The fourteen articles collected in this publication offer in-depth investigations and fresh insights into the understudied but complex production and reception processes of muraqqaÊ¿s (Persianate albums) in India of the late eighteenth centuryâa period marked by the rise of British and French colonial powers. The book grew out of an international three-day-long workshop, âEighteenth-Century Persianate Albums Made in India: Audiences â Artists â Patrons and Collectorsâ, held at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin from 15 to 17 September 2021. Its hybrid format allowed scholars, students, art dealers, and collectors from all over the world to join the event online and initiate vivid and stimulating discussions. Further exchanges of thoughts, insights, and materials followed in the weeks and months after the workshop, via email communication and in-person encounters, resulting in new questions and post-event contributions by enthusiastic specialists from various fields. Consequently, beyond the papers presented at the workshop, most of which are published here, three additional articles enrich this volume.
Why had there not been an earlier conference on this topic? The most obvious answer is that the digitisation of eighteenth-century albums has only recently gained momentum. Hence, the majority of the albums under investigation have not yet been made available online,1 and of those that have, many are presented as single folios rather than as double-page openings arranged in the order in which they are organised in the album itself.2 Notable exceptions are the online-presentations of several still-intact eighteenth-century albums in the Bodleian Library in Oxford,3 and the John Rylands Libraryâs Digital Collections of two recently discovered Polier albums in Manchester.4 Things are further complicated by the fact that many Indian muraqqaÊ¿s were sold on the art market as loose folios,5 or that they were disbound after they had entered public collections.6 Research on the patronage and contents of later Indian albums also presents challenges: Whereas the study of albums assembled and collected under the Timurid, Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman dynasties from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries has considerably increased and deepened in recent years,7 scholarship has always shied away from delving into later Indian muraqqaÊ¿s. These were mostly compiled outside the imperial Mughal courtâsome for the Mughal nawabs (governors) in Awadh (todayâs Uttar Pradesh), some for the local Indian elites in Bihar and Bengal, and some by Indian artists for Europeans residing in Indiaâoften under circumstances that cannot be entirely reconstructed.8 Eighteenth-century Indian albums differ from seventeenth-century imperial Mughal albums in their more varied marginal illumination and an often-astounding mixture of works from different periods, ranging from highly-valued late sixteenth-century Mughal calligraphy and painting to contemporary Indian miniatures and calligraphic pieces. Moreover, many of the latter turn out to be adaptations of earlier Mughal works from the reigns of Jahangir (r. 1605â1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628â1658), which in themselves are quite often of unclear provenance, as these were frequently re-arranged in Mughal-style albums over many decades and centuries.9 In sum, eighteenth-century assemblages are difficult to disentangle, and new problems and questions related to their study are constantly arising.
One such question is: Who were the targeted audiences of these albums? Traditional Mughal albums usually consist of alternating openings of two facing paintings and two facing calligraphic compositions, framed by elaborately illuminated margins in a fairly homogenous style, the whole being introduced by a dedicatory rosette (shamsa) followed by facing portraits of Mughal emperors.10 This scheme seems to have been largely abandoned in albums produced for the European colonial elites, who were among the most prolific patrons of late-eighteenth-century Indian albums. In their albums, a painting is often juxtaposed with a calligraphic piece. One might ask, then, how the thematic and aesthetic preferences of Europeans affected these new assemblages. Did Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (1741â1795), Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726â1799), Richard Johnson (1753â1807), and Sir Elijah Impey (1732â1809)âto name the most prominent collectorsânevertheless continue considering muraqqaÊ¿s as repositories of knowledge, signs of status and delicate taste, and Gesamtkunstwerke, as did their Iranian and Mughal predecessors? Or were they entirely absorbed in their own perceptions and treated the albums merely as souvenirs meant to evoke the glories of the Mughal past? Did they try to learn about their contents from an Indian audience?
Since the mid-twentieth century, research on Indian muraqqaʿs has mainly been carried out by Western scholars, which seems due to the fact that most are preserved in European and American collections. This, however, has led to a biased focus on the paintings, their styles and artists. Only rarely have the calligraphic pieces been given the appropriate attention, even though they are present in equal number in most of these albums.11 Until quite recently, scholars have tended to examine single paintings from Indian muraqqaʿs as separate artworks, rather than understanding them as Gesamtkunstwerke and looking, for example, at meaningful juxtapositions on facing pages.12
1 The Essays
This collection of essays is divided into four parts, complemented by an appendix. The essays of the first and second parts examine paintings and albums made for elite members of Indian society, beginning with, in the first part, Mughal elitesâemperors, princes and nawabsâof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then, in the second part, European colonial elites of the eighteenth century. The essays of parts three and four allow the reader to gain a greater and more detailed understanding of the calligraphy and the paintings in the albums, respectively. Since several contributions mention Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil as key patrons and collectors of albums, the biographical and historical information presented overlaps to a certain extent. However, repetitions of this kind are inevitable so as to allow readers to read the essays separately and not necessarily in the proposed order.
