Magic and adventure made the Hamzanama the most popular oral epic of the Islamic world. In Tehelka, William Dalrymple tracks its mad energy in its first-ever English compilation:
IN JUNE 2002, as Pentagon strategists were making their plans for the invasion of Iraq, a short distance away down Washington’s National Mall, the Freer- Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian were showing one of the most interesting exhibitions of Islamic art seen in the US for years. Ironically, the show was made up of illustrations of a story largely set in the very Iraqi cities which were shortly to find themselves as targets for the Pentagon’s munitions.
The Sackler show was unusual in that it displayed just one single painted manuscript – the Hamzanama: a spectacular, illustrated book commissioned by the Emperor Akbar (1542-1605). For art historians, the show was fascinating for it brought together the long-dispersed pages of what was the most ambitious single artistic commission ever undertaken by the atelier of an Islamic court: no fewer than 1,400 huge illustrations were produced.
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Also, check out Jai Arjun Singh’s literary blog on the Amir Hamza epic
I don’t think much of phrases like “important/essential book” or “one of the year’s most significant publishing events” (pompous, best reserved for jacket descriptions written by the marketing divisions of publishing houses), but more than once I’ve been tempted to use them for The Adventures of Amir Hamza, Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s outstanding 950-page rendition of the epic Dastan-e Amir Hamza). As the first complete English translation of a medieval classic that has been in danger of neglect, this is a landmark work in its very conception – invaluable to students of Islamic heritage and Arabic literature – but the excellence of its execution makes it a fantasy-adventure that can be relished by readers from all backgrounds.
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The latest issue of New Yorker carries a piece by Salman Rushdie, ‘The Shelter of the World’, featuring Emperor Akbar and his imaginary wife, Jodha.
At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces of the new “victory city” of Akbar the Great looked as if they were made of red smoke. Most cities start giving the impression of being eternal almost as soon as they are born, but Sikri would always look like a mirage. As the sun rose to its zenith, the great bludgeon of the day’s heat pounded the flagstones, deafening human ears to all sounds, making the air quiver like a frightened blackbuck, and weakening the border between sanity and delirium, between what was fanciful and what was real.
Even the Emperor succumbed to fantasy. Queens floated within his palaces like ghosts, Rajput and Turkish sultanas playing catch-me-if-you-can. One of these royal personages did not really exist. She was an imaginary wife, dreamed up by Akbar in the way that lonely children dream up imaginary friends, and in spite of the presence of many living, if floating, consorts, the Emperor was of the opinion that it was the real queens who were the phantoms and the nonexistent beloved who was real. He gave her a name, Jodha, and no man dared gainsay him.
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Bijoy Bharathan in The Asian Age:
Jodhaa Akbar, Ashutosh Gowariker’s big-screen adaptation of the love story that blossomed from the relationship between one of India’s greatest Mughal emperors -Akbar and his beloved wife Jodhaa — has now sparked a renewed interest in the history of the Mughal period. But really, who was Jodhaa? And how instrumental was she in shaping the destiny of this nation? Did she even exist in the first place or was she just the figment of a collective imagination spawned through centuries-old folklore?
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The website, All American Patriots has some detail about Salman Rushdie’s new book to be launched early in June:
On June 3, 2008, Random House will publish Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a dazzling historical novel set in Renaissance Florence and the court of the great Mughal Empire.
“This new novel marks a bold departure for Salman Rushdie in terms of setting and subject matter,” comments Will Murphy, Rushdie’s editor at Random House. “It is an amazing display of his gifts as a storyteller and will undoubtedly draw many new readers to his already wide audience.”
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