JAHANGIR or JEHANGIR (1569-1627), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Akbar the Great in 16o5. His name was Salim, but he assumed the title of Jahangir, "Conqueror of the World," on his accession. During his father's Deccan cam paign of 1598-99, he had meditated rebellion, but in 1604 they were reconciled, the son being made viceroy of southern and western India and allowed to live in Agra as heir apparent. After his enthronement on Oct. 24, 1605, Jahangir won a certain amount of popularity by declaring himself a Muslim, but his zeal soon waned, and his natural scepticism manifested itself in his indifferent toleration both of Christians and Hindus. In 1606, his son, the popular prince Khusru, attempted rebellion with the result that some 300 of his supporters were brutally put to death and he himself blinded and imprisoned until 1622 when he was strangled by order of his brother Prince Khurram. Jahangir succeeded in keeping under control the rana of Udaipur, Malik Amber the vizier of the Nizam Shah in the Deccan, and the rebels of Bengal, though in 1622 he lost Kandahar to the Shah of Persia. The rebellion of his son Shahjahan in 5624 was patched up by an apparent reconciliation in the following year.
In spite of opposition from the Portuguese, the missions of the Englishmen, William Hawkins, William Edwards, and the am bassador, Sir Thomas Roe, led to the emperor's sanction of English trade at Surat. Though possessed of many natural abilities and a lover of art and literature, Jahangir was a dissolute, capricious and tyrannical ruler who gradually allowed his Persian wife, Nur Jahan, to secure the reins of government and thereby to satisfy the interests of her relatives and her own thirst for gold. He died while returning from Kashmir in Oct. 1627, and is buried in the gardens of Shandera on the outskirts of Lahore.
The best editions of his Memoirs, which were either written by himself or dictated to a scribe, appeared at Ghazipur in 5863 and at Aligarh in 1864 (Eng. trans. by Rogers and Beveridge, 2 vols., 1909-14). See also Jahangir's India, a translation from the Dutch of F. Pelsaert by W. H. Moreland (1925) and bibliography in W. A. Smith's Oxford History of India (2nd ed., 1923).