Juan Cole: Jesus and Mary in Paintings of the Mughal Court
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Here’s a Christmas entry. The Mughal dynasty, originating in what is now Uzbekistan, ruled India from 1526 until the 18th century, though the dynasty continued under British rule until 1857. Some of the members of the royal family were remarkably open-minded about religion, being a Muslim minority in a sea of Hindus and members of other religions. Indeed, most people in the Mughal bureaucracy were Hindus, and the Rajput Hindu cavalry was a key element of its military. It was not so much a Muslim empire, though Muslim rulers were at the top of it, as a multicultural one.
The ruler Akbar (r.
1556-1605), a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, invited to his court holy men
from the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Zoroastrian communities where they held
dialogues on the truth. When Akbar conquered Gujarat, he encountered Portuguese
Christians based at the colony of Goa, and invited some Jesuits to his court.
At one point he commissioned them to write a Persian account of the life of
Jesus. Jesus is recognized as a messenger of God in the Qur’an, but the Muslim
tradition was often chary of reading the Gospels. Although the Gospels were
praised in the Qur’an, as well, some medieval Muslim thinkers developed a
doctrine that their text had been corrupted by later interpolations. The Jesuit
“Mirror of Holiness” is a short illustrated manuscript with early modern
European illustrations, including of the birth of Christ…
https://www.juancole.com/2021/12/nativity-paintings-muslim.html
Sameer Khan: Dara Shukoh and the struggle of liberal Islam
Book Review - Supriya Gandhi’s Biography of Dara Shukoh Separates the Man From the Myth
The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European
Human, all-too human? Anastasia
Filippovna’s ‘Portrait of Christ’
