Shah Jahan Commissions the Peacock Throne
A jeweled throne costing roughly twice the price of the Taj Mahal becomes the empire's ultimate status symbol
Quick facts
- Commissioned by
- Shah Jahan
- Location
- Diwan-i-Khas, Red Fort, Delhi
- Later fate
- Taken to Iran by Nader Shah in 1739
What happened
Shah Jahan commissioned the Peacock Throne in the early seventeenth century for the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audiences, in what would become his Red Fort at Delhi. Contemporary accounts describe a throne extravagant even by the standards of the wealthiest Mughal court, reportedly costing roughly twice what the Taj Mahal itself had cost to build, set with an enormous quantity of gems. Jahangir had already left Shah Jahan an empire whose twelve separate treasuries, one dedicated purely to precious stones, gave his son the resources for a commission on this scale. The throne became the physical symbol of Mughal sovereignty and remained in the Red Fort until it was carried off as war plunder more than a century later.
Why it matters
The Peacock Throne's cost is a direct measure of how much surplus wealth the empire commanded at its height under Shah Jahan, wealth built on Akbar's administrative reforms and decades of stable, expanding territory. Its later theft by Nader Shah in 1739 would become shorthand, in Mughal and later histories, for the empire's fall from that peak.
How we know
The throne's construction and extravagant cost are described in Mughal court chronicles from Shah Jahan's reign and referenced in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art's institutional history of the objects Nader Shah later carried out of Delhi, including the throne itself.
Sources
- Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. Nadir Shah of Iran · Reputable sourceasia-archive.si.edu · The domain "asia-archive.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Victoria and Albert Museum. The arts of the Mughal Empire · Reputable sourcevam.ac.uk · The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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