The Victoria and Albert Akbarnāma or First Akbar-nāma is the first illustrated manuscript of the Akbarnama, the history of the Mughal ruler Akbar and his ancestors from the pen of Abul Fazl. It is also the oldest copy of the Akbar-nāma, which was written at almost the same time as this manuscript.
Even before Abul Fazl had completed his text, the already drafted chapters were copied by a calligrapher and illustrated in the royal studios. This haste meant that massive changes had to be made to the already illustrated manuscript following a revision of the work by the author. In order to be able to continue using the elaborately produced illuminations in the revised text version, text panels within the pictures and on their reverse sides had to be pasted over with the new wording. As a result, the illustrated pages of the manuscript in particular are unusually thick.
A part of the manuscript with 116 images is now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum under the inventory number I.S. 2-1896 1-117. The events depicted in it occurred during the period between 1560 and 1577. The previous volume of this Akbar-nāma is in the Golestan Palace in Tehran. About 20 detached illustrations are distributed among various museums and collections worldwide.
There is no consensus among experts as to the exact dating of the illustrations. Due to their stylistic proximity to an illustrated history of Timur, the Tīmūr-nāma (c. 1584–1586), some place them in the period from 1586 to 1587, while others, due to the known time of composition of the Akbar-nāma, assume a period of origin from 1590 to 1595.