GK SERIES FOR SSC,IAS,PCS,HAS,HCS
AND OTHER COMPETITIVE EXAMS
(HISTORY-20)
MUGHAL-3
ART, ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE UNDER THE MUGHALS
The
Mughal Age is called as the “Second Classical Age”, the first being the Gupta
Age in northern India. Three most important aspects of cultural developments
during the Mughal period were:
1)
The
Mughal culture was largely secular and aristocratic.
2)
In
the growth and enrichment of this culture, people from different parts of India
and outside contributed equally, and
3)
The
cultural norms which the Mughals introduced in India in the field of
architecture, painting, music etc. deeply influenced the future course of
Indian culture during the subsequent centuries.
Architecture:
·
The
history of Mughal architecture begins with Babur, who have undertaken many
building projects at Agra, Dholpur, Gwalior and other places. He built two
mosques, one at Kabulibagh in Panipat and other at Sambhal in Rohilkhand.
·
In
the early years of Humayun’s reign, he built a city at Delhi, called the Din-panah
(World Refuge). The mausoleum of Humayun in Delhi heralded the new movement. In
spirit, the structure of Humayun’s tomb stands as an example of synthesis of
two great building traditions of Asia, namely the Persian and the Indian. It
was built by his widow Haji Begum.
·
Thus,
the contribution of both Babur and Humayun to the growth of Mughal architecture
is almost negligible.
Akbar:
·
Akbar
was the founder of several fortified royal residences, each of which served as his
capital during the period. The first of such royal residences to be erected was
the fortress palace at Agra.
·
Abul
Fazl writes in the Ain-i-Akbari that within the fort, the emperor built upwards
of five hundred edifices of red stone. Among those that have escaped
destruction, mention may be made of two palace buildings known as Akbari Mahal
and Jahangiri Mahal.
·
The
new capital city that he built on the ridge at Sikri, 36km west of Agra, to commemorate
his conquest of Gujarat in 1572 was named Fatehpur (city of victory). The
monuments of Fatehpur Sikri may be divided into two classes, one religious and the
other secular.
·
Undoubtedly
the most impressive creation of this new capital city is the grand Jama Masjid
which had been described as the glory of Fatehpur Sikri. The southern entrance
to the Jama Masjid is an impressive gateway known as the Buland Darwaza made of
red sandstone.
·
Two
other additions were later made within the mosque enclosure. One of these is
the tomb of Shaikh Salim Chisti (the patron saint of Sikri), a small, square and
attractive building in marble (first Mughal building in pure marble). The pierced
screens of the corridor of this tomb are very finely worked. To the east of the
tomb of the Shaikh, stands the mausoleum of Islam Khan, a grandson of the saint,
built in 1612.
·
The
other is Diwan-i-khas or the hall of private audience in which the arrangement
of a hanging throne platform connected with hanging galleries by radiating
passages represents a novel and original conception.
·
Other
buildings include Jodha Bai’s palace, houses of Birbal and Mariam’s palace,
Diwan-i-Aam and the Panch Mahal (a fantastic five-storied pillared structure).
Jahangir:
·
Jahangir’s
chief interest lay in painting rather than in architecture. He was also fond of
laying gardens. One of the most famous gardens laid by him was Shalimar Bagh in
Kashmir.
·
One
of the earliest building projects of Jahangir was the completion of the tomb of
his father at Sikandara near Agra. It was started by Akbar himself.
·
The
most important feature of this period is the substitution of red sandstone by
white marble.
·
Jahangir
also loved color and thesis was imparted to the buildings of his period by encaustic
tiling and the system of pietra dura (floral
designs made up of semi-precious stones), i.e. the inlaid mosaic work of hard
and precious stones of various hues and shades, which began towards the end of
his reign.
·
Jahangir’s
own tomb was built on similar lines at Shahdara near Lahore. It has lavish color
imparted through inlaid marbles, glazed tiles and paintings.
·
He
also built Moti Masjid at Lahore.
·
Nur
Jahan was responsible for the construction of her husband’s tomb and also the
tomb of her father Itmad-ud-daulah at Agra, which has rich ornamentation in
pietra dura.
·
The
tomb of Akbar Rahim Khano Khana at Delhi was built more or less as a copy of Humayun’s
tomb, but in certain respect, it anticipates the Taj Mahal.
Shah Jahan:
·
Marble
of a pure white texture was procured from the quarries of Makrana in Jodhpur.
·
By
demolishing some of the earlier buildings, he built marble edifices at Agra, such
as the Diwan-i-Aam, the Diwan-i-Khas, the Khaas Mahal, the Shish Mahal, the Mussamman
Burj (Jasmine Palace where he spent his last years in capitivity), the Anguri
Bagh, the Machhni Bhawan and the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque, only mosque made of
marble).
·
In
1638, Shah Jahan began the construction of a new capital city Shahjahanabad at
Delhi.
·
The
palace fortress, the Red Fort as it is known because of the red sandstone
fabric of its rampart walls, with its halls, palaces, pavilions and gardens was
completed in 1648.
