Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): text page

The page was created in 1559 within the Mughal Empire, as recorded in its cataloguing data. It is now held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, where it is catalogued under the accession number 1962.279.203.a. The work is attributed to an unknown artist, and no further details of its commission, intermediate ownership, or chain of custody prior to its acquisition by the museum are documented in the available sources.

The text page from the Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama), created in 1559, is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland. The work is cataloged under the accession number 1962.279.203.a. While the artifact originates from the Mughal Empire, the provided sources do not list any specific exhibition history for this page.

The object is a single sheet from the illustrated manuscript known as Tales of a Parrot (Tuti‑nama). Rendered as a painted page, it is dominated by dense black calligraphy arranged in tight, orderly rows. The paper exhibits a warm, antiquated tone with subtle brown spotting, and a slender red border outlines the perimeter.

Tales of a Parrot belongs to a genre of animal‑centered storytelling that uses the parrot as a narrator or moral commentator. This literary motif was popular in medieval Persian literature, serving both entertainment and didactic purposes within courtly and scholarly circles.

Pages like this exemplify the integration of calligraphy and illustration that characterizes Persian manuscript art. Their preservation offers insight into historical narrative techniques and the aesthetic values of the period, informing contemporary scholarship on textual and visual culture.