Empire: World History - 217. Zebras and Zodiacs: Jahangir’s Art Revolution

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Often overshadowed by his son’s architectural wonders like the Taj Mahal, Emperor Jahangir was a true connoisseur of beauty.  His reign witnessed a flourishing of art, architecture, and craftsmanship through his patronage of impressive workshops of artists who created vibrant masterpieces. Jahangir continued expressing his love of the natural world through the paintings he commissioned: from zebras to squirrels to exotic birds. And women were not excluded from his world of art. His powerful wife Nur Jahan oversaw architectural projects like the “Baby Taj”, and female painters at court documented the intimate life of the imperial harem. But beyond documenting the world around him, how did Jahangir use art as propaganda, and what is the meaning behind the mysterious zodiac coins he created? Listen as William and Anita are joined by Susan Stronge, curator of the V&A exhibition, The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence, to discuss the visual culture of the court of Jahangir. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis & Aaliyah Akude Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. And today we are joined by one of my great heroes and mentors and the woman who is the toast of artistic London at the moment, Sue Strong, the curator of the fabulous show,

The Great Mughals, Art, Architecture and Opulence at the VNA. And we're very grateful to Sue, not only for coming on today, but for giving us the peg to hang this entire series on, which is something I've been longing to do ever since we started Empire, and Sue has given us the excuse for a fully, completely indulgent, in-depth mogul extravaganza. So welcome Sue. Thank you. I think that's the best introduction I've ever had. I'll tell you what, it's been cooking in him for such a long time. He does talk about you. I mean, when we're not doing the pot, he talks about you often and warmly. So thank you so much.

I know it's a really, really busy time. What rave reviews for your exhibition? We were a little bit worried at the beginning because some of the sub-editors' headlines had comments like the debauch moguls, which seemed to rest on the fact that they drank wine. And another one was Sultans of Bling. But the actual journalist who were writing the articles were fantastic. And the Guardian critic Jonathan Jones, who never likes anything, absolutely loved it.

Oh, he does, he does. And the Telegraph as well, they were very thoughtful examinations of the exhibitions. We were thrilled with it. For those who often get annoyed with headlines, I just to explain the inner workings of how a newspaper works is the sub-editors are a completely different unit and they're the ones who come up with those headlines. So you'll often get a journalist. Which the journalist never gets to see until it's too late. No, doesn't get to see until they get hate mail pouring into their inboxes. They don't realise.

And, you know, they often will go to social media going, but it wasn't me, but no one's listening. There's one occasion when I wrote a piece on Rumi and the sub-editor said, the Turkish poet Rumi. And I had literally 10,000 rude responses from proud Persians who claim Rumi as their greatest post. I called Shakespeare, the French sonnet writer or something. And there's never had more outraged response to anything I've ever done. Happy to correct the record once again. And it is a very serious exhibition. So, Sue, you chose when you were framing this exhibition on Mughal art to focus particularly on three emperors.

on Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. And so, Jahangir, who we're going to talk about today, sits absolutely at the heart of your wonderful show. Could you tell us why you made that decision to focus on those three? Because many would say that Humayin was a crucial figure in the birth of Mughal painting and so on. That's certainly true, but in visual terms, if you were to include Humayun, it would be quite difficult.

You know, if you're choosing objects, there wouldn't be very much that you could put in. So I think if you start with Akbar, the story is fantastic. I mean, the character of Akbar is so compelling. But also it's the time when you have the creation of a new art, which is a hybrid art born of the Iranians, particularly in painting, the Iranian masters who were brought over by Humay and supervised the House of Books, the paintings, the production of paintings.

And then all these artists who are coming in from the newly conquered regions. So that in itself is interesting, but then you have the development of it over the reign of Abba, the introduction of European art, then the reign of Jahangir, which we're talking exclusively about the art of the book, widely regarded as the greatest art of the mogul period, and then Shah Jahan, the famous one. But in total, it is the great age of mogul art. And although what came afterwards is extremely interesting, it's a more comprehensive. complicated story. It's not so easy to communicate. Sure. I think you certainly reaped the benefits of this spectacular masterpieces.

