Two illuminated folios from a manuscript of Ghazals of Nawidi, India, Mughal, second half 16th century

The poet Nawidi, a native of Nishapur, joined the entourage of the Mughal Emperor Humayun in the mid-sixteenth century, and died in 1565. Among his ghazals were a group notable for the presence of a technically unusual motif - in each of the ghazals a certain letter of the alphabet is strictly avoided. Examples of his poetry are very rare.

The richly decorated borders are executed in a style that is associated with both Persian and Indian works of the second half of the sixteenth century. The borders of manuscripts produced in Khurasan and Bukhara at this period perhaps provide a prototype, and this would fit with the author's background from Khurasan. But here the designs and execution have a slightly more flamboyant and lively manner, indicating a possible origin in India, perhaps even associated with the court of the poet's patrons Humayun or Akbar in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Thus the manuscript may have been executed in Persia during Humayun's exile, or in India after his return, or during Akbar's early reign. It is also possible that they were executed away from the Mughal court, but in a context that was influenced by royal literary tastes and manuscript production styles, such as at the atelier of Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, the Mughal general, bibliophile and patron. The boldness of these borders can perhaps be linked in spirit to those of the famous Panj Ganj manuscript, whose borders were illuminated by the artist Mushfiq for Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan.