Sultan Mahmud leading a hunting expedition, attributable to Daulat, Mughal, circa 1605

brush and ink heightened with gouache and gold on paper, inscribed and dated in nasta’liq script on the rocks in the background: 'Sultan Mahmud 'Shah', laid down on an album page with blue inner borders and wide outer margins in red flecked with gold, pencil inscription on the reverse of no interest

Colonel John Murray (in India from 1781)
Sotheby's London, 15 June 1959, lot 117, an album, to Garabad for Kevorkian
Hagop Kevorkian, New York (1872-1962)
Hagop Kevorkian Fund
Sotheby's London, 21 April 1980, lot 129

In good overall condition, very minor losses to edges and a few light creases, as viewed.
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The identity of the particular Sultan Mahmud Shah, whose name is inscribed on a rock above the principal rider, is uncertain. The most famous Sultan Mahmud was Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, who ruled the Ghaznavid empire from 1002 to 1030 and who repeatedly raided northern India. He also appeared in several works of Persian poetry, so his presence in miniatures could be either historical or literary. However, he was not usually referred to with the suffix Shah, and his appearance in a Mughal work of the early-seventeenth century, while not impossible, would not be very likely. There were several other prominent characters called Sultan Mahmud whose identities might fit more easily with the present work. There were three characters mentioned in the Baburnama of this name, of which the most prominent was the Central Asian Sultan Mahmud Khan (see Thackston's translation of 1996, as indexed), but Sultan Mahmud of Malwa, mentioned by Babur as one of the five major Muslim rulers of Hindustan prior to Babur himself, is perhaps more likely a candidate (Baburnama, transl. Thackston 1992 and 2002, p.331). Individuals bearing this name also appear in both Abu'l Fazl's Akbarnama and the A'in-i Akbari. There were also two rulers of Gujarat named Sultan Mahmud Shah, the first who ruled from 1498 to 1511 and the other (Sultan Mahmud Shah III) who ruled from 1537-54. It is also possible that the inscription naming Sultan Mahmud Shah is a later addition and that the scene is meant to shows another ruler (perhaps Timur or Babur judging by the style of turban). It could conceivably be an unidentified page from the Chester Beatty Akbarnama - the size and style of drawing would fit.

Daulat was a pupil of Basawan and became a favourite painter of the Emperor Jahangir. Self-portraits appear in both the 1595 Khamsa of Nizami and the margins of the Tehran section of the Gulshan Album (Brend 1995, p.64, and Pal et al. 1991, p.88, fig.1), but little more than his appearance and the fact that he was a Muslim is known about him. That his career started in the reign of Akbar is revealed by a page of the Baburnama of circa 1597 (Pal et al. 1991, p.89, col.fig.2). Daulat continued to paint during the reign of the Emperor Shah Jahan - a page of the great Padshahnama being attributed to him and dated circa 1635 (Beach, Koch and Thackston 1997, pp.110-1, no.46, pp.210-1). For further discussions of Daulat see Beach 1978, pp.113-116; Beach, Koch and Thackston 1997, p.215; Das in Pal et al. 1991, pp.87-104; Leach 1995, vol.II, pp.1101-02, Beach in Beach, Fischer and Goswamy 2011, pp.305-320; Verma 1994, pp.126-130; Leach 1995, vol.II, pp.1101-1102. For another page with similar borders from the Murray Album assembled in the 1780s, probably at Lucknow, and which had been dispersed by 1977, see lot 16 in this catalogue. Works of similar style by different artists are to be found throughout the so-called Chester Beatty Library Akbarnama of 1603-05 (see Leach 1995, vol.I, pp.232-294), including one with a closely related composition that was also in the Murray Album (see Sotheby's, London, 3 April 1978, lot 79).

John Murray, the patron who assembled the album from which this page originates, was a Scottish officer commissioned into the Bengal Army in 1781. He rose to the rank of captain in 1785 and was later appointed Military Auditor General with the rank of colonel. The album was first sold in these rooms on 15 June 1959, and a group was sold again in these rooms on 3 April 1978, with a further group on 21 April 1980, this page being lot 129.