Template:Did you know nominations/Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings
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Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings
- ... that a painting depicts the Mughal emperor Jahangir preferring a Sufi saint to the Ottoman sultan and the King of England?
- Source: Smee, Sebastian (2021-03-03). "A Mughal masterpiece". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2024-07-28. Retrieved 2024-12-08.
It shows Jahangir, the great Mughal emperor and patron of the arts, sitting cross-legged on a throne that takes the form of a European hourglass. Beneath him are four people, slightly smaller in scale. The lower one is Bichitr, the artist who painted it. Above him are King James I of England, the Sultan of Turkey and – uppermost at left, the object of Jahangir's rapt attention – Shaikh Hussain. Shaikh Hussain was a Sufi descendant of the revered saint Khwaja Mu'in-ud-Din Chishti. It was to this saint's shrine that the emperor Akbar once prayed for a son. Jahangir himself was the happy result. One of the Persian couplets that appear in cartouches above and below states: "To all appearances, even as kings and potentates stand in attendance upon him, his gaze falls, inwardly, ever upon holy dervishes." In other words, Jahangir – for all his immense worldly power, evoked by the magnificent jewels on his fingers and the transparent delicacy of his body-clinging jacket, or "jama" – knew what mattered.
Ettinghausen argued that it is precisely this choice of holy men over secular rulers, of the divine over the mundane, that is the subject of the illustration. He notes the putti above, who seem both dazzled by Jahangir's splendor and distressed that their emblems of worldly sovereignty are rejected
5x expanded by AmateurHi$torian (talk).
Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 5 past nominations.
AmateurHi$torian (talk) 14:31, 17 December 2024 (UTC).