The Ḥamza-nāma manuscript was the largest and most ambitious illustrative program of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s atelier. Known as ‘the wonder’ conceived by the emperor, it told 360 tales in a new visual language. The manuscript consisted of 1400 large pages of illustration on cloth, backed by nineteen lines of fine nastaliq text on paper. Today only about 200 are known. Speculative theories about the manuscript maintained that the illustrations were held up to an audience while the text was read out aloud from the back. However, codicological evidence disproved this theory by reconstructing volume eleven whose illustrations and text were in excellent condition, and the legible numbering was consistent with the story and the title. Yet, many of the extant pages still remain unidentified, continue to be misinterpreted and have been arbitrarily assigned to early, late and ‘unidentified’ volumes by recent scholarship. This article re-examines the Ḥamza-nāma, restores several of the damaged and miscatalogued pages to their rightful place, and identifies and forges new links between the folios. It discusses the tradition of oral storytelling, addresses the recent misunderstanding about how the pages functioned, and introduces new story cycles within the dispersed Mughal manuscript.

该哈姆扎圣名手稿是莫卧儿皇帝阿克巴的工作室的最大和最雄心勃勃的计划说明。它被皇帝设想为“奇迹”，以一种新的视觉语言讲述了360个故事。该手稿由1400张大的布版插图组成，并辅以19行精美的nastaliq在纸上的文字。今天仅已知约200个。关于手稿的投机理论认为，插图是由观众举起的，而文字是从背面大声读出来的。但是，药理学证据通过重建第十一卷的插图和文字处于良好状态，从而反驳了该理论，其清晰的编号与故事和标题一致。然而，许多现存的书页仍不为人所知，继续被误解，并已由最近的奖学金任意分配给早期，晚期和“不明身份”的书卷。本文重新审视了Ḥamza-nāma，将几个损坏和目录错误的页面恢复到正确的位置，并识别和伪造作品集之间的新链接。它讨论了口头叙事的传统，解决了有关页面功能的近期误解，并在分散的莫卧儿手稿中引入了新的故事周期。