Jahangir

Jahangir, born Prince Salim, was the fourth Mughal emperor, ruling northern India from 1605 to 1627. He inherited a vast and settled empire from his father Akbar and is remembered less as a conqueror than as a connoisseur: of painting, of nature and of his own life, which he described in lively memoirs. His reign was also marked by rebellions by his sons, the political power of his wife Nur Jahan, and the first English embassy to the Mughal court.

Salim was born at Fatehpur Sikri on 31 August 1569, the son of Akbar and his Rajput wife Mariam-uz-Zamani. Two earlier sons had died as infants, and he was named after the Sufi saint Salim Chishti, whose prayers his father credited for the birth. He was taught Persian, Hindustani and the ancestral Chagatai Turkic, along with history, the sciences and warfare. In 1594 he led an army against the Bundela chief Vir Singh Deo of Orchha, who submitted and became his ally.

Impatient for power, Salim proclaimed himself emperor at Allahabad in 1599 while Akbar was campaigning in the Deccan, issuing coins in his own name. The revolt ended without a decisive battle, and by 1604 father and son had been reconciled. Akbar died in October 1605, and Salim took the throne on 3 November with the name Jahangir, "seizer of the world".

Within months his own eldest son, Khusrau, rebelled. Jahangir defeated him, had his followers tortured and impaled before his eyes, and later had him blinded. The Sikh Guru Arjan, accused of aiding Khusrau, was executed on Jahangir's orders in 1606. In 1611 Jahangir married Mehr-un-Nissa, the widow of a Persian officer, who as Nur Jahan became the real power at court, placing her relatives in high office. The Mughal Empire brought the Rajput house of Mewar to submission, took the fortress of Kangra in 1620 and extended its control in Bengal, but it lost Kandahar to Shah Abbas the Great of Iran in 1622.

Jahangir clashed with the Portuguese after they seized a pilgrim ship owned by his mother in 1613. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe arrived as ambassador of James I of England, sent at the request of the East India Company, and stayed for about three years. He won permission for an English trading post at Surat, beginning a long relationship between the Mughals and the company, and his journals are an important source for the reign. Dutch traders also received privileges in Gujarat.

Jahangir was fascinated by art and the natural world. His painters, among them Ustad Mansur and Abu'l-Hasan, produced finely observed portraits of animals, birds and people, often to illustrate his memoirs, the Jahangirnama. He claimed he could identify the artist of any face in a painting at a glance. He also conducted small experiments of his own, studied the animals he hunted, and adopted ideas from European prints brought by Jesuit missionaries. He set up a "chain of justice" for petitioners to appeal directly to him and, in religion, largely continued his father's tolerance, though orthodox Sunni advisers gained more influence over time.

From 1622 another son, Prince Khurram, rebelled, fearing that Nur Jahan meant to make her son-in-law Shahryar heir; the war lasted until 1625. Weakened by years of heavy drinking and opium, Jahangir died near Bhimber in late October 1627 while travelling from Kashmir to Lahore, where he was buried. After a brief struggle Khurram took the throne as Shah Jahan and had his rivals executed. Many historians have judged Jahangir a weak ruler, but his reign was a high point of Mughal painting.

Our 1600 map shows the Mughal Empire as Jahangir inherited it, and the 1650 map shows it under his son, with the Safavid Empire holding Kandahar to the west.