…In defence of the Moguls, it should be said that this oppressive and alien regime transformed India, for more than a century, into the wealthiest and most powerful monarchy on the face of the earth., and incidentally, laid the foundation for the modern Indian nation-state. This male chauvinist dynasty, moreover, was responsible for the greatest monument to a woman ever erected: the Taj Mahal. Feminine influence was everywhere in evidence, for that matter. Even the ripe-fig contours of the domes that sprouted all over India under the Moguls seem to be an unconscious tribute to the fact that their princes were customarily breast-fed until the age of three. The women who suckled them often wielded considerable influence in the inner lives of their charges. Akbar’s chief wet nurse, for example, is said to have enjoyed a position at court comparable to say, Hilary Clinton.
—Akbar’s painting Fusion of Persian and Indian styles—click image for source…
What the Moguls dreamed of, but were never quite able to achieve, was hegemony over the whole of India and Afghanistan from Kandahar to Dacca. It was a grand design that failed because they developed a fatal intolerance of competition, diversity, dissent- and because they were incapable of learning what guerilla warfare was all about, or how to cope with it. Still, while it lasted, the Mogul Empire was a magnificent thing to behold, largely because its greatest rulers were field marshals of the arts as well as the armies, giving their courts a paradoxical air of great power employed in the service of great elegance.
—”Raja Udai Singh (Mota Raja) in a Gold, Flowered Jama” from the album of Shah Jahan. (circa 1640-50)
A typical album is composed of folios, or double-sided sheets, which pair a painting with a section of calligraphy; the relationship of image and text varies from illustration to loose association.
Photo: The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin—click image for source…
The fame of the Mogul emperors spread to the farthest cornrs of the civilized world and exerted a decisive inlfuence on the lifestyle of such relatively disadvantaged monarches as Augustus the Strong and Louis XIV. Akbar the Great whose reign of almost fity years nearly coincided with that of Queen Elizabeth of England, and he was by far the richer of the two in soldiers, poets, painters and money. His annual revenue allowed him to support a vast artistic establishment.
—The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and his royal hunting party are shown here in one of the final grand imperial images from the age of the great Mughals. Preparations for the chase are in progress, evident from the row of hunters in the foreground and others who lead deer as bait or carry leafy screens for camouflage. The emperor upon his jeweled palanquin, with a stooped profile and a gray beard, resembles the few other known images of him as an old man.—click image for source…
It is a measure of Akbar’s greatness that he inherited only a mall part of his kingdom. The dynasty had begun modestly enough with his grandfather Babur, “The Tiger” who had been driven out of Fergana, now Central Asia and spent a lifetime as a military adventurer, conquering other people’s kingdoms by way of compensation. Though he and his descendents came to be known as Moguls, the Persian word of Mongols, the term is a misnomer,since Babur was Turk in origin, and fifth in descent from Tamerlaine; only on his mother’s side could he claim distant kinship with the Mongol Genghis Khan.
—The brilliant Persian-language poet of Sultanate India, Amir Khusrau Dihlavi wrote his reprise of Nizami’s Khamsa at the end of the thirteenth century and very beginning of the fourteenth. The fourth book of this work, the A’ina-yi Sikanderi (Mirror of Alexander), gives a selective account of the life of Alexander. In addition to his military exploits, Alexander sought advice from spiritual authorities. In this painting, he visits the sage Plato in his mountain cave and is advised on rulership and warned of his own impending death. This picture comes from one of several deluxe illustrated manuscripts produced for the Mughal emperor Akbar in the royal book atelier in Lahore in the 1590s.—click image for source…
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