Jahangir: The Fourth Mughal Emperor

Nur al-Din Muhammad Jahangir, the fourth emperor of the Mughal Empire, reigned from 1605 to 1627 over the territories his father Akbar had assembled across northern India. He came to the throne at thirty-six after a long and uneasy wait, having once taken up arms against his father, and he spent the first years of his own reign putting down a rebellion by his own eldest son.

The reign is documented from the ruler's own side, because Jahangir kept a memoir. The Tuzuk-i Jahangiri records his administrative orders, his hunting, the animals and plants he had examined, the workmanship he was shown, and his own drinking habits, set down with a particularity that his court chroniclers did not supply. Where the official histories give the shape of events, the memoir gives the texture, and the two can be read against each other.

What the reign is remembered for is partly institutional and partly cultural. Jahangir issued twelve ordinances at his accession and hung a chain of gold bells between Agra fort and the riverbank so that petitioners could summon the emperor directly. The painting produced in his studio is marked by the same close observation that runs through his memoir. He gave his wife Nur Jahan a share in the substance of government that the contemporary chronicles describe without reserve, including coinage struck in her name. He also lost Kandahar to Safavid Iran, faced revolts by two sons and one of his senior commanders, and left a disputed succession behind him.

The Empire He Inherited

By 1605 the Mughal state had been in India for just under eighty years. Babur had won Delhi and Agra in 1526; his son Humayun had lost the territory to Sher Shah Suri and recovered it only shortly before his death; and Akbar, over a reign of nearly half a century, had turned a conquest into an administration. By the time of Akbar's death the empire ran from Kabul and Kandahar in the north-west across the Indo-Gangetic plain to Bengal, with a contested frontier in the Deccan and an unsubdued Rajput state in Mewar.

The machinery Jahangir took over was already settled: a ranked service of mansabdars holding assignments of revenue called jagirs, a revenue administration over the directly held khalisa lands, and a court whose public business was transacted at the jharoka, the window at which the emperor showed himself daily. Jahangir's own ordinances, discussed below, are in large part confirmations and adjustments of this inherited system rather than replacements for it.

Birth and Name

Jahangir was born on 30 August 1569 at Fatehpur Sikri. His mother held the title Maryam az-Zamani. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that he was named for Shaykh Salim Chishti, the Chishti shaykh then resident at Fatehpur, and that he was known in the family as Shaykhu Baba on that account.

The shaykh's standing at the time is attested by a contemporary who had no particular reason to flatter him. Bada'uni, writing in the Muntakhab al-Tawarikh, describes Shaykh Salim Chishti of Fatehpur as one of the greatest shaykhs of Hind and a master of the stages of the knowledge of God, and elsewhere records that when Shaykh Mubarak and his sons needed refuge from proceedings at Akbar's court they took it with Salim Chishti, who was "then in the height of his glory". The Chishti order to which he belonged is among the Sufi orders of South Asia and traces itself to Mu'in al-Din Chishti of Ajmer.

Prince Salim

Early Service

Under his given name Salim, the prince appears through Abu'l-Fazl's Akbarnama in the ordinary course of an imperial son's career: commands held, campaigns attended, marriages contracted. His first marriage was to a Kachhwaha Rajput princess who took the title Shah Begam, and she was the mother of his eldest son Khusrau. Jahangir later wrote of her in the Tuzuk that she was his first bride and that he had married her in his youth.

The Revolt Against Akbar

In the closing years of Akbar's reign Salim made what the Encyclopaedia of Islam describes as a short attempt at independence in his father's lifetime. He established himself at Allahabad and for a period conducted himself as a sovereign in his own right. The attempt did not displace Akbar, and a reconciliation followed, but it left two consequences that shaped everything after. It gave the court a party that preferred Khusrau, Salim's own son, as Akbar's successor; and it gave Salim a precedent of filial revolt that was used against him twice in his own reign.

