Sanjay Subrahmanyam | Jesuit Advice for a Mughal Emperor: A Seventeenth-Century Exchange of Ideas

The Jesuit missions to the Mughal court translated several Christian tracts into Persian, and at times these were transformed into attractive illustrated manuscripts such as the 'Mirat al-Quds'. The presentation focuses on a different register, namely the attempt by the Jesuit Jerome Xavier to produce a 'Mirror of Princes' text for the Mughal ruler Jahangir (r. 1605-27). We shall examine the materials chosen, the questions treated and the questions avoided, as well as the complex process of collaboration by which the work itself was produced.Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Distinguished Professor of History and Irving & Jean Stone Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA. He also holds a long-term visiting professorship at the College de France (Paris). His most recent books include 'Courtly Encounters' (2012), and 'Europe's India' (2017)