As Emperor Akbar’s biographer, Abu'l Fazl, wrote, quoting Akbar himself: "More than a hundred painters have become famous masters of the art, while the number of those who approach perfection, or those who are middling, is very large … It would take too long to describe the excellence of each. My intention is 'to pluck a flower from every meadow, an ear from every sheaf'."
The Mughals, perhaps more than any other Islamic dynasty, made their love of the arts, their aesthetic principles, a central part of their identity as rulers. The first Mughal Emperor, Babur, came from Ferghana (now Uzbekistan). He marched into Northern India, defeated Shah Lodi in the fierce Battle of Panipat in 1526. His daughter wrote about his life and a copy of the manuscript survives from the 17th century. His diaries show realistic animals and plants. The Mughal Emperors wrote their memoirs, often illustrated with scenes of court life, hunting and battles. The second Mughal emperor, Humayun (1508-56) believed that artists "were the delight of all the world" and lured several Persian masters to his court from Persia and central Asia. His son, the emperor Akbar, did the same and emphasised that he had no time for ultra-orthodox Muslim opinion, which objected to the depiction of the human form: "There are many that hate painting," he wrote, "but such men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had a quite peculiar means of recognising God; for a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs, one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God, the giver of life." It is one of the most eloquent defenses of portraiture in the history of Islamic art.
The reigns of Akbar's son, Jahangir (1569-1627), and his grandson, Shah Jahan saw the highpoint of Mughal portraiture, and with it the moment of greatest celebrity for the masters of the court atelier. Abu'l Hasan seems to have been a particular favourite of Jahangir. "I have always considered it my duty to give him much patronage," wrote the emperor in his autobiography, the Jahangirnama, "and from his youth until now I have patronised him so that his work has reached the level it has."
What drew great painters like Farrukh Husain and the other painters of the age to Mughal service was less the good taste of the emperors than their incredible wealth. The Mughals were not just enthusiasts of the arts – they also had unrivalled resources with which to patronise them. They ruled over five times the population commanded by the Ottomans – some 100 million subjects – controlling almost all of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as eastern Afghanistan.