Are not these people, who are speaking in various tongues, from Galilee? How is it that each of us hears them speaking in the language to which we were born? Iraqis, Shirvanis, Turanians, Egyptians, inhabitants of Diyarbekir, Africans, Anatolians, Arabs—each of us understands them praising God in our own language.1
This excerpt of the Pentecost story is from the Mir’āt al-quds (Mirror of Holiness), a manuscript commissioned by emperor Akbar of Mughal India, written and translated into Persian by father Jerónimo Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit missionary sent by the Portuguese viceroy, and later copied and illustrated by Mughal court painters for Akbar’s son, emperor Jahangir.2 Fr Xavier’s text is an account of the life of Christ taken from biblical and apocryphal accounts with some of his own comments.3 Because it failed to convert the emperor, it was heavily critiqued.4 Yet, in light of the spiritual environment in which it was created, this manuscript offers insights into the role of art and the imagination in a context of religious dialogue and cross-cultural spiritual formation.
In 1578, Akbar was first introduced to Christianity by a priest yet was left unsatisfied with the priest’s inadequate knowledge of Christianity. He then requested the Portuguese viceroy at Goa ‘send him Jesuits with books and Gospels so that he could “study and learn the law and what is best and most perfect in it”.’5 Three missions were sent during the rules of Akbar and Jahangir in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fr Xavier, chosen for the third mission, was a guest in the Mughal court from 1595 to 1614.6 During his time there, he wrote a collection of works that included the Mir’āt al-quds (presented to Akbar in 1602) as well as texts on a range of secular and religious topics including philosophy and inter-religious dialogue.7 These texts were the first Catholic literature created in the Persian language.8
A Project of Translation
The Mir’āt al-quds was part of the larger Jesuit project to ‘translate’ Christianity into the local culture.9 This project involved not just learning and translating texts into local languages by creating grammars and vocabularies, but contextualizing Scripture and Catholic texts into new literary and artistic forms:
Recognizing that these translations required more than merely linguistic skills, the missionary scholars also took a distinct interest in Hindu literature, especially the popular epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the ancient collection of myths known as Puranas, and the devotional literature of Hindu bhakti religiosity, which they used as literary models for the composition of Christian texts.10
The Jesuits also dialogued with the visual culture of the Mughal empire. Historian Gauvin Alexander Bailey calls the artistic collaboration in Mughal India an ‘extraordinary episode of cultural convergence’ catalyzed by the Jesuits, who facilitated ‘what may well have been the most reciprocal artistic dialogue of any of their world missions.’11
Perhaps the success of this cultural convergence owed to Akbar’s shared passion for translation. During the first Jesuit mission in the 1580s, Akbar ‘established a house of writing (maktab khānah) where court historians and scholars were instructed to translate works into Persian from Sanskrit and other languages.12 This house of writing aimed to make accessible to the Mughal court works from a broad spectrum of learning from the various religions under Akbar’s jurisdiction.13 By translating them into Persian, it also sought to unify the nation through a common language of state and create a Mughal cultural identity with its own artistic and literary forms.14
A Book of Vision
The images and the text of the Mir’āt al-quds incorporate visual practices central to Jesuit and Sufi15 devotion into the work, creating a setting in which the spiritual life could be nurtured through the imagination and senses. Fr Xavier understood images to be a powerful form of universal communication. In his Persian apologetic treatise, The Truth Showing Mirror, he describes the nature of images, comparing them to a book that holds meaning, makes the past present, and mirrors a reality beyond itself. An image, he expresses, can reach beyond the bodily senses to the interior,16 enabling it to ’speak’ on a wholly different plane than verbal communication. It is ‘an assistant to the temperament; a teacher of the intellect; and it depicts intention…. Furthermore, those forms and media [i.e., images] pass deeper into all the interior senses, and the more subtle they are the more easily they enter and take hold, until the intellect becomes aware of these things, like pictures and phantoms.’17 This kind of communication, reaching the inner soul, was spiritually formative.
