Stranger still are the distant European townscapes with exotic spires and towers. Other ladies lounge with musical instruments in the foreground, and multi-coloured fish swim round a fountain. The garden is improbably peopled with a princess in the left pavilion, a prince in the right, and a European-hatted genLieman on the central terrace, all with their bevies of maids and musicians. Marble pavilions, terraces, cypresses, flower-beds and water-courses all march away to inconsistent vanishing-points. The idealised vision of a princely pleasure-garden is similarly overlaid with fantasy. But this naivete is integral to his vision, along with a flair for detail and a rich Deccani palette. His human figures are stiff and undifferentiated, and his stabs at architectural recession are a jumble of divergent viewpoints. The daily records of the early Nizams, rulers of Hyderabad From the eighteenth century, record their occasional brief stays at Golconda Fort, which was also used as a state prison.' The Nizarns ceremonious excursions to the old fortress must have inspired the present artist, who supplied much else (such as the distant hilltop towns) From his imagination. Once prosperous and Famous for its diamond trade, Golconda had been the capital of the Qutubshahi Sultans (16)' before falling to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1687. Dominated by a lofty citadel within several rings of walls, the city bears some resemblance to the old Fortress of Golconda, five miles from Hyderabad. On either side, women bathe or wash clothes and ascetics gather in a grove. In the procession scene, a ruler riding in a bright yellow elephant howdah approaches a walled city over a long bridge with multiple gates. These treatments by a Hyderabad artist of a royal procession and a palace garden are enlivened by his playful experiments with perspective and borrowings from the European topographical prints that were reaching India in great numbers by the late eighteenth century. Gouache on paper 27.5 x 33 ern: 23.6 x 33 ernД«odleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, no.25, 31) Yet the artist has still responded with zest and charm to the climax of the wonderful tale.ДЄ royal procession to Golconda Figures in a pleasure garden Hyderabad, Deccan, c.1775 With its stylized, broad-cheeked figures and a general crowding of detail, such work stands near the end of the Mughal tradition. The forest below bursts with blossoms and fruit, the lake with lotuses. Winged feinale attendants fly alongside on swift and anoeuvrable puffy clouds, fanning the royal couple and plying them with grapes, fruits and celestial liquors. In this happy denouement Badi-al Jamal embraces her new husband as they speed along in a gold aerial palanquin borne by monstrous but amiable jinn. Only after worldwide travels, shipwrecks, kidnappings, the deployment of a magic ring and other interludes are the couple at last united. As a result of earlier events, Prince Saif ul-Muluk falls irresistibly in love with a magical portrait of the Jinn princess. a princess of the Jinn ('genies' or superhuman beings) is taken from the great Arabic compendium, The Tiiousend and One Nights. The wonder-tales and romances of the kind enjoyed by the young Akbar (1, 4) appealed as greatly as ever to the escapist mood of the late Mughal period, and were often illustrated at the courts of Oudh and elsewhere. Gouache with gold and silver on paper 24.5 x 18.3 cm Saif ul-Muluk and Badi' ai-Jamal with jinn attendantsДЄn episode from The Thousand and One Nights With its deep contrasts of light and shade, this is a strongly moody variation on a well-known theme. The densely leaved trees also show Western influence. The youth piping on a sinuous horn probably has a European antecedent. They make music, smoke or perform a curious sword dance. The other figures are a strange and fanciful party of grey-skinned and pink-garbed yogis, male and female, some only boys. Clasping a peacock-feather fan in the manner of an attendant, he too receives the ladies' respects. Seated beside the shaikh is a venerable yogi with coiled, matted locks and grey, ash-smeared skin. A group of ladies have come by night to honour a white-bearded Muslim divine, seated by a tent or awning with garlanded Shi'ite religious standards the leading noblewoman kneels to offer him a dish of pomegranates. This late treatment of the subject has an air of fantasy (and unusual religious syncretism) typical of the eclectic painter Mir Kalan Khan (29). Sometimes these scenes are nocturnal, allowing a modified use of European chiaroscuro. In the eighteenth century scenes of princes or princesses visiting the abodes of holy men, either Sufi dervishes or forest-dwelling Hindu yogis, had become a commonplace of Mughal painting. Gouache with gold on paper 24.4 x 16.3 cmД«odleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, no.10) Provincial Mughal style in Oudh (Lucknow or Faizabad), c.1760.

Saif ul mulk poetry