Muraqqa

Youth kneeling and holding out a wine-cup.Safavid period, early 17th century. Isfahan School. Ink and color wash on paper. Freer Sackler Gallery F1928.10.

Some verses in Persiannasta'liqscript, probably always a single page meant for amuraqqa;16–17th century.

AMuraqqa(Persian:مُرَقّع,Arabic:مورّقةTurkish:Murakka)is an album in book form containing Islamic miniature paintings and specimens ofIslamic calligraphy,normally from several different sources, and perhaps other matter. The album was popular among collectors in the Islamic world, and by the later 16th century became the predominant format for miniature painting in the PersianSafavid,MughalandOttoman empires,greatly affecting the direction taken by the painting traditions of thePersian miniature,Ottoman miniatureandMughal miniature.The album largely replaced the full-scale illustrated manuscript of classics ofPersian poetry,which had been the typical vehicle for the finest miniature painters up to that time. The great cost and delay of commissioning a top-quality example of such a work essentially restricted them to the ruler and a handful of other great figures, who usually had to maintain a whole workshop of calligraphers, artists and other craftsmen, with a librarian to manage the whole process.

An album could be compiled over time, page by page, and often included miniatures and pages of calligraphy from older books that were broken up for this purpose, and allowed a wider circle of collectors access to the best painters and calligraphers, although they were also compiled by, or presented to, shahs and emperors. The earliestmuraqqawere of pages of calligraphy only; it was at the court inHeratof theTimuridprinceBaysunghurin the early 15th century that the form became important for miniature painting. The wordmuraqqameans "that which has been patched together" inPersian.

The works in an album, typically of different original sizes, were trimmed or mounted on standard size pages, often with new border decoration being added. When the compilation was considered complete it was bound, often very luxuriously, with anIslamic book-coverthat might be highly decorated withlacqueredpaint, gold stamping on leather, or other techniques. Othermuraqqamight be bound in a specialconcertina-like form. Many were arranged with pages of calligraphy facing miniatures, the matching of verse to image allowing some scope for the creativity of the compiler.Albums containing only calligraphy tended to be arranged chronologically to show the development of a style. The bindings of many albums allowed items to be added and removed, or they were just removed from the centre of the page, and such changes were often made; some albums had marks which allow changes to be traced.The grandest albums had specially written prefaces which are the source of a high proportion of surviving contemporary writing on the arts of the book, and the biographies of painters and calligraphers; these tended to be written by calligraphers. For calligraphers too the single page for an album became the "bread and butter" source of income,using mostly texts from poetry, whether extracts from a long classic orghazallyrics, but sometimes an extract from theQur'an,perhaps given the place of honour at the start of the album. Album pages often have areas ofdecorated illumination(as in the illustration) that share their motifs with other media, notably book-covers and carpet designs, the best of which were in fact probably mostly produced by the same type of artist at court, and sent to the weavers.

While the classic Islamicilluminated manuscripttradition had concentrated on rather crowded scenes with strong narrative content as illustrations in full texts of classic and lengthy works like theShahnamehand theKhamsa of Nizami,the single miniature intended from the start for amuraqqasoon developed as a simpler scene with fewer, larger, figures, often showing idealized beauties of either sex in a garden setting, or genre figures from nomadic life, usually with no real or fictional identities attached to them. In Mughal India realistic portraiture, nearly always of rulers or courtiers, became a very common feature, and in Ottoman Turkey portraits of the Sultans, often very stylised, were a particular speciality. Fully coloured scenes tended to give way to part-drawn and part-painted ones, or to figures with little or no background. The album to some extent overlaps with the anthology, a collection of different pieces where the main emphasis is on the texts, but which can also include paintings and drawings inserted from different sources.

