Of Tulips and Daffodils

This article examines the emergence of the concept of Kashmir jannat nazir as a literary and political imaginary in the Mughal court. It represented a distinct imagination about the region and emerged as a literary imaginary in the late 16th century and over the early part of the 17th century, entering into the imperial chronicles. By the mid-17th century, the concept had become a part of the political discourse and the language of Mughal sovereignty. The literary and political imaginary of Kashmir in the Mughal court drew upon older textual traditions like the literature and histories from Kashmir, corpora of Arab and Persian geographies compiled from the ninth century onwards, travel accounts, wonder tales and the chronicles of the Ghaznavid and Timurid courts.