Artwork story
About "A Muslim Pilgrim Learns a Lesson in Piety from a Brahman", Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi
The artist and artwork
Basawan painted this manuscript folio in 1597–98 for a sumptuous copy of the Khamsa by Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, a celebrated Persian-language poet of the Indian subcontinent. In ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, Basawan places a Muslim pilgrim and a Brahman within a sharply observed Indian landscape. The page was a collaborative court object: Muhammad Husain Kashmiri, admired as the “Golden Pen,” supplied the elegant nasta'liq calligraphy, while colored and gilded margins joined text and image in a luxury manuscript.
The world around it
The page was made during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar, whose library held roughly twenty thousand manuscripts and whose workshops united painters, calligraphers, illuminators, and bookbinders. The Khamsa was written around three centuries earlier and adapted Nizami's five-poem model to Indian settings. By the late 1590s, Akbar's court governed a religiously diverse empire and invested heavily in illustrated literature. This folio belongs to that world of imperial collecting and cross-cultural inquiry, while its lesson shifts attention from rank or doctrine to the practice of devotion.
A detail to notice
The story turns on a physical action. The Brahman travels toward the Shiva temple at Somnath by repeatedly lying flat and advancing only the length of each prostration. The Muslim traveler is headed for Mecca; his prayer beads, book, and bare feet identify his devotion. Moved by the Brahman's arduous journey, he removes his shoes and continues barefoot. The striking reversal is that the Muslim protagonist learns piety from a Hindu stranger. The landscape therefore measures the distance both men must travel and makes respect between faiths the narrative's decisive event.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is folio from an illustrated manuscript made in Image: Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper; Margins: Gold on dyed paper and held in the Islamic Art department.
Recorded dimensions include Overall: H. 9 7/8 in. (25.1 cm); W. 6 1/4 in. (15.9 cm); Frame:H. 25 in. (63.5 cm); W. 19 in. (48.3 cm); D. 1 in. (2.5 cm).
Subject terms include Animals, Men, and Landscapes. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913.
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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