I mean, everyone that goes into that show just emerges utterly dazzled by what you've put together. So much stuff that also we've never seen before, a great deal of new material. There is a lot of new material, particularly in the metal work and tiles, I think. And there are a lot of things which are old friends, which are paintings that are published very often. very rarely seen because of course if you bring them out all the time they'll fade under too much light. So there are paintings like Mansour, zebra or the beautiful squirrels in a plane tree from the British library. The squirrels painting, I've actually in my life only ever seen, I think, three times, but it is one of the most famous paintings. So it was a balance of bringing in things which are

very familiar to people who know and love mogul art and bringing enough new material that it'll also be intriguing and interesting. The lion's share of this podcast is going to be about the art, but we should talk about other remits as well because you mentioned Shah Jahan. What most people know the moguls is the Taj Mahal. They know about that great edifice. Let's start with architecture, though, with Jahangir,

and then we'll move on to art, which, as you say, you know, he had some of the most extraordinary courtly painters, the world has ever known. But as far as architecture is concerned, was Jahangir a great builder of things? And what was his sensibility? I think he was more of a builder than we realize

because what happened after his death was that Shah Jahan seems to have, I think, deliberately tried to erase a lot of the monuments that were built by Jahangir. But the thing I find interesting about him is that one of his most obvious characteristics is that he clearly had a profound love of the natural world. And that comes out in everything. And of course it comes out in his memoir, the Jahangir Name,

the book of Jahangir, which is an almost day-to-day account of his life. And it brings in official events that were happening in his life and in the life of the court, but also very personal comments, observations and so on. And what comes out in that is that he spent a lot of time seeking out beautiful places. So groves of trees. Lakesides. Yeah, lake sides. That's very characteristic, anywhere with water.

and very often he would order pavilions to be built so that they could stay there, perhaps for the weekend. And that happened outside Adshmere, where there was a very famous local beauty spot with a ravine and a pool. And he had pavilions built there, which still exist in ruined state. When you talk about pavilions, though, I mean, paint is a picture, because for people who don't know, they will have no consciousness of what these things are and how permanent they are. There's very simple chambers with pillars and rooms, and then you'll have a cross piece which might, in the case of the pavilions outside Ajma, which was called Cheshmei Noor, Fountain of Light. His calligrapher had designed some Persian verses which were then chiseled onto a cross piece above the pavilion. So what you have is a very steep fall from a river that flowed along a flat plain, surrounded by trees.

It must have been very beautiful. the river is dried up now, but then it fell across a precipice with a fountain. And next to this were these chambers that were just built and were painted inside with pictures, including even Christian scenes. The Dal Lake is another, isn't it, from the Nagin Lake, is it? Those extraordinary Jahangiri pavilions and that succession of waterfalls and gorgeous water features that he put by the lake. And then, of course, in Kashmir as well, which was one of his favourite excursions in spring and summer, specifically to look at nature, to look at the spring flowers. And he tells everybody to put the flowers onto their helmets at one point, doesn't he?

And he describes, you know, tulips growing on the roofs of the buildings in Kashmir. Always there are observations about nature, but the means of staying within nature, if he's going to a place repeatedly, then pavilions will be built so they can stay there very simply, but very easily. Just to speak a little bit more about how the father-son relationship means that a lot of what he did, a lot of what he built and the vision that he had is just not around for us to see. It's completely, you know, sort of reduced to nothing. So we're talking about Qurham here who will become Shah Jahan.

Who was given the title, Shah Jahan, before he became emperor, actually. Right. So what's the deal going on here? Why did that happen? Well, Shah Jahan rebelled against his father. So for the last years of Jahangir's reign, they never saw. saw each other. Shah Jahan was in the Deccan fighting wars and then rebelled. And so when he became empress, seems to have had a very clear idea of what imperial image he wanted to project. And so

it meant that he saw the legitimate line directly from Timor to Akbar and then skipping Jahangir and going to him. He saw himself as being much more important. And that's reflected in paintings. We've got in the exhibition, one of the famous paintings from the Chester Beattie Lai. which shows the three emperors enthroned and Akbar is handing the crown not to Jahangir, who is sitting there next to them, but to Shah Jahan. And so immediately, Shah Jahan starts to redesign the forts in Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and sweep away whatever had been built by Jaiangir. What a psychoanalyst would make of that, you're literally deleting your dad.

All the moguls seem to have had this father, other than Babborn Humayin, who got on you quite well. All the mogul seemed to fought with their children. But not their grandchildren, actually. I mean, Akbar and Kurem were very close, weren't they? That's right. He nearly gave the kingdom over to him at one point. Sort of gives so much more fire to a teenage strop, doesn't it? You're actually going to just wipe out the entire legacy of your father. Again, we're going to talk about art, as I say, a lot in this. But just before, let's talk about some of the other things that people don't know about. So he was very innovative when it came to coins as well. And he said us about the zodiac coins.

