Magni Mogolis Imperium

Circa 1640

Original hand-coloured copper engraving on paper

Print size: 16.25 x 20.5 in (41.5 x 52 cm)
Sheet size: 19.75 x 23.5 in (50 x 59.5 cm)
Folded: 19.75 x 13.25 in (50 x 33.5 cm)

Blaeu’s authoritative baroque map of the Mughal Empire—among the most influential European images of Northern India in the Dutch Golden Age

This celebrated map by Joan Blaeu presents one of the most authoritative seventeenth-century European visions of the Mughal Empire, extending from the Hindu Kush to Bengal and from the Himalaya to the northern Deccan. Issued in Amsterdam during the apogee of Dutch cartographic achievement, it became a defining Western image of imperial India and shaped European geographic understanding of the subcontinent for generations.

Derived in part from the Baffin–Roe cartographic tradition, the plate refines earlier English intelligence through the precision, elegance, and engraving virtuosity of the Blaeu workshop. Major cities, rivers, and political regions are rendered with clarity, while the interior reflects both emerging knowledge and persistent early modern conjecture, including the legendary Lake Chiamay, long believed to feed Southeast Asia’s great river systems.

The map is further distinguished by its rich accompanying verso text, which offers European readers a vivid synopsis of Mughal sovereignty beyond the purely geographic. Blaeu’s description surveys the empire’s vast extent, the hierarchy of nobles measured by cavalry obligations, and the extraordinary military strength attributed to the Great Mughal—tens of thousands of horses and elephants maintained for campaign and garrison. It evokes the magnificence of court life at Agra, the roles of eunuchs and officers within the palace, systems of justice and punishment, imperial titles and ranks, and the ceremonial submission of vassal kings. In this way, the sheet functions as both a map and a political ethnography: an engraved portrait of Mughal power at its zenith.

At its core, the composition is anchored on Agra, presented as the imperial and commercial centre of North India, linking the trading towns of Gujarat and the Indus–Ganges corridor to Kabul and the wider overland routes toward Persia and Central Asia. The geography thus doubles as a network of movement—caravan cities, river valleys, and pathways sustaining one of the early modern world’s most vital trading systems.

Enhanced by finely engraved decorative elements, balanced typography, and subtle original hand-colouring characteristic of Blaeu’s atlas production, this plate was widely disseminated through the Atlas Novus and later atlases. A cornerstone work of Dutch Golden Age cartography, it remains of enduring appeal to collectors of early India maps, Mughal history, and Blaeu’s supreme atlas legacy.

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