, and the 

.Hamida 

trip to the Safavid domains provided an opportunity  to see Persian painting at its best: Herat library trea sures that Timurid princes-who had fled the  Shibanid occupation of Khurasan-had brought  westward, and the new Safavid synthesis that  emerged from the blending of the Herat and  Turkoman styles of painting. Each had a different  reaction towards the old and the new. While  Humayun sought Safavid artists for his own library atelier, IHamida Banfi expressed a preference for the  acquisition of Timurid manuscripts from her ances tral Khurasan. Indeed, notations on the famous 1486  Gulistdn of Sacdi (AHT, no. 36) copied by Sultan-CAli 

Mashhadi and probably commissioned by Mir  CAlI Shir as a present for Sultan-Husayn Bayqara  (r. 1470-1506),2 specify that it was 

.Hamida Banfi and 

not Humaytn who acquired this Gulistdn manuscript  (P1. XVa).3 At her death, it was inherited by her son  and was integrated into the Mughal royal library. 

A Timurid and Safavidjoustingfield 

Another Gulistdn manuscript (FGA, F1998.5) that  found its way into the Mughal royal library probably  came to India as a gift from Tahmasb. Although  there are no direct references to this effect, an array of circumstantial evidence upholds the contention  that, through the gift of this manuscript, Tahmasb  had sought to honour Humayun's lineage. 

Copied by Sult an-CAli Mashhadi in 1468, and orig inally illustrated with five Timurid paintings, this  small-scale Gulistadn's calligraphy was rather weak and  inferior to the prevailing nastacliq standards of the  1540s; and apart from a small illuminated opening  heading, it had no other illumination or embellish ing detail.4 Nevertheless, very elaborate Safavid mar gin paintings, mostly attributable to Agha Mirak, 

were added over some sixteen pages.5 As the margin  paintings are stylistically more colourful and intri cate than those of the Shah Tahmasb Khamsa (BL,  Or. 2265) of c. 1539-43,6 they should be dated to the  mid-1540s.7 This dating, in conjunction with the  facts that the manuscript was copied in 1468 during  the last year of the reign of Humayun's great grand father, the Timurid Sultan Abfi Sacid (r. 1451-69),  and that it was still in the Mughal library in the early  years of Akbar's reign (r. 1556-1605),8 leads to the  conclusion that Humayuin was thus honoured by  Shah Tahmasb with a manuscript from the library of  his direct ancestor.9 No other explanation can  account for the addition of elaborate margins by the  hand of the Shah's chief painter and household  superintendent, Agha Mirak, to a manuscript that  did not seem to merit such extra embellishment. 

While the apparent intent of the gift was to hon our Humayin, the unusually elaborate Safavid mar gins10 were also meant to overshadow the Timurid  illumination and illustrations and to hint at the  superiority of the new Safavid style.11 In the same vein, the subsequent repainting of the original  Timurid illustrations may have been an attempt to  counter the earlier Safavid taunt with the highly  developed Mughal style of the Shah Jahan  (r. 1628-57) period. 

Although a recent study attributes the cause of  Mughal repainting to water damage sustained dur ing a palace fire in 1644,12 two distinctive sets of  water-stains-from two different periods-are indi cations to the contrary. One set can be seen near the  outer edge of the Safavid margins with no extension  to the text area (P1. XVb). Had flooding damaged  illustrations during the palace incident, water-stainas  would have extended from edge to centre. 

A second set lies within the text area only and  does not appear on the Safavid margins (see  P1. XVb). It is the result of water damage sustained  prior to the addition of those margins. If the paint ings had suffered damage then, it would have been  minimal for, judging from the remains of the  Timurid painting apparent under a flaked area of  the Prophet and the Zoroastrian (see P1. XVc), the old  pigments seem complete and solidly attached to the  paper substrate.13 Also, the Safavids would have most  likely restored any such damage prior to giving the  manuscript to Humayun. Furthermore, the Mughal  paintings number six, one more than the original  five, which means that at least one of the Mughal  paintings was a new addition.14 Thus the Shah Jahan  period repainting seems to have been motivated by a  factor other than a desire to cover water damage. It  was probably an attempt to overshadow the Safavid  work with the finest quality of imperial Mughal  painting, and that is why six of the top Shah Jahani  painters were chosen for this task: Govardhan,  cAbid, Balchand, Payag, Lalchand and Murar.'5 For  two centuries this Rose Garden of Sacdi had turned  into a jousting field between Timurid and Safavid  artists.16 

Humdyun 's invitation 

Humayun arrived at a time when the two great  Shah Tahmasb manuscripts, the Shdh-ndma and the  Khamsa, had been substantially completed.17 In the  process, a new generation of artists had been  trained, the most important of whom were the three  cAlis: Mirza cAli, son of Sultan-Muhammad, the lead ing artist of the Tabriz studio; Muzaffar cAli, a grand nephew of the celebrated Bihzatd; and Mir Sayyid 

cAli, son of Mir Musavvir; each a master in his own  right. If Tahmasb wished to impress Humayin with  the prowess of his painters, it was wholly unneces sary. Humayun was captivated by their works and  expressed his delight by offering a huge sum for the  discharge of one of the Shah's painters: "If the  emperor (i.e. Tahmasb) releases Mir Musavvir to 

me, I shall offer one thousand tumdns in  exchange."'s This proposal is related by Buidaq-i  Munshi-yi Qazvini who, in 1544, as secretary of  Tahmasb's brother, Bahram Mirza (1517-49), was  well placed to comment on the event.19 Bfidaq then  adds: "It is thus that the Mir's son, who had become  better than his father, went earlier to India, and the  father followed him there." Bfidaq's text is subse quently plagiarised by Qtai Ahmad in his famous  Gulistdn-i hunar treatise with one exception: he omits  the important information that "Mir Musavvir was  undoubtedly a man (of strong character), and was in  disgrace" at the time of Humayi-'s arrival.20 This  omitted information is the key to our understanding  why Humay~m picked the ageing Mir Musavvir  instead of a younger and more promising second  generation painter; as a guest of Tahmasb, it was  improper for him to ask for painters who were still  official employees of the royal library-atelier. He  therefore chose the one master-painter that the  Shah had dismissed.21 Bfidaq's contention that  Humayi-'s invitation was addressed to the Mir and  that his son seized upon the occasion and went to  the Mughal court first, is corroborated by the text of  Mir Musavvir's letter to Humayun, reproduced in a  painting attributed to Mirza Sayyid cAli (P1. XVd).  This letter is illustrated as a petition in the hands of a  kneeling old man that has been erroneously  assumed to represent Mir Musavvir.22 The Mir can not be writing a letter from afar and presenting it to  Humay0n at the same time. Indeed, in his letter, the  Mir apologises to the emperor for his delay in join

ing the Mughal court and promises that he will soon  do so: 

Petition from the old and long time slave, Mir  Musavvir: It is a great honour to report that it has  been a while since this slave's son (i.e. Mir Sayyid  cAlI) has entered the services of Your Majesty. It is  hoped that he will become the subject of royal  munificence. [As for me,] I am hopeful to start my  journey soon and join Your Majesty's services. God  willing, the shadow of your radiance [shall protect  us forever].23 

Furthermore, the kneeling old man is portrayed with  a sumptuous gold embroidered robe, and a dark  skin, which, according to Persian painting conven tions, designates a man from India. He is therefore  most probably a vizier or secretary to Humay0n in  charge of presenting and reading petitions to the  emperor. 

The letter clearly indicates that Mir Musavvir was  expected at the Mughal court, and that the presence  of his son did not relieve him from his obligation to  join Humayin. The Mughal chronicler Bayazid  reports that Humayiun summoned CAbd al-Samad  and Mirza Sayyid CAli through an imperial rescript

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 51 

 

entrusted to a returning Safavid envoy in 1546.24  However, a more likely scenario is that, once artists  discovered Humayin's enthusiasm for Persian paint ing, they expressed their interest in joining his  library-atelier, and Humayun replied favourably only  after he had regained Qandahar and had partially  recovered his kingdom. Bayazid's subsequent obser vation that the painter Dufst-Muhammad came with out a prior permission seems to imply that most  other artists had conveyed-on their own initia tives-their desire to join the Mughal library-atelier  and were then granted permission to do so.25 

Tahmasb's lack of interest 

Humayin's largesse and the Timurids' reputation  for generous patronage certainly influenced some  artists to join the Mughal emperor,26 and the wine drinking prohibition imposed by Tahmasb induced  others to consider such move.27 But these factors  alone did not generate the massive disaffection of  artists from what should be perhaps considered as  the greatest library-atelier of all times. The funda mental reason was Tahmasb's waning interest in the  activities of his library-atelier, which eventually led to  the dismissal of most of the remaining artists. 

Dickson and Welch have surmised that Tahmasb's  estrangement from painting culminated with the  963/1556 Edict of Sincere Repentance "which for mally banned secular arts from his realm," thus  insinuating that religious considerations were at the  root of such decision.28 The Edict of Sincere  Repentance, though, was not for Tahmasb himself to  repent but addressed the Qizilbash amirs and Safavid  nobles, who were required to take an oath of absti nence from forbidden worldly pleasures and repent  of past sins.29 Tahmasb's own "sincere repentance"  had most probably occurred at Jajarm in 1534, and  was subsequently proclaimed in Herat.30 It was fol lowed by a decree that banned "irreligious" activities 

drinking and the Shah knew it [but did not  mind]."~5 This is in sharp contrast with Tahmasb's  reaction towards Qizilbash amirs such as the long trusted Vizier of the Qiirchis (royal guards) Shah Quli, whom he ordered to be decapitated for the sin  of wine-drinking in spite of the ban.36 

Painting is not explicitly banned by the Qur'an,  but the cloud of uncertainty that hung over painting  was associative in nature: orthodox Sunni theolo gians considered it as duplicating creation or an  attempt to return to idolatry.37 Shicite theologians  may never have addressed the issue. Had there been  a Shicite prohibition of painting, Tahmasb would  have been a master at finding ways to circumvent it. 

A point in case is Tahmasb's annulment of the  immunity he had granted the Ottoman prince  Bayazid in the year 1559. Vying for the Ottoman  throne, the prince Bayazid had fought unsuccessful ly against the combined forces of his father,  Siileyman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66), and broth er, Selim (the future Selim II, r. 1566-74). He was  defeated and took refuge with Tahmasb, but before  reaching the capital city of Qazvin he obtained  through a religiously-binding oath a grant of immu nity that was supposed to block every avenue of  treachery. Tahmasb avowed in his own diaries that  for the sake of good relationship with Sfileyman with whom he had finally concluded a peace treaty  in 1555-he had to return the prince but was bound  by his oath neither to kill him, nor to hand him to  Siileyman or his men.38 However, Tahmasb broke  his oath pretending that he "had not vowed not to  return him to his brother Selim", and so the unfortu nate prince and his four sons were delivered to  Selim's men, who decapitated them on the spot. 