And the whole symbolism of light attach both to the pavilions and the architecture and to the coins. That whole world is fascinating. The title that he adopted was Nur ad-Din, Light of Faith. And Nur, Light, becomes very important throughout the rain. You mentioned Cheshmey and Noor. Cheshmei Noor, yeah, Fountain of Light. And his wife. Norja-ha, yes.

So Light of the World. But he did bring in all sorts of new fashions in clothing. So he introduced a coat, which was called Nardiri, which had a special design. He brought in these zodiac coins, which for the first time he said were his invention almost. But they had calligraphy on one side

and the signs of the zodiac on the other. We should make clear that they're gold, they're solid gold and big. They're big, gold and intricate. They have more detailing on them than coins I've seen before. They do and also the calligraphy is very important in Jahangir's reign.

So it was important at all times, but some of the finest calligraphy belongs to his reign, and the calligraphy on the coins is superb. And the interesting thing about coinage, of course, is that some of the coins were struck in the name of No Jahan, who he married in 1611. But the zodiac coins apparently were minted, were struck in the places where he stopped, which is quite interesting.

When you say they were minted, I mean, I just want to know, I mean, now we've got an idea of a royal mint that sort of churns these things out. but back in Jahangir's day, how were these coins created? And what was the process that delivered these extremely ornate disks of gold? Clearly within the camp, when Jahangir moved round, which he did constantly, there was the facility to mint coins. So you would stamp them out, you'd have the dye and stamp the gold from the dye. It was clearly quite a portable process because there is evidence that these coins

were being produced as the court moved, as opposed to in fixed mince. Sue, you've brought in Noor Jahan, who's such a crucial character in the life of Jahangir. We've actually had earlier in the pod two episodes on her, because she's just such a fascinating series. The building that they planned together, I think, is Nojahan's father, Itmad Udaullah. How far is that a departure in mogul architecture and an important new step towards something completely different? Well, it's interesting because it's always referred to as the tomb of Itimadadala, isn't it? Everyone calls it. It's actually the tomb of Itimadadala and Esmatt Begham, his wife.

Because they died within months of each other when they were travelling, I think, near Lahore. And so Nojahan then commissioned this magnificent tomb in Agra, which the local guides will always call baby targe, weren't they? But I think what's interesting, it's faced with white marble and it's inlaid with contrasting stones in ochre and black and brown. And the designs are very, very large. I mean, that's one of the striking things about them. Images of wine flasks, images of glasses. Painted as well on the inside. But the hard stone inlays are absolutely extraordinary because they're so bold. And you have inlaid into the white marble floor, Arabesque scrolling designs, which are really big.

You know, the scale is very, very large to an unprecedented scale, and it's a very beautiful monument. Are we talking about sort of generational builders and carvers, because we talked earlier in the series about how Akbar created this metropolis that was a magnet for anyone who could make beautiful things? So are we talking about the descendants of those people, or are others being attracted because of Jahangir sensibilities and desire to create these things? It's probably an impossible question to give a definitive answer. I mean, there must have been local people who were just the product of generations of knowledge which depended on local materials. So if you're in Rajasthan and you're working the white marble from the Makranom mines.

Still to this day when you go along that road to Adjbier, these enormous lorries come trundling past with huge chunks of marble on the back. So you would have specialist stone masons who were attracted. But we know very little, I mean, we know nothing about them. I can't answer that. But if you look at somewhere like Fatipo Sikri and take that as a model and the reforms which are coming in from the distant provinces of the newly expanding empire, so it has Gujarati features. You get the same thing happening in painting where the names of the artists will reflect their place of origin, so you'd have so and so Gujarati, so and so Kashmiri. So presumably that was also happening in places like Agra. It's very interesting that when they began restoring Humayans' tomb, when the Agha Khan Trust began this very

extensive and wonderful rehabilitation of what had become a very shabby monument. They went to the same communities in Dolpur and Macron and they found their stoneworkers who still had the traditional skills to make Jalis and Carvin Lay and so on, exactly the same families they claim as that time. So it's perfectly believable that with just a couple of generations since the beginning of Bogle architecture that these guys will be employed generation after generation. But what's interesting, I think also, is the ability of crafts to be revived, even if they've been completely forgotten, because you mentioned the Aga Khan Trust. In the exhibition, we've got some film footage which was supplied by them, where they decided to copy the Mother of Perlin laid wooden canopy over the shrine of Nizamuddin in Delhi. This was a lost technique. They recreated it by copying the original canopy so that the copy could be installed in the new museum. and we've got footage of them doing it. And it's incredibly complicated and intricate and slightly alarming

