<div class="description">
<p>This fine calligraphic work is signed and dated by a calligrapher who was highly regarded in both Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Mughal albums typically had a painted portrait or figural scene on one side, and a work of calligraphy on the other. The British civil servant Sir Charles Forbes made his album following that format.
The verses are a lament over a lack of wine, beginning:
</p>
<pre> For some days now the Daughter of the Vine has been lost to us,
 Gone away to tend to her own affairs.
 Be alert and prepared as a search party.
</pre>
  Her dress is of rubies, and she wears a tiara of delicate glass.</div>
<div class="fn value">
Mahmud ibn Ishaq al-Shahabi</div>
1575
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