The present article studies a number of texts produced at the court of the Mughal Emperor Humayun in order to argue that there was a rise in prestige for various fields of knowledge such as mathematics, geography and astronomy. While these texts certainly fulfilled a political function (elucidating the cosmos for Mughal universalist claims), they also reflected aspects of the intellectual climate and practices of the sixteenth century that were undergoing a realignment with the expansion of royal authority throughout much of the globe.
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