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Among the hallmarks of Deccani art are portraits of Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II (r. 1580-1627), the region’s so-called greatest patron of the arts and author of its iconic book of songs (Kitāb-i Nawras). In order to move beyond the narrative of Ibrahim as an isolated Deccani “genius” patron, this article explores the ruler and his court in light of Indo-Persian processes of taste, intellectualism, and migration. Bijapur is first positioned as a critical stop in cultural peregrination between Safavid Iran and Mughal India, and Ibrahim is explored as a collector of coveted books, a hitherto uncharted aspect of his identity that confirms his participation, via the mediation of Iranian elites, in widespread patterns of Perso-Islamic sovereignty. Attention subsequently focuses on the itinerant painter Farrukh Husayn, whose most compelling works reconcile Bijapuri and Persianate paradigms while stimulating new questions about artistic agency, peripatetic experience, and knowledge transmission between Iran and the subcontinent.
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Adamova Adel 2012 London Azimuth Editions Persian Manuscripts, Paintings and Drawings from the 15th to the Early 20th Century in the Hermitage Collection. Translated by J. M. Rogers and edited by Simon Hartly
Ashraf Muhammad 1967 Hyderabad Salar Jung Museum and Library A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Salar Jung Museum & Library. Vol. 4, Concerning 546 MSS. of Poetry, From Beginning to 900 A.H., Firdausi to Jami
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Flatt Emma The Authorship and Significance of the Nujūm al-ʿUlūm: A Sixteenth-Century Astrological Encyclopaedia from Bijapur 2011 131, no. 2 223 244 Journal of the American Oriental Society
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Ḥasīr Raḍawī Qāsim & al-Muqtadir ʿAbd 1921 Calcutta Imperial Library Catalogue raisonné of the Būhār Library. Vol. 1, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts
Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil Shāh II 1956 New Delhi Bharatiya Kala Kendra Kitab-i-Nauras [Kitāb-i Nawras]. Edited and translated by Nazīr Aḥmad
Leach Linda 1995 London Scorpion Cavendish Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library. 2 vols.
Lentz Thomas W. & Lowry Glenn D. 1989 Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Washington, D.C. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century
Overton Keelan 2011 Los Angeles University of California “A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580–1627).” PhD diss.
Overton Keelan Forthcoming Bloomington Indiana University Press Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, c. 1400–1700
Overton Keelan, Wannell Bruce & Beers Kristine Rose Overton Keelan Between Herat, Bijapur, and Mysore: The Qurʾan in the University of St Andrews Library Forthcoming Bloomington Indiana University Press Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, c. 1400–1700
Quṭba b. Aws. 2010 Rampur, U.P. Maktaba Riḍā Dīwān shiʿr al-Ḥādira. Copied by al-Yāqūt al-Mustaʿṣīmī, with an introduction and commentary by Mukhtār al-Dīn Aḥmad
Richard Francis Alam Muzaffar, Delvoye Françoise ‘Nalini’ & Gaborieau Marc Some Sixteenth-Century Deccani Persian Manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France 2000 New Delhi Manohar The Making of Indo-Persian Culture,
Richard Francis 1997 Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France Splendeurs persanes: Manuscrits du XIIe au XVIIe siècle
Richard Francis La signature discrète d’un doreur persan à la fin du XVe s.: Mīr ʿAzod al-Mozahheb 1993 61–62 99 108 Revue des Études Islamiques
Rieu Charles 1966 London British Museum Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum
Robinson B. W. 1976 London Sotheby Parke Bernet Persian Paintings in the India Office Library: A Descriptive Catalogue
Seyller John The Inspection and Valuation of Manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal Library 1997 57, nos. 3–4 243 349 Artibus Asiae
Siddiqi W. H. 1998 Rampur, U.P. Rampur Raza Library Rampur Raza Library: Monograph
Simpson Marianna Shreve 1997 Washington, D.C. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran. New Haven: Yale University Press;
Skelton Robert 1982 London Victoria and Albert Museum The Indian Heritage: Court Life & Arts under Mughal Rule
Sotheby’s London 1988 Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures. Sale held October 10, 1988
Uluç Lâle 2006 Istanbul Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları Turkman Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors: Sixteenth Century Shiraz Manuscripts
Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 67. This exhaustive monograph remains a critical source on all things Deccani.