In the case of painting, Tahmasb did not even  have to invent ajustification: there was a ready-made  theory that his contemporary, the calligrapher Duist Muhammad, had referred to in his preface to the  Bahram Mirza album of c. 1544. By this theory, the 

(nd-mashrcadt) such as pigeon-flying (kablntar-bdzi), 

art of illumination and painting that adorned the 

shaving one's beard, and tanbfir and naqqdra  music,1 and ordered the closing of taverns, opium  dens and brothels where the "forbidden things"  (mandhi, such as wine drinking), was pursued. 32 It  caused a substantial loss of revenue for the royal trea

sury, amounting by one estimate to 12,000 tuimdns  per year.33 By this measure alone, the repentance of  the avaricious Tahmasb must be considered as quite  sincere.34 Conspicuously absent from this decree is  any reference to painting and calligraphy. Tahmasb  not only did not ban painting but tolerated painters'  infractions of the decree. Thus, Biidaq reported:  "that master Bihzad, who reached the age of seventy,  could not live a moment without ruby-red wine or  the ruby-red lips of a wine-bearer; constant wine had  kept him young and despite the ban, he continued 

written Word went back to the venerated first Shicite  imam, CAli, who was also credited with the invention  of the Islamic scroll pattern.39 Painting was thus pro tected by the sanction of the highest Shicite authori ty, the Imam cAli himself. 

Interestingly, Buidaq emphasises in separate  instances that Tahmasb repudiated both calligra phers and painters from his library-atelier. If paint ing had been from time to time the subject of reli gious controversy, calligraphy was not only immune  from such controversy but represented Islamic art  par excellence. Therefore, if Tahmasb expelled calli graphers along with painters, a reason other than  religious fanaticism must be sought. That reason  may be a weakening of Tahmasb's eyesight caused by  a hereditary ophthalmic disease that was accelerated by a severe illness contracted in the year 1543 and  reported by the chronicler Qai2 AJmad-i Ghaffari.  In contrast to his usual concise reporting style,  Ghaffari devoted considerable space to the incident  and wrote verses which oddly make repeated use of  the word "cayn" "eye" and seem to indicate that the  illness had affected Tahmasb's eyes: 

From today to eternity, it is incumbent upon  mankind 

To praise the Lord one thousand times a day.  For the "Seeing Eye of Created Beings" (Cayn-i  basira-yi dfanrnish) is in absolute health (cayn-i  sihhat), by the will of the Creator. 

You are the soul of worldly events, and as all souls  are linked to yours, may you live as long as the  world shall be.40 

By calling Tahmasb the Seeing Eye of Created  Beings, the author is implicitly attributing to him a  vision so strong that it encompasses the seeing power  of all created beings. It is an odd and uncommon 

way to praise a king in Persian poetry, and perhaps  an indication to the contrary. 

The possibility of a hereditary ophthalmic disease  is strengthened by the fact that the eyesight of  Tahmasb's eldest son, the future Shah Muhammad  Khuda-banda (1531-88), inexplicably deteriorated  when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, and that  he was almost blind soon after.41 Medically speaking,  it is a very rare phenomenon to have a young man go  blind at such an early age and it strongly suggests  "macular degeneracy" (a retina disease) of a heredi tary type. Tahmasb was thus likely to have been  afflicted by macular degeneracy as well, perhaps not  as extreme as his son's, but severe enough to impair  his ability to focus and to see clearly, as happens to  people with Best's Disease, Starguart Disease or  other macular degeneracy problems.42 

Three other considerations may reinforce this  theory. The first is the concept of the Fdl-ndma, a  large-format manuscript produced c. 1550, with  unusual large-size calligraphy and bold designs that  are devoid of minute detail-work, as if the manu script was prepared for a patron unable to see minia ture details yet appreciated coloration and elegant  composition (P1. XVId).43 It was possibly a last-ditch  attempt by members of the royal library-atelier to  keep alive the artistic interest of a patron with a  vision problem. 

The second is the continued activity of artists, cal ligraphers (such as Malik-i Daylami) as well as  painters (such as Muzaffar cAli), in the architectural  decorations of the Qazvin palace of Tahmasb, for  several years after 1544.44 According to the contem

porary chronicler CAbdi Beyg-i Shirazi, Tahmasb  returned to Qazvin after the departure of Humaymn  for Qandahatr, and decided that "from then on (i.e. 

from 1544) the court would stay in winter quarters  (qishldq) in Qazvin and that a new government palace  (dawlat-khdna), surrounded by [appropriate] gar dens, would be erected there."45 As 1544 is also the  approximate date of the expulsion of calligraphers  and painters from the royal Safavid library-atelier  (see below), the further work of artists at the Qazvin  palace seems to indicate once again that Tahmasb  could see-albeit not very clearly--large-scale callig raphy and architectural painting but not manu

script-size detail work. 

Finally, a very odd aspect of Tahmasb's reign is  that he seldom went hunting. Hunting was an essen tial activity of Turco-Mongol princes, one that was  believed to develop the combat skills of the warrior.  Prowess in hunting was equated with prowess in com bat and a substitute for it. Thus the Persian chroni cler who wished to gloss over Shah Ismacil's defeat at  Chaldiran in 1514 portrayed him as leaving the bat tle scene for quail hunting while the Qizilbash  troops were being massacred by the Ottomans!46  Strangely, Tahmasb did not go hunting but went  fishing. To ennoble this peculiar activity, the chroni

clers, and Tahmasb himself, termed it shikar-i mahz  (lit. "fish-hunting"), as if, like some North American  Indians, he was shooting trout with a bow and arrow  up and down mountain streams.47 Luckily, we have  the account of an eyewitness, the Venetian Michele  Membr6, who mentions that Tahmasb carried a thin  cane for fishing and spent considerable time at it.48 

Most sources seem to indicate that Tahmasb was  present at a hunting expedition in honour of  Humayun which was organised as a jarga hunt (hunt  with beaters), i.e. an easy hunt in which the game is  driven towards the hunter. Even so, it is not clear  from the sources whether Tahmasb was actively par ticipating or not.49 While the reference to this jarga  hunt is very concise in Persian chronicles, a lengthy,  and relatively unnecessary, sentence in the same  sources is devoted to the death of the Shah's  standard-bearer (Calam-ddr-i khassa), who was acciden tally shot during this hunt.50 One wonders whether  Tahma-sb mistook the standard-bearer for a deer! 

The dispersal of Safavid artists 

Whatever the reason for Tahmasb's disaffection  regarding painting, by the year of Humayun's  arrival, the Shah's artists had sought alternative  patronage. The likeliest choice was of course the  younger brother of Tahmasb, Bahram Mirza, a bon vivant and talented calligrapher and painter, who  was in the process of assembling his famous album  (TKS, H2154, completed c. 1544) with the help of  one of the Shah's calligraphers, Duist Muhammad.51  Works from a number of other artists appear in the  same album, and it is more than likely that some

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 53 

 

were produced specifically for inclusion in it and  that a few artists had switched to Bahram's library atelier. Most informative in this respect is a recently  published manuscript (TKS, R.957) that bears a  dedication to the library of the prince and incorpo rates the signatures of three artists who had pXrevi ously worked on Shah Tahmasb's Khamsa.5 On  fol. 2a, the painting of a seated prince is incorporat ed in a colophon-looking page with a legend that  reads: "Has painted it cAli al-Husayni and has  copied it Shah Mahmuid al-Nishabhiri" (see P1.  XVIa). The calligrapher has not only signed his  name on this page but also included, by proxy, the  signature-name of the painter Mir Sayyid cAli. One  should note that since Mir and Sayyid both indicate  descent from the Prophet Muhammad, their simul taneous inclusion in a signature-name that already  emphasises descent from the Husayni branch of the  Prophet's progeny, would have been redundant  and they were therefore omitted.53 Furthermore, a  quick comparison of this seated prince with the  seated ruler in Night-time in palace (Arthur M.  Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums,  1958.76) that has been attributed to Mir Sayyid  cAli 54 brings to light many of his stylistic particular ities: high distance between eye and eyebrow, earth tone carpet with a white stencilled border, fine  details, precise fingernails and a seated posture that  depicts a comfortable and stable seated position in  perfect harmony with the laws of gravity. As noted  by M. S. Simpson, a page from the Bahram Mirza album (TKS, H. 2154, fol. 148a), with a similar calli graphic layout and the same poems written by the  same hand on the top of the page, shows a sumptu ously dressed standing prince with a sitar in his  hands (P1. XVIc). Because of the elaborate textile  details and the same facial characteristics as those  of the prince in the previous painting, this too is  attributable to Mir Sayyid CAlf. It most probably  depicts Bahr-am Mirza- whose musical talents are  highly praised by his brother Sam Mirza (1517-67)  in his TuhIfa-yi Sdmi.55 Its slightly different legend  reads: "Has copied this by way of practice, Shah  Mahmuid al-Nishaburi, may God forgive his sins  and cover his shortcomings, in the year 950  [1543-44 A.D.]." The strong affinity between the  two pages suggests a close date of production for  both. 

Facing the seated prince, and on the opposite  page of this manuscript, is depicted the portrait of a  kneeling prince presenting a petition addressed to  the king and signed by the artist Muzaffar cAli, who  is undoubtedly the author of the painting (P1. XVIa).  Unlike Mir Sayyid cAli, Muzaffar CAlI has no sense of  weight and his kneeling prince seems to float in  space. The petition reads: 

The least of the slaves Muzaffar cAli submits to the  loftiest court that His Imperial Majesty (nawdb  jahdn-bdni) is well aware that the stipend of this  lowly [servant] was six tiimdns while in the services  of His Fortunate Majesty (nawdb kdmrdni), but is  now [reduced] to three timdns, as a result of which  the life of this lowly [servant] is quite distressed.  Your orders shall be obeyed whatever they shall  be.56 

The kneeling prince is wearing a sumptuous  robe and a turban with an ostrich feather; he is  therefore of high rank, and because the painting  has been inserted at the very beginning of a manu script made for Bahram Mirza, it must depict him  in the process of presenting a petition to the Shah  on behalf of Muzaffar cAli, perhaps on the very 

occasion of Humayuin's visit when Bahram joined  Tahmasb in Abhar (between Qazvin and Zanjan).  Since the time of the Mongols, court protocol had  dictated that princes and dignitaries, as well as  attendants and wine-bearers, should approach the  ruler on their knees. The positioning of the kneel ing Bahram opposite a seated prince with three  ostrich feathers in his turban (usually an attribute  of kingship), may suggest that the latter represents  Tahmasb.57 Speculating on the sequence of events,  it seems that the portrait of Bahram Mirza with a  sitar was the first to be incorporated in the manu script, followed by the addition of the kneeling  Bahram. But to make the double page more mean ingful, the portrait to the left was "upgraded" to  represent the Shah as the receiver of the petition.  The same, rather weak, poem appears on the origi nal and replacement page; perhaps this was a poem  of Bahram that the seated Tahmasb was meant to  read. 

More importantly, the petition reveals that  c. 1544, Muzaffar CAli, and most probably the other  artists whose names appear in this manuscript,58 had  left the royal library-atelier or had been transferred  to the library-atelier of Tahmasb's brother with a  reduced stipend.59 

A manuscript of the Silsilat al-dhahab of Jami (St.  Petersburg, Dorn 434), copied by Shah Mahmfid al Nishaibliri in Ardabil at the very beginning of Sam  Mirza's tenure as governor of that city,60 and dated  1 Shacban 956/25 August 1549, with a double-page  frontispiece attributable to Mirza cAli,61 is a further  testimony to the precarious situation of master  painters and calligraphers who had sought the  patronage of this rebellious prince.62 Any associa tion with Sam Mirza, was susceptible to attract the  wrath of Tahmasb, as perhaps it did in the case of  Mir Musavvir in prior years.63 

With his appointment to Ardabil, Sam Mirza may  have nurtured the idea of reviving his own library atelier. But Tahmasb stripped his brother of all sources of revenue and so reduced his stipend that  the prince had to engage in commerce (tijdrat) in  order to generate a meagre income.64 In such a case,  Sam Mirza could hardly afford a library-atelier of his  own. 

