Velvet and Silk Carpet

Carpet

Jahangir, on a New Year's day, visited his brother-in-law Asaf Khan, who had covered the road between his house and the palace with gold brocade and velvet. This delicately sumptuous floor spread introduces us to an extraordinary tale of success at the Mughal court—and to the Iranian taste of Asaf Khan's sister, Nur-Jahan, the favorite wife of Emperor Jahangir, whose influence on Mughal art was almost as great as it was on the emperor.

Born with the name Mehr un-Nisa, she was the daughter of Ghiyath Beg, an aspiring but untried Iranian nobleman, who brought her to Mughal India with the rest of his family. She became the young bride of Sher Afkan, whose accidental death in 1607 led to her moving from Bengal to the Mughal court as lady-in-waiting to one of Akbar's widows. There, in 1611, at a fancy bazaar at which the ladies coyly played at being shopkeepers, selling trinkets to the emperor and his family and to the nobles of the court, she met Jahangir, a mutually soul-stirring encounter. One of the great royal marriages of world history soon followed; and Mehr un-Nisa received the title Nur-Mahal (Light of the Palace), which was soon increased in refulgence to Nur-Jahan (Light of the World). Magnetic, witty, a crack shot with a matchlock, artistically discriminating, hardly selfless but socially responsible (she established institutions for orphaned girls), she was above all subtle. And she enchanted her imperial husband, at whose side she was always present. When he, a Muslim ruler, struck coins bearing his own effigy holding a wine cup, it was considered extreme; but it was far more irregular when coins were minted in her name.

The Metropolitan Museum carpet, with its scintillating eight-lobed medallions and floral rosettes, is one of a set of three (with those in the Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, and the Musee du Louvre, Paris) that bring to mind the artistic character of one of the finest Mughal buildings, the tomb commissioned and closely supervised between 1622 and 1624 by Nur-Jahan for her mother and her father, l'timad ad-Daula (Pillar of Government), one of Jahangir's most powerful nobles. Known for its pictra dura inlays in muted, often mottled buff, black, gray, and brown stone, it is preferred by many connoisseurs to the better-known Taj Mahal, the tomb of his granddaughter. Especially marvelous is the upper chamber, containing the cenotaphs of the late chief minister and his wife. The walls are huge, richly geometric jalis, and the floor a stunningly bold, vital, but stately arabesque in stone inlay for which the building is especially admired. The mind and eye that conceived this magnificent room-in which constant changes of light, by day and night, scatter rays through the screens, lending unearthly voices to the fugal pattern of the arabesques—would also have enjoyed the Metropolitan's superb carpet, with its once shimmering silver and gold threads playing against red velvet.


[Stuart Cary Welch 1985]

Royal House of Saxony(from 1683); [ J. Glückselig, Vienna, until 1927; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "INDIA !," September 14–September 14, 1985, no. 136.

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930. pp. 217–18, ill. fig. 132 (b/w).

Reath, Nancy Andrews, and Eleanor B. Sachs. Persian Textiles and Their Technique from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Centuries Including a System for General Textile Classification. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.

Harari, Ralph, and Richard Ettinghausen. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Arthur Upham Pope. vol. I–VI. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. ill. vol. VI, pl. 1068.

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 266, ill. fig. 174 (b/w).

Welch, Stuart Cary. India! Art and Culture 1300–1900. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985. no. 136, pp. 206–8, ill. p. 207 (black, color detail).

Welch, Stuart Cary. The Islamic World. vol. 11. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. pp. 159–61, ill. fig.122 (color).