A sultan for whom art was a defining passion, a poet who averred that the two most beautiful things in the world are a lute and a lovely woman, an erudite scholar who wrote Dakhni verses remarkable for their blended vocabulary (South Indian, Arabic and Persian), a mystic who touted his own brand of mysticism that invoked an unlikely Trinity: the Prophet Muhammad, the Hindu goddess Saraswati, and the Sufi saint Gesudaraz - Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580-1627) is lauded as the Deccan’s greatest patron of the arts and the most intriguing figure in its story. Under his patronage, Bijapur spawned an artistically robust culture, bringing together Hindu and Muslim traditions in an atmosphere of heterodox learning, and uniting Persians, Africans and Europeans in a cosmopolitan artistic meritocracy.
It was an era of intense cosmopolitanism. Between the 16th 1nd the 18th centuries, following an epic migration of traders, soldiers, artisans and inventors to the Deccan, sultans sought to project their power and piety by commissioning exquisite works of art and architecture. The golden age of Bijapur under Ibrahim’s visionary rule saw a mature Bijapuri artistic idiom come to full fruition. His court attracted some of the most talented artists of the age who gave expression to the sultan’s inner vision and whose works offer a glimpse into an opulent and sensuous world. An Akbari envoy (Asad Beg), a Dutch Mannerist painter (Cornelius Claez Heda) and a Flemish jeweller from Bruges (Jacques de Coutre) also visited his court and provide compelling accounts of Adil shahi diplomacy in general and Ibrahim’s aesthetic tastes in particular. Mirza Asad Beg speaks of the opulence of the city of Bijapur and of Ibrahim’s rapturous love of music, his falling into a trance at a musical soiree and being almost unable to speak. [1] Cornelius Claez Heda in his letters [2] provides an outsider’s insight into this sultanate in the grip of an artistic rebirth of great brilliance, and recounts how his paintings mesmerized Ibrahim. Ibrahim invited him to stay at Bijapur, gave him the title Nadir-uz-Zaman, the most Excellent of the Age, made him “Third Counsel of the King” and presented him with a Bijapuri mansion. Jacques de Coutre who visited Bijapur five times between 1604 and 1619 described the exceedingly rich material culture of Bijapur and the ostentation of its sultan. [3]
Looking at the corpus of paintings that come to us from Ibrahim’s reign is like throwing a window open on an enchanted world. Brooding landscapes, enigmatic yoginis, deviant dervishes, solemn sufis and pensive, melancholic sultans intrigue us in abundance. And the one-man catalyst for this outpouring of creativity was Ibrahim Adil Shah II. The sultan was a contemporary of Akbar but while Akbar was illiterate and a man of action, Ibrahim was a romantic and a dreamer. His religious eclecticism drew him to Hinduism and early in his reign, he gave up wearing jewels and adopted the rudrakshamala of the Hindu sadhu. According to Mark Zebrowski “It is hard to label him either a Muslim or a Hindu; rather he had an aesthete’s admiration for the beauty of both cultures.” [4]Ibrahim’s sensitivity and allure reach out to us through his own compositions in his book, the Kitab-i Nauras, a collection of fifty-nine devotional songs and seventeen dohras (couplets), highly visual in their imagery and metaphors. Through these songs Ibrahim crafted a distinct iconography for himself primarily consisting of his tambur Moti Khan, elephant Atash Khan, wife Mallika Jahan, and sister cities Bijapur and Nauraspur. The Kitab-i Nauras is a vision of the culture Ibrahim espoused, his hybrid religiosity, his devotion to music, his mystical temperament, his valuing of art and literature as essential elements of court life; and nauras is the leitmotif running through the book. It is a key to the artistic high points of the period and to the aesthetic concept of nauras as a symbol within state affairs. [5]
Perhaps the most astounding passage occurs in the 56th song, where Ibrahim describes himself as a Hindu god: “In one hand he……[holds] a musical instrument, in the other a book which he reads and sings songs related to the Nauras. He is robed in saffron-coloured dress, his teeth are black, the nails are red…….. and he loves all. Ibrahim, whose father is god Ganesh and ……mother pious Saraswati, has a rosary of crystal round his neck, a city like Vidyapur [Bijapur] and an elephant as his vehicle.”[6]Such songs almost certainly formed the subject matter of Bijapuri painting. The painting of Ibrahim playing on his tambur in the Naprstek Museum, Prague, [7] for example, corresponds to this self-description, for Ibrahim is depicted holding his tambur Moti Khan, with rudraksha beads round his neck, nails lacquered red and two elephants and a tiny cityscape - probably Bijapur itself - in the background. The whole scene has a rather eulogistic feel. The sultan is magnificently attired, positioned against an opulent cushion embroidered with huge gold rosettes, playing a lute with a long neck and a big, pear-shaped body which according to Robert Skelton “is doubtless Ibrahim’s celebrated tambur Moti Khan.” [8] Draperies flow in multiple folds and the ubiquitous rhomboid pattern embellishes the edges of garments, golden patkas, and the pattabandhas securing conical turbans. The rich green foliage of a voluminous tree frames the royal head of the sultan.
