King Bahram, who has married Khassa’s daughter, has her tied to a camel to be abandoned in the desert as a result of false accusations made by Khulasa, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-firs

King Bahram, who has married Khassa’s daughter, has her tied to a camel to be abandoned in the desert as a result of false accusations made by Khulasa, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-first 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:

The king, seated on a long-legged throne, furiously orders his wife’s execution. Khulasa, the king’s vizier, has attempted and failed to seduce her. Spurned by the queen’s rejection, he accuses her of committing adultery with another member of the court. At the center of the scene, a minister implores the king to abandon his wife, rather than have her beheaded.

Object facts

• Title: King Bahram, who has married Khassa’s daughter, has her tied to a camel to be abandoned in the desert as a result of false accusations made by Khulasa, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-first 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: 7.4 x 10.3 cm (2 15/16 x 4 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.328.a

A detail from the museum

The king is compared to Rustam, a legendary Persian warrior.

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.
• Nakhshabī, Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn, and Muhammed Ahmed Simsar. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland: The Museum, 1978.

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.