Cleveland Museum of Art

Calligraphic exercises and verses of Hafiz (Persian, about 1325–1389) (verso)

Mahmud ibn Ishaq al-Shahabi

Date: 1575–76
Medium: Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Culture: Persian, Uzbekistan, Bukhara
Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

This fine calligraphic work is signed and dated by a calligrapher who was highly regarded in both Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Mughal albums typically had a painted portrait or figural scene on one side, and a work of calligraphy on the other. The British civil servant Sir Charles Forbes made his album following that format. The verses are a lament over a lack of wine, beginning: For some days now the Daughter of the Vine has been lost to us, Gone away to tend to her own affairs. Be alert and prepared as a search party. Her dress is of rubies, and she wears a tiara of delicate glass. The work was part of an album of paintings collected in India before 1811 by a Scottish politician who worked for the British East India Company.

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