An important work relating to the same song from the Kitab-i Nauras has recently come to light from a royal collection at Jaipur, a painting of the goddess Saraswati, [9] envisioned as a Deccani princess, dressed in a white sari, seated upon an ornate hexagonal walled throne, holding her attributes of vina, book, rosary, conch and, additionally, a lotus. A heavily tasseled, gold-embroidered textile is held above her by two magnificently-winged paris, and above this is the passage of illumination, the words from song no 56 of the Kitab-i Nauras: Ibrahim ko got pita dev guru Ganapati mat pavitra Sarsuti (Ibrahim whose father is guru Ganpati and mother the pure Saraswati). According to one source, Ibrahim performed puja to Saraswati every morning! It is delicious evidence of the open-mindedness of this astonishing sultan, a Muslim king in South India, to write a text where he declares with such passion and conviction his affiliation to Hindu gods, and then for a painter from Iran to come to these parts and realize them in paintings! It has been suggested that this extraordinary painting may have formed the frontispiece to one of the manuscript copies of the Kitab-i Nauras. The luminously-coloured work is signed by Farrukh Husain and is hisonlyknownfemininesubject.
Farrukh Husain’s sojourn at Bijapur (ca.1596-1609) has been much discussed by art historians. [10] Though he was a meticulous artist, his output at Bijapur is nothing short of ravishing. What was it about Ibrahim’s inspiring tutelage that Farrukh’s oeuvre underwent a startling transformation during his Bijapur tenure, becoming more visionary and abstracted, almost fantastical? Colours grow more luminous, trees “bubble” like brilliantly-daubed broccoli forms, rocks surge in striated colours, and clouds billow psychedelically. In the well-known painting Ibrahim Hawking [11] also by Farrukh Husain, the young sultan is depicted riding a majestic horse, against a mystic landscape with rolling mounds of malachite, bluish hills and the gold haze of the sky. The galloping steed seems to “float” against this otherworldly backdrop, its saddlery so delicately patterned that it reminds one of the illuminated ‘unwans that adorn royal manuscripts. This element of fantasy in Ibrahim-era painting, the distinctive palette, the hyperreal treatment of fauna and vegetation, has earned it the epithet of “otherworldly.” Ibrahim’s patronage elevated Bijapuri painting to a level of expressive power and technical refinement that rivalled the greatest Mughal and Safavid works, yet it was the expression of a technical mastery that still honoured and explored the idea of fantasy and otherworldliness.
Portraits of rulers, too, lack the sober documentary realism or portentous imperial symbolism of their Mughal counterparts. In Ibrahim holding Castanets [12], the poet-mystic-musician strolls trance-like through the emerald haze of a night-garden in deep reverie like a Sufi seeker in quest of his god, holding castanets that look like colourful birds. No royal panoply or posse of attendants mar the pensive beauty of the scene. Instead, it is an appropriate representation of a man who wrote that the two most beautiful things in the world are a lute and a beautiful woman. Pink floral clusters and leaves preen to the rhythms of his kartal, or so it would appear from this superb portrait where he stuns us with his magnificent gold shawl, pink breeches and transparent robe edged with embroidered arabesques.
