Muraqqa
The earliest muraqqa were of pages of calligraphy only; it was at the court in Herat of the Timurid prince Baysunghur in the early 15th century that the form became important for miniature painting.
When the compilation was considered complete it was bound, often very luxuriously, with an Islamic book-cover that might be highly decorated with lacquered paint, gold stamping on leather, or other techniques.
Album pages often have areas of decorated illumination (as in the illustration) that share their motifs with other media, notably book-covers and carpet designs, the best of which were in fact probably mostly produced by the same type of artist at court, and sent to the weavers.
[7] While the classic Islamic illuminated manuscript tradition had concentrated on rather crowded scenes with strong narrative content as illustrations in full texts of classic and lengthy works like the Shahnameh and the Khamsa of Nizami, the single miniature intended from the start for a muraqqa soon developed as a simpler scene with fewer, larger, figures, often showing idealized beauties of either sex in a garden setting, or genre figures from nomadic life, usually with no real or fictional identities attached to them.
After a gap of some years, Tahmasp's nephew Ibrahim Mirza established an atelier at Mashad, which produced the Freer Jami in the 1560s, and which Shah Ismail II took over after having its former patron killed in 1577.
The royal library remains very largely intact in Turkey, mostly at Topkapi Palace, and was greatly enriched by Persian manuscripts, initially taken during the several Ottoman invasions of eastern Persia, and later, after a treaty in 1555, often received as diplomatic gifts.
But a distinctively Ottoman style can be seen from the start of the 16th century, with pictures showing simpler landscape backgrounds, more sea and ships, neatly tented army camps, distant cityscapes, more individual characterization of faces, but also a less refined technique.
[14] The Mughal dynasty in the Indian subcontinent was rather later in establishing a large court atelier, which did not begin until after the exile in Persia of the second emperor, Humayun, who on his return was joined from about 1549 by Persian artists including Abd as-Samad.
In the case of the Jahangirnama, the emperor Jahangir kept a diary and commissioned paintings separately, which were most likely held in the Kitabkhana (किताबखाना), until his official contribution to the court chronicle genre could be assembled.
[21] In the 18th and 19th centuries Indian artists working in the hybrid Indo-European Company style produced albums of miniatures for Europeans living in India as part of the British Raj and its French and Portuguese equivalents.
[25] A muraqqa was created for Sultan Murad III in 1572 when he ascended to the throne, which is unusual because the dedication is very detailed, including the date and place of creation, namely Istanbul, 980 AH/1572-73 AD.
[28] It has a two-page introduction written in Persian, which is similar in structure to Timurid and Safavid album prefaces, and indicates that this muraqqa was compiled in Istanbul less than two years before Murad III became Sultan.
[29] Another album in the Ottoman royal collection contains only Western images, mostly prints but including a drawing in pen of an Ornamental Scroll with Putti and Penises, "for the merriment of adult guests at a dinner in Pera".
The other 15 images are a mixed group of Florentine engravings, mostly unique impressions (i.e. otherwise unknown), with some religious subjects and a coloured print of Mehmet II, who apparently acquired the album.
[31] Using the emergent tools of digital humanities, Sumathi Ramaswamy at Duke University has recreated the form of a Mughal muraqqa’ to track the itineraries of the terrestrial globe in early modern India.
