Jahangir Shooting the Head of Malik Ambar
Abu al-Hasan, 1620
This painting shows the Mughal emperor Jahangir firing an arrow through the severed head of Malik Ambar, regent of the Ahmednagar Sultanate, whose resistance blocked Jahangir's long campaign to conquer the territory. The head is shown without a turban, its mouth open and eyes rolled back, a deliberately disrespectful depiction. Jahangir stands on a globe with India at its centre, a visual pun on his regnal title, which means 'world seizer'. Beneath him, a lion and a goat on the globe evoke the 'beast and prey' theme, and the globe rests on the horns of a cow standing on a fish, both Islamic emblems of kingship. An owl perched on the head, a bird of ill omen, was reportedly requested by the emperor himself. A chain with bells and a suspended scale refer to the zanjir-i adal, the chain of justice hung in the capital, and the inscription claims that, through Jahangir's justice, the lion has drunk milk from the goat. The work belongs to a series of allegorical paintings probably commissioned around 1616-1618, although another view links it to Ambar's death in 1626.
- Painter
- Abu al-Hasan
- Date
- 1620
- Museum
- Chester Beatty Library
