The mystery of paradise on earth - 2

Earlier I made an attempt to unravel the fictional history of a certain persian couplet. In summary, there is a general belief that this couplet was about Kashmir. I said that it was not originally written about Kashmir, noted an incident of its historical usage in a non-Kashmiri context, but was willing to concede that the Emperor Jahangir may have used the quote while talking of Kashmir.

However, I have now begun to doubt the logic of this concession. Here's why:

Suppose Jahangir had indeed quoted Khusrau in the context of Kashmir, and suppose that this was recorded somewhere. He dies, and his son Shah Jahan comes to the throne.

Shah Jahan moves the capital to Delhi and orders the Red Fort to be built. On the Diwan-e-Khaas, he orders inscribed (or at least does not mind having inscribed) the same verse his father quoted. Except by placing it there, he is explicitly and publicly contradicting his father. His act says: Kashmir is not Firdaus, Desh is Firdaus. His father said Kashmir was X, the son insists on telling the world, No, Desh is X.

There are arguments we could have to the extent this is perhaps not strictly a contradiction, it just attributes the characteristic (Firdaus) to a wider set (Desh) while maintaining its applicability to a specific instance (Kashmir). But then if all of Desh is Firdaus, Jahangir's alleged comment is still reduced to irrelevancy and meaningless.

In short, if Jahangir had indeed said what many claim, then it would be a strange and petty thing on the part of his son to inscribe the same couplet on the walls of his Diwan-i-Khaas. There does not seem any reason to believe that Shah Jahan and Jahangir had such a relationship. It would seem more reasonable to think that Jahangir never commented on Kashmir, and when the time came for Shah Jahan to build his palace, he simply chose (or permitted) a couplet he considered appropriate for his beloved kingdom to be inscribed on the palace walls.

I know, this is a tedious argument, and it would be far better if a diligent scholarly type waded through the documents and established whether for example, Tuzuk-i-jahangiri or any other mughal manuscript for that matter, has a Mughal Emperor quoting Khusrau. But in the absence of such a type, one must make do with speculation based on the limited facts before us, and so we must consider that Shah Jahan's actions point against Jahangir having said what many think he said.