Artwork story
About "The Angel Gabriel meets 'Amr ibn Zaid (the Shepherd)", Folio from a Siyer-i Nebi (the Life of the Prophet)
The artist and artwork
Mustafa ibn Vali painted this Istanbul manuscript page around 1595 in ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper. It came from the fourth volume of a six-volume Siyer-i Nebi, an illustrated account of the life of the Prophet Muhammad written by Mustafa b. Yusuf al-Darir al-Erzerumi in the late fourteenth century. Commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Murad III, the immense book project joined an older Turkish text to court painting. Here the archangel Gabriel and the shepherd 'Amr ibn Zaid approach one another on horseback within a landscape of steep rocks and compact trees.
The world around it
The folio was completed at the end of Murad III's reign, when the Ottoman Empire stretched from the Balkans through Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean and Arab world. Istanbul's court drew on Byzantine, Persian, Arab, and Turkic traditions while developing a distinct Ottoman visual language. Manuscript painting was one of the period's major artistic fields, alongside architecture, calligraphy, textiles, and ceramics. A lavish six-volume sacred history therefore served several purposes: devotion, dynastic patronage, workshop production, and the visual expression of an empire that understood itself as a leading power in the Islamic world.
A detail to notice
The supernatural encounter is staged as a meeting on an ordinary road. Gabriel appears at the left with broad, layered wings and a green robe, while the shepherd rides from the right; their horses nearly touch noses in the dark passage between orange and blue-gray rocks. Small flowers, trees, and the narrow route turn the landscape into a threshold where earthly travel and revelation meet. Bands of Ottoman Turkish text remain above and below the picture, so the image never becomes an isolated fantasy: it pauses one episode inside a continuing written life. That tight fit between text, terrain, and approaching figures gives a monumental religious event an unexpectedly immediate scale.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is folio from an illustrated manuscript made in Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper and held in the Islamic Art department.
Recorded dimensions include H. 14 9/16 in. (37 cm); W. 10 1/4 in. (26 cm).
Subject terms include Men, Camels, Horses, and Archangel Gabriel. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1994.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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