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拍品專文
The strength of the calligraphy of this panel, as well as the high quality of the pale jade from which it is formed all point towards royal patronage. It is dated AH 1006/1597-98 AD, a moment at which the Emperor Akbar was still the head of the Mughal Empire but at a time when his young son – Prince Salim – was beginning to make his play for power.
Although there are very few extant Mughal jades that can be plausibly attributed to Akbar’s reign, the existence of such works may be inferred through the visit to the Imperial court in 1563 of a Central Asian jade merchant Khwaja Mu’in who was the overseer at the main jade-bearing river in Kashgar (documented by Abu’l Fazl in his Ain-i Akbari, Stephen Markel (ed.), The World of Jade, Bombay, 1992, p.52). The account of an English merchant, William Hawkins, is also significant. Befriended by the Emperor Jahangir, he reported that in 1609 the royal treasury at Agra contained some twenty-five kilogrammes of uncut jade and five hundred drinking cups, a substantial number of which were likely to have been made during Akbar’s reign which had ended only four years earlier (Markel, op.cit., p.52). Markel describes the jades of Akbar’s period as having overall stout form, heavy features and rudimentary (if any) ornamentation. He also mentions that under Akbar there was a tendency towards dark green jade, as opposed to the pale green jade favoured by Jahangir or the white jade popular under Shah Jahan (Markel, op.cit., p.52). All this would indicate that our haldili was not a product of Akbar’s atelier.
In 1597-98, when our jade was made, Akbar was still very much in power, but his son Prince Salim (later the Emperor Jahangir) was vying for the throne. He first revolted in 1599 and eventually succeeded in overthrowing his father in 1605. From the latter half of 1599 he made his capital at Allahabad – a city built by Akbar’s order, and long a provincial Mughal centre. Jahangir’s patronage of the arts began even before he moved to Allahbad. By 1588-89 when the prince was not yet twenty, the recently arrived Iranian painter Aqa Riza was already in his employ. The manuscripts that were soon to be produced for him in Allahbad frequently exhibited a distinct Iranian flavour due to the influence and guidance of this Safavid master who became the leading artist and director of an atelier which included painters, calligraphers, architects, masons and lapidaries (Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India 1600-1660, exhibition catalogue, Williamstown, 1979, pp.17 and 33-41). The elegant nasta’liq of this panel owes a debt to the Iranian tradition. Welch writes that the Emperor Jahangir’s connoisseurship extended to calligraphy, something to which our haldili certainly attests (Stuart Cary Welch, India. Art and Culture 1300-1900, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p.197). In spite of the technical challenges of carving into the very hard surface of the jade, the calligraphy is masterful, such that it can be blow up to the proportions seen on the facing page and still retain its strength and elegance.
Carved Mughal jades from Allahabad are known. One famous example is a mid-17th century jade terrapin which, according to records in the British Museum was ‘brought from India by Lieutenant Gen. Kyd, found in a tank and brought to him while working on fortifications of Allahbad’ (Welch, op.cit., p.193). An archer’s ring is known inscribed ‘Shah Salim’ and attributed to circa 1599-1604. This reading of ‘Shah Salim’ is generally understood as inferring to Prince Salim and this is thus an important demonstration of Jahangir’s patronage of the arts before he came to power (now in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi; Markel, op.cit., fig.5, p.53). Like the archer’s ring it seems likely that this haldili was also made for Prince Salim in this period before he became Emperor. The purpose of the haldili was to cure the wearer of ‘palpitations’ including those of an emotional nature. Perhaps in this instance it was worn to give him strength in his attempts at taking power.
A number of jades inscribed for the Emperor Jahangir are known. Most of these take the form of wine cups – something that for Jahangir were favourite possessions and imperial attributes (Welch, op.cit., p.195). One of these is in the Brookyln Museum (dated AH 1016/1607-08). Another, at the Rhode Island School of Design, is dated AH 1021/1612-13 AD. An inkpot and opium cup are also known (dated AH 1028/1618-19 AD and AH 1026/1617-18 AD respectively) and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (all published Welch, op.cit., nos.122-126).
By far the closest comparable piece to ours is a pendant now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (previously sold Sotheby’s, 18 October 2001, lot 150). That example bore the name of Shah Jahan, written neatly along the lower edge, and a date of AH 1041/1631-62 AD. Like ours, it was also inscribed with Ayat al-Kursi. The later gold mount to which this panel has been married, probably in the 19th century, has not been removed for the purpose of this catalogue. The overall quality of the haldili however such that it is tempting to imagine that one might find the name of a royal patron were it to be removed.
