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European Travelers in the Mughal Empire: Jahangir’s Court through English Eyes

Dr. Mehreen Chida-Razvi

I. Introduction: The Arrival of the English in the Mughal Realm

The Mughal Dynasty of South Asia came into being at a time in which European interest in

the region was peaking, with travelers beckoned by the promise of riches through trade,

religious fervor or a fascination with the exotic. The reputation in Europe of the Mughal

Padshah, or Emperor, as the ‘Great Mogol’ was such that the term became synonymous with

wealth and luxury, and the Mughal court became a draw for European diplomats,

adventurers, tradesmen and clergymen. The first European power to establish itself as a

legitimate entity within the Mughal borders were the Portuguese, but they were soon

followed by other European nations intent on sharing in the wealth of Hindustan. It was

during the reign of the fourth Mughal Emperor, Jahangir (r.1605-27), that the English began

to arrive in greater numbers, continuously pressing for the establishment of an English

Factory and trading rights that would put them on par with the Portuguese, or, preferably, in a

greater position of trading power and diplomatic influence.

It was inevitable that these English subjects documented their time and travails while abroad

in South Asia, and that they would communicate their thoughts, experiences and complaints

to family, friends and colleagues in England. It is intriguing to note the variations in how

these written documents portray the Mughal Empire, the Mughals themselves, and the

Englishmen who wrote them. Evaluating this information is at times problematic as

questions can arise as to the authenticity of the details and perceptions being relayed in these

writings, which subsequently were considered factual on their arrival in Europe. Were these

contemporary accounts accurate representations of what these travelers saw around them and

experienced, or were their perceptions colored or altered by personal circumstances, both

good and bad? Did this result in skewed visualizations of what these Englishmen noted in

their writings? How did their own living situation, personal background and material wealth

impact their reflections? In this contribution I would like to instead examine the questions

that arise from these readings, and which form the subject of this paper, by focusing on the

writings of prominent English visitors to the Mughal court during the reign of Jahangir and

evaluating what external factors outside questions of orientalism and postcolonial theory,

may have influenced their written perceptions. How these same perceptions were then

presented as facts in their later writings, in the form of either letters written to Europe or later

in published travelogues, will be examined. Due to spatial constraints I will be focusing this

paper on English views of the Mughal Emperor and the court.

These questions will be explored here using the writings of prominent Englishman present at

the Mughal court during Jahangir’s reign, including: William Hawkins, a representative of

the East India Company; William Finch, an Englishman who arrived at Jahangir’s court in

Lahore in 1611 seeking to establish trade rights for the English; Sir Thomas Roe, the first

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official Ambassador to the Mughal Court, arriving in 1615; the eccentric traveler Thomas

Coryat, a contemporary of Sir Thomas Roe, who travelled overland from Jerusalem to the

Mughal realm; and Edward Terry, Roe’s chaplain. The era of Jahangir will be focused on

here as, with few exceptions, it was during the early years of his reign that the agents of the

East India Company (EIC) first set foot in Mughal South Asia;1 in addition, it was the period

in which there was mass infiltration of Europeans into the Mughal borders. William Finch

writes, for example, that when he was taken to Jahangir’s court in Agra in 1610, there were

representatives from Portugal, Spain, France and Venice present, as well as other Christians.2

The year Jahangir ascended the throne, 1605, corresponds to just a few years after the

establishment of the EIC in 1599, and the granting of its royal charter in December 1600.

II. Changing Perceptions of the Mughal Empire

It has been noted in the early travel writings of the English in Hindustan that the writers

collectively appeared to go through three disparate moments of thought.3 They first viewed

the region as a land of wealth, plenty and wonder, but this was soon followed by censure, in

which what had initially drawn praise and awe was subsequently tempered so that the

disparity between what the reality of Mughal Hindustan was and the perceived reality of the

travelers’ views and their became less. Instead of the region being a land of plenty it became

instead a land of excess, and therefore more negative. 4 This excess took the various forms of

‘uncontrolled and uncontrollable passion, diseases, cruelty, and ignorance... The English

traveler now located a landscape of disease, death, and deprivation in the same features once

imaged as pleasurable profusion. However, this does not complete the representation of India.