See, among others, Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, 67; Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, 163. These comments parallel the early twentieth-century assessment of Basil Gray, “Deccani Paintings: The School of Bijapur,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 73, no. 425 (August 1938): 74.
As early as 1995, John Seyller concluded, “Abundant visual and literary evidence has encouraged some scholars to stress the role of the patron’s personality in the development of style, particularly in the case of the Muslim states of the Deccan and the Mughal empire. In this view, the patron Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II (reg 1579–1627) of Bijapur not only had the means and desire to summon talent to his court but also the force of personality to transmit his own poetical and musical interests to his painters, who translated them into melancholic colour schemes, fantastic landscape forms and sensitive rhythms of drapery and pattern [emphasis added].” John Seyller, “Indian Subcontinent, S XII, 2: Patronage: Painting,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 1995), 739–40. Deborah Hutton subsequently emphasized the phenomenon of “historiomachy,” in which modern scholarship transforms prominent historical figures into heroes or villains, and further challenged Ibrahim’s presumed patronage of Bijapuri monuments such as the Ibrahim Rauza. See Hutton, Art of the Court, 18, 125–32, building off of Seyller and Carl Ernst’s assessment of “historiomachy” in Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 20, 285n61.
Robert Skelton, “The Mughal Artist Farrokh Beg,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 393–411. I am indebted to Robert for his inspiration, hospitality, encouragement, and encyclopedic insight throughout my dissertation project and the years following.
Among others, see John Seyller, “Farrukh Beg in the Deccan,” Artibus Asiae 55, nos. 3–4 (1995): 319–41; Abolala Soudavar, “Between the Safavids and the Mughals: Art and Artists in Transition,” Iran 37 (1999): 49–66; Milo C. Beach, “Farrukh Beg,” in Masters of Indian Painting, vol. 1, 1100–1650, ed. Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Goswamy, 2 vols., Artibus Asiae Supplementum 48 (2011): 187–210. See also Skelton’s current thinking in “Farrukh Beg in the Deccan: An Update,” in Sultans of the South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323–1687, ed. Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011), 12–25; Keelan Overton, “Farrukh Ḥusayn,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, forthcoming 2016. Despite this relative consensus, only the following is incontrovertible, and presented here according to five distinct stages of production/patronage. First, Farrukh Beg was a “trusted companion” of the Safavid heir apparent Hamza Mirza (evidence: Tārikh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī). Second, Farrukh Husayn was affiliated with the Kabul ruler Mirza Hakim in 1584–85 (evidence: two signed portraits, one dated—Tehran, Gulistan Palace Library, no. 1663, fols. 199 [fig. 28], 234). Third, in 1585, Farrukh Beg entered Akbar’s service, and works ascribed to him subsequently appeared in major Mughal manuscripts (evidence: Akbarnāma text and ascribed manuscript illustrations, including, but not limited to, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.2:117-1896 [Akbarnāma], and Washington, D.C., Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, S1986.232 and S1986.231 [Bāburnāma]; the Bāburnāma illustration reproduced here [fig. 27] does not bear an ascription). Fourth, Farrukh Husayn was one of the most accomplished painters in Ibrahim’s Bijapur (evidence: Sih Naṣr text, two signed paintings—“Saraswati enthroned” [fig. 1] and the St. Petersburg “Ibrahim hawking,” with a partial signature discussed in Seyller, “Farrukh Beg in the Deccan”—and a second portrait of Ibrahim ascribed to the artist at the Mughal court [fig. 2]). Finally, Farrukh Beg was prominent at Jahangir’s court circa 1609–19 (evidence: Jahāngīrnāma and Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī [Book of Fortune] texts and several ascribed paintings [figs. 2, 30]).
As first proposed in Skelton, “Mughal Artist,” 401–2, and further elaborated in Soudavar, “Between the Safavids and the Mughals,” 60.
Sajjad H. Rizvi, “Bijapur,” in Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Josef W. Meri and Jere L. Bacharach, 2 vols. (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 1:108. Khandalavala had earlier argued, “He [Ibrahim] restored Sunni rites and saw to it that Deccanis and Abyssinians replaced the Persians who held all the high offices of state. He also changed the official language from Persian to Deccani.”: Karl Khandalavala, “Five Miniatures in the Collection of Sir Cowasji Jehangir,” Marg 5, 2 (1952): 26.