Shift to the album

A Young Lady Reclining After a Bath,Herat1590s, a single miniature for themuraqqamarket

Persian Empire

The dominant tradition of miniature painting in the lateMiddle Ageswas that ofPersia,which had a number of centres, but all usually dependent on one key patron, whether the shah himself, or a figure either governing a part of the country from a centre such asHerat,where Baysunghur was an important patron in the early 15th century, or the ruler of a further part of thePersianateworld in a centre likeBukhara.As theSafavid dynastycentralized Persian rule in the 16th century the number of potential patrons of a full-size atelier declined, but the atelier of the shah expanded and produced a number of superb illustrated books, using a variety of very talented artists on each. However, in the 1540s ShahTahmasp I,previously a keen patron, lost interest in commissioning books, and thereafter the Persian miniature painting tradition lacked a steady source of commissions for books in the old style. After a gap of some years, Tahmasp's nephewIbrahim Mirzaestablished an atelier atMashad,which produced theFreer Jamiin the 1560s, and which ShahIsmail IItook over after having its former patron killed in 1577. But Ismail's reign was very brief, and thereafter consistent large-scale patronage was lacking. It was in this period that the single miniature designed for inserting in an album came to be dominant; such works had long been produced, but now they became the main source of income for many artists, who probably often produced them speculatively with no commission, and then looked to sell them (little is known about the market for album miniatures).

The artist who epitomises the Persian album miniature isRiza Abbasi,active from the 1580s until his death in 1635, whose early single miniatures of groups are somewhat like those in narrative scenes, but lacking any actual narrative attached to them. He soon turned to, and developed, subjects mostly of one or two figures, often portrait-like, although very few identities are given or were probably ever intended to be recognised. There are a large number of beautiful youths, to whose clothes great attention is paid.

Ottoman Empire

15th century portrait ofMehmet II(1432-1481), showing Italian influence

The best Ottoman painting was heavily concentrated in the capital, which from 1453 wasIstanbul,and the most important patron was always the Sultan. The royal library remains very largely intact in Turkey, mostly atTopkapi Palace,and was greatly enriched by Persian manuscripts, initially taken during the several Ottoman invasions of eastern Persia, and later, after a treaty in 1555, often received asdiplomatic gifts.Many of these manuscripts were broken up to use the miniatures in albums.Persian artists were imported from virtually the start of the Ottoman tradition, but especially in the 16th century; sixteen artists were brought back just from the brief Ottoman conquest ofTabrizin 1514, though by 1558 the palace records list only nine foreign artists of all kinds, against twenty-six Turks. But a distinctively Ottoman style can be seen from the start of the 16th century, with pictures showing simpler landscape backgrounds, more sea and ships, neatly tented army camps, distant cityscapes, more individual characterization of faces, but also a less refined technique. There was strong European influence, mostly fromVenice,but this was restricted to portraiture.

Turkish albums include mixtures of collected miniatures similar to those in Persia, and often including Persian pieces, with the addition of rather more greatly elaborated pen drawings of an essentially decorative nature, of a foliage motif, or a bird or animal treated largely as such. Albums dedicated to the sultans, with portraits and laudatory pieces of text, are a distinctive Turkish type, and there were also albums of scenes of Turkish life, showing the relatively uniform costume of different ranks in society, methods of torture and execution, and other scenes of interest to the mostly Western foreigners they were produced for, matching similarprintsmade in contemporary Europe.

One very distinctive type of miniature is found only in Ottoman albums, though they may have been brought from Persia as booty, and perhaps were not intended for albums originally. These are eighty or so the mysterious and powerful images grouped under the name ofSiyah Qalam,meaning "Black Pen" (or drunk or evil pen), full of demons and scenes which suggest nomadic life in Central Asia, though it has also been suggested that they come from a single Persian court artist letting himself go. They are perhaps from the early 15th century, reaching Turkey in the 16th.

Another distinctive type of Ottoman work is thedécoupageor cut paper miniature, where different colours of paper, cut with minute detail then pasted together, are used to create the image. This technique was used for book-covers in Timurid Persia, which were then varnished over for protection, but in Turkey the images were treated as miniatures and went inside albums; the technique was also much used for page border decoration.