For the Jesuits, the arts were vital to proselytization since they engaged the imagination in the Scriptures.18 This imaginative encounter with Scripture was rooted in the Jesuit tradition beginning with Ignatius of Loyola, who wrote the Spiritual Exercises as a contemplative guide for spiritual formation. A key practice of Ignatius of Loyola’s exercises is visioning19—calling to the mind’s eye the setting and characters of a biblical narrative in as much detail as is possible: ’when we contemplate Christ our Lord, the representation will consist in seeing in the imagination the material place where the object is that we wish to contemplate.’20
After composing the scene of the narrative in his mind through these imaginative contemplations, one would apply each of the five senses to the narrative being contemplated. 21 Fr Xavier draws on this Ignatian training to guide detailed descriptions of Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus to help the readers place themselves face to face with the characters.22 A reader can almost visualize an icon of Jesus when reading his description:
His countenance is so splendid and full of gravity that those who see him must both love and fear him. His hair is reddish brown and straight to his earlobes, but below his ears it curls in shiny ringlets and hangs below his shoulders. His hair is parted in the middle of his head, in the manner of the Nazarenes. His forehead is broad and flat. His face is without flaw and adorned with a harmonious redness. His gaze is sincere and mature. His nose and mouth cannot be faulted in any way. His beard is full and the color of his hair, and it is parted in two. His eyes are blue and extremely bright. In rebuking or chastising he instills wonder; in teaching and exhorting he is soft of speech and a lover of peace. His face is open, and he is grave…In speech he is measured and grave. He is a man of few words but beautiful among men.23
By sensorily engaging the narrative and characters in this way, readers could personally respond as witnesses from within the world of the text.
Fr Xavier’s Ignatian tradition shared an understanding of transformation that involved imaginative visioning with the interior senses with Sufism. In Islam, what the bodily senses absorbed was filtered through the interior senses and stored in the treasury of the intellect, akin to the process of making and beholding art.24 What a person’s senses perceived about the material world could reveal the nature of the Truth-Reality (haqq and haqīqa): the fundamental order and essence of existence.25 This belief was based in the metaphor expressed by one artist at the time that ’this world is a mirror of the divine world.’26 The mirror was also a key metaphor for understanding how human nature reflects God’s nature.27 In a Persian ontology of creation,
the outer form, perceived through sense-perception, is conceived of as metaphorical (majāzī) because it is a reflection in a lower world of higher truths. The world of meaning is known as ḥaqīqī [Truth-Reality]. The two worlds—formal manifestation and supra-formal abstraction—exist both in the macrocosm of the outer world and within the microcosm of the human individual. They are accessed through an intermediary realm called the Imaginal World or the World of Ideal Forms (ʿālam al-khiyāl or ʿālam al-mīthāl) which is understood to be an isthmus (barzakh).28
God’s qualities are thus reflected in the whole hierarchy of the created world. To glimpse and interpret this world of higher reality, a person must first enter the Imaginal World through sensory devotional practices. According to Akbar’s chronicler, Abu’l Fazl,29 for those who have attuned their senses and imaginations, calligraphy and painting facilitate this movement from the material world perceived by the outer senses to the abstract world of Truth-Reality perceived by the inner understanding:
“What we call form leads us to recognize a body; the body itself leads us to what we call a notion, an idea. Thus, on seeing the form of a letter, we recognize the letter, or a word, and this again will lead us to some idea. Similarly in the case of what people term a picture….A picture (ṣūrat) leads to that which it represents [lit. its own master] and this [leads] to the meaning (maʿnī), just as the shape of a line leads one to letters and words, and from there the sense can be found out. Although in general they make pictures (taṣvīr) of material resemblances, the European masters (kārbardazān-i firang) express with wondrous forms many meanings of the created world and [thus] they lead those who see only the outside of things to a place abounding with Truth-Reality (ḥaqīqat-zar)…. In truth, according to the eyes of the lovers of beauty, forms are the loci for the manifestation of light [lit. the place of manifestation where light is captured]. For the farsighted ones, this cup of Jamshid [locus of manifestation] leads to the transcendent.30
