Nan va Halva (Breads and Sweets)

The Nan va Halva

Written by Muhammad Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili (1547–1621), also known as Shaikh Baha’i, the text of this manuscript is a masnavi poem on the merits of the ascetic life. After serving as the shaikh al-Islam of Isfahan, he left the post to travel and write, producing commentaries on the Qur’an, grammar, jurisprudence, and astronomy as well as other subjects.[1] Among the works written during this period was the Nan va halva (Bread and Sweets), of which the manuscript here is perhaps the only known illustrated copy. The author’s Arabic preface is written in black, with interlinear Persian translations in red, while the poem is given in Persian, in black, with Arabic headings in red. The text is outlined with gold clouds, and several pages have borders with gold lotus flowers in a grid on a silver background. Other borders include fantastical birds and animals in a rocky landscape. Vivid flowering plants flank many of the headings.

The subject of the poem would not seem to lend itself to illustration, but this unknown artist has found humor in the parables sketched by the author. Of his four charming paintings, the first accompanies a chapter on the regrets of a life spent learning things not useful on the day of resurrection. The artist shows a school in which only the sciences are taught, its teachers dozing, meditating, and drinking (opposite page). The second and third paintings illustrate a chapter that relates the story of a recluse who does not receive his accustomed daily bread. When he wanders into town and hungrily accepts bread offered to him by an infidel, a dog scolds him for not having the faith or patience to see whether God would have provided for him. One painting depicts the recluse praying in the wilderness; the second shows the dog chiding him; the infidel in the background is depicted as the English king Charles II (above). In the final painting, the widow Bibi Tamiz sits on a prayer mat with her head turned away, attention diverted. It accompanies a chapter on hypocrisy, for although Bibi Tamiz is ostensibly devout, her real occupation is prostitution.

The manuscript was probably produced in Aurangabad soon after the Mughal conquest of the Deccan, when many northerners had moved into this new province of the empire. While little is known about the court art of this phase, it is assumed that the patronage of many nobles outside the court stimulated a new phase in Deccani art, which began to assimilate elements of Mughal and Rajput painting.

Marika Sardar in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. For Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili, see Kohlberg, Etan. “Baha’-al- Din ‘Ameli, Shaikh Mohammad.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica 1985–, vol. 3 (1989), pp. 429–30; Stewart, Devin J. “A Biographical Notice on Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili (d. 1030/1621).” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111, no. 3 ( July–September 1991), pp. 563–67; Stewart, Devin J. “Taqiyyah as Performance: The Travels of Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili in the Ottoman Empire, 991–93/1583–85.” Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 4 (1996), pp. 1–70.; Stewart, Devin J. “The First Shaykh al-Islam of the Safavid Capital Qazvin.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 3 ( July–September 1996), pp. 387–405.


Manuscript of the Nan va Halva

While few dated or firmly ascribed painted works from Aurangabad are known, a body of material attributed to that center has nevertheless come together. One style exhibits a strong Rajput sensibility as seen in a few large pichwais (painted backdrops) with rows of women in gold against a red ground;[1] in a grand, forty-foot-long painted scroll from a Jain bhandar (repository) in Nagpur;[2] and in a couple of manuscripts, one a dispersed ragamala (garland of songs) series with Hindu deities and lively patterned textiles.[3] In another strain of Aurangabad painting, a simplified Mughal style predominates, which includes quizzical and amusing figures often drawn with curved lines and filled with areas of flat color rather than modeled with stippled contours.[4] This style was a favored idiom for courtly caricatures and also Islamic texts, including the present example.

The Nan va Halva manuscript opens with a calligraphic face composed of auspicious names, a characteristically Deccani feature. This page is followed by four charming illustrations of the parables of Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili (died 1621), which are written out on cheerful text pages in bright ink.

Among the paintings depicted is the story of a hungry recluse who accepts bread from an infidel, but is then reproached by a dog for this lack of piety. The infidel is shown here as the "merry monarch" Charles II of England (reigned 1660–85). The three other paintings similarly illustrate the moral lessons of ‘Amili, who was also the author of Shir va Shikar (Milk and Sugar) and Nan va Panir (Bread and Cheese).

Some pages of this manuscript are enclosed in silver borders filled with a trellis of lotus flowers and stems. This decoration recalls the openwork-lotus designs on the finials of a palanquin from Golconda (MMA no. 1995.258a, b). Other borders are filled with boldly rendered animals or birds, as on the present folio, in which missing areas in the corners have been repaired with marbled paper. Other copies of Nan va Halva in collections in Mashhad, Taskhkent, and London (Victoria and Albert Museum) await further investigation.[5]

Navina Najat Haidar in (Haidar and Sardar 2015)

Footnotes:

1. S. C. Welch, "India: Art and Culture, 1300–1900." Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985, pp. 328–29, no. 223.

2. Doshi, Saryu, "The Pancha-kalyanaka Pata, School of Aurangabad.” Mārg 31, no. 4 (September), 1978, pp. 45–54.

3. Zebrowski, Mark, "Deccani Painting". London: Sotheby’s; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 49, ill. no. 33; Sotheby’s, London, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, part 2, May 31, 2011, pp. 34–35, lot 15. For another manuscript, see Doshi, Saryu "An Illustrated Manuscript from Aurangabad Dated 1650 A.D."Lalit Kalā, no. 15, 1972, pp. 19–28.

4. S. C. Welch, "A Matter of Empathy: Comical Indian Pictures." Asian Art & Culture 7, no. 3 (Fall), 1994a, p. 92, fig. 12.

5. Musayev, Sh., and G. Karimov, "Literature" in "The Treasury of Oriental Manuscripts, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2012, p. 50. Thanks are due to Vivek Gupta for his research and this information.

sale, Sotheby's, London, July 7–8, 1980, no. 256; [ Sam Fogg, London, until 1999; sold to MMA]

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Nature of Islamic Ornament, Part IV: Figural Representation," September 16, 1999–January 30, 2000, no catalogue.

New York. Brooklyn Museum. "Light of the Sufis : an introduction to the mystical arts of Islam," June 5, 2009–September 6, 2009, not in catalogue.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "Light of the Sufis : an introduction to the mystical arts of Islam," May 16, 2010–August 8, 2010, not in catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy," April 20–July 26, 2015, no. 170.

Fantoni, Georgina. Indian Paintings and Manuscripts. Vol. no. 21. London: Sam Fogg Rare Books & Manuscripts, 1999. no. 35, pp. 56–57, ill.

Haidar, Navina. "Manuscript of the Nan va Halva (Breads and Sweets)." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin: Recent Acquisitions vol. 58 no. 2 (Fall 2000). p. 16, ill. (color).

Haidar, Navina. "Visual Splendour: Embellished Pages from the Metropolitan Museum 's Collection of Islamic and Indian Manuscripts." Arts of Asia vol. 42 (2012). pp. 115–16, ill. fig. 15 (color).

Haidar, Navina, and Marika Sardar. "Opulence and Fantasy." In Sultans of Deccan India 1500–1700. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015. no. 170, p. 294, ill. (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam. How to Read Islamic Calligraphy. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018. p. 113, ill. fig. 48.