- Provenance
- Provenance research underway.
- Label
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The Hamzanama recounts fictitious adventures of the Prophet Muhammad's uncle, Hamza, in his journeys to spread the Islamic faith. In this scene, the heroine Khurshidchehr (in upper right holding a sword) disguises herself as a man to penetrate the jail wherein Hamza's son, Hamid, is being held.
This painting belongs to a Hamzanama manuscript that Emperor Akbar (reigned 1556-1605) commissioned when he was about twenty years old. The original manuscript consisted of fourteen volumes, each containing one hundred unusually large illustrations, 150 of which have survived. The manuscript, which took fifteen years to complete by a large workshop of artists, is one of the few surviving illustrated texts of the early Mughal period.
- Published References
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- Glenn D. Lowry, Milo Cleveland Beach, Elisabeth West FitzHugh, Susan Nemanzee, Janet Snyder. An Annotated and Illustrated Checklist of the Vever Collection. Washington and Seattle. cat. 40, p.30, 33.
- Milo Cleveland Beach. The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court., 2nd ed. Washington and Ahmedabad, India, 2012. cat. 6G, p. 58.
- John Seyller. The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India. Washington. pp. 272-273, R136.
- Collection Area(s)
- South Asian and Himalayan Art
- Web Resources
- Google Cultural Institute
- SI Usage Statement
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Usage Conditions Apply
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CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
Usage Conditions Apply
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
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International Image Interoperability Framework
FS-6977_10