Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics 0231158106, 9780231158107

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Old and the New in Mughal Historiography
1. Letters from a Sinking Sultan
2. The Mughals Look Beyond the Winds
3. On the End of the Akbari Dispensation
4. The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, Circa 1600
5. Faizi’s Nal-Daman and Its Long Afterlife
6. Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir 249 (1608–1611)
7. The Making of a Munshī
8 .Trade and Politics in the Arcot Nizamat (1700–1732)
9. Eighteenth-Century Historiography and the World of the Mughal Munshī
10. The Political Thought of a Late-Eighteenth-Century Mughal Prince
Epilogue: Mughals in Exile
Index

Citation preview

Writing the Mughal World

Writing the Mughal World Studies on Culture and Politics

Muza ar Alam Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alam, Muzaffar, 1947– Writing the Mughal world : studies on culture and politics / Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-15810-7 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-231-15811-4 (paper : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-231-52790-3 (ebook) 1. Mogul Empire—History. 2. Mogul Empire—Historiography. 3. Politics and culture—Mogul Empire—History. 4. Mogul Empire— Politics and government. 5. Mogul Empire—Commerce—History. I. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. II. Title. DS461.A43 2011 954.02’5072—dc22

2011012092

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

for

Caroline and Rizwana their patience and good humour

Contents Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: The Old and the New in Mughal Historiography

ix xiii xv 1

1

Letters from a Sinking Sultan

33

2

The Mughals Look Beyond the Winds

88

3

On the End of the Akbari Dispensation

123

4

The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, c.1600

165

5

Faizi’s Nal-Daman and Its Long Afterlife

204

6

Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–1611)

249

7

The Making of a Munshī

311

8

Trade and Politics in the Arcot Nizāmat (1700–1732)

339

9

Eighteenth-Century Historiography and the World of the Mughal Munshī

396

The Political Thought of a Late-Eighteenth-Century Mughal Prince

429

Epilogue: Mughals in Exile

467

Index

485

10

viii

Contents

Maps 1 Evolving Frontiers of the Mughal Empire 2 Trade Routes and Urban Centres in the Mughal Empire

xvii xviii

Preface

A

s a rule historians do not really collaborate. This is a simple empirical fact that some scholar will one day take the trouble to explain systematically. To be sure, there are exceptions to this rule (our friends Polly O’Hanlon and David Washbrook, to take an example) but they are rare and episodic rather than sustained, let alone programmatic. The obvious reasons for this absence are not far to seek. The foundational myths of the modern discipline are ‘heroic’ in nature and therefore demand individual rather than twinned effort. So the individual voice is given inordinate weight; this is also the case in the sister discipline of anthropology. Where collaboration exists, it is often hierarchical and fraught with all the unpleasant tension that hierarchy brings in the allegedly egalitarian societies of the modern day, so it rarely lasts. All this is very well, but it still falls quite short of a proper explanation for the absence of joint authorship in history in general as well as Indian history in particular. Nevertheless, the publication of this particular book will mark roughly two decades of collaborative endeavour and a quarter of a century (give or take) from the time that its two authors first were introduced. There is surely an appropriate irony in the fact that the authors of this volume first met not in Delhi—where they both lived at the time—but in Yogyakarta in central Java, on the occasion of a conference on ‘The Ancien Régime in India and Indonesia’ held at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in the mid-1980s. It was a measure of the strange symbolic distance that obtained at the time between Jawaharlal Nehru University (or JNU, where Alam taught) and the Delhi School of Economics (where Subrahmanyam taught),

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bridged episodically by seminars at the Teen Murti Library, where we would later also meet other common friends: the late Dharma Kumar (who was responsible for bringing us both to Yogyakarta), Neeladri Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and many others. A hiatus then ensued after 1987, and we resumed close contact in the early months of 1989 at another seminar in the India International Centre (New Delhi). The Indian postal service was at the time still capable of delivering postcards somewhat efficiently, all the better for the telephones at the Delhi School hardly worked. Mediated by postcards, many rich conversations followed in Dakshinapuram on the JNU campus, not with any particular purpose in mind. At least half a generation separated us, to say nothing of vast differences in background, adab, training, and a host of other issues. Yet it was evident to both of us from the very start that there was really something important to be gained if we managed somehow to combine our very different skills, perspectives, and sensibilities. This became all the more obvious to us during the first half of the 1990s. In May 1990, we were both invited by our friend in common, Suraiya Faroqhi (the Indo-German historian of the Ottomans), to a conference on ‘The State, Decentralisation and Tax-Farming, 1500–1850: The Ottoman Empire, Iran, and India’, at the University of Munich. Here we met Cornell Fleischer, Murat Cızakça, Salih Özbaran, Ariel Salzmann, and a host of other historians who startled us out of the last vestiges of our Indocentric complacency. The next year we travelled a vast distance together from Delhi via Frankfurt to attend a conference at Harvard University on a similar theme, this one organized by Tosun Aricanlı and Ashraf Ghani. The need to define our positions in the face of colleagues like Cemal Kafadar, who were working on Iranian and Ottoman history, sharpened our collaborative urge as did challenging conversations with our South Asianist colleagues John Richards and Burton Stein. It was probably this logic which eventually led us to publish our first joint essay: ‘L’État Moghol et sa fiscalité (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, Annales HSS, 1994, no. 1, pp. 189-217. That essay, which we do not reproduce here, eventually formed the seedling from which we developed the long introduction to our jointly edited volume The Mughal State, 1526–1750 (1998). We also

Preface

xi

went on from the essay in the Annales to work in the mid-1990s in Delhi and Leiden on a series of essays on Indo-Persian travel accounts, which in turn eventually allowed us in 2007 to publish a collaborative book entitled Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. To date, besides these two books, we have published over a score of joint essays, and it is from this corpus that we have constituted the present volume. (Within which all passages translated into English, unless otherwise specified, are by us.) We have, however, excluded a certain number of essays which we hope will eventually be drawn upon for a second volume on travels in Mughal India. Apart from our perceptive older friends Burt Stein and John Richards (both of whom are sadly no longer with us), it may frankly be said that our collaboration has met with a mixed reception. This of course excluded our dear friends Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, who have always known from their own practice what collaborative authorship is all about. Still our constant supporter has been Rizwana Khatun, who has also been the closest and most understanding witness of the shifting terms of our collaboration. In the past decade, Caroline has also happily participated in the complex dealings that have taken us to Paris, Istanbul, Orccha, and Delhi, but also to the icy chills of Chicago in early February. We also owe thanks to a number of our other friends and colleagues who have helped by giving us bibliographical aid, loaning us books and copying obscure essays, and by commenting perceptively (and sometimes repeatedly) on drafts. These include Manan Ahmed, Ali Anooshahr, the late Jean Aubin, Françoise Aubin, Giancarlo Casale, Partha Chatterjee, the late Simon Digby, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Jorge Flores, Caroline Ford, Carlo Ginzburg, Jos Gommans, Nile Green, Rajeev Kinra, Sunil Kumar, C.M. Naim, Velcheru Narayana Rao, Arif Naushahi, Polly O’Hanlon, Salih Özbaran, and Luís Filipe Thomaz. The comments of two anonymous referees for Columbia University Press helped us make final revisions to this text. Finally, a special word of thanks to our ‘Lucknowi’ friend Rukun Advani, by now a co-conspirator of long standing. As for those who may still wonder what motivates us to produce these collaborative writings, our response must of course be complex.

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Working together forces us to ask ourselves new and intriguing questions. It brings us pleasure from mulling over materials at length together: the pleasure of friendship, intellectual synergy, and above all happy conversation. In the scattered world in which we live, these are by no means small pleasures. Chicago and Los Angeles

Acknowledgements The essays in this volume have often been published earlier, albeit not necessarily in the same form. Some have seen extended modifications. 1. ‘Letters from a Sinking Sultan’, in Luís Filipe F.R. Thomaz, ed., Aquém e Além da Taprobana: Estudos Luso-Orientais à Memória de Jean Aubin e Denys Lombard (Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2002), pp. 239-69 (the text has been modified and extended quite considerably). 2. ‘Southeast Asia as Seen from Mughal India: Tahir Muhammad’s “Immaculate Garden” (ca. 1600)’, Archipel, no. 70, 2005, pp. 209-37. 3. ‘Witnessing Transition: Views on the End of the Akbari Dispensation’, in K.N. Panikkar, Terence J. Byres, and Utsa Patnaik, eds, The Making of History: Essays Presented to Irfan Habib (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000), pp. 104-40. 4. ‘The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, ca. 1600: Contemporary Perspectives’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 47, no. 3, 2004, pp. 357-89. 5. ‘Love, Passion and Reason in Faizi’s Nal-Daman’, in Francesca Orsini, ed., Love in South Asia: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 109-41.

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6. ‘Frank Disputations: Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–11)’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 46, no. 4, 2009, pp. 457-511. 7. ‘The Making of a Munshi’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 2, 2004, pp. 61–72. 8. ‘Exploring the Hinterland: Trade and Politics in the Arcot Nizâmat (1700–1732)’, in Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Lakshmi Subramanian, eds, Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 113-64. 9. ‘Witnesses and Agents of Empire: Eighteenth-Century Historiography and the World of the Mughal Munshī’, in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 51, nos 1–2, 2010, pp. 393-423. 10. ‘Envisioning Power: The Political Thought of a Late EighteenthCentury Mughal Prince’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2006, pp. 131–61.

Abbreviations AN BL CC GOML IAN/TT IESHR JRASGBI NAH NAI OBP OIOC VOC

Archives Nationales, Paris British Library, London Corpo Cronológico Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Chennai Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon Indian Economic and Social History Review Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Nationaal Archief, the Hague National Archives of India, New Delhi Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren Oriental and India Office Collections Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie

Map 1. Evolving Frontiers of the Mughal Empire

Map 2. Trade Routes and Urban Centres in the Mughal Empire

Introduction: The Old and the New in Mughal Historiography Sad naghma-i dard dar sukhan rīz Dar sāghar-i nau mai-i kuhan rīz. (Make a hundred songs of pain into poetry, Fill the fresh goblet with an old wine.) —Faizi, Nal-Daman

T

he Mughals have truly cast a long shadow on Indian historiography, from the time when they themselves began to patronize major works of history, largely in Persian, in the sixteenth century. From the very distinctive and remarkably accessible memoir authored nearly five hundred years ago in Chaghatay Turkish by the founder of the dynasty’s fortunes in Hindustan, Zahir-udDin Muhammad Babur, to texts written in the next generation by his daughter Gulbadan Begam and several of his son’s officials (Bayazid Beg, Jauhar Aftabchi), to the massive chronicle Akbar Nāma produced in the third generation by Akbar’s most influential ideologue Shaikh Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, these texts have long formed the central basis for an understanding of the Mughals.1 The 1For

a useful recent and ambitious reconsideration of a large group of texts, see Stephan Conermann, Historiographie als Sinnstiftung: Indo-persische Geschichtsschreibung während der Mogulzeit (932–1118/1526–1707) (Wiesbaden: 2002). No comprehensive general discussion exists in English of Mughal historiography. For a still-useful overview, see Abdur Rashid, ‘The Treatment of History by Muslim Historians in Mughal Official and Biographical Works’, in C.H. Philips, ed., Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: 1961), pp. 139–51;

2

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fifteenth century had seen a historiographical revolution of sorts in the Central Asian and Iranian Timurid world effected by writers such as Sharaf-ud-Din Yazdi, ‘Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi, and Mirkhwand, and the Mughals undoubtedly carried that tradition forward and consolidated it further south.2 Historiographical production then proceeded apace in the century that followed, sometimes with royal or official patronage, and sometimes without its benefit. The reign of Shahjahan (1628–58) alone boasted major chronicles by ‘Abdul Hamid Lahori, Muhammad Amin Qazwini, and Muhammad Salih Kamboh. By the middle years of the eighteenth century, when the English East India Company began its conquest of eastern India, its administrators had to contend with a veritable Mughal library made up not only of histories and books of advice to princes, but literature on a vast variety of other subjects—from norms of comportment, literature, and prosody to astrology, cuisine, and the management of agrarian resources—all of which formed part of the potential curriculum for the novice administrator. These years saw the first halting translations of such texts as the Ā’īn-i Akbarī of Abu’l Fazl, the Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī of Muhammad Qasim ‘Firishta’, and the Inshā’-i Harkaran into English. But this did not mean that English became the dominant idiom in which the history of the Mughals was understood. Through the nineteenth century, their history continued to be addressed and debated vigorously in such diverse idioms as Persian, Urdu, Braj Bhasha, and vernacular languages from Tamil and Telugu to Marathi and Bengali, both before and after the great anti-British uprising of the late 1850s.3 more specifically, see studies such as Harbans Mukhia, Historians and Historiography During the Reign of Akbar (New Delhi: 1976). Interesting readings of particular texts are also emerging, such as Ali Anooshahr, ‘Mughal Historians and the Memory of the Islamic Conquest of India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 43, no. 3, 2006, pp. 275–300. 2John E. Woods, ‘The Rise of Timurid Historiography’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, 1987, pp. 81–108. 3See, for example, Phillip B. Wagoner, ‘Precolonial Intellectuals and the Production of Colonial Knowledge’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 45, no. 4, 2003, pp. 783–814; Kumkum Chatterjee, The Cultures of History in Early Modern India: Persianization and Mughal Culture in 17th and 18th Century Bengal (Delhi: 2009); Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, ‘India’s History Revealed in a Dream’, trans.

Introduction

3

What exactly the Mughals represented remained the subject of continuous and rather contentious debate, some nostalgically lauding their achievements in terms of both culture and material life, others claiming that they had always been an oppressive and despotic presence. The latter view increasingly came to be defended in official British views of India as they moved from their initial ideological claim that they were heirs to and renewers of the Mughal tradition of governance, to the much different view that the ‘improvement’ they were bringing about on the subcontinent represented the mirror image of the type of rule that the Mughals had set in place. An important transitional figure in this respect is that of the East India Company servant Henry Miers Elliot (1808–53), who collected and attempted to systematize materials on Indo-Muslim historiography from both pre-Mughal and Mughal periods.4 If Elliot was on the one hand an extremely energetic scholar—his colleague and friend Aloys Sprenger believed he had the best grasp of Indo-Persian historiography of any Englishman of his time—he was also firmly committed to the Company’s political expansion, which led him to suggest that the ills of nineteenth-century princely states such as Awadh could be seen to be endemic and representative of Muslim rule in general.5 The highly judgmental (and even accusatory) tone with which Elliot evaluated Mughal histories was exacerbated by his colleague John Dowson, who used his papers (which included draft translations of many Arabic and Persian histories by several hands) to produce the Sujit Mukherjee, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 32, no. 2, 1995, pp. 219–44; Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (New York: 2007). 4On Elliot, see Tripta Wahi, ‘Henry Miers Elliot: A Reappraisal’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1, 1990, pp. 64–90; more generally, see J. S. Grewal, Muslim Rule in India: The Assessment of British Historians (Calcutta: 1970). 5It has been suggested that Elliot’s younger contemporary and sometime collaborator Abraham Richard Fuller (1828–67) possessed a sounder and less biased grasp of Mughal historiography. For a discussion of this question, as well as of the broader Indian reception of British colonial historiography, see Avril A. Powell, ‘History Textbooks and the Transmission of the Pre-colonial Past in North-Western India in the 1860s and 1870s’, in Daud Ali, ed., Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (Delhi: 1999), pp. 91–133.

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massive eight-volume work titled The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Mohammedan Period (1867–77). In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, as an Englishlanguage historiography of the Mughals came to be consolidated and developed for use in college and university curricula, several notable historians stand out, some interested largely in military questions, others in patronage and cultural movements, and still others—the dominant, in many respects—in administration. They deployed the recognized and preponderant tools of the time, namely philology and textual criticism (represented most fully in the celebrated Bibliotheca Indica series). This resulted in, above all, analyses of the ‘cream’ of Mughal writing; studies of numismatics and the inscriptional corpus; an examination and documentation of surviving built structures and monuments; studies of painting and visual representations produced under the Mughals; and finally, through a gradual and extremely uneven process, the constitution of an archive of Mughal documents (as distinct from the collections of texts initiated by the Company from the time of the seizure of the library of Tipu Sultan at the end of the eighteenth century—a library which had been incorporated in fair measure into the Asiatic Society’s collection in Calcutta in 1808).6 The motivations and methods of those engaged in such work were often complex, perhaps more so than those of Elliot. An early figure of importance, for example, was the Dresden-born Heinrich (Henry) Ferdinand Blochmann (1838–78), who after studies in Leipzig and Paris embarked for India as an enlisted soldier in 1858 (ostensibly drawing inspiration from the eighteenth-century orientalist scholar Anquetil Duperron).7 Blochmann knew Persian and Arabic, and upon arrival in India he proceeded to teach and interpret in these languages as well as pursue studies at Calcutta University after a brief stint in the colonial army. From the mid 1860s to the end of his short life he then taught at the Calcutta madrasa, and devoted himself 6Charles Stewart, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore: To Which are Prefixed Memoirs of Hyder Aly Khan and His Son Tippoo Sultan (London: 1809). 7On Anquetil Duperron, see the important reconsideration by Lucette Valensi, ‘Eloge de l’Orient, éloge de l’orientalisme: Le jeu d’échecs d’Anquetil-Duperron’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, vol. 212, no. 4, 1995, pp. 419–52.

Introduction

5

almost exclusively to philological and related pursuits, in particular his eventually unfinished project on the Ā’īn-i Akbarī. Blochmann, like his ally W. Nassau Lees, was thus a central figure in establishing a close relationship between philology—as it was conceived in midnineteenth-century France and Germany—and the study of Mughal history.8 The relative neutrality of his tone, his attention to geography, the absence of sweeping generalizations, and his careful devotion to the protocols of textual reading in a characteristically positivistic mode have made him a far more attractive figure across a variety of constituencies than the more difficult Elliot. The tendencies represented by Elliot and Blochmann posed a challenge to the tradition of scholarship that resided still in the Persianized literati class which depended for its sustenance on regional courts, as well as to the prestigious vestiges of Mughal intellectual culture within British India. It could be said that a figure such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan took up the challenge thrown by the new philology allied with the emerging print culture: this seems evident from his partial edition of the Ā’īn-i Akbarī (1855–6), and his editions of Barani’s Tārīkh-i Firūzshāhī (1862) and the Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī (1863; reprinted 1864). In a sense, these followed the older tradition of Fort William College, which had seen several attempts by scholars to render Mughal chronicles into Urdu: they included Mir Sher ‘Ali Afsos’s Ārāyish-i Mahfil, which was a translation of Sujan Rai Bhandari’s Khulāsat al-Tawārīkh, and ‘Ali Husaini’s rendering of Shihab-ud-Din Talish’s Fathiyya-i ‘Ibriya. But Sayyid Ahmad Khan seems in mid career to have abandoned both his philological vocation and his antiquarian interests so evident in his celebrated early work Āsār al-sanādīd (of which two distinct versions exist).9 To study the past in this manner, he came to be convinced (apparently under the influence of the poet Ghalib), was to be excessively oriented towards it; rather, the real race was to dominate the future through a 8For a wide-ranging reflection (which does not however take the case of IndoPersian into account), see Sheldon Pollock, ‘Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, no. 4, 2009, pp. 931–61. 9Christian W. Troll, ‘Note on an Early Topographical Work of Sayyid Ahmad Khān: Āsār al-Sanādīd’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2, 1972, pp. 135–46.

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deep investment in reform. The foundation by him in 1875 of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh was part of this vision, with an emphasis on persuading members of the Indo-Islamic elite to grasp their future with both hands. Staffed in good measure by Cambridge alumni, and intended to be a sort of Indian Cambridge for the ashraf of northern India, the college was in its first generation (analysed at length by David Lelyveld) more oriented to producing bureaucrats and functionaries than historians of note.10 To be sure, some who were broadly of Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s generation, notably Shibli Nu‘mani, Muhammad Husain Azad, and Munshi Zakaullah, continued to be interested in producing history of a sort, ironically with what has been termed ‘heavy borrowing from British sources, and sometimes their uncritical acceptance’.11 The immensely prolific but quite derivative Zakaullah has been dealt with at length by a number of authors who have also noted that many other—non-historical—aspects of his oeuvre are probably more worthy of attention than his historical ventures. The work of Muhammad Husain Azad (1834–1910) is somewhat different, for we are aware that he specifically began writing a history of Akbar which was eventually brought into print as Darbār-i Akbarī.12 Though this work came to be popular in many circles, there was little to be found in it for the historian of his time beyond a straightforward chronology of Akbar, beginning with his birth, and an accumulation of (at times engaging) popular traditions regarding the monarch. The most powerful of these authors was surely Shibli Nu‘mani (1857–1914), who also wrote extensively on Islamic history. With regard to Mughal India, however, he is generally known for his work Aurangzeb-‘Ālamgīr par ek nazar, a work frequently reprinted and even translated into English.13 Within his wide-ranging body of essays 10David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton: 1978). 11Mushirul Hasan, A Moral Reckoning: Muslim Intellectuals in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (Delhi: 2005), pp. 225–34 (p. 231); Muhammad Aslam Syed, Muslim Response to the West: Muslim Historiography in India, 1857–1914 (Islamabad: 1988). 12See the editor’s introduction by Muhammad Ibrahim to Muhammad Husain Azad, Darbār-i Akbarī, reprint (Lucknow, n.d.). 13Shibli Nomani [sic], Alamgir, trans. Syed Sabahuddin ‘Abdur Rahman (Delhi: 1981). This work was originally written as a series of essays between 1906 and 1909

Introduction

7

the focus is broadly on intellectual and cultural history.14 Writing at a time when manifestations of Hindu–Muslim communalism were becoming rather evident at the turn of the twentieth century, Shibli, who had earlier differed with Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s politics and supported the nascent Congress Party, defended Mughal rule and culture on the grounds that the Mughals had protected, befriended, and taken care of their Hindu subjects.15 In this regard his writings often seem to be addressed to non-Muslim readers. Thus, he aims to call for a recognition of the history of Muslim rule in its ‘positive’ aspects in India as these included efforts at promoting and protecting ‘Hindu’ culture. This he emphasized in particular in a well-known article, ‘Musulmānon ki ‘ilmī be ta‘assubī aur hamāre Hindū bhāiyon ki nāsapāsī’ (The intellectual tolerance of Muslims and our Hindu brethren’s ingratitude).16 The same sentiment is also expressed in an extremely romantic way in two of his poems, ‘Hamārā tarz-i hukūmat’ and ‘‘Adl-i Jahāngīrī ’. In the first we have these illustrative lines: Kabhī hamne bhī kī thī hukmarānī in mamālik par, magar woh hukmarānī jiskā sikkā jān-o-dil par thā […] dulhan kī pālkī khud apne kandhon par jo lāye the woh shāhanshāh-i Akbar aur Jahāngīr ibn-Akbar thā yahī hain woh shamīm angeziyān ‘itr-i mohabbat ki ke jinse bostān-i Hind barson tak mu‘attar thā. in the magazine Al-Nadwa. For a discussion, see Aslam Syed, Muslim Response to the West, pp. 88–9. 14Some of Shibli’s most important essays regarding the Mughals are: ‘Zaib-unnisā’’ (1909), Maqālāt-i Shiblī, vol. 5 (Azamgarh: 1989), pp. 100–11; ‘Maulawī Ghulām ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī’ (1905), Maqālāt-i Shiblī, vol. 5, pp. 112–28; ‘Hindustān mem Islāmī hukūmat ke tamaddun kā asar’, Maqālāt-i Shiblī, vol. 6 (Azamgarh: 1989), pp 194–216; ‘Humāyūn-Nāma az Gulbadan Begum’, in Rashid Hasan Khan, ed., Intikhāb-i Mazāmīn-i Shiblī (New Delhi: 1993), pp. 106–17; ‘Tuhfat al-Hind: Musulmānon ki tawajjoh braj bhāshā par’, in Khan, ed., Intikhāb-i Mazāmīn-i Shiblī, pp. 48–58; ‘Bhāshā, zabān, aur Musalmān’, in Khan, ed., Intikhāb-i Mazāmīn-i Shiblī, pp. 59–71; ‘Jahāngīr aur Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī’, in Khan, ed., Intikhāb-i Mazāmīn-i Shiblī, pp. 118–49. 15On Shibli’s differences with Sayyid Ahmad Khan, see Sayyid Sulaiman Nadwi, Hayāt-i Shiblī (Azamgarh: 1999), pp. 295–8 and 618–23. 16The essay is reproduced in Maqālāt-i Shiblī, vol. 6, pp. 217–36.

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Tumhe le de ke sārī dāstān mein yād hai itnā ke ‘Ālamgīr Hindūkush thā, zālim thā, sitamgar thā. (Once we too ruled over these kingdoms, a rule which held sway over people’s hearts and souls. […] The bride’s palanquin was carried on their own shoulders by the Emperor Akbar and his son Jahangir. This was the scent of the perfume of love they spread which made the gardens of Hindustan fragrant for years. As for you, all you recall of that tale is: ‘Alamgir as Hindu-killer, as tyrant, as oppressor.17) This point is amplified in his poem on Jahangir’s justice (‘‘Adl-i Jahāngīrī’), which emphasizes the extent to which the Mughals could put aside even their most cherished sentiments when administering justice to the people irrespective of their religion.18 For all the considerable impact of Shibli’s oeuvre on his contemporaries and successors, it seems settled that, for the most part, his realm was not properly Indian history. This meant in effect that the high ground of Mughal history had for a time been almost entirely ceded, in particular to members of the Indian Civil Service who—following Henry Miers Elliot—pursued history either in their spare time or after retirement. Key figures in this respect were two near-contemporary Scotsmen, William Irvine (1840–1911) and Henry Beveridge (1837–1929).19 Irvine, after his retirement in 1888, wrote extensively on the Mughals, first publishing The Army of the Indian Moghuls (1903), and then reflecting at great length on the dynasty’s travails in the eighteenth century, explaining their decline in terms of moral deficiency; lastly, he showed a close interest in contemporary European narrative accounts of the Mughals and was responsible for an important translation of the Storia of the Venetian Nicolò Manuzzi, which had long lain 17Kulliyāt-i

Shiblī Urdū, ed. Sayyid Sulaiman Nadwi (Azamgarh: 1954), p. 41. p. 42. 19A third Scottish savant who might be added to their number is Thomas Wolseley Haig (1865–1938), though he devoted greater attention to the Deccan than to Mughal India. 18Ibid.,

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neglected.20 Beveridge was far more entirely inclined to the task of translation, notably with regard to the work of Abu’l Fazl; his wife, Annette S. Beveridge, produced translations as well, both from the Turkish and the Persian, including of Gulbadan’s memoirs. The tradition of scholar–civil servants working on the Mughals was then continued but also appreciably transformed by a native of Northern Ireland, William Harrison Moreland (1868–1938).21 After his retirement from the Indian Civil Service in 1914, Moreland turned from studying the agrarian problems of the United Provinces to a closer interest in making comparisons between British and Mughal rule, above all from an economic standpoint. From an initial dependence on translations, including of the Ā’īn-i Akbarī, his work in the course of the 1920s and 1930s shows an increasing familiarity with and grasp of Persian narrative sources and documents, as well as the archives of the Dutch East India Company—on which he placed considerable reliance. His works, which are very largely devoted to the history of administration, have often been admired for their thoroughness and technical skill (particularly with respect to revenue vocabulary), but they remain consistent in their urge to demonstrate that, largely on account of poor administrative practice (in other words, despotic rule), the living standards of Indian peasants under the Mughals and their precursors were rather poorer than those under the British. This is a leitmotif from India at the Death of Akbar (1920), to From Akbar to Aurangzeb (1923)—perhaps the strongest of his three major works—to the wide-ranging The Agrarian System of Moslem India (1929). In an obvious jab at Indian nationalist scholars such as Brij Narain, he was to write in the 1930s of how ‘a small but voluble band of enthusiasts have of late adopted an attitude of uncritical hostility towards any evidence tending to show that the India of this [Mughal] period was not an earthly paradise.’22 20See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Further Thoughts on an Enigma: The Tortuous Life of Nicolò Manucci, 1638–c.1720’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2008, pp. 35–76. 21For a useful, but rather apologistic, view of his career, see Margaret H. Case, ‘The Historical Craftsmanship of W.H. Moreland (1868–1938)’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 2, 1964, pp. 245–58. 22W.H. Moreland, ed., Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century (London: 1931), p. xxvi. In this work, which edits and presents the accounts of

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Moreland for his part remained an ardent adherent of the ideology of colonial ‘improvement’, which led some self-conscious historians even in Britain, such as J.B. Harrison, to criticize his work in the late 1950s and early 1960s.23 The work of historians such as Irvine and Moreland, while certainly varied in nature and intent, shared a broad commitment to philology and positivism, the former intending to produce a narrative form of history and the latter a more analytical history focused on the fiscal system. Historians of other parts of the Islamic world working at the turn of the twentieth century, or even later, on political narrative or agrarian–fiscal history, whether themselves administrator–scholars or not, would surely have recognized themselves in some of what they did; one may think of the work of Ann Lambton on Iran or Ömer Lütfi Barkan in the Ottoman case.24 So it is in relation to Irvine and Moreland that we must also place the work of the most important and prolific Indian historian of the Mughals in the first half of the twentieth century, Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958). Born into a zamīndār family in eastern Bengal, and educated almost exclusively in Calcutta, Sarkar was noted for being something of a cultural nationalist, famously complaining that ‘India cannot afford to remain an intellectual pariah, beggar for crumbs at the doors of Oxford or Cambridge, Paris or Vienna.’ Some welcome attention has been paid in recent years to Sarkar’s close (and sometimes tense) dealings with his historian contemporaries in Maharashtra; however, one cannot lose sight of his crucial association with William Irvine, as well as the mutual admiration and intellectual support between him and Moreland.25 William Methwold, Pieter Gillisz van Ravesteyn, and Anthonij Schorer, Moreland defends their narratives as largely objective views of a despotic state. Cf. Brij Narain, Indian Economic Life: Past and Present (Lahore: 1929). 23J.B. Harrison, ‘Notes on W.H. Moreland as Historian’, in C.H. Philips, ed., Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, pp. 310–18. 24In the case of Barkan, some Turkish scholars have in fact termed his approach one of ‘state fetishism’. See Halil Berktay, ‘Three Empires and the Societies They Governed: Iran, India and the Ottoman Empire’, in Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi, eds, New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History (London: 1992), pp. 242–66. 25Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Public Life of History: An Argument Out of India’, Public Culture, vol. 20, no. 1, 2008, pp. 143–68; also Dipesh Chakrabarty,

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Within a vast body of work, arguably the best-known project was the five-volume History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources (1912–24), which may have drawn for inspiration on Irvine’s own rather firm notions (in turn influenced by his readings of Manuzzi) on the relative merits of Aurangzeb and his brother Dara Shukoh. Written as narrative ‘high political history’ in a tragic mode, the work claims to show how the highly intelligent Aurangzeb eventually fell victim to his own religious attitudes, which in turn influenced the eventual fate of the empire over which he ruled. Moreland saw no particular contradiction between Sarkar’s work and his own, as his reviews of the latter show; naturally, he preferred the works on administration and institutions to the more flowing narratives, and he also complained on one occasion that Sarkar was too gentle on the Mughals: ‘There is some risk that the lengthy quotations from instructions given to Mogul officials may tempt readers to believe that these instructions must have been followed in practice; a better estimate of the weight actually attached to them can be framed by readers familiar with such incidents as the Khan-Khanan’s excess profits levy at Dacca in 1661, or Mirza Ali Akbar’s extortion at Surat a few years before.’26 For his part, and despite this gently critical remark, it is clear that Sarkar was most certainly not committed to the perspective of the nationalist critics of Moreland, who had insisted that standards of living in Mughal times had been far better than under British rule.

II The principal difficulty of post-1950 historiography on the Mughals lay in understanding how to manage this troubled inheritance, exacerbated by the implications of the Partition. It soon ceased to ‘Bourgeois Categories Made Global: Utopian and Actual Lives of Historical Documents in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no. 25, 2009, pp. 67–75. The conventional treatment in works such as S.K. Srivastava, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the Historian at Work (Delhi: 1989) is in need of considerable revision. 26W.H. Moreland, ‘Review of Sarkar, Studies in Mughal India and Mughal Administration’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 3, 1921, pp. 438–9.

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be necessary to deal with a renewed British historiography on the subject; after the disappearance of the scholar–administrator from the ICS as a social type, British universities ceased for the most part to patronize the serious study of Mughal history in the 1950s and 1960s.27 Even eccentric figures such as the Stepney-born inveterate traveller and polyglot Edward Denison Ross (1871–1940), who had worked variously on the translation of Mirza Haidar Dughlat’s Tārīkh-i Rashīdī and an edition of Ulughkhani’s Zafar ul-Wālih, were no longer to be found in these years. A figure such as Simon Digby, when he eventually appeared on the scene and began to publish occasionally in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was unable to find a proper place for himself in the academy. In the South Asian context, however, a struggle played itself out between different tendencies. A simplistic reading of the struggle would view it as a binary one between a ‘communalist’ and ‘secular’ historiography, the former committed to reading the Mughal period in terms of the logic of its religious and ideational conflicts and the latter seeking more materialist and universal schemes of explanation. On this view, there would also be an implicit complicity between Hindu and Muslim communalist readings, the former located for example in the multi-volume History and Culture of the Indian People edited by K.M. Munshi and R.C. Majumdar, and the latter in various works produced in Pakistan by authors such as I.H. Qureshi (1903–81).28 However, a closer inspection of the record reveals a far more complex picture. 27The only major area of continued interest for British scholarship on the Mughals was literary, as we see from the work of Ralph Russell, Christopher Shackle, David Matthews, and others. For a good example of such work, see Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda, Mir Hasan (Cambridge, Mass.: 1968). Aside from these, we may count a few essays on the Mughals, such as Peter Hardy, ‘Abul Fazl’s Portrait of the Perfect Padshah: A Political Philosophy for Mughal India—or a Personal Puff for a Pal?’, in Christian W. Troll, ed., Islam in India, Studies and Commentaries: vol. 2, Religion and Religious Education (New Delhi: 1985), pp. 114–37; and Peter Hardy, ‘The Mughals and Money’, in Christopher Shackle, ed., Urdu and Muslim South Asia: Studies in Honour of Ralph Russell (Delhi: 1991), pp. 19–27. 28See I.H. Qureshi, et al., A History of the Freedom Movement, Being the Story of Muslim Struggle for the Freedom of Hind-Pakistan, 1707–1947, 4 vols (Karachi: 1957), especially vol. I; also I.H. Qureshi, Akbar: The Architect of the Mughul Empire (Karachi: 1978).

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Rather, the views summarized above—whether those of Sarkar with their emphasis on the religious basis of later Mughal rule, or Moreland’s more economistic claim that under the Mughals ‘the administration was the dominant fact in the economic life of the country’—were certainly under contest by the 1930s. Here, we refer to the works of historians such as Ibn Hasan, Ram Prasad Tripathi, and Parmatma Saran, and to the larger school of what has been termed ‘nationalist and liberal’ historiography associated with Allahabad University.29 These writers attempted to argue that the Mughal state was no voracious Leviathan, that peasants had well-developed property rights, that reasonable limits existed to the extent of revenue collection, and that Mughal rule had within its institutional structure checks and balances that could be seen as a sort of unwritten constitution. There is no doubt a certain nationalist overzealousness in Saran’s insistence that ‘our modern [i.e. colonial] institutions are not in all respects necessarily an advance over their predecessors’, but the position of these scholars seems in retrospect far more reasonable than Moreland’s rather obsessive concern with the administrative evils of pre-colonial Muslim rule, whether in the Mughal domains or in the Sultanate of Golkonda.30 The first generation of post-1950 historians, such as S. Nurul Hasan and Satish Chandra, came in some measure from this liberal-nationalist tradition and continued even in their later writings to owe much to it (whatever their ostensible allegiance to Marxism). Thus, Satish Chandra’s early work was marked by its critique of Sarkar’s ‘representation of Aurangzeb as a religious fanatic and [his] view that in a truly Islamic state religious tolerance was an impossibility’, while 29Ibn Hasan, The Central Structure of the Mughal Empire and Its Practical Working up to the Year 1657 (London: 1936); P. Saran, The Provincial Government of the Mughals, 1526–1658 (1st edn, Lahore: 1943; 2nd edn, New York: 1973); R.P. Tripathi, Some Aspects of Muslim Administration (Allahabad: 1936). The ‘Allahabad School’ of historiography has now largely been forgotten, as we see from the debate between Ramachandra Guha, ‘The Absent Liberal: An Essay on Politics and Intellectual Life’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 36, no. 50, 2001, pp. 4663–70, and Peter Ronald de Souza, ‘Intellectuals and Their Domain’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 37, no. 9, 2002, pp. 890–92. 30At the same time, one cannot deny that there was considerable variation in the views of ‘Allahabad School’ historians, not all of whom comfortably fit the category ‘liberal-nationalist’.

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Nurul Hasan consistently insisted on the existence of a complex view of layers of rural middling groups—what he termed ‘primary’ and ‘intermediary’ zamīndārs—rather than a simple opposition between an incubus-like state and an impoverished peasantry.31 The emergence in the late 1950s of a new tendency in Mughal studies at Aligarh Muslim University tended to overshadow and obscure this liberal-nationalist riposte to Sarkar and Moreland. After the somewhat unpromising beginnings we have noted above, in the early 1920s the college founded by Sayyid Ahmad Khan was transformed into a university and quickly gained ground with regard to its investment in history; a key figure was the Aligarh- and Oxfordeducated Mohammad Habib (1895–1971), whose early work is also marked by a liberal-nationalist perspective not entirely dissimilar to that of the Allahabad historians cited above. Indeed, the combined effect of the emergence of historical schools in Allahabad and Aligarh in the period may be seen as an attempt by both elite Muslim and Persianized Hindu (i.e. Brahmin, Kayastha, and Khatri) groups in northern India to reappropriate Sultanate and Mughal history from the hands of the British ICS historians who had largely reduced them in enterprises such as Bibliotheca Indica to the role of lowly informants and munshīs.32 It is notable moreover that the preponderance of such Indian historians of the Mughals at the time came from families either of wealthy landowners (such as the ta‘ālluqdārs of Awadh or the Indo-Afghan elites of western UP), or from families heavily and prosperously invested in the new liberal professions (such as law). Mohammad Habib emerged from such a milieu, as did a number of other historians—whether liberals or leftist—mentioned below. However, his impact on Mughal historiography was somewhat attenuated by the fact that the greater part of his work focused on the period of the pre-Mughal Sultanate dynasties, as well as early 31Satish Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History (Delhi: 2003); S. Nurul Hasan, Religion, State, and Society in Medieval India, ed. Satish Chandra (Delhi: 2008). 32There is also the matter of the continuation of a certain style of amateur scholarship, often in Urdu, of which an excellent example from the early twentieth century is ‘Abdul Halim Sharar, Hindūstān mem mashrīqī tamaddun kā ākhirī namūnā ya‘nī Guzashta Lakhnau, ed. Rashid Hasan Khan (New Delhi: 1971); the English translation is Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, trans. E.S. Harcourt and Fakhir Husain (Delhi: 1989).

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conqueror figures such as Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (971–1030). Of Mohammad Habib’s approach and inclinations as a historian, Simon Digby says: ‘Habib’s interpretations of Indian and Islamic history bear the mark of a succession of intellectual influences upon him. A pious and educated family background, reinforced by Shiblī Nu‘mānī’s historical writings, gave him a keen interest in early Islam, suffused by a romantic but in effect re-interpretative approach. He also had some grounding in fiqh, kalām, and other scholastic Islamic branches of learning, which some of his pupils and successors today lack.’33 Over time, however, and particularly from the early 1950s, Mohammad Habib’s writings came gradually to acquire a more Marxist colouring, a tendency that may also be linked to the growing prestige and influence of other figures such as Kunwar Muhammad Ashraf (1903–62), who had written widely on Indo-Islamic themes from a broadly Marxist perspective.34 The flagship text of the new Aligarh historiography, or the ‘Aligarh School’ as it is sometimes termed, was written however by a member of the next generation. This was Irfan Habib’s The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1963), initially submitted as a D.Phil. thesis to Oxford University. The work was immediately received with acclaim, though some discordant notes may also be found in reviews, such as two by the Karachi-based historian and Aligarh alumnus Riazul Islam (1919–2007), published in the same year (to which we shall return below). In a glowing review, Tapan Raychaudhuri, who had earlier written on the history of the 33Simon

Digby, Review of Mohammad Habib, Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period: Collected Works, vol. 1, ed. K.A. Nizami (New Delhi: 1974), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, 1976, pp. 453–8. Digby also notes the opposition between the Aligarh scholarship of Mohammad Habib and the traditionalist and more exacting philological scholarship of Lahorebased intellectuals such as Hafiz Mahmud Sherani (the latter largely literary in focus), citing Maqālāt-i Hāfiz Mahmūd Sherānī, vol. 6: Barr-i saghīr mem fārsī adab se mut‘alliq mazāmīn (Lahore: 1972), pp. 210–40. To our knowledge, no systematic analysis has been attempted yet of the contents of the Oriental College Magazine (Lahore), founded in 1925, where Sherani, Muhammad Shafi‘, and others published extensively on Mughal literary culture in these years. 34Kunwar Muhammad Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindūstān (1200–1550 AD), Mainly Based on Islamic Sources (New Delhi: 2000); Horst Krüger, ed., Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf: An Indian Scholar and Revolutionary, 1903–1962 (Berlin: 1966).

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Mughals in Bengal, declared: ‘Once in a very long while something happens to stir the shallow, turbid and yet extensive waters of Indian historiography. The publication of Irfan Habib’s The Agrarian System of Mughal India is generally recognised—even in the most unlikely quarters—as one of these rare occasions.’35 The virtues of the work were seen in part as rootedly traditional, namely the author’s massive erudition particularly with regard to Persian sources; but he was also applauded for explicitly linking Mughal historiography with a Marxist perspective, this being in keeping with the earlier attempts of D.D. Kosambi with regard to ancient India (of which a major statement was published in 1956).36 But critics, even friendly ones, noted the uncomfortable proximity of the work (including its title) with the earlier work of Moreland. Just as the observations of British colonial administrators had once enabled Marx to build his edifice of the Asiatic Mode of Production, it appeared that the logic of Irfan Habib’s argument depended on the cross-pollination of Moreland’s conception of Mughal rule as a voracious Oriental Despotism with the Canadian Marxist Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s characterization of the Mughal regime as undermined by ‘lower class uprisings’.37 Riazul Islam was the most perspicacious of the work’s critics, pointing to how after the ideologically-determined strictures passed on Mughal administration by Moreland and Sarkar, ‘Dr. Beni Prasad, Dr. Ibn Hasan, Dr. B.P. Saksena and, above all, Dr. P. Saran, showed a better understanding and appreciation of Mughal rule.’ He then remarked: ‘Now the wheel has turned full circle and Dr. Irfan Habib has come out to support the view held by an earlier generation of historians’, 35Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘The Agrarian System of Mughal India: A Review Essay’,

in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, 1526–1750 (Delhi: 1998), p. 259. The essay first appeared in 1965. 36D.D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay: 1956); The Oxford India Kosambi: Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings, ed. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (Delhi: 2009). For a critical but sympathetic view of Kosambi’s approach, see Sheldon Pollock, ‘Towards a Political Philology: D.D. Kosambi and Sanskrit’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 30, 2008, pp. 52–9. 37Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Lower Class Uprisings in the Mughal Empire’, in Alam and Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, pp. 323–46. The essay dates to 1946 and is widely cited.

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meaning that of Moreland above all. His critique was particularly sharp with regard to Irfan Habib’s determination to stretch the evidence out on the procrustean bed of a rather crude theory of class struggle: Dr. Irfan Habib has indeed tied himself into knots in trying to equate the Marathas with peasants in revolt. After observing, ‘The conditions of the peasants were aggravated beyond endurance from the Maratha depredations’, he goes on to draw the astonishing conclusion: ‘This apparently drove the peasants still further into the arms of the Marathas.’ In substantiation he quotes at length from Bhimsen’s Nuskha-i Dilkushā. Curiously enough the passage he cites concludes thus: ‘The peasants have abandoned cultivation and neither dām nor dirham reaches the jāgīrdārs. Despairing and perplexed because of (their lack of strength) many of the mansabdārs of this country have gone over to the Marathas.’ If the peasants were reeling under Maratha depredation and if the mansabdārs were going over to the Marathas, it passes understanding how the Maratha eruption can be acclaimed as a revolt of over-taxed peasants against an oppressive, exploiting regime. The fact of the matter is that Dr. Irfan Habib has tried to force a class pattern on facts and the facts have refused to oblige him.38

Despite the accuracy and force of such criticism, The Agrarian System of Mughal India became the magnetic pole around which a whole body of work came to be oriented, while at the same time historians who continued to work within the broadly liberal-nationalist framework—amongst whom we may count such older and highly prolific figures as Mohibbul Hasan (1908–99) and Haroon Khan Sherwani (1891–1980)—were relegated to a distinctly secondary role. To the work of Irfan Habib was added that of, first, Iqtidar Alam Khan and M. Athar Ali, and later, Shireen Moosvi, while each year’s Indian History Congress now saw the production of a separate mimeographed ‘Aligarh volume’ dominated by the perspective of Irfan Habib. This 38Riazul

Islam, ‘Review of The Agrarian System of Mughal India’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, nos 3–4, 1965, pp. 143–4. Also see Riazul Islam, ‘Review of The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707) by Irfan Habib’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, 1965, pp. 172–4.

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was despite the fact that the greater part of the work of scholars such as Iqtidar Alam Khan and Athar Ali was either profoundly traditional in nature (the biographies of elite figures such as Mirza Kamran and Mun‘im Khan in the case of the former), or perfectly comprehensible within the older liberal–secular framework of history (the case of the latter’s prosopographical work on the Mughal elite), with no particular relationship to the doxa on peasant hyperexploitation that had been filtered through Moreland.39 Further, if the ‘Aligarh School’ gained adherents outside Aligarh, such as to an extent Tapan Raychaudhuri, it also had a polarizing effect within Aligarh (and in Mughal history circles more generally), particularly with regard to scholars such as Khaliq Ahmad Nizami (1925–97) and Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi (1921–94), who continued to express and develop a deep interest in religious questions.40 What was the content of the older tradition marooned or set aside by the rising tide of the ‘Aligarh School’? The answers could be diverse, and actually varied over a large spectrum. We may take an example that is relatively well documented to gain a sense of what was at stake. This was the case of Haroon Khan Sherwani, born into a prosperous zamīndār family from Dataoli, just east of Aligarh, but whose grandfather had migrated for political reasons (in the aftermath of 1857) to al-Ta’if in Yemen. The historian Sherwani’s Mecca-born father Musa Khan, on his return to India, was closely associated for a time with Sayyid Ahmad Khan, then joined the Muslim League, and was eventually a follower of Gandhi in the last decades of his life.41 39For a sampling of their respective writings, see Iqtidar Alam Khan, The Political Biography of a Mughal Noble, Mun‘im Khan Khan-i Khanan, 1497–1575 (New Delhi: 1973), and Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (Delhi: 2004); M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Bombay: 1966), and Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, ed. Irfan Habib (Delhi: 2006). 40In the present volume, we have not ourselves gone deeply into questions of religion, as they will be dealt with in a separate work in preparation by Muzaffar Alam. 41Here we follow the accounts in Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, ‘Life Sketch of Professor H.K. Sherwani: His Family History, His Services and Contributions’, and P.M. Joshi, ‘H.K. Sherwani: Evolution of a Historian’, in P.M. Joshi and M.A. Nayeem, ed., Studies in the Foreign Relations of India (From the Earliest Times to 1947): Professor H.K. Sherwani Felicitation Volume (Hyderabad: 1975), pp. 1–17,

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Despite his close associations with Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s family (including a close personal friendship with his grandson Sayyid Ross Masood), H.K. Sherwani was not educated at the college at Aligarh but admitted to Cambridge in 1907. Though initially inclined to study mathematics, he eventually transferred to Oxford and completed a degree in modern history there in 1911 before pursuing studies in law and travelling in Europe where he became an avid Francophile. Returning to India, Sherwani then spent the years of the First World War somewhat adrift in Aligarh before being appointed to the newly founded Osmania University in Hyderabad in 1919, where he remained for the greater part of his career, with the exception of the years bracketing the Partition and the Indian ‘police action’ in Hyderabad, which he spent in Delhi. In the decades that followed his arrival in Hyderabad, Sherwani consolidated his reputation through his translations, original publications, and participation in the activities of such bodies as the Indian Historical Records Commission. Although himself a transplant to the region, it is clear that his work gradually grew to have a certain Deccani patriotism about it, as one sees in Mahmud Gawan, the Great Bahmani Wazir (1941), The Bahmanis of the Deccan (1953), and his long series of studies on the Qutb Shahi rulers of Golkonda, culminating in the publication of the massive History of the Qutb Shahi Dynasty (1974). These are almost all works of narrative history, albeit with some attention to the functioning of institutions; Sherwani’s other great interest was the Muslim presence in Europe. At the heart of the work lies a somewhat idealized view of the South Asian ‘composite culture’ that is thought by him to have characterized the centuries between about 1350 and 1750. This idea he developed largely from a reading of Persian and Arabic materials, but also—as in his last work, on the Qutb Shahis—by drawing on the work of collaborators to address literary materials in Telugu. The tone is at times nostalgic, but often soberly modernist as befitted a moderate admirer of Mustafa Kemal. The ‘drawback’ with this form of history is its lack of schematization, an absence of great and totalizing theoretical edifices, and adherence 18–34. It is interesting to compare these views with the account in Francis Robinson, ‘Mohibbul Hasan: Historian of Muslim India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 34, nos 46–7, 1999, pp. 3276–7.

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to a particular style of British empiricism; its advantages include a very broad coverage of both material and cultural themes, as well as attention to and respect for philological precision. Such virtues were scarcely enough to protect these writings from marginalization, a process that cannot simply be understood as an assault on humanistic history by the methods of the social sciences. By the early 1990s, some three decades after the publication of Irfan Habib’s magnum opus, an attempt was made by one of us to understand systematically what the long-hegemonic ‘Aligarh School’ had come to stand for in regard to Mughal historiography.42 The exercise made it clear that the ‘school’ itself had by then ossified into defending a series of propositions which, when taken together, did not appear either particularly innovative or even entirely coherent as a programme. However, these propositions were widely diffused not only within India but in the nascent historiography on the Mughals that had emerged in the West (and above all in American universities) from the 1970s. Here then was the body of orthodox propositions that the ‘school’ and its chief adherents seemed to defend. First, on matters of chronology and periodization, the main focus of research on the Mughals seemed always to be on the period from Akbar to Aurangzeb, which is to say 1556 to 1707. This was the period dealt with in Irfan Habib’s Agrarian System. Even within this period, the main focus was to be on the reigns of Akbar and Aurangzeb, with a relative neglect of the first half of the seventeenth century. This also meant giving overwhelming importance to certain texts, of which ‘most favoured status’ was extended to the Ā’īn-i Akbarī of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, completed in the late sixteenth century.43 It was argued moreover that the ‘key’ Mughal institutions were put in place by 42Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State—Structure or Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 29, no. 3, 1992, pp. 291–321. 43This is most evident in Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire, c. 1595: A Statistical Study (Delhi: 1987), but can equally be discerned in numerous other texts. For a technical critique of Moosvi’s work, see K.K. Trivedi, ‘The Share of Mansabdars in State Revenue Resources: A Study of the Maintenance of Animals’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 24, no. 4, 1987, pp. 411–21; also the review by Sanjay Subrahmanyam in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 1988, pp. 103–7.

Introduction

21

Akbar and remained there under Jahangir and Shahjahan, only to come under challenge during the reign of Aurangzeb. We have noted that both the early period of Mughal rule (including both Babur’s and Humayun’s reigns), and the post-Aurangzeb era, were given short shrift.44 A second set of propositions concerned the nature of political power. The empire in the years under examination had to be portrayed as a highly centralized and bureaucratized despotic ‘absolutism’. Such however was apparently not the case under Babur and Humayun, nor under Aurangzeb’s successors. Manifestations of this precocious centralization were to be found in the Mughal revenue system, mansabdārī, the coinage system, and the high degree of control exercised over society in general (on which more below). Flowing from this was an insistence on the ruthlessly extractive character of the dispensation: the Mughal state was thought to have had a massive impact on producers, extracting their surplus almost wholly. In Tapan Raychaudhuri’s portrayal in The Cambridge Economic History of India, the Mughal state was ‘an insatiable Leviathan (with) . . . unlimited appetite for resources’, which had the peasantry ‘reduced to bare subsistence’. This extractive character implied in turn massive concentration of resources in the hands of the elite. However, the surplus extracted, it is argued, was used unproductively for conspicuous consumption, including imports. At the same time, relations with the world at large were seen as showing a passive character. Imports were seen as largely required to service elite consumption, thus affecting a narrow, mostly urban segment of society. Since this position bore a close resemblance to the one espoused by eighteenth-century Physiocratic literature, it was natural for the ‘Aligarh School’ to oppose its writings to those of ‘bullionist’ historians, who it portrayed as praising trade because it brought precious metals into the economy. However, even for the ‘Aligarh School’ trade may not have been wholly irrelevant in one specific sense. This was in terms of the potentially destabilizing effects 44Of

course, some historians even in Aligarh showed an early interest in the eighteenth century, amongst whom we must count Noman Ahmad Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals, 1700–1750 (Bombay: 1970), and Zahir Uddin Malik, The Reign of Muhammad Shah, 1719–1748 (Bombay: 1977).

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Writing Mughal India

of the bullion inflow through inflation in the seventeenth century, the so-called ‘Price Revolution’. Again, one of the central reasons why technology allegedly remained static was the cultural attitude of the elite, which was portrayed as lacking in scientific curiosity and technological application. Aside from its place in such blunt-edged culturalist formulations, ‘ideology’, usually read simply as ‘religion’, had to be seen as largely irrelevant for purposes of historical analysis. The main contradictions and tensions in the empire were to be viewed as structural, and flowing from the clash of interests rather than ideological perspectives. Even the reasons for the curious elite ideology mentioned above are not to be investigated, but treated as given. Part of the reason for this appeared to be the need to use certain selected texts quite literally, rather than consider the possibility that they may have been ideologically motivated. The notion of the ‘normative’ text thus did not feature in these writings for the most part. Finally, there was the sensitive matter of ‘eighteenth-century decline’, which has perhaps attracted more attention than any other.45 This was in spite of the fact that not even all of the ‘Aligarh School’ (as we have defined it) had precisely the same opinion on the question. Tapan Raychaudhuri, for example, apparently did not subscribe to the view of a decline in the economy in the eighteenth century, as evident from his contributions to the two volumes of The Cambridge Economic History of India. Most fervently attached to the proposition were Athar Ali and Irfan Habib, with the latter having first articulated his position in the closing chapter of his Agrarian System. He argued there that the jāgīrdārī system, whose very nature promoted short-term exploitation of the peasantry, combined with other factors such as inflation to provoke a ‘crisis’, manifested in widespread peasant rebellions against the Mughal state. This crisis came to a head in the last years of Aurangzeb’s reign and continued through much of the eighteenth century, leading to the generalized 45See Seema Alavi, ed., The Eighteenth Century in India (Delhi: 2002); P.J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (Delhi: 2003); and for a broader historiographical analysis, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Making Sense of Indian Historiography’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 39, nos 2–3, 2002, pp. 121–30.

Introduction

23

‘subversion of peasant agriculture’. The eighteenth century was in his view a period when ‘the gates were opened to reckless rapine, anarchy and foreign conquest.’

III It is against this long historiographical background that the studies in this volume, which were largely conceived and written between 1997 and 2009, must be considered. Its authors are two historians of considerably different background and training. The first author (Muzaffar Alam) after an initial training in Islamic studies, traditional philology, and theology (outside Western-style institutions), studied history at Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has long been invested in textual edition and criticism as well as the study of narrative materials and archival documents in Urdu and Persian (and more recently Arabic). The second author (Sanjay Subrahmanyam) was trained in the social sciences and completed his initial research at the University of Delhi on the economic history of southern India. Thereafter, his interests have widened on the one hand to include new geographical areas (from Iberia to Southeast Asia), and on the other hand to social, cultural, and literary questions. This book thus finds itself at the intersection of these two quite diverse sets of authorial interests and skills. The themes treated here are in turn quite diverse, and if in part they were deliberately conceived to swim against the tide of historiographical orthodoxy, they are also often motivated by more simple philological and textual concerns. They broadly cover the three centuries from 1500 to 1800, albeit not in an even or systematic fashion. Our first study concerns one of the forerunners and eventual targets of the Mughals, namely the Sultanate of Gujarat. Initially written for a volume in memory of the French scholars Jean Aubin and Denys Lombard, this study has since been somewhat expanded through the addition of material. Here, we hope to contribute to the renewal of a broad diplomatic history of the sort upheld and defended by Riazul Islam in his several works on the subject of ‘Indo–Persian

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relations’.46 However, we do so by looking at Gujarat’s relations with the Ottomans on the one hand and the Portuguese Estado da Índia on the other. Our intention is moreover to argue that the Mughals from the very outset operated in a broad inter-state and diplomatic context, which thus obliged them to render their political and sovereign expressions commensurable with others—whether Islamic or European.47 The second study is in a related vein, but looks instead to Mughal understandings of Southeast Asia in the late sixteenth century. This was motivated in part by our study of a single, somewhat neglected text by a certain Tahir Muhammad Sabzwari (which has never to our knowledge been edited), but it was also intended to counter the cliché (referred to above) regarding the Mughal elite’s lack of cultural curiosity. The next four studies address issues from the early seventeenth century, the period of transition between the Mughal emperor Akbar and his son Jahangir. The first draws on Jesuit materials and the autobiographical narrative of a Mughal notable, Asad Beg Qazwini, to consider how matters of succession were managed at this time. In part, this takes us back to the preoccupations of the ‘Allahabad School’ regarding the robustness and resilience of Mughal institutions as against the portrayal of the empire as an arbitrary despotism. The second of these studies then contrasts Asad Beg’s views of the Mughal frontier with the sultanates of the Deccan (particularly Ahmadnagar and Bijapur) with those of a slightly earlier Mughal envoy to the same region, the poet Faizi, brother of the celebrated Abu’l Fazl. The poet Faizi is again the central subject of the next study, which has a far more literary flavour and concerns one of his most important works, the narrative poem (or masnawī) devoted to the old Indic story of 46Riazul

Islam, Indo-Persian Relations: A Study of the Political and Diplomatic Relations between the Mughul Empire and Iran (Tehran: 1970); his lead was followed, to a certain extent, in Naimur Rahman Farooqi, Mughal–Ottoman Relations: A Study of Political and Diplomatic Relations between Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire, 1556–1748 (Delhi: 1989). 47For a more general approach to this issue, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Par-delà l’incommensurabilité: Pour une histoire connectée des empires aux temps modernes’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 54, no. 5, 2007, pp. 34–53.

Introduction

25

Nala and Damayanti. We propose a politically-inflected reading of this work, and argue that Faizi was influenced by ideas of advice literature and the ‘mirror of princes’ genre in his treatment of these materials. We thus hope here to argue that it is necessary to cast our net wider in search of the key texts through which to comprehend Mughal ideology, going beyond the chronicles and treatises that have usually been drawn upon. A fourth study returns us to the Jesuit materials, which are on this occasion read together and contrasted Rashomon-like with a recently discovered text of prime significance, the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī of the Mughal intellectual ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri. Through this exercise we gain a better sense of the courtly intellectual milieu as well as the inter-religious debates (munāzara) that characterized a good part of this period, and which were important precursors to those of the colonial period. The succeeding study then deals with a rather different type of text, namely the short (but extremely rich) autobiography of a Hindu (probably Kayastha) munshī named Nek Rai from the second half of the seventeenth century. We argue that first-person narrative texts like this, though somewhat rare, are crucial in order to understand how a literati culture was formed and transformed under the Mughals. We have drawn inspiration here from a rich literature that exists on similar themes for the Ottoman empire. The last three studies take us finally into the eighteenth century, long the neglected stepchild of Mughal historiography (despite the early interest shown in it by Irvine and Sarkar). In the first of this triptych, we propose a regional study of the emerging ‘successor state’ of Arcot in southern India, drawing upon the Persian chronicling tradition and the records of the Dutch East India Company. We show that this state as it emerged was a sort of condominium of a Deccani (Nawayat) elite and Persianized Hindu communities such as the Khatris. We also argue for the need to reintegrate studies of agrarian-fiscal themes with those of external trade, two fields which we argue had for too long been kept artificially separated. A second study then takes us to examining the changing fate of our munshīs in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as they accompanied the changes in Mughal rule as both agents and witnesses. We read both histories and autobiographical accounts by some of these figures

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to this end, and compare them with similar figures elsewhere in the early modern Asian world. Finally, coming full circle, the last study included here examines the views and writings of an obscure Mughal prince of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, Mirza ‘Ali Bakht Azfari. Azfari’s chief work, an autobiographical text, was deliberately modelled on that of his distant direct ancestor Babur, but unlike his illustrious forebear he was unable to emerge triumphant with a kingdom to rule over at the end of his travails. Once more, this study is a contribution to a broader understanding of the varied and contested basis of the Mughal ideology of rule. A brief epilogue then traces how the Mughals were seen from the perspective of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, using the writings of a series of intellectuals who left the old Mughal capital of Delhi for Lucknow further east. Taken together or read separately, these studies form part of an interesting renewal and reorientation of Mughal historiography that has taken place over the last quarter-century and more. These changes can be understood in a variety of ways, but there is little doubt that they constitute a gradual erosion (if not dismantling) of the erstwhile hegemony of the ‘Aligarh School’.48 In 1975, the American historian John F. Richards published his Mughal Administration in Golconda, the first significant monographic work on Mughal history to appear by a scholar entirely trained outside the subcontinent in many decades. This was a carefully constructed discussion of a single region in the Deccan over roughly four decades (from 1687 to 1724), based on hitherto underexplored archival documentation. While insisting on the great influence exerted over his work by Jadunath Sarkar, it is nevertheless interesting that Richards chose at the time to pose his book as a part of the ‘Aligarh School’. In marked contrast, when a long-awaited (and slightly revised) second edition of Irfan Habib’s 48For Aligarh historians’ reactions to this erosion, see M. Athar Ali, ‘The Mughal

Polity—A Critique of Revisionist Approaches’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27, no. 4, 1993, pp. 699–710; and Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘State in the Mughal India: ReExamining the Myths of a Counter-Vision’, Social Scientist, vol. 29, nos 1–2, 2001, pp. 16–45. Inevitably, both historians see in the process a conspiracy hatched principally by British (as well as Dutch and American) scholars and implemented by their Indian acolytes.

Introduction

27

The Agrarian System of Mughal India appeared in 1999, it fell on stony ground, hardly being reviewed (or read) for the most part. Several new themes had emerged in the intervening years, and the narrow conception of history as the examination of a fiscal-administrative apparatus seemed curiously old-fashioned by then. This was depite the fact that neither the Cambridge historians (whether in their first incarnation of the 1960s as the ‘Cambridge School’, or as reoriented by C.A. Bayly in the 1980s), nor ‘Subaltern Studies’ had addressed the Mughal period for the most part.49 What then were the new trends and themes of the changed Mughal historiography? To some extent they were indeed entirely new, but they also at times represented the renewed respectability now afforded to certain classic subjects that had for a time been set aside. We shall identify seven such areas below, to which others can certainly be added.50 (1) The question of religion under the Mughals saw a great deal of renewed interest in the period, for reasons that had in part to do with the contemporary controversies of the period. Faced with the debates around the Babri Masjid, for example, it became clear that the received portrayal of the Mughal elites’ religious attitudes was in need of closer examination. This also required a return to the vast body of materials from the period left by Sufi orders and charismatic 49For

exceptions, see Partha Chatterjee, Bengal, 1920–1947: The Land Question (Calcutta: 1984); Gautam Bhadra, ‘Two Frontier Uprisings in Mughal India’, in Alam and Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, pp. 474–90; Gautam Bhadra, Mughalayuge krishi-arthanīti o krishaka-bidroha (Calcutta: 1983); and Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Marxist Perception of Indian History’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 31, no. 28, 1996, pp. 1838–40, the last of which is a review of Irfan Habib, Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (New Delhi: 1995). However, it may be said that Chakrabarty in his writings often remains rather faithful to the position of Jadunath Sarkar. Finally, cf. C.A. Bayly, ‘State and Economy in India Over Seven Hundred Years’, The Economic History Review, New Series, vol. 38, no. 4, 1985, pp. 583–96. 50For a somewhat different view from ours, see the brief work by Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Oxford: 2004), focusing largely on such questions as ‘legitimacy, religion and political culture’, ‘etiquette’, ‘family’ and ‘folklore’. To explain his choice of emphasis, the author argues that ‘the impress of French historical writing, especially of the Annales mode, on [his] book is quite visible’ (p. xi).

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saintly figures. The work of Simon Digby on the Naqshbandis in the Deccan had been preceded by Richard Eaton’s and Carl Ernst’s work on other Sufis, and was followed by that of Nile Green.51 One of the present authors also contributed several essays on this question, whether with regard to the early Mughals or the neglected Chishtis of the seventeenth century.52 Where once such hagiographical and related materials were seen as irrelevant (or relegated to a distinctly secondary status, as with the work of Nizami and Rizvi), they came now to play a far more important role in research. (2) In a related vein, literature and literati culture emerged once more as serious fields of inquiry rather than as a minor set of sources to be mined for their descriptions of material life. Some of the studies in this volume partake of that trend, as in our repeated recourse to and discussion of first-person narratives in Persian. Elsewhere, we have written at monographic length on the Indo-Persian travel account as a genre and also on the emergence of Persian as the dominant language of courtly and elite expression amongst the Mughals.53 Equally, there has been a growing interest and careful discussion of vernacular materials, in particular Braj Bhasha, but also other regional materials, and even Sanskrit.54 In part, this can be read as an aspect 51Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, NY: 1992); Simon Digby, Sufis and Soldiers in Awrangzeb’s Deccan: The Malfūzāt-i Naqshbandiyya (Delhi: 2001); Nile Green, Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books, and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (London: 2006). 52Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2009, pp 135–74; Muzaffar Alam, ‘Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society’, in R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal, eds, Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila Thapar (Delhi: 1996), pp. 164–91. 53Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, 1998, pp. 317–49; Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo–Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: 2007). 54Allison Busch, ‘Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Keśavdās’, South Asia Research, vol. 25, no. 1, 2005, pp. 31–54; Allison Busch, ‘Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2010, pp. 267–309; Rupert Snell, ‘Confessions of a 17th-century Jain Merchant: The Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās’, South Asia Research,

Introduction

29

of a ‘new intellectual history’ of the period, encompassing a variety of subjects including music, and seeking to go beyond the paradigms of ‘cultural failure’ and oriental stasis dear to earlier authors.55 The study of translation (for example between Sanskrit and Persian) in the polyglot culture of the Mughal elite is also a thriving field that is bound to grow in significance. Again, it may be noted that such studies often have both elite and popular dimensions, and incorporate oral traditions as much as written ones.56 (3) There has been a marked revival of interest in the ‘neglected periods’ of Mughal history, both the first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century. We can thus count new monographs on Babur and Humayun, as well as on later Afghan rule in northern India; equally, the reign of Jahangir has been the subject of renewed interest and curiosity.57 vol. 25. no. 1, 2005, pp. 79–104; Sandhya Sharma, Literature, Culture and History in Mughal North India, c. 1550–1800 (Delhi: 2010). 55For instance, see Joep Bor, Françoise N. Delvoye, Jane Harvey, and Emmie te Nijenhuis, eds, Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries (New Delhi: 2010). 56See the now-classic study by V. Narayana Rao and J.F. Richards, ‘Banditry in Mughal India: Historical and Folk Perceptions’, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, pp. 491–519; Shail Mayaram,‘Mughal State Formation: The Mewati Counter-perspective’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 34, no. 2, 1997, pp. 169–97; and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Friday’s Child: Or how Tej Singh became Tecinkurajan’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 1999, pp. 69–113. 57On the sixteenth century, see Stephen F. Dale, The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Bābur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483–1530) (Leiden: 2004); Raziuddin Aquil, Sufism, Culture, and Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India (Delhi: 2007); Ali Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (London: 2009); Nader Purnaqcheband, Strategien der Kontingentbewältigung: Der Mogulherrscher Humayun (r. 1530–1540 und 1555–1556) dargestellt in der ‘Tazkirat al-Wāqi‘āt’ seines leibdieners Jauhar Āftābcī (Schenefeld: 2007). On Jahangir, see Corinne Lefèvre, ‘Recovering a Missing Voice from Mughal India: The Imperial Discourse of Jahāngīr (r. 1605–1627) in his Memoirs’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 50, no. 4, 2007, pp. 452–89, as also Corinne Lefèvre, ‘Pouvoir et noblesse dans l’Empire moghol: Perspectives du règne de Jahāngīr (1605–1627)’, Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 62, no. 6, 2007, pp. 1287–1312.

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(4) Also of significance was the trend of the regional monograph, possibly inaugurated by Richards’s work on Golkonda cited earlier, and continued by his student Richard Eaton in his work on Bengal in the longue durée; Punjab has been treated in the seventeenth century by Chetan Singh.58 A set of new studies on Gujarat under Mughal rule include an important one by Farhat Hasan, possibly the most credible of the recent generation of Aligarh-trained historians.59 Yet, what is of particular interest in Hasan’s work is the judicious distance he puts between his own work and older orthodoxies, both with regard to methods and conclusions. (5) There have also been some significant strides in the integration of the traditionally distinct domains of art history and architectural history with Mughal studies in general.60 In part, as with writers like Ebba Koch, this has been by treating both art and architecture as part of the sphere of ideological production and even as somewhat propagandistic in nature.61 But, more generally, the capacious rubric of ‘visual culture’ has enabled the synthesis of visual and textual materials, to which we too have contributed elsewhere. (6) One of the paradoxes of Mughal studies in India in the decades following Independence was the relative neglect of textual editions. Between roughly 1960 and 2000, very few editions of important Persian texts appeared in the country, and the historians of the ‘Aligarh School’ proved to be particularly negligent in this 58Richard

M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley: 1993); Chetan Singh, Region and Empire: Panjab in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi: 1991). For the perspective from the regions, also see Muzaffar Alam, ‘Eastern India in the Early Eighteenth Century “Crisis”: Some Evidence from Bihar’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 28, no. 1, 1991, pp. 43–71, and Munis D. Faruqui, ‘At Empire’s End: The Nizam, Hyderabad and EighteenthCentury India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2009, pp. 5–43. 59Farhat Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–1730 (Cambridge: 2006). It is interesting to note that the author in his prefatory note (p. viii) sarcastically refers to the fact of his being perceived as a ‘Cambridge convert’. Also see Ghulam A. Nadri, Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political Economy, 1750–1800 (Leiden: 2009). 60Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 49, no. 4, 2007, pp. 751–82. 61Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (Delhi: 2001).

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31

respect.62 In contrast, several important works were edited in Pakistan (both in Lahore and Karachi), as well as in Qom and Tehran. These included works that had long been known and catalogued but little studied; several important discoveries were also made in the process.63 In the pages that follow, we have made full use of these quite recently edited texts, whether the letters of the poet Faizi, or the account of ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahori of the nocturnal discussions in the court of Jahangir. (7) Finally, one must note the innovations in the treatment of gender and related questions by several authors, most notably Rosalind O’Hanlon. These include not simply the treatment of the harem, or of femininity (older subjects that have now been significantly reinterpreted) but also studies of masculinity in relation both to the elite at large and the royal figure himself.64 These trends, if taken together, might suggest that Mughal historiography had taken something of a belated ‘cultural turn’, 62For significant exceptions, see Khwaja Kamgar Husaini, Ma’asir-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Azra Alavi (Bombay: 1978); Muhammad Hadi Kamwar Khan, Tazkirat-usSalātīn Chaghtā: A Mughal Chronicle of the Post-Aurangzeb Period, 1707–1724, ed. Muzaffar Alam (Bombay: 1980). Also see the long-awaited work by Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli, The Mughal State and Culture: Selected Letters and Documents from ‘Munshaati-Namakin’ (New Delhi: 2007). 63We have referred to and made use of a large number of these editions in Alam and Subrahmanyam, Indo–Persian Travels. For a sampling, we mean texts such as Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak (Faizi), Kulliyāt-i Faizī, ed. A.D. Arshad (Lahore: 1967); Ruqa‘āt-i Hakīm Abu’l Fath Gīlānī, ed. Muhammad Bashir Husain (Lahore: 1968); Muhammad Bakhtawar Khan, Mirāt al-‘ālam: Tārīkh-i Aurangzīb, ed. Sajida S. Alvi (Lahore: 1979); Advice on the Art of Governance: An Indo-Islamic Mirror for Princes: Mau‘izah-i Jahāngīrī of Muhammad Bāqir Najm-i Sānī, ed. Sajida S. Alvi (Albany, NY: 1989); Mutribi Samarqandi, Nuskha-yi Zibā-yi Jahāngīr, eds Isma‘il Bikjanuf and Sayyid ‘Ali Maujani (Qom: 1377 Sh./1998). 64Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 42, no. 1, 1999, pp. 47–93; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Kingdom, Household and Body: History, Gender and Imperial Service Under Akbar’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 41, no. 5, 2007, pp. 889–923; Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge: 2005); and most recently, Ali Anooshahr, ‘The King Who Would be Man: The Gender Roles of the Warrior King in Early Mughal History’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (N.S.), vol. 18, no. 3, 2008, pp. 327–40.

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in keeping with that of the historical profession in general. While this is true to an extent, we should note a continued interest in the sphere of high Mughal politics as such, political economy in a more general sense (whether analysed through Marxist frameworks or not), the history of knowledge-making and technology, and many other somewhat materialistic themes. From the earlier dominance of a single pole, we can say that a hundred flowers of Mughal studies now bloom in various continents. We hope through these studies to have contributed a few more sprigs to that bouquet.

1

Letters from a Sinking Sultan ‘This [Sultan Bahadur] is naturally a conqueror, and of great heart, and the most indefatigable man that I’ve ever seen, and an extraordinarily great lord, save now that Fortune goes against him […]’—Martim Afonso de Sousa to Dom João III (1535)1 ‘This Nuno da Cunha was a poltroon, a great coward with a poor spirit, and a traitor without a generous intention, a spiritual brother of the capon Baxá Soleimão [Hadim Süleyman Pasha]’—Anonymous sixteenthcentury Portuguese commentator2 1‘Este

[Rei] naturallmemte he comquystador he de gramde coraçam he ho mays fragueyro omem que eu numqua vy he muy gramde senhor em demasya senam agora lhe foy a fortuna comtrayra (…)’ Letter written from Lathi on 1 November 1535, reproduced in Luciano Ribeiro, ‘O primeiro cerco de Dio’, Studia, vol. 1, 1958, pp. 201–71 (p. 235). For a collection of Martim Afonso’s letters from the period (in somewhat modernized Portuguese versions), also see Luís de Albuquerque and Maria do Anjo Ramos, Martim Afonso de Sousa (Lisbon: 1989); for an earlier reading and discussion of some of these texts, Georg Schurhammer, ‘Cartas de Martim Afonso de Sousa (1534–1539)’, in Georg Schurhammer, Gesammelte Studien, II: Orientalia (Rome/Lisbon: 1963), pp. 185–205. Finally, for a useful biographical study, see Alexandra Maria Pinheiro Pelúcia, ‘Martim Afonso de Sousa e a sua Linhagem: A Elite Dirigente do Império Português nos Reinados de D. João III e D. Sebastião’, PhD dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2007. 2‘Este Nuno da Cunha foi um poltrão muito covarde de animo vil e traidor sem animo generoso, irmão no spirito de Baxá Soleimão Capão.’ This commentary may be found inserted into the mid-sixteenth-century manuscript text of Francisco do Couto, Cerco e guerra de Diu, published in Ribeiro, ‘O primeiro cerco de Dio’, p. 261.

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The Prelude

T

he study of diplomacy, while it played a crucial role in the development of the modern historical profession worldwide, has today fallen into a certain disfavour, being often viewed as excessively traditional and elitist in its orientation. The prolific nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, for example, famously wrote at length regarding diplomatic relations, including those between the Spanish Habsburgs and the Ottomans in the early modern period.3 The Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, a short generation older than Ranke, was perhaps one of the first Europeans to address the question in a non-Western context in his well-known essay of 1830 on diplomatic dealings between the Mughals and the Ottomans.4 What these writings already made abundantly clear was that the Mughals as well as other contemporary Muslim dynasties in South Asia did not exist in a vacuum as singular states with a past, but rather in a web of inter-state and inter-imperial dealings, surrounded by rituals, conventions, and elaborate forms of cultural production which merit closer examination. While recent years have seen a call for the birth of a ‘new diplomatic history’, this project has largely remained confined to Europe, or at best the Mediterranean world,5 and the issue has remained relatively neglected with regard to early modern South Asia as well as the Islamic world at large.6 To be sure, there have been individual studies of European embassies to the Mughal court, as well as of dealings between Mughal 3Leopold von Ranke, Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie im sechszehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: 1857). 4Joseph de [von] Hammer, ‘Memoir on the Diplomatic Relations between the Courts of Delhi and Constantinople in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 2, 1830, pp. 462–86. 5John Watkins, ‘Towards a New Diplomatic History of Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 38, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–14, and the essays that follow. 6Thus, seemingly general works such as Matthew S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (London: 1993), have only a perfunctory mention or two of the Ottomans and none at all of the Mughals. But see the innovative work on East Asia of Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Princeton: 1984).

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India, Safavid Iran, and the Ottoman domains, but these usually remain somewhat narrowly focused.7 Relations between sixteenth-century Gujarat and West Asia are also a subject that has been touched on by a number of scholars over the years, amongst whom an important place is occupied by the late French savant Jean Aubin. Aubin’s first detailed forays into the history of the Gujarat Sultanate came out of his work on the chronicler Nimdihi, and they were renewed when he wrote his classic essay ‘Albuquerque et les négociations de Cambaye’ in 1971.8 The present chapter draws upon Persian and Portuguese materials either known to or actually collected by Aubin, but which he was unable to make full use of during his lifetime.9 It is thus partly conceived of as a tribute to his pioneering methodology, which combined global curiosity with local philology, and the careful sifting of contemporary documents and chronicles in a variety of languages; but it is also a useful point of reflection from which to embark upon the history of the Mughals in India, to ensure that they do not appear to act upon an empty stage or write as it were on a tabula rasa. The chapter itself may appear to have a simple purpose. It largely focuses on a set of four Persian documents from the 1530s that are preserved in the the Cartas Orientais collection of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, and which had been examined by Aubin in 1952. The reader of the original documents even today finds their covers annotated in Aubin’s tiny and meticulous hand, with brief summaries 7On

Mughal–Safavid relations, see Riazul Islam, Indo-Persian Relations: A Study of the Political and Diplomatic Relations Between the Mughul Empire and Iran (Tehran: 1970); Muhammad Yakub Mughul, Kanunî Devri Osmanlıların Hint Okyanusu Politikası ve Osmanlı-Hint Müslümanları münasebetleri, 1517–1538 (Istanbul: 1974). The pioneering work is that of Abdur Rahim, ‘Mughal Diplomacy from Akbar to Aurangzeb: An Account of the Foreign Relations of the Mughal Empire’, PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies (London), 1932. 8Jean Aubin, ‘Indo-islamica I. La vie et l’œuvre de Nimdihi’, Revue des Etudes islamiques, vol. 34, 1966, pp. 61–81. Also see Jean Aubin, ‘Albuquerque et les négociations de Cambaye’, Mare Luso-Indicum, vol. 1, 1971, pp. 3–63, reprinted in Jean Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, 3 vols (Paris: 1996–2006), vol. 2, pp. 197–250. 9It appears that Aubin’s method here was much influenced by savants such as Robert-Henri Bautier, Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries: Études de diplomatique et de sigillographie médiévales, 2 vols (Paris: 1990).

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and datings where possible. In 1973, Aubin published a valuable essay entitled ‘Les documents arabes, persans et turcs de la Torre do Tombo’, in which he introduced the entire collection, and presented transcriptions and translations into French of four letters, three from the celebrated Khwaja ‘Ata (Cojeatar) to the Portuguese governor Afonso de Albuquerque (of which one is in Arabic), and one letter, also in Arabic, from a certain Baba ‘Abdullah to the Portuguese king Dom Manuel.10 The letters that we publish here, in the original Persian with an English translation, were studied by Aubin in the context of his work on sixteenth-century Gujarat and the Portuguese, though he had not completed a transcription or translation of all of them.11 What was the context of these four letters, written by Bahadur Shah, the Sultan of Gujarat, to various Portuguese authorities in the 1530s? Some broad introductory reflections may not be out of place here. We may recall that after the Portuguese arrival at Calicut under Vasco da Gama in 1498, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt constructed and sent out a powerful fleet into the Indian Ocean in 1506, drawing on the help of the Ottomans for a part of its construction. It was commanded by Amir Husain al-Kurdi Bash al-‘Askar, but carried none of the prestigious Circassian Mamluks on board, and was instead largely manned by European renegades, blacks, and a number of others (both volunteers and forced recruits) described broadly as ‘Levantine’ in contemporary texts. There are unfortunately few 10Jean

Aubin, ‘Les documents arabes, persans, et turcs de la Torre do Tombo’, Mare Luso-Indicum, vol. 2, 1973, pp. 183–237, reprinted in Jean Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, vol. 2, pp. 417–52. A number of other documents from the Cartas Orientais concerning the Persian Gulf were summarized, and rather poorly reproduced, in Jahangir Qa’im Maqami, Asnād-i fārsī, ‘arabī wa turkī dar ārshīv-i millī-yi Purtughāl: Darbār-i Hurmūz wa khalīj-i Fārs (Tehran: 1354 Kh.). Other Ottoman documents from the same collection have been published episodically, for example in Salih Özbaran, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion: Studies on Ottoman–Portuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman Administration in the Arab Lands During the Sixteenth Century (Istanbul: 1994), of which a revised version appears as Özbaran, Ottoman Expansion Towards the Indian Ocean in the 16th Century (Istanbul: 2009). Some documents regarding the Persian Gulf have also recently been published by Dejanirah Couto and her Persophone collaborators. 11We are grateful to Madame Françoise Aubin for allowing us access to Jean Aubin’s draft readings of the documents, and also for furnishing us copies of the photographs taken in the 1950s, which were often clearer than more recent reproductions.

