Riding into battle on a rhinoceros

In Vienna recently, I had hoped to see the pages of the Hamzanama owned by the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK). Sadly they are not available to the public but the curator kindly referred me to the Google Arts page containing high-definition images of the full collection. In some ways these are better than the real thing as they can be enlarged for poor aging eyes like mine, whereas original folios can only be viewed in low light. Check out the page here.

You may recall that the Hamzanama is a collection of fantastical stories about Amir Hamza, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad (earlier posts here). Derived from medieval Persian legends, these tales of warriors, demons and giants were hugely popular in Mughal India. The young emperor Akbar commissioned a full set of illustrations which are now recognised as one of the greatest works of Mughal art. I like to think that Akbar, still in his late teens, saw this as his personal superhero comic-book. After the decline of the Mughal dynasty, the 12 bound volumes were lost, probably broken up and sold piecemeal. Fewer than 200 of the original 1400 pages or folios are known to exist today, of which the MAK’s collection of 60 is the largest single holding.

Thinking about the similarity with superhero comics, I was taken by the image above, depicting the warrior Qasim fighting with the evil Kayhur, who is mounted on a rhinoceros. A few of you may have watched the film Black Panther, set in a fictional African country where armoured rhinos are used as mounts in battle (see below). There was some excitement on the internet about “war rhinos”, which someone pointed out had already been used in the film 300 a decade earlier. But as far as I know, no-one in this debate mentioned their appearance in a 16^th century imperial Mughal manuscript.

The artists of the Hamzanama show Qasim rather gruesomely decapitating the poor rhino with such force that even Kayhur’s white shield is sliced neatly in half (detail below). The animal appears to be an Indian one-horned rhino, with its trademark big floppy ears. Whatever the artistic merits of the Hamzanama, I’m happier with the film where the rhino is portrayed as a kind of gigantic family pet. It seems to be modelled on an African white rhino, which is also said to be less bad-tempered than the black rhino, though you wouldn’t really want to test this.

Rhinos have never been tamed for riding, of course, but I’m sure the MAK knew this when it purchased the 60 folios at the Vienna World Fair in 1873, describing them as ‘treasure troves of costumes, architecture, devices, vessels, weapons etc, all richly and neatly ornamented’. The seller seems to have been an Iranian prince, though details are sketchy, and in this climate of resentment at Western museums' ownership of Asian art, I don't expect much further clarification. Pages of the Hamzanama have turned up in the oddest places: those owned by the Victoria & Albert Museum were found stuffed into broken window-panes in a Kashmir antique shop. Each page would now be worth over half a million pounds.

I can’t leave without sharing another fabulous and funny image (see below) which supports the ‘superhero’ hypothesis. Two brothers, fighting for the infidel enemy, attempt to frighten the troops by lifting an elephant and tossing it aside. Farrukhnizhad – one of the good guys – sees this and snorts: “Two men to lift one elephant?”. He then picks up the poor elephant himself (the animals really don’t do well here), whereupon the awestruck brothers immediately agree to convert to Islam and join the good side. The name Farrukhnizhad doesn’t have the same ring as Hulk or Iron Man, but for Akbar it probably sounded Marvel-lous.

Reference material: The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India, John Seyller and Wheeler Thackston, Smithsonian Institute

A new adventure for Hamza

In July, I wrote about the Mughal painter Daswanth and his illustrations for the Hamzanama (Adventures of Hamza), commissioned by the emperor Akbar in the mid-16^th century. Akbar’s atelier of artists created some 1,400 illustrated pages (folios) for this magnificent work, of which perhaps 200 have survived. What I didn’t know at the time was that a newly discovered folio had been consigned for sale at Christie’s in London. On October 20^th, that piece (below) sold at auction for £821,000. If it had been in pristine condition, like the ones in the Smithsonian, it could have fetched seven figures.

Entitled “The Rukh carries Amir Hamza to his home”, the folio depicts a scene where our hero Hamza takes the quickest route home by clinging to the legs of a rukh, a giant mythical bird which some may remember as the roc in the Sinbad stories. The roc is really not pleased, as shown by its furious expression as it turns to peck at Hamza. Our hero hangs on bravely as they fly across the ocean, only a few feet above the waves, watched by a couple of curious fish on the lower right. Bear in mind that these illustrations are quite large, around 25 inches (65cm) high and 20 inches (50cm) wide, so its impact when new must have been stunning.

