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Lot Essay
At the end of his second campaign in Iran, Timur ordered the rebuilding of the castle of Qahqaha near Kalat (in Baluchistan, present day Pakistan), a feat that was achieved in two days. “Timur departed fourteen days after, and went to the fortress of Qahqaha, between Baverd and Kalat; the emperor gave orders to rebuild it, and the soldiers so industriously applied themselves to it that in two days and nights it was entirely rebuilt: he gave the government of it to Haji Koja, and fortified it with a strong garrison. He sent to the other side of the country Siorgatmish Can, Mirza Ali and the brave Sheikh Ali with the troops of their Toman, to guard the road to Kalat and to block up the passages with so much precaution that this place should be a sort of a prison from which nobody could come in or go out to carry refreshment to the prince” (Cherefeddin Ali (Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi), The History of Timur Bec, 2 vols., London 1723, vol. 1, p. 224 with slight adaptations).
Khemkaran, also written as Khem Karan, was one of the seventeen artists mentioned by name by Abu’l Fazl as he reported in the Ain-i Akbari on the more than one hundred painters in the imperial atelier at the end of the 16th century, most of whom were very competent or better (Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, quoted at length in Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image, Washington DC: Freer Gallery, 1981, p.24). It has been suggested that Khemkaran may have worked on the Hamzanama but he is not included in John Seyller’s extensive study of that manuscript. He was busily at work in the imperial atelier all the way through from the Razmnama of 1582-6 (Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II City Palace Museum, Jaipur, no inv. no.), to the “second” Akbarnama of 1604 (he designed 3ff. in the section in the British Library, Or.3714 and 1f. in Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 03), appearing in more than ten other projects in addition to these. At first his reputation was clearly as a portraitist, which is how he appears in the Razmnama, but he clearly expanded and two years later in the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya of around 1584 (Khoda Baksh Public Library, Patna, no.551; HL 107) was already a valued designer as well as painter. He painted one other recorded illustration for this manuscript, a battle scene of Timur fighting the army of Chata (with Prahlad Bubbar, London, 2025).
There are also a number of separate works known by him, ranging from drawings (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.310) to a fully worked depiction of a prince on an elephant (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 25.68.4). He appears to be one of a number of artists whose commissions dried up around the time of the accession of the new emperor Jahangir in 1604.
Khemkaran, also written as Khem Karan, was one of the seventeen artists mentioned by name by Abu’l Fazl as he reported in the Ain-i Akbari on the more than one hundred painters in the imperial atelier at the end of the 16th century, most of whom were very competent or better (Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, quoted at length in Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image, Washington DC: Freer Gallery, 1981, p.24). It has been suggested that Khemkaran may have worked on the Hamzanama but he is not included in John Seyller’s extensive study of that manuscript. He was busily at work in the imperial atelier all the way through from the Razmnama of 1582-6 (Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II City Palace Museum, Jaipur, no inv. no.), to the “second” Akbarnama of 1604 (he designed 3ff. in the section in the British Library, Or.3714 and 1f. in Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 03), appearing in more than ten other projects in addition to these. At first his reputation was clearly as a portraitist, which is how he appears in the Razmnama, but he clearly expanded and two years later in the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya of around 1584 (Khoda Baksh Public Library, Patna, no.551; HL 107) was already a valued designer as well as painter. He painted one other recorded illustration for this manuscript, a battle scene of Timur fighting the army of Chata (with Prahlad Bubbar, London, 2025).
There are also a number of separate works known by him, ranging from drawings (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.310) to a fully worked depiction of a prince on an elephant (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 25.68.4). He appears to be one of a number of artists whose commissions dried up around the time of the accession of the new emperor Jahangir in 1604.