AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THE NAFAHAT AL-UNS OF JAMI ATTRIBUTED TO HIRANAND

Very good overall condition. Slight wear to pigments due to age. Diagonal crease on the middle left across the mane of the white horse and the hand of the adjacent figure. Slight abrasions on the upper left corner above the plume of the turbaned, bearded figure. The image has be remounted within the present folio border. Exhibited in a temporary frame.
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A Sufi prisoner being rescued by a nobleman (closely resembling the Emperor Akbar) accompanied by troops, who attend to him holding his severed hand. Two other prisoners lay slain and decapitated. The nobleman’s elaborately-saddled horse held by a servant awaits him. The scene executed in a very fine nim-qalam (half painted) manner.

This superb rare folio is from the dispersed Nafahat al-Uns of Jami created for the Emperor Akbar in 1604-05 and copied by the royal scribe Abd al-Ramin Anbarin Qalam (the Amber Pen). Our manuscript was created in the same period and by the same atelier of artists - measuring essentially the same dimensions and having a similar  appearance, as the well-known Chester Beatty Akbarnama of 1604. The majority of its extant leaves being in the British Library (MS.OR.1362) which include seventeen miniatures with a further six known in the collection of the Chester Beatty Library all executed in both the present nim-qalam (lightly tinted pen) manner and fully colored styles. Scholars have also noted a small number of unaccounted folios of which the present leaf is likely one. The text of the Nafahat al-Uns deals with accounts of numerous Muslim saints and sufis written by Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414-93) with our folio (numbered 9 in the text panel) likely originally preceding folio number 10 in the British Library which there depicts, “Abu’l Adyan sitting on burning coals and watched by Zoroastrians”.

As was the case with many of the pages of the Akbarnama the present painting was quite probably the collaborative work of several studio artists of the Imperial atelier. This painting was executed in a quite distinctive and expressive hand. The artists Hiranand and Govardhan were active in the Imperial studio during the period of these manuscripts' production and close inspection of the present work does reveal some overlapping of the styles of both of these great painters. A cautious attribution may be made here to Hiranand. It is a miniature of great elegance and superb quality, a recently rediscovered rarity from Emperor Akbar’s Imperial atelier.

For discussion of the British Library folios see J.P. Losty and Roy, Mughal India Art, Culture and Empire, London, 2012, pp.70-72, figs 32-33 and N. M. Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts, London, 1977, pp.69, no. 207.For Chester Beatty Library folios see Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 1995, vol. 1, pp.310-320.

With many thanks to Marcus Fraser for his insights on this painting.