I was also excited to learn that the piece is attributed by the art historian John Seyller to the artists Daswanth and Shravana. Dr Seyller points to key elements of Daswanth’s style, like the use of huge forms and supernatural images (remember the ghoul in the Jaipur Museum’s Razm-nama). You can read the Lot Essay that he wrote for Christie’s here. Daswanth and Shravana worked together on several folios of the Hamzanama, some of which were included in the Smithsonian’s exhibition of 2002 (check out the beautiful catalogue here). You may also recall that Shravana worked on the brilliant depiction of evil Zumurrud Shah and his henchmen escaping on flying jars.

There’s something irresistible about the image of the giant roc. Below for example is a poster produced by the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for its production of Sinbad the Sailor in 1892. Like Hamza, Sinbad uses the roc as an unwilling form of transport.

While researching other images of the roc, I came across this painting (below) from the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, and was struck by the similarities with the Rukh folio. This piece is dated 1590, some twenty-five years later than the Rukh, and is attributed to the eminent Mughal painter Basawan. He was a colleague of Daswanth and Shravana in the imperial atelier and worked alongside them on the Hamzanama.

Although the image here derives from a poem by the Persian poet Nizami, and the flying creature is not a roc but a simurgh (more like a phoenix), I couldn’t help wondering if it was to some extent inspired by Daswanth and Shravana’s work.

Anthony Welch, in Arts of the Islamic Book, points out that the simurgh plays a key role in Arabic and Iranian mystical stories, so “a Muslim arriving at Akbar’s court from Iran or Central Asia would have recognised this work immediately”. So perhaps the similarities are simply due to the genre.  But if Basawan’s work is, even in a small way, a nod to his former colleague Daswanth (who had died tragically six years before), that must add to the importance of the Rukh folio.

I really hope that the folio will eventually reside in a public museum for all to see. Trustees of the V&A and the Smithsonian, now is the time for action!

Daswanth the mysterious Mughal painter

Indian painting of the Mughal school blossomed in the late 16^th century during the reign of Akbar, grandson of Babur (whom you will recall was not fond of jackfruit.) It was particularly influenced by two Persian masters, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd as-Samad, who were in charge of the imperial atelier. In 1597, Akbar’s biographer Abu’l Fazl drew up a list of the best painters of the period. The two Persians were placed respectfully at the top, but surprisingly, third place went to a low-born painter named Daswanth (or Dasavanta), who some twelve years earlier had succumbed to madness and taken his own life.

To be placed third was no mean achievement – there was some amazing talent in Akbar’s stable of artists, most of whom didn’t even make the list. Below for example is an illustration from the Hamza-nama (The Adventures of Hamza) which is attributed to two of these artists, Shravana and Madhava Khurd. It depicts an episode where the giant Zumurrud Shah and his followers escape on flying jars with the help of wicked sorcerers. Neither of these artists made the list, even though the work is quite delightful – look at the playful structure and the energy bursting off the page. 

More of this on the Smithsonian website at www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/hamza/hamza.htm and hopefully in a subsequent post.

What did Daswanth have to match this? As a young artist, he too contributed to the Hamza-nama but some of his finest mature works were said to be the illustrations to Akbar’s copy of the Razm-nama (the Persian adaptation of the Mahabharata). This is owned by the Jaipur royal family and has been locked away from public view for decades. No-one knows why – is it something as mundane as a legal dispute between the heirs of the last Maharaja? That hasn’t prevented access to other works though.

I first encountered Daswanth in an article by the art historian Milo Cleveland Beach which included some blurry monochrome images from the Razm-nama. In the one below, depicting a night assault on the enemy camp, a huge ghoul wearing a necklace of heads (upper right) rises out of the corpse of the slain warrior Sikhandin (lower right). Dating from the early 1580s, shortly before the painter’s death, it’s tempting to see in this some hint of the dark thoughts which led to his demise.

Further research led me to a massive four-volume catalogue entitled Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition by Thomas Holbein Hendley, published in 1883 (if you request this in the British Library, be prepared to wheel it in a cart to a special table where photography is banned!). Volume 4 contains a full set of images taken from the Jaipur Razm-nama, in monochrome only but giving a pretty good idea of the range of Daswanth’s work. There is a stunning double-page picture of a maze comprised of rows of soldiers, into which the hero Arjuna’s son was lured and killed. Hendley praises the intense colours in this painting – sadly we can only imagine this for ourselves.

At least Daswanth’s skills may be appreciated in the Hamza-nama, for example in the image below depicting the messenger Umar slaying a dragon. The wonderful colours of the dragon, and the way the nervous onlookers at the top seem to be almost tumbling over the rocky cliff, may help to explain Abu’l Fazl’s high regard for Daswanth. But until we see the full glory of the Jaipur Razm-nama, we may never know for sure how great an artist he was.