Mughal Empire & South Asian Subcontinent

Company styleminiature ofFive Recruitsto a British Indian military unit, c. 1815

TheMughal dynastyin theIndian subcontinentwas rather later in establishing a large court atelier, which did not begin until after the exile in Persia of the second emperor,Humayun,who on his return was joined from about 1549 by Persian artists includingAbd as-Samad.The Mughal style developed under the next emperor,Akbar,who commissioned some very large illustrated books, but his artists produced single miniatures for albums as well. In the case of theJahangirnama,the emperorJahangirkept a diary and commissioned paintings separately, which were most likely held in theKitabkhana(किताबखाना), until his official contribution to the court chronicle genre could be assembled.From fairly early the Mughal style made a strong feature of realistic portraiture, usually in profile, and perhaps influenced by Western prints, which were available at the Mughal court. For a long time portraits were always of men, often accompanied by generalized female servants orconcubines;but there is scholarly debate about the representation of female court members in portraiture. Some scholars claim there are no known extant likenesses of figures likeJahanara BegumandMumtaz Mahal,and others attribute miniatures, for example from theDara Shikohalbum or theFreer Gallery of Artmirror portrait, to these famous noblewomen.Another popular subject area was realistic studies of animals and plants, mostly flowers; from the 17th century equestrian portraits, mostly of rulers, became another popular borrowing from the West.The single idealized figure of the Riza Abbasi type was less popular, but fully painted scenes of lovers in a palace setting became popular later. Drawings of genre scenes, especially showing holy men, whether Muslim or Hindu, were also popular.

Akbar had an album, now dispersed, consisting entirely of portraits of figures at his enormous court which had a practical purpose; according to chroniclers he used to consult it when discussing appointments and the like with his advisors, apparently to jog his memory of who the people being discussed were. Many of them, like medieval European images of saints, carried objects associated with them to help identification, but otherwise the figures stand on a plain background.There are a number of fine portraits of Akbar, but it was under his successorsJahangirand Shah Jahan that the portrait of the ruler became firmly established as a leading subject in Indian miniature painting, which was to spread to both Muslim and Hindu princely courts across India.

In the 18th and 19th centuries Indian artists working in the hybrid Indo-EuropeanCompany styleproduced albums of miniatures for Europeans living in India as part of theBritish Rajand its French and Portuguese equivalents. Some Europeans collected or were given earlier Indian miniatures; the Large and Small Clive albums were presented toLord Clive,and are now in theVictoria & Albert Museumin London.Others created albums of new work, tending to concentrate on animal portraits and the houses, horses and other possessions of this wealthy group. In the 19th century images of Indians and their costumes, often categorized by regional and ethnic type, or occupation, became very popular. Large-scale patrons included ColonelJames Skinnerof Skinner's Horse fame, who had aRajputmother, and for natural history paintings,Mary Impey,wife ofElijah Impey,who commissioned over three hundred, and theMarquess Wellesley,brother of thefirst Duke of Wellington,who had over 2,500 miniatures.

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  A noble lady, Mughal dynasty, India. 17th century. Color and gold on paper.Freer Gallery of Art F1907.219.
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  Jahangirholding a globe, 1614-1618. India.
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  Jahangir,Mughal dynasty, Reign of Jahangir, 17th century. India. Color and gold on paper.Freer Gallery of Art. F1907.187.
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  Shah Jahanand his son,Dara Shikohhunting, Mughal, India. c 17th century. Color and gold on paper.Freer Sackler Gallery F1907.196

Use of albums

Manohar, EmperorJahangirreceiving his two sons, an album-painting in gouache on paper, c. 1605-6

Eight separate pieces of calligraphy by five different Ottoman calligraphers (Sheikh Hamdullah,Hâfiz Osman,Yusuf Efendi (d. 1729),Mehmed RasimandMahmud Celaleddin Efendi) which were trimmed and pasted onto separate sheets of paper and mounted on a single sheet of muraqqa page

