Tuti-Nama

Tuti-Nama

This magnificently adorned manuscript was created for the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542–1605) in his court workshop by two Persian artists: Mir Sayyid Ali (1510–72) and Abd al-Samad (active 1550–95). It contains the early -14th century Persian work Tuti-Nama or “The Book of Parrots” by Ziya' al-Din Nakhshabi, which describes how a wise parrot strives to prevent the young wife of a far-travelled merchant from committing adultery by telling her the most entertaining stories. The Tuti-Nama was extremely popular in the Mughal Empire because its contents provided the opportunity for risqué illustrations. The dangers of such a wayward life are clearly illustrated, either in unambiguous terms, or in a less obvious and codified form of highly interesting parables. This manuscript thus represents one of the important specimens of both Mughal art and literary culture.

218 Miniatures from a Fascinating, Distant World

The outstanding miniatures of this work are considered to be formative for the development of the Mughal style, which combined influences from the Indian, Persian, and Islamic artistic traditions. The extremely colorful, often gold-adorned miniatures of the book clearly show the popularity of secular literature as a form of entertainment at the court of the cosmopolitan Mughal Empire in India. Its turbulent history is as stunning as the work itself: the leaves emerged from the darkness of history in the estate of Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long (1881–1958), an American diplomat, politician, and collector of antiques. Initially acquired by a Philadelphia antique dealer in 1959, the precious work passed through the hands of the Bernard Brown Agency in Milwaukee before being sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1962 where it remains today.