Notification texts go here Contact Us Buy Now!

Introduction to The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan

 By: Ebba Koch

The 30 years of Shah Jahan’s reign (1628–58) are widely regarded  as the golden age of the Mughal empire. already in the 18th  century  the  historian  Muhammad  Hashim  Khafi  Khan,  who  wrote of the Mughal emperors from Babur (r. in india 1526–30)  down to the 14th year of the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719– 48), looked back to it as the best period of Mughal rule:

it is clear to those of intelligence that, although in terms  of territorial expansion [and] autonomy there was no one  among the Timurids who graced the throne of hindustan  better than Muhammad akbar padishah; for tight control,  amassing treasure, improving the realm, appreciation of the  army, and tending to the welfare of the military there has  been no better ruler than Shah Jahan padishah in the vast  expanse of hindustan. aside from necessary expenditures  for ruling and what was spent on the buildings, fortresses  and mosques of Shahjahanabad and other cities, on  gratuities for ambassadors, and on the Qandahar and Balkh  campaigns, which in the end went for naught, 24 crores  of rupees were left behind in coin, aside from unminted  gold and silver, gold and silver vessels, and jewels, which  would amount to approximately 15 or 16 crores. he was  most strict in tending to his subjects and [defending them]  against the oppression of [his local] governors.1

Yet  the  reign  of  the  fifth  emperor  of  the  Mughal  dynasty  is still one of the least studied areas of Mughal history. The  attention of historians has been directed mainly to akbar (r.  1556–1605) and aurangzib (r. 1658–1707), and more recently  also to Jahangir (r. 1605–27).2 The voices speaking about Shah  Jahan are few. an early assessment is abdul aziz, “history of  the reign of Shah Jahan”, which came out in several fascicles in  five issues of the Journal of Indian History between 1927 and 1933.3 There are only three monographs dedicated to Shah Jahan. The  most important of these dates back to 1932, when Banarsi prasad  Saksena brought out his History of Shahjahan of Dihli, which he  based on his painstaking textual research of Mughal historical  sources and the observations of foreign travellers.4 This was  followed at great intervals by the more popular monographs of  Muni lal (1986) and fergus Nicoll (2009).5

one of the reasons why Shah Jahan was studied less than  akbar or aurangzib is that principal historical texts concerning  his reign are either unedited or untranslated.6 in the past decades  new initiatives were undertaken to make Shah Jahani sources  more  easily  available.  The  late  Dr  Syed  Mohammad  Jaffery  (also  spelled  Jaffary,  Jafari  or  Ja’fery)  worked  since  the  1970s  on  Persian  editions  of  Shah  Jahan’s  historians  and  poets.7 he  published inter alia Chandar Bhan Brahman’s Chahār Chaman, a prose work dealing with various aspects of Mughal life including  the author’s own;8  Jalala-i Tabataba’i’s Shāhjahānnāma, an early  history written for Shah Jahan;9 and the versified Pādshāhnāma  of Shah Jahan’s court poet abu Talib Kalim Kashani.10 The only  complete translation of a historical work dedicated to Shah  Jahan  so  far  available  is  ‘Inayat  Khan’s  Shāhjahānnāma.11 as to  monographs  on  literati  of  Shah  Jahan’s  court  there  is  Rajeev  Kinra’s examination of the life and work of the high-caste Hindu  Chandar Bhan Brahman, who worked as state secretary for  Jahangir, Shah Jahan and aurangzib.12

This recent exploration of Mughal sources (and their  authors) will hopefully give rise to a better understanding of  Shah  Jahan’s reign, which promises  to overcome what appears  to be a certain bias on the part of historians. While the reign  of akbar is considered to be the great phase of Mughal state  building, and the reign of aurangzib is regarded as marking the  beginning of Mughal decline, political historians especially seem  to have seen the reign of Shah Jahan as a more static and hence  less interesting phase. This view tells us perhaps more about the  effectiveness  and longevity  of  Shah  Jahani  propaganda,  which  emphasized the continuity and everlastingness of the emperor’s  rule, than about the actual historical situation.13



Art historians, cultural historians and literary historians, on  the other hand, have taken Shah Jahan more seriously, though  here too a certain long-standing bias had to be overcome. in the  19th century his patronage was judged ambivalently. The British  architectural historian James Fergusson considered Shah Jahan’s  buildings to be “feeble” and “pretty”, though “at the same time  marked with that peculiar elegance which is found only in the  East”; Shah Jahan’s architecture was contrasted to that of Akbar,  which was seen as manly and vigorous:

