Hamzanama

The illustrated volumes describing the fantastic adventures of Hamza (called the "Hamzanama", or "Book of Hamza") were commissioned by the Mughal emperor Akbar who ruled from 1556 to 1605. They were the first major project of the royal painting workshops and are known to have taken 15 years to complete, probably between about 1562 and 1577. The work was directed by Mir Sayyed 'Ali and 'Abd as-Samad, two Iranian masters brought to India by Akbar's father. No independent, contemporary version of the Persian text survives and many of the original pages are missing. It is now therefore difficult to reconstruct the complicated stories of the battles between Hamza and his heroic followers, and their enemies, who included infidels, dragons, witches and giants. This page shows Hamza killing a lion, with a gory depiction of a figure who has been sliced in half in the foreground.