Abd al-Samad

[1] It has recently been contended by a leading specialist, Barbara Brend, that Samad is the same person as Mirza Ali, a Persian artist whose documented career seems to end at the same time as Abd al-Samad appears working for the Mughals.[8] After discussing other aspects of the question, and comparing the styles of Mirza Ali and Samad, Brend suggests that they are indeed the same artist, who adopted a sobriquet on moving to a new country.[10] One source says that Samad's father was the vizier of Shah Shuja of Shiraz, a difficulty with her theory that Brend explains by speculating that this was instead his grandfather, in whose house he was brought up while Sultan Muhammed established his career at court.[21] Samad probably worked on the unusually large painting of the Princes of the House of Timur (British Museum), which Humayun commissioned about 1550–55, in particular on the landscape background.[25] A drawing with muted colour, inscribed with Samad's name, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford depicts the arrest, three days after Akbar's accession, of Humayun's troublesome favourite, Abdu'l Ma'ali, who is seized from behind by a burly courtier.But by the 1590s elements of his style, including a taste for detail, were in favour, though after his death Mughal painting turned in the direction of simpler compositions emphasising human interactions.[34] Another late work is a version of a famous Persian composition of two camels fighting by Behzād, which an inscription says was done at the request of his son Sharif when he was infirm.[38] Muhammad Sharif was a friend of the next emperor Jahangir, and like his father was given important administrative roles, a pattern unique among the many Mughal painter families.
Barbad Plays for Khusraw , Khamsa of Nizami , British Library, Oriental 2265, 1539–43, inscribed Mirza Ali at bottom left.
The earliest known example of a Mughal painting , Princes of the House of, Timur (c. 1550-55), is attributed to Abd al-Samad. It was probably executed for Humayun , and added to under later emperors to update the family tree.
Painted with gouache and gold on fine cotton fabric. British Museum
Abd al-Samad, miniature of 1588
Arghan Div Brings the Chest of Armour to Hamza , from Volume 7 of the Hamzanama , supervised by Samad.
Abdul Samad (disambiguation)ShirazPersianHamzanamaHumayunKhamsa of NizamiPersian miniaturesMughal miniatureMughalsBritish LibraryStuart Cary WelchSultan MuhammedatelierShahnameh of Shah TahmaspHaft AurangIbrahim MirzaFreer Gallery of ArtAfghanistansobriquetMughal paintingBritish MuseumvizierShah Shuja of ShirazShah Tahmasp I of PersiacalligrapherMughal emperorTabrizMir Sayyid AliDust MuhammadBukharadiplomatic giftKashgarmuraqqaGolestan PalaceTehranSafavidBodleian LibraryOxfordfavouriteTutinamaAkbar HamzanamaDaswanthBasavanFatehpur SikriMultanKhusrawillustrationsDervishAga Khan MuseumBehzādJahangirMi'rajOxford Art OnlineBlochmann, H.Wayback MachineThe New Cambridge History of IndiaNational Portrait Gallery, LondonMuqarnas