The traveler conflated physical and moral topographies when he read climatic conditions,

landscape features, town planning, and disease as symptomatic of moral conditions. Further,

he began to evacuate the landscape of Indian icons by rejecting, altering, or explaining away

their valence and value to the natives.’5 Edward Terry, for example, writes of the many

wondrous things, people and animals he encountered on his time in Hindustan, but promptly

negated all these things by then commenting that, it would be wrong to consider the lands of

the Mughal empire to be an earthly paradise, and then goes on to list the various dangerous

1 John Mildenhall was the first of the EIC representatives to arrive at the Mughal court, but during the final

years of Akbar’s reign. He arrived at Agra in 1603, 2 years before Akbar died in 1605. Mildenhall arrived as a

merchant but decided to present himself to Akbar as a spokesman for the English Monarch, Queen Elizabeth I,

thus starting the trend of EIC representatives attempting to speak for the Crown without official capacity, with

which Sir Thomas Roe then had to contend with as the first true Ambassador of the English Crown to the

Mughal Court. 2 William Finch. ‘Observations of William Finch, Merchant, taken out of his large Journall,’ Purchas His

Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, Vol 4., James MacLehose and Sons, University of Glasgow Press, Glasgow, 1905,

p. 38.

3 The points which follow are discussed in Pramod Nayar. ‘Marvelous Excesses: English Travel Writing and

India, 1608-1727.’ Journal of British Studies. 44 (2, April 2005):224-230 4 Ibid. pp. 225, 229.

5 Ibid., p. 230.

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wild animals, insects, flies, rats, and natural disasters which befall the area, including the

monsoon.6

After moving on to this view of excess, the English travel writers then followed it with the

idea that the region and the Mughal empire were not as significant as the English originally

thought because they had become ‘morally questionable;’ by labeling it thus, it became easy

for the English to establish reasons for the extreme wealth of the Hindustani princes and

Kings, and for the plentiful nature of the land, which was now due to the exploitation of the

working class and everyday man.7 This last point is exemplified by Hawkins, who claimed

that Jahangir’s wealth was derived from the fact that he came from a line of conquerors, that

he inherited the wealth of the nobility on their death, and that he received a large percentage

of the profits made from the wealth of the land.8

III. External factors that impacted English Views of Jahangir’s Empire

Three reasons can be highlighted as primary factors that drove Europeans into the Mughal

realm: trade, diplomacy and evangelism. For the English, it was with the desire to establish

trading rights with this new, wealthy entity that had the strongest draw. They were aware of

the possibility of riches because the Portuguese had established such trading rights with the

Mughal Emperor Akbar (r.1556-1605), Jahangir’s father, and were prospering in the new,

Indian-Ocean trading world as a result. The Portuguese had also established themselves as

fixtures within the Mughal court, called upon to advise the emperor in his general dealing

with Europeans, and as generic representatives of Europe they also acted as translators and

interpreters when other Europeans came to the court begging favors of the Great Mughal.

Unfortunately for the English, they arrived with little to recommend them to Jahangir and,

with Portuguese representatives serving as aides-de-camp to the Emperor, were at a

disadvantage as these two European nations had an antagonistic relationship based on mutual

military hostility, especially on the open sea. As a result, the English representatives at the

Mughal court at this time found themselves in situations where the Portuguese poisoned

Jahangir’s mind against them and their desires, and it was only when they were aware of it

that the English were able to respond to the charges laid at their door.

This is an important point to note as it raises the issue of languages, which ultimately affected

how the English were able to interact at the Mughal court. When unable to speak or

6 Edward Terry, ‘A Relation of a Voyage to the Easterne India. Observed by Edward Terry, Master of arts and

Student of Christ-Church in Oxford.’ Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, Vol 9., James MacLehose and

Sons, University of Glasgow Press, Glasgow, 1905, p. 24.

