Mirza Muhammad Rafi' Bazil

Bazil, also recorded as Mirza Rafi' or Badhil Mashhadi, was born in Mashhad in Safavid Iran; no exact birth date is documented in the available record. He moved with his family to Mughal Delhi to seek court patronage, and Christie's catalogue notes state that he later served under the emperor Aurangzeb, who appointed him governor of Gwalior. His major work, Hamla-i Haydari, is a versified account of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his first successors according to Shi'ism, a text that later authors continued to extend after his death. Christie's catalogue notes place his death around 1713 to 1714, though the auction house itself hedges the exact year. He should not be confused with two other historical or contemporary figures who share overlapping name elements: Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda, an unrelated 18th-century Urdu poet (1713 to 1781), and Dr. Mirza Rafi Ahmed Baig, an unrelated contemporary Marathi poet. No visual artist by this name is documented; illustrated copies of his text produced in later centuries are attributed to anonymous provincial Mughal or Indian-school ateliers rather than to Bazil personally.

Available commentary on Bazil comes almost entirely from auction house catalogue notes rather than published art criticism, and no verbatim evaluative quote from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed. Christie's specialists describe Hamla-i Haydari as a significant text within the Shi'i devotional and literary tradition, one that attracted illustration across multiple later manuscript copies.

The only clearly documented auction result for a work associated with Bazil is a manuscript of Hamla-i Haydari, catalogued as provincial Mughal, North India, first half of the 18th century, sold at Christie's London on 27 April 2023 as part of the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds sale. Estimated at GBP 40,000 to 60,000, it hammered at GBP 176,400. No earlier or later comparable sale, and no repeat-sale price history, could be confirmed in available sources. Manuscripts bearing his textual authorship appear intermittently at Christie's and Bonhams Islamic and Indian art sales.

This is a market defined by the rare appearance of illustrated manuscript copies of a single literary text, not by a conventional artist's price history. Only one high-confidence auction result is documented, so there is no reliable trend line to draw on, and no catalogue raisonne or gallery or estate representation to consult. Works described as "by Bazil" are almost always later manuscript copies of his text, painted by anonymous provincial Mughal or Indian-school artists, so attribution and provenance should be verified directly through a specialist auction house's Islamic and Indian art department before any purchase decision.