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contemporary Arabic sources that report on this expedition in any detail, and we are hence obliged to turn to Portuguese materials, which are much given to exaggerating the role of Venice and the Venetians in the whole matter.12 The best of these sources is the socalled Crónica Anónima in Portuguese, which seems to have been written during the reign of Dom Manuel; and it is indeed this source which affords us the closest look at the activities of Amir Husain and his fleet between 1506 and 1509.13 Amir Husain is described in this text as an elite Mamluk, and it is stated that his fleet initially consisted of 6 ships and 6 galleys, manned by 900 ‘Mamluks and Venetians, and Turks on pay’ at the time that it set out from the port of Suez in February 1506. The anonymous author insists that the Venetians played a significant hand in preparing the fleet, sending the necessary wood to Alexandria; but this is a claim that can be shown to be unsustainable, as is the impression that many Venetians were in fact on board. The first task of this fleet was, however, not to combat the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean; it was instead to impose some order on the increasingly chaotic conditions in the Red 12For

the significant Arabic sources regarding the Red Sea in the period, see Abi al-Ziya ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Ali al-Dayba‘, Kitāb qurrat al-‘uyūn bi-akhbār al-Yaman al-maymūn, ed. Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Akwa‘ al-Hawali, 2 vols (Cairo: 1971–7); Shams al-Din Muhammad bin ‘Ali bin Ahmad al-Salihi al-Dimashqi al-Hanafi (ibn Tulun), Mufākahat al-khillān fī hawādis al-zamān, ed. Muhammad Mustafa, 2 vols (Cairo: 1962–4); Yahya ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Qasim, Ghāyat al-amānī fī akhbār al-qutr al-Yamānī (Cairo: 1968), and Lein Oebele Schuman, Political History of the Yemen at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century: Abu Makhrama’s Account of the Years 906–927 H. (1500–1521) (Groningen: 1960). 13Luís de Albuquerque, ed., Crónica do descobrimento e primeiras conquistas da Índia pelos Portugueses (Lisbon: 1986) (hereafter cited as Crónica Anónima); Jean Aubin, ‘Un nouveau classique: L’Anonyme du British Museum’, in Jean Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, vol. 2, p. 553: ‘Soulignons cependant que l’Anonyme est remarquablement informé sur l’expédition mamlouke de 1506–1507 en Mer Rouge, et qu’il ajoute aux renseignements déjà solides de Castanheda des précisions que les chroniques arabes ne démentent pas.’ For the other main Portuguese source regarding the expedition of Amir Husain, see João de Barros, Da Ásia, Década Segunda, Parte I (Lisbon: 1974), pp. 173–218, 282–321. A retrospective account in Arabic from India regarding the Diu engagement of this fleet is that of Zain al-Din Ma‘bari, Tuhfat al-mujāhidīn fī ba‘z ahwāl al-Burtukāliyyīn, trans. David Lopes, História dos Portugueses no Malavar por Zinadím (Lisbon: 1899), text, p. 41; translation, p. 40.

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Sea. In this respect, Amir Husain was to anticipate the formula that would be used by the Ottomans time and again in the course of the sixteenth century; for instance, in 1538–9, Hadim Süleyman Pasha not only went out to Gujarat but also imposed a new order on the Red Sea and Aden.14 On leaving Suez in 1506, Amir Husain’s fleet seems to have made a brief supply-stop at Tur, close to the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, which was an important point of transhipment on the spice route to Egypt. From there, the next stage was Yanbu‘ al-Bahr, which it is noted was a rather significant way-station for the ‘pilgrims for the house of Mecca’. However, the ruler there had ceased to collaborate in the passage of pilgrims, and Amir Husain apparently carried a warning message from the Mamluk sultan for him. Since this warning had no effect, the fleet began to bombard the city, and the troops disembarked; an engagement ensued in which the Mamluk forces were victorious, although at some cost to themselves. A new ruler was installed, and the fleet now moved on to Jiddah, the principal port linked to Mecca. Here, nothing untoward was found, and the fleet was able to move on rapidly southwards to Jizan, described as a ‘town of a thousand households, unwalled, with a large and protected bay’.15 Here again, the local ruler, a certain Shaikh al-Darawi, was reprimanded for not having paid tribute (páreas) to the sultan; the town was pillaged, and the spoils were sent back to Cairo. Amir Husain then seems to have spent a long period, perhaps as much as a whole year, in Jiddah, which he left only in August or September 1507. The Portuguese chronicles are unclear on why he hesitated so long to enter the Indian Ocean, especially since the stay at Jiddah led to a near-mutiny amongst the crews of various ships, of which at least two abandoned him and sailed off independently towards India. There is a suggestion that he awaited further finances from Cairo, but 14For

the Ottoman policy in this regard, see Salih Özbaran, ‘Ottoman Naval Policy in the South’, in Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, eds, Süleyman the Magnificent and his Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: 1995), pp. 55–70. For the transition between Mamluks and Ottomans, see JeanLouis Bacqué-Grammont and Anne Krœll, Mamlouks, Ottomans et Portugais en Mer Rouge: L’Affaire de Djedda en 1517 (Cairo: 1988). 15Crónica Anónima, pp. 326–7.

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it may also have been the case that the amir was anticipating fresh news from India. The Egyptian chronicler Ibn Iyas does however help to shed light on the matter. He notes that Amir Husain had been ‘asked to look after the construction of the fortification-walls and the towers of Jiddah; these were excellent works.’16 However, he adds that during this period (that is, 1506–7), the amir had assumed the ‘governorship (niyābat) of Jiddah, and at this time had shown himself to be full of vanity and arbitrariness. The merchants (tujjār) had a tax (‘ushr) of ten per cent imposed upon them and the population, which had greatly suffered from his injustice (zulm), had found him unbearable.’17 Elsewhere, the chronicler has already condemned the actions of Amir Husain in no uncertain terms: ‘Husain, the governor of Jiddah, levied a tax on the traders from India at the rate of one to ten, and so these traders abandoned the port of Jiddah, the situation of which slid in the direction of ruin; therefore, muslins, rice and leather became rare, and the port was abandoned.’ Even if this is exaggerated, we may imagine that Amir Husain’s rapacious reputation preceded him by the time he made his way into the heart of the Indian Ocean. Amir Husain’s chief correspondents in India at this time were probably the Gujarat Sultan Mahmud Begarha (r. 1458–1511), and Malik Ayaz, the semi-independent ruler of the major port-city of Diu. It is clear that the sultan and the malik did not always perceive their interests as being exactly congruent. The latter was a former royal slave (ghulām-i khāss), whose origins have been variously stated as Dalmatian, Russian, Turkish, and Persian (Gilani), and rather less probably as Malay or Javanese. Once freed, he had accumulated 16On the fortifications at Jiddah, see R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadramī Chronicles (with Yemeni and European Accounts of Dutch Pirates off Mocha in the Seventeenth Century) (Oxford: 1963), pp. 160–2. 17Gaston Wiet, Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire: Chronique d’Ibn Iyās, 2 vols (Paris: 1955–60), vol. 1, pp. 268–9; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Iyas al-Hanafi, Badā’i‘ al-zuhūr fī waqā’i‘ al-duhūr/ Die Chronik des Ibn Ijās, eds Paul Kahle and Muhammed Mustafa, Gen. Ed. Moritz Sobernheim, vol. 4 (Istanbul: 1931), pp. 286–7. On this author and his work, see David J. Wasserstein, ‘Tradition manuscrite, authenticité, chronologie et développement de l’œuvre littéraire d’Ibn Iyās’, Journal Asiatique, vol. 280, nos 1–2, 1992, pp. 81–114.

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territories and resources in the Kathiawar region, and, operating from a centre at Junagarh, used Diu as his maritime base. By 1507, when the Mamluk fleet entered the Indian Ocean, he had helped transform Diu from a port of second rank to the key centre linking West Asia and Southeast Asia. While declaring that he was no more than a ‘fiscal official of the king of Cambay’ (hum almoxarife del-rey de Cambaya), Malik Ayaz in fact had his own fleet of small vessels (atalaias), and a considerable personal guard, including numerous mercenaries. It was thus logical that the Mamluk fleet and its commander would seek out an alliance with him, and indeed the decision seems to have been made to use Diu as the centre of operations from the Mamluks, rather than any of the ports of the Konkan or Malabar coasts. It is probable that, in this matter, Amir Husain’s decision was influenced by the close relations that one may suspect existed between the Gujarat sultan and Cairo. We are unable to seize these directly, in the absence of the requisite diplomatic correspondence, but it is clear that the decline of the Delhi Sultanate from the late fourteenth century onwards had left a vacuum in terms of high politics in the area. In the 1440s, ‘Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi, envoy-at-large of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh, had attempted to make the claim that his own master in Herat occupied a position of tutelage with regard to the spaces formerly dominated by the Delhi Sultanate. But there is no indication that such an argument carried water in Gujarat. On the other hand, we are aware from the account of Ibn Iyas that at the death of Mahmud Begarha, his son—termed Malik Muzaffar Shah (r. 1511–25), and given no greater dignity than that of Sāhib Kanbāyat—sought a form of investiture for the rule over Khambayat from Cairo and the ceremonial Caliph al-Mutawakkil (min al-khalīfa taqlīd ba wilāyat ‘ala Kanbāyat).18 Whatever be the case, the initial reception of the fleet from the Red Sea at Diu appears to have been rather positive. Malik Ayaz agreed to send a fleet of his own small vessels to accompany them, and the fleet began to make its way down the Indian west coast, eventually encountering a Portuguese fleet commanded by Dom Lourenço de Almeida, son of the viceroy, in early March 1508, at 18Ibn

Iyas, Badā’i‘ al-zuhūr, vol. 4, p. 287.

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the port of Chaul, in the Ahmadnagar Sultanate. In the ensuing engagement, the viceroy’s son was killed and the Portuguese fleet roundly defeated, with a number of Portuguese being taken prisoner. The victorious allies (who had also included some Muslim elements from Calicut, such as a certain ‘Maimame’, killed in the combat) then returned to Diu, but the alliance had already begun to fall apart. Malik Ayaz had begun to fear that Amir Husain had rather too draconian a way about him, signs of which had already been evident in Jiddah. Aubin has suggested that the presence in the Gujarat court of the interpreter Sidi ‘Ali al-Andalusi may have also been significant, since this Muslim from Granada was much given to exaggerating the power of the Iberian rulers. In any event, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Aubin draws here: ‘Anxious to preserve the authority he had ably acquired, Malik Ayaz feared, rather more than the wrath of the viceroy, the military superiority of the Egyptians, their prestige and the fact that the importance that was given to them might encourage their temptation to dominate.’19 A similar scenario would be played out with the Ottomans in 1538.20 News of the grand victory at Chaul reached the court at Cairo by the end of 1508, and it was announced that both a considerable booty and some hundred Portuguese prisoners would be sent to the court. The Venetian consul in Alexandria equally reported this, and 19Jean Aubin, ‘Albuquerque et les négociations de Cambaye’, in Jean Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, vol. 2, pp. 207–8. A far more schematic, neo-Weberian, argument may be found in Michael N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: 1976), pp. 64–73, which has long dominated the English-language historiography. This work was justly criticized not long after its publication by Geneviève Bouchon, ‘Pour une histoire du Gujarat du XVe au XVIIe siècle’, Mare Luso-Indicum, vol. 4, 1980, pp. 145–58. 20We lack a comprehensive study of the Ottoman expedition of 1538. The best accounts to date are those of Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York: 2010), pp. 59–65; Dejanirah Couto, ‘No rasto de Hādim Suleimão Pacha: Alguns aspectos do comércio do Mar Vermelho nos anos de 1538–1540’, in Artur Teodoro de Matos and Luís Filipe F. Reis Thomaz, eds, A Carreira da Índia e as Rotas dos Estreitos: Actas do VIII Seminário Internacional de História Indo-Portuguesa (Angra do Heroísmo: 1998), pp. 483–508; also, see the more general overview in Dejanirah Couto, ‘Les Ottomans et l’Inde portugaise’, in José Manuel Garcia and Teotónio de Souza, eds, Vasco da Gama e a Índia, vol. 1 (Lisbon: 1999), pp. 181–200.

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mentioned rumours that the sultan was preparing to construct further ships at Tur, to be sent into the Red Sea, and then as reinforcements to Amir Husain. Ibn Iyas had already noted that the amir had ‘asked for reinforcements to bring the remainder of the Frankish forces to an end.’21 In the event, nothing of the sort transpired. Malik Ayaz chose to throw in his lot with D. Francisco de Almeida, and entered into secret negotiations with him. The viceroy arrived with his fleet off Diu in early February 1509, after having sacked the Konkan port of Dabhol (which was weakly fortified), and prepared to attack Amir Husain’s fleet. Malik Ayaz for his part refused to render combat, and the Egyptian fleet was largely destroyed.22 Amir Husain himself, though wounded, escaped with his life and fled to the Gujarat capital, preferring Sultan Mahmud to the wily Malik Ayaz. He would eventually painfully find his way back to Cairo in December 1512, accompanied by an ambassador from Gujarat; Venetian reports suggest that the sultan had been furious with him for the arrogant behaviour he had displayed in India (i sinistri modi usadi con superbia con quelli signori de India), and had sent various messages and gifts (grandi e belli presenti) to placate the Gujarat sultan and others.23 However, in the few years of existence that remained for the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, no further expeditions would be sent into the Indian Ocean. In 1516–17, the Ottomans under Sultan Selim (‘the Grim’) completed a rapid and somewhat unexpected conquest of the 21Ibn Iyas, Badā’i‘ al-zuhūr, vol. 4, p. 142, report dated Sha‘ban 914 ah (November–December 1508). 22Unfortunately the account in Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, 4 vols (Lisbon: 1983), vol. 3, pp. 100–1, fails to see that the root cause of the Egyptian defeat was the abandonment of Amir Husain by Malik Ayaz. Instead, he argues that the problem lay in the fact that ‘the Mamluks above all formed a body of horsemen without any experience of naval combat; they did not possess a body of well-trained mariners’, and cites the decidedly outdated study by G.W.F. Stripling, The Ottomans Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574 (Urbana: 1942), p. 30. The situation was quite to the contrary, as Aubin notes (Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, vol. 3, p. 460): ‘Since the Circassians refused to campaign outside Egypt and Syria, and otherwise than on horseback, it was using blacks and European Mamluks that the expeditionary force of 1506 to India was formed.’ 23I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. R. Fulin, N. Barozzi et al., 58 vols (Venice: 1879–1903), vol. 9, pp. 110–11.

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Mamluk Sultanate, both its central territories in Egypt and the more extended domains in the Red Sea which included the Hijaz. The decisive battle that was fought in late August 1516 at Marj Dabiq (in Syria) was consolidated in the months that followed the death of Sultan Qansuh al-Ghauri on the battlefield, with the Ottomans being able to take Cairo in late January 1517. Shortly after these events, in the month of Rabi‘ II 923 ah (April–May 1517), Sultan Selim sent out a letter to Sultan Muzaffar Shah, with an account of his victories in ‘Arab, ‘Ajam, Egypt, Syria and Aleppo.24 Here he noted that when God had granted him the sultanate, he had chosen to follow his dynasty’s tradition of jihād. This had meant in particular that he had had to struggle against the heretics (zanādiqa and malāhida), who were led by some misguided people from Ardabil calling themselves Sufis (the reference is to the Safavids). So, in 920 ah, Sultan Selim had set out from his capital for Tabriz in order to chastise those mischiefmongers. The latter were dealt a heavy defeat, and their goods and wealth were captured. Thereupon the sultan returned home to Rum, and in the beginning of the spring of 921 ah, he returned towards Iran, securing victories in Armenia, and further triumphs over ‘Ala-ud-Daula Beg and his clan. Ottoman armies were then sent out to Diyarbekir and its surroundings, where they enjoyed great success. Kurdistan fell in turn to their armies. It is then stated that in the spring of 922 ah, the sultan once more set out from Istanbul towards ‘Ajam. In the meanwhile, however, he came to know that Sultan Qansuh al-Ghauri of Egypt was showing signs of wickedness and mischief (tughyān-o-zalālat) by allying with the heretics. This was of course contrary to the commands of the Qur’an. The Egyptian sultan had descended with a large army near Aleppo claiming to suppress a Circassian rebellion, but in fact seeking an alliance with the heretics. Near Aleppo, the Ottoman and Egyptian forces met, not far from the shrine of the prophet David, and Sultan 24Sari ‘Abdullah Efendi, Münşeat-ı Fārsī, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Ms. Esad Efendi, Nr. 3333, fls. 108a-10a (consulted as a microfilm in the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Middle Eastern Collection). A brief summary appears in Nizamuddin Maghrebi, ‘The Ottoman–Gujarat Relations’, in P.M. Joshi, ed., Studies in the External Relations of India: Professor Sherwani Felicitation Volume (Hyderabad: 1975), pp. 184–93.

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Qansuh al-Ghauri and many of his chiefs were killed through the skilful Ottoman use of cannon and firearms. The Ottomans thereby conquered large territories in the area, eventually reaching Damascus. The Circassian Mamluks then fled to Egypt and declared a certain Tuman Bey to be their ruler, further flying the flag of sinfulness. The Ottoman forces thus advanced into Egypt as far as the boundaries of the Maghreb, and also into the lands of the Hijaz (with a mind to restore proper order to the Holy Cities). Advancing through difficult deserts, the Ottomans defeated the Circassians once more, so that Tuman Bey fled further. He and his allies then attempted to foment rebellion in Egypt, and there were skirmishes in the streets of Cairo. After several fights, Tuman Bey was captured, allowing the flag of Islam to fly everywhere, from Egypt and the Arab lands to the Holy Cities. Caravans and traders were now able to ply again in peace. After describing this victory, the Ottoman sultan promises to keep Sultan Muzaffar abreast of his activities and to maintain their friendship and correspondence. Recent research has also enabled historians to have access to the papers of the first Ottoman bey of the sancak of Jiddah, namely a merchant from Azarbaijan by the name of Qasim Sherwani. These include an initial report sent out by him from Jiddah to his superiors in Istanbul but we are also aware of a sort of victory-bulletin (fathnāma) that he for his part sent out to Muzaffar Shah in the latter half of 1517.25 The greater part of this bulletin concerns the modalities of the Ottoman victory over their Mamluk foes, but the last sections were surely those of greatest concern for its recipients in Gujarat. They ran as follows: When the word of he who is like Solomon [Sultan Selim] arrived at the port of Jiddah, Shaikh ‘Amir, who had been the master of Yemen, had [already] been put to death and the soldiers (‘askarī) who were in Yemen had read the khutba of Islam in the name of his Majesty the Sultan, Shadow of God— may God, be He exalted, aid him!—and the whole of Yemen, Dahlak, Suakin and other places had come into the possession of those victorious 25Jean-Louis

Bacqué-Grammont, ‘Les premiers fonctionnaires ottomanes dans le Hedjaz: Un rapport de Kāsim Širvānī de septembre 1517’, Annales islamologiques (Caire), vol. 21, 1985, pp. 129–45.

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soldiers, who are marked by triumphant signs. In Jiddah, on the orders of his Majesty the Khaqan, the conqueror of the world, [Amir] Husain the Turkmen was thrown into the turbulent sea (dar daryā-yi zakhkhār). Tranquillity and security, justice and equity, all appeared in the kingdoms of the Arab lands, the Hejaz and Yemen, and the populace of that land found its heart to be free of care and full of well-being. The twenty ships that had already been constructed by the Circassians are to be found now in Jiddah (dar Jiddah maujūd ast), and his Majesty, refuge of the sultanate and whose court is like that of Solomon—may God, be He exalted, aid him!—has ordered that fifty other ships be constructed. If God so wills, with numerous troops and soldiers beyond count, he [the sultan] will shortly drive those mischief-making [Portuguese] infidels (ān kuffār-i ghaddār) to their black destiny and [with his troops] who will act as a tempest, he will force them like waves, one army after another, into the wind of destruction […] and there will be tranquillity and security, if God so wills! 26

These communications eventually produced a quite elaborate letter of response from Sultan Muzaffar, which is dated October 1518 (10 Shawwal 924 ah). 27 The missive commences with some verses in praise of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, the family of the Prophet and his Companions. Thereafter Muzaffar Shah confirms that, through the mediation of Amir Husain, he has received a letter from Sultan Selim, who is referred to in the response with elaborate titles emphasizing his power, his ability to obliterate infidels and especially heretics, his sense of justice, and as the source of guidance for believers to travel along the correct path. No mention is made of the death by drowning of Amir Husain in April 1517, which is referred to in Qasim Sherwani’s bulletin. Rather, it is noted that the letter from the Ottoman ruler had brought to Muzaffar Shah the good news of the victories that the sultan had achieved. An appropriate Qur’anic verse is cited here, attributing all victories ultimately to Allah. 26Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont and Mohammad Mokri, ‘Une lettre de Qāsim Širvānī à Muzaffar Šāh du Gujarat: Les prèmiers relations des Ottomanes avec l’Inde?’, in Rudolf Veselý and Eduard Gombár, eds, Zafar Nāme: Memorial Volume of Felix Tauer (Prague: 1996), pp. 35–47. 27Letter from Sultan Muzaffar Shah to Sultan Selim, in Feridun Ahmed, Mecmu’a-i Münşeat-ı Feridun Bey (Istanbul: 1848), vol. 1, pp. 447–9.

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Continuing his response, Muzaffar Shah writes that he too, by the grace of Allah, had secured a victory over the impregnable fort of Mandu and its limitless territories, the Muslim ruler of which— along with his important nobles—had earlier been captured and killed by evildoing and false infidels (kuffār-i fujjār wa ashrār-i wāfir ightirār).28 The fort and the region were now under the control of officials and the army in Muzaffar Shah’s service. The brave soldiers of his army, alongside whom victory marched, had no fear of the infidels, despite the fact that they had held such a fort, possessed so much wealth, and even employed brave soldiers of their own; and instead they had put these infidels to the sharp edge of their sword and driven from their very hearts the desire to capture territory in the future. This is followed by three verses describing the infidels and a brief Qur’anic phrase. The letter then describes how with the help of the sultan’s fire-spitting sword the infidels had all been drowned in the ocean of calamity, and set ablaze in the fire of destruction. In the fortress of Mandu were left twenty thousand corpses of those sinners who had become the victims of the dagger of divine wrath. Indeed, it was difficult to count the bodiless heads, which were destined to become the carrion of a variety of beasts and birds. Two further verses follow, which again evoke the victory over the infidels. The letter goes on to note that the mosques and places of worship of the Muslims (masājid wa ma‘ābid-i ahl-i Islām) had been desecrated and rendered into a state of impurity (nā-pākī) in a variety of ways (and with a variety of pollutants) by impure and dirty idolworshippers (al-mushrikūn). Muzaffar Shah’s victory had therefore purified and cleansed these sites and once more transformed them into proper places of habitation and light. The ‘ulamā’ and other pious people who had earlier fled in all directions, when they saw the rays of the sun again in the sky (that is, in the form of Muzaffar Shah’s power), now felt safe from the atrocities of those accursed people, and returned with their hearts secure and reassured, as if the stars had been returned to their proper place in the heavens. The 28The reference here is to Mahmud Shah II (r. 1510–31) of Malwa and his complex relationship with the Purbiya Rajput warlord Medini Rai. See D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: 1990), pp. 86–7.

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mischiefmongers had fled with their lives and the world was returned to its correct order. In sum, when the truth returned, falsehood was forced to retire. As a result of this victory, achieved with the grace of the support of the Prophet and Allah, that powerful fort and the pinnacles of the mountains were turned into a garden, full of shady trees, and the moats, as deep and wide as a sea, turned into a thriving pond, and the whole place became like heaven, a simile supported here by an appropriate Qur’anic verse. The picturesque places and buildings of that land again became a pleasing sight for onlookers. This is followed by further Qur’anic and Persian verses, describing the beauty of the place following the victory of Muzaffar Shah. Muzaffar Shah then notes that he paid particular attention to the task of restoring the sultanate to the earlier ruler and returned to his own capital, Muhammadabad (or Champaner). This place had earlier been fortified and strengthened to defend it from the possible threat posed by infidels and misguided people (ahl-i kufr-o-zalāl), and had been turned into a resting place of grandeur and fortune. Having returned there with his triumphant army, Muzaffar Shah offered thanks to God, the real, matchless and all-powerful bestower of victory. Muzaffar Shah also expressed a firm hope that, in similar manner, the sharp swords of both the powerful states (daulat) would continue forever to kill their enemies, and that the key of the power of these states would continue to open the door of the happy news of victory. He also hoped that, day by day, the mutual friendship and love between the two sultans would continue to grow, thereby serving as a source for a variety of people to obtain their ends; and that as a result of the efforts of both sides in seeking friendship for the sake of Allah, the grandeur of the faith of Islam (dīn-i Islām) in all places would be enhanced. In comparison to the elaborate rhetoric of this letter, Malik Ayaz’s own two-part response to Sultan Selim dating a short time later (20 Zi-Qa‘da 924 ah) takes on a far more businesslike tone.29 The initial letter begins with the formulaic Bismillah and mentions the honour felt by Malik Ayaz upon receiving the letter (termed misāl) of the 29Malik

Ayaz to Sultan Selim, in Feridun Ahmed, Mecmu’a-i Münşeat-ı Feridun Bey, vol. 1, p. 449.

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sultan, using the device of an appropriate Qur’anic verse. Sultan Selim is referred to with a variety of extravagant titles, including a number that compare him to Iranian and Turkish heroes of the preIslamic past (in comparison, the letter from Muzaffar Shah adheres to a more Islamic tone throughout). These elevated terms also speak of the Ottoman ruler as ‘the most benevolent of the rulers of the time, the greatest and the most learned of the kings of the day, the refuge of the kings of the whole world, the conqueror of the forts of ‘Arab and ‘Ajam, the controller of the climes (aqālim) with his pen and sword, the pillar of Islam and the Muslims, the protector of the lands of Allah, the supporter of the slaves of Allah, a warrior (mujāhid) in the path of Allah, Sultan, son of Sultan, son of Sultan, the perfection of Sultanate and Caliphate and faith (dīn), Selim Shah.’ Malik Ayaz then alludes to the Ottomans’ recent victories, with Qur’anic verses, and attests to his own prayers for the sultan’s continuing reign and triumph. What is of greater interest however is the long second part of this letter, a report of sorts.30 Here, Malik Ayaz begins by expressing his gratitude to Sultan Selim for the favour and honours shown to him. He notes that since a certain time the community of white Christians (tā’ifa-yi sumra-yi nasāra) have taken the greater part of the coasts of ‘Arab, ‘Ajam, and Hind under their control. It is generally known that though Allah does at times allow a certain time to tyrants, eventually He turns on them. The inhabitants of the coast have long suffered the Christians, and so Malik Ayaz now appeals to the great sultan to help them, requesting him to send his victorious army to defeat this damned community, drowning and burning them. He suggests that an account of their destructive activities must already have reached the sultan. In Aden and the nearby ports, there have been battles which have proved destructive to the ports and to ships, that have been burnt in numbers. In the meanwhile, the Egyptians had sent a force ostensibly to fight these infidels (tā’ifa-yi kafara), but instead they had attacked and looted the Muslims of Aden and captured Yemen. The ruler of Aden was killed with his brother and son. So bad was the Egyptian action that even a kāfir would have done 30Sari ‘Abdullah Efendi, Münşeat-ı Fārsī, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Ms. Esad Efendi, Nr. 3333, fls. 149b–151a (from Ayaz Sultani).

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better, writes Malik Ayaz in sorrow, and the inhabitants of Aden were hence forced in extremis to take the help of the Franks (firangiyān) against them. Now, Malik Ayaz hopes that the sultan will come to the aid of the Muslims, and protect the pilgrims to Mecca from the wickedness of the infidels. Were he to do this, people would pray for the Ottoman success. Further, he writes, no other ruler could take on this huge task (ghazā’-yi akbar) of expelling the infidels from the ocean, for only the Ottomans had the wealth, army, and firearms (lashkar wa tob wa tufank) to acomplish this. Malik Ayaz therefore asks Sultan Selim to send a farmān to his army commander, that when he reaches the port of Aden he should first reassure the local ruler of his intentions. From there, they should go on to Hurmuz (or Jarun) and capture it, as there are no more than four or five hundred Franks present in the place. This act alone would spread fear amongst the other Franks. Consolidating their position there, the Ottoman force should then proceed by water to Dabhol which he notes is under the rule of a certain ‘Adil Khan Sawa. Some ten or fifteen thousand people from Rum (ahl-i Rūm) should be stationed there. Further along the coast, near Goa, was an important centre for ships called Chaul where the infidels resided. It was three days’ journey from Goa. In Goa, there were four or five hundred Franks with their wives and children, and they usually only had six or seven ships (ghurāb). However, periodically, and at the right season, their chief gathered together twenty or thirty ships and three or four thousand men there, while the rest of their ships and men were distributed in forts (hisār) in Cochin, Calicut, Bhatkal, Melaka, and Sumatra. The Franks were thus spread out from Gujarat to Goa on the one hand, and to the Arab ports and Hurmuz on the other. Malik Ayaz therefore proposes an appropriate strategy for the Ottomans to follow. When Sultan Qansuh al-Ghauri had sent Amir Husain with his force, he had arrived in Diu. However, once he got there his forces had all dispersed in every direction, abandoning him. (This—it should be noted—was a rather disingenuous and self-serving account on Malik Ayaz’s part.) Therefore, on the next occasion, Malik Ayaz suggested that the bulk of the Ottoman force should be sent to Dabhol, which was closer to the centre of the Franks. At the same time, one or two thousand Ottoman troops should be sent to Diu,

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where Malik Ayaz promised to gather together his forces and ships to join the Ottoman forces and act as their guide (dalīl-o-rāhnumā). Besides, Malik Ayaz requested that the Ottoman commander Selman Re’is—who had already fought at Jiddah with the Portuguese, knew how to combat them properly, and was personally acquainted with Malik Ayaz—be sent with the ships. It is dryly noted that he was not a tyrant (in evident contrast with Amir Husain). A further request was that the expenses for the ships and troops be set aside in the Ottoman treasury for five years, so that the commander of the force might rest assured of his finances. This was because, in Malik Ayaz’s view, the rulers in India (Pādshāhān-i Hind) were really too feeble and usually able to draw direct resources from a mere one or two hundred villages. Even the greatest amongst them had no more than seven, eight, or at most ten thousand horsemen. On earlier occasions, Malik Ayaz had fought the Christians, with considerable casualties on both sides. But since the Indian rulers had not helped him, he had eventually been obliged to make peace with the Franks for the good of the coastal residents and the continued traffic of pilgrims. The Franks had agreed not to attack the ports or impede the passage of goods, while Malik Ayaz and others had agreed not to resist them. However, now that the Ottoman sultan has honoured him with his attention, Malik Ayaz declared that he was again enthused to work for the betterment of the faith and Ottoman service (dar kār-i dīn wa khidmat-i shumā ). He therefore hoped that this relationship would remain firm in the future. A certain Mustafa Agha would serve as the intermediary and would also carry an oral message together with the letter (‘arīza), because he had lived in the area (meaning Gujarat) and had become perfectly familiar with its situation which he could therefore describe to the Ottoman ruler. The letter ends duly with wishes for the continued prosperity of the Ottomans.

Changes from the 1520s This intriguing correspondence suggests that the Mamluk–Ottoman transition in the Red Sea was noticed almost at once in Gujarat, and that the Gujarat sultans as well as military-political entrepreneurs like

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Malik Ayaz sought to align themselves diplomatically to the newlyascendant power. It cannot however be taken as proof that Sultan Selim himself already possessed a set of concrete plans that included western India within its ambit, of which there is no mention in the letters of either Qasim Sherwani or Sultan Muzaffar Shah.31 It would appear however that such plans began to emerge in the course of the 1520s, and that they emerged in part from the activities of Ottoman subjects with ambitions of their own with regard to the Indian Ocean. An important piece of evidence in this regard is the well-known report prepared by Selman Re’is Layihası (a personage already mentioned above) and submitted to the Ottoman governor in Egypt, with a detailed (if not always accurate) evaluation of Portuguese strengths and weaknesses in different parts of the Estado da Índia in 1525. Selman came to the conclusion that once Yemen was subdued by the Ottomans, ‘it would be possible to master the vilāyet-i Hindustān and every year send a great amount of gold and jewels to Istanbul.’ Less than discreet, Selman also seems to have spoken at some length of his plans in the same year with Piero Bragadin, the Venetian bailo in Istanbul, informing him that the Ottoman sultan ‘wished to prepare a fleet for India, and send him [Selman] to head the enterprise; and he is having two large galleys and one supply-ship made ready in Alexandria to this end, on which two thousand men will be sent out for this purpose; and he said that in Alziden [Jiddah], there would be thirty more galleys which are in order, and some other galliots.’32 The Venetians naturally encouraged him wholeheartedly, and in pursuit of this objective Selman Re’is eventually took an Ottoman fleet towards Gujarat in 1527–8, but was killed in a rebellion before he was able to achieve a great deal. 31Michel

M. Mazzaoui, ‘Global Policies of Sultan Selim, 1512–1520’, in D.P. Little, ed., Essays on Islamic Civilization: Presented to Niyazi Berkes (Leiden: 1976), pp. 224–43. An extended refutation of this viewpoint is made in Jean Aubin, ‘La politique orientale de Selim Ier’, Res Orientales VI: Itinéraires d’Orient, Hommages à Claude Cahen (Bures-sur-Yvette: 1994), pp. 197–216. Aubin concludes that ‘until his death, he [Selim] showed no intention of acting in the Indian Ocean.’ The account in Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 23, 27–9, supports Mazzaoui over Aubin, but with little credible foundation. 32I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, vol. 40, ed. Nicolò Barozzi, pp. 824–5.

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The Ottomans were surely aware that by the time of this intervention other political events of significance were beginning to alter the map of Hindustan, with an impact on Gujarat as well. That the 1520s and 1530s were tumultuous and significant years for the political history of northern India can hardly be doubted. The foundation of the Mughal state at Agra and Delhi by the Timurid prince Zahirud-Din Muhammad Babur in 1526, its initial consolidation by his son Humayun, and then the latter’s dramatic displacement by the Afghan warlord Sher Shah Sur occupy the most conspicuous part of the scene, but this should not obscure the fact that other political processes of great importance were taking place at the same time elsewhere, notably in Gujarat and Bengal. In particular, the Gujarat Sultanate seems in these years to have ridden a political roller-coaster, from moments of great and dramatic success to a situation where, by the late 1530s, it has begun to fragment into a number of appanages dominated by groups such as the Afghans, former Ottoman subjects (or ‘Rumis’), and Timurid Mirzas related to the Mughals. A particularly striking set of changes in these processes brings those newcomers, the Portuguese, into the centre of the picture, though the Estado da Índia had made creeping inroads into the political economy of Gujarat from the early 1510s on. Relations between successive Portuguese governors and viceroys and the Gujarat Sultanate had been mixed in character at the time of Sultan Muzaffar Shah. However, with the death of Sultan Muzaffar (shortly prior to Babur’s conquest of Delhi), and the succession struggle between his sons, relations with the Portuguese too took a definite turn for the worse. Thus, Sultan Bahadur Shah Gujarati, the second son and eventual successor to Sultan Muzaffar, found his coastal territories constantly harassed by Portuguese fleets very nearly from the inception of his reign. The prosperous port of Rander in the Gulf of Cambay was a particular target, but Portuguese patrolling fleets also made periodic raids on other ports extending as far as Kacch. If one were to present a schematic picture of the decline of the Gujarat Sultanate, which had after all been a particularly prosperous one in about 1510, we might depict it as a polity that overextended itself in circumstances when new and powerful rivals had appeared on the scene. The old balance of power, between a relatively modest

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Afghan state in the heart of the Indo-Gangetic plain, Rajput ‘buffer states’ between this core and Gujarat, and an open zone of possible expansion in Central India that had obtained for a good part of the fifteenth century, no longer characterized the century that followed. A possible, and relatively conservative, strategy for the Gujarat sultans would have been to consolidate their rule over Kathiawar, encroach slightly on the southern Rajput states and Malwa, and to then try and hold this compact territory against the Mughals. But this was not how Sultan Bahadur and his advisers conceived matters. Instead, he embarked on an enormously energetic set of campaigns that seemed to have ambitions ranging as far as Bombay on the one hand, and Agra on the other. The idea seems to have been a reversal of the classic pattern, in which initially landlocked states in the IndoGangetic plain sought maritime outlets by expanding westwards towards the coast. Here instead was a coastal state that sought to broaden its hinterland, but which equally wished to expand the coastal territories under its control. The reversal, when it came, was rapid. Between the mid-1530s and the late 1550s, the Sultanate of Gujarat imploded, leaving it relatively easy prey for the Mughals, once the latter had sorted out their own internal dynastic problems, and also defeated the Afghan alternative that was grouped around Sher Shah and his immediate successors. In all of this, the death of Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat himself has a dual importance. As an event, it is invested with some degree of symbolism for Euro–Asian relations, both by contemporaries and later writers. But it is equally interesting as a hinge moment in regional politics, when the seal is set on the decline of the sultanate. In some senses, the unsuccessful siege of the fortress of Diu by the Gujarat forces and their Ottoman allies in 1538 only confirms what was on the cards in 1537, when the sultan died by drowning off Diu. Sultān al-barr, shahīd al-bahr (Sultan ashore, Martyr at sea), and Firangiyān Bahādur-kush (Franks, slayers of Bahadur); these two Persian chronograms, both adding up to the Hijri year 943, summed up the core of the matter for many contemporaries. The first, composed it is said by the wazīr of Gujarat, a certain Ikhtiyar Khan, pronounces Sultan Bahadur Shah Gujarati a martyr when he decided to leave the safe shore for the unsafe sea, and gives the year

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of his death. The second, reported by the Mughal chronicler Shaikh Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, in his celebrated late-sixteenth-century work Akbar Nāma, accompanies a description of Bahadur’s death, and in some manuscripts also a rather striking Mughal miniature depicting the same.33 What did in fact happen? It is difficult to say for certain. But we do know that Sultan Bahadur Shah died at sea under mysterious circumstances on 3 Ramazan 943 ah (14 February 1537), after having reigned for some eleven years and three months. He had gone on board a Portuguese vessel to meet the governor of the Estado da Índia, Nuno da Cunha, in order to settle some outstanding differences between him and the Portuguese. Sixteenth-century Persian writers such as Mulla ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni are prompt to blame his death on the Portuguese, but do not give details: ‘Sultan Bahadur was drowned in the sea owing to the treachery of the Firangis’, he writes.34 The contemporary Hadrami chronicler, Ba Faqih, is more explicit, and explains matters as follows: In this year [943 ah] on Monday, 3rd of the month of Ramazan, or the 4th of Ramazan, Sultan Bahadur Shah, Lord of Gujarat, was killed, being murdered by the Frank. It came about in this wise—that a fleet (tajhīz) of the Frank arrived before Diu from the south (fī sāfil), and when they reached Diu port, Sultan Bahadur embarked, exposing his own person to danger on Khwaja Safar Salman’s grab, by way of coming to meet them, accompanied by about ten of his ministers and by the Khwaja Safar Salman. When he reached them they made a show of welcome and politeness (ikrām wa hashma) towards him, and of support against his foes the Mughals who had seized his country—as was related under the year [93]7. [However] they reproached him for sending the sailing-ships to Jiddah as already mentioned, [and] that all he intended was to incite the Turks (arwām) against them. He absolved himself, saying: ‘My intention was merely to go on the pilgrimage in them, but nobody apart from the wazīr and some of my family consented to go on the pilgrimage.’ They would not, however, 33Abu’l

Fazl, Akbar Nāma, vol. 1, ed. Ghulam Riza Tabataba‘i Majed (Tehran: 1379 Sh./2000), pp. 223–5. 34‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, Muntakhab ut-Tawārīkh, 3 vols, trans. G.S.A. Ranking, W.H. Lowe, and T. Wolseley Haig (Calcutta: 1884–1925), vol. 1, p. 458.

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believe him, and when he left them they sent two grabs in pursuit of him, but he fought them bravely till he and the ministers accompanying him were slain, all except the Khwaja Safar, for him they spared.35

The indigenous sources for the history of Sultan Bahadur’s reign are in general not numerous. The most important are without doubt the Arabic chronicle of Hajji ud-Dabir Ulughkhani, and the somewhat later Persian work of Sikandar ibn Manjhu, the Mirāt-i Sikandarī; to these, the Mughal chronicles in Persian at times add details, as does the celebrated early-seventeenth-century text of Muhammad Qasim Hindushah, better known as ‘Firishta’.36 A number of contemporary Portuguese materials may be added to these, ranging from the great chronicles—Barros, Correia, Castanheda, and Couto—to other more minor works, and finally the rather abundant documents that are mostly to be found in the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon.37 Pride of place amongst these contemporary documents should undoubtedly be given to the anonymous text entitled ‘Capítulo das cousas que passarão no Reyno de Guzarate depois da morte de Sultão Modafar’ (Chapter on the things that happened in the kingdom of Gujarat after the death of Sultan Muzaffar), a rather elaborate narrative by a Portuguese writer which begins with the succession struggle at the death of Sultan Muzaffar Shah in 1525.38 35Serjeant,

The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadrami Chronicles, pp. 75–6. 36‘Abdullah Hajji ud-Dabir Ulughkhani, Zafar ul-Wālih bi Muzaffar wa Ālih, 3 vols, ed. E. Denison Ross (London: 1909–29); defective English translation by M.F. Lokhandawala, Zafar ul Wālih bi Muzaffar wa Ālihi: An Arabic History of Gujarat, 2 vols (Baroda: 1970–4); Sikandar bin Muhammad, The Mir’āt-i Sikandiri, eds, S.C. Misra and M.L. Rahman (Baroda: 1961); English translation by Fazlullah Lutfullah Faridi, Mirāti Sikandari or the Mirror of Sikandar (Dharampur: 1899). 37Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, História do Descobrimento e Conquista da Índia pelos Portugueses, 2 vols, ed. M. Lopes de Almeida (Oporto: 1975). Gaspar Correia, Lendas da Índia, 4 vols, ed. M. Lopes de Almeida (Oporto: 1975). For Diogo do Couto, see the older edition of Da Ásia, Décadas IV–XII, rpnt Livraria Sam Carlos edn (Lisbon: 1974); also Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, Diogo do Couto e a Década 8a da Ásia, 2 vols (Lisbon: 1993–5). 38This text may be found in the Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (henceforth referred to as IAN/TT), Colecção São Vicente, vol. 11, fos. 91–111; it is discussed at some length in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Crónica dos

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The text is often attributed by modern commentators to a certain Diogo de Mesquita Pimentel, who spent time in captivity in Gujarat, and was later present at the fateful occasion in February 1537 when Sultan Bahadur Shah was killed. This attributed paternity remains to be thoroughly verified, being based largely on a reference in Gaspar Correia’s chronicle Lendas da Índia to the fact that this Mesquita had left behind an account of Gujarat in the period which Correia claimed to have used in his own work. Correia writes: ‘And since this section will deal extensively with the King of Cambay, Sultan Badur, it seems right to give an account of him and his affairs, as I saw in an account that was written of him by Diogo de Mesquita Pimentel, who was a captive for many years in the mountains of Champaner (…)’39 Mesquita, we are aware, was captured in a vessel off Gujarat in late August or early September 1528, and though allegedly asked by Sultan Bahadur to convert to Islam, refused to do so, according to some Portuguese sources, even at the risk of his own life. He was later released in the course of the negotiations over Diu in 1535, but continued to play a role in diplomatic relations between Gujarat and Goa, until Sultan Bahadur’s death. It is incidentally possible, but by no means entirely certain, that he is the same as the Portuguese envoy of the same name to Constantinople in the early 1540s. It is worth remarking, at any rate, that he is never mentioned by name in the ‘Capítulo das cousas (...)’, whereas several other Portuguese do find a clear place, such as António da Silveira, Simão Ferreira, and the celebrated renegade João de Santiago (whom the text mentions with conspicuous disapproval). Further, the text uses the first person sparingly, and the author never presents himself as an eyewitness to any events, and the celebrated episode (recounted both in the chronicles, and the later anonymous text Primor e Honra), in which Mesquita and Bahadur have a confrontation, is left out. Stranger still, in the account in the text of the siege and capture of Chitor Reis de Bisnaga e a Crónica do Guzerate: Dois Textos Indo-Portugueses do século XVI’, in Os Construtores do Oriente Português (Lisbon-Oporto: 1998), pp. 131–54. 39On Diogo de Mesquita, also see Dejanirah Couto, ‘L’itinéraire d’un marginal: La deuxième vie de Diogo de Mesquita’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian, vol. 39, 2000, pp. 9–35. The author is commendably cautious concerning the attribution of the text of the ‘Capítulo das cousas …’ to Mesquita.

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fortress by Sultan Bahadur in early 1535 (in which chroniclers such as Castanheda and Couto agree that Diogo de Mesquita himself played a significant role), our chronicler contents himself with a distant and rather conventional description. Above all, the historian must reconcile himself to the fact that Correia’s account entitled ‘Lenda d’el Rey de Cambaya, o Soltão Badur’, diverges very substantially from the text of the ‘Capítulo’, despite some superficial similarities at the beginning.40 Be that as it may, we are certain that the author of the text (whoever he was) had an intimate knowledge of the politics of Gujarat in the late 1520s and early 1530s. What he provides us with in effect is a very detailed account of Bahadur’s ascension against his brothers and rivals on the death of Sultan Muzaffar, his actions to prosecute the expansion of the Gujarat kingdom both in the direction of Rajasthan and Central India, and his eventual clash with the Mughals. It is with the triumphant advance of the Mughal ruler Humayun, and Bahadur’s flight as far as Diu in November 1535, that the chronicle abruptly terminates. It is clear when we place the anonymous Portuguese chronicle side by side with other texts in Arabic and Persian—notably Hajji ud-Dabir Ulughkhani’s Zafar al-Wālih, and Sikandar ibn Manjhu’s somewhat later text Mir’āt-i Sikandarī (but also some other minor texts in Persian)—that we are dealing with an important, indeed in some respects indispensable, contemporary account of affairs. Two aspects stand out. First, we must note the close attention paid to the role of Afghan mercenary soldiers and notables (including disaffected elements belonging to the erstwhile Lodi Sultanate) in the system of political alliances linking Gujarat, the Mughals, and other rival states in this epoch. The second issue, dealt with to some extent by D.H.A. Kolff, is the crucial contest between Bahadur and the Islamicized Rajput leader from Central India, Silhadi.41 Very valuable details of the battles and negotiations between the two can be found in the Portuguese chronicle. At the same time, we must bear in mind that the text has a rather open slant, which is itself a matter of some 40Correia, 41Kolff,

Lendas, vol. 3, pp. 504–33. Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy, pp. 86–102.

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significance for the events of the years from 1534 to 1537. It is clear that, throughout the ‘Capítulo’, Bahadur is treated for the most part as cruel, vicious, and the epitome of a Muslim tyrant. This is an image that is carried over in part into later chroniclers like Diogo do Couto (‘era máo, cruel, e tyranno, e Deos o queria castigar’). Relations between the Portuguese and Bahadur can be divided into two clear phases. In the first period, we witness growing pressure from the authorities at Goa to gain a foothold in one of the ports of the Gujarat Sultanate, preferably Diu. Instructions dating from the mid-1520s, thus from the very beginning of Sultan Bahadur’s reign, make it clear that the Portuguese court had plans in this direction, and was prepared in principle to devote substantial resources to it.42 For a number of reasons, this turned out to be difficult to implement; internal divisions in the Portuguese Estado da Índia, and the rather determined resistance by both Bahadur and the sons of Malik Ayaz of Diu, meant that the Portuguese could not do much more than harass Gujarati shipping and raid ports such as Daman and Rander. However, a second phase is inaugurated in about 1534, at the same time that Martim Afonso de Sousa arrives in India with the title of capitão-mór do mar da Índia.43 In this phase, the position of Sultan Bahadur worsens, and just when it begins to appear that he may regain some ground, he dies mysteriously. It is this second phase, then, that is our central concern. A relatively clear narrative of events in this phase is available to us from the Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes de Castanheda. As he presents it, on arriving in India, Martim Afonso was despatched very quickly on an expedition against Daman, ‘a place in the kingdom of Cambay, situated at the point of a bay on the southern side, some distance up a river, where the king of Cambay had a fortress that was 42IAN/TT,

Cartas dos Vice-Reis da Índia, no. 17, ‘Várias cartas para D. Henrique capitão-mor da Índia sobre a tomada da villa de Rumes escritas em Tomar a 7 de setembro de 1526’. For a further discussion of these materials, see Diogo do Couto, Década Quarta da Ásia, ed. M. Augusta Lima Cruz (Lisbon: 1999), vol. II, pp. 54–8 (note by Sanjay Subrahmanyam entitled ‘O interesse e os projectos de conquista de Diu’). 43See, in this context, IAN/TT, Cartas dos Vice-Reis da Índiano. 22, ‘Parecer sobre a forma como se poderia subgigar os da cidade de Dio (…)’ (probably dating to 1533).

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strong and well-provided with artillery, square, and with a bulwark on each corner, and only one door.’ The captain of this fort is described as a Turk, at the head of a mixed force of Turks and Rajputs. An engagement follows between the Portuguese fleet and the garrison; the fortress is taken and razed, and Martim Afonso moves on to Diu, in order to continue the usual pattern of attacks and skirmishes that the Portuguese had been pursuing since the mid-1520s. Things might have remained in this uneasy equilibrium between the Portuguese and the Gujarat Sultanate had not other factors intervened. The most important of these, as Castanheda himself admits, was the war that Bahadur began with the Mughals under Humayun. The casus belli was, according to the Portuguese chronicler, a campaign that Bahadur conducted in Malwa, in Central India, in which he took the city of Mandu and killed its ruler. Castanheda suggests that complaints from Mandu reached Humayun, who hence wrote a threatening letter to Bahadur. Whatever be the case—and it may well have been that the Mughals were merely seeking a reason to engage the overly ambitious Bahadur—a major campaign was on the cards by the last months of 1534. Castanheda writes: The King of the Mogores sent an ambassador to the king of Cambay, and since he did not wish to do what he asked, there was bad feeling between them, and they made war on each other, which was at once begun through their captains. And since the people of the King of Cambay had the worst of it, he himself decided to go there in person, on which account he decided to make peace with the governor Nuno da Cunha, for he feared that he might take Diu along with the whole sea-coast, while he himself was away against the King of the Mogores. And in order to content him, and to make sure that he would make peace, he gave him Baçaym, on which account he sent an ambassador called Coje Xacoez [Khwaja Shaikh Uwais].44

A carrot is offered then to the Portuguese, in order to buy off their threat for a time, and the man sent to negotiate it is Shaikh Uwais, whom we shall see more of below. The offer is of Bassein on the southern fringes of the Gujarat Sultanate, along with some islands, all of which yield a revenue of some 50,000 gold pardaos a 44Castanheda,

História, vol. 2, Livro VIII, p. 707.

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year. But Nuno da Cunha drives a hard bargain. Not content with the offer, he insists that all ships departing from Diu be obliged now to pass through Bassein and pay customs duties to the Portuguese there; being hard pressed, the ambassador from Gujarat agrees and Bassein is ceremonially handed over. But matters take a different turn shortly thereafter, with the key actor (according to Castanheda and others) being a certain João de Santiago, a Portuguese who had converted to Islam, then reconverted to Christianity, and was used as a Persian–Portuguese interpreter for Nuno da Cunha. This Santiago accompanied Shaikh Uwais on his return to Gujarat, but was persuaded once more to enter Bahadur’s service, where he is reported to have convinced him that the Portuguese were militarily rather weak and could easily be expelled. Bahadur is hence said to have paid no heed to the clause requiring ships to put in at Bassein; nor were the Portuguese prisoners with him (men like Mesquita and Lopo Fernandes Pinto), whose release Nuno da Cunha had demanded, released at this juncture.45 In short, the cession of Bassein satisfied no-one. Bahadur may have regretted it as soon as he did it; Nuno da Cunha clearly felt that he had been shortchanged in the immediate aftermath of the negotiations. But local politics still had not had their say. Shortly after signing over Bassein, Sultan Bahadur began his elaborate campaigns against Humayun. His first destination, from Mandu, was the Rajput fortress of Chitor, which he took in a campaign where the Ottoman and European artillery specialists who were in his entourage played an important role. But this success did not last. A major engagement with Humayun now followed; the Gujarat forces were soundly defeated and Bahadur fled to Mandu, and from there (when the Mughal siege of that city began to appear ominous) to Champaner and eventually Diu. We are by now in August 1535. Martim Afonso de Sousa, who is in the region, writes to Bahadur offering him aid. Nuno da Cunha, whose relations with Martim Afonso are none45Besides

the Portuguese, Sultan Bahadur also held some thirty-six French prisoners from a failed expedition that had set out from Dieppe in the late 1520s; for a letter from these Frenchmen to Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, see Luís de Matos, Les Portugais en France au XVIe siècle: Etudes et Documents (Coimbra: 1952), pp. 225–8.

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too-good, seeks direct negotiations with the sultan, and sends his own secretary, a certain Simão Ferreira, to Diu accompanied by Shaikh Uwais, who has meanwhile returned to Goa. As for Bahadur himself, it appears that he considered asking the Ottomans for aid in this moment of distress, and wrote letters to either the Ottoman governor of Egypt or to Sultan Süleyman himself. In Castanheda’s account, ‘he sent him [Süleyman] a present of jewels, arms, and rich cloths, which were valued at 600,000 cruzados, and in money to pay for the salaries of the ten or twelve thousand men that he asked him for, he sent him a million in gold, and 800,000 cruzados; and all these and the letters that he wrote to the Turk, he handed over to one of his principal captains whose name was Çafercão [sic: Asaf Khan], in whom he had great confidence.’ This Asaf Khan, accompanied by a Portuguese renegade called Jorge, is reported to have been sent to Jiddah by ship in early September 1535, in order to make his way overland from there to Cairo. His large party, which also comprised a number of royal women, included two rather clever young men, Hajji ud-Dabir Ulughkhani and Qutb-ud-Din Nahrawali, who left brief accounts of the events. We gather that Asaf Khan in turn sent his envoy, a certain ‘Umdat ul-Mulk, to Istanbul from Mecca, with a letter for the Ottoman sultan dated early June 1536.46 The embassy was apparently received with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance at Edirne, and assurances were given that the Ottomans would receive very substantial financial returns (from the treasury of the Gujarat ruler) for their imminent intervention.47 But we have run ahead of our story. For Ottoman help, even if it had come, could not have been an immediate solution in late 1535.48 Bahadur thus seems to have decided at that time to cede 46This letter from ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Asaf Khan, dated 17 Zi-Hijja 942 ah/7 June 1536, may be found in the Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi, E. 1351; see Mughul, Kanunî Devri Osmanlıların Hint Okyanusu Politikası, pp. 125–7. 47A description of the embassy at Edirne is to be found in Lütfi Pasha, Tawārīkh-i Āl-i ‘Osmān (Istanbul: 1341 ah/1922–3), pp. 357–8; also see the account in Ibrahim Peçevi, Peçevî Tarihi, ed. Murat Uraz, vol. I (Istanbul: 1968), pp. 119–22. 48The Ottoman expedition to Diu of 1538 under Hadim Süleyman Pasha was obviously in part a response to these appeals; cf. Dejanirah Couto, ‘No rasto de Hādim Suleimão Pacha’, pp. 483–508. A valuable document, still poorly understood, on this expedition, is the letter from Süleyman Pasha to Ulugh Khan, wazīr of

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Diu to the Portuguese, and to hand over the Portuguese captives he had held now for some years, in a show of good faith. For his part Humayun, at this time in the region of Champaner, seems to have opened negotiations of his own with Nuno da Cunha, also offering him Diu, and much more. These two letters apparently reached Goa via Diu at much the same time, but it was Bahadur’s offer that seemed the more valid one to the Portuguese in Gujarat like Martim Afonso; after all, the sultan still held possession of Diu. But matters were more complicated than they seemed, for internal rivalries and jockeying within the Portuguese hierarchy made for a series of misunderstandings. We have already seen that the governor, Nuno da Cunha, sought to deal directly with Bahadur through his secretary Simão Ferreira, undermining the position of Martim Afonso de Sousa, who was in Gujarat at this time, and who seems to have enjoyed excellent personal relations with Sultan Bahadur. But Sousa was no mean political actor, and he was not so easily to be robbed of a moment of glory. Eventually, it was he who negotiated the terms of the cession of Diu with Bahadur, relegating Ferreira to a somewhat secondary position. The terms of the agreement were thus set down as follows, in Castanheda’s version: That the Çoltão Badur is pleased to cede to the King of Portugal a fortress in Diu at any spot that the governor Nuno da Cunha desires, on the side of the bulwarks facing the sea or the land, of the size that he finds acceptable, and also the sea-bulwark. And also it pleases him to grant and confirm Baçaym with all its lands, tanadarias, rents and duties, as has been stated in the treaty that he made with him, concerning peace in the said Baçaym. With the condition, that all the ships for Meca which according to the said peace treaty were obliged to go to Baçaym are no longer to do so, but to come to Diu, as they did before; and that no force should be used against Gujarat, dated 18 Rajab 945 ah, or 10 December 1538, and written at Aden. The Ottoman original no longer exists; a Portuguese translation dated 7 May 1539 may be found in IAN/TT, Corpo Cronológico (henceforth CC), III-14-44, reproduced with some errors in Luciano Ribeiro, ‘O primeiro cerco de Dio’, pp. 211–12, and more recently (with a better reading, but some lines still mistakenly omitted) in Dejanirah Couto, ‘Les Ottomans et l’Inde Portugaise’, pp. 193–4.

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them. And when some ship wishes to go there of its own will, that it be allowed to do so: and that the same apply to others from other parts which are to be allowed to go and come wherever they wish. However, that all of them sail with cartazes. And with the condition that the King of Portugal would not have duties or rents at Diu, or anything other than the said fortress and bulwarks, and that all the duties, rents, and jurisdiction over the people of the land would pertain to Çoltão Badur. And with the condition that all the horses from Ormuz and Arabia which according to the said peace treaty were obliged to go to Baçaim, will go to Diu, and will pay customs duties to the King of Portugal in keeping with the custom in Goa. And if the king does not buy them, their owners can take them wherever they want. And with the condition that all the horses that come from this side of the Straits [i.e. between the Persian Gulf and Gujarat], will not pay any duties and be exempt from them. And with the condition that the King of Portugal and Çoltão Badur will be friends of each other’s friends and enemies of each other’s enemies. And the governor in the name of the King of Portugal will aid Çoltão Badur with all his power at sea and on land, and that the king will do the same for him when needed with his people and fleets. And with the condition that if some Moors from the land of Çoltão Badur wish to become Christians, that the governor will not allow it. And that Çoltão Badur will not allow any Christian to become a Moor. And that if some person or persons who owe money to, or have goods belonging to, the King of Portugal pass over to his lands, that he will oblige them to hand them over, and that the governor will do the same if some man who has the goods of Çoltão Badur or owes him money, passes over to the Portuguese.49

The text of this treaty, negotiated between the sultan on the one hand, and Simão Ferreira and Martim Afonso de Sousa on the other, was accompanied by a letter from the sultan to Nuno da Cunha, dated 28/29 September 1535, which is the first of the Persian documents at hand. It is a remarkable letter, not least because we 49Text of the treaty in Castanheda, História, vol. II, livro VIII, pp. 734–5. Compare this to the later text of a treaty signed between the viceroy D. Garcia de Noronha and Sultan Mahmud, on 6 Zi-Hijja 945 ah, in IAN/TT, CC, III-16–19.

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possess both the Persian original (reproduced below as Document I), and a contemporary Portuguese translation, which is reproduced by Castanheda in his chronicle. Castenheda’s version runs as follows: Appointee of the great King, Lion of the Sea and of the blue waters, Nuno da Cunha, Captain-Major through the grace of the king, I raised you up through my friendship. You will know that the secretary Simão Ferreira faithful and beloved on both sides, and Xacoez Atear [Shaikh Uwais Ikhtiyar], of honourable parentage, came to me: your letter that you sent me came to my state, and I saw all that was written in it. Regarding your wish and the desire you have, I came to know of it with clarity, and already Xacoez informed me of your goodness and friendship, and now I came to know through Simão Ferreira in a friendly manner what you required, which could not be accomplished for so many years nor would you have been able to acquire so excellent a place for the Portuguese to settle here in Diu on the side that you want, had you not requested it or asked for it. I grant it to you with the conditions that Symão Ferreira authorised by means of your letter of credit (vossa procuração), and which you will come to know through his letter and through the message of Xacoez. Now it is necessary that as soon as you receive this, you do not delay in any other place, but rather come here with Xacoez: I had written to the Captain-Major of the Sea [Martim Afonso], and as soon as they gave him my order he came at once to my house and this pleased me, and therefore I ordered him to remain here to serve me. Written in Diu on 28 September 1535.50

The translation is for the most part accurate in its ability to convey both the contents and the tone of the letter, while not really following the Persian text to the letter. This gives us a certain confidence in Castanheda’s versions of other Asian diplomatic materials, even in those cases where we possess a Portuguese translation but no original. A case in point is the letter from Humayun to Nuno da Cunha that dates from August or September 1535, at any rate some time after the fall of Mandu to Mughal forces. That letter runs as follows: 50Portuguese translations in Simão Botelho, O Tombo do Estado da Índia, in R.J. de Lima Felner, ed., Subsídios para a História da Índia Portuguesa (Lisbon: 1868), pp. 219–20, and Castanheda, História, vol. II, livro VIII, p. 737.

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Most honoured and great lord amongst all, and the chief of all, who is most tolerant and most virtuous, and has such fame of possessing great honour, Governor and Captain-Major of the Franks, to whom I offer courtesies as if he were the person of the King [of Portugal], he [Nuno da Cunha] wrote me a letter expressing his desire, expressing his good wishes and his friendship which was delivered to me when I was already on my way to attack my enemies in their lands. I saw what you wrote to me and was greatly content to see it. And that time, many of my enemy’s men attacked my land and some of my captains set out to fight with them and entered his encampment and defeated them, and pursued them until they came close to Mandu, killing and capturing many people, who—as soon as they saw my sword—all fled like bad and weak people. I sent a messenger (hum pião) to the captains of the Deccan, whom I had ordered to attack the lands of my enemy, and I said to them that they should come to my aid. They are very honourable, and very great lords, and they possess the whole kingdom of the Deccan. When they arrive, I will take counsel with them, and with very little effort I will seize my enemy with his lands. Regarding the sea-ports, you have written to me that you wish to retain them with all their revenue: for those that I have in my power, I send you this formão, and I concede to you what you have asked me for, with the condition however that whoever wishes to sail should be allowed to do so, and that whoever wishes to live in these ports should be allowed to do so without being persecuted (sem receber escandalo). And from such a king as I, you may expect to receive further grants, and I would want that you pursue proper justice in every place that you have in your power, for my people who are near you will help you in this matter when it is necessary, and your [people] will do the same for me when I require it. And you can seize the lands that you find close to you, without troubling yourself about those that are far, for when the time comes I will take them. And if someone asks for my grace and desires my friendship, why should I not say that I will give them not merely sea-ports but the hinterland (as terras firmes), and as much as I can, for the sea-ports are nothing at all?51 51Letter from Humayun to Nuno da Cunha in Castanheda, História, vol. II, p. 736.

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Faced with this letter, and its almost embarrassingly generous offer of not only ports such as Bassein, Diu, and all their revenues, but future territories both on the coast and inland, the temptation for Cunha to try and drive a harder bargain with Sultan Bahadur was probably irresistible. But for a time the governor chose not to show his hand.52 Instead, arriving in Diu in October 1535 with nine hundred men, he even submitted to what to contemporary Portuguese appeared rather haughty treatment from Sultan Bahadur, who barely spoke to him at their first meeting save to ask how his journey had been (‘El Rey não teve outra pratica com ho governador se não preguntarlhe como hia do caminho’). Wasting no time, Cunha promptly took possession of the land where the fort was to be, and placed flags with the Portuguese arms there; a few joint military exercises, with regard to Broach and a fort in Kacch, were also planned though not put into action. Construction work on the Portuguese fort itself began in November 1535, with the governor still present. But Bahadur’s troubles were far from over. The Mughal threat still continued, as Humayun took the redoubtable fort of Champaner and began to advance towards the coast, via Ahmadabad. The sultan hence decided to move out of Diu, while incorporating into his entourage a small group of Portuguese military auxiliaries, who included Martim Afonso de Sousa; this was an arrangement to which Nuno da Cunha agreed without too much fuss. Some time thereafter, however, Bahadur returned to Diu, and clearly began to have second thoughts about the utility of the alliance with the Portuguese. This is the moment, then, when he began to think of constructing a wall between the Portuguese fortress (that was itself still in the making), and the main city of Diu; this wall became a major bone of contention between him and Nuno da Cunha. Bahadur’s claim was that the wall would ensure a proper separation between the two settlements, whereas some of the Portuguese saw in the wall a military venture, designed to pose a threat to the fort. It is interesting to note 52The true extent of Portuguese ambitions may however be seen by a treaty signed not long after Bahadur’s death, in March 1537, between Nuno da Cunha and the short-lived Timurid ruler of Gujarat, Mirza Muhammad Zaman, granting Portuguese the coast from Mangrol to Bete Island, and from Daman to Bassein, for which see IAN/TT, CC, I-58–73.

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divisions within the Portuguese camp itself, with Martim Afonso de Sousa for instance being in favour of letting the sultan have his way. Eventually, it was Nuno da Cunha who held his ground, and this clearly annoyed Bahadur a great deal, suggesting to him that the Portuguese having been given an inch were blatantly preparing to take an ell. Even Castanheda’s semi-official history suggests that the sultan was not entirely unreasonable in sending word to the governor that ‘when he had made a peace treaty with him, he had not agreed to anything more than to let him make a fortress, and that he was not subject to him, but that he now saw that he [Cunha] wished to subjugate him, since he wished to stop him from making a wall in his own territory, and that he did not honour the treaty.’53 None of this had any effect on Cunha, who proceeded to complete the fortress by the end of February 1536, and who eventually left Diu in the end of March that year for Bassein, leaving behind a garrison of nine hundred men, and a certain Manuel de Sousa de Évora as captain. These are the circumstances then that explain the second and third letters of our sequence, both addressed by Sultan Bahadur to the king of Portugal, Dom João III. The first of these comes from early January 1536, when Nuno da Cunha was still in Diu, and the quarrel was simmering; it is a relatively polite and diplomatic letter, but it also makes clear the existence of substantial resentments on the part of the sultan. This is obviously the meaning of the section of the letter which runs: ‘You should now ensure that the doors of correspondence remain open, and instruct the Captain-Major of India to act according to the stipulated agreement (shart-nāma). And he should also consider it his duty to render services to this court in such a way that there is help and cooperation. And in this matter, we should both be of one intention, and walk the road of sincerity. And the regulations that were in force [in the ceded territories] should be followed.’ What is still partly concealed resentment in this letter bursts into the open with full force in the third letter, also addressed to the Portuguese king, but in April 1536. After a series of initial polite formulas and greetings, the key passage runs: 53Castanheda,

História, vol. II, pp. 766–7.

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The governor had come with the Portuguese forces to aid me in person in this calamity, and I for my part had without compulsion, in order to demonstrate my sincerity, love and friendship, granted him Hisari village in the Bab-al-Kot in the region of Dib, and I had asked by way of conditions that a formal agreement (qaul-nāma) be written with all the specific clauses set out therein. In the meanwhile, I had to ride out [from Gujarat]. At this time, the governor wrote the qaul-nāma according to his own wishes, and in it he wrote down that which should not have been written and excluded that which should in fact have been put down. Now, I am still confident that the draft of this document would have been sent to you, the king, and that on reading it, you would realise that the benefits to the governor had been exaggerated, and those to myself have been minimised. In fact, even those [few] things that had been agreed upon are now being refused, and the governor has acted, and is acting contrary to that document. The governor has transgressed the limits and is still doing so in this matter.

In sum, Bahadur had decided that dealings with the authorities in Goa were not worth pursuing beyond a point; it was the king of Portugal who had to be apprised of the chicanery of his Asian appointees. Of some significance is a statement towards the close of the letter, where the sultan announces his intention to visit Mecca; at this point, for whatever reason, Bahadur had decided that he would do best to absent himself for a time from Gujarat, and perhaps seek Ottoman aid in a more direct fashion than he had been able to do up to that moment. Interestingly, the sending of this letter broadly corresponds with (in fact slightly precedes) the despatch of the letter from the Gujarat wazīr Asaf Khan at Mecca, to the Ottoman sultan. In his letter, Asaf Khan stated that he had come to the Ottoman empire accompanying Bahadur Shah’s queen, in order to fulfil his hajj obligation, and to take shelter there.54 The goodness and courtesy that had been shown to them had demonstrated that the high opinion held by the Gujarat sultan regarding the Ottomans was quite true and appropriate. Asaf Khan and his party had enjoyed great comfort and ease, and 54We

base ourselves on the summary in Mughul, Kanunî Devri Osmanlıların Hint Okyanusu Politikası, pp. 125–7. Our thanks to Ali Anooshahr for his invaluable help with this material.

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the money that he had brought with him, as well as the gifts, cloths, and other things, were given back to him and no tyranny was shown to him by administrators. Asaf Khan further states that the queen who had come to Jiddah carried a letter from Bahadur Shah to Sultan Süleyman; this letter as well as the aforementioned gifts were being sent in the charge of a confidant. He hoped the gifts would find acceptance; the Gujarat sultan’s purpose was after all to confirm his love and respect for His Majesty the Ottoman sovereign. It was further stated that Asaf Khan and the queen, together with their party, had found shelter in Mecca beneath the just and noble shadow of the House of God. There, they had received a letter from Sultan Bahadur, dated 20 Ramazan 942 ah (mid-March 1536), wherein he stated that with the help of God, he had once more become dominant in every direction (this was something of an exaggeration at this point). The enemy (that is Humayun) had managed to save his life with difficulty, and escaped together with his army without being able to consolidate his conquests. At this news, Asaf Khan, the queen, and other Muslims had been overjoyed. Those of them who were in Mecca now awaited the Ottoman ruler’s permission in order to return to their country. For without a command from the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman governors in Mecca and Jiddah would not allow them to depart to India. They therefore requested just such an order. It was also noted that in Bahadur Shah’s letter he had stated that, if he emerged fully victorious, he too would like to come to Mecca in order to fulfil the obligation of hajj. Asaf Khan had been ordered to facilitate his coming and going. Months later, in November 1536, when the last of our letters was written, the affairs of the sultan had indeed taken a further turn for the better, and this is clear enough from the tone of the missive itself. In the intervening months, relations between the Portuguese garrison and the Muslim residents of the town had been none-too-good; Castanheda reports an incident in mid-June 1536, when an armed fight broke out and several Portuguese were killed. The Portuguese captain asked for the Muslims who had been in the fray to be handed over to him; but this request was denied, and mutual resentement simmered at ever higher levels. However, in the meanwhile, Bahadur’s political fortunes were on the rise. Harried by troubles elsewhere,

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notably the Afghan challenge in the east of his empire, Humayun had been obliged to pull out of Gujarat and turn his attention to the heartland of his possessions. On 10 October 1536 the sultan returned to Diu, with the Mughal threat now having receded to a large extent. It was a month later that he sent the last of the letters that we publish below, negotiating the return of Nuno da Cunha to Diu, to discuss matters that were still outstanding between them. We have the impression that the annoyance of the earlier letters has passed, and that relations are now on the mend. But was this really so? Castanheda, who was particularly close to the governor, claims that the letters of invitation were really a conspiracy, as was the embassy sent to Goa, which consisted once more of Shaikh Uwais, and the son of Ulugh Khan, wazīr of Gujarat (perhaps the Nur Muhammad Khalil referred to in Document 4). In the Portuguese chronicler’s view, since Bahadur was too afraid to declare open war on the Portuguese, he had ‘decided to capture the governor, and had him sent for, pretending that he wanted to speak with him on matters that were important for the service of the King of Portugal.’55 This ‘treason’, he further declares, eventually came to be known to the Portuguese through the intervention of a Persian agent of theirs, a certain Khwaja Pir Quli (‘Coge Percolim’), who managed to get the ambassador from Gujarat drunk at a feast.56 In his drunken stupor, the ambassador apparently declared that their intention was to take Nuno da Cunha prisoner by inviting him to a formal banquet when he was in Diu. In this account then, Cunha believed that Bahadur was planning to take him prisoner by means fair or foul, and his own intention when he set out for Diu in January 1537, although quite ill himself, was to forestall this by taking the sultan prisoner first. It is entirely possible that this account of a conspiracy was a slightly later fabrication, to absolve Nuno da Cunha from what was after all a rather damning stain (for which he was once called a ‘poltroon’ by one of his compatriots). Sultan Bahadur was not an official enemy of 55Castanheda,

História, vol. II, p. 816. Iranian merchants such as Khwaja Pir Quli and their dealings with the Portuguese, see Luís Filipe Thomaz, ‘La présence iranienne autour de l’océan Indien au XVIe siècle d’après les sources portugaises de l’époque’, Archipel, no. 68, 2004, pp. 59–158. 56On

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the Portuguese at the time of his death, and the circumstances of his drowning were highly suspicious, to say the least. The sources of the conflict, which are presented in the Portuguese accounts as stemming entirely either from the sultan’s evil character traits, or from his desire to gain unreasonable leverage, appear to us to be rather more complex. Caught between the Mughal Scylla and the Portuguese Charybdis, Bahadur’s instincts were to resist the one and appease the other. Yet, what he gave the Portuguese was never enough. Not Bassein, ceded in a moment of desperation, not even the right to control Diu, given at a time when things looked quite hopeless, and flight to Mecca and the Ottoman embrace was not ruled out. For the governors of the Estado da Índia wanted more: indeed they wanted nothing less than a territory that would be controlled on terms similar to Goa or Melaka. In order for that, Diu had to be not merely a fortress, but a full-fledged conquest and customs house. In this sense, the first siege of Diu in 1538, and the transformation of a fortress that had been ceded into one that was held by force of arms, was the logical outcome of the policies that Nuno da Cunha had in mind.57 We will never know whether it was the governor’s intention that Bahadur should drown in the waters off Diu on that day in February 1537. The reader of Castanheda cannot escape a feeling of suspicion, even if he writes that Nuno da Cunha ‘when he learnt of the death of the king of Cambay, was very saddened on that account, for it seemed to him that it would have been a better affair (melhor negócio) had he been made prisoner.’58 Yet the same chronicler assures us that ‘Our Lord who had mercy on the Portuguese permitted that they should kill him (…) knowing of the treason that he wished to do, and the 57On the siege of Diu, see the materials in Luciano Ribeiro, ‘O primeiro cerco de Dio’, pp. 201–71; Luciano Ribeiro, ‘Preâmbulos do primeiro cerco de Diu’, Studia, vol. 10, 1962, pp. 151–93; and Luciano Ribeiro, ‘Em torno do primeiro cerco de Diu’, Studia, nos 13–14, 1964, pp. 41–104. Also see Lopo de Sousa Coutinho, História do primeiro cerco de Diu (Lisbon: 1890; first published at Coimbra: 1556). 58Nevertheless, the Portuguese did not do too badly in financial terms out of Bahadur’s death. See IAN/TT, CC, I-65–94, document dated in Diu, 30 September 1539, certidão concerning the death of Sultan Bahadur, and evaluating the goods, etc. taken after Bahadur’s death at 82,929 pardaos. The document results from an investigation held by the vedor da fazenda Dr Fernão Rodrigues de Castelo Branco on 15 September 1539, with Francisco Afonso, contador da casa.

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hatred he had for the Portuguese.’ If regret there was at the turn that events took, it must certainly have been mixed, for the Portuguese governor and his entourage, with a sense of triumph. Here is how Nuno da Cunha himself described matters in a letter to the king dated 8th December 1537, after briefly mentioning how Sultan Bahadur had visited him on his galleon. As he [Bahadur] was thus leaving accompanied by Manuel de Sousa in a vessel (catur) along with others who were with him, when he saw that it was time [to leave] I communicated my message to him through [João de] Santiago in the way I wished it to be sent; to which he responded that he was happy with it, and he invited Manuel de Sousa to enter his foist (fusta) which he did immediately, and once he was inside, the king [Bahadur] ordered that he should be killed. Our people who accompanied him, when they saw him in this state, at once entered the king’s foist, amongst whom there were António Cardoso and Pedro Álvares de Almeida; and so these men together with those in the other ships joined in such a way that the king and his people all lost their lives there, and Our Lord was pleased to organize matters thus so that even if four or five [Portuguese] men who ventured themselves there died, it was all for the good and tranquillity of this land; for I am certain that had this man [Bahadur] lived, our own lives would have been uncertain, bearing in mind the things he had done here and what was discovered about him later.59

Epilogue The death by drowning of Sultan Bahadur in early 1537 certainly marks a point of inflection in the political history of the Sultanate of Gujarat. In its aftermath, the young Sultan Mahmud (r. 1537–54) succeeded him, and a significant struggle ensued between various elite groups that moved the polity in the direction of fragmentation. These included a ‘Rumi’ group initially centred around the figure of Khwaja Safar-us-Salmani, or Khudawand Khan, who remained interested in 59IAN/TT, CC, I-60-37, letter from Nuno da Cunha to D. João III, 8 December

1537; the transcription in Ribeiro, ‘Preâmbulos do primeiro cerco de Diu’, pp. 176–87, is partly defective.

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pursuing Ottoman interests in the region. In the first place, this new conjuncture led to the long-delayed Ottoman maritime expedition to Gujarat in 1538, a massive affair involving some seventy vessels which besieged the Portuguese fortress at Diu for some six weeks. When the Ottoman force under Hadim Süleyman Pasha, the aging eunuch governor of Egypt, eventually sailed back somewhat ignominously to the Red Sea in September, resistance to the Portuguese in the region did not come to an end. In 1546, Khwaja Safar was back on the offensive and, having fortified his own main base at Surat, persuaded the Gujarat sultan to renew the attack on Diu. In the event this second siege too, which in addition boasted no direct Ottoman maritime reinforcements, also failed and Khwaja Safar himself died while supervising it. The Portuguese governor Dom João de Castro, who had helped orchestrate the resistance, undoubtedly saw this as the greatest event of his time in the Estado da Índia. Yet what is most remarkable is the manner in which he responded to the larger geopolitical exigencies of the moment. Castro was well aware that the power of the Mughal dynasty, which Nuno da Cunha had negotiated with, had withered away and that the erstwhile ruler Humayun was now in Iran. Even as he was preparing an expedition to relieve Diu, he therefore wrote on 4 July 1546 not to the Mughals but to Islam Shah Sur, the Afghan ruler of Hindustan who had recently succeeded the deceased Sher Shah. The contents of his letter are intriguing.60 Most high and most powerful Salim Mixaa [Islam Shah], most powerful king of the Patanes [Pathans]. The fame that runs through the world of the greatness, justice and great virtue of Your Highness has given me occasion, even though I cannot see you myself, to desire to serve you above all else; and in order to manifest this desire which I have had for many days towards you, I have on a number of occasions prepared ambassadors to send to you; but their passage to those parts was always impeded by the Guuzerates [Gujaratis] who never wished to open up a passage for them to arrive securely before Your Highness. On account of which it has become necessary for me to send you this messenger, in an anonymous and inconvenient guise, to 60Leonardo Nunes, Crónica de Dom João de Castro, ed. J.D.M. Ford (Cambridge, Mass.: 1936), pp. 59–65, 72–4, for the entire correspondence.

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appear before your royal presence so that by this means my desires might be executed and this letter of mine might be presented to you; in which I decided to put forth some memoirs of great importance for your service and for the expansion of your royal estate, and together with that offer myself to Your Highness so that with ten thousand men and a hundred sail I might serve and help you very truly in all matters that pertain to your service, honour and state, and which you might require of me. First of all I would like to recall to Your Highness that the Kingdom of Cambaya [Cambay] today is so greatly weakened and spent that it would be the simplest thing for a king of far less greatness and power than Your Highness to take it, and even one of your smaller captains could do so if he so desired. For the king is a boy and immersed in all sorts of vices and evil customs besides being distant from the use of arms, and having forgotten his honour and Republic; and on this account is badly viewed by all his people for his cruelty and tyranny, so that it is a thing to marvel at. Now, besides that, the Guuzerates [Gujaratis] are such men that the women of other nations are far superior to them whether in the glory of their persons, their force and heart, or in the art and exercise of war and battles. From which it follows that at any time when Your Highness decides to make war on them, they will have no other recourse nor confidence in other sorts of arms and defence, save to throw themselves at the mercy and pity of the victors, without ever thinking to place their affairs in the hands and movements of Fortune to ascertain through the use of arms the justice of their affairs, honours, lives, goods and liberties, as is held to be the custom, precept, and noble and sovereign remedy not only by all the peoples and nations that live on the roundness of the earth, but even by the ferocious and brute animals to whom Nature has extended this singular remedy and gift, for to each of them she has given arms by which to attack and a spirit such that they might not be subjugated and defeated by their enemies. For it is notorious that the king of Cambaya lives with no other expectation, were he to receive news that Your Highness had advanced against his kingdom, nor can he hope to save himself by any other military means or effort, and can only scurry off and secrete himself in the most hidden and remote places in his land which are situated on the seafront, and there place himself under the shadow, protection and favour of the Portuguese. Which from now on will forever be denied to him on account of the many signs of ingratitude that he has shown in the past few days, despite the great friendship and good

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works that he has received from the very high and very powerful king of Portugal, my master, and more generally from all of the Portuguese nation that frequents these parts. On account of these causes, Your Highness has before him the best conjunction there could possibly be, I do not say negotiated, but rather asked for and desired in order to accomplish the addition of these kingdoms of Cambaya to his own and thus enlarge his greatness and singular virtues. And in order that Your Highness might more easily acquire these lands without loss of his own people or expense from his treasuries, I have reached a secret agreement with some Guuzerate [Gujarati] lords and very important people in that kingdom, so that as soon as they hear that Your Highness has entered those lands, they will rise up in rebellion with their places and fortresses. So that, My Lord, the kingdoms of Cambaya now await you with their doors open, and with no resistance or impediment to be foreseen. Therefore Your Highness should not lose such an occasion as Time has now brought forth and Fortune has prepared for him. And in order that Your Highness may have no doubt concerning my service on this expedition and enterprise, as I have offered above, I am now preparing myself to go forth this very summer and make war with fire and blood on Cambaya both by sea and on land, and to sack and destroy the whole sea-coast, and in the winter I will take up stations in Baçaim with six hundred cavalrymen with gilded spurs and silk standards and Arabian horses, with which—and above all with the aid of Our Lord—I will cause such difficulty to the king [of Cambay] that most certainly Your Highness can then come and take away his entire land; from which I want no more for the king, my master, other than a few maritime places that I will take. And this only in order that the bad people from amongst the Rumes do not come and install themselves there, and thus we will settle peace and perpetual friendship between Your Highness and the king of Portugal, my master, forever and done in such a way that between the two parties there might be an alliance and contracts of very true brotherhood against all the kings and lords who might want to quarrel or make war on either of the two. And in this way Your Highness will remain with the best and the greatest part of the land, and the king my master will possess the sea, with nothing in the world that could cause annoyance or disgust to you or prevent you from enjoying your empires save the power and will of the High and True God, against whom we mortals cannot offer any resistance. Written in Goa on 4 July 1546.

