Page 202 - Eye of the beholder

MUGHAL MINIATURES
In order to contextualize Mughal miniatures and its ultimate development, it mandates a short introduction of the Islamic rulers who invaded India and established political power beginning with the Delhi Sultanates. The advent of Islam in India was not in terms of barbarian conquerors, who came looted and the left the country, but they came with a political motive to establish rule, and as rulers were well versed in the traditions of praiseworthy literature, architecture and other arts which had been inherited by them from Central Asia and Persia. Leaving aside the political nuances of a new intolerant faith, there was within public consciousness an existence of an unavoidable realization that the peoples who had been conquered also had a continuous achievement not only in the building of splendid edifices with wealth of decorative features, but also in many other artistic activates.
Indispensible in the beginning perhaps but increasingly evident with the passage of time was the fact that the Islamic heritage of art in India had inevitably to be a fusion of the artistic talents of the rulers and the ruled. One factor which dominated the prevalent situation was that Sultanate and later the Mughal court had to rely for the most part on the skills of a variety of Indian artists, artisans and craftsmen to achieve the architectural forms they sought to initiate and also for a large variety of artistic products. Later principally in the Mughal period the production of splendid illustrated manuscripts and individual paintings, was fulfilled by the Indian artists.
Mughals established their power in the country when Babur won his battle against Ibrahim Lodi in 1526 at the first Battle of Panipat. Timur had sacked Delhi in 1398 and had laid the city bare and totally ravaged but he had no ambitions of establishing political power, which Babur did two centuries later. From his father’s side Babur was descended from Timur the Lame and on his mother side from Genghis Khan both belonging to tribes in Central Asia.
Babur’s own chronicle namely the Babur Nama revealed the many sided aspects of this remarkable monarch. He had a keen appreciation of miniature painting. But his short rule of four years did not permit him enough time to set up a painting atelier as all his mighty energies were spent in consolidating and expanding his conquests in Northern India. Nevertheless his early death put an end to his painting ambitions. His son Humayun who inherited the throne was not able to sustain it and he lost it to the Afghan Sher Shah Sur, with the result Humayun was made a fugitive. He found refuge in the Safavid ruler’s court in Persia under Shah Tahmasp who received hi with all the honours deserving of an emperor. The court at Tabriz where Shah Tahmasp ruled in Persia was the centre of art and culture. Humayun travelled in Tabriz and met a painter from Shiraz Khwaja Abdus Samad and at the royal atelier another brilliant talent Mir Sayyid Ali. To them Humayun offered opportunities of employment if he regained his throne. Shah Tahmasp set up Humayun with a small court at Kabul and here the latter patronized painting untill he was able to regain the throne in 1555, which he had lost. Unfortunately Humayun died the following year after a fall on the steps of his library in 1556.
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