The book begins by examining imperial and nawabi patronage and their legacies in eighteenth-century albums and paintings. Hence, the first part titled âAlbums Commissioned by Mughal Elites: Contents and Compilation Strategiesâ explores albums and paintings made for Mughal elites and their later fate. The first essay by J.P. Losty (1945â2021), with the title âThe Indian Paintings from the Collection of Archibald Swinton, Formerly at Kimmerghame House, Berwickshireâ is an annotated and updated version of Lostyâs extensive notes on paintings from the collection of the Scottish surgeon and interpreter Archibald Swinton (1731â1804), now housed in the National Museum of Scotland. It provides not only a comprehensive overview of Swintonâs paintings produced at the court of Murshidabad, reflecting the political developments at the nawabi court in Bengal in the 1740s and 1750s, but also examines twenty-two Mughal and Deccani portrait miniatures that were removed from royal or princely albums, trimmed, and placed in two wooden arched-top frames with Persian inscriptions transcribed in Swintonâs hand. In âObvious Narratives and Hidden Messages in the Large Clive Albumâ, Axel Langer advances the hypothesis that this album was produced on behalf of the Awadhi nawab ShujaÊ¿al-Dawla (r. 1754â1775) as a diplomatic gift for Robert Clive (1725â1774) in his capacity as representative of the East India Company. The gift was possibly delivered on the occasion of the Peace Treaty of Allahabad following the Battle of Buxar (22 October 1764). A comparison of the Large Clive Albumâs structure and contents with a similar, albeit smaller album that once belonged to ShujaÊ¿âs cousin Shir Jang Bahadur further strengthens this assumption. Emily Hannamâs essay with the title âTwo Late Mughal Albums in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle: Further Evidence for the Collections of Nawab Asaf al-Dawlaâ looks at the internal hierarchies of composition and at evidence of the earlier arrangement of two albums from the library of Nawab Asaf al-Dawla (r. 1775â1797) in Lucknow. She also investigates comparable volumes in other collections that either bear Asaf al-Dawlaâs seal or whose paintings can otherwise be associated with the two Royal Collection albums. The continuity of artistic practice in Iran, Central, Asia, and India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is demonstrated in Laura Parodiâs essay, titled âMughal Art on its own Terms: Reflections on an Album Folioâ. By examining an eighteenth-century album folio of the Bruschettini collection, her case-study challenges scholarly classifications of artistic originality and the nature of a copy.
The second part, âAlbums of Foreign Elites: Changes and Challengesâ, moves on to albums produced outside the Mughal courtly tradition. It concentrates on muraqqaâs made for the Franco-Swiss engineer-architect and East India Company agent Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (1741â1795), because they come astoundingly close to the traditional format of Mughal albums, not only in terms of the stylistic wealth and thematic variety of contents, but also in terms of the frequent inclusion of a dedicatory rosette (shamsa) at the beginningâwhich is missing in other albums compiled for Europeans. This part also considers the patronage of Polierâs French colleague, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726â1799), who, like Polier, worked in the early 1770s as architect and military advisor for Nawab ShujaÊ¿ al-Dawla in Faizabad. In âThree Albums of Seigneur Gentil and Colonel Polier: Cultural Exchanges in Late Eighteenth-Century Indiaâ, Susan Stronge explores three albums that local artists produced within ten years of each other for these two multilingual Europeans who were both integrated into north Indian elite society at that time. In the following essay, âTo Be Viewed from Both Ends: The Surviving Polier Albumsâ, Friederike Weis seeks to put Polierâs sixteen surviving muraqqaÊ¿s in a tentative chronological order related to his stays in Faizabad, Delhi, and Lucknowâbased on dedications, inscribed volume numbers, dated calligraphic pieces, and a recently discovered sale offer listing twenty-five numbered albums from Polierâs collection. Furthermore, her contribution examines the layout and juxtapositions of calligraphy and painting on the example of one Polier album produced in Faizabad or Delhi before 1780. Malini Royâs essay, âA Newly Identified MuraqqaÊ¿ Assembled for Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier in the British Museumâ, highlights a muraqqaÊ¿ that has been held in the British Museum since 1860 (1920,0917,0.133â153) and only now has been identified as a product of Polierâs workshop in Faizabad, run by Mihr Chand (fl. c. 1859â1786). By examining the albumâs contents, new light is shed on the workshopâs modus operandi, such as the copying and duplication of paintings. An appended list provides detailed information on the subject-matter, style, and authorship of paintings and calligraphic piecesâthe latter identified by Jake Benson. By exploring the characteristic marginal illuminations in Polierâs albums, in âLike a Garden Bedecked: Floral Margins in the MuraqqaÊ¿s of Antoine Polierâ, Isabelle Imbert offers new insights into the workshopâs production practices, which were, on the one hand, inherited from the Mughal kitÄbkhÄna and, on the other, based on a new repertoire most likely inspired by Indian textiles destined for European markets, such as palampores (bedcovers) and kalamkari (hand-painted cotton textiles).
