Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, Or. 12208)

The illuminated manuscript Khamsa of Nizami British Library, Or. 12208 is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of the Khamsa or "five poems" of Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th-century Persian poet, which was created for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the early 1590s by a number of artists and a single scribe working at the Mughal court, very probably in Akbar's new capital of Lahore in North India, now in Pakistan. Apart from the fine calligraphy of the Persian text, the manuscript is celebrated for over forty Mughal miniatures of the highest quality throughout the text; five of these are detached from the main manuscript and are in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore as Walters Art Museum MS W.613. The manuscript has been described as "one of the finest examples of the Indo-Muslim arts of the book", and "one of the most perfect of the de luxe type of manuscripts made for Akbar".

The collection of five works by Nizami or Nizami is a classic of Persian poetry of which many luxury illuminated manuscript versions have been made; in particular this manuscript should not be confused with British Library, Or. 2265, a Persian manuscript of 1539-43 which is even better known. The poems are in masnavi rhyming couplets. The first poem is a collection of moral discourses illustrated by stories or parables drawn mostly from the lives of historical figures, while the remaining four poems are romances, including many stories found in Persian tradition and earlier works such as the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Akbar had already commissioned a smaller manuscript of the Khamsa, which was made in 1585-90.

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