Jahangir was famous for his "Chain of Justice". In contemporary paintings, it has been shown as a golden chain with golden bells. In his memoir
Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, he wrote that he ordered the creation of this chain for his subjects to appeal to the emperor if they were denied justice at any level. Jahangir was known for his fondness in hunting
Nilgai.
Religious view by
Bichitr dated from the early 1620s depicting the
Mughal emperor Jahangir preferring an audience with Sufi
saint to his contemporaries, the
Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I and the
King of England James I (d. 1625); the picture is inscribed in
Persian: "Though outwardly shahs stand before him, he fixes his gazes on dervishes." According to
M. Athar Ali, Jahangir generally continued the religious policy of Akbar and had a major interest in
pantheism. However, orthodox figures in the Mughal's court influenced him in his later years to become more puritan in stance and reversed some of Akbar's religious policy. Another influence for Jahangir changed his religious policies was due to the action of
Ahmad Sirhindi, who routinely attend the court debates to counteract some religious beliefs and doctrines which prevalent in the court. In the process, it is recorded from these correspondence which compiled in 1617, that Farid Murtaza Khan took Ahmad Sirhindi advices regarding this matter. His efforts influenced
Abul Fazl, protegee of emperor Akbar, to support Ahmad Sirhindi in effort to convince Jahangir to reverse the policies of Akbar of tolerating Hindus in Mughal court.
Yohanan Friedmann has noted that according to many modern historians and thinkers, the puritanical though of Ahmad Sirhindi has inspired the religious orthodoxy of emperor
Aurangzeb. This was noted by how Ahmad Sirhindi managed to influence the successor of emperor Akbar, starting from Jahangir, into reversing Akbar's policies such as lifting marriage age limits, mosque abolishments, and
Hijra methodology revival which was abandoned by his father. It is noted by historians that this influence has been significantly recorded during the conquest of
Kangra under Jahangir, that at the presence of Ahmad Sirhindi who observed the campaign, the Mughal forces had the Idols broken, a cow slaughtered,
Khutbah sermon read, and other Islamic rituals performed. Further mark of Jahangir's departure from Akbar's secular policy were recorded Terry, a traveller, who came and observed India region between 1616 and 1619, where he found the mosques full of worshippers, the exaltation of Quran and hadith practical teaching, and the complete observance of
Fasting during Ramadan and
Eid al-Fitr celebrations. Jahangir issued bans on cowslaugher and animal slaughter on certain days of the week in continuance of his father's policy. According to the
Dabistan-i Mazahib he appointed Srikant of Kashmir to be qazi of the Hindus so that they would have their own judicial representative. He also continued his father's policy of patronizing Brahmins and temples. Notably he issued several grants to the
Chaitanya sect for their temples in
Vrindavan, but also made negative comments about their temples. He, like his father, disapproved of reincarnation and idol worship and ordered the boar image to be removed from Rana Shankar's temple at
Pushkar. Most notorious was the execution of the
Sikh Guru Arjan Dev on Jahangir's orders. His lands were confiscated and his sons imprisoned as Jahangir suspected him of helping Khusrau's rebellion. It is unclear whether Jahangir even understood what a Sikh was, referring to Guru Arjan as a Hindu, who had "captured many of the simple-hearted of the Hindus and even of the ignorant and foolish followers of Islam, by his ways and manners... for three or four generations (of spiritual successors) they had kept this shop warm." The trigger for Guru Arjan's execution was his support for Jahangir's rebel son
Khusrau Mirza, yet it is clear from Jahangir's own memoirs that he disliked Guru Arjan before then: "many times it occurred to me to put a stop to this vain affair or bring him into the assembly of the people of Islam." Guru Arjan's successor Guru Hargobind was imprisoned for sometime but released soon. He developed friendly relations with Jahangir and accompanied him on his journey to Kashmir just before the latter's death. According to Jahangir's memoirs, he issued a
