NORTH INDIA, LATE 17TH/EARLY 18TH CENTURY

The earliest reference to a zoomorphic hilt in Mughal art appears in a painting of Jamal Khan Qarawul by Murad, in the Kevorkian Album and dated to circa 1610-15 (Joseph M. Dye III, The Arts of India. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia, 2001, p.422, the painting published in Stuart Cary Welch et al, The Emperors' Album. Images of Mughal India, New York, 1987, no.26, pp.132-33). As Stuart Cary Welch writes, a look at the Padshahnama reveals that the most common form of dagger worn during the reign of Shah Jahan (1627-58) was the katar, followed closely by the khanjar. Of the khanjars depicted in the manuscript however, there are only very few examples with animal-head hilts. Welch suggests that it is only therefore after the reign of Shah Jahan that the trend for zoomorphic hilts proliferated (Stuart Cary Welch, India. Art and Culture 1300-1900, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p.258). Bashir Mohamed writes that the tradition of hilts of jade, rock crystal or ivory in the form of rams, deer, lions or stallions, is a testimony to a former pastoral existence (The Arts of the Muslim Knight. The Furusiyya Art Foundation Collection, Milan, 2007, p.142).