Person · Mughal emperor & builder · India
Shah Jahan
Also known as Shah Jahan, Shahab-ud-din Muhammad Khurram, Shahjahan
Fifth Mughal emperor, 1628 to 1658, who moved the capital from Agra to the new city of Shahjahanabad at Delhi in 1648 and built the architectural ensemble that defines Mughal visual memory: the Taj Mahal for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Red Fort of Delhi, the Jama Masjid, and the refacing of the Agra Fort in marble. His reign is the Mughal state's economic and architectural apex, and the Peacock Throne — set with the Koh-i-Noor, the Timur Ruby and other Golconda stones — was its visible symbol. His son Aurangzeb imprisoned him at Agra Fort in 1658 and he died there eight years later.
- Date
- 1592–1666
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Mughal
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He fought and lost a war of succession as a prince in 1623 against his own father Jahangir, then won the throne in a civil war against his own three brothers in 1628, then lost it to his son Aurangzeb in 1658 — three Mughal successions he was personally inside. The marble Taj Mahal took twenty-two years and twenty thousand workers; the Peacock Throne took seven years and the whole treasury's jewels. Nader Shah took the throne apart in Persia; the Koh-i-Noor was still in it when he did.
About the place
Placed at Delhi (Shahjahanabad) and Agra (where he built the Taj and died).
Connections (8)
- BuiltTaj Mahal
Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal in 1631 as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who had died in childbirth at Burhanpur that year. Construction ran twenty-two years, employed about twenty thousand workers, and used marble from Makrana, jade from China, carnelian from Persia and sapphire from Sri Lanka. He himself is buried beside her in the main chamber, the only asymmetric feature of a building that is otherwise obsessively balanced — a late addition after his son Aurangzeb's war of succession.
- BuiltRed Fort, Delhi
Shah Jahan commissioned the Red Fort as the imperial palace of his new capital Shahjahanabad from 1639, with construction running to 1648 when he formally moved the court from Agra. The Diwan-i-Am and Diwan-i-Khas held the Peacock Throne, built over seven years with the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby set into it. The Lahori Gate's audience bazaar, Chandni Chowk running west, and the Jama Masjid two kilometres southwest were part of the one urban ensemble.
- Imprisoned atAgra Fort
After losing the 1657–58 war of succession to his son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan was imprisoned at the Agra Fort — within sight of the Taj Mahal across the Yamuna — and died there in 1666 after eight years of captivity, cared for by his daughter Jahanara. Aurangzeb did not visit him. His body was carried across the river to be buried beside Mumtaz Mahal in the Taj's main chamber, the only asymmetrical addition the mausoleum ever received.
- Son ofHumayun
Shah Jahan — born Khurram — was Humayun's grandson and Jahangir's son, becoming emperor in 1628 after a brief civil war against his brothers following Jahangir's death. The direct Babur-Humayun-Akbar-Jahangir-Shah Jahan line gives the Mughal dynasty its central five emperors across a hundred and thirty years; Shah Jahan was the first of them not to have campaigned to claim the throne against an uncle or cousin, which is partly why his reign could spend as it did on architecture.
- Son ofAurangzeb
Aurangzeb was Shah Jahan's third son and defeated his father in the 1657–58 civil war, imprisoning Shah Jahan at Agra Fort until his death in 1666. The war began when Shah Jahan fell ill and Aurangzeb concluded his elder brother Dara Shikoh — Shah Jahan's chosen heir — would ruin the empire with his religious syncretism. Aurangzeb's own ascetic Islamic orthodoxy was in part a rhetorical frame against Dara's Upanishad translation and Majma-ul-Bahrain.
- Son ofDara Shikoh
Dara Shikoh was Shah Jahan's eldest son and intended heir, raised in his father's syncretic court culture and formally designated as successor from the 1640s. His translation of the Upanishads into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar in 1657 and his earlier Majma-ul-Bahrain treating Islam and Hinduism as two expressions of one truth were partly a princely programme of comparative religion his father actively encouraged. Aurangzeb's 1658 victory ended that programme.
- Rebuilt byAkbar's Church (Church of the Holy Name), Agra
Shah Jahan rebuilt Akbar's Church at Agra around 1636 after it had been partially destroyed in retaliation for a Portuguese raid on the Mughal customs post at Hooghly in 1632 and again damaged by Shah Shuja's forces in 1635. The rebuilding was financed from imperial funds and was a public acknowledgment that the Portuguese raid had been unauthorised and that Akbar's grant of protection to the Jesuit mission still bound the Mughal state. The reconstructed church served the Agra Christian community through Shah Jahan's remaining reign and Aurangzeb's.
- BuiltJama Masjid, Delhi
Shah Jahan built the Jama Masjid at Delhi between 1650 and 1656 as the congregational mosque of his new capital Shahjahanabad. The three-domed red-sandstone and white-marble building sits on a raised platform above the walled city with three sides of steps leading up to its gates, forty metres above street level, and holds 25,000 worshippers in its courtyard. The mosque was the Mughal state's principal Friday space from its 1656 opening until 1857.