Timur’s army pursues Toqtamish Khan in 1391

Here's my reading of this folio, drawing on the confirmed identification: "Timur's army pursues Toqtamish Khan in 1391," a folio from Akbar's Zafarnama (1595-1600), ascribed to Banwari Khurd, done in opaque watercolour, ink and gold on paper. The composition captures a moment of pursuit rather than a static battle line — cavalry surging across steppe terrain, Timur's forces in the chase after Tokhtamysh's retreating army during their long 1391 campaign across the Eurasian steppe. Pursuit scenes like this typically use diagonal, cascading compositions — riders and horses arranged in tumbling ranks down a hillside or across open ground — to convey momentum and disorder, in contrast to the more static, frontal arrangements used for siege or court scenes. Beyond the historical event, the painting functions as dynastic propaganda. Akbar commissioned this Zafarnama specifically because Timur was his direct ancestor — so every triumphant scene, including this one, isn't just illustrating Yazdi's 15th-century biography, it's visually asserting Akbar's own legitimacy and martial lineage. The chaos and speed of a pursuit scene (versus a calm court audience) also lets the artist show off technical virtuosity — foreshortened horses, overlapping riders, a sense of terrain and distance — which Mughal ateliers used to demonstrate mastery of Persianate painting conventions while pushing them toward the more naturalistic, energetic style Akbar's workshop favored. Banwari Khurd's role — coloring and portraiture, working alongside specialists in outline or composition — reflects how these manuscripts were collective productions, almost like an assembly line of specialized hands producing a unified imperial narrative. The red signature at the bottom is a quiet but significant detail: individual artists claiming credit within what was fundamentally a state-sponsored, ideological project. So the "message" I'd draw is layered: on the surface, a celebration of a specific military victory; underneath, a visual argument for Akbar's inherited right to rule, built through the deliberate, luxurious craft of gold, ink, and pigment that only an imperial treasury could commission.