page_title: Naubat Khan
section_title: Subject of individual portrait
hierarchical_section_title: Naubat Khan / Subject of individual portrait
caption_attribution_description: English: Naubat Khan the Vina Player, style of w:en:Ustad Mansur
context_page_description: Naubat Khan was a prominent Indian classical music composer, musician and instrumentalist. He was an influential musician of his time. The rudra veena, also called the bin, came into prominence during the time of Tansen's contemporary, and son-in-law, Naubat Khan. In the paintings of the time, it is clearly Naubat Khan and not Tansen who is associated with the instrument. Naubat Khan was the honorary title conferred by Mughal Emperor Jahangir on Ali Khan Karori.
context_section_description: Only highly ranked figures of the court enjoyed the privilege of being painted alone or within an assembly by the painters of the court and Naubat Khan is one of the rare musicians – along with the illustrious singer-composer Tansen – to have been the subject of an individual portrait. Both Tansen and Naubat Khan were individually immortalized by artists of the Imperial atelier during the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar. A superb and well-known portrait of Naubat Khan painted during Akbar's reign and attributed to the artist Mansur, is held in the British Museum.  Another lively tinted drawing of him is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and yet another from the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection is presently held in the San Diego Museum of Art.  There is yet another portrait of Naubat Khan which is a Double Sided Muraqqa Folio.The influential musician Naubat Khan playing a rudra vina, or bin, with its large round orange gourds, wearing an Akbar period white muslin chakdar (four pointed) jama with a small white kulhadar (an early Akbar-style turban) on his head, stands on a slash of green landscape. A flat verdigris background with a hint of blue sky above. The nasta'liq script on the applied album folio on the verso reads:
  "chand gu'i ze koja'i o koja
  az nahan-khaneh-ye tajridam o az deyr fana
  to jadal mi-koni amma che-koni chun na-koni
  goft haqq dar haqq-e to akthar-e shay' jadala".
  Translation:
  "How many times will you ask: Where are you? Where are you?  Where?
  I am from the closet of separation and from the transitory world.
  You dispute, but what will you achieve if you do not?
  
  He said: Truth, you will always be the cause of disagreement".
caption: Portrait of Naubat Khan Kalawant by Ustad Mansur,Mughal School towards 1600,British Museum,London
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