To dream is to create

Loved this....

We are all dreaming creatures who continually live in part in our dreams, dreams of what could be for ourselves and our children, even dreams of what is the case, dreams in which our husbands grow more charming, our wives more beautiful, our houses finer, our prospects richer than they are. Dreams in which our daily lives might be tolerable. To dream is to create.

According to a post at the New Yorker blog, Salman Rushdie said it in a lecture over the weekend on "the making of the Hamzanama, an illustrated manuscript created in the sixteenth Century under the Mughal emperor Akbar."

Apparently, Akbar commissioned fourteen hundred individual pieces of art (of which around 200 remain today) which narrate the " fantastical adventures and exploits of Amir Hamza, the uncle of the prophet Mohammed." Some of them were posted at the above New Yorker link and I am using one here (with full copyright to whoever owns them!) but there are a few more at that link that you can enjoy.

The palace depicted illustrates “the birth of a dream architectural style that became a reality,” Rushdie said.

It seems there is a recent translation, The adventures of Amir Hamza - Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami. (Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.)

But before I ran into these links I had never heard of Amir Hamza and so I lead you to others who have done a great job of reviewing this book about a fascinating life. Read Jai Arjun's two wonderful posts at his blog and also William Dalrymple's review of the book in the NYT.

It seems the book is almost 950 pages and I doubt I will ever read it but I do want to some day soon read Dalrymple's recent book The Last Mughal: Fall of a Dyansty, Delhi, 1857.
It was received very well in India (and abroad too maybe) and considering I at least know something about the Mughals and the Mutiny of 1857, the detailed history of that period should make for very interesting reading. On the other hand, what I do not know about Amir Hamza could fill a book...a 950 page one! :)