At the time of writing Pedro Moura Carvalho mentioned that the earliest known dated Mughal jade was the Brooklyn Museum cup, mentioned above (Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, London, 2010, p.54). This haldili is thus doubly important, not only as a work of art of royal quality, but also as the earliest known dated Mughal jade.
Although there are very few extant Mughal jades that can be plausibly attributed to Akbar’s reign, the existence of such works may be inferred through the visit to the Imperial court in 1563 of a Central Asian jade merchant Khwaja Mu’in who was the overseer at the main jade-bearing river in Kashgar (documented by Abu’l Fazl in his Ain-i Akbari, Stephen Markel (ed.), The World of Jade, Bombay, 1992, p.52). The account of an English merchant, William Hawkins, is also significant. Befriended by the Emperor Jahangir, he reported that in 1609 the royal treasury at Agra contained some twenty-five kilogrammes of uncut jade and five hundred drinking cups, a substantial number of which were likely to have been made during Akbar’s reign which had ended only four years earlier (Markel, op.cit., p.52). Markel describes the jades of Akbar’s period as having overall stout form, heavy features and rudimentary (if any) ornamentation. He also mentions that under Akbar there was a tendency towards dark green jade, as opposed to the pale green jade favoured by Jahangir or the white jade popular under Shah Jahan (Markel, op.cit., p.52). All this would indicate that our haldili was not a product of Akbar’s atelier.
In 1597-98, when our jade was made, Akbar was still very much in power, but his son Prince Salim (later the Emperor Jahangir) was vying for the throne. He first revolted in 1599 and eventually succeeded in overthrowing his father in 1605. From the latter half of 1599 he made his capital at Allahabad – a city built by Akbar’s order, and long a provincial Mughal centre. Jahangir’s patronage of the arts began even before he moved to Allahbad. By 1588-89 when the prince was not yet twenty, the recently arrived Iranian painter Aqa Riza was already in his employ. The manuscripts that were soon to be produced for him in Allahbad frequently exhibited a distinct Iranian flavour due to the influence and guidance of this Safavid master who became the leading artist and director of an atelier which included painters, calligraphers, architects, masons and lapidaries (Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India 1600-1660, exhibition catalogue, Williamstown, 1979, pp.17 and 33-41). The elegant nasta’liq of this panel owes a debt to the Iranian tradition. Welch writes that the Emperor Jahangir’s connoisseurship extended to calligraphy, something to which our haldili certainly attests (Stuart Cary Welch, India. Art and Culture 1300-1900, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p.197). In spite of the technical challenges of carving into the very hard surface of the jade, the calligraphy is masterful, such that it can be blow up to the proportions seen on the facing page and still retain its strength and elegance.
Carved Mughal jades from Allahabad are known. One famous example is a mid-17th century jade terrapin which, according to records in the British Museum was ‘brought from India by Lieutenant Gen. Kyd, found in a tank and brought to him while working on fortifications of Allahbad’ (Welch, op.cit., p.193). An archer’s ring is known inscribed ‘Shah Salim’ and attributed to circa 1599-1604. This reading of ‘Shah Salim’ is generally understood as inferring to Prince Salim and this is thus an important demonstration of Jahangir’s patronage of the arts before he came to power (now in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi; Markel, op.cit., fig.5, p.53). Like the archer’s ring it seems likely that this haldili was also made for Prince Salim in this period before he became Emperor. The purpose of the haldili was to cure the wearer of ‘palpitations’ including those of an emotional nature. Perhaps in this instance it was worn to give him strength in his attempts at taking power.
A number of jades inscribed for the Emperor Jahangir are known. Most of these take the form of wine cups – something that for Jahangir were favourite possessions and imperial attributes (Welch, op.cit., p.195). One of these is in the Brookyln Museum (dated AH 1016/1607-08). Another, at the Rhode Island School of Design, is dated AH 1021/1612-13 AD. An inkpot and opium cup are also known (dated AH 1028/1618-19 AD and AH 1026/1617-18 AD respectively) and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (all published Welch, op.cit., nos.122-126).
By far the closest comparable piece to ours is a pendant now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (previously sold Sotheby’s, 18 October 2001, lot 150). That example bore the name of Shah Jahan, written neatly along the lower edge, and a date of AH 1041/1631-62 AD. Like ours, it was also inscribed with Ayat al-Kursi. The later gold mount to which this panel has been married, probably in the 19th century, has not been removed for the purpose of this catalogue. The overall quality of the haldili however such that it is tempting to imagine that one might find the name of a royal patron were it to be removed.
At the time of writing Pedro Moura Carvalho mentioned that the earliest known dated Mughal jade was the Brooklyn Museum cup, mentioned above (Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, London, 2010, p.54). This haldili is thus doubly important, not only as a work of art of royal quality, but also as the earliest known dated Mughal jade.