2. THE SECOND WAVE 

The reverse tide 

The premature death of Bahram Mirza in 1549  dashed all hopes for a continuing Safavid princely  patronage, and swelled the wave of migrating artists.  But like so many other instances in the history of  Turco-Mongol princes, wine and opium suddenly  changed the course of events. In early 1556, leaning  on a staff and under the spell of opium, Humayufn  dozed off in the middle of a discussion with his gen erals and fell to his death from a rooftop.65 This  tragedy, in conjunction with the appointment of  Sultan-Ibrahim Mirza (1544-77) as governor of  Mashhad a few months later, reversed the migration  tide, and some of the artists who had gone to the  Mughal court came back to join the library-atelier of  this talented and enthusiastic young prince. Bufdaq-i 

Munshi provides information on two such artists,  Mirza cAlf and Shaykh Muhammad.66 Of the latter  he wrote: 

Mulla Shaykh-Muhammad is from Sabzavar. His  father was Mulla KamIal, pupil of Mawlana CAbd al Hayy; he wrote well in thulth and naskh and Qur'ans  copied by him were being sold at three to four  tumans. Together with his children he joined the ser vices of [the Mughal emperor] Mirza Humayfin. His  son, Mulla Shaykh-Muhammad, was a pupil of Duist-i Divana and matured there. Later on, when he came 

to Khurasan, Ibrahim Mirza, son of Bahram Mirza,  tutored him. Without exaggeration, he was an excel lent painter, illuminator, and outliner (muharrir)  and wrote well in nastacliq. [In painting] he rivalled  Chinese painters, and for the likeness of his  Chinese-style portraiture people exclaimed: "Well  done!"67 

Less explicit and more problematic is his informa tion about Mirza cAli which comes at the end of an  entry for Sultan-Muhammad: "he had an equally tal ented son who, after the death of his father, went to  India and prospered there."68 Oddly, he is silent on  Mirza cAli's activity at the library-atelier of Sultan  Ibrahim Mirza in Mashhad, perhaps because this  section of Bfildaq's Javdhir al-akhbdrwas written earli er, and not fully updated when he hastily dedicated  his work to Ismacil II (r. 1576-77) in 1576.69 But  since he is usually accurate, his account carries  weight. Moreover, the reference to both of these  artists' passage to India was suppressed in the  Gulistdn-i hunar of Qaii Ahmad. Patterns of omission 

are sometimes more telling in Persian sources than  written words. In this case, the omissions were proba bly intended to minimise in Safavid chronicles both  the rising fortunes of the Mughals and the state of  disarray at Tahmasb's library-atelier. 

A scenario in which Mirza cAli went to "India"  (i.e. the Mughal court) and returned to Mashhad  c. 1556 does not conflict with the chronology of  works attributable to him. His last works before the  1556-65 Haft awrang of Sultan-Ibrahim Mirza (FGA,  46.12) are datable to the year 1549 by (a) the afore mentioned frontispiece of the St. Petersburg manu script; and (b) three paintings (fols. 66a, 102b, 139a)  from another copy of the Silsilat al-dhahab of Jami  dated 1549 (AMSG, S86.0044).70 

A recently published painting from the Gulshan  album that was assembled for the Mughal emperor  Jahangir (r. 1605-27), reinforces the possibility of a  brief stay of Mirza CAlh at the Mughal court (GPL,  nos. 1663, fol. 46, see P1l. XVIIa).71 It displays many  characteristics of his paintings: the majestic and  serene appearance of the seated king, the shape of  the turbans (bulging in the front with dipping curves  in the back), his favourite plane tree with yellow and  red leaves, the division of the crowd into interacting  pairs (see e.g. the top right corner where the hand of  one party is naturally resting on the other's shoulder  and the latter is reciprocating the affectionate ges ture by grabbing his counterpart's belt) and, finally,  the wonderful sense of balance that his characters  can convey in the most awkward positions (such as  the page boy hanging a lantern in the plane tree, see  P1. XVIIb). The size, general composition and gold painted borders of this miniature recall paintings of  the Shah Tahmasb Khamsa, especially fol. 202v,  Bahrdm Gfir exhibiting his hunting prowess, painted  by Mirza cAli's father.72 Furthermore, the margin  rulings of the painting follow the unique pattern and  sequence of the Khamsa: (from inside outwards)  gold, black, natural paper, red, natural paper, green,  thick gold, two thin black lines, natural and dark  blue (P1. XVIIb).73 It was intended for the Khamsa  yet it was integrated in the first section of the  Gulshan album no later than 1610.74 The question,  then, is how did such an important painting end up  in Mughal hands? Most likely its presumed author,  Mirza CAlI, finished it at a time when Tahmasb  became uninterested in painting and took it to  "India" as a present for Humayun (or as proof of his 

prowess). The only other transfer scenario within  the seventy-year time span-from the production of  the Khamsa to the assembly of the Gulshan album is a gift from Shah CAbbas I (r. 1588-1629) to  Jahangir. However, it is highly improbable that Shah  CAbbas would have sent a single page, and not a com plete manuscript, as a gift to the Mughal Emperor.75 

Moreover, the first major Persian embassy sent by

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 55 

 

Shah cAbbas reached the Mughal court in 1611; by  then, the first section of the album was probably  closed and any gift-page from it would have been  incorporated in the second section. 

In the light of this discovery, we may reconsider  the previously accepted notion that other dispersed  pages of the Shah Tahmasb Khamsa were removed  c. 1675 when the painter Muhammad Zaman insert ed some new pages and retouched the faces on some  existing pages. Since all the previously known paint ings that were removed from that manuscript are  attributable to Mirza- Sayyid cAli,76 we may assume  that these, too, were taken by their author to the  Mughal court.77 

Also, the dating of another painting attributed to  Mirza cAli, Princely lovers (AHT, no. 65; P1. XVIIc)  should perhaps be revised from c. 1544 to c. 1550.78  It was previously argued that the painting hinted at a  love affair between Humayin's trusted companion 

Bayram Khan and Tahmasb's sister Princess  Sult anum.79 But considering that Tahmasb had  betrothed his sister to the (disappeared) Shicite  Twelfth Imam, and taking into account his violent  reaction towards possible suitors,80 it now seems  more likely that Mirza CAli painted the Princely lovers 

on his way to the Mughal court with the intention of  offering it to Bayram Khan, the second most power ful man of the Mughal empire. 

The Mashhad library-atelier and stylistic expectations for  Farrukh Beyg 

Generally hailed as one of the great schools of  Persian painting, the vigorous and eccentric  Mashhad style that emanated from the library-atelier  of Sultan-Ibrahim Mirza, is as much a reflection of  the taste of a refined patron as the genius of its two  leading artists, Mirza CAli and Shaykh Muhammad,  who, after exploring distant horizons, injected new  blood into the veins of the stagnating Safavid style of  painting.81 The Mashhad style of Mirza cAll and  Shaykh Muhammad inevitably influenced the next  generation of painters, the most talented of which  were undoubtedly Muhammadi and Farrukh Beyg.  Since both artists ended up in library-ateliers of rivals  of the Safavids, no individual entry was devoted to  them in Safavid sources. Any reference to their  works was accidental or en passant.82 In an entry on  the painter of Georgian origin, Siyavush, Iskandar  Beyg mentioned that he "was the pupil of Ustad cAli  (i.e. Mirza cAli),83 and under the reign of the Nawab  with the Dignity of Alexander (i.e. Shah Muhammad  Khodabanda), he (Siyavush) and his brother  Farrukh Beyg were among the trusted companions  (muctamidadn) of the young and fortunate prince  Hamza Mirza; and under the reign of his Exalted  Majesty (i.e. Shah CAbbas I), he served His Majesty 

for quite a while and lost his life while in the retinue  of his Holiness (i.e. Shah cAbbas I)."'84 

Even though the Mughal and Deccani works of  Farrukh Beyg have been extensively analysed in  recent studies, no attempt-apart from an ink draw ing (Musee Guimet, Paris; P1. XVIIIa) and a manu script (King's College Library, Cambridge, K11, see  P1. XVIIIb) with five miniatures bearing attributions  to him-has been made to discover pre-Mughal  works of the artist.85 As for the written attributions  on the Safavid works, they have remained controver sial since the connection to later paintings of  Farrukh Beyg is not easily recognisable.86 

In an attempt to identify other Safavid paintings  of Farrukh Beyg, and prior to a stylistic analysis of his  works, we may already make certain assumptions  based on the information provided by Iskandar  Beyg, and test their validity as we proceed forward:  (a) since Siyavush was taught by Mirza cAli, works of  his brother Farrukh Beyg are likely to show the influ ence of Mirza cAli; (b) equally likely is the influence  of Shaykh Muhammad; and (c) since Farrukh Beyg  was a contemporary of Muhammadi,87 some of his  works may evoke Muhammadi's style. 

Testing our assumptions against the above-men tioned attributed works, we can readily see that the  Cambridge set is very much in the style of  Muhammadi88 and that the Paris drawing is yet  another replica of the yoked Uzbek prisoner, origi nated by Shaykh Muhammad. Following the portrai ture style of Shaykh Muhammad, the artist has drawn  here an elaborate three-quarter portrait with a flat  nose.89 

An interesting aspect of the work is the Mughal  inscription that identifies the yoked prisoner as  Bayram Oghlan, the Uzbek ruler of Gharjistan who  surrendered in the year 1551 to the Safavid governor  of Herat.90 This was a relatively minor incident  unlikely to be well known at the Mughal court half a  century later, and the identity of the prisoner was  therefore most probably provided by the author  himself. We may then surmise that, similar to the  Khamsa page by Mirza CAli, and perhaps to those by  Mirza Sayyid cAli, these Safavid period works were  brought to India by Farrukh Beyg as samples of his  work and/or as exchange goods to allow him a fresh  start there.91 

Although stylistically different form his later  paintings, each of these early works includes charac teristics that remain with Farrukh Beyg until the very  end of his career: (a) the Cambridge painting has a  very high and vertical background which surrounds  the painted figure and makes it the focal point of the  composition; (b) the portrait of the yoked prisoner  is highly elaborate; and (c) his left sleeve is partially  turned inside out and displays its inner lining  (P1. XVIIIa). More generally, Farrukh Beyg frequent-ly tries to show the lining, or the reverse side, of a  skirt or a sash blowing in the wind. This is a direct  influence of Mirza cAli, most noticeable in the sleeve  and the robe of Absal in Saldmdn and Absdl repose on  the happy isle (see P1. XXc). However, as we shall see,  Farrukh Beyg's sashes and rippled robes tend to be  starchy and stiff and less fluid than the elegant  curves created by Mirzt cAli.W 

These are too few characteristics to establish a  precise stylistic profile for the works of Farrukh Beyg.  To do so, we need to start with later paintings and  work our way back to some of his earlier master pieces. 

