Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaykh to Kings
Around 1615 Jahangir’s artists begin to create allegorical portraits with symbolic references. This painting, for example, asserts that Jahangir favors the spiritual over the worldly. He hands a book, the most respected of objects in both Islam and the Mughal court, to a Sufi shaykh (a religious scholar). Below (and therefore implicitly less important than) the shaykh stand an Ottoman sultan and King James I of England. Bichitr’s self-portrait in the lower left corner conveys the respect that Jahangir accorded to painters.
Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaykh to Kings
From the St. Petersburg Album
Signed by Bichitr
India, Mughal dynasty, ca. 1615–18 Margins by Hadi, Iran, dated AH 1169/1755–56 CE
Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper Purchase
Freer Gallery of Art F1942.15
When he was fourteen years old, Jahangir began wearing single-pearl earrings to symbolize his devotion to the Sufi saint who had brought the Chishti lineage to India in the eleventh century. This portrait depicts the white-bearded Shaykh Husain, who was in charge of the Dargah, or Sufi shrine, at Ajmer, where Jahangir lived between 1613 and 1616. His presence in the painting celebrates an important source of Mughal dynastic power.
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The portrait of King James I of England (reigned 1603–25) was probably based on a painting by the European artist John de Critz (1551/2-1642). The English ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe (c. 1581-1644), brought such paintings as diplomatic gifts to Jahangir.
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Bichitr’s yellow jama is tied to the left, which indicates he is a Hindu. The painting he holds has the red border typical of paintings made at Hindu courts and it represents a yellow-robed man and an elephant. As Jahangir rewarded esteemed artists and poets with elephants, the image perhaps refers to a gift that Bichitr received from the emperor.
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Two angels, which are based upon European sources, are cleverly represented wishing Jahangir a long life by writing on the hour glass, “O Shah, may the span of your life be a thousand years.”
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