In a famous painting from the Bikaner collection [13], Ibrahim is portrayed with four strands of rudraksha beads around his neck, a sign of his increasing devotion to Hinduism. He wears a lavish and voluminous chador, clutches a cane and walks at the head of a group of seven courtiers. A floating tasseled canopy hovers over his head, a saffron fanning cloth flares out behind him. Here he is the self-styled Jagatguru [14] (world preceptor), mystical, bearded and contemplative. Together these paintings attest to the supernal beauty and intensity of Ibrahim-era painting. These two works acknowledge Ibrahim’s musicality and closeness to Hindu customs and also stand as testament to the distinctive Bijapuri painting style that developed in his time
The paintings of yoginis are also emblematic of the vividly heterogeneous court culture that flourished under Ibrahim Adil Shah II’s court. There are several such visionary paintings, uncommonly beautiful solitary women with the attributes of Hindu ascetics and the raiment of Deccani princesses. The most well-known of these, the Chester Beatty Yogini [15] (named after the library in which she is now housed) incorporates many moods and many strands, a wonderful crystallization of the syncreticism of the Deccan. Elegantly elongated like a Mannerist Madonna, the yogini, whose body is a luminous purple-gray from the ash she has smeared on herself, stands in solitude in a wild landscape. The yogini’s intimate communion with a mynah, the over-sized sensuously sprawling peonies, and distant illuminated palaces are taken to surreal heights. She is elaborately bejeweled, and seems almost spellbound, though her gold sashes furl and the delicate tendrils of hair around her tilted head quiver. The yogini’s ash-covered skin and jata are the attributes of female ascetics associated with Siva. There are other album folios depicting these bejeweled renunciants, yoginis with morachhals, trishuls, ektaras, in animal-hide garments and sometimes accompanied by dogs. It is a particularly intriguing genre of Bijapur court painting. Ibrahim Adil Shah, whose verses delighted in conjuring multiple metaphors for poetic objects and whose eclecticism encouraged a fluidity of religious doctrine at court would have savoured the multiple resonances evoked by the yogini paintings. Bijapur yoginis were produced on the cusp between a period of intense occult speculation in the late 16th century. There was a strong nexus of Sufic, the occult and the court at Bijapur, and yoginis were invoked and propitiated for their supernatural powers. Rites were performed to gain territory, subdue one’s enemies, expand dynasties and for all militaristic purposes. Here, then, is adbhuta rasa, woven into the rich tapestry of Bijapuri courtly culture.
The rasas of Ibrahim-era Bijapuri art range widely. Mullahs and dervishes, and Sufi Shaikhs of all ranks formed spiritual lineages and held alliances as powerful as those of its kings. A small portrait from Bijapur [16] shows us the face of spirituality. A mullah, a lone figure draped in a Kashmiri pashmina, and holding prayer beads and a book which might be a copy of the Qur’an, is urbane and dignified, his careworn expression suggesting one deep in thought, perhaps burdened by a troubled world. Sufism also had a vibrant presence in the Deccan, and at the wilder end of the Sufi spectrum, appear the dervishes, upholders of a deviant and enigmatic piety. Images of dervishes in paintings from Bijapur emphasize the mystical and bizarre elements of their character. Qalandar in a Fur Cloak, [17] Mazhub with a Cat [18] and Dervish wandering with a Dog [19] show these outcastes of society. It is a provocative cluster of images showing a peripheral but fascinating and boisterous world. “Such men, we imagine, must have been commonplace sights in Adil Shahi Bjiapur,” writes Deborah Hutton, “which housed a growing number of Sufis at the turn of the century.” Ibrahim’s piety and attachment to dervishes is seen, too, in Dervish receiving a Visitor. [20] In a rustic setting, in a shrine with overtly Islamic references, the artist shows Ibrahim approaching a seated dervish. In addition to depicting a Sunni sultan amongst heterodox Sufi mazhubs and Hindus, the image also includes a European and references to Shi’ism (the four alams on the hilltop). It is therefore a corroboration of the Shi’i-Sufi synthesis during the reign of this sensitive and tolerant sultan.
