Barbara Schmitz & ZiyaudDin A. Desai

Dr. Barbara Schmitz, received her Ph.D. in the field of Islamic painting from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 1981. Prior to this catalogue, Dr. Schmitz has authored Islamic Manuscripts in The New York Public Library (New York and Oxford, 1992) and Islamic and Indian Manuscripts and Paintings in The Pierpont Morgan Library (New York, 1997). More recently she edited and contributed to a book for Marg Publications, After the Great Mughals: Paintings in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Bombay, 2002) and contri-buted two essays, ?Persian Influences on Indian Painting? and ?Indian Influences on Persian Painting?, to the Encyclopa-edia Iranica (Volume XIII, fasc. 1, New York, 2004, pp. 65-81); these articles also appear in a book on India?s relations with Iran published by The Encyclopa-edia Iranica Foundation, New York. She is currently working on a book on Persian painting in Khurasan, from 1560 to 1630. Dr. Ziyaud-Din A. Desai (1925-2002) had an exceptionally brilliant career. He topped the list of successful candidates at the B.A. and M.A. examinations of the Bombay University. After teaching Persian at the university level for about six years, he joined the Archaeological Survey of India as the head of its Perso-Arabic epigraphy section in 1953 and finally retired as Director (Epigraphy) after a distinguished career of three decades. Dr. Desai is the author of about two dozen books and more than 350 articles on Indo-Muslim history, art, architecture and numismatics, Indo-Persian literature, old Urdu (Gujari language), etc.