This astonishingly original image is one of the most memorable of all Mughal paintings. It depicts the moment when one of Shah-Jahan’s soldiers severed the head from the lifeless body of a rebellious noble, Khan Jahan Lodi, to send to the Emperor at Burhanpur. Lodi was an ethnic Afghan and had been a close confidant of Jahangir who gave him increasingly important roles after Shah-Jahan rebelled against his father, eventually becoming commander-in-chief of Jahangir’s army.^[119] He did not support Shah-Jahan as heir and, according to the Padshahnama text, after many of the Afghan tribes declared allegiance to him following the new Emperor’s accession ‘his brainless head had become a nest of false and demonic hopes and vain fancies’.^[120] The former commander fled towards the Deccan but, when Shah-Jahan’s forces closed in, he and his entourage turned north towards the Punjab. They were eventually hunted down and one of his companions, Darya Khan Rohilla, was slain. Khan Jahan escaped but was pursued and eventually killed on 3 February at Sihanda in central India. This painting captures the moment that his head was sawn off after the battle. On the sleeve of the soldier crouched astride the body is the inscription shah-jahani, meaning ‘one who owes allegiance to Shah-Jahan’, leaving no doubt as to the imperial nature of the gruesome act. The garment of the soldier on the right, holding Lodi’s petrified head by the ears, also bears an inscription invoking God to grant victory to both him and the Emperor. Six other heads are scattered about the painting, including one on a pike and two held by the hair in the clenched fists of soldiers in the foreground – those of Lodi’s son Aziz and Emal – ready to be sent along with that of their father to ShahJahan who then had them suspended from the palace gate as a warning to other potential rebels. Notably, each of their turbans has been removed, the utmost mark of dishonour.^[121]

All the action is in the foreground: a circle of soldiers surrounding the two who commit the deed. Despite their calm demeanour, not all seem able to watch and it is only the grotesque masks decorating the armour of certain individuals to the left and right that appear to react in horror to what is going on.^[122] Dressed in a bright orange jama on the right is the Rajput Madho Singh proudly holding the lance with which he fatally struck the Afghan rebel. In the mid-ground, Sayyid Muzaffar Khan of Barha and Abdullah Khan, the leaders of Shah-Jahan’s imperial forces, face each other in a near mirror image. They were well rewarded for their victory, the title Khan Jahan given to the former as inscribed on the hilt of his sword. At the apex of the pyramid is a figure looking directly at the viewer with his arms outstretched. Perhaps he is Farid, the only son of Lodi to be captured alive, holding his arms up in surrender as he is being captured.^[123] He stands directly below a chinar tree, a species brought to India by the Mughals which was often associated with the Timurid dynasty (see cat. no. 25), perhaps a symbol of the absent emperor. A row of soldiers labelled ‘the world-conquering army of the Second Lord of Conjunction’ appear behind a rocky outcrop in the background.

The artist Abid was Iranian, the son of Aqa Reza and brother of the more famous Abu'l-Hasan.^[124] He juxtaposes an Iranian conception of space, the landscape divided into three levels with a high horizon line and even a typically Iranian gold band of sky, with overt realism in the Caravaggesque oozing severed heads surrounded by swarms of blood-filled flies and acutely observed portraits. A meticulous artist, the treatment of drapery and armour is unrivalled in contemporary Mughal painting, with the gold details of the horse’s trapping on the right punched in as if worked on leather. This is the most sensational of Mughal paintings, in both senses of the word.