7 Nayar. ‘Marvelous Excesses: English Travel Writing and India, 1608-1727.’ 230.

8 William Hawkins, ‘Captaine William Hawkins, his Relations of the Occcurents which happened in the time of

his residence in india, in the Country of the Great Mogoll, and of his departure from thence; written to the

Company’: Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, Vol 3., James MacLehose and Sons, University of

Glasgow Press, Glasgow, 1905, pp. 42-3.

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understand any of the languages spoken at the court, the English entered into a situation in

which they were unable to either comprehend what was being said to them or about them,

and had to rely on interpreters to pass on their words and desires to Jahangir or the nobles

with whom they had to deal in order to have access to him. This being the case, the English

who were unable to speak or understand Persian or Turkish were at the mercy of their

interpreters for a factual relay of information in both directions of communication. However,

this was not always the situation, for some English at the court were proficient in these

languages. For example, William Hawkins spoke Turkish and Thomas Coryat spoke Persian,

and both were therefore able to communicate directly with nobles of the court and with

Jahangir, and were able to use this ability to their advantage. According to his own account,

Hawkins impressed Jahangir with his ability to speak Turkish and was regularly invited into

the Emperor’s private quarters to converse with him, a distinction offered to few.9 Hawkins

was received by Jahangir as an ambassador from England, as John Mildenhall, the English

merchant at Akbar’s court in 1603, had promised that one would arrive, thereby

distinguishing the English from the Portuguese, who did not have a permanent, government-

sanctioned satellite in Hindustan.10

Hawkins was taken to be this individual on his arrival at

the court and accepted the charge, even though he did not have the official capacity to do so.

Regardless of this, he stayed at the Mughal court for between 1609 and 1611, both to ‘feather

my own nest’ and to represent the EIC and the Crown to the best of his abilities.11

During his

time there, Jahangir referred to Hawkins as the ‘English Khan’ and gave him a title, rank,

gifts, money, and even an Armenian Christian from his harem to be his wife. In accepting the

gifts of Jahangir and establishing himself at the court so fully, Hawkins displayed a

willingness to meld himself into the prevailing customs and life of the court. In his eyes there

was nothing wrong in advancing his own interests while at the same time representing

England, but others of his countrymen did not see it this way as to outward appearances

Hawkins had become a servant of the Mughal Emperor.

On arrival at one of wealthiest courts in the world, and, moreover, one which was fully aware

of its own consequence and had a strong sense of its own importance both in the region and

on the wider-world stage, the English were actually unprepared for the sophisticated

civilization they encountered at the Mughal court and, therefore, were even more thrown off

balance by what they found. In order to get the trading rights they so desperately wanted

from an Empire which did not seek or need validation from their King or merchants, it was

borne in on the English that they required an official government representative to negotiate

with the Mughal court. As seen, members of the EIC would present themselves to the

Mughal Emperor in the guise of Ambassador, but without the official endowment. This did

9 Hawkins, ‘Captaine William Hawkins, his Relations of the Occcurents which happened in the time of his

residence in india, in the Country of the Great Mogoll,’ 12-13. 10

Ram Chandra Prasad. Early English Travellers in India. Indilogical Publishers, New Delhi, 2nd

ed. 1980: 91. 11

Hawkins, ‘Captaine William Hawkins, his Relations of the Occcurents which happened in the time of his

residence in india, in the Country of the Great Mogoll,’ 14.

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not serve their purposes as well as they would have liked, but it did allow for some initial

meetings and relationships to evolve, and set the scene for the arrival of the first official

English ambassador to the Mughal court, Sir Thomas Roe.

Sir Thomas Roe was one of those who did not approve of the way that Hawkins and previous

representatives of his government acted at the court, for he felt that they diminished and

demeaned his country in the eyes of the Mughals.12

Roe then felt he had to contend with a

reputation which held the English to be of little importance for trade and diplomacy. It has

been pointed out by Barbour that in his words and dealings with the emperor Jahangir, John

