Preaching and Preening: A Ṭūṭī’s Book in Persianate India

Starting from the fifteenth century, richly illustrated manuscripts written in Perso- Arabic scripts began to proliferate in north-central India. In some manuscripts, paintings appeared as frequently as in every other folio. I investigate the rise to prominence of the visual through a close study of the Ṭūṭīnāma manuscript currently housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My argument is that this phenomenon can be explained by the growth of elite urban communities in north-central India. These communities, I argue, invested in the visual medium to learn more about and carefully modulate adab (intertwined aesthetic, ethical, and political codes of the Persianate world).