Tales of a Parrot Cleveland Museum of Art's Tuti-Nama by Nakhshabi, Ziya al-Din - 1978

E-165?: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1978. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Cleveland Museum of Art. 1978. 339 pgs. 48 stunning full-page, full-color illustrations. A translation of Nakhshabi's original work that was written in Persian DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards lightly rubbed and worn. Tutinama, literal meaning "Tales of a Parrot", is a 14th-century Persian series of 52 stories. An illustrated version containing 250 miniature paintings was commissioned by the Mughal Emperor, Akbar in the later part of the 16th century. The work redacted in 14th century AD in Iran derives from an earlier anthology ‘Seventy Tales of the Parrot’ in Sanskrit compiled under the title Sukasaptati (a part of katha literature) dated to the 12th century AD. In Iran, as in India, parrots (in light of their purported conversational abilities) are popular as storytellers in works of fiction. The adventure stories narrated by a parrot, night after night, for 52 successive nights, are moralistic stories to persuade his owner not to commit any adulterous act with any lover, in the absence of her husband. The illustrations embellishing the stories created during Akbar’s reign were created in a span of five years after Akbar ascended the throne, by two Iranian artists named Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad working in the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. E-169; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; 338 pages .