The third part, titled âMasters of Calligraphy and Painting: Between Historicism and Innovationâ, offers in-depth investigations into the hitherto understudied role of calligraphic compositions included in eighteenth-century Indian albums. It also considers references to earlier masters of calligraphy and painting, as well as contemporary innovations. Claus-Peter Haaseâs essay with the title âThe Earlier Calligraphies in the Berlin Albums: Reflections on their Origins and Purpose in a MuraqqaÊ¿â discusses the role of the older canon of six calligraphic scripts (al-aqlÄm al-sitta) in the Berlin albums (acquired by the Prussian state from the Hamilton library in 1882),13 in consideration of the artistry achieved by the new masters of the seventh script, nastaÊ¿lÄ«q, as invented in Iran during the Mongol and Timurid periods. In âPolierâs Posterior Album: Rylands Persian MS 10â, Jake Benson delves into a recently discovered calligraphy album that Polier evidently commissioned as a gift for his friend Sir William Jones (1746â1795) since it contains an ode in the latterâs honour. The essay describes the circumstances of the albumâs production and subsequent history by comparing its contentsâpredominantly signed by the contemporary Lucknow calligrapher Muhammad Ê¿Aliâwith the first calligraphy album that Polier had intended for Jones, now kept in the National Art Library in London (MSL/1858/4765). Will Kwiatkowskiâs essay, titled âExpanding the Canon: Mir Muhammad Husayn Ê¿Ata Khan and the Polier Albumsâ, examines a number of pieces in the Berlin albums that were executed by calligraphers from among Polierâs circle of friends and employeesâincluding Ê¿Ata Khan, a then well-known calligrapher, poet, and writer. He suggests that a group of albums made for Polier between c. 1773 and 1780 reflects the tastes of an expanded bureaucratic class engaged in the reshaping of Mughal courtly traditions. In âMihr Chandâs Copies and Adaptations of Earlier Mughal Paintingsâ, John Seyller explores the oeuvre of the artist Mihr Chand, the son of Ganga Ram who was active in the 1740s. Several paintings included in the St. Petersburg Album and generally dated to the seventeenth century here are suggested to be early works by Mihr Chand himself, of the mid- or late 1740s. Seyller also examines a few copies of Mughal masterpieces that the artist made throughout the 1750s.
In the fourth and last part, âSpaces and Gazes: Reading Imagined Worldsâ, the contributions focus on specific subject-matter in paintings of the second half of the eighteenth century, which reflect on Hindustani modes of music, gender, topographical views, and poetic vistas. Molly Aitkenâs essay, âThe Spaces in Between: A Yogini of Lucknow for Antoine Polierâ, focuses on the scene of a yogini playing a flute to an assembly of courtly women. Aitken analyses visual citations from the archetypal compositions of a central figure surrounded by enchanted animals and demonstrates how the gender ambiguity of the yogini in Polierâs painting relates to the cultural hybridity that developed especially in Lucknow. In âBuilding Worlds: Reading Spatiality, Power, and Gaze in Eighteenth-Century Paintingsâ, Parul Singh shows how a few topographical paintings that were once part of a muraqqaÊ¿ of Nawab ShujaÊ¿ al-Dawla and can be attributed to Fayzullahâs workshop (active 1750â1775) trace a trajectory from early paintings using a single perspective to later, increasingly complex works including multiple perspectives, narratives, and depictions of power and socio-economic diversity. It concludes by comparing these paintings with topographical views specifically made for Polier, highlighting their different concepts of spatiality, gaze, and power.
Finally, the appendix on âInscriptions and Seal Impressions in the Berlin Albums I. 4589, I. 4591, I. 4592, I 5001, and I. 4600â by Will Kwiatkowski and Friederike Weis returns to the Berlin albums and seeks to retrace previous ownership as apparent from seal impressions and inscriptions.
