Intertextual Analysis of Miniatures and Poems of Akbar Shah’s 996 AH Pocket Manuscript of the Divan of Anvari

The Mughal reign is considered a period of cultural and artistic flourishing in Islamic India, reflecting the influences of Iranian art and culture as well. Mughal painting may be considered as a distinctive form of Islamic painting which flourished during the 10th and 11th centuries AH. By the time of Akbar Shah’s reign from 1542- 1605 AH, under the influences of Iranian artisans and the combination of their style and that of the renowned Hindu artisans, it evidently transformed and developed into the distinctive style of the Indian Mughal painting. On the other hand, European works, which were brought to the court of Akbar Shah during the above-mentioned period by Christian ambassadors, transformed the tradition of Mughal painting as well, thus multilingual royal bibles and Flemish woodcarvings as well as the European techniques of scenery representations deeply affected the Mughal painting in India. Numerous manuscripts including biographies, historical texts, Divans of Iranian poets as well as Persian translations of Hindu literature were transcribed and illustrated in the prolific workshop of Akbar Shah. One of the notable examples of these manuscripts is Divan of Anvari, the renowned Seljuk-era poet, also known as one of the three prophets of Persian poetry. Manuscripts like Akbar’s Divan of Anvari were intended to be carried and held. This copy, upon leaving the imperial scriptorium, painting workshop, and bindery, must have been received by the firm but sensitive hand of the emperor, who would have shared it with his son prince Salim and other members of the imperial household. As part of the great Mughal library, it was enjoyed for hundreds of years. The copy of the Divan in the Fogg Art Museum, skillfully executed in Lahore, the northwestern capital of Mughal Empire, by a scribe whose name is unfortunately erased, comprises 345 folios. It measures only 51/2 by 27/8 inches and the text area is surrounded by thin gold and black lines. Each page contains fifteen lines of poetry. The execution of the manuscript, as fine as its calligraphy, is strangely incoherent: the material for all the textual areas is a very fine marbleized paper as well as colored, gold-flecked paper, which seems to have been pasted over the original pages which had become brittle. The Artists of the manuscript chose to illustrate mainly the second part of the Divan; only rarely do the qasidas (odes) offer images that lend themselves to pictures. In almost every case, it has been the beginning of a qasida or the contents of qita that inspired painting, but it was certainly easier for the painters to illustrate the short stories and jokes contained in the second part of the Divan, even though the artists often reset a rustic scene in a courtly milieu. In order to study the subject, intertextuality approach was adopted in analysis of miniatures and poems of Anvari's Divan (with the case study of the 996 AH pocket manuscript of Akbar Shah). By considering Iran's and Mughal India’s cultural and art studies as well as two different systems of verbal and visual texts, intercultural intertextuality and intersemiotic translation have been explained for studying the statistical sample which consists of 13 miniatures of this Anvari’s manuscript and their related lyrics.In the early stage, analysis of subtexts and paratexts in relation to Mughal government, especially the time of Akbar Shah was the main focus. After explanation of verbal texts, visual texts were studied, and important and effective components of both verbal and visual texts were revealed. The aim of this study, with an intertextual approach, was to examine important components of verbal and visual texts and to reevalute the miniatures of this manuscript. The Data has been collected through journal articles, books and online sources. As a result, by intertextual analysis, the influence of Persian miniatures on the structure of aesthetics of miniatures, the influence of northern Europe painting on building up backgrounds and coloring, and also the influence of Indian painting on the miniatures of this manuscript were recognizable. The relationship between verbal and visual texts was based on division and adaptation and the social context had a great impact on visual text.