The Mughal Empire

The Padshahnama

The Padshahnama (also called the Badshahnama) is the official history of the reign of Shah Jahan, and it is of the official chronicles of the Mughal court. Composed in a carefully crafted Persian prose that drew on the Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri of Jahangir, and the wider tradition of Indo-Persian historical writing, the Padshahnama is a detailed account of the reign of Shah Jahan from his accession in 1628 to 1636/7, and it is one of the principal primary sources for the political, military, administrative, religious, and cultural history of the period. The text was produced in two principal illustrated versions: the Badshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori, the principal court historian, and the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, a parallel illustrated version commissioned by the emperor. The illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, is illustrated manuscripts of the Mughal period, and it contains some of the most accomplished paintings of the early modern world. The composition of the Padshahnama by Abdul Hamid Lahori and Muhammad Waris, the structure of the text, the celebrated illustrated manuscript, the imperial painters who produced the illustrations, the patronage of the work, the place of the work in the wider tradition of Mughal historical writing, and the place of the manuscript in the Royal Collection at Windsor are treated in detail below.

The Authors: Abdul Hamid Lahori and Muhammad Waris

Abdul Hamid Lahori (d. 1654) was the principal court historian of Shah Jahan’s reign, a Persian prose stylist of considerable accomplishment, and one of the most distinguished historians of the period. Lahori joined the Mughal court in the early years of Shah Jahan’s reign and was appointed as the waqia-navis (the official chronicler) of the reign, and he was responsible for the production of the Badshahnama, the official text of the Padshahnama. The composition of the Badshahnama was a major project of the early reign, and it involved a substantial body of translators, scribes, copyists, and illustrators. The work was completed in several volumes, of which only the first two volumes (covering the period from 1628 to 1636/7) are generally attributed to Lahori; the third volume (covering the period from 1637 to 1648) is attributed to Muhammad Waris.

Muhammad Waris (d. 1648) was the principal court historian of the later years of Shah Jahan’s reign, and he was responsible for the production of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, a parallel illustrated version commissioned by the emperor. The composition of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris was a major project of the 1640s, and it involved a substantial body of illustrators from the imperial atelier. The work was completed in 1648, the year of Waris’s death, and the manuscript was later acquired by the East India Company, taken to London, and eventually presented to the British Royal Family. The manuscript has been in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle since the eighteenth century, and it is one of the major treasures of the Royal Collection.

The Structure of the Padshahnama

The Padshahnama is organised by regnal year (sal), and each year is treated in a series of sections dealing with the principal events of the year: the military campaigns, the administrative appointments, the religious and cultural events, the durbars, the firman of the emperor, the imperial hunts, the formal receptions, the principal incidents of the court, the marriages of the princes, the construction of the imperial buildings, and the various other major events of the reign. The Padshahnama of Lahori covers the period from 1628 to 1636/7 in two volumes, and the Padshahnama of Waris covers the period from 1637 to 1648 in a third volume. The text is illustrated by a substantial body of paintings, of which the Padshahnama of Waris (now at Windsor) is the most celebrated, and the Padshahnama of Lahori (now partly in the British Library and the Chester Beatty Library) is the most extensive.

The Padshahnama contains detailed accounts of the principal events of Shah Jahan’s reign: the accession of 1628, the Deccan campaigns, the Bundela campaign, the campaign against the Portuguese at Hooghly (1632), the Central Asian campaigns of the 1640s, the formal durbar of the court, the jharokha-i-darshan of the emperor, the tuladan of the imperial birthday, the construction of the Taj Mahal, the construction of the Red Fort at Shahjahanabad, the construction of the Jama Masjid of Delhi, the marriage of the princes, the Nauroz celebrations, the Eid celebrations, the formal receptions of the foreign embassies, the imperial hunts, the music of the mehfil, the mushaira of the court, the qawwali of the Sufi establishments, and the various other major events of the period.

The Language of the Padshahnama

The Padshahnama was composed in a carefully crafted Persian prose that drew on the conventions of the classical Persian insha (formal prose) tradition, the Shahnameh of Firdausi, the Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri of Jahangir, and the wider tradition of Indo-Persian historical writing. The Persian of Lahori and Waris is a high, ornate, and rhetorically sophisticated prose, marked by the use of the classical Persian saj, the radif, the qafiya, the tarsi, the muharraf, the laff-o-nashr, the tajnis, the kinaya, the istiara, and the various other rhetorical devices of the Indo-Persian prose tradition. The Padshahnama also contains a substantial body of verse — qasidas, ghazals, rubais, and masnavis — composed by the court poets of the period, and the text is interspersed with the waqia (narrative) and the bayan (description) of the principal events of the reign.

