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In 1603, Prince Salim commissioned painter Mohan to portray his grandfather, the Mughal emperor Humayun, with a planispheric astrolabe. In Kamayani Sharma’s account for Scroll.in, the image’s Persianate references and scientific instrument help explain how Salim could draw on Humayun’s legacy while distinguishing his emerging court from his father Akbar’s. That political reading is an art-historical interpretation, not a documented statement of Salim’s private intent.
What the painting shows
The work, identified as Humayun with astrolabe, was painted by Mohan in 1603 for Shahzada Salim, the prince who later became Emperor Jahangir. Humayun kneels on a patterned blue carpet and reads a poem by the Persian poet Sa’di. Writing materials and a planispheric astrolabe sit nearby, connecting the courtly image to both literary culture and the study of the heavens. These details are reported in Kamayani Sharma’s 6 September 2025 feature for Scroll.in.
Sharma reports that curator Emily Hannam identified the original painting in an album associated with Nawab Wazir Asaf ud-Daulah of Awadh. The feature also says a reproduction is on view at the Humayun’s Tomb World Heritage Site Museum in New Delhi. That is a report about a reproduction, not confirmation that the original is displayed there; the account does not establish the museum’s current display status.
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The object is not merely decorative. A planispheric astrolabe uses a rotating rete—a representation of the night sky—over an interchangeable tympan calibrated for a particular latitude. In the account, its practical uses include measuring the altitude of celestial bodies, identifying their positions, calculating latitude for terrestrial navigation, and determining local time.
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Its presence also carries symbolic weight in Sharma’s reading. The feature connects the instrument with Humayun’s reported interest in astronomy and mathematics, and with Jahangir’s later interest in natural history. Drawing on scholarship by Ebba Koch, Ali Anooshahr, and Sriramula Rajeswara Sarma, Sharma presents the astrolabe as a link between learned kingship and the cosmic order. Its function as a working scientific instrument and its meaning in a royal portrait can coexist; the latter is an interpretation of the image, not proof of what Salim privately intended.
How the portrait could serve Salim’s politics
The commission belongs to a period when Salim rebelled against Akbar, established a semi-independent court in Allahabad, and maintained a parallel atelier. In that setting, a portrait of Humayun could invoke a prestigious Mughal ancestor without centering Akbar, the reigning emperor and Salim’s father.
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The image’s imagined Persian garden setting and Safavid references further frame that appeal to lineage. Art historian Kavita Singh, quoted by Sharma, describes Salim’s stylistic choice as a “rebel aesthetic for a rebel prince.” She interprets it as a bid “to forge a cultural identity distinct from Akbar’s imperial center…to claim a lineage that legitimized his kingship yet bypassed his father”. These are Singh’s words as reported in Sharma’s feature, not a statement by Salim.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteRead together, the political context, the painting’s Persianate visual language, and the astrolabe’s association with knowledge make the portrait legible as more than a family likeness. Sharma’s argument is that it could help Salim claim continuity with Humayun while articulating a courtly identity apart from Akbar’s. The painting supports that reading, but the surviving account does not establish a recorded commission brief or direct evidence of the prince’s intent.
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