Recto: General Ghazi al-Din Bahadur Khan Firuz Jang I (birthname: Mir Shahab al-Din Siddiqi, circa 1649-1710) was born in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. He arrived at the court of Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) from Iran in 1669. He served in the siege of the Bijapur Fort in 1685 and the siege of the Golconda Fort and capture of Hyderabad in 1687. He was made Subahdar (governor) of the Gujarat Subah (province) during the reign of Emperor Shah Alam Bahadur (Bahadur Shah I, r. 1707-1712; see M.74.123.5). He died in Ahmedabad in 1710. His son was the first Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah I (1724-1748).
The general is depicted in profile against a Mughal-style pale green background with a groundline of flowering plants. He wears a turban, white coat (jama) with roses and rose-colored pleats, orange-and-gold striped trousers, yellow-and-green waist sash with irises, and brocade shoes. He has a punch dagger (katar) and a sword worn on his far side and a shield suspended from a shoulder strap. He carries a handkerchief in his right hand. The painting is mounted with 18th-century borders embossed in gold with figural and landscape motifs. For additional folios from the same album, see M.76.2.35 and two pages in the San Diego Museum of Art (1990.493 and 1990.494). A conventionalized portrait attributed to circa 1686 is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-T-00-3186-2).
Verso: Panel of calligraphy by Haidar Beg, Roshan Qalam (Haidar Beg of the Golden Pen).