when you see them cutting Mother of Pearl slivers on this spinning very sharp wheel with fingers next to the wheel and plasters on the end of the fingers. No health and safety is. None whatsoever. But incredibly skilled and technically very proficient. And the end result is marvellous. But so how far is it true that the building of the Iwodododoula creates a new vocabular, cabri that we'll see developed into the Taj in due course. Yeah, whatever Sharjaham wants to think,

if that did it first. Well, I'm not sure because it doesn't have carved marble daydotes, for instance, like the Taj Mahal. And the inlays and the Taj Mahal are very different. And that's an interesting question. Well, calligraphic. Well, no, I meant more the semi-precious stone inlays, which are these jewel-like reds and greens, which are very beautiful, but very different from Itamah. Adela and Esmatt Begham's tomb, which is, as I say, you know, the scale of the inlays is enormous compared with the scale of inlays that we think of in the Taj Mahal and in the fort in Agra and then in the new city in Shahjahabad in Delhi. So I'm not sure how, I suppose, the prolific use of white marble, I suppose, is the departure in the tomb of Itimadamadal and

Esmachemabagam. If you want to see the work of Jahangir today, other than Ajmir, where would you advise people to go to the Lahore for, to the picture wall? Sikandra, I suppose, wouldn't you? The tomb of Akbar. Yeah, Akbar's tomb, because Jahangir commissioned that just after his accession and then was taken up for quite a while with the rebellion of Kusro. And when he came back to Sikandra to look at what the builders had done in the meantime, he was rather horrified and made them redesign it and start again.

So I think that's very much his major monument. And of course, Shahjahan couldn't possibly touch that because it was his grandfather's too. To describe what it looks like and why it's such an important place. One of the things that it's got various stories, but it's various flaws to it. But at the top, and I don't know if it's still open, there's an open terrace with marble inlaid floors and Persian inscriptions all around this open rectangular space. And then in the middle is the most beautiful white carved marble cenotaph. which has flowers and inscriptions all over it.

And the flowers are obviously derived from European botanical illustration, which is coming over at the time. Emma Koch has done a wonderful essay on this, isn't she, on how these German prints. And the print, one specific print, was copied exactly by Mansour. And we know that because he signed the copy and it's coloured. You're itching to get to Mansour and the page, I can just see it. And that's what we're going to do after the break.

Just before we do go to the break, though, Sue. I mean, you mentioned that he, designed a coat and I never had Jahangir down as some kind of fashion designer. What was this coat of Jihangir? Because we just can't let that pass. Before the break, put us out of our misery. What was the jahangir coat? So he claims that he designed this coat, which was called Nardiri, meaning rarity. And it was, he said, of length from the waist down to below the thighs and it has no sleeves. So it's a sleeveless robe. And we have one in the exhibition which is embroidered. It's ivory satin, embroidered with flowers and hunting scenes in very pale pastel shades, and it's got rabbits

and hairs and lions romping across the landscape. All the things that he loved, the natural, well, I mean, Willie's characterised him as the David Attenborough of the day. Look, join us after the break where we get into the real meat of this, which is the actual artwork, the paintings, the miniatures. And you've heard the name Mansour mentioned already. He is not the only master painter that we're. we're going to talk about. So join us after the break. Welcome back. Jehungia awarded his two most

brilliant artists, the beautiful natural history painter Manso and his rival Abul Hassan with the titles Nadir al-Zaman, the wonder of the age, and Nadir al-Zaman, the wonder of the times. Abul-Hassan seems to have been a particular favourite with Jihangir. And uniquely we get in Jihangir's autobiography a description of his interactions with his painters. I've always considered it my duty to give Abel Hassan much patronage, wrote the emperor in his own autobiography, and from youth until now, I have patronised him so that his work has reached the level it is.

Sue Strong, tell us more about Jahangir's love of paintings, and particularly his relationship with his master painters. Throughout the Jahangir Name, his memoirs, we get references to, I call the painters and tell them to do this, this and this. Intriguingly and very irritatingly, they're not often mentioned by name, and this is consistent whether we're talking about artists or craftsmen. But we do know that Mansour and Abil Hassan, he regarded as his greatest artists. So you can piece together their work from this day-by-day account of Jahangir

and also works that exist that are signed by them. We know almost nothing about them. Oh no. Tragic. At this period, there isn't a single mogul artist that we know the birth or death date of. The information is absolutely minimal. And that's significant, isn't it? Although Jahangir was unique in adoring these people and patronising them with the fervor he did, they were not regarded like Raphael was at the court of Julius II.

