linguistic:translation, structural:scholar_edition, information:highlighting
Shalimar Bagh Inscription

A popular fable which has made its way into scholarship ascribes the following famous Persian verse to Khusrau:

Agar Firdaus bar ru-ye zamin ast, Hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast.

In English: "If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this." This verse is believed to have been inscribed on several Mughal structures, supposedly in reference to Kashmir, specifically a particular building at the Shalimar Garden in Srinagar, Kashmir (built during the reign of Mughal Emperor Jahangir).

However, recent scholarship has traced the verse to a time much later than that of Khusrau and to a place quite distant from Kashmir. Historian Rana Safvi inspected all probable buildings in the Kashmir garden and found no such inscription attributed to Khusrau. According to her the verse was composed by Sa'adullah Khan, a leading noble and scholar in the court of Jahangir's successor and son Shah Jahan. Even in popular memory, it was Jahangir who first repeated the phrase in praise of Kashmir.