Mildenhall gave the impression that the English had arrived in Hindustan merely to exploit

avenues of trade, and that the English were remiss in visiting the court of the Great Mughal

because their country was geographically and diplomatically remote from the region. This is

in stark contrast to the complementary message he thought he was conveying, which was

supposed to be that even though England was so far away the fame of the Great Mughal had

reached it, and that due to the importance of both the Mughal Emperor and the English

monarch, trade would be desirable to both countries.13

Roe had to battle not only against the established reputation of the English, but while he

remained on his dignity, doing nothing which would demean either himself or King James I,

he had to contend with the appearance of the eccentric Thomas Coryat at the court of

Jahangir. It was a presence Roe would have preferred to do without, and when Coryat

performed a Persian speech in front of Jahangir and was rewarded in gold, which he readily

accepted, Roe was again in a position where he felt he had to battle for his own, and his

country’s, reputation. He found it demeaning and considered his fellow countryman to be on

par with court performers; despite his ever-pressing need, Roe himself steadfastly refused

monetary recompense from Jahangir.14

For Roe, the impression he gave of himself, and of

his King, was a supreme priority, and as this was the case the question of how this was to be

portrayed and represented to the local population, Nobles and Emperor became a necessary

one. It involved in no way ‘going native,’ as others of his countrymen did, instead he had to

continuously project the persona of The Ambassador. This being the case, as has been

pointed out by Barbour, Roe thoroughly engaged with politics of display and presentation,15

12 ‘At the name of an ambassador they laughd one upon a nother; it beeing become ridiculous, so many having

assumed the that title, and not performed the offices;…I mention these only to lett the Company understand how

meanly an embassador was esteemed at my landing; how they subjected them selves to all searches and

barbarous customes,…if it seeme to any that shall heare of my first carriadge that I was eyther too stiff, to

punctuall, too high, or to prodigall, lett them consider I was to repayre a ruynd house and to make streight that

which was crooked.’ William Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619, as narrated in

his journal and correspondence, revised edition, London, Oxford Univerisyt Press, 1926: 30

13 Richmond Barbour. ‘Power and Distant Display: Early English “Ambassadors” in Moghal India.’ Huntington

Library Quarterly, 61 (3/4) 1998: 353. 14

Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619: 83. 15

Barbour. ‘Power and Distant Display: Early English “Ambassadors” in Moghal India.’ 345.

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in that he was a player in a scene and had to keep up the character throughout if it was to be

believed. This maintenance of character and the constant need to portray the dignity of King

James I is certainly evident in the writings of Roe and colors many of his anecdotes and

entries detailing his time at Jahangir’s court. Roe was one of those who did not speak a

language that could benefit him in his dealings with the Mughals and the frustrations which

arose from this then impacted his writings. He understood at what a disadvantage he stood,

but at the same time relished standing apart from those who could speak the language as he

considered them to be at times little better than court satellites.

In the writings of European travelers to the Mughal realm there can be found a strong sense

of preconceived notions as to what they expected to find and witness in Hindustan, another

factor which affected English views of the Mughals. This took several different forms, one

of which was an un-established idea of the East and, correspondingly, preconceived notions

of the luxury, excess and debauchery they would encounter there. This then further

contributed by reinforcing the idea that the English had a superior culture that was civilized,

ordered and composed of individuals who practiced a proper religion. The ‘barbaric’ notions

of the Muslims and Hindus were regularly juxtaposed against the more civilized, true religion

of Christianity. In fact, the superiority of the English was presented in such a way that

activities, habits, laws or traits of Mughal citizens were typically contrasted with the

corresponding activities or beliefs in England, and were generally found wanting. In certain

cases this was not what occurred; take, for example, the writings of Edward Terry, who when

writing on the religious practices of Muslims, praises the devotion he witnesses ‘…to the

shame of us Christians.’16

Regarding the preconceived notions and expectations had of life at the Mughal court, the pre-

formed idea about what the Mughal Empire would be like, and the expectation of luxury and

excess, these led travelers to believe that they knew and, more importantly, understood what

was happening around them. We see in the writings of the English at Jahangir’s court is that

there is an expectation of the exotic and the strange in the Mughal Empire, and so they were

very willing to believe both the best and worst of what they heard, or expected to see. For

example, grand numbers of women in the harem were expected, and so it comes as no

surprise to hear from Thomas Coryat that ‘The King keepeth a thousand women for his own

