Tarif-i Husain Shahi

The Tarif-i Husain Shahi is a history of the reign of Husain Nizam Shah I written by Aftabi; its illustrated manuscript, in the Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala, Poona, holds the earliest surviving Ahmadnagar painting — twelve illustrations. The manuscript is unfinished and lacks a colophon. ¹

Husain allied with the sultans of Golconda, Bijapur and Bidar against the empire of Vijayanagar, which the combined Muslim armies defeated in January 1565; Husain died that June. Since the book describes and illustrates the defeat of Vijayanagar but not the sultan's death, and stresses the rule of both Husain and his queen, Mark Zebrowski dates the manuscript to 1565, between victory and death, rather than to the queen's regency (1565–69) as had been suggested. ¹

Five show court life and six the Vijayanagar campaign; the most poetic shows a tree bursting into bloom at the touch of a beautiful young woman. The author finds the manuscript unorthodox in that Queen Khanzada Humayun appears in six of the twelve, sharing the sultan's throne; her figure was scratched out of the court scenes in 1569, probably on her son's order, but survives in the tree scene, which the vandal did not recognise. He sees links with early Malwa painting, though its bold compositions and colours transcend their sources. ^{3 2}