Tracing back Farrukh Beyg's works 

We shall begin with two almost identical paintings  of a Deccani youth holding a narcissus. The first is a  painting from the Gulshan album (GPL no. 1663,  fol. 86) that reportedly bears an inscription "has  drawn it (rdqimuhu) Farrukh Beyg at the age of seven

ty"; it may be a reliable attribution, even though the  second part of the legend, "at the age of seventy,"  appears on so many paintings attributed to this artist  that it is a priori suspect (P1. XXIa).92 The second is a  close duplicate from the Binney Collection (San  Diego Museum of Art, 1990:0318) and bears an attri bution to Farrukh Beyg (P1. XXIb).93 The following  characteristics can immediately be detected: (a) as in  the Cambridge paintings, both have a very high verti cal background but with an added distinction: they  are horizontally stratified with parallel rows of green  tufts; (b) two dominant colour schemes are used,  one is the "pink family" with hues that range from  pinkish red to violet, and the other is the "green fam ily" that encompasses many shades of green, from  light to dark; and (c) a geometric pattern is favoured  for the design of the sashes that comprise a multi tude of juxtaposed zigzag lines creating a string of  diamond motifs in between. 

A recently discovered minute inscription (see  Appendix) on Ibrdhfm cAdil Shdh hawking (Institute  of Oriental Studies St. Petersburg, ms. E. 14, fol. 2)  attributes this magnificent painting to Farrukh Beyg  and firmly establishes him as a Deccani court painter  (P1. XVIIIc).94 The painting is dominated by a com bination of the previously-mentioned green and  pink scheme of colours, and the sash is drawn with  Farrukh Beyg's usual geometric pattern. Two other  characteristics can be noticed: (a) the horse is drawn  with a heavy upper body, rounded hindquarters  smoothly ending in a reverse concave curve above  the back knee, and extra-large kidney-shaped nos trils that in some other painting would look as if they  were stuck on the horse's nose; and (b) rainbow  coloured peonies adorn the gold saddle cloth. 

John Seyller and Ellen Smart, who discovered the 

above inscription, also attribute two paintings from  the Gulshan album (AHT, nos. 128b and c) to  Farrukh Beyg (Pls. XVIIId and XIX) which come  from a dispersed Zafar-ndma.95 The attributions are  based on certain similarities between these two and  Farrukh Beyg's paintings from the c. 1586 Akbar ndma pages (VAM, I.S. 2-1896), the most important  of which are "the doleful bearded figures in gray  holding the standard and riding beside the parasol  bearer. "96 

As in the two Deccani paintings, these two Zafar nama pages are dominated by the green and pink  families of colours. Both have high vertical back grounds with a mounted Timfir (r. 1370-1405) as  their focal point. The horses have the large kidney shaped nostrils. Similar to the saddle cloth in the St.  Petersburg painting, the one in P1. XIX is in gold  with rainbow-coloured peonies, and Timiur's  armour has the same geometric pattern as Farrukh  Beyg's Deccani sashes. The sleeve of the foot-soldier  beneath Timuir is turned inside-out (Pl. XIX). The  three-quarter elaborate portraits of Timuir and  some other warriors are reminiscent of Shaykh  Muhammad's style of portraiture. More  generally,(a) we recognise Farrukh Beyg's tendency  to striate white beards (and yak-tails hanging from  the horses' necks) with black, or red, lines or vice versa; and (b) horse-covers, parasols and awnings  have an indigo blue section covered with gold floral  motifs.97 

Based on the above, the Horse and a groom drawing  from the Musee Guimet98 can now be attributed to  Farrukh Beyg (P1. XXa). The horse is typical, with  large nostrils, strong upper body and rounded  hindquarters; and the belt of the horse-cover dis plays Farrukh Beyg's favourite geometric pattern.  The left sleeve of the groom is turned inside-out  to show its inner lining and the back side of the  groom's frozen-looking sash can be detected  between the ripples. These similarities notwith standing, the most important element, and usually  easiest to identify, in stylistic attributions is facial sim ilarity. Here, the groom's face is similar to the face of  the prince in Youth with a wine-cup and a falcon (GPL,  no.1663, fol. 47)99 and the face of the Khan in Mir  Mucizz al-Mulk and Bahaddur Khdn meet in 1567  (P1. XXb),100 a type that is described by Seyller as  "oval-shaped, squinty eyes, and thin dark eyebrows" 

and with a drooping moustache.101 

Farrukh Beyg's Haft awrang paintings 

It would have been rather odd if Farrukh Beyg  arrived at the Akbar's court in 1585, a mature  painter at the age of forty,102 ready to tackle major  projects such as the above-mentioned Zafar-ndma or  the c. 1586 Akbar-ndma, without prior accomplish-

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 57 

 

ments. He must have had solid credentials. We shall  propose that Farrukh Beyg's major Safavid-period  accomplishment was the painting series for a Haft  awrang copied by the scribe Muhibb cAli between  1570 and 1572 (TKS, H.1483), a lavish manuscript  that rivals in many ways the Sultan-Ibrahim Mirza Haft awrang of 1556-65. All but one of the minia tures (twenty-five text illustrations, one frontispiece  and four colophon finispieces in total) of the manu script are attributable to Farrukh Beyg. The one  exception, fol. 109a, is as we shall see attributable to  Muhammad-i. 

The twenty-nine paintings attributable to Farrukh  Beyg are so strikingly different from other contem porary works that they can be immediately recog nised as a homogeneous group and the work of one  artist.103 We shall therefore limit the justification for  our attributions to a few examples. 

Fol. 55a, Choosing a vizier (P1. XXIIIa), and fol.  77a, Majnun's father requesting Layli 's hand in marriage  for his son (P1. XXIIIc), have each the characteristic  high vertical background with the horizontal stratifi cation. The dominant colour scheme for the first  painting is the pink family and for the second one  the green family.104 Elongated faces noticed by  Seyller105 and visible in P1. XXb appear in both, and  a number of the faces are depicted with striated  black and white beards. Another painting, fol. 86,  Layli and Majnuin meet at the Kacba (P1. XXIIIb), has  the same high vertical background but is devoid of  the stratification with green tufts, since the scene  takes place in the desert near the Kacba. Instead, the  ground is covered with pebbles thrown by the pil grims during the hajj ceremonies; the colour scheme  is nonetheless of the pink family.106 Men with elong ated faces appear in the top right, and striated black  and white beards appear on the left side of the paint ing. Besides the intensity of colours, what is most strik ing about these illustrations is the elaborate, individ ualised portraiture that often exaggerates facial fea tures. It is the continuation of a trend set by Mirza CAlI and Shaykh Muhammad. By the mid-1560s,  Mirza cAli's portraits have elongated cone-shaped  necks and bulging eyes (P1. XVIId),107 and Shaykh  Muhammad portraits get increasingly eccentric.108 

Farrukh Beyg not only created elongated faces but  also further individualised his characters by playing  with the position of their chin. Thus in the Mughal  period he often opted for a small, depressed and  vanishing chin (P1. XXIVa), whereas in the Safavid  period he was bent on producing protruded jaws  with forward chins (P1. XXIVb). 

Finally, the double-page frontispiece with a Mirza  cAlI-inspired composition (Pls. XXVa-b) has facial  types very similar to the previous ones and horses  that are drawn with the previously-observed charac

teristics. Noteworthy is the special shape of cloud  bands, which as a repeat pattern usually represents a  distinctive signature-like motif for each individual  artist. The colour scheme of the left cloud bands,  which differs from the more conventional one on  the right, juxtaposes black against white and beige,  similar to Farrukh Beyg's striation of beards and yak tails. While the colour scheme is different on the two  sides, they have a common motif in the fibulae shaped spirals at the centre of cloud formations.  This fibulae-shaped motif not only appears in other  illustrations of this manuscript (see for instance  P1. XXII), but resurfaces in a Deccani-period paint ing of Farrukh Beyg as gold embroidery on the robe  of Youth in a Garden (P1. XXVd).109 

Farrukh Beyg's Safavid-period works 

At this stage of our inquiry, four other paintings  are attributable to Farrukh Beyg. The first is an ex Rothschild painting depicting two seated learned  men (P1. XXVIa),"l one of them with a typical heavy  protruding jaw (P1. XXVIIa). As one can see, the  inner lining of the robes of both men is visible  through the bottom ripples. 

Next is the Sheperd with a goat (P1. XXVId) whose  facial characteristics, including the drooping nose  and almond shaped eyes-with the upper and lower  contour lines joined at the two ends-are very simi lar to those of the Two learned men (P1. XXVIIa,  b, c).111 Also noticeable are the sawed-off tree  trunks and branches which reappear in a painting  (FGA, 46.12 fol. 64b) that Farrukh Beyg con tributed-perhaps at a date later than the 1556-65  calligraphy period-to the Freer Haft awrang: 

Bandits attack the caravan of cAynia and Riyd  (P1. XXVIc).112 It was previously attributed to  Shaykh Muhammad by S. C. Welch but a close look  reveals that it is much different in composition as  well as details (e.g. grass tufts and faces) than the  rest of illustrations attributed to the same artist  (fols. 114b, 132a, 253a, 264a, 298a and 120a which is  actually signed).113 On the other hand it displays  many Farrukh Beyg characteristics: almond-shaped  eyes, high background with stratified turf lines,  zigzag pattern on a saddle-belt, and a multitude of  armoured horses as in the Zafarnama pages. The  peculiar shape of turbans with a prominent diago nal fold and a flat drooping tail is a constant feature  and an important characteristic (P1. XXVIIa, b, c,  d, e and f). The black Scythian-like cap worn by  Khurasami peasants is another Farrukh Beyg  favourite (e.g. P1. XXIIIc). 

The fourth is a page of yet another Jami manu script (AHT, no. 72). Many of the previously-defined  characteristics are visible (P1. XXVIIb): elongated  faces with striated beards, youths with red cheeks resembling those in P1. XXVIIf, an indigo blue  awning with gold motifs, and a geometric pattern of  bricks that produces an horizontal string of diamond  shapes. It is probably the earliest of the group that  we have just attributed to Farrukh Beyg.114 

Muhammadf and the dating of Farrukh Beyg's Haft  awrang paintings 

Stylistically, the above mentioned four paintings  should be dated c. 1570-80. Such a dating necessi tates a reconsideration of the dating of the Topkapi  Haft awrang paintin s as being contemporary with  the text (1570-72)115 because they all seem to be  posterior to the above four paintings. Also, if the  illustrations of the Topkapi Haft awrang were con temporary with the text, we would still be left with a  dilemma similar to the one which we evoked at the  beginning of the previous section: what happened to  Farrukh Beyg between 1572 and 1585, and why did  he not produce other masterpieces at the Safavid  court? The answer is that the painting series of this  manuscript was Farrukh Beyg's last Safavid project  and was executed c. 1580-83. 

A first observation is that colophon pages are illus trated in this manuscript; a fact that usually points to  a post-calligraphy attempt to use the maximum avail able space for decoration purposes by a painter who  does not have access to the initial production team  of the manuscript and cannot request a new arrange ment of the text with more space devoted to illustra tion. Also, in comparing two of these pages, we can  see that in P1. XXVIIIb there are six illuminated car touches plus the illustration at the bottom, while in  P1. XXVIIIa the cartouches are filled with tiny paint ings. It suggests that, in the first production phase of  the manuscript, the calligraphy of the manuscript  was terminated and the illumination was halfway  through. Most probably, no illustration had been  added because in the regular course of manuscript  decoration, painting came last. The cartouches of P1.  XXVIIIa were probably left empty and were painted  later on by Farrukh Beyg. Choosing a vizier (P1.  XXIIIa), seems to confirm this: the section-heading  space in the middle of the page is still devoid of illu mination. Left with a previously-designed page with  an empty section reserved for painting and little  room to manoeuvre, Farrukh Beyg used in a major  tour de force every bit of space, including the inter columnar one, in order to squeeze in a maximum  number of his elaborate portraits. To avoid a visual  clash between the central cartouche and surround ing painting, Farrukh Beyg left it unfilled. The fact  that it remained empty suggests that perhaps the  renewed project lacked an accomplished illuminator  and that Farrukh Beyg was single-handedly refur bishing the manuscript. 