body….’17

The idea that the Great Mughal had a harem of multiple-hundreds of women, and

16 Terry, ‘A Relation of a Voyage to the Eaterne India’ p. 38. The English were in fact fascinated with the

Mughal world around them, but at times this became a morbid fascination which then served once again to

illustrate that the English and Christendom were superior. Take, for example, the continued fascination with the

habit of Sati; many travelers witnessed such acts and all lamented that it existed and occurred. However, the

fact that everyone did mention or witness the act speaks of the draw it had not only for the English present at the

act itself, but also to the readership who would peruse the writings of the travelers in England.

17 Thomas Coryat, ‘A Letter of Mr. Thomas Coryat, which travailed by Land from Jerusalem to the Court of he

Great Mogol, written to Mr. L. Whitaker. To which are added pieces of two other, to entertayne you with a little

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that the court was one of lascivious, immoral behavior allowed, for example, for Roe to give

his opinion that Shah Jahan was in love with his step-mother, Nur Jahan,18

a patently false

statement, as was the information that Anarkali, a young woman of Akbar’s harem whom he

had walled-up alive, Anarkali, was in fact one of Akbar’s wives.19

(Both these points are

discussed further below). The willingness to believe these types of rumors and slanders, and

the ability to then relate them as fact to one’s audience, confirms that this kind of behavior

was what Europeans expected to happen.20

Another factor to be taken into consideration when discussing how the English viewed the

Mughal court is the social environment in which English travelers found themselves in on

arrival in the Mughal Empire, and how this differed from the society and societal norms from

which they came. There was an awareness of the fact that in this new social, cultural and

diplomatic environment they, the English, were marginal.21

Instead of occupying a central

role within the mind of the Mughals, when they arrived asking for trading rights the English

were tolerated and occasionally considered useful. They did not have the same importance

placed on them as, for example, the Portuguese; the same was therefore true of the British

monarch. Roe’s reaction to this stimulus was to attempt to recreate the English impression

and break this pattern established by his predecessors, and in doing so show the nobles with

whom he had to deal, and Jahangir himself, that the English and their King were to be taken

seriously. From Roe’s own writings we know that he insinuated himself into the court

ceremonial structure in such a way that he was given prime a position of location, and had a

high level of access to the court.22

Roe’s self-importance is contrasted, however, with the

fact that Roe is never mentioned by Jahangir himself in his Jahangirnama, the Emperor’s

autobiography. The omission of Roe contrasts strongly with the importance he placed on

himself within the Mughal court structure and is a truer indicator of how he was viewed while

in the Mughal realm. There is certainly a disparity between what Roe perceived and what

was the reality of his place within Jahangir’s court scene. The contrast with how Roe and

Jahangir viewed the Persian ambassador visualizes this very well. Roe, witnessing the arrival

of the Persian Ambassador, Muhammad Riza Beg, thought that he demeaned himself, the

Indian-Odcombian mirth,’: Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, Vol 4., James MacLehose and Sons,

University of Glasgow Press, Glasgow, 1905, p. 475.

18 Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619: 289-90.

19 William Finch. ‘Observations of William Finch, Merchant, taken out of his large Journall,’ Purchas His

Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas, Vol 4., James MacLehose and Sons, University of Glasgow Press, Glasgow, 1905,

p. 57.

20 It should be sated that for all these points it was not just the English which did this, but many of the other

European visitors and travlers to the mughal realm as well. 21

Barbour. ‘Power and Distant Display: Early English “Ambassadors” in Moghal India.’ 344. 22

The ceremonial of the court dictated that when the Emperor was in darbur or holding audience, the nobles of

the court were placed around the hall in accordance with their rank, and only the closes advisors and highest-

ranking nobles were allowed into the rails closest to the Emperor. It was within these rails that Roe was granted

the right to stand, in addition to not being required to offer Jahangir the customary greeting when brought into

his presences as he found the acts of bowing and touching the floor to be insulting to himself and his King.