The Killing of Abu'l Fazl

To this period belongs the killing of Abu'l Fazl, Akbar's minister and the author of the Akbarnama. Abdul Hamid Lahori's Padshahnama records that Abu'l Fazl was travelling from the Deccan to court with a small escort, in obedience to Akbar's orders, when Raja Nar Singh Deo Bundela, at the prince's instigation, placed a force of horse and foot in ambush and fell upon him; that his followers advised him to flee and he refused; and that he was killed in the year 1011 AH, which the same passage gives as 1602. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, citing Jahangir's own memoir in the Rogers and Beveridge translation, records that the head was cut off and sent to Jahangir at Allahabad, and that Jahangir held Abu'l Fazl to have been an obstacle in his path.

Both chronicles pass judgement on the act in their own terms. What they establish is the ambush, the instigation, the date, and the despatch of the head to Allahabad.

Akbar's Death

Akbar died in 1013 AH, corresponding to 1605. The party favouring Khusrau did not prevail, and Salim succeeded.

Shortly before the accession, in 1013 AH, Shah Begam died. The account in the Tuzuk is Jahangir's own: she had written repeatedly to Khusrau, pressing on him the proofs of his father's kindness and affection, and when she found it had no effect and could not tell how far her son would go, she set her heart on death; her father and brothers agreed in telling Jahangir that her mind had become disturbed; and on 26 Dhu'l-Hijja 1013 AH, while Jahangir was out hunting, she took an excessive quantity of opium and died soon afterwards. He records that she hoped her death would bring her son to contrition.

Accession

Jahangir ascended the throne at Agra on 21 October 1605. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records the regnal style he took as Abu'l-Muzaffar Nur al-Din Muhammad Jahangir Padshah-i Ghazi, and notes that this full style appears on some of his coins.

The First Measures

Asad Beg, an officer who had served under Akbar and whose Wiqaya survives, records the first weeks. The new emperor distributed titles and dignities among the senior nobles; Mahabat Khan and Sharif Khan arrived to offer their congratulations, and Mahabat Khan was made commander-in-chief while Sharif Khan received the title Amir al-Umara. Within the first few days Jahangir gave up the transit duties and fees, the poll-tax on Hindus, and the tax on the property of orphans, remitting them throughout the hereditary dominions.

The Chain of Justice

The same source records that for the consolation of his people he suspended a chain of justice hung with golden bells. The Tuzuk gives the specification: the chain was of pure gold, thirty gaz long, carrying sixty bells, and weighing four Hindustani mans, which the text equates to thirty-two mans of Iraq; one end was fixed to a battlement of the fort of Agra and the other to a stone column on the bank of the river. A petitioner who could not get a hearing through the officers of the court could pull the chain and be heard.

The Twelve Ordinances

Jahangir set out twelve ordinances to be the common rule of practice throughout his dominions. The Tuzuk gives them in his own words, and they are worth taking in order, because together they show what a new Mughal emperor thought it necessary to announce.

1. Prohibition of cesses. He forbade the levy of duties under the names of tamgha and mir-bahri, together with the taxes of every description that the jagirdars of each suba and sarkar had been accustomed to exact for their own benefit.
2. Highway robbery and theft. On roads that were the scenes of robbery, and on stretches far from habitation, the jagirdars of the neighbourhood were to build a sarai or a mosque and sink a well, so as to promote cultivation and induce people to settle there; where such places adjoined khalisa land, government officials were to do it.
3. Free inheritance. No one was to open the packages of merchants on the roads without their consent; and when anyone died, Muslim or non-Muslim, his property was to descend by inheritance without interference. Where there was no heir, officers were to take charge and spend it according to the law of Islam on mosques and sarais, on repairing broken bridges, and on digging tanks and wells.
4. Wine and intoxicants. Wine and every sort of intoxicating liquor was forbidden, and was neither to be made nor sold. Jahangir then set down his own practice without concealment: he had taken wine from his eighteenth year to his thirty-eighth, which was his age at the time of writing; in his early days he had sometimes taken as many as twenty cups of double-distilled liquor; it had come to have a great effect on him and he had set about reducing the quantity, bringing it down over seven years to five or six cups; and at the time of writing he drank only at night and only to promote the digestion of his food.
5. Dwellings, and mutilation as a punishment. No one was to take up residence in another's dwelling. He prohibited everyone from cutting off the noses or ears of criminals for any offence, and recorded a vow to heaven that he would never inflict that punishment on anyone.
6. Prohibition of ghasb. Officers of the khalisa lands and the jagirdars were not to take the lands of the raiyats by force and cultivate them on their own account, and were not, without permission, to form connexions with the people of their districts.
7. Hospitals. Hospitals were to be built in the large cities and physicians appointed to attend the sick, the expense to be met from the royal treasury.
8. Days on which animals were not to be slaughtered. In imitation of his father, he directed that each year from 18 Rabi' I, his birthday, no animals should be slaughtered for a number of days corresponding to the years of his age; and that two days in every week should be exempt — Thursday, the day of his accession, and Sunday, his father's birthday.
9. Respect for Sunday. Akbar had held Sunday in respect, and Jahangir continued it as a day on which killing animals was interdicted throughout his dominions.
10. Confirmation of mansabs and jagirs. He confirmed the ranks and assignments of his father's servants and then increased them, giving details of the scale: a man who held ten was advanced to not less than twelve, and sometimes to thirty or forty; the allowance of the ahadis went from ten to fifteen; the monthly pay of domestics from ten to twelve or twenty; and the attendants of his father's household were advanced according to their position.
11. Confirmation of aima lands. The aima and madad-ma'ash grants devoted to prayer and praise were confirmed on the terms each grantee held, and the Sadr, whom he describes as of the purest Sayyid descent in Hindustan and as having held the office under his father, was directed to look after the poor daily.
12. Amnesty. All prisoners long confined in forts or shut up in prisons of any kind were ordered to be set free.

