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Abid

The Decapitation of Khan Jahan Lodi (3 February 1631) c. 1635 - 1650

Painting in opaque watercolour including metallic paints. | 31.8 x 20.0 cm (image) | RCIN 1005025.q

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  • Padshahnamah fol. 94v
    (plate 16)

    The posthumous decapitation of the rebellious nobleman Khan Jahan Lodi.

    Khan Jahan Lodi was an Afghan who had been a close confidant of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and gained increasingly important positions at court. After Prince Khurram (later Emperor Shah-Jahan) rebelled against his father, Jahangir appointed Lodi commander-in-chief of his army, after. He did not support Shah-Jahan as heir and, according to the Padshahnamah text, after many of the Afghan tribes declared allegiance to him following the new Emperor’s accession ‘his brainless head’ became ‘a nest of false and demonic hopes and vain fancies’. In 1629, the former commander fled towards the court of the Nizam Shah in the Deccan but, when Shah-Jahan’s forces closed in, he and his entourage turned north towards the Punjab. They were eventually hunted down and one of his companions, Darya Khan Rohilla, was slain. Khan Jahan escaped but was pursued and eventually killed by Madho Singh on 3 February 1631 at Sihanda in central India. This painting captures the moment that his head was sawn off after the combat.

    All of the action takes place in the foreground: a circle of soldiers surrounding the two who commit the deed. ‘Likeness of the headless’ is written beside Lodi’s face in ink containing gold flecks and, on the sleeve of the soldier crouched over his body, is the inscription shah-jahani, meaning ‘one who owes allegiance to Shah-Jahan’, leaving no doubt as to the imperial nature of the gruesome act. Six other heads are scattered about the painting, including one on a pike and two held by the hair in the clenched fists of soldiers in the foreground – those of Lodi’s son Aziz and Emal. Despite their calm demeanour, not all of the surrounding figures seem able to watch and it is only the grotesque masks decorating the armour of certain individuals to the left and right that appear to react in horror to what is happening. Dressed in a bright orange jama on the right is the Rajput officer Madho Singh, proudly holding the lance with which he fatally struck the Afghan rebel. In the mid-ground, Sayyid Muzaffar Khan of Barha and Abdullah Khan, the leaders of Shah-Jahan’s imperial forces, face each other in a near mirror image. They were well rewarded for their victory, the title Khan-Jahan given to the former as inscribed in the painting on the hilt of his sword. At the apex of the pyramid is a figure looking directly at the viewer with his arms outstretched. He may be Farid, the only son of Lodi to be captured alive, holding his arms up in surrender. He stands directly below a chinar tree, a species brought to India by the Mughals which was often associated with the Timurid dynasty, perhaps a symbol of the absent Emperor. A row of soldiers labelled ‘the world-conquering army of the Second Lord of Conjunction’ appear behind a rocky outcrop in the background.

    The artist Abid signed the work and recorded its completion in Agra: ‘work of slave of the court Abid … [it] attained completion in the city of Akbarabad [Agra].’ Abid was Iranian, the son of the painter Aqa Reza and brother of the more famous Abul-Hasan. He juxtaposes an Iranian conception of space (the landscape divided into three levels with a high horizon line and a typically Iranian gold band of sky) with overt realism in the oozing severed heads surrounded by swarms of blood-filled flies and acutely observed portraits.

    Bibliography:
    Milo Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the world : the Padshahnama, an imperial Mughal manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, 1996
    Saqib Baburi, Beyond the Akbarnamah: Padshahnamahs and Official Regnal Chronography for Shah-Jahan Padshah (r. 1037/1628-1068/1658), 2010.

    Provenance

    Illustration from a Padshahnamah manuscript formerly in the Mughal imperial library and acquired by Asaf al-Dawlah, Nawab of Awadh, c.1780-90; presented by Saadat Ali Khan, Nawab of Awadh, to George III via Lord Teignmouth in June 1799.

  • Medium and techniques

    Painting in opaque watercolour including metallic paints.

    Measurements

    31.8 x 20.0 cm (image)

    58.1 x 36.5 cm (page dimensions)

  • Category
  • Alternative title(s)

    The Death of Khan Jahan Lodi (3 February 1631)


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