Albums were often presented as gifts to mark a milestone in life. Chroniclers record that when the Persian PrinceIbrahim Mirzawas killed in 1577, on the orders of ShahTahmasp I,his wife, Tahmasp's sister, destroyed artworks including an album containing miniatures byBehzadamong others, which her husband had compiled and given her for their wedding, washing the miniatures in water.Perhaps she did not want anything to fall into the hands of her brother, who had ordered his death, and who did take over the prince's atelier.Albums were often presented to rulers on their accession, or in Turkey at New Year. They could also be given as diplomatic gifts between rulers.

A muraqqa was created for SultanMurad IIIin 1572 when he ascended to the throne, which is unusual because the dedication is very detailed, including the date and place of creation, namely Istanbul, 980 AH/1572-73 AD.The dedication is to Murad III, also naming his compiler Mehmed Cenderecizade. The Murad III muraqqa was designed much more extravagantly than other Islamic muraqqa and with original nakkashane (Ottoman painting studio) border paintings.This muraqqa contained miniature paintings, ink drawings, and calligraphy, includingghazals.The Murad III muraqqa has twenty-four miniatures created in the cities ofBukharato the east of Persia,Tabriz,Isfahan,andQazvinin Persia, andIstanbulbetween the late fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.It has a two-page introduction written in Persian, which is similar in structure toTimuridandSafavidalbum prefaces, and indicates that this muraqqa was compiled in Istanbul less than two years before Murad III became Sultan.

Another album in the Ottoman royal collection contains only Western images, mostlyprintsbut including a drawing in pen of anOrnamental Scroll withPuttiand Penises,"for the merriment of adult guests at a dinner inPera".The collection was probably assembled for aFlorentinein the late 15th century, probably a merchant living in Istanbul (where Pera was the quarter for Westerners). The other 15 images are a mixed group of Florentineengravings,mostly unique impressions (i.e. otherwise unknown), with some religious subjects and a coloured print ofMehmet II,who apparently acquired the album. It is of interest to art historians because only a small handful of early albums of Western prints survive anywhere, having been broken up by later collectors or dealers; they were probably common among collectors in Europe at the time.

Examples from the Mughal Court

• Salim Album,produced in the reign ofAkbar the Great,contains both Christian images and portraits of Hindu courtiers.
• Minto Albums,from the reign ofShah Jahan,contains miniatures depicting royal courtiers, gardens, and images of wildlife, surrounded by elaborate floral borders.
• Shah Jahan Album,now dispersed, as it was split up byGeorge Joseph Demotte,a Belgian dealer. Many of the sheets are now in theMetropolitan Museum of Artin New York.
• Kevorkian Album,now mostly split between New York (Metropolitan) and Washington (Freer).
• Gulshan Album,compiled by EmperorJahangir,now mostly in theGolestan Palace,Tehran.

In modern times

Abdur Rahman Chughtaiwas a painter who was responsible for the revival of the muraqqa in theIndian Subcontinentin 1928 after publishing his Muraqqa-I Chughtai. When he started painting in the 1910s his major influence wasHindu mythology,but by the 1920s he was inspired by Islamic artwork including the muraqqa,ghazals,andOttoman miniatures.

Using the emergent tools ofdigital humanities,Sumathi Ramaswamy atDuke Universityhas recreated the form of a Mughal muraqqa’ to track the itineraries of theterrestrial globein early modernIndia.