Regulations to the Frontier Commanders

A separate set of orders, also recorded in the Tuzuk, was issued after it came repeatedly to Jahangir's hearing that commanders at the frontier posts were assuming observances to which they had no right. Farmans were issued forbidding them practices that belonged to emperors: not to sit at the jharoka; not to require of the officers serving under them the obeisance owed to the imperial chair; not to hold elephant fights; not to punish anyone by ordering him to be blinded or to have his nose or ears cut off; and not to impose certain obligations by force. Elliot and Dowson's editorial notes record that the Iqbal-nama and the Ma'asir-i Jahangiri vary from the Tuzuk on the wording of some of these items and omit one of them altogether.

The Rebellion of Khusrau

The Flight to the Punjab

Khusrau, Jahangir's eldest son, had been the candidate of a court party during Akbar's last years. In the spring after his father's accession he rebelled. The TDV entry places the rising in the Punjab from 6 April 1606; the Encyclopaedia of Islam dates the rebellion to 1015 AH, 1606. Khusrau moved north-west towards Lahore gathering support as he went.

Jahangir's own memoir records a detail of the aftermath that is characteristic of the way the Tuzuk works: the emperor indemnified every person who had been plundered at the roadside by Khusrau during the flight, and in one instance honoured a note of hand that Khusrau had written in favour of a man robbed of his horses. The same passage preserves what Khusrau himself used to tell of the flight — that one night, overcome by exhaustion, he lay down in a forest like a dead man while nobody in his party took any heed of his companions, and that a jackal came and seized his foot, his boots saving him from injury.

Guru Arjun

Khusrau received help and shelter on his route. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that the Sikh Guru Arjun, who had helped and sheltered Khusrau during the rebellion, was put to death by the emperor; the entry on the Mughals in the same work places the execution among the punishments of the rebels that followed the rising, and records that the act laid the foundation of a lasting hostility between the Mughal power and the Sikhs. The TDV entry likewise records Guru Arjun's support for Khusrau. This is the point at which the two communities' relations enter the political history of the dynasty.

Defeat

The rebellion was broken in the Punjab. The TDV entry records the defeat at Bhairowal and Khusrau's capture.

The Blinding

Khusrau was blinded on his father's order. This is attested by the Mughal court chronicles and is not in doubt; what the sources record, and what must be stated precisely, is that the blinding was partial rather than a permanent and total deprivation of sight.

The Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi gives the fullest account. It records that Jahangir ordered the prince to be deprived of his sight; that a wire was put in his eyes, inflicting pain the writer describes as beyond expression; and that Khusrau was then brought to Agra, upon which, in the chronicler's words, the paternal love again revived. The most experienced physicians were ordered to take measures to heal the prince's eyes so that they might become as sound as they had been before. A Persian physician named Hakim Sadra undertook to cure him within six months, and by his skill the prince recovered his original power of vision in one eye, while the other remained somewhat defective and became smaller than its natural size. Khusrau had recovered sufficient sight to attend court by 1616.

