Bashir confides his love for Habbaza to an Arab friend, and sends him to her with a message, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fourth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Bashir confides his love for Habbaza to an Arab friend, and sends him to her with a message, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fourth Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the upper register, Bahir, dressed in orange, conveys a message to his friend for his lover Habbaza. Habbaza herself, who is married to another man, waits for the message in her tent. Other villagers appear throughout the painting, some gesturing in surprise, signaling how news of the clandestine affair spread among the people of Habbaza’s tribe.

Object facts

• Title: Bashir confides his love for Habbaza to an Arab friend, and sends him to her with a message, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fourth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 16 x 10.1 cm (6 5/16 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.167.b

A detail from the museum

Bahir’s friend, wearing yellow, appears both in the upper register and outside Habbaza’s tent.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.