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Calligraphy of Chaghatai Turkish Poems in Praise of Wine (verso)
calligraphy by Mirza Muhammad (probably Persian, active c. 1520s)
and Sultan Muhammad Nur (Persian, c. 1472–1536)
c. 1500–1520
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Page: 36.2 x 24.3 cm (14 1/4 x 9 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This page of delicately illuminated calligraphy from the pre-Mughal period was mounted into a Mughal album. The poems are written in the native language of the Mughals, a form of Turkish called Chaghatai, using a flowing form of Arabic script called nasta‘liq. The Mughals self-consciously adopted Persian as their official court language, so few Chaghatai books or works of calligraphy were made for them.
The quatrain in the center reads: The wine has made an attempt on my life, Since it is the wine that can wear down the pain of separation. O Sufi! Let the mosque be for you, and the tavern for me, Since you need to arrive at the Spring of Kowsar, while I am in need of wine! The Spring of Kowsar is where the righteous quench their thirst in the afterlife.