The sources differ on the occasion. The TDV entry attaches the blinding to the capture after the defeat at Bhairowal. The Encyclopaedia of Islam has the 1606 rebellion ending in a reconciliation, and places the blinding in 1016 AH, 1607, when Jahangir crushed a conspiracy to murder him while camped at Kabul: four of the ringleaders were executed, and Khusrau, whom the entry calls the moving spirit, was partially blinded by the emperor's order. The variance is discussed in the Historiographical Note below.

Two of Jahangir's own ordinances stand beside this. The fifth prohibited the cutting off of noses and ears and recorded his vow never to inflict that punishment; the regulations to the frontier commanders forbade them to punish anyone by ordering him to be blinded.

Confinement and Death

Khusrau remained under restraint for the rest of his life. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that although a reconciliation was effected after the rebellion, Jahangir never forgave his son's conduct, and that Khusrau's death in suspicious circumstances in 1031 AH, 1622, at Burhanpur relieved the emperor of considerable anxiety.

The Impostor at Ujjainiya

The political afterlife of the blinding is recorded in the chronicles. While Afzal Khan was absent from Patna, a man of Uch named Kutb came in the habit of a faqir into the territory of Ujjainiya nearby, declared himself to be Khusrau escaped from prison, and promised a share in his success to those who joined him. He accounted for the brand marks round his eyes by saying that hot cups had been tied over them while he was in captivity. On that claim he collected a body of horse and foot and, learning of Afzal Khan's absence, entered the city. Elliot and Dowson's editor attaches a footnote to the passage referring the reader to the Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi account of the attempt to blind Khusrau.

Nur Jahan

The Marriage

In 1611 Jahangir married Mihrunnisa, the daughter of Ghiyath Beg, who is known in the histories by his title I'timad al-Dawla. The Encyclopaedia of Islam dates the marriage to 1020 AH, 1611, and treats it as opening a new phase of the reign; the TDV entry gives the same year.

The Rise of the Family and the Titles

The Iqbal-nama-i Jahangiri, the chronicle of Mu'tamad Khan, records the progression. She received first the title Nur Mahal, "Light of the Harem", and was afterwards distinguished by that of Nur Jahan Begam, "Light of the World". Her relations and connexions were raised to honour and wealth. No grant of land was conferred upon any woman except under her seal.

Sovereignty in Her Name

The same chronicle states the position in terms that leave little room for doubt about how contemporaries understood it. In addition to the titles that other kings bestow, the emperor granted Nur Jahan the rights of sovereignty and government. She would sometimes sit in the balcony of her palace while the nobles presented themselves and listened to her directions. Coin was struck in her name, bearing the superscription that by order of the King Jahangir gold had a hundred splendours added to it by receiving the impression of the name of Nur Jahan, the Queen Begam. On farmans that carried the imperial signature her name was attached jointly. The chronicler writes that her authority reached a point at which the king was such only in name, and that Jahangir repeatedly gave out that he had bestowed the sovereignty on her, saying that he required nothing beyond a sir of wine and half a sir of meat.

The same passage records a charitable practice: that she would bring about the marriage of any destitute and friendless orphan girl whose case came to her notice and give her a wedding portion, and that during her period of authority the number so married and portioned was probably not less than five hundred.

What the Sources Do Not Support

Two widely repeated stories about Jahangir's private life are rejected by the approved sources, and the rejection is itself a finding worth recording.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam states that contemporary sources make no mention of the popular story of Jahangir's passionate love for Nur Jahan and the premeditated murder of her first husband, Ali Quli Khan Istajlu, known as Sher Afkan. The same entry states that the prince's alleged romance with a palace attendant called Anarkali finds no corroboration in history; it notes that the building in Lahore known as Anarkali's tomb is said to have been raised over her, that the sarcophagus carries the inscription majnun Salim-i Akbar, that the dates given for her death vary, and that the whole affair is so obscured that nothing convincing can be said about it — adding that it is difficult to understand why no contemporary historian and not Jahangir himself makes any mention of such a tragedy.

Neither story is stated in this article as fact, and the reader who encounters them elsewhere should know that they do not rest on the contemporary record.

