Hamza arrives in Mecca

The Hamzanama, or 'Book of Hamza' was commissioned by the great Mughal emperor Akbar in the mid-16th century. The epic story of a character based very loosely on the life of the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad chronicles the fantastic adventures of Hamza as he and his band of heroes fight against the enemies of Islam. The stories, from a long-established oral tradition, were written down in Persian, the language of the court, in multiple volumes. These originally had 1400 illustrations, of which fewer than 200 survive today. There is no known independent contemporary version of the text which survives in fragmentary form on the backs of the remaining illustrations, making it difficult to follow the stories. Work on the project probably began in about 1562 and took 15 years to complete.