"Spotted Forktail", Folio from the Shah Jahan Album

55.121.10.15 verso–Calligraphy

There is no worth in you and in your seeing–
Otherwise [you would see that! there is nothing else in the
universe.
The word of love is rarely bought–Otherwise
the Beloved is very conspicuous.
As long as you have not become intoxicated by [acknowledging]
His [God's] unity,
The rank of arriving will not be granted to you.
The poor sinner Mir-'Ali

These lines express, in a somewhat convoluted style, the mystical concept of the Unity of Being: there is nothing existent but God, and He alone is visible, even though people may not reach the highest degree of love and annihilation in His unity.

The page is surrounded by an encomium for a Timurid prince–apparently a son of Timur, perhaps Shah-Rukh–whose "ascendant is higher than Timur's."

Annemarie Schimmel in [Welch et al. 1987]

THE GOLD-ON-BLUE inner border of this verso calligraphy page is almost identical to that of the recto (pl. 40 in this volume). Panels of cutout poetry along the sides form a partial innermost border. The outer border contains flowering plants on a buff ground. An iris is identifiable in the upper left comer, a poppy in the lower left corner, and a narcissus four plants from the right in the lower border. A Narcissus bulbocodium is the small plant third from the right in the upper border. There is no reason to suppose that Harif was not responsible for this border as well as for that of the recto.

The birds painted around the calligraphy panels may be identified as follows: river chat (Chaimarvornis leucocephalus), at right above the first line of calligraphy; common rosefinch (?) (Carpodacus erythrinai [?]), above the second line of calligraphy; chukor (Alectoris chukor), above the third and fourth lines of calligraphy from the bottom along the central vertical axis; white wagtail(?) (Notocilla alba[?]), at right above the fourth line of calligraphy from the bottom and at right of the third line from bottom; egret (Egretta), bottom right comer. In the upper right comer a black buck (Antilopa cerricapra) is being attacked by a cheetah (Acimonyx jubata).

Marie L. Swietochowski in [Welch et al. 1987]

55.121.10.15 recto–Spotted Forktail

INSCRIBED( in fine nasta'liq):(in sky) a'la [most
high]; (on right rock) "equal to the natural
size"; (on left rock) "a unique [lit., 'nonrepeated']
beast which the servants hunted in
Jangespur and whose likeness they [i.e., His
Majesty] ordered [to be drawn] by the servant
of the palace Nadir az-zaman [i.e., Abu'l-Hasan]";
(to left of rock in minute gold script)
"work of gold-spreading the painting of Harif."
(These last words were rewritten when the
cloth was repaired or when the picture was mounted.)

THE SPOTTED FORKTAIL is a bird of the Himalayas, living by running streams in, preferably, thickly forested ravines, at elevations from three thousand to twelve thousand feet. Its strikingly patterned black-and-white plumage affords it perfect camouflage, blending with the gleam of the flowing water and the deep shadows of rocks as it moves along in search of insects and larvae in the water or stream bed.[1] In what circumstances, one wonders, did the servants of Jahangir find this elusive and beautiful bird? Did Jahangir see it alive or dead? Did Abu'l-Hasan see it alive or dead and was he also in Jangespur? Where is Jangespur, which is not mentioned in Jahangir's memoirs and does not appear in atlases, historical or contemporary? It can be surmised that Abu'l-Hasan did not see the spotted forktail in its natural habitat and was unaware of it, or he presumably would have painted it in or beside a mountain stream. Jahangir must indeed have been
moved by the beauty of the bird, whatever the circumstances of his seeing it, in that he deemed its portrait worthy of the brush of one of his most esteemed artists.

