Illustrated folio of Akbar's Hamzanameh, probably volume 6, Mughal India, reign of Akbar, circa 1565 and modern period Manuscript folio of 19 lines of Persian nasta'liq text in black ink on cream-colored paper glued to textile cloth and punctuated with small gold flakes. The number 34 is inscribed in red numerals above the penultimate line, with an interlinear inscription in smaller characters between lines 13 and 14. On the back, a full-page illustration painted in gouache and gold depicting an audience in a walled palace in the middle of a stretch of water. On the hull of the boat in the lower right, the number 31 appears in black numerals. 70 x 53.5 cm Stains, folds, wetness, extensive overpainting on the illustration. Provenance : Belgian private collection. This impressively sized page appears to be an unpublished folio of Akbar's famous Hamzanameh. The story, whose title literally means "The Story of Hamza", tells the tales of Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib, uncle and brother-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the great hero of the Battle of Badr in 624 who went on to play a major role in the spread of Islam. These tales, tinged with wonder and fantasy, are among the oldest, tastiest and most popular in Persian literature, and were transmitted orally for several centuries and in several languages throughout the Islamic world. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) was captivated by their enchantment, and commissioned his workshop to produce an ambitious illustrated copy of the Hamzanameh. Executed approximately between 1557-58 and 1572-73, this exceptional work would have comprised 13 to 14 volumes and 1,400 illustrations, i.e. around 100 per volume. Of these 1,400, only 170 are known to exist. The text inscribed on one side of this folio displays all the characteristics of the folios in this manuscript: the fine paper support glued to the cotton cloth, the number of lines, the gold flakes punctuating the text, the folio number inscribed in red numerals above the penultimate line. The other side, however, raises a number of questions. Careful study of this painting with the naked eye and under ultraviolet light shows extensive late repainting throughout, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century, an analysis corroborated by the scientific study of this painting in the laboratory. The majority of the faces have been replaced, making our page yet another victim of the iconoclastic act that affected several folios of this work, as witnessed by the erased faces appearing on pages known to public collections such as pages IS.2513-1883 or IS.2511-1883 from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The presence of repaints and additions is also apparent in the inconsistency of the number inscribed on the hull of the left-hand boat. This number should normally immediately precede the one that appears on the back in red above the penultimate line of text, as the construction of the manuscript dictates that the text and its illustration are not on the same page but on two separate folios. Following this original numbering principle, the number on the image should be 33, not 31. Our text, numbered 34, would then have to be matched by an illustration bearing the same number. As the manuscript is multi-volume, several illustrations were logically numbered 34, but of the two known to date[1], one in particular catches our eye. This is page LNS 297 MS in the al-Sabah Collection at the National Museum of Kuwait. The illustrated side of this folio depicts the capture of the Frankish fortress by 'Umar Ma'dikarb and Hamza's men, and the evacuation of the latter by the Frankish king Marzuq, fleeing by boat with his court, harem, gholams and possessions. It's nighttime, as evidenced by the presence of lit torches, and Hamza is absent. However, on reading the Persian text in our folio, which makes no mention of Hamza, we discover the story of a nocturnal scene, the last lines of which are devoted to Marzuq's escape. It is therefore highly likely that the written side of our folio has a pictorial correspondence with the illustrated side of the Kuwait folio. As in our illustration, the painting in the al-Sabah Collection has had the faces of its figures replaced by later repainting. Art historians attribute the original painting to Mah Muhammad and place it in volume 6 of the Hamzanameh [...]. WE INVITE YOU TO DISCOVER THE FULL DESCRIPTION IN THE PDF CATALOG