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status of his office and his Shah by performing the ritual obeisance of bowing and touching

the floor before Jahangir. Roe himself refused to do this on his arrival at the Mughal court,

and in his own eyes was therefore worthy of his office as well as projecting an increasingly

positive notion of the English court and King James I. Roe then made a comparison between

the language Jahangir used to describe Shah Abbas and that used for James I, and determined

that the Shah was described in less impressive terms, which Roe put down to the behavior of

the respective ambassadors.23

This is contrasted with the reality from the Mughal point of

view; Jahangir wrote of Muhammad Beg Riza’s visit to his court in his memoirs, and

included a copy of the letter he wrote to Shah Abbas within them as well. As noted above,

Roe does not feature in the Jahangirnama at all.

Although the English did not arrive in the Mughal realm as evangelists, they still drew

heavily on their Christianity in their dealings with the Mughals; religion therefore had an

important impact on their perceptions of the Empire. Certain anecdotes which were recorded

must have been done with the sole intention of increasing the perceived importance of

Christianity in the Mughal Empire. These anecdotes further gave the impression that while

the Mughal Padshahs were very open-minded and tolerant of other religions, they considered

Christianity to be superlative. In a passage meant to indicate how strongly Akbar felt about

Christianity, Coryat wrote that the only thing Akbar ever denied his mother was her request

to have the Bible tied around a donkey’s neck and parade it around the town in retaliation for

the fact that the Portuguese had done this to a copy of the Qur’an. Coryat reported that Akbar

denied this request by saying ‘...that God would not suffer the sacred Booke of his Truth to be

contemned amongst the Infidels.’24

This was quite a masterful stroke of reporting, for in one

instance Coryat not only managed to send the message that Akbar considered the Bible to be

as important as the Qur’an, but also that it was the Portuguese, the enemy of the English, who

were the infidels responsible for such a heinous act.

IV. Perceptions relayed as fact to Europe

Having discussed some of the reasons for why the English travelers to Jahangir’s court wrote

of it as they did, let us know examine some instances in which these perceptions resulted in

the creation of false rumors which were then relayed to England as factual information.

At times there appears to have been a calculated decision to incorporate certain words or to

convey certain ideas. For example, in a letter Roe wrote directly to King James I we see that

the letter is laced with language meant to convey that the Mughal Emperor and Empire were

vastly inferior to that of England and the English Monarch. Roe first stated that much of the

23 Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619: 264.

24 Coryat, ‘A Letter of Mr. Thomas Coryat, which travailed by Land from Jerusalem to the Court of he Great

Mogol,’: p. 490.

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Mughal Empire’s reputation was due to fame, and that it did not live up to the reality of it.25

He then went on to note that while the Mughal Prince (and note the choice of title: Prince, not

King or Emperor) may be the mightiest in Asia, there is so much wrong with the method of

government, there are no laws or policies, too many religions, poor constructions, and

barbaric customs, the result of which is that Roe cannot wait to leave the Mughal lands and

return to England and see the face of the King.26

Roe’s lack of awareness of the makeup of the court leads him to make some untrue claims

about Jahangir. For examples, he calls Jahangir an atheist, and writes that he was brought up

without any religion at all. He claims this on the basis that while Jahangir makes the Muslim

profession of faith he also keeps the holidays and celebrates the holy days of the Hindus.27

While true that Jahangir would have celebrated these, the reason was not due to a lack of

religion on his part but to the fact that his extended family though marriage was Hindu, and

that this religious group also comprised a large percentage of the court nobility.

Religion was the impetus for another ‘fact’ of the Mughal court that arrived in Europe.

Hawkins writes that the locals were concerned that a Christian had become so close to the

emperor and so they tried to oust him from his place in the court.28

The importance the

English placed on themselves as being instigators of Christianity at the Mughal court was, at

the time, a direct jab at the Portuguese, who had been at the Mughal court since the reign of

Akbar. Hawkins and Finch both considered the ‘conversion’ of three of Jahangir’s nephews

to Christianity to be due to the English presence, which directly implies that it had nothing to

do with the prevalent, more long-standing presence of the Portuguese fathers at the court.

