“A Royal Banquet at Night"
Folio from a manuscript of the Divan of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza (known as Jahi)
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The secrets of the heart are a recurring theme of the lyric ghazal genre, as in the verse illustrated here. The poet writes that his secret love was suddenly exposed one night at a courtly gathering by their exchange of a single amorous look. The illustration captures several such “plays of the glance” (nazir-bazi): between the seated prince and an elder, the younger and older men in the foreground, those seated in the landscape beyond the terrace’s red fence, and even the two jackals depicted in the mural above the prince’s head. The poem’s final verse states: “It is a prize to have reached his banquet after a thousand nights. / Jahi! Never remove your eyes from him.”