Editing Jahangir (section)

=== Art ===
[[File:Jahangir inscription on the Allahabad pillar of Ashoka.jpg|thumb|Jahangir's inscription on the [[Allahabad Pillar]] of [[Ashoka]].<ref name="RT">Description and recent photograph in {{cite web |last1=Thapar |first1=Romila |title=India and the World as Viewed from a Pillar of Ashoka Maurya |url=https://guftugu.in/2018/06/pillar-of-ashokamaurya-romila-thapar/ |date=13 June 2018 |access-date=1 October 2022 |archive-date=30 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200930204907/https://guftugu.in/2018/06/pillar-of-ashokamaurya-romila-thapar/ |url-status=live }}</ref>]]
Jahangir was fascinated with art and architecture. In his autobiography, the [[Jahangir-nama|Jahangirnama]], Jahangir recorded events that occurred during his reign, descriptions of flora and fauna that he encountered, and other aspects of daily life, and commissioned court painters such as [[Ustad Mansur]] to paint detailed pieces that would accompany his vivid prose.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cleveland Beach|first=Milo|title=Mughal and Rajput Painting|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1992|location=Cambridge|page=90}}</ref> For example, in 1619, he put pen to paper in awe of a royal falcon delivered to his court from the ruler of Iran: "What can I write of the beauty of this bird's colour? It had black markings, and every feather on its wings, back, and sides was extremely beautiful," and then recorded his command that Ustad Mansur paint a portrait of it after it perished.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jahangir|title=The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India|url=https://archive.org/details/jahangirnamamemo00jaha|publisher=Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Association with Oxford University Press|year=1999|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/jahangirnamamemo00jaha/page/314 314]|isbn=978-0-19-512718-8 |translator-last=Thackston|translator-first=W.M.}}</ref> "[[Nadiri]]" was a type of exclusive clothing designed by Jahangir, reserved for his personal use and esteemed courtiers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Findly |first=Ellison Banks |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ugxFjVDk3I8C&dq=nadiri%28dress%29&pg=PA221 |title=Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India |date=1993-03-25 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-536060-8 |page=221 |language=en |access-date=9 May 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715064900/https://books.google.com/books?id=ugxFjVDk3I8C&dq=nadiri(dress)&pg=PA221 |url-status=live }}</ref> Jahangir bound and displayed much of the art that he commissioned in elaborate albums of hundreds of images, sometimes organized around a theme such as zoology.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cleveland Beach|first=Milo|title=Mughal and Rajput Painting|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1992|location=Cambridge|page=82}}</ref>

Jahangir himself was far from modest in his autobiography when he stated his prowess at being able to determine the artist of any portrait by simply looking at a painting. As he said: {{blockquote|text=...my liking for painting and my practice in judging it have arrived at such point when any work is brought before me, either of deceased artists or of those of the present day, without the names being told me, I say on the spur of the moment that is the work of such and such a man. And if there is a picture containing many portraits and each face is the work of a different master, I can discover which face is the work of each of them. If any other person has put in the eye and eyebrow of a face, I can perceive whose work the original face is and who has painted the eye and eyebrow.}}

[[File:Jahangirs huqqa close national museum india.JPG|thumb|Jahangir's Jade ''[[hookah]]'', [[National Museum, New Delhi]]]]

Jahangir took his connoisseurship of art very seriously. He also preserved paintings from Emperor Akbar's period. An excellent example of this is the painting done by [[Ustad Mansur]] of Musician [[Naubat Khan]], son-in-law of legendary [[Tansen]]. In addition to their aesthetic qualities, paintings created under his reign were closely catalogued, dated and even signed, providing scholars with fairly accurate ideas as to when and in what context many of the pieces were created.

In the foreword to [[Wheeler Thackston|W. M. Thackston]]'s translation of the Jahangirnama, [[Milo C. Beach|Milo Cleveland Beach]] explains that Jahangir ruled during a time of considerably stable political control, and had the opportunity to order artists to create art to accompany his memoirs that were "in response to the emperor's current enthusiasms".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jahangir|title=The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India|url=https://archive.org/details/jahangirnamamemo00jaha|publisher=Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Association with Oxford University Press|year=1999|location=New York|page=vii|isbn=978-0-19-512718-8 |translator-last=Thackston|translator-first=W.M.}}</ref> He used his wealth and his luxury of free time to chronicle, in detail, the lush natural world that the Mughal Empire encompassed. At times, he would have artists travel with him for this purpose; when Jahangir was in Rahimabad, he had his painters on hand to capture the appearance of a specific tiger that he shot and killed because he found it to be particularly beautiful.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Verma|first=Som Prakash|title=Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna: Ustād Manṣūr|publisher=Abhinav Publications|year=1999|location=New Delhi|page=25}}</ref> 

He had his artist [[Govardhan (artist)|Govardhan]] travel to Prayagraj(Allahabad) to paint sadhus. This resulted in the earliest set of images depicting sadhus in all yogic positions.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last1=Dalrymple |first1=William |last2=Anand |first2=Anita |title=Jahangir: A World of Light And Darkness(Ep1) |url=https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xDj4HLlFSAA6MrzzQANos?si=7db988896c474760 |website=Spotify}}</ref> 

The Jesuits had brought with them various books, engravings, and paintings and, when they saw the delight Akbar held for them, sent for more and more of the same to be given to the Mughals. They felt the Mughals were on the "verge of conversion", a notion which proved to be very false. Instead, both Akbar and Jahangir studied this artwork very closely and replicated and adapted it, adopting much of the early iconographic features and later the pictorial realism for which [[Renaissance]] art was known. Jahangir was notable for his pride in the ability of his court painters. A classic example of this is described in [[Sir Thomas Roe]]'s diaries, in which the Emperor had his painters copy a European miniature several times creating a total of five miniatures. Jahangir then challenged Roe to pick out the original from the copies, a feat Sir Thomas Roe could not do, to the delight of Jahangir.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

Jahangir was also revolutionary in his adaptation of European styles. A collection at the [[British Museum]] in London contains seventy-four drawings of Indian portraits dating from the time of Jahangir, including a portrait of the emperor himself. These portraits are a unique example of art during Jahangir's reign because faces were not drawn in full, including the shoulders as well as the head as these drawings are.''
<ref>{{cite book |last1=Losty |first1=J.P. |title=The Carpet at the Window: a European Motif in the Mughal Jharokha Portrait |publisher=Mapin Publishing |location=Ahmedabad |date=2013 |pages=52–64 |editor1-last=Sharma |editor1-first=M |editor2-last=Kaimal |editor2-first=P |series=Indian Painting: Themes, History and Interpretations; Essays in Honour of B.N. Goswamy}}</ref>