They were not given the same status, really, were they? I'm not sure. I think they probably were. When Johan Gha travelled with a lighter entourage, they were definitely at the heart of it. And you have pages of albums where the artists are depicted sitting in these stylised golden landscapes, but they're just kneeling with very simple materials aboard, the pigments in shells, the brushes and so on. There's a very gorgeous picture, isn't there like that, of one of his first artists. And he takes him off to Al-Habad, even before he's become Emperor Goverdan. In Al-Ahabad specifically, that's where Abul-Hassan starts off as an artist, aged about 12.

Twelve. He was the son of an Iranian artist called Agar-Rezar, who did a lot of paintings in Al-Ahabad for Jahangir and called him Salim Padishah. So we know that this was the period of rebellion when Salim was calling himself Emperor Padishar. Agariza was there, and we have a tiny drawing, which is by Abul-Hassan. and inscribed to say when he did it. And it says that he did it when he was 12. And it's a copy of a Dura print of St John. That's actually in our exhibition and in the book. So this boy starts off as a house-born artist and then grows up to become in the reign of Jahangir, one of his leading artists given this title. And obviously very, very highly regarded.

William, you said it was a rivalry between Abel Hassan and But Mansour. And he does say, I mean, He does seem to have a favourite because he says about Abil Hassan, without exaggeration, his work is perfect and his depiction is a masterpiece of the age. I mean, talk more about this rivalry. How would it have appeared to people? And did he have a favourite? Was Abel Hassan his favourite? I don't think there's any evidence he had a favourite.

I think that they were just part of a group of a community of artists, calligraphers, craftsmen. The impression you get, I mean, there's no direct evidence. The impression is that they were just moving around with him, producing. paintings of anything of interest that came into the palace or into the encampment. It's quite documentary, isn't it? It is very much. And we mustn't forget that these aren't paintings that are supposed to be hung on walls and seen separately.

These were intended to be part of bound volumes. So they were either illustrations to Jahangir's memoirs or they were collections to be incorporated into albums of paintings and calligraphy. But we've lost most of the bound volumes. The greatest work that was done for Jahangir is the Gulshan album, the Rose Garden album, which is mostly preserved in Tehran in the Gulistan Palace Museum, and largely unpublished, but absolutely beautiful calligraphy surrounded by little vignettes of court life. So you might see, for instance, little scenes of the women's quarters with a queen sitting,

playing with a little child while a female musician plays to them, and the female cat bearer brings wine and so on. So absolutely beautiful, but very little known and very inaccessible. We have this image of the young Salim's not yet emperor in Alahabad, rebelling against his dad. And part of that rebellion is taking some of Dad's miniature painters down to Al-Habad and getting them to paint there. Talk about what went on in Al-Habab in the period before Jahangir becomes emperor.

I think Akbar and Jahangir obviously, competed with each other to have works of art produced for them. And whenever new consignment, say, of European art came in, they were both pouncing on the new works very eagerly and obviously discussing them with the artists. Then Salim goes to Al-Habad, and it's usually represented as a complete separation so that he went, I think, in 1600 and didn't come back till 1604.

But there was a lot going on in those four years, so it's difficult to know quite what was happening. And certainly at one point, there was a brief truce, and Salim went back to his father. He sort of goes halfway a couple of times and then sort of comes back again. Then comes back, yeah, and then the royal women go and try and bring him back. An old auntie's sent off to woo him back and succeeds. Absolutely, and then he's locked up for a while to dry out.

That's right. He's kept in a room without alcohol and opium for 10 days, which he regards as one of the low points of his life. And probably one. Yes. If you're an addict, it would have been pure hell, wouldn't it? So one of the kind of wonderful things that happens when he's at Al-Habhad is he's looking down onto the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna, and he's seeing the saddues down on the riverbank. There's quite a lot of interest in Hinduism at this period in Jahangya's painting, isn't there? Is it at this period you get those extraordinary early yoga texts that are commissioned by the moguls with the first ever pictures of yoga asanas with the Persian.

text next to it. You do get these texts which we do know for a fact we're produced in Allahabad that the manuscripts are preserved in the Chester Beattie Library and that's one of the few pieces of direct evidence that's there. And it's literally the first pictures of Yoghāasana's that we have in detail, isn't it? Jim Malletan who studied this as regards it as the first individuated set of yoga asanas that we have anywhere. Well then that's certainly true if he says that I'd certainly defer to him. The interesting thing about it is a lot of Alahabad though is that it seems to be a place where there was a very small group of women artists. How interesting.

