Shah Jahan, also called the "Great Mughal," succeeded his father, Jahangir. Like his ancestors, he was interested in the arts, especially jewelry and architecture. Shah Jahan is probably best remembered as the builder of the Taj Mahal, a mausoleum for his favorite wife. Shah Jahan also commissioned pictures of state occasions, battles, and family celebrations, providing a glimpse of life in seventeenth-century India.

European merchants and emissaries were impressed by the opulence and sophistication of the royal Rajput and Mughal cities. Niccolò Manucci, an artilleryman and physician at the mid-seventeenth-century Mughal court, wrote:

"I assert that in the Mughal Kingdom the nobles, and above all the king, live with such ostentation that the most sumptuous of European courts cannot compare in richness and magnificence with the luster beheld in the Indian court."

Construction during the reign of Shah Jahan: