Anant
Akbar and Abdu'r Rahim
About the painting
This illustration to the Persian-language history of the reign of Akbar is by one of the Mughal artists of the royal workshop, Anant. It depicts the emperor receiving the four-year old Abdu'r Rahim at court following the assassination of his father, Akbar's leading general and mentor, Bairam Khan, in 1561. The child is helped onto the dais by another man, who has been identified tentatively as Ataga Khan. The event took place in 1561.
Read on
The Akbarnama (Book of Akbar) was commissioned by the emperor as the official chronicle of the reign. It was written by his court historian and biographer Abu'l Fazl between 1590 and 1596 and is thought to have been illustrated between c. 1592 and 1594 by at least forty-nine different artists from Akbar's studio. After Akbar's death in 1605, the manuscript remained in the library of his son, Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and later Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658). The Victoria and Albert Museum purchased it in 1896 from Mrs Frances Clarke, the widow of Major General Clarke, an official who had been the Commissioner in Oudh province between 1858 and 1862.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- IS.2:7-1896