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The response from Islam Shah (termed the ‘king of Patane’, that is of the pathāns), written from Agra in the month of Sha‘ban 953 ah (or October 1546), only arrived at the beginning of the next year. It was polite but certainly not enthusiastic about the joint project proposed in Castro’s letter, and also grumbled somewhat regarding matters of etiquette. As translated into Portuguese, this was how it ran. Captain-General Dom Joham de Castro, governor of much piety and beauty, who possesses many of the qualities to be the intimate of kings, possessed of much experience and the wisdom of Solomon, with no blemish on him. The messenger with your letter came before us, and he was very courteous and full of much love and friendship. And it made good time and arrived at a fortunate hour at the court of this powerful king and it came to be known what was written therein, in which you spoke and gave an account of the affairs that had passed there in the lands of Gujarat which are under the power of that evil man Mamude Guuzeraate [Mahmud Gujarati] and which he was responsible for and which caused his honour to diminish greatly, and that thereafter matters had once more become peaceful; and that the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords had considered it to be of his service, as is his wont, to give you [victory] as he has given us the lordship of these kingdoms, and the very sword that God employs was given by Him into our hand and He chose us amongst all the people to be the master thereof. And we are the shadow under which all shelter, and the pastor of all people. It is an old saying that letters are worth half a conversation between people. The messengers that you sent me and the constancy of your message reached us, giving an account of how you were ready with your army. May God make you prosper and grant you victory. The friendship between us is very old, and now is once again confirmed with the King of Portugal, who is very great and powerful. Our customs are that when such messages are sent, along with them it is necessary to send a horse or valuable cloth as a sign of friendship, for this is a way of pleasing us and we are obligated, after you have closely listened to and paid attention to the reply that we must send you, to be fast friends. And this in such a manner that it is as if we are held fast by a chain thrown around our neck, for this friendship shall never be lost; and we shall value it as we do precious stones; and if an ambassador comes here on the part of your King it should be in the manner that we have set out, and then he will be received in accordance with our customs, for

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in this way we shall be greatly honoured. Written in the city of Agra, in the month of Xava [Sha‘ban], which was in the month of October 1546.

The providentialist (if not downright millenarian) tone that it has sometimes been remarked pervaded Islam Shah’s court certainly colours this letter. The reference to the old friendship with the Portuguese may speak of the time in eastern India in the 1530s, when various Portuguese actors had entered into contact with Sher Shah. At any rate, governor Castro’s enthusiasm remained high enough for him to make one more attempt. His next (and last) letter was written then from Diu in early February 1547. Most high and most powerful King Salin Mixaa, most powerful king of the Patanes. On 25 January I received a letter from Your Highness in response to another that I had sent you the days past. And through it, I learnt of the desire you have to make such a form of peace and friendship with the most high and most powerful king of Portugal, my master, that it might last forever; which I, more than anything else in this world, find to be most fortunate and honourable, for it is through my effort that such an alliance and friendship has been made, and I hope in Our Lord that the kingdoms and lordships of both [rulers] might increase greatly, and through all the globe (toda a Redondeza) by land and sea they might be feared and known as genuine and true lords. Regarding the matters of Cambaya, I wish to inform Your Highness that I have put Mamude [Mahmud] who calls himself king of Guuzeraate [Gujarat] in such a state that any captain of Your Highness could now enter into his lands, and I would be in a position to hand over the whole kingdom to him most peacefully, for I defeated his whole army on the battlefield, and I have killed all the foreign people (gente estrangeira) that he had, including all the famous captains of his kingdom, and I have seized all the artillery and munitions from his camp, as well as his strong and great city of Dio; and through my captains I have had all the sea-coast destroyed and devastated, and they seized the cities of Guogua, Guandar (…) from him. After they had killed many of his people they caused such destruction that there was hardly one stone that remained atop another which they also did in many other places and castles. So that Portuguese arms were now not only feared in all of Guuzeraate, but their fame has created such wonder in the whole

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land that no one even dared to defend themselves but instead they either fled many leagues into the interior or surrendered to our clemency and mercy. And after all this damage had been done and the arms of the Portuguese had grown tired from shedding Gujarati blood, and after ruining so many of their cities and castles, I remained all of the summer in this city of Dio, waiting for Your Highness to send someone to take over the kingdom of Cambaya. And now that I see that on account of some [other] reasonable activities this could not be done, I will go and winter in India, from where— once the winter has passed—I will return to take up quarters in this city of Dio with all the Portuguese people who can be found in these parts. And in Baçaim I will import a great number of Arabian horses, so that I may serve Your Highness by sea and by land and so that I may succeed in handing over these lands of Guuzerate to him, which Mamude [Mahmud] now possesses more as a tyrant than as a native king and ruler. And at the same time when I return to India, I will send you an ambassador through the land of the Inizamaluco [Nizam-ul-Mulk] with a very beautiful Arabian horse, despite the fact that it may seem a very difficult task to pass through so many places that are inimical and contrary to us. But since it will be recommended by your great good fortune and negotiated with my greatest diligence, I hope in Our Lord that it will reach you safely. And through Bemgualla [Bengal] I will make another ambassador ready, so that he can take another similar present and the same substance as is contained in this letter. And since Your Highness will rejoice to have Arabian horses in your stables, were you to come and settle in the city of Amadaba [Ahmadabad] I promise that each year I will send you more than a thousand horses there, with which—and taken together with your great effort and wisdom—within a few days you can become lord of all the kingdoms of the Orient, and acquire such fame and renown in all the land that the memory of the great King Tamerlane [Temorlam] will be entirely forgotten. May Our Lord increase the life and royal state of Your Highness by many years. Written in this city of Dio, 8 January [sic: for February] 1547.

So far as we are aware, this letter and its renewed invitation to conquer Gujarat was met with silence from the Surs. But twenty-five years later, the invitation was indeed accepted. However, the conquering forces that entered the ports and hinterland of Gujarat were not of the Afghans but rather of the descendants of ‘the great King Tamerlane’.

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Appendix: Four Letters of Sultan Bahadur The documents reproduced here are amongst the oldest surviving chancellery and diplomatic documents from sixteenth-century northern India.61 To be sure, we do have some chancery documents from the Delhi Sultanate, for example from early in the reign of Muhammad Shah Tughluq.62 Further, some farmāns from Bahmani times in the Deccan may be found. But few original Mughal documents survive from the period of Babur or Humayun, let alone the Delhi Sultanate. For a discussion of the conventions of document production in the period, which is largely concerned however with the Mughals, see the work by Momin Mohiuddin, The Chancellery and Persian Epistolography under the Mughals, from Bābur to Shāh Jahān, 1526–1658: A Study on Inshā’, Dār al-Inshā’, and Munshīs Based on Original Documents (Calcutta: 1971), as also the extensive summaries of diplomatic correspondence in Riazul Islam, A Calendar of Documents on Indo–Persian Relations, 1500–1750 (Tehran/Karachi: 1979–82). The four letters we reproduce and translate are from Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Documentos Orientais collection. They are as follows: (1) Letter from Sultan Bahadur to Nuno da Cunha, 1 Rabi‘ II 942, no. 31. (29–9–1535, Wednesday). Documentos Orientais No. 31. (2) Letter from Sultan Bahadur to Dom João III, dated 7 Rajab 942, no. 17 (unsigned). (1–1–1536, Sunday). Documentos Orientais No. 17. The document has no seal. From the contents the letter is obviously from the Sultan of Gujarat to the King of Portugal, Dom João III. This letter is more formal than Doc. 1 in terms of language, and is in elegant naskh script. It ends with stylized dates, in an Arabicized language. 61Cf. the relatively complete list of such documents in Portuguese collections in Georg Schurhammer, ‘Orientalische Briefe aus der Zeit des Hl. Franz Xaver (1500–1552)’, Euntes docete, vol. 21, 1968, pp. 255–301, which however does not include three of our four letters. 62For example, see the royal order dated Shawwal 725 H./September–October 1325, from the Keir Collection, reproduced in Claus-Peter Haase, ed., A Collector’s Fortune: Islamic Art from the Collection of Edmund de Unger (Berlin: 2007), pp. 28–9.

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(3) Letter from Sultan Bahadur to Dom João III, dated 25 Shawwal 942, no. 30. (17–4–1536, Tuesday). Documentos Orientais No. 30. The letter is written in cursive ta‘līq script. (4) Letter from Sultan Bahadur to Nuno da Cunha, dated 3 Jumada II 943, no. 8. (17–11–1536, Friday). Documentos Orientais No. 8. The letter is written on behalf of the Sultan of Gujarat to the Captain-Major, but it lacks the royal seal, and only has that of the royal secretariat. This letter, unlike the earlier one, never uses the first person.

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English Translation of Document No. 1 Seal: The king of the glittering sky full of stars is Sultan Bahadur, the king the seal of whose signet ring draws brilliance from the sun.63 Text: The exalted and noted Lion of the Green Ocean (asad albahr al-khazra), Nuno da Cunha, Captain-Major (kaptān mūr), honoured with the privilege of royal attention, may it be known to him, that our mutual confidant Simão Ferreira, secretary, is present here accompanied by Kamal-ud-Din Uwais Shaikh Ikhtiyar, having had the honour of kissing the threshold of these high-statured portals. Your letter was presented before the feet of the throne that is the refuge of the Caliphate. We came to know of the sincerityladen contents of this letter. Whatever you had written about your services and loyalty was noted. Earlier too, we had come to know of your loyalty from the letters of the said Shaikh. Now, once more, it became further established from the address of Simão Ferreira. What you had desired and not received for years, that is a place for some of the people of Portugal to reside, and which had again been the aim (mudda‘ā) of this letter, we grant you this [herewith] without your formal request on some conditions which Simão Ferreira as your representative (wakīl) has accepted. You will learn the details from his letter and also verbally from the said Shaikh. Now, after having received our high farmān, you should come to present yourself without any delay, accompanied by the said Shaikh. And it was appreciated when the captain-major, chief of the seas (sardār-i daryā) set out for the exalted court on receiving our farmān. He is staying here, so that he can render services (khidmatgāri) to us. Dated 1st Rabi‘ II 942. 63This document and Doc. 30 have shāh-i a common seal. Our reading is: Shāh-i sipihr-i kaukaba Sultān Bahādur ast/ shāh-i ke muhr-i khātamash az mehr-i khwur dur ast. Aubin’s draft translation differs, and he proposes, ‘Le roi du firmament, c’est la constellation de Sultan Bahadur/Le prince dont le cachet de son sceau est convenable pour le soleil’. Castanheda, História, vol. II, livro VIII, p. 729 has another version of the seal that seems to us rather fantastic: ‘Ho Çoltão Badur cadeyra está nos ceos, e ho sol he seu selo, e a lua serradura do seu cavalo, e as estrelas cravos dela’.

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English Translation of Document No. 2 Notation at top right: Bi-Ismih’il Asmā Subhānahu (In His Name who is High, Glory be to Him!). Text: Commander of the state (mubāriz ud-daula) and of exalted heights and fortune, Rey Don João King of Portugal, may God strengthen the foundations of your state and height and fortune for ages. May I present you this letter that carries caravans of prayers with pleasant fragrance, and people with rose-coloured praises. The

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purpose of this letter is to state the following: That earlier, following the truce with the best of the governors of the Christians, Nuno da Cunha, captain-major and governor, representative of you, highstatured [ruler], I had conferred a fort in the territory (khitta) of Bassein along with its appurtenances and revenues; and as in the meanwhile I have [further] noted the marks of the cementing of our close collaboration and the sincere services [of your men], I am now generously bestowing on you, great king, Hisari village in the territory (bāb) of Kot, in the region (khitta) of Dib, along with the fort in the middle of the water, and two other forts belonging to the region of Bassein that I had not granted earlier. You should now ensure that the doors of correspondence remain open, and instruct the Captain-Major of India (kaptān-i mūrān-i Hind) to act according to the stipulated agreement (shart-nāma). And he should also consider it his duty to render services to this court (dargāh) in such a way that there is help and co-operation. And in this matter, we should both be of one intention, and walk the road of sincerity. And the regulations that were in force [in the ceded territories] should be followed. And those things which your governor has submitted afresh towards peace and cooperation will be clear from his letters to you. 7 Rajab 942 Hijri.

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English Translation of Document No. 3 Seal: The king of the glittering sky full of stars is Sultan Bahadur, the king the seal of whose signet ring draws brilliance from the sun. Notation at top right: Bi-Ismih’il Asmā Subhānahu (In His Name who is High, Glory be to Him!). Text: Commander of the State, Governance, Sultanate and Fortune, Rey Dom João, King of Portugal. May God strengthen the foundation of your state. After sending you fragrant wishes and prayers, etc. It is not hidden from people of intelligence that kingship free from changes and transformation behoves only the Almighty who possesses stature and wrath. And the sultanate of his creatures, even if it lasts for long, must change, and decline inevitably sets in […]. The position of kings varies on account of their power, control, strength and éclat. Further, how can the calamities and unfortunate occurrences of the time, particularly those of the countries of Hindustan, that is Gujarat (mamālik-i Hindustān siyima Gujarāt), be concealed from a person, the ship of whose power and strength plies the circumscribing ocean (daryā-i muhīt), and those of Firang and Hind? Besides, to come to the purpose of the letter, the foundations of friendship and trust had been laid between the two of us; the governor had come with the Portuguese forces to aid me in person in this calamity (hādisa), and I for my part had without compulsion, in order to demonstrate my sincerity, love and friendship, granted him Hisari village in the Bab-al-Kot in the region of Dib, and I had asked by way of conditions that a formal agreement (qaul-nāma) be written with all the specific clauses set out therein. In the meanwhile, I had to ride out [from Gujarat]. At this time, the governor wrote the qaul-nāma according to his own wishes, and in it he wrote down that which should not have been written and excluded that which should in fact have been put down. Now, I am still confident that the draft of this document would have been sent to you, the king, and that on reading it, you would realize that the benefits to the governor had been exaggerated, and those to myself have been minimised. In fact, even those [few] things that had been agreed upon are now being refused, and the governor has acted, and is acting contrary to that document. The governor has transgressed the limits and is still

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doing so in this matter. No representative of a king has ever been able to do such a thing without the agreement of his master. And if it is in keeping with his master’s wishes that he has written such a document, then where can I go to complain about such a great king (bādshāh-i buzurg)? I cannot say anything about what he has done, on account of my own diffidence. Humayun is willing to leave the country if only I am willing to state that I accept peace, but I have decided not to accept this […] We must listen to each other patiently, but in any case my heart is fully confident that you will investigate this completely, and as a result reprimand the governor on my account for all this. As for the qaul-nāma, whatever Your Excellency writes himself could be sent to me, and I shall accept it. This year, I am intending to go to Holy Mecca. The qaul-nāma that you send will be received by my officials (muta‘lliqān) in the region of Div, so that they may send it on to me for its putting into effect. Written on 25 Shawwal, the month with the mark of virtue and fortune, in the year 942.

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English Translation of Document No. 4 Seal of the Secretariat: Sikka-i dabīr khāna. Text: The exalted and noted Lion of the Green Ocean, the great governor (warandūl a‘zam), Nuno da Cunha, Captain-Major (kaptān mūr), privileged especially with limitless royal kindness, may it be known to you that your letter was received at the feet of the throne that is the refuge of the Caliphate (dar pāya-i sarīr khilāfat masīr), and its contents came to be known. Whatever you had written of your loyalty and services in relation to the court that is the shelter of the Caliphate (dargāh-i khilāfat panāh) was noted and appreciated. One of our close confidants, Nur Muhammad Khalil, has been sent, from whom you would gather the conditions in these parts. You, noted one, are ever a well-wisher of the state and of this high-statured court (dargāh-i ‘ālījāh). In view of the expression of your good wishes, your treatment of this representative should [now] be such as to cause my kindness and affection towards you to grow. As for your request to come here, you are hereby informed that His Highness’s heart has been gladdened by this expression of intention. You should immediately set out, because it has been decided that soon the Star of Greatness (kaukabah-i ‘azmat) shall rise in the direction of the fort of Chitor. Written on Saturday 3 Jumada II 943.

2

The Mughals Look Beyond the Winds ‘Hindustan is described as enclosed on the east, west and south by the ocean, but Sri Lanka (Sarāndīp), Aceh (Achīn), the Moluccas (Malūk) and Melaka (Malāqa), and a considerable number of islands are accounted within its extent.’—Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī1

The Indian Ocean Conjuncture

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he previous chapter was concerned with relations between the Gujarat Sultanate and West Asia on the one hand, and the maritime power of the Portuguese Estado da Índia on the other, with a particular temporal focus on the first half of the sixteenth century. The Mughals had begun to appear as players on the scene by the 1530s, but had yet to consolidate their power, a process that would take another half-century. What impact did this process have on the larger Indian Ocean world? The existence of very extensive commercial and other relations between the India of the Mughals and the kingdoms of Southeast Asia is perfectly well known, but still surprisingly difficult to delineate with clarity.2 1Shaikh

Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, trans. H.S. Jarrett, revised Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta: 1948), vol. III, p. 7. 2We thus return here to themes studied briefly in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Persianisation and Mercantilism: Two Themes in Bay of Bengal History, 1400–1700’, in Denys Lombard and Om Prakash, eds, Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: 1999), pp. 47–85, as indeed in the rest of that conference volume by other authors.

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These relations must obviously have passed above all through two principal corridors in the late sixteenth century, after the great Mughal expansionary wave of the 1560s and 1570s: relations between the ports of Gujarat (and most particularly Surat) and the havens of island Southeast Asia, the Malay Peninsula, and the Mergui–Tenasserim complex; and those between Bengal and other ports of the Bay of Bengal littoral. Later, as the Mughals advanced southwards down the Indian peninsula, we may equally imagine that these relations would have grown more complex in their geographical spread. Thus, in about 1700, ambassadors from the Restored Toungoo dynasty in Burma to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb arrived in the port of Mylapur, which had only recently fallen under Mughal control, and were received by the governor Da’ud Khan Panni. In the same years, we are aware that ports like Pipli and Balasore maintained relations with a number of Southeast Asian courts, ports, and polities. Inevitably, it is the commercial aspects of these relations that are the easiest to seize. Historians of trade have been able to set out, and even quantify in a limited way, the numbers of ships and the volume and value of goods that moved between the ports of Mughal India and those of Southeast Asia. We know that textiles formed a staple of Indian exports, and that Southeast Asia spices, some metals and minerals, wood varieties, and even elephants were carried in the other direction. We are able to identify some of the great merchants who plied these routes, whether the Iranian magnates of Masulipatnam, or the traders of Aceh, Mergui, and Johor, or even some of the more obscure merchants of Surat who traded in Aceh in about 1610.3 What we are able to reconstruct is, however, very largely a function of European sources, a fact noted with irony and regret several decades ago by Ashin Das Gupta.4 3Shireen

Moosvi, ‘Travails of a Mercantile Community: Aspects of Social Life at the Port of Surat (Earlier Half of the Seventeenth Century)’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 52nd Session (New Delhi: 1992), pp. 400–9: Farhat Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–1730 (Cambridge: 2004), p. 90. 4See, for instance, Ashin Das Gupta, ‘Indian Merchants and Trade in the Indian Ocean’, in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1: c. 1200–1750 (Cambridge: 1982), p. 407.

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The history of mutual perceptions and cultural interactions is at any rate a far harder nut to crack, because European sources are only of limited utility in this respect. Still, in his important study published in 1967 of the Sultanate of Aceh in the period of Iskandar Muda (1607–36), Denys Lombard called attention at several points to the significance of the cultural link between India and Sumatra from a Southeast Asia viewpoint. Drawing on the earlier works of G.P. Rouffaer and Teuku Iskandar, Lombard commented in relation to the ruler Iskandar Muda that ‘one must admit that this great Sultan of Aceh (…) drew inspiration from the Great Mughal.’5 Rouffaer, it may be recalled, had studied with particular interest the nine-circle seal of the Aceh sultans, where one finds ‘around a central circle, containing the name of the reigning monarch, eight other circles with each one containing the name of one of his great predecessors.’ The Dutch scholar had then noted the anterior mention and description in the Akbar Nāma of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl of such a seal and concluded that the Acehnese usage had a ‘Hindustani origin’.6 Teuku Iskandar for his part had argued that the anonymous text, Hikāyat Aceh, drew inspiration from the Akbar Nāma, and that it was commissioned at the court of Iskandar Muda with the purpose once more of following the Mughal model.7 However, to cite Lombard once more, while the structural and even anecdotal similarities are striking, ‘even if there is inspiration, there seems to be no question of [simple] imitation.’ This discussion thus suggests that, by about 1600, there was a sufficient circulation of texts, and perhaps even of savants, between Mughal India and the Sultanate of Aceh, to permit such passages and transformations: ‘In certain modes of governing or of thinking, in their vocabulary as in their literature, in both secular and in religious life, one encounters India [in Aceh] and above all the Islamised India of the Mughals.’8 5Denys

Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjéh au temps d’Iskandar Muda, 1607–1636 (Paris: 1967), p. 79. 6G.P. Rouffaer, ‘De Hindostanaasche Oorsprong van het “negenvoudig” Sultanszegel van Atjeh’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 1906, pp. 349–84. 7Teuku Iskandar, De Hikajat Atjeh (The Hague: 1958), p. 20. 8Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjéh au temps d’Iskandar Muda, p. 180.

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Certainly, there are a few instances in the writings of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl himself which make it clear that Aceh formed a part of his geographical horizons, however indifferent he may have been to, say, the world of the Europeans. The temptation remains to imagine that the primary line of circulation would have passed through Gujarat. This is for several reasons. First, arguably the most celebrated Indian figure in the history of the Sultanate of Aceh is Nur-ud-Din al-Raniri, author of the Bustān us-Salātīn (Garden of the Sultans), who originally came from Rander in Gujarat and moved to Aceh in 1637.9 In the second place, there has long been a consensus in the historiography that the rise of the westward-bound pepper trade from Aceh owed a good deal to the mediation of merchants from Gujarat, many of whom would have moved their focus to Aceh after the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511. C.R. Boxer suggested this clearly; indeed, he concluded it was ‘safe to suggest (…) that the development of Atjeh’s spice-trade with the Red Sea was largely, perhaps mainly, due to the initiative and cooperation of the Gujaratis.’10 Basing himself largely on such Portuguese sources as the chronicle of Diogo do Couto, he also argued that vessels from Bandar Aceh carrying pepper (and other spices) regularly began to make an appearance in Red Sea ports like Jiddah after about 1530, and that this trade was ‘undeniably in full swing by the mid-sixteenth century’. Ports such as Khambayat (Cambay) and Surat were assumed to have played a major mediating role in this commerce, which was also commented on extensively in the 1560s by Venetian observers. Gujarat was also assumed, rightly, to have been a major staging post in the general dealings between Aceh and the Ottoman empire, which writers such 9See Jelani Harun, ‘Bustan al-Salatin, “The Garden of Kings”: A Universal History and Adab Work from Seventeenth-Century Aceh’, Indonesia and the Malay World, vol. 32, no. 92, March 2004, pp. 21–52; and most recently Paul Wormser, ‘Le rôle culturel des étrangers dans le monde malais du XVII siècle: Le Bustan alSalatin de Nuruddin ar-Raniri’, PhD dissertation, EHESS, 2010. 10Charles R. Boxer, ‘A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Atjeh, 1540–1600’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3, 1969, pp. 415–28. It seems worth noting that this essay appeared quite soon after Lombard’s monograph cited earlier.

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as Lombard and Anthony Reid had begun to stress in their research of the 1960s and 1970s.11 Research by Ottomanists has done much to consolidate and flesh out this picture. Giancarlo Casale, importantly, allows us to put together a far more complete narrative of Ottoman dealings with Aceh.12 He points to the crucial role of an Ottoman envoy, a certain Lütfi (formerly a sea captain in the sultan’s müteferrika corps), who was sent out to Aceh in 1564 on a return embassy in response to an earlier Acehnese delegation that had arrived at the Sublime Porte in 1562. Lütfi appears to have returned to Istanbul in 1566 after a twoyear stay in Sumatra, with plans for a massive Ottoman intervention in the affairs of the Indian Ocean, which eventually however came to naught. He also brought back a letter for the Ottoman sultan, apparently from the Acehnese sultan ‘Ala-ud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah alQahhar (r. 1539–71), but which—in Casale’s reasoned view—appears to have been ghostwritten by Lütfi himself in impeccable Ottoman Turkish. This letter, or ‘report’ as Casale more appositely terms it, unambiguously sets out matters in the following terms: We sincerely request that His Imperial Majesty should no longer consider me, your servant in this land, to be an independent ruler, but instead to accept me as a poor, humble, and downtrodden slave who lives thanks to the charity of your Imperial Majesty, Refuge of the World and Shadow of God [on Earth], in no way different from the governors of Egypt and Yemen or the beys of Jiddah and Aden (...) with God as my witness, this [city of ] Aceh is one of Your Majesty’s own villages, and I too am one of your servants. Your official Lütfi can personally attest to our circumstances and to our deeds, to the great endeavours we have undertaken for the sake of holy war, and to our firm and sincere longing to enter your Imperial Majesty’s service.13 11Anthony

Reid, ‘Sixteenth-Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3, 1969, pp. 395–414. 12See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York: 2010). 13Translation in Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, p. 128. The original text may be found in Razaulhak Şah, ‘Açi Padişahı Sultan Alâeddin’in Kanunî Sultan Süleyman’a Mektubu’, Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, vol. 5, nos 8–9, 1967, pp. 373–409, in particular on pp. 381–8.

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The text set out a grandiose plan, wherein various other parts of the Indian Ocean would fall into a grand alliance around an axis that connected Aceh and the Ottomans, with Gujarat as the third point in the triangle. The rulers of diverse other lands (even those who were not Muslim) were portrayed as eagerly falling into line, and even embracing Islam in their desire to rid themselves of the Portuguese yoke. Thus, another passage of the text runs: ‘When the rulers of Ceylon and Calicut received news that His Majesty’s servant Lütfi had arrived here [in Aceh], they sent ambassadors to us who proclaimed: “We [too] are servants of His Imperial Majesty, Refuge of the World and Shadow of God [on Earth]” and then took an oath swearing that if His Imperial Majesty’s propitious fleet were to journey to these lands, they themselves would come to the faith and profess the religion of Islam, and that likewise all of their infidel subjects would forsake the way of false belief for the straight path of the one true religion. God willing, with the illustrious assistance of His Imperial Majesty, all traces of the infidels in both the East and the West will be destroyed, and they will finally join the Islamic faith.’14 Such statements are of course to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt and more. However, what is of particular significance for us is the crucial role of Gujarat in all these transactions. Thus, we learn that ‘in the year 972 H. [late 1564], His Majesty’s servant Lütfi came here [to Aceh], and on his return journey he loaded sixteen kantars of pepper, silk, cinnamon, cloves, camphor, rosemary and other products from the “Lands Below the Winds” onto a large and famous ship known as the Samadi and belonging to Chingiz Khan, one of the vezīrs of the land of Gujarat in Hindustan.’15 But equally, on the way to Aceh, former Ottoman subjects now resident in Gujarat had already come to the rescue of Lütfi and assured his passage. Thus, another passage in the text runs: Karamanlıoğlu ‘Abdur-Rahman, one of the vezīrs in the land of Gujarat, is a capable and conscientious servant who is worthy of [being entrusted 14Casale,

The Ottoman Age of Exploration, p. 129. For the text, see Razaulhak Şah, ‘Açi Padişahı Sultan Alâeddin’in Kanunî Sultan Süleyman’a Mektubu’, p. 385. 15See Razaulhak Şah, ‘Açi Padişahı Sultan Alâeddin’in Kanunî Sultan Süleyman’a Mektubu’, p. 384. The name of the ship is somewhat unclear.

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with] further duties [in Your Majesty’s service]. While Lütfi was making his outward journey to this land from [Your Majesty’s] exalted presence, he became greatly perplexed upon his arrival in Jiddah, because he was unable to find any ships there that would take him the rest of the way. [Thankfully], the above-mentioned ‘Abdur-Rahman, out of respect for the illustrious orders [which Lütfi had received] from Your Imperial Majesty, sent Lütfi and all of his entourage all the way here in one of his own ships, and covered all of the expenses for the journey himself.

It is a matter of debate whether the Ottoman influence in fact was the determining factor behind the anti-Portuguese unrest in various parts of the Indian Ocean in the late 1560s and early 1570s.16 What is beyond doubt is that the Ottoman empire, Gujarat, and Aceh were bound in ties far closer in the 1560s than was the case by 1580. The conquest of Gujarat by the Mughals meant a sharp decline in the influence of figures such as ‘Abdur-Rahman and Chingiz Khan mentioned above. Even if Aceh and the Ottomans continued to maintain relations into the seventeenth century, the ‘Sumatran adventure’ of the Sublime Porte did not last more than a brief moment, and appears to have been more a dream of a few persons than an act of sustained policy. Nevertheless, Aceh does feature, along with other parts of Southeast Asia, in Ottoman writings of the late sixteenth century, such as the work of the Ottoman chronicler Seyfi Çelebi, posthumously titled ‘Book of the History of the Monarchs of the Countries of Hind, Khitay, Kashmir, ‘Ajam, Kashgar etc.’. This is an important compendium of Ottoman xenology which is not directed to the West, which is to say the countries of the Mediterranean littoral and America (as was the case with the anonymous Tārīkh-i Hind-i Gharbī), but instead to the East, a far more uncommon procedure.17 16Thus,

Casale’s work tends to favour a ‘maximalist’ view of the Ottoman intervention, which is even seen by him as catalysing the defeat of Vijayanagara in 1565. It is largely in consonance with the views expressed in Luís Filipe F.R. Thomaz, ‘A Crise de 1565–1575 na História do Estado da Índia’, Mare Liberum, no. 9, 1995, pp. 481–519, and may be contrasted to Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Matter of Alignment: Mughal Gujarat and the Iberian World in the Transition of 1580–81’, Mare Liberum, no. 9, 1995, pp. 461–79. 17Thomas D. Goodrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World: A Study of ‘Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi’ and Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Americana (Wiesbaden: 1990).

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Thus, his sixth chapter (that follows on his account of the Mughals) begins with the monarchs of the Deccan but moves on soon enough to Pegu (in Burma), then to Sri Lanka (Serendib), and eventually to the Sultanate of Aceh (Açi vilāyeti).18 In such writings, we can see what has been retained of such diplomatic texts as the report of Lütfi, in the form of a glimpse of how the ‘Lands Below the Winds’ (zīrbādāt) of Southeast Asia appeared to late-sixteenth-century Ottoman armchair observers. We thus gather that ‘Aceh is located in the middle of an island but it is a vast place; its Padshah is Sunni and a Muslim, and is called Muhammad Shah’; thereafter Seyfi moves on to his real interest, which is in the elephants of Aceh. The rest of the description of Aceh is thus an exoticist composition on its marvellous elephants, while the people of the land are seemingly of no interest either to Seyfi or his imagined reader.

On Mughal Perceptions Yet, if one is to believe much historiography on Mughal India, even the modest contribution of Seyfi Çelebi vastly outstrips any Indian ‘xenological’ attention paid in the Mughal period to the lands that were ‘beyond the ocean’, whether Africa, Southeast Asia, or Europe. It is generally a staple view of writings on the Mughal domains that curiosity there, to the extent that it existed, was confined to areas to the north and north-west, namely Central Asia, Iran, and the Ottoman empire.19 Much of the classic historiography on the subject produced in the latter half of the twentieth century by the ‘Aligarh School’ ironically mimics the view (often denounced as deeply Orientalist) of writers such as Bernard Lewis, with their notion of an Islamic world that was, by the post-‘Abbasid period, largely indifferent to other lands, usages, and customs.20 Seconding this view, even Simon Digby 18Joseph Matuz, ed. and trans., L’ouvrage de Seyfî Çelebî, historien ottoman du XVIe siècle (Paris: 1968), pp. 120–1. 19For a discussion of such materials, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Empiricism of the Heart: Close Encounters in an Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Text’, Studies in History, n.s., vol. 15, no. 2, 1999, pp. 261–91. 20Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York: 1982); the same view recurs in Rudi Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness and Fascination: Safavid Views of

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argues that Mughal India had practically no empirical interest in the ‘overseas’.21 Rather than simply dismiss Digby’s point of view, it may be helpful to rehearse the major elements in his argument. He admits for example, on the basis of very wide reading, that Europeans (his primary focus) in the Indo–Persian literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘represent a diversity of experience, intimacy of contact and levels of sophistication’. He makes a broad distinction between ‘informed accounts’ and ‘popular beliefs’; however, even within his first group he finds nothing of much empirical value before the late eighteenth century, when the Indo–Persian literati came into close contact with the British. So, ‘among the literate classes of the Mughal empire a lack of curiosity about geographical matters outside their immediate ken appears to have been the prevailing response through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.’ Typical of this is the great savant Shaikh Abu’l Fazl (mentioned above), who referred vaguely to the ‘islands of the Franks’ (jazā’ir-i Firang), as though oblivious of continental Europe.22 In order to explain this curious lack of curiosity, Digby draws upon Michael Pearson’s well-known construct that on account of ‘deep cleavages, horizontal and vertical, in Indian society’, the empirical knowledge of sailors and traders did not penetrate the world of ‘authors of works in Arabic and Persian [who] were associated with the administrative class.’23 Therefore, the typical Mughal view—if we are to follow Digby—would have been that of an author such as Amin-ud-Din Khan in the late seventeenth century, who in his the West’, Iranian Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 1998, pp. 219–46. For a more nuanced presentation, see Ahsan Jan Qaisar, The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture AD 1498–1707 (Delhi: 1982), and for a vehement counterargument to that of Lewis, Nabil Matar, In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel-Writing in the Seventeenth Century (New York and London: 2003). 21Simon Digby, ‘Beyond the Ocean: Perceptions of Overseas in Indo-Persian Sources of the Mughal Period’, Studies in History, n.s., vol. 15, no. 2, 1999, pp. 247–59. 22On Shaikh Abu’l Fazl’s geographical knowledge, also see M. Athar Ali, ‘The Perception of India in Akbar and Abu’l Fazl’, in Irfan Habib, ed., Akbar and His India (Delhi: 1997), pp. 215–24. 23M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: 1976).

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Ma‘lumāt al-āfāq (Knowledge of the Horizons) informs his readers of horse-headed ogres in the land of Firang, and who, moreover, was ‘apparently unaware that, for two centuries, European vessels had been sailing around Africa.’ Few other writers, even visitors from Central Asia such as Mahmud Wali Balkhi in the late 1620s and early 1630s, seem capable of asserting much better.24 In short, whereas there was clarity regarding Samarqand and Bukhara, Yazd and Isfahan, the ocean apparently presented an impenetrable barrier that no savant in Mughal India seemed conceptually capable of penetrating. The implicit argument here seems to be that the Ottomans, with their superior navy and seafaring skills represented by men such as Piri Re’is and Seydi ‘Ali Re’is, were a quite different society in matters of ‘xenology’ than the hidebound, horsebound Mughals. This is where a text such as the one to which the core of this chapter is devoted gains its significance. We refer to a work entitled Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn (The Immaculate Garden), written by a certain Tahir Muhammad ibn ‘Imad-ud-Din Hasan ibn Sultan ‘Ali ibn Haji Muhammad Husain Sabzwari, a migrant from Iran to Mughal India. The author was a fairly well-connected man whose father, ‘Imad-udDin Hasan, had already been a Mughal official in Gujarat, while one of his brothers was a poet at the Mughal court. Begun by him during the reign of the emperor Akbar, before 1011 H (1602–3), the work was apparently completed in 1015 H (1606–7), early in the reign of Akbar’s son and successor Jahangir.25 The work is in five books (qism), of which Book V deals inter alia with ‘the marvels and wonders of the islands and ports’ near Bengal, deriving from the writings of a certain Khwaja Baqir Ansari, who had long served as a Mughal official in Bengal (in the text: ‘ajā’ib-o-gharā’ib ki dar banādir-o-jazā’ir wa atrāf-oaknāf-i ān bilādast az nuskha-i Khwāja Bāqir Ansāri ki muddat-i madīd 24On Mahmud Wali Balkhi, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘From an Ocean of Wonders: Mahmûd bin Amîr Walî Balkhî and His Indian Travels, 1625–1631’, in Claudine Salmon, ed., Récits de voyage des Asiatiques: Genres, mentalités, conception de l’espace (Paris: 1996), pp. 161–89. 25Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Elliot 314 (Sachau-Ethé no. 100), Rauzat utTāhirīn; also see British Library, London, Ms. Or. 168. For a brief and somewhat misleading summary, see H.M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, 8 vols (London: 1867–77), vol. VI, pp. 195–201.

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dar wilāyat-i Bangāla ba khidmat-i bakhshigarī qiyām dāshta and).26 This book was apparently a fairly well-known work in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; copies of it exist not only in Oxford and London, but in Lucknow, Hyderabad, and the Asiatic Society of Bengal (in Kolkata), with the last perhaps being the same that was in the possession of Tipu Sultan (d. 1799), the ruler of Mysore. The Rauzat is a work with vast, somewhat totalizing ambitions, initially conceived of as a ‘universal history’ dealing with various parts of the Islamic world. These more traditional parts of the work are derived largely from well-known textual sources and need not concern us particularly here, although they undoubtedly merit proper study. Our concern is instead with the closing section of Book V, which derives in part from the author’s personal experience, and in part from materials that he gathered from Khwaja Baqir Ansari, or from other sources in Bengal. The part that derives more directly from the author’s personal experience can be dealt with quickly—we have analysed it in greater detail elsewhere.27 This section is entitled ‘A brief description of the kingdom of Portugal which is under the rule of the Emperor of Firang’,28 and comes framed in a brief portion of Tahir Muhammad’s autobiography. We learn that in the year 987 H (1579 ce), Tahir had been sent on the orders of Akbar as part of an embassy (hijābat) to the port of Goa, which was under the control of the governors (hukkām) of the emperor of Portugal. He was thus able to gather information from them, and also observe the Franks at quite close quarters, returning distinctly unimpressed in some respects: ‘The community of Franks (tā’ifa-i Firang) wear very fine clothes but they are often very dirty and pimply (chirkīn). They don’t like to use water (ba āb muqayyad nīstand). They bathe very rarely. Amongst them, washing after relieving oneself (tihārat-o-istinjā) is considered improper. They are very good at using firearms (tufang), and they are particularly brave on ships and in the water. But in contrast to this, 26Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn, book V, chapter 5, Bodleian Ms, fls. 621a–26; British Library, Ms. Or. 168, fls. 698a–700. 27See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Taking Stock of the Franks: South Asian Views of Europeans and Europe, 1500–1800’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 42, no. 1, 2005, pp. 69–100. 28Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn, book V, chapter 5, Bodleian Ms, fl. 626a.

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they are not so brave on land.’ Tahir also gathered a good deal more information in the period of a year and more that he spent in Goa, before returning to the port of Khambayat in Gujarat, where his own father was the mutasaddī. From Gujarat he seems to have returned to Akbar’s court and paid the emperor his respects, as well as carried information to him concerning the situation in Europe at the time. Some of this information was undoubtedly somewhat confused. Thus, we learn initially that Portugal is the name of a very large city, which is the capital (pā-i takht) of the emperor (bādshāh) of Firang. On the one side, the frontier of his lands touched the land of the Maghrib. Given this proximity, for a long time the king of Portugal had wished to conquer the kingdom of Maghrib, until at last an opportunity offered itself. Tahir now recounts in a succinct manner the story of the expedition of Dom Sebastião to North Africa, and his death or disappearance there.29 He also notes that when news of this reached his kingdom, the king of Spain (ray Aspānya), another powerful king from amongst the Franks, had entered Portugal and captured it. Further, he notes that when word of these events had reached Goa, the Franks in the ports of Hindustan had without any hesitation accepted the Spanish king’s rule. It thus turns out that Tahir was present in Goa at the time of the arrival of the first viceroy sent out by Philip II, Dom Francisco Mascarenhas, in late September 1581.30 It is almost certainly to him that the chronicler Diogo do Couto refers, when he writes of an ‘embaixador do rey dos Mogores’, who asked for and received a cartaz from the new viceroy to send a ship from Goa to Jiddah in the Red Sea.31 The suggestion is clearly that Tahir had his own commercial interests, another 29Jesuit

writers from the Mughal court claimed that the story of the expedition of Dom Sebastião to North Africa made a great impression on Akbar; cf. the letter from Fathers Acquaviva, Monserrate, and Henriques to the Captain of Daman, Fatehpur Sikri, March–April 1580, in Josef Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XII (Rome: 1972), doc. 3, p. 23. 30For the conjuncture at this time, see Subrahmanyam, ‘A Matter of Alignment’. 31Diogo do Couto, Da Ásia, Década Décima (Lisbon: 1974), parte I, livro II, cap. 1, pp. 151–2; see the discussion in Jorge Manuel Costa da Silva Flores, ‘Firangistān e Hindustān: O Estado da Índia e os confins meridionais do Império Mogol (1572–1636)’, PhD thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2004, pp. 114–15.

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effective counterexample to the view of ‘deep cleavages’ between the commercial and administrative classes in Mughal India. However, Tahir Muhammad is not content to leave the matter with a prosaic account of politics in Portugal and Spain; he also adds an element of the marvellous to this account. It turns out here that in the Maghrib there was a large cave (ghār) inhabited by djinns. Several people had been lost there, some of whom had returned, but one of them had stayed on and become the master of magical arts. At a certain point, Dom Sebastião had decided to seal the mouth of this cave and cut off access to it. However, when he died or disappeared in battle, there was much ambiguity on what precisely had happened. His uncle, Dom Henrique, then became ruler and asked that the cave be opened. Six of the seven people who had been inside it for seven years emerged, declaring that the emperor of Portugal had indeed died in the battle. This passage sets the tone for what will follow in Tahir’s account. He certainly does not represent the same end of the spectrum of rationalistic Mughal historiography as, say, Shaikh Abu’l Fazl or Khwaja Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad. Rather, his is a view in which popular elements of ‘marvels and wonders’ (‘ajā’ib-o-gharā’ib) have a full place, as he himself explicitly admits in the title of this section. This is also the reason why, when closing his section on Portugal, he adds an account of various other wonders: whirlpools and bizarre storms, fiery miasmas over ships, strange oceanic creatures, and so on.

Neighbouring Lands The sections that have been discussed so far derive essentially from Tahir Muhammad’s year-long sojourn in Goa, and may also relate to what he had gathered from his father in Gujarat. However, this is not true of the bulk of his materials (discussed below), which seem instead to come from Bengal. Indeed, this is logical enough, for they follow on a chapter that deals with how Bengal fell under the control of the Mughals, from the time of the rule of the Karrani Afghans there. The section on the ports and islands (banādir-o-jazā’ir) of the Indian

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Ocean thus begins with a mention of Ceylon (Sīlān), which—so our author declares—is ‘under the control of Hindustan’. The special characteristic of this place is that in the jungles there, cinnamon (dār-chīnī) and cloves (qaranfal) may be found in quantities, so that merchants come there to fill their ships with these goods, as well as some precious stones. Tahir adds that, initially, the ruler there had been poorly placed to resist the Franks, who had the upper hand over the cinnamon trade. He then adds: ‘These days, now that the people there have got together large armies and elephants in number, they are resisting the entry of the Firangis, and as a result the supply of cinnamon has come down.’ This is followed by a brief discussion of a place referred to as ‘Koji’, but which seems to be a reference to the Moluccas. For we gather that on this ‘island’, plenty of cloves are to be had, and that this is the main source of revenue; the people there are Muslims, and they know of neither gold nor silver, so that everything is transacted in terms of cloves. Cloth and rice are taken there in ships, and cloves brought back. Tahir notes that in the past three years ships from Bengal have begun going there, but that the voyage is somewhat dangerous. Amongst the wonders is a sort of talking parrot to be found there, which is better than what one finds elsewhere, and also more colourful. This brief note on the Moluccas may be compared to other brief references that one finds later in the text. One of these concerns Bandar Chamba (or Champa), described as a thoroughly beautiful place, with gardens, fine buildings, and an elaborate covered route that runs from the port to the palace—producing the illusion of birds flying overhead.32 Again, Tahir contents himself in his alltoo-brief remarks with noting that there are two kinds of inhabitants here, that the main traded product is fine-quality silk, but that the Franks have a monopoly over the commerce. There are only two kingdoms in Southeast Asia, however, that find elaborate discussion in the text. These are Pegu and Aceh, with the Thai kingdom (shahr-i nau) still apparently being considered too insignificant in this epoch. We may begin with the case of Pegu, and then turn to Tahir’s fairly elaborate account of the Sultanate of 32Rauzat

ut-Tāhirīn, book V, chapter 5, Bodleian Ms, fl. 623b.

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Aceh.33 The discussion of Pegu begins by noting that the king there has five white elephants, and that their way of life is different from that of both Muslim and Hindu (az tarīqa-i Musalmānān-o-Hindū’ān alahida ast). We are immediately plunged now into details of an ethnographic type. Thus, we find the rather odd claim that the inhabitants of Pegu worship the camel (ushtur), and that anyone who takes camels there can make a great deal of profit for the local inhabitants pay an extraordinarily high price for them. The camel was decorated with precious jewels, and people gathered around it in wonder. As for their sages and wise people, just as they are called ‘ālim and fāzil in Islam, pādri by the Franks, kashish in Circassia and Georgia, pandit, sannyāsi, and barhaman in Hind, so in Pegu they are called rāwali. When these rāwali died, their goods were all brought together, and for three days the elite and commoners gathered to celebrate with food and drink bought from the effects of the dead man. Then, a garden was made in his memory, where they brought out the dead body, filled up its belly with gunpowder, and set it afire. Then when the rāwali had burnt, his bones were gathered up and buried. Court ritual too was different here from what obtained in the Mughal domains. When the king or ruler (hākim) came to the court, the grandees, viziers, and people great and small (umarā’-o-wuzarā’ wa khwurd-o-buzurg) touched their heads to his feet, and presented the affairs of the country to him while bowed, their hands clasped over their heads. No one could raise their voice or speak loudly in his presence. Again, their main celebration was also characterized by silence and calm; anyone who spoke out was at once locked up. Tahir Muhammad claims that in Pegu too, as with the Muslims, Friday was the special day, and the rāwali preached on that day. He exhorted people in general not to harm any living creature, a central tenet of the place. Here, Tahir’s account takes a turn and assumes a more disapproving stance. He notes that there were dances in their idol-houses (but-khāna) to mark special occasions in which some girls entered into a trance, foamed at the mouth, and became intoxicated. They also had two particular holy days in a year, when 33For Pegu and Arakan in this period, see Jos Gommans and Jacques Leider, eds, The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200–1800 (Leiden: 2002).

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they welcomed the devil (shaitān) and in their idol-houses celebrated with alcohol; he adds sarcastically that anyone who missed these festivals was miserable for the rest of the year and thought it would bring bad luck. But the place had its positive wonders too, including ones that immediately struck the eye. The town of Pegu had twenty-eight great doors made of brass, gilded over. This gave the illusion that they were made wholly from gold; these doors all looked alike, so that a traveller could mistake one for another quite easily. This is a town, Tahir declares, unmatched in the whole world in terms of its wondrous appearance. The idol-houses in the town were also all made from brass (royīn), and their walls were totally gilded. One of these was particularly large, and in their language they called it Paradise (bihisht). But as against this, he once again brings out the regrettable customs of the inhabitants of the kingdom. They ate creatures of every sort and placed no restrictions on the kinds of food that were legitimate, not distinguishing harām from halāl. Brothers married sisters and when reproached said blithely that being descended from Hazrat Adam they followed him in this matter. Local customs carry a particular prurient interest for Tahir Muhammad. For one of the wonders of Pegu was that some people there slashed open their own penis (nafs), and inserted small gold bells (zangul) the size of a large gram between the skin and the flesh; they then stitched themselves up again, and by the magic of some recited formulae were rapidly cured.34 As a result, when they had an erection, they could not be joined at first with their wives and had to use fingertips to excite them. Subsequent to penetration they could not for a very long time be separated—not until the release afforded them by satiety. Indeed, couples had sometimes to work hard at being separated. Someone in Bengal had told Tahir that when he was in the city of Pegu there had been a major fire during which couples in coitus on beds had been extracted from their houses. Enquiring what was afoot, the visitor was informed that as they could not be separated, they had had to be brought out conjoined. Only after 34On such practices as detailed in European travel-texts, also see Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680: Volume One, The Land Below the Winds (New Haven: 1988), pp. 148–51.

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an hour or more could they be set apart. Further, when copulating it was customary for the woman to strike the man on his thigh with her fist, making it ring like a bell and providing the woman much pleasure. This shamelessness (bi-ghairatī) is an integral part of the nature of these women, writes Tahir. Any trader going to that country and seeing the daughter of a notable suffices to make her come to him. But if when he wishes to leave the country the girl has become pregnant meanwhile, or had a child, the trader is obliged to stay on and finds himself entrapped.35 As a land not too far from the eastern limits of the Mughal domains, it is of interest to Tahir also for the power of its ruler. The army of the country is not very impressive, he declares; its horses are far smaller than those of India, and though the army is large, it is mostly made up of foot-soldiers. These soldiers are quite well armed, and if they have to travel for a month or two, they carry supplies on their backs. The army is divided into two parts, one called barma and the other ‘abbāsī. Earlier, the latter group had ruled, but of late it is the barma who have become rulers. In the year 1001 H (1592–3 ce), they had first invaded the area, but the barma leader’s son was killed. Then, in 1002 H, they sent another army, and this time gained a major victory. Many people were killed in the town of Pegu in a huge general massacre (qatl-i Khalā’iq), and others enslaved. The ruler of the barma had also deliberately ordered that there should be no cultivation for five years, so that a major famine had resulted. At last, God had had mercy on the people and that particular conqueror had died.36 Thus, in 1012 H (1603–4 ce), a few years before the completion of the Rauzat, the country had once more come to be settled, and cultivation had begun anew. The main produce was rice, and lots of fruit, such as mangoes and bananas were imported from there into Bengal. The reference here appears quite clearly to be to 35This

is an idea regarding Pegu that may already be found in the fifteenthcentury Russian account of Afanasii Nikitin, for which see Jean-Yves Le Guillou, Le voyage au-delà des trois mers d’Afanasij Nikitin (1466–1472) (Québec: 1978), p. 34. For a variant account from the seventeenth century, see Ansar Zahid Khan, ‘Bahr al-Asrār: The towns and regions beginning with ( ) (b)’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, vol. XXIX, pt 1, 1991, pp. 11–12. 36It is possible, but by no means certain, that this is a reference to the Thai ruler Naresuan (r. 1590–1605).

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the wars and disputes of the late sixteenth century (including the socalled myó-zà and bayin revolts), between the decline of the rule of the Toungoo Dynasty at the time of Nanda-bayin (r. 1581–99), and the eventual emergence of the Restored Toungoo Dynasty under Anaukhpet-lun (r. 1606–28).37 This was a period of considerable turmoil, and the years after 1594 also saw the emergence into prominence for a time of Mon rebels (perhaps the barma of Tahir Muhammad’s account) who allied themselves with the ruler of Ayuthia.38 Tahir notes that a major port under the rule of Pegu was Martaban.39 There was a special variety of banana there, and elephants aplenty. When the ruler wanted to catch elephants, he got hold of a tame elephant, applied magic powder on its penis, and let it loose in the jungle. This elephant then became irresistible to other elephants, which followed it towards the town, and thence into a special enclosure. The ones that pleased the king were kept, the others released back into the jungle. The people of this kingdom treated elephants in the same way that people treated goats and horses in India, namely as personal possessions. Among the other oddities, Tahir claims that there was no gold or silver in Pegu, and hence no coinage in the area. Instead, the natives used objects made of copper (biranjī), which were made into various shapes and tied together with threads that ran through holes in them. But this meant that if one had a hundred rupees worth of such coins, you needed two elephants to carry them. Since olden times to the present day, he asserts, exchange in this country had been carried out in this impractical way. Tahir’s description of Pegu can be contrasted to his briefer mention of Arakan (or Arakhang), paradoxical in view of the greater proximity of Arakan to the Mughal domains.40 It is mentioned that this is a land ruled over by the Magh 37Victor B. Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580–1760 (Princeton: 1984), pp. 38–60. 38For Portuguese sources on Burma in this period, compare Maria Ana Marques Guedes, Interferência e Integração dos Portugueses na Birmânia, ca. 1580–1630 (Lisbon: 1994). 39Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn, book V, chapter 5, Bodleian Ms, fl. 622a. 40Ibid., Bodleian Ms, fl. 624b. For later Mughal accounts of Arakan, see Shihabud-Din Talish’s Fathīyya-i ‘Ibrīyya (c. 1670), for which see Ahmad bin Muhammad Wali Shihab-ud-Din Talish, Tarikh-i Asham, récit de l’expédition de Mir-Djumlah au pays d’Assam, translated from the earlier Hindustani translation of Mir Husaini,

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who are a kind of Hindus (az firqa-i Hindūwān and), as distinct from Pegu which he regards as different from both Hindus and Muslims. He notes that some people had fled from there to the Bengal port of Sonargaon, that the rulers possessed cannon and guns in plenty, and so the Franks had been unable to capture the place. But here too, as in Pegu, they ate indiscriminately, and brothers and sisters had sexual relations, people kept two or three white elephants, and all were fascinated by camels—if they could find one, they worshipped it. Clearly, proximity has in this case reduced none of the exoticism attached to the inhabitants of either Arakan or Pegu, who seem to be rather peculiar creatures from Tahir Muhammad’s viewpoint, even if his understanding of them is not entirely pejorative. What creates a barrier for him is possibly the absence of a substantial implantation of Islam in these lands. In order to test this hypothesis, we need to look to his other elaborate description, namely that of the Sultanate of Aceh.

Aceh in 1600: A Mughal View By the early seventeenth century, there are at least a few indications to suggest that the Sultanate of Aceh was known in the Mughal court. One of these concerns an anecdote regarding the introduction of tobacco to the Mughal court, recounted in the memoirs of the official Asad Beg Qazwini. This Mughal official reports that, on his return to Agra after an embassy in the Deccan, he decided to present Akbar with tobacco, which though quite common in Bijapur was apparently new to northern India. He notes that he had equally procured a golden pipe (chilam) to smoke it from the Deccan, studded with precious stones; this pipe was three yards long and originally made in Bandar Aceh, a place whose location he does not see the need to explain. It was decorated at both ends, and the mouthpiece was fitted with a good-quality Yemeni ruby to make it all the more attractive. In the ensuing discussion, in the court, it was noted that tobacco had by Théodore Pavie (Paris: 1845), and more particularly Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib’s Reign (Hyderabad: 1989), pp. 114–48.

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only been recently discovered; as for the pipes, they generally came to the ports (banādir) of India from Aceh.41 But this variety of brief mention is of a quite different order from the complex description that occurs in the Rauzat of the ‘island of Āchīn’. This section of the text begins by approaching Aceh not through its social customs or political institutions, but through the commercial products to be had there. To be sure, writes Tahir, there is plenty of fruit to be found in Aceh, but what is of real interest is its camphor (kāfūr).42 However, the area where camphor is to be found is inhabited by cannibals (ādam-khor), and they themselves bring this good to the ruler of Aceh as a gift each year, so that the ruler can then send it on to other countries. It was said by common folk in Bengal and elsewhere that camphor arises when certain special drops of rain fall between banana trees. But Tahir Muhammad divulges that better information is now available. For it turns out that the ruler of Aceh had sent some of the wood from which camphor is made along with his agents (wukalā’-i khwud), together with other gifts, to the emperor Muhammad Akbar. Here then is direct evidence of diplomatic contacts between Aceh and the Mughal court by about 1600, which may help us partly resolve the question of the nature of and conduit for the influences discussed variously by Rouffaer, Iskandar, and Lombard. Tahir Muhammad had heard that, simply by looking at this wood, one could gather that the tree must be like a mango tree or a chinār. He adds besides that there were three kinds of camphor: one from the bark of the tree (kāfūr-i pā); a second which was stuck in the branch (kāfūr-i sar); and one from the lower part of the tree (kāfūr-i qamar), and these three were of differing value. The camphor apparently had to be extracted from the wood using metal claws, and the larger grains were worth more than the others. From Aceh proper to the country of the cannibals, where the camphor could be found, it was a journey of five days. The cannibals’ 41Waqā’i‘-i Asad Beg, Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Abdus Salam Collection, no. 270/40 (4), pp. 90–2; also see the discussion in Qaisar, Indian Response to European Technology, pp.118–20. 42Also see Nouha Stéphan, ‘Le camphre dans les sources arabes et persanes: Production et usages’, in Claude Guillot, ed., Histoire de Barus (Sumatra): Le site de Lobu Tua, Volume I. Études et documents (Paris: 1998), pp. 225–41.

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villages were scattered, but despite this it turned out that they were all related to one another. If one of them fell ill, they let time pass; and when the illness had advanced they killed the person and distributed the body parts amongst different families, with the chief (kalāntar) getting the head. These parts were then hung in houses, so that every major house had a few heads hanging in it as a sign of status. The more heads you had hanging in your house, the greater the signification of your power and importance. But matters did not stop with the traffic in body parts. When these cannibals gambled, they offered their own hands and feet as wagers in the game, and if they lost, their hands and feet were cut off and miscellaneous other pieces of flesh taken away in proportion to the loss. The other cannibals ate this flesh without hesitation; nor did the people whose task it was to carve up their fellows hesitate for a moment, or even think to discuss the matter afterwards. (A small parenthesis adds that they also ate pān leaves, or betel, in the area, as if to suggest that the cannibals were not entirely beyond the pale in the things they consumed.) Returning to the main thread of his discussion, Tahir continues: if you promised a part of your body in a game and then refused to give it up when you lost, it was considered a sign of great humiliation not just for the poor loser, but for his whole group (qabīla). Besides all this, there was also an annual day when the ruler of the cannibals and his people got together and ate human flesh (gosht-i ādam). On this particular occasion, a chosen man was rendered unconscious by placing a hand over his mouth. Occasionally, if he pleaded, they let him go and caught another, it being inauspicious to consume one who had expressed such a marked distaste at the prospect of being eaten. Then, the selected person’s body parts were cooked alongside other dishes, and if any in the group felt a lack of appetite facing such a choice repast, they lost status and were made to feel insufficiently cannibal. Having disposed thus of the cannibals, Tahir turns to the city and customs of Aceh. He notes that its society is characterized by a very high degree of surveillance, and that the kotwāl of the town is meant to keep track of everything that happened in it. For example, if the son and daughter of two people fall in love, on the first night that they spend together, the kotwāl simply writes it down. He then gives them six months’ respite, and if at the end of this time they persist,

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they are apprehended. If they are caught in flagrante delicto, they are summarily brought before the ruler next morning. If they belong to the group of the notables (a‘yān), he orders their execution, but not by speaking to them directly. Rather, he gives a sign, at which one of the royal eunuchs gets on the chief elephant and takes them to the chief maidān, where they are killed. To do this, they are placed side by side, and they recite love-verses in their own language while approaching one another step by step, being stoned all the while by the gathered populace. They are stoned from behind in such a way that they utter no sound until such time as both fall dead. This then was a land of rather strange customs, and summary justice, as is also shown by the fact that the people here routinely cut off the limbs of thieves. Mention is also made of a special place of exile, on a strip of land surrounded by the sea on three sides, where wrongdoers were pushed out for life through a door that was then shut behind them. The men and women who were thus exiled had to make their lives in there, and even wound up constituting families in it. But this harshness has its underlying reasons. For, writes Tahir Muhammad, in each of their actions the people of Aceh show their constant determination to fight the Franks (that is, the Portuguese), and it is said that even their most simple everyday acts, such as drinking water or wearing clothes, are done with this determination.43 As a result, despite their best efforts, the Franks have managed to gain no control over their country. This is partly because they are separated and protected by a mountain range. But even on the maritime front, they remain very vigilant.44 When a ship is seen to approach from the sea, or when the sound of a cannon is heard, the people of Aceh are 43This reminds us of the remark of Diogo do Couto, to the effect that Sultan ‘Alaud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah al-Qahhar ‘never turned over in his bed without thinking how he could encompass the destruction of Malaca’; cited in Boxer, ‘A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Atjeh’, p. 420. 44For Portuguese perceptions of Aceh and its defences in this period, see the materials in Jorge M. dos Santos Alves and Pierre-Yves Manguin, O ‘Roteiro das Cousas do Achem’ de D. João Ribeiro Gaio: Um olhar português sobre o Norte de Samatra em finais do século XVI (Lisbon: 1997). Also of relevance for Portuguese– Acehnese relations in the period, and Portuguese projects to attack Aceh, is Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, Portugueses e Malaios: Malaca e os Sultanatos de Johor e Achém, 1575–1619 (Lisbon: 1997).

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ready to fight. Again, a technical reason for their success is suggested: there was a kind of secret oil in this country that could be spread on the water and set afire as a form of defence, to keep the Franks at bay, and the king himself had a monopoly over this special oil. There was also the fact of the plentiful availability of saltpetre, particularly in the jungle. (Tahir adds, again in parenthesis, that no flies, crows, or jackals were to be found.) Adding to the ruler’s riches was easy access to frankincense (lubān) and pepper (fil-fil) in the woods and mountains of Aceh. All in all, the natural riches, which included a special kind of stone (zahar-muhra) to be found in plenty in these mountains, were what gave the kingdom its strength. Besides other products, the fruit was most excellent, and even if carrying food and other goods from the mountains down to the waterfront was difficult, it still could be managed with the aid of headloads. Tahir Muhammad now turns at length to the dynastic history of Aceh, and to its various ruling lineages.45 At the start, he declares, the ruler (hākim) of Aceh was in fact a sayyid from Najaf, whose story was as follows. A sayyid of high family came to Aceh, and impressed the ruling king as well as others to the point that they accepted him as the new ruler. One day, this sayyid asked the notables of the kingdom why a strange noise emerged periodically from the mountains. They told him it came from fairies (pari) who lived there; they made the noise when they came back from the sea. On their return they bathed in a pond before eventually returning to their home in the mountains. The next day, the sayyid concealed himself by the pond, and upon the appeareance of the bathing fairies he ran out and stole the clothes of one of them. But the wings of the fairy being attached to the clothes, lacking them she could not fly; left in the water, she pleaded for their 45In some respects, Tahir Muhammad’s account of the sultans of Aceh bears a closer resemblance to certain Afghan histories of the later Delhi Sultanate, than to later Mughal historiography. See for example Shaikh Rizqullah Mushtaqi, Waqi‘ate-Mushtaqui of Shaikh Rizq Ullah Mushtaqui: A Source of Information on the Life and Conditions in Pre-Mughal India, trans. Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui (New Delhi: 1993), and for the text, Shaikh Rizqullah Mushtaqi, Wāqi‘āt-i Mushtāqī, eds Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui and Waqarul Hasan Siddiqi (Rampur: 2002). For a general consideration of such writings, also see Simon Digby, ‘The Indo-Persian Historiography of the Lodi Sultans’, in François Grimal, ed., Les Sources et le Temps (Sources and Time) (Pondicherry: 2001), pp. 243–64.

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return.46 Instead of heeding her, the sayyid brought her back home, closed up the clothes in an iron box, and married her. Over time, some children were born to them. One day, the sayyid went hunting and left an old woman to watch over the fairy. The fairy flattered her, and pleaded with her to show her the concealed garments. The old woman, thinking that now that she had had children she would not run away, opened the box and took the clothes out. The fairy snatched the garments, flew up, and sat on the roof of the house, from where she explained to her children that she needed to get away from there to her own place of origin. So saying, she disappeared; the children were left weeping, while the old woman fell unconscious. Meanwhile, the sayyid returned, and himself eventually died of sorrow at this unbearable loss. The six children came to be rulers of the area, but over a period of time they too all died. No one was left from that lineage, and so the succession fell to a group of sayyids from Java (sādāt-i ahl-i Jāva).47 Now, these sayyids of Java had already held significant posts in the kingdom, which they manipulated to strengthen their position. Five of their number hence became rulers in succession. When one of these sayyids was the ruler of Aceh, he was particularly considerate to an ignoble man (apparently not one of the sayyids of Java) who held an important post in his government in spite of his past several mistakes. One day, in 999 H (1590–1), the ruler eventually lost patience with his incompetent subordinate and decided to punish him the next day. When the mean and ignoble person heard about this, he sat in the court and called for his brother, his son, and other members of his clan. He simply refused to go home, and when the 46This

story thus runs parallel to a section of the plot of the Hikayat Malem Diwa, in which the hero Malem Diwa (here, temporarily in the form of a fish), ‘swam about in the water where Putròë [Putri] Bungsu with her sisters and their attendants were bathing. He stole her upper garment and thus she lost the power to fly back with her companions to her father’s aërial kingdom.’ Later, however, she too recovers the garment and ‘weary of domestic strife, flies away with her child to the airy realms.’ See C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese, 2 vols, trans. A.W.S. O’Sullivan (London and Leiden: 1906), vol. II, pp. 125–6; and for an edition of a version of the text, Hikayat Malem Diwa, ed. Ramli Harun (Jakarta: 1980). 47Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn, book V, chapter 5, Bodleian Ms, fl. 623b. Note that the term ‘Java’ at this time did not always correspond to the island.

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other nobles asked him to return to his residence, he claimed he had been appointed to some special task. He then sent his son with some other people to penetrate the interior of the palace in order to kill the ruler. They also decided to attack various other people whom they thought loyal to the king. The ruler was assassinated and the others killed; those who remained fell in with the usurper, perhaps a reference to ‘Ala-ud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah Sayyid al-Mukammil (r. 1589–1604).48 Ever since, writes Tahir Muhammad, control of the kingdom had fallen to this man and his family (we may note that at the time the Rauzat was written, rule was in fact with his son ‘Ali Ri‘ayat Syah [r. 1604–7]). Since the kingdom of Aceh depended above all on trade (āmad-oraft-i tijārat), the ruler kept it closely in his focus. Despite this, when he wished to, he arbitrarily seized the goods of merchants he did not like, claiming they had died or disappeared. An example of this was Sa‘id Khan who, at the time of Akbar, was the governor of Bengal (hukūmat-i wilāyat-i Bangāla) and sent his ships to trade in Aceh.49 However, the ruler of Aceh did not get along with his trading agents; and so, when one of his ships reached port, a malcontent told the ruler of Aceh that Sa‘id Khan was dead. The ruler, instead of ascertaining the veracity of the rumour, summarily seized the ship and its goods. When Sa‘id Khan and other important nobles (buzurgān) in Bengal heard this, they sent a collective document (mahzar) of protest, but their plea had no effect. At this time, writes Tahir, the ruler of Aceh had just seized control of two or three more ports and become still 48This account is however at variance with most other sources (such as the Frenchman Augustin de Beaulieu and the Englishman John Davis), which portray Al-Mukammil as an old man who refused the throne several times; cf. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjéh, pp. 38–9, 193–6. 49Sa‘id Khan Chaghatai was officially governor of Bengal from 1587 to 1594, but maintained contacts with that region even later, for a period of nearly twenty years, amassing a vast fortune in gold, goods, and some 1200 eunuchs. For his biography, see Shahnawaz Khan, Ma’asir-ul-Umara, Being Biographies of the Muhammadan and Hindu Officers of the Timurid Sovereigns of India From 1500 to About 1780 AD, trans. H. Beveridge and Baini Prashad, 3 vols (Calcutta: 1911–52), vol. II, pp. 679–82. But we may also note Jahangir’s remark that ‘his eunuchs were tyrannical and aggressive to the poor and downtrodden’; cf. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (New York: 1999), p. 28.

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more powerful. In view of the inherent ill nature of these people, such successes only made things worse. The increased wealth and armies of the ruler thus meant harm to others; his kingdom had reputedly become so enormous that from the port to his court alone the distance was sixty way-stations (manzil); and it took all of six months from his court to his borders in the interior. To this account of Aceh, Tahir Muhammad appends a few other matters and brief descriptions. One of these concerns an island close to Aceh with inhabitants called ‘Batak’: they are like the Qalmaq of Central Asia, only even darker in complexion. He reports that some people from this place have even been seen in Bengal. There is a special kind of tree (jauz-i būbā) in their land. They eat parrots and forest birds, and also sell them to merchants; and the fabulous Homa bird is to be found on their island. Still another island is fifty leagues (kos) distant, a place where much white amber can be found, but unfortunately inhabited by cannibals. There is mention too of an island with a special kind of honey that becomes like wax. In the island of cannibals (perhaps the Andamans), the people trade in boats. A story appears here of a man who recounted how his ship stopped in the place to gather firewood, and their party was attacked by cannibals. Mention may equally be found in Tahir Muhammad’s account of Kuch Bihar, to the east of Bengal, Assam, and Tippera, in a series of moves that take us further and further away from Aceh. The only point in the closing section of his text where Tahir Muhammad returns to Aceh is in his brief disquisition on the Maldives (Dīv Mahall), which it is noted lies to the left on the maritime route from Aceh to Surat. The closing sentences of the Rauzat call the work a ‘wonder-book’ (shagraf-nāma), a point that may not be entirely devoid of significance. Certainly, the account of Aceh has been full of its fair share of wonders and bizarre occurrences, from the description of cannibals and camphor to that of the odd character of the Acehnese dynasty itself. Yet it seems clear that the sources used by Tahir Muhammad (and in turn by his source, Khwaja Baqir Ansari) drew upon a deep vein of tales that had a Southeast Asian origin. The foundation tale by which the sayyid from Najaf took power over Aceh seems to refer to either ‘Ali Mughayat Syah (d. 1530), the notional founder-ruler, or his son ‘Ala-ud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah al-Qahhar (r. 1539–71), the most powerful

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and prepossessing figure amongst the sixteenth-century dynasts.50 The notion that this ruler possessed supernatural powers through control of a ‘fairy’ is certainly not an unfamiliar theme in the Indonesian world; marriage with or sexual union with a goddess or female spirit could indeed be seen as lending one an aura above the common. Tahir’s account of the subsequent events lends itself to the view that it is indeed the latter rather than the former who is being referred to. The rapid passage over the quick succession of ‘six children’, leading to the change of dynasty, can be read as an understanding of the quick series of successions between 1571 and 1579, culminating with the death of Sultan Zain al-‘Abidin. In turn, the rise of the sayyids of Java is clearly a reference to the line of so-called ‘foreign sultans’, namely ‘Ala-udDin of Perak and Sultan Buyung (or ‘Ali Ri‘ayat Syah, r. 1586–9); the ‘ignoble’ courtier who then seized power is meant in this depiction to be Al-Mukammil, who gained control of the throne in 1589.51 Tahir’s views would be echoed in part, in the late seventeenth century, by other authors who, for their part, would insist that ‘earlier, there was an Arab king on the island.’ Into the eighteenth century, the Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn thus kept its place on the shelves of the libraries of the learned, and we have already noted that a copy of it was in the possession of the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. We may also note the following brief reference to the text in the Shagraf-nāma-i wilāyat of Mirza I‘itisam-ud-Din in the 1760s. This traveller was part of an embassy sent by the Mughal emperor Shah ‘Alam II to the British court in the aftermath of the capture of Bengal by the East India Company, and sailed from Hijli via Mauritius to Europe. He notes that on his way to Mauritius he passed by ‘many interesting islands and coasts’ in the Indian Ocean, and points to the existence of several ‘populous countries lying to the south-east of Bengal at a distance of half a month’s voyage.’ He then goes on to speak of how ‘Tahir Muhammad, an amīr at the court 50On the political history of Aceh in the sixteenth century, see Jorge Manuel dos Santos Alves, O domínio do norte de Samatra: A história dos sultanatos de SamuderaPacém e de Achém, e das suas relações com os Portugueses, 1500–1580 (Lisbon: 1999). 51The informants of Khwaja Baqir Ansari, who in turn informed Tahir Muhammad, clearly were Mughal merchants at Aceh in the 1590s who had heard of the great massacre of the orang kaya perpetrated by Al-Mukammil, reported by Beaulieu and Davis (Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjéh, p. 196).

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of Badshah Akbar (…) wrote a book called the Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn, where there are accounts of all the countries in the region including Pegu.’52 A century and a half after its writing, then, the Rauzat had curiously not been superseded as a source on Southeast Asia for the Mughal literati.

Comparative Notes Can we clearly locate Tahir Muhammad in a larger tradition of reflection on Southeast Asia, if not from the Mughal world, then at least from the broader Indo–Persian world of the early modern period? A few stray references can certainly be found in several texts, including Mahmud Wali Balkhi’s Bahr ul-asrār. However, the obvious point of contrast would be with an officially commissioned work, the Safīna-i Sulaimānī (The Ship of Sulaiman), whose author Muhammad Rabi‘ was the secretary (wāqi‘a‘-nawīs) of an embassy sent by Shah Sulaiman of Iran to the Thai court of king Narai in the 1680s (departing Bandar ‘Abbas in June 1685 and returning in May 1688).53 Besides providing an interesting window into Iranian attitudes to the ‘margins’ of the Persian world, the account of Muhammad Rabi‘ is particularly valuable for its description of the nature and functioning of the Persian community resident in Ayuthia, and Thailand more generally, in the period, and also contains a brief description and discussion of Aceh.54 This text is divided into four parts or ‘jewels’, preceded by an introduction and succeeded by an epilogue concerning the Mughal 52Mirza

Sheikh I‘tesamuddin, The Wonders of Vilayet: Being the Memoir, Originally in Persian, of a Visit to France and Britain in 1765, trans. Kaiser Haq (Leeds: 2001), p. 39. Unfortunately, he then goes on to confuse Tahir’s descriptions of Pegu and Aceh to a large extent. 53Muhammad Rabi‘ bin Muhammad Ibrahim, Safīna-i Sulaimāni (Safar Nāma-i Safīr-i Irān ba Siyām, 1094–1098 H.), ed. ‘Abbas Faruqi (Tehran: 1977). For an abridged English translation, see John O’Kane, The Ship of Sulaiman (London: 1972). 54Jean Aubin, ‘Les Persans au Siam sous le règne de Narai (1656–1688)’, Mare Luso-Indicum, vol. IV, 1980, pp. 95–126; also David K. Wyatt, ‘A Persian Embassy to Siam in the Reign of King Narai’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 42, no. 1, 1974, pp. 151–7.

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conquest of Haidarabad in the late 1680s. In the introduction, the author, who describes himself as ‘scribe to the contingent of royal musketeers’ (muharrir-i sarkār-i tufangchiyān), begins by praising the ‘ship of Sulaiman, adept at bearing travellers on the sea of true religion, over ranks of swelling waves, through limits of confusion, till they each the shores of their salvation’, which vessel in a later passage in praise of Hazrat ‘Ali comes to be compared implicitly with Noah’s Ark (safīna-i Nūh) which saves the good, while leaving ill-doers to drown in the ‘depths of perdition’ (jihālat). A strong notional line is thus established from the outset between Muslims and others, and a note of Iranian patriotism is struck from the very opening, when the kingdom of Iran (mamālik-i Irān) is said to mirror Paradise itself. However, a brief note of ambiguity is introduced with regard to the ruler of Thailand (Siyām), who had in the year 1682 sent a certain Haji Salim Mazandarani to Iran as his envoy with a letter and gifts for the Safavid monarch. This ruler is described in grandiose terms as ‘the Lord of the White Elephant and the Throne of Gold, Friend of Muslims, Sultan of the kingdom of Siyam (May God endow him with the fortune of Islam) (sāhib-i fīl-i safed wa takht-i tilā muhibb-i ahl-i Islām Sultān-i mulk-i Siyām—waffaqa-hul-lāh-ta‘āla lil Islām).’55 This embassy, it is hence suggested, was itself a form of subordination, and opened the possibility of the conversion of the king to Islam. ‘For he [the king of Thailand] loves all Muslims and was overawed seeing that our king, the brilliant luminary of world rule had risen into the Heavens of eternal sovereignty.’ Indeed, in the terms of the text, the Safavid ruler saw himself as the father of the ruler of Thailand, and so decided in his generosity to send out a return embassy led by a certain Muhammad Husain Beg. After some travails that need not concern us here, the Iranian party eventually arrived in the area of Tenasserim (‘Tanasuri’ in the text) in the kingdom of Thailand, here referred to by the Persian term shahr-i nau, which he classes as ‘Town of the Boats’ rather than the usual ‘New Town’. Arriving at the port of Mergui (today in Burma), the embassy was welcomed by local officials (mutasaddiyān-i Siyām), who apparently received the farmān sent by Shah Sulaiman with 55O’Kane,

The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 19; Safīna-i Sulaimāni, text, p. 7.

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great reverence and prostrations, in ‘the very manner in which they worship before their idols (asnām) as well.’ But it is clear that none of this really pleased Muhammad Rabi‘, for he seems to have been genuinely ill-at-ease in the midst of these unbelievers (kāfirān). In brief, things were not off to a happy start, despite the care and respect with which the missive from Shah Sulaiman itself was received. To be sure, not far from the idol-house (but-khāna) was a far more civilized building that had been constructed by the governor (hākim) of the area, a prosperous Iranian. But proper provisions were scarcely to be had, and the natives seemed to eat rice for the most part rather than the wheat which their visitors preferred. Besides, the proximity of the Thais sent to serve the party disgusted Muhammad Rabi‘, who refers to them in no uncertain terms as ‘an ocean of legally unclean filth (nijāsat-i ‘ainī)’. After a few days at Mergui, the Iranian party made its way by boat to Tenasserim, a town (qasba) of five or six thousand households. But here disaster struck. Several members of the embassy had already died, some in Bandar ‘Abbas, and some on the sea voyage. The ambassador, Husain Beg, with whom the voyage had not really agreed, was now seriously afflicted with dropsy (istisqā), and despite the ministrations of a Thai and Chinese doctor died on 19 December 1685. Some other important members of the delegation still remained alive though, and it was decided to carry forward their task. The group thus made its way, first by boat and then elephant, until they had traversed the peninsula and reached the town of Phetchaburi; they then went on to Suphan Buri, and then eventually east to the capital city of shahr-i nau Ayuthia itself. Here, the author of the Safīna and other members of the embassy remained troubled in spirit. To begin with, they could not agree on who would lead the embassy. Then, it seemed that the measures of culture were too far apart between the world of the Iranians and that of Siam. A grumbling tone thus found itself into a letter that Muhammad Rabi‘ wrote to the Thai monarch Narai in order to explain the difficult circumstances of the embassy, wherein the overbearing spirit of the Iranians soon became evident. For the letter insisted that the members of the embassy were men of elevated status in Iran, who had ‘until now lived their lives in the indescribable Paradise of Iran,

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where the fields are broad and ample and the climate is delightful (dar firdaus-i barīn wilāyat-i wasi‘-ul-fazā’ Irān)’, and so visiting Thailand was for them a form of ‘dark suffering’ in comparison to their homeland, where ‘the foods are tasty, and the fruits delicious, and the flowing waters cool.’ To cut a long story short, the Iranian embassy was an utter fiasco from start to finish, and only the periodic elephant-hunts, along with other tiger-hunts and bird-hunts, seem to have amused our jaded author, corresponding as they did to the familiar category of ‘wonders and marvels’. But after a brief description of each of these hunts, he inevitably returns to his vitriolic criticisms of the Siamese: ‘The food of the people of Siam, which I shall describe in its proper place, in no way resembles normal, proper, foods and the natives are not familiar with intelligent methods of preparing meals. In fact, no one in Siam really knows how to cook and eat, or even how to sit correctly at table. The people of Siam have only recently arrived from the world of bestiality to the realm of humanity (darīn auqāt pāra-i min hadd al-bahīmiya ilā hadd al-insāniya ruju‘ namūda and).’56 Again, only the king is partly exempt from this, and that because he has had the intelligence to keep the company of Iranians; and thus having ‘acquired a permanent taste for our food’, was given to having an Indian cook prepare ‘real food’ for him from time to time. To be sure Muhammad Rabi‘ does admit on one occasion that their own ‘lack of familiarity with the protocol (dastūr) of Siam, and the fact that we were not led by a clever ambassador’, had played a part too. Carrying a return letter to their own monarch, the Iranian embassy eventually departed for their homeland in a ship belonging to a merchant from Surat on 18 January 1687 (22 Safar 1098 H).57 At a later point in his text, Muhammad Rabi‘ produces a fairly lengthy discussion of the religion and mores of the people of Thailand, and here we return to the plainly vitriolic terms of the earlier diatribes in his text. To Muhammad Rabi‘, people in the world can be divided into two categories: ‘people of faith and religion (arbāb-i adyān wa 56O’Kane,

The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 68; Safīna-i Sulaimāni, text, p. 65. another point in his text, Muhammad Rabi‘ states however that the date of departure from Ayuthia was 21 December 1686 (15 Safar 1098 H.); see O’Kane, The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 217. 57At

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ahl-i milal-o-nihal)’, and ‘people of lust and contempt (ahl-i ahwā’).’ He then adds that ‘there can be no doubt that the people of Siam belong to the second group, in fact even more blind and hopelessly gone astray, for it is clear that they do not adhere to any form of sharī‘a or specified practice.’ Indeed, this is clear to him by the fact that they make use of Satan (shaitān), believe in idol-worship (but-parastī), and in the transmigration of souls (tanāsukh).58 Now our author is willing to concede that amongst the unbelievers (kāfir-kesh), some may be thought to be better than others. Indeed, he notes that the ‘best group amongst the Hindus’ (bihtarīn tawā’if jama‘-i and az hunūd) is one that refrains from all forms of violence, and do not kill or eat meat, probably referring to the Jains. But the people of Siam are to his mind ‘the worst of these peoples (jama‘āt-i siyām ke badtarīn tawā’if and wa abtal az hama)’, entirely opportunistic in what they state and practice. This broad condemnation attaches both to the lay people and to their wise men (‘ulamā’-i īn tā’ifa) called raolīs (the rawāli of Tahir Muhammad’s text), corresponding no doubt to Buddhist monks. There is not much to be salvaged amongst the people of Siam then, if one is to follow the views of our Iranian traveller. One minor consolation may be had, in that ‘the truth of the faith of this king is not clear (haqīqat-i millat-i īn shāh zāhir nīst).’ But even those institutions that have little to do with religion do not find favour with him. In his jaundiced view, while laws of a sort do exist, ‘to apply legal terms to that procedure is as meaningless as it is to call these people human beings (insān).’ Little justice may be expected then, unless it is by pure chance, even as little reasonable social behaviour can be seen, even in such matters as incest. In the Siam of Muhammad Rabi‘, as in the Pegu and Arakan of Tahir Muhammad, ‘a father will marry his daughter, his sister or his niece.’ As for the king, he scarcely has an army, beyond ‘a mob of peasants assembled in times of danger.’ Since no craftsmen (ahl-i sanā’i‘) worth the name exist in the land, one can be sure that any sign of skill or craft is the work of an Iranian migrant. Poverty is widespread, and there is no landed class with sizeable revenues (amlāk-i arbābī ba jama‘ wa banīcha) since everything belongs directly to the royal treasury (tamām khālisa 58O’Kane,

The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 111; Safīna-i Sulaimānī, text, p. 109.

