The reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, known as ‘the Great’, was considered the most glorious of the entire Mughal Period. His courts at Delhi, Agra, and Fatephur Sikri were...
The reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, known as ‘the Great’, was considered the most glorious of the entire Mughal Period. His courts at Delhi, Agra, and Fatephur Sikri were legendary, attracting artists and poets in their droves to pay homage to the most cultured and noble of the Mughal monarchs. India was never exactly a backwater, but its economy had long been dwarfed by that of China; Akbar grew India’s production of spices, tea, gold and precious stones, making his country the wealthiest on Earth. He sponsored the Indo-Persian culture so beloved of the Mughals, rooted in their own ancestry as descendants of Tamerlane (also known as Timur), the great Persian warrior-king and perhaps one of history’s most successful and cruellest generals. Akbar himself was no stranger to the sword, and his great military innovations, including an overhaul of the mansabdari hierarchical structure and the adoption of matchlocks, cannon, and a revolutionary use of elephants, aided the expansion of the Mughal Empire and the consolidation of Muslim control over North India. His efforts ensured that the Empire, so fractious and uncertain at his accession, was secure and prosperous by the time of his death.
The life of Akbar was, like those of the other early Mughal Emperors, described in a work of semi-mythical autobiography or hagiography, following in the tradition of the Baburnama, the candid writings of the first Emperor, Babur. Akbar’s own work, the Akbarnama, is somewhat less famed; for a start, Akbar used a ghost-writer, the court historian Abul Fazl. The Akbarnama was illustrated with around a hundred and sixteen miniature paintings, produced by the very finest court artists of the period, including Basawan, who innovated with the use of individual recognisable portraits in wider group scenes. This miniature is a copy, produced in the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century AD, of a Sixteenth Century AD original taken directly from the pages of the Akbarnama. Given the remarkable execution of the painting, and the access the artist had to the original, it is likely that this, too, was produced by a court painter, perhaps out of work after the British took control of Delhi.
The scene depicts Akbar at the top centre, a position of honour in Indo-Persian miniature painting. He is seated upon the Peacock Throne, a hexagonal platform of gold and jewels arrayed with cushions on which the Emperor sat, and placed under a high canopy. The world of the Mughal Emperor revolved around symbolic seating positions, and the position of the Emperor on platforms higher above other members of the court. This painting bears all the hallmarks of the compositions of Anant, one of the senior court artists of the Sixteenth Century AD, whose painting Akbar receiving Abdu’r Rahim, taken from the Akbarnama, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (IS.2:7-1896). This scene is equally crowded, with courtiers presented as in awe of the Emperor, who is at the centre of attention. The court bustles with activity, traders, diplomats and emissaries; at the bottom of the picture, a man prepares to strike another with a long stick, presumably in a dispute over the horse brought by his companions. Around Akbar, the world is more refined and serene. In front of the Emperor, a scholar kneels, presenting him with numerous volumes of a book. It is possible, given the fact that the Akbarnama itself was a multi-volume work, that the kneeling ma is Abul Fazl, presenting his work of the Akbarnama to the Emperor as a kind of hidden signature within his own work.
Research by Dr Christopher Cooper Chief Curator, Barakat London