Thus, in the Imaginal World, form becomes the loci for the manifestation of divine light, or knowledge of God. Yet, unlike Christian ontology, in the Sufic journey, which begins with the senses and culminates in the perception of God, the material forms of things must eventually be shed, and ‘step by step, it [the transcendent] unloads the burden of contingency from its shoulders,’ since material form has no place in God, who is ’beyond manifestation,’ described by Sufis as immaterial and ’colourless.’31
Akbar’s painters understood the ability of images to communicate immaterial reality: ‘They became fascinated by the power of images, with their ability to depict the spiritual, embody abstract ideas, stimulate the emotions, and aid the memory.’32 The miniatures in the Mirāt al-Quds thoroughly assimilate the Christian subjects into an Indo-Persian artistic idiom used for religious, ethical, and poetic writing.33 Many of these follow a threefold formula that symbolically expresses the Sufic paradigm of reality.34 According to art historian Murad Mumtaz, the middle ground represents the spiritual world or the ’Imaginal plane,’ the background hints ’at the heavenly abode of the unseen,’ and the foreground represents the world of the senses or the corporeal world.35
King Abgar
Fr Xavier structured his narrative around biblical rulers to facilitate for Akbar a personal encounter with the narrative.36 The literary portraits of kingship created opportunities for the emperor to consider Christ’s authority for earthly rulers.37
The narrative of Abgar, king of Edessa, from the Eastern iconographic tradition, provides the overarching framework for the whole text.38 Fr Xavier parallels Akbar and Abgar, two gentile rulers, to facilitate an imaginative encounter with an acheiropoietos, or true icon.39,40 In the narrative, king Abgar, a leper, on hearing of Jesus, sends a letter: “‘I have heard of your pure life and of the miracles you are working, and that the Jews are lying in wait for you and want to kill you. I would consider it a privilege if you would desire to come to this land, and I undertake to give you half of my kingdom and to act appropriately to you if you would honor this realm.’”41 Jesus declines his invitation: ‘”I have come for the sake of the sheep that have gone astray from Israel. It is necessary for me to be with them, to teach them, and to fulfill what the prophets have written of me.“‘42 However, Abgar also sent a portraitist named Ananias to paint Jesus’s likeness to bring back to him:
He drew it several times but every time he thought the job was finished he found it far from a likeness. He did it several times but only became more frustrated. Finally, Jesus asked him for a piece of clothing, which he passed over his blessed face and gave back to him. [Ananias] found his very likeness on it. Jesus said, ‘You will give this likeness to your king in my name.’ In summary, the king rejoiced and kept the likeness in all reverence.43
When the Lord sent an Apostle to Edessa after Jesus’s ascension, Abgar and most of his kingdom converted to Christianity, and he hung the likeness over the city gate.44 Agbar’s story defines the purpose of this illuminated manuscript: to paint a textual and visual portrait of Christ for Akbar’s contemplation.
The portrait Christ sent to Abgar resembles the Sufi practice of devotional viewing. In pursuit of the goal of intimate knowledge of and union with God, a devotee would gaze on their spiritual guide’s face or portrait for a sustained period of time. As the disciple internalized the vision of their guide’s face, ‘the rust on [their] heart will be removed, and the mirror of [their] heart will be illuminated’ to see images of the spiritual realm—ultimately arriving at a vision of the face of God.45 Many portraits of saints were made for the purpose of devotional viewing,46 a practice that was a means of grace since the saints conferred divine presence to the beholder: ’The concept of devotional viewing represents more than just a literal meeting of the eyes. It includes the act of participating in the barkat that a sanctified person radiates.‘ (Barkat is an Arabic word derived from baraka, which means ’divine grace‘).47
Mughal portraiture shared with Christian iconography the impetus to depict a likeness of the spiritual character of a saint, rather than merely a person’s external features. Akbar showed a keen interest in portraiture that displayed the personality and inner soul of the subject, writes art historian Stuart Welch: ‘Akbar, it appears, was the first to require a soul-searching likeness, which could, as his remarks imply, substitute for the person represented.’48 Mughal portraiture functioned akin to Abgar’s icon, which was not meant merely to resemble Christ but to make him truly present to Abgar. While Akbar’s painters were skilled enough to even capture the soul of their subjects in paint, Abgar’s story implies that Jesus was of a different nature that he alone could reveal: one that could not be portrayed by human hands, even by king Abgar’s own court painter.49
