46 S U LTA N I B R A H I M A D H A M V I S I T E D B Y A N G E L S India (Mughal), 1730-1740 Height: 20.5 cm Width: 13.6 cm
Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper, laid down on a small gold-flecked album leaf. On an evening dimly lit by the pale light of a crescent moon and a few distant stars, a holy man sits on a rocky dais at the entrance of his cave, attended by seven winged angels who bring him food and drink. Three sumptuously dressed angels kneeling on the left carry gold covered dishes. The angels standing behind offer drink in a blue-and-white flask and a bunch of grapes. The angels on the right hold gold and silver bowls. The circular rock on which the saint is seated is laid with a cloth upon which are placed an array of delicacies, including a dish of quail. He partakes using a golden spoon and his supper is lit by a magnificent candelabrum. A tree shades the entrance to the cave. In the background, two ships sail in a lake. In the foreground, egrets and a crouching rabbit play on the bank of a lotus pond. The scene is from the famous story of Sultan Hadrat Ibrahim bin Adham of Balkh, an eighth century king who gave up his kingdom in order to become a dervish and is visited by the angels. This was a subject very popular in eighteenth century Mughal painting and another depiction of the scene from Awadh dating to circa 1770-1780 is in the India Office Library, Johnson Album 6, no. 5.1 According to the legend, before he turned into a dervish, Ibrahim was a very wealthy king. One night he is woken at midnight by strangers searching for their lost camel on his roof. When he asks how they would expect to find
a camel on the roof, the mystical reply is, “Just as you hope to find God while dwelling in a kingly palace and dressed in kingly attire”. Ibrahim is immediately possessed by the fear of God.2 The second sign of God to come before Ibrahim is a visit to his palace by another stranger, looking for a place to “lodge in this caravanserai”. When Ibrahim prays to God to tell him the identity of this mysterious stranger, he learns that it is none other than Khidr, and the fear of God strikes him once again.3 Finally, one day while out hunting in pursuit of a beautiful deer, just as he is about to shoot the deer with his arrow, the deer turns to him and speaking in a human voice says, “I have come to hunt you, not to be hunted by you. You cannot kill me. Have you ever pondered if the Lord has created you for this recreation in which you are indulging?” Upon hearing this miraculous message from God, Ibrahim leaves his palace, gives up all worldly possessions and dons the “divine princely garments of poverty”. He stays in the forest for nine years.4 According to the legend, the angels administer to Ibrahim on the banks of the
Tigris after he resigns his kingdom, bringing him ten dishes of food. This arouses the envy of a dervish who was a poor man before he assumes the habit of a beggar and to whom only one plate of food is given. The jealous ascetic is often depicted in other paintings of Sultan Ibrahim, looking very forlorn, but he is not shown here.
and influential style for the Nawabs of Awadh in the 1760s and 1770s. Exhibited and Published: Toby Falk and Simon Digby, Paintings from Mughal India, Colnaghi exhibition catalogue, 1979, pp. 52 and 53, no. 24. References: 1. Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, 1981, no.
A painting of Sultan Ibrahim that includes the poor dervish is in the Cynthia Hazen Polsky Collection, New York. This is published in Andrew Topsfield (ed.), In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India, 2004, pp. 196-197, cat. no. 80. In the catalogue description, Jerry Losty observes that the various versions of this well-known Mughal subject are linked by their dependence on European imagery for the figures of Sultan Ibrahim and angels, going back to a now lost seventeenth century version. Losty cites Gauvin Bailey’s description of a similar picture in the St. Petersburg MuraqqaC where Bailey writes that the figure of Ibrahim is derived from Christ in “The demon tempts Christ in the wilderness”, and the angels from “Angels minister to Christ”, both in the “Poor Man’s Bible” of 1593, a Jesuit book which arrived in the Mughal court in 1595.5 Robert Skelton has suggested an attribution for the present painting to the artist Mir Kalan Khan, early in his Delhi phase, before he later developed his idiosyncratic
325, p. 156. We are grateful to Jerry Losty for drawing our attention to this miniature. We would also like to thank Robert Skelton for drawing our attention to the TadhkaratulAuliya of Fariduddin Attar, in which the story C
of Ibrahim is recorded. Falk and Archer note that Ibrahim was a ninth century king but Fariduddin Attar says he died in 777 AD. C
2. Selections from Fariduddin Attar’s C
Tadhkaratul-Auliya [Memoirs of Saints] Parts I & II, abridged and trans. from the Persian by Bankey Behari, 1961, pp. 35, 36 and 37. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Engraved illustrations by Adriaen Collaert, pls. 12 and 14 from Jerome Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, Antwerp, 1593: see Gauvin Bailey in The St. Petersburg Muraqqa : Album of Indian and Persian C
Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Calligraphy by Imad al-Hasani, 1996, p. 81, C
pl. 90, folio 53.