It  would  be  difficult  to  point  out in  the  whole  history  of  architecture any change so sudden as that which took place  between the style of akbar and that of his grandson Shâh  Jahân—nor any contrast as that between the manly vigour  and exuberant originality of the first, as compared with the  extreme but almost effeminate elegance of the second.14

and until the end of the 20th century art historians judged  painting created for Shah Jahan as decorative and superficial.15 From deeper research beginning in the late 1970s Shah Jahan’s patronage and, as it were, his rule, have emerged as a dynamic   phase where an increasing centralization in the administration  went hand in hand with a formalization of court ceremonial,  architecture and the arts—which intellectually express his ideal  of universal kingship.16 Shah Jahan came to be seen as Khafi Khan  had pictured him, as the great perfectionist and systematizer  of the Mughal empire. That this did not contradict but rather  refined Shah Jahan’s contribution to the Mughal imperial myth  is shown by azfar Moin who integrated the discoveries of art  historians into his study of sacred kingship.17 previously i drew  attention to the innovative, even revolutionary, aspects of Shah  Jahan’s artistic projects and I tried to show that the prevailing  image  one  has  of  Shah  Jahan’s  conservatism  and  increasing  orthodoxy does not do justice to his little-understood complex  personality as a man, as a ruler, and as a patron of the arts:  The creation of the plant-decorated baluster column for the  architecture of his appearances as a symbol of the bloom in  hindustan brought about by his just rule was so successful that  it became a pan-indian form;18 the monumental recreation of  the Solomonic throne in the audience hall at Delhi, which was  decorated with florentine pietra dura inlay work, including an  orpheus playing to the beasts, illustrated his Solomonic justice;19 to say nothing of the Taj Mahal as a neo-platonic concept “in  reverse”, realizing here on earth and on a gigantic scale the ideal  paradisiacal dwelling for his deceased wife in order to guarantee  a counter-image for her in the immaterial world.20

We note a new engagement with the larger world, especially  Muslim and european, in which the 17th-century Mughals were  located. The attitude vis-à-vis europe is ambivalent: in the  political realm, for example, Shah Jahan’s attack of 1631–32 on  the portuguese of hughli,21 and in the art domain a controlled  and  differentiated  assimilation  of  Europeanizing  styles  in  imperial architecture, painting and object art.22

 For literary historians, Shah Jahan’s reign is the high point  in Mughal culture, with a dazzling array of poets of various  backgrounds and talents.23

from these parameters further questions arose. To respond  to  them  is  the  aim  of  the  present  volume.  For  the  first  time  scholars with various historical interests—political, cultural,  social, economic, literary and art-historical—are involved in an  interdisciplinary exchange on Shah Jahan and his predecessor  Jahangir. The transition between the two reigns emerged as an  issue that attracted a particular amount of interest. The study  of Jahangir and Shah Jahan as a new subject of multidisciplinary  investigation hopes to engage students of South asia, and  particularly of South asian history, showing them a wide range  of possible approaches and methodologies when dealing with  textual and material objects from an outstanding period in Mughal history. The volume is divided into five sections. 

The  first  section,  “From  Jahangir  to  Shah  Jahan”,  focuses  on the problematic relationship between the two rulers, which  began with the rebellion of prince Khurram (already entitled  Shah Jahan), in 1620. in that year, after days of glory and basking   in the sun of imperial favour, the future Shah Jahan had a total  falling-out  with  his  father  through  the  intrigues  of  Jahangir’s  powerful wife Nur Jahan. The prince of the empire, shāh-i buland  iqbāl, rebelled and became bī-daulat (without any standing), and  had to spend his time in exile in the Deccan. his eldest sons were  kept as hostages at Jahangir’s court. 