Although Akbar did not follow Abgar’s conversion narrative, Christian imagery did produce deep theological dialogue and engagement. Akbar sent his painters to the Jesuits’ catechism lessons with children of court to learn from the illustrated book of Christian doctrines they used, and the Jesuits used engravings to explain Bible stories during the weekly inter-religious debates that Akbar and Jahangir facilitated. Jahangir and his courtiers raised questions that opened up opportunities for discussion about the meaning of Christ’s death and the purpose of religious images.50
During the Jesuit mission to the Mughal court, literature and art offered a language for ‘perceiving the links between the visible and invisible worlds,’51 bridging Jesuit and Mughal spirituality, ethics, anthropology and theology. Imaginative visual exercises fostered both identification and juxtaposition across religious, social, and cultural barriers. Fr Xavier’s approach probed the tension in translation between faithfulness to the original text and transference of meaning to a new cultural, linguistic context. Was the Mir’āt al-quds a powerful example of two-way translation? Or, as his critics argued, did it confuse and distract from the gospel? His sensory approach to Scripture painted a vivid portrait of Jesus through the eyes of earthly kings and assimilated the gospel stories into a shared visual spirituality. Did his imaginative use of Scripture and tradition truly capture Jesus’s likeness? The open, dynamic questions and dialogue facilitated by this manuscript create a richly layered exploration of the gospel that is as worthwhile now as it was then.
[1] For all excerpts of Fr Xavier’s text, I rely on the English translation by Pedro de Moura Carvahlo. This excerpt is from Pedro de Moura Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds (Mirror of Holiness): A Life of Christ for Emperor Akbar: A Commentary on Father Jerome Xavier’s Text and the Miniatures of Cleveland Museum of Art, Acc. No. 2005.145 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2012), https://www.rarebooksocietyofindia.org/book_archive/196174216674_10155755224396675.pdf, p. 238. In his narrative, Fr Xavier sets the table for Akbar to imagine the stories for himself. For example, in this narrative of Pentecost after Jesus’s ascension, he includes ethnicities which would have been within Akbar’s familiar world alongside those in the original account, implicating Akbar’s empire into the narrative. Fr Xavier is showing his knowledge of languages here as well. The Turanians represent the tribes of Eurasian people that spoke pre-Persian languages including the Mongolic languages from which the Persian of the Mughal empire would have evolved. (See F. Max Müller, No. III – Genealogical Table of the Turanian Family of Languages, Northern Division. (Published online by Cambridge University Press: 2014), https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/lectures-on-the-science-of-language/genealogical-table-of-the-turanian-family-of-languages-northern-division/9247433F080F2D4D59204369FB5792D4
[2] Gudrun Löwner, “Christian Art in India: Early Christianity from the Arrival of the Portuguese Until Today,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 40, no. 2 (04, 2016): 164,172,174-177, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1787158037?accountid=43676.
[3] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 27.
[4] Protestants especially critiqued it since it did not directly translate the gospel texts. See Markus Hattstein and Peter Delius, Islam: Art and Architecture, English ed. [rev.] (Cologne: Könemann, 2004), p. 454.
[5] Hassan Bashir, Europe and the Eastern Other: Comparative Perspectives on Politics, Religion and Culture Before the Enlightenment, (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2012), ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/regent-college/detail.action?docID=1104452, p. 63; Stuart C. Welch, The Art of Mughal India: Painting and Precious Objects (The Asia Society, Inc., The Asia House Gallery (New York, NY: Amo Press, 1976), p. 29. Akbar’s interest in “the Celestial Jesus’s Law,” (Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 3) unites spiritual and political motivations. As a statesman himself who had become king under regency at the age of twelve and was groomed for rulership in his childhood, it is not surprising that he was particularly interested in what Christ could offer to him as a ruler. To read about Akbar’s rise to rule see Fischer, Michael H. A Short History of the Mughal Empire, London, UK:I. B Taurus, 2016, pp. 76—77.
[6] Fr Jerónimo Xavier was the great nephew of the renowned “Apostle of India,” Francis Xavier. Gilbert Renault-Roulier, Rémy (pseud), Goa: Rome of the Orient, trans. By Lancelot C. Sheppard, (first published in France by France-Empire as Goa, Rome de l’Orient) London,UK: Arthur Baker Ltd., 1957), p. 114.[7] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds.