·
He
also built Takht-i-Taus (peacock throne).
·
The
Diwan-i-Khas (also called Imtiyaz Mahal) and the Rang Mahal are the two most
conspicuous buildings inside the Red Fort.
·
The
grand Jama Masjid at Delhi, the largest and the most well known in the whole of
India, also forms part of the scheme of the city of Shahjahanabad.
·
Mausoleum
of his wife, Arjumand Banu Begum (better known as Mumtaz Mahal) at Agra is
called the Taj Mahal after the title of the empress. The Taj is the crowning
glory and culmination of Mughal architecture. It was commence in 1631 and
completed sometime around 1653.
Aurangzeb:
·
Two
mosques erected during his reign were: the Moti Masjid within the Red Fort in
Delhi and the Jama or Badshahi mosque at Lahore.
·
Bibi
ka Makbara, the tomb of Aurangzeb’s queen Rabbia-ud-Daura, at Aurangabad
illustrates the rapid deterioration of the Mughal architectural style. Erected
in 1679, it is a frank imitation of the Taj Mahal at Agra. But compared to the
Taj, this tomb is a very mediocre production which, as Fergusson says,
“narrowly escapes vulgarity and bad taste”.
Mughal School of Painting:
·
Mughal
painting was largely influenced by the Persian school of Painting, which again was
an amalgam of the Chinese, the Indian, the Buddhist, the Bactrian and the Mongolian
influences.
·
Mughal
School of painting is broadly represented in two forms: the portraiture and miniature
in the form of book illustrations.
·
Humayun,
who during the years of his exile in Persia and Afghanistan secured the
services of Persia’s two greatest masters (Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad),
laid the foundation of Mughal painting. Both these masters followed Humayun to
Delhi, and were able to work in the art establishment of Akbar.
·
The
most important work produced in the Mughal studio, one of the earliest and most
important, is an unusual manuscript, Dastan-i-Amir Hamza, better known as
Humzanama, which has nearly 1,200 paintings.
·
During
the reign of Akbar, there was a fusion of Persian and Indian style of painting.
Akbar employed a large number of Hindu painters, which includes Daswant,
Basawan, Lal and Mukund.
·
Mughal
painting witnessed a rapid change and reached its logical culmination during the
reign of Jahangir. The most important feature of the history of painting in
Jahngir’s reign is the decline of Persian influence, which made way for a style
that was essentially Indian.
·
Some
impact of European art also became clearly visible in the paintings of the
period. In the early years of his reign, he was keenly interested in miniature,
but later he became interested in portraits and got a large number of them
prepared. The most important of all Jahangir’s painters were Ustad Mansur (great
expert in painting of miniatures), Abdul Hassan and Bishandas.
·
During
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it migrated to regional centers
of painting where it prospered under different styles, such as Pahari and Rajput
(particularly Jaipur, Bikaner and Bundi) styles.
·
The
subjects of Mughal painting were mainly derived from court life and nature. Animals
like deer, lion, peacock etc. and Indian dresses and ornaments were faithfully represented,
but the life of the people was sadly neglected. A keen appreciation of nature
was a remarkable characteristic of the Mughal artists.
·
The
Mughal portrait painters were noted for their rich coloring, sympathetic
outline drawing, decorative treatment and the delineation of actual features.
·
The
Mughal artists excelled in color composition that was generally a beautiful mosaic
of reds, blues and gold.
Literature:
·
Some
of the Mughal rulers like Babur, Humayun, Jahangir and many Mughal princes and
princesses were themselves great literary personalities. Some other rulers like
Akbar and Shah Jahan, were themselves not great authors, however, great patrons
of literature.
·
The
greatest literary development during the period took place not only in the
field of Persian literature, which was the court language, but also in several
Indian and non-Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu and Arabic
which brought forth a vast treasure of literary compositions.
Persian:
·
It
has been said that ‘the Summer of Persian Poetry’, brought about by the
patronage of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, is one of the brightest features
of the Mughal rule in India. They, along with literary men born in India, evolved
a distinct Indian style (Sabk-i-Hindi) of Persian poetry.
·
The
reign of Akbar was a period of ‘renaissance’ of Persian literature in India.
·
The
Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl gives the names of fifty-nine great Persian poets of
Akbar’s court.
·
The
Persian works of the period may be classified into three parts:
o
Literary
and theological works
o
Translations
and
o
Historical
works
·
In
the second category, many books of Sanskrit and other languages were translated
into Persian. Different parts of the Mahabharata was translated by several
Muslim scholars and put together under the title of Ramzanama.
·
Badauni
translated the Ramayana.
·
Haji
Ibrahim Sirhindi translated the Atharva Veda.
·
Faizi
translated the well-known work of Hindu Mathematics, Lilavati.
·
Mahammad
Khan Gujarati translated a work of Gujarat under the title Jahan-i-Zafar.
·
Todarmal
translated the Bhagavata Purana into Persian.
