Babur meeting the Khurasan Mirzas

This tiny book page is one of the illustrated pages in an illustrated copy of "The Baburnama," Babur's memoirs, and was made at the royal workshop of Akbar around 1590. The Victoria & Albert Museum cites Isma'il Kashmiri as the artist who painted this scene, which depicts Babur's meeting with the Khurasan Mirzas in the tents of Badi'al-Zaman. The event occurred in October of 1506, when the last of the Timurid Kings, Sultan Husayn Bayqara, died while feeding himself and his army against the Uzbek conqueror Shaybani Khan. After the death of Husayn, his sons and the Uzbek princes met with Babur at Badi'l-Zaman's location to make an alliance. This alliance was quickly followed by a banquet, but was ultimately too weak to prevent the Uzbeks from capturing Herat a year later. Akbar commissioned the Persian translation while Khan-I Khanan was in Kabul, and in 1589 after Akbar returned from Afghanistan with Khan-I Khanan, he presented the translation to Akbar and commissioned painted copies for the imperial library. The V&A obtained this page from the dealer Luzac & Co. between 1912 and 1913 after the entire original album was dispersed. The original page is painted using opaque watercolors and gold on paper and represents the Persian-influenced Mughal style of the period, which consists of flattened spatial arrangements (with a divided horizon), jewel colors, patterned textiles, and an increasing use of naturalism in Mughal painting.