Because his style is so different and no dated land marks exist for comparison purposes, the dating of  Farrukh Beyg's Haft awrang series is difficult.  Fortunately, the single painting that is not by him,  The Prophet Moses bearing a stray sheep on his shoulders 

(P1. XXVIIIc), allows a fairly accurate dating of that  body of work. The similarity of Moses' faces in this  page with Moses debating with a heterodox person  (P1. XXVIIId) from another Jami manuscript (State  Public Library, Dorn 429, fol. 37)116 is striking and is  proof that both were painted by the same hand.  However, what is of use here is not the similarity but  the contrast between the two paintings. The land

scape of P1. XXVIIId is in the conventional style of  the 1570s, while the edges of the rock formations in  P1. XXVIIIc are filled with white patches that are  characteristic of the 1580s. 

Both of these paintings will be discussed and  attributed to Muhammadi in a forthcoming article  by the present author that will focus on the artist's  painting activity rather than on his famous ink draw ings."7 Interestingly, P1. XXVIIIc has also much in  common with another painting attributed to  Muhammadi, Throwing down the impostor, which  belongs to a Sifadt al-cashiqin manuscript (AHT  no. 90) copied in 1582.118 The most visible similarity  resides in the treatment of the leopard skin in the  two paintings (see Pls. XXIXa,b). Each artist devel ops his own peculiar style of small, repetitive details  such as leopard spots. Here, the spots are identical in  both paintings; they are mostly painted as clusters  of five loose dots in a regular pentagon formation.  Other Muhammadi favourites are the emerging  necks of what are supposed to be mountain goats"9  from the rock formations under the leopards in both  paintings, and the depiction of white spotted domes ticated goats. Muhammadi's single painting thus  allows a 1580s dating for the series. 

Based on the above observations, we now have a  preliminary framing of Farrukh Beyg's Haft awrang  paintings: they must have been created in the 1580s  but no later than 1585, the year of his departure for  India. 

The patron of the Haft awrang paintings 

As suggested elsewhere, the Sifdt al-cashiqin manu script was made by the order of the vizier Mirza  Salman as a present for Hamza Mirza (1566-86), the  elder brother of the future Shah CAbbas I, son of  Shah Muhammad Khidfabanda.120 Since the latter  was almost blind, nominal power revolved around  the heir apparent Hamza Mirza. But effective power  resided with Mirza Salman, who not only controlled  the administration but had also gained the upper  hand over the Qizilbash amirs after leading them in  two successful campaigns. To strengthen his posi-

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 59 

 

tion, Mirza Salman arranged the marriage of his  daughter Safiyya Khanum to Hamza Mirza in April  1582.121 She was ten and he was sixteen. The fron tispiece of the TKS Haft awrang manuscript  (P1. XXVa-b) may thus illustrate the marriage cere mony that Mirza Salman had lavishly organised in  his home.122 As in the Sifdt al-cdshiqzn frontispiece,  where the vizier is depicted with a long staff in his  hand (P1. XXIXc),123 Mirza Salman appears here on  the bottom right of the presumed marriage scene  with exactly the same clothes. The dignitary with a  staff on the opposite corner may be the vizier's son  Mirza cAbdallah, whom Mirza Salman had appoint ed vizier to Hamza Mirza.124 

In full circle, we are back to Hamza Mirza and  Iskandar Beyg's remark that Farrukh Beyg was in his  retinue. The illustrations added to the unfinished  TKS Haft awrang were probably all painted for the  young crown prince, whose early career heralded  the appearance of a valiant and refined ruler for the  future of the Safavid state. 

3. THE THIRD WAVE 

Farrukh Beyg's departure 

Mirza Salman was killed by the Qizilbash amirs on  13 June 1583.125 Hamza Mirza was in turn killed on  10 December 1586 by a disgruntled lover.126 The  exact date of Farrukh Beyg's departure is not known,  but according to the Akbar-ndma, after the death of 

not the only one to go. Another painter, Agha Rita  Haravi, seems to have departed at the same time and  perhaps for the same reasons. Both gained fame and  fortune in India as their works were prized by succes sive Indian rulers, especially Jahangir, who collected  a number of their paintings for his Gulshan album. 

CONCLUSION 

Like the previous migratory waves, the third wave  came as a result of the loss of effective patronage on  one side and active patronage on the other. But  unlike the first wave which included artists such as  Mir Sayyid CAli who remained entrenched in his  Persian mode of painting, the third wave artists had  been trained by the second wave painters, who better  prepared them for the Mughal taste and modes of  painting. The flourishing of Farrukh Beyg's style in  India may ultimately be traced to the style which he  inherited from the two returning artists, namely  Mirza cAli and Shaykh Muhammad, and to the ate lier of prince IHamza Mirza who emerges in this  study as a worthy successor to his more famous  cousin Sultan-Ibrahim Mirza. 

APPENDIX 

Farrukh-Hlusayn vs. Farrukh Beyg 

John Seyller has read 

the inscription on the 

St. Petersburg painting 

 

Akbar's half-brother, 

Farrukh 

 

Beyg left Kabul for India in December 1585. An 

Muhammad-HI.akim, 

inscription on a portrait of Mirzi-HIakim accompa nied by one IIajji Yaqfit bears the signature of 

of Ibrdhim cAdil Shdh II  hawking as camal-i Farrukh  Beyg ast (it is the work 

 

Farrukh 

alias Farrukh Beyg (see Appendix), 

of Farrukh Beyg).127 The 

 

and situates him in Kabul in the year 992/1584. He 

H.usayn, 

must have left Safavid territory earlier, perhaps in  late 1583. 

What caused Farrukh Beyg's departure was not so  much the premature death of IHamza Mirza but  probably the death of the vizier. By dominating the  military institution and the administration, marrying  his daughter to the prince and appointing his son as  Hamza Mirza's vizier, Mirza Salman gained control  over the prince's activities and probably over the  royal library-atelier and its artists. Farrukh Beyg was  thus inevitably linked to the vizier. 

The Qizilbash amirs' reaction to Mirza Salman's  dominance was violent and vengeful. They killed  him, confiscated his entire family's wealth and even  forced Hamza Mirza to divorce Mirza Salman's  daughter. In such circumstances, and because of his  links with Mirza Salman, Farrukh Beyg must have  felt threatened. He thus migrated to the Mughal  court where artists where in high demand. He was 

inscription though, has 

neither Camal nor ast 

(see right figure). The 

reading of ast was proba

bly suggested by the 

existence of two dots over the final gdf of Beyg. In  reality, the three letters of ast are non-existent and  the two dots belong to the fd' and kh&' of Farrukh.  As for what was read as Camal, it looks like the two  end letters yd' and nun of words such as kamtarin  ("the lowliest"), or Husayn. However, kamtarzn is an  epithet used by artists in their signature, and its pres ence in the same legend with the epithet Beyg cre ates a contradiction in terms; the first is a sign of  humility and the second is an honorific epithet  equivalent to Monsieur. A painting that seems to  bear Farrukh Beyg's signature is the previously mentioned Youth with a wine-cup and a falcon (GPL,  no. 1663, fol. 47).128 The visible portion of the signa ture reads Camal-i kamtarin Farrukh ("the work of the lowliest servant Farrukh"). One additional letter, a  mzm, appears before the margin cut-off. It is proba bly the beginning letter of musavvir ("the painter"),  an epithet that many painters included in their sig nature. Thus Beyg was not included in what appears  to be a genuine signature of the artist. 

A second possibility is that the two letters in the St.  Petersburg inscription are the end letters of Husayn,  in a formula such as camal-i ibn-i Husayn, Farrukh Beyg  ("the work of Farrukh Beyg son of Husayn"). Based  on the writings of the Deccani poet Zuhiiri, who had  eulogised an artist by the name of Farrukh Husayn in  his writings, Robert Skelton had boldly suggested in  a controversial article that Farrukh Beyg had worked  in the Deccan and was none other than Farrukh  Husayn, since both were first-class artists and both  were trained in Safavid Iran.129 Skelton has further  speculated that the Mawlana Darvish Husayn-at 

whose house Zuhfiri briefly stayed while visiting  Shiraz-was perhaps Farrukh Beyg's father. Darvish  was a learned man who had taught calli graphy and painting to many Shirazi artists, and 

H.usayn 

Zuhtiri's stay at Darvish IHusayn's house may not  have been fortuitous but perhaps the result of a  prior relationship between the poet and Farrukh  Beyg when both were in Khurasan.130 

Skelton's imaginative speculations may find sup port in the following considerations. First, Farrukh  Beyg's Shirazi connection is not far-fetched. In an  entry on the Georgian Siyavush who was Farrukh  Beyg's brother, QaZi Ahmad wrote that he joined  "his kinsmen in Shiraz.";131 Their presumed father  was thus likely to have resided in that city. But how a  Georgian who was initially Tahmasb's slave could 

Farrukh IHusayn is an odd name that only appears in  certain Sufi-related milieus in which the names of  the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams were used  with epithets such as Sultan, Shah, etc. and especial ly when Husayn appeared in the name of the father.  Such is the case of Sultan-HIusayn Bayqara's sons,  who were named Farrukh Husayn, Muzaffar Husayn,  Ibrahim Husayn and even Ibn-i Husayn. Skelton's  speculation that Farrukh Beyg/Farrukh HIusayn's 

real or adoptive father was named Darvish Husayn is  not only possible but perhaps insightful. 

ADDENDUM 

The belated arrival of Gulshan album slides from  Tehran134 has brought added confirmation to some  of the arguments advanced in our main text and pro vides information about inscribed attributions:  (1) The tinted drawing with the lengthy inscrip tion by Farrukh Husayn (P1. XXX) that we referred  to in our appendix without the benefit of seeing an  illustration of it, confirms many of our assumptions.  First, it clearly incorporates many of Farrukh Beyg's  characteristics: elaborate portraiture, refined drafts manship as in Horse and a groom, geometric patterns  on the sashes and turbans, and the hanging willow  branches featured in the Zafar-ndma and Akbar-nama 

pages. Second, this tinted drawing, which is in a style  usually associated with Muhammadi, further empha sises the parallel stylistic development of the two  artists. 

(2) As with Muhammadi, Farrukh Beyg (alias  Farrukh Husayn) has an elegant nastacliq hand writing that will serve in future studies to differenti ate between his authentic signatures and mere attri butions. 