When Shah Jahan managed to succeed to the Mughal throne  in 1628 his historians lashed out at the reign of Jahangir. They  stigmatized it as a time of bad government, which in their eyes  was  no  wonder  because  the  affairs  of  the  empire  had  been in  the hands of a woman (Nur Jahan). Shah Jahan’s accession as a  mujaddid, a religious renewer, ended an era of corruption and  religious decline. Shah Jahan’s early historian Qazvini brings this  to the point when he writes:

in each cycle of the ages he [god] brings a famous one  from the hidden place of nonexistence to the wide space  of reality and makes him a mirror of his own beautiful  power, and in each century he brings a ṣāḥib-i qirān24 from the narrowness of concealment into the wide space  of visible appearance and makes him the manifestation  of his full power, so that the dust of degeneration which  in the passing of days and ages has settled on the face of  time may be wiped off with the sleeve of his  [the ṣāḥib-i  qirān’s] wisdom and  thoughtful  planning, and  the flame  of discord and corruption that has been blazing through  this little sarāy of the world may be extinguished with  the gleam  [of the bright steel] of the sword of his effort  and his struggle for religious causes. [and in this way]  he re-strengthens the foundation of religion and the people,  promotes  afresh  the  affairs  of  the  kingdom  and  state, introduces good rules and laws, takes the present  state out of its worn gown, lets the water of justice flow  again in the channels of the kingdom, rips out the roots  of tyranny and oppression from the plain of the world  (sarābistan-i gītī), and gives splendour to the forecourt  of existence (pīshgāh-i hastī) by spreading the carpet of  peace and security and makes it current, and he increases  the adornment of the workshop of the world (kārkhāna-i  dunyā) with paintings and ornaments and with returning  benevolence. 

In each cycle of the administration of affairs, 

 it is absolutely essential to have a ṣāḥib-i qirān. Because the chain of his justice with many mouths   [chain links] 

 laughs at the justice of Nushirvan.25

This  passage  gives  us  the  official  view  of  Shah  Jahan  on  the  rule  of  Jahangir,  and  acquaints  us  with  the  difficulty  in  the  transition  between  the  two  reigns.  The  papers  of  the  first  section analyse the various ways in which the events of the  transition  found  textual  expression  in  Jahangir’s  and  Shah  Jahan’s historiography, and also in subaltern courtly writing, a  genre new to this period. Corinne lefèvre shows that Jahangir  was excluded from the new imperial model crafted by his son’s  historians  to  the benefit of more prestigious  forebears such as  Timur and akbar, but she detects a “hidden indebtedness” as  emblematic of Shah Jahan’s relationship to Jahangir’s heritage.  anna Kollatz analyses the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī of ‘abd al-Sattar  lahauri, a lower-placed member of the elite, who in narrating  Jahangir’s nightly discoursesintroduced a Sufi literary genre, the  malfūẓāt, into court writing, to project the emperor as a rational  but at the same time divinely inspired guide of his people (pīr wa murshid-i rāhnumā). ali anooshahr examines another text “from  below”, Bahāristān-i Ghaibī, the  memoirs  of  the  Mughal  officer  Mirza Nathan, written to exculpate himself when his loyalty  was challenged in the rebellion of prince Khurram (the future  Shah Jahan) against his father, Jahangir. The question of “how  to serve two masters” posed itself for many a manṣabdār caught  in the events of this time. Munis faruqui takes the rebellion of  Mahabat Khan of 1626, and  the role  that Asaf Khan,  Jahangir’s  prime minister (wakīl) and Shah Jahan’s kingmaker, played in it,  to show how the same historical event was narrated differently— from  Jahangir’s  perspective in  the  Fathnāma-i Nūr Jahān Begum of  Mulla  Kami  Shirazi,  and  from  Shah  Jahan’s  in  the  Ma’āsir-i  Jahāngīrī of Khwaja Kamgar husaini/ghairat Khan (c. 1630) and  the Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī of Muhammad Sharif/Mu‘tamad Khan  (c. 1632). While historiographic voices speaking for Jahangir  differ,  for  Shah  Jahan  they  are  (by  imperial  imposition  and  control) unanimous. 

The tensions between Jahangir and Shah Jahan were  reflected not only in textual matter but also in architecture and  art. Mehreen Chida-razvi argues that the person responsible  for the tomb of Jahangir was Nur Jahan, not Shah Jahan, who  to follow convention claimed the patronage of the mausoleum  of his father for himself. he did contribute key elements to  the  project—the  upper  and  lower  cenotaphs  inlaid  with  floral  pietra dura work, of the same outstanding workmanship as the  cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal at agra, and to all evidence created  by the same artists. We observe here a case of “split patronage”  which can be disentangled by linking visual and written sources.  From the methodological point of view it will be of great benefit  to historians and art students to understand how textual sources can be read against the physical evidence of architecture. 

