The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c17.67

v4.c17.67

During the first seventeen years of his reign Jahāngīr himself maintained a record of events, and when failing health prevented him from still writing this, it was carried on under his direct supervision. Although the memoirs are not a confidential record of human aspirations, fears and hopes, and are not remarkable for the shrewdness of their assessment of passing events, they are of great value in estimating the character of their author. Jahāngīr shows himself a man of wide interests, but these are devoted more to material objects and to the rare, novel or curious element, than to the intellectual. He thus presents a marked contrast to his father, who though entirely illiterate, and occupied throughout his reign with great enterprises and administrative reforms, was constantly engaged in discussing the basis of religion and took more pleasure in hearing the debates of learned men than in the beauties of nature or art.