ON October 27, 1605, the great Emperor Akbar passed to his rest. One of his last acts was to signify to the nobles gathered round his bedside that Prince Salim should be invested with the royal turban and the sword of Humayun.

Salim was the Emperor’s eldest and favourite son, the offspring of his marriage with the sister of the Rajput chief, Raja Bihari Mai of Amber, whom he had espoused in the hope of welding the Hindu and Muslim peoples into a single nation. Salim was born, so his father believed, in answer to the prayers of the famous saint Shaikh Salim Chishti of Sikri, 23 miles from Agra, where Akbar afterwards founded his dream-city.

This was in 1569, so Salim was 36 years old at the time of his father’s death. He had received a liberal educa­tion, partly at the hands of the gallant Jesuit Fathers who had come from Goa to Akbar’s Court, and at one time it seemed possible that he might be con­verted to Christianity.

He had, how­ever, proved to be a wayward and unstable young man, and declined the po­sition of Viceroy of the Deccan in order that he might not be deprived of the luxuries of life in the capital. In 1600, in a fit of jealousy at his father’s preference for his other son, Prince Daniyal, he retired in a dudgeon to Bengal, where he started a rebellion. Two years later, he almost broke Akbar’s heart by hiring a ruffian to assassinate his trusted friend and counsellor, Abul Fazl, whom Salim hated and feared. But in 1604, father and son were reconciled.

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As soon as he ascended the throne, Salim assumed the title of Jahangir or World Grasper. He issued a proclama­tion assuring his subjects that he would protect the Mohammedan religion, and promising various reforms such as a general release of prisoners, the abolition of barbarous punishments, the sup­pression of highway robbery, the pro­hibition of the sale of intoxicants, and the confirmation of noblemen and religious bodies in their estates. This, however, did not prevent popular risings in favour of his son Khusru, a gentle and enlightened young man, who is described as “a gentleman of a very overly presence and fine carriage, ex­ceedingly beloved of the common people.” Khusru had been confined in Agra fort, but he escaped to the Punjab, where he raised the standard of rebellion. He was joined by an army of peasants, and the Sikh Pontiff Arjun gave him a sum of money and his blessing, “not because he was a prince, but because he was needy and friendless.”

The rebellion was easily put down. The governor of Lahore refused to open the gates of the city to the insurgents, and Khusru and his chief adherents were captured and brought before the Emperor. Jahangir describes the pun­ishment he meted out to the two ring­leaders. “I ordered these two villains to be enclosed in the skins of a cow and an ass, and to be paraded round the city. As the skin of a cow dries quicker than the skin of an ass, Hussain Beg only lived to the fourth watch. Abdul Aziz, who was in the ass’ skin, lived for twenty-four hours and was then throne, released. To strengthen and confirm

our rule, I directed that a dense row of stakes should be set up from the garden to the city, and that the rebels should be impaled thereon and thus receive their deserts in this most excruciating punishment.” The Emperor, on a gor­geously caparisoned elephant, rode be­tween the lines of his writhing victims followed by the unhappy Khusru, trembling and weeping at the horrible fate which had overtaken his adherents. Another distinguished sufferer for his share in the rebellion was Arjun who, though he was the Fifth Guru of the Sikh sect and compiler of their Adi Granth or Bible, was tortured to death for refusing to pay the fine im­posed upon him; the Sikhs never forgot this act. Khusru himself was blinded with hot irons and imprisoned for life. After a time he partly re­covered his sight, and was made ‘the catspaw of con­tending factions until his death, caused, as everyone believed, by his brother Khurram, in 1622. It was a tragedy that Khusru never succeeded to the throne for, had he done so, the history of the period would have been a very different story. “If Sultan Khusru prevails,” wrote Sir Thomas Roe, a very shrewd observer, “this king­dom will be a sanctuary for Christians, whom he loves; and honours, favouring learn­ing, valour and the discipline of war, abhorring all cove- tousness, and discerning the base custom of taking, used by his ancestors and the nobility.” He was looked on by the common folk as a martyr to their cause and wherever his body halted on its way to its last resting- place in the garden named after him in Allahabad, a shrine was erected to his memory, surrounded by a tiny plot of grass.