Who were obviously a very high birth, who produced a very small number of paintings, one of which again is preserved in this Gulshan album in Tehran. And it says that this woman was the daughter of Myataki, about whom we know nothing, and the pupil of Agareza. She did this painting, which is a copy of a European print. we have in the VNA a painting of Shah Tahmas, with Iran, the early 16th century ruler. This is done again by a woman artist. And they seem to be just copying other works, either European works or earlier Iranian works.

When I did my white moguls, there's a reference in one of the letters that I found, one of the Persian letters, of the grandmother saying that if a female artist comes to Hyderabad, I will get her to take my portrait and send it to you. So there was obviously this tradition of female portraits being done within the hiring by women artists that we have often failed to, I think, identify as such and disregard as sort of generic Mughal women. And which doesn't happen in the West as much at the sort of similar time. It's a very male preserve, male court artists, male artists who do everything. I mean, this is this is news to me.

It's fabulous. But equally what's extraordinary is that you occasionally get depictions of the women's quarters. So you have pictures of, say, the birth of one of Akbar's sons, which is depicting the inside of the women's quarters. And it's like a bird's eye view. So you see the eunuchs guarding the outside entrance and then the women guarding the next entrance in. And then you get to the heart of the women's quarters. And it's an extraordinary depiction. Let's talk about the painting that you've mentioned a couple of times now, the zebra by Mansour, who is the other great court painter.

So this was something Jahangya wanted, painted of a gift that was given to him. Tell us a bit about both the story behind it and the painting itself and why it's so important. Well, Mansour started off working for Akbar, clearly, because he worked on some of his most important manuscript in the 1590s. By the reign of Jahangir, he seems to have been given the job of depicting animals particularly, although we know he also painted flowers, though not. none of his floral studies have survived from nature. Jahangir was always looking for anything rare, exotic, unusual, and that included animals.

And so when Mir Jafar of Surat brought a zebra from Africa, this arrived at court and caused an absolute sensation, and Jahangir described it in great detail and said, there's a fantastic quote. He said, black lines ran gracefully round its eyes. one might say that the painter of fate has with the pen of novelty bequeathed to the album of the existence a masterpiece. Oh, wow. He was suspicious, wasn't he, at first? He thought it was a fake.

Well, no, I'm not sure it was him. I think some of the courtiers were so amazed at this stripy creature that they thought that these black stripes have been painted onto the white body. So they examined it carefully and realized it was real. But it's very good. It's a very good portrait of a zebra and would have been pretty. because nobody would have known about these things at all. It was a fantastic painting, but what's interesting is that in Jahangir's memoirs,

when he describes it in such detail and says that a painter was asked to depict it, he doesn't actually say who the painter was. But the V&A painting of the zebra is obviously the one that was intended to illustrate Jahangir's memoirs. So it's a picture of the zebra, which is a very bold image of this black and white creature against a pale ochre, totally plain back,

ground. And then the only touch of colour is this vivid red, very delicate harness and the animal is tethered to a post. Typically, Mansour depicts every detail of animals and birds with great finesse and delicacy. So obviously got a tiny brush and brings in every detail. And Jahangir had this taste, as you say, for exotica. There's three of the other most famous Mansour paintings are the dodo, the turkey and the gecko. Tell us about those three. The dodo is attributed to Mansour, very convincingly, and that's preserved in an album in St Petersburg.

The other's, the chameleon, is in the Royal Collection and has the same characteristics, but it's got a very slight surface relief to it as well. So I think Mansour's facility with paint is absolutely extraordinary. It's like a braille gecko, is it? The VNA one is interesting because it's got Jahangir's own inscription on, written on the side of it, in very characteristic spidery writing. And that's the evidence that it's Mansour that did it. Because in the memoirs, he doesn't actually

name Mansour, but on the painting, he writes that it was done by him. And this is an animal that the Turks brought to court and gives the date and everything. And he gives Mansour's title, doesn't it? Nadir al-Assri. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely, let's talk about the squirrel painting, because that is so exquisite. And for those of you who haven't seen it, you might think it's just, you know, sort of squirrel knuckins this time of year, sitting on a branch, you know, very Christmassy.

But it is the scale of the tree and the delicacy of the leaves in autumn and all of the different colours. Was this a collaboration? Do you think, or do we know, between Mansour and Abel Hassan? Like a super band? Yeah.

There's an inscription on the back of the painting, which is later, which says that it was done by them, and it is completely convincing. I mean, it's not signed, but it's because of the quality, and the liveliness of the squirrels that are popping in and out of the cavities in the tree. It is a beautiful painting. And there's also the colour of the leaves.

