The Hamzanama, or 'Book of Hamza' was commissioned by the great Mughal emperor Akbar in the mid-16th century. The epic story of a character based very loosely on the life of the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad chronicles the fantastic adventures of Hamza as he and his band of heroes fight against the enemies of Islam. The stories, from a long-established oral tradition, were written down in Persian, the language of the court, in multiple volumes. These originally had 1400 illustrations, of which fewer than 200 survive today. No independent contemporary version of the text is known, and the story is difficult to reconstruct from the text preserved on the backs of the few remaining paintings. Work on the project probably began in about 1562 and took 15 years to complete.
The giant Sar Farangi here leaps from a rocky outcrop to smite Mesluq with a huge mace. Mesluq falls to the ground, watched by men on horseback. The painting has been damaged and the faces of all the humans and horses deliberately obliterated, probably in the 19th century. The giant's face has been crudely repainted.