The second section, “at the Court of Shah Jahan”, throws  light on the emperor’s interaction with his subjects and foreign  visitors as themes of historiography. No regularizing texts on the  organization of Shah Jahan’s court such as books of ceremonies  are available, so harit Joshi examines the writings of Shah  Jahan’s  chief  historians,  ‘Abd  al-Hamid  Lahauri,  Muhammad  Salih  Kanbu  and  Chandar/Chandra  Bhan  Brahman,  to  find  the  norms of etiquette governing comportment in terms of speech  and gestures of all categories of individuals—members of the  ruling  family,  high-ranking  officials,  minor  courtiers,  foreign dignitaries  and  traders—when  they  were  in  the  emperor’s  presence. Within this striving for regulation and order Joshi  points out contradictions which disturb the projected image of  the perfect and orthodox ruler: that Shah Jahan tolerated the  involvement of his son Dara Shukuh and his daughter Jahanara  with eminent mystics and that he himself sought the company  of Sufis and visited their shrines. We even learn that the emperor  had a kind of jester at his court: the eccentric Shaikh Nazir who  performed miracles and declared himself to be a god-appointed  guardian of Shah Jahan. 

Stephan popp focuses on the exchange of presents, or rather  the presentations, at the courts of Jahangir and Shah Jahan,  descriptions of which occupy a principal part in their histories;  he gives us a precise and highly useful analysis of what was given,  when, by whom, and to whom. Besides ceremonial processes and  reciprocal presentations as signifiers of the emperor’s interaction  with his court and the wider world, detailed descriptions of the  emperor’s building projects emerge as new subjects of Mughal  historiography.26

The  changing  emphasis  on  specific  topics  leads  us  to  the  more general issue of the analysis of Mughal historiography  which  is  still  insufficiently  developed.  Shah  Jahan’s  histories  are often and misleadingly termed “chronicles” though they are  obviously motivated by much greater and complex ambitions  than the chronological recording of events. There are also new  foreign voices to consider. roman Siebertz analyses the Dutch  merchant Joan Tack’s experience when trying to obtain a farmān from Shah Jahan to solve ongoing disputes between the Dutch east india Company and the Mughal state when the emperor was  in Delhi in 1648; it serves as a case study for the inner workings  of the Mughal state and its bureaucracy. a greater look at what  was happening with trade and mercantile groups in this period  would be an important context in which to locate the more  expansive Shah Jahani world.

The third section, “poetry and Court rhetoric”, is devoted  to  the  literature  under  Shah  Jahan’s  patronage.  Sunil  Sharma  characterizes its main trends, how the dominance of iranian  poets gave way to an integration of persianate indians, and he  also looks at hindi and Sanskrit texts; he focuses on a genre that  is  specific  to Shah  Jahan’s  reign,  the Persian masnavī (poem in  rhyming couplets) on Kashmir, that combines verse travelogues  and topographical poems. Chander Shekhar looks at the genre of  dībācha—prefaces or introductions in the literature produced at  Shah Jahan’s court—and identifies three categories: dibachas to  poetical works, dibachas to historical works and court chronicles  such as the Pādshāhnāmas or Shāhjahānnāmas, and dibachas by  princes or by others to their literary compositions. 

The fourth section, “architecture, legal practice, ornament  and painting”, is, as its title indicates, an exercise in approaching  material evidence with new and diverse methodologies. ebba  Koch looks at the palaces and gardens of the Mughal nobility as  an intersection of architecture and law; she discovers in their  changing ownership the pattern of imperial escheat, which  became an established praxis under Shah Jahan. Susan Stronge’s  essay on the dispersed tile-facing of the gate of the tomb and  mosque of Madani (d. 1445) at Srinagar in Kashmir is a piece  of detective work, effected  through close stylistic analysis; she  suggests a date of 1640 for the gate, and a link to Safavid iran for  the innovative  technique of its figural cuerda seca  tiles, which  became a characteristic form of architectural ornamentation  under Shah Jahan. J.p. losty examines the famous Dara Shukuh  album (now in the British library), and in a painstaking analysis  of  its  calligraphy  and  flower  decoration  places  its  creation  in  1630–33 at the beginning of Shah Jahan’s reign, and its position as  central to the changes of artistic patronal taste that transformed  Jahangiri into Shah Jahani painting. 