Unlike other Muslims of his day, he had refused to contract numer­ous alliances, and had married only a single wife, to whom he was devoted. Such enlightened souls as Khusru had, alas, but a very small chance of surviving in those hard and cruel times.

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At the beginning of his reign, in spite of his promises, Jahangir showed marked favour to the Jesuit Fathers. He decorated his throne room with pictures representing biblical subjects, and por­traits of the Pope and the King of Spain. Church processions with full Catholic ceremonial were to be seen in the streets of Agra and Lahore, and, to the great scandal of the orthodox, the Emperor sealed official documents with a signet bearing the effigies of Christ and His Mother. In 1607, however, the Jesuits re­ceived a severe setback on the arrival a Agra of Captain William Hawkins of the newly-formed East India Company, letter from James I of England, asking for the grant of trade facilities. Hawkins had learnt Turkish in the Levant, and this was so closely allied to Turki, Jahangir’s mother-tongue, that they could converse without an inter­preter. Hawkins was a jovial Eliza­bethan toper, and Jahangir had the family weakness for drink; the consequence was that Hawkins rose to high favour, and the two sat carousing together until a late hour every night. Hawkins was made a “Commander of 400,” with a salary of 30,000 rupees a year, and this so incensed the Jesuits, says Hawkins that they became “like madde dogges,” and, if we can credit his story, even tried to poison him. The Emperor provided him with an Armenian wife to cook his food. Hawkins went home in 1611, and in the following year the Portuguese, who had sent a large fleet to turn the English out of their newly-acquired factory in Surat, were completely de­feated by two tiny English merchantmen. “The Great Mughal, which before thought none comparable to the Portuguese at sea, much wondered at the English resolution.” From this event we may reckon the beginning of British ascendancy in India. Hawkins gives a fas­cinating account of Jahangir’s daily life:

“First in the morning about the break of day he is at his beads with his face turned to the westward. The manner of his praying when he is in Agra is in a private fair room, upon a goodly jet stone, having only a Persian lamb-skin under him; having also some eight chains of beads, every one containing four hundred. At the upper end of this jet stone the pictures of Our Lady and Christ are placed, graven in stone; so he turneth over his beads and saith 3,200 words, according to the number of his beads, and then his prayer is ended. After lie hath done, he showeth himself to the people, receiving their salames or good-morrows; unto whom multitudes resort every morning for this purpose. This done, he sleepeth two hours more, and then dineth, and passeth his time with his women; and at noon he showeth himself to the people again, sitting till three by the clock, viewing and seeing his pastimes and sports made by men and fighting of many sorts of beasts, every day sundry kinds of pastimes.

“Then at three of the clock all the nobles in general (that be in Agra and are well) resort unto the Court, the King coming forth in open audience, sitting in his seat royal, and every man standing in this degree before him, his chiefest sort of nobles standing within the red rail, and the rest without. They are all placed by his lieutenant-general. This red rail is three steps higher than the place where the rest stand; and within this red rail I was placed, amongst the chiefest of them all. The rest are placed by officers, and they likewise be within another very spacious place railed; and without that rail all sorts of horsemen and soldiers that belong unto his captains and all other comers. At these rails there are many doors kept by many porters, who have white rods to keep men in order. In the midst of the place, right before the King, standeth one of his sheriffs, together with the master hang­man, who is accompanied by forty hang­men, wearing on their heads a certain quilted cap different from all others, with hatchets on their shoulders; and others with ail sorts of whips being there ready to do what the King commandeth. The King heareth all causes in this place and stayeth some two hours every day.

“Then he departeth towards his private place of prayer; his prayer being ended, four or five sorts of very well dressed and roasted meats are brought him, of which as he pleaseth he eateth a bit to stay his stomach, drinking once of his strong drink. Then he cometh forth into a private room, where none can come but such as himself nominateth (for two years I was one of his attendants there). In this place he drinketh other three cupfuls, which is the portion that the physicians allot him. This done, he eateth opium, and then he ariseth, and being in the height of his drink he layeth him down to sleep, every man departing to his own home.”