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ast). Indeed, except for a few products such as elephants, camphor, and aloes-wood, it is not at all clear what comprises the riches of the kingdom. The contempt of Muhammad Rabi‘ extends beyond Siam, indeed to all the kings of the ‘land below the winds (zīrbādāt)’ who are to his mind ‘counterfeit rulers [who] do not incur the usual financial burdens of royalty such as endowments, salaries (…) grants, charities and alms.’59 Narai alone is exempt to a limited extent, and that too for the obvious reasons: ‘Compared to the other kings of the zīrbādāt, who live with neither a retinue nor expenditures, the king of Siam, because he has long lived with Iranians, has changed his habits, and has decided to have an apparatus (waz‘ ), to eat and drink in keeping with other principles, to dress up, to have dishes made and to buy carpets, and he has conceived the idea of having a name and reputation, relations and contacts with the great sovereigns.’60 What remains of the positive in the view that Muhammad Rabi‘ leaves us of Thailand under king Narai? Certainly little of the society or culture, whether material culture or the beliefs and mores of the people. The people of Siam are in his view utterly contemptible, and lacking in practically any redeeming quality. But at least there are a few wonders, some fine natural products, some curious animals that may be hunted. Further, once the people are removed from the picture, nature in Thailand does please Muhammad Rabi‘. Thus, while he is at Suphan Buri, we learn that the place is a veritable orchard (bāghistān), ‘extremely fertile and beautiful’, and that ‘a wondrous river of fresh water flows through the town and continues down to the sea’. Further, he is greatly impressed by the vegetation, ‘trees that never feel the withering touch of autumn’, and which include ‘every sort of fruit tree, lemon, orange, coconut, and mango, as well as the betel tree, which for beauty and grace rivals the free swaying cypress.’ He sums up his eloquent description by declaring: ‘Here is a resting place for a traveller’s weary soul, a place of good fortune for those 59O’Kane,

The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 155. a useful general discussion of this reign, also see Dhiravat Na Pombejra, ‘Crown Trade and Court Politics in Ayutthaya During the Reign of King Narai (1656–88)’, in J. Kathirithamby-Wells and John Villiers, eds, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise (Singapore: 1990), pp. 127–42. 60For

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who have left their home.’61 The problem however is that the place comes encumbered by a society and a people which the traveller has nothing but disdain for, and it is difficult to believe that any Iranian reader of this text in the late seventeenth century would have evinced the least desire to visit Thailand after having read Muhammd Rabi‘. And what of his description of Aceh? Here, we should note that Muhammad Rabi‘ derives his knowledge at second hand, not through his own travels there.62 He is convinced that it is the place of residence of such legendary figures from Perso-Islamic literature as Saif ul-Mulk and Badi‘ ul-Jamal, and has also heard excellent reports regarding its climate, ‘which is even more unusual for its balance and beauty’. He rehearses the account of the earlier rule there of an Arab king, but then argues that things have deteriorated very far in recent times, to the point that a woman (the reference is to Sultana Taj ul-‘Alam, r. 1641–75) has been allowed to sit on the throne by the ‘woman-hearted men of state’ there. The Iranian envoy now moves on to an account of the extensive gold production and gold mines in the area, which he argues have become so important that foodstuffs are now imported from India. A brief description follows of royal ritual, the death sentence, and a variety of other subjects, repeating a number of topoi that one finds in Tahir’s account, including the notion that this is a society where justice is very harsh, and surveillance close, especially of foreigners. He also notes the existence of djinns in the area, including some who make noises from a mountain in the interior, although the particular story of the sayyid from Najaf does not appear. All in all, Muhammad Rabi‘ is not favourably disposed to the natives of Aceh, even if he believes that the land itself is thoroughly pleasant and agreeable. He has heard the people are inhospitable, given to stealing and dishonesty, to the point that ‘the indelible stain of bad reputation has darkened the face of all the natives.’ Their main virtue is in their resistance to the Portuguese Franks, with regard to whom he repeats at least one of the stories to 61O’Kane, 62O’Kane,

173–80.

The Ship of Sulaiman, p. 50; Safīna-i Sulaimānī, text, p. 43. The Ship of Sulaiman, pp. 174–81; Safīna-i Sulaimānī, text, pp.

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be found in Tahir’s account, namely that of the special oil that can be spread on water and set afire. Even a rapid comparison of these two texts, written some eighty years apart, makes it clear that Muhammad Rabi‘ did not derive his account textually from Tahir Muhammad. While the Rauzat utTāhirīn did circulate quite widely, there is currently no reason to suppose that it ever attained the world of Safavid Iran. Rather, it would seem that the two authors drew on a common fund of lore and oral materials that circulated in the ports of the Indian Ocean world, in which both Aceh and the Buddhist states of mainland Southeast Asia were approached through a set of prisms and topoi, involving elephants, camphor, cannibals, incest, penis-balls, djinns, and the like. Islam may have provided a basic common ground between Safavid Iran, Mughal India, and Aceh, but these accounts also demonstrate that such commonalities often could not bridge the perceived cultural gap that existed in the minds of our observers. To be sure, when religious difference was added to a gulf in terms of food, court ritual, and even music, the results could be quite extreme, as we see with the Iranian embassy to Thailand in the 1680s. Ironically then, we are left with the view that while proximity did not rule out curiosity, it certainly did not foster immediate comprehension, or even obviate the possibility of quite exacerbated forms of exoticism. The inclusivist rhetoric of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl aside, these parts of the world were certainly not considered in the seventeenth century to be truly a part of Hindustan.

3

On the End of the Akbari Dispensation ‘The principles of the Mogul government were however so moderate and mild, that while the empire did continue to flourish, it certainly must have been more owing to the prejudices and peculiarities of the people, than to any faults in their rulers, that they did not grow powerful in proportion to their prosperity.’—William Bolts, Considerations on India Affairs (1772)1

Introduction

D

uring the latter half of the eighteenth century, the progressive seizure of power by the English East India Company in first Bengal and then northern India raised fundamental questions regarding the nature of Mughal sovereignty and its degree of compatibility with political notions then current in Europe.2 Where did the Mughals derive the right to rule, and what made their regime one that had such widespread acceptance, even when their actual power had declined? How could the Company and its servants make use of 1William

Bolts, Considerations on India Affairs, Particularly Respecting the Present State of Bengal and Its Dependencies (London: 1772), p. 13. On Bolts, see the useful study by Willem G.J. Kuiters, The British in Bengal, 1756–1773: A Society in Transition Seen Through the Biography of a Rebel, William Bolts (1739–1808) (Paris: 2002). 2See Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal (Cambridge: 2007).

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Mughal legitimacy to shore up their own rule, if they chose to pose themselves not as usurpers from a foreign land but as restorers of an ancient ‘Mughal constitution’ that had been eroded over time? How different after all was the rule of a Muslim dynasty of Turko–Mongol origin that ruled over a vast number of Hindu subjects from that of a German dynasty that had replaced a Scottish line that had in turn been supplanted for a time by a Dutchman from the House of Orange? Comparative writings on the nature of state power in the East and the West in the early modern period have often stressed the persistent nature of personalized power in the former, when contrasted to its increasingly institutionalized character in the latter. This differentiation at least partly underlies ideas of ‘Oriental Despotism’ (whether in the version of Montesquieu or in later Marxist incarnations), in addition naturally to the manner in which the nature of property—above all, property in land, but also the rights enjoyed by the ruler over the persons of his subjects—is depicted in such a model of the Orient.3 At the same time, historians are well aware that charisma is by no means absent as a feature of rulership in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, or eighteenth-century Europe, or indeed in more recent times.4 The classic exposition of the problem of ‘charisma’, that by Max Weber early in the twentieth century, tended to emphasize that power and domination could take three forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Sharply separating the first from the second (in a procedure that was subsequently criticized by those who argued that they were really much the same), Weber in a well-known passage stated that charisma was the ‘extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed. “Charismatic authority” hence shall refer to rule over men (...) to which the governed submit because of their belief in the extraordinary quality of the specific person.’ Further, he added, 3M. Athar Ali, ‘Political Structures of the Islamic Orient in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Irfan Habib, ed., Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India, 1200–1750 (Delhi: 1992), pp. 129–40. 4On the fact that the monarchs of France and England were thought, for example, to have healing powers until the eighteenth century, see Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges (Strasbourg: 1924), and Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: 1973), pp. 227–44, with particular reference to scrofula or the ‘King’s Evil’.

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in what remains a crucial and particularly controversial phrase, ‘charismatic rule is not managed according to general norms, either traditional or rational (...) and in this sense is “irrational.”’5 This use by Weber seems itself to derive from the reintroduction of the Greek word kharisma (χα ´ρισµα) into modern western European languages in the early twentieth century. Interestingly, the Weberian usage itself secularizes a term whose primary use in English and French at that time was predominantly religious, and more precisely ecclesiastical (in the sense of the unpredictable and temporary grace accorded by God to a Christian for the good of the community of the faithful). In contrast, languages such as Persian knew the term (here, karishma) from its Greek origins, but used it in a semantically dispersed and thin way, not investing it with a particular theoretical weight or charge, and at times using it simply to mean ‘talisman’, ‘charm’, or ‘wonder’. In an important essay devoted to explicating the idea of power as well as ‘traditional political conceptions’ in the context of Java, Benedict Anderson further refined and developed the ideas of Weber in this respect. His essay, published at the time of the transition from Sukarno to Suharto was, in Anderson’s own later words, quite consciously ‘indigenist and nationalist’ in tone, and attempted besides ‘to show that “traditional Javanese thought” was perfectly rational once its assumptions about the nature of power were properly understood.’ In particular, Anderson stressed a contrast between what he termed the ‘substantive’ and the ‘instrumental/relational’ concepts of power. The first saw ‘power as an emanation of the cosmic or divine’, in the Javanese case manifested for example through wahyu (divine radiance), or in a more everyday sense by ca (or tja, radiance). Thus, it is argued by Anderson (drawing on earlier works such as that of Soemarsaid Moertono) that Power (as distinct from power) as a substance was typically identified with light in Javanese thought, and that ‘the movement of wahyu typically marked the fall of one dynasty and the transfer of the light source to another.’6 5As cited in Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, ‘Further Adventures of Charisma’, in Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: 1990), p. 80. 6Anderson, Language and Power, pp. 11, 31. Also see Soemarsaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java (Ithaca, NY: 1968).

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The student of Mughal India would not have failed to note the rather obvious parallels with a certain part of Mughal ideology as expressed in court chronicles and paintings, but might also have noticed the parallels between Anderson’s analysis and that of certain scholars of Mughal India, more or less influenced by Weberian theory. The reference here is not so much to the construct of the so-called ‘patrimonial–bureaucratic state’, or to ideas of ‘ritual kingship’ (which Irfan Habib has, somewhat ironically, suggested are only the logical successors to ‘Oriental Despotism’),7 but rather to John Richards’s well-known analysis of the ‘formulation of authority under Akbar and Jahangir’. Here, Richards used a combination of Persian and Western sources (notably Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy account) to explain the manner in which Akbar and Jahangir created a form of personal and (though he eschews the word) charismatic authority.8 Richards thus concludes that ‘popular understanding of the emperor’s assertions of divinely sanctioned ancestry, illumined wisdom, and spirituality clearly permeated among the populace of the court/camp and other major urban centres of the empire. Ultimately this understanding became so pervasive that a continuing memory of Akbar’s powers was even absorbed into the folk culture of rural society within the various regions of the empire.’9

Views of the Succession Yet the problem remains in this context of how the transition between such a monarch and his successor could be managed. Richards, 7Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, 2nd edition (Delhi: 1999), p. xi. 8These questions have been revisited with respect to Sir Thomas Roe in William Pinch, ‘Same Difference in India and Europe’, History and Theory, vol. 38, no. 3, 1999, pp. 389–407; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Frank Submissions: The Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris’, in H.V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, eds, The Worlds of the East India Company (Woodbridge: 2002), pp. 69–96. 9John F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority Under Akbar and Jahangir’, in J.F. Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia (reprint, Delhi: 1998), p. 307.

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while noting that ‘Jahangir (...) seems to have been caught in the dilemma of imitation vs. rebellion against his father, common to the sons of men of extraordinary stature’, does not really enter into the problem that concerns us here. What we are interested in is the degree to which an institutional field existed in Mughal India by the early seventeenth century, which could guarantee that affairs of transition within a dynasty might be conducted within an overall ambience of stability, even if the precise identity of the successor remained open to contestation. To put the matter otherwise, what were the institutional elements underpinning the unwritten Mughal ‘constitution’ (if indeed there was one), and how did they articulate with one another? And can such an approach take us away from notions of Oriental Despotism to another view of what constituted legitimacy over and above the problem of charisma? There is no denying of course that dynastic successions were always the occasion for some uncertainty, both within the court and outside. Consider the following celebrated account from the Jain merchant Banarasidas’s Hindi autobiography, Ardhakathānak, by way of example: ‘In Vikram 1662 [1605 ce], during the month of Kartik, after the monsoon was over, the great emperor Akbar (Chhatrapati Akbar Sāhi Jalāl) breathed his last in Agra. The alarming news of his death spread fast and soon reached Jaunpur. The people (prajā) felt suddenly orphaned (anāth) and insecure without their sire. Terror raged everywhere; the hearts of men trembled with dire apprehension; their faces became drained of colour.’ The admittedly impressionable Banarasidas himself says that he began to ‘shake with violent, uncontrollable, agitation’, as a result of which he fell down the stairs (on which he was seated), fainted and was injured in the head. He then continues: The whole town was in a tremor. Everyone closed the doors of his house in panic; shop-keepers shut down their shops. Feverishly, the rich hid their jewels and costly attire underground (dharti tale); many of them quickly dumped their wealth and their ready capital on carriages and rushed to safe, secluded places. Every householder began stocking his home with weapons and arms (śastr). Rich men took to wearing thick, rough clothes such as are worn by the poor, in order to conceal their status, and walked the streets covered in harsh woolen blankets or coarse cotton wrappers. Women

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shunned finery, dressing in shabby, lustreless clothes. None could tell the status of a man from his dress and it became impossible to distinguish the rich from the poor (dhani daridri bhae samān). There were manifest signs of panic everywhere although there was no reason for it since there were really no thieves or robbers about.10

The psychological state of the nineteen-year-old Banarasidas, who was at that time torn between the Jainism into which he was born and the worship of Shiva which he had temporarily adopted, may have made him particularly susceptible to such perturbation. Nevertheless, his report of how matters were perceived in the bazaar (as it were) at Jaunpur is very evocative, especially as he also provides a calm enough resolution. The commotion subsided after ten days, when a letter arrived from Agra bearing news that all was well in the capital. The situation returned to normal. Let me give you the gist of the news the letter carried. Jalal [Akbar] has died in the month of Kartik, in the year 1662 Vikram, after a reign of fifty-two years; now Akbar’s eldest son, Sahib Sahi Salim, had been enthroned as king to rule from Agra, like his father Akbar. Salim has assumed the title of Nuruddin Jahangir Sultan; his power reigned supreme and unchallenged throughout the land. This news came as a great relief and people heartily hailed (jayjaykār) the new king.

What we thus have are ten days of uncertainty and public disquiet, which is not entirely surprising in view of the fact that the reign in question had endured more or less a half-century. In some sense, we may even argue that it was the very stability of the political dispensation under Akbar that gave room for this particular form of uncertainty, which was moreover soon enough allayed. How the succession was seen from the perspective of a merchant of Jaunpur, 10Mukund

Lath, Ardhakathanaka, Half a Tale: A Study in the Interrelationship Between Autobiography and History (Jaipur: 1981), pp. 38–40; text, verses 245–60. Lath’s version is not exactly a direct translation, and tends at times towards a gloss or an explication. Also see Rupert Snell, ‘Confessions of a 17th-century Jain Merchant: The Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās’, South Asia Research, vol. 25. no. 1, 2005, pp. 79–104.

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while interesting in its own right, does not enable us to see the issue from the core of the political system, even as the view from on high cannot enable us, inversely, to see how things look from the periphery. As it happens, sources from the Mughal court are somewhat scarce for the years 1605–6, a period when the great chronicles of Akbar’s reign have run their course. To be sure, the Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī (or Jahāngīrnāma) remains an important source, but it too passes over a number of crucial issues in understandable silence. This takes us logically to the reconsideration of a more-or-less contemporary document concerning the death of Akbar, and the succession of Jahangir: here we refer to the letter written by the Jesuit Jerónimo (Jerome) Xavier to the Provincial of the Jesuits at Goa, from Lahore on 25th September 1606, nearly a year after the death of Akbar.11 Xavier was present at Agra in the last months of Akbar’s life and the first months of his son’s reign, and begins his letter by noting that ‘a little after I wrote to Your Reverence last year, the world revolved here (se revolveu aqa o mundo) with the death of the king Acbar.’ He states moreover that the event had been predicted by several observers; a ‘Moorish [Muslim] astrologer had given it in writing to the prince [Salim] in Agra that he would be king within three months as his father would die’, while another Muslim saint (tido por sancto delles) who was resident in Lahore had also sent word to the same effect. Besides, several Gentile (gentio) astrologers had also gone about predicting the same. It was in early October 1605 that Akbar fell ill, but it was not taken to be serious. In fact, early on in this illness, at the beginning of October, he had the Jesuits sent for and proceeded to discuss matters Christian with them. On this occasion, writes Xavier, he ‘gave few signs of being ill’. A few days later, word was spread that he was afflicted by dysentery, and the Jesuits began to think it was time to suggest once more that he accept ‘the law of the Holy Scripture’. But, once again, when Xavier and his companion António Machado were called to pay a visit late at night (‘it would have been ten hours of the night’), in the interior of the royal pavilion, 11British

Library, London, Additional Manuscript 9854, ‘Jesuit Missions in India, 1582–1693’, fls. 38–52, in António da Silva Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III (Lisbon: 1963), pp. 62–91.

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they were astonished to see that he looked in good health. Akbar received them with Salim and Khusrau present, and asked Xavier to read out and translate a letter in Portuguese that he had received. The emperor having formally sent off his son and grandson after a time, the Jesuits remained with him. Xavier continues: After a time, he rose up to go into the mahal, the place of the women, and he went there (...) as if he were in sound health, and with even less signs of weakness than when he was well. He having retired, we remained there awaiting the time when he would return, and when it was (...) midnight, he passed through there again in order to go to the place where he used to pray. We saw him coming without anyone’s support (encosto), and as talkative and smiling as ever, all of which we noted. In the end, the [other] Padre and I decided that it was not the right moment to talk to him, as he gave no signs of illness, and he retired thereafter in order to pray. At midnight, we came away being persuaded that he was well. The next day in the morning, he showed himelf at the window to the people with a very good appearance. What I have described was Saturday night, on Sunday he was well; [but] on Monday, it began to be said that the King was dying.12

The Jesuits now repeat the rumour that they (and others) had already noted some years before, namely that ‘the poison that he [Akbar] had been given had started to work.’ Xavier and his companion thus went that morning to the jharoka (ao lugar da janela), but Akbar did not appear; instead, it was confirmed that he was unwell. The Jesuits now attempted to go into the interior of the palace by claiming that they had a remedy (mesinha) for the illness, but neither they nor any of the boys whom they attempted to send in on their behalf was allowed to enter. The account continues: In [all] this time, the prince [Salim] did not come to see his father. Some said that since the father suspected him of giving him poison, he [Akbar] 12Cf.

the standard account in Pierre du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits: An Account of the Jesuit Missions to the Court of Akbar, trans. C.H. Payne (London: 1926), pp. 203–4. Du Jarric’s Histoire, in 3 volumes, completed in 1614, was largely derived for its account of the Mughals and Akbar from Fernão Guerreiro, Relação Anual das Coisas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus nas partes da Índia Oriental, 5 vols (Coimbra/Lisbon: 1603–11).

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did not wish to see him. Others said that he [Salim] himself did not wish to come since he did not wish to place himself behind closed doors, [because of ] a Gentile captain, brother-in-law of the prince, who was aggrieved with him as his sister, who was the wife of the prince, had killed herself with poison on account of jealousy over her husband, and this captain had the king in his power, and wanted to make his own nephew, the oldest son of the prince, the king and exclude his father, and he had on his side another great Moorish captain whose daughter was married with the same son of the prince. Other Gentiles and Moors too were of the same view, and even the king was inclined towards this, so that he [Salim] was afraid to enter the fortress to see his father, since he did not know if he would be allowed to leave there.13

The two figures mentioned here are Raja Man Singh, Salim’s brother-in-law and the maternal uncle of his son Khusrau, and Mirza ‘Aziz Koka, titled Khan-i A‘zam. We shall encounter this group below in the context of the account of a Mughal official, but it is interesting to note that the Jesuits, with their assiduously collected bazaar gossip, were not entirely off the mark here. Xavier then continues his account by noting that ‘the king went on deteriorating’. Salim, he claims, began to think matters had now passed out of his control ‘and almost ran away one night, so badly did he see the turn of his affairs.’ Though outnumbered, and also lacking control over the doors to the fort, nevertheless he did seem to have popular opinion (o vulgo) with him. The Jesuit states that this was because he was thought to be ‘liberal [and] just’, and so little by little he managed to win over the major amirs. His account continues: Even the principal Moors who wanted to give the kingdom over to the grandson consulted on the matter, et omnibus pensatis, they thought that it was better to give it over to him to whom it belonged, and so one of their principal members was sent by them to deal with him [Salim] and to promise him the kingdom if he swore to protect the law of the Moors (a ley dos mouros) and not to harm either his son or the others. He swore to it all. 13For Jahangir’s version of the death of his wife, who ‘swallowed opium and killed

herself ’, see The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, translated, edited, and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston (Oxford: 1999), pp. 50–1.

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Immediately that evening, the Gentile uncle of the grandson of the king, and his father-in-law, came and brought him his son, and they made him touch his feet and they did the same. The prince at once ordered the fortress and its doors to be cleared, and placing his own people there, went the next day with trusted people to see the king.

The account notes that Akbar was unable to speak by that time, but was still conscious. He is said to have ordered Salim to be handed over the regalia, and signalled for him to be given the sword that he kept by the bedside to gird on. Salim is said to have performed the sijda (the jezda, in Xavier’s words), after which he was told to leave. In Xavier’s view then, the king died more or less alone, with only ‘a few people who remained with him, and some of them took the name of Maffamede. He never responded to them, he only took the name of God a few times, nor did he die in keeping with the custom of the Gentiles. As one never knew under what religion (ley) he lived, nor did one know under which one he died, since he made place for all the religions and took none of them for the truth, though his usual habit was to worship God and the Sun.’ Xavier now follows up this account with a long and largely laudatory obituary notice of Akbar, to which we shall have occasion to turn briefly below. What is of particular interest for us here is his description of the nature of the transition, which we reproduce in full, and which precedes the long account in the same letter of the suppression of the rebellion by Prince Khusrau in April and May 1606. The king Aqbar, that is the Great King, came to an end. The new king began to take matters in hand. He came and went from the fort in order to console his sisters who were more disconsolate than he, but he then [always] returned to his own residence. At the end of eight days, he went to the palace to take possession of the kingdom. He had the public square (terreiro) richly adorned, he then came out from the interior and sat on the throne, while they shouted Padja çalamat, that is Salve rex, [and] brought him his presents; he then went in and settled into the fortress as king. With the change in kings, the court too changed, those who had risen up now fell, and those who had fallen now rose. Much was expected of the new king for he promised much, but once things had quietened down, the promises were forgotten and the expectations were deceived.

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Amongst those deceived and disappointed were the Jesuits themselves, for they apparently had thought ‘that a great conversion might be accomplished for until then he almost claimed to be a secret Christian, and his [confidants] told us he was one.’ They claim that the reason for this change lay in the politics of the court. For, in Xavier’s view, at the time of his accession Jahangir’s principal worry was Man Singh (‘the Gentile captain who was at the head of all the Gentiles’), and in order to counterbalance this he had had to make common cause with the orthodox Muslims. ‘The Moors made him King, he swore to them to be zealous on behalf of the law of Maffamede, [for] he wished to win over and keep the Moors, placing himself on their side, and thus it was in the beginning of his reign. He made it public that he would order the mosques cleaned and freed of encroachments. The prayers and preaching by Moors began in the palace.’ For Xavier then, as for his other Jesuit brethren located in Lahore, the main preoccupation in all this was the rise of what they understood as an official Islam that might have repercussions for their own mission, and for the treatment of Christians in northern India. A reading of their later letters demonstrates, however, that in their own view these perturbations proved to be of a relatively short duration, and the political system returned to equilibrium. To be sure, some rose and some fell amongst the grandees of the court, but this was not for them a particularly exotic phenomenon.

Asad Beg’s Ringside View It is of interest to contrast this view with another available to us from a rather more ‘internalist’ angle. We refer here to the valuable account of Asad Beg Qazwini, a minor official under Akbar and Jahangir, who provides us with a rather close account of how matters appeared in and around the Mughal court in the years from 1601 to about 1606, precisely the period of transition.14 A marginal note (by a later 14We have essentially used the manuscript in the British Library, London, Oriental and India Office Collections, Ms. Or. 1996, 30 fls; the manuscript was copied on 25 Rabi‘ I (Wednesday) 1211 ah by Kishan Das. It has also been collated where needed with the later but more legible Aligarh manuscript, Maulana Azad Library, AMU, Aligarh, ‘Abdus Salam Collection, no. 270/40 (4), Waqā’i‘-i Asad

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commentator, one Ziya-ud-Din Ahmad), at the start of the text states that it is the account of Asad Beg Qazwini, who held the title of Peshrau Khan, and who is described as one of the reliable and sincere friends of Abu’l Fazl ibn Shaikh Mubarak Nagauri. The text, it is noted (the formal title of which is given as Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg), contains a description of Abu’l Fazl’s assassination at the hands of Bir Singh Deo Bundela with the connivance of Prince Salim (or Jahangir Badshah), near Sironj in 1011 ah, corresponding to the 47th regnal year of Akbar. Further, the summary continues, the deployment of an army under Mughal nobles for the chastisement of the Bundela chief is described, as well as Asad Beg’s appointment to investigate the failure of this expedition. This is followed by his being sent to the Deccan as envoy (hājib) to Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah, and his return with peshkash and gifts, including the daughter of the king of Bijapur to be given in marriage to Prince Daniyal. The text also includes other events until the death of Akbar, in 1014 ah, and the accession of Jahangir in Delhi. There is also some detail of the author’s travails and various other matters. The commentator notes that it is an excellent book, ‘a dependable treatise, rare even if it is brief.’ The colophon contains a brief biographical sketch of the author, worth reproducing in full. Asad Beg Qazwini, the author of this treatise, distinguished for his efficiency, courtesy, and fine sensibility as well as generosity, was in the service of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl son of Shaikh Mubarak for seventeen years. After his death, he gained access to the charmed circle of the confidants of the emperor, and performed commendable services and tasks (kār-o-khidmat), and thus gained wealth and fame. A few years later, with the death of the ruler, he returned to the court of Jahangir, and though far from favour at first, was able with his constant efforts and excellent service in the last years of that reign to earn the title of Peshrau Khan. He died in the early years of Shahjahan in 1041 ah.15 Beg. For a study of manuscript variants, see Mashita Hiroyuki, ‘A Historiographical Study of the So-called Ahwāl-i Asad Bīg’, Zinbun vol. 36, no. 1, 2001–2, pp. 51–103. 15The title Peshrau Khan had earlier been held by a certain Mihtar Sa‘adat, a slave who had been gifted by Shah Tahmasp to Humayun, and who died in October

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The account of Asad Beg has so far attracted attention principally from historians of the Deccan, who have been interested in its view of the court of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah.16 A portion of the text was published in translation over a century ago in Elliot and Dowson’s History of India, but there has never been an edition of the text to our knowledge, let alone a complete translation.17 There have also been a few attempts, which we shall note briefly below, to use the text for other purposes, notably to discuss the nature of political alliances in the transition from Akbar to Jahangir. It is clearly not feasible within the bounds of a relatively brief discussion such as this to render justice to the complexities of the text. We shall thus for the most part exclude sections dealing with the embassy to the Bijapur court, which are dealt with in the next chapter. After a brief first introduction, characteristically praising God (and interspersed with verses), we have the the usual description and praise of the Prophet (dārūd or na‘t) and his Companions, the leaders of the Faith and guides on the Path of Belief. It would appear from these (though this is not entirely certain) that the author Asad Beg was himself a Sunni in his religious orientation. He goes on to describe himself as the most insignificant slave of God, by name Asad ibn Muhammad Murad Ragani, and then enters into his narrative proper. The first section commences rather abruptly with a presentation of the assassination of ‘that great scholar and pearl of his Age’, Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, near Sarai Bar in Sironj on 7 Rabi‘ I 1011 ah at the time of the Friday prayer. It is reported that when the news of this terrible but inevitable event reached the emperor Akbar, he was filled with 1608, having risen to the head of the carpet department (farsh-khāna). See The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Thackston, p. 97. 16P.M. Joshi, ‘Asad Beg’s Mission to Bijapur, 1603–1604’, in S.N. Sen, ed., Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D.V. Potdar Sixty-First Birthday Commemoration Volume (Poona: 1950), pp. 184–96; and P.M. Joshi, ‘Asad Beg’s Return from Bijapur and His Second Mission to the Deccan, 1604–1606’, in V.D. Rao, ed., Studies in Indian History: Dr. A.G. Pawar Felicitation Volume (Bombay: 1968), pp. 136–55. 17H.M. Elliot and J. Dowson, eds, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, 8 vols (reprint, Delhi: 1990), vol. VI, pp. 150–74. An edition of the text was announced some years ago by Rahim Raza (Naples), but it has not appeared to our knowledge.

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sadness and abstained from consumption of his regular intoxicants, nor did he eat. He was so sad that he wept incessantly. In the midst of this lamentation he enquired after Asad Beg and asked one of his close confidants: ‘Where is Asad?’ Since no one knew about Asad Beg, this question remained unanswered. In the meanwhile, Mirza Ja‘far Asaf Khan reached the court, and seeing the state of the emperor began to weep uncontrollably too.18 The emperor asked him too for news of Asad Beg. ‘Was he with him [Abu’l Fazl] or not?’ Asaf Khan replied that uptil Sironj, he had been with Abu’l Fazl, but that the faujdār of the new parganas whom Abu’l Fazl had received in Malwa had remained behind with Asad Beg at Sironj at their master’s orders. Thus, he surmised that Asad Beg was not with his master when he had been killed. The emperor now instructed Asaf Khan to write a farmān to Asad Beg to return to the court, leaving the rest of Abu’l Fazl’s retinue and affairs behind. A detailed but remarkably diplomatic description now follows of the assassination itself. We must comprehend Asad Beg’s dilemma here, for his text was written, after all, in the years when Jahangir was already ruler, and the assassination of Abu’l Fazl was carried out, as we know, on his orders.19 The task of Asad Beg was thus to present the assassination both inoffensively and without concealing the truth of the matter. This he does as follows. It was written in Fate, asserts Asad Beg, and the Age had turned against Abu’l Fazl; so it was that the incompetent and ill-equipped men of a certain Gopal Das accompanied him. The ill-starred Gopal Das had earlier raised about 300 lowly Rajputs (Rājpūt-i zabūn) as sihbandī to take care of his own revenue assignment. Though it was known that Raja Bir Singh Deo Bundela would attempt to waylay them (and news came in almost every day to this effect), Abu’l Fazl tended not to pay heed to it even when letters came from his own brother Shaikh Abu’l Khair. Gopal 18This

Asaf Khan should not be confounded with the celebrated Abu’l Hasan, son of I‘timad-ud-Daula, who died in 1641. Ja‘far Beg, who died in 1612, was also a writer who composed a version of the story of Khusrau and Shirin, entitled the Nūr-nāma. Jahangir suspected him of being disloyal with respect to his dealings with Khusrau, but nevertheless did not act against him (cf. the notice of his death in The Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 136). 19Thus, see The Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 32–3, for Jahangir’s own discussion of the question.

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Das argued that Abu’l Fazl’s own retinue of Mughals was fatigued and should remain at Sironj to deal with the threat of Indrajit Bundela. This view was accepted by Abu’l Fazl, whose death was—it is stressed once more—inevitable. An appropriate verse is cited: The signal of battle was sounded, in keeping with the regulation of the ignorant, and so lives were ruined.20

Now, it is stated that when Abu’l Fazl had asked Asad Beg to remain behind in Sironj, Asad Beg had insisted that he be allowed to go as far as Gwalior. But, he repeats, Abu’l Fazl refused this. Asad Beg even got on his horse to accompany him a part of the way, but the former made him promise not to. It thus happened that his elephant, standard, and trumpet (damāma) were left behind with Asad Beg. Rustam Khan Turkoman, assistant to Asad Beg, was instructed by him to go along a part of the way, but he too was sent back by Abu’l Fazl, though later he was sent once more to join his master by Asad Beg. When Abu’l Fazl reached Sarai Bar and camped there, a jogī came to see him. He brought certain news that Bir Singh Deo Bundela would attack the following day. But Abu’l Fazl gave him a few rupees and sent him off and did not keep his own companions informed. This was Abu’l Fazl’s nature, states Asad Beg, which also explains why he then went to sleep negligently (dar nihāyat ghaflat). The next day, Friday, he bathed and put on white clothes on the occasion of the juma‘at. Several people from the area came to meet him, including jāgīrdārs, revenue officials (karorīs), and others. Among them was a servant of Mirza Rustam with 40 or 50 horsemen. A certain Shaikh Mustafa, the faujdār of Kala Bagh, also brought his own force. Altogether, there were some 200 horsemen, but he dismissed them all. Had they but remained with him, exclaims Asad Beg! When Destiny is dictated by the sky, even the intelligent become blind. Abu’l Fazl now began to advance with Ya‘qub Khan, and the damāma was sounded to signal his companions. His group had not advanced far when some Bundela footsoldiers emerged and attacked. Those who were ready advanced against them. 20Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, AMU Ms, p. 4.

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Mirza Muhsin Badakhshi went out in advance and looked out from a high spot. He then returned rapidly with an estimate of the force. But when he came back he found that many of those in the camp were still not ready to fight, or even in their proper battledress. A consultation ensued: should they advance or take another route? It was decided not to retreat or change route. Mirza Muhsin now advanced rapidly and managed to escape the Bundelas. But Abu’l Fazl, who was slower to advance, came upon a forward party of Bundelas which seized his standard and kettledrum. Abu’l Fazl was then forced to turn back to recover his standard, as Asad Beg had apparently foreseen. The next Bundela wave of 500 horse, with Bir Singh, now arrived, all in chainmail and armour. A certain Gada’i Khan Afghan attacked them with a few horse, and was killed. At this time, an unidentified man with Abu’l Fazl pointed out that the enemy had armour and they did not. It was hence better to take refuge at a distance and fight with arrows rather than at close quarters. He took the shaikh’s bridle and led his horse off. But by this time the enemy had reached and began to attack them with renewed violence. A Rajput pierced the shaikh from the back with a spear and he fell to the side. Jabbar Khasakhail, who was behind the shaikh, now killed the Rajput and took Abu’l Fazl off the horse. He led him away some distance, but since Abu’l Fazl was deeply wounded he fell again. Now Bir Singh Deo himself arrived on the spot, and Jabbar hid the two of them behind a tree. But Bir Singh spotted the horse, and an elephant too. He came up and found Abu’l Fazl, and so dismounted. He placed the wounded man’s head on his thigh, and wiped the blood off his cheek with his cloth (dupatta). When Jabbar saw from his concealment that Bir Singh was being kind to Abu’l Fazl, he came out and salaamed him. Bir Singh asked him who he was, and when Abu’l Fazl heard this he opened his eyes. Bir Singh saluted him and said to the shaikh: ‘Hazrat-i Jahangir has in his grace sent for you’, and showed him a farmān he had. The shaikh made a bitter face and Bir Singh swore that he had come to take him in all safety. The shaikh began to curse him and utter vile insults (dushnām-o-fahsh). Bir Singh’s men said that he was heavily wounded and could not be saved. In desperation, Jabbar now pulled out his sword and felled two or three Rajputs, and advanced towards Bir Singh. Now at last Bir

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Singh stood up, and the men with him decapitated Abu’l Fazl. No one else resisted.21 A verse is cited at this juncture: Such is the custom of this deceptive caravanserai. So the wise have ever kept their distance from it.22

Asad Beg thus notes that, in sum, Abu’l Fazl out of a sense of arrogance, overconfidence, and a false estimation of his strength went accompanied by this powerless force. His account is thus interesting in that it divides the blame between Fate, Abu’l Fazl’s own character, and Jahangir, and even partly seems to exonerate Bir Singh Deo in the affair. Such able diplomatic tightrope-walking, as we shall see below, is one of his characteristics. Resuming his narrative then, the day after Abu’l Fazl had left, Asad Beg prepared to depart from Sironj for the land of Indrajit Bundela. He had sent for the ironsmiths of the city to prepare a kettledrum for him, so was somewhat delayed. Further, he was awaiting the end of the rains. The kettledrum being ready at last, they received news from Muhammad Nasir of this fact. But when they sounded the kettledrum, it failed to produce a real sound, which was a matter of astonishment (no doubt an ill omen of sorts). At this time, a man came with whispered news to Muhammad Nasir, whose face altered on hearing it. But he said nothing. A certain Sher ‘Ali Aqa, one of Asad Beg’s servants, had been sent out ahead on the road to Sarai Bar, and he returned at this time, desperately spurring his tired horse. Asad Beg recognized him at a distance and sent men to meet him. At this time, Muhammad Nasir said: ‘This is the news. The Nawwab (Abu’l Fazl) has been in a battle. Sher ‘Ali is bringing the news of his death.’ On hearing this, Asad Beg returned to Sironj and began to improve its fortifications. A few days later, a letter came from Asaf Khan with the news of the death of Abu’l Fazl, and of 21Cf. Allison Busch, ‘Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical

Poems of Keśavdās’, South Asia Research, vol. 25, no. 1, 2005, pp. 31–54, especially the discussion on pp. 38–43. 22Asad Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 5; AMU Ms., p. 11.

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the imperial order to calm the soldiers, leave them with Gopal Das, and to return himself to the court without delay. Asad Beg left at once, and on reaching Sarai Kala Bagh saw Rai Chand Bakhshi and Parmanand, who had taken shelter there with the effects of Abu’l Fazl. They stated that Abu’l Fazl had left many of his effects there before moving on, and had left word that they should take their time. However, before they could leave, news came of Abu’l Fazl’s death; hence, they had decided to stay put. Asad Beg encouraged them, loaded up the camels, elephants, and horses and advanced to Agra, with the goods that were worth some 4 or 5 lakhs of rupees. When Asad Beg arrived in Agra with 200 horse, he had left Rai Chand and the others behind with the baggage. He first appeared at the court with only his own retinue. The emperor was seated in the jharoka-i-khāss-o-‘āmm in the afternoon. Leaving his other men near the gate, Asad Beg came to the jharoka with five or six others. Sarbaragh Khan had already preceded him to inform the intendants (bakhshīs). Shaikh Farid called him inside the first railings alone, and announced him. When the emperor heard his name, and his glance fell on him, tears began to flow from his eyes, and he started to weep aloud. He went inside, leaving the jharoka. Everyone present was astonished at this reaction. It was as if the mourning from the day that the news arrived of Abu’l Fazl’s death had resumed. In the midst of all this, the emperor asked Ramdas to call Asad Beg inside. He furiously declared his intention to chop him to pieces by his own hands. Ramdas emerged and called for him, and led him to a corner inside. Ramdas was clearly very nervous in the situation. Meanwhile, Khan-i A‘zam, Asaf Khan, and Shaikh Farid attempted to distract the emperor. The emperor told Ramdas to carry a message to Asad Beg: ‘In spite of boasting of the bravery and sincerity with which you served Abu’l Fazl, in which hell were you that you proved to be of no help to him in his extremity? Now you’ve come running to me! I will not leave you alive. I’ll kill you in such a way that the world will remember it.’ The poor Ramdas replied to him, all calm and quiet. When Asad Beg heard these angry words, his head began to swim, and he lost his composure. ‘How can I reply?’, he asked Ramdas, requesting him to intervene in the affair. But he resigned

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himself to his fate at the same time. The emperor was a just ruler; and he would not kill anyone unjustly. But if he wanted to kill him, and it would bring him some comfort, so it had to be. But still, Asad Beg wanted the truth to reach his ears, and he wanted too to assert his innocence. Ramdas went and explained all this. After going back and forth several times, Akbar asked why he had abandoned Abu’l Fazl to the jaws of death. Asad Beg explained: in the first part of the journey, from Sarra to Sironj, Asad Beg with Mahdi ‘Ali Kashmiri, and 1000 horse (Mughal and Afghan) had accompanied Abu’l Fazl. But at Sironj, Gopal Das told Abu’l Fazl he had no jāgīr or revenue resources in Hindustan. The men from the Deccan were not only tired, but would bother him en route for their emoluments. So, it would be best to leave them there with Asad Beg. Gopal Das would send his fresh men in their place, with his own brother. Abu’l Fazl found this reasonable and summoned Asad Beg, telling him to remain behind to chastise the Bundelas, while he pushed on himself. Asad Beg demurred, insisting he would first go to the court, then return to complete this job. To this Abu’l Fazl replied that God was with him. There was hence no need to accompany him. Well, Asad Beg declares at the court, the emperor himself knew Abu’l Fazl’s stubborn character perfectly. No one could resist him, once he had decided something. All this was conveyed by Ramdas. The other nobles too declared unanimously that they had heard that Asad was entirely faultless in the matter. He had done what was possible. ‘He was a servant, and a servant cannot control things beyond a point.’ Indeed, Asad Beg had gone far beyond the call of duty in his insistence. On hearing all this, and the pleas of Khan-i A‘zam, the emperor decided at last to excuse him. Asad Beg was allowed to go to his own house and meet his own children. Akbar also asked Shaikh Farid not to allow any other servant of Abu’l Fazl (other than Asad), to come before the jharoka. At last, Ramdas came and informed Asad Beg that things had turned out well for him. Asad Beg thanked God and told Ramdas that he wanted to do his salutation (sijda) to the ruler, as so far he had been forced to sit in a corner. The request was presented by Ramdas formally, and

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at the end of the day the emperor went into his inner apartments and instructed Ramdas to bring Asad Beg to the chaukandī. The emperor had finished his prayers (tasbīh) by now. Asad Beg was taken inside by Ramdas, and Asad Beg presented 1 muhr and 9 rupees, and ritually performed kūrnish and sijda. The emperor asked Shaikh Farid to bring Asad Beg closer, so that he could kiss his feet, while he was standing. Shaikh Farid then conducted him there, and Asad Beg proceeded to kiss Akbar’s feet. The emperor placed his hand on his back twice by way of benediction, and he saw that the emperor’s visage was now full of serenity (bahjat). The emperor now asked about his origins (az kujā ast wa az che mardum ast). Naqib Khan replied that Asad Beg was of good origins, from Qazwin, which was also his own city. The emperor now favoured him with a particularly benevolent look. Asad Beg for his part now looked towards Asaf Khan, to indicate that he knew him well. Asaf Khan now moved closer and stated: ‘Asad Beg is a close relative of mine. His father was known as Murad Beg Aqa Mulla, and was amongst the best-known people of Qazwin.’ The emperor now expressed surprise that he was a relative of Asaf Khan, and that he had not known about it. Asad Beg replied that he was merely a humble servant of the emperor, therefore had no need of another reference (nisbat). The emperor replied that, in truth, accomplished people had no need of a nisbat. He then asked Asad Beg how long he had been in the service of Abu’l Fazl, and Asad Beg replied about seventeen years. The emperor commented on how long he had served him, and how fortunate he was. The other people present added words of support and praise, confirming that he was a perfectly trustworthy person. At this, the emperor replied that he had had his eye on Asad Beg for a long time; he had even wanted to wean him from Abu’l Fazl’s service, but the latter had not wanted it. Asad Beg too replied that he too had long wanted to enter the direct service of the emperor but had not been able to find an opportunity. He cited a verse (probably in a Turkish dialect, termed zabān-i ramandī); when the emperor heard this, he was surprised and asked what verse this was, in which language, and what its meaning was. Naqib Khan replied that it was in the Ramandi language, and it meant the following:

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I have the desire to see you, but since I cannot I must seek a place to see Those who gaze upon you.23

The emperor appreciated this bon mot greatly. He told Khwaja Amin-ud-Din to get a robe of honour (khil‘at) ready for Asad Beg. The Khwaja went off to get some box with such things. A certain sar-o-pā, of particularly high value (greater than that normally given to those of Asad’s station), was chosen by the emperor with his hand, and given to Shaikh Farid. The shaikh and the Khwaja then took Asad Beg aside, and placed the cloth on him behind a curtain, and brought him back to perform sijda once more. Further exchanges of remarks took place. His replies pleased the emperor. That evening, Asad Beg claims that he was the main subject of conversation, and many of his friends gathered from this that he would soon get a high position. Before the end of the evening, the emperor once more made a special mention to Ramdas of Asad Beg, and told him to take care of him as well as to remind him from time to time of him. Ramdas bowed, Asad Beg prostrated himself, and then taking leave of Ramdas departed the court with Asaf Khan. The latter assured Asad Beg that he was now in favour, and warned him never to commit an error in the emperor’s service. Also, he should try and be present at the jharoka-i darshan from the next day. This conversation continued till Asaf Khan mounted his horse, and, as he was leaving, Asaf Khan gave him an encouraging prayer. Asad Beg now returned home, and was able to see his own children after a gap of six years, thanking God for this pleasure. He was in a moved and euphoric state all night, on account of this royal interview, weeping and praying. The next day he went to the jharoka for darshan, and thereafter went to see Khwaja Amin-ud-Din. At this later time of the day, the emperor came out once more to the jharoka-i ‘āmm-o-khāss. On this occasion, Asad Beg presented him with the jewel-box of Abu’l Fazl. The emperor asked him what it was, and he replied that it contained all the jewels and 23Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 9; AMU Ms., p. 20.

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muhrs that Abu’l Fazl had gathered in the Deccan for Akbar. On the day of his death, it had been taken by his servant Niyaz, who had hidden in the jungle. Rai Chand and Parmanand in Kala Bagh had then got hold of it, and then from there given it to Asad Beg. It was thus the emperor’s tribute (nazr). The emperor now said he could not bear to have things associated with Abu’l Fazl near him. Asad Beg should hence give it to Shaikh ‘Abdul Rahman. To this, Asad Beg said that all his master’s goods had been given over to tahwīldārs (keepers of goods), until they reached Abu’l Fazl’s son. But this box was an exception, since Abu’l Fazl had wanted it to be given to the emperor. When he insisted a thousand times in this fashion, the emperor had it sent to the inner quarters (mahal); all trace of it had been lost since. Asad Beg now went to the balustrade (katehra) to enquire after the evaluation of his own mansab. He was then taken once more by Ramdas to the inner quarter (ghusl-khāna and chaukandī). These procedures, going back and forth, went on for five or six days. At the end of this time, the emperor told Shaikh Farid to decide Asad Beg’s position in consultation with Asaf Khan. After discussions, they went and advised the emperor, who eventually concluded that Asad Beg should be given a rank of 100 zāt/20 sawār. The bakhshīs then came, Asad Beg went to do his taslīm to the emperor, and the emperor showed his pleasure. When the bakhshīs were finalizing matters, however, the emperor intervened once more and said that for Abu’l Fazl’s sake the mansab could be increased to 100/25. However, though Asad Beg received this rank he notes that he was never able to stand in court with those of 100 and 200 rank. This was because within a few days of this assignation, he received something else. Now, at this time Khwaja Qasim, Diyanat Khan, and Mirza Mukhtar Beg (uncle of Asaf Khan) jointly looked after the office of superintendence (ihtimām). Mukhtar Beg also being the tutor (atālīq) of Prince Parvez, was thus unable to take care of ihtimām full-time, and so he and Khwaja Qasim (who was more devoted to the job) were always quarrelling. As a result, one day a report reached the emperor of this, with a complaint against Mukhtar Beg. Asaf Khan justified his uncle by saying that he was overburdened with the care of Prince Parvez. It was hence decided to put someone else in his place, and Asaf Khan hinted that the post could go to Asad Beg.

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The emperor was gladdened with this suggestion, and called Asad Beg. Akbar then took something out from the khāssa in his hand, put his hand on his shoulder, as was the Chaghatay custom (tūrayi chaghatāy), and allowed him into the charmed circle of the ahl-i tabāf, which Asad Beg notes was equivalent to bakhshīgīrī.24 Soon after, the emperor pointed out to Asaf Khan that nothing had been done about Asad Beg’s mansab, and that he had also not been given a jāgīr assignment. Despite the fact that Asaf Khan was very busy, he found the time to assign some villages in sarkār Narnaul, which had earlier been in the jāgīr of the late Shah ‘Ali Khan. In the first year, Asad Beg got Rs 17,000 from it; in the second year Rs 20,000, and in the third year Rs 23,000 from the jāgīr. The main conclusion that we may draw from this section then is its insistence on the importance of personal contact with the emperor, which turns out to be the key to Asad Beg’s advancement. This is the main card that Asad Beg can play, even in the reign of Jahangir, and he must thus insist in this part of the text, as later, that he was allowed intimate access to Akbar in the last years of the latter’s life. What is appealed to is thus not the ‘objective’ standard of mansab, but another link, which also has to do with the fact that Asad Beg comes to be admitted into the circle of the emperor’s disciples, receiving before his departure for Bijapur in 1603 a token or emblem (shast-i murīdī) that marks his participation in the royal cult of the tauhīd-i ilāhī.

Turbulence and Transition We shall pass rapidly over the sections that follow, the first concerning the failed expedition that was sent out against Bir Singh Deo, and the second dealing with Asad Beg’s despatch as envoy to Bijapur. The parts of the text that interest us here particularly are those which begin after Asad Beg’s successful return from the Deccan in 1604, with the elephant Chanchal, and a number of other notable gifts from Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah. His return journey had been a hard one, and he had fallen seriously ill on at least one occasion. The successful 24Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 10; AMU Ms., p. 23.

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completion of a number of delicate diplomatic tasks, the rich gifts he brought back, and the well-connected relatives he had at court seem to have allowed Asad Beg to rise rapidly in imperial favour, though not necessarily in a proportionate fashion where his formal rank was concerned. He himself notes that, at this time, each day he was given some special favour or treatment (tarbiyat), growing in favour until the day when he was appointed representative to the four provinces of the Deccan (īlchīgīrī-i chahār sūba-i Dakan). Still his mansab, which had been 100/25, was initially raised only to 200/50, with an emolument (tankhwāh) which rendered Rs 17,000 annually. Asad Beg comments: ‘Subhan Allah! What a blessed time that was!’ In that very period, he states that he was appointed to the post of page (du‘a rasānīdan) to the inner quarters (burj and ghusl khāna) in place of Khwaja Amin-ud-Din. This post he held with Khwaja Muhammad Taqi, but with a difference, namely that when it was Asad Beg’s turn, even Muhammad Taqi could not enter the burj without being announced, whereas when Taqi was the page, Asad Beg had free access. Another difference was that whosoever’s request was carried in by Asad Beg, the emperor would ask them in. In fact, at times, Khwaja Taqi did not dare to carry in certain requests and had Asad Beg carry them instead, since he was more likely to get a good reception. Before Asad Beg’s time, this work was done by Amin-udDin and Taqi, and at this time things passed through Raja Ramdas and Khwaja Daulat, the chamberlain (nāzir). But when Asad Beg took over this function, this regulation (zābita) was suppressed by the emperor, who left matters entirely to Asad Beg’s discretion. With the passage of time, even Raja Ramdas and Khwaja Daulat could not get access to the inner pavilion (burj) without Asad Beg. This then was his work until he left a second time for the Deccan. It was towards the close of this period that news of the death of Prince Daniyal arrived in court. One night, after the period of mourning was over, there was a musical evening held at the burj. At this time, Asad Beg whispered to Raja Ramdas that on a certain night when he was in Bijapur, the ‘Adil Khan had asked him whether the great musician Tansen sang standing up or sitting down. But the emperor overheard this, and even though he was listening to music,

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he asked why the name of the ‘Adil Khan was being taken. Ramdas recounted what had been whispered to him. At this, the emperor smiled, and understood its significance. He said to Ramdas that it was clear that Asad Beg should return to the Deccan. To this Asad Beg replied that the rains would have made the roads difficult, and it was better to make the journey after the monsoon. The emperor ordered that preparations be made, and that the necessary horses should be purchased from the exchequer. Raja Kishan Das was told to get ‘Iraqi and Turki horses for Asad Beg, and this was counted as a great favour, of a type never given earlier in the reign. Asad Beg thus wishes to stress once more his privileged, and direct, relationship with Akbar. Within a month, 180 ‘Iraqi and Turki horses had been bought. At this time, in the evenings, the emperor would give him detailed instructions and advice on his mission while at the burj. This included the writing of royal farmāns for the four govenors (hākims, in reality the sultans) of the Deccan (hukkām-i arba‘-yi Dakan), namely Bijapur, Golkonda, Bidar, and Karnatak (Vijayanagara). He also told Asad Beg his last mission had been on account of the misbehaviour of the previous Mughal envoy Mir Jamal-ud-Din, the affair of the daughter of the ‘Adil Khan, and the peshkash. This time around, he had full authority over the four sūbas of the Deccan, and wherever he went he had specific objectives. Good elephants and high-quality jewels were to be sought out, which were to be found in all four of these regions. These then were his instructions, and two months were spent in making the arrangements. He was now given a fresh mansab of 200/300. Asad Beg got together a considerable force with ‘Iraqis, Khurasanis, and Turkomans, and gave each an advance of three to four months’ salary. Besides each was given a good horse, and all in all he got together a thousand or two thousand men, with Shah ‘Ali Isfahani, a very capable scribe (nawīsinda) as intendant (bakhshī). A hundred musketeers (bandūqchīs), a hundred archers on foot, and others, all were a part of his armed force. In those very days, a peshkash and ‘arzdāsht arrived from Bidar with the wakīl, Amin-ulmulk. Before leaving, Asad Beg also asked for a farmān for Malik ‘Ambar (whom he had met on his previous embassy), and he was told to draft it himself. An order was issued that Asad Beg be given several

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plain papers with a tughra and a muhr-i auzak (the main seal), which he was to fill from time to time as he felt appropriate. This, says Asad Beg, was an extraordinary favour of a sort conceded to relatively few people by the emperor. He now returns to an account of the frequent evenings he spent in the pavilion (burj) with the emperor just before his departure. One night, when the emperor was getting up from his throne, and about to go into his inner apartments, he told Asad Beg that he had given him a mansab rank of 1000, but that he would get it only on his return from his voyage. Asad made his taslīm and sijda, as was appropriate. He was also given a special horse from the royal stable, and a brocade khil‘at on another day; on still another day, he received a royal shawl from Akbar’s waist, that the emperor tied on his head with his own hand. An honourable farewell ceremony was organized, and Asad Beg was told to wait in vicinity of the town of Agra a few days, for any last-minute instructions. Asad remained camped outside the town for fifteen days, and on each day one or the other royal servant would come with messages from the court. On the fifteenth night, Khwaja Muhammad Taqi came with word from the emperor that he could leave at last. After an arduous journey, and after fending off several attacks on the way, the party eventually reached Ujjain, where Asad Beg met the governor, the Timurid noble Mirza Shahrukh. A camp was pitched outside the town, and for a time they rested, oblivious to worldly cares. The last phase of the journey had after all been rather tiring and stressful. On the fourth day, they thought of moving on. At this time, however, Nawwab Mirza ‘Ali Beg Akbarshahi, who was on his way back to the court from the Deccan, stopped off near Asad Beg’s camp. Since Asad Beg claimed him as a friend, he decided to stay on for one more day for his sake. They met, and had pleasant conversations. Suddenly, a letter arrived from ‘the Hindus’ (presumably Rajput chiefs), with news that the emperor was seriously ill. At this, their whole plan was upset, and everyone around fell into disarray. They decided to stay on another day, awaiting further news. The following night, letters came from the wakīls of Mirza Shahrukh and the Hindus, with the heartbreaking news of the emperor’s death. The entire world, writes Asad Beg, fell into confusion at this. He cites a verse:

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In a moment, in an hour, in a breath, The affairs of the world may be wholly altered.25

Asad Beg felt this as a black day for himself. May God protect others from such a fate, he declares, and cites a few verses of Asaf Khan in this context: Autumn has aged the leaves of every garden, I am not the only one who was uprooted. Flowers in every garden have wilted. My garden too has been laid to waste.

Another verse uses the metaphor of a boat in a storm, in which fire has broken out to add to its misfortunes: The nākhudā was frightened by the storm, The wind was so fierce that fire entered the ship.

The direct consequences of this news are interesting to list. On the day that this sad news arrived, Asad Beg goes on to relate, the accursed Baluchis who were in charge of the camels (fifty of Asad Beg’s and a hundred with the merchants’ goods) promptly took their animals and fled. Besides, it was feared that the Badakhshis of Ujjain, who were not much in awe of Mirza Shahrukh, might do something untoward. One of Asad Beg’s companions, Mirza ‘Ali, left for the court, telling Asad Beg that he really should do the same. But Asad Beg could not turn back without his caravan, especially because he had some merchants (including two great Tabrizi traders) in his charge. This qāfila had to be taken as far as Burhanpur. To add to this, other men began to desert from within Asad Beg’s own party. First among them was the royal musician Baiju (Baijū-i kalāwant bādshāhī), with his brothers (birādarān), to whom Asad Beg had ironically been most attentive and considerate.26 In fact, he had given each of them excellent horses 25Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 42; AMU Ms., p. 106. is the historical figure who corresponds to the mythical Baiju Bawra, rival of Tansen. Another mention of him may be found in ‘Ala-ud-Din Muhammad 26This

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as well as money in advance. Yet they proved disloyal (mardum-i bīwafā’). The next day, the bakhshī, Shah ‘Ali, who was in charge of the news and accounts, also ran away with some horsemen and troopers. Faced with this, Asad Beg regrouped his caravan with 150 additional camels, and went ahead to meet Mirza Shahrukh. The latter gave him his own wakīl Mir Kalan with a group of 500 horse, to accompany the caravan as far as the Narbada river. Thus, on the fourth day after the bad news had arrived, they managed at last to leave Ujjain.27 But the unfortunate turn to events had not ended. More shocking still was that the greater part of the troopers, who were Turkomans under the command of a certain Nasir Khan (‘the black-faced’), now hatched a conspiracy against Asad Beg. Nasir Khan was Asad Beg’s wakīl, with unlimited powers. Fortunately, Ya‘qub Aqa and Sher ‘Ali Aqa, though a sworn part of the conspiracy, revealed it to Asad Beg. Asad Beg declares his own consternation faced with this disloyalty of his own closest servants. Who could he turn to for help? Fortunately, God protected him, not allowing the conspirators a chance to implement their plans. For the time being, he was protected by the troopers detached by Mirza Shahrukh. But when they reached the banks of the Narbada, the Mirza’s troops thought to go back. However, at this stage Asad Beg went to the tent of Mir Kalan and explained the ingratitude (harām khorī) of his own men, requesting him to remain for two or three more stages to protect him. Eventually, shattered and exhausted by these travails, Asad Beg reached Burhanpur, and camped at the house of his friend Akhund Mulla Hayati. After a stay of several days in this town, he made his way to the camp of ‘Abdul Rahim Khan-i Khanan, for whom he had several farmāns, and by whom he was very well received. The days that followed were for our author very good ones, in which Asad Beg was particularly gladdened by the happy soirées (asbāb-i a’ish-o-kāmrānī), full of circulating glasses of wine (jāmhā-yi rāh-i rehānī) that brought life (raunaq-i tāza) back to a world that had seemed full of gloom Chishti Barnawi’s Chishtiyya-yi bihishtiyya (private communication from the late Simon Digby). For details of this text, see Hafiz Mahmud Sherani, ‘Makhdūm Shaikh Bahā’-ud-Din Barnāwī’, Oriental College Magazine (Lahore), vol. 3, no. 1, August 1927, pp. 40–58; vol. 3, no. 4, August 1929, pp. 72–99. 27Asad Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 42, or fl. 24a.

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and death. Even though Asad Beg had his ‘palate full of the bitter poison of repeated failure’, he was able to gain a little pleasure in these circumstances, even if his heart was heavy. Having ingratiated himself with several of the important notables in the camp, things were bound to take a turn for the better. Thus, some days later, the Khan-i Khanan offered him a higher mansab and suggested that he should stay on there in all comfort. The hint was that he might well be made bakhshī, particularly in view of his intellectual qualities (suhbat). On hearing all this, Asad Beg was naturally happy. He replied that he would consider the offer and then give a proper reply.28 However, he hesitated, and at length the Khan-i Khanan sent his diwān, Mirza ‘Abdul Malik Arghandi (also an old friend of Asad Beg), and some others to go and talk to Asad Beg in his quarters, in order to seek an auspicious time to confirm the arrangement. Asad Beg now replied at length, stating that he could hardly refuse the offer, especially in view of his own relative status compared to that of the Khan-i Khanan. Nevertheless, he expressed his own anxiety. The deceased emperor had given him an important charge, and the prince (Jahangir) too had very kindly shown concern at his departure in the interval that he was camped outside Agra, awaiting his final despatch. However, on the day of his departure, despite the prince’s concern for him, he had not taken formal leave of him. Now, the prince had become emperor; and Asad Beg was left sleepless with anxiety that he would not have forgiven this discourtesy. Besides, all that had happened since the time that Asad Beg had been the Shaikh’s (Abu’l Fazl’s) servant was no doubt still on Jahangir’s mind. This too was weighing heavily on his, Asad Beg’s, mind. He was thus in the Deccan, waiting either for a farmān, or for a messenger, to bring him back to the emperor’s service. He could not go back on his initiative. This was indeed what transpired some days later, with the arrival of what Asad Beg himself terms ‘a cold and indifferent farmān of summons’ from Jahangir. This document was brought by Ya‘qub Aqa, Asad Beg’s wakīl from the darbār, together with some letters of his friends at Agra. The farmān was taken and delivered, sealed, to the Khan-i Khanan. When it was opened, it was found that an order was written to the effect that Asad, who had been sent in embassy 28Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., fl. 25b.

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(hijābat) to the Deccan, should return to the court, no matter where he was. When the Khan-i Khanan saw this, he realized that what Asad feared had come to pass. He asked Ya‘qub Aqa why this farmān had been issued, and in what circumstances. He was told that the man responsible was a person called Baiju, one of the singers (kalāwants) whom the deceased emperor had sent with other Kalawants to the ‘Adil Khan, to learn some of the latter’s compositions (tasnīfāt). That ill-starred character, when he had heard of the emperor’s death in Ujjain, had run away and turned back to Agra. He was espied by Jahangir in court, and recognized as one of the Kalawants who had gone with Asad Beg. He was asked where he had left Asad, and the latter replied in Ujjain. Baiju claimed that when he heard of Jahangir’s succession, he and the others had decided to come back, but that Asad had obstinately gone onwards to Burhanpur. Jahangir was angered to hear this, and so ordered Asad Beg back at once. The chief wazīr, who was a friend of Asad, pleaded that he had been sent from the court on a mission and that he would surely return when the mission was accomplished. Mirza ‘Ali Beg, whom he had met in the Deccan, had also returned to the court and he told Jahangir that he had seen Asad Beg in the Deccan. When news of Akbar’s death had reached, he reported, Asad Beg had been abandoned by many of his company. Asad had in fact wanted to return to the court, but since he had a large qāfila with him, and also some people from the Deccan, he had had to take care of them. Had he returned, abandoning the qāfila, it might well have been destroyed. These were the reasons, he pleaded, that Asad Beg had not returned at once. But why had he not returned after carrying the qāfila to Burhanpur, demanded the emperor? Perhaps he was delayed, said the Mirza, still making lame excuses. The Deccan was far away. At this, Jahangir said with indifference: ‘God knows where he has gone now.’ A third character, a certain Mirza Jan Beg, who felt warmly towards Asad, now intervened. Why did Jahangir not send a farmān at once with Asad’s wakīl, he suggested. So, a farmān was drafted at once and given to Ya‘qub Aqa. Asad was also sent an informal message to return as soon as possible, to try and get back in the good books of Jahangir. This informal letter did not reach in time, and the farmān’s arrival closed Asad Beg’s options. In point of fact, this was Jahangir’s first formal farmān to reach the Deccan.

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Asad Beg recounts that he himself went forward to meet the farmān, performed sijda to it, and took it in his hand. He read it entirely, and the Khan-i Khanan expressed concern about its consequences. When a few days had passed, it seemed no other solution was possible than to tie the metaphorical turban of pilgrimage, and go to the court. He describes how he took leave from Khan-i Khanan, and regretfully from Mirza Rustam and his other friends. He then returned to Burhanpur, where he found his horses and other baggage with his brother Ibrahim Beg. He left them with his brother, adding to them some other accumulated stuff from Daulatabad. However, some giftable items (ke liyāqat-i peshkash-o-saughat dāsht) were got together, namely Karnatak chintz and small diamonds (sang reza). Some other items that he had obtained from Mirza Rustam and Khwaja Beg were given over to Ibrahim Beg. Accompanied by 150 of his old troopers (sawār), Asad Beg now made his way back rapidly to the court, citing an appropriate hemistich: When the beast is hunted, It makes straight for the hunter.

He was now pretty much prepared for an ignominious death, he writes, and indeed put his foot in the hunter’s trap in such a way that both his friends and foes were moved to pity. The late emperor had taken much care of him, and this was not unknown either to him or to Jahangir. Still, he trusted in Jahangir to the point that, depositing his goods outside Agra with Ya‘qub Aqa and Sher ‘Ali (to be carried to his house), he himself made straight for the darbār. Here, he found Khwaja Amin-ud-Din in charge once more, and the latter greeted him with joy. He spent a fair deal of time (2 or 3 gharīs) there, when the naqqāra sounded and the emperor himself emerged. The Khwaja approached him to enquire about the placement of the nazr and peshkash; Asad Beg sent 9 muhrs and 9 rupees through him with a message on paper. Asad Beg was taken into the special enclosed balustrade (katehra-i narda). Khwaja Amin-ud-Din advanced with the Wazir-ul-Mulk, and announced: ‘Asad has arrived from the Deccan. He makes his salutations.’ When Jahangir’s eyes fell on him, Asad Beg at once performed taslīm, kūrnish, and sijda. The wazīr

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presented the nazr, which Jahangir took with a show of reluctance and said: ‘Where was this little man (mardak) till now, and how has he come now?’ He had gone to the Deccan, as envoy, and has now returned, was the reply. At this time, Asad saw that the Amir ulUmara had arrived and was performing the sijda under the jharoka. As he stood up, Jahangir said, pointing to Asad: ‘This is Asad. He has come from the Deccan.’ The Amir welcomed him. ‘You’ve never met him before?’, asked Jahangir. No, it was the first time, said the Amir. Then, Jahangir realized that Asad had arrived straight from his trip, not stopping to meet anyone at the court. Nevertheless, Jahangir began to list his complaints against him. ‘Asad deserves to be killed’, he said. The Amir ul-Umara replied: ‘How many people deserving death have you killed so far, that you want to kill Asad? He is only your unfortunate servant.’ Jahangir said: ‘When I wanted him here, he was not present. Now he has come running. I don’t have the heart to even look at him. Let him go where he wants.’ In short, says Asad Beg, all that he had done and all the hopes he had accumulated, while getting blisters on his feet in imperial service, had come to naught. What more did Fate (fāl) have in store for him now?

The Death of Akbar Revisited This is a question that eventually remains unanswered in the text itself. Instead, Asad Beg returns to what had happened at the time of the death of Akbar, and the events of that time. He begins by citing a celebrated verse from the ‘best of the later poets’, Anwari: If everything in the fate of beings were not predetermined, How then does Man’s state go against his own will? Truly, for better or worse, Destiny has every man’s reins in its hands, For no matter what one does, one still finds that things end in error. The age makes myriad images, But the image in one’s mind’s eye remains unmade.29 29Asad

p. 126.

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., p. 50; AMU Ms.,

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He reminds us that since he himself had left for Bijapur and Golkonda, Bidar, and Karnatak for the second time, he was not there when the emperor departed this world. When he was leaving on his embassy, a matter that the emperor was particularly concerned with was a projected fight between the elephant Chanchal (from Bijapur) and another called Girambar. The emperor had even suggested that Asad Beg delay his departure to see this fight, but this turned out to be impossible. If only this fight had never happened, Asad Beg exclaims! For he had heard that the elephant fight had led to Akbar’s having a seizure (ishtidād-i ‘izzat). When this news had reached him in Ujjain, Asad Beg had been with Mirza Shahrukh. This, he recapitulates, had led the Baluchis to flee with the camels, and also had led Mirza ‘Ali Beg to leave for Agra. Asad Beg had at that time refused to go with him. He now goes over the conversation at Ujjain. He had told Mirza ‘Ali of his relations with Abu’l Fazl, his killing because of Jahangir, and his own subsequent closeness to Akbar. He also recounts briefly his being sent to the Deccan, his successful return, and his being sent out again. In all this, he had never been able to serve Jahangir directly, and so was convinced that Jahangir must have a grudge against him in his heart. He recounts his despair at this time.30 Mirza ‘Ali Beg, who was an understanding man, had told him that since he still had wealth and a position, he should enter directly into Jahangir’s service. No time should be allowed to elapse. But Asad Beg ignored his advice, since Fate was not on his side. In fact, Mirza ‘Ali Beg had left with some annoyance in the face of this attitude. At the same time, staying at Ujjain had done Asad Beg no good. The Baluchis had not returned, and the qāfila was still in danger. He had therefore been obliged to appeal to Mirza Shahrukh for help. The latter had helped him through his wakīl, and appointed a certain Shah ‘Imad as an escort with 500 horse. He had thus managed to make it to Burhanpur, and then some days later the farmān from Jahangir had arrived. He had thus arrived as soon as possible at the court. Now, it turned out that when Asad Beg had left Agra, the late emperor’s state had deteriorated somewhat, with a visible decline 30Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., fl. 28b.

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in his health (takassur). In those very days, the fight was planned between Chanchal and Girambar, the elephant as it turns out of Shahzada Wala Gauhar (that is, Salim). This led his health to decline even more, for in the midst of this fight a quarrel broke out between the followers of Prince Salim and Prince Khusrau.31 When news of these incidents was brought to the emperor, he became enraged and had a seizure. The doctor, Hakim ‘Ali Gilani, was brought in, and he declared that he could do nothing. Khan-i A‘zam, who now saw the signs of imminent death, called Raja Man Singh and suggested that Sultan Khusrau be raised to the throne. The two, Khan-i A‘zam and Man Singh, were powerful men, and though their idea was improper, they managed to make it gain ground. It was decided that when the Shahzada Wala Gauhar appeared before the emperor for his daily kūrnish, he would be seized. But they did not realize that one cannot diminish the sun’s light by throwing up handfuls of dust. What Fate’s pen has drawn, declares Asad Beg, cannot be wiped out by mere trickery. A verse is cited: The lamp that is lit by God, If anyone blows on it, his beard will catch fire.

Thus, on the given day God’s Selected One (i.e. Jahangir, being flattered here by Asad Beg for obvious reasons), left his quarters and getting on a boat with some attendants, reached a certain Batta Burj. When he wished to descend, a distressed Mir Ziya-ul-Mulk Qazwini came running up and brought news of the emperor’s imminent death. He also informed Jahangir of the conspiracy. The prince turned back the boat, and with his eyes full of tears and a heavy heart, went back to his quarters. The arrow of the rebels was thus unable to attain its target. Another verse follows: God takes the boat where he wills, so that, the nākhudā tears his clothes in despair. 31For a parallel account of an elephant-fight between Girambar and Khusrau’s elephant Aprup, see The Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 15–17, Preface by Muhammad Hadi. It is unclear whether either Muhammad Hadi or Asad Beg in fact confused these two fights.

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While the emperor still had life left in him, Khan-i A‘zam and Man Singh had called together some of the notables and told them that Prince Salim’s behaviour was known to them all, and the emperor’s will was also evident. That is, the emperor never wanted to give the sultanate to Prince Salim. So, Sultan Khusrau was the person to seat on the throne. However, Sa‘id Khan, a great noble and related to the emperor by clan, a Turk and Mughal of clear heart, objected to this. How could one place Salim’s son on the throne while he himself was still alive? This was against what he significantly called the shī‘ar-otūra-yi chaghatāy (the code of the Chaghatays and the Chinggisids more generally), and could never happen. Qulij Khan Andijani, another great noble, supported him, and both left the meeting in annoyance. Khan-i A‘zam, who was the root of this sedition (fitna), held his breath and the meeting ended in confusion.32 At this time, Raja Ramdas Kachwaha came with a group and took control of the treasury (khazāna), in order to protect it. The great Sayyid Murtaza Khan left the fort at this time, returned to his quarters, and got together his people from Barha. Mirza Sharif Mu‘tamad Khan came to see him and asked his advice. He replied that there was nothing to do save going to see Prince Salim. The two decided to go, with Mu‘tamad Khan taking the lead and the other following with his Barha clansmen.33 By the time he reached the prince’s quarters, the latter had turned back from his boat trip on account of Mir Ziya-ul-Mulk’s warning. He had already been surrounded by some short-sighted people, who spread rumours that Sultan Khusrau had been placed on the throne, and that cannon had been put in place to blow away Shah Burj. The prince had more or less accepted these rumours, and had even begun to prepare special boats in order to flee. At this time, Shaikh Rukn-ud-Din Rohila arrived, and he was a close ally of Salim. With his large contingent, he reassured the prince and told him to wait for two watches. While this was going on, Mirza Sharif Mu‘tamad Khan arrived with news 32For

an earlier discussion of this passage, see Ahsan Jan Qaisar, ‘Jahangir’s Accession: An Outcome of Orthodox Revivalism?’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 23rd Session (Aligarh), 1960, pp. 251–2. 33For a brief discussion, also see Afzal Husain, The Nobility Under Akbar and Jahangir: A Study of Family Groups (New Delhi: 1999), p. 111.

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that the conspiracy had fallen through, and that Murtaza Khan had walked out of the meeting. The prince was happy to learn this, and those around him too were relieved. Murtaza Khan and Qara Beg also turned up with the sayyids of Barha, and saluted the new ruler. The celebratory fanfare (naqqāra-i shādiyāna) was now sounded, but the prince asked them not to sound the naqqāra, as his father had just died. He did give Murtaza Khan a khil‘at-i khāssa and a bejewelled sword in gratitude for his crucial support. Now, others arrived pell-mell and fell over each other to salute the new ruler. That evening, Khan-i A‘zam too arrived and shamefacedly made his salutations. But the prince did not let on to him that he knew about the conspiracy and treated him well. When Raja Man Singh saw how things had turned out, he took Prince Khusrau with him and prepared boats to leave for Bengal the next day. Salim for his part saw that things were now secure, and that the big notables (especially Mir Murtaza Khan) were on his side; he therefore went to his dying father’s side accompanied by them. It turned out that Akbar was still alive, and it was as if he was waiting for his last surviving son. Reaching, Jahangir touched his face to Akbar’s foot and the emperor opened his eyes. He signalled that a sar-o-pā and a turban, which had been made ready (especially for Salim, claims Asad Beg), be brought out. Salim put these on, tied his sword, and did a taslīm. On cue, Akbar now died, and lamentations broke out on all sides. A verse is cited: When Akbar Shah took leave of this world, A lament broke out from the sky above.

Asad Beg composes further verses to the effect that in this world the axle of life is such that no one is destined to last. Once the boat of life begins to move, its end is sure. Some are destroyed by storm, some by the whirlpool. Once Jahangir succeeded, he writes, he wanted the last rites of his father to be performed according to the sharī‘a. The close attendants and the learned men of the age were instructed to do whatever was required. The body was prepared and taken out in a huge procession. The new emperor himself carried the bier, at the feet, on his shoulders from the room where the body

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was prepared to the edge of the daulatkhāna-i khāss-o-‘āmm. From there it was taken over by the nobles, to the gates of the fort, and the emperor accompanied them on foot. The learned men, Sufis, nobles, and others, barefoot and bareheaded, accompanied the body with horses and elephants beyond counting. The procession went from Akbarabad fort to Bihishtabad-Sikandra, with people chanting Allah-o-Akbar on the way, and with coins being thrown en route. Food, sweets, and drinks were distributed to one and all. When the body of the emperor reached Bihishtabad at last, and he was buried like a veritable treasure, on his grave a large building was made with a garden which was called Bihishtabad.34 When this work had been completed, the new emperor handed over charge of the fort and treasury to Raja Ramdas. At this time he learnt that Raja Man Singh, accompanied by Prince Khusrau and a force, had fled for Bengal. Jahangir was grieved to learn this, but since Man Singh’s brother Madho Singh was at the court, he instructed him to bring his brother back with reasonable words. Madho Singh met his fugitive brother and remonstrated with him. The reply was that Man Singh was helpless. Prince Khusrau was still young, and he feared that he might be killed. This was the reason that Man Singh had been obliged to flee. He asked Madho Singh to tell the emperor that if he were willing to pledge a guarantee (qaul) of Khusrau’s safety, he would return. Madho Singh came back and reported this. Jahangir, as a kind man and a conciliatory person, gave such an assurance. Raja Man Singh returned to the darbār, with the prince. Jahangir embraced the prince and kissed his face, and sent him back to his quarters. The mourning for the dead emperor continued for some more days, and things were distributed to the poor in this phase. Only after an interval did the formal coronation take place. The final section of the text thus takes us to what is termed the accession of Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir Badshah to the throne of his ancestors. On the day of the accession, the darbār was decked out and decorated, and Jahangir left his own quarters (daulatkhāna) in a boat for the fort, through the Sukh Pul, accompanied by a large number of people. Here, scattering silver and gold coins, he 34Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, London Ms., fl. 29b.

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entered the fort. All around were the notables and wazīrs, closely accompanying him till he sat on the throne with the title of Jahangir. He thus started conquering the hearts of the people, and with his administration, Asad Beg tells us, the world was properly settled. Mansabs and titles were bestowed on many nobles. The umarā’ and wazīrs were raised up, and given mansabs as they desired. To console the hearts of the populace in general, both the high and low (khāss-o‘āmm), he fixed a golden chain of justice in order to remove the rust from the hearts of his subjects. A verse is inserted here: On the first day, the emperor Jahangir made a chain for justice. With one end tied inside the palace, and the other dangling out the window. Whoever was oppressed could ring on it to complain, And without a word said, justice would be rendered.35

A few days after the accession, Mahabbat Khan, Sharif Khan, and others reached the court. Mahabbat Khan was made Sipah-Salar and Sharif Khan the Amir al-Umara. Within a few days, discriminatory taxes like the zakāt, the jizya-i hunūd, and some other cesses on the poor were once again abolished within the empire. Jahangir’s fame thus came to spread all across Hindustan. Verses of a rather mediocre quality follow (probably composed by Asad Beg himself), praising his justice, and his administration and caring qualities in respect of his subjects. The king of the World and of Faith, Jahangir, no other king is equal to him, with sword. He has gone beyond claiming jizya, zakāt, and other taxes, and taken the crown on his head with indifference. What he gave up was not negligible, for each of these revenues would open hundreds of doors. He has more in his balance still, than the zakāt of Hind, and all the revenues of Turan. No-one even speaks of the goods of orphans, or escheat on the estates of the dead. 35Cf.

The Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 24, as also the description by Xavier, in Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, p. 74.

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He has such wealth that no one dares to go beyond, for it cannot be carried in loads, or laid out on the threshing floor. He who wants a good name is indifferent to wealth, for a good name is desirable above all. O Asad! Virtues are better than riches, for they remain while riches dissipate.36

And Asad Beg concludes, with suitable solemnity: ‘These are a few lines of the history, and a small part of the news that shows the high status and the glories of the Salatin-i ‘Azim-ush-Shan-i Timuriyya in Hindustan. What the position and status was in those times of this humble servant would have become evident from these lines. Concluded.’

Conclusion Reading the text of Asad Beg together with the other contemporary materials that we have cited allows us a firmer grasp on both the nature of the transition between Akbar and Jahangir, and the last years of Akbar’s reign. Recent years have seen renewed attention directed by researchers at the evolution of Akbar’s religious and social policy, which contributed to the image that he came to have for posterity.37 In this context, it is interesting to note that Jerónimo Xavier himself provides us an image of the monarch at his death which is remarkably positive, indeed far more so than the views that were held for example by the viceroys and governors of Portuguese India. A brief passage from his letter will suffice to demonstrate this aspect: He [Akbar] died at last on a Thursday (sic), on the [sixteenth] of October of the year 1605. With him died a kingly man who truly was a king, and who made sure he was obeyed and who knew how to govern. He was greatly beloved in the whole world, feared by the great, loved by the small, the same 36Asad

Beg, Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg, AMU Ms., p. 139.

37Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Akbar’s Personality Traits and World Outlook—A Critical

Appraisal’, in Irfan Habib, ed., Akbar and His India (Delhi: 1997), pp. 79–96.

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to everyone, be they natives, foreigners, small or great, Moors and Christians and Gentiles, everyone felt they had him on their side. Where God was concerned, he was so pious that he prayed four times a day without fail— that is, once at sunrise and once at sunset, at midday and midnight, without ever neglecting to do so on account of any matter, however important.38

To this Xavier then adds that no detail was too small to escape him, and that though ‘he did not know how to read or write, he knew everything.’ This portrait then of a humanist ruler contrasts markedly with the images that would be produced half a century later in Europe of the Mughals, at a time when the idea of the Oriental Despot had gained firm ground in the European imagination. The Jesuit vision of Jahangir, while less positive (in particular following the reprisals that resulted from Khusrau’s rebellion), nevertheless falls short of a portrayal that resembles the familiar clichés of a despotism that is wholly dependent on charisma, and thus is naturally uncertain at moments of transition. In this, internalist and externalist perspectives do eventually coincide to a surprising extent, though the Jesuits were unable for obvious reasons to infer that this might be on account of certain loosely codified traditions of governance and succession, including what Sa‘id Khan (whom Asad Beg refers to as related to the emperors by clan, and as a ‘Turk and Mughal of clear heart’) termed the shī‘ar-o-tūra-yi chaghatāy.39 In this respect, it would appear that Mughal rule was if anything less based on personal charisma and royal aura than, say, that of the Ottomans, who were obliged consistently to conceal the death of rulers, often for several days and even weeks on end, from fear of a breakdown of public order.40 In the one instance in which this 38Xavier’s

letter of 25 September 1606, in Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 65–6. 39For discussions in other contexts, Denise Aigle, ‘Le grand jasaq de GengisKhan, l’Empire, la culture mongole et la Sharī‘a’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 47, no. 1, 2004, pp. 31–79; D.O. Morgan, ‘The “Great Yāsā of Chingiz Khān” and Mongol Law in the Īlkhānate’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 49, no. 1, 1986, pp. 163–76. 40Cf. the essays collected in Gilles Veinstein, ed., Les Ottomans et la mort: Permanences et mutations (Leiden: 1996), with respect to both Mamluks and

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may have been practised where the Mughals were concerned, at the death of Humayun, it would seem to have been on the advice of the visiting Ottoman admiral and notable, Seydi ‘Ali Re’is. In any event, Seydi ‘Ali assures us that when the nobles of the Mughal court entered into panic at their master’s death (in view of Akbar’s absence), he responded: ‘When that object of grace and pardon Sultan Selim Khan—May Allah’s peace and mercy be upon him—went to the other world, Piri Pasha, on whom be peace, took all sorts of measures and, until the fortunate Padishah [Süleyman] had mounted the throne, the population was not informed. You too should take measures to ensure that no one is advised until his son has received the news.’41 He then reports that measures were taken to conceal the death (to the point of finding a double for Humayun), until Akbar returned and acceded to the throne. It has in the past been tempting in the Ottoman case to see in this sort of measure (which appears particularly in the period of rulers with strongly developed ‘charisma’) the result of the absence of something like the Christian political theology of the ‘king’s two bodies’. Whether this is in fact the appropriate mode of analysis remains debatable, for it is certain that the Ottomans too had a form of political theory (whether explicit or implicit), deriving in part (somewhat surprisingly) from Timurid practice.42 In the Mughal case, what is certain is that by the early seventeenth century, despite the clear traces of charisma that one finds surrounding a figure such as Akbar, political institutions possessed considerable resilience even at moments of ‘crisis’, such as that which royal succession Ottomans; also G. Veinstein, ‘Un secret d’État: La mort de Soliman le Magnifique’, L’Histoire, no. 211, 1997, pp. 67–71. 41See Seyyidi ‘Ali Re’is, Le miroir des pays: Une anabase ottomane à travers l’Inde et l’Asie centrale, trans. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont (Paris: 1999), pp. 89–91; Seydi Ali Reis, Mir’âtü’l-Memâlik, ed. Mehmet Kiremit (Ankara: 1999), pp. 120–1. 42Cornell Fleischer, ‘Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and “Ibn Khaldūnism” in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 18, nos 3–4, 1983, pp. 198–220; Linda T. Darling, ‘Political Change and Political Discourse in the Early Modern Mediterranean World’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 38, no. 4, 2008, pp. 505–31. Contrast this to the classic Weberian view in Şerif Mardin, Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey (Syracuse, NY: 2006).

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undoubtedly represented.43 The fortunes of individuals such as Asad Beg aside (and even he, we may note, returned eventually from political eclipse), the Mughal political system thus appeared less than ‘despotic’ even to contemporary Europeans who were in close contact with it. To trace the history of the theories that emerged in the course of the seventeenth century, and which eventually left their mark as late as the twentieth century on the Weberians (who have often seen political systems based on ‘charisma’ and ‘rational–legal’ systems as somehow mutually exclusive), is however a task that must await another occasion.

43Abundant materials on Akbar’s ‘charismatic’ presence in various regional and pan-Indian traditions, both of the seventeenth century and later, may be found in Habib, ed., Akbar and His India, and Iqtidar Alam Khan, ed., Akbar and His Age (New Delhi: 1999).

4

The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, Circa 1600 Introduction

T

he analysis of state formation and political economy under the Mughals has been one of the fields in which historians of early modern South Asia in both India and the West have invested the most heavily over the past half-century.1 The mode and manner in which this has been done, as well as the sources that have been used, have varied considerably. If some authors have preferred to use the grand tradition of Indo–Persian chronicles and normative works as their principal support, others have extensively deployed administrative materials (such as farmāns, sanads, mahzars, dastūr ul-‘amal texts, and the like), and still others have depended upon European materials, whether gathered from the archives of the Dutch and English East India Companies or those of the Portuguese Estado da Índia. The work of the Dutch scholar Dirk Kolff, notably his very-well-known opus on the military labour market in Hindustan between the mid-fifteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries, exemplifies an eclectic approach to this problem of sources. In his analysis, one finds extensive reference to the Kroniek en Remonstrantie of the Dutch East India Company factor Francisco Pelsaert (which he 1See Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, 1526–1750 (Delhi: 1998); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State—Structure or Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 29, no. 3, 1992, pp. 291–321.

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also jointly edited), but equally to the Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, and the Mughal chroniclers Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad and ‘Abbas Khan Sarwani, and even to oral song traditions in Bhojpuri and Awadhi.2 Yet, underlying this eclecticism is a set of coherent and well-defined problems, namely those of ethnogenesis, circulation, and the definition and redefinition of both internal and external frontiers within the political formations of the late medieval and early modern periods. Since these frontiers were by their very nature the loci of a set of political and social dynamics, it may be of interest in the present context to focus in particular on them. The present chapter is thus conceived of as a modest contribution to an aspect of one of these problems, namely the history of the management of the Deccan frontier of the Mughals in the late sixteenth century. In order to comprehend the nature of this frontier, we must bear in mind a complex quadrilateral relationship that existed in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries between four sets of rather unequal powers: first, the expanding Mughal empire in northern India that carried all before it in the decades after about 1560; second, the Deccan sultanates further south, and especially the kingdoms of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar; third, the Portuguese Estado da Índia with its political heart at Goa and subsidiary centres at Daman, Diu, and the Província do Norte; and finally, the Safavid state in Iran that from its very inception in about 1500 had maintained privileged relations with the Muslim sovereigns of the Deccan.3 Of these four sets of political entities, three had coincidentally been founded at practically the same moment, in the very beginning of the sixteenth century. The Bijapur and Ahmadnagar sultanates had both emerged from the debris of the declining Bahmani Sultanate as the fifteenth century drew to a close, being founded respectively by former Bahmani nobles called Yusuf ‘Adil Khan and Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri. The Portuguese had arrived in the western Indian Ocean in 1497 and declared their Estado da Índia to be a stable political entity 2D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: 1990). 3For an earlier, but less developed, essay on similar themes, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Uma sociedade de Fronteira do século XVI: Perspectivas Indo-Persas no Decão Ocidental’, Oceanos, no. 34, 1998, pp. 88–101.

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(rather than deriving simply from a succession of fleets sent out from Portugal) from the time of the initial viceroyalty of Dom Francisco de Almeida (1505–9), seizing Goa from the control of the Bijapur rulers in 1510. The Safavids, a Sufi order that had long nurtured political ambitions from its base at Ardabil, erupted onto the centre of Iranian political scene at much the same time as the first Portuguese fleets arrived off the west coast of India, and rapidly consolidated power under the charismatic figure of Shah Isma‘il I, whose aura of total invincibility began to wear thin only after the defeat he suffered at the hands of the Ottomans in the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514.4 The relative latecomers amongst these four then were the Mughals, a dynasty that derived from the great Central Asian conqueror Timur, and also in a more distant way from Chinggis Khan. This prestigious lineage was however not enough to guarantee success, and the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, had to spend long years as a peripatetic prince before he eventually managed in the 1520s to gain control over northern India. His son and successor Humayun also had a chequered career. The first of the Indian Mughals to have direct diplomatic contacts with the Portuguese (as we have seen in an earlier chapter), he seems in the 1530s to have nurtured ambitions in the direction of the two major maritime provinces—Gujarat to the west and Bengal to the east. His ambitions in neither case quite came to fruition, although he did for a time make successful inroads in both directions. Eventually, in the latter half of the 1530s, Humayun’s expansionary ambitions came undone as he was exiled on account of the rising power of the Afghans in northern India under Sher Shah Sur. Forced into retreat via first Sind, and then Afghanistan, Humayun found refuge for a time in Iran, under the rule of Shah Tahmasp, son of the Safavid dynasty’s charismatic founder. He accepted the difficult conditions that Tahmasp laid down for his support, and eventually returned to take power briefly once more in northern India, before dying in an accidental fall in 1556. This left his son, the 14-year-old Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, himself born when his father was a wandering 4See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (London: 1993), ch. 1.

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exile, to consolidate Mughal power in Hindustan. Akbar managed to achieve this in a quite remarkable fashion in the first fifteen years of his rule. Initially under the tutelage of the powerful Bairam Khan, then increasingly independent, he first defeated the autochthonous challenge of Himu Baqqal and the Afghans, and then set about systematically taming the power of the Rajputs in western India. A combined policy of carrot and stick, of marriage alliance and main force, meant that in the course of the 1560s he was able to bring many of the main Rajput princely houses within the alliance structure of the Mughal dispensation. By the early 1570s the two old targets that Humayun had been unable to conquer properly—namely, the maritime provinces of Gujarat and Bengal—had emerged once again as the next objects of Mughal expansion. The Mughal kingdom, at this point still a landlocked state in the plains of northern India, was about to enter the political scene of the Indian Ocean, and also transform itself from a fairly compact kingdom into a sprawling imperial state. Three major expansionary campaigns were to define this new profile, first the conquests in Gujarat and Bengal, and then, in the early 1590s, the reduction of the autonomous kingdom of Sind astride the lower valley of the river Indus. Even if a first campaign of conquest had been completed by the mid-1570s, in fact Bengal remained a problem for decades afterwards. The local rulers and princelings in that region, whether Afghans or belonging to older local lineages, continued to resist the Mughals with varying measures of success, so that campaign after campaign had to be mounted to ‘pacify’ the region in the early-seventeenth century. The Portuguese presence in the region had two broad foci, to the west in Satgaon and then Hughli, and to the east, around Chittagong and its satellite centre of Dianga. The latter centre lay beyond Mughal control until the 1660s, when they mounted a successful campaign there. But in Hughli, or Porto Pequeno, the Portuguese quickly succeeded in obtaining terms from the Mughals in the 1570s, and went on to maintain a prosperous trading operation both to other centres in the Bay of Bengal, and to centres such as the Maldives, Cochin, and Goa to the west. Still, since this particular Portuguese presence was in large measure autonomous of Goa (despite the fact that a captain, an ouvidor, and some other officials might be found

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there), the Mughals too tended to treat the residents of Hughli as somewhat distinct from their compatriots in western India. In western India, the prospect of Mughal expansion was viewed with increasing alarm in Portuguese official circles from at least the 1570s. The ‘natural’ limits of the expanding empire were not at all obvious to such official observers as the minor chronicler António Pinto Pereira, writing his História da Índia in the 1570s; rather, it was feared that the power vacuum created by the collapse of Vijayanagara power in the south-western Deccan would occasion ever further Mughal inroads into the region of Goa.5 Much has been written on Mughal– Portuguese relations during the reign of Akbar, particularly after the Mughal conquest of Gujarat in 1573. Three clear strands are visible in the historiography, even though they often appear intertwined. First, it is pointed out that the Mughal ports of Gujarat and Portuguesecontrolled ports like Goa and Hurmuz enjoyed important trade links in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and that an accommodation of interests was necessary if the coastal cáfilas along the west coast or the annual fleets to the Persian Gulf were to ply. Both parties had an interest in the matter, the Mughals because Surat was thus supplied with silver reales and other goods, the Portuguese Estado because it received customs revenue, and Gujarati textiles brought to Goa could be carried back to Europe. Portuguese private traders settled at Surat, Rander, Cambay, and other centres also formed a sort of pressure group, which acted on the Goa administration.6 A second aspect of relations stemmed from the hajj traffic in which the Mughal state interested itself. Here, the Portuguese, as cartaz-issuing authorities, and the Mughals, whose ships received the safe-conducts, had to enter into dealings (paralleling those between the Portuguese and the Deccan rulers for the same purpose). Such dealings were of course a source of conflict, as the Mughals evidently did not accept cartazes with good grace, and Portuguese officials for their part did not miss opportunities to squeeze benefits out of the 5António Pinto Pereira, História da Índia no tempo em que a governou o visorey D. Luís de Ataíde, ed. Manuel Marques Duarte (Lisbon: 1987). 6Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Matter of Alignment: Mughal Gujarat and the Iberian World in the Transition of 1580–81’, Mare Liberum, no. 9, 1995, pp. 461–79.

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arrangement. At the same time, an alignment with the realities of the balance of maritime power was necessary, if the hajj from Surat and other ports was to be maintained. A third aspect, perhaps the best known, can be traced to the late 1570s, with the beginnings of the Jesuit presence in Akbar’s court, and lent a religious dimension to the dealings. The Fathers hoped, in vain, to convert the ruler, or at least some of his prominent nobles. But they also served as a conduit between the authorities at Goa and the Mughal court, and were thus a convenient presence since the Estado da Índia and the Mughals did not maintain permanent diplomatic missions in each other’s domains. It is evident even from the bald summary presented above that relations between the Mughals and the Portuguese were potentially as much of conflict as of collaboration, since their basic interests were by no means congruent. We have to look no further than the Mongoliecae Legationis Commentarius of the Catalan Jesuit António Monserrate for a confirmation of this, for his account contains a detailed mention of the difficulties between Mughals and Portuguese in Gujarat and off the Konkan coast in the years 1581–2.7 Abu’l Fazl’s official Mughal chronicle Akbar Nāma is no less explicit on the question.8 The Mughal–Portuguese equation, then, was an ambiguous one, even if we take only Gujarat into account. Mughal expansion in other directions was not all that well received by the Portuguese either, as we see from Diogo do Couto’s account of Raja Man Singh’s expedition to the east in the 1590s, in Década XII of his huge chronicle Da Ásia. It is all the more disappointing therefore that the surviving section 7Henry

Hosten, ‘Mongoliecae Legationis Commentarius (by António Monserrate)’, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 3, 1914, pp. 513–704; S.N. Banerjee and John S. Hoyland, trans., The Commentary of Father Monserrate S.J. on his Journey to the Court of Akbar (London: 1922). 8Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. H. Beveridge, 3 vols (Calcutta: 1902–39), vol. III, pp. 409–10. Akbar’s anti-Portuguese posture at this time is also echoed in his letter to ‘Abdullah Khan Uzbek, for details of which see Mansura Haider, ‘Relations of Abdullah Khan Uzbeg with Akbar’, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, vol. 22, nos 3–4, 1982, pp. 313–31. A later letter to ‘Abdullah Khan, from 1586, again stressing the desire to expel the Portuguese, may be found in Abu’l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, vol. III, pp. 754–60. For another view, see M.N. Pearson, ‘The Estado da Índia and the Hajj’, Indica, vol. 26, nos 1–2, 1989, pp. 103–18, especially pp. 117–18.

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of his chronicle says so little about the major Mughal expansion of the years 1597 to 1600, namely the incorporation of large parts of the Deccan, and in particular the Ahmadnagar Sultanate.9 This is in evident contrast to the detailed attention Couto pays to Nizam Shahi affairs in earlier parts of Da Ásia; the struggle for succession at the death of Burhan Nizam Shah (r. 1508–54), the siege of Chaul in 1570–1, earlier Mughal threats to Ahmadnagar in the 1580s, and Portuguese–Nizam Shahi relations in the viceroyalty of Matias de Albuquerque (1591–7) all receiving their fair share of attention.10 The point to be made then is that while there is a certain retrospective inevitability about Mughal expansion, contemporaries did not wholly share this sense until the late sixteenth century. From our perspective, the history of the Mughal state from its very creation in the 1520s in northern India, to the early eighteenth century, is one of expansion in every direction from its core at the Ganges–Jamuna doāb, but especially southward. After the early 1590s, once Sind had been captured and the last gasp of organized resistance by Muzaffar Shah III snuffed out in Gujarat, the west remained relatively stable; on the other hand, the expansionary campaigns to the east came to a halt only in the 1660s, with the fall of Chittagong. As for the north and north-west, they continued to harbour potential for expansion into Shahjahan’s reign, as the unsuccessful campaign into Balkh shows. But it was truly in the south, first the Deccan, then the Karnatak, where the Mughals fought a war of attrition, expanding step by step from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, when the furthest southern limits were defined under war leaders like Zu’lfiqar Khan Nusrat Jang and Da’ud Khan Panni. It was equally here that Mughal expansion seemed most uncertain, as a host of 9Diogo do Couto, Da Ásia, Décadas IV–XII (Lisbon: 1974). Couto’s Década Duodécima is divided into five books, and a total of sixty-three chapters, all dealing with the viceroyalty of the Count of Vidigueira (1597–1600). Of these, Malabar affairs dominate by far, but four chapters are Mughal-related. Two of these (pp. 24–39) are devoted to the affairs of Man Singh (‘Manacinga’), and another two to the conversion of a prince of Badakhshan (‘Abadaxam’), son of Mirza Shahrukh, to Christianity by the Augustinians at Hurmuz (pp. 483–505). 10But also see such contemporary letters as those in British Library (henceforth BL), Additional Manuscripts 28,432, fos 13r-16v; Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Códice 1976, fos 117r-121v. The latter volume contains several other letters of interest for Mughal–Portuguese relations.

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challengers from Malik ‘Ambar in the early-seventeenth century to Shivaji Bhonsle, later in the same century, arose to halt the advancing tide. But we should also bear in mind that the Portuguese, who had arrived in India a quarter-century before Babur turned his attention to Hindustan, were uneasy observers of Mughal expansion from their coastal enclaves, and invented in this process the collective myth of the omnivorous triumvirate of giants of south and south-west Asia, the Great Turk, the Great Sufi, and the Great Mughal.11 In the first quarter of the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese initially established themselves at Cochin and Goa, the Vijayanagara state in peninsular south India had given them far less cause for anxiety, even if relations between Goa and Vijayanagara were not always amicable. From the era of Vasco da Gama and Afonso de Albuquerque, when the Portuguese king Dom Manuel had even dreamt of a marriage alliance between the royal houses of Portugal and Vijayanagara, things began to sour in later decades. The idea of using Vijayanagara as a counterweight to keep the ‘Adil Shahi rulers of Bijapur in check, and thus protect Goa’s internal frontier, was the principal focus of Albuquerque’s own geo-political conception of the Deccan, but other considerations were later to modify this. First, between 1520 and 1560, there was no very serious attempt by the sultans of Bijapur to retake Goa; this limited the extent of their conflict. Second, official Portuguese policies brought them into conflict with the trading settlements of the Kanara coast, which were controlled (or at least protected) by Vijayanagara. The ports of Bhatkal, Basrur, and Honawar, as also Mangalore, were seen as allied to the Mappila opponents of the Portuguese, who used every opportunity to harass their shipping. Third, the relative tolerance shown under Dom Manuel for Vijayanagara—which was after all a ‘Gentile’, that is, a Hindu, kingdom to them—did not survive into 11Elements

of this portrayal, in respect of the Ottomans and the Safavids, may already be found in João de Barros, Da Ásia, Décadas I–IV (Lisbon: 1973–4); and the legend of the ‘Grand Turk’ itself, of course, goes back at least to the fifteenth century; cf. Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: 2008). For one of Couto’s earliest uses of the term ‘Grão Mogor’, see Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, Diogo do Couto e a Década Oitava da Ásia, 2 vols (Lisbon: 1993), vol. I, p. 39, the context being a Mughal attack on Daman.

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later decades, when the Counter-Reformation spirit at Dom João III’s court prompted him, among other things, implicitly to permit the governor Martim Afonso de Sousa in the 1540s to essay an attack on the Tirupati temple.12 The attack did not come off, but the fact that it was contemplated—despite the awareness that the Vijayanagara kings were major patrons of this temple—suggests that the Estado da Índia cared little about hurt feelings at the inland court. The revival of Vijayanagara as a military power under Aravidu Rama Raya in the 1550s and early 1560s may have briefly caused the Portuguese to take pause. But they were quick to seize the opportunity, when in 1565, Rama Raya was defeated and killed by the Deccan sultans. Their ‘share’ of the spoils were the ports of Mangalore, Basrur, and Honawar, which they took in a series of attacks in 1568–9, thus assuring Goa of a stable supply of rice, and also giving them easy access to Kanara pepper.13 It was left to the Italian Filippo Sassetti in the mid-1580s to point to how the decline of Vijayanagara had been detrimental to the Portuguese at Goa; there is little evidence that many other contemporary Portuguese thought so, with the arguable exception of Diogo do Couto.14 Sassetti’s argument, like that of Couto later, was an economic one: Goa’s trade had, he felt, been crucially dependent on the market 12For the most detailed account, see Gaspar Correia, Lendas da Índia, ed. M. Lopes de Almeida (Oporto: 1975), vol. IV, pp. 299–305, 324–5; also the anonymous ‘Verdadeira enfformaçam das coisas da Índia (1544)’, in Rego, A. da Silva Rego, ed., As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, vol. III (Lisbon: 1963), pp. 199–234. The Tirupati affair is also referred to, oddly enough, by Henrique de Sousa Godinho in 1603, while discussing nominations for the viceroyalty of Portuguese India; cf. BL, Addn. 28,432, fo. 72r. 13Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500–1650 (Cambridge: 1990), pp. 120–35, 260–5. 14Couto, Década Oitava, vol. I, pp. 93–4; Vanni Bramanti, ed., Lettere da Vari Paesi, 1570–1588, di Filippo Sassetti (Milan: 1970), pp. 492–3. For general Portuguese official indifference to the fate of Vijayanagara, see José Wicki, ‘Duas relações sobre a situação da Índia Portuguesa nos anos 1568 e 1569’, Studia, no. 8, 1961, pp. 133–220; also the earlier letter from the viceroy D. Antão de Noronha to the King, 17th December 1566, in António da Silva Rego, ed., Documentação para a história das missões do padroado português do Oriente, vol. X (Lisbon: 1953), especially p. 161.

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for imports at Vijayanagara. Other arguments of a more political and military nature could be added. The fact that, in the late 1560s and early 1570s, the Portuguese settlements of the Konkan and Goa itself were attacked by the sultans of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur was evidently no coincidence; relieved of the pressure from Vijayanagara, these rulers could now turn their attention coastward, and also use the momentum and goodwill of their earlier anti-Vijayanagara alliance against the firangī enemy. True, when under siege from the land, Goa’s lifeline was now secure so long as the rice fleets from Kanara came in, but on balance the geo-political shifts of the 1560s seem to have been unfavourable to the Estado. It is however difficult to link these events directly to Mughal expansion into the Deccan, which, while it may have been contemplated as early as 1577, in fact began only in the 1590s. Conventional accounts link Akbar’s decision to expand into Ahmadnagar with the quarrels between the ruler Murtaza Nizam Shah (r. 1565–88) and his brother Burhan, which led the latter, after a brief sojourn in Bijapur, to take shelter with the Mughals, who incorporated him in 1584 into their own hierarchy of notability and made him a mansabdār-jāgīrdār. It seems likely however that the Mughals would have turned their attention to the Deccan sooner or later, once they had secured the conquests of Bengal and Gujarat, and consolidated their northern and north-western frontiers. Besides, it is useful to bear in mind that the succession struggle that ensued at Ahmadnagar on Murtaza’s assassination in 1588 only set the seal on a process of fragmentation that had deeper roots; the effort by the habashī (or Ethiopian) element in the state to assert its autonomy, the recourse by others— especially Deccani notables—to a form of Mahdawi millenarianism, in view of the approach of the Hijri year 1000: all of these point to a political situation fraught with tension.15 The reader of the two 15Mahdawi

movements in the region are conventionally traced to Sayyid Muhammad Jaunpuri (1443–1505), who was born in the Sharqi Sultanate of Jaunpur, and after performing the hajj in 1495–6 settled down in western India, where he attracted numerous followers and sympathizers in Gujarat, and Ahmadnagar, including—it is claimed—Sultan Mahmud Begarha of Gujarat and Ahmad Nizam Shah. He was however expelled from the area by Sultan Mahmud, and died (or was killed) in Afghanistan. For details, see S.A.A. Rizvi, ‘The Mahdavi Movement in

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great chronicles of the epoch, the Burhān-i Ma’asir of Sayyid ‘Ali bin ‘Azizullah Taba’taba’i, and the Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī of Muhammad Qasim Hindushah Astarabadi (better known by his nom de plume of Firishta), is left in no doubt as to this.16 Both writers were witness to the situation in the late 1580s, and Firishta left Ahmadnagar for Bijapur soon after Murtaza Nizam Shah’s death, apparently fearing the rise of the Mahdawis and its implications for Shi’as like himself. Burhan returned to Ahmadnagar from his Mughal exile as Burhan Nizam Shah II in 1591. He did so with Akbar’s blessings, but took the aid of Raji ‘Ali Khan Faruqi, ruler of Khandesh, rather than that of the Mughals themselves, in order to improve his own legitimacy once in Ahmadnagar. On his return, he displaced and imprisoned his own son Isma‘il, who had ruled for two years with the support of the Mahdawi leader Jamal Khan.17 However, Mughal expectations that he would be little more than a quisling once in power were soon denied. Abu’l Fazl, in his Akbar Nāma, expresses great disapproval of Burhan throughout his four-year reign: ‘When Burhan al-Mulk prevailed over Ahmadnagar, he should have increased his devotion and gratitude, and been an example of obedience to other rulers in that quarter. The wine of success robbed him of his senses, and he forgot the varied favours he had received from the Shahinshah. In India’, Medieval India Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 10–25; M.M. Saeed, The Sharqi Sultanate of Jaunpur: A Political and Cultural History (Karachi: 1972), pp. 284–92. 16See T. Wolseley Haig, The History of the Nizām Shāhī Kings of Ahmadnagar (Bombay: 1923), pp. 201–3; this is an abridged translation of Sayyid ‘Ali bin ‘Azizullah Taba’taba’i, Burhān-i Ma’asir (Persian edition by Sayyid Hashmi Faridabadi, [Hyderabad: 1936]). Taba’taba’i was first in Qutb Shahi and then in Nizam Shahi service; his work goes on to the negotiations between Chand Sultana and the Mughals, ending 27 Rajab 1004 ah (14 March 1596), when the author was probably present. For the Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī or Tārīkh-i Firishta, by Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah, see John Briggs, History of the Rise of Mahomedan Power in India, 4 vols (London: 1829), in which volume III deals with the five post-Bahmani Deccan Sultanates. A third, as yet unpublished, chronicle is the Tazkirat al-mulūk of Rafi‘-ud-Din Ibrahim Shirazi (1540/41–c.1620), written between 1608 and 1612, for a discussion of which see Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Tazkirat ul-Muluk by Rafi’uddin Ibrahim Shirazi: As a Source on the History of Akbar’s Reign’, Studies in History (N.S.), vol. 2, no. 1, 1980, pp. 41–55. 17Briggs, History of the Rise of Mahomedan Power in India, vol. III, pp. 168–71.

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his evil fortune he set himself to oppress the weak, and considered that his profit consisted in the injury of others.’18 To force him back to a more submissive posture, Abu’l Fazl’s brother Abu’l Faiz ‘Faizi’ was sent on a mission to the Deccan in the years 1591–3. He left a valuable account to which we shall turn presently.19 For reasons that await detailed analysis, the Mughals still held back militarily, though, but did not conceal their amusement at Burhan’s military failures—in respect of not only Bijapur but the Portuguese. One possible reason for Mughal reticence may have been the difficulties they faced in the early 1590s in Gujarat, where Muzaffar Shah once more led a resurgence of local chiefs, including those of Jamnagar, Junagarh, Sorath, and Kacch. Akbar’s foster-brother Mirza ‘Aziz Koka, newly appointed sūbadār of Gujarat, set about crushing this move in a military action that endured from 1591 until well into 1592. In the next year, 1593, Mirza Koka began to threaten the Portuguese settlements in Gujarat, in particular Diu. Thereafter, apparently disgruntled with the lack of favour shown him by the Mughal court despite his military success, he himself began to display rebellious tendencies, and eventually embarked in a Mughal pilgrim ship for the hajj, returning only in 1594.20 This was the very year when Burhan Nizam Shah II entered into headlong conflict with the Portuguese over a fortress he had built on a tongue of land, overlooking their settlement of Chaul in the Deccan. The Persian chronicler Muhammad Qasim Firishta, in his near-contemporary chronicle, describes matters as follows: In the year ah 1001 [ad 1592–3], Burhan Nizam Shah marched his army against the Portuguese of Rewadanda; and despatching a large force to the 18Abu’l

Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, p. 909. Sherwani, History of the Qutb Shāhī Dynasty (New Delhi: 1974), pp. 352–3. Also see Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak, Inshā’-yi Faizī, ed. A.D. Arshad (Lahore: 1973), pp. 95, 101–3, passim. An extensive discussion of this text may be found in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Place in the Sun: Travels with Faizī in the Deccan, 1591–93’, in François Grimal, ed., Les sources et le temps/ Sources and Time: A Colloquium (Pondicherry: 2001), pp. 265–307. 20Abu’l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, pp. 979–82, 1006; ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh, trans. George S.A. Ranking, W.H. Lowe, and T.W. Haig. 3 vols (Calcutta: 1884–1925), vol. II, pp. 400–1, 412. 19H.K.

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sea-port of Chaul, ordered that a fort should be built to prevent the entrance of the Portuguese into the harbour of Rewadanda, and this fort he called Korla. The Portuguese sailing during the night effected their escape, but they returned with reinforcements from many other ports which had also fallen into their hands (...). Burhan Nizam Shah now sent a body of about four thousand men, under Farhad Khan, to reinforce Korla; and as other troops were expected from Daman and Bassein, he appointed one Bahadur Khan Gilani, at the head of all the foreign troops, governor of the fortress of Korla, to blockade Rewadanda.21

The chronicler goes on to describe how the Ahmadnagar forces nearly got the Portuguese to capitulate; however, the ‘tyranny’ of Burhan caused many of his commanders to desist from taking the enterprise to its conclusion. The Portuguese meanwhile arrived in a fleet, carried out a landing, and after a prolonged fight in which 12,000 of the Ahmadnagar forces were killed, ‘reduced the fort to ashes’. This event, according to Portuguese sources, took place in early September 1594; Burhan himself died on 18 April 1595 (13 Sha‘ban 1003 ah). Thus far Firishta, who—in keeping with his disapproval of this particular monarch—does not tell us what prompted Burhan to act in such a manner and so contravene the agreement that his brother Murtaza and the Portuguese had arrived at after the earlier siege of Chaul in the 1570s. Nor is the Portuguese writer Diogo do Couto, whose chronicle contains a quite detailed description of these events, much more helpful than Firishta in explaining what prompted the ‘Melique’ (i.e. Malik, the title by which he refers to Burhan and the Nizam Shahs in general), to build the fortress of the ‘Morro’ (the hill-top: referring here to Korla).22 But whatever be the reasons for the act, there is little doubt that the episode of the ‘Morro’ precipitated a major crisis, leading eventually to serious Mughal inroads into the Ahmadnagar Sultanate by about 1600. 21Firishta, in Briggs, History of the Rise of Mahomedan Power, vol. III, pp. 172–3 (proper names have been modernized). For Mughal responses to Burhan’s defeat, see Abu’l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, pp. 1023–5. 22Couto, Década XI, pp. 164–73; also see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Life and Actions of Mathias de Albuquerque’ (1547–1609): A Portuguese Source for Deccan History’, Portuguese Studies, vol. 11, 1995, pp. 62–77.

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Although it would take them another three decades to complete the task of conquest, the years between 1593 and the death of Akbar in 1605 mark a decisive stage in the changing relations between the Mughals and the Deccan. This takes us to the situation with regard to the other major Deccan Sultanate, namely Bijapur, in these years under the rule of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II (r. 1580–1627). Ibrahim had come to power after the controversial reign of ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah, who had entertained complex relations with the Portuguese. Initially, in the 1560s, he seemed rather favourably inclined to Goa, and had even encouraged a mission to his own court from the archbishop, Dom Gaspar Pereira.23 But later in the same decade, relations began to sour. Eventually, ‘Ali had even undertaken an ambitious—if unsuccessful—campaign against the Portuguese, mounting an attack on Goa that posed a serious threat to the Portuguese for a time. However, by the time of his assassination, and Ibrahim’s accession, it would have seemed clear to the most powerful elements in the Bijapur polity that the real threats came from the north rather than from the west. Residual Portuguese ambitions had more or less abated by then, and with the death of ‘Ali bin Yusuf ‘Adil Khan, the exiled son of Bijapur’s founder who had sought refuge in Goa, even this element of friction no longer persisted. On the other hand, relations with the Mughals were quite another matter. For while the Mughal claim by the 1580s was that the whole of the Deccan fell under their suzerainty, the rulers of neither Bijapur nor Golkonda could countenance such a claim. In their titulature, their coinage, and other claims, they obviously saw themselves as independent (if threatened) rulers from the Mughals until at least the 1630s. Besides, from the early-sixteenth century there was the Safavid connection, and the fact that both Bijapur and Golkonda had periodically recognized in the Safavids a form of ‘ritual suzerainty’, often inserting the names of the rulers of Iran for example into the Friday prayers in their capital cities. The flow of Iranian migrants into the Deccan in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and the fact that these migrants constituted a significant part 23Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Palavras do Idalcão: Um encontro curioso em Bijapur

no ano de 1561’, Cadernos do Noroeste, vol. 15, nos 1–2, 2001, pp. 513–24.

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of the élite in both Bijapur and Golkonda, only served to strengthen these ties. In correspondence with the ruler of Iran, the Bijapur ruler could write as late as 1613: This letter is from the humblest slave Ibrahim to the exalted emperor Shah ‘Abbas. My forefathers had always [had] great hopes in His Majesty’s ancestors’ love and friendship and had banked on them. I, on my part, would do no better than to revive and strengthen those ties. The Deccan territories form as much a part of the Safavid empire as the provinces of ‘Iraq, Fars, Khurasan, and Azarbaijan. Accordingly, the names of the Safavid monarchs have been recited in the [Friday] sermons and will continue to be recited in future. Our forefathers were appointed to rule over these territories and protect them, by His Majesty’s ancestors. So our function is to rule the countries on His Majesty’s behalf and defend them against foreign aggression.24

The manifest purpose of these letters was to complain about the ‘ruler of Agra and Delhi’, as the Mughal monarch is slightingly referred to. The project that is proposed, namely that the Safavids should attack the Mughals from the west (in the region of Qandahar), to divert them from attacks on the south, need not be taken too seriously. But it is clear that the Bijapur sultan, like his counterpart in Golkonda, hoped in some way to counterbalance the Mughal superpower by appeals to a countervailing threat. Here then is a clue to how the Safavids were perceived from the viewpoint of the Deccan. It was clear of course that no military alliance was really possible that might straddle the distance between Chaul and Dabhol, and the ports of Fars, but other forms of real and symbolic affinity tied the predominantly Shi‘i sultans of the Deccan to Iran rather than to the Sunni Mughals who were gradually encroaching upon them from the north. 24Translated in Nazir Ahmad, ‘Letters of the Rulers of the Deccan to Shah ‘Abbas of Iran’, Medieval India: A Miscellany, vol. 1, 1969, pp. 280–300; text in Nazir Ahmad, ‘Adil Shahi Diplomatic Missions to the Court of Shah Abbas’, Islamic Culture, vol. 43, no. 2, 1969, pp. 143–61. For a general discussion, also see M.A. Nayeem, External Relations of the Bijapur Kingdom (1489–1686 AD): A Study in Diplomatic History (Hyderabad: 1974).

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Faizi’s Mission to the Deccan, 1591–1593 A valuable account from these years in order to understand the Mughal perspective on matters is provided to us by the reports of the Mughal poet-laureate, Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak, better known as Faizi Fayyazi. The brother of the great chronicler and ideologue Abu’l Fazl, Faizi was personally close to Akbar himself, and thus represents the viewpoint of the Mughal court with a certain faithfulness, while also bringing back crucial empirical information on matters in the Deccan for the benefit of his royal master. His despatch to the Deccan in 1591 was, however, neither in the capacity of Sunni Muslim (which he may not really have been), nor of poet (which he most certainly was), but as an intimate of Akbar. He was thus charged to size up the situation in respect of the area of Khandesh (more or less a Mughal protectorate by then), as also more particularly in Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golkonda, regions that had a rather more ambiguous political position. It is this rather delicate situation, of contested sovereignties, that Faizi found himself embroiled in. Added to this was the fact that the ruler of Ahmadnagar, Burhan Nizam Shah, had—as noted above—spent some years in the Mughal court as an exile, and had returned to take charge as sultan from a previous situation as a mere Mughal subordinate.25 This, then, is how Abu’l Fazl puts it in his Akbar Nāma: the pressing need was to bring around the ‘somnolent one [Burhan] and the other rulers of that quarter. If they listened and apologized, he [Akbar] would withhold his hand from retribution. Otherwise a victorious army would be appointed, and chastisement would be inflicted.’26 Faizi thus left from Lahore on his travels to the Deccan on 24 August 1591 (the Hijri month of Shawwal 999), and returned to the court in May 1593, after an absence of a year and three-quarters.27 25For

a general reconsideration of Mughal relations with the area, see M. Siraj Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan: Political Relations with Ahmadnagar Kingdom (Delhi: 2007). 26Abu’l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, p. 909. 27Badayuni, Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh (English trans.), vol. II, pp. 389–90, mentions that four envoys were sent out: Faizi to Asir and Burhanpur, Amin-ud-Din to Ahmadnagar, Mir Muhammad Amin to Bijapur, and Mir Munir to Golkonda.

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In this time he set down a number of reports for Akbar that touch on a diversity of subjects, ranging from the situation in crucial fortresses on the route, to gossip concerning the Safavid political situation gathered from fresh migrants to the Deccan, to an appraisal of the Deccan political scene itself. He also looked into the matter of persons in the Deccan, whether poets, writers or others, who could eventually be recruited into Mughal service, thus acting as a sort of ‘talent scout’. Yet, Faizi’s embassy to the Deccan was not considered a success from a diplomatic perspective, a fact which even his devoted brother Abu’l Fazl implicitly admits. Writing in the Akbar Nāma, he notes: ‘On the 28th [Ardibihisht] the standard of the seekers after knowledge, the malik ush-shu‘arā’ Shaikh Faizi, returned from the Deccan, and after an absence of 1 year, 8 months, 14 days, did homage. He was exalted by various favours. He had gone on an embassy. Burhan in his arrogance and self-will had not listened to his counsels. He had not sent fitting presents and had prepared the materials for his own injury. Raji ‘Ali Khan had to some extent listened to his commands, and had sent his daughter with choice bridal gifts for the wooing of the Prince Royal.’28 The unofficial Mughal chronicler Badayuni, who is much less sympathetic to Faizi, for his part notes that in Muharram 1002, four months after Faizi’s return, ‘the other ambassadors arrived from the rulers of the Dakhin having succeeded in their negotiations; and paid their respects. And since Burhan-al-Mulk had not sent any acceptable present, on the 21st of Muharram, the Emperor appointed the Prince Daniyal to this service, as wakīl to the Khan-i Khanan (...) and other amīrs with 70,000 specially assigned troops.’29 A snide tone is implicit: the other ambassadors had ‘succeeded’, ergo only Faizi had failed. The failure consisted above all in the fact that Faizi was unable to persuade Burhan Nizam Shah to declare unambiguously that he was a vassal or subordinate of the Mughals, and that he was willing to pay regular tribute (or peshkash) to his powerful northern neighbours. In other words, in comparison to the Faruqi ruler of Khandesh, who received Faizi with total self-abnegation, the Nizam Shah still showed signs that he saw himself as capable of being autonomous, partly 28Abu’l

Fazl, Akbar Nāma, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, p. 982. Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh (English trans.), vol. II, pp. 402–3.

29Badayuni,

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through the privileged relations that he had with the Safavids. The final message to be derived from Faizi’s reports was therefore that the Mughals had no real recourse left but military conquest. Yet, to leave matters at this is to reduce a rich series of materials to a rather simple one-point programme. For Faizi was able in four of his six reports to present a series of striking vignettes of various aspects of the Deccan, and also of the political situation in Iran. These range from simple descriptions of the towns through which he passed, to evaluations of the court politics of the Deccan sultanates, that are all quite valuable. We may take, by way of example, his brief but evocative description of Burhanpur, in his view no more than a small town (baghāyat tang), but full of gardens and greenery (būstān). All cultivable land was made use of, Faizi notes, and figs (injīr) of high quality were to be found there, while firangī melons (papayas) were to be found hanging in bunches of twenty or thirty on the trunks of trees. Bananas in plenty were also to be found, while on the other hand Indian melons were imported into the area. The wind was a little hot in the month that he visited; in the day, a single layered garment was sufficient, and at night a light additional tunic was necessary. As for the water, he found it to be different from that in the neighbouring towns.30 No doubt Akbar and his sons could have found such information of interest when planning their future military campaigns in the area, since they eventually used Burhanpur as a place of residence. The first of Faizi’s reports, written largely while he is in Mughal territory, has its share of blunt condemnations, and recommendations of officials that he encountered; we do not know to what extent these ideas were implemented at the court, and imperial servants transferred, promoted, or chastised as a consequence. But the second report already moves away from such a tone and content. Instead, we get the following appreciation of the affairs of Ahmadnagar, from a time when Faizi had already taken up temporary residence in that city. Burhan Nizam-al-Mulk is one of those who has been raised from the dust by Your Excellency, and who has been reared on your munificence. It is four 30Abu’l

Faiz, Inshā’-yi Faizī, p. 97.

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months that he has entered the jāgīr of ‘Adil Khan in a part that is 25 kos from Ahmadnagar on the bank of the river Nahalwada or Bhima, a big river that separates them. And he has built two mud fortresses in the middle of the latter’s territory. ‘Adil Khan is still sitting in the fort of Bijapur, and has sent his army of 14,000 horsemen. There are skirmishes every day, and a large number of people are being slain on both sides.

Neither ruler of the Deccan is given the dignity of the title of ‘Shah’, as we note, and their territories are treated throughout as mere jāgīrs, revenue-assignments deriving from the Mughals. Further, Faizi notes that the uncle of Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk (not ‘Nizam Shah’, we may stress again), a certain Baqir, who had been living in poverty in Bijapur, had been now promoted by the ‘Adil Khan (not ‘Shah’) and sent against him with an army. The idea was to have him take over Ahmadnagar, and the latter had been tempted by this. Meanwhile, Raji ‘Ali Khan Faruqi had sent men to both the uncle and nephew, urging them to make peace. So it was expected that truce would be declared, but for the moment war was still continuing. Faizi expresses great annoyance with the situation. For, when Burhan had left Ahmadnagar on his Bijapur campaign, he had with great humility expressed his own sense of vulnerability and declared that he was preparing the peshkash for the Mughals. Faizi had since tried to persuade him to expedite matters, but he kept putting things off. Four months had passed thus, even though Faizi had met him twice in that connection. The Mughal envoy notes how distressed he was to find himself in the city of Ahmadnagar, full of mischief and commotion (shor-o-sharr), inhabited by sedition-mongers and ruffians (fitnasāzān wa aubāshān). He had the impression of wasting his time, even though the wretched Burhan continued to write regularly to Faizi, beseeching him to prevent Akbar’s wrath. And each time, in his letters, he insisted he would return in a few days. Faizi adds: ‘Since Burhan is your disciple (tarbīyat karda), and has grown under your kind eye, I hope he will always remain on the correct path, and that his conduct will be acceptable to Your Excellency, and that it will all end well for him.’31 31Abu’l

Faiz, Inshā’-yi Faizī, p. 103.

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A description of the city of Ahmadnagar now follows. Faizi notes that the city was built by the father of Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri, grandfather of Burhan Nizam Shah (himself son of Husain, son of Burhan, son of Ahmad). This last Ahmad had built a stone fort at four or five bowshots’ distance from the city, and the fort was the main seat of the ruler (hākim). Around the fort was a maidān, and open fields. The city was rectangular, and there were no city walls. At a distance of two kos was a lake, and a canal had been excavated to bring water to the city from there, and it was thus distributed to households. Some houses had tanks, others used indifferent wellwater. The Mughal envoy notes that at the time that the late ruler Murtaza Nizam-ul-Mulk had gone mad, a certain Salabat Khan had built a garden for him with tall cypress trees outside the town. In the middle of it was a covered pond or hauz, but Faizi had not yet seen it. The air was pleasant in the area, but in certain months a quilt was necessary. Amongst the fruits, good melons were not to be found; rather they were sour and lacking in taste. Of all the fruits, the figs were not bad; grapes were in abundance; other fruits were available in modest quantities. Pineapples were imported in quantities from nearby, and they were not bereft of taste. Bananas and apples (amritfal) were to be had as well, and the mangoes too met with his approval. Roses were to be found only with difficulty, and those he had seen lacked fragrance. On the other hand, champa and other Indian flowers were prolific. Sandal trees were to be seen, and an abundance of white pepper (filfil) too. Faizi praises the good goldsmiths of the area, and its unparalleled weavers. In general, says, very high-quality cloth was made in the Deccan. Patan and Daulatabad are centres singled out. Clearly, the conquest of the area could bring major economic benefits to the Mughals. But contrasted to this rather positive situation in terms of climate and products is the quite disastrous political ambience: In the last few years, there were massacres (qatl-i ‘āmm) twice in this city [Ahmadnagar], in the course of which not a single person from abroad (mardum-i wilāyat) was left alive. The killing spree lasted for three days. Good people like the learned men and traders, who had assembled here in this period, were all slain, and their houses were destroyed. And at another

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time, after the coming of Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk, a great plunder and loot was carried out with respect to the foreigners (gharībān). Whosoever had any goods was killed or wounded; the kith and kin of Shaikh Munawwar were ruined in this process, and were wounded. They are so ashamed that they do not dare come out of their houses. He expects favours from you. Lahori Afghan merchants too were plundered in large measure, and some of the servants of Salima Sultan Begam too were looted. How can the things plundered by these ruffians in this commotion be recovered?

These thugs, or aubāshān, were still roaming the streets freely, a sign of how matters needed to be taken in hand in Ahmadnagar. Having made it clear that Ahmadnagar under Nizam Shahi rule is a den of iniquity, Faizi turns his attention to Ibrahim ‘Adil Khan, the hākim (governor) of Bijapur, and now some twenty-two years of age. He notes that in the early part of his reign, power had been exercised by a certain Dilawar Khan Habashi, a Sunni, but that he had then fled to the camp of Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk. In a later section of the report, we learn more details to the effect that Dilawar Khan Habashi had controlled Bijapur for ten to twelve years, to the point that the ‘Adil Khan did not even drink water without his approval, and rarely stirred out. However, his misbehaviour had made the people of Bijapur miserable. Hence, the previous year, a large number of people had assembled there to kill him, with the connivance of the ‘Adil Khan himself. It was then that Dilawar Khan had fled to join Nizam-ul-Mulk. In the meanwhile, ‘Adil Khan invited him back, and he returned, believing he would be well treated. Instead, when he reached his eyes were gouged out and his effects confiscated. His son, Muhammad Khan, was also wooed by ‘Adil Khan, but when this failed he too was blinded. Clearly, things in Bijapur were on the decline too. As for Golkonda, its ruler Muhammad Quli Qutb-ulMulk was a Shi‘a who had made a new city called Bhagnagar, named after a certain Bhagmati, a hardened whore and his old mistress (fāhisha-i kuhna wa ma‘shūqa-i qadīm), from which fact one could draw one’s own conclusions.32 The territories of the Deccan were thus 32For a comment on this legend, and Faizi’s recounting of it, see Sherwani, History of the Qutb Shāhī Dynasty, pp. 339–48.

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broadly divided, in Faizi’s view, into the jāgīrs of these three men, and also some other rājās who coexisted in a politic fashion (mubassirāna). Faizi claims that he has observed them carefully, and promises a fuller report at a later date. Yet his claims for Mughal suzerainty continue to colour every part of the account. ‘This territory is part of the well-protected territories (mamālik-i mahrūsa)’, he writes, calling on Akbar to visit it once, since the mere sound of the arrival of Akbar will have a positive effect on these recalcitrant elements. Yet, Faizi was also keen to use his time in Ahmadnagar to look beyond the politics of the sultanates of the Deccan, and one of his primary tasks was to gather information on the situation in Iran. It turned out that in that particular year, six ships had arrived from Hurmuz on the Konkan coast; a certain Khwaja Mu‘ina’i, who was a merchant-prince (‘umdat ut-tujjār), had made the twenty-four-day voyage with his friends, bringing with him two hundred ‘Iraqi horses in three ships. However, it turned out that the Portuguese—here simply termed the firangīs—had a rule that ships with horses were taken first to Goa, where they picked out the ones they wanted. Only then could the ships go on to the port of Chaul, which was in the jāgīr of Nizamul-Mulk.33 Faizi now notes that some traders and some of the qizilbāsh (‘red-cap’ Turkoman military specialists) in Safavid service, on account of the turbulence in ‘Iraq and Fars, had left for the Mughal domains, with the intention of ‘kissing the threshold’ of Akbar. The chief of them was a certain Husain Quli Afshar, a brave young man, and one who in the time of Shah Tahmasp had held the governorship of some districts around Isfahan. Another important man was Husain Beg, lashkar-nawīs, who at the time when Ya‘qub Khan had been powerful in Iran had been a particular friend of his, and held a high position in the province of Fars. But after the latter’s death (on which more below), he too had been forced to leave. These two men had come with their followers and were temporarily staying in the port of Chaul, pondering their future. They had written to Faizi, and he had replied to both by a single letter, of which he sent a copy to Akbar. 33Goa

is misread in the edited text as ‘Kuda’, and Chaul as ‘Jival’. Also see the somewhat confusing account in Iqtidar Hussain Siddiqui, ‘Inshā’-i-Faizī: A Source of Information on Akbar’s Reign’, in Iqtidar Alam Khan, ed., Akbar and His Age (Delhi: 1999).

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Amongst the other people on the ship was a certain Hamza Hasan Beg, a relative of the great Mughal general ‘Abdul Rahim Khan-i Khanan, who hence planned to go to Thatta in Sind, where ‘Abdul Rahim was. Still another migrant was Haji Ibrahim who was a former rikābdār (cupbearer) of Shah Tahmasp. There was also Haji Khusrau, a former personal slave of Shah Tahmasp, and well known in the Mughal court. Some of these ships’ passengers had arrived by and by in Ahmadnagar, and given Faizi information concerning the current situation in ‘Iraq, Fars, and Rum. This was ‘hot’ gossip indeed, and he hence hastened to retail it to his master, the emperor. Faizi thus writes: Shah ‘Abbas has attained twenty years of age, and is aflame with the fire of youth. His horoscope and those of his two brothers, Abu Talib Mirza and Tahmasp Mirza, are hereby enclosed for your consideration. The courtastrologers will tell you the beginning and the end of the fate of these three. Shah ‘Abbas is fond of hunting, polo (chaugān), shooting, and javelinthrowing (neza-bāzī). He is keen on falconry. Last year, he fell down twice from his horse while javelin-throwing, once in Shiraz and the second time in Isfahan. Both times, his knee was severely injured. He is a brave man, and proud of himself (ghairat-mand), and even if he is prey to the whims and passions of royal youth, he is still sober, and intelligent. He has still not taken over the reins of governance, and the fiscal and administrative affairs are so far left to the officials. Farhad Khan is his chief secretary (wakīl-i mutlaq), and his constant companion, and Hatim Beg Urdubadi, who is very shrewd and economical, is the wazīr.

The time had come, writes Faizi, when the shah would awake from his stupor and emerge from the intoxication of youth. This was therefore a dangerous moment for his rivals and neighbours. He was now very concerned that most of the lands of Khorasan had been lost on account of his carelessness and was making efforts for their recovery.34 The previous year he had wanted to attack Khorasan; but 34On the siege and capture of Herat by Shaibani or Uzbek forces in 1587–8, see Robert D. McChesney, ‘The Conquest of Herat 995–6/1587–8: Sources for the Study of Safavid/Qizilbash–Shibanid/Uzbak Relations’, in Jean Calmard, ed., Études Safavides (Paris and Tehran: 1993), pp. 69–107.

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when he reached Rayy, plague broke out, and some of his troops had bubos on their sides, others on their thighs, the size of a gram. Shah ‘Abbas himself had fallen ill with fever at the time and rushed back to Qazwin.35 Thereupon, Farhad Khan had come to Khorasan with some notables, recaptured some of the towns, and arrived in the vicinity of Mashhad, killing several thousand Uzbeks. The son of the Shaibani ruler, ‘Abdullah Khan, had then made a flanking attack from Herat, and Farhad Khan had retreated to Qazwin. Faizi notes that the traders from Iran had clearly mentioned that ‘Abdullah Khan’s son only had 5000–6000 men, and that if Farhad Khan had stood his ground, he would have carried the day; the implication is that the Safavid military capability left much to be desired. The role of astrologers in determining Safavid policy is also noted: they had prevented the shah, the previous year, from launching any expedition in Khorasan, but in the current year they had suggested he could lead the army, and even predicted he would emerge victorious. Faizi also makes it a point to provide a detailed estimate of the armies of the shah with whom he is planning to make the attack on Khorasan. The total force is estimated at well over 100,000 men, with details of the various commanders (who are often provincial governors), the central forces (lashkar-i khāssa) of about 30,000, as well as the slave forces directly under the command of the shah, numbering about 10,000.36 Yet it seems that the Safavid realm was riven with internal dissension. For example, Daulat Yar Kurd, who had been sent to the area between Tabriz and Qazwin with 20,000 men, had rebelled. The shah had then sent Husain Khan, the governor of Qom, with 15,000 men to quell him; Husain Khan had however been defeated, and it was thought that when the shah left for his campaign in Khorasan, Daulat Yar would be able to advance as far as Qazwin. In the face of this threat, the shah had attacked him and persuaded some of Daulat Yar’s brothers to defect. Because of this reverse, Daulat Yar had surrendered and appeared before the shah, expecting clemency. 35On the peripatetic life of Shah ‘Abbas in this epoch and later, see Charles Melville, ‘From Qars to Qandahar: The Itineraries of Shah ‘Abbas I (995–1038/1587–1629)’, in Calmard, ed., Études Safavides, pp. 195–224. 36On this subject, also see Masashi Haneda, Le Chāh et les Qizilbāš: Le système militaire safavide (Berlin: 1987).

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None was forthcoming. In fact, the shah kept him in a cage (sandūq), had him taken to Qazwin, and burnt him alive there. The ferocity of Shah ‘Abbas is thus a recurring theme in these letters. It is claimed that he even threatened to harm some Uzbek traders in Yazd, only relenting when the Uzbeks said that if they were harmed, Iranian traders would face similar consequences in Shaibani territories. Besides, it was said that in the previous year Shah ‘Abbas, using a hot iron, had blinded his brothers Tahmasp Mirza and Mirza Abu Talib, and also Isma‘il Mirza as well as the son of Hamza Mirza. The last of these was so young that he had died as a consequence. Shah ‘Abbas himself had two sons, one Mirza Safi, the other Mirza Haidar, both born the previous year. The shah’s father, Sultan Muhammad, was blind and lived in the shah’s camp, in a separate tent. Arrangements had been made for his food and drink; he occupied himself with various forms of entertainment. But most significant of all was the case of a certain Ya‘qub Khan, briefly mentioned above. Faizi reports that the year before last, Yaktash Khan, the governor of Kirman and Yazd, who had a considerable force at his command, had revolted against the shah. Ya‘qub Khan Zu’l-qadr, the governor of Shiraz, had been sent by the shah to chastise him; he had killed Yaktash in the fight that followed, and a huge amount of property and goods fell into the hands of Zu’l-qadr, which had rather turned his head. He used to claim to be a ‘product of Shah Tahmasp’ (man az Shah Tahmāsp hāsil shuda am), and even stated that he would one day be ruler of Iran. In pursuit of this idea, in Shiraz, near the tomb of Shaikh Sa‘di, he had illegally built a fort. The shah sent for him repeatedly from Isfahan and asked him to deposit the goods he had gathered, but he refused. The shah gathered 12,000 men and attacked Shiraz; but Zu’l-qadr now went to Istakhar, where he enclosed himself within the fort with 400 men. Shah ‘Abbas besieged him there for four months, and he would say regretfully to his companions that he had had no better servant than Ya‘qub Khan, but that his enemies had frightened and misled him. This news reached Ya‘qub Khan, so that at last he left the fort under the influence of the seduction and soft words (afsūn wa afsāna) of the shah and was for a time forgiven by ‘Abbas. Yet rumours persisted that he was planning to kill the shah, and one day while hunting

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‘Abbas, pretending affection, passed his hand over Ya‘qub Khan’s shoulder and felt a coat of mail. Taking this as a sign of sedition, he claimed he had a headache and returned to the city, abandoning the hunt. The next day he summoned Ya‘qub Khan before the audience hall (dīwān-khāna) with all his important servants. It so happened that over those very days a group of rope-makers had asked the shah to show him their skill with rope-play. The shah seated Ya‘qub Khan by his side, jokingly took a stick in his hand, and said: ‘Kingship is coming to Ya‘qub Khan. He shall be the king, and we his servant’ (Shāhī ba Ya‘qūb Khān mīrasad. Īshān Shāh bāshan wa mā naukar-i ān). He then said aloud, ‘Shah Ya‘qub Khan issued the order that such-and-such a servant should be killed with a rope.’ Thereupon one of Ya‘qub’s servants was strangled. Thereafter the supporters of Ya‘qub Khan were killed before his very eyes one after another, until at last it was his own turn. He was hung up by a rope, his body was put to the rack (dar shikanja kardan), and after torture his flesh was fed in morsels to dogs (luqma-i sagān sākhtand).37 Faizi leaves us in little doubt that he considers this an act of quite gratuitous cruelty, explaining why men such as Husain Beg (mentioned above) had decided out of disgust to leave Iran for India. In view of all this, it is clear that Faizi believed that the Mughal court could quite easily recruit the best talent from Iran. Thus, amongst the scholars (dānishmand) of ‘Iraq and Fars was a certain Mir Taqi-ud-Din Muhammad, famous under the name of Taqiya Nasaba. In that country he was unmatched, and he was a disciple of the great Mir Fathullah Shirazi, from whom Faizi had heard great praise of him. It was believed that Mir Taqi-ud-Din was keen to come to the Mughal court but lacked the means for the voyage; so Faizi suggests that Akbar should issue a farmān with some money for him, and that this will persuade him to make the trip. Other names are also mentioned, such as that of the son of the qāzī of Hamadan (a 37The episode of Ya‘qub Khan is dealt with at some length in Sholeh A. Quinn, Historical Writing During the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City: 2000). Cf. this description with the slightly later suppression of the Nuqtawis by Shah ‘Abbas, described in Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, Mass.: 2002), pp. 3–6, 103–7.

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certain Ibrahim) who was a great scholar, or of Shaikh Baha-ud-Din Isfahani resident in the Safavid capital, or the celebrated Chalpai Beg who had been educated in Shiraz and Qazwin.38 Besides, there were the Iranian savants in Ahmadnagar, who included two poets, Malik Qomi and Mulla Zuhuri, both of whom Faizi believed should be invited to the Mughal court.39 During all of his stay in the Deccan, Faizi continued to gather intelligence on the Safavids. In a later report he notes that letters from the Hurmuz traders to those in Ahmadnagar had recently arrived, and that he had managed to read some of them. These letters claimed that Shah ‘Abbas had first gone to Gilan, and after quelling some rebels there had set out for Khorasan, accompanied by 150,000 horsemen and foot-soldiers. There was a great battle (jang-i ‘azīm), and the shah had recaptured Mashhad and Herat from the Uzbeks. The letters stated that the Uzbeks had fled the battlefield; rivers of their blood were being spilt by the Qizilbash army of Iran. Besides, the great merchant (saudāgar-i buzurg) Khwaja Baha-ud-Din had written from Chaul, stating that the captain (nākhudā) of a ship which was on its way from Hurmuz to Goa had stopped off at Chaul on some pretext and given him the latest news from Iran. He had learnt that the shah had taken Khorasan, and had decided to send an envoy with sixty ‘Iraqi horses, expensive textiles, and a large quantity of goods, to Akbar. The envoy (īlchī) was still in Hurmuz, and was about to leave for the Mughal court via Sind. Another letter (khatt-i dīgar) claims that a hundred severed heads of Uzbeks and a hundred live Uzbek slaves were being sent to the Mughals. Rather extravagantly, Faizi confidently asserts that in his letters Shah ‘Abbas humbly states that he is a mere ‘devotee’ (mukhlis) of the Mughal emperor who is hoping for Akbar’s kind attention. He even claims that the Safavids admit freely that their fortune and state (daulat dar khāndān-i safawī) is due to the Mughals (īn dūdmān-i ‘ālī), as is evident from the pages 38On

the issue of the migration of Iranian savants to Mughal India, see the details in Ahmad Golchin-i Ma‘ani, Kārwān-i Hind (The Caravan of India: On Life and Works of the Poets of Safavid Era Emigrated to India), 2 vols (Mashhad: 1990). 39Both poets are later to be found in Bijapur, as we see from Asad Beg’s account. For their work, see M. ‘Abdul Ghani, A History of Persian Language and Literature at the Mughal Court, 3 vols (Allahabad: 1929–30), vol. II, pp. 181–219.

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of history.40 Here, Faizi’s imperial rhetoric rather exceeds itself, but this need not detract from the significance of certain other parts of his account. Iran and the Iranian world thus feature quite prominently in Faizi’s account. The Portuguese are a more discreet presence, even though we have seen them briefly mentioned above in the context of the horse trade. One anecdote does however feature a Portuguese character. It emerges that Faizi had heard a story of a firangī physician called Bajarz (perhaps Borges), who had been invited to Ahmadnagar in the earlysixteenth century by Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri, and was employed by him as a confidant. One day, this hakīm asked Khwajagi Shaikh Shirazi in the court of Nizam-ul-Mulk the following question: ‘If there were a fire at the end of the world, and there was nothing between you and that place, and you were standing on a mountain, you could see the fire. Yet you people say that before the sky (falak), where the moon is, there is a layer of fire. Why is that not visible?’ The shaikh replied that this was on account of distance. The Portuguese then crudely mocked his reply. At that time, the celebrated Shah Tahir Husaini arrived and asked what was happening. When told, he replied that the shaikh was wrong. When there is a mixture of elements, only then are things visible, as with the normal world’s fires, which have particles of earth in them. But the heavenly canopy of fire, being made up of a pure element, is invisible. This silenced the Portuguese completely.41 From these and other minor elements in the account we can see that Faizi set no great store by the Portuguese or their knowledge. At best, they were minor irritants, at worst arrogant troublemakers.

Ten Years After In the ten years that followed Faizi’s mission, the Mughals managed to make substantial inroads into the Deccan. Despite resistance mounted by the Ahmadnagar queen Chand Sultana, and a certain 40This was, of course, the exact opposite of the real relationship between Babur and Humayun and the Safavid dynasty. 41On Shah Tahir, see the brief comment in Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: 1978), pp. 68–9.

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Abhang Khan, Mughal forces had by 1599 come close to taking Ahmadnagar and were only temporarily halted in this enterprise by the mysterious death of Akbar’s son Shah Murad, who headed the Mughal army. Letters from the Portuguese viceroy Dom Francisco da Gama written in 1599 suggest that the Estado da Índia may in fact have been implicated in the Mughal prince’s death, since the viceroy believed that his death would increase internal dissensions in the Mughal camp and draw their attention away from projects of conquest.42 In fact this strategy did not bear the slightest fruit: the Mughal armies crushed the forces of Ahmadnagar, took the city, and advanced their southern frontier as far as Bijapur. Akbar, having personally supervised the campaign, then left his son Daniyal in charge of the Deccan together with the veteran general ‘Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, and returned north. The main remaining resistance in Ahmadnagar now was provided by a group of Ethiopians, including a personage whom we shall encounter below—Malik ‘Ambar.43 Faced with this situation, the plight of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah can only be imagined. Certain observers like the Flemish jeweller Jacques de Coutre, who was in the Bijapur court in these years, decried the sultan’s cowardice, but it is clear that his only possible strategy was now a form of passive resistance through diplomacy. Coutre, who claims to have known the monarch closely (con mucha familiaridad) between 1604 and 1616, is nevertheless bitingly sarcastic, referring to him by turns as a coward, tyrant, arbitrary, and obsessed with his harem of over 900 concubines ‘who served him carnally when he wished’.44 Indeed, Ibrahim’s major virtue in Coutre’s eyes is that he paid up his debts promptly (era … puntual en lo que comprava), besides punishing bandits with the requisite hardness and paying his soldiers and household with regularity. Coutre noted that Ibrahim’s way of 42Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Viceroy as Assassin: The Mughals, the Portuguese

and Deccan Politics, c.1600’, Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies, vol. 2, 1995, pp. 162–203. 43B.G. Tamaskar, Life and Work of Malik Ambar (Delhi: 1978); Radhe Shyam, Life and Times of Malik Ambar (Delhi: 1968). 44Jacques de Coutre, Andanzas asiáticas, eds Eddy Stols, B. Teensma, and J. Verberckmoes (Madrid: 1991), pp. 174–98, 287–98; the quotation is from p. 297.

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dealing with the Mughals was simply to offer them ‘gross gifts and tributes’, and he further reported that the ‘Adil Shah had justified this to his own vassals by claiming that instead of spending money and lives in making war, which always carried the risk of a loss, he would ‘rather send him [the Mughal] the money in offering, and make him content, and be his friend, and remain in my house with my peace and quiet (quedarme en mi caza con mi quietud y sossiego).’45 In fact, Ibrahim’s strategy was rather more creative, but in order to understand it we need to turn to the account of the Mughal envoy to his court in 1603, the same Asad Beg Qazwini.46 Now we have seen that Asad Beg had been a loyal servant of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, until the latter’s assassination in 1601. Thereafter, his career had come briefly under a cloud, but he had managed to regain royal favour and was sent out to deal with Bijapur in 1603. As he himself explains it in his detailed account, the Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg (or Waqā’i‘-i Asad Beg), the situation in that year was as follows.47 When Akbar had been in Burhanpur in pursuit of his campaign against Ahmadnagar, he had decided to send a certain Iranian savant called Mir Jamal-udDin Husain Inju Shirazi to Bijapur as an envoy.48 Mir Jamal-ud-Din’s principal task was to arrange a marriage between Ibrahim’s daughter and Prince Daniyal, but instead of doing so expeditiously, the sayyid from Shiraz remained at the Bijapur court for an inordinately long while, so that the emperor began to grow restive. Further, letters came in from both the Khan-i Khanan and Mir Jamal-ud-Din, in 45Coutre, Andanzas asiáticas, pp. 296–7; for Ibrahim’s relations with the Mughals in the early 1610s, see Khursheed Nurul Hasan and Mansura Haider, ‘Letters of Aziz Koka to Ibrahim Adil Shah II’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 27th Session, 1965, pp. 161–7, containing a calendar of some diplomatic documents in ‘Abdul Wahhab bin Muhammad Ma‘muri al-Husaini, Gulshan-i Balāghat, for a manuscript of which see Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, Curzon Collection, II, 312 (IvC 131). 46As before, we use two manuscripts: British Library, London, Oriental and India Office Collections, Ms. Or. 1996, 30 fls; Maulana Azad Library, AMU, Aligarh, ‘Abdus Salam Collection, no. 270/40 (4), Waqā’i‘-i Asad Beg. 47Also see Chapter 3 above. 48Jamal-ud-Din Husain ibn Fakhr-ud-Din Hasan Inju Shirazi (d. 1035 ah/1626), is best known for his massive work Farhang-i Jahāngīrī, 2 vols, ed. Rahim ‘Afifi (Mashhad: 1980).

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which the latter gave improbable reasons for his failure to return. The emperor at last grew angry, reports Asad Beg, and decided to set him straight. It was decided to send an appropriate person for this, and the royal eye fell on Asad Beg. The instructions to Asad Beg were simple: he was to bring Mir Jamal-ud-Din back without even ‘giving him a chance to take a sip of water’. Further, the envoy was told to bring back goods and wealth (zar-o-māl) from the Deccan by way of tribute. A farmān was also drafted for Mir Jamal-ud-Din which stated that, if he did not return with Asad Beg to the court, he would face dire consequences for himself and for his children. Asad Beg further asked for and was given a royal order addressed to Malik ‘Ambar. And finally, Akbar instructed Asad Beg to bring back a rather special elephant called Atish Para belonging to Ibrahim, which he had long promised but so far not given to Mir Jamal-ud-Din Husain.49 The envoy set out for the Deccan by way of Ujjain, where the governor was the Timurid prince Mirza Shahrukh. From there, he went on to Mandu, then to Burhanpur, where he was received by Prince Daniyal himself and by the Khan-i-Khanan. The Mughal army seems to have been well-settled in the Deccan by then, and the tone was rather relaxed. Evenings were spent with poetry, wine, and music rather than in any extended martial reflection. The Khan-i-Khanan did however ask Asad Beg to try and bring around Malik ‘Ambar and a certain Hasan ‘Ali Beg, who, so it appears, had a disagreement. The resistance in Ahmadnagar itself seems to have been at a low ebb. On reaching Bir, Asad Beg then met Hasan ‘Ali Beg, and eventually it was decided that a reconciliation meeting between him and Malik ‘Ambar would be organized. The Mughal envoy therefore first met the Ethiopian warlord (whom he already knew), presented him the Mughal farmān, and the two fell to talking about old memories. The next day, Malik ‘Ambar went on to organize festivities (jashn) in which several nobles of Ahmadnagar and learned persons and ‘turbaned scholars’, as well as sayyids, were present. It would thus seem that at this time relations between the Mughals and Malik 49P.M. Joshi, ‘Asad Beg’s Mission to Bijapur, 1603–160’, in S.N. Sen, ed., Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D.V. Potdar Sixty-First Birthday Commemoration Volume (Poona: 1950), pp. 184–96.

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‘Ambar were growing rather cordial. We can see this from the fact that, at the time of the formal reconciliation, an elephant and a fine horse were given to Malik ‘Ambar by Hasan ‘Ali Beg, as also the fact that Malik ‘Ambar at this time wrote letters to the Khan-i-Khanan to be sent on to the court, in which he declared his allegiance and fervent desire to serve the emperor. Asad Beg notes that already at the time when his own master Abu’l Fazl had been in the Deccan, Malik ‘Ambar had been looking around in distress for some service. He wished to join Abu’l Fazl, but certain others opposed it. So far as Asad Beg is concerned, ‘Ambar is the paragon of all good qualities, a wonderful host and a devout Muslim. Indeed, were he to recount the qualities of this bravest of the men of the time, a chapter—nay, a book—would be needed. We are clearly at some distance from the malevolent image that the same Malik ‘Ambar would acquire in Mughal texts of the 1610s and 1620s!50 The Mughal envoy now departed for the south, accompanied by ‘Ambar’s own young nephew, as far as the ‘frontier with Bijapur’ (tā sarhad-i Bījāpūr). The place at which Asad Beg entered ‘Adil Shahi country was still a short distance from the town of Mangalbedha, where Mir Jamal-ud-Din and Mustafa Khan, the head of the Bijapur armies, were resident. Here, he was given a letter from Mir Jamalud-Din in response to an earlier missive that Asad Beg had sent him. This letter contained rather hypocritical declarations of joy at Asad Beg’s coming and stated that the next day Mustafa Khan’s son would meet him with a force. The day after that, he would be welcomed by a certain Haibat Khan and thereafter by Mustafa Khan himself with the nobles of Bijapur and men on elephants. Orders also arrived from Sultan Ibrahim on the reception to be given to Asad Beg. The Mughal envoy was thus treated with due pomp and ceremony, as befitted the representative of a superior—but not quite suzerain—power. Yet, it soon became clear that things were not as they appeared on the surface. True, Mir Jamal-ud-Din and the people with him displayed extraordinary hospitality. Several days were spent in Mangalbedha, until word came that festivities were to be held in 50B.P. Saksena, ‘A Few Unnoticed Facts about the Early Life of Malik Amber’, Proceedings (Transactions) of the Indian History Congress, 5th Session, 1941, pp. 601–3.

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honour of Ibrahim’s daughter, to which both Mir Jamal-ud-Din and Asad Beg were invited. This meeting lasted all day. High-quality food and drink, and all sorts of other things were made available; and when the festivities ended Asad Beg was given a fine elephant and two Arab horses with gilded saddles, as well as silver accoutrements. Besides, nine trays of diverse cloths, and rare chintz from the Karnatak were given him, together with a special golden tray with all sorts of jewels and rings on it. Asad Beg was also invited by the Bijapur nobles one after another in the days that followed, and each took care of him after his fashion. From each he got Arab horses and high-quality Deccani gifts. This notwithstanding, the Mughal envoy began to chafe at the bit and declared that he needed to see Ibrahim urgently. The latter protested that such haste was unseemly and contrary to their custom. In keeping with Coutre’s characterization, his agents even tried to tempt Asad Beg with an offer of 200,000 hūns if he would be content just staying put in Bijapur for a time. Asad Beg refused, and it soon became clear that it was by such means that Ibrahim had managed to manipulate Mir Jamal-ud-Din. This was the reason why the sayyid from Shiraz was so reluctant to leave the Deccan. The fact, according to Asad Beg, was that each year Mir Jamal-ud-Din was making some 300,000 or 400,000 hūns from Bijapur and Golkonda, as if he had a jāgīr of 5000. But the corruption went further still. Asad Beg claimed that the Khan-i-Khanan too was receiving like sums of money, and there was an agreement between him and Ibrahim to delay the departure of the palanquin of the latter’s daughter from Mangalbedha. When asked about the delay, the Khan-i-Khanan would claim that the threat of Malik ‘Ambar made the roads unsafe. What Ibrahim was unable to achieve by force, he was thus able to do by the judicious use of money. Asad Beg’s arrival on the scene was thus a nuisance to all parties. When they saw that he was impervious to bribes, Ibrahim at last invited him to the city of Bijapur. The Mughal envoy now set out, with quite elaborate presents, including some horses, camels, Kashmiri shawls, as well as European cloth (parchahā-i nafīs-i wilāyat), all worth about Rs 20,000 to 25,000. But Ibrahim continued to procrastinate. When Asad Beg was a day short of Bijapur he asked him to delay his arrival by two weeks: apparently there was an important festival

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to be attended to. During this further wait the lavish hospitality continued, with all sorts of food, drink, and fresh fruit, and good fodder for the animals. Besides, the custom was that the food would be brought in copper dishes (degh), and chinaware (chīnī), which were never taken back. Asad Beg thus accumulated a number of vessels and utensils, so much so that they became a nuisance: where was he to keep them? Besides, Ibrahim had ordered that, each day, two men from amongst his principal courtiers (az majlisiyān-i khāssa) would come and converse with Asad Beg to keep him entertained. They included Malik Qomi and Maulana Zuhuri (whom we have encountered above in Faizi’s account), as well as Bichitr Khan, Mirak Mu‘in-ud-Din, and many others. All of this grew quite tiresome, and it was a relief when the festival of Shab-i Bar’at finally arrived. This was a rather elaborate affair, with the usual sweetmeats, fruit and dried fruit, alongside a rather showy fireworks display, the high point of which was when two firework castles (which had been made at an expense of 2000 hūns) were set afire side by side. When set alight it was as if they were firing arms and cannon at each other, to the point of panicking the horses, camels, and elephants in Asad Beg’s camp. It was only now that Asad Beg was finally given permission to meet Ibrahim, and brought to a house that had been kept ready at the edge of the tank (tāl) of Bijapur. Here, the Bijapur ruler was supposed to hold their first formal meeting to ceremonially receive the farmān from Akbar. But having agreed that he would enter alone, when the moment came other courtiers also barged in, which Asad Beg took to be an offensive breach of etiquette. Still, he carried on with the ceremony, which required Ibrahim to acknowledge Mughal superiority, and also to perform the sijda, bowing down in the direction of the absent Akbar. The farmān was now opened and read, but at a certain point Ibrahim began to find its contents offensive and started to comment in Marathi (ba zabān-i Marhāta) to his chief Brahmin adviser, Antu Pandit. Asad Beg was now obliged to negotiate directly with Ibrahim and the courtiers were sent away; this posed a minor problem, for while Ibrahim ‘understood Persian well, (…) he could not answer in that language, and spoke in a broken (shikasta) way.’ Still, the conversation was conducted, and when it ended Ibrahim insisted once more that Asad Beg not leave the same

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day as this was against their tradition (rasm). For his part, Asad Beg insisted he had to leave quickly, and that he had to be accompanied by both Mir Jamal-ud-Din and Ibrahim’s daughter. And finally, there was the question of the royal elephant Atish Para. Ibrahim replied that this particular elephant having been rendered useless (bar taraf shuda) two years earlier, in its place another animal called Chanchal would be sent. This arrangement was accepted, and further gifts ceremonially exchanged. The following day, after Asad Beg had spent several hours in festivities, a further message was brought to him to the effect that Ibrahim was not happy giving him just one elephant in gift. He had decided to also give him a rare black Arab horse, called Chini, which he had bought in Bijapur for 3000 hūns (equivalent to 9000 Mughal rupees). He also invited Asad Beg to the palace, to bid him a formal farewell. Here was an occasion for Asad Beg to inspect the fort, and he noted that it consisted of triple concentric fortifications.51 Beyond each moat wide and full of water ran a double wall. Between each level of fortification were two lines of trees amidst a plenitude of greenery. Past the third door were two lines of gunners, archers, and swordsmen. When the Mughal party reached the interior palace (daulat-khāna), they passed yet another gate. A great display had clearly been put on to impress the Mughal envoy: expensive carpets and vases had been laid out. They then went into a large and open courtyard, clean and sparkling, with decorated galleries, and covered vestibules in parallel. The main gallery was two yards high and some sixty hands in width, but with no visible columns. In this gallery was a golden throne studded with jewels, and near it a seat with a number of reclining cushions, and single and double lamps of gold and silver, some twenty in all. Small pieces of velvet and brocade lay spread around, and between every two lamps and incense-burners was trelliswork of gold or silver. Asad Beg went and sat by the throne. After some time, a door opened from the other side of the palace, and Ibrahim in all his splendour, accompanied by three or four persons, entered. Asad Beg stood up to greet him, 51Cf. the description in Henry Cousens, Bijapur and Its Architectural Remains (Bombay: 1916).

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and the Bijapur ruler advanced towards him. The people with him, soaked in perfume from neck to waist, stood by. Continuous music emerged from the door through which he had emerged, and Ibrahim’s attention still seemed engaged by that music. But since Asad Beg was his guest, he began to make conversation with him. Parallel to this gallery were three niches, one very large, two somewhat smaller. In the largest was the elephant Chanchal, in the others were two female elephants. All three were offered by Ibrahim to Asad Beg to take back with him. Their conversation went on until two watches of the night, and then Asad Beg took leave. The Mughal envoy tried to drive the hardest bargain possible, extracting as much by way of tribute in jewels and precious objects as he could. By the time he reached home it was almost dawn. However, a bone of contention remained between the two, for Ibrahim had insisted on taking Asad Beg’s badge of discipleship (shast-i murīdī), which he had received directly from Akbar, and had refused to return it. It was only after elaborate negotiations that the Mughal envoy was able to have this precious symbolic object returned, several days later. Affairs were thus concluded now from the Mughal envoy’s point of view. As instructed, he had procured the elephant and horse, besides other significant tributes. The only remaining question was how to deal with the recalcitrant Mir Jamal-ud-Din. Asad Beg put matters to him bluntly, saying the game was up. He and the Khan-i-Khanan would now have to expedite matters with regard to the Bijapur bride. A letter was sent out to the Khan-i-Khanan, who reluctantly agreed that he would make his way to receive the princess. Mir Jamal-udDin tried a few more desperate delaying tactics, but to no avail. The Bijapur force that was to accompany them also persisted in dragging their feet. Rumours were periodically heard that Malik ‘Ambar was on his way with a force to attack them. But Asad Beg managed to keep his head in the midst of all this, and presently a Mughal party came along to accompany them as far as Ahmadnagar. Here, in the Ahmadnagar fort, the Sona Mahal was kept aside for Prince Daniyal, and everything was decorated and prepared. The newly arrived princess was also to stay in the same palace. Asad Beg’s good services were brought to the prince’s attention, and he was duly rewarded, with Daniyal’s generosity being contrasted to the miserliness of the

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Khan-i-Khanan. The fact that Asad Beg had managed to persuade Mir Jamal-ud-Din to return, and brought back the daughter of the ‘Adil Khan, besides the elephants and other peshkash, allowed him to return to the Mughal court in very good odour.52 In Asad Beg’s account, the Portuguese in Goa play an insignificant role. They appear on three or four different occasions: first, some European cloth appears among the gifts; then a box of Portuguese manufacture (sandūqcha-i firangī) is mentioned in relation to the transport of certain jewels; third, wine of Portuguese origin is listed among the return presents sent by Ibrahim for Akbar; and last, the Portuguese figure in the context of a discussion of tobacco and its qualities in the Mughal court. In relation to the wine, Asad Beg informs us that Chanchal, the female elephant, was used to drinking two Akbari man of wine a day, and that eventually two of the casks of high-quality Portuguese wine (sharāb-i nafīs-i purtagālī) had to be broached to calm her down on the way to Agra. But if the Portuguese have a minor place, even more remarkable is the almost total absence of the Safavids—who had played such a prominent role in Faizi’s account—in Asad Beg’s narrative. Rather, one has the impression that the affairs of the Deccan have been reduced to a rather straightforward game between the Deccan sultanates and the Mughals, with Malik ‘Ambar in the role of a minor annoyance, who can however be controlled by deft diplomacy. The main problem, if one is to follow Asad Beg, is that the Mughals themselves are so utterly divided that the cunning Ibrahim can sow the seeds of dissension amongst them via bribes and promises. A couple of decades of cohabitation with the Bijapur monarch has thus produced a new equilibrium, one in which he appears to hold the diplomatic high ground, conceding relatively little to the Mughals.

