This painting by the Mughal court artists Tulsi the Elder and Jagjivan from the Akbarnama (Book of Akbar) depicts Shuja’at Khan pursuing Asaf Khan on the River Ganges in north-east India. Asaf Khan was vizier to the Mughal emperor Akbar (r.1556–1605). He was also a highly effective military leader but, for reasons that are obscure in the text of the Akbarnama, kept treasure that the Mughal forces had seized during a successful campaign in 1565. He tried to flee with his supporters across the Ganges, where Akbar’s forces, led by the general Shuja’at Khan, caught up with him. A fierce confrontation followed, depicted in this illustration, but Asaf Khan escaped. In 1567, he sent messengers to the court asking for forgiveness, which was granted.

The Akbarnama was commissioned by Akbar as the official chronicle of his reign. It was written in Persian by his court historian and biographer, Abu’l Fazl, between 1590 and 1596, and the V&A’s partial copy of the manuscript is thought to have been illustrated between about 1592 and 1595. This is thought to be the earliest illustrated version of the text, and drew upon the expertise of some of the best royal artists of the time. Many of these are listed by Abu’l Fazl in the third volume of the text, the A’in-i Akbari, and some of these names appear in the V&A illustrations, written in red ink beneath the pictures, showing that this was a royal copy made for Akbar himself. After his death, the manuscript remained in the library of his son Jahangir, from whom it was inherited by Shah Jahan.