The Art of the Book in Early Modern Kashmir

In 1752 CE, as the Mughal empire was unravelling across the vast territories it had once ruled in South Asia, it also lost control of its northernmost ṣubah (province), the Himalayan valley of Kashmir. For more than two centuries beginning with the collapse of the Kashmiri Sultanate (1339–1586 CE) to the invading armies of the fourth Mughal emperor Jalāl-al Dīn Akbar (r. 1556–1605 CE), the land had remained a prized possession of the Mughals. Following the conquest, for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Kashmir emerged as a preferred visiting place for Mughal emperors as well as their entourages, comprising members of the imperial household and nobility. Despite the hazardous and time-consuming journey across treacherous mountainous passes connecting Kashmir with the imperial cities of Lahore, Delhi and Agra in the plains, this was a much-anticipated journey for the court. ¹ The Mughal engagement with Kashmir was posited on imagining the land as a terrestrial paradise-firdous. ²