Conclusion The remaining quarter-century of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah’s reign did not see a major alteration in this relationship; if anything the Mughal 52P.M.

Joshi, ‘Asad Beg’s Return from Bijapur and His Second Mission to the Deccan, 1604–1606’, in V.D. Rao, ed., Studies in Indian History: Dr. A.G. Pawar Felicitation Volume (Bombay: 1968), pp. 136–55.

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position weakened somewhat in view of the growing power of Malik ‘Ambar. It was only in the late 1620s that matters began to change, with the accession of Shahjahan corresponding broadly with the death of Ibrahim. To that extent, the reign of Jahangir (1605–27) can be seen as a hiatus so far as the Deccan policy of the Mughals is concerned, and in general this is a reign in which few major expansionary moves are contemplated or executed. This was also a matter of some relief for the Portuguese Estado da Índia, which had their hands full already with the Dutch in Southeast Asia and on the Coromandel coast, and with the English Company in Surat, to say nothing of major problems with a host of Asian polities, from the Safavids to the Tokugawas. The long reign of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II, which lasted almost a half-century, thus marks something of a watershed in Portuguese relations with the Deccan. In the first threequarters of the sixteenth century, the ‘Idalcão’ was a major thorn in the Portuguese flesh, and one of the periodic threats to Goa, as well as to other Portuguese interests on the Konkan coast. Hostilities had flared up time and again, whether in the 1530s with Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah I, or the 1560s with ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah, to say nothing of the protracted tussle and negotiation over the status and claims of the pretender resident in Goa, Mealecão, or ‘Ali bin Yusuf ‘Adil Khan.53 For the first time, from the 1580s, this equation substantially changed, and the change was principally because Bijapur and Goa finally had a common enemy in the Mughals, whose expansion into the Deccan both feared. This common fear helped define a vastly improved relationship between 1580 and 1630, when numbers of Portuguese private traders could enter Bijapur with impunity, and take part in the lucrative diamond and textile trade of the Deccan—as Coutre’s account amply helps us document. The reign of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II was in a sense a ‘Golden Age’ for Portuguese–Bijapur relations. But this idyll could not last. The pressure exerted by Shahjahan on his accession to the throne, culminating in the ‘Treaty of Submission (inqiyād nāma)’ of 1636 for Bijapur and Golkonda, the declining 53Sanjay

Subrahmanyam, ‘O suspiro do Mouro: A triste vida de um príncipe muçulmano em Goa no século XVI’, in Ronaldo Vainfas, Georgina Silva dos Santos, and Guilherme Pereira das Neves, eds, Retratos do Império: Trajetórias individuais no mundo português nos séculos XVI a XIX (Rio de Janeiro: 2006), pp. 407–35.

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economic strength of Goa, and a series of other minor factors meant that by the late 1630s the rulers of Bijapur were looking for other trading partners, which eventually led to the opening of the Dutch East India Company factory in Vengurla. But Mughal pressure also had other unforeseen effects, forcing Bijapur into an ambitious southward campaign of its own, and leading to the conquest of lands in the Karnatak—both to the west on the Kanara coast, and in the areas from Senji to Tanjavur. The account of Asad Beg thus marks an interesting moment, when diplomacy and money power dominated over the use of armed force. But seen from the longer-term viewpoint, the period simply marked a temporary halt in the inexorable march of the Mughal war machine into the southernmost reaches of the Indian peninsula.

5

Faizi’s Nal-Daman and Its Long Afterlife Introduction

I

n the previous chapter we encountered one of the major intellectuals and actors of the late-sixteenth-century Mughal empire, the poet and writer Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak, known as ‘Faizi’ or ‘Fayyazi’. Here we analyse one of his major works, namely his retelling in Persian of the classical story of Nala and Damayanti, or Nal and Daman, employing the verse-narrative form known as the masnawī. This great poem skilfully weaves together in a sophisticated synthesis motifs particular to this story, and motifs and elements common to other Indian and Persian tales with, importantly, Faizi’s own reflections on politics, kingship, and the transience of this world. Our analysis also concerns the life of this text, which acquired great popularity among readers of Indian Persian, as we see from the numerous manuscripts that are available of it, in major collections both in India and abroad.1 In a subsequent phase, and especially in the course of the nineteenth century (as Persian began to give way 1Thus, 11 manuscripts are reported in the Khuda Bakhsh Library (Patna) alone, 13 manuscripts at the the Aligarh Muslim University Library, besides several in the British Library’s Oriental and India Office Collections (including the oldest extant manuscript dating to 1069 ah). For printed editions, see Nal Daman-i Fārsī az rashhāt-i qalam-i Abū’l Faiz Faizī (Lucknow: 1877) (also reprinted in 1889 and 1930); Tamizuddin Arzan, ed., Nal Daman (Calcutta: 1831); the edition from Kanpur of the Nizami Press (1294 ah), and the more recent Iranian edition entitled Dāstān-i Nal-o-Daman (Tehran, 1335 Sh/1956). One may also consult the facsimile Moscow edition: Abul Faiz Fajzi, Nal’i Daman (Moscow: 1982).

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increasingly to Urdu), a number of authors also produced versions of the work in Urdu.2 We will not go here into other Persian retellings such as that of Mohan Lal ‘Zirak’ in the late-seventeenth century, or early Hindawi retellings like that of Ahmad Sarawi in the earlyeighteenth century, but briefly focus on that of Munshi Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’, Nal–Daman Hindī.3 This was not mere translation, but represented a significant transformation of the text of Faizi, while still retaining a firm anchorage in the magnum opus of the Mughal poet and its core thematic orientation. How did such a theme as the story of Nal and Daman (or Nala and Damayanti), which we know both from the classical Indian tradition in Sanskrit, and from the flourishing vernacular traditions of medieval India, come to pass into Persian at the Mughal court?4 What were the differences between the Sanskrit and vernacular versions and Faizi’s, and what is their significance? In order to comprehend these questions, some broader historical trends need to be borne in mind.5 2See Ahmad Sarawi, Nal Daman, ed. Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abdullah (Karachi: 1987); and Gopi Chand Narang, Hindustānī qisson se mākhūz urdū masnawiyān (New Delhi: 1962), pp. 17–38. We have briefly analysed that text in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Afterlife of a Mughal Masnavī: The Tale of Nal and Daman in Urdu and Persian’, in Kathryn Hansen and David Lelyveld, eds, A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective (Delhi: 2005), pp. 46–73. Also see, for Hindi versions, Susan S. Wadley, ‘A Bhakti Rendition of Nala–Damayanti: Todarmal’s “Nectar of Nal’s Life’’’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1999, pp. 26–56. 3Munshi Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’ Kakorwi, Nal-Daman Hindī (Delhi [Matba Indian Punch]: 1859; also reprinted 1869; earliest manuscript from 1244 ah). Reported prose versions in Urdu include that by Ilahi Bakhsh ‘Shauq’ (manuscript in the British Library, dating 1217 ah); a version by a certain Raghunath, mentioned by Garcin de Tassy; and Talib Banarasi’s drama based on Nal–Daman, written in 1885, printed by Naval Kishor. Poetic versions include that of Ahmad Sarawi, Nal Daman, cited above; one by Mir Niyaz ‘Ali Dehlawi ‘Nikhat’ (manuscript dating to 1256 ah, in the Reza Library, Rampur); Mir ‘Ali Bangali, Bahār-i ‘ishq; and Ahmad ‘Ali, Nal Daman (the last two undated). 4On the classical Nala–Damayanti story, see the important essay by David Shulman, ‘On Being Human in the Sanskrit Epic: The Riddle of Nala’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 22, 1994, pp. 1–29, reprinted in Shulman, The Wisdom of Poets: Studies in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit (Delhi: 2001), pp. 131–58. 5These reflections draw on Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Culture and Politics of Persian in Pre-Colonial Hindustan’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History:

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First, it should be noted that even if Persian had entered India from an earlier period, that is the tenth–eleventh centuries, its dominance was still not assured by the end of the fifteenth century, during the period of Afghan ascendancy over the political fortunes of northern India. In both Delhi and the provinces, the main vernacular tongue, Hindawi, had been given considerable encouragement by the Muslim sultans by this period, and we know that it was a contender as a language both of administration and culture at the time of the reign of the Lodis and Surs. After the rise of the Mughals, Persian was once more brought to the fore in the second half of the sixteenth century as a language of power and culture. As a result, the efflorescence of Hindawi, in North India at least, was stunted, and its development delayed. Even the scriptures of Hindustan were translated into Persian in Akbar’s time, and the relationship between Persian and Sanskrit was strengthened, bypassing the vernaculars to an extent. Stories that had been written in Hindawi and integrated into Indian Islam, such as the Padmāvat and Madhumālati, were brought back into Persian under Mughal patronage, with a marked moment of advance during the epoch of Jahangir.6 Clearly, a new form of Indo–Persian literary synthesis was under way, with a point of inflection being through the Persian masnawī at the time of Akbar. Here, it is important to bring out the significant role played by the Mughal poet-laureate Faizi, in his attempt to bring ‘secular’ stories into Persian, of which the Nal–Daman narrative is a central example. Faizi begins his text with a fairly elaborate if stylized mise-en-scène. He tells us that one night, in the late sixteenth century, his patron the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) summoned him to the court. The poet had been at his own residence, sitting in a meditative frame of mind; and when summoned he naturally rushed to the royal presence, thinking there might be some great dynastic crisis afoot. Instead, the emperor asked Faizi why, as the poet-magician of Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: 2003), pp. 131–98, and on Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, 1998, pp. 317–49. 6See, for example, Shantanu Phukan, ‘“None Mad as a Hindu Woman”: Contesting Communal Readings of Padmāvat’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 16, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41–54.

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the court, the flute of his pen did not produce a poetic fire and cast a new magic spell? In short, why, instead of addressing the staple question of love in general, did the poet not turn to the specifics of ‘love as it happened in India’ (dar Hind za ‘ishq sar guzashtī ast)?7 The words of instruction that are put in Akbar’s mouth by the poet are as follows, with not only the general theme, but the very specific example of a story that already had wide currency at that time, being clearly set out by the patron: Nau sāz fasāna-i kuhan rā ‘ishq-i Nal-o-khūbī-i Daman rā. (Tell that old tale anew, Of the love of Nal and the beauty of Daman.) (...) Sad naghma-i dard dar sukhan rīz Dar saghar-i nau mai-i kuhan rīz. (Make a hundred songs of pain into poetry, Fill the fresh goblet with an old wine.) —(p. 129, vv. 13, 16)

Akbar suggested to the poet, moreover, that he should place all his arts at the service of this enterprise, of bringing alive a story in which love had reduced the lovers themselves into a burnt offering at the temple: Of the two lovers’ coquetry and submission (nāz-o-niyāz), carry lessons to the lovers’ assembly. See what love once was like in India (dar Hind), the dagger-thrusts that drowned their hearts in blood. How those who’ve played with love in this land, passed on with their hearts and livers shattered. How they burnt themselves in fire, how they became ashes in love’s temple. —(p. 130, vv. 4–7) 7Masnawī Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Muhammad Taiyab Siddiqui (Patna: 1987), p. 130, v. 5.

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So, clearly, the issue to be dealt with was not one of love in general, but in its specific, Indian, manifestations. The underlying project may be seen as one where the larger Persian-speaking world was to be given access to one of those works that had a characteristically Indian flavour, a manifestation then of the ‘Hindustani patriotism’ that already characterized the court of Akbar and Jahangir. Our contention however is that Faizi took his task to be a far more general one than that, and thus took it upon himself to reinterpret, as it were, the relationship between the poetic and political domains. The means available at his disposal from within the sphere of Indian Persian poetics were clear enough. At the heart of the matter was the idea of ‘equivocation’ or ‘deliberate ambiguity’ (īhām), which though inherited from Iran had been theorized afresh in a radical manner by Amir Khusrau of Delhi (d. 1325). The view espoused by Khusrau, according to which various possible meanings of a text were all equally legitimate, with none accorded true primacy, in fact came to gain very wide applicability, being utilized on the one hand by Sufis and on the other by writers of political treatises. This can equally be read from the masnawīs of Faizi, especially given the special relationship between the poet and his patron, Akbar. If, on the one hand, the Mughal poet reflects the prevailing mood of Akbar’s period, it is equally clear that the poet had a part in both making and representing political ideals.

Notes on Faizi Faizi was the son of Shaikh Mubarak Nagauri, an ‘ālim, a teacherscholar, who had settled in the Mughal capital of Agra.8 Among his 8Faizi’s

great-grandfather Shaikh Musa had migrated from Yemen to Sind in 900 ah (1494), married, and settled there. His son, Shaikh Khizr, then moved to Hindustan proper, where he settled in the western Rajasthan town of Nagaur and enjoyed extensive contacts with the local ‘ulamā’ there. Khizr’s son was the celebrated Shaikh Mubarak, born in Nagaur in 1505–6. Khizr himself died in Sind where he had returned for a visit, and after his mother’s death Mubarak moved first to Gujarat, but was advised there to move to the more significant political centre of Agra, where he arrived in 1543–4, and married into a respectable family, making his own madrasa in the town. For the basic details of Faizi’s biography, see Munibur

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father’s eight sons and four daughters, through several marriages, three of these sons stand out: Abu’l Faiz, Abu’l Fazl, and Abu’l Khair. Known successively by the poetic names of Faizi and Faizi Fayyazi (the latter adopted in the closing years of his life), Abu’l Faiz was born in Agra in on 5 Sha‘ban 954 ah (that is, 24 September 1547) and was educated largely by his father. In 974 ah/1566–7, Faizi and Mubarak reached the court through the intercession of some influential persons, possibly Akbar’s foster-brother Mirza ‘Aziz Koka. Faizi was successively given the post of tutor to the Mughal princes Salim, Murad, and Daniyal, and soon became close to Akbar himself. In 981 ah/1573–4, the second brother Abu’l Fazl was brought into the court on the recommendation of Faizi, and became a major influence as chronicler and ideologue of the second half of Akbar’s reign. In 990 ah/1581 Faizi himself was made sadr (head of the state ecclesiastical department) of Agra, Kalpi, and Kalinjar, and three years later he participated in the anti-Yusufza’i expedition to the northwest frontier of the Mughal domains. In 997 ah/1588 Faizi was given the title of malik-ush-shu‘rā’ (or poet-laureate, the third poet to hold this title in the Mughal court), and in the same year he accompanied Akbar to Kashmir, cementing his close relationship with the ruler.9 We possess fairly extensive details of the poet’s intellectual biography as well. Faizi knew not only Arabic and Persian but also Sanskrit. Among his other teachers (besides his own father) was Khwaja Husain of Marw (d. 1571–2), from whom he is reported to have received Rahman, ‘Fayzi, Abu’l-Fayz’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. IX, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (New York: 1999), pp. 457–9, and Gerald Grobbel, Der Dichter Faidī und die Religion Akbars (Berlin: 2001); and for a more elaborate treatment, Nabi Hadi, Mughalon ke malik-ush-sh‘urā’ (Allahabad: 1978), pp. 81–145. 9In 999 ah (1590–1) Faizi was sent to Khandesh and Ahmadnagar as Mughal envoy and wrote a series of celebrated reports dealing with the political and cultural conditions there, as well as the contemporary situation in Iran. A few years after his return from this extended visit to the Deccan, he fell ill with asthma in 1003 ah, and died on 10 Safar 1004 ah (5 October 1595) at Lahore; he would appear to have been buried at first in the Ram Bagh at Agra, but was later transferred to another family mausoleum, near Sikandra. For Faizi’s reports, see A.D. Arshad, ed., Inshā’-i Faizī (Lahore: 1973); we have analysed them at length in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Place in the Sun: Travels with Faizī in the Deccan, 1591–93’, in François Grimal, ed., Les sources et le temps, Sources and Time: A Colloquium (Pondicherry: 2001), pp. 265–307, and more briefly in ch. 4 above.

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instruction in poetry-writing. Not notably orthodox in his religious beliefs, Faizi was a particular devotee of the Chishti Sufi Khwaja Farid-ud-Din Ganj-i-Shakkar. Amongst his contemporaries, he also had good relations with another major religious figure, ‘Abdul Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi. By the close of his career, Faizi had attained the somewhat lowly rank of 400 within the Mughal mansabdārī system, but would nevertheless seem to have been a man of some means, with a very large personal library of some 4600 volumes. Ranked first among the poets of his age by an admittedly partial observer—his own brother, Shaikh Abu’l Fazl—Faizi was equally praised for his technical skills by Mulla ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, otherwise not necessarily a great admirer of his. Badayuni wrote: ‘In many separate branches of knowledge, such as poetry, the composition of enigmas, prosody, rhyme, history, philology, medicine and prose composition, Shaikh Faizi had no equal in his time.’10 At the same time, Faizi’s father, Shaikh Mubarak, had had associations with the Mahdawis (during the reign of Islam Shah Sur), as well as supposed leanings towards Shi‘ism and a growing closeness to Akbar: none of these augured well for a relationship between him and his sons, and more orthodox-minded savants at the court. Thus, the other side of Badayuni’s judgement of Faizi: ‘All Jews, Christians, Hindus, and fire-worshippers, not to speak of Nizaris and Sabahis, held him in the very highest honour for his heresy, his enmity to the followers of Islam, his reviling of the very fundamental doctrines of our faith, his contemptuous abuse of the noble companions [of the Prophet] and those who came after them (...).’ This is a view that must undoubtedly be taken with a very large pinch of salt, but the text of the masnawī of Nal–Daman does confirm that Faizi was religiously liberal and tolerant, and particularly open to Chishti Sufi ideals and vocabulary.

Faizi Tells the Tale When Faizi was commissioned to present a Persian version of the Indian story of Nal and Daman, the resources before him were thus 10‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, Muntakhab ut-Tawārīkh, trans. G.S.A. Ranking (reprint, New Delhi: 1990), vol. III, pp. 411–12.

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both ample and somewhat restrictive. The poet was soon to conceive of the story as one of five masnawīs that he planned to write, but of which he completed only two before his premature death, namely the Nal–Daman text (completed in Safar 1003 ah, a year before his death), and the Markaz-i Adwār, which he was finishing in his last weeks. The three other texts, namely Sulaimān wa Bilqīs, the Haft Kishwar, and the Akbar Nāma, were never completed, though the first had certainly been begun as early as 996 ah.11 The last project is a particularly intriguing one, for one may well wonder how precisely the poet would have adapted the masnawī form to the ends of writing an account of the reign of Akbar. In embarking on this vast programme, Faizi’s ambition was quite clearly to make a statement that would extend beyond India to Iran, and to the Persian-speaking world more generally, of which he believed himself to be a part. It is thus no coincidence that the formal model for Nal–Daman comes from Nizami’s Layli–Majnūn, in terms of the metrical scheme utilized as well as a number of other features; similarly, the Markaz-i Adwār was to correspond to Nizami’s Makhzan al-Asrār. But Faizi also departed from received models, whether in his choice of metaphors, in his capacity to draw on Indian cultural resources, and his own particular predilections which took him in directions that separate him both from his Indian and Persian forebears. It has often been supposed by writers that this is the first ‘Indian’ story that one finds in the Persian masnawī tradition. This is not strictly true, with the misunderstanding perhaps arising from Badayuni’s description of the masnawī. Amongst earlier texts, there is a short masnawī on an Indian theme by Hasan Sijzi Dehlawi, in the fourteenth century;12 and to an extent even Amir Khusrau’s Dewal Rānī Khizr Khānī can be classified as a predecessor to Faizi’s text. But the major difference may be that Amir Khusrau was not drawing upon a major existing tradition; he was practically the first to write the Dewal Rani story, and thus had neither the same sorts of constraints nor the same framework of options before him. 11See Z.A. Desai, ‘Life and Works of Faidi’, Indo-Iranica, vol. XVI, no. 3, 1963, pp. 1–35, especially pp. 25–7. 12Cf. Muhammad Shakil Ahmad Siddiqi, Amīr Hasan Sijzī Dihlawī: Hayāt aur adabī khidmāt (Lucknow: 1979).

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Existing scholarship has in our view been less than just to Faizi’s ambitious enterprise. Scholars dealing with Faizi as a poet have preferred to concentrate on his dīwān, and have for the most part given relatively short shrift to the masnawī and its contents.13 On those relatively rare occasions when the masnawī has attracted scholarly attention for its own sake, the main focus has been on the poetic quality of Faizi as related to aesthetics and rhetorical traditions; some attempts have also been made to judge the ‘Indianness’ of the metaphors used in the text.14 A notable exception is the series of essays by the textual scholar and epigraphist Z.A. Desai.15 Desai’s main concern has been to identify the sources used by Faizi, since his version seems to differ in some respects from the ‘original’ story in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata; the conclusion after extensive comparisons (including with a seventeenth-century version from Gujarat) remains somewhat ambivalent.16 A particular consequence of Desai’s comparative approach (followed by some later writers as well) is the near-inevitable conclusion that Faizi may be a good poet but is a poor storyteller: he is charged with having ‘missed’ key elements, sacrificed character development for poetic effect, and introduced elements of incoherence into the story. What are the so-called ‘defects’ in Faizi according to these authors? First, that in his text the love between Nal and Daman begins without any proper explanation; no external reason is given for the fact that this love arises in their hearts. Second, 13Waris

Kirmani, ‘The Significance of Faidi’s Poetry and Its Background’, IndoIranica, vol. 38, no. 304, 1985, pp. 26–35; for the dīwān, see A.D. Arshad, ed., Kulliyāt-i Faizī (Lahore: 1967; reprint, 1983). 14For instance, see Muhammad Taiyab Siddiqui’s extensive Introduction to his edition of Masnawī Nal-Daman Faizī, pp. 1–94. 15See the series of essays deriving from his earlier (unpublished) doctoral dissertation on the text: Z.A. Desai, ‘Nal Daman of Faidi’, Indo-Iranica, vol. 11, no. 4, 1958, pp. 43–56; Z.A. Desai, ‘The Story of Nala–Damayanti as told by Faidi and its Comparison with the Original Sanskrit Version’ (in 2 parts), Journal of the Oriental Institute (Baroda), vol. 8, no. 1, 1958, pp. 81–96; vol. 8, no. 2, 1958, pp. 183–98. 16Faizi certainly knew the Mahābhārata of Vyasa, and had participated in the enterprise to edit the Persian version produced at Akbar’s court under the direction of Mir Ghiyas-ud-Din ‘Ali Naqib Khan Qazwini, sometimes entitled the Razm Nāma. Thus, any departure from the received version must be seen as deliberate, rather than based on ignorance or carelessness.

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on hearing of the beauty of Daman, the gods in the Ur-text start out to her svayamvara and meet Nal on the way. In Faizi, the gods appear suddenly, without being introduced to the reader. Third, the reasons for Nal’s decline and his misfortunes are linked in the Ur-text to Kali and Kali’s influence (and to the rivalry between Kali and Nal), while this explanation is left out in Faizi. Faizi’s text does not bring out the perseverance and bravery of Daman when she is abandoned, and thus she does not have the powerful character of the earlier version (possibly because Faizi sees her as the relatively passive beloved, ma‘shūq, and not the more active lover, ‘āshiq). Such a method by which a later version is constantly measured against an Ur-text is familiar to us from a number of contexts, and no doubt has its own utility. Our attempt here however will largely be to assess the text on Faizi’s own terms, to see what he is in fact trying to achieve by his telling. We will argue that Faizi in fact has quite another purpose in mind than earlier writers, namely to suggest that love (‘ishq), and especially love in the milieu of kings, can be meaningful only when it is tempered. When love becomes excess, it can only lead to disaster, for this is the inevitable consequence of the neglect of the intellect (‘aql) and of notions of equilibrium that are crucial both for kingship and social order. This can be seen as the development in an Indo–Persian context of the heritage of reflection from a far earlier Hellenic milieu concerning frenzy and hubris, which lead ineluctably to destruction; and we are aware that both Faizi and Abu’l Fazl drew often upon such Hellenic materials for philosophical reflection. But it is also interesting to note that the schema in Faizi’s case is not wholly deterministic; one can still pull back from the brink and return to a state of equilibrium. Faizi naturally opens his text with the praise of God (hamd), followed by a very long two-part praise of the Prophet (na‘t), and then praise of the emperor Akbar. The story proper begins only after this very extensive set of prefatory remarks, and we enter into the mise-en-scène that we have already rehearsed at the outset. Indeed, when the emperor pronounced the words commissioning the text, Faizi reports that he found the task particularly challenging. His hair stood on end: for how could he produce a poem that would both reduce its readers to tears and bring fresh life to them, cause them

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to suffer by bringing alive old wounds while renewing them at the same time? How could he reduce pain itself to tears, making the ache in the heart itself ache? This was surely asking too much, the poet-laureate thought, and scarcely the sort of thing that one could simply pick up a pen and write. Yet, there was no option left to the poet, for how could he refuse the demands of an emperor whose orders (farmān) reached up to the very sky, and to whom the stars themselves submitted and bowed? The poet thus agreed to take on the task. His model was clear from the start, namely the great Persian poet Nizami Ganjawi (c.1141–1209): When the ebb and flow of this verse reach Layla, she’ll transform her clothes into chains. When this magic is heard by Majnun, he’ll even forget Layla herself. Let me arrange the fire-temple anew. Let me tell of the love of idol and Brahmin (but-o-barhaman). —(p. 131, vv. 18, 19; p. 132, v. 3)

This is a key set of terms that will recur time and again in the text, and which perhaps requires some explanation. The role of the ‘idol’ (but, from Buddha, but also sanam), is a complex one in the Persian poetry of the time. The lover is usually portrayed in terms of this metaphor as the worshipper of the idol, in a powerful device that plays with the idea of infidelity; an alternative mode is to present the beloved as kāfir, that is, as an infidel. Once the metaphor of the ‘idol’ has been worked into the structure of a poem, a series of other possibilities open up, namely the references to the beloved’s residence as a temple or idol-house, the reference to rivalry in terms of iconoclasm (the smashing of other idols, etc.). The drive is very clearly to turn what is an eminently negative lexical item in an orthodox vocabulary on its head, and the role of the poet is both to provoke and invert. To be an ‘idol’ in Persian poetry is thus no bad thing, whatever the use religious orthodoxy puts the same term to; but the consciousness that another (negative) use of the term exists is necessary to give the term its full piquancy. In his own use of metaphors impregnated with ‘Indian’ local colour, Faizi does not

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stop at the but and sanam, but goes much further. The play between the Indian world of the Brahmin and his sacred thread (zunnār), and the classical Persian world of Layla and Majnun is thus clear from the start, as indeed is the relationship between the linguistic worlds and registers that are to be played with. Let me combine the melody (āhang) of the Indian voice, with the sound of instruments from Pahlawi and Dari. Let me take my suffering’s candle and ignite it at the fire-temples of Fars. We shall take our thoughts to the Iranians, and offer this fire to them in gift. —(p. 132, vv. 7–9)

This is an integral part of Faizi’s conception of matters, for his audience is not only within India, but embraces the larger Persianspeaking world, including Safavid Iran. At the very end of the poem he returns to this theme, speaking of how he has brought together the patterns of Ganja (native place of Nizami) with the ideas of Delhi, and erected an idol-house which is still accessible to the intelligent reader who is not immersed in matters Indian. This is his idea, then, of a new style, where the best of India and Iran will be combined to fresh effect. To these themes we shall have occasion to return in later sections of this chapter. What then is the central theme so far as Faizi is concerned? It is love (‘ishq), and some ten pages are devoted to this theme, once the Introduction has been completed and before we enter into the narrative proper.17 A series of deft oppositions is introduced, including a particularly crucial initial one between love (‘ishq) and intellect (‘aql). Though Faizi is an avowed partisan of the intellect, he notes that at least initially he will suppress his own inclinations, placing his foot on the pulpit of intellect in order to declaim a sermon in praise of love. Love shimmers like a thousand flames, while intellect is like a thousand damp cotton-pieces, 17Masnawī

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O intellect! You may have a thousand lives, but for now, remain silent. In love’s presence, stand up and pay respect. Love is an emperor without weapons. Love is a king even in the midst of ruins. Its buried treasures may be found deep in the desert. Its wealth may be found even in an empty hand. Passion is its fighting force, tears are the guardians of its court. —(p. 144, vv. 9–13)

And so the poet concludes, pressing the paradox to its logical end: A hundred seditions may arise while you’re seated, a hundred victories concealed in defeat here. (...) On the soil of destruction stands its throne, The dark of night is its lamp of fortune. (...) Thriving here is the same as ruination, While failure here is success itself. —(p. 144, vv. 15, 17, 19)

Having developed his first contrast between ‘ishq and ‘aql, Faizi now moves to a new opposition, that between ‘ishq and husn (beauty). Love is vulnerable and ever-seeking, whereas beauty is distant, refuses to engage, and altogether remarkable for its indifference. Beauty fires arrows, and love is wounded; beauty is the flame, love the moth. Yet when ‘ishq attains its height, it is no mean force either; it can melt iron, and even beauty becomes prepared, however reluctantly, to praise it. At this moment, love and beauty can be one. Eventually, the roles of captor and captive are reversed; Beauty comes to be captured by Love, and the two come together like wine in a glass or melody on the string. Not only this: the place of ‘ishq, writes Faizi, is all the more marked in India, a land that seems to have a particular gift or aptitude in his view for love.

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This fire is aflame in Hind, For it’s here that the sun really blazes. I’ve just heard of love in ‘Arab and ‘Ajam But in Hind I’ll tell of what I’ve seen. I’ll draw you such a picture in this book that you’ll feel you’ve seen what you hear. —(p. 147, vv. 9–11)

In Hind, writes Faizi, insisting once more on his point, both moth and flame are burnt, and it is not as if one is burnt in the other, as is so often the case elsewhere. The old distinction between ma‘shūq and ‘āshiq, beloved and lover, partly dissolves in this context. The comparison with other places in the world such as the Arab lands, Iran, and even Armenia can only be unfavourable to them, as Hind alone is the place where Faizi finds all virtues relating to the real meaning and content of love. This is applicable not only to love in the abstract, but to certain rather concrete elements within the play of love; for the Indian Beloved (idols in the plural here, sanamān) too has some very special qualities. Their bloodshot eyes, both daggers and salt-merchants, How can the intellect dare face up to them? —(p. 150, vv. 11–12)

This takes us to the third of the contrasts which Faizi employs to build up his second level of frames, and which appear to us to be the keys to construction of the text as a whole. This is the oppositional relationship and tension between ‘ishq and junūn (or frenzy), that excessive state to which love can lead. For if love is a tree, frenzy represents the flowers and fruit that grow on it. Now, in the normal state of things, writes Faizi, only the intellect can control love. But when love bares itself, and stretches out its arms, such is its power that the intellect falls tumbling into its grave. Love then runs completely out of control, recognizing neither the emperor nor the dervish. Even so, all hope is not lost. When one moves from human love (‘ishq-i majāzī) to divine love (‘ishq-i haqīqī), one can still try and carry the

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river of love to its true destination, namely the Sea of Divine Love. This temporal love is then like a sort of interim step, a purgatory before entering into reality. Here, Faizi moves effortlessly into a Sufi vocabulary, exhorting his reader to search for true beauty, that which is beyond and eternal, rather than that which one finds on this earth. He states that he too is a lover (‘āshiq), but only in that other sense, namely as a Sufi who is searching for the other Reality. So we are left feeling ambiguous. Is Faizi in favour of ‘ishq, as one might think from a first reading, or actually reticent about it? Is his method not one of praising love as a deft tactic, only to reinstate the place of the intellect? These issues emerge more clearly in the narrative itself.

The Onset of Love Love sets upon the hero, King Nal, like an illness, and the first section of the narrative develops the theme of lovesickness, physicians, and cure both at the level of the plot and the etiology of love. That the events take place not in the heartland of Hindustan but further to the south is appropriate, since Faizi, like his brother Abu’l Fazl, was something of a traveller, though neither actually set foot outside India (so far as we know). The most famous of Faizi’s travels was in the capacity of Mughal ambassador to the Deccan, where his task was to browbeat a variety of subordinate or inferior rulers into accepting their ‘proper’ place in the Mughal-centred world. Some geographical details allow the reader to situate and contextualize the tale: That in a country of Hind was a king, A handsome black-eyed man, A ruler with a huge army, the land of Ujjain was his capital. He was known as Nal, and amongst kings, he held sway like the pupil in the eye. A wise king, and awe-inspiring, sage and brimful with reason. —(p. 154, vv. 15–16; p. 155, vv. 1–2)

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Nal’s qualities are now listed: he is brave, generous, lion-like in battle, but also an incomparable host in wine-filled evenings. The world at large benefited from his justice (‘adl), while his intellect (‘aql) had resolved a large number of problems in the world. In sum, the image of Nal that we have from Faizi is not altogether dissimilar to the one in which he might present his patron, Akbar, in other contexts. The resemblance does not stop there: Akbar was celebrated for being fond of his elephants, whom he reputedly knew individually by name and appearance; Nal here (as in the Mahābhārata) is noted for his fondness for and expert knowledge of horses. Nal is famed besides for his boundless wealth, and his court too is full of wise courtiers and advisers. It was their habit to tell him stories as part of the daily court routine. Two of the major themes treated were, inevitably, love and beauty. Everything so far is perfectly normal, as it might be in the Mughal court; the minor detail that the king prefers not to read but rather to have things read out to him confirms his resemblance to the poet’s model, namely Akbar. Faizi suggests that Nal has heard so many stories of love over the years that he is somewhat fearful of having the same happen to him, of falling prey to the malady. Yet, when the time came, he could not prevent it. One day, all of a sudden, Nal is possessed by love. His sentiments are confused and inexplicable. He is bewildered by anxiety and a sense of helplessness. Something seems to have happened to him in his sleep. Yet, how could this have transpired? How could bandits have stolen into his treasury in spite of all his patrolling guards (i.e. his intellect)? Nal has a feeling that the sentiment of commotion (fitna) has been introduced into his blood, his house set on fire, his body stabbed by a dagger or administered some debilitating drug. Self-reflection makes him ask: Can this be an attack of ‘ishq?18 The king now addresses his courtiers, urging their wisdoms to discover a remedy for his state. We note that Daman has neither appeared nor even been mentioned so far in the story. Simply, spontaneously, like a self-generating ‘sleeper’ virus whose time has come to corrupt the hard disk of the royal interior, ‘ishq has appeared in the ruler’s heart. 18Masnawī

Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 163.

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Here then is a specific characteristic of the story as Faizi tells it. No images, words, or external stimuli are needed. The potential for ‘ishq lies full-blown, as it were, in everyone’s interior; it is only a question of when it becomes manifest. A major physician is called in to diagnose the malady. He takes Nal’s hand and calls for some of the usual pathological samples that are employed in the yunānī medicine of Faizi’s time. But Nal has little doubt: Nal said: ‘O foolish doctor! Don’t diagnose my illness like this. Haven’t you heard of the heart’s fevers, when the vein of frenzy is sliced open? Look to my turbulent heart, and throw that urine sample in the fire. My heart’s phial is filled with blood, Inspect it and ask why it is so.’ —(p. 165, vv. 8–11)

The doctor is nonplussed and reports his discomfiture. The king, whose intellect reaches the very sky, the doctor declares, is now a victim of the fire of youth. It is clear that ‘ishq is at work, and this has now gone beyond the normal course of love to attain the turbulence of frenzy (junūn). The only remedy can be to find a beautiful young woman. Approached by the minister to confirm the diagnosis, Nal is still lucid enough to offer advice. Though a great hunter, he states, he himself has been entrapped and wounded. The first remedy, or rather an interim solution, is, typically, for the courtiers to gather and recount various sorts of stories of love to him in the hope that a discursive engagement will distract and cure the king. After each courtier has offered him a tale from one place or the other, with no visible effect on Nal, a final courtier arises to state that rather than recount a story from the past he will offer one from the present. If a solution is to be found, it cannot be ancient, it must be found within the contemporary. His tale concerns the Deccan, a notable source of commotion (fitnakhīz) where great turbulence has arisen in recent times. Who, or what, is this?

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A magical idol, an illusory idol, has destroyed patience the world over. A flower-like face, lovely, Daman by name, her tresses have cast a net on the garden. Her intoxicated eyes like an Indian idol’s temple, the very idols of Hind worship her. Hundreds of Brahmins are bathed in their blood, when she visits the temple, idols shatter. Her palace has set Somnath aflame, Each idol has rent its sacred thread. —(p. 169, vv. 8–12)

The praise continues verse after verse, with the same bitter-sweet vocabulary; within it past iconoclasm—Mahmud of Ghazna’s raids on Somnath have clearly not been forgotten in the Mughal court— is brilliantly redeployed to a quite different end. When this Deccani princess speaks, it is at once sweet and salty: her mouth is no less to the poet than a pistachio-nut filled with almonds. The contrast with the normal beauty of the Iranian masnawī’s heroine is clear, for the Indian princess is both dark and beautiful, thus both salty and sweet, ‘as if in sugar-candy one had thrown some brackish salt’. This beauty has thus far been protected from the public gaze: only her mirror knows her image well. Yet rumours of Daman have begun to spread far and wide, so that she is known now over the seven climes and all sorts of kings are eager to marry her. Nal listens to this elaborate description with rapt attention. At length he lets out a heartfelt groan, as if now understanding the real reason for his sickness. This princess must be the reason for his state, it is her tresses that have troubled him, her arrow that has entered his heart—though, as noted, he has in fact had no contact, direct or indirect, with Daman. Yet the knowledge that his love now has a concrete object within a geographical location is no remedy for the malady. Rather, gaining such knowledge is like pouring oil on fire, making it burn all the more fiercely. Nal therefore reproaches the story-teller for deepening his wound. And yet he wants to know even more, worsen his own situation—such being the illness of love. The story of the circumstances attending Daman’s birth introduces a new narrative and provides the opportunity for much advice (nasīhat)

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on kingship and the qualities required of a good ruler. There was a king at a place called Bidar in the Deccan, south of Ujjain, whose wife was barren. The king was desolate but he could not marry again, for he did not dare share his bed with two women. After trying all sorts of remedies he was told that another king lived in his lands, a king who had become a faqīr after renouncing the world. Though bereft of all worldly possessions, he had the mighty power of asceticism. So off goes the first king, barefoot, to see the second, the ascetic monarch living in desert climes, to ask his advice, perhaps gain a boon—here, the parallel with Akbar’s visits to the shrine of the Sufi saint Mu‘inud-Din Chishti at Ajmer could not have been missed by readers at the Mughal court. The dervish begins the interview by giving the king some general advice on the nature of power and its place in the world, as well as the dependence of kings on saints and ascetics.19 He stresses the need for humility and generosity: the metaphor used is of the king as a sort of inn-keeper ministering to the people (khalq).20 Framed within the text, and placed in the mouth of this royal sage is, then, a condensed version of Faizi’s views of kingship, in which the king must give, indeed bestow on others more than what God has bestowed upon him. For unless the king gives with generosity, the shower of wealth from above will not favour him either. The attributes of a king extend beyond material giving, however, to a real empathy with his subjects (‘Keep your hands ever open, and also your heart, and thus open the seals of both treasures’). Crucially, in the midst of this generosity and seeming hedonism, all this feasting, the king should never lose his equilibrium. Thus, while being intoxicated (mast) and dancing on the roof, the ruler should make sure he does not slip and stumble: 19Masnawī Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 178. On the broader nasīhat tradition in the early modern Islamic world, also see Andreas Tietze, ed. and trans., Mustafā ‘Ali’s Counsel for Sultans of 1581, 2 vols (Vienna: 1978–83). 20 When you prepare to enter the field of battle, Humble yourself—for victory comes from within. If you break someone’s heart, that will be your own defeat.—(p. 178, vv. 9–10)

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When you’re blowing the trumpet from the rooftops, remember dawn brings remorseful prayers. Sing in such harmony with others, that your song brings them no grief. —(p. 179, vv. 6–7)

This crucial point seems likely to be a reflection of the characteristic Akbari motif of sulh-i kull, universal peace, a recipe for a sort of social harmony mediated by royal power, of which we also find powerful reflections in the writings of others in Akbar’s court, notably Faizi’s brother, Shaikh Abu’l Fazl. These passages can be linked to others regarding the idea of balance and harmony (the key terms being tawāzun and i‘tidāl), often contrasted in the literature on statecraft (akhlāq) to other notions such as ifrāt (excess) and tafrīt (shortfall).21 The ideal ruler then must understand that to have power is a reflection of his own good fortune, and hence make it his duty to be governed constantly by his intellect (khirad, a notion very close to that which we have already encountered, ‘aql). Finally, rather than dependence on a small coterie of advisers, the king must have a broader awareness of his public image. For isolation is the bane of kings, and even of courtiers. The irony that this message, doubly framed as the advice given by the royal sage to the king and by a courtier to the sick Nal, will be disregarded in the future by Nal is one that should not be lost on the reader. The dervish’s final advice concerns the real end of kingship, namely, to be remembered in favourable terms by the 21For example, the ruler must combine harmony with firmness, never hesitating to intervene when he feels there is an offence (jurm) being committed. For the key quality for a king is neither his genealogy, nor his wealth, but his justice (dād); it is thus that he may hope to be perceived favourably by the people at large. The king does not become great by impeding the caravan’s passage or seeking to tax it, but rather by helping it on its way with his generosity. For a broader discussion of such literature, also see Muzaffar Alam, ‘Akhlāqī Norms and Mughal Governance’, in Muzaffar Alam, et al., eds, The Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies (New Delhi: 2000), pp. 67–95; and Sajida Sultana Alvi, ed. and trans., Advice on the Art of Governance: Mau‘izah-i Jahāngīrī of Muhammad Bāqir Najm-i Sānī, An Indo-Islamic Mirror for Princes (Albany [NY]: 1989).

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subjects over whom one has ruled (‘May your acts be such that when you’ve departed, the world sounds the bugle of mourning’). After saying all this, the royal sage, who had by now understood (even without words) the real reason for the other king’s presence before him, gave him a boon of two oranges and an apple, hinting that these souvenirs would yield the king two sons and a daughter. True to the promise, the following year a son was born to the queen, then another, and finally a daughter, presumably from the apple rather than the oranges. As this daughter was incredibly beautiful, the king took her at once to see the dervish once more, and seek his blessings. The royal sage was pleased with her, spoke some words on her future, read her horoscope (fāl), and gave her the name ‘Daman’.22 This, explained the courtier to Nal, was the very girl whose fame had spread far and wide, causing commotion the world over. His advice to Nal was that he too should attempt to capture her hand, even though—as he had noted—a vast number of competitors and rival royal suitors stood in his way.

The Course of Love The next section of the poem is devoted to Nal’s condition once his lovesickness has been thoroughly diagnosed. The typical motif of the lover’s complaint at the beloved’s indifference, pointing to the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between them, is slightly modulated here to suggest that the pain may be on both sides. A succession of familiar motifs—the portrait, the bird as messenger, and the letters—then carries the narrative forward. To begin with, then, Nal blames Love (‘ishq) itself, and berates it for having made him its victim. Why can’t he simply be left alone, instead of being besieged in his own house? In a second phase, the tone changes. He realizes that Love is not such an unmitigated evil after all. In a part-ironic but part-sincere fashion, Nal congratulates Love for having taken over his life, and having brought spring to his garden, as it were. Then, in a third phase, Nal addresses an imaginary Daman, whom he has of course not yet seen, only heard of. These 22Masnawī

Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 183.

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verses take the familiar tack of blaming the beloved, who is inevitably seen as heartless but who must nevertheless be asked for mercy: O candle of mine, where are you? O destroyer of my house, where are you? Sight unseen, you plunged a sword in my breast, O heartless one! You didn’t even regret it. A sword has been aimed at me, the king. An arrow has been fired at me, the moon. Your wound in my heart has rendered me ill, from the very first day, the blood keeps flowing. —(p. 187, vv. 18–19; p. 188, vv. 1–2)

This suffering is, however, not to be in vain, for Nal is convinced that his destiny is now forever intertwined with that of Daman: These are not just boasts from my tongue, for I’m a Veda-reciting Brahmin, So far, I’ve depended on my idols, but now I worship you, not them. —(p. 188, v. 20; p. 189, v. 1)

Faizi’s mastery is evident here, in his capacity to move from the register of advice and abstract political reflection to virtuoso love poetry (we admit freely that our flat translation does not come close to the flavour of the original): Without you, I weep tears of blood, and what do you respond? Without you, my eyelashes are in the dust, while you sleep on a coquette’s bed. Without you, my eyes drip blood, while you smile in the flower-garden. —(p. 189, vv. 6–7, 9)

And although thus far the asymmetric nature of the relationship between the Beloved (ma‘shūq) and Lover (‘āshiq) is stressed, that the pain may have afflicted both parties is also made evident:

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Those who speak of love, say turmoil rages on both sides. —(p. 190, v. 9)

This is of course perfectly prescient, for Faizi informs us soon enough that meanwhile, in the Deccan, Daman is in fact undergoing the same pangs and torment. On the very night that Love entered Nal’s heart, Daman became restless on her bed. It turns out that the Beloved and the Lover are in fact sharing a more or less symmetric moment. The burning of desire and heartache, was like wine poured at once in two glasses. Like the same note sounded from two different keys, the same intoxication in two different spots. The suffering that love induced in the Lover, the Beloved welcomed as her guest. The bell the Lover tolled in grief, echoed in the Beloved’s heart. —(p. 191, vv. 12–15)

Yet, although their suffering is symmetric (or at least more than we can have suspected), it is clear that in this section the woman’s love is, to an extent, derivative. This contrasts with other versions and reflects Faizi’s slight preference for a story in which the male character dominates. Daman has been seized, as it were, by Nal’s love, as we see in Daman’s own reflection: Whose love now walks with me? In whose grasp has my wrist fallen? (p. 193, v. 7)

Daman, no less than Nal, is able soon enough to find out who is responsible for her state, playing on the strings of her heart. Having discovered his identity, she then makes an imaginary portrait (naqsh) of her lover by way of consolation, though she explains it away to her slaves and companions by saying it is an idol she worships. The

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motif of lovesickness re-enters here. The whole palace is alarmed, and her illness and obsession with the portrait come to the attention of her parents. In her case, the fear is of a potential scandal. The royal family (dūdmān-i shāhī) is particularly vulnerable to the rumours that might spread. On the other hand, the king reflects, if he were to brutally suppress the love he would be criticized by his people as well. Daman, for her part, protests that it is not her fault; it is Nal who is the cause of all her problems. It is a bird, captured in Nal’s garden, which proves instrumental in bringing the lovers together. The trapped bird, which arrives from Sri Lanka (Sarandip), is brought before Nal in a cage and pleads with him in the voice of a small child: O broken-hearted and dejected one, your own bird is caught in a lovely net. My wings are already like a cage, so open the doors of this other prison. Here I cry in one cage, and over it you’ve placed yet another. I too have an idol, my very life’s breath; I’ve been left here, and she’s flown away. I’m burning in fire from separation, the freedom of one is the cage of the other. —(p. 204, vv. 2–3, 5–7)

These lines of pathos draw a parallel between the bird’s fate and Nal’s. The bird declares that if he is released he will surely be of some service to Nal, for he is no ordinary creature. He knows a thousand stories and has seen myriad things. Neither love (‘ishq) nor frenzy (junūn) are unknown to him, and he is well acquainted with the tricks employed by the Beloved as well. The bird is an accomplished conversationalist and poet, highly literate, and even able to read the words of both humans and gods. He offers to intercede with Daman. All Nal needs to do is to put his thoughts down in a secret letter (khatt), accompanied by an oral message (paighām) that the bird will carry. Nal now takes the bird to the edge of a nearby stream, draws out a pen, and writes a ‘letter

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of separation’ (firāq-nāma), a mixture of direct praise and praisethrough-blame in which each word drips with pain. After a score of verses extolling Daman’s beauty, the letter goes on to declare Nal’s love for her, a love that has him lying drunk from her liquor, reduced to the width of a hair. These elaborate verses are once more a sort of virtuoso performance on Faizi’s part: he develops a theme by repeating the same alliterative structures. Beyond the despair and lamentation there eventually emerges a concrete proposition. Nal tells Daman he is no ordinary man and that what he desires is union. The letter closes as follows: This letter that tells the tale of love’s sorrow is also a bouquet of the spring of love. This letter which carries the secret of my heart is Nal’s supplication to Daman. The song wet with tears that travels here, carries a hundred heart-aches in each cry. Those who can grasp the point of words can make a book from each letter. Hark to the sound of this bell, and my excuses for this long-windedness. —(p. 210, vv. 11–15)

Having completed the letter with this rather prosaic anticlimax, Nal perfumes it with a sprinkling of amber. He then gives additional oral instructions to the bird—how he is to salute Daman, and what precisely he is to say to her. There is no real need to reply to the letter, he adds, for a meeting alone can suffice. Nal then blows on the ink with his heavy sighs, ties the letter up with strings and knots which parallel his accumulated travails, and places it under the bird’s wing.23 The bird now sets out with this secret letter (nāma-i rāz), which is equally a love letter (nāma-i ‘ishq). Flying over mountains and deserts, he reaches Daman’s palace, and, catching her attention, cleverly 23These passages can be compared to those in a roughly contemporary text, the Telugu Prabhāvati Pradyumnamu of Pingali Suranna, for which see The Demon’s Daughter: A Love Story from South India, trans. with an Afterword by V. Narayana Rao and David Shulman (Albany [NY]: 2006), pp. 45–7.

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retreats until he reaches a corner of the garden, far from Daman’s companions. The bird then begins to speak, using those poetic words which he has so well mastered, and reveals that he is no ordinary bird but Love itself, as well as a messenger of love. This secret is tied under his wing. Having delivered this first morsel, he leaps on to Daman’s hand. His seductive talk now continues, but he also makes it clear that the letter comes from none other than Nal, ‘the cypress-tree of the spring of youth’. Daman falls to the ground, intoxicated by what she hears. When she recovers, she signals to her companions to move away so that she can speak to the bird alone under a cypress. Presently, she opens the letter and begins to read it. Each word in it strikes her as fiery and capable of melting the intellect. Still, she reads it from beginning to end, enchanted by both the words and the verses it contains. Daman at once begins to compose a letter in response, rather more composed and purposeful than Nal’s, as the first lines show: I begin my letter in the name of God, the one who has lit the lamp of purpose. —(p. 215, v. 2)

After several lines in praise of the Almighty, the letter addresses Nal directly, as the ‘emperor of the age’ (shāhinshāh-i zamāna): Salutations to Nal from Daman, from my eyes a message to your heart. —(p. 215, v. 10)

The letter she has received, Daman writes, is full of frenzied passion (junūn) which has evoked the same passion in her, to the point that her state is no better than his. Daman points to her wretched condition in the palace, reviled by those around her and a cause of distress to her father and mother. She would gladly fly and join him but is kept secluded within the four walls of the palace (parda-nashīn). He must take the initiative for he is free. The letter alternates between moments of despair and hope as well as exhilaration. Daman notes, for example, that her horoscope is a fine one, and so things can only

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turn out well, and she is most eager to meet him. All in all, this letter is rather less elaborate than the one sent by Nal, perhaps something less of a poetic tour de force. Once completed, Daman seals it with her eyes, perfumes it with her tresses, ties it with a piece of her headcloth, and gives it back to the bird, who carries it to Nal. This exchange of letters can hardly be kept secret for long. Daman’s father comes to learn of it soon enough, for neither the smell of wine nor that of love can be concealed, writes Faizi. He therefore calls in the astrologers, and urgently seeks their advice. Brahmins are sent out to spread the good news that Daman’s marriage is to be fixed. Only royal suitors, with a good family and character, are to apply. The time and date when these suitors are to appear are stated. When this news spreads, the rulers of the world decide to try their luck; even some of the pagan gods (parīzhād) think they should try their hand at seducing Daman, who is to go about with a flower garland in her hand in search of a suitable suitor amongst those assembled.24 This sort of festival, Faizi notes, is common enough in India and goes by the name of saimbar (i.e., svyamavara). All the preparations are thus made, and naturally Nal too decides to make his way to the gathering. Nal’s march towards Bidar, the place where the wedding is to be held, is described in majestic verses which carry the flavour of victorious Mughal armies advancing: Hundreds of way-stations were gilded with carpets, hundreds of caravans were laden with Chinese silks, With wine and savouries in sack after sack, and perfumes from China and Tartary. —(p. 223, vv. 18–19)

Meanwhile, Daman is impatient to catch a glimpse of Nal amongst her many suitors. But even as she has her imaginary portrait of him, she trembles with the fear of choosing wrongly and having to live in suffering forever after. The tension mounts. When Daman eventually appears at the assembly of princes, Nal is there too but the pagan gods who have shown up at the competition have set up a trick: 24Masnawī

Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 221.

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Nal stood there intoxicated, like fermenting wine, under a rose-tree’s shadow. She came and looked at both sides of the throng, where it seemed the moon and stars had come out. In great desire, she glanced at Nal, handsome and graceful beyond compare. At that spot were two or three gods, tricksters and sons of devils, who, hearing of Daman’s beauty, had their own eyes on her. A beauty that had drawn the gods, and cast a spell on magicians. —(p. 227, vv. 1–6)

These pagan gods (parī-nazhādān) have transformed themselves: each looks identical to Nal. How is she to find the real Nal? Daman now prays to the real God (as distinct from these false ones): ‘O God (Yā rabb), reveal the secret of this riddle to me, and show me what is real.’ Her wish is granted, for a divine beam of light appears, accompanied by a voice which says: ‘Know that there are three signs of the gods (parī). Their eyebrows do not meet, their feet do not touch the ground, and their bodies cast no shadow.’ Armed with this knowledge, Daman is now able to recognize the real Nal. Smiling, she approaches and garlands him; the others lose hope. The two are thus united at last, and Faizi devotes several dozen verses to the happy outcome, using a series of metaphors gathered largely from nature, yet remarkable nonetheless for their unusual eroticism within the context of contemporary Persian poetry: Venus was seated on the moon’s lap, a bouquet of a hundred stars on her shoulder. For a moment, exchanging glances, two flower-buds kissed. For a moment, raising their glances, they cast off the rose-leaves they wore, showing their beauty, unabashed, entwined like two trees, branch to branch.

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When the treasure was on the palm, the key entered the pearl’s lock; the pond’s purity was discovered and the fountain within began to gush. As if spring had caught fire, and raindrops had begun to fall. (...) Pearl-seeds borne by raindrops, came down and filled the oyster. —(p. 229, vv. 13–19; p. 230, v. 4)

These are metaphors that we shall have occasion to encounter below, albeit somewhat transformed, in the hands of a nineteenthcentury Urdu poet. Here Faizi has deftly used the pagan gods without deviating from the monotheism that his audience expects from him. Rather like his near–contemporary the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões—whose Lusíadas also contain a large dose of pagan gods as a conceit within an essentially Christian framework—Faizi allows the parī-nazhād a place, but also contains them rather than allowing them full play.25

Exile and Return After the marriage is celebrated the bride and groom return to the city of Ujjain, the capital city over which Nal rules. But Nal’s problems are far from over; in fact, they have just begun. The main reason for this, in Faizi’s view, stems from his being a victim of the frenzy of passion (shorish-i junūn), that excess which means he cannot find the right balance between love and the exercise of reason. Indeed, the poet tells us, one can never count on the vagaries of Fortune and the Age, which vary all the time; their wine changes colour all the time, and life itself is no more than a gambling house (qimārkhāna). If at times you are riding high, at other moments you may 25See Shankar Raman, Framing ‘India’: The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture (Stanford: 2002), pp. 29–88.

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fall into the depths. The part of the story that follows exemplifies this truth. Nal, who until now has been counted amongst the great rulers of his time, becomes completely lost to pleasure (nishāt). It is as if his good fortune has been exhausted in this earlier enterprise of finding Daman, as he comes now to be possessed by the frenzy of passion (saudā’-i junūn). In his life, love (‘ishq) and frenzy (junūn) thus come to form an alliance against the intellect (‘aql). The result is that he loses his equilibrium, that balance (i‘tidāl) which is the essential quality of the good ruler in Faizi’s vocabulary. This is the moment when his younger brother decides to take advantage. He proposes a game of chess as a diversion. But the brother’s real plan is rather more sinister. Nal, who is already a prisoner of junūn, falls into this whirlpool as its unsuspecting victim. But in a crucial sense he is himself responsible for falling into this trap—he has laid his own bed and now is obliged to lie on it. In the game, at first Nal wins and grows overconfident. His losses now begin, one after the other. His courtiers try to advise him not to play on, but their intellect (khirad) is all in vain. Having lost all his goods and treasure, Nal is presently left with only his kingdom, and soon that too is gone. Further, he is completely oblivious of the criticism of the people (khalq) at his comportment, which is not only self-destructive but detrimental to their welfare. Faizi concludes: When ‘ishq and junūn join together, Sorrow becomes a storm of misfortunes. —(p. 235, v. 18)

Nal is obliged to abandon his kingdom and his town. All of a sudden the world has turned upside down. Yet none of his erstwhile courtiers and friends come forward to support him, disgusted perhaps at his disregard of their advice. Only Daman is left by his side in this moment of immense difficulty. Nal and Daman are obliged to walk into the wilderness. His delicate feet soon become blistered and bruised: the royal couple, used to walking in gardens, is now obliged to tramp the jungles of the region, for the Age itself has turned against

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the king. The transformation from palace to wilderness occurs with astonishing rapidity, in the course of a few dozen verses.26 After a few days of hunger and bewilderment, Nal suffers further abasement when the bird he is trying to catch with his remaining cloth flies away, leaving him completely naked, and reproaches him in the bargain. Nal grumbles and laments, comparing the difference between his erstwhile state and the one in which he now finds himself. This is the Springtime of his Love (bahār-i ‘ishq), he declares with bitter irony, but also shows a certain lucidity in relation to his own condition. The poet presents Nal now with all his flaws, which adversity reveals ever more strongly. Not only is he incompetent as a hunter, he is an inveterate grumbler, and it turns out he is suspicious too. Faizi reflects here briefly on where love can lead. When love crosses the bound into intoxication, it begins to tyrannize everyone. Love becomes a tyrant sultan who thinks justice comes from destroying good. —(p. 244, vv. 1–2)

This leads to a turning point in the story, for Nal has begun to think of leaving Daman: he cannot bear to live with her in such conditions. He suggests that she should return to her parents’ house, and if ever his fortune changes for the better they may one day be reunited. Daman resists this proposal and eventually responds in terms of the need for faith (wafā) between lovers under all possible circumstances. She goes so far as to accuse him of bad conduct (badrawishī). Even if ‘ishq and junūn have so mixed in him, she remarks, he should exercise some degree of self-control. Even such extremity cannot excuse one from wanting one’s lover to depart. After all, are they lovers or enemies? But even if for a time Nal accepts her argument, his inner turmoil cannot allow him rest. So, one night while Daman is asleep, he cuts her cloth in half, wraps himself in it, and silently leaves. When she awakes she is naturally in great distress. Nal is not to be found 26Masnawī

Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 237.

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anywhere. Daman now addresses bitter reproaches at him, ostensibly directed at her heart, which had taken residence in his.27 O my heart! What has happened? Why have you fought with me? You’ve gone without a word, thinking nothing of my sad state. You’ve left me on the bed to die, abandoned me sleeping in the dust, I’ve become sorrow and grief itself, blood flows from my eyes and heart. What wise men have said is true: There is a method in madness. You’ve abandoned the path of faith, and invented a new form of love. You’ve broken love’s magic spell, and robbed love’s passion of its dignity. Love and passion existed before you, but you’ve transformed the face of love. —(p. 241, vv. 3–10)

Daman now has to face the dangers of the jungle alone. She is barely saved from a huge snake, which attempts to kill and eat her, by a passing traveller, but in fact now she wishes to die and is looking for a wolf or a lion to eat her. Presently, she reaches the edge of a river and meditates on her misfortune. It would have been far better had the dervish not granted her father a boon, had she never been born. But at this point certain benevolent spirits dressed in white (safīd poshān) offer her good advice and urge her against despair. Further along her way she encounters an army whose general asks her to come along with him to his capital city. When the army is attacked by wild elephants and destroyed, only a few Brahmins and Daman escape. The Brahmins take care of her, and she eventually reaches the kingdom to which the army belongs. Here, she is well received by the king and queen, and appointed a companion to their daughter. 27Masnawī

Nal-Daman Faizī, ed. Siddiqui, p. 247.

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Nal, meanwhile, has begun to feel guilty almost immediately after abandoning Daman. He decides that one day he will make it all up to her and admit his faults if ever he gets the occasion. But a series of puzzling encounters and tests await him first. While still wandering in the jungle, the voice of a huge snake burning in the middle of the forest pleads with him. The snake was cursed by a Brahmin he had bitten the previous day and is paying the price. After some hesitation Nal helps him out of the fire. In exchange for the aid he has received, the snake promises help. Nal is told to count from one to ten; on the count of ten, the snake bites him all of a sudden and Nal becomes completely black in colour. Nal protests at this injustice. What sort of help was this? The snake assures him that this is indeed a form of assistance. Nal should take the slough which the snake has recently shed, and when he burns half of it he will revert to his initial form. Meanwhile, the snake advises Nal to go to the city of a king called Rutbarn and take employment there under the name of Bahuk Darvesh. Nal can serve in the stables, and the king will help him improve his gambling skills. This indeed transpires, and the king is pleased to have acquired a servant who not only looks after horses but also cooks splendidly. So, during the day, Nal works for the king. But at night he spends most of his time weeping, remembering his lost Daman. Meanwhile, Daman’s parents are looking out for her, knowing she has been exiled from the city of Ujjain; her father sends out his Brahmin agents to enquire her whereabouts from every passing caravan. One of these Brahmins, a certain Sadev, eventually arrives in the town where Daman now resides. He spots her at a Vedic recital in one of the temples. The two meet and Daman enquires anxiously after her parents and their kingdom. Word of this encounter reaches the queen of that city (its intelligence services are clearly quite good). She asks Daman who she really is, supplementing this with information from Sadev. By a convenient coincidence it now turns out that the queen is Daman’s maternal aunt; naturally, she is overjoyed to discover her niece. Daman is sent back to Bidar. Yet she is still disconsolate and enlists her wet-nurse (dāya) in the task of finding Nal once again. The king and queen are informed, and they decide to send out their trusty Brahmin agents once more on spying

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missions, this time to look out for the most miserable and lovesick man thay can find. One of these Brahmins, called Parnad, eventually reaches the town where Rutbarn is king. He at once spots the conspicuously lovesick Bahuk-Nal, but Bahuk insists he is no more than the stable-master of Rutbarn, expert in the business of horses. Parnad reports the story back to Daman, especially the bits about the horses. She now calls in the expert Brahmin Sadev and asks him to go and announce a second svyamavara to Rutbarn, while hinting that his chances are really quite good in the affair. Sadev protests that Rutbarn lives too far away and cannot come to Bidar at short notice. Daman points out that if Bahuk is really Nal he will so ably manage the horses that the requisite speed will be achieved. As predicted, Rutbarn urges Bahuk to arrange passage, explaining his reasons for the haste. When Bahuk-Nal hears them his heart sinks, his head begins to swim. Perhaps Daman has thought him faithless and wants to marry again. But upon reflection, he wonders if it is not a ruse on Daman’s part to get him back. He agrees to accompany the king and selects two emaciated horses from the stable. The king is initially displeased with his choice but bows to Bahuk’s superior judgement. In fact, the king is so impressed at their speed that he asks Bahuk to reveal the tricks of his trade, including how to distinguish good horses from bad. BahukNal discloses a good number of his secrets, and the king is so grateful that he volunteers some of his own secret skills in exchange. One of these is to count the leaves and twigs on a tree by a single glance. He also teaches Nal a number of other gambling (qimār-dānī) tricks. Nal is saddened to have to learn these tricks, which pertain after all to the sphere of trickery and illusion. Still, realism prevails, and Nal realizes that if he is to win back his kingdom, this is really the only solution. Once in Bidar, Rutbarn and Bahuk are surprised not to see any sign of a svayamvara. Daman’s father is just as surprised to hear that Rutbarn has arrived. Hastily received, Rutbarn is more than a little embarrassed and makes some lame excuses. Daman, for her part, sends one of her friends to examine Bahuk more closely and subject him to a first set of tests. The friend raises the subject of Nal in conversation, and Bahuk denies all knowledge of him. But when the subject of ‘ishq is raised, Bahuk begins to weep

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bitterly. The friend runs back to report this to Daman, who decides she will try one more test. She knows that Nal alone is capable of making food without water or fire, and so sends a cooking pot to him to see if Bahuk too can do the same. Sure enough, the black Bahuk turns out to have the same skills. Daman is now certain of her identification. She calls her brothers and reveals the truth to them; they go at once to meet Nal and embrace him despite his strange appearance. When Daman reports her rediscovery of Nal to her mother, however, she proves rather more sceptical. Next, the mother wants to make sure both that it is really Nal, and also that Nal has not changed his mind about her daughter. Nal is invited into the palace, and Daman is instructed to interrogate him. When she begins to ask him who he is and why he is there, the questions and answers assume the form of riddles. Bahuk-Nal says he is lost and purposeless. Why is he black? Because the colour of his fortune is black, and this has affected his body. Who seeks separation from his own beloved, asks Daman. One who is affected by the frenzy of passion, replies Nal. Why did you abandon the path of ‘aql, asks Daman. Because of the magic of devils, replies Nal. Why did you fall into this situation, asks Daman. Because of my own faults, replies Nal. How did you come here, she asks. Wandering through sands and deserts, he replies.28 At the end of this interrogation, Daman softens, and even her mother agrees that the man before them is really Nal. The snake’s slough helps him regain his initial form, the lovers are reunited at last, and it is like spring once more. When Rutbarn learns of the episode he comes forward to proffer his excuses for having treated Nal as his servant. But Nal and Daman tell him they are in fact deeply in his debt; friendly relations are re-established, and in the next few days Nal and Daman return to Ujjain with goods and wealth from the latter’s father. Nal now calls for his brother and suggests an amicable reconciliation. The younger brother replies with disdain but agrees to another gambling match. This time Nal, with his new-found skills, wins with ease and the brother fears Nal will do a tit for tat. But Nal generously forgives him and allows him to stay on in the kingdom, even giving back his old 28Cf.

Shulman, The Wisdom of Poets, pp. 137–42.

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prebend (iqta‘-i qadīm). Nal is re-established as king and proceeds to rule in all his glory. Thus, things are brought to an even keel once more. But this time, Faizi insists, there is not only enjoyment but also sagacity (hūshiyārī). It is thus possible at the end of all his travails for Nal to combine these qualities of ‘ishq (love) and shauq (desire) with the ‘essence of an awakened intellect’ (jauhar-i ‘aql-o-hūsh). A perfectly equilibriated form of kingship is thus attained. But the Indo–Persian poet still has some tricks up his sleeve, which will perhaps perplex assiduous readers of the Sanskrit epic. For Faizi the story has not attained its conclusion, and one more crucial episode is yet to come. After Nal has reigned in this way for long years, one day in the autumn (khizān) he notices that everything in the garden has dried up. No nightingale is to be heard and the flowers are gone. Led to meditate, Nal realizes the transient nature of the life he is living. He calls his oldest son and tells him that the throne is his from that day on. Hearing this the son begins to weep and so do the other notables (a‘yān), but Nal is adamant: such transitions are inevitable in the world, with the passing of time. So he places his son on the throne and departs after giving him advice in the form of an aphorism: Keep generosity and justice ever alive, And rulership shall always remain with you. —(p. 300, v. 5)

Once in the wilderness, Nal’s health begins to deteriorate rapidly, and so he calls for Daman, his beloved, who is still beautiful despite her advancing age. Now is the time for him to make amends. He regrets all the unhappiness that he has caused her in the past and says that he is preparing to leave the earth, with nothing but her ‘ishq amongst his possessions. But she replies that this is once more nothing but unfaithfulness (bīwafā’i) on his part. How can he begin to talk of separation once more, when they represent a single life in two bodies? The tenor of Nal’s argument now moves from the notion of bodily love to that of true love, which we may understand to be akin to the Sufi notion of union. The body is only a veil, and what awaits them is another level of reality. So saying, he closes his eyes. At this point his breath leaves his body. Daman begins to weep. Then,

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she gathers together all the dried flowers of the forest, and makes up a bier of sandalwood. She declares aloud her intention to accompany his caravan while seated on a saddle of fire (haudaj-i ātishīn). She then transforms herself spontaneously into flames while seated on Nal’s pyre. The lover was drunk with the last drops of wine, while his idol held the cup in her hand. (...) They sat in each other’s fire, and grew hotter than the pyre itself. (...) The idol was burnt from love of the Brahman, its body now charred like its burnt-out heart. If the moth was afire on this evening of sorrow, the candle too burnt from top to toe. —(p. 304, vv. 3, 6, 11–12)

As Nal had taken care of his people and offered them every comfort, his death is marked by a general mourning, as though at the Last Judgement. The temples become dark, the divine conch falls silent. The last section of the poem introduces a series of general reflections on the story via abstractions rather than concrete detail. In formal terms, these closing passages could be read in a number of ways, of which one might be to see it within the Persian tradition of the lament (marsīya). O Fayyazi, go beyond this world, And plant your flag in the next one. This sky is a board, and its foundation is the sign of destruction, like colour effaced. The world’s existence is a mere illusion, its roots to be traced in nothingness. Both new and old are of no importance, so attach yourself to nothing here. —(p. 306, vv. 7–10)

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The verses now flow with advice on how to deal with a transient world while knowing full well that it is illusion. In the epilogue (khātima) Faizi offers some explicit comparisons between his work and that of his illustrious predecessors, including Nizami Ganjawi. The specificity of his Indian metaphors and usages are once again apparent, as is the fact that the text was completed in the thirty-ninth regnal year of Akbar. And so we conclude with him: O Fayyazi, on the making of this charm, how long will you continue to speak? Far better to draw it to a close, before you pass yourself into the realm of story. O, burnt heart, end this tale now. Stop this story of love, stop. —(p. 324, vv. 16–18)

Epilogue Faizi’s Nal-Daman, with its powerful innovations and technical mastery, seems to have exercised much fascination already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The hallmarks of his treatment came to be seen as his insistence on the delicate line between love and excess (or frenzy), with the intellect being the only means of preventing the one from degenerating into the other. In relationship to kingship, the text also offered a poet’s sage advice—no ordinary poet, but one who claimed to be amongst the philosophers of his time. All this was tied up with a brilliant closing section in which the Indo–Persian poet’s fascination with satī was combined with earlier themes to allow a closure wherein a return to an explicitly Sufi flavour was possible. In all these respects, Faizi’s version sets itself apart from earlier renderings of the text, whether in Persian or the vernaculars, in none of which is politics or kingship seen as central. At best, in some earlier versions the themes are existential and questions on the nature of identity are raised because of the transformation and retransformation of Nal.

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We may now turn briefly to the afterlife of Faizi’s Nal–Daman through a reading of Munshi Lal Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’ Kakorwi’s Nal–Daman Hindī, written in North India and published in 1859, thus immediately after the important political events of 1857–8.29 Bhagwant Rai actually starts his masnawī as follows (with ‘Hindi’ in his version still meaning ‘Urdu’, not only the script but also its heavily Persianized diction): Jo dekhā āj kal hindī ka charchā Huā dil ek din mushtāq iskā Ke ‘ishq-i-Nal jo thā ‘ālam mein mashhūr Kare hindī zabān mein usko mazkūr Agar che fārsī mein sab bayān hai Magar tūl uskī har ek dāstān hai Kare tū mukhtasar aisā bayān sab Khule har ek pe jo raze nihān sab. (Seeing the demand for Hindi in our times, the desire came upon me one day, that Nal’s love which was famous in this world should be brought into the Hindi tongue. Though it has all been told in Persian yet it’s been done at tedious length. Why not recount it all in brief, that each reader might grasp the point?) —(p. 2, vv. 24–8)

The Urdu version does indeed ‘recount it all in brief ’, reducing the 4000 verses of the original to less than half that number. The influence of Faizi upon Bhagwant Rai is evident, both in terms of the organization of the story and the presence of some key episodes that were Faizi’s innovations, such as the initial praise of ‘ishq (here called muhabbat). Bhagwant Rai, however, does not utilize Faizi’s development of the idea of two stages of Love, one within the 29Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’ Kakorwi, Nal–Daman Hindī. The original lithograph is not paginated, and in the paragraphs that follow we follow its sequence.

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bounds of Reason, and the other where Love is transformed into an uncontrollable passion. Nor does he expatiate on another distinction clear to Faizi, and which appears both at the beginning and in the concluding sections of the Persian Nal–Daman, namely, that between bodily Love and real Love, which approximates to the Sufic idea of Union. In the Urdu text we pass without clear distinctions between the love of the deer, which seeks its companion in the forest, to the execution of Mansur because of his declaring ‘ana’l-Haqq’ (I am God). Bhagwant Rai perhaps logically reduces the initial sections of Faizi’s text drastically, passing very quickly to a brief description of Hindustan, with only passing reference to the inferiority of foreign lands (wilāyat) vis-à-vis the wonders of Hindustan. But a few other verses suggest an even more highly developed sense of ‘patriotism’ on the part of our nineteenth-century author than one in Faizi, who, as noted, is not entirely lacking in these sentiments either: It seems to be a part of Paradise, for the status of this land is towering. If we were to describe its beauty in detail, our paper would be transformed into a painting. In terms of beauty, it has such a name, that Canaan would do well to be its slave. —(p. 3, vv. 7–9)

A few other changes in detail are perhaps worth mentioning. When Nal falls sick, examining his urine (qārūra) does not interest the doctors; they are more preoccupied by the patient’s pulse (nabz). In describing Daman’s beauty, the emphasis on the appellation ‘Hindu’, in the double sense of ‘dark’ and as a religious category (in opposition to ‘Musalman’), is quite clear. And while the Persian text rests content with describing Daman’s face, and a limited set of features, the Urdu text (perhaps under the influence of vernacular poetry) is far more explicit in developing a series of detailed physical descriptions: The Deccan is a place of wondrous beauty a colourful garden, full of rose-like faces.

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Each of them has a special style, that drives even the sane mad with love. But there is one moon-faced one there, whom the whole world desires to acquire, If that idol were seen by a pious Muslim, he would desire her like any Brahmin. The net (dām) she has made with her tresses has produced her name itself—Daman. Thousands of Brahmins are mad about her, and want somehow to approach that silvery idol. What can I say of the love she inspires, that black-eyed, black-haired Hindu. (...) Not only will the Hindu die for her tresses, the Musalman too would sacrifice his faith for it. —(p. 5, vv. 2–6, 17)

A long passage also illustrates the innovations the Urdu poet has introduced for his part, for if on the one hand he prefers brevity, on the other he dilates on aspects that would probably have made the sixteenth-century poet blush. On her chest lie two fresh apples, which no hand has besmirched so far. Her whole belly is so soft and silky that it would put ermine itself to shame. And her waist as thin as a flower-stalk, has the greatest connoisseurs rapt in wonder. Her gliding walk undulates as if she bears her tresses as a weight. In the belly’s river lies a whirlpool, her navel, that has drowned a thousand hearts. Beyond this lies the place of shame, where the pen can find no real place. That secret place cannot be drawn, so how can ‘Rahat’ write of it subtly? If the poet exercises all his craft he may give a mere glimpse of it.

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The morning’s air cannot reach it, so the flower-bud is yet to open. Her hips are so very wondrous, as if the bottom were higher than the top. What shall I tell you of her thighs? For they glisten with a delicate light. When the mirror looks upon their beauty despairing, he throws his own shine in the dust. Whoever looks upon the calves of that fairy, will never again find peace from his unrest. The henna on the edges of her feet, has watchers all rubbing their hands in envy. —(p. 5, vv. 54–55; p. 6, vv. 1–13)

Variations in the Urdu text occur thus mostly in the direction of more concrete detail,30 and a few elements from popular Islam also feature in the Urdu text: for example, Daman is said to have met the legendary Khwaja Khizr on her wanderings before finding her way to the kingdom of her aunt and uncle. While the Urdu text veers towards greater sexual explicitness, the nineteenth-century poet also seems more concerned with propriety when it comes to Daman’s actions. Thus, in the episode where Daman and the bird converse in a corner, the Urdu text has her making rather lame excuses to her friends for why she needs to speak with this messenger. A new ambient morality seems to have set in, making crude concealment necessary. When Daman’s father discovers her secret passion, Bhagwant Rai’s version has it that he is afraid of his reputation because his daughter is still too young. The nineteenth-century preoccupation with an appropriate age for marriage has thus invaded the text, this being something that does not bother the Mughal poet. At the same time, perhaps the most significant deviation takes place in the description of the union of Nal and Daman after the svayamvara, which we have seen is quite charged in Faizi’s version. But the Urdu poet, whose language is rather more uninhibited, takes us further down the track of sexual love, seen from an explicitly and quite aggressively male viewpoint. 30For example, in the episode of the exchanged letters, the Urdu text notes that they were put inside envelopes (lifāfa), something that of course Faizi does not mention.

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Daman was then brought to his side, the curtain between them was raised, When the rituals had been performed, the place came to be deserted. When they were alone at last in the palace, Desire put his foot forward boldly. The lover was now growing impatient, the wait had been too long for him. As his hand moved with speed and hope, it first touched the fresh pomegranate. Having caressed it a while in lust, he then bent over the grape-like lips, to chew upon the pistachio in her mouth, to taste the pleasure of her apple-like cleft chin. Having tasted each fruit turn by turn, he placed his hand at length around her waist. If she showed some signs of shyness, he scarcely hesitated. The silvery branch he drew to his waist, and joined it to the soaked-through date. Seeing these two fresh flower-like bodies so, the candle kept burning there in shame. When the raindrop approached the oyster’s mouth, the jeweller could not pierce the shell. The hard diamond which stood in the way of a sudden became soft, and yielded. The body that was as flushed as vermilion, grew pale from the flash of lightning. The face turned as pale as the moon, for desire had now at last subsided. Still he clasped his beloved to his body, For in his heart, passion still was beating. 31 —(p. 16, vv. 2–17) 31The

Urdu text also deviates somewhat from that of Faizi in bringing back the theme of Kali into the text, with Kali concretely being the snake that bites Nal and transforms him into Bahuk. This is not a full-fledged rehabilitation of the Kali theme into the poem, for Bhagwant Rai still remains faithful to Faizi’s conception

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The colophon of the Urdu text is once again far more modest, and far less abstract than that of Faizi.32 The Urdu poet, no doubt a Kayastha from the area around Lucknow, seems to have produced the text from his own inspiration and then taken it to a series of patrons. Besides Kali Prashad, mentioned earlier, we know that the text’s printing was subsidized by at least two other such individuals: Lala Jai Narayan and Lala Bakhtawar Singh. The patronage of the Mughal court has passed in symbolic fashion to that of the merchant (saudāgar), but a good part of Faizi’s message still retains an interest for nineteenth-century readers. There has been much debate over the years on the translation of texts from Sanskrit into Persian at the courts of Muslim sultans, whether the Tūtī-Nāma and other cycles of stories, or esoteric and philosophical texts. It is certain that in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such projects of ‘translation’ (with the word being used in the widest possible sense) gained a massive momentum under the Mughals for complex reasons. The major Sanskrit epic of love and excess as the principal axis around which to organize the narrative. The sudden introduction of Kali here suggests that the Urdu poet was aware of other versions, and sought in his own way to effect some minor reconciliations. 32Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’ Kakorwi, Nal–Daman Hindī: Now I should thank the Creator, who from nothing brought forth all creation, This work has been done thanks to Him, and carried through from beginning to end. When the masnawī was made ready, I thought someone should examine it. I took it to a benefactor Kali Prashad, who heard it and grew very glad. He reflected upon it with grace, and said: this story brings comfort. Whoever reads this masnawī, May God keep him ever content. So long as the sun shines in the sky, may this story remain famous in the world. O cup-bearer! Pour me such a wine that I may not be intoxicated again. When I counted out the verses, they came to a thousand six hundred and seventy-five.

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texts were rendered into Persian and were at times drawn upon by chroniclers to provide a history of India in the period before Muslim rule. In some instances, it would appear that these Persian versions enjoyed a great deal of legitimacy even amongst Hindu readers (this is the case with the translation of the Mahābhārata), while in others the Persian versions languished for long in obscurity.33 Within this broad context, Nal Daman is a peculiar instance. The text did not have any particularly weighty religious connotation and seems to have been absorbed into the Persian tradition by Faizi as a relatively secular theme upon which he could develop a series of reflections and arguments of his own, concerning royal power, the nature of love, and the place of the intellect in managing the affairs of the world. For example, while the text never attempts to transform Nal’s identity, or present him as anything other than an idol-worshipper (but-parast)— in fact, one may even say that the poet takes a certain pleasure in playing constantly with metaphors relating to idols, Brahmins, and temples, and relating them to the lover and beloved—in Faizi’s view the problems of kingship are universal and have nothing to do with whether the king is Muslim or not. The advice given by the royal sage could be the advice given by a Sufi to a Mughal ruler; and finding both social balance and empathy with the ruled are universal problems that call for universal solutions, these being expressed quite naturally in the vocabulary of Persian poetry. What is of interest is the power of the poet’s intervention which, if partly related to his prestige and that of the Mughal court, is also largely the consequence of the literary and thematic appeal that his text carried. For many of the literati of northern India, then, the story of Nal and Daman (or Nala and Damayanti) would never be the same again after Faizi had remoulded it to his own ends.

