Habbaza’s sister, who is sent to console her, discovers the disguised Arab in her place, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fourth Night

The painting depicting Habbaza’s sister discovering the disguised Arab in her place originates from the Mughal imperial workshop and is dated to 1560. It illustrates a narrative from the Tuti-nama, a Persian illustrated manuscript composed in the early 17th century but drawing on earlier storytelling traditions. The work belongs to a broader tradition of Persian miniature painting that flourished under Mughal patronage, blending Persian compositional principles with Indian visual sensibilities.

Its presence in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art underscores its significance within the corpus of surviving Mughal-era miniatures.

Scholars have examined the piece as part of the Cleveland Museum’s Mughal painting holdings, highlighting its role in understanding cross-cultural artistic exchange within the Persianate world. The attribution to an anonymous artist working within the Mughal imperial atelier reflects the collaborative and often unattributed nature of workshop production during this period. The painting’s composition and narrative detail contribute to discussions on narrative illustration in Islamic manuscript culture, particularly in how emotional and dramatic moments are rendered through gesture and spatial arrangement.

The work depicts an interior scene set within a vividly colored red tent trimmed in yellow. A woman dressed in green stands beside a seated man, cradling an infant, while outside three additional tents, red, orange, and blue, are arranged beneath a sky dotted with soft clouds. The composition is dominated by bold hues of red, blue, and gold, and the fabrics are richly patterned.

Executed in a flat, decorative manner, the painting employs strong, saturated colors and stylized patterns that emphasize surface ornamentation over naturalistic depth. The use of bold outlines and simplified forms aligns with a manuscript illustration tradition, while the vivid palette and patterned textiles reflect a decorative aesthetic typical of Persian narrative art.