The destitute Mukhtar meets his wife Maimuna at a holy shrine, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The destitute Mukhtar meets his wife Maimuna at a holy shrine, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth 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 center of the image, a surprised Mukhtar, dressed in rags, confronts his wife. A few days prior, he had attempted to kill her in order to steal all of her possessions. Now destitute, Mukhtar begs for his wife’s forgiveness, which she grants.

Object facts

• Title: The destitute Mukhtar meets his wife Maimuna at a holy shrine, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth 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: 13.2 x 10.1 cm (5 3/16 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.175.b

A detail from the museum

A woman places a garland on a cenotaph, probably marking the grave of a Sufi holy man.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.