In the fifth and final section, the “Epilogue”, Robert McChesney  shows  that  Shah  Jahan’s  reign  cast  such  a  long  shadow  that  it  even reached the late 19th- and early 20th-century rulers of  afghanistan—amir ‘abd al-rahman Khan (r. 1880–1901) and his son  and successor, amir habib allah Khan (r. 1901–19); he discusses the  variety of ways in which Shah Jahan’s image was evoked by these  two men, as filtered through the account of their chronicler, Faiz  Muhammad ‘Katib’ Hazarah, the author of Sirāj al-tawārīkh.

Shah Jahan, whose motto was “Verily our traditions [āsār] tell  of us”, would have been pleased.  

So, where should we situate a book such as this in the field of  Mughal studies? it hopes to newly position the distinctiveness of  the first half of the 17th century in the history of the Mughals and  to look at it as an entity where structural continuity prevailed  in the face of the polemically professed divisions between the  reign of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. But the book goes further.  As its chapters have underlined, so much finessing was carried  out  at  different  levels  during  the  reigns  of  the  two  monarchs  that they actually appear as a unit, not so much a culmination,  but a creative reconceptualization of the Mughal empire as  imagined by akbar on the basis of what Babur and humayun  had initiated. it also makes us reconsider commensurability— the 17th-century Mughals seemed to anticipate the europeans  during a period when there were so many shared concerns and  so much dialogue—and also uniqueness. To be sure the Mughal  archive does not have the kind of documentation that can  sustain  a Norbert Elias-like  evaluation  of  affect  and  politeness that flowed from courtly society into an enlarging public arena  that shaped early Modernity. But the chapters in this volume do  enlarge on the elements that shaped an asian early Modernity— humanism, self-will, curiosity, scientific interest, exploration of  the potential of art, experimentation with languages and the  confidence  of  the  state  to  articulate  a  cultural  uniqueness  for  its domain. So much of this asian early Modernity belongs to  the fashioning that took place during the early 17th century.  The  concluding  essay  of  Robert  McChesney’s  contribution  on  19th-century  evaluations  of Shah  Jahan’s  reign in Afghanistan  is very much to the point in this context—outside india, and in a  world that was not ruptured by an intrusive Colonial Modernity,  it was Shah Jahan’s court, not Akbar’s, that was regarded as the  paradigm of civility, progress and development. 

 

 

BiBliographY

Primary Sources

Begley and Desai 1989: W.e. Begley and Z.a. Desai. Taj Mahal, The  Illumined Tomb. An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and  European Documentary Sources. Cambridge, Ma: aga Khan program  for islamic architecture, harvard university and Seattle: Edited  by  Muḥammad  Qahremān.  Mashhad:  Intishārāt-i  Āstān-i  Quds-i Rażavī.

Kalim  2016:  Abu  Ṭālib  Kalīm  Kāshānī.  Mathnawi Pādshāhnāma by Abu  Tālib Kalīm Kashāni. edited with an introduction by Syed Mohd.  Yunus Jafari. New Delhi: Centre for Persian Research, Office of the  Cultural Counsellor, islamic republic of iran. 

Kanbu  1967–72:  Muḥammad  Saliḥ  Kanbū.  ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ or Shāh  Jahānnāma.  Revised  and  edited  by  Waḥīd  Quraishī  based  on  the  Calcutta  edition  of  1912–46  by  Ghulām  Yazdānī.  Second  Edition.  3 vols. Lahore: Majlis-i Taraqqi-yi Adab.

Khafi Khan 1869–1925: Muḥammad Hāshim Khāfi Khān. Muntakhab al Lubāb.  Edited  by  Kabīr  al-Dīn  Aḥmad.  Calcutta:  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal. 

Lahauri  1866–72:  ‘Abd  al-Ḥamīd  Lāhaurī. Bādshāhnāmah. edited by M.  Kabīr al-Dīn Aḥmad and M. ‘Abd al-Raḥīm. 2 vols. Calcutta: Asiatic  Society of Bengal.

lahori 2010: Lahori’s Padshahnamah (1592–1638). Summary translation by  Dr hamid afaq Siddiqi. 2 vols. Delhi: idarah-i adabiyat-Delli. Qazvini: Muḥammad Amīn Qazvīnī, or Amīna-i Qazvīnī. Pādshāhnāma.  British library, MS. or. 173.

Tabataba’i  2009:  Jalāl  al-Dīn  Ṭabāṭabā’ī.  Shāh Jahānnāma. persian text  edited  with  an introduction  by  Seyed Muhammad  Yunus  Ja’ffery.

