Capture of Daulatabad Fort in 1633: a) Emperor Shah Jahan Watches the Assault on Daulatabad Fort; b) Capture of Daulatabad Fort, Folios from the Padshahnama (Chronicle of the King of the World)

* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Capture of Daulatabad Fort in 1633: a) Emperor Shah Jahan Watches the Assault on Daulatabad Fort; b) Capture of Daulatabad Fort, Folios from the Padshahnama (Chronicle of the King of the World)

India, Delhi, Mughal Empire, circa 1800
Drawings; watercolors
Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
a) Sheet: 11 7/16 x 6 1/2 in. (29.05 x 16.51 cm); Image: 6 7/8 x 4 1/16 in. (17.46 x 10.31 cm); b) Sheet: 11 7/16 x 6 1/2 in. (29 x 16.5 cm); Image: 6 3/4 x 4 3/8 in. (17.14 x 11.11 cm)
Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch Collection (M.45.3.545a-b)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

The Padshanama (Chronicle of the King of the World) was written by Abdul Hamid Lahawri (or Lahori, d. 1654). In 1648 he completed the first two decades of the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan (r....
The Padshanama (Chronicle of the King of the World) was written by Abdul Hamid Lahawri (or Lahori, d. 1654). In 1648 he completed the first two decades of the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658). The original album, the Padshahnama of 1656-1657 now in The Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RCIN 1005025), narrates only the first decade of Shah Jahan’s reign. The colophon states that the text was copied by the scribe Muhammed-Amin of Mashhad in AH 1067 (1657-1658 CE). Presumably due to the usurpation of Prince Aurangzeb (1618-1707) in 1658, the album was likely never assembled in Shah Jahan’s lifetime. Milo Beach (1997) hypothesizes that it was assembled between the death of Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) in 1707 and the sack of Delhi in 1739 by the Iranian King Nadir Shah (r. 1736-1747). LACMA’s six double-paged folios are from a manuscript attributed to circa 1800 during the reign of Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1760-1806). Rather than the earlier individualized realistic representations being copied, this later manuscript has new illustrations with generic figures and settings. This double-page folio illustrates the capture of Daulatabad Fort near Aurangabad, Maharashtra in 1633. On the right (a), Shah Jahan oversees the assault mounted on a steed with barding or body armor. In the facing page on the left (b), cannons are fired at the fort, which is rendered as a fortified palace rather than the actual dramatic mountain fortress. See also M.45.3.542a-b and M.45.3.543a-b.
More...