Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

These manuscript folios feature a royal hunt—the only surviving painting from the manuscript depicting this type of scene—and a dedicatory panel decorated with gold and lapis patterns. The text dedicates the manuscript to Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara (r. 1469–1506), the last Timurid ruler based in the capital city of Herat. His imperial authority is impressively displayed in the dramatic hunting scene that extends across rocky and open terrain. Huntsmen on horseback and on foot slay wild boar with their swords, shoot arrows at deer, and send foxes scrambling, while mounted falconers hunt duck against a gold backdrop in the upper register.

Intriguingly, this manuscript was likely transcribed in Herat in the second half of the fifteenth century, while the dedicatory page and some paintings were added about fifty years later in Bukhara with a false claim of imperial production during the Golden Age of Timurid rule.