New  Delhi:  Centre  for  Persian  Research,  Office  of  the  Cultural  Counsellor, islamic republic of iran.

Waris: Muḥammad Wāris. Pādshāhnāma. British library, MS. add. 6556.  Unpublished typed transcript by Dr S.M. Yunus Jaffery, 1983.

Secondary Sources 

aziz 1927–33: a. aziz. “history of the reign of Shah Jahan”. Journal of  Indian History 6 (1927): 235–57; 7 (1928): 127–47, 327–44; 9 (1930):  132–72, 279–305; 11 (1932): 86–113, 356–65; 12 (1933): 47–78. 

Beach, Koch and Thackston 1997: Milo C. Beach and ebba Koch  with translations by Wheeler Thackston. King of the World. The  Padshahnama, An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library,  Windsor Castle. london and Washington DC: azimuth editions and  Smithsonian institution.

Begley 1979: Wayne e. Begley. “The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New  Theory of its Symbolic Meaning”. Art Bulletin 61: 7–37.

Begley 1981: Wayne e. Begley. “The Symbolic role of Calligraphy on  Three imperial Mosques of Shah Jahan”. in Kaladarśana: American  Studies in the Art of India. edited by Joanna Williams. New Delhi:

american institute of indian Studies, pp. 7–18. 

fergusson 1910: James fergusson. History of Indian and Eastern  Architecture. 2 vols., 1876. revised and edited with additions by  James Burgess and r. phene Spiers, 1910 (reprint, london and New  Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1972). 

Joshi 2010: Harit Joshi. “L’Espace cérémoniel dans la cour de l’empereur  Moghol Shah Jahan”. Journal Asiatique 298/1: 31–107. 

Kinra 2015: rajeev Kinra. Writing Self, Writing Empire. Chandar Bhan  Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary.  oakland, Ca: university of California press (indian edition, Delhi:  primus Books, 2016).

Koch 1982/2001: ebba Koch. “The Baluster Column—a european Motif  in Mughal architecture and its Meaning”. Journal of the Warburg and  Courtauld Institutes 45: 251–62. reprinted in Koch 2001, pp. 38–60.

Koch 1988/2001: ebba Koch. Shah Jahan and Orpheus. The Pietre Dure  Decoration and the Programme of the Throne in the Hall of Public Audiences  at the Red Fort of Delhi. graz: akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.  reprinted without introduction in Koch 2001, pp. 61–129.

Koch 2001: ebba Koch. Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology. Collected Essays.  New Delhi: oxford university press.

Koch 2006: ebba Koch. The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of  Agra. london: Thames and hudson (revised paperback edition 2012).

Introduction | 17

Koch 2012: ebba Koch. “how the Mughals referenced iran in Their  Visual Construction of universal rule”. in Universal Empire. A  Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian  History. edited by peter fibiger Bang and Dariusz Kolodziejczyk.  Cambridge: Cambridge university press, pp. 194–209.

Koch 2013: ebba Koch. “The Wooden audience halls of Shah Jahan:  Sources and reconstruction”. Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual  Cultures of the Islamic World 30: 351–89.

Koch 2017: ebba Koch. “Visual Strategies of imperial Self-representation:  The Windsor padshahnama revisited”. The Art Bulletin 99 (2017):  93–124.

lal 1986: Muni lal. Shah Jahan. New Delhi: Vikas publishing house.  leach 1995: l.Y. leach. Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester  Beatty Library. 2 vols. london: Scorpion Cavendish ltd. Lefèvre 2018: Corinne lefèvre. Pouvoir impérial et élites dans l’Inde moghole  de Jahangir (1605–1627). paris: les indes Savantes.

Moin 2012: a. azfar Moin. The Millennial Sovereign. Sacred Kingship and  Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia university press. Nicoll 2009: fergus Nicoll. Shah Jahan. The Rise and Fall of the Mughal  Emperor. london: haus publishing.

Saksena 1932: B.p. Saksena. History of Shahjahan of Dihli. allahabad:  Central Book Depot (reprint, 1968).

Sharma 2017: Sunil Sharma. Mughal Arcadia in an Indian Court. Cambridge,  Ma: harvard university press. 

Thackston 1974: Wheeler M. Thackston Jr. “The poetry of abu-Talib  Kalim: persian poet-laureate of Shahjahan, Mughal emperor of  india”. phD dissertation, harvard university.