The Wars of the Reign

Mewar

Mewar had resisted Mughal authority through Akbar's reign. Jahangir's memoir records the submission of Rana Amar Singh in his own words: that the Rana and his ancestors, relying on the security of their mountains and their home, had never seen one of the kings of Hindustan and had never shown obedience, and that in Jahangir's reign he had been brought to submit. The terms were negotiated through Jahangir's son Khurram, who sent the Rana's representatives to court; Mulla Shukrullah, Khurram's diwan, received the title Afzal Khan for settling the matter, and Sundar Das afterwards received the title Rai Rayan. Jahangir records that he overlooked the Rana's past offences, wrote him a reassuring farman under his own seal, and wrote also to the Rana's son inviting him to name the manner in which he would come to pay his respects. The Encyclopaedia of Islam notes that there had been renewed conflict with Mewar earlier in the reign.

The Deccan and Malik Ambar

The Deccan occupied the reign's longest campaign. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that operations begun there were at first largely unsuccessful, and that Malik Ambar, a former Habshi slave, using guerrilla bands of Maratha soldiers, recovered Ahmadnagar, with further loss of Mughal territory in the Deccan following. Not until 1030 AH, 1621, did Khurram bring the campaign to a successful outcome. The TDV entry likewise records Malik Ambar among the reign's military problems.

Bengal and the East

The TDV entry records a revolt in Bengal during the reign and the renaming of Dhaka as Jahangirnagar.

The Loss of Kandahar

Kandahar passed out of Mughal hands during the reign. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that a Persian claim to Kandahar caused Jahangir to move for a time to Kabul. The TDV entry records that the city was taken by Shah Abbas I on 11 June 1622. The Safavid dynasty in Iran had contested the place with the Mughals since Akbar's time, and it changed hands more than once again under Jahangir's successors.

Europeans at the Mughal Court

European trading contact grew through the reign. The TDV entry records the arrival of the English East India Company and the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, who came as the ambassador of the King of England and whose mission was directed at securing terms for English trade. Portuguese power on the western coast, established a century earlier, is also recorded in the chronicles of the reign, which note the defeat of a Portuguese force among the good tidings reported to the emperor.

The Mughal court's interest in European material was not confined to commerce. Jahangir's memoir records his examination of a piece of European workmanship in several parts, describing the figures in each panel, including one representing a large tree with Jesus seated beneath it and men standing and bowing about him; he rewarded the artist with a present and an increase of his allowances.

Court, Painting and Observation

The habit of exact description that runs through the Tuzuk is the same habit that shows in the painting of the reign. Jahangir recorded what he had been shown and what he had examined — workmanship, animals, plants, curiosities — and his studio produced work of a correspondingly precise kind. The Encyclopaedia of Islam's treatment of Mughal art and architecture cites studies of painting under European influence in the fort at Lahore and of the painted and sculptured decoration of Nur Jahan's pavilions in the Ram Bagh at Agra, which bore the name Bagh-i Nur-Afshan. Mughal garden-building, carried on by both the emperor and his wife, belongs to this part of the reign's record, as does the Shalimar Bagh, which the TDV entry associates with him.

Religion in the Reign

The religious episode of the reign that the approved sources document most fully concerns Shaykh Ahmad of Sirhind, the Naqshbandi shaykh whose letters circulated widely. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, citing the Tuzuk, records that Jahangir judged him an impostor, using the word shayyad, and described his Maktubat as a tissue of absurdities; that on the ground that the shaykh had passed the limits of Sufic propriety in one of the letters he ordered him imprisoned in the fort of Gwalior, where political prisoners were generally confined; and that after a year or so he revised his opinion and released him.

The ordinances themselves bear on religious practice in several places: the disposal of intestate property according to the law of Islam, the confirmation of madad-ma'ash grants made for prayer and praise, the direction to the Sadr to attend to the poor daily, and the annual and weekly suspensions of animal slaughter, the last of these continued from Akbar's practice.