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Hawkin’s account may be compared with that of another Englishman, Sir Thomas Roe, who came out as ambas­sador from James I in 1615, and stayed until 1619. His Diary is an invaluable commentary on all that he witnessed:

“I went to Court at 4 in the evening to the Durbar, which is the place where the Mughal sits out daily to entertain stran­gers, to receive petitions, to give com­mands to see, and to be seen. To digress a little from my reception and to declare the customs of the Court will enlighten the future discourse. The King hath no man but eunuchs that comes within the lodgings or retiring rooms of his house. His women watch within and guard him with manly weapons. He comes every morning to a window called the Jharokha (Window of Audience) look­ing into a plain before his gate, and

“At the Durbar I was led right before him at the entrance of an outer rail, where met me two principal noble slaves to conduct me nearer. I had required before my going leave to use the customs of my country, which was freely granted, so that I would perform them punctually. When I entered within the first rail I made an obeisance; entering in the inward rail another; and when I came under the King a third. The place is a great court; whither resort all sorts of people. The King sits in a little gallery overhead; ambassadors, the great men, and strangers of quality within the inmost rail under him, raised from the ground, covered with canopies of velvet and silk, under foot laid with good carpets; the meaner men representing gentry within the first rail, the people without in a base court, but so that all may see the King.”

In 1611, Jahangir married the famous Nur Jahan, or light of the World, with whom he had long been in love. This remarkable woman was the daughter of a Persian refugee, and Jahangir became enamoured of her while he was still Prince Salim. Akbar, who did not approve, married her off to one of his officers, Ali Kuli, surnamed Sher- afgan or Tiger-thrower, who was made governor of Bardwan in far-off Bengal. The details are obscure, but apparently it was the old story of David and Bath- sheba: after Jahangir’s accession, Sher- afgan was attacked and killed by one of the Imperial envoys, and the lady brought back. For a long time she resisted her royal lover’s importunities, and when at last, after four years, she consented to accept him; she was thirty- four, an age when women in the East are usually long past their prime. But Nur Jahan was singular in this as in other respects, and she soon obtained complete mastery over her husband. Her father, Itmad-ud-daulah, and her brother, Asaf Khan, became the leading figures in the court. She married her daughter by her former husband to Jahangir’s younger son, Prince Shahryar, and her niece, afterwards the Empress Mumtaz Mahal, who sleeps in the famous mauso­leum which bears her name, to Prince Khurram, afterwards the Emperor Shah Jahan. She thus made her position completely unassailable.

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The weak and self-indulgent emperor allowed his strong-minded consort to gain entire ascendancy over him, and the empress was the de facto ruler of Hindu­stan. She used her power wisely and well. She curbed her husband’s craving for drink. She sat daily at the Audience Window, with a veil over her face, hearing the grievances of her subjects and personally redressing them. She spent much of her private fortune in finding dowries for orphaned girls. She even had her name stamped on the coinage. She was a great horsewoman and a mighty shikari; contemporary pictures show her playing polo, and on one occasion she brought down four tigers in four successive shots. The nobles were intensely jealous, and on one occasion Mahabat Khan, one of the most powerful of them, actually attempted to kidnap the emperor and empress when they were encamped on the bank of the Jhelum River. Surround­ing their camp with a body of Rajputs, he forced his way into the Royal tent, and compelled Jahangir to mount an elephant which he held in waiting. The reason for this action, he said, was that the empire was being ruled by a woman, and that Jahangir was a mere puppet in the hands of his wife and her faction. But Mahabat Khan had reckoned without his hostess. The doughty Nur Jahan forced her way through the ranks of her would-be captors amid a shower of arrows, one of which wounded a female attendant in the arm, and forded the river on her elephant. She then took such effective counter-measures that Mahabat Khan was glad to release his royal prisoners and take refuge among his friends in Rajputana.