In his memoirs Jahangir has this to say about Abu'l-Hasan, to whom he had just given the title Nadir azzaman (Wonder of the Age): 'At the present time he has no rival or equal. If at this day the masters Abdu'l-Hayy and Bihzad were alive, they would have done him justice. His father, Aqa Riza'i, of Herat, at the time when I was Prince, joined my service. He (Abu'l Hasan) was a khanazad of my Court. There is, however, no comparison between his work and that of his father (i.e., he is far better than his father). One cannot put them into the same category. My connection was based on my having reared him. From his earliest years up to the present time I have always looked after him, till his art has arrived at this rank. Truly he has become Nadira-i-zaman ("the wonder of the age"). Also, Ustad Mansur has become such a master in painting that he has the title of Nadiru-l-Asr, and in the art of drawing is unique in his generation. In the time of my father's reign and my own these two have had no third." [2]

Marie L. Swietochowski in [Welch et al. 1987]

ABU'L-HASAN drew with the most powerfully sure and articulate line in Mughal art; and whether painting man or beast, he tinctured telling gestures with humor. This spotted forktail (Enicurus maculatus), outfitted in starkly elegant blacks and whites, is as dignified as any emperor. Its white-outlined oval eye, precise as a crescent moon, peers alertly from the brow's airy, ping-pong ball roundness. Even in isolation, Abu'Hasan's figures and animals–unlike Manohar's–imply involvement with others. Frail but flexibly springy, the forktail sparkles with the might and comedy of life. Under the palpable feathers, skeletal "architecture" is apparent in the perfectly aligned, arrow-straight legs. Strong as steel girders, they end in claws sharp as fish hooks and are grounded on massive rock. In comparison, everything else in the picture is in flux. Distant birds swoop or hover in a gold-streaked sky against cloud banks; thin, feathery grasses shimmer in gusts of wind that whip water into froth. This is one of Abu'l-Hasan's few natural history pictures, and the only one with a contemporaneous
inscription.[3]

Stuart Cary Welch in [Welch et al. 1987]

THIS MAGNIFICENT painting has an equally magnificent border, consisting of supremely fine and delicate floral scrolls with much gold brushed into the varicolored petals. At the bottom of the picture an inscription in tiny letters states that the gilding was by Harif. His name is not familiar as a painter of scenes or portraits, and it does not appear on any other published borders (this field is, however, in its infancy).
For a discussion of Harif and his possible relationship to Daulat, see MMA fol. 2r (pl. 34 in this volume).

The margin bears the number 44. In a vertically oriented album the bird's tail would be at the bottom. There is a palmette, floral-spray, and leaf-scroll inner border in gold on pink; there is no innermost border of cutout poetry. The fork tail would have faced the hornbill (pl. 41 in this volume) in its original album.

There is a nineteenth-century copy of this painting in the Kevorkian Album (FGA 39.46b; pl. 85) which has the same floral-scroll border scheme, but which in respect to both bird and border cannot be compared to the original. When albums were reassembled in the early nineteenth century and the copies added at that time, they must have been done in considerable haste and carelessness because, of course, a copy must have been intended for a different album from the original. It is also possible that the nineteenth-century copy was
indeed assembled into a different album from the original or was at least slotted for such a step and that at some later date the albums were taken apart again and reassembled at a time when the purpose of the nineteenth-century copies was unknown to the later assemblers.

Marie L. Swietochowski in [Welch et al. 1987]

Footnotes:

I. Whistler, Hugh, and Kinnear, Norman B. Popular Handbook of Indian Birds. Rev. and enl. 4th ed. London, 1949, pp. 95–97, fig. 15.

2. Jahangir. The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri; or Memoirs of Jahangir. Trans. Alexander Rogers. Ed. Henry Beveridge. 2 vols. London, 1909–1914, II, p. 20.

3- Robert Skelton has ascribed two others to him on stylistic grounds; see Welch, Stuart Cary, and Beach, Milo Cleveland. Gods, Thrones, and Peacocks. New York, Asia Society, 1965, no. 10, and Welch, Stuart Cary. A Flower from Every Meadow. New York, Asia Society, 1973, no. 61. Abu'l-Hasan is also likely to have worked with Mansur on the famed Squirrels in a Plane Tree; see Welch, Stuart Cary, India! Art and Culture 1300–1900. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, no. 141.