·
Abul
Fazl’s Akbarnama and Ain-i-Akbari are complementary works. His Insha
(collection of official dispatches sent by Akbar to foreign rulers) and Raqqat (collection
of his own private and personal letters) are important from historical as well
as literary points of view.
·
Among
other noble works of history were:
o
Nizam-ud-din
Ahmad Baksh’s Tobaqat-i-Akbari,
o
Gulbandan
Begum’s Humayun-namah,
o
Abbas
Khan Sherwani’s Tuhfa-i-Akbar shahi alias Tarikh-i-Sher,
o
Mulla
Daud’s Tarikh-i-Alfi,
o
Babur’s
Tuzuk-i-Baburi,
o
Abdul
Qadir Badauni’s Muntakhab-ul-Tawarikh,
o
Kamgar
Khan’s Maasir-i-Jahangiri,
o
Mutamad
Khan’s Iqbalnama-i-Jahangiri,
o
Abdul
Hamid Lahori’s Padshanama,
o
Amini
Qazwini’s Padshanama.
o
Inayal
Khan’s ShahJahan-nama.
·
Persian
literature continued to flourish under Akbar’s successors.
·
Jahangir,
himself a scholar and critic, wrote his own autobiography in imitation of his great
grandfather Babur and named it Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri.
·
Shah
Jahan’s eldest son Dara was a great scholar of many works on Sufi philosophy and
on the biographies of Muslim Saints. His most original work was Majma-ul-Bahrain
or the Mingling of the Oceans, in which he attempted to show that Hinduism and
Islam were two paths to one goal. He also wrote Sirr-i-Akbar and
Safinat-ul-Auliya.
·
Aurangzeb
had no taste for poetry and was opposed to the writing of the histories of his period.
Yet several important histories were written during his time. Some of these
were Khafi Khan’s Muntakhab-ul-lubad, Mirza Muhammad Qazim’s Alamgirnama,
Ishwar Das Nagar’s Futuhat-i-Alamgiri, Bhim Sen’s Nuskha-i-Dilkusha, Sujan Raj’s
Khulasat-ul-Tawarikh, Aquil Zafar’s Namah-e-Alamgiri, Saqi Mustaid Khan’s
Massir-i-Alamgiri.
·
The
most authoritative and elaborate digest of Muslim law, known as Fatwa-i-Alamgiri,
was produced by a syndicate of theologians under the orders of Aurangzeb.
Sanskrit:
·
Akbar
was the first Mughal emperor to extend patronage to Sanskrit and many scholars and
poets of Sanskrit adorned his court. During his reign the first Persian Sanskrit
lexicon, called Parsi Prakasha, was compiled.
·
Mahesh
Thakur of Darbhanga worte a history of Akbar’s reign in Sanskrit.
·
Siddhi
Chandra Upadhyaya wrote Bhanu Chandra Charitra, which gives an account of the
Jain mission to Akbar’s court.
·
Jahangir
and Shah Jahan also patronized Sanskrit scholars.
·
Jagannath
Pandit, the author of Ras Gangadhar and Ganga Lahari, was court poet of Shah
Jahan.
Hindi:
·
The
reign of Akbar constitutes the golden age of Hindi poetry.
·
The
most notable luminaries of Hindi were Tulsi Das, Sur Das, Abdur Rahim Khanekhana,
Ras Khan and Birbal.
·
Ras
Khan, although a Muslim, was a devote of Lord Krishna and an author of a large number
of first rate poems on Krishna’s life.
·
A
number of great Hindi poets also flourished during the reign of Jahangir and
Shah Jahan. Of these Keshav Das, Chintamani, Mati Ram, Bihari and Bhusan (1613-1712)
who wrote on Shivaji’s struggle against Aurangzeb, are the most noteworthy.
·
Other
modern Indian languages, including Urdu, also received impetus during the
Mughal period. After Persian and Hindi, Bengali language and literature
recorded the greatest progress during the period.
Music:
·
Akbar,
Jahangir and Shah Jahan greatly contributed to the development of Indian music.
·
Akbar,
who had a profound knowledge of music, took first step in this direction.
·
Tansen
was the most accomplished musician of the age.
·
Ain-i-Akbari
gives the names of thirty-six first-rate musicians of Akbar’s court where Hindu
and Muslim systems of music mingled freely.
·
Jahangir
and Shah Jahan also equally patronized music.
·
The
national music, which had its birth at Agra in the time of Akbar, holds the
field even today.
Navratna i.e. nine jewels of Akbar’s court:
1.
Birbal
(administrator)
2.
Abul
Fazl (scholar and statesman)
3.
Faizi
(scholar and statesman)
4.
Todarmal
(finance minister, introduced Dahsala Bandobast)
5.
Bhagwandas
(mansabdar)
6.
Man
Singh (mansabdar)
7.
Tansen
(musician)
8.
Abdur
Rahim Khanekhana (Hindi poet and statesman)
9.
Mulla
Do Pyaja (advisor)
