Courtiers supervising the building of a wall around a palace, India, Mughal, circa 1590-1600

gouache heightened with gold on paper, depicting workers mixing cement and laying bricks, laid down on an album page ruled in various colours, collector initials scratched into bottom left hand corner

Ex-Essayan Collection
Hotel Drouot, Paris, 28 June 1983, lot 72

In good overall condition, minor paint losses, some staining to outer album page margins and old paper repairs, otherwise colours good, collector initials engraved into lower left corner, small nicks to painting edge, as viewed.
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The identification of the scene depicted here is uncertain, although there are several possibilities. There are various instances in illustrated Mughal manuscripts in which wall-building is shown; most of these occur in the Akbarnameh, including the construction of Fatehpur Sikri and the construction of Agra Fort (see Calza 2012, section II, nos.II.1-II.6, pp.114-119). In illustrated copies of the Baburnameh there are scenes of Babur supervising the building of walled gardens (ibid), but here the scene is definitely urban and there is no garden evident.

The inscription in the lower outer margin is a later addition and identifies the building as the fortress of Mazandaran. This may be a mis-identification as Mazandaran (the region immediately south of the Caspian Sea in Iran) does not feature frequently in Persian or Mughal literature. It does appear in the Shahnameh, but mostly in the context of King Kai Kavus’s campaign against the Div kingdom of Mazandaran, in which no fortress-building occurs. The Mongol campaign and attacks on the Assassin fortress of Alamut, which was in Mazandaran province, features in the Mughal Chingiznameh.