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

The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the thirty-sixth 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:

On the thirty-sixty of fifty-two nights, Khujasta stands before Tuti the talking parrot in a brightly patterned courtyard. In order to keep Khujasta from visiting her lover, Tuti begins to tell her the tragic story of the King of Zabul, who fell for a merchant’s daughter and ultimately died as a result of his unrequited love.

Object facts

• Title: The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the thirty-sixth 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: 9.2 x 10.2 cm (3 5/8 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.237.a

A detail from the museum

Zabul is a city in southern Afghanistan.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.