Adnan Rashid – The Great Mughals Exhibition
AI: Summary ©
The speaker is impressed by Mughal art's large number of artists and historic works, including a collection of Royal L individuals and a painting of famous Mughal artist. They also see a range of Mughal art works, including a collection of Mughal thirteenth- never again, the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never, and the first Mughal thirteenth- never
AI: Summary ©
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, everyone.
I am Adnan Rashid, and I am here
in London, V&A Museum, Victorian Albert.
I am visiting this very important exhibition that's
taking place on Mughal history.
As you can see behind me, the great
Mughals, and if you come with me very
quickly, Mughals ruled India for nearly 300 years.
You can see at the peak of its
power, Mughal Empire was this big in India,
in the Indian subcontinent, okay?
And this exhibition is about Mughal art, Mughal
architecture, and Mughal paintings, Mughal manuscripts.
So this is a worth-visiting exhibition.
If you are in London, you must visit.
We will give you a quick tour of
this museum.
You can see these giant Quran manuscript pages
with excellent artwork.
It's gold illuminated.
This is beautiful calligraphy in different scripts.
Amazing.
You can see Naskh and Muhakkak.
These are different scripts.
This actually belonged to the royal family.
This particular manuscript belonged to the kings once
upon a time.
You can see some of the stamps there.
This is what the manuscript would have looked
like from inside.
This is what the calligraphy would have looked
like.
And then there are artworks, paintings, miniatures, you
can see on the wall.
So the Mughals ruled India from, to be
precise, from 1526 to 1857, more than 300
years, of course with fluctuating level of power,
okay?
At the peak of the Mughal Empire, you
can say four emperors ruled from Humayun to
Akbar to Jahangir to Shah Jahan and to
Aurangzeb.
Up to Aurangzeb Alamgir, who died in 1707,
the Mughal Empire was at its peak and
then started a sharp decline for the next
50 years.
Okay, so you can see some manuscripts made
in the in the Indian subcontinent during the
Mughal period when the Mughals were ruling.
These are very important books.
Okay, and this one is in particular very
special, Gulistan Rose Garden of Saadi.
It was a very common text, character building
text.
It had stories and you know, anecdotes to
teach people how to build character and take
lessons.
And we have some of the histories of
the Mughal Empire.
This is Akbar Nama that was produced during
the reign of Emperor Akbar.
Okay, and that's Babur Nama, the memoirs of
Emperor Babur, the first Mughal Emperor who ruled
from 1526 to 1530.
Let's move on.
Let's go quickly.
So it's a very quick tour and for
a detailed visit, you're gonna have to come
here yourself.
I'm just sharing some of the gems here.
Look at these.
Jewel-studded.
I think these are ceremonial weapons.
They're not for use in war as you
can tell.
They were worn for ceremonies.
Jewel-studded, gold-inlaid.
Amazing, absolutely beautiful weapons.
Okay, let's go.
Keep moving.
Let's go.
So, it's a very quick visit.
I don't want to make too much noise,
not talk too loud because there are so
many people around me and they are trying
to look at some of these absolutely amazing
gems from the Mughal Empire and a lot
of this is artwork basically.
As you can see, miniatures produced during the
Mughal period.
I'm going to show you some of those
important ones very quickly.
This is very special to me.
This is a collection of Emperor Jahangir's Zodiac
Moors.
Moor was a gold coin produced during the
Mughal period.
It was about 10 grams of gold, between
10 to 11 grams of gold and this
Zodiac collection was made by Emperor Jahangir's orders.
It has Zodiac signs.
He clearly believed in this stuff.
So, he produced this collection.
It's very difficult to get it in one
place at one time.
So, that's a very nice example there and
again, bejeweled weapons with a lot of gold
and emeralds and rubies studied on the hills.
You can see, magnificent, absolutely.
So, I really strongly advise everyone to visit
this museum, specifically for this gallery or for
this exhibition.
It's temporary.
It's going on till March, if I'm not
mistaken, 2025, March 2025.
And then, we have some amazing paintings, miniatures
from the Mughal period.
There was a very famous Mughal artist called
Bichitr and he has painted this very famous,
well-known paintings on the Mughal Empire.
This is an imagined depiction of Khwaja Moinuddin
Chishti, who lived from 1143 to 1236.
His date of death is very easy to
remember.
It's 1236.
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti was a saintly figure in
India and he is buried in Ajmer in
India.
This is Jahangir, Emperor Jahangir, depicted by that
contemporary painter called Bichitr.
Here also is a very famous painting of
Jahangir, standing on top of the world, shooting
an arrow at his enemies.
In this case, Malik Ambar, who was a
South Indian general.
Okay, so let's move on.
We keep moving on.
There is a lot to see here.
We cannot possibly show you every single item,
but these are very important.
This is some of the Mughal armour.
You can see how lavishly decorated this is.
Swords, gold inlaid sword handles, sword cases, absolutely
beautiful.
