The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the fortieth night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the fortieth night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

As Khujasta prepares to leave to spend the night with her lover, she is stopped by Tuti the parrot. Tuti begins to tell her the story of a merchant’s wife, named Shahr-Arai, who tricked her husband in order to carry out an affair. The story is set in Nishapur, a city in northeast Iran.

Object facts

• Title: The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the fortieth night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot)
• 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: 8.9 x 10.1 cm (3 1/2 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.258.a

A detail from the museum

A highly corrosive copper green pigment, called verdigris, has darkened and damaged the paper.

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.