Rudaba lets down her hair for Zal, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

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Rudaba lets down her hair for Zal, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi. Rudaba is the daughter of Mehrab, king of Kabul, and she has fallen in love with Zal, son of the ruler of Zabulestan in Iran. The couple overcome family and cultural objections by meeting in secret. Rudaba offers her long hair for Zal to climb to her room, but instead he lassoes the palace battlements, and climbs up by rope. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in nasta`liq script, with gold-painted borders, and painting (on recto), from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Abu al-Qasim Firdausi (d. 1022), attributed to the early reign of Safavid Shah `Abbas I (r. 1587-1629), Qazvin, Iran, undated, c. 1590-1600. This is one of twenty-two folios in the Chester Beatty, all from the same partial copy (possibly never fully completed) of Firdausi's Shahnama: ten folios are in a modern binding, twelve are mounted separately. Most of these folios are not directly sequential, and fall into three sets, narrating the earliest kings, Faridun and his descendants, and Rustam.