By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
What this article is about
'Akbarnama: Mines Exploding During the Siege of Chitor' is a painting in opaque watercolour from the Indian subcontinent, made during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. The composition is attributed to the artist Miskina and the painting to Sarwan. It was made in the early 1590s, but shows an imagined bird's-eye view of an event that had taken place a quarter of a century earlier, in 1567.
The work is often confused with its companion, a page of the same size showing military engineers at work during the same siege. The two faced each other in the book, and they are sometimes treated as a single piece.
The Mughals were besieging the fiercely defended Rajput fortress at Chitor (usually spelled Chittor, and also known as Chittaurgarh), capital of the kingdom of Mewar, long a Hindu stronghold in western India. The Mughal sappers dug covered trenches to protect themselves from fire from the battlements as they got close enough to lay explosives. When the mines went off, a little early, some 200 of Akbar's own men were killed. He had 5,000 on the task, and the loss was borne. The defenders sealed the gap. In the end the Mughals breached the walls in several places, and Akbar himself is said to have shot the Rajput commander, Jaimal, with a musket.
The painting is one page from the 'Akbarnama', the chronicle of Akbar's reign written by his court historian, Abu'l Fazl, in the 1590s. Akbar, born Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad in 1542, reigned from 1556 to 1605 as the third Mughal emperor, Akbar the Great. So this is a reimagining of an event from early in his reign, commissioned, as such things often are, by an ageing ruler who wanted to shape how he would be remembered. It served another purpose too. As the succession became a live question, it reminded any would-be successor of his strength.
The artists
Miskina and Sarwan, along with Bhura (see below), were among at least 49 court artists known to have been active in this period. Work was not usually signed. It has been attributed from mentions in records and from the names sometimes written in red beneath the paintings in the Akbarnama. These artists worked side by side in the same studio, so it is hard to say exactly who did what.
We do know that by the 1590s Miskina was one of the elders of the circle. He is also credited with painting the emperor. He and Sarwan worked together on other projects in the same way, Miskina handling the composition and Sarwan the detail, as in their picture of the building of the fort at Agra (below).
The Mughal Empire was Muslim, yet Akbar was tolerant of other faiths, and curious about them. Miskina even painted Christian subjects.
The two paintings as a pair
Europeans write from left to right. Persian, the official language of the Mughal court, is written from right to left. That explains why the page on the right shows the sappers preparing their trenches, and the page on the left the untimely explosion.
The paintings as they appear in the Akbarnama. Follow the Persian convention and read from right to left.
The siege
The siege lasted from October 1567 to February 1568. Inside the fort were several thousand Rajput soldiers and tens of thousands of ordinary people. It stands on a hill some 150 metres high, covers about 700 acres (nearly 3 square kilometres), was heavily fortified and had its own water supply. It was hard to take, though it had fallen before, as Akbar would have known.
Akbar had already reached agreements with other regional rulers that gave him access through their lands to the seaports vital to Mughal trade. But Udai Singh II, the Rana (king) of Mewar, refused to pay him homage. So Akbar dealt with the Rana's likely allies and then arrived at Chitor, his capital. Knowing the job would be tough, he set stonemasons, carpenters, builders and explosives experts to undermine the walls while his guns kept the defenders' heads down. He also had a huge siege cannon cast on the spot.
The explosion in the painting may well be the first, premature one that killed about 200 Mughals. When the defenders sealed the gap, the Mughals had to think again, and eventually brought down the walls at several points. They then slaughtered perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 people, many of them entirely innocent.
Udai Singh had left before the fort fell, and died a few years later. His son Pratap Singh remained a thorn in the Mughals' side for the rest of his life. Pratap's successor, Amar Singh, eventually decided it made sense to come to terms, and the emperor Jahangir, who had succeeded Akbar, returned Chitor to him on condition that it was not repaired.
The execution
The pages of the Akbarnama seem to have been made of several sheets of paper laminated together. The design was marked out, then painted in thick, opaque watercolour bound with gum arabic, from the acacia tree. The thickness of the paint seems to be why the colours have stayed so vivid over the centuries, but it also makes conservation difficult where the paint has flaked. Many of the colours were burnished, that is, polished by rubbing.
What happened to the Akbarnama?
When Akbar died the Akbarnama stayed in the library of his son Jahangir, the new emperor, and then in those of his successors Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. So we are told, but that is a simplification.
The British Major-General John Clarke acquired the manuscript in India, where he was Commissioner of Oudh until he retired in 1862. The British had deposed the last Mughal emperor in 1857, so such a relic may well have been seen as fair pickings and easily acquired. The general's widow, Mrs Frances Clarke, sold it in 1896 to the South Kensington Museum, which became the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Conclusion
Here is a historic document that shows a setback in battle, which suggests that what Akbar had his court artists depict was broadly truthful. The artists could have spoken to men who were at the siege. Did they walk the site? Possibly, but Chitor is some 300 miles from Akbar's court, and a bird's-eye view is an invention in any case. We can safely assume some artistic licence.
The Mughal Empire matters. It endured for more than three centuries before falling to the British, and in some respects its court was remarkably open. The emperors often employed non-Muslim artists, and that openness allowed painting to make advances that bear comparison with those in Europe.
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