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Calligraphy

Surdasc. 1596

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States

Akbar, the third Mughal emperor of India, commissioned an illustrated copy of the Chingiz-nama, a historical text written in Persian during the early 1300s by a Jewish scholar who converted to Islam. The Chingiz-nama is an account of the conquests of Akbar’s ancestors, the Mongols, who swept across the Asian continent from Siberia to the Mediterranean Sea during the 1200s. This page describes the final momentous defeat of the caliph of Baghdad, the religious head of Sunni Islam and political leader of the Abbasid dynasty, with the names of all the caliphs who came before him listed in red at the top.

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  • Title: Calligraphy
  • Creator: Basavana (Indian, active c. 1560–1600), Sur Das (Indian)
  • Date Created: c. 1596
  • Physical Dimensions: Image: 34 x 20 cm (13 3/8 x 7 7/8 in.); Overall: 38.5 x 25 cm (15 3/16 x 9 13/16 in.); with mat: 49 x 36.3 cm (19 5/16 x 14 5/16 in.)
  • Provenance: Demotte, (Heeramaneck Galleries, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Type: Calligraphy
  • Rights: CC0
  • External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1947.502.b
  • Medium: ink and color on paper
  • Inscriptions: recto lower left: [translated] Siege of the fort of Irbil by Urgatu Nuyan and the attainment of victory by command of Hulagu Khan.; verso overall: [text]
  • Fun Fact: This fortified city in the heart of Kurdistan, now called Irbil, is in Iraq.
  • Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
  • Culture: India, Mughal Dynasty (1526-1756)
  • Credit Line: Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
  • Collection: Indian Art
  • Accession Number: 1947.502.b
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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