Page 21 - ISLAM Rock n Roll

included alcohol, guns, gunpowder and horses. Trade therea er became an important part of India’s economy, which had hitherto been a primarily agrarian society.
As regards cultural projects, Jahangir, despite priding himself as a connoisseur of painting and not architecture, set out to commemorate Akbar’s legacy by building a mausoleum at Sikandra, near Agra. Set out as a chahar bagh, it was meant to re ect the Qurʾanic paradise gardens, some- thing made plain in the poetic verses composed by ʿAbd al-Haqq Shirazi (d. 1644) that were inscribed on the portal:
Hail blessed space, happier than the garden of Paradise! Hail lo y buildings, higher than the Divine Throne!
A paradise, the garden of which has thousands of rizwans
as servants,
A garden which contains thousands of Paradises.
The pen of the mason of the Divine Decree has written
on its threshold;
These are the gardens of Eden, enter them and live forever.
Shah Jahan’s commitment to the Mughal artistic and aesthetic legacy resulted in what is the most romantic and famous of all the buildings erected by the dynasty, the
Taj Mahal, in Agra. A mausoleum also set in a paradise garden, he had it built for his wife Mumtaz Mahal
(d. 1631), and it included a series of inscriptions also composed and designed by ʿAbd al-Haqq Shirazi. Shah Jahan’s impressive patronage of architecture also resulted in Shahjahanabad (now known as Old Delhi), the Red Fort (Urdu, Lal Qila) and the Friday Mosque, all at Delhi, in addition to, in Lahore, the Shalimar Gardens and the Fort, along with a number of mosques elsewhere.
Shah Jahan’s incredible oeuvre and his long reign would have been di cult to predict given that he rose to power a er a succession dispute instigated in part by his stepmother, Nur Jahan (d. 1645), who sought to place her son Shahryar Mirza (d. 1628) on the throne. Having suc- cessfully thwarted the scheme, Shah Jahan executed his potential male rivals and had his stepmother con ned. Ironically, in the last eight years of his life, it would be
Shah Jahan who would be incarcerated a er being forced to abdicate by his son and successor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), who declared him un t to rule. Each day therea er, so the story goes, Shah Jahan looked out longingly from his Agra Fort prison to the tomb he had built for his beloved wife until he himself died and was buried next to her.
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Masterpieces of Mughal calligraphy, the gold coins (obverse shown above and reverse shown below) were minted in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh (India) in 1635–1636. The inscription on the obverse is inscribed with the shahada, and names and epithets
of Rashidun caliphs. The reverse is inscribed with Shah Jahan’s name and epithet ‘monarch warrior’, and the mint name.
Detail of a jasper inlaid white marble calligraphic panel from
the Taj Mahal inscribed with a Qur‘anic verse in thuluth script, designed by ʿAbd al-Haqq Shirazi (d. 1644), who migrated from
Iran to India in 1608 and was responsible for several calligraphic projects during Shah Jahan’s reign.
The alabaster and polychrome portrait of Shah Jahan shown right, was probably made by an Italian sculptor resident in India between 1630–1650.