Hamzanama

The Hamzanama or the Dastan-e Amir Hamza is an artistic masterpiece created about 1558–1573 under the Mughal emperor Akbar. It originally comprised 1,400 canvas folios. On one side of most folios is a painting, about 54cm x 69cm in area, done in a fusion of Persian and Indian styles. On the other side of most folios is Arabic text in Nasta'liq script. The folios are ordered, and the text on the back of one folio accompanies the painting on the subsequent folio.

The Hamzanama Adventures of Amir Hamza was designed to augment a story-telling performance. This romance originated more than 1,000 years ago, probably in Persia, and subsequently spread throughout the Islamic world in oral and written forms. The Dastan-e Amir Hamza existed in several manuscript versions. One version by Navab Mirza Aman Ali Khan Ghalib Lakhnavi was printed in 1855 and published by the Hakim Sahib Press, Calcutta, India. This version was later embellished by Abdullah Bilgrami and published from the Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow in 1871. On October 23, 2007, Random House Modern Library (New York) will publish the first ever complete and unabridged translation of the Ghalib Lakhnavi/Abdullah Bilgrami version of THE ADVENTURES OF AMIR HAMZA by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.

References

Farooqi, Musharraf Ali (2007), "The Adventures of Amir Hamza" (New York: Random House Modern Library) Seyller, John (2002), The Adventures of Hamza, Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution). (Contains the most complete set of reproductions of Hamzanama paintings and text translations.)

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