References

• Abid. Reign of Shah Jahan, portrait by Abid dated 1628; assembled late 17th century.Mirror Case With Portrait of Mumtaz Mahal.Freer Gallery of Art. F2005.4
• Brend, Barbara.Islamic art,Harvard University Press, 1991,ISBN0-674-46866-X,9780674468665
• "Canby (2009)", Canby, Sheila R. (ed).Shah Abbas; The Remaking of Iran,2009, British Museum Press,ISBN978-0-7141-2452-0
• "Riza" – Canby, Sheila R.,Riza [Riżā; Reza; Āqā Riżā; Āqā Riżā Kāshānī; Riżā-yi ‛Abbāsī],inOxford Art Online(subscription required), accessed 5 March 2011
• Crill, Rosemary, and Jariwala, Kapil.The Indian Portrait, 1560–1860,National Portrait Gallery, London,2010,ISBN978-1-85514-409-5
• Dadi, Iftikhar (2006). "Miniature Painting as Muslim Cosmopolitanism" ISIM Review: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World. No. 18 pp. 52–53.
• Fetvaci, Emine F. (2005). "Viziers to Eunuchs: Transitions in Ottoman Manuscript Patronage, 1566–1617." Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Harvard University. pp. 1–533
• Froom, A. E. (2001). "Collecting Tastes: A Muraqqa’ for Sultan Murad III". Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies IV: 19, pp. 1–14.
• Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter.The Renaissance Print,Yale, 1996,ISBN0-300-06883-2
• Losty, J.P.; Roy, Malini (2012).Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library.London: The British Library. pp. 132–133.ISBN9780712358705.
• Rizvi, Kishwar. (2003). "Prefacing the File: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran by David J. Roxburgh." (book review) The Art Bulletin. 85.4. pp. 800–803.
• Robinson, B.,Fifteenth-Century Persian Painting: Problems and Issues,NYU Press, 1993,ISBN0-8147-7446-6,ISBN978-0-8147-7446-5,google books
• Thackston, Wheeler McIntosh.Album prefaces and other documents on the history of calligraphers and painters,Volume 10 of Studies and sources in Islamic art and architecture: Supplements to Muqarnas, BRILL, 2001,ISBN90-04-11961-2,ISBN978-90-04-11961-1
• Titley, Norah M.,Persian Miniature Painting, and its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India,1983, University of Texas Press, 0292764847
• Tanindi, Zeren (2000). "Additions to Illustrated Manuscripts in Ottoman Workshops". Muqarnas. Brill: 17. pp. 147–161.JSTOR

Further reading

• Beach, Milo Cleveland. (1967). "The Heeramaneck Collection". The Burlington Magazine: 109.768. pp. 183–185.
• Blair, Sheila S. (2000). "Color and Gold: The Decorated Papers Used in Manuscripts in Later Islamic Times". Muqarnas. 17. pp. 24–36.
• Glynn, Catherine. (1983). "Early Painting in Mandi". Artibus Asiae. 44.1, pp. 21–64.
• Glynn, Catherine. (2000). "A Rajasthani Princely Album: Rajput Patronage of Mughal-Style Painting". Atibus Asiae. 60.2, pp. 222–264.
• Harris, Lucian. (2001). "Archibald Swinton: A New Source for Albums of Indian Miniatures in Williams Beckford's Collection*". The Burlington Magazine. 143.1179. pp. 360–366.
• Kurz, Otto. (1967). "A Volume of Mughal Drawings and Miniatures". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 30, pp. 251–271.
• Roxburgh, David J.,Prefacing the Image The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran
• Roxburgh, David J. (2000). "Kamal al-Din Bihzad and Authorship in Persianate Painting." Muqarnas. 17, pp. 119–146.
• Soucek, Priscilla P. (1995). "Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Marie Lukens".Journal of Near Eastern Studies.54.1, pp. 74-.
• Swietochowski, Marie Lukens & Babaie, Sussan (1989).Persian drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN0870995642.
• Welch, Stuart C.; et al. (1987).The Emperors' album: images of Mughal India.New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN0870994999.

External links

• Smithsonian 2008 exhibition
• Chester Beatty Library
• Images of a Muraqqa
• New York Times review of Smithsonian exhibit of Muraqqa
• Going Global in Mughal Indiaintroductionanddigital muraqqa album