Paul Losensky, “‘Square like a Bubble:’ Architecture, Power, and Poetics in Two Inscriptions by Kalim Kāshāni,” Journal of Persianate Studies 8 (2015): 42–70. I am grateful to the author for sharing his essay in advance of publication.
Haidar and Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India, 100. The color plate in Singh and Narayan, Six Multicoloured Prints, is the best available reproduction. The painting is in a private royal collection and unavailable for study.
London, British Museum, 1997.1108.01, reproduced in ibid., fig. 12; Haidar and Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India, cat. no. 46.
Richard Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 110–11. For Ibrahim’s devotion to the Prophet, Saraswati, and Gesu Daraz, see Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil Shāh II, Kitāb-i Nauras [Kitāb-i Nawras], ed. and trans. Ahmad, 128.
Rampur, Raza Library, 5207. For the library’s publications, see W. H. Siddiqi, Raza Library: Monograph (Rampur, U.P.: Rampur Raza Library, 1998), and Quṭba b. Aws, Dīwān shiʿr al-Ḥādira, copied by al-Yāqūt al-Mustaʿṣīmī, with an introduction and commentary by Mukhtār al-Dīn Aḥmad (Rampur, U.P.: Maktaba Riḍā, 1431 [2010]). I thank Abusad Islahi for bringing the latter to my attention. My examination of the manuscript in 2010 was brief (see preliminary findings in Overton, “Collector and His Portrait,” 96–101). The discussion here sets aside the question of authenticity (see note below) and focuses on the volume’s presence in Ibrahim’s collection.
During ʿAshura in 1596, Ibrahim ordered the house arrest of an anti-Shiʿi Shattari Sufi who had disrupted the celebrations. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 116.
Reproduced in Ravinder Lonkar, ʿAdil Shahi Farmans (Pune: Diamond, 2007), 4–5.
Serpil Bağcı, “A New Theme of the Shirazi Frontispiece Miniatures: The Divan of Solomon,” Muqarnas 12 (1995): 104–5.
Priscilla Soucek, “Solomon’s Throne/Solomon’s Bath: Model or Metaphor?,” Ars Orientalis 23 (1993): 122.
Bağcı, “New Theme of the Shirazi Frontispiece Miniatures,” 104.
San Diego Museum of Art, 1990.318.
London, British Museum, 1920,0917,0.298.3.
London, British Library, Or 1362, fol. 354v. The majority of this manuscript is preserved in the British Library. For six detached paintings remounted over pages of the Farhang-i Jahāngīrī (Dictionary of Jahangir) of Mir Jamal al-Din Husayn Inju Shirazi (Akbar’s envoy to Ibrahim), see Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, 2 vols. (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), 1:310–20. For valuations on some of the manuscript’s individual paintings, see Seyller, “Inspection and Valuation,” 277 (also 290 for his full entry on the volume). Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, 311nn6–7, references two other possible subimperial copies of the text. The only other known contemporary illustrated manuscript of the Nafaḥāt al-Uns is the Ottoman example dated 1003 (1595) (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, T 474), reproduced in Elaine Wright, Islam: Faith, Art, Culture: Manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library (Dublin: Scala Publishers, 2009), figs. 128, 176.
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Among the hallmarks of Deccani art are portraits of Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II (r. 1580-1627), the region’s so-called greatest patron of the arts and author of its iconic book of songs (Kitāb-i Nawras). In order to move beyond the narrative of Ibrahim as an isolated Deccani “genius” patron, this article explores the ruler and his court in light of Indo-Persian processes of taste, intellectualism, and migration. Bijapur is first positioned as a critical stop in cultural peregrination between Safavid Iran and Mughal India, and Ibrahim is explored as a collector of coveted books, a hitherto uncharted aspect of his identity that confirms his participation, via the mediation of Iranian elites, in widespread patterns of Perso-Islamic sovereignty. Attention subsequently focuses on the itinerant painter Farrukh Husayn, whose most compelling works reconcile Bijapuri and Persianate paradigms while stimulating new questions about artistic agency, peripatetic experience, and knowledge transmission between Iran and the subcontinent.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2067 | 102 | 30 |
| Full Text Views | 302 | 14 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 198 | 22 | 1 |