The Persian of the Padshahnama also contains a substantial vocabulary of Indian origin, including the Hindi vocabulary of the indigenous Indian administration, the Sanskrit vocabulary of the Hindu religious and philosophical tradition, the Hindi vocabulary of the regional geography, the Persian-Arabic vocabulary of the Islamic religious and legal tradition, and the Turki vocabulary of the Timurid and Mughal imperial household. The Padshahnama is therefore an important document of the Indo-Persian linguistic register of the mid-seventeenth century, and it has been used extensively by historians of the period for the study of the linguistic history of the Mughal Empire.

The Illustrated Manuscript of the Padshahnama

The Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, is illustrated manuscripts of the Mughal period, and it contains some of the most accomplished paintings of the early modern world. The manuscript is a substantial volume of approximately 440 folios, of which approximately 140 contain paintings, and the paintings of the manuscript are among the masterpieces of the Mughal painting tradition of the Shah Jahan period. The principal painters of the manuscript included Bichitr (the leading master of the Shah Jahan atelier), Balchand, Chitra, Anupchhatar, Mohan Das, Payag, and a substantial body of other painters of the imperial workshop. The paintings of the Padshahnama represent the mature phase of the Shah Jahan-period style: the formal court style, the careful attention to facial types, the careful treatment of the human figure, the use of European techniques of perspective and shading, the careful draftsmanship, the careful colouring, the careful composition, the elaborate ornamentation, the careful integration of the various elements of the painting, and the formal character of the imperial style.

The most famous paintings of the Padshahnama include the Shah Jahan Receives Prince Aurangzeb (attributed to Bichitr and others), the Shah Jahan Receives the Persian Ambassador Muhammad Ali Beg (attributed to Bichitr), the Shah Jahan Hunting, the Shah Jahan at the Jharokha-i-Darshan, the Shah Jahan Receives the East India Company Officials, the Shah Jahan at the Durbar, the Shah Jahan Weighing Himself against Gold and Silver (the tuladan), the Shah Jahan at the Taj Mahal, the Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal at the Diwan-i-Khas, the Shah Jahan at the Peacock Throne, and the various other paintings of the imperial court and the imperial ceremonial.

The illustrations of the Padshahnama are characterised by their formal character, their careful composition, their use of European techniques of perspective and shading, their careful draftsmanship, their careful colouring, their elaborate ornamentation, and their integration of the various elements of the painting. The paintings of the Padshahnama have been the subject of extensive scholarly study, and they have been the foundation of the modern study of the Mughal painting tradition of the Shah Jahan period. The manuscript has been the subject of several major exhibitions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the paintings of the manuscript have been widely reproduced in the scholarly literature of the period.

The Imperial Painters of the Padshahnama

The principal painters of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris were the leading masters of the Shah Jahan atelier, the imperial painting workshop of the period. The principal painters included:

  • Bichitr (active c. 1620s–1660), a Hindu painter from the Punjab and the most distinguished master of the Shah Jahan atelier. Bichitr is known for his sensitive portrait studies, his paintings of court subjects, and his paintings of the Padshahnama. His Jahangir Receives Prince Khurram (now in the National Museum, New Delhi) and his paintings of the Padshahnama are among the most accomplished works of the Shah Jahan-period style.
  • Balchand (active c. 1630s–1660s), a master of the Padshahnama and other illustrated manuscripts of the period. Balchand is known for his careful draftsmanship, his careful colouring, and his careful composition.
  • Chitra (active c. 1630s–1660s), a painter of the Padshahnama and other illustrated manuscripts of the period.
  • Anupchhatar (active c. 1640s–1660s), a master of single-page paintings of the Padshahnama tradition.
  • Mohan Das and Payag (active c. 1630s–1660s), masters of the workshop.
  • Ram Das (active c. 1630s–1660s), a painter of the Padshahnama and other illustrated manuscripts of the period.

