The Inn at Bethlehem

This scene of "The Inn at Bethlehem" was done as an illustration to a text by a Jesuit priest, Jerome Xavier, who led the third Jesuit Mission from Portuguese Goa to the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1595. He had learned Persian, the language used for all official purposes at the court, on his way to the court and by 1597 was reasonably fluent. From 1600, in response to requests from the emperor, Jerome Xavier began to write a series of texts with Christian themes, the earliest being the Dastan-i Masih, or "Story of Christ", also called the Mir'at ul-Quds, or "Mirror of Holiness". It is probable that he wrote it in Portuguese and the text was then translated in collaboration with a prominent court literary figure, Abdu-s Sattar, the text being completed in Agra in 1602. This illustration has been extracted from one of the copies of the original, and the text is now lost.