Tutinama

Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot)

Author	Nakhshabi
Illustrator	Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad
Language	Persian Urdu and English
Genre	Fables
Publisher	Original Version in 14th century Illustrated version during Mughal, Reign of Akbar, 16th century and Urdu translation version by Al-din Nakhshabi Ziya, Saiyid Haidar Bakhsh, (1875), English translation by George Small
Publication date	Illustrated version 1555–1560 AD in Persian Urdu and English Version (1875)
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	268

Tutinama (Persian: طوطی‌نامه‎‎), literal meaning "Tales of a Parrot", is a 14th-century Persian series of 52 stories. An illustrated version containing 250 miniature paintings was commissioned by the Mughal Emperor, Akbar in the later part of the 16th century. The work redacted in 14th century AD in Iran derives from an earlier anthology ‘Seventy Tales of the Parrot’ in Sanskrit compiled under the title Śukasaptati (a part of katha literature) dated to the 12th century AD. In Iran, as in India, parrots (in light of their purported conversational abilities) are popular as storytellers in works of fiction.

The adventure stories narrated by a parrot, night after night, for 52 successive nights, are moralistic stories to persuade his owner not to commit any adulterous act with any lover, in the absence of her husband. The illustrations embellishing the stories created during Akbar’s reign were created in a span of five years after Akbar ascended the throne, by two Iranian artists named Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad working in the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar.

The authorship of the text of the Tutinama is credited to Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi or just Nakhshabi, an ethnic Persian physician and a Sufi saint who had migrated to Badayun, Uttar Pradesh in India in the 14th century, who wrote in the Persian language. He had translated and/or edited a classical Sanskrit version of the stories similar to Tutinama into Persian, around 1335 AD. It is conjectured that this small book of short stories, moralistic in theme, influenced Akbar during his formative years. It is also inferred that since Akbar had a harem (of women siblings, wives and women servants), the moralistic stories had specific orientation towards the control of women.