Finch relayed that Hawkins considered the conversion to be an honor to England because he

carried the flag of Saint George before the children on their way to the church.29

However,

from the same passage we are told that the Christian names given to the children all began

with ‘Don’ (Don Philippo, Don Carlo and Don Henrico), a Portuguese adjunct to the names,

and that the Jesuit Fathers were to be the ones responsible for daily teaching the children

about how to be good Christians.30

From these facts it would appear that in truth it was the

Portuguese and the Jesuit fathers who had much more influence in convincing the emperor to

allow his nephews to be converted to Christianity, rather than the English.

25 Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619: p. 102.

26 Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619. 102. ‘But the government so uncertayne,

without written law, without policye, the customs mingled with barbarisme, religions infinite, the buildings of

mudd (except the Kings howses and some few others): that even this greatness and wealth that I edmired in

England is wher I see yt, almost contemptible, and turns myne eyes with infinite longings to see Your Majesties

face and happiness...’ 27

Ibid: 276. 28

Hawkins, ‘Captaine William Hawkins, his Relations of the Occcurents which happened in the time of his

residence in india, in the Country of the Great Mogoll.’ 17. 29

Finch. ‘Observations of William Finch, Merchant, taken out of his large Journall.’40. 30

Ibid. 41.

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Christian beliefs obviously influenced the English at the court very strongly, as exemplified

again by the following. It was known that Muslims were traditionally circumcised at birth,

and if not, there faith was considered to be in doubt. Thomas Coryat relayed a rumor that

Jahangir was uncircumcised, and gave this report further distinction by claiming that the

Emperor was the only Muslim prince rumored to be in such a state.31

What would have been

the reason for relaying such a rumor? It can be interpreted in the following manner. By

remaining uncircumcised, it meant that from an early age Jahangir was not touted as a devout

Muslim, and, therefore, that there was either more reason to suppose that he may eventually

be open to conversion to Christianity, or that he would be more sympathetic to the plight of

the European Christians who were now coming to ask for the rights to trade.

Indicative of the wide breadth of information which was perceived as correct and which then

made its way into the realm of truth is the reputed way by which Akbar died. Terry relates

that when Akbar was put out with one of his nobles he would give him a poisoned pill by the

method of having another, non-lethal pill which looked the same to take himself so that the

noble would not get suspicious. However, one day it happened that Akbar took the wrong

pill, which killed him within a few days.32

This propensity to believe in the radical and mystical accounts that were heard or created

must have found a resonance in the minds of these English travelers as they then repeated the

rumors for the benefit of those they wrote their letters to, or for the readers of their accounts

once they were published in England. One of the more outlandish rumors repeated by Coryat

was that Akbar was versed in the arts of sorcery, proven by the fact that one day cut off his

chief queen’s head and subsequently reattached it with magic.33

Another example in which a surmise or rumor becomes fact is in the case of William Finch

writing about how Jahangir came to the throne. He writes that Prince Salim was in revolt

against Akbar, which was true, and that Salim’s son, Khusrau, had been named by Akbar as

his successor.34

This was true up to a point, which is to say that Khusrau was the preferred

choice by Akbar during this period but was not formally named as the heir. Finch then goes

on to write that Akbar died while Salim was still in revolt against him, and that Salim then

took the throne by force from Khusrau.35

This was not the case, as Salim was reconciled with

Akbar before Akbar’s death, and named by Akbar as his heir. It is true that Khusrau then

revolted against Jahangir as he had expectations of the throne, but there was no case of

Jahangir defeating his own son to claim the throne.

31 Coryat, ‘A Letter of Mr. Thomas Coryat, which travailed by Land from Jerusalem to the Court of he Great

Mogol.’ 474

32 Terry, ‘A Relation of a Voyage to the Eaterne India.’ 51.

33 Coryat, ‘A Letter of Mr. Thomas Coryat, which travailed by Land from Jerusalem to the Court of he Great

Mogol.’ 489. 34

Finch. ‘Observations of William Finch, Merchant, taken out of his large Journall.’50. 35

Ibid.

