The dervish brings in as dowry an elephant laden with gold, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The dervish brings in as dowry an elephant laden with gold, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh 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 eccentric dervish, wearing a fur cap, a leopard-skin skirt, and chains around his neck, chest, and legs, comes to the king with the very thing the king thought he could never provide: an elephant laden with gold in exchange for the princess’s hand in marriage. The dervish had gone to the magnanimous King of Kings—the overlord of this local king—with his plight: in order to marry the princess, he had to provide an elephant laden with gold as a dowry. The King of Kings, who could not resist a good love story, provided it for him. The text of the story is written in Persian in a naskh script, which is read from right to left.

Object facts

• Title: The dervish brings in as dowry an elephant laden with gold, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh 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: 4.2 x 9.9 cm (1 5/8 x 3 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.45.a

A detail from the museum

This painting is attributed to the same unnamed artist who painted folio 27r (CMA 1962.279.27.a).

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, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.
• Seyller, John. “Overpainting in the Cleveland T̤ūtīnāma.” Artibus Asiae 52, no. 3/4 (1992): 283-318.

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.