Abstract
Taking an album (muraqqa’) featuring portraits of Muslim saints as a case study, this essay presents a hitherto unexamined dimension of early modern painting from Kashmir. Thematic and stylistic analysis of the images and its accompanying text opens up a complex network of questions regarding cultural and political interactions between the Himalayan hills region and the North Indian plains during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In art history, scholars tend to view these two regions as distinct cultural zones, a division which reflects the biases of recent historiography rather than the porous cultural framework of pre-colonial India. The paper will particularly focus on the opening page that includes a portrait of the famous Mughal period Sufi, Mullā Shāh. His association with two royal siblings of the Mughal house, Princess Jahānārā Begum and Prince and heir apparent Dārā Shikoh, was central for the development of Sufi devotional portraiture as a unique sub-genre of Indian painting. By mapping key portraits of Mullā Shāh, the essay will provide a window into the process of localization of a pan-Indian genre within the context of Himalayan art.
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