Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): text page
Unknown Artist
c. 1560
Medium
gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Dimensions
20.3 × 14 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
Accession Number
1962.279.33.a
About this artwork
The book of the Tuti-nama from which this page comes consists of 341 folios, or 682 pages. The 52 tales told by the parrot Tuti to his mistress Khujasta and the overarching frame story about Khujasta herself are all written in Persian. Here the form of the script is called naskh and is read from right to left. The word in blue means “cut,” which indicates that the prose narrative will cut to a poetic verse. The Tuti-nama was written in 1329–30 by a Persian-speaking Sufi scholar and author from C...