[8] Fr Jerónimo Xavier was the great nephew of the renowned “Apostle of India,” Francis Xavier. Gilbert Renault-Roulier, Rémy (pseud), Goa: Rome of the Orient, trans. By Lancelot C. Sheppard, (first published in France by France-Empire as Goa, Rome de l’Orient) London,UK: Arthur Baker Ltd., 1957), p. 114.[9] Alexander Henn, Hindu-Catholic Encounters in Goa: Religion, Colonialism, and Modernity (Indiana University Press, 2014), JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.regent-college.edu/stable/j.ctt16gz7v6. p. 65.
[10] Henn, Hindu-Catholic, p. 65. [11] Henn, Hindu-Catholic, p. 65.[12] Razieh B. Koshtely, Saarthak Singh, Vafa Movahedian, Muntazir Ali, Michael Willis, “Translation and State,” in Translation and State: the Mahābhārata at the Mughal Court, edited by Michael Willis, Sam van Schaik and Lewis Doney, Volume 1, published by Walter de Gruyter, 2022, https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/61015/9783110501520.pdf?sequence=1, ch. 1, pp. 1—66. Open Access. (De Gruyter, 2022), p. 11.
[13] Akbar also had a religious motivation for his Translation Bureau. Badāʾūnī, one of the translators of the Hindu epic, the Mahābhārata, explains that the Emperor was becoming interested in truth in other religions. Abandoning a costly fifteen year project to transcribe and illuminate seventeen volumes of works of Muslim history and theology, “now he ordered those Hindu books, which holy and sober sages had written, and were all clear and convincing proofs, and which were the very pivot on which all their religion, and faith, and holiness turned, to be translated from the Indian into the Persian language.” See Koshtely, Singh, Movahedian, Ali, Willis, “Translation,” p. 27.
[14] “The Bureau produced a series of translations of works on astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, folklore and other subjects,” (Koshtely, Singh, Movahedian, Ali, Willis, “Translation,” p. 11), in order to create “a unique Indo-Persian literature, drawing on the Sanskrit classics.”Koshtely, Singh, Movahedian, Ali, Willis, “Translation,” p. 8.
[15] Though Akbar himself fell outside of any orthodox religious association, Islam was the primary religion of the Mughal conquerors and Sufism had a large influence in the Mughal court.
[16] The interior senses refer to the imagination, the memory, the common sense, and the intellect. Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 128.
[17] Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 127–128.
[18] Henn, Hindu-Catholic, p. 65.
[19] These visual contemplations included for example imagining the road that Mary travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem and how long and wide it was, or how level or steep it might be, or considering the place of his birth, “whether big or little, high or low, and how it is arranged.” Ignatius, Spiritual, p. 52. Fr Xavier describes in detail these parts of the story in the Mir’āt al-quds: “along the way they suffered from the wind, rain, and cold, because it was winter, and from the length of the road, their lack of supplies, and the press of the people who were going for that purpose…..After much searching, they located a small, lowly, out-of-the-way, crumbling hovel outside the city that served as an animal shelter from the wind and rain.” See Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 150.
[20] Ignatius continues with instructions for visualizing more abstract contemplations: “In a case where the subject matter is not visible, as here in a meditation on sin, the representation will be to see in imagination my soul as a prisoner in this corruptible body, and to consider my whole composite being as an exile here on earth, cast out to live among the brute beasts.” Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A New Translation Based on Studies in the Language of the Autograph, translated by Louis J. Puhl (Loyaola Press: Chicago, IL, 1951), p. 25.[21] Ignatius laid out the application of the senses in detail: “First Point. This consists in seeing in imagination the persons and in contemplating and meditating in detail the circumstances in which they are, and then in drawing some fruit from what has been seen. Second Point. This is to hear what they are saying, or what they might say, and then by reflecting on oneself to draw some profit from what has been heard. Third Point. This is to smell the infinite fragrance, and taste the infinite sweetness of divinity. Likewise to apply these senses to the soul and its virtues, and to all according to the person we are contemplating, and to draw fruit from this. Fourth Point. This is to apply the sense of touch, for example, by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand or are seated, always taking care to draw some fruit from this.” Ignatius, Spiritual, pp. 54–55.
