Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings

Jahangir sits on a throne shaped like an hourglass, a halo of sun and crescent moon behind his head, and hands a book to a white-bearded Sufi, Shaikh Husain. Waiting below are an Ottoman sultan, King James I of England, and, at bottom left, the painter himself holding up a picture of his own.

The point is in the order of the queue. The emperor gives his attention to the holy man and none to the monarchs. The inscription on the hourglass wishes the shah a reign of a thousand years.

Bichitr borrowed freely. James I is copied from a portrait by John de Critz that the English ambassador Thomas Roe brought to the court; the sultan follows a type from Giovanni Bellini; the cupids and the Venetian-style carpet are European too. Putting himself in the corner became a habit later Mughal painters adopted.