The Tuzuk-i Jahangiri

The memoir is known as the Tuzuk-i Jahangiri and also, in some manuscripts, as the Waqi'at-i Jahangiri. It covers the reign in regnal years and mixes administrative record with personal observation. The standard English translation is that of Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge, published in London in two volumes in 1909 and 1914; the Persian text used by the Encyclopaedia of Islam is the edition of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, printed at Ghazipur in 1864, and an Urdu translation appeared at Lahore in 1960.

A second text circulates under the title Tarikh-i Salim Shahi and presents itself as another version of the memoirs. The Encyclopaedia of Islam judges the English translation made from it to be unreliable, describing the work as a forgery and a fabrication. Nothing in this article rests on it.

Alongside the memoir the reign produced several chronicles that remain the basis of its history: the Iqbal-nama-i Jahangiri of Mu'tamad Khan, the Ma'asir-i Jahangiri, and the Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi, all three of which Elliot and Dowson translated in part and collated against one another.

The Last Years

Illness and the Shape of the Court

The Iqbal-nama records that in the eleventh year of the reign a pestilence broke out in parts of Hindustan, arising in the parganas of the Punjab and reaching Lahore, where it took a great number of lives. Jahangir's own health declined in the latter part of the reign. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that it had been broken by excessive drinking carried on since his early youth — a statement that sits beside his own account, in the fourth ordinance, of the quantities he had taken and the reductions he had made.

By the last years the court had divided into interests: Nur Jahan and her brother Asaf Khan, the claims of the surviving sons, and the senior commanders.

Khurram's Revolt

In 1032 AH, 1623, Jahangir faced a revolt by his son Khurram, the future Shah Jahan. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records the revolt and attributes the prince's position to the manoeuvring around him at court.

Mahabat Khan

In 1035 AH, 1626, Mahabat Khan — the commander-in-chief of the accession — attempted to seize the emperor in order to remove him from the influence of Nur Jahan and her brother. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that the attempt was at first successful, to the queen's discomfiture; that Asaf Khan fled and then joined Mahabat Khan at Kabul at Nur Jahan's instigation, which provoked dissension among the imperial followers; and that on Mahabat Khan's flight and his subsequent alliance with Prince Khurram, Nur Jahan appointed Khan-i Jahan Lodi as imperial commander with orders to subdue the rebels. Her plans were cut short by the emperor's death. The TDV entry likewise places Mahabat Khan's move in 1626.

Death

Jahangir died on 27 Safar 1037 AH, 7 November 1627, on the road between Rajauri and Bhimber, as the court was coming down from Kashmir.

The Succession

The contest that followed is recorded in the Padshahnama, Abdul Hamid Lahori's chronicle of the next reign.

With Khurram far off in the Deccan, Asaf Khan's party resolved to place on the throne, for a few days, Bulaki — the son of Khusrau, known also as Dawar Bakhsh — who had been in Nur Jahan's keeping and was afterwards put in the charge of Iradat Khan by Jahangir. They set him on horseback with a party of men they trusted and marched, keeping a day ahead of Nur Jahan. Judging the young princes unsafe with her, they removed her from the royal palace and took the princes into their own charge; once Bulaki had been raised to the throne the princes were placed with Sadiq Khan.

Shahriyar, Jahangir's youngest surviving son, was near Lahore with two or three thousand horse awaiting events. News of the rout of his forces reached him by a Turki slave; he fell back into the fortress, where the nobles sat down before him. Some of his followers came to terms with Asaf Khan, and the fort was entered. Shahriyar took refuge in the late emperor's female apartments, was brought out by a eunuch, and was led bound before Dawar Bakhsh; he was placed in confinement and blinded two or three days afterwards. Tahmuras and Hoshang, sons of Jahangir's brother Prince Daniyal, were also taken and confined.

Asaf Khan wrote to Khurram with news of the outcome. Banarasi the runner left Jangazhati in the mountains of Kashmir and reached Junir, on the frontier of the Nizam al-Mulk's territory, in twenty days, arriving on 19 Rabi' I 1037 AH; he went to the lodging of Mahabat Khan, who had shortly before been received by Khurram, and Mahabat Khan sent word in to the prince, who came out and received Asaf Khan's signet ring from the runner's hand. After the proper rites and term of mourning Khurram began his journey on 23 Rabi' I and proceeded by way of Gujarat.

He ascended the throne at Agra on 18 Jumada II 1037 AH, 6 February 1628, with the title Abu'l Muzaffar Shahab al-Din Muhammad Sahib Qiran-i Sani.

