Ghiyas al-Din Ali, known as Naqib Khan (d. 1614), was an Iranian originally from Qazvin and famed for his kindness and good nature.^[59] His father, a Sunni Muslim, was persecuted by the Shia Safavid ruler of Iran and invited by Humayun to join the Mughal court where he later tutored the young Akbar. Ghiyas al-Din Ali and Akbar were childhood friends and they remained intimate throughout the Emperor’s life. He was Akbar’s official ‘reader’ as the Emperor himself never learnt to read. He was also a celebrated historian, and in 1582 the Emperor granted him the title Naqib Khan, referring to someone of great intellect with particular knowledge of genealogies. After Akbar’s death, he continued to be employed in the service of Jahangir.

In 1608 Jerome Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit who visited the Mughal court, described the courtier in a letter from Agra to his contemporaries in Goa:

This king has a very grave man [hum homen muito grave] whose office is to read him histories, both at night when he wishes to sleep and during the day when he wishes to relax […] and this man-of-letters had the same office with the father of this King and was highly esteemed by him for his letters and because he is a Sayyid [descendant of the Prophet Muhammad] […] and because he knows almost every sort of history.^[60]

This careful portrait depicts Ghiyas al-Din Ali as an elderly man holding an open book. He is shown in profile, emphasising his hooked nose, prominent Adam’s apple, and the protruding vein down the right side of his neck. Jahangir recorded in his memoirs that there had been great affection between him and his wife. They died within two months of each other in 1614 and the Emperor ordered that the couple be buried together in Ajmer in the courtyard of the mausoleum of the Sufi saint Khwaja Muin al-Din Chishti, where their graves can be found to this day.^[61]