It's painted in autumn as the leaves are turning and just about to fall. What are the brushes that they use? Because you talked about that fine detail of the red rain on the zebra and looking at this squirrels painting where they're playing. But it is the absolute delicacy of each and every leaf being sort of, even with sort of browning going on on the outside of a green leaf. leaf. What would they have used? I mean, what were the tools of their trade? The brushes are squirrel hair, aren't they? I mean, Willie can talk about this because of your wife. My wife, exactly,

paints for them. There's a famous story of how you must catch the squirrel alive and extract one single hair from its tail and you are not allowed to harm the squirrel in any way. And if you do, it's always said the paintings will die if you harm the squirrel. But you're allowed, according to this tradition, to take one single hair from the tail and release it unharmed, which is a lovely detail. I love the idea. You've mentioned that story before of Olive, sort of trying to bag a squirrel. That just makes me laugh when I'm feeling blue, running up a tree, trying to bag a squirrel. You do it on a roof terrace with a baited tea cozy, which falls on the squirrel.

Like in a cartoon. Squirrels are not easy to catch. We have them infesting our loft ones. Oh, really? Quite an adventure to get ridden. But with these brushes, since you know, and since Olive is a painting, you'll know this. I mean, how many hairs per brush? I mean, what are we talking about? sort of different types of brushes with different numbers of squirrel hair. Different kinds of brushes have different numbers, yeah.

That's so interesting. And you choose different brushes according to the subject. And then artists have their own little tools that they designed for themselves because I remember seeing an artist who had a burnisher, which was a tiny little emerald wheel. And so when you put gold leaf onto the surface of a painting and you want to have a contrast between a dull gold and a really sparkly shimmering line,

then you put the little wheel and burnish it, or you could use a piece of agate and just press it on and rub it across. Sue, the great Indian art historian who died last year, Bian Ghoswami, painted a very stark contrast between the sort of atelier you got under Jahangir in the Mughal court and the sort of thing going on in the Punjab Hills or the Rajput courts. Do you believe this? Because what he says is that you have in Agra or wherever the Mughal emperor is, a group of artists selected from the talent around the empire, brought into the capital, trained under an Ostad, a master, under strict discipline, and all of them competing with each other. And he contrast that with what's going on in the Rajput courts in Rajasthan or in the Punjab Hills, where he says they're families of artists working at home collegiately with maybe the mum making

the paint in the back kitchen and the sons working together. Is that description of this sort of highly mentored, highly disciplined Karkana in the fort, which was ruled with a rod of iron by a master? Is that something you would go with? I'm not sure because I don't know that we've got the evidence. For Jahangir's period, when you've got these perpetual travels, I don't think that that model would work. So it's probably closer to Goswami's Punjab Hills model. And certainly the artists that were travelling with Jahangir. Some of them were related to each other. I mean, there were brothers and there were fathers and sons. So it strikes me that in that setting it was a lot less rigid and formal.

You also get at this time, don't you, artists moving from court to court, Faruk Beg being an example of a great artist who's at different times working, I think, in Iran, in Delhi, and then finally in Bejapur, in the Deccan in the middle of India. Ah, the Farak Beg in the Deccan story. That's the very... You don't buy that one, no? Before you can test it. Tell us what it is. What is the story that you're challenging? Farak Beghe worked for Jahangir. I mean, that's a fact. And he arrived, I think, in 1598 to work for Akbar.

So he came from Iran. He was mentioned as one of the great artists of Akbar's court. And then became one of Jahangir's leading artists. And then he disappears. And so there's a theory that he went to the Deccan. And I've never had the patience to go into it in enough detail to know whether that holds water or not. and then he came back and did some paintings for Jayaangir in his, I think, 70th year. So they've got the very shaky handwriting on saying this was done by me and my 70th year.

The exciting thing being that he has this sort of incredibly psychedelic style. He looks like he's been on an acid trip in the 1960s or something. It's a very distinctive style, if that's the same Faruk. Well, leave that hanging, that mystery. One thing that isn't a mystery, though, is the use of propaganda. So there is a painting that I really want to talk about before we end. today. And that is, I mean, we've talked about Malacamba. We did an entire episode of Malacamba earlier. And there is this extraordinary picture of Jahangir standing on the world.