And yet Ibrahim remains a mysterious figure - likehispaintings.Sultansindreamy contemplation; haunting, self-possessed yoginis; an ambiguity of moods and dreamlike images rather than realistic representation; the way in which rasa is invoked again and again - Ibrahim-era painting is fecund with an intense intermingling of ideas. The magic and majesty of Bijapuri art goes beyond the material realm into that of the imagination. The paintings express this quality most powerfully in their fantastic styles and subjects, challenging the idioms of the Indo-Persian canon, but never straying from its discipline and technical finesse. Colours that range from the nuanced to the audacious, lines that undulate lyrically from the bold to the vanishingly fragile, enigmatic shifts of scale, and an emphasis on mood rather than reality - Ibrahim wanted every detail of life imbued with aesthetic intent and the highest quality of workmanship. Collectively this provides an insight into Ibrahim’s remarkable patronage, and forms the legacy of this true and passionate rasik.
Notes
1. P.M.Joshi, “Asad Beg’s Mission to Bijapur, 1603-4,” in Prof. D.V. Potdar 61st Birthday Commemmoration Volume, ed., S. Sen (Poona, 1950), 185.
2. Ten letters from Heda dating between 1610 and 1619 survive, including both originals and copies made by VOC secretaries. All of these remain in the National Archive in the Hague.
3. Vida de Jacques de Coutre, natural de la ciudad de Brugas, a unique manuscript at the Biblioteca National de Madrid. Recounting the life and travels of a Flemish merchant from Bruges, Jacques de Coutre, it was originally written in Portuguese and then translated into Castilian by his son: Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400-1800 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 343.
4. Mark Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 163.
5. At least seventeen different items were named nauras, including such diverse things as a musical note, a sweet wine of nine flavours, the royal flag, and, most significantly, the new city founded by Ibrahim in 1599, Nauraspur.
6. Nasir Ahmad, ed. and trans., Kitab-i Nauras by Ibrahim Adil Shah II (New Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Kendra, 1956), 146-7.
7. Ibrahim Playing on his Lute, ascribed to Farrukh Husain, Bijapur, 1595-1600, Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Culture, Prague (A.12182).
8. Hana Knizkova, “Notes on the Portrait of Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur in the Naprstek Museum, Prague,” in Facets of Indian Art: A Symposium held at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 26,27, 28 April and 1May 1982, ed. Robert Skelton et al. (London: Victoria and albert Museum, 1986), 116.
9. Saraswati Plays on a Vina, Farrukh Husain, Bijapur, ca. 1604. Brig. Sawai Bhawani Singh of Jaipur, City Palace, Jaipur (JC-1/RJS.1326-RM177).
10. The identity of Farrukh Husain and his tenure at Bijapur has been the subject of much debate. It is now accepted that between ca 1580 and 1619, a single artist known as Farrukh Husain or Farrukh Beg worked in the following five contexts: Safavid Khorasan, the independent kingdom of Kabul, Mughal India, Adil Shahi Bijapur, and once again Mughal India.
11. Ibrahim Adil Shah II Hawking, Bijapur, ca. 1598-1600. Institute of Oriental Studiesm Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, MS. E. 14,f. 2.
12. Ibrahim Adil Shah II holding Castanets, Bijapur, ca.1610. The British Museum, London, 1937 4-1002.
13. Ibrahim Adil Shah II in Procession, attributed to the Bikaner Painter, Bijapur, ca. 1595, private Collection, London.
14. Song no 50, Kitab-i Nauras (1956), 145: “Ibrahim is singing and playing upon his instrument and so he is given the appropriate title of Jagatguru (world preceptor) and Nad Murat (embodiment of sound)”.
15. The Chester Beatty Yogini, Bijapur, ca. 1605. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. MS. 11A, no. 31.
16. A Mullah, Bijapur, ca. 1620, Trustees of the British Museum, London (1937,0410,0.3).
17. Qalandar in a Fur Cloak, Bijapur, 1st quarter of 17th cent., Metropolitan Museum of art, New York, 57.51.30.
18. Mazhub with a Cat, Bijapur, ca. 1625-50, Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad.
19. Dervish wandering with a Dog, Bijapur, ca. 1600. Collection, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, O.S. 5374.11.77.
20. Dervish receiving a Visitor, Bijapur, ca.1610-20, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Ms Douce Or.b.2, fol. 1r.