firman banning Jain seorahs (monks) due to alleged scandalous behavior. However, the ban was quickly rescinded but Jahangir neglected to mention that in his memoirs. There is a wide variety of evidence that Jahangir had good relations with Jains and Jain sources themselves extol him. According to Ali, Jahangir wrote his memoirs with his intended audience of Persian-speaking Muslims in mind and sought to portray himself as an anti-idolatry sultan and thus "modified" facts. Jahangir's memoirs also omit the fact that three of his nephews at one point converted to Christianity with his permission, although they would later reverse their decision. He issued 'Jahangiri coins' which had his own portrait. He even issued the zodiac series of gold and silver coins which had images of zodiac symbols alongside the radiating sun in the background, due to his faith in astrology. The sign of the zodiac was substituted for the month in which the coin was minted. All of this was considered haram by the ulema due to which his successor Shah Jahan ordered all those coins melted, accounting for their extreme rarity now. Jahangir had a strong inclination toward pragmatism, reason and skepticism. He often remarked on unusual occurrences by stating, "This is so strange, it is recorded here," or dismissing claims that defied logic with, "It does not accord with reason, and my mind does not accept it." While he upheld religious tolerance, his patience did not extend to deceitful religious practices. He swiftly punished a self-proclaimed guru who displeased him, expelled a yogi while destroying his idol for performing a superstitious ritual with his visitors, and imprisoned a renowned Naqshbandi Muslim scholar for a while, who, in his view, held an inflated sense of self-importance and hoodwinked people by peddling mysticism. However, he was not without his own biases. He maintained a deep reverence for the tombs of saints and firmly believed in the power of holy men's prayers, particularly those he credited with enabling his birth. He held faith in astrology and ensured he gave alms to counteract the negative effects of unfavorable planetary alignments.
Art of
Ashoka. Jahangir was fascinated with art and architecture. In his autobiography, the
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. 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. "
Nadiri" was a type of exclusive clothing designed by Jahangir, reserved for his personal use and esteemed courtiers. 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. 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: '',
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
W. M. Thackston's translation of the Jahangirnama,
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". 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. He had his artist
Govardhan travel to Prayagraj(Allahabad) to paint sadhus. This resulted in the earliest set of images depicting sadhus in all yogic positions. 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. 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.
Politics Jahangir is widely considered to have been a weak and incapable ruler. Orientalist
Henry Beveridge (editor of the
Tuzk-e-Jahangiri) compares Jahangir to the Roman emperor
Claudius, for both were "weak men... in their wrong places as rulers... [and had] Jahangir been head of a Natural History Museum,... [he] would have been [a] better and happier man." Further he notes, "He made no addition to the imperial territories, but on the contrary, diminished them by losing Qandahar to the Persians. But possibly his peaceful temper, or his laziness, was an advantage, for it saved much bloodshed. His greatest fault as a king was his subservience to his wife, Nur-Jahan, and the consequent quarrel with his son, Shah Jahan, who was the ablest and best of his male children".
Sir William Hawkins, who visited Jahangir's court in 1609, said: "In such short that what this man's father, called Ecber Padasha [Badshah Akbar], got of the
Deccans, this king, Selim Sha [Jahangir] beginneth to lose." Italian writer and traveller,
Niccolao Manucci, who worked under Jahangir's grandson,
Dara Shikoh, began his discussion of Jahangir by saying: "It is a truth tested by experience that sons dissipate what their fathers gained in the sweat of their brow." According to
John F. Richards, Jahangir's frequent withdrawal to a private sphere of life was partly reflective of his indolence, brought on by his addiction to a considerable daily dosage of wine and opium.
Science Jahangir had a keen interest in conducting his own "scientific" experiments, which reflected his deep fascination for the natural world. He found that the widely accepted belief about the aggressiveness of mountain sheep was not true. He investigated the effectiveness of bitumen for healing broken bones using a chicken as a specimen(bitumen proved ineffective). He compared the air quality of Ahmadabad and Mahmudabad by observing the rate of decay in sheep carcasses. Additionally, he actively engaged in animal husbandry and goat breeding, accurately estimated the gestation period of elephants, and studied the livers of lions and wolves to determine whether the location of their gall bladders, whether they were inside or outside the liver, correlated with courage. == Popular culture ==