33See Mir Ghiyas-ud-Din ‘Ali Naqib Khan Qazwini, Mahābhārat, eds S.M. Reza Jalali Naini and N.S. Shukla (Tehran: 1358 Sh/1979).

6

Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–1611) I loathe the very name of infidel. I stagger at the Koran and the sword. I shudder at the Christian and the stake; Yet ‘Alla’, says their sacred book, ‘is Love’, and when the Goan Padre quoting Him, Issa Ben Mariam, his own prophet, cried, ‘Love one another little ones’ and ‘bless’ whom? Even ‘your persecutors’! There methought the cloud was rifted by a purer gleam than glances from the sun of our Islam. —Alfred Tennyson, ‘Akbar’s Dream’ (1892)1

Prologue

I

f the early modern encounter between the Society of Jesus and the Mughal empire does not quite qualify as the proverbial meeting between the irresistible force and the immovable object, it does not seem too far from it either. Founded in 1540 under the Bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae of Pope Paul III, the Society of Jesus sent its first missionaries to India shortly thereafter and they arrived in Goa, along 1On this poem, scarcely one of Tennyson’s better known or more successful efforts, see John McBratney, ‘Rebuilding Akbar’s “Fane”: Tennyson’s Reclamation of the East’, Victorian Poetry, vol. 31, no. 4, 1993, pp. 411–17, and the references cited therein.

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with the controversial and innovative incoming Portuguese governor Martim Afonso de Sousa, in May 1542. Within three decades of their arrival in India, they had equally established themselves far and wide in the world of Iberian expansion and empire-building: Melaka in 1545; Brazil and Japan in 1549; Ethiopia in 1557; Peru in 1568; Mexico in 1572; and eventually the Philippines in 1581.2 Drawing on what was arguably the intellectual cream of the European Catholic world, the Society became a formidable machine for the execution of a complex and changing worldwide mission, but it was also an organization that was extremely adept at managing its image and controlling and channelling flows of information and knowledge.3 This not only had an effect on the perception of the Society in the early modern world but has strongly influenced the manner in which the history of the order is written even today. ‘Jesuit Studies’ seem to draw on a loyal following not only amongst members of the Society itself (who are today, and have always been, its chief historians), but amongst other scholars who prefer often to study only the Jesuits to the exclusion of everything else, including even other Catholic missionary orders.4 As we shall argue below, this tunnel vision carries with it some peculiar perils by creating a false sense of where the order itself stood in a variety of highly-contested and conflict-ridden early-modern contexts.5 2For a standard account of the history of the Society, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford: 1996), pp. 51–2, on the Jesuit arrival at the Mughal court. For a useful survey on recent historiography, see Simon Ditchfield, ‘Of Missions and Models: The Jesuit Enterprise (1540–1773) Reassessed in Recent Literature’, The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 2, 2007, pp. 325–43. On the Jesuits in India, also see the important if conventional work by John Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters and Indian History, 1542–1773, 2nd edn (Bombay: 1969). 3For an interesting study of the mentalities of some early Jesuits in Asia, see Gian Carlo Roscioni, Il desiderio delle Indie: Storie, sogni e fughe di giovani gesuiti italiani (Turin: 2001). 4Amongst the most significant recent studies regarding Mughal–Jesuit relations are those by Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Jesuits and the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India, 1580–1630 (Washington: 1998), and Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773 (Toronto: 1999), pp. 112–43. While we have profited greatly from these studies, we also distance ourselves from many of the interpretations proposed by this author. 5For interesting recent studies that attempt to address these issues, see Adone Agnolin, Jesuítas e Selvagens: A Negociação da Fé no encontro catequético-ritual

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On their arrival in India in the early 1540s, the first Jesuits encountered a predictably diverse political situation which other orders like the Franciscans arguably knew rather well by then. Their activities in this first phase concentrated on Goa and its adjacent areas, but they also quickly extended to the so-called Fishery Coast of southern Tamilnadu, and into the Bay of Bengal. The peripatetic life of the best known of this first generation of Jesuits in Asia, the future saint Francis Xavier, captures something of the geography of early Jesuit activity. While he visited both the southern tip of the peninsula and São Tomé de Meliapor (Mylapore) on the Coromandel coast, neither Xavier nor those of his generation interested themselves particularly in the affairs of northern India, or Hindustan.6 This was in large measure because of the geopolitical situation in the period, which saw the Portuguese Estado da Índia embroiled in an extended conflict with the Sultanate of Gujarat, with the Ottomans playing a secondary role in the matter. We have noted that the Portuguese governor Dom João de Castro attempted to draw the Afghan Sur dynasty, which at that time ruled over Delhi and Agra, into this conflict, even inviting Islam Shah Sur to invade Gujarat and offering him military support in this venture. However, for a variety of reasons, the Surs preferred to disregard this offer, fobbing the governor off with a polite and somewhat formulaic response.7 As Jesuit interests extended further east, first to Melaka, then to the Moluccas in the mid 1540s, and eventually to Japan and China, northern India was clearly not on their immediate priorities as a mission field. Matters began to change in the 1560s, and these years witness the first Jesuit attempts to grapple with the cultural and political realities americano-tupi (séc. XVI-XVII) (São Paulo: 2007), and Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, Mass.: 2007). In contrast, we can only regret the recent publication of ill-informed works like that of Hugues Didier, ‘Muslim Heterodoxy, Persian Murtaddun, and Jesuit Missionaries at the Court of King Akbar (1580–1605)’, The Heythrop Journal, vol. 49, no. 6, 2008, pp. 898–939. 6See the meticulous standard biography by Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe, 4 vols (Rome: 1973–82). 7See the correspondence exchanged in Leonardo Nunes, Crónica de Dom João de Castro, ed. J.D.M. Ford (Cambridge, Mass.: 1936), pp. 59–65, 72–4. See ch. 1 above for details.

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of one of the sizeable sultanates in India. Their first real target, somewhat surprisingly, was the ‘Adilshahi Sultanate of Bijapur, the long-term enemy of the Portuguese Estado from whom they had seized the territory of Goa in 1510. In the late 1550s, the young Sultan ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah—who had just come to the throne in 1558—seems to have sought out the Portuguese authorities and in particular the Archbishop of Goa, Dom Gaspar de Leão Pereira, causing much excitement in ecclesiastical circles there. The Jesuit Melchior Dias would write from Goa in late 1560 to his brethren in Lisbon that ‘the fervour to become Christian is to the extent that we hope in the Lord that very soon there will be no more gentile headgear (toucas de gentios) in this land, and this deed we will commence with that Idalcão [‘Adil Khan].’8 In March of the next year, a mission was sent from Goa to Bijapur, made up of a certain Francisco Lopes (apparently a merchant who had a ‘very great name among them’ in Bijapur), a Dominican called António Pegado, another unnamed priest, and the middle-aged Jesuit Gonçalo Rodrigues (born in 1523), the only one who has left us an account of the visit.9 The broad context for what transpired was described as follows by the to-be-celebrated Jesuit Luís Fróis in a letter written late in 1561. It seems that the Idalcão, king of this mainland and our neighbour, powerful in terms of men and treasure, who succeeded to the kingdom a short while ago on account of the death of his father, moved by some curiosity since he is still a youth, sent two or three messages here to the Archbishop in Goa 8Letter from Melchior Dias at Goa to Antoni Montserrat in Lisbon, 8 December 1560, in Josef Wicki and John Gomes, eds, Documenta Indica (1540–1597), 18 vols (Rome: 1948–88), vol. IV, p. 813. For an examination of the larger context, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Palavras do Idalcão: Um encontro curioso em Bijapur no ano de 1561’, Cadernos do Noroeste, vol. 15, nos 1–2, 2001, pp. 513–24. 9The two letters by Rodrigues are dated 23 March 1561 (from Belgaum), and 7 April 1561 (from Bijapur), and appear in Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. V, docs 23 and 24, pp. 129–45. For an earlier discussion of them, see Henry Heras, ‘Three Catholic Padres at the Court of Ali Adil Shah’, Journal of the Bombay Historical Society, no. 1, 1928, pp. 158–63. He notes that an Italian version of the second of these letters had already appeared in print in AA.VV. Nuovi avisi dell’Indie di Portogallo ricevuti dalli Reverendi Padri della Compagnia di Giesù, tradotti della lingua spagnuola nell’Italiana (Venice: 1565), fls 120v–124v.

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in which he asked very insistently that he should send two or three learned Padres to him since he wished to speak with them and witness a dispute between our Padres and his learned men (seus casizes). And even though this seemed to be a most curious matter, as it indeed was, consultations were held to see if it would be a good thing to send them there; and when it was decided that it would be good, as he was our friend, and also because something of what he heard might remain impressed on his mind, the Archbishop ordered (since the viceroy was not there) that an ambassador be sent with his present as is the custom in such an embassy; and on this mission were sent the vicar of St. Dominic, Frei António Pegado, a learned and virtuous man and a great friend of ours, and our Padre Mestre Gonçalo who had just then come from Taná and was getting ready to leave for Malaca.10

The scene is thus set up in a classic manner: a young and curious monarch who practically demands that his own faith, Twelver Shi‘i Islam, be tested against the faith of his traditional enemies and neighbours. But the rest of the plot did not follow as the Jesuits had anticipated. The mission left Goa in mid March 1561 and made a first halt at Belgaum before arriving in the capital city of Bijapur at the end of that month, where they were received ‘with many elephants and men’ and taken to the central part of the city. Refusing an offer to stay in local houses, which they judged to be of poor quality, they preferred to stay in a garden area. From here they were invited to the court not once but several times. The first visit was described by Gonçalo Rodrigues as nothing less than a ‘mortification’; the Portuguese party had to wait a long while near the palace and in its exterior, without being received by the sultan. Eventually, they were told to return the following day and participate in some festivities. Here too, despite the riches and luxuries on display, nothing of any import resulted and the Portuguese declared themselves not particularly impressed. Eventually, they did manage on one occasion to gain access to ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah after another long wait in the maidān of the palace (terreiro do paço), during which time the Jesuit Rodrigues managed to quarrel with a Brahmin visitor from the neighbouring state of Vijayanagara. 10Letter from Luís Fróis at Goa to the Society in Portugal, 1 December 1561, in Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. V, p. 280.

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Admitted to the royal presence, the priests made the necessary courtesies and presented the sultan with a Bible bound in velvet, and a copy of St Thomas Aquinas’s thirteenth-century work Summa contra Gentiles, which he accepted courteously.11 ‘Ali made a favourable first impression on them, as a liberal and magnanimous prince with an agreeable personality (gentil pessoa de homem), and his unsolicited offer to help the Portuguese against the Ottomans also struck a positive chord. But then the conversation took a strange turn. [The Sultan said] that he wished to ask some things, and that we should not become exasperated with this, even if the questions were of a low order (ainda que as perguntas fossem baixas). And so he asked three things in this order: first, if Christ had given us a precept concerning what we were to wear and how; the second, if he had forbidden us the use of wine and if we could eat elephants’ meat; the third, if we could drink urine without incurring a sin. To these fatuous questions we responded, and being satisfied, the king ordered robes of honour (cabaias) brought for us and he ordered that they should be placed over our shoulders, each one with his own, made of brocade, and a headdress for each one; and with this, he sent us off, and [said that] he would call us again in a more leisurely way and then would bid us farewell.12

As we know, nothing resulted from this mission, and a few years later the Bijapur Sultanate and the Portuguese resumed hostile relations, with ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah attempting to recapture Goa from the Portuguese in the late 1560s and early 1570s. But the problem remains: what was the significance of these ‘fatuous questions’, particularly since it is evident that Gonçalo Rodrigues could make no sense of them? Clearly, the Jesuit, who must have been schooled in the usual business of debating other religions in a public setting, was caught on the wrong foot. Rather than going over the usual 11On

the Jesuit use of this text (and others) by Aquinas in their missions of the period, see Peter A. Dorsey, ‘Going to School with Savages: Authorship and Authority among the Jesuits of New France’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, vol. 55, no. 3, 1998, pp. 399–420. 12Rodrigues in Bijapur to António de Quadros at Goa, 7 April 1561, in Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. V, p. 142.

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ground—the divinity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the prophethood of Muhammad, the revealed nature of the Qur’an— here was something else. Perhaps ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah was being naïve, but then perhaps he was not. All the questions he asked do indeed make perfect sense, when taken at a variety of registers. Here is a possible reading of them. – The question regarding the clothing of the priest should properly be understood as pure mockery since the sultan surely understood that their apparel had nothing to do with Christ and his injunctions. – The matter of wine was clearly a manner of distinguishing Islam—where its use was forbidden—from Christianity where wine had a ceremonial and sacred use. – The issue of elephant’s meat is an interesting one. Most Islamic jurists of the time agreed that this was not legitimate (halāl) meat, but the Christians had no ruling (and indeed no debate) on the question. They thus would appear clumsy and unsophisticated in the face of this question. – Regarding urine, in similar vein, received Islamic jurisprudence would have declared it a forbidden substance since it was a product of the human body. In contrast, some Hindu ascetic groups did consume it as a part of yogic practice. Here too the Christians— who had no theological position on the matter—would appear to be clumsy and unsophisticated. The strategy of ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah can thus be understood as one of not engaging the Jesuits on the major doctrinal matters on which they expected to be challenged, but rather on relative trivia. Here, for the Jesuits to say that what was asked was ‘fatuous’ may have been satisfactory for their own correspondents, but scarcely adequate in the context of a public debate. Thus, what is of consequence is that we are not faced with the usual Jesuit capacity to make sense of, and translate, the world at large, but their manifest incomprehension. It is a lesson that we will do well to follow into the Mughal court a generation or two later.

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Engaging the Mughals Even though the Mughals had entered the politics of Hindustan in a major way by the mid-1520s, the Portuguese Estado had relatively limited contacts with them in the initial phase of their rule. It was in the mid-1530s, with Humayun’s expeditions into Bengal and Gujarat, that the first occasions for such dealings arose, as the Portuguese negotiated with the rulers of both these regional sultanates and attempted to wrest concessions from them using the threat posed by the Mughals as an opportune occasion. This meant in turn that by the 1560s, when the Mughals prepared once more to attack these regions and incorporate them into their empire, they had to count on an established Portuguese commercial and military presence there. It was thus in the 1570s that the Jesuits had their first occasion to deal at first hand with the Mughals both in Gujarat and in Bengal, with the first two Jesuits to come to Bengal in about 1576 being António Vas and Pedro Dias. However, neither of these men actually seems to have visited northern India; rather, the first Catholic priest to encounter the Mughal court directly was a rather obscure figure from Satgaon in Bengal called Gil Eanes Pereira (a secular priest with some Dominican leanings), who made his way there along with another Portuguese and an Armenian interpreter who went by the name of João Garcês. Famously described in Sousa’s late-seventeenth-century text Oriente conquistado a Jesus Cristo as a man who ‘possessed more virtue than letters’, Pereira (who was in fact rather humble and unpretentious) apparently suggested to Akbar that he might ask the viceroy in Goa to send him bettereducated priests than himself since he was ‘not lettered or anything (não era letrado nem era nada)’, in order properly to expose the nature of Catholic doctrine at the court.13 13Letter

from Gil Eanes Pereira at Fatehpur Sikri to the Archbishop of Goa, Dom Henrique de Távora, dated 5 June 1579, in Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XI, pp. 595–8; Francisco de Sousa, Oriente conquistado a Jesus Cristo pelos padres da Companhia de Jesus da Província de Goa, ed. Manuel Lopes de Almeida (Oporto: 1978). For a useful discussion, see Roberto Gulbenkian, ‘The Translation of the Four Gospels into Persian’ [1981], in Gulbenkian, Estudos Históricos, III: Vária (Lisbon: 1995), pp. 9–108, discussion on pp. 29–32.

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Pereira had arrived in Fatehpur Sikri in March 1578 (in the same year as António Cabral, an official Portuguese envoy from Goa), and this was already three years after the creation of the ‘Ibādat khāna (Hall of Prayer) in the court. In creating this space for inter-faith disputation and debate, which effectively lasted until 1581 (and was formally closed in 1582), Akbar was harking back, whether consciously or not, to older Mongol practice. In May 1254, the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck had participated in such a debate before the ruler Möngke (r. 1251–9), involving Nestorians, Muslims, and Buddhists; the occasion was not necessarily meant for any party to triumph, but for the universal reach and ambitions of the Mongol Khan to be on public display in a particularly theatrical form.14 The first Jesuit mission in the Mughal court, which arrived there in February 1580, would for its part participate to an extent in such stylized discussions but also in other ongoing and loosely-defined debates; we are optimistically assured by a recent historian of the Jesuits in regard to these that ‘late into the night, they [the Jesuits] vanquished their Sunni, Shiite, Hindu, and Jain foes at the podium.’15 This first mission has been extensively documented and much discussed in the historiography.16 It was made up of three Jesuits: the aristocratic Italian Rodolfo Acquaviva, the Catalan Antoni Montserrat (or Monserrate, the most prolific writer of the three, and in a sense the official chronicler of the mission), and the rather enigmatic figure of the Persian convert from Hurmuz, Francisco Henriques, who was sent back to Goa already in 1581. Besides letters 14See

Peter Jackson and David Morgan, eds and trans., The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255 (London: 1990). 15Gauvin A. Bailey, ‘The Truth-Showing Mirror: Jesuit Catechism and the Arts in Mughal India’, in John W. O’Malley, Gauvin A. Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, eds, The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (Toronto: 1999), pp. 380–401, citation on p. 381. For an important perspective on these debates from a heterodox Muslim viewpoint, see Derryl N. Maclean, ‘Real Men and False Men at the Court of Akbar: The Majalis of Shaykh Mustafa Gujarati’, in David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, eds, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainesville: 2000), pp. 199–216. 16The standard account is that of John Correia-Afonso, Letters from the Mughal Court: The First Jesuit Mission to Akbar, 1580–1583 (Bombay: 1980).

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sent to other members of the order, the contents of some of which came to be incorporated in annual circular letters, Montserrat also wrote a series of important texts which became the basis in good measure for the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Peruschi’s published work Informatione del regno et stato del Gran Rè di Mogor (1597).17 In this work Peruschi made it clear to his European audience that the conversion of Akbar to Christianity might well be imminent, a conceit that was derived from his sources and then repeated by others who translated and used his text. In comparison to an Ottoman empire that was portrayed as staunchly attached to Sunni Islam, Akbar’s Mughal empire was thus seen as the possible frontier of a conversion that might have massive geopolitical implications. The matter had apparently already tickled the Portuguese fancy in respect of Akbar’s father, Humayun. Thus, the chronicler Diogo do Couto recounts the following anecdote with regard to Humayun’s flight to Iran after his defeat by Sher Shah in the late 1530s: On this voyage (jornada), there was a Portuguese by name Cosmo Correa, a settler (cazado) from Chaul with a wife and children (who is still alive) who, since he had assaulted a [Crown] Factor fled to Cambay and from there passed to the court of the Magor, who used to give a good account of this voyage, because he was a well-informed man and on that account the Magor was well-inclined towards him. And he used to recount many things about him [Humayun], amongst which he used to say that when he was talking with him one day, he [Humayun] asked him to show the book using which he prayed and that he [Correa] brought him the [Book of ] Hours of Our Lady (which had a binding illuminated in the old style in quarto), and on opening it the King fell at once on the beginning of the seven Psalms, where there was an illumination of the story of David and Bathsheba. And the king looking at it carefully, said to Cosmo Correa: ‘What will you give me if I guess [the content of ] these stories?’ Cosmo Correa responded to him: what did he possess to give to such a great monarch? ‘Give me your lance’, said the Magor (for it was one from Portugal), ‘and if not I will give you the head of a wild boar which I will kill in front of you.’ And with that, he 17Edward Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: 1932), pp. 12–13.

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recounted the story to him just as we have it in the Scriptures. And handing the book back to him, he [Humayun] asked that he show him the four men who had written the Law of the Christians, and Cosmo Correa showed him the Evangelists [Matthew, Mark, Luke and John] who were illuminated in the beginning of the four Passions, which the King looked at carefully and said: ‘Now, you should know something, which is that on many occasions I heard my father Babur Paxa say that if the Law of Muhammad were to suffer a decline, that I should receive no other than that which has been written by four men.’ And thus this barbarian was so fond of Christians that whenever he saw them, he gave them great honour and grants.18

However, as we are well aware, neither the first nor the second Jesuit mission to the Mughal court was able to advance very far. The first, involving Acquaviva and Montserrat, ended in February 1583 with the former’s eventual departure for Goa, where he was killed not long after in a celebrated fracas at Cuncolim in Salcete. A hiatus of several years then ensued, during which the Society of Jesus seems to have reconsidered its options and the reality of the prospects that lay before it in Hindustan. The second mission once more was launched largely at Akbar’s initiative, after the chance passage through his court of a Greek priest, Leon Grimon, who was then sent by him as an informal envoy to Goa. The Jesuits acquiesced to this renewed request (which brought with it a parwāna) and put together a fresh mission involving the priests Duarte Leitão and the Castilian Cristóbal de la Vega, and the lay brother Estêvão Ribeiro. They were eventually sent via Ahmadabad, Bikaner, and Multan to Lahore, where Akbar had taken up residence for strategic reasons since the mid-1580s. The episode lasted a rather brief period between 1591 and 1593; not 18See Diogo do Couto, Década Quinta da Ásia, ed. Marcus de Jong (Coimbra: 1937), livro 8, capítulo 8: ‘Do que aconteceo a Hamau Paxa, rei dos Magores depois de desbaratado de Xirxa; y de como com favor do Xa Ismael rei da Persia tornou a conquistar seus reinos; y de como foi contra os Patanes, onde foi debaratado y lhe naceo hum filho que depois delle reinou’, pp. 525–33; also the comments by Roberto Gulbenkian, ‘Os quatro evangelhos em persa da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, o Grão Mogol, os Jesuítas e os Arménios’ [1969], in Gulbenkian, Estudos Históricos, I: Relações entre Portugal, Arménia e o Médio Oriente (Lisbon: 1995), pp. 259–300 (pp. 273–4).

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much is known about it beyond the fact that a school was set up in which some minor Mughal princelings received a certain amount of instruction, including in the Portuguese language. Leitão and Vega seem to have decided to return of their own accord, claiming that they found the situation at the Mughal court intolerable on account of the ‘arrogance of that barbarian [Akbar] who has turned himself into a prophet and legislator, saying that the time of the Law of Mahoma is already over.’19 While the Jesuits were by now somewhat reluctant to devote a great deal of further attention to this mission field (in comparison to East Asia, which must have seemed to them a far better prospect at the time), they were under a double external pressure to renew their presence. On the one hand Akbar—for reasons that they did not quite comprehend—still desired their presence in his court. On the other the viceroy of the Estado da Índia, at the time the very experienced nobleman Matias de Albuquerque, must have understood that this was a rather smooth way for him to obtain regular intelligence regarding Mughal political ambitions. Albuquerque had already spent an extended period of time in Asia and knew by the 1590s that one of the major threats to the Estado was Mughal expansion into the Deccan; if, as seemed likely at the time, they managed militarily to crush the Nizam Shahi Sultanate of Ahmadnagar, the Mughals, it was obvious, would then move in the direction of Bijapur and thus become uncomfortably proximate with Goa. Even if we lack direct evidence in terms of the correspondence between the viceroy and the Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Goa, it is easy enough to see that Albuquerque must have made his own views on the pressing matter of a Jesuit presence at the Mughal court clear.20 The Society 19Letter from Cristóbal de la Vega to General Claudio Acquaviva, Chaul, 2 December 1593, in Wicki and Gomes, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XVI, pp. 478–84 (citation on p. 480). For a discussion of this document, see Arnulf Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History, 1956–1998 (Leiden: 2000), pp. 47–59. 20On the pressure from the viceroy, see the letter from André Fernandes to General Acquaviva, Goa, 25 November 1594, in Wicki and Gomes, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XVI, p. 902; it is even claimed that Albuquerque threatened to offer the mission to other religious orders if necessary: Gomes Vaz to General Acquaviva, Goa, 25 November 1594, in Wicki and Gomes, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XVI, p. 890: ‘que se los nuestros no fuesen, otros religiosos lo deseavan y pedían’.

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thus decided that it would push all its chips in, making a substantial investment of prestigious and talented personnel in the matter. The central personage who was deployed was Jerónimo de Ezpeleta y Goñi (1549–1617), the great-nephew (on the maternal side) of Francis Xavier, who—even though not yet sanctified—had enormous prestige in the eyes of the order as the founder of its activities in Asia.21 Using the name Jerónimo Xavier, this Jesuit became the lynchpin in many respects of Jesuit–Mughal relations for almost two decades from May 1595, when he arrived in Lahore accompanied by Manuel Pinheiro and Bento de Góis. He eventually left the Mughal court under a cloud in 1614, and died in an accidental fire in Goa in 1617—before he was able to take up a prestigious position as Archbishop of Cranganor. During his stay at the Mughal court Xavier wrote a large number of letters of which at least twenty-four have come down to us, including eleven written from Lahore and eleven from Agra. Most of the Agra letters come to us from a period between September 1608 and September 1611 and we shall refer to two of them at some length. However, even before he left on his mission, in late 1594, he described its broad outlines in a letter to his brother Don Bernardo de Ezpeleta. For two years I was in charge of this house of Goa; now it pleases God Our Lord to send me to the lands of the Mogol; the king himself, called Equebar, 21The two major modern studies on Jerónimo Xavier are those by Arnulf Camps, Jerome Xavier, S.J. and the Muslims of the Mogul Empire: Controversial and Missionary Activity (Schöneck-Beckenried: 1957), and Ángel Santos Hernández, Jerónimo Javier, S. J., apóstol del Gran Mogol y arzobispo electo de Cranganor, en la India, 1549–1617 (Pamplona: 1961), besides which we have a number of important essays by Henry Hosten. All these works are indeed extremely useful, but largely apologistic in their tone. A global reconsideration of the plentiful materials in a variety of languages on Xavier is thus desirable. For an important and very wide-ranging (but still unpublished) study of the period, see Jorge Flores, ‘Firangistān e Hindustān: O Estado da Índia e os confins meridionais do Império Mogol [1572–1636]’, PhD thesis, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2004, of which a small part may be found in Flores, ‘Dois retratos portugueses da Índia de Jahangir: Jerónimo Xavier e Manuel Godinho de Erédia’, in Jorge Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva, ed., Goa e o Grão-Mogol (Lisbon: 2004), pp. 44–66.

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has requested the Viceroy and the Bishop to send him some Fathers. He is a very powerful king; four hundred leagues separate us from his Court, and the four hundred leagues are across his dominions. May it please God that I have the happiness of announcing His Holy Law as is appropriate. The principal men of the Court and of the country are Moors. If I am of little use to them, my sins will be the cause of it; as for me, I shall consider it blessed fruit of my labours to suffer and die for the most holy name of Jesus Christ. I go, and I offer myself for it, with great consolation of my soul; never, in the Indies, have I felt so happy, so full of courage and confidence as at this hour, when God applies me to a work which will have to cost me so much, and the more the better.22

To this point, Xavier had not had a particularly remarkable career. He had entered the Society of Jesus in 1568 at the age of nineteen, and then spent thirteen years in Toledo before embarking for India in 1581. Here he was named Rector of the Jesuit colleges at Bassein and Cochin, before being appointed Superior of the Professed House in Goa. So far as we are aware, as late as 1594 he had no particular knowledge of Persian or Arabic, nor any education that might have qualified him as an ‘Orientalist’. However, by August 1595, three months after his arrival in Lahore, he was to claim that ‘we are entirely occupied now in learning the Persian language and our progress leads us to believe that by God’s grace we will have mastered it within a year, and then we shall be able to say that we are at Lahore, for hitherto we have been, as it were, dumb statues.’23 Progress seems to have been slower than expected; in 1598 Xavier still admitted to his Navarran Jesuit friend Tomás de Ituren that he knew only ‘a little Persian’ though he had earlier claimed (in September 1596) that Prince Salim ‘had been astonished by our Persian (de nosso parcio)’ and had sent away his interpreter ‘saying that he had no more need 22Letter from Xavier to Don Bernardo de Ezpeleta, Goa, 28 October 1594, in Henry Hosten, ‘Some Letters of Fr. Jerome Xavier, S.J., to his Family’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, (n.s.), vol. 23, 1927, pp. 131–6, citation on p. 134; we have corrected it against the French translation in Léonard-JosephMarie Cros, Saint François de Xavier de la Compagnie de Jésus: Son pays, sa famille, sa vie (Documents nouveaux) (Paris: 1903), p. 464. 23Cited in Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul, p. 197.

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of him to deal with us and that we spoke better than him, that is, the interpreter.’24 A few years later, however, it was claimed on Xavier’s behalf that ‘the Persians themselves take pleasure in hearing him talk and all but admire the propriety of his vocabulary and the choiceness of his diction’, as also that ‘the Persians themselves confessed that they had learnt from him many new phrases and figures of speech.’25 These views, spread in particular by the Jesuit visitor Nicolau Pimenta, were crucial in supporting the overall claims and ambitions of the mission and seem in large measure to have been responsible for the considerable prestige that Xavier came to acquire within the Order. By the late 1590s, we are thus assured that he was capable of first producing a work entitled Fount of Life (Fons vitae in Latin; Fuente de la vida in Spanish), with a defence of the Christian faith and a refutation of all others, and then able ‘himself to translate it into Persian, being assisted by certain persons learned in that language.’26 We shall encounter this work below in a slightly different version, namely as the Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā.

The Figure of the Intermediary Who then were the learned assistants employed by Xavier, Pinheiro, and the others? We cannot rule out the presence of a number of Persian-knowing Armenians in the Jesuit entourage.27 But the key 24Xavier

to the Provincial Francisco Cabral, Lahore, 8 September 1596, in Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, vol. XVIII, pp. 539–84 (citation on p. 574). 25Pierre du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits: An Account of the Jesuit Missions to the Court of Akbar, trans. C.H. Payne (London: 1926), p. 97. Du Jarric’s work in turn drew extensively on Fernão Guerreiro, Relação anual das coisas que fizeram os padres da Companhia de Jesus nas suas missões (...) nos anos de 1600 a 1609, e do processo da conversão e cristandade daquelas partes, tirada das cartas que os missionários de lá escreveram, ed. Artur Viegas, 3 vols (Coimbra: 1930–42). 26Interestingly and ironically, Fons vitae was also the title of a celebrated work by the medieval Iberian writer Avicebron, revealed by nineteenth-century scholarship to have been the Jewish thinker Solomon ibn Gabirol. 27For the role of Armenians and others, see Gulbenkian, ‘Os quatro evangelhos em persa da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, o Grão Mogol, os Jesuítas e os Arménios’. We may gather from this that Pinheiro and Xavier had access through Armenian

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figure here is of a certain ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, sometimes misidentified as the son of the historian Muhammad Qasim ‘Firishta’. ‘Abdus Sattar is mentioned twice in Jahangir’s memoirs; in August 1617, for example, he received a gift from the emperor of an elephant. A second mention, from March 1619, is more elaborate. It is noted that ‘Abdus Sattar had recently presented Jahangir with a miscellaneous album with collected writings in the hand of the emperor Humayun, including ‘some prayers, an introduction to the science of astronomy, and some other unusual matters (‘ilm-i tanjīm wa dīgar umūr-i gharība), most of which he had experimented with, found to be true, and recorded therein.’ Pleased with this present— which shows Sattar to have been a connoisseur as well as a man of erudition—Jahangir decided to reward him handsomely: he ‘raised his rank beyond anything he could have imagined, and gave him a thousand rupees as a bonus.’28 These two episodes suggest that a decade into Jahangir’s reign ‘Abdus Sattar was a well-regarded figure at the court, and we may note that the emperor even treats him with the honorific ‘Mulla’. The Jesuits were less gracious about him. A letter from Manuel Pinheiro dated September 1610 stated that when they first knew him, he had been ‘as poor as Irus’, and had only risen up in the Mughal court and received an official rank through the intervention of Jerónimo Xavier.29 This seems not merely unkind but rather disingenuous, for reasons that we shall see below. intermediaries to Persian translations of the Gospel made from the Greek, but treated them as problematic and in need of emendation. For the larger context, which also involved the Italian Vecchietti brothers, see Francis Richard, ‘Les frères Vecchietti, diplomats, érudits et aventuriers’, in Alastair Hamilton, Maurits van den Boogert, and Bart Westerveel, ed., The Republic of Letters and the Levant (Leiden: 2005), pp. 11–26, and the older but still very useful essay by Walter J. Fischel, ‘The Bible in Persian Translation: A Contribution to the History of Bible Translations in Persia and India’, Harvard Theological Review, vol. 45, no, 1, 1952, pp. 3–45. 28Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir, Toozuk-i-Jehangeeree (Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī), ed. Syud Ahmud (Aligarh: 1863–4), pp. 192, 267; Wheeler M. Thackston, trans. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (Oxford: 1999), pp. 226, 299. 29Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, Ms. no. 4156, Manuel Pinheiro’s letter from Agra of September 9, 1610, pp. 217–30 (especially pp. 221–2), discussed in Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul, p. 204. The reference is to Odyssey, Book 18: ‘Now there came a certain common tramp who used to go begging all

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Though ‘Abdus Sattar and his writings have been periodically noticed and commented on by historians of the Jesuit Mughal mission ever since the time of Maclagan, they have never quite received their due. These writings included a summary version, the Guzīda-yi Zafarnāma, of the famous text by Sharaf-ud-Din Yazdi; and a more significant work entitled Samrat ul-Falāsifa (The Fruits of Philosophers), or Ahwāl-i Firangistān (Account of the Land of the Franks) on the rulers and philosophers (salātīn and hukamā’) of Greece as well as those of the classical Roman world, based on works he had apparently encountered in European languages (zabān-i Firang) through his contacts with the Jesuits (and Jerónimo Xavier in particular). Sattar had also come over the years to be perfectly familiar with translations of the Bible and stories about some of the companions of Christ, while working in collaboration with Xavier. Most significant of all for our purposes is a text by him that has recently been exhumed and published under an attributed title, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī.30 This text describes nocturnal discussions in Jahangir’s court and prefigures the later (and far-better-known) work of Mutribi Samarqandi, which sets out the latter’s discussions with the Mughal emperor in the 1620s.31 There is ample material in the text of the Majālis to discuss Mughal politics and culture in the early-seventeenth century, and it also sheds significant light on Jahangir’s interest in a variety of matters ranging from religion and his conception of kingship to literature, poetry, music, Christianity, and so on.32 However, we shall focus below over the city of Ithaca, and was notorious as an incorrigible glutton and drunkard. This man had no strength nor stay in him, but he was a great hulking fellow to look at; his real name, the one his mother gave him, was Arnaeus, but the young men of the place called him Irus, because he used to run errands for anyone who would send him.’ 30‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī: Majlis-hā-yi shabāna-i darbār-i Nūr al-Dīn Jahāngīr az 24 Rajab 1017 tā 19 Ramazan 1020, ed. ‘Arif Naushahi and Mu‘in Nizami (Tehran: 2006), editors’ notes (muqaddima): pp. 23–85 (which includes some very useful remarks on the author of the text, pp. 24–47). 31Mutribi Samarqandi, Khātirāt-i-Mutribī Samarqandī (Being the Memoirs of Mutribī’s Sessions with Emperor Jahāngīr), ed. ‘Abdul Ghani Mirzoyef (Karachi: 1977). 32On the image and self-image of Jahangir, see the recent reconsideration by Corinne Lefèvre, ‘Recovering a Missing Voice from Mughal India: The Imperial Discourse of Jahāngīr (r. 1605–1627) in His Memoirs’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 50, no. 4, 2007, pp. 452–89.

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on what the text reveals regarding relations between Catholics and Muslims in the Mughal court in the early-seventeenth century.33 It is clear from a variety of sources that the intervention of ‘Abdus Sattar was crucial in the production of a number of Persian works by Xavier. Maclagan was anxious to assure us that there was ‘a larger share by Xavier in the work of translation than mere supervision or consent.’34 The real problem however is that historiography has so far not wholly appreciated the extent of ‘Abdus Sattar’s participation in the enterprise.35 We see evidence of this for example in the colophon of one of the manuscripts of the Mir’āt ul-Quds or Dāstān-i Masīh. This respected work and its fortunate introduction (dībācha-i sa‘ādat) which I, the slave Padre Jeronimo Xavier, a Frank, who belongs to the community of Hazrat ‘Isa, am writing, has been set down under the command of Jalalud-Din Akbar Padshah, the illumination of the heart of the people of his time, may his power and Sultanate remain forever. Whatever I am writing is derived from the Injīl-i Muqaddas [Gospel] and the other books of the Prophets which were brought to the Seat of the Caliphate in Agra. This slave made this translation in Agra in collaboration with Maulana ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, and it was completed in the year 1602 of the birth of Hazrat ‘Isa Masih, the 47th Ilahi year. This [manuscript] is written on Wednesday, 8 Ramazan 1027 ah.36 33Unfortunately

the posthumously published essay by M. Athar Ali, ‘Muslims’ Perception of Judaism and Christianity in Medieval India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, 1999, pp. 243–55, is on pp. 245–7 almost entirely unreliable in its account of the Jesuit–Mughal encounter. Athar Ali states he could not find ‘any tangible consequences of this [Mughal] curiosity regarding Christianity during the time of Akbar and Jahangir [and that] (…) references to Christian practices or beliefs remained casual or incidental.’ Even taking into account the state of knowledge in the mid-1990s, this was an indefensible view, ignoring the valuable work of Fischel, Gulbenkian, Hosten, and others. 34Maclagan, Jesuits and the Great Mogul, p. 204. 35For an instance of this, see the conventional account in Ángel Santos Hernández, ‘La obra literaria persa de un jesuita navarro: El P. Jerónimo Javier’, Estudios eclesiásticos, vol. 29, 1955, pp. 233–50, as also Camps, ‘Persian Works of Jerome Xavier, a Jesuit at the Mughal Court’, in Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History, pp. 33–45, where ‘Abdus Sattar simply merits a single phrase as ‘Xavier’s collaborator’ (p. 34). 36No modern edition of this text exists, but for the bilingual (Latin–Persian) version printed in 1639 by the Protestant polemicist Louis de Dieu, see Jerónimo

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This text was described by Xavier in one of his own notations to a manuscript as a ‘holy and pure mirror in which one deals with the life and marvellous doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ (espelho santo e puro em que se trata da vida e maravilhosa doctrina de Jesu Christo Nosso Senhor).’ Divided into four parts, it dealt with the entire narrative regarding Christ from the nativity through to the resurrection, using both the Gospels and a number of popular legends that were accepted by Catholics at the time (though not necessarily by other Christians). The work was seen as prestigious, and at least one of the manuscripts (that in Lahore) carries with it a significant number of Mughal illustrations of quality.37 Opening ‘in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are one God (bism al-ab wa al-ibn wa al-rūh al-quds ilāhun wāhid)’, the text claims to be one ‘in which is given the wonderful story of Hazrat ‘Isa [Christ] and a part of his heavenly teaching and his elevated miracles.’ In his writings ‘Abdus Sattar makes it clear that he had risen to considerable prominence already in the court of Akbar. In his dealings with Jahangir, for example, he often quotes Akbar to him to show his past closeness to the emperor’s father (whom he terms Arsh Āstānī).38 He notes that he had been told by Akbar to learn the Frankish language, enter into their secrets, and find out about their kings as well as the Greek and Latin sciences. He had thus taken it upon himself to learn the Latin language from Jerónimo Xavier, then fresh in the court, and had done so in about six months. As he describes Xavier, Historia Christi persice conscripta, simulque multis modis contaminata, a P. Hieronymo Xavier, Latine reddita, et animadversionibus notata a Ludovico de Dieu (Leiden: 1639). The work contains numerous critical remarks regarding Xavier’s use of popular legends concerning the life of Christ. The chief manuscript cited here (British Library, I.O. Islamic 940) was in fact copied from the early-seventeenthcentury manuscript in 1185 ah/1771–2 in Calcutta for Richard Johnson by Shaikh Ifazatullah. A version with a comparable (but slightly variant) colophon is to be found in Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, Ms. 2016; see the description in Angelo Michele Piemontese, Catalogo dei manoscritti persiani conservati nelle biblioteche d’Italia (Rome: 1989), pp. 231–2. 37See Muhammad ‘Abdullah Chaghatai, ‘Mirat ul-Quds: An Illustrated Manuscript of Akbar’s Period about Christ’s Life’, in Anjum Rehmani, ed., Lahore Museum Heritage (Lahore: 1994), pp. 179–88. 38The more common variant Arsh Āshyānī is preferred by the text’s editors; see ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri. Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, Editors’ Introduction, p. 52.

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it, Sattar’s main task was the translation of Frankish books. One of these was the Mir’āt ul-Quds (which he states was already completed in 1011 h), while a second important book was the Dāstān-i Ahwāl-i Hawāriyān or Waqā’i‘-i Hawāriyān-i Dūāzdagāna (Account of the Twelve Companions), completed in 1014 h.39 This latter text, he notes, was dedicated and presented to Akbar in the very last years of his life. In view of their explicitly Christian tone, it is clear however that Sattar needed—while participating in their production—to distance himself from their authorship and the works thus appear principally in the voice of Xavier. In the case of the Mirāt ul-Quds, for example, Xavier speaks directly of his long efforts to translate the text, his difficulties and frustrations, and so on. But none of this should lead us away from a grasp of the fact that these works were in fact products of a form of joint authorship in which ‘Abdus Sattar had to polish the rhetoric and render the presentation not merely comprehensible but respectable enough to present to Persophone princes and aristocrats.40 These ambiguities regarding authorship are not to be found in the case of the Samrat ul-Falāsifa, or Ahwāl-i Firangistān, a work that was apparently completed sometime between Rabi‘ I and Rabi‘ II 1012 H (or August–September 1603).41 The title appears written somewhat 39Henry Hosten, ‘Fr. Jerome Xavier’s Persian Lives of the Apostles’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, (n.s.), vol. 10, no. 2, 1914, pp. 65–84. The excerpts of the text published by Hosten (pp. 79–84) point to the fact that the manuscript he used had not yet been ‘polished’ and was in a rather rough state from a rhetorical standpoint. 40For example, we may compare two versions of the Ādāb al-saltanat or Directório de Reys text produced by Xavier. The first Persian version, in the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, Ms. 7030, dated 1018 ah (1609), lacks polish and is rhetorically cruder and somewhat confused; another in the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, Ms. 2015, has clearly been worked on and represents a more final version even from the viewpoint of calligraphy. This manuscript was completed on 23 Rabi‘ I, 1018 ah (June 1609), and a version of it was presented to Jahangir in Agra in that year. The scribe was a certain Kabir Lahauri. For a brief discussion of this text, see Adel Yussef Sidarus, ‘A Western Mirror of Princes for an Eastern Potentate: The Ādāb al-saltanat by Jerome Xavier S.J. for the Mogul Emperor’ (unpublished paper, n.d.). 41A number of manuscripts exist of this text, but there is currently no edition. The editors of the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī have used the following versions: British Library

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differently in various manuscripts; if Samrat is written with S (Th), the title emerges as ‘The Fruits of Philosophers’, but if it is written with a Sīn, then it may instead be translated as ‘[Nocturnal] Story of the Philosophers.’ In the text, ‘Abdus Sattar makes it amply clear that he was commissioned to produce the work by none other than Akbar, who wished to have a clearer grasp of the history of Europe based on authoritative textual sources emanating from the Europeans themselves. We quote here at some length from his prefatory statement. When the Khedive of those who know God, and the Shahinshah of the worshippers of Allah, the Darius of the times [i.e. Akbar], king in appearance and reality, on account of his love of knowledge and his excessive generosity towards the people, expressed the desire to have the secrets of religions and accounts of rulers of every land and the revelation of the mysteries of all eminent philosophers continuously described in his court; and besides, the Master of the Age, with unlimited courage and ambition, thus peopling the world, wished that the true level of every community be known, accepting from them some matters and rejecting others to create a fresh dastūr ul-‘amal, so as to profit from countries both far and near: to meet this desire, the slave ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim on account of his own good fortune was also filled with the urge to render an important service, with the aid of the heavens.42

‘Abdus Sattar thus presents himself here as an agent of the universal ambitions of the Mughal emperor and his desire to grasp ‘the secrets of religions and accounts of rulers of every land.’ These claims were, as is well known, developed in Akbar’s court by his chief ideologue and chronicler Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak who had come to Mss, Or. 5893; King’s College, Cambridge, Brown Supplement 770; John Rylands Library, Manchester, Lindesiana, no. 445. Other manuscripts may be found in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, Hyderabad, no. 118, and the Astan-i Quds Rizvi, Mashhad. 42We draw here on the text in the National Archives of India, New Delhi (henceforth NAI), Ms. 2713, pp. 4–5, which seems to be from the author’s lifetime, as he is mentioned in the colophon as if he were still alive, even though it is undated. We have also consulted an unnumbered Raza Library, Rampur, manuscript from about 1830–5.

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play a particular prominent role in the 1580s and 1590s, and who appears in the descriptions of court life by Montserrat already in the early 1580s. Sattar’s preface now continues: But I was also perplexed, and did not have the resources to fulfil such an urge at the start. How could I then give the ruler, with this twisted and useless tongue of mine (kajmuj zabān bi yāwar) and lack of capital (kam māyagī), a gift as was appropriate? A good time passed on this account. Suddenly, one day, my star began to shine and the door of fortune opened to me. The emperor, who knows what lies in the hearts of others, and fulfils what they desire, summoned this obscure slave to court. He gave the order to learn the language of the Franks (zabān-i Firangī), to gain a knowledge of the secrets of that community, their rulers, and the philosophers of Yunan [Greece] and Latin [Rome] according to their own books, and render them into Persian. Thus, what had remained hidden from sight on account of the strangeness of their language, and distance, should be brought forth in our own springtime. And these Christians (Nasāra) who are always there in an attitude of submission in the court may also gain some solace in their hearts as a consequence. I took this order of the Shadow of God as a divine order. I raised the skirt of my courage and became totally dedicated, and began to frequent a Padre by name Jerónimo Xavier, one of the select amongst the knowledgeable persons of the Franks who had recently arrived and kissed the threshold. I determined to learn and to have a command over that language. Since I had total dedication and since I was inspired by the emperor more and more every day, in six months I acquired the ability and strength to comprehend practical and scientific (‘ilmī) matters in that language. Because I have spent most of time in producing translations, and did not have the opportunity to speak much, I still am not capable of conversation. However, with the aid of Jerónimo Xavier I could fulfil the emperor’s desire.43

For his part, then, ‘Abdus Sattar is clear enough about his dealings with the Jesuits, as well as his debt to them. Xavier is for him not someone to be despised; rather, he is ‘one of the select amongst the knowledgeable persons of the Franks.’ But the purpose here is 43NAI,

Ms. 2713, Samrat ul-Falāsifa, pp. 4–5.

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an eminently pragmatic one, of grasping the knowledge that lies locked away in books in an impenetrable and obscure language, namely Latin. The works I have produced contain the practical and scientific secrets of this community; an account of the Messiah; the rulers of Rome and Greece; the subtleties of their celebrated philosophers. These were taken from the Bible (Injīl), and the book of St Antoninus which are considered to be reliable books of that land. The account of the rulers of Rome and of the philosophers is taken from the book of St Antoninus together with information from other books. I made chapters for each of the important philosophers and organized them on the basis of the rulers of the age. Regarding the place of birth and origins of these famous people, there are different traditions. Thus, some are mentioned as Romans and others as Greek, and the reason for this difference of opinion and doubt is the fact that when the Greeks conquered Italy, where Rome is the capital, they call it Greece; but when the emperors of Rome conquered Greece, they call it Rome. I have tried to clarify an account on these matters on which there is no clarity even today, so that every reader understands the differences of opinion and the doubts are clarified. Since our emperor [Akbar] was particularly curious to know all the novelties and wonders of Rome, I wrote of it in all detail, and with the account of the philosophers, I have described matters since the time when the city was founded.44

The reference here is principally to the work of Antonio Pierozzi or St Antoninus (1389–1459), the celebrated Dominican friar who had become Archbishop of Florence. But rather than Antoninus’s best-known theological works, here ‘Abdus Sattar refers to his threevolume Summa Historialis or Chronicon partibus tribus distincta ab initio mundi ad 1360 which had appeared between 1474 and 1479 and been reprinted several times thereafter in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries.45 His purpose is however quite elementary, 44Ibid.,

pp. 7–8.

45On St Antoninus, see the discussion in Peter Howard, ‘Preaching Magnificence

in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 2, 2008, pp. 325–69, as also the older work by James Bernard Walker, The ‘Chronicles’ of Saint Antoninus, a Study in Historiography (Washington, DC: 1933).

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in view of the state of knowledge of his imagined audience. Thus, he begins: Let it not be hidden that Italy is a country to the west of Greece, and in ancient times it too was called Greece, since the ruler of Greece had conquered it and given it that title. For some time it was known as Suturia, in the name of Saturn [Saturnus], its ruler. Only after that has it been called Italy, when Ital came to be its ruler, and even today it is known by that name. The capital city is called Rome. Its language is Latin, and this tongue in the lands of the west—that is in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Castile—is considered to be of high status and books are written in it. And in these countries, books on practical and scientific matters are written in this tongue. Rome is in the fifth clime, from amongst the cities of cold character.46

We may naturally suspect ‘Abdus Sattar here of slightly gilding the lily and adding more to the text than he had found in his sources. For him to incorporate the scheme of the seven climes into his work is natural enough; and his etymology for ‘Italy’ as deriving from ‘Ital’ (or Italus/Italos) actually derives from such respectable sources as Thucydides and Virgil. We are then provided with a number of chapters of some interest, which we shall briefly summarize here using their titles. These are presented in no particular chronological order, moving casually back and forth between Roman, Greek, and medieval European history. Thus we begin with ‘the story of the peopling of Rome and the rule there of seven persons’, and ‘an account of Numa Ponpaleo [Numa Pompilius], the second ruler of Rome’, before passing on to ‘the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and its interpretation by Daniel’ and to ‘Marsio [Ancus Marcius], the fourth ruler [of Rome]’.47 The text then takes us back chronologically to an ‘account of Greece and Athens, centre of philosophers’, moves us rapidly forward to ‘the 46NAI,

Ms. 2713, Samrat ul-Falāsifa, p. 9. pp. 10, 15, 26. On Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, also see the relevant passage by Xavier in Hosten, ‘Fr. Jerome Xavier’s Persian Lives of the Apostles’, pp. 75–6. On the status of these two figures (Numa and his grandson Marcius) from among the legendary ‘seven kings’ of ancient Rome, see, for example, R.F. Hathaway, ‘Cicero, De Re Publica II, and his Socratic View of History’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 29, no. 1, 1968, pp. 3–12. 47Ibid.,

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end of Muslim rule in al-Andalus’ and especially Toledo, and then again reverses direction chronologically to ‘an account of Babylon’, followed by ‘an account of Canus ibn Tiru’, the description of ‘a series of philosophers at the time of Xerxes ibn Darius’, before predictably spending a great deal of space on the subject of ‘Aflatun’ or Plato and an ‘account of Alexander the Greek called Sikandar Rumi.’48 The work then ends with ‘thanks to God to whom I bow my head that after all my efforts on Friday, 13 Rabi‘ I 1012 Hilālī [for Hijrī], on 29th Amardad Ilahi, Isifindayar, 48th Regnal Year.’ ‘Abdus Sattar here terms his work a Book of Reason (khirad-nāma) which has been written in the mere time of nine months, the interval required to give birth to a child, but notes that it still carries material in it for the old and experienced. The title of Samrat ul-Falāsifa is one he notes that the emperor Akbar himself had attributed to the text.49 There can in fact be little doubt that ‘Abdus Sattar employed Latin books in this exercise, as we can see from the fact that he periodically prefers the Latinized version of a name (say, for Aristotle) to the Arabic one. A number of Latin terms such as material, formal, and facile appear in his text with no gloss, as is often the case in such texts based on extensive translation. His discussion of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander, and a chapter with details on Alexander’s struggle with the Iranians, seem similarly to derive from Western versions of the Alexander narrative rather than more familiar Arabo–Persian narratives. We may also note that Sattar locates the birth of Christ at forty-two years from the foundation of Rome, at the time of the second Caesar.50 In the process of co-producing works such as this it is clear that ‘Abdus Sattar—who was already very well educated in rhetoric, dogmatics, jurisprudence (fiqh), and Arabic and Persian literature and poetry—widened his horizons considerably. He came to acquire a fair grasp of Latin, even if (as he notes) he could not actually speak it. But he also remained true to his own religious leanings, which took him particularly in the direction of the Chishti Sufi order. Not for nothing does he tell us that the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī 48NAI, Ms. 2713, Samrat ul-Falāsifa, pp. 44, 46, 50, 54, 89, 126–7, 160–1 (for Plato), and 209 (for Alexander). 49Ibid., p. 265. 50Ibid., 247–8.

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(an attributed title, as noted earlier) was conceived along the lines of a malfūzāt, the recorded table-talk of a saint such as Nizam-udDin Awliya: the example was the Fawā’id al-Fu’ād of Amir Hasan Sijzi Dehlawi, which Sattar explicitly mentions.51 He even refers to his own text as the Malfūzāt-i Jahāngīrī at one point. At various points in the work, he recounts stories to Jahangir about Nizam-udDin and his disciple Amir Khusrau; but Sattar was also eclectic and had contacts with other Sufis, such as a dervish called Lalmati and a Suhrawardi Shaikh, ‘Abdullah Sarmast Burhanpuri, both of whom he brought to the Mughal court.

Debating Faiths at Jahangir’s Court It has long been known that after a hiatus of over a decade and a half, religious debates (munāzara) resumed in the Mughal court a few years after Jahangir’s accession in late 1605. Initially, the Jesuits witnessed the succession of this new ruler with great trepidation, fearing that—even though they had known him as a prince—he would be less favourably disposed to them than his father. Here for example is Xavier’s evaluation of the situation in September 1606: With the change of King, the court too changed; those who had been elevated fell, and those who were fallen came to be elevated. Much was expected of the new King for he promised a lot, but once things calmed down the promises were forgotten and the expectations were disappointed. Even we expected from the new reign of this King redemptionem Israel, and believed from what had preceded that a great conversion might be accomplished for until then he almost claimed to be a secret Christian (quasi se dava ao discoberto por Christão), and his [confidants] told us he was one. We were also misled because as in the beginning he had against him that gentile captain [Man Singh], head of all the gentiles, and the Moors made him King, he swore to them to be zealous on behalf of the law of Maffamede, 51‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, pp. 2, 43, and 113; for an understanding of this text, see Bruce B. Lawrence, trans., Morals for the Heart: Conversations of Shaykh Nizam ad-din Awliya Recorded by Amir Hasan Sijzi (New York: 1992).

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[for] he wished to win over and keep the Moors, placing himself on their side, and thus it was in the beginning of his reign. He made it public that he would order the mosques cleaned and freed of encroachments. The prayers and preaching by Moors began in the palace. He took on a new name—that is Nurdim Mohamad Jahanguir, which is the Light of the Law of Maffamede, Seizer of the World—and he made out as if he had never known us, and paid us no attention.52

Over time, however, as Jahangir moved from Agra to Lahore and the Jesuits followed, they began to feel somewhat closer to the ruler. In March 1607 the Jesuits met him on the occasion of his departure for Kabul and reported that they ‘presented him with the Gospel written in Persian which he had asked for several times, and he took it with great courtesy.’53 These and other signs were taken as positive and Xavier wrote: ‘the King is now not as much of a Moor as he showed himself to be at the start, rather he has clearly said that he will follow the path of his father, and he shows this clearly through his works. This is far less bad (menos mal he isto).’54 Further changes came when the court returned to Agra in March 1608. Here is how Xavier portrays matters in his letter of September that year. As the King was resting in Agra, one night his librarian on his orders brought him a great multitude of books (grande multidão de registros) concerning our saints and other things (which in the previous years he had collected), in order to pass sections of the night looking at them, and through these images we managed this year to do what we had wanted for many years, which is to have a public dispute with the principal people of the king in front of him, regarding matters of our Holy Law and that of the Moors, and these exchanges and disputes went on for a month almost every night, 52See the letter from Jerónimo Xavier to the Provincial of the Society in India, Lahore, 25 September 1606, British Library, Additional 9854, fls 38–52v, in António da Silva Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III (Lisbon: 1963), p. 67 (for the citation). We also refer readers to the discussion in ch. 3 above. 53Letter from Xavier in Lahore to the Provincial, 28 August (?) 1607 (‘dia de Santo Augustinho’), in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, p. 92. 54Ibid., pp. 98–9.

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and in order to do this he used to call us close to him (junto de si) where usually only the sons of the King and some of his confidants were, and the others were [standing] a bit further off. And since I trust that our dearest brothers would like to hear about this, I will recount in some detail some of the things that happened on some of these nights.55

The implication is thus that by 1608 the Mughal royal library (or kitābkhāna) possessed a substantial number of works regarding Christianity. Some of these would have been in European languages, with or without illustrations, while others would have been translations into Persian (or in some cases Arabic) of such works. Already in 1606 Jahangir had expressed interest in a printing press (estampa dos livros) that could put out works in Persian, and had been assured by Xavier that an Arabic press could be modified for this end. However, the suggestion here is that the works in question were manuscripts (hence, perhaps, Xavier’s choice of the word registros) and that their chief attraction lay in their paintings.56 He continues: Since the King did not understand what those images signified, he had us sent for (for until then we did not enter his presence at night unless we were called). As the [Jesuit] house was far away [from the palace], when we reached it was either time to get up and retire, or it was not an occasion for discussion. Thus we went along for some nights, until we began to discuss some papers that he would give us with his own hand. The books were various, and spoke of many and diverse things of our law; on one or two of these first nights I was unwell and did not go, and Padre Francisco Corsi went, only the King had no experience of him until then and was afraid that he would be as short in his knowledge as he was in his body (cuidava que seria curto no saber como no corpo).57 He asked him for me. He 55Letter from Xavier in Agra to the Provincial, 24 September 1608, British Library, Additional 9854, fls. 64–76v, in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 111–33 (citation on p. 115). This is a crucial letter by Xavier of which we will make extensive use in the pages that follow. 56Bailey, Art of the Jesuit Missions, p. 238, note 165, translates registro as ‘print’, but this would usually be gravura in Portuguese, and grabado or grabadura in Castilian. From the dozen or more uses of the word in Xavier’s letter, we believe our own translation is sounder. 57Corsi would, incidentally, appear to be the Jesuit figure depicted in the

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told him I was sick. Of what? He said it was on account of the penitence and fasts of Lent. There was a brief discussion of our fasts and theirs, and with the explanation of some papers he was contented. On another night, on being called, both of us went, and calling me close to him at an elevation (ariba) he asked me what the matter was, and if I practised heavy penitence. I made light of everything, but said that in brief it was in order that God should preserve his person and kingdom, etc. He began to show me books. He saw one the explanation of which did not satisfy him. I said that it was just like that; Agiscoca [‘Aziz Koka] said, ‘Lord that young Padre who came yesterday explained these things very well and has a very good understanding’. He called him [Corsi] above and ordered that we should not communicate together. ‘Let’s see what the other says.’ I moved a little further off. The King gave him the book. He explained it in the same way. After that, he would give the Padre [Corsi] one paper to explain, and another to me, and the King ordered that every night one or the other of us should go. We did so for some nights, for it was a great deal of work for both of us to go every night.58

The Jesuits were of course quite familiar by that time with the court and its principal personalities. They knew Mirza ‘Aziz Koka well, and had followed the episode of his disgrace early in Jahangir’s reign with some interest; now it seemed he was back in the good graces of the emperor.59 It is also interesting to see the Mughal attempt to play off the senior Jesuit from Navarre against the younger one from Florence. We are eventually led to one of the standard subjects in such Christian–Muslim debates, namely the crucifixion and the insistent representation of it by Christians. painting attributed to Manohar, ‘Darbar of Jahangir’, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Inv. 14.654. 58Letter from Xavier in Agra to the Provincial, 24 September 1608, in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 115–16. 59Jahangir, Toozuk-i-Jehangeeree (Persian text), pp. 38, 131–2; Thackston, The Jahangirnama, pp. 63, 162. For the Jesuit understanding of the situation with regard to Khan-i A‘zam, see Xavier’s letter from Lahore to the Provincial, 28 August 1607, in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 102–3. For Jahangir’s relations with his nobility in general, also see Corinne Lefèvre, ‘Pouvoir et noblesse dans l’Empire moghol: Perspectives du règne de Jahāngīr (1605–1627)’, Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 62, no. 6, 2007, pp. 1287–1312.

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One of these nights, when we were both there, we were handed a book showing Christ Our Lord crucified at which we took off our caps and placed the book above our heads. After we explained it, one [of the courtiers] said if we loved Christ Our Lord so much, why did we paint him in that state of dishonour? I said that, in fact, the greatest honour we could do Him was to always have him in front of our eyes in that form, for it was thus that he suffered, not for his fault or against his will, because He was so powerful that no one could do anything to Him, as was seen when they tried to kill him a second time; and as for this last occasion, I had already said that it was His will to die for us; and to show that He was not taken by force, when they came in large numbers to capture him more than six hundred of them fell to the ground in despair when they were asked by Him who they came to seek, and He said it to them that it was Him [they sought].

The Jesuits seem to have warmed to the subject and gone to considerable lengths to insist that what they were doing was by no means dishonourable or disgraceful. So, Xavier continues: And thus the most gracious figure we have of Our Lord Christ is of Him on the cross, and we esteem it so much that if we were to see Our Lady the Virgin Mary and the figure of Christ crucified together, we would rather pay courtesy to that figure than to the Virgin herself. A captain said: to the figure of the Virgin or to the Virgin herself? I said we would rather honour the figure of crucified Christ than the Virgin herself. He said: this is great insistence. I said, furthermore, my Lord, we do not venerate these images for what they are for we well know that they are paper or painted cloth, but rather for what they represent, just as with your formões or [royal] provisions we place them above our heads not because they are papers with ink, but because we recognize in them your order and will. The King heard all this very quietly and said maqul—that is—this is correct and reasonable.60

We thus see here what will become a recurrent claim in Xavier’s letters, namely the fact that they not only won the arguments, but that the Mughal emperor regularly approved of their positions, here their insistence that they were not idol-worshippers. This eventually builds 60Letter from Xavier in Agra to the Provincial, 24 September 1608, in Rego, ed.,

Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 116–17.

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itself into a rhetorical crescendo where the only possible outcome appears to be his conversion, which of course never transpires. Some reasons for this are suggested, and they allow us to gain a glimpse of Jahangir’s rather playful style, a fact testified to in a number of other sources as well. Another night, one talked on purpose of the confession, and of the penitence that is ordered thereafter. The King received all this well. What made him afraid was the fact of not having an exception (even for kings) in order to have many wives. He said that this was very difficult, and that if it were not the case, everyone would accept your law. He repeated this point many times as if it were a matter that troubled him. Another night he said to me: Padre, if a king like me wishes to become Christian and has many wives, what would you do with him? One of the greatest captains who was with him said: Padre, His Highness says if any king wishes to become Christian, etc. The King interrupted him and said: No, no, rather if a king like myself wanted to become Christian what would you say to him, etc. I said: the first thing was that from his many women he would have to choose one, and that he would have to leave the rest, etc. He said: this would be very difficult. He returned to this matter many times.61

Monogamy is presented here as a key sticking point, and it is an issue to which we will return below. But the question of the visual representation of different aspects of the sacred was also a matter that was discussed regularly, as we see from the episode below. That night he [Jahangir] was much drawn to a book that had a painting of God, the Father. He asked: what is this? I said: it is a figure of God not because He is [really] like this, but rather so that with this figure we can show some of His attributes, just as with this intention they paint the angels as boys and with wings even if they possess none of that, etc., and also because He appeared thus to some prophets.62 He had barely approved of 61In

these passages, we have been obliged to intervene somewhat with regard to Xavier’s rather irregular grammar in Portuguese, in which he passes incessantly between the past and present tenses. 62The sentence runs: ‘figura de Deos não ja porque elle assi seja senão pera com esta figura mostrar alguns dos seus atributos’, which Gauvin Bailey (Art of the Jesuit

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this painting when one of his grandees approached: My Lord, it is said that our prophet saw God as a youth; they say that such and such a prophet saw him as an old man as he is shown here; each one paints him as he saw him. Things calmed down somewhat, but whenever he [the King] sees a similar painting in these papers, he has an issue with it (embica nella).

Xavier generally refuses to identify his opponents in the arguments in the court, preferring to call them generically as ‘a captain’, or ‘a grandee.’ The one exception he made in this extended letter was with respect to Sayyid Ghiyas-ud-Din ‘Ali Naqib Khan (d. 1614), whom Jahangir refers to in his memoirs as ‘a Sayfi Sayyid and originally from Qazwin.’63 Naqib Khan had participated in the elaboration of the voluminous Tārīkh-i Alfī, and was also centrally involved in the production of the Persian version (entitled the Razm Nāma) of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata. This is how he is introduced by Xavier. This King has a very grave man (hum homen muito grave) whose office is to read him histories, both at night when he wishes to sleep and during the day when he wishes to relax, which seems to be a similar office to the one that is mentioned in the Book of Esther where the king Assuero [Ahasuerus] had his annals read out;64 and this man-of-letters had the same office with the father of this King and was highly esteemed by him for his letters and because he is a Said—that is—of the caste of Maffamede and because he knows almost every sort of history. So, this reader of his (este seu lente) said to him: My Lord, the Christians do not have the Gospel, or the Psalter, or the Books of Moses save in a wholly corrupt form. The Padre replied: how can it be that they are corrupted, since the Christians would give their lives a thousand times rather than consent to the change of a single letter in the Missions, p. 234), translates as: ‘It is an image of God not only because he looks like this, but also in order to demonstrate some of his attributes using this picture.’ This is one of a number of slips in Bailey, Art of the Jesuit Missions, pp. 126–7, 234–8; he is also under the mistaken impression that these debates occurred in Lahore in 1607. 63Jahangir, Toozuk-i-Jehangeeree (Persian text), p. 129; Thackston, The Jahangirnama, p. 160. 64Referring to the Mughal court, the Jesuits had a particular fondness for comparisons with the Book of Esther, comparing court personages incessantly, for example, with figures like Haman.

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holy books? Another grandee amongst the captains said: You did not do this, but your ancestors, and not the people but rather your king. He [the Padre] replied: our kings do not interfere with matters of the law and its books, but rather in this matter they are as obedient as everyone else. Here, the King began to speak and said: what do you all say about Maffamede? The Padre said: he was a man who wanted to become a prophet. The King said: Maffamede was not a prophet? The Padre said: so it is, my Lord, he was not a prophet. He at once said: was he a false prophet? The Padre said: Yes my Lord. The King repeated, smiling: False? The Padre said: Yes, my Lord, false. The reader came up and retorted, saying that what the Padre said was a lie, and that there was mention of Maffamede in the Gospel, saying that he could come. The King asked: is that so? He [the Padre] said: My Lord, no, I have read the Gospel many times, and there is no such news there, rather it states that no other prophet and no other law will come until the Day of Judgment. The King said: is that in the Gospel? The Padre said: Yes, my Lord. The King replied: And until the Day of Judgment? He said: Yes, my Lord, until Judgment Day. The King then asked that reader of his: was there another prophet after Jesus Christ? He and another person replied: Yes, my Lord, there were others before Maffamede but they did not give a new law, and they recounted certain stories about them. The King turned to the Padre and said: you do not accept Maffamede as a prophet? He said: My Lord, no, for if I took him for one I would accept his law, but he was not and I do not consider him to be one, for there will be no other law [save Christianity] until the Day of Judgment. The reader said: My Lord, do not listen to these things, for whoever hears them will become an infidel. And disgusted, he left and did not appear there again that night.65

The debate here takes a rather crude form, with mere assertions from the two parties rather than any sophisticated development of a viewpoint. At issue are two broad questions. The first is of whether the texts that the Jesuits presented as the Gospel, the Psalms of David, and so on, were in fact authentic from a Muslim viewpoint. A related point was the Muslim claim that there were mentions of the Prophet Muhammad as a future prophet in texts such as the Gospel (a claim that the Jesuits obviously did not accept). The central issue here was of 65Letter from Xavier in Agra to the Provincial, 24 September 1608, in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 118–19.

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a deep asymmetry. The Jesuits simply rejected Muhammad outright, as we shall see again and again; the Muslims in the court accepted Jesus (or ‘Isa) as a prophet but not as the son of God, even less as God himself. This is the gist of the next debate reported by Xavier. There then commenced the dispute on the divinity of Our Lord Christ which these Moors heard with such difficulty. The King said: this is just a manner of speaking for the Christians to show the great love they have for him, just as I (said the King) say to someone whom I have affection for: be my brother, be my eyes, my soul, even though it is not like that in truth. So he said, Christ is not God in truth but the great love they have for him makes them call him God, and with this he responded to all the objections they made to him, and this with such emotion that if he had defended the real divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, then God would have thanked him very much. As the Padre saw that the King, though he was prompted by love was making an error, he made signs that he wished to speak. He [the King] with his fervour would not let him and to quiet him down said: Padre, let it lie, for I am on your side. The Padre said: My Lord, may God save us, I could not have a better advocate. As for Christ being the son of God (said the King), they call him that as he has no father and was born of the Virgin Mary in such a marvellous way. Someone retorted saying that the small insects that appear in [rotten] meat could also be called sons of God then as they have no father. The King said: Oh no, for they are creatures which live for four days, and they have no activity on account of which they can be called sons of God. The King said to the Padre: is it as I say? The Padre said no. The King said: did you understand what I said (showing annoyance that he did not go along with him, as he was defending us; but since the matter was so serious there could be no dissimulation). The Padre responded: yes my Lord and repeated what he had said. He [the King] said: what do you say then? My Lord, we say that Jesus Christ is truly God, and truly son of God. Is this what it says in the Gospel? He said it was. Another retorted that if Jesus Christ had performed some miracles that others had not done, then he could be called God, but that all the miracles he had performed had also been done by others. Here they began to recount the miracles of Maffamede. The Padre said: Jesus Christ performed many miracles that others did not in order to confirm his divinity. The King said: did Jesus Christ ever say he was God? The Padre responded: yes my Lord,

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many times. The King then returned to his declaration saying that he only said that on account of the great love we bore Him [Christ].66

Here, if we can credit this version, Jahangir attempted to take a conciliatory and rather intelligent position, arguing that the Jesuits were taking a metaphor rather literally. But this position was naturally unacceptable to them. This also led the emperor eventually to make a rather irreverent comparison between Jesus and an intoxicated dervish who performed tricks (and it is curious to see how his slightly mocking tone escaped Jesuit vigilance). The King [also] said that this was because we had all been brought up since childhood with this love and this opinion, but that there was nothing to wonder at that everyone called Jesus Christ God because in this land here certain dervishes (who are like ascetics, who profess the service of God) after having drunk two porcelain [cups] of bhang (bange), which is a certain drink that intoxicates and destroys the judgement, begin to perform certain tricks and movements so that an infinite number of people follow them and take them for saints. If we could see one who could bring back the dead with as much facility as the Lord Jesus, we would all say he was God. And to close, the King said: I who have never seen the miracles he performed love him a great deal on account of what I have heard, and consign all my affairs to him. Is it strange then that those who with their own eyes saw him bring back the dead could call him God? All the grandees applauded at this, saying this was true, and those who did not love Jesus Christ were without faith (erão sem ley). Then the King said: all the Padre has said is maqul (which is to say in keeping with reason) and I find nothing else to discontent me save that their faith does not permit more wives.

Finally, we also see the Jesuit attempts to mock the Prophet Muhammad directly, as in the episode below where they bring up and discuss the miracle of the ‘splitting of the moon (shaqq al-qamar).’67 66Ibid.

pp. 119–20. Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill, NC: 1985), pp. 69–71, passim. 67See

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On another night that followed, when I went alone, he asked me about the Padre [Corsi]. I said, since you ordered that each night one of us should come, today he remained in the house. No, no, he said, both of you should come; is the house far off? I saw that he wanted to call him. No, I said, he can come quickly. I went off to call him. When he arrived, he entered. Soon after, he [the King] called him close to him and said to him quietly: you spoke very well yesterday but Naquib Kão (who is that reader of the King) is exasperated with you. Then, in a loud voice he once again began to ask him what he thought about Maffamede. He said the same thing as the other night. I remained a bit further off in the middle of the room. He [the King] then also called me and asked me if Maffamede was a prophet (until then he had never spoken to me about him). I said no. At once, [he asked] is he a false prophet? I said yes. False? I said false. The Padre meanwhile was saying the same thing to others [there]. The King said: O Naqib Kão, come here! The Padre also says that Maffamede is a false prophet. Naqib Kão put his hands over his ears and started to leave saying: I don’t need to hear these [people] who deserve to die. This made the King laugh and he slapped his knees with his hands. Don’t go, he said to him. He stopped. I said: My lord, this is not determined with threats and bad words (espantos e ruindades) but with reasons and disputes. The King said: the Padre is right. Now show how Maffemede is a prophet. He started to recount stories; the King said, what do you say to that? I said: this story is false, invented by them. Another captain retorted: these things can’t be proved by stories because they don’t take our histories to be true. He brought up the miracle of the moon, which was broken into pieces, joined together, and made to pass through the sleeve [of the Prophet]. The King said: what do you say to that? I said: My Lord, this is a lie and an optical illusion (enganno dos olhos), for if it were a true [story], and it [the moon] fell from the heavens, it is so large that it would have crushed many kingdoms, all of Greece, Egypt, Hindustan and even Italy, and in all of these kingdoms there would have been a memory of this and books since it would be the rarest thing that had occurred in the world; for even if they did not believe in Maffamede, the zealots who were against him would have to recount this case as an admirable prestige [trick], etc., but only the Moors know about this and no other nation. And if they say that it was small when it reached the earth, we would say that this was not the real moon, just as we say that it is not so-and-so who did something if we depict him as a tiny dwarf when he is in fact of a good size (se no lo pintão

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como anão piqeno sendo elle de boa disposição). This reasoning agreed with the King and he repeated it to him [Naqib Khan]. We then proceeded to have many discussions. One would speak from the one viewpoint, the other from the other. Everyone felt the need to retort; the King gave everyone a hearing and always showed that he was on our side. One captain said: this is too much, for while they do not believe in our books, we believe in theirs, so we cannot dispute with them. Another captain wished to intervene with his arguments, but as he had little force, another intervened and took his hand saying to him: don’t enter into this with them for they are men-ofletters and know a lot. The King [finally] ordered a gentile captain to come there and asked him if he held Maffamede to be a prophet. He said: I, my Lord, what do I know of him? Is he a false prophet? As he gathered from the situation that it would be approved of, he said: My Lord, yes he is false. The King laughed. Many things were dealt with that night regarding Maffamede and his book.68

Several points may be remarked in this extended passage. The first is that the Jesuits drew on relatively popular versions of this miracletale (involving the passing of the moon through the Prophet’s sleeve, for example), and also thought that in the narrative the moon had somehow crashed to earth. A second point is the convoluted and obscure aspect of Xavier’s metaphorical reasoning in the example involving the dwarf, which is unlikely to have been very convincing. Indeed, the most interesting voice in this debate is that of the anonymous captain who remarks that the discussion is pointless for ‘while they do not believe in our books, we believe in theirs.’

Polyphony and Dialogue In a justly celebrated essay Carlo Ginzburg suggests that early modern Jesuit texts usually ‘have leaks.’ The point made is more general in its application. Examining the work from about 1700 of a French Jesuit, Charles Le Gobien, Ginzburg notes that ‘behind the smooth 68Letter from Xavier in Agra to the Provincial, 24 September 1608, in Rego, ed., Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, vol. III, pp. 123–4.

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rhetoric of Le Gobien’s narrative, we hear at last a different, dissonant, untamed voice: an alien voice, coming from a place outside the text.’ This occurs, he says, at those moments when the Jesuit ‘seems unable to understand what he [himself ] has written’, thus ‘adding a dialogic dimension to a basically monologic narrative.’69 This is a valuable insight, particularly in light of the rather naïve reading to which Jesuit materials regarding Mughal India have often been subjected, by authors who themselves seem entirely seduced by the Jesuit viewpoint. We have seen the utility of Ginzburg’s formulation already with the letter of Gonçalo Rodrigues from Bijapur in 1561, and the Jesuit’s incomprehension of the sultan’s ‘fatuous questions.’ We encounter this again with Xavier’s own incapacity to perceive Jahangir’s ludic spirit or his gentle mockery, and the very form of Xavier’s letters—which are often rhetorically crude compositions with scant regard even for the simple rules of Portuguese grammar— lends itself to this even more than Le Gobien’s rather more polished rhetoric. It might be possible then to sift through these materials with care, accumulating tiny ‘leaks’ and dissonances. By hazard and good fortune, we have another strategy available to us.70 This is because ‘Abdus Sattar also reported at some length on the debates between Muslims and Jesuits in the court in the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī. The text is characterized from the outset by a tone of ostensible humility; he describes himself as one of the ‘humblest disciples’ of Jahangir, who is his master (pīr-o-murshīd) and guide (rāhnumā), and also a veritable ‘Miracle-Worker.’ ‘Abdus Sattar goes on to note that the work was begun by him in Jahangir’s fourth regnal year with the emperor’s own permission. The text was meant to be shown in the first instance to none other than the 69Ginzburg, ‘Alien Voices: The Dialogic Element in Early Modern Jesuit Historiography’, in Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover, NH: 1999), pp. 71–91 (citations from pp. 77, 83). 70This strategy obviously takes us back to the classic work of George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: 1973), in which Elison closely analyses the early modern Japanese response to Christianity (and to the Jesuits in particular). For an earlier consideration on these questions, also see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Taking Stock of the Franks: South Asian Views of Europeans and Europe, 1500–1800’, IESHR, vol. 42, no. 1, 2005, pp. 69–100.

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Khan-i A‘zam Mirza ‘Aziz Koka, the idea being that some of the choicest episodes recorded there might be selected for inclusion in the Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī. It is clear that Sattar had complex relations with those in elevated court circles. He seems for example to have had good relations with the powerful Khan Jahan Lodi and Qasim ‘Ali (titled Diyanat Khan), but quite tense dealings with the major theologian Taqiya Shushtari. Of particular interest is the fact that Naqib Khan (whom we have encountered above) and ‘Abdus Sattar seem to have had difficult relations, with the latter treating the former as credulous and old-fashioned and Naqib Khan regarding the other as too dependent on his knowledge of European texts. We have noted that the Majālis was initially modelled on a form of Sufi malfūzāt or ‘table-talk’ and indeed it was first intended to report on forty sessions (a powerful number in Islam) of courtly conversations. Eventually, the work came to have as many as 122 majālis (of which in fact 113 have come down to us) rather than forty, and was over three times the planned length. ‘Abdus Sattar makes an amusing contrast between the elevated text authored by the emperor, which he terms a roznāmcha or daily account, and his own humble shabnāmcha or nocturnal account. The temporal limits of the sessions extend from early November 1608 to late November 1611 (24 Rajab 1017 h to 19 Ramazan 1020 h) and they are thus later meetings than those reported by Xavier above (which begin in Lent 1608). Most of the meetings reported on appear to have been held in Agra. Of significance for us is also the fact of self-conscious intervention on the part of Jahangir in the making of this text. At times, the emperor appears to have insisted that ‘Abdus Sattar should be present when a notable discussion is to take place, and on one occasion, when he was absent for some reason, Khan-i A‘zam and I‘timad-ud-Daula were actually instructed by Jahangir to let him know what happened so that he could write it up.71 Further, ‘Abdus Sattar insists that Jahangir himself was shown the text periodically, and that he suggested emendations, additions, and corrections. 71‘Abdus

Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, Majlis 45, 18 Sha‘ban 1018 h (Sunday), 5th regnal year, p. 110.

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The portrait that emerges of Mughal kingship and courtly life from the text is a complex one. Despite the fact that the text underwent a form of censorship, we may note that this did not lead to undue homogenization; the coverage of subjects is quite different between this work and the Tūzak. The presence of Christians is far more substantial in this text, and there is considerable mention of the Portuguese, as also of a major intermediary figure who dealt with them, the celebrated Muqarrab Khan from Gujarat.72 Jahangir’s rather complex attitude towards Shah ‘Abbas is also brought out in some detail, as are his nuanced religious positions. Thus, it seems that Jahangir was not particularly well disposed towards Shi‘is but that he changed later.73 Also notable is the presence of both Hanafi and Shafi‘i ‘ulamā’ in the Mughal court. But the emperor’s tolerance equally had other limits. Thus we learn that he had briefly imprisoned ‘Abdul Latif, son of Naqib Khan, on charges of becoming an atheist (mulhid), but then forgave him.74 Jahangir’s personal religiosity was expressed through his marked devotion to Khwaja Mu‘in-ud-Din in Ajmer and his shrine, something of which Sattar obviously approved greatly.75 What emerges overall is a powerful portrait of a patron of the arts, painting, poetry, and music. However, Jahangir had a quite distinct taste: he did not like either satire (hajw or harza) or praise-verse (qasīda), and made fun of those qasīda writers who demeaned the great figures of the past—such as Kaykhusrau, Naushirwan, etc.—to raise him up.76 In poetry, he apparently showed a marked preference for the ghazal and rubā’ī forms, and declared his discomfort with laments or marsīyas. 72Ibid., pp. 46, 66, 104, 271, 275–6. On this personage, also see the treatments in Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, ‘An Aristocratic Surgeon of Mughal India: Muqarrab Khan’, in Irfan Habib, ed., Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India, 1200–1750 (Delhi: 1992), pp. 154–67, and Avril A. Powell, ‘Artful Apostasy? A Mughal Mansabdar among the Jesuits’, in Peter Robb, ed., Society and Ideology: Essays in South Asian History, Presented to Professor K.A. Ballhatchet (Delhi: 1993), pp. 72–96. 73‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, pp. 78, 201. In relation to this issue, also see the views in Sajida S. Alvi, ‘Religion and State During the Reign of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1605–27): Nonjuristical Perspectives’, Studia Islamica, no. 69, 1989, pp. 95–120. 74‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, pp. 22 and 24. 75Ibid., pp. 160, 162 and 164. 76Ibid., p. 199.

