The three young men present themselves as suitors for the hand of Zuhra, the daughter of the merchant of Kabul, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fourth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and De

The three young men present themselves as suitors for the hand of Zuhra, the daughter of the merchant of Kabul, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fourth 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:

Above, two women listen as three suitors address the merchant of Kabul. Each hopes to prove himself worthy of marrying the merchant’s daughter, Zuhra. The first is skilled in divination; the second can bring carved wooden horses to life, and the third is a talented archer. Before Zuhra can select a husband, she is kidnapped by an evil fairy.

Object facts

• Title: The three young men present themselves as suitors for the hand of Zuhra, the daughter of the merchant of Kabul, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fourth 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: 16 x 10 cm (6 5/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.225.a

A detail from the museum

Zuhra is also the name of the planet Venus.

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.
• Nakhshabī, Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn, and Muhammed Ahmed Simsar. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland: The Museum, 1978.
• 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.