"Portrait of Prince Danyal", Folio from the Shah Jahan Album

Verso: This richly illuminated folio of calligraphy features the work of the preeminent Timurid calligrapher, Sultan 'Ali Mashhadi. Patronized by the Timurid court, Mashhadi was a poet and a recognized master of the nasta'liq script. In the following poem, composed by Khwaja Salman al-Savuji, he writes:

Coil up in your own tress And then ask how I am, How those are whom the snare Of your affliction broke: You want to know how all Those broken lovers fare– Then ask me first, for I Am the most broken one.

This love poem belongs to a larger tradition of mystical poetry in which the lover longs for the unattainable object of his affections. His lover's tresses ensnare him and, hopelessly caught, the poet mourns his plight.