Tamrūsīya is thrown into the sea

This folio is a two-scene painting on a paper leaf about 35.6 × 23.5 cm. The manuscript's text is written in nastaʿlīq script within gold-ruled margins, and a band of that script divides the two scenes. Comparable paintings from Akbar's workshop, such as those in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Akbarnāma, are catalogued as opaque watercolour and gold on paper, which suggests the likely technique here. In the upper scene, Zangdilīsā's maidens throw Tamrūsīya into the sea. She wears green and lies limp in the arms of attendants aboard a canopied boat, while a second boat with two men sits at the left. Pink rocks, trees and distant buildings frame the water. The lower scene in the artwork paints the narrative, showing Tamrūsīya in the turbulent water while two men reach down to rescue her from a small boat crowded with jars, ropes and oars. The painting shows Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarsūsī's Dārāb-nāma, which is a Persian romance about the hero Dārāb, and Tamrūsīya is his beloved, and Zangdilīsā appears in the story as a rival who eventually kills her. The scene falls midway through the book. Earlier folios show her brought before Zangdilīsā and offered wine in a boat, and a later folio shows her weeping on the shore after the rescue. The folio comes from the court culture of Akbar's imperial workshop. The manuscript is the first in which court librarians systematically recorded the painters' names, so that they could be paid according to their work, and more than forty artists are named. The lower margin of this folio carries the inscription ʿamal-i Manī, which is read as "work by" the named painter. The painting joins Persian ideas of layout, with text and image sharing the page, to the lively figures and busy landscapes of the developing Mughal style. The two scenes set treachery beside deliverance. Tamrūsīya is betrayed by her captor's household and saved by strangers, which shows the sudden reversals of fortune at the centre of the romance. The sea is the setting for these changes, a place of separation and danger where her survival is still uncertain.