The Mughal Manuscript of the Ḥamza-nāma in the Context of Oral Storytelling and Performance

Abstract

The Ḥamza-nāma manuscript was the largest and most ambitious illustrative program of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s atelier. Known as ‘the wonder’ conceived by the emperor, it told 360 tales in a new visual language. The manuscript consisted of 1400 large pages of illustration on cloth, backed by nineteen lines of fine nastaliq text on paper. Today only about 200 are known. Speculative theories about the manuscript maintained that the illustrations were held up to an audience while the text was read out aloud from the back. However, codicological evidence disproved this theory by reconstructing volume eleven whose illustrations and text were in excellent condition, and the legible numbering was consistent with the story and the title. Yet, many of the extant pages still remain unidentified, continue to be misinterpreted and have been arbitrarily assigned to early, late and ‘unidentified’ volumes by recent scholarship. This article re-examines the Ḥamza-nāma, restores several of the damaged and miscatalogued pages to their rightful place, and identifies and forges new links between the folios. It discusses the tradition of oral storytelling, addresses the recent misunderstanding about how the pages functioned, and introduces new story cycles within the dispersed Mughal manuscript.