[22] These sensory contemplations would move the soul of the exercitant through an emotional response of tears or gratitude nearer to God, and to enable him to choose those things which brought him closer to God, and become aware of those choices and deceptions which drew him away from God along his journey of sanctification. Sensory devotion was an important step to this deeper spiritual transformation.
[23] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 239.
[24] Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 128.
[25] See Ali, Mukhtar H, ‘Truth and Reality (ḥaqq and ḥaqīqa)’, St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al, 2024, https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/TruthandReality [26] Anjan Chakraverty, Indian Miniature Painting, [New ed. ] India Crest (New Delhi: Lustre Press, 2005), p. 50.[27] Murad Khan Mumtaz, HdO: Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500–1800, Edited by Muzaffar Alam, Johannes Bronkhorst, Knut A. Jacobsen, in Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Two: South Asia, Volume 39 (Leiden, ND: Brill, 2023), pp. 3–5.
[28] Mumtaz, HdO, pp. 18–19.
[29] Abu’l Fazl’s insights emerge from a centuries-long Sufi dialogue about the senses and the imagination. Mumtaz, HdO, p. 24.
[30] Mumtaz, HdO, pp. 20–21.
[31] Mumtaz, HdO, p. 24, 271. [32] Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 118. [33] Other works that share this genre and image style include the Lights of Canopus (Anvar-i Suhaili), which was an ethical guide for princes, and Breaths of Fellowship (Nafahāt al-Uns), which was a hagiography of Sufis and saints. See Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 128—129. [34] See the miniature of the woman at the well (whose setting bears a resemblance to the miniature painted around 1590 titled “Babur and His Retinue Visiting Gurkhattri” from the Baburnama) for a good example of this structure (Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 107). In this image, the woman and Jesus occupy the middle ground between a central tree and well that might echo the tree of life motif, and the monastery garden setting represents an edenic paradise: “The jōgī and his āshram—replete with a central pool, singing birds, and fruits from all seasons—at once signify the ideal community, the archetypal human being, and the paradisiacal inner state” Ashram is a hindu monastery (Mumtaz, HdO, p. 77). The samaritan woman stands between the well and the tree, in the perfect axis to receive spiritual life as she interacts with Jesus, the archetypal human being who is offering her entry into paradise. Her gaze is fixed on Jesus’s face as they converse, while a dog among the disciples in the foreground is a reminder that this woman, like a yogi’s dog, devotes and humbles her soul to Jesus as her spiritual master. Hills and mountains recede to sky in the background, finishing the threefold composition.[35] Murad Khan Mumtaz, HdO: Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500–1800, Edited by Muzaffar Alam, Johannes Bronkhorst, Knut A. Jacobsen, in Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Two: South Asia, Volume 39 (Leiden, ND: Brill, 2023), p. 297.
[36] Augustus Caesar provides the vantage point into the birth narrative, for example, while Pilate provides the framework for the passion and resurrection. Each of the kings he includes facilitate spiritual contemplations designed for a powerful ruler. Augustus Caesar’s narrative raises the question, “Will there be anyone greater?” While Pilate’s juxtaposes the fragility of an earthly governor’s authority with the supreme authority and complete freedom of will that Christ demonstrated in his trial and death on the cross. Other notable kings include the three “wise kings of Arabia,” to whom the Apostle Thomas was sent, Fr Xavier writes, after they returned to their kingdoms and baptized them, drawing another connection between Mughal India and the biblical kings. Jesus is also identified as King of Kings, not of an earthly kingdom, but of a spiritual one.
[37] The painters also drew connections between biblical and Mughal rulers. For example in the miniature of Herod receiving John the Baptist’s head on a platter, “the artist follows a traditional Mughal formula, which includes a courtyard, where an enthroned ruler appears among people standing and kneeling nearby. In this case, Herod, is seated as Akbar is in a number of paintings.” Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, p. 120.
[38] Fr Xavier includes Abgar’s account both in the prologue and during the narrative of Christ’s ministry, concluding with the detailed description of Christ’s face by Lentulus, governor of Jerusalem, in a letter to Caesar. This description echoes the image that Abgar received from Jesus.