 

become a learned man named Darvish 

H. usayn and 

 

father to Farrukh Beyg is still unresolved, unless one  assumes that the two brothers were captured in a  Georgian campaign, were orphans, and Darvish  Husayn became Farrukh Beyg's teacher and perhaps  adoptive father. Second, two pages from the  Gulshan album (GPL, no. 1663, fols. 199 and 234)  bear a signature of Farrukh Husayn.1'32 Since neither  have been reproduced, stylistic comparison with  works by Farrukh Beyg is not possible. However, a  signature-legend on folio 199 reportedly reads "has  drawn it the sinful Farrukh HIIusayn the painter" and  an inscription on the top says: "the portraits of the  prince of the world and its inhabitants, Muhammad 

Mirza, and his close confidant the one who  has performed the hajj at the Two Holy Places, Hajji 

H.akim 

Yaqfit; was drawn at the Shahr-ara Garden of Kabul  in the year 992 [1584]."133 These two legends in con junction with the Akbar-nama's information that  Farrukh Beyg left Kabul for Akbar's court in  December 1585 upon the death of Mirza  Muhammad Hakim, make Farrukh Beyg and  Farrukh Husayn one and the same person. Finally, 

(3) Some paintings by Farrukh Beyg bear an  attribution written in a dot-less and awkward hand writing that is very similar to Jahangir's (a specimen  of his handwriting is visible on the right side of the  colophon on P1. XVa). Without relying on a thor ough analysis of calligraphic similarities, one can see  that the location of the attributing sentences-usual

ly prominently written on the painting itself-desig nates Jahangir as a possible candidate. For only an  owner, librarian or artist with access to the library,  and with pretence of connoisseurship-very much  professed byJahangir-would dare to add such graf fiti to masterpieces of the royal treasury. However,  without a correct assessment of their date and time,  one should not discard other possibilities, such as  inscriptions added by later princes (e.g. ShahJahan)  imitating Jahangir's attribution formula. Fortun ately, the location of the attribution that appears at  the bottom of P1. XXIb provides a better clue of  authorship since it is located outside the painting

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 61 

 

frame and is set within the illuminated margins. It  was certainly on the painting page prior to its incor poration into the album. The fact that such poor cal ligraphy was not trimmed away but laboriously fitted  into the marginal decoration leads to the conclusion  that it was penned byJahangir himself. 

Abbreviations for museum and art institution names  AHT = Art and History Trust Collection, courtesy  of Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington D.C. 

AMSG = Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington D.C. 

BL = British Library, London 

FGA = Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington D.C. 

GPL = Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran  MG = Musee Guimet 

TKS = Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul  VAM = Victoria and Albert Museum, London 

* I am indebted to Sheila Canby who allowed me to present  this paper at the British Museum on 25 March 1998 and sug gested its publication in Iran and to John Seyller who, by  sending me a copy of his article on Farrukh Beyg, prompted  my research on earlier works of this artist and the compila tion of this paper. I am also indebted to Marianna Shreve  Simpson, who made available to me her own set of slides  while I was waiting for a set that I had requested from the  Topkapi Saray Museum. 

1 Hamida Banui was a descendant of the celebrated Shaykh  Ahmad ofJ am (1049-1141); Riazul Islam (1970), p. 29.  2 Soudavar (1992), pp. 134-75. 

3 There are two notations by Mughal librarians on this  colophon page which refer to Hamida Banui as Maryam  Makani ("the one with the dignity of Mary"), and one  inscription on the first page by Emperor Jahangir-who  refers to her as mddar-i kaldn (grandmother); ibid., p. 101.  The earliest inscription is written in a beautiful Persian-style  nastacliq with a seal that reads "Ghiyath al-Din the follower of  Akbar Shah 996/1587," perhaps the handwriting of Ghiyath  Beyg of Tehran later known as Ictimad al-Dawla. Another  Timurid manuscript, the Khamsa of Mir cAlJ-Shir copied by  Sultan-CAll Mashhadi in 1492 (Royal Library, Windsor, RCIN  1005032), that bears the signs of a passage through Bukhara,  was acquired by IHamida Banui after the death of her hus band; Seyller (1997), p. 295. The manuscript has two seal  marks that read: 

When one's seal bears the sign of love *(IHamida Banfi  Beygom)* His (her) stamp shall become a reflection of good  fortune. 

The seal marks are reportedly dated 968/1560 although not  visible in the reproduction (ibid., fig. 6). Another manuscript  that once belonged to Hamida Banti is a copy of Ramdydana  (private collection), copied by the Persian expatriate CAbdal Rashid-i Daylami in 1594, the nephew of the celebrated Mir  CImad; ibid., p. 304. Finally, a manuscript of Adhkar-i Imam  Nawa'i at the National Museum of Pakistan bears a seal  imprint that reads: Hamida Banti b. cAli-akbar (see Hamidi  (1974), p. 91). It has been suggested that the formula used  on the seal indicates that she was using the manuscript even  prior to her marriage to Humayuin; ibid, p. 97. 

4 An inscription by Muncim Beyg, who received the manu script from Akbar in 1567, notes that the manuscript had  only five illustrations then; Soudavar (1992), pp. 332-38.  5 Ibid., pp. 178-79. 

6 For reproductions of some of the original margins of the  Khamsa, see Welch (1979), pp. 137, 144, 145. 

7 A previous dating to the 1530s is hereby corrected; Soudavar  (1992), pp. 178-79. 

8 It was in Akbar's library up to the year 1567; ibid., p. 332.  9 Despite a reference by Mirza Haydar Dyghlat that the master  painter Mansfir was working in the library-atelier of Sultan  Abui Sacid, no illustrated manuscript from Abfi Sacid's  library and attributable to him has survived; the 1468  Gulistdn may have originally included some works by him;  ibid. p. 122. 

10 It is unusual to have highly elaborate margins added to an  older manuscript. It is also significant that these margins  are even more intricate than the original illuminated mar gins of the prestigious and exquisite Shah Tahmasb  Khamsa of the British Library. The only comparable mar gins-albeit not as colourful-are from a sixteenth-century  manuscript, the text area of which was replaced by page  sections from a seventeenth-century Gulistdn copied by the  celebrated calligrapher Mir cImad; see Sotheby's sale of 12  October 1990, lot 255. Some of these margins have been  attributed to Sultan-Muhammad, see Welch (1979), nos.  45-46, and Soudavar (1992), p. 267. However, it is not  clear whether they constituted integral parts of an original  manuscript or were conceived as decorative margins for  the embellishment of an older manuscript and then  reused to enhance the presentation of the Mir's calli graphy. 

11 The idea of impressing the Mughals with dazzling margins  must have developed gradually, for the illumination on the  first page is rather conventional and the shift to the highly  elaborate green and gold style occurs only from the second  page onwards, see Soudavar (1992), p. 179, where a detail of  the first page illumination is reproduced. 12 Welch (1985), p. 242. 

13 For most pages with painting, the stains hardly reach the  painted area, see Soudavar (1992), pp. 332-33. 

14 This means that one of the paintings was added to a space  that was originally left blank; perhaps Sacdi in the rose gar den (fol. 6v), on the reverse of which the reflection of oxi dising paint duplicates the Mughal painting without hint ing at the prior existence of a Timurid one, ibid. p. 333,  335. 

15 Ibid., pp. 335-38 

16 The Mughals were descendants of Timur and therefore  Timurids as well. 

17 Both of these manuscripts display unfinished areas.  18 Buidaq (1576), p. 1llb. 

19 Bidaq was Bahram's secretary from c. 1536 to 1549; ibid.  pp. 316a-b, and Soudavar (1992), p.258. Bahram Mirza was  one of the official hosts of Humayfin during his sojourn in  Safavid territory, Qumi (1980), vol. I, p. 307. 

20 Buidaq (1576), p. lla: 

21 Mir Mosavvir's fall into disgrace must have been in the mid 1530s, since he did not contribute to the British Library  Khamsa (a signature on the wall of Nushiravan listening to the  owls in the ruined palace (fol. 15v), previously thought as one  from Mir Musavvir, has been attributed by this present  author to Agha Mirak; Soudavar (1992), p. 178). His down-fall may have been due to a close association with Tahmasb's  rebellious brother Saim Mirzai, who was arrested in 1535;  idem (1997), p. 67. 

22 Okada (1989), p. 130, Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I,  p. 189. Both publications accept the attribution to Mir  Sayyid CAli reportedly inscribed below the painting. 

23 Okada refers to Stchoukine and Minorsky's spotty illustra tion and produces an undecipherable text; Okada (1989), p.  132. The letter must be reconfigured by reinserting within  the text important words that are traditionally pulled to the  margin or the top of the document: 

AS .L .u.A,:..L & ..!,5 ? y ;14e 

.491 .4&ya cj. jt13] ab 4? -.l] Ja-i -a rC -'U - 

L4... ? (JL; aI).WI , '.49c .4A.. U . j W & j 14?] 

24 Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I, p. 178. 

25 Ibid. vol. I, p. 119. 

26 The 1,000 ttmadns proposed by Humayun for Mir Musavvir  was quite a hefty compensation. By way of comparison, and  according to the same source, calligraphy pieces (qitra) by  the celebrated Mir CAli fetched 2,000 to 3,000 dindrs while  entire Qur3ans by such renowned calligraphers as Mulla  Kamal (the father of Shaykh Muhammad) were worth 3-4 

tumdns each (1 timdn = 10,000 diznrs); Bidaq (1576),  pp. 109a, 112a. Both were active in the first half of the six teenth century.  27 Such seems to be the case for the painter Dilst Muhammad, 

who had a hard time finding wine in Safavid territory;  Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I, p. 119. 

28 Ibid., p. 45. The present author had previously accepted the  Dickson and Welch proposition; Soudavar (1992), p. 221.  29 Qumi (1980), p. 386. 

30 Soudavar (1997), pp. 53, 75. 

31 The tanbuir is a stringed instrument and the naqqdra is a  double drum. 

32 Navai (1989), pp. 512-13, Bufdaq (1576), p. 306a.  33 Qumi (1980), p. 226. Tahmasb reportedly destroyed 500  tumdns' worth of high-quality opium (tirydq-i fdaiq); Vala-yi  Isfahani (1993), p. 395. 

34 Such was Tahmasb's thirst for money that he kept his seal bearer, Khwaja Amir Beyg-i Muhr-dlar, imprisoned in the  Alamut fortress for thirty-three years on the accusation that  he had "gold" and would not divulge its whereabouts; Qumi  (1980), vol. I, pp. 611-14. For fourteen years prior to  Tahmasb's death, the army had not been paid, even though  the treasury coffers were full. Ismacil II's first act after  ascending the throne was to pay these arrears; Rfimlfi 

(1978), p. 623. 

35 Bidaq (1576), fol. illa. 36 Ghaffari (1953), Qumi (1980), p. 226. In the twenty-two  years' time span stretching from his own repentance to  the Edict of 1556, Tahmasb must have indulged from time  to time into the worldly pleasures that he had banned.  According to Hasan Beyg Rilmlfi, at the wedding of his  son Ismacil in 1556, "Tahmasb danced to the tune of  singers and musicians;" Rfimhi (1978), p. 500. Since  Tahmasb had repented once before, the 1556 Edict of  Sincere Repentance, which addressed the Qizilbash amirs,  was perhaps proclaimed in lieu of a second Tahmasb  repentance. 

37 The theologian Abfi Hamid Muhammad-i Ghazzall consid ered depiction of living things (ssrat-i hayawdn) as forbidden, 

especially those on the walls of public baths, which had to be  removed; Ghazzatli (1983), pp. 407-08. 

38 Tahmasb (1562), fol. 86a,b. Another stipulation of  Tahma-sb's oath was a pledge not to blind Bayazid; Qumi  1980, p. 418. 

39 Bayatni (1966), p. 196; Thackston (1989), p. 343. The same  theory was later on quoted by Qdaii Ahmad in a lengthy  poem; Qumi (1974), p. 129. 

40 Ghaffari (1963), p. 295: 

Despite the fact that Rfimlfi, Qumi and Shirazi usually copy  all the information provided by Ghaffari, none of them  reproduces this poem. 

41 Iskandar Beyg (1971), vol. I, p. 126. It is to be noted that  contrary to some recent assertions (see e.g. Membre (1993),  p. 81), Iskandar Beyg's text clearly states that the prince's  vision deteriorated inexplicably (acf-i bdsira) without refer ence to illness or infection. 

