Shere Khan is a fictional Bengal tiger in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and its adaptations, in which he is often portrayed as the main antagonist, itself an exaggeration of his role in the original stories, which he only appears in a third of. The name roughly translates as tiger ruler, with shere being the Persian word for 'tiger'), and khan being used as a title of distinction among the Turco-Mongol peoples, usually meaning chief or ruler. According to The Kipling Society, the name "show[s] that he is the chief among tigers". Shere Khan is named after Afghan Emperor Sher Shah Suri.
Shere Khan and his wolf followers, as illustrated by Maurice de Becque in a 1924 French edition of The Jungle Book
Shere Khan as he appears in the 1967 Disney film.
Shere Khan in promotional material for The Jungle Book (2016).
The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. Most stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seeonee" (Seoni), in the central
state of Madhya Pradesh.
Embossed cover of first edition with artwork by John Lockwood Kipling
Mowgli made leader of the Bandar-log by John Charles Dollman, 1903
Mowgli, Bagheera, and the wolf pack with Shere Khan's skin. Illustration by W. H. Drake. First edition, 1894
Protagonists from the Soviet animated adaptation, "Маугли" (Mowgli), on a Russian postage stamp.