[39] An acheiropoietos is an imprint of Christ’s face not made with human hands.[40] The Western Church’s counterpart, Veronica’s veil, is also included in the crucifixion account. Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, pp. 228.
[41] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, pp. 205–206.
[42] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, pp. 205–206.[43] Carvalho, Mir’āt al-quds, pp. 205—206.
[44] Like Abgar, Akbar publicly displayed Christian imagery in his palace, and by the third Jesuit mission had acquired a sizeable collection of Christian devotional art including images of Christ and Mary and an image of the Man of Sorrows. Jahangir was also a keen patron of Christian art. Jahangir allegedly kept Christian images even in his personal quarters. See Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 124. Many of Akbar’s courtiers also requested original Catholic artworks from the Jesuits, see João Vicente Melo, Jesuit and English Experiences at the Mughal Court, c. 1580–1615, from New Transculturalisms 1400—1800 series edited by Ann Rosalind Jones, Jyotsna G. Singh, Mihoko Suzuki (Open Access, ebook: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96588-4, p. 79. Outside the palace, art in the Jesuit church in Lahore drew Hindu and Muslim pilgrims and became “a centre for the diffusion of European art.” See Melo, Jesuit, pp. 96—97.
[45] During the devotional viewing, the disciple would receive entrance from the Sensorial World to the world of Ideal Forms, then to the world of Angelic Forms, arriving at Utimate Reality, where she would be able to receive a vision of the face of the God. See Dara Shikoh, Risāla-i ḥaqnumā, 8, quoted by Mumtaz, HdO, pp. 257–258.
[46] Mumtaz, HdO, pp. 50–51.
[47] Mumtaz, HdO, pp. 50–51.
[48] Welch suggests Akbar’s interest in portraiture was inspired by Humanism and Western Christian art (such as iconography). Stuart C. Welch, The Art of Mughal India: Painting and Precious Objects (The Asia Society, Inc., The Asia House Gallery (New York, NY: Amo Press, 1976), p. 30.
[49] The acheiropoietos given to Abgar expresses the mystery of the Incarnation and Christ’s fully divine, fully human nature. For Sufis, though the material world can lead to knowledge of God, “the contingent can never encompass the Absolute.” (Ali,’Truth and Reality (ḥaqq and ḥaqīqa)). For Christians, likewise, God is exclusively transcendent over the creation, beyond human grasp, and uncontainable is any created form (Ananias was not able to grasp Christ’s features). Yet, the icon of Christ’s face expresses the mystery that in Jesus God has circumscribed himself in human flesh, and “being born in the likeness of men,” taken a human form and nature that can be depicted. For a good study on the theological development of the Abgar tradition, see Andrea Nicolotti, the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin: The Metamorphosis and Manipulation of a Legend (BRILL, 2014).[50] Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 117. Bailey writes in detail on these discussions prompted by art: “Jahangir invited the fathers to his palace, and ordered his librarian to bring out his albums of engravings and Christian paintings by his own artists, so that he could learn not only their stories but also the significance of their symbols and allegories. Jahangir asked many pointed questions which demonstrate a keen interest in the role of images and the function of allegory in Christian art. For example, he found it difficult to separate the notion of honour from beauty; when shown a Crucifixion, he asked, ‘Why, if [you] adored Christ Our Lord so much, did you paint him in such a dishonourable state?’ One of his nobles added, ‘When we depict Christ we always paint him very beautifully and not on the Cross.’ When the fathers explained that it was a great honour because it showed that Christ had died for our sins, they also indicated the mnemonic value of the wounds as reminders of his sacrifice. In another discussion, one of his nobles brought up the question of images as idols, asking them whether they pay homage ‘before an image of the Virgin, or before the Virgin herself’? The fathers explained it in Mughal terms: ‘Sire, we do not venerate the images for what they are, because we are well aware that they are merely paper or canvas with pigments; it is because of those whom they represent. Just as with your fermāns [decrees]: you do not touch them to your foreheads because they are papers covered in ink, but because you know that they contain your order and will.’” Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, p. 127.
[51] Markus Hattstein and Peter Delius, Islam: Art and Architecture, English ed. [rev.] (Cologne: Könemann, 2004), p. 485.
