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. The only contemporary version of the text is that on the reverse of the few remaining paintings, making it difficult to reconstruct the stories. Work on the project probably began in about 1562 and took 15 years to complete.
Here, Rustam and Mihr Afruz prepare for their wedding feast in garden pavilions enclosed by tent walls. All the faces of the living beings depicted, whether humans or birds, have been deliberately erased, probably in the 19th century.