Jahangir’s reign was not distinguished by any great military exploits. He had little appetite for martial glory, and was a scholar and connoisseur rather than a soldier. His son, Prince Khurram, brought to an honourable conclusion the war against the Rana of the Rajput state of Mewar, which had defied the efforts of Akbar himself. The families of many of the nobles were captured, and at length the Rana submitted. It was agreed that the fortress of Chitor should not be fortified, but on the other hand, the Rana was not to be asked to send his women-folk to the Imperial harem.

The Mughal troops took the great fortress of Kangra on the Kashmir border, but Shah Abbas of Persia was allowed to capture the important fortress of Kan­dahar, commanding the highroads to Central Asia. In the Deccan, which was destined to be the grave of the Mughal Empire, Malik Ambar, the Minister of Ahmadnagar, had discovered the fact that the famous Maratha light horsemen were more than a match for the clumsy and unwieldy Mughal army.

The hardy Marathas, subsisting on nothing more than a bag of grain sus­pended from the saddle-bow, and what they could get from the surrounding country, hung on the flanks of the Imperial troops, cutting off stragglers, intercepting supplies, and refusing to be drawn into a pitched battle until their opponents were completely exhausted. Moreover, Jahangir, like all the Mughal Emperors, was unlucky in his sons.

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With the exception of Khusru they were dissolute and quarrelsome, and instead of supporting their father and assisting in the administration of the far-flung prov­inces of his great empire, spent their time in fighting among themselves and intriguing against Nur Jahan and her fac­tion. In 1626 Jahangir’s health was failing, and in March of the following year the Court moved up from Lahore to Kashmir in order that he might recover his health among the gardens that he loved so well. Here he seemed for a time to recover, but on his way down to the plains at the beginning of the cold weather, on November 7th, 1627, he passed away at the age of fifty-eight. His body was taken to Lahore and buried in a garden; over the grave his widow erected a magnificent mausoleum, in which, under a severely simple marble tomb, that great and masterful woman was in due time also laid to rest at her consort’s side. It bears the inscription,

Let neither lamp nor rose adorn my poor grave,

To save the moth from courting death and the nightingale a song.

Jahangir’s character is a curiously complex one, and Terry, Sir Thomas Roe’s chaplain, summed him up acutely when he observed, “for the disposition of the king, it ever seemed to me to be com­posed of extremes; for sometimes he was barbarously cruel, and at other times he would seem to be exceeding fair and gentle.” He was exceedingly fond of children and animals, and once, when his little grandchild was sick unto death, he vowed he would give up hunt­ing if the child ‘recovered. Unlike his father, he was a good scholar, and his Memoirs, written in elegant Persian, are second only in interest to those of Babur. He was a keen naturalist, and made a special journey to the passes of Kashmir in order to make a catalogue of the spring flowers growing there. He had a large zoological collection, and his artists have preserved realistic portraits of his favourite beasts. He tried experi­ments in breeding birds in capitivity, and in his passion for knowledge he person­ally carried out dissections of various animals.

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All the Persians loved gardens, and it was the custom of every Muslim nobleman to design one for himself, where he might take his ease during the heat of the day, and find a last resting- place when he died. These gardens were of a formal type, with cypresses, marble channels for water, fountains and cascades. Jahangir and his consort are responsible for many lovely gardens at Lahore and in Kashmir. Most beautiful of all of them is the Shalimar Bagh in Kashmir, with its immense chinar trees, its shady walks and beds of many-coloured flowers, and its rippling streams, all set against the in­comparable background of the silver wa­ters of the Dal Lake and the snowy moun- tain-ranges in the distance. Jahan-gir’s love of Kashmir is recorded in many striking passages in his Memoirs, of which one may suffice:

“Its pleasant meads and enchanting cascades are beyond all description. There are running streams and fountains beyond count. Wherever the eye reaches, there are verdure and running water. The red rose, the violet and the narcissus grow of themselves; in the fields there are all kinds of flowers and all sorts of sweet-scented herbs more than can be calculated. In the soul-enchanting spring the hills and plains are filled with blossoms; the gates, the walls, the courts, the roofs, are lighted up by the torches of the banquet-adorning tulips. What shall we say of these things or the wide meadows and the fragrant trefoil?”