 

Notes

1  Khafi Khan 1869–1925, Pt. 1, pp. 757–58. One crore is ten million  rupees. i thank Wheeler Thackston for help with the translation of  this passage.

2 The most detailed new examination of Jahangir is lefèvre 2018.

3 aziz 1927–33.

4 Saksena 1932/1968. The work ran to several editions: 1962, 1968  and 1975.

5 Both works drew on Saksena. That of Nicoll was in addition  informed by Dr Syed Mohammed Jaffery.

6  Until  2004  only  the  histories  of  Shah  Jahan’s  historians  Lahauri  and Kanbu were available in printed persian editions: lahauri  1866–72 and Kanbu 1967–72. There were also printed editions of Shah Jahan’s court poet Abu Talib Kalim Kashani, such  as Kalim 1957, Kalim 1990. None of these sources were translated  into english.

7  Dr  Jaffery  undertook  this work in collaboration with me  for my  project on the art, architecture and court culture of Shah Jahan,  which I began at Delhi in 1976. I provided him with microfilms of  manuscripts of Shah Jahani sources, chiefly in the British Library,  of which he prepared typed transcripts. he read the histories and  poetic works and took notes of topics of interest to me. We then  translated the relevant passages together, meeting on a regular  basis during my stay at Delhi between 1976 and 1986, and during  my following visits until his death in 2016.

8 Chandar Bhan 2007.

9  Tabataba’i 2009.

10  Kalim  2016.  Dr  Jaffery  also  prepared  typescripts  of manuscripts  of the Pādshāhnāmas of Muhammad amin or amina-i Qazvini and  Muhammad Waris as a base for future publications.

11  ʻInayat Khan 1990. The earliest translation of a historian writing  about the reign of Shah Jahan is perhaps by francis gladwin who  translated extracts of Chandar Bhan Brahman’s Chahār Chaman as a  model of persian prose style. See gladwin 1801. elliot and Dowson  translated  extracts  of  Shah  Jahan’s  historians  Qazvini,  Lahauri,  ʻInayat Khan, Waris, Kanbu, Muhammad Sadik Khan, Muhammad  Sharif Hanafi and Mufazzal Khan in their monumental work The  History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, see elliot and Dowson  1867–77, Vol. 7, pp. 1–145. There exists also a faulty and abridged  translation of lahauri: see lahori 2010. Begley and Desai 1989  assembled an anthology of translations of texts related to the Taj  Mahal. 

12  Kinra 2015; Thackston’s  thesis on Kalim is  still unpublished. See  Thackston 1974.

13 See Koch 2001, introduction, p. xxvii.

14 fergusson 1910/1972, Vol. 2, p. 308.

15 linda leach wrote: “he [Shah Jahan] seems to have viewed  painting purely as a decorative art and therefore did not require  the same expressiveness from his miniaturists as did Jahangir.”  leach 1995, Vol. 1, p. 354.

16 See especially Begley 1979; Koch 1988/2001; Beach, Koch and  Thackston 1997; Koch 2006; Joshi 2010; Moin 2012.

17 Moin 2012.

18 Koch 1982/2001.

19 Koch 1988/2001.

20 Koch 2006.

21 Saksena 1932/1968, pp. 104–12.

22 See e.g. Koch 1988/2001 and 2017.

23 Sharma 2017.

24 Ṣāḥib-i qirān is an astrological expression, literally meaning “lord  of the Conjunction”. it refers to the auspicious conjunction of  the planets Jupiter and Venus. it was the title of Timur and other  rulers who referred to him. See Moin 2012, Chapter 2.

25  Qazvīnī,  fols.  10a–10b.  The  late  Dr  Jaffery,  who  was  preparing  an  edition  of  Qazvīnī’s  Pādshāhnāma, and Stephan popp, who is  working on its translation, assisted me in rendering this passage  into english. anushirvan, the Sasanian king Khusrau i (r. 531–579),  became proverbial for his justice in persianate cultures. for the  chain of justice as a literary trope and a real practice at the Mughal  court see Koch 2012, pp. 205–08.

26 See e.g. Koch 2013, especially pp.

 

Post a Comment

Oops!
It seems there is something wrong with your internet connection. Please connect to the internet and start browsing again.
Site is Blocked
Sorry! This site is not available in your country.
NextGen Digital Welcome to WhatsApp chat
Howdy! How can we help you today?
Type here...