The articles gathered in this publication are certainly more than mere conference proceedings; they represent the collective effort and combined experiences of scholars who have passionately delved into the complex world of eighteenth-century Indian muraqqaʿs.
2 Acknowledgements
This publication would not have been possible without the funding that the German Research Foundation (DFG) granted for the research project âIndian Albums of the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century between Tradition and Documentation: The Polier and Swinton Albums in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlinâ (no. 416816602), which I carried out at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin from 2019 to 2024. I am grateful to Ines Buschmann, Raffael Gadebusch, Mareen Hatoum, Lars-Christian Koch, Bärbel Kron, Maurice Mengel, Uta Schröder, Anna Seidel, and Alexis von Poser in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Ethnologisches Museum, as well as to Deniz Erduman-ÃaliÅ, Ute Franke, Yelka Kant, Martina Müller-Wiener, Claudia Pörschmann, Jutta Maria Schwed, and Stefan Weber in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, for their continued interest in and support for this project.
Special thanks are due to Julia Gonnella who was the first to encourage me to embark on researching the Berlin Hamilton albums, especially Polierâs muraqqaÊ¿s, which she sensed were of utmost importance for understanding the intertwined late-eighteenth-century Mughal, Awadhi, and European visual cultures. Thanks also go to Marie Felis, Tina Störzel, Sophie Triller, and Antigoni Vlachopoulou for their invaluable help in all organisational aspects of the 2021 workshop and in the editing process of this book. I am also indebted to Teddi Dols, Brillâs Middle East, Islamic and African Studies editor, to the production editor Bart Nijsten, and to the editors of Brillâs Islamic Manuscript and Books series, Christoph Rauch, Karin Scheper, and Arnoud Vrolijk, as well as to Sigrid Wollmeiner, the head of the publishing department of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. I extend my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers whose feedback has greatly improved the contributions to this collection.
Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to all of the workshop participants14 and contributors to this volume, Will Kwiatkowski for generously sharing his knowledge of Arabic and Persian epigraphy, Jerry Lostyâs widow Kate for providing access to his research notes, and Malini Roy and Friederike Voigt for their invaluable collaboration in turning these notes into an article with which we hope Jerry would have been happy. We are immensely grateful to Kate Losty for her encouragement to publish it. The volume is dedicated to J.P. Lostyâs memory.
3 Notes to the Reader
At the end of the volume, a comprehensive bibliography compiles all references that are already fully listed in the notes of the essays. In addition to the âIndex of Personsâ (A) and the âIndex of Places (other than Places of Collections)â (B), another aid to future research on eighteenth-century Indian albums is offered in the concordance of Index C (âIndex of Albums, Letters, Manuscripts, Works, and Calligraphic Stylesâ). It not only lists the collections and inventory numbers of all albums, letters, and manuscripts mentioned in the volume, but it also indicates the figure numbers and the pages where these are referred to in the essays.
Current spellings of place names (such as Faizabad, Lucknow, and Buxar) are used throughout the book, unless the author is citing a text in which a different historic spelling is employed.
4 Note on Transliteration
The volume follows the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. In essays 7, 10 and 12, original passages of Arabic and Persian were kept for textual comparison.
This is the case, for instance, for eight albums formerly owned by Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier in the Berlin (Museum für Islamische Kunst (I. 4593â4599 and I. 4601) four out of eight albums from the collection of Archibald Swinton (1731â1804), and a calligraphy album credited to the patronage of a certain Jahangir Beg (Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4589â4592 and I. 4600). Another seven albums, which are now kept at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, have only recently been made accessible online at
See, for example, the Gentil album Estampes, Réserve Od 49 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris in Gallica (
See, for example, for MS. Ouseley Add. 173, an album formerly owned by Sir Gore Ouseley (1770â1844):
Indian Drawings 12:
A case in point is the collection of about forty Indian albums and folders of Sir Elijah Impey (1732â1809) and his wife, Lady Mary (1749â1818), auctioned off shortly after Impeyâs death in May 1810; see Lucian Guthrie Harris, âBritish Collecting of Indian Art and Artefacts in the 18th and Early 19th Centuriesâ (PhD diss., Sussex University, 2002), pp. 99â103 and note 309.
