MURDER SCENE IN A PALACE BY NIGHT, INDIA, SULTANATE, 15TH CENTURY

This miniature would have been an illustration to a manuscript of Persian poetry, probably a copy of the Khamseh of Amir Khusrau or Nizami, or the Shahnameh of Firdausi. The scene depicted here is difficult to identify exactly, since all the original text is absent and the picture has been mounted in unrelated borders, but the scene of a murder in a palace occurs several times in these texts.

Sultanate painting in India was strongly influenced by Persian painting of the 15th century, as well as by indigenous painting styles in Western and Northern India. For many years there was confusion over the attribution of certain manuscripts and illustrations to India or Persia. Over the last few decades several studies started to untangle the subject. For discussions of Persian and Sultanate Indian painting see Fraad and Ettinghausen 1969, Robinson 1991, and Brend 2003, ch.3, pp.73-149. Recent research has been conducted by Emily Shovelton in a PhD thesis submitted to SOAS, London University in 2010. Miniatures from related manuscripts are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1972.285.2) and formerly in the Binney Collection (see Binney 1973, nos.2-4).