Aqa Mirak

Aqa Mirak was a painter, purveyor and companion to the Safavid shah Tahmasp I and was well known in contemporary circles.

[1] The contemporary chronicler Dust Muhammad mentioned that Aqa Mirak along with Mir Musavvir did wall paintings for Prince Sam Mirza's palace in Tabriz and illustrations for royal manuscripts including the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, a superb copy of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh ('Book of kings') and Nizami's Khamsa ('Five poems').

Qazi Ahmad wrote that Aqa Mirak "had no peer in artistic design and was an incomparable painter, very clever, enamoured of his art, a bon vivant, an intimate [of the Shah] and a sage".

A transitional period in the early 1530s was followed by mature works produced from the late 1530s to c. 1555, in which the compositions are more complex and the coloring more subtle.

In the view of Dickson and Welch, at the end of his life the artist returned to his youthful style in two paintings for Ibrahim Mirza's copy of Jami's Haft Awrang ('Seven thrones') produced between 1556 and 1565.