He has bow and arrow in his hand and he is releasing an arrow into the decapitated head of Malacamba on a spot. You couldn't get less frivolous than the squirrels. I mean, just tell us a little bit of what we know of that. To make it even weirder, the globe on which Jahangir is standing. to shoot this head is itself resting on the back of an ox, and the ox is resting on the back of a giant fish. It's a very surreal, sort of almost Dali-esque painting, isn't it? It's absolutely full of visual metaphors and symbols. Every single thing in it seems to have a meaning,

but you have, as you say, this figure of Johan gear with lips tightly pursed, arms-taught, firing an arrow into the mouth of this decapitated black hair. head of Malikambar, who was this de facto ruler in the Deccan. But the period when the painting was done, Jahangir was absolutely obsessed with Malikambar and seems to be having sleepless nights over the fact that the mogul armies couldn't defeat him and he was always gaining the upper hand in the skirmishes. And the fact that he was black is obviously important. We should remind people, you know, go back and listen to him, but he was an Ethiopian who was enslaved and bought by a noble in the Deccan and then works his way up to being this mighty general the moguls just can't crush and

who is driving Jahangir nuts which is you know explains why this painting is so full of the anger and tautness that you describe because this didn't happen he didn't fire an arrow into the head of mullicumber on a spike but this is what you can tell this is what he'd like to do it seems to be based on dreams that he had this was when jahangir was in adjima for about three years and he had various dreams and there were various incidents that are incorporated into the picture. So above the head of the decapitated head of Malikambah is an owl. And Jahangir records in the memoirs that one evening when the light was failing, an owl appeared on the ramparts of the palace and he shot it and everyone was amazed that he managed to shoot it in such poor light

conditions. But the owl is the bird of Ile omen. And so the owl is above this head. And The head is a caricature. Obviously, the artist had never seen him. But everything in it refers to some aspect of Jahangir's lineage or his imperial image. So you have the Timurid legacy is on a stand which has a disc, which inside the disc has other disc on which are written his ancestors. So it's a very complicated picture, but rests on the fact that he was in Ajmir having this life of obsessional hatred. And the nur, the light, is contrasted against the darkness of his enemies. But interestingly, shortly afterwards, Shah Jahan commissioned or seems to have had an artist with him during his rebellion in the Deccan. And his artist, Hashem, painted the most fantastic portrait of Malikambar, obviously done from the life, and shows what he really looked like, which is this very imposing figure who looks as if he's got an extremely strong will. And it's a beautiful painting, just contrasting a beautiful white muslin robe with his dark skin and just vivid scarlet slippers. And that's the only colour in the painting. Holding the cane and looking stately, it's not something his father would ever have done.

We're coming to the end of our time together and we ought to say, we ought to really sort of end Jahangir's life. I mean, just talk us through the end of days for Jahangir. The end of days was the end of the arts, really, as well, because in the 1620s, he became, more and more ill, travelling just as much, but travelling more in the north where it was cooler, because every time he came to Delhi and Agri, he seemed to get sicker and sicker. And so he spent most of the time in between Lahore and Kashmir and stopped writing his own memoirs because he became too ill, oversaw the writing of them by his secretary for a couple of years, and then after that wasn't able to carry on even supervising the memoirs.

When you say ill, do you mean addicted to opium and wine or there were actual liver complaints? What was he suffering from? I'm not sure what his precise symptoms were, but I think the debilitation caused by lifetime of excess of alcohol and opium hadn't helped. It can't help. We have sort of skipped over something we talked about once before, which is this kidnap of Jahangir and Nourjah coming to the rescue and all of that. Go back and listen to that episode, if you will. But he's only 60 years of age when he dies. And I'm always slightly aghast at how young people were and how much they accomplished.

I mean, he's just 60 when he dies, but look at all that he is left behind. What do you think his true legacy is? The art of the book, I think, is regarded as the greatest art of the time. But then there's so much else. You know, you've got the introduction of new crafts that were being produced. Enamaling appears properly in Jahangir's reign. Jade, a material imported from China, becomes very important. The perfection of Atta, the perfume, is something that happens during his reign.

Yeah, which was supposed to be invented, I think, by his mother-in-law, wasn't it? That's right. But also the calligraphy, you know, the calligraphy, you know, the calligraphy, on monuments is extremely important. And the hybrid nature of the art of the court, because some of the most significant figures in charge of the workshops, including Saeed Agilani, who was an Iranian, was in charge of the Goldsmith's workshop. but was extraordinary as a figure because he was a poet, he could make jade artefacts, he engraved inscriptions on precious stones and so on. So there was a great range of new art being produced, new styles, new materials, new techniques. So it's been an absolute delight.

And thank you for making it all so visual for us, so strong with the VNA. Go and see the show. Buy the book. Buy the book. Wear the t-shirt. All of those things are true. But, you know, we will pick up from this story from Sue with the troublesome son of Jahangir, the man who will erase so much of what we've talked about, Kouram Shahjahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal.

Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye for me, William Duremple.