42 I am indebted to Drs. M. Soechting and S. Nader for provid ing me information on macular degeneracy problems and  the hereditary aspects of certain type of this disease. 

43 For the reproduction of other pages from this manuscript,  see e.g. Lowry and Nemazee (1988), pp. 120-29; Falk  (1985), pp. 95-99, Soudavar (1992), p. 188. The famous  Akbarian Hamza-ndma, and Fdl-ndma manuscripts in the TKS  have a large format as well. However, they are all posterior to  the Tahmatsb Fdl-ndma and may well have emulated a genre  instituted by this manuscript. 

44 The painter Muzaffar CAlj added painting and the calligra pher Malik-i Daylami contributed calligraphy panels for  Tahmasb's palace in Qazvin; Iskandar Beyg (1971), p. 174,  Qumi (1974), p. 94. Also to be noted is the fact that, unlike  musicians, painters were not ordered to abandon their  career; they were free to continue their activity outside the  royal library-atelier; Vala-yi Isfahani (1993), p. 467. 

45 Shira-zi (1990), p. 94. The dawlat-khdna mainly related to the  audience halls. It was in a way the seat of government. The  surrounding gardens were necessary to accommodate the  royal encampment for periods that Tahmasb and his retinue  would stay in Qazvin. For a detailed account of the gradual  move of the seat of government to Qazvin, see Dickson and  Welch (1981), vol. I, p. 250, n. 10. 

46 Ghaffari (1963), p. 277. Quail-hunting is highly difficult if  practised with bow and arrow; by emphasizing the type of  hunt which Ismacil undertook, Ghaffari was trying to portray  him as a warrior in full control of his skills and not much  concerned about the outcome of the battle with the  Ottomans. 

47 Ibid., pp. 290 and 307; Qumi (1980), p.428; Tahmasb (1562).  48 Membre (1993), p. 27, who specifies that Tahmasb spent the  whole of October 1539 in fishing; ibid., p. 28. A sentence in  Rfimlfi (1978), p. 383, subsequently copied in Qumi (1980),  p. 294, stating that in the year 1540, Tahmasb went to  Georgia "hunting all the way" (shikdr-kundn), is very suspect  in the light of Membre's descriptions of the Shah's lengthy  fishing expedition the year before, unless it meant that  Tahmasb went "fish hunting;" neither Q~i Ahmad-i Ghaffari  nor CAbdi Beyg-i Shirazi allude to this supposed hunting  trip. 

4 The earliest-and usually the most reliable-source, the  Tarikh-i Jahdn-drd, simply mentions that a jarga hunt was  organised without further detail; Ghaffari (1963), p. 295.  Qumi repeats the same. Hasan-i Riimlfi seems to have  altered the information of the Tdrikh-i Jahdn-drd by only  mentioning Tahmasb's presence at the jarga hunt; Rfimlfi  (1976), p. 400. Iskandar Beyg, who wrote at a later date, gives  a lengthy but improbable account that the honour of inau-

 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 63 

 

gurating the hunt went to Humaiyum, Bahr-am and Sam  Mirza, and that Tahmasb shot only on the second day to  teach the Chaghatayids (i.e. Humayiun's retinue) a lesson in  hunting; Iskandar Beyg (1971), p. 99. On the Mughal side,  the sister of Humafiyn, Gul-badan Beygum, relates that,  according to her brother, Tahmasb and his sister Sultanum  both watched the hunt mounted on a horse side-by-side, with  the reins of Sultanum's horse held by an old man with a  white beard, a position hardly suitable for hunting; Gul badan (1996), p. 114. 

50 The standard-bearer is named as Abu 'l-Qasim Khulafa-yi  Qajar, Ghaffari (1963), p. 295. 

51 Since the album was completed c. 1545, work had to be car ried on over the previous two to three years. According to  Buidaq, the calligrapher Dust Muhammad was the only one  who remained in the royal library-atelier after Tahmasb evict ed all others; Buidaq (1576), fol. tllb. He must have  rejoined Tahmasb's library-atelier after the completion of  the album or after the death of Bahram Mirza. 

52 Simpson (1991), pp. 376-84. 

53 Such is the case of the celebrated calligrapher Mir cImad,  whose signatures are mostly in the form of cImad al-Hasani  and seldom include the redundant "Mir." 

54 See e.g. Welch (1979), pp. 180-81, Dickson and Welch,  vol. I, p. 184, Kevorkian and Sicre (1983), p. 169.  55 Sam Mirza (1925), p. 9. 

56 It is to be noted that, in compliance with scribal conventions,  two important attributes (acld) and (kdmrdnf) that were  pulled out of the text and written on the top of the petition,  have been reincorporated here between parentheses: 

57 An intriguing aspect of the painting is the lack of a Safavid  baton for the prince, which sometimes indicates a non Safavid prince.  58 Dickson and Welch also argue that, since according to the  Gulistdn-i hunar, the calligrapher Shah Mahmuid died in  972/1565 and had spent twenty years in Mashhad, he must  have left the royal Library-atelier c. 1545; Dickson and Welch  (1981), vol. I, p. 178. While their conclusion is correct, it is  based on an erroneous information by Qaii Al1mad; as we  shall see, Shah Mahmild was in Ardabil in 1549 and there fore did not spend all of those twenty years in Mashhad.  59 This may also explain why Mirak was chosen to illuminate  the 1468 Gulistdn manuscript: as the household superinten dent of Tahmasb, he was the only master painter left in the  retinue of the Shah. 

60 Sam Mirza was appointed governor of Ardabil in that same  year of 1549 and remained in that post for twelve years;  Qumi (1980), vol. I, p. 550. 

61 Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I, pp. 138-39; for a colour  reproduction, see Loukonin and Ivanov (1996), p. 182.  62 Sam Mirza had rebelled twice before and was placed in  house arrest the second time; Soudavar (1997), pp. 52-67,  Dickson (1958), pp. 285-95. 

63 See above, n. 21. Possibly for this very reason, Mirza CAlj pre ferred not to join the prince in Ardabil and sent his work for  later insertion in the manuscript. Indeed, the double-page  frontispiece has been pasted into the manuscript, a sign that  the painter was not located at the production site; Lukonin  and Ivanov (1996) p. 183. 

64 Qumi (1980), vol. I, p. 550. With no revenue, Sam Mirza was  a lesser threat since he could neither buy influence nor raise  and maintain a private army. 

65 Ibid., vol. I, p. 378. The death of Bahram Mirza was also  caused by excess in wine and opium. 

66 It is noteworthy that Qaii Ahmad, who systematically plagia rised Buidaq's text for his Gulistan-i hunar, omitted references  to the Safavid artist's temporary sojourns in "India";  Qumi(1974), pp. 137-42. 

67 Budaq (1576), fol. 113b. 

68 Ibid., fol. 112b. 

69 The Javdhir al-akhbdr seems to have been initially prepared  for Tahmasb, but Bfdaq, who repeatedly complained about  the Shah's lack of interest in his work (perhaps he was  unable to read it), managed to present his manuscript to  Ismacil II in 1576, four months after Tahmasb's death;  Soudavar (1992), p. 200. The section on the artists of the  royal Safavid library-atelier is oddly inserted in the middle of  the history of the cAbbasid caliphs, where he refers to  Princess Sultanum, who died in 1562, as still living; Bfidaq  (1576), fol. illb. 

70 Lowry et al. (1988), pp. 148-49; the folio number of the last  painting is erroneously written as 130a in the aforemen tioned catalogue. Fol. 66a of this manuscript had been previ ously attributed to Mirza CAll by this author; Soudavar  (1992), p. 201. 

71 This painting, along with a detail, has been reproduced in  Tehran as a New Year's greeting card. I am indebted to Mr.  Massoud Nader for sending me this beautiful and interesting  card. 

72 See e.g. Welch (1979), p. 173. 

73 Ibid., pp. 134-75. 

74 The part of the album that is in Tehran seems to include ear lier works, up to 1609, and the Berlin portion seems to  include later ones, with dates as late as 1618; Beach (1978),  p. 43. 

75 Jahangir requested Shah cAbbas to send him Ulugh Beg's  astrolabe; the Shah duplicated the astrolabe and sent the  original to India; Riazul Islam (1970), p. 72. One could con ceive that, if a painting was somehow related to the Timurids  and meaningful to Jahangir, it would have been sent as a  single page, but no such connection can be imagined for this  Mirza CAli painting. 

76 Welch (1979), pp. 176-81. 

77 One should also note that, if any of the paintings had been  removed by Muhammad Zaman, he would have replaced it  with a similar subject; but none of his added paintings are in  fact replacements for the dispersed pages by Mirza CAi or  Mirza Sayyid CAi. 

78 Soudavar (1992), pp. 170-73 

79 Ibid. 

80 Membre (1993), p. 25; Bada'iini (1868), p. 444, Soudavar  (1998). 

81 Other artists who contributed to the Freer Haft awrang were:  Agha Mirak, who had probably reached the end of his career  and produced uninspiring paintings for this manuscript;  CAbd al-CAziz, still a very able artist but whose style did not  influence the next generation; Muzaffar CAlI, who was an  excellent craftsman but not an innovator and always a follow er of Mirza cAli; and cAbdallah-i Mudhahhib-i Shira.zi, who  was primarily a good illuminator. Mirza CAli was probably  recruited early on to lead the Freer Haft awrang project. His  work dominates the first section of the manuscript; three out  of four of the paintings in the first fifty pages of the manu script are by him. 

82 Because he ended up working for the Uzbeks after the cap ture of Herat in 1588, references to Muhammadi are scant;  Soudavar (1992), p. 237. The lack of a specific entry for  Farrukh Beyg was probably due to a similar reason. 

83 For a discussion on Mirza CAlI's name and signature, see  ibid., p. 170. 

84 Iskandar Beyg (1976), p. 176. The last section of the entry  in the present printed version of his chronicles, due to a  minor scribal error (cumrash instead of Cumrishdn), reads  as if both brothers joined the services of Shah cAbbas and  both lost their lives at the same time there. Farrukh Beyg's  departure for India notwithstanding, the syntax of the  sentence shows that it should only relate to Siyavush and  that the plural for the end-sentence is wrong; idem.  However, this may have been an error perpetrated by the  author himself, as Vala-yi Isfahani, who half a century  later, in his Khuld-i barin scrupulously follows Iskandar  Beyg's text, commits the same mistake; Vala-yi Isfahani  (1993), p. 470. 

85 Skelton (1957), pl. 2, fig. 4 and pl. 9, fig. 18; Okada (1992),  p. 120; Robinson (1992), pl. IXb 

86 Skelton expresses his doubts on the Cambridge manu script attributions but accepts the Paris one, Skelton  (1957), pp. 395 and 403. Okada accepts the attribution on  the Paris drawing and discusses its merits, Okada (1989),  p.123. Robinson accepts the attributions on the  Cambridge manuscript, but does not offer any stylistic 

comparison with other works of Farrukh Beyg, Robinson  (1992), p. 28. 

87 Farrukh Beyg was approximately forty years old when he  arrived at the Mughal court in 1585; Seyller (1995), p. 319,  Okada (1989), p. 117. His carrier therefore overlapped that  of Muhammadi who was active c. 1560-90. 

88 For a similar Muhammadi composition, see e.g. Robinson  (1965), p. 76; Papadopoulo (1976), pl. 59. 

89 For Shaykh Muhammad's portraits of Ozbeg princes see  Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I, pp. 251-52; Welch (1979),  nos. 77, 80; Soudavar (1992), p. 236. 

