Starting from the fifteenth century, richly illustrated manuscripts written in Perso- Arabic scripts began to proliferate in north-central India. In some manuscripts, paintings appeared as frequently as in every other folio. I investigate the rise to prominence of the visual through a close study of the Ṭūṭīnāma manuscript currently housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My argument is that this phenomenon can be explained by the growth of elite urban communities in north-central India. These communities, I argue, invested in the visual medium to learn more about and carefully modulate adab (intertwined aesthetic, ethical, and political codes of the Persianate world).

从 15 世纪开始，用波斯阿拉伯文字书写的插图丰富的手稿开始在印度中北部大量涌现。在一些手稿中，绘画出现的频率与其他所有对开本中的出现频率一样高。我通过仔细研究目前收藏在克利夫兰艺术博物馆的Ṭūṭīnāma手稿来调查视觉的兴起。我的论点是，这种现象可以用印度中北部精英城市社区的增长来解释。我认为，这些社区投资于视觉媒体，以更多地了解和仔细调整adab（波斯世界交织在一起的审美、伦理和政治准则）。