Jewels in India's Imperial Crown

By Roderick Conway Morris

LONDON 7 November 2025

V&A, London
Timur handing the Imperial Crown to
Babur in the presence of his son Humayun,
attributed to Govardhan, c. 1630-40

In January 1505 a band of horsemen set out from Kabul. Leaving behind them the barren, snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush, they descended onto the edge of the Indian plain. They were led by the 21-year-old Babur, who years later recorded in his lively memoirs: 'Another world came into view: the grasses, the trees, the animals, the birds, the manners and customs of the people - everything was different. We were amazed, and in truth there was much to be amazed at.'

This was just a hit-and-run raiding party to rustle animals and gather loot before retiring back into Afghanistan. But haunted by his vision of this rich and fertile land, two decades later Babur returned with more ambitions plans - to overthrow the Afghan Sultan of Delhi and make himself the master of Hindustan. When he succeeded in 1526, defeating a mighty army of 100,000 and 1,000 elephants with his 25,000 men, he became the founder of the dynasty that was eventually to rule almost the entire Indian sub-continent. 'The treasures of five kings fell into his hands,' Babur's daughter recounted. 'He gave it all away.'

Babur was descended on his father's side from the 14th-century Mongol warrior Timur, known to the West as Tamerlane; on his mother's side, from the 12th-13th-century Mongol Genghis Khan. But his forebears had long since been absorbed into the culture of the Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia. Indeed, he took a dim view of pure Mongol 'wretches', noting that 'mischief and devastation must always be expected from the Mughal horde.' It was only in the 17th century that Babur's descendants, reclaiming their ancient world-conquering lineage, adopted for themselves this Turkish name for the Mongols.

The stirring story of this empire is now related in an impressive V&A exhibition 'The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence', curated by a team of experts led by Susan Stronge. The nearly 250 artworks and objects from over 25 collections are primarily from the most glorious century of their rule between 1556 and 1658, presided over by the emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

After Babur's death in 1530, his son Humayun proved an inadequate heir. Faced by a challenge from an Afghan warlord, Sher Khan, Humayun, in the words of his personal servant, 'unaccountably shut himself up for a considerable time in his harem, and abandoned himself to every kind of indulgence and luxury.' He was soon driven out of India altogether and took refuge in Iran. However, he made an astonishing comeback in 1555, imitating his father's deeds by defeating a vastly superior Afghan army, he once again ascended the throne in Delhi.

However, he died in an accident six months later, falling down the stairs in his library, and his son Akbar succeeded him in 1556, at the tender age of 13. The reign of Akbar - long regarded as the greatest of all the Mughal emperors - was almost exactly to coincide with those of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and Philip I of Spain (1556-1598).

Akbar inherited the reckless daring of his grandfather Babur, routinely leading his troops from the front in battle, but also his love of the arts, notably of Persian poetry. He was also a brilliant administrator. The Hindu Rajput kingdoms, whose warriors had a fiercesome reputation, were the principal barrier to Mughal expansion. But in 1562 the Rajput Raja of Amber (now Jaipur) offered his daughter in marriage to Akbar.

The match set the tone for all subsequent relations between the Mughals and the Hindus, who formed the vast majority of India's population. Hindus were allowed to thrive in all areas of the military, civil administration and the arts. This even-handed treatment of all his subjects was continued by his son Jahangir and grandson Shah Jahan. Akbar abolished the hated poll tax levied on non-Muslims, celebrated Hindu festivals at court and began to abjure meat, not wanting to make his body 'a tomb for beasts'. For 300 years Muslim rulers in India had pursued policies that allowed them to live in relative peace with their Hindu subjects. The Mughals went further, and by harmonizing their own cultural identity with those of the lands they ruled, created a new civilization.

Akbar inherited a landlocked kingdom, but his conquest of Gujarat in 1572-73 brought it to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Shortly afterwards, with the addition of Bengal, his domains stretched from shining sea to shining sea, opening maritime links to Iran, Arabia and East Africa to the West and Malaya, the Spice Islands and south-east Asia to the East. The Portuguese had begun to settle in India at the beginning of the century, two decades before Babur established himself there. The conquest of Gujarat brought the Mughals close to the Portuguese capital of its State of India, the cosmopolitan trading hub of Goa, which became a conduit for multiple western products, including prints and books. These were soon exercising a powerful influence, especially on Mughal painting, which adopted elements of European perspective, naturalism and motifs.

The sheer sumptuousness of the Mughal court, infinitely greater than anything that could be found in Europe, astonished western visitors. A chronicler of Akbar's reign recorded a tent city, whose state halls alone consisted of 70 rooms, laid with thousands of carpets and decorated with countless costly hangings.

In 1616, Jahangir's minister of state Asaf Khan laid out a welcome carpet of gold brocade and velvet materials for the emperor over a mile long. The Mughals had the pick of the diamonds mined in Golconda, the main global source of these precious stones until the 18th century, in South India and imported massive quantities of other rare stones from the ends of the earth. In contrast to western practices the finest and largest stones were left rough cut, although often engraved, to maintain the maximum weight and emphasise their natural beauty and uniqueness.

The English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, sent to the sub-continent by James I and the newly founded East India Company, described Jahangir in 1617: 'his head, necke, breast, armes, above the elbowes, at the wrists, his fingers every one with at least two or three rings, fettered with chaines, or drilled diamonds, rubies as great as wal-nuts (some greater), and pearls such as mine eyes were amazed at.'

Mughal textiles were no less lavish and luxurious. At first the imperial family continued to wear traditional Central Asian Turkish dress, but Akbar, for example, adopted a Rajput-like turban. The finest diaphanous cotton muslin, of the kind used for the dress of the Mughal Princess, probably Nadir Banu Begum, in an exquisite miniature of c.1630-33, was reputed to be so delicate that moonlight could wear it out.

Babur was buried in a simple grave open to wind, rain and snow in his favourite garden in Kabul. His successors laid out hundreds of lush, well-watered gardens and floral motifs, symbolic of paradise, proliferated on carpets, hangings, tiles, the margins of miniatures and in marble inlays. A Persian inscription in Shah Jahan's Shahjahanabad reads: 'If there is Paradise on Earth, this is it.'

Jahangir married his chief minister Asaf Khan's sister, conferring on her the title of Nur Jahan (Light of the World). Like many aristocratic and royal women, she was highly educated and a patron of the arts. She built a magnificent tomb for her revered parents, had coins struck in her name (normally the prerogative of an independent Muslim ruler), issued royal orders and organized the most spectacular festivities of his reign. She was also a fine shot and hunted with her husband.

Portraits of women, such as the one of Nadir Banu Begum, were relatively rare, but the dynasty's most renowned funerary monument was raised not for an emperor but his consort. When Shah Jahan's wife Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their 14th child in June 1631, such was his grief that contemporaries recorded that half the hairs in his jet-black beard turned white almost overnight. A Rajput prince, Raja Jai Singh of Amber (whence Akbar's Hindu bride had come 70 years before) provided the site on the banks of the Yamuna River in Agra and oversaw the supply of the snow-white marble from the Makrana quarries in Rajasthan. The best stone-cutters and inlayers were brought from far and wide to execute the breathtakingly intricate floral patterns and inscriptions in semi-precious stones. The signatures on some of the stones suggest that most of these masons and craftsmen were Hindus.

Thus, the Taj Mahal stands today as not only the most beautiful monument in the world devoted to a woman, but also bears witness to the Mughal dynasty's fruitful fusion of cultures that produced such remarkable works of art, architecture and artefacts.

'The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence' at the V&A, 9 November 2024 - 5 May 2025

First published: The Lady