The vizier dissuades the king of Bahilistan from executing the dervish who asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Det

The vizier dissuades the king of Bahilistan from executing the dervish who asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): 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:

A poor dervish, wearing a fur cap and short brown lower garment, stands captive before the furious king of Bahilistan. Before he can kill the dervish, a vizier reminds him that it is beneath a king to stain his sword with the blood of a mendicant. The dervish is ordered to prove his worth by offering the king’s daughter an elephant laden with gold.

Object facts

• Title: The vizier dissuades the king of Bahilistan from executing the dervish who asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): 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.); Painting only: 14 x 9.9 cm (5 1/2 x 3 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.44.b

A detail from the museum

Bahilistan was once an independent state in India.

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, translator and editor. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland, OH: 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.