Person · Mughal emperor
Jahangir
Also known as Jahāngīr, Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad Salīm, Nur ud-din Muhammad Salim, Prince Salim, Salim, Jehangir, Nuruddin Jahangir
The fourth Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1605 to 1627 after rebelling against his father Akbar and styling himself emperor at Allahabad in 1599. His Persian memoir, the Tuzk-i-Jahangiri, records birds, plants and his own experiments alongside politics, and he had painters such as Ustad Mansur draw what he described. He married Nur Jahan in 1611 and left much of government to her, built the Shalimar Bagh at Srinagar in 1619, and is buried at Shahdara across the Ravi from Lahore.
- Date
- 1569–1627
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Mughal
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Thomas Roe, James I's ambassador, spent three years at his court until 1619 and could not pick out a European miniature from the copies Jahangir's painters had made of it. Jahangir, for his part, never mentions Roe in his voluminous memoirs.
Sources differ on his death: Wikipedia's Jahangir article gives 28 October 1627 in its lead and 29 October in its narrative, near Bhimber, while its Tomb of Jahangir article places it near Rajauri on 28 October.
Connections (8)
- Buried atShahdara
Jahangir died in 1627 on the road back from Kashmir, and his body was carried to Lahore and buried in the Dilkusha garden at Shahdara, a favourite spot of his across the Ravi. Shah Jahan ordered a mausoleum befitting an emperor; it took ten years and cost ten lakh rupees. It has no central dome because Jahangir is reported to have forbidden one, so four minarets about thirty metres high rise from a single-storey plinth instead, around a marble cenotaph inlaid with the ninety-nine names of God.
- BirthplaceFatehpur Sikri
Akbar's twin sons had died in infancy, and he and Mariam-uz-Zamani sought the blessing of the Chishti saint Salim Chishti at Sikri, who promised sons who would live. When the empress was expecting again, Akbar had a palace built near the saint's lodgings, today called the Rang Mahal, and the prince born there on 31 August 1569 was named Salim after him. The saint's daughter became the boy's foster mother, and his grandson Qutubuddin Koka became his foster brother and first tutor.
- Court associationNur Jahan
Jahangir married Mihr-un-Nissa, widow of the Persian noble Sher Afgan, on 25 May 1611; she was called Nur Mahal and later Nur Jahan, Light of the World. From the marriage on he left much of government in her hands and gave her relatives high office, and after 1620 she held the title Padshah Begum until his death. In 1621 she married her daughter to his youngest son Shahryar, which Prince Khurram read as a bid for the succession and answered with rebellion in 1622.
- PatronageMughal Gardens of Kashmir
In 1619 Jahangir enlarged an older garden on the north-east shore of Dal Lake into a royal garden and called it Farah Baksh, the Delightful. It is now the Shalimar Bagh, the earliest of the Mughal gardens of that name, followed by Lahore in 1641 and Delhi in 1653. He and Nur Jahan moved the whole court to Srinagar for the summer at least thirteen times, crossing the Pir Panjal on elephants, and the garden served as their summer residence and court.
- PatronageJahangir's zodiac rupees
Jahangir struck coins bearing his own portrait and a zodiac series in gold and silver, in which the sign for the month of minting replaced the month's name, set against a radiating sun, out of his faith in astrology. The ulama held the images haram, and Wikipedia's biography says his successor Shah Jahan ordered the coins melted, which is why they are now so rare. He had already struck coins in his own name in 1599, while a rebel prince holding court at Allahabad.
- Court associationThomas Roe
Roe was James I's royal envoy to Jahangir from 1615 to 1619. He arrived with gifts that included many crates of red wine, explained to the emperor what beer was and how it was made, and allegedly became a favourite and drinking companion. His journals describe how petitioners could pull the chain of justice to reach the emperor at darshan, yet Jahangir's own voluminous memoirs never mention the ambassador at all.
- Traditional linkImarti
A popular attribution, not a documented one. Imarti's southern name, jangiri or jaangiri, is read as a corruption of Jahangir: a 2009 Times of India feature called it the closest the jalebi family comes to being named after the emperor, and a 2013 Deccan Herald piece called imarti a favourite treat of the Mughal emperor Jahangir. Neither names a Mughal text, cook, recipe or date, and no source consulted ties the sweet to his years as Prince Salim. Jahangir reigned from 1605 to 1627.
- Traditional linkSaidpur, Islamabad
Saidpur takes its name from Said Khan Gakhar, son of the Pothohar chief Sultan Sarang Khan, to whom Akbar transferred the village for the Gakhars' service against Sher Shah Suri. Said Khan's daughter married Akbar's son Salim, the future Jahangir, and her father gave her Saidpur as a wedding gift. Jahangir's memoir, the Tuzk-i-Jahangiri, mentions a stay at a village beyond Rawalpindi on the road to Kabul, then a garden resort watered by a spring, which is believed to be Saidpur.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Jahangir", "Tuzk-e-Jahangiri", "Ustad Mansur", "Tomb of Jahangir", "Shalimar Bagh, Srinagar", "Thomas Roe". Wheeler M. Thackston (trans.), The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (1999); Lisa Balabanlilar, The Emperor Jahangir: Power and Kingship in Mughal India (2020).
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