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Solomonic Angels in a Mughal Sky: The Wall Paintings of the Kala Burj at the Lahore Fort Revisited and Their Reception in Later South Asian and Qajar Art

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Spirits in Transcultural Skies

Abstract

In this paper, I shall discuss how angels or winged spirits appear in the art of the Mughal Empire. The Mughals, the Muslim dynasty which was in power in India from 1526 to 1858, were paradigmatic in many of their formulations, and brilliantly expressed their ideas in the visual arts. Since they ruled as Muslim elite over a vast empire of peoples of different beliefs and cultures, they were concerned with addressing the widest possible audience and, in order to achieve this, developed a cosmopolitan imperial rhetoric which also informed their artistic programs. Thus following Mughal artistic interests, as is true of an investigation of winged spirits in general, will often be a cross-cultural journey.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The article on “Jahangir and the Angels: Recently Discovered Wall Paintings under European Influence in the Fort of Lahore” was reprinted in Koch (2001, 12–37). For a more extensive discussion and detailed references consult this publication.

  2. 2.

    There are also traces of wall paintings with Christian subjects in other buildings of the Lahore fort. Best preserved besides the Kala Burj are those in the bangla-shaped pavilion called Seh-Dara further east on the north front of the fort. See Beach (1992, 86–89); see also Cooper (1993). He argues not very convincingly, contradicting himself, against my interpretation of the program of the paintings of the Kala Burj. Khalid (2010) presents a detailed study of the Christian figures in the so called Seh-Dara pavilion.

  3. 3.

    For a color illustration see Ettinghausen (1961, pl. 12), but one needs a magnifying glass to make out the cherub heads.

  4. 4.

    On this point, see Stronge (2002, 168–170), where she compares the marginal illustrations of the Wantage and the Kevorkian Album with the ornament on Akbar’s cenotaph (ca. 1611–1613).

  5. 5.

    See for example the tiny paris holding gazelles on the spandrels of the gate of the Agra fort under construction on a page from the Akbarnama in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, painted by Miskina with Sarwan and Tulsi Kurd, 1590–95, see Koch (2006, 82). Individual paris holding Solomonic animals or objects begin to occur in Timurid and Turkman painting and seem to have been particularly popular in Ottoman drawings, see e.g. a beautiful pari holding a peacock, end of sixteenth century, in Taylor and Jail (2001, cat. no. 198). The authors are not aware of the Solomonic connotation of the figure.

  6. 6.

    Jean Philippe Vogel published his Tile-mosaics of the Lahore Fort in 1920.

  7. 7.

    Thackston (in Jahangir 1999, 264) translates the passage: “would get on my flying carpet like Solomon and fly away,” but the Persian text (Jahangir 1980, 262) says “takht-i bad” which means “throne of the wind.”

  8. 8.

    The work was translated and published in 3 vols: vol. 1 by H. Blochmann (second edition revised and edited by D. C. Phillot (Calcutta 1927)); vols 2 and 3 by H. S. Jarrett (second edition corrected and further annotated by J. Sarkar (Calcutta 1948–49)). All three volumes were reprinted in New Delhi 1977–78. For a new translation of the passage see Koch (2010, 277).

  9. 9.

    Cooper (1993, 16), mentions the Wazir Khan angels briefly and shows a line drawing of one of them.

  10. 10.

    See the chapter “Surpassing Invention: Painted Decoration under Bir Singh Dev,” in Rothfarb (2012), especially pl. 6.1 showing riders on dragons catching gazelles below a solar motif among foliage and birds in the spandrels of the gate, and pl. 6. 10 showing a painted relief of the rasalila, the circular moonlight dance of Krishna and the cow herd girls on a ceiling of the palace.

  11. 11.

    I have also consulted Tushingham (1972, 121–132).

  12. 12.

    For a discussion of this throne see Koch (2001, 104–111).

  13. 13.

    I thank the artist for providing me with two still images of the video reproduced as my Figs. 12 and 13.

  14. 14.

    See note 1 above.

  15. 15.

    Shahzia Sikander does not copy the putto angel of the descent of the cross but an angel of the victory type with a long garment and blowing a trumpet, which is more closely related to the angels on the outer wall of the Lahore fort.

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Acknowledgement

I thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for a grant to support my project “Mughal Palaces: The Palaces and Gardens of Shah Jahan (rul. 1628-58)” (Project Nr. P 21480-G21) which I carry out as a senior researcher of the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2009–2014). I prepared the present article in the context of this project.

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  1. Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Universität Wien, Universitätscampus Hof 9, Spitalgasse 2, 1090, Wien, Austria

    Ebba Koch

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  1. Cultural and Religious History of South Asia, Heidelberg University, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, Germany

    Niels Gutschow

  2. Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe", Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Katharina Weiler

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Koch, E. (2015). Solomonic Angels in a Mughal Sky: The Wall Paintings of the Kala Burj at the Lahore Fort Revisited and Their Reception in Later South Asian and Qajar Art. In: Gutschow, N., Weiler, K. (eds) Spirits in Transcultural Skies. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11632-7_7

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