90 Dickson and Welch (1981), vol. I, pp. 251-52; Welch (1974),  pp. 463-64. For a painting of the same subject signed by  Shaykh Muhammad, see ibid., p. 499. The effective governor  of Herat at that time was Muhammad Khan-i Sharaf al-Din  Oghli Takalli; Rfimlfi (1978), pp. 436-37. But the nominal  governor of Herat was the almost blind Prince Muhammad  Mirza, who later ruled as Shah Muhammad Khudabanda.  The popularity of the yoked prisoner subject may be due to  the fact that the capture of the Ozbeg warlord was later on,  reinterpreted as a feat attributable to Shah Muhammad.  Farrukh Beyg, who was in the retinue of prince Hamza  Mirza, thus chose to glorify his patron's father by drawing  the defeated Ozbeg warlord. The numerous yoked prisoners  of Shaykh Muhammad, also painted in this period, may have  been drawn for the same reasons. 

91 This recalls the well-known practice of poets who would  arrive at a court reciting new poems in the hope of remuner ation from an appreciative ruler.  92 In the hopelessly disorganised catalogue of the GPL albums,  a colour reproduction of this painting appears next to p. 352  and the entry appears on p. 356, under the entry for fol. 86;  Atabay (1974). 

93 A colour reproduction appears in Okada (1992), p. 124. The  attribution reads "camal-i Farrukh Beyg." 

94 Seyller (1995), p. 320. 

95 For colour reproductions, see Soudavar (1992), p. 308-09.  96 Ibid., p. 338. 

97 Besides the two Zafar-ndma pages, the motif of gold peonies  on a blue awning/parasol can be seen on a Bdbur-ndma page  (ASG, S86. 0230), Lowry and Nemazee (1988), p. 163, and  an Akbar-ndma page in Seyller (1995), fig. 6, Okada (1992),  p.118. 

98 See Okada (1992), p. 66, where the drawing is wrongly attrib uted to cAbd al-Samad. For a colour reproduction, see  Okada (1989), p. 29. 

99 Atabay (1974), p. 357 and 362; Skelton (1957), fig. 13.  100oo Ibid., fig. 1; Seyller (1995), fig. 6, Okada (1992), p.118. 

101 Seyller (1995), p. 339. 

102 Ibid., p. 319. 

103 Stchoukine (1974), pp. 5-11, and Simpson (1997), p. 244,  both consider the paintings as a coherent group but neither  makes an exception for fol. 109a that we attribute here to  Muhammadi. 

104 For a colour reproduction, see Rogers et al. (1986), nos.  114-15. 

105 Seyller (1997), p. 339. 

106 For colour reproduction, see Rogers et al. (1986), nos. 116.  107 See Welch (1979), pp. 201, 209 and 210; Welch and Welch  (1982), pp. 85-86. 

108 See Welch (1976), pp. 122-26; Simpson (1997), pp. 201,  220. 

109 For a colour reproduction, see Okada (1992), p. 122.  110 For a colour reproduction, see Kevorkian and Sicre (1983),  p. 24. 

"1 For a colour reproduction see Pope and Ackerman (1967),  vol. XI, pl. 920. 

112 For a colour reproduction see Simpson (1997), p. 113 or  Welch (1976), p. 109. 

113 See relevant pages in Simpson (1997). 

114 For a colour reproduction, see Soudavar (1992), p. 225.  115 For the calligraphy and its dating, see Simpson (1997), pp.  278-83. 

116 For a colour reproduction, see Ashrafi (1974), p. 59.  117 In a recent article (Robinson [1997], p. 40), Robinson criti cises this author's attributions to Muhammadi and main tains an earlier position that "no fully painted miniatures  are to be found among the best authenticated works of the  artist" (see also Robinson [1992], p. 18), despite the fact  that he himself attributes three such paintings to him (ibid.,  paintings designated as M1, M18-19, M20). Such a position  defies logic and is tantamount to saying that Picasso only  painted in the Cubist mode. The bread-and-butter mode of  painting for every Safavid painter was manuscript painting.  This was the medium in which they were trained by previous  masters and this is where they earned a living. The idio syncratic tinted drawing style of Muhammadi could not gain  approval unless he had first established his credentials in  the domain of conventional painting. It is our hope that our  forthcoming article on Muhammadi will further show the  close affinity between his tinted drawings and his manu script paintings. 

118 For the attribution and a colour reproduction, see Soudavar  (1992), p. 233. 

119 Contrary to Farrukh Beyg, Muhammadi depicts plain ani mals, such as deer and boar, as mountain goats. 

120 Ibid., pp.227-35. 121 Qumi (1980), vol. II, p. 724. 

122 Stchoukine had suggested that this scene represented the  marriage of Ibrahim Mirza to Tahmasb's daughter.  123 For a colour reproduction, see Soudavar (1992), pp. 230-31.  124 Qumi (1980), vol. II, p. 724. 

125 Qumi (1980), vol. II, p. 746. 

126 Iskandar Beyg reports that death occurred on 22 Dhu 'l-Hijja  994/4 December 1586 (Iskandar Beyg [1971], vol. 1, p. 347),  but his dates are at times inaccurate. This period is well doc umented by Qumi, who cites frequent dates, usually in con cordance with one another. He situates the death of Hamza  Mirza at six days later; Qumi (1980), vol. II, p. 842.  127 Seyller (1997), p. 320. 

128 Atabay (1974), p. 357 and 362; Skelton (1957), fig. 13.  1'29 Skelton (1957), pp. 401-02. 

130 Ibid. 

131 Qumi (1974), p. 148. 

132 'Atabaly (1974), p. 357. Atabay includes "Musavvir" in her  reading of the signature; the actual painting may show more  of the signature than the reproduction does.

133 Ibid: 

BETWEEN THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS: ART AND ARTISTS IN TRANSITION 65 

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134 I am indebted to Messrs. Anisi and cAla'ini of the Gulistan  Palace Library for their kind cooperation in the procure ment of these slides. 

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Credit List 

P1. XVa. Colophon page detail, 1486 Gulistdn. Art and  History Trust Collection, courtesy of Arthur  M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,  Washington D.C. no. 36 

P1. XVb. Fol. 6r, 1468 Gulistdn. Freer Gallery of Art,  Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.F1998.5.  Gift in Honour of Ezzat-Malek Soudavar 

P1. XVc. Prophet and the Zoroastrian (detail), fol. 46r,  1468 Gulistdn, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington D.C.F1998.5. Gift in  Honour of Ezzat-Malek Soudavar 

P1. XVd. Vizier reading Mir Musavvir's petition (detail),  Mus&e Guimet, Paris, no. 3619, I, b. 

P1. XVIa. Tahmasb reading a poem, fol. 2a of ms. R. 957,  Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul 

P1. XVIb. Bahram Mirza kneeling and presenting a petition  from Muzaffar cAli. Fol. 148a, album H. 2154,  Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul 

P1. XVIc. Bahram Mirza with a sitar. Fol. 148a, album H.  2154, Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul 

P1. XVId. Bold calligraphy from the Fdl-ndma. Art and  History Trust Collection, courtesy of Arthur  M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,  Washington D.C. no. 72 verso 

P1. XVIIa Outdoor feast by Mirza CAll, fol. 46, no. 1663.  Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran, no. 1663, fol. 46.  P1. XVIIc. Princely lovers, Art and History Trust Collection,  courtesy of Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,  Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.. no. 65  P1. XVIId. Youth holding a booklet. Prince Saduddin Aga  Khan Collection. 

P1. XVIIIa. Portrait of Bayram Oghlan. Musee Guimet, Paris,  no. 3619, I, a. 

P1. XVIIIb. Manuscript illustration attributed to Farrukh  Beyg, King's College Library, Cambridge, K1i 1. 

P1. XVIIIc. Ibrahim CAdil Shah hawking (detail). Institute of  Oriental Studies St. Petersburg, ms. E. 14, fol. 2. 

P1. XVIIId. Timir on the battlefield (detail). Art and History  Trust Collection, courtesy of Arthur M. Sackler 

Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.  no. 128b. 

P1. XIX. Timur's army in procession (detail). Art and  History Trust Collection, courtesy of Arthur M.  Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,  Washington D.C. no. 128c. 

P1. XXa. A horse and a groom. Musee Guimet, Paris, no.  3619, L, a. 

P1. XXb. Mir Mucizz al-Mulk and Bahadur Khan meet in  1567 (detail). Victoria and Albert Museum,  London, I.S. 2-1896 96/117. 

P. XXc. Salaman and Absal repose on the happy isle  (detail). Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington D.C., 46.12, fol. 194b. 

P1. XXIa. Deccani youth holding a narcissus. Gulistan  Palace Library, Tehran, no. 1663, fol. 86. 

P1. XXIb. Deccani youth holding a narcissus. Edwin Binney  3rd Collection. San Diego Museum of Art,  1990:0318. 

P1. XXII. Iskandar suffers a nose bleed, Topkapi Saray  Museum, Istanbul H.1483, fol. 224b. 

P1. XXIIIa. Choosing a vizier. Topkapi Saray Museum,  Istanbul H.1483, fol. 55a. 

P1. XXIIIb. Layli and Majnfin meet at the Kacba. Topkapi  Saray Museum, Istanbul, H.1483, fol. 86. 

P1. XXIIIc. Majnuin's father requesting Layli's hand in mar riage for his son. Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul  H.1483, fol. 77a. 

P1. XXIIId. Aristotle at Philip's deathbed. Topkapi Saray  Museum, Istanbul, H.1483, fol. 207b. 

P1. XXIVa. Akbar enters Surat. Victoria and Albert Museum,  London, I.S. 2-1896 117/117 

P1. XXVa-b. Double page frontispiece of the Haft awrang.  Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, H.1483. 

P1. XXVd. Fibulae shaped cloud embroidery motif (detail).  Reproduced with the kind permission of the  Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,  MS7A(18). 

P1. XXVIa. Two learned men (private collection)  P1. XXVIb. A page from a 1570s Jami manuscipt, AHT, no.  88. 

P1. XXVIc. Bandits attack the caravan of CAynia and Riya.  Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution,  Washington, D.C. 46.12 fol. 64b. 

P1. XXVId. Shepherd with a goat. Ex-Demotte collection as  per Pope and Ackerman (1967), vol. XI, pl. 920. 

P1. XXVIIIa. Colophon with painted cartouches. Topkapi Saray  Museum, Istanbul H.1483, fol. 170b. 

P1. XXVIIIb. Colophon with illuminated cartouches. Topkapi  Saray Museum, Istanbul H.1483, fol. 200a. 

P1. XXVIIIc. The Prophet Moses bearing a stray sheep (1580s).  Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul H.1483, fol.  109a. 

P1. XXVIIId. Moses debating with a heterodox (1570s). State  Public Library, St. Petersburg, Dorn 429, fol. 37. 

P1. XXIXa. Throwing down the impostor (detail). Art and  History Trust Collection, courtesy of Arthur  M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,  Washington D.C., no. 90b. 

PI. XXIXc-d. Double page frontispiece of the Sifdt cdshiqfn  manuscript. Art and History Trust Collection,  courtesy of Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,  Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., no.  90a. 

P1. XXX. Hajji Yaqfilt in the presence of Muhammad  Hakim Mirza. Signed by Farrukh Beyg and dated  1584. Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran, no. 1663,  fol. 47.