Imagine the artwork that's gone into it.
The reason why I'm showing you this is
to get you a sense of appreciation as
to the power, the magnificence and the achievements
of the Muslim civilisation, in particular, Mughal India.
The Mughals were a part of the Muslim
civilisation and they represented the Muslim civilisation for
at least 300 years in India.
In that period, what was achieved in terms
of art, literature, book production, the creation of
weapons with artistic expressions, this is so amazing.
It's unbelievable.
I wish I could show you every single
piece, but we're going to have to move
on very quickly.
Again, there are some very famous paintings here.
You can see here, here you have three
Mughal emperors.
You have Akbar in the middle, you have
Jahangir and you have Shah Jahan.
Akbar ruled from 1556 to 1605.
Then his son Jahangir ruled from 1605 to
1627 and from 1627 to 1658 was Shah
Jahan.
So, three emperors.
Here you have another very interesting depiction of
the origins of the Mughal Empire.
Timur, Timalayan, the founder or the forefather of
Babur, the first Mughal emperor and his son
Hamayun sitting there.
These are some absolutely amazing depictions of Emperor
Shah Jahan.
As you can see here, this is Emperor
Shah Jahan who was a very, very powerful
Mughal emperor who ruled from 1627 to 1658.
He was the emperor for nearly 30 years.
He was the father of the famous Aurangzeb
Alamgir.
Much maligned and much hated Mughal emperor in
the Indian subcontinent, especially in the current anti
-Islamophobic environment in India.
This is again a very beautiful depiction of
Shah Jahan, Emperor Shah Jahan.
And we have also Aurangzeb here, Aurangzeb Alamgir,
one of the most powerful Mughal emperors.
This is Aurangzeb Alamgir.
It says there, Shabih, it says there on
the side, Shabih Aurangzeb Alamgir.
Again the name of the painter is there
as well.
So this is a model, a replica of
the grave or cenotaph of Mumtaz Mahal, the
lady who was buried in Taj Mahal.
Taj Mahal was built for this lady.
She was the beloved wife of Shah Jahan
and he built Taj Mahal in her loving
memory.
And this is the cenotaph of her grave,
her tomb.
So if we move forward, we have some
Mughal jewels here, some emeralds and other precious
stones, precious materials.
Here we have some very special diamonds that
belong to the Mughal treasury once upon a
time.
But there is this one very special object,
it's a spinal, it's a mineral stone if
I understand correctly.
It has the names of the kings it
once belonged to inscribed on it.
So it has the name of Shah Abbas
the Persian, it has the name of Timurlane
or Timur the lame.
It has the name of Mughal Empress Jahangir
and Shah Jahan.
It also has the name of Ahmad Shah
Durrani, once upon a time the king of
Afghanistan.
You can see those inscriptions very clearly.
There in the middle you see Shahrukh Mirza,
Shahrukh the son of Timur the lame, also
called lame.
On the left you see where I'm zooming
in right now, it says Timur Gorkhan, Amir
Timur Gorkhan which is basically Amir Timur.
This is a very special gem that once
belonged to all these Muslim kings from Central
Asia, Persia and the Mughal Empire and later
on the Afghan Empire.
Ahmad Shah Durrani is the last king whose
name is inscribed on the stone on this
side.
If you come on this side and zoom
in please, from this side you can see
the names of the kings.
We're going to try to show you the
name of Ahmad Shah as well.
On the right you see Shah Vilayat, Bandai
Shah Vilayat Abbas, you can see that's the
Persian king Shah Abbas.
And then on the top left you see
Ahmad Shah Durrani, you can see the name
clearly inscribed there.
So why am I showing you this everyone?
I'm showing you this so that you realise
how these kings valued these gems, these stones.
They were a symbol of power, a symbol
of wealth, they would even display them publicly
at times.
As you might have seen in the miniatures
or in the pictures of the Mughal Emperors
I showed you earlier, that you see Shah
Jahan wearing all those precious jewels around his
neck.
So this is a very impressive exhibition taking
place in London, Victorian Albert Museum.
And it's going on from November to March
2025.
November 2024 to March 2025, you're most welcome
to watch it.
Just wanted to share this very quickly.
Just to give you a sense of appreciation
for the Muslim civilisation in India in particular
during the Mughal period.
This is a huge cloth, a piece of
cloth from that period.
We can look at the description here.
So this is poppy floor spread from about
1650.
So it's like a floor spread, cotton floor
spreads covered for most of the months of
the year.
This one was probably painted cotton textiles of
a very high quality.
Wall paintings in the city's buildings depict similar
poppies.
And the region was a main source of
poppy growing and the opium trade.
So this is a floor spread, massive floor
spread which is about 400 years old.
So just wanted to share this with you
very quickly.
Thank you so much for watching.
Visit if you are in London, it's worth
visiting.
There's a small fee to enter, otherwise the
museum is free.
So thank you so much for watching.
Keep watching.
Assalamualaikum.