The four destitute friends go to a wise man who gives each one of them a magic shell to be placed on top of the turban, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-seventh Night (c. 1560): Art, Histor

The four destitute friends go to a wise man who gives each one of them a magic shell to be placed on top of the turban, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-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 seated wise man drops a small, red shell into the final friend’s outstretched hands. He then instructs each of them to go out into the world and walk until the shell falls to the ground. If the man digs where the shell lands, he will find something to sustain him.

Object facts

• Title: The four destitute friends go to a wise man who gives each one of them a magic shell to be placed on top of the turban, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-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.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.301.b

A detail from the museum

This story takes place in Balkh, a city in northern Afghanistan.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

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.