Princes of the House of Timur, painting on cotton, British Museum

Princes of the House of Timur is a large opaque watercolour on cotton, 108.5 x 108 cm, in the British Museum (1913.2-8.1); the catalogue calls it the earliest known work by the Safavid court artists whom Humayun brought to India. ^{1 2}

In exile in 1544 Humayun stayed at the court of Shah Tahmasp, where he was thrilled by the shah's painters, several of the greatest of whom tentatively accepted his invitation. ^{1 2} In 1546 he sent for them; they left Tabriz in 1548 for Kandahar, joined him at Kabul in 1549 and in 1554 accompanied him on his successful return to India. ³ Among them were Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, who brought to India the latest Iranian book arts: calligraphy and illumination, coloured and gold-sprinkled paper, illuminated margins and lacquer bindings. ¹

Its size, its new conception of portraiture and its close observation of cooks, waiters and minor courtiers reveal Humayun's effectiveness as a patron; no purely Safavid picture would record the gestures and expressions of servants so believably. ³ Though cut down and partly repainted, it is assigned to Abd al-Samad working under the influence of his colleague Mir Sayyid Ali, for the bold arm gestures, the flight of birds at the top, the trees and the convincing arrangement of forms in space. ³ Michael Rogers has suggested that it was painted at Kabul before Humayun's return to India, and that the central figure, usually identified as Humayun, may be Babur in one of his garden palaces. ³

Facing him in the pavilion are Akbar, his son Jahangir and grandson Prince Khurram, later Shah Jahan; these portraits are imperial work of Jahangir's reign, datable to about 1607 when Khurram was fifteen and his father thirty-eight, and many other faces were retouched then. ³ Rogers points out that the lost foreground would have shown musicians and entertainers and added twenty to twenty-five centimetres to the height. ³