ABSTRACT

In around 1584, while based in his capital at Fatehpur-Sikri, Akbar commissioned a history of Timur and his successors, including his own reign up to that date. The result, the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya, an impressively large and heavily illustrated manuscript, now preserved in Patna, with 132 full-page paintings on 332 folios, has not received the same level of attention as Akbar's other historical commissions from around the same period, notably the Tarikh-i Alfi and the Baburnama. In particular, little or no attention has been paid to the text. This paper seeks to put the manuscript both in its immediate historical and historiographical context and in its relationship with these other illustrated works, created to celebrate Akbar's political and spiritual authority and dynastic inheritance. It can be shown that the portion of the Tarikh-i Alfi that covers the same period – including the reigns of Babur, Humayun and Akbar – draws almost verbatim on the Khandan-i Timuriyya. This suggests that the same author might have been responsible for both works and is consistent with other indications that the production of the manuscript might have been later than generally supposed.

摘要

大约在 1584 年，阿克巴在他的首都法塔赫布尔-西格里（Fatehpur-Sikri）委托撰写了帖木儿及其继任者的历史，包括他自己的统治时期。结果，Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya是一份令人印象深刻且插图丰富的手稿，现在保存在巴特那，在 332 对开页上有 132 幅整页画作，没有像阿克巴的其他历史委员会那样受到关注同一时期，特别是Tarikh-i Alfi和Baburnama. 特别是，很少或根本没有注意文本。本文试图将手稿置于其直接的历史和历史背景下，以及与这些其他插图作品的关系中，这些作品旨在庆祝阿克巴的政治和精神权威以及王朝继承。可以证明，Tarikh-i Alfi涵盖同一时期的部分——包括 Babur、Humayun 和 Akbar 的统治——几乎逐字绘制了Khandan-i Timuriyya。这表明同一作者可能对两部作品负责，并且与其他迹象一致，即手稿的制作可能比通常认为的要晚。