Khamsa of Nizami

Khosrow and Shirin, Bahram-e Gur, and Alexander the Great, who all have episodes devoted to them in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh,[1] appear again here at the center of three of four of Nezami's narrative poems.

The adventure of the paired lovers, Layla and Majnun, is the subject of the second of his four romances, and derived from Arabic sources.

[1] The Khamsa was a popular subject for lavish manuscripts illustrated with painted miniatures at the Persian and Mughal courts in later centuries.

A Khamsa manuscript created for Prince Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor, is now in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art.

Its illustrations of Bahram Gur depict the character as Aurangzeb.