11

Yet another instance of such rumors becoming fact has to do with a willingness to believe the

more salacious gossip surrounding the court. Finch writes of the myth of Anarkali, reported

to have been a young woman in Akbar’s harem who, on exchanging glances with Prince

Salim in front of Akbar, was walled up alive as punishment. Salim was said to have been so

distraught by this that upon coming to the throne one of his first acts as Jahangir was to order

the construction of a grand tomb for her in Lahore. Finch identifies Anarkali as one of

Akbar’s wives and not as one of the girls from his harem, and so states that the Prince was

having an interlude with his step-mother!36

Writing a few years after Finch, Terry gives

another account of Anarkali which could be interpreted as a different story. Terry still refers

to her as one of Akbar’s wives, but writes that Akbar had threatened to disinherit Salim

because he had abused Anarkali.37

This implies that there was more of an inappropriate

behavior on the part of Salim and not Anarkali, and reiterates the fact that she was one of

Akbar’s wives, not a member of the harem.

These types of rumors were also prevalent regarding the harem and the ‘unnatural’

occurrences which could happen there. For example, Coryat tells that in the annual fair

within the palace grounds in which the ladies of the harem were able to go and make

purchases, that anything brought into the makeshift bazaar of a ‘virill’ shape would be cut

and made jagged because the king was jealous that they may be put to unnatural use.38

Continuing in this vein we have a rumor reported by Roe that was patently false. He

intimates that there was something between Shah Jahan and his step-mother, Nur Jahan. Just

before Shah Jahan was to leave for his campaign against the Deccan Roe went to see him

about the collection of a debt and wrote of Shah Jahan that: ‘...I found some inward trouble

now and then assayle him, and a kind of brokenness and distraction in his thoughts,

unprovidedly and amasedly answering sutors, or not hearing. If I can judge any thing, hee

hath left his hart among his fathers women, with whom he hath liberty of conversation.

Normahall in the English coach the day before visited him and tooke leave. She gave him a

cloake all embrodered with pearle, diamonds, and rubyes; and carried away, if I err now, his

attention to all other business.’39

The rumors and reports conveyed to England were not always of such a tone, however. At

times they had a more historical bent. One rumor claimed by Edward Terry and then later

supported by two other European travelers, an Englishman and a Frenchman, was that

Jahangir decided that he would be buried in Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra when he himself

died;40

this did not happen in the end and a new tomb was built for him in Shahdara, in

Lahore. Another inaccurate rumor concerning the Sikandra tomb of Akbar is that Akbar

36 Terry, ‘A Relation of a Voyage to the Eaterne India.’ 57.

37 Ibid. 51.

38 Coryat, ‘A Letter of Mr. Thomas Coryat, which travailed by Land from Jerusalem to the Court of he Great

Mogol.’ 491. 39

Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615-1619: 289-90. 40

Terry, ‘A Relation of a Voyage to the Eaterne India.’ 37.

12

himself began it, again reported by Terry, but from Jahangir’s own memoirs we are told that

he ordered the tomb constructed after he took the throne.

IV. Conclusion

The contradiction felt by the English in their dealings with the non-European world has been

aptly summed up by Richmond Barbour in his discussion on the journal of Anthony Marlow,

a member of the East India Company: ‘As he oscillates between Anglocentrism and

admirations of difference, claims of achievement and confessions of need, Marlowe vividly

documents the Jacobean para- dox of expansive insularity: the mariners repeatedly found

themselves desperate for help from others whom they preferred to think unfortunate for not

being English.’41

While able to touch on only a few reasons for and examples of English perceptions of

Jahangir’s court, it is clear that there were many reasons, influences and circumstances that

affected how these travel writers chose to describe and convey what they thought of the

Mughal court, its nobles and the Emperor himself. England would go on to have a greater

impact that the seventeenth-century travelers of the nation would have ever envisioned, but it

seems clear that when exploring how the initial reputation of the Mughal Empire was created

in England, through the writings of the English in Mughal Hindustan, there were many

different factors that came into play.

41 Richmond Barbour. ‘The East India Company Journal of Anthony Marlowe, 1607-1608.’ The Huntington

Library Quarterly, 71, 2. 2008: p. 257

13

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