The Twilight of Mughal Delhi

In the 1730s, the Mughal Empire was still the richest place in Asia.

Caravans of pilgrims, merchants and aristocrats trekked across the deserts of Rajasthan or the scrub of the Doab for just a glimpse of its glittering capital of Delhi.

It had been in decline for decades and was racked by instability, but in recent years a new Emperor called Muhammad Shah ‘Rangeela’ (the colourful) had stabilised the realm.

Scholars are now reassessing Rangeela's rule as one of the great periods of Indian painting.

Moreover it was Rangeela’s court that first elevated the sitar and tabla to an imperial genre of music, and the courtesans who played them grew more powerful than ever.

“This was the age of the great courtesans, whose beauty and notorious coquettishness were celebrated across South Asia. Ad Begum would turn up stark naked at parties, but so cleverly painted that no one would notice: ‘she decorates her legs with beautiful drawings in the style of pyjamas instead of actually wearing them; in place of the cuffs she draws flowers and petals in ink exactly as is found in the finest cloth of Rum."

Many of the most erotic poems in Indian history were composed at this time, and the Emperor himself would commision a portrait of himself making love so as to prove his virility to the court. It was a very different world from the reign of Rangeela's predecessor, the puritanical Aurangzeb.

As Delhi’s decadence reached its pinnacle, rumours began to float around that the new ruler of Persia, Nader Shah, intended to “pluck some golden feathers” from the Mughal peacock.

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