In 1855, an obscure press, Matba - e- Hakim sahib in the Indian city of Calcutta published a book titled, tarjuma-e-dastan-e- sahibqiran giti-sitan Aal-e Paighambar-e Akhiruz Zaman Amir Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib bin Hashim bin Abdul Munaf - (A translation of the adventures of the lord of the auspicious planetary conjunction, the World conqueror, uncle of the last prophet of the times, Amir Hamza son of Abdul Muttalib son of Hashim, son of Abdul Munaf). It's writer Nawab Mirza Aman Ali Khan Bahadur Ghalib lakhnavi, identified himself as a son-in-law of prince Fateh Haider, the oldest son of Sultan Tipu of Mysore. This book was one of the earlier version of Dastan-e-Amir Hamza(Adventures of Amir Hamza) printed in Indian in the Urdu language. This version was later embellished by Abdullah Bilgrami and published by the Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow, in 1871. It contained 46 volumes and has approximately 48000 pages. The Hamzanama or Hamzenâme, Epic of Hamza, or Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, narrates the legendary exploits of Amir Hamza, an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, though most of the stories are extremely fanciful, "a continuous series of romantic interludes, threatening events, narrow escapes, and violent acts".
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Though the first Mughal Emperor, Babur described the Hamzanama as "one long far-fetched lie; opposed to sense and nature", his grandson Akbar (1542 – 1605), who came to the throne at the age of fourteen, greatly enjoyed it. He commissioned his court workshop to create an illustrated manuscript of the Hamzanama early in his reign (he was by then about twenty), which was conceived on such an unusually large scale that it took fourteen years, from about 1562 to 1577, to complete. Apart from the text, it included 1400 full page Mughal miniatures of an unusually large size, nearly all painted on paper, which were then glued to a cloth backing. Their production was an enormous undertaking for Akbar’s atelier, which employed several eminent Persian artists, including ‘Abd al-Samad and Mir Sayyid ‘Ali. These artists introduced the artistic conventions of Persianate Islamic Central Asia to Hindu Indian painting, and in doing so created a new, distinctive Mughal style.
Only about 200 pages of the Hamzanama are extant, many famously discovered in the 19th century lining the windows of a Kashmiri teashop. |