The painters of the Padshahnama worked in the formal court style of the Shah Jahan period, and they were among the most accomplished artists of the early modern world. The dismissal of the principal painters of the imperial atelier under Aurangzeb, in the 1660s and 1670s, led to the dispersal of the imperial tradition to the regional courts of the empire, and the painters of the Padshahnama tradition were among the most important sources of the later Mughal painting tradition.

The Patronage of the Padshahnama

The Padshahnama was produced under the direct patronage of Shah Jahan himself, and the production of the manuscript was one of the principal cultural projects of the reign. The emperor took a personal interest in the production of the Padshahnama, and he is said to have reviewed the paintings of the manuscript personally and to have commissioned changes in the composition and colouring of the paintings. The production of the Padshahnama was a major logistical enterprise, and it involved a substantial body of illustrators from the imperial atelier, the darogha-i-kitab khana of the period, the kitab khana scribes, the mashq calligraphers, the bargird binders, the lacquer workers, and the muraqqa album makers of the imperial household.

The patronage of the Padshahnama was an important element of the imperial ideology of Shah Jahan’s reign. The formal durbar scenes, the jharokha-i-darshan scenes, the tuladan scenes, the hunting scenes, the marriage scenes, the Nauroz scenes, the Eid scenes, the construction scenes, and the various other subjects of the paintings of the Padshahnama were all carefully selected to project the image of the emperor as the just ruler, the pious Muslim, the great builder, the victorious general, the generous patron, and the supreme head of the imperial establishment. The paintings of the Padshahnama were therefore not merely illustrations of the historical events of the reign, but they were also carefully constructed ideological statements of the imperial vision of the reign.

The Place of the Padshahnama in the Mughal Historical Tradition

The Padshahnama holds a distinctive place in the wider tradition of Mughal historical writing. It is the principal historical source for the reign of Shah Jahan, and it is chronicles of the period. The Padshahnama drew on the conventions of the Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri of Jahangir, the Babar-nama of Babur, the Humayun-nama of Gulbadan Begum, and the wider tradition of Indo-Persian historical writing, and it is the principal source for the political, military, administrative, religious, and cultural history of the reign of Shah Jahan. The Padshahnama has been the subject of extensive scholarly study, and it has been the foundation of the modern historiography of the period.

The principal modern editions of the Padshahnama include the Bibliotheca Indica edition of the text, the Royal Collection edition of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, the Wheeler Thackston translation (the principal English translation), the Sarkar and others translation of selected portions, and a number of more recent critical editions of the text. The principal modern studies of the Padshahnama include the works of S. R. Sharma, S. A. A. Rizvi, M. Athar Ali, Satish Chandra, J. F. Richards, S. N. Sen, Ebba Koch, Gauvin Bailey, Oleg Grabar, Wheeler Thackston, and a substantial body of other modern scholarship. The illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris has been the subject of several major exhibitions, including the Padshahnama: Imperial Painting from India exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution (1998) and the Mughal: Art, Culture and Empire exhibition at the British Library (2012), and the paintings of the manuscript have been widely reproduced in the scholarly literature of the period.

The Place of the Manuscript in the Royal Collection

The illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris has been in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle since the eighteenth century, and it is one of the major treasures of the collection. The manuscript was acquired by the East India Company in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, presented to the British Royal Family, and incorporated into the Royal Collection. The manuscript has been the subject of several major exhibitions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the Padshahnama: Imperial Painting from India exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution (1998) and the Mughal: Art, Culture and Empire exhibition at the British Library (2012), and the paintings of the manuscript have been widely reproduced in the scholarly literature of the period. The manuscript remains illustrated manuscripts of the early modern world, and it is one of the major cultural treasures of the British Royal Collection.

Sources

  • Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court (Mapin, 2012), on the Padshahnama manuscripts.

For the broader context of the literary and linguistic tradition, see the Mughal literature and languages page. The official chronicle of the reign of Akbar, the Akbarnama, is treated in The Akbarnama. The Persian literary tradition of the imperial court is treated in Persian literature at the Mughal court. The painting tradition of the imperial atelier, which produced the celebrated illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama, is treated in Mughal painting under Akbar, in Mughal painting under Jahangir, and on the Mughal art and miniature painting page. The historical context of the reign of Shah Jahan, the period covered by the Padshahnama, is treated in greater detail in the entry on Shah Jahan. The architectural projects of Shah Jahan, which are extensively illustrated in the Padshahnama, are treated in the Mughal architecture overview and in the entries on the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort.