Haji Husain Bukhari — Folio from the Shah Jahan Album | Restored Mughal Wall Art

The Mughal divine Haji Husain of Bukhara seated on a Persian carpet in a moonlit pavilion, a book open in his hands. A cherry tree blooms over his shoulder, a cypress rises behind him, a sleeping cat curls at his feet — every detail of the composition tuned to the quiet, contemplative grammar of the Mughal portrait.

The recto carries an inscription attributing the painting to Ustad Mansur — court painter to Jahangir, and the same artist celebrated for the album's exquisite nature studies. The verso, signed the slave Mir 'Ali, is a later 19th-century copy after a 16th-century calligraphy by the great Mir 'Ali Heravi. The folio was bound into the Shah Jahan Album, the most ambitious imperial album ever assembled by the Mughal court — commissioned to honour the painters and calligraphers of his father Jahangir's atelier.

What survives here is not a state portrait but something more intimate — the visual record of a learned man at rest among his books, painted with the same quiet attention the court reserved for emperors.

Restored from the museum archives by aurahliving.com.