The Tomb at Shahdara

Jahangir's body was brought down to Lahore and buried at Shahdara, across the Ravi. The TDV entry records that the tomb was completed in 1637, a decade after his death, under his successor. It is a single-storey building of red sandstone and white marble, carrying a tapering minaret at each of its four corners and set within a walled garden enclosure.

Historiographical Note

Four matters in the sources require the reader's notice.

The occasion of Khusrau's blinding. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi attaches the blinding to Khusrau's capture after the defeat at Bhairowal in 1606. The Encyclopaedia of Islam has the 1606 rebellion ending in a reconciliation and places the blinding in 1016 AH, 1607, as the punishment for Khusrau's part as the moving spirit in a conspiracy to murder the emperor at Kabul, four other ringleaders being executed at the same time. The two accounts agree that Jahangir ordered the blinding, that it followed Khusrau's defiance, and that it was partial; they differ on which act of defiance it answered and therefore on the year. The Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi, which gives the fullest account of the blinding and of the attempt to reverse it, describes the order, the method and the treatment without settling the date, so the variance stands.

The extent of the blinding. Accounts that describe Khusrau as having been simply blinded, in the sense of permanently deprived of sight, do not represent what the chronicles say. The Encyclopaedia of Islam specifies partial blinding. The Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi records the treatment by the Persian physician Hakim Sadra, the recovery of the original power of vision in one eye, and the permanent partial impairment and shrinking of the other. Khusrau was attending court again by 1616.

Stories without contemporary support. The romance of Salim and Anarkali, and the account of Jahangir's passion for Nur Jahan together with the premeditated killing of her first husband, are both treated by the Encyclopaedia of Islam as uncorroborated: the first as finding no corroboration in history, the second as unmentioned by contemporary sources. They are widely repeated, and the encyclopaedia's own observation — that neither the contemporary historians nor Jahangir's own memoir mentions the Anarkali affair — is the reason they are not carried here.

A fourth point concerns a name. The Encyclopaedia of Islam's entry on Delhi records, among the graves at the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya, that of "Jahangir, son of Akbar II". That is Mirza Jahangir, the son of Akbar Shah II who died in 1821, and not the emperor who is the subject of this article. The two are separated by two centuries.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri (Waqi'at-i Jahangiri), the emperor's own memoir of his reign. Persian text edited by Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Ghazipur, 1864; English translation by Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge, London, vol. 1 1909, vol. 2 1914; Urdu translation, Lahore, 1960. Extracts translated in Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. 6.
• Mu'tamad Khan, Iqbal-nama-i Jahangiri. Calcutta, 1865. Extracts translated in Elliot and Dowson, vol. 6.
• Intikhab-i Jahangir-Shahi. Extracts translated in Elliot and Dowson, vol. 6.
• Ma'asir-i Jahangiri. Extracts translated in Elliot and Dowson, vol. 6.
• Abdul Hamid Lahori, Padshahnama.
• Abu'l-Fazl, Akbarnama.
• Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni, Muntakhab al-Tawarikh.
• Asad Beg, Wiqaya. Extracts translated in Elliot and Dowson, vol. 6.

Classical Islamic Sources

• Shah Nawaz Khan, Ma'athir al-Umara, the biographical dictionary of Mughal officers, English translation by Henry Beveridge.
• Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Firishta, Tarikh-i Firishta.

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• A. S. Bazmee Ansari, 'Djahāngīr', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, pp. 379–381.
• 'Mughals', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 7.
• 'Dihlī', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2.
• Enver Konukçu, 'Cihangir', TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, Istanbul, 1993, pp. 538–539.
• H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (eds.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, vol. 6.

Further Reading

• Beni Prasad, History of Jahangir. Allahabad, 1940. Named by the Encyclopaedia of Islam as containing an exhaustive bibliography and giving a balanced account of the reign.
• Ellison B. Findly, 'Jahāngīr's Vow of Non-Violence', Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 107, no. 2 (1987), pp. 245–256.
• H. Beveridge, 'Cihangir', İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, pp. 172–173.

Note: the works in this Further Reading list are offered to the reader for further study. Nothing in the body of this article rests on them.