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Farrukh Beg
(b c. 1547; d after 1615). Persian painter, active in India. He went to India at the age of 39. His year of birth, AH 954–5 (AD 1547–8), has been calculated from an inscribed painting, executed when he was 70 in AH 1024. His ethnic origin has been given by Abu’l Fazl as Qalmaq and elsewhere as Qaqshali (a misreading of Qashqa’i?). He evidently received his training in Khurasan, probably from artists associated with the production of a manuscript of Jami’s Haft awrang (‘Seven thrones’; Washington, DC, Freer) for Prince Ibrahim Mirza, governor of Mashhad 1564–77. His earliest surviving work comprises four miniatures in a simplified Khurasani style in a manuscript of Amir Khusraw’s Khamsa (‘Five poems’; Cambridge, King’s Coll.) dated AH 978–9 (AD 1571–2) at Herat. This manuscript evidently travelled to India because the attributions include the title Nadir al-`Asri (‘wonder of the age’) bestowed on him by the Mughal emperor Jahangir (reg 1605–27) before AH 1024 (AD 1615). Farrukh Beg went to Kabul and entered the service of Muhammad Hakim, half-brother to the Mughal emperor Akbar (reg 1556–1605). On 13 March 1580 he negotiated the sale, to Akbar’s library, of a manuscript, recently illustrated with two miniatures in Khurasani style, possibly by him. After the death of his patron in July 1585 he travelled with Muhammad Hakim’s son and others to the court at Rawalpindi and entered Akbar’s service.
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