An illustrated leaf from Mirza Muhammad Rafi'Badhil's hamla-yi haydari: ‘Amr ibn Umayyah al-Damri assassinates two members of the tribe of Banu Kilab, India, Hyderabad, circa 1820

The hamla-yi haidari was composed by the poet and Mughal administrator Mirza Muhammad Rafi’ Badhil (d.1712). Badhil, who was descended from an important family in the shrine city of Mashhad, Iran, intended to produced a history of the life of the Prophet Muhammad from the time of his first revelation up until the death of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of the Prophet. The epic follows in the tradition of illustrated manuscripts which recount various early battles and events during the life of the Prophet, paraphrasing from the Qur’an and various hadith sources. In this particular episode the companion of the Prophet, ‘Amr ibn Umayyah al-Damri had been sent to investigate a treachery committed against Muslim missionaries by the pagan tribe of the Banu Kilab. ‘Amr ibn Umayyah finds himself by chance sharing a resting place with two members of the Banu Kilab tribe. He decides to assassinate them while they slept which is depicted here as the two victims are shown reclining on their sleeping mats.

Further illustrated leaves from the same manuscript are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv.2015.576, 2015.577 and 2015.578); The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (inv. B87D17), and the David Collection, Copenhagen.

The bright colours used on this and other folios would suggest that they were painted somewhere in central India. Another illustration from this manuscript now in the Aga Khan Museum Collection had been attributed to nineteenth-century Northern India, (S.R. Canby, Princes, Poets & Paladins: Islamic and Indian Paintings from the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, British Museum Press, 1998, Cat.136, p.177). This attribution was suggested without the knowledge of the existence of other illustrations from the same manuscript. The attribution to Northern India could also be justified by comparing this manuscript to the British Library’s copy of the khavarannameh of Ibn Husam that was illustrated by ‘Abd al-Hakim Multani, dated 1097 AH/1686-87 AD and attributed to the Punjab, (inv. add.19776, N.M. Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts: A Catalogue and subject index of paintings from Persia, India and Turkey in the British Library and The British Museum, British Museum Publications, 1977, Cat.193 (37). The khavarannameh, though recognisably earlier in date than this hamla-yi haydari, obviously stems from the same tradition of illustrated epics relating to the life and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. In the nineteenth century Hyderabad was a city of great wealth and patronage that attracted a great number of artists from other parts of India. As a result it is likely that the artist of our illustration could have trained in Northern India but have produced this work in Hyderabad using local pigment preferences.