All Polier and Swinton albums in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin were disbound in the early 1930s, after thirty-two leaves had been stolen by the art historian Hermann Goetz (1898â1976) in the winter of 1929/30. For more information on the theft, see the appendix by Kwiatkowski and Weis in the present volume. The Johnson albums (see note 1) were also dismantled shortly after Richard Johnson had sold them in 1807 to the India House in London (todayâs India Office Library in the British Library), perhaps because of the poor state of their bindings, a matter commented upon by the librarian Charles Wilkens (1749â1836); see Toby Falk and Mildred Archer (eds.), Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981), pp. 14â29, esp. p. 27. Another two disbound albums are preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle: RCIN 1005069:
See, for example, David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400â1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Elaine Wright (ed.), MuraqqaÊ¿: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library Dublin (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2008); Julia Gonnella, Friederike Weis, and Christoph Rauch (eds.), The Diez Albums: Contexts and Contents (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2016); and Emine Fetvacı, The Album of the World Conqueror: Cross-Cultural Collecting and the Art of Album Making in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
For the later painting tradition in India that grew out of the productive âchaosâ after the dispersal of artists from the capital after the Sack of Delhi in 1739 by Nadir Shah (1688â1747) and the subsequent Indian invasions between 1748 and 1767 (esp. in 1756) by the founder of the Afghan Durrani empire, Ahmad Shah Abdali (c. 1722â1772), see J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire: Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library (London: The British Library, 2012), p. 153.
See, for instance, the now dispersed folios from the so called Minto-Wantage-Kevorkian Album group, consisting of three albums compiled between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of mostly original seventeenth-century Mughal works, but also containing a few later Indian works of c. 1800, copied after earlier Mughal designs; see Wright (ed.) MuraqqaÊ¿, appendix 7, pp. 472â473, and Susan Stronge, âThe Minto Album and Its Decoration, c. 1612â1640,â in ibid., pp. 82â105. For a recent study on this phenomenon and the role of pandits (Hindu knowledge-brokers) within these procedures, see Yael Rice, âPainters, Albums, and Pandits: Agents of Image Reproduction in Early Modern South Asiaâ, Ars Orientalis 51 (2022), pp. 27â64. For an eighteenth-century adaptation of a Mughal painting of c. 1630 from the Minto Album, see also Friederike Weis, âCruel Conquerors and a Solomonic Saint: European Collectorsâ Interests in Indian MuraqqaÊ¿sâ, in Manuscript Albums and Their Cultural Contexts: Collectors, Objects, and Processes, Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 34, ed. Janine Droese and Janina Karolewski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023), fig. 3 (Timur handing the imperial crown to Babur in the presence of Humayun [Swinton album, Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, I. 4589, fol. 35v]), derived from an earlier painting by the Mughal artist Govardhan (fig. 4; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Minto Album, IM 8-1925).
For the internal layout of Mughal albums produced for Jahangir (r. 1605â1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628â1658), see Elaine Wright, âAn Introduction to the Albums of Jahangir and Shah Jahanâ, in Wright (ed.), MuraqqaÊ¿, pp. 38â53, esp. pp. 40â42.
See, for instance, Ernst Kühnel, Islamische Schriftkunst (Berlin and Leipzig: Heintze & Blanckertz, 1942); Regina Hickmann (ed.), Indische Albumblätter: Miniaturen und Kalligraphien aus der Zeit der Moghul-Kaiser (Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1979); Claus-Peter Haase, âKalligraphische Meisterwerkeâ, in Islamische Kunst in Berliner Sammlungen, ed. Jens Kröger and Desirée Heiden (Berlin: Parthas, 2004), pp. 116â122.
See, for instance, Almut von GladiÃ, Albumblätter: Miniaturen aus den Sammlungen Indo-Islamischer Herrscherhöfe (München: Edition Minerva, 2010), and Stephen Markel and Tushara Bindu Gude (eds.), Indiaâs Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow (Los Angeles: DelMonico Books, 2010). Over the past ten years, however, scholarship has started to draw attention to intentionally paired juxtapositions on page-spreads in Mughal, Safavid, and later Indian albums; see, for example, Anastassiia Botchkareva, âRepresentational Realism in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Changing Visual Cultures in Mughal India and Safavid Iran 1580â1750â (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014); Rice, âPainters, Albums, and Panditsâ, pp. 50â51; and Milo C. Beach, âThe Gulshan Album: Aspects of its Assemblyâ, Artibus Asiae 80/1 (2020), pp. 39â98.
See note 1.
Only a few months before this publication was released, it lost one of its future readers. Kavita Singhâs passing on 30Â July 2023 is a great loss not only for her family and friends, but also for the field of Indian and global art history. Her enthusiastic online participation in the workshop extended over all three days, in spite of the time difference between Germany and India. Singhâs exceptionally astute intellect, generosity, and warmth will be greatly missed.