Jahangir was not a great builder, like the other Mughals, but his few works are of a rare loveliness. He completed the tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, and he erected another for his father-in-law, Itmad-ud-daulah, which is a master­piece. Standing in an enclosure of red sandstone, its dazzling marble, exquisitely fretted and inlaid, is in striking contrast to its surroundings. “Whether regarded as an architectural composition of match­less refinement,” says a recent critic, “or as an example of applied art displaying rare craftsmanship, or as an artistic symbol of passionate devotion, the tomb of Itmad-ud-daulah expresses in every part of it the high aesthetic ideals that prevailed among the Mughals of that time.”

In the realm of art, however, Jahangir’s chief contribution was to painting. Of this he was a connoisseur of rare ability. He says in his Memoirs, “as regards myself, my liking for painting and my practice in judging it have arrived at such a point that when any work is brought before me, either of deceased artists or of the present day, without the names being told me, I say on the spur of the moment that it is the work of such and such a man. And if there be a picture containing many portraits, and each face be the work of a different master, I can discover which face is the work of each. If any other person has put in the eye and eyebrow of a face, I can perceive whose work the original face is, and who has painted the eye and eyebrows.” There was, of course, an indigenous school of painting in India long before the coming of the Mughals, and Akbar blended the Rajput and Persian styles by encouraging Hindu and Muslim artists to collaborate. A third in­fluence was added when Jahangir intro­duced his painters to the copies of the Italian masterpieces brought to Agra by the Jesuits. In this way Indian painting attained to its zenith. Jahangir’s two chief painters were Ustad (Master) Mansur, and Abul Hasan, “The Wonder of the Age.” These artists copied a miniature belonging to Sir Thomas Roe so skilfully that he was at a complete loss to know which was the original and which the copy. Jahangir also struck a series of coins of exceptional artistic merit.

It is difficult to say what Jahangir’s religion was. Probably, like his father, he was a mystic, holding the tenets of the Sufi sect, who regard all creeds as imperfect shadows of the same under­lying truth. His leaning towards the Catholicism of the Jesuits has already been noted, and he encouraged religious debates between the Fathers and the Muslim doctors. He loved talking about philosophy to Hindu ascetics, but he regarded popular Hinduism as a “worthless religion.” Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was completely tolerant and never persecuted a man for his beliefs.

As a ruler, Jahangir was proud of his even-handed justice. “God forbid,” he exclaims, “that I should consider princes, far less noblemen.” “A king has no relations,” is another of his sayings. The lack of communications made it difficult to keep a check on distant officials, but corruption and extortion were severely punished when detected, and anyone who could do so was at liberty to petition the Emperor personally at his daily Audience. The sale of intoxicating liquor and drugs was stopped, and cus­toms such as Sati and infanticide were for­bidden. Compensation was paid for dam­age done by troops on the march, and when one of the famines so common in pre-British India broke out, he did his best to alleviate it by free kitchens and re­missions of revenue. No execution could take place till sunset, in order to give time for the arrival of a reprieve. The horrible punishments inflicted for political crimes, though revolting to modern sentiment, were no worse than the disemboweling, quarterings and breaking on the wheel of contemporary Europe.

In his personal appearance and the pleasures of the table, Jahangir was as fastidious as he was in everything else. He records the delight of eating freshly- plucked figs and the excellence of Kabul cherries. He is perfectly frank about his unhappy fondness for strong drink which marred what might otherwise have been an excellent character, and was responsible for most of his failings. He tells us that he commenced taking wine at the age of eighteen, and when this ceased to intoxicate him, he had recourse to raw spirits and drugs. At one time his hand shook so violently that he could not hold a cup, but Nur Jahan partially reformed him. Altogether, Jahangir, though by no means the greatest of his line, is an interesting character, who, like his grandfather, Humayun, only just failed to be a good ruler owing to an unfortunate weakness, which he was unable to overcome.