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What is thus made very clear is Jahangir’s discernment with poetry, his capacity to scan and make technical comments as well as make sharp judgement.77 But we also learn of his considerable direct interest in various aspects of the past, including reading the Shāhnāma and learning of the history of the Sultanate. The name of Sultan ‘Ala-udDin Khalji appears in the text, and the great poet Amir Khusrau is mentioned more than once, especially his incomplete Tughlaq Nāma, which was apparently finished on Jahangir’s orders by Hayati Gilani.78 Finally, we should note that the Majālis carries some interesting information on Jahangir’s attitude towards the visual arts. Particularly revealing is an episode in which Jahangir is shown portraits of his father Akbar, which he finds substandard; furious, he declares that only a limited number of artists—perhaps only three—should be allowed to make such portraits; other attempts should be cut short—by cutting off the offending fingers.79 But what does the text specifically reveal regarding the position of the Catholic missionaries at the court and their dealings with the Mughals? Let us begin with an episode which occurs early in the Majālis, in November 1608.80 ‘Abdus Sattar reports Naqib Khan and Sa‘adat Khan raising questions regarding the great differences and quarrels that existed between Christians and Jews. The emperor asked why they fought so: let those who follow Moses have their religion (dīn), he declared (drawing on a proverbial expression), and those who follow Jesus have theirs. Naqib Khan then tells the following story (which we will also encounter below). There was a Jew who was very well read and who decided for his own perverse reasons to ruin the teachings of Jesus. So he converted to Christianity and pretended he had given up the Law of Moses. He underwent such penance and devotion that Christians accepted him as their master and teacher and would come to learn from him about their own affairs. He then took different groups into confidence and taught each one a different thing. To one group he said that Jesus was God (‘Īsa Khudā ast); to another he said he was the son of God (pisar-i Khudā ast); to a 77For

example, ibid., pp. 38–42. pp. 7, 10, 108, and 155. 79Ibid., pp. 242–3. 80Ibid., Majlis 2, 26 Rajab 1017 h (Saturday), 4th regnal year, pp. 5–6. 78Ibid.,

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third group he said that God was three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this way, each of these three groups was misled by the cunning Jew and turned against one another, and would die bad deaths (ba marg-i bad ba-murad). Implied in the story was that Christians had come to resent the Jews on account of this evil by one of their number. Jahangir is reported to have responded that they would not necessarily go to Hell (dozakh), for if they had been misled they were not really at fault; but if they did it for material gain they would indeed come to a sorry end. The anecdote seems to explain why the various groups of Christians with whom the Mughals had contact—such as the Armenians and the Portuguese Catholics—had such different theological positions. As such, it also appears—referring as it does to a powerful convert from Judaism— to be a refraction of some narrative concerning St Paul. Our second episode takes us to 11 May 1610, perhaps a year and a half from the first discussion summarized above. Here, we learn that the emperor had summoned ‘Abdus Sattar late at night to a meeting of the court in which he was surrounded by many of his chief nobles, including the governors of many provinces.81 Also present were the wise men of different faiths (dānāyān-i ‘aqlī wa naqlī), namely Muslims, Christians, Brahmins, and various philosophers with knowledge of metaphysics and practical matters. They included the Qazi-yi ‘Askar, Sayyid Ahmad Qadiri (who was the Mir ‘Adl), Maulana Taqiya Shushtari, Maulana Ruzbih (or Ruzbihan) Shirazi, and Padre Jerónimo Xavier, described as ‘one of leading wise men of the Land of the Franks.’82 Sattar recounts that a debate (munāzara) began amongst them. The Padre brandished a large book and said he had spent all of twelve years, night and day, to write this book explaining the truth of his own religion.83 He had considered every point of view, proofs both rational and traditional, and thus proven his faith to his satisfaction. Hearing him the emperor turned to the Muslim divines (mawālī) and asked them to respond. Maulana Taqiya retorted that it was impossible because the very foundation 81Ibid.,

Majlis 14, 27 Safar 1019 h (Sunday), 5th regnal year, pp. 29–37. Ruzbih (or Ruzbihan) Shirazi is mentioned in Jahangir, Toozuk-iJehangeeree (Persian edn), p. 76; Thackston, The Jahangirnama, p. 104. 83By all evidence then, this was the Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā. 82Maulana

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of the Christian religion was false (bātil). How could something with a false foundation become true? For, he stated, God was eternal and inevitable, while Jesus, being born of Mary, could not be the same as God. The Padre’s rejoinder to this was that they did not say Jesus was the same as God, but that he was both God and Man. His human nature was earthly and his godly nature was eternal. His two natures coexisted—one can mix black and white and give out a black appearance while harbouring a white interior (the terms ‘arz and jauhar are used for these two aspects).84 To this Maulana Taqiya said if this was the case, why did Christians insist on the ‘integral existence’ (wajīb ul-wujūd) of the earthly nature of Christ? The Padre now objected and asked the emperor to intervene. The mullahs, he pleaded, were stretching the importance of the concept of ‘integral existence.’ Could not God give his autonomy (qayyūmiyat) to another essence (jauhar)? The Maulana for his part found this infeasible (mahal). The Padre demanded to know all the same whether it was possible (mumkin). Now the emperor grew exasperated and decried their manner of arguing. Khan-i A‘zam agreed the discussion had become far too general and was no longer about Jesus but about broad concepts. The emperor rejected this; it was specifically about Jesus, who had brought the dead back to life, given eyesight to the blind, etc. Khan-i A‘zam said others too had performed miracles. Leaving aside Islam, the Christians had claimed such powers even for their Apostles. Padre Xavier agreed but said they had received this power from the Messiah, the Messiah’s power being all his own. Khan-i A‘zam now pointed out that ‘Abdus Sattar, though present and rather knowledgeable in the matter, had been standing quietly in a corner. The emperor turned to him. First, Sattar tried to clarify the Padre’s point in view of the fact that his Persian was rather imperfect (az kamdānishī dar Fārsī zabān kotahī mīkard). He thus asked the Padre whether he meant that the Apostles had brought the dead back to life using Jesus’s power, and the Padre assented. Sattar now asked him whether Jesus had not prayed to God before bringing the dead man to life, in order to prove his own truth. If this were true, Jesus was 84It is unclear whether members of Jahangir’s court had access to alternative views on the question from the Eastern Churches.

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asking God to intervene with his power. On what basis did ‘Abdus Sattar claim such, the Padre retorted? The emperor too demanded an answer. Sattar said he was referring to the case of Lazarus. That the Messiah had prayed to God in this case was in the Bible (injīl), even though the Muslims regarded it as a distorted book. Padre Jerónimo now agreed that in the case of Lazarus this was true, because at that point in time Jesus was still human; he had both the earthly and the divine in him. ‘Abdus Sattar responded sarcastically that this was true of any man, nay, even any horse and ass. The emperor now told the Padre to speak sensibly facing such an august assembly. Sattar too told the Padre sternly that this was a court with the wise men of the seven climes. The tension between the two erstwhile collaborators is now evident. The emperor again addressed the Padre and asked why Jesus did not do more to distinguish himself from the other Apostles in matters of devotion (ubūdiyat) and humanity (bashariyat). This was a hint of sorts. So Sattar added that in the Bible it was written that on a certain day, in a secret meeting, Jesus had told the Apostles that he was leaving this world to join his Father, who was also their Father, and who was his God just as He was theirs. Here too he seemed to equate his level to that of the Apostles. Xavier again intervened impatiently, insisting that Jesus was a real son, while the others were metaphorical sons. Sattar addressed the emperor again to refute this. This was an absurd claim that anyone of intelligence would see through. If this had been the case, Jesus would use different words for different relationships. At this rate, he said, every word would come to have two meanings, one real (haqīqī), and another metaphorical. He noted citing chapter and verse that Matthew (Chapter 2), Mark (Chapter 11), and Luke (Chapter 17) all contained a story. A rich man came to Christ, and kneeling before him as a pious master, asked for eternal life. Jesus replied that no one was pious (nīk) except God. From this, it was clear that Jesus was only claiming to be a slave of God, rather than godly. The Padre replied that at the time Jesus was speaking in his human version. Khan-i A‘zam now asked Sattar to tell the Christians’ own story of what had happened when the Messiah was crucified. This was again a broad hint and so Sattar duly recounted the story.

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It was written in the Bible, he said, that on the cross Jesus had said seven things. The first was, in Sattar’s version: Elwī, elwī, lama sabakhtanī: ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ [Hebrew: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabakhthani?’] This could be understood in various ways. One was that Jesus himself was God and that he handed himself over for execution to deliver humans from their sins. This is why Christ was the Redeemer (mukhlis). Sattar then asked the Padre if such was the case, why was Jesus complaining on the cross? To whom was his complaint actually directed then? The emperor applauded this pointed question. The Padre responded again that Jesus was both human and divine. He endured his suffering with forbearance and even joy. Had he remained silent, people might have thought (wrongly) that he did not have to suffer pain. To remove this doubt, he complained, so that his part-human and part-divine nature might be clear. Sattar stated that he found this explanation ridiculous, and he notes that the emperor did not really take to it either. Sattar now remarked that the Padre was a rather strange man, and it seemed he had lost his bearings. Was it not clear whether Jesus’s humanity or his divinity was concealed? He raised a second question. Jesus was lashed over five thousand times, and he bled enormously, according to the Christians. He also wore a crown of thorns. Even though he slept, and walked, and drank, and ate, were people still not aware of his human aspect? Was it still necessary for him to complain on the cross? The emperor now told the Padre that he could really do better to defend himself. Sattar for his part reassured the emperor that the Padre was really a man of wisdom (mard-i dānā) in most matters but a simpleton in matters of faith (dīn). What could he say? Indeed, the Padre fell silent and kept changing colour from embarrassment. The emperor now told Khan-i A‘zam of an episode from five or six days earlier. Then, Sattar had read his translation of the Bible (which he had done together with the Padres, probably the Mir’āt ul-Quds) out loud in court, and done so with such enthusiasm that the emperor had wondered if Sattar himself had become a Christian. He had wanted to know what he really was and even asked him to swear an oath concerning his true beliefs. Jahangir had assured him that he himself was a Universal Manifestation (mazhar-i kull); and that just as God was concerned with all his slaves, the emperor was

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concerned with all God’s slaves. No matter what Sattar’s real faith, he would not be persecuted. Sattar had said Christianity today was, to his mind, not the Messiah’s true faith. Rather, it was the invention of the Pope (ikhtirā‘i pāpa), who claimed to be the Caliph of the Messiah. Sattar said he had failed even to that day to access the real faith of Jesus; if he did, he would find it to be true. He believed there was no contradiction between the faith of Jesus and that of Muslims, save that the latter was more complete and perfect. Indeed, Sattar claimed he had understood the weakness and incorrect nature of the current faith of the Franks. He had explained them to Jahangir, who therefore asked him on this occasion to repeat some of them again. ‘Abdus Sattar went over this carefully prepared ground. For example, during their mass, the Padre read a prayer over a small piece of bread and handed it around saying it was the flesh of Jesus and should be eaten. Then they took a small quantity of wine, gave it out, and said it was the blood of the Messiah to be drunk. If one did not accept that this was indeed the flesh and blood of Jesus, you were to them an unbeliever (kāfir). Could anyone eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus and then take him to be God? Second, in their worship they brought out Christ naked without even covering his private parts and with a crown of thorns that pricked his head. He showed signs of wounds and suffering, and then they said he was God. How could such a God, who has been humiliated and made to suffer, be accepted by any self-respecting person? Sattar added some further details, and the Padre agreed that what he said was based on his accurate textual knowledge of the Gospel. The emperor now recalled that on the previous occasion, Sattar had told him that when he had first met Xavier and begun to work with him, he had been quite free of prejudice (ta‘assub). He had indeed been completely open-minded at the time, and therefore become intimate with the Christians. Prior friendship and enmity were thus not his considerations. However, as he became closer to them he saw in an ever clearer way the falsity (butlān) of their faith and came to dislike it. He had spent two years with Xavier and acknowledged that he was a truthful man, and the Padre too could swear to Sattar’s open-mindedness. The emperor thereupon asked for more details of their dealings. Sattar recounted that, one day, some two years earlier

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(so, in about 1608), he and the Padre had been sitting together. The Padre had told him that his junior priest (perhaps Corsi, b. 1573, rather than Pinheiro, b. 1552) had suggested that, with the passage of time, Sattar had turned gradually against them and their faith. Was this true, Xavier had asked? Sattar admitted the truth of this and gave his reasons. Initially, he had been free of hostility and had come to them in good faith. He believed that blind tradition (taqlīd) was the cause of difference, acceptance, and rejection. But experience had taught him the error of the religion of the Franks. Xavier confirmed to Jahangir that this was indeed how things had turned out. The emperor then told Sattar that he had shamed the Padre that day. Sattar said it was up to the emperor to decide who was right and wrong: the scales of justice were in his hands. The emperor for his part noted that the Padre had in some ways accepted his errors. Sattar then asked a last question, driving another nail as it were into the coffin. If the Messiah had come back from the grave, with the same body and face, then why had Mary Magdalene not recognized him on her visit to his grave, and been so close to him? Why did she take him for a gardener (bāghbān)? It would seem that his appearance had changed. Faced with this needling question regarding the celebrated Noli me tangere episode, the Padre said it was because Christ was so surrounded by light that she was bedazzled.85 The emperor then said if Jesus was so bedazzling, how come she took him for a gardener? There was no answer. Matters ended there, with the Jesuits in full retreat. The next episode featuring the Jesuits reported in the Majālis dates to some two months later.86 A gift had apparently just arrived from the principal people in the port of Goa along with some of the ‘Frankish wise people (dānāyān-i Firang).’ However, one of them— very likely the Jesuit José de Castro (1577–1646), who we know came to Agra in 1610—was apparently noted for his harsh speech, bigotry (ta‘assub) and sharp temper. In court he vociferously praised 85On theological and iconographic problems associated with this episode, see Robert Deshman, ‘Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Early Medieval Images’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 79, no. 3, 1997, pp. 518–46. 86‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, Majlis 29, Rabi‘ II, 1019 h, 5th regnal year (Thursday night), pp. 70–5.

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his own faith and denigrated Islam. In spite of this Mahabat Khan spoke to him pleasantly (mutāyaba), yet he kept on with the rough talk. ‘Abdus Sattar notes that the emperor was, as usual, unconcerned with the niceties of his comportment and even liked the Jesuit’s frankness. He briefly recounted a story to the Padre about one of the thieves who had been crucified alongside Jesus. The arrogant Frank paid little attention and only said that no-one with intelligence could accept the Muslim faith (dīn-i muhammadī). Irritated, the emperor now turned to ‘Abdus Sattar and asked him to intervene in view of his knowledge of matters Christian. He observed that the cross-worshipper (salīb-parast), taking advantage of the emperor’s generosity, was growing ever more insolent in his attacks on Islam and in defence of his own faith. Sattar also felt the priest was not capable of proper debate and was riding for a fall. He asked the priest: ‘Tell us clearly: do you not believe in prophethood as such, or in the prophethood of Muhammad?’ He replied evasively saying he did not understand the purpose of the question. He only wanted to assert that Muhammad was no prophet (paighambar). It was up to Sattar to establish the contrary. Sattar then pointed out to the emperor that he was trying to set the terms of the debate. His response would depend on whether or not the Frank accepted the very idea of prophethood or rejected it altogether. Was the other a kāfir-i mutlaq, an unqualified denier, or not? The priest did not respond to this. He said instead he did not know the appropriate Muslim vocabulary. He simply stated that he was a Christian (‘Īsawī) and believed in the religion of the Gospel (dīn-i injīl). Sattar now responded that he did not believe that the Frank’s religion was the religion of Jesus or indeed that his book was the Gospel. He thus felt that he had turned the tables on him. The emperor’s attention now turned to something else and the debate stopped for a time. After about half an hour (sa‘at-i nujūmī) it resumed. The Frank now said he hoped that ‘Abdus Sattar would become a Christian, and that the emperor would give an order to facilitate this. Mahabat Khan again said pleasantly that he himself had no doubts about Sattar’s understanding. If he became Christian, why, everyone else would too! The emperor called Sattar forward; the latter bowed down and kissed the earth; Jahangir asserted again

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that he was the mazhar-i kull and had no objection to his becoming Christian (nasrānī). Sattar for his part protested. Was the emperor ordering him to become Christian, or was he asking whether he was attracted to Christianity for its innate truth and reason? The emperor clarified that he was not giving an order. It was more a question of what Sattar wanted, and he himself wanted to clarify that he posed no constraint on his eventual conversion. As to the reasonableness (ma‘qūliyat) of Christianity, Sattar now responded that he found it the most false (bātil-tarīn), the most impure (najis-tarīn), and the dirtiest (ganda-tarīn). He found even the faith of Hindus (dīn-i hunūd) better than Christianity. The emperor was shocked and said: ‘This does not sound reasonable to me.’ Sattar responded that after all even the Hindus did not claim that their God had been crucified. Jahangir replied that they might not say it, but the Hindus did have a god (namely, Krishna) who had sported with 12,000 women on a single day and impregnated them all! Chastened, Sattar retreated a little from his position and said he was willing to concede that if the emperor felt this way, it must be true.87 But he still could not withdraw his objections to the God of the Christians who had been crucified naked, received five thousand lashes, on whose face people had spat, who wore a crown of thorns, and who had been so mocked. Further, he assured the court that he was not making this up but deriving his knowledge from the scriptures of the Christians. The emperor asked the Padre for a response. The Padre said that, in their view, God had not been killed. This was a false accusation. Rather, he returned to the question of the simultaneous humanity and divinity of Jesus. Sattar said he felt 87Pinheiro

reports this particular debate, including Jahangir’s response; see Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul, p. 204. It is remarkable however that ‘Abdus Sattar says nothing of a curious episode that occurred at about this time, on 18 July 1610; this was the handing over by Jahangir to the Jesuits of the three sons of his brother Mirza Daniyal, who took the names of Dom Filipe (Tahmuras), Dom Carlos (Baisunghar), and Dom Henrique (Hushang). None of the three seem in fact to have accepted Christianity, for they all returned to Islam soon after; for the particular case of Baisunghar, see Jorge Flores and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. ‘The Shadow Sultan: Succession and Imposture in the Mughal Empire, 1628–1640’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 47, no. 1, 2004, pp. 80–121.

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the Padre was simply wasting time to get away that evening whereas he himself was getting to the heart of the matter. Had Christ been killed? The other agreed he had. Had he received five thousand lashes? Yes, he had. Had he been obliged to wear a crown of thorns? Had people spat on his face? The other agreed this was true. Well, if all this was true, was Jesus God and was God Jesus? The Padre said he was. Sattar turned to the emperor: it was clear that their God had been crucified and been humiliated. To sum up, Sattar pointed out, the Frankish wise men (dānāyān) claimed that Jesus was both God and man, just as something can have elements of both white and black. Yet, when it suited them, they denied it was their God who was humiliated, crucified, and killed. The Padre continued to be evasive. He then used an example. If the emperor sent someone like Khan Jahan Lodi to another land and he was badly treated there by the inhabitants, would he not still treat that as a mark of honour? Sattar felt that the Padre had tripped himself up. Jesus was being compared here to the emperor’s slave (banda). He therefore noted that in this example there was still a sender (faristinda) and a sent (faristāda). Indeed, in the book of the Christians, Jesus insisted he too had been sent. The Padre had a response of sorts to this. He began to recount the Christian narrative again and arrived at a point where he noted that Jesus had not revealed his role for thirty years. Sattar now intervened. What had he said when he began to teach? He then asked the emperor to allow him to bring forth the Persian translation of the Gospel from the royal library (khazāna-i āmira) to see what it said. The Gospel was read out as follows. The genealogy of the Messiah was traced to Abraham, with fourteen links to David, another fourteen to Zerubbabel, and then another fourteen to Abraham. It was then said that there was a girl, who was married to a carpenter called Joseph. An angel of God appeared to her at thirteen and she became pregnant. She then went to Bethlehem and in a lowly house gave birth to a boy. Three astrologer-kings (pādshāh-i munajjim) from the east came to seek out a star and worshipped the boy. The angel then told Joseph to run off to Egypt. Herod, who was seeking the boy, now ordered all children between two and four to be killed. Joseph remained in Egypt four years, but returned to Nazareth with his family on the angel’s instructions. Here the boy

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grew up. For thirty years he remained amongst his people and was of the faith of Moses (dīn-i Mūsā). Then, he fasted for forty days; after that he came to spread the faith of the Gospel. Some people began to follow him. He lived in a certain village and some time passed. Thus, his story was recounted in the book of the Franks. Having read this passage out, Sattar asked: what did Jesus say after thirty years that was new? Were they things that he knew better than his mother and his relatives? For they too had seen everything he had seen. Besides, he pointed out to the emperor that, according to the Franks and their book, on the day when Jesus came forth to the people the first thing he said was as follows: ‘Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near, believe in my Gospel (bar injīl-i man).’ Now was this Gospel that Jesus wanted people to believe the same as the Gospel that described his life and was written fifteen or twenty years after his death? If it was, how could Jesus already have had it? What this really meant was that there was a first Gospel that Jesus possessed, different from the Gospel of the Franks. But where had this first one disappeared? Sattar noted to the emperor that, according to Mark, he was writing down what he had heard and what he had seen. This was only the story of Jesus then, not to be confused with the Gospel of God. Actually, then, the book of the Franks had no real relationship with the religion and faith of the Messiah. None of their prayers, practices, or other things was in fact based on the real Gospel. ‘Abdus Sattar reports that the emperor, lover of justice (bādshāh-i insāf-dost), acknowledged the reason of this. He also reports that the noisy Padre’s lips dried up, he sweated profusely, and finally slunk away. The next discussion concerning the Christians is stated by Sattar to have taken place not long afterwards.88 On this occasion a debate began as follows. The Christians claimed that Joseph and Mary had been married, while the Muslim tradition denied this. The emperor Jahangir—wanting as usual to get to the bottom of the matter—called in the wise men of the Franks. They stated their version, which ran thus. When the Virgin Mary was nine-and-a-half years old, Zachariah Cohen, the father of John, thought she should 88‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, Majlis 30, 3 Jumada I 1019 h, 5th regnal year, pp. 76–7.

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be married. But since she had a compact (‘ahd) with God that she would protect her virginity and not pollute herself, Mary was simply not willing. Zachariah was in despair and called in the other elders for advice. People suggested that they seek God’s sign. After much prayer it became clear that Mary should be married off and told that she could nevertheless remain a virgin. Now the problem was finding a husband. Elderly bachelors (‘azab) men from the lineage of David were invited to come with a staff, which they could leave in the house of worship overnight. The staff that flowered and gave fruit would determine the identity of the husband. The next day, the staff of Joseph had turned green (sabz) and begun to flower. This was the story of how their marriage was arranged. The emperor expressed deep scepticism and doubt at this story. The Christians should clear Mary from the blemish of marriage (tuhmat-i tazwīj), he declared. For it seemed to him that this story implied that Mary’s child was in fact Joseph’s child. After all, Joseph was shown as elderly. The implication of the dry staff becoming green, flowering, and giving fruit was that Joseph, who was an elderly bachelor, was to become fresh again. After all, an elderly man who had a young wife and a child was proverbially termed ‘becoming green (sabz shuda).’ Hazrat Maryam, both Muslims and Christians agreed, was a virgin who had actually died virgin. Everyone agreed too that Jesus did not have a human father. Anyone with a bit of common sense and intelligence, said Jahangir, would interpret this story as he had. The story must be false, or otherwise the Jesus of the Christians was some other Jesus, not the son of the Virgin Mary. ‘Abdus Sattar declares his sentiment that God had spoken through the mouth of the emperor. The Franks were aghast at this declaration and the nobles in the court praised Jahangir’s wisdom. There is thus an inevitability to these depictions in the Majālis which always end with humiliation for the Jesuits, the very opposite of the outcome that we are shown in the Jesuit letters. But there is also a greater complexity and depth to the theological discussions as they are depicted by ‘Abdus Sattar. We see this in the following episode, which dates to just over a month later.89 There was a 89Ibid,

Majlis 35, 8 Jumada II 1019 H (Sunday), 5th regnal year, pp. 86–7.

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discussion in the court on whether Jesus (Hazrat ‘Isa) had brought the freshly dead (murda-hā-yi tāza) back to life or old ones (kuhano-farsūda). Khan-i A‘zam and the Qazi-yi ‘Askar confessed they had never thought of this problem before and a Jesuit (dānā-yi Firang) was called in. The emperor asked him how many of the dead Jesus had brought back to life. The Padre said there were clear accounts of three dead men in one place in the Gospel, and, in other places, episodes of the dead coming back to life, the blind being able to see, and the deaf able to hear. Since the last was in the plural, it seemed the instances of this could have been several. The matter now turned to the fact that the Christians believed that Jesus’s humanity was on account of God’s autonomy (qayyūmiyat) and not his own autonomous power. Maulana Ruzbih Shirazi was called. When the Padre came back to his usual point of Jesus being both human and divine, the Maulana objected. How could one thing be temporary and eternal, contingent and inevitable? The Padre retorted that this was because of Christ’s dual nature. The emperor then intervened to say that it seemed to him that God and Jesus were distinct (Khudā dīgar ast wa ‘Īsā dīgar) and ‘Abdus Sattar saw that this was casting considerable doubt on the Franks’ view. How could God be three— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and one of the three then be killed? The idea that God sent his only son to the world to save the world from its sins was incomprehensible, the emperor added. Sattar was satisfied by this and felt that this intervention had put the Franks in their place just when they were getting arrogant. About two months later, on October 29th 1610, ‘Abdus Sattar reports that, at some point early in the night, Jahangir called in the Jesuits again.90 Again the question of Jesus raising up the dead was brought up. The same answer was repeated. Why was one passage in the Gospel so vague about numbers, Jahangir asked? The discussion was pursued by some courtiers. The emperor insisted that he was not asking for the names or details of those in the second passage who had been raised up. Khan-i A‘zam then suggested that the Gospel was no more than a book of history (tārīkh bīsh nīst), rather than a real holy 90Ibid., Majlis 47, 21 Sha‘ban 1019 h (Wednesday), 5th regnal year, pp. 116–19.

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book. The Padre replied that the Torah was no different in character. The Khan said he felt the same, because the Jews had also meddled with the Torah. The emperor now returned to whether the Gospel was from the time of Jesus or not. The Padre replied that Matthew’s Gospel dated to two years after Jesus departed for heaven. Had he heard it from Jesus, or how had he put it together, asked the emperor? The Padre replied that Jesus appeared (zāhir shud) to Matthew two years after his ascension and instructed him to write. Was this in a dream, asked Jahangir? If so, the Gospel was hardly trustworthy. He then turned to the mullahs for their view. Four Maulanas spoke up: Qazi ‘Isa from Agra, Maulana Shukrullah Shirazi, Maulana Ruzbih Shirazi, and Maulana Taqiya Shushtari. They stated their view that the real Gospel had been revealed (nāzil) to Jesus during his life. The discussion continued and Sattar felt the Padre again failed to measure up. The emperor now turned to differences between Jews and Christians on questions of permissible and prohibited foods (halāl and harām). Maulana Taqiya said Jews believed horses, donkeys, camels, rabbits, pigs, and certain types of fat were harām for them. They also did not eat fish except those with scales. What was the proof that fish without fins and scales were forbidden, Jahangir asked? Both the Franks and the Muslims in court responded. Jahangir turned to Maulana Shukrullah who had just arrived in court and recounted a story. He once had caught a lot of fish and given some to Mir Ziya, though they had no scales. He responded that he was a Shi‘i and therefore would not eat such fish. Jahangir was puzzled by this. Further, he had noticed that when he fished with a net, he caught scaly fish; but when he fished with a rod and a piece of meat as bait, more fish without scales were caught. This meant, he supposed, that scaly fish did not eat meat or dead things. Was this the reason to prefer them? Perhaps fish without scales were even capable of eating human flesh. Khan-i A‘zam responded that he thought this was quite right. Jahangir said proudly that this was his own inference. Some Shi‘i mullahs had told him that he was probably right too, though they had never seen it written down in a book. At any rate, Jahangir too had decided in keeping with his reasoning only to have scaly fish. He then read out an apposite hemistich in court:

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Excellent goods are needed, No matter which shop they come from.

He then returned to the question of Jesus bringing the dead back to life. Had anyone asked these men who returned what the afterlife was like? The Padre responded that he knew nothing, but the fact was that, three hundred years after Jesus’s birth, a pious man called ‘Shorniam’ (perhaps St Julian) had brought someone back to life. This man had spoken of the afterlife but said nothing of any consequence. There was again another debate on the Trinity of the Christians where the Christians once again failed to convince. However, a last discussion recorded in the Majālis, this one dating to late April 1611, held some consolation for the Jesuits.91 Here, the court began to reflect on a wholly separate matter from that of faith, namely the affairs of the province of Bengal and the difficulty of crossing rivers there. It was noted that money had been sent from the treasury for the building of bridges. From this matters drifted to other questions. Eventually, the emperor called a Frankish Padre and gave him a wax candle from his own hand, recounting that he had seen Jesus in a dream. The candle was therefore meant to be an offering in the church (kalīsa). The emperor recounted his dream to Murtaza Khan and Khwaja Abu’l Hasan as follows. He had seen three people, each with a candle in his hand, and they all had the same wonderful, illumined, and awe-inspiring face. Now, since he had often seen Jesus’s face in the paintings of the Franks, he realized that it was him multiplied by three. Murtaza Khan noted that the Franks said there were three groups (tā’ifa) amongst them, one claiming Jesus was God, some claiming he was the Son of God, and a third lot claiming he was the Prophet of God. Jahangir too recalled the story of the Jewish sage (dānā-yi az yahūd) who, seeing the growth of the Christian faith and the decline of the Jews, became concerned. So he intervened to divide the Christians; he ceased to dress as a Jew and wore the garments (libās) of the Christians. After penance, he emerged with so much credit that the Christians began to hand over their children to him to learn the Christian faith. 91Ibid,

Majlis 87, 17 Safar 1020 h (Monday), 6th regnal year, pp. 214–18 (the relevant section may be found on pp. 216–17).

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He convinced each one that he had a special affection for them. And he taught each one a different thing. To one group he said that the sole truth was that Jesus was God the Father who had appeared as a human to deliver mankind, suffering greatly in the process; to another group (dīgarān) he said the sole truth was that Jesus was the Son of God, sent by his Father as a human amongst the humans in order to liberate them from the Original Sin (gunāh-i maurūsī) that had existed from the time of Adam and had managed to enter heaven, taking the souls of all the other prophets with him; to the third group he said Jesus was a prophet (paighambar) sent by God for guidance (hidāyat) and killed by the Jews who did not believe in him. The emperor added that even if some Frankish ‘ulamā in the court had told him this, the real truth (haqīqat) was only known to God. Nevertheless, he persisted in his desire to offer a candle at the church of the Jesuits. Several major and minor points may be noted regarding these discussions as reported in the Majālis. The first is the key role played by ‘Abdus Sattar, based on his own knowledge of Christian materials— which was itself a product of his past close interactions and dealings with the Jesuits. In his case at least, Xavier and the others could not simply dismiss him as someone who did not know their materials since, after all, he was centrally implicated in the production (or at least the substantive revision) of their Persian redactions. In turn, a key part of Sattar’s disputational strategy was to make use of the Persian versions that now existed in the royal library, in particular it would seem of the Mir’āt ul-Quds. Once this text, and others like it, had been stabilized and agreed upon by the two parties in the debate, it became possible to look closely and even literally at them as textual and philological objects rather than merely trading insults at a general level. As we can see, according to the Majālis—and here it differs greatly from the Jesuit accounts—the debates therefore centred above all on the Christians, their Gospel and related materials, and not on Muhammad and his prophethood or miracles. A second point concerns the manner in which the emperor Jahangir and his attitudes are portrayed. Both sets of materials portray him as playful and rather enjoying these debates, even if he is occasionally irritated by them. However, while the Jesuits see him as usually ruling in their favour, Sattar’s account suggests the contrary. The same holds for a number

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of other key courtiers, such as Mirza ‘Aziz Koka, usually portrayed by the Jesuits as very favourably disposed towards them, but who appears here as one of those who actively instigates ‘Abdus Sattar against them. As regards the broad content of the debate, there is little that is novel or surprising about it. On the other hand, an important point concerns the form of the debate. ‘Abdus Sattar notes that, as late as 1610, Xavier’s command over Persian was inadequate (what he terms kamdānishī dar Fārsī zabān), and that he was unable to express himself clearly in verbal argument. The very nature of the debate thus placed the Jesuits at a disadvantage, for which the remedy was to resort to quite another form: namely, written textual polemics.

Coda The years from 1608 to 1611 are usually portrayed in the historiography as a period when the Jesuits still held considerable sway in the Mughal court. This is paradoxically not simply a consequence of their efforts alone, but also of the view that the first Englishmen at Jahangir’s court brought away and broadcasted to the world. William Hawkins, who arrived in Agra in April 1609, was convinced of a fullfledged Jesuit campaign against him from the time he had set foot in Surat and wrote darkly of how ‘the Jesuites and Portugalls slept not, but by all meanes sought my overthrow.’92 As late as November 1613 Nicholas Withington was to claim that Jahangir would do nothing against the Portuguese ‘soe longe as that witch Savier [Xavier] liveth (for soe the Moores theselves terme him) which is an ould Jesuitt residinge with the Kinge whom he much affects.’93 The shipwrecked 92Clements R. Markham, ed., The Hawkins’ Voyages During the Reigns of Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, and James I (London: 1878), p. 403. On English attitudes towards the Mughals, also see the analysis in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Frank Submissions: The Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris’, in H.V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, eds, The Worlds of the East India Company (Woodbridge: 2002), pp. 69–96. 93Withington’s letter is cited in William Foster, ed, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–19, as Narrated in his Journal and Correspondence (London: 1926), p. 275n. For other English comments on Jesuit influence over Jahangir, see the letter from

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English seaman and traveller Captain Robert Coverte, who found himself in India in 1609, had a somewhat more subtle reading of matters. He noted the following with regard to Jahangir. And to this his great stile he is also of as great power, wealth and commande, yet will he urge none of what Nation soeuer to forsake their Religions, but esteemeth any man so much the better, by how much the more he is firme and constant in his Religion, and of all other he maketh most accompt of Christians, and will allow them double the meanes that hee giveth to any other nation, and keepeth continually two Christians Friars, to converse with them in the Christian Religion and manners of Christendome. He hath also the picture of our Lady in the place of his praier or Religious proceedings, and hath oftentimes said that he could find in his heart to be a Christian, if they had not so many Gods (…).94

Coverte seems to have had good relations with Jerónimo Xavier, whom he terms the ‘chiefe Friar’ at the court, and even asked him for a number of letters of recommendation ‘which he most willingly granted, beeing a man of great Credit there, and greatly esteemed and well knowne in other Kingdomes.’ Yet, none of these accounts—not even that of Withington—seems to have understood how fragile the Mughal–Jesuit entente in fact was. Thus, in 1614, after the Portuguese captain Luís de Brito de Melo had seized, looted, and burnt a Gujarati ship returning from the Red Sea the previous year, Jahangir turned on the Jesuits, closing down their churches in Lahore and Agra and retracting his financial aid to them.95 Jerónimo Xavier was sent by Thomas Kerridge at Agra to Thomas Aldworth and Council at Surat, 7 September 1613, in F.C. Danvers and William Foster, eds, Letters Received by the East India Company From Its Servants in the East, Transcribed from the ‘Original Correspondence’ Series of the India Office Records, 1602–1617, 6 vols (London: 1896–1902), vol. I, pp. 282–4. 94Robert Coverte, A True and Almost Incredible Report of an Englishman, that (Being Cast Away in the Good Ship called the Assention in Cambaya the Farthest Part of the East Indies) Trauelled by Land Through Many Unknowne Kingdomes, and Great Cities (…) With a Discovery of a Great Emperour called the Great Mogoll, a Prince Not Till Now Knowne to Our English Nation (London: 1612), p. 40. 95On Brito de Melo’s attack (which had the sanction of the viceroy Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo), see António Bocarro, Década 13 da História da Índia, ed.

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him to Goa to negotiate a solution, as we learn from Xavier’s letter to Tomás de Ituren. Two years ago, the Portuguese took a ship from a captain of the Mogol King which was coming from Meca, and he resented it so much, at the instigation of the said captain, that he showed himself very angry with them. And to force them to give him some satisfaction about the ship, he has us deprived of the churches of Lahore and Agra; and he sent me into exile as it were, telling us to go and complain to the Viceroy of what he was doing against us. And he took from us the alms which he used to give for our upkeep. His sending me here was only a trick to make me arrange with the Viceroy about peace, and to conceal the fact that he was asking for it. That is how I was dismissed by him.96

This was, of course, not the end of the Jesuits’ Mughal mission. Pinheiro, Corsi, and Castro remained in the Mughal domains, albeit under humiliating circumstances, before being restored to a better situation a few years later. They would be followed by a number of others later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all the way to the time of the Jesuits Tieffenthaler and Wendel, the last survivors who eventually handed over the Agra Mission to the Carmelites in 1781. But the debates in the Mughal court from the time of Jahangir and Xavier did have several afterlives, and these were all in textual form. Two of Xavier’s works came to be published by his Protestant critics in the late 1630s in the Netherlands in bilingual editions: one of these was the Mir’āt ul-Quds or Dāstān-i Masīh, and the other was Rodrigo José de Lima Felner, 2 vols (Lisbon: 1876), vol. I, pp. 189–92. However, the viceroy seems to have acted against royal wishes; see Philip III’s earlier letter to Jahangir of 12 February 1612, in Raymundo António de Bulhão Pato, ed., Documentos remettidos da Índia, ou Livros das Monções, 5 vols (Lisbon: 1880–1935), vol. III, pp. 163–4; and a reproachful letter from Philip III to Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo dated 11 February 1616, in Pato, ed., Documentos remettidos da Índia, ou Livros das Monções, vol. III, p. 389. 96Henry Hosten, ‘Eulogy of Father Jerome Xavier, S.J., a Missionary in Mogor’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, (n.s.), vol. 23, 1927, pp. 109–30 (citation on pp. 123–4), letter from Xavier to Tomás de Ituren, Chaul, 4 December 1615.

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a section of his work on the apostles, published as Historia S. Petri (or, in Persian, Dāstān-i San Pedro ammā ālūda).97 Louis de Dieu, the Protestant savant who published these works and translated them into Latin, accompanied them with a violent critique of Xavier, stating for example that the Jesuit had no regard for textual veracity so long as he could convince his Mughal audience. Even more interesting is the fate of one of the other works produced by Xavier, namely the Ā’īnayi Haqq-numā, or ‘Truth-showing Mirror’, which was less a narrative like the Mir’āt ul-Quds, and more a polemical work directed at the rivalry between Christianity and Islam.98 This was a work apparently completed early in Jahangir’s reign and organized in the classic form of a dialogue between a Padre, a philosopher (or philosopher-king, apparently modelled on Akbar), and a mullah. The exact extent to which this work circulated in Mughal India, and whether it was known or directly accessible to ‘Abdus Sattar, is something we cannot for the time being ascertain. However, we are aware that an abridged version of it circulated as far as Safavid Iran, where it was the object in 1622 of a trenchant refutation written by a certain Sayyid Ahmad ibn Zain al-‘Abidin ‘Alawi, the pesh-namāz of Shah ‘Abbas, under the title Misqal-i Safā (The Mirror-Polisher).99 This work in turn travelled as far as Rome, where theologians were set to work in order to respond to it. After a first somewhat unsuccessful response in 1628, a more comprehensive work was penned by an Arabist, Father 97Jerónimo

Xavier, Historia S. Petri persice conscripta, simulque multi modis contaminata: Latine reddita & brevibus animadversionibus notata, a Ludovico de Dieu (Leiden: 1639). 98To our knowledge, no modern edition exists of this work; but see the extensive excerpts and translations in Samuel Lee, ‘Preface’ in Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism By the Late Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and of Some of the Most Eminent Writers of Persia Translated and Explained: To Which is Appended an Additional Tract on the Same Question; and, in a Preface, Some Account Given of a Former Controversy on this Subject, with Extracts From It (Cambridge: 1824), pp. v-xli. Also the detailed discussion in Camps, Jerome Xavier, S.J. and the Muslims of the Mogul Empire, pp. 92–175. 99The abridged version of Xavier’s text (Intikhāb-i Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā) may be found in two copies in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Ms. Or. CXI (149), and Ms. Or. CX (124). For details see Piemontese, Catalogo dei manoscritti persiani, p. 354. Extensive excerpts and translations of the Misqal may be found in Lee, ‘Preface’, pp. xli–ci.

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Filippo Guadagnoli, as Apologia pro Christiana religione, and printed by the Propaganda Fide in 1631, and then translated into Arabic and printed in 1637 for wider circulation in the Islamic world.100 Later, in the 1650s, the Isfahan-based Jesuit Aimé Chézaud wrote a longer work in Persian that dilated on Guadagnoli’s work, and was entitled Māsih-i Misqal-i Safā-i Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā (Corrector to the MirrorPolisher of the Truth-Telling Mirror). Whether on account of its tone, or because (as a recent scholar has written) ‘the syntax of Father Chézaud is frequently faulty and he sometimes commits errors in his choice of vocabulary in writing Persian’, this text remained largely unknown in its time and only saw a brief revival of interest in the eighteenth century.101 The polemic around Xavier’s work, though, managed to attract its own hagiographical material. Thus, we are told in an early-eighteenth-century account of Guadagnoli’s work that ‘he produced it with such success, that his refutation entirely convinced the Persian [Sayyid Ahmad ‘Alawi] to whom he sent it, of the truth of the Christian Religion, and this man had himself baptised and became a zealous defender of the Faith which he had earlier combated with all his force.’102 The story would surely have pleased Jerónimo Xavier. The long history of Christianity in the Indian subcontinent is of course far too complex to be resumed here, and the episode of the 100See

Filippo Guadagnoli, Apologia pro christiana religione qua a R.P. Philippo Guadagnolo Malleanensi, clericorum Regul. Minorum s. theologiae & arabicae linguae professore, respondetur ad obiectiones Ahmed filii Zin Alabedin, Persae Asphahensis, contentas in libro inscripto (Rome: 1631). 101Francis Richard, ‘Le Père Aimé Chézaud, controversiste, et ses manuscrits persans’, Nāmeh-ye Bahārestān, vols 6–7, nos 11–12, 2005–6, pp. 7–19 (citation on p. 17); on Chézaud’s work more generally, see Francis Richard, ‘Catholicisme et Islam chiite au “grand siècle”: Autour de quelques documents concernant les Missions catholiques en Perse au XVIIème siècle’, Euntes docete, vol. 33, no. 3, 1980, pp. 339–403. 102Jean-Pierre Nicéron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des hommes illustres dans la République des Lettres, avec un catalogue raisonné de leurs ouvrages (Paris: 1729), vol. VII, p. 276. Whether we choose to believe this account or not, it is interesting to note that a response to Guadagnoli was composed around 1700 by ‘Ali Quli Jadid al-Islam, a former Augustinian monk (of Portuguese origin, earlier Frei António de Jesus) converted to Shi‘ism; see Francis Richard, ‘Un augustin portugais renégat, apologiste de l’Islam chiite au début du XVIIIe siècle’, Moyen Orient et Océan Indien, vol. 1, 1984, pp. 73–85.

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encounter between Catholics and Muslims in the Mughal court is only a small part of it.103 To be sure, in the Jesuit imagination, if only they had converted the Mughal emperor, it would have led to a mass conversion in India with dramatic consequences. One gathers, though, that this was never an imminent prospect. The Mughals of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were curious about Europe and attracted by a number of aspects of the material culture of the Europeans, be it their paintings, their clocks, or their firearms. But they dealt with them playfully, as powerful monarchs could in the face of what they imagined were quite minor interlocutors.104 It would be somewhat unkind of us, with the benefit of hindsight, to reproach them for this.

103There were obviously some continuities between the debates we have looked at and those of the nineteenth century, for which see Avril A. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (Richmond: 1993). 104We may compare this with the considerable violence of some contemporary Chinese and Japanese responses, such as Fukan’s Hai Daiusu (‘On the Destruction of the Deus’, 1620), or Yang Guangxian’s Budeyi (‘I must burst out at last’, ca. 1660). For details, see Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: 1985), pp. 6–14.

7

The Making of a Munshī Introduction

T

he difficult transition between the information and knowledge regimes of the precolonial and colonial political systems of South Asia was largely, though not exclusively, mediated by scribes, writers, statesmen, and accountants possessing a grasp of the chief language of power in that time, namely Persian. More than any vernacular language or Sanskrit, it was in Persian that the officials of the English East India Company conducted its early rule, administration, and even diplomacy in the years around the seizure of the revenues of Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century. So, naturally, they had to come to terms with the social group regarded as most proficient in this regard.1 To be sure, the Mughal aristocracy and its regional offshoots provided them with certain models of etiquette and statecraft, and various ‘Mirror of Princes’ texts attracted the attention of Company officials. But the pragmatic realities of political economy that had to be dealt with could not be comprehended within the adab of the aristocrat, and the representatives of Company Bahadur were, in any event, scarcely qualified themselves to claim such an unambiguous status. The real interlocutor for the Company official thus was the munshī, who was mediator and spokesman (wakīl), but also the key personage who could both read and draft materials in 1C.A.

Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: 1996), pp. 73–8; Michael Fisher, ‘The Office of Akhbar Nawis: The Transition from Mughal to British Forms’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 1993, pp. 45–82.

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Persian, and who had a grasp over the realities of politics that men such as Warren Hastings, Antoine Polier, and Claude Martin found altogether indispensable.2 Though the term munshī is recognizable even today, it has shifted semantically over the years. Aficionados of Hindi films since the 1960s will recognize the character of the munshī as the accountant and henchman of the cruel and grasping zamīndār, greasily rubbing his hands and usually unable to protest the immoral demands of his master.3 Specialists on colonial surveying operations in the Himalayas and Central Asia will recall that some of those sent out on such ventures were already called ‘pundits’ and ‘moonshees’ in the midnineteenth century.4 But the latter set of meanings is not our concern in this brief analysis. Rather, we shall look at how, in the high Mughal period, one became a munshī, what attributes were principally called for, and what the chief educational demands were. The sources with which we approach this problem fall broadly into two categories. Relatively rare are the first-person accounts or autobiographical narratives that will be our principal concern here. More common are normative texts, corresponding to the ‘Mirror of Princes’ type, but which we may term the ‘Mirror for Scribes.’ Thus, in the reign of Aurangzeb, just as Mirza Khan could pen the Tuhfat al-Hind (Gift of India), in which he set out the key elements in the education of a well-brought-up Mughal prince,5 others wrote works such as the Nigārnāma-’i Munshī (Munshi’s Letterbook), which were primarily concerned with how a munshī was to be properly trained, and which 2On one such munshī, Kishan Sahai from Bihar, who served Antoine Polier, see Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I‘jaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters, 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (Delhi: 2001), pp. 13–14. 3A similar figure is the mun‘īm, on whom see C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: 1983), pp. 377–8. 4Kapil Raj, ‘When Humans Become Instruments: The Indo-British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, Christian Licoppe, and Hans-Otto Sibum (London: 2002). 5 Mirza Khan ibn Fakhr al-Din Muhammad, Tuhfat al-Hind, ed. Nurul Hasan Ansari (Tehran: 1975).

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technical branches of knowledge he ought rightfully to claim a mastery of.6 Earlier still, from the reign of Jahangir (r. 1605–28), we have a classic text entitled Inshā’-i Harkaran, the author of which, Harkaran Das Kamboh of Multan, claimed to have served with his family as scribes in the high Mughal administration. The significance of this text was such that the East India Company produced an edition and translation of it in the late-eighteenth century to serve as a model text for its early administrators when they dealt with the knotty problems of inherited Mughal administrative practice and terminology.7 The munshī was thus the North Indian equivalent, in Mughal domains, of the South Indian karanam.8 Since such materials fell into a branch of knowledge that was regarded as secular, in the sense of being distinctly this-worldly and largely devoid of religious or theological connotations, we are not entirely surprised to find that many of their authors, including Harkaran himself, were Hindus, usually Khatris, Kayasthas, or Brahmans. It has long been recognized that, over the centuries of Muslim rule in northern India, the frontiers of Persian came to extend far beyond the narrow circle of the emperor, the princes, and high nobles.9 Akbar was the first of the Indo-Islamic kings of northern India formally to declare Persian the language of administration at all levels, which had not been the case under the Afghan sultans. The proclamation to this effect was apparently issued by his famous Khatri revenue minister, Todar Mal. It was accompanied by a reorganization of the revenue department as well as the other administrative departments by the equally famous Iranian noble Mir Fath-Allah Shirazi. An eighteenth6On this text, see S. Nurul Hasan, ‘Nigār Nāma-i-Munshī: A Valuable Collection

of Documents of Aurangzeb’s Reign’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 15th Session (Gwalior: 1952), pp. 258–63. 7Francis Balfour, ed. and trans., Inshā’-i Harkaran (Calcutta: 1781); also see Francis Gladwin, The Persian Moonshee (Calcutta: 1795), which includes a translation of the Qawā‘id-i Saltanat-i Shāh Jahān, by Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’. 8A subject treated in detail within Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India, 1600–1800 (Delhi and New York: 2003). 9The following paragraphs draw heavily on Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: 2003), pp. 159–71.

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century historian, Ghulam Husain Taba’taba’i, remembered and recorded this change thus: ‘Earlier in India the government accounts were written in Hindavi according to the Hindu rule. Raja Todar Mal acquired new regulations (zawābit) from the scribes (nawīsindagān) of Iran, and the government offices then were reorganized as they were there in wilāyat (Iran).’10 Persian was thereafter on the ascendant, and it was not simply the royal household and the court which came to bear the Iranian impress. As mutasaddīs and minor functionaries, Iranians could be seen everywhere in government offices, even though they were not in exclusive control of these positions. A substantial part of the administration was still carried out by members of the indigenous Hindu communities who had hitherto worked in Hindavi: importantly, these communities soon learned Persian and joined the Iranians as clerks, scribes, and secretaries (muharrirs and munshīs). Their achievements in the new language were soon recognized as extraordinary. To this development, Akbar’s reform in the prevailing madrasa education—again planned and executed by the Iranian Mir Fath-Allah Shirazi—contributed considerably. Hindus had already begun to learn Persian in Sikandar Lodi’s time, and ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni even mentions a Brahman who taught Arabic and Persian in this period.11 Akbar’s enlightened policy and the introduction of secular themes in the syllabi at middle levels had stimulated a wide interest in Persian studies. Hindus—Kayasthas and Khatris in particular—joined madrasas in large numbers to acquire excellence in Persian language and literature, which now promised a good career in the imperial service.12 From the middle of the seventeenth century, the departments of accountancy (siyāq), draftsmanship (inshā’), and the office of revenue minister (dīwān) were mostly filled by these Kayastha and 10Ghulam Husain Taba’taba’i, Siyār al-Muta’akhkhirīn, vol. 1 (Lucknow: 1876), p. 200. 11‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh, vols 1 and 3, ed. Maulavi Ahmad ‘Ali, and vol. 2, ed. Maulavi Ahmad ‘Ali and N. Lees (Calcutta: 1865–8), vol. 1, p. 323. 12Balkrishan, ‘Arzdāsht, British Library, London, Addn. Ms. 16859, cited in Momin Mohiuddin, The Chancellery and Persian Epistolography under the Mughals: From Babur to Shahjahan, 1526–1658 (Calcutta: 1971), p. 41; Syed Muhammad ‘Abdullah, Adabiyāt-i Fārsī mein Hindūwon kā Hissa (Lahore: 1967), pp. 240–3.

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Khatri munshīs and muharrirs, Harkaran Das being the first known of these.13 The celebrated Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ was another influential member of this fraternity, rated second only to the Mīr Munshī himself, Shaikh Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602). Chandrabhan was a man of versatile skills who also wrote poetry of high merit.14 They were followed by a large number of other Kayastha and Khatri munshīs, including the well-known Madho Ram, Sujan Rai, Malikzadah, Bhupat Rai, Khushhal Chand, Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, Bindraban ‘Khwushgu’, and a number of others who made substantive contributions to Indo–Persian language and literature.15 Selections and specimens of their writings formed part of the syllabi of Persian studies at madrasas. Certain areas hitherto unexplored or neglected found skilled investigators, chiefly among these Kayasthas and Khatris. They produced excellent works in the eighteenth century in the philological sciences: the Mirāt al-Istilāh of Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, the Bahār-i ‘Ajam of Tek Chand ‘Bahar’, and the Mustalahāt al-Shu‘arā’ of Siyalkoti Mal ‘Warasta’ are among the most exhaustive lexicons compiled in India. Persian grammars and commentaries on idioms, phrases, and poetical proverbs show their authors’ keen interest, extensive research, and unprecedented engagement in the development of Persian in India.16 Underpinning these developments was undoubtedly the figure of the ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ munshī, which many of these men aspired to be. Yet what did this mean in concrete terms? A passage from a celebrated letter written by Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ to his son Khwaja Tej Bhan is worth quoting in this context: Initially, it is necessary for one to acquire a training in the [Mughal] system of norms (akhlāq). It is appropriate to listen always to the advice of elders and act accordingly. By studying the Akhlāq-i Nāsirī, Akhlāq-i Jalālī, Gulistān, and Būstān, one should accumulate one’s own capital and gain the 13For

an analysis, see Mohiuddin, Chancellery, pp. 215–20. ‘Abdul Hamid Faruqui, Chandra Bhan Brahman: Life and Works with a Critical Edition of his Diwan (Ahmadabad: 1966); for his prose, see Mohiuddin, Chancellery, pp. 228–34. 15Cf. Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748 (Delhi: 1986), pp. 169–75, 237–40. 16‘Abdullah, Adabiyāt, pp. 121–68. 14Muhammad

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virtue of knowledge. When you practice what you have learned, your code of conduct too will become firm. The main thing is to be able to draft in a coherent manner, but at the same time good calligraphy possesses its own virtues and it earns you a place in the assembly of those of high stature. O dear son! Try to excel in these skills. And together with this, if you manage to learn accountancy (siyāq), and scribal skill (nawīsindagī), that would be even better. For scribes who know accountancy as well are rare. A man who knows how to write good prose as well as accountancy is a bright light even among lights. Besides, a munshī should be discreet and virtuous. I, who am among the munshīs of the court that is the symbol of the Caliphate, even though I am subject to the usual errors, am still as an unopened bud though possessing hundreds of tongues.

Chandrabhan then goes on to set out the details of a rather full cultural curriculum, showing that the letter was clearly destined for a larger readership than his son alone: Although the science of Persian is vast, and almost beyond human grasp, in order to open the gates of language one should read the Gulistān, Būstān, and the letters of Mulla Jami, to start with. When one has advanced somewhat, one should read key books on norms and ethics, as well as history books such as the Habīb al-Siyar, Rauzat al-Safā’, Rauzat al-Salātīn, Tārīkh-i Guzīda, Tārīkh-i Tabarī, Zafar-nāma, Akbar-nāma, and some books like these that are absolutely necessary. The benefits of these will be to render your language elegant, also to provide you knowledge of the world and its inhabitants. These will be of use when you are in the assemblies of the learned. Of the master-poets, here are some whose collections I read in my youth, and the names of which I am writing down. When you have some leisure, read them, and they will give you both pleasure and relief, increase your abilities, and improve your language. They are Hakim Sana’i, Mulla Rum, Shams-i Tabriz, Shaikh Farid al-Din ‘Attar, Shaikh Sa‘di, Khwaja Hafiz, Shaikh Kirmani, Mulla Jami, and Unsuri, Firdausi, Jamal al-Din ‘Abdul Razzaq, Kamal Isma‘il, Khaqani, Anwari, Amir Khusrau, Hasan Dehlawi, Zahir Faryabi, Kamal Khujandi, ‘Amiq Bukhari, Nizami Aruzi Samarqandi, ‘Abdul Wasi Jabali, Rukn Sa‘in, Muhyi al-Din, Mas‘ud Bek, Farid al-Din, ‘Usman Mukhtari, Nasir Bukhari, Ibn Yamin, Hakim Suzani, Farid Katib, Abu’l ‘Ala Ganjavi, Azraqi, Falaki, Sauda’i, Baba Fighani, Khwaja Kirmani,

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Asfi, Mulla Bana’i, Mulla ‘Imad Khwaja, ‘Ubaid Zakani, Bisati, Lutf-Allah Halawi, Rashid Watwat, Asir Akhshikati, and Asir Umami. May my good and virtuous son understand that, when I had finished reading these earlier works, I then desired to turn my attention to the later poets and writers and started collecting their poems and masnawīs. I acquired several copies of their works, and when I had finished them I gave some of them to some of my disciples. Some of these are as follows: Ahli, Hilali, Muhtasham, Wahshi, Qazi Nur, Nargis, Makhfi Ummidi, Mirza Qasim Gunai, Partawi, Jabrani, Hisabi, Sabri, Zamiri Rasikhi, Hasani, Halaki, Naziri, Nau’i, Nazim Yaghma, Mir Haidar, Mir Ma‘sum, Nazir, Mashhadi, Wali Dasht Bayazi, and many others who had their collections (dīwāns) and masnawīs, and whose names are too numerous to be listed in this succinct letter.17

The extensive list cited here is remarkable both for its diversity and programmatic coherence. The list begins with texts on statecraft and moralia, touches on the question of accountancy and epistolography, then moves quickly to a set of histories and chronicles, before ending with an extensive list of poets both old and new. The masters of the Iranian classics obviously found an appreciative audience even among the middle-order literati in big and small towns, as well as among village-based revenue officials and other hereditary functionaries and intermediaries. All Mughal government papers—from imperial orders (farmāns) to bonds and acceptance letters (muchālka, tamassuk qabūliyat)—that a village intermediary (chaudhurī) wrote were in Persian.18 Likewise, there was no bookseller in the bazaars and streets of Agra, Delhi, and Lahore who did not sell manuscript anthologies of Persian poetry. Madrasa pupils were in general familiar with the Persian classics, and Persian had practically become the first language of culture in North India.19 Those steeped in Persian appropriated 17Cited

in ‘Abdullah, Adabiyāt, pp. 241–3. Our translation. in Bengal, the administrative papers prepared and issued in the name of the local Hindu intermediaries were in Persian. Persian inshā’ even succeeded in influencing Bengali prose; cf. Promesh Acharya, ‘Pedagogy and Social Learning: Tol and Pathsala in Bengal’, Studies in History (n.s.), vol. 10, no. 2, 1994, pp. 255–72. 19Badayuni, Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh, vol. 2, p. 285 ; also see Nicole Grandin and Marc Gaborieau, eds, Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde musulman (Paris: 1997). 18Even

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and used Perso–Islamic expressions such as Bismillāh (in the name of Allah), lab-bagūr (at the door of the grave), and ba jahannam rasīd (damned in hell) just as often as their Iranian and non-Iranian Muslim counterparts did. They would also look for, and appreciate, Persian renderings of local texts and traditions. Indeed, many Hindu scriptures and other Indic texts were rendered into Persian, and these too joined the cultural accessories of the typical Kayastha or Khatri.20 While we cannot present a detailed analysis of each of these texts, some of these translations clearly enjoyed circulation outside the relatively rarefied milieu of the court.21 Yet the core of the technical ‘curriculum’ for a munshī lay elsewhere, notably in epistolography, accountancy, and methods of fiscal management. The Nigārnāma-’i Munshī, cited briefly above, shows this clearly enough. It was written by an anonymous author who used the pen-names ‘Munshi’ and ‘Malikzadah’, and who had been a member of the entourage of Lashkar Khan, mīr bakhshī in 1670–1. The author then seems to have entered the service of the prince Shah ‘Alam, and gone on to hold a series of other posts into the mid-1680s. Around the age of seventy, having accumulated considerable experience, he thought to pen this didactic text. The Nigārnāma itself is made up of two sections (daftars), which follow an Introduction largely devoted to the subject of inshā’ or draftsmanship and epistolography, and the work of prominent munshīs of the past. The first part is subdivided into four chapters, dealing with the drafting of different kinds of letters: those for princes of the royal blood, those written for nobles, those for dīwans, and orders and letters of appointment. The examples seem to be authored by the writer, ‘Munshi’ himself. The second daftar then surveys examples of the work of other prominent munshīs, including royal orders, orders written on behalf of Shah ‘Alam, other letters, and reports, and includes a particular section devoted to one prominent 20Compare

Gopal bin Govind’s preface to his Persian translation of the Ramāyana, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Blochet, I, 22. 21See M. Athar Ali, ‘Translation of Sanskrit Works at Akbar’s Court’, in Iqtidar Alam Khan, ed., Akbar and His Age (New Delhi: 1999), pp. 171–80. It would seem that in Mughal India, besides the ‘aqliya and naqliya traditions of Islamic sciences (‘ulūm), we should also note the rise of a third category around the texts of so-called hikmat-i ‘amalī, or ‘practical wisdom’, in which such materials were included in madrasa education.

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munshī, Uday Raj Rustamkhani. Clearly a pantheon of munshīs existed and the great exemplars of style were never arbitrarily chosen. Thus, this particular work includes—besides Uday Raj—letters and orders drafted by men like Shaikh ‘Abdus Samad Jaunpuri, Mir Muhammad Raza, and Sa‘adullah Khan. The last personage, a prominent dīwān of Shah Jahan’s reign, was obviously viewed as one of the heroes of the munshī tradition, for one version of the manuscript also reproduces his ‘Manual of the Diwan’ in its first daftar.22 In a complementary vein to the text cited above is the Khulāsat al-Siyāq, written by Indar Sen, probably a Kayastha, in ah 1115 (1703–4), late in Aurangzeb’s reign.23 This work is mostly concerned with fiscal management: its three central chapters concern key institutions that dealt with accounting, fiscality, and supplies, that is, the Diwan-i A‘la, the Khan-i Saman, and the Bakhshi, and the conclusion includes examples of arithmetic formulae of use to the munshī in his accounting (siyāq). The Introduction sets out the transition from Hindavi accountancy to Persian in the time of Akbar, and emphasizes the need for the munshī class to move with the times. Yet, even more than the Nigārnāma text, this presents a rather narrow conception of the role of the munshī. A rather more comprehensive view can be found in the autobiographical materials from the same broad period, insisting as they do on the formation of the moral universe of the munshī.

Nek Rai’s Premature Autobiography The fate of the munshī was to wander, since his type of employment required him to travel with a peripatetic patron of the elite class. 22Shaikh

Abdur Rashid, ‘Some Documents on Revenue Administration During Aurangzeb’s Reign’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 15th Session (Gwalior: 1952), pp. 263–8. 23Noman Ahmad Siddiqui, ‘Khulāsat-us-Siyāq’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 22nd Session (Gauhati: 1959), pp. 282–7. This is only one of several similar texts; for another example, see Munshi Nandram Kayasth Srivastav, Siyāqnāma (lithograph; Lucknow: 1879), and for a survey of such ‘administrative and accountancy manuals’, Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, 2nd edn (Delhi: 1999), pp. 470–1.

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It is thus no coincidence that the text that we shall discuss here, though largely autobiographical in nature, uses the word ‘travel’ (safar) in its title. The work comes from the pen of a seventeenthcentury member of a scribal group (probably a Kayastha, though we cannot entirely rule out the possibility he was a Khatri), Nek Rai by name, and seems to emerge from a context in which Persian scribal skills were being ever more widely disseminated and available in increasing numbers to Khatris, Kayasthas, and even some Brahmans. We have noted above that, as early as the reign of Akbar, Khatris such as Todar Mal had featured in a prominent place in the revenue administration, but the seventeenth century saw their numbers growing apace, before a veritable explosion in their ranks after 1700. Earlier historians have noted this fact while surveying the writings of Kayastha authors such as Bhimsen (author of the Tārīkh-i Dilkushā), who accompanied the Mughal armies into the Deccan in the latter decades of the seventeenth century.24 However, Nek Rai—whose text is a Bildungsroman of sorts with a thread of travel running through it—has thus far escaped the attention of historians of the Mughal period. Our discussion is based on a single manuscript of his work; the text is entitled Tazkirat al-Safar wa Tuhfat al-Zafar (Account of Travels and the Gift of Success), and it was copied by a certain Ram Singh, at the behest of Lala Hazari Mal, who may have been from the author’s own family, on 10 Zi-Qa‘da ah 1146 (April 1734) in Hyderabad.25 Our discussion will follow the thread of the narrative very closely, paraphrasing and commenting on it. First-person prose narratives, while less common perhaps in Mughal India than in the Ottoman domains, still had a respectable place in Mughal belles-lettres.26 The Mughal emperors themselves had shown the way, for Babur had authored one such text (in Chaghatay Turkish)—arguably the first autobiography in the Islamic world— 24Bhimsen,

Nuskha-i Dilkushā, ed. and trans. Jadunath Sarkar and V.G. Khobrekar (Bombay: 1971); cf. Satish Chandra, Letters of a Kingmaker of the Eighteenth Century (Delhi: 1972), for the letters of Mehta Balmukund. 25Salar Jang Museum and Library, Hyderabad, Accession no. 4519, Mss. no. 7. All references are to this manuscript. 26Cemal Kafadar, ‘Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in SeventeenthCentury Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature’, Studia Islamica, no. 69, 1989, pp. 121–50.

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while Jahangir too had distinguished himself as an author in this genre. In the course of the seventeenth century, some other examples may be found by authors such as ‘Abdul Latif Gujarati, though the real efflorescence comes only in the eighteenth century and the phase of ‘Mughal decline’. At the same time, the autobiographical account was also known in the North Indian vernacular tradition, as the celebrated Ardhakathānak of Banarasi Das demonstrates. In this panorama, the text by Nek Rai must count as an early example of an Indian first-person account in Persian, unusual for its time perhaps, but not quite unique. It shares a feature with Banarasi Das’s text, namely its concern with the author’s childhood and youth, rather than with his mature years. In fact, Nek Rai’s account is even more ‘half a tale’ than the Ardhakathānak (whose author stopped in about his fiftieth year), for it ends when its author has barely reached his early to mid-twenties. We should note at the outset that Nek Rai’s text is written in a deliberately difficult and flowery Persian, and begins with the praise of God and of the ‘pen’. The initial theme that is treated is not travel, as might be suggested by the title, but rather speech (sukhan). The first page and a half of the manuscript are devoted to an elucidation of the invocatory term Bismillāh al-rahmān al-rahīm, including the construction of its letters, the idea of justice that it embodies, and so on. Nek Rai’s model here seems to be the prose of Abu’l Fazl, and some verses follow with allusions to the ancients and other prestigious figures. We then move from speech (sukhan) to the pen (qalam) in the space of some lines, as well as to the subject of the craftsmanship of God. As with Abu’l Fazl, the use of Arabic phrases here is quite limited. Once the initial framing in terms of the wonders of God’s creation has been established, the proper text of his narrative begins. This prefatory hamd section is extremely artful and clever, and even manages to incorporate the name of the reigning monarch, ‘Alamgir. A sample of it runs as follows: The account of the disturbed conditions of this sinful faqīr, who with the help of fortune and the support of thoughtfulness has entered the alley of the pen, and the field of paper, to venture a description, is on account of the grace of God. May this account be able to apply the kohl of experience

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to the eye. It is like a light-giving lamp in the night of thought. Just as the movement of the pen brings light onto the blank page, may this account bring light to the night in the city of transitory being. This is a pious account [zikr-i khair]: Even if I am not pious, I am the dust of the feet of the pious. (Agarche Nek niyam Khāk-i pā-i Nekānam).

The play here is obviously on the author’s own name, Nek Rai. This is followed by another verse, perhaps more indicative of his own (non-Muslim) identity: No wonder I am not thirsty I am an earthen pot of basil.

Nek Rai then explains his title, Tazkirat al-Safar wa Tuhfat alZafar, which mentions both travel and Dar al-Zafar (or Bijapur). We then move at last to the beginning of his account proper, or the āghāz-i dāstān.27 In the thirteenth regnal year of Aurangzeb, on 14 Zi-Hijja 1080 (4 May 1670), a Thursday (here we find some astrological details), Nek Rai was born, so he tells us, in the city of Amanabad–Allahabad; this corresponds, he states, to the year 1726 Samvat of Raja Bikramajit, the calendar that is preferred by the Indian Brahmans (ba nazdīk-i barahmanān-i Hind). His birthplace, he takes care to note, is also called Prayag; the town has excellent buildings, and is on the banks of the river Ganges. A Brahman astrologer, Debi Dutt, was summoned at his birth by his father and grandfather, and on his advice the child was called Nek Rai—‘Pious’ or ‘Fortunate’—and the name had some effect, in the sense of allowing him access to science and culture (‘ilm wa adab) as well as honour, distinction, and a good rank (mansab) already in his youth. He reproduces the zā’icha or astrological chart made at his birth faithfully in the text; it is in the ‘Indian style’, 27Nek

Rai, Tazkirat al-Safar, fl. 3b.

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though it contains Persian names and terms. He then proceeds at some length to explain the chart and the extent to which it has in fact influenced his life, as well as things that might have happened but which in fact did not. We return then to a description of Allahabad itself (tausīf-i sawād-i balda-i Ilahābād). Nek Rai tells us that he will provide a view of the town that will show his command over the art of description. It is not just a town located on a river but one that brings salvation to all of Hindustan. Its lanes and bazaars are wonderful, and in their description, the metaphors all relate to water: the lanes are like rivers, the walls like waves, and so on. The town has a fort made of stone, both powerful and beautiful, and built by the monarch Jalal-ud-Din Akbar. It reaches up to the sky, but its reflections plumb the water. Its walls are as strong as the sadd-i Sikandarī, Alexander’s wall against Gog and Magog. Inside it is a building called the Chihil Sutun, with buildings of marble that seem to emerge from the water itself. There follows a long aside on storms on the Ganges, which happen every hundred years or so; they are apparently as powerful as the storm of the time of Noah, and bring destruction, uprooting trees, and flooding water everywhere. The town has many gardens such as the Jahanara Bagh. His own description of the town, writes the immodest Nek Rai, is as if he were weaving silk, even as his pen moves on silken paper. We become quickly aware in the course of these initial pages that the entire family of Nek Rai is made up of munshīs. When Ilahwardi Khan Ja‘far became governor of Allahabad, the author’s grandfather and father were employed by him, the former as dīwān and the latter as bakhshī.28 Unfortunately the khan died a month before Nek Rai’s birth, which caused numerous problems for the father and grandfather. This suggests the ultimate dependence of these ‘service gentry’ on an elite class of patrons, to the extent that they sometimes took the name of their patron as a sort of surname. Amanullah Khan, the son of the deceased, did provide employment to them for 28On this Mughal amīr, see M. Athar Ali, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices, and Titles to the Mughal Nobility (1574–1658) (Delhi: 1985), entry S. 7374, passim.

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a little over two years. Then Nek Rai’s grandfather died at the end of three years, ‘like a fruit-giving tree that had outlived its time.’ This grandfather is portrayed as a formidable and rather wealthy man. When Ilahwardi Khan had been governor of Shahjahanabad, the grandfather had built a fine house (‘imārat-i ‘ālī) in that city. Then, Ilahwardi was transferred to Akbarabad (Agra), and the grandfather followed him there and built another house (kākh-i aiwān), with fine decorations. The grandfather also had a house in Mathura, described as a hawelī-i dilkushā. Since the grandfather had a number of friends, he even built a house in the city of Benares, where people in India come on pilgrimage (matāf); he also had a garden in Gorakhpur. This leads Nek Rai to cite a verse from Sa‘di: ‘Whoever came [to the world], built a new house.’ He then left, and another took care of it. The grandfather’s death was a major blow to the family and an occasion of great mourning. Soon after, Husain ‘Ali Khan, brother of Ilahwardi Khan, was sent as governor to Allahabad and gave employment to Nek Rai’s father; this was in the eighteenth regnal year of Aurangzeb, when Nek Rai was five years old. This implies incidentally that his father, Lal Bihari, had no employment for some two or three years, but that attachments to a particular patron’s extended family remained strong. As for the young Nek Rai, he began his formal education at the beginning of his sixth year, in keeping with tradition (az rū-’i rasm wa ‘adat), with the first Persian letters on a tablet (lauh-i abjadkhwānī). Soon enough, Husain ‘Ali was called back to the Mughal capital, and Lal Bihari accompanied him to Delhi. Since he had some relatives in Agra, Nek Rai was sent off to stay with them for a time. His teacher there was Durwesh Muhammad Jaunpuri, and Nek Rai tells us that the light of understanding thus began to dawn within him under the tutelage of this first master. Two years were thus spent gaining an initial training in reading, writing, and the rudiments of Persian. At about seven years of age he began his study of Persian literature and had his first readings of Shaikh Sa‘di; he also moved to Delhi. It was at this stage that he was married off to the daughter of Daya Ram, son of Bhagwan Das Shuja‘i; a brief and rather conventional description of the marriage follows and we are told that we are now in the twentieth regnal year. At this time, Lal Bihari decided to change patrons and

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became attached to a certain Tahir Khan, who was given the faujdārī of sarkār Mu‘azzamabad or Gorakhpur (this was a powerful post, in view of the economic expansion in the area at this time). Lal Bihari was given the posts of peshdast and mushrif (or overseer) in charge of the lands and commons (kharāba). Nek Rai moved there as well shortly thereafter, with the rest of his family. He mentions Gorakhpur as an open and spacious place, and pleasant to live in. But soon after, Tahir Khan was transferred from the spot, and moved back to Delhi via Jaunpur and Allahabad, since the alternative route through Awadh and Lucknow was considered more difficult. On the way was the holy site of Kachauchha, where they went in pilgrimage to the tomb of the Chishti saint Shah Ashraf Jahangir. The central story about Kachauchha recounted in the text is as follows. When Shah Ashraf arrived there, only a few Muslims were in residence, and these lived in fear of a certain pandit-jogi. People complained to him, so he made inquiries about the jogi and discovered he was a great practitioner of magic (sihr wa fusūn) in the manner of the master of Harut and Marut (two fallen angels, who were great magicians). But the Shah with a mere glance began to burn the jogi, who was obliged to beg for mercy and admit defeat. There is no doubt that the shrine has great power, writes Nek Rai. It is a place where supposedly incurable diseases are cured. Shah Ashraf had told the merchants (baqqālān) of the town that the expenses of those who came to the shrine would be defrayed from his family’s resources. The merchants would therefore advance grain to visitors, knowing their money was secure. Nek Rai’s paternal uncle, Pratap Mal, had an alcohol problem and had grown dry as a stick. No doctor could cure him; finally, he was brought to Kachauchha. After three months of ceremonies (involving offerings of milk, etc.), he recovered his health. Near the shrine lay a garden inhabited by djinns and spirits (āsebzada) whose conversations could be heard by mortals. They would climb up trees and generally create a ruckus. But those who were possessed by such spirits, especially women, could be cured by a visit to the garden. A further wonder of the place was that even were women hung upside down, their clothes remained more or less in place, preventing indecent exposure. This, Nek Rai assures us, is no fantasy; he also makes it clear that he has

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a personal devotion to certain Sufi shrines, especially those of the Chishti order. The family’s return to Delhi occurs in the text after this digression in Kachauchha, and the absence from the Mughal capital seems to have lasted no more than seven months. Delhi now merits brief mention—as a wonderful place with excellent buildings and beautiful women. Nek Rai seems in a new phase of awareness: he speaks now of the sensual pleasures of the town. Shahjahanabad, he writes, is where hundreds of handsome Yusufs pursue their Zulaikhas and where the air is like the breath of Jesus, bringing the dead back to life. In another set of passages with allusions and comparisons Nek Rai shows his mastery of, among other things, Old Testament metaphors. Thus, the dabīrs of the town wield their pens like the staff of Moses and the trees on the bank of the river are like pearls in the beard of the Pharaoh. He mentions a canal, made in the time of Shah Jahan by the great Iranian noble ‘Ali Mardan Khan, whose waters are so sweet (shīrīn) as to be the envy of Farhad himself.29 A great fort had been made there by the second Sahib-Qiran (that is, Shah Jahan), and was hence called Shahjahanabad. Other old forts here, such as Tughlaqabad, touch the very sky. If Amir Khusrau, emperor of the land of speech, were alive today, writes Nek Rai, his verbal skills would have touched the skies (the idea here being that things in Nek Rai’s time are much better than those in Khusrau’s). Delhi is thus called ‘Little Mecca’ (Khwurd Makka) by people of the day. Every year, pilgrims go to the shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Qutb-ud-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki (another Chishti saint) to prostrate themselves and attain their desires. Verses follow in praise of Qutb-ud-Din, taken from Amir Khusrau and other authors. Nek Rai also recounts an incident involving the great Chishti Sufi Nizam-ud-Din Awliya and a verse of his disciple Amir Khusrau, the recitation of which had occasioned the death of Mulla Ahmad Mimar. Despite these digressions, the central thread continues to be the author’s education. Nek Rai begins now to reside in the town and study with Shaikh Khairullah, nephew of Durwesh Muhammad, his earlier teacher. He studies the Gulistān and Būstān of Sa‘di, the 29Nek

Rai, Tazkirat al-Safar, fl. 13b.

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Tūtīnāma, and the Sikandar Nāma of Nizami, but soon the shaikh has to leave town as he is given a post in the Lucknow area, in hawelī Selak. So Nek Rai begins to study instead with Sayyid ‘Abdul Qadir Lahauri, to whom he is introduced by his father. He praises this new teacher, in his view one of the best-educated men of his time. Over this period Mas‘um Khan, son of Shahnawaz Khan, was made faujdār of Gorakhpur, and Nek Rai’s father (who already knew him) went with him as dīwān and bakhshī, advancing in his career ‘as Yusuf had in his time’. Instead of going back to Gorakhpur, Nek Rai and his family were left behind, this time in Mathura, yet another praiseworthy town that steals the hearts of people—as noted by the poet Mulla ‘Ali. The metaphor Nek Rai uses is to compare the town and its people to a text written in nasta‘līq or in naskh. He even praises the style of speech here (probably Brajbhasha) as being more beautiful than elsewhere. The river plays a prominent role in this town, with extensive steps (ghats) of stone. Sacred-thread-wearing Brahmans (zunnārdārān-i Hind) come from afar to reside here, some two thousand in number. The sweetmeats of this town are so reputed that people carry them away as gifts; made of milk and sugar, they yet stay fresh for many days. The town is apparently particularly resplendent over the rainy season. Nek Rai then outlines the less savoury aspects of Mathura. It was said that Bir Singh Dev Bundela had in the time of Akbar killed ‘Allami Shaikh Abu’l Fazl near Gwalior at the behest of Prince Salim, and that in appreciation for this Salim (when he came to the throne) bestowed the enitre property of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl to the raja. The raja requested the sultan’s permission to use this large sum of money to make an impressive place of worship (ma‘bad), reaching the sky, in Mathura. This, he declared, would be in keeping with his pursuit of the spiritual. Thousands of people went on pilgrimage there, festivals and fairs were held. This went on until the time when that Aurangzeb, ‘in consideration of matters external to spirituality’, decided to tear it down. The act was carried out by Husain ‘Ali Khan, the faujdār of Mathura, who ‘made a mosque from the temple’ (az ma‘bad masjid tartīb yāft). Nek Rai disapproves of this and cites a verse, attributed by him to the seventeenth-century poet Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ which mentions him by name:

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Bibīn karāmat-i butkhāna-’i marā ay Shaikh Ki chūn kharāb shawad khāna-’i Khudā gardad. (Look at the miracle of my idol-house, O Shaikh. That when it was ruined, it became the House of God.)

So, although devoted to Chishti saints and a member of a family with an extensive tradition of service to the Mughals, Nek Rai sees the times in which he lives with a certain irony. This digression on the temple-turned-mosque leads him to a rather extended discussion of wahdat al-wujūd and wahdat-i adyān, the Unity of Being and the Unity of All Religion, which must be read as an implicit criticism of these acts during the time of Mughal rule. Remove the dust of bigotry from the cheek of the Beloved, he remonstrates; don’t trust what you see, which is mere appearance (zāhir-bīnī). What is the difference after all between stone and glass, though one may break the other? The religion of ‘Isa and the religion of Musa seem to be different, but when you really look, they are the same. The appearance of each letter may be different, but when you combine them in a word they acquire a different sense. The wave, the drop, and the bubble seem different, of course, but are they really so?30 He also suggests the possibility of reconciliation between apparent opposites via a verse from Rumi: those who are prisoners of colour will make even Moses fight with himself, while those who have gone beyond colour (birangī) can reconcile even Moses and the Pharaoh. This further digression being completed, Nek Rai returns to the matter of his own education. In Mathura he completes his study of the Tūtīnāma and the Sikandar Nāma; next he begins to read Abu’l Fazl’s letters, the writings of Jami, and the Mu‘ammiyāt-i Husainī. However, he has been in Mathura barely a year when his father recalls him and the rest of the family to Gorakhpur. This leads him to describe Qasba Gorakhpur; this place and Mathura do not qualify in his view for the more dignified term balda. From a distance it appears large, but when one approaches one realizes that the population, like the inflated hearts of lovers, is small and widely dispersed. Here is to 30Ibid.,

fl. 18b.

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be found a shrine of Sayyid Ghalib Shahid, so miraculous that lions frequent it without harming humans—as in the proverb wherein the lion lies with the lamb. The Ruhin river runs through the town and brings to his mind a residence made there by his grandfather, less than half a kos from the river, and even closer in the rainy season. He waxes nostalgic about boat rides on the river and other leisurely activities of the rainy season. Bananas, pineapples, and other fruit of the town are recalled with special fondness and seem linked to the family garden: its plants, special vegetables, and fruit are listed in detail. In the bazaar, one finds excellent fish, and rice is available for as little as two man-i shāhjahānī (each 33.5 kg) for a rupee. The lemons here are juicy, the mangoes extraordinarily sweet. Nek Rai has now reached the age of 10 and reads the Qirān alSa‘dain of Amir Khusrau as well as texts of greater complexity. These next couple of years were truly happy, but like all good things they ended. People grew jealous of his father and complained about him to the faujdār, so that the family was obliged to return to Delhi, this time via Awadh, crossing the Ghaggar and Saryu, a difficult journey. A description follows of the banks of the Saryu, with its beautiful trees and scenic qualities. A boat ride is taken on a bow-like bend in the river, and its undulating waves provoke poetry. Nek Rai loves to compare everything to Persian letters: something is like a be, something else is like a qāf, and so on. They thus arrive in the town of Awadh, which he carefully describes, linking it once more to obvious religious themes. For this is the place where Rama and Lakshmana were born, and ‘we people’ (mā mardum) are attached to the faith of these gods. He feels obliged to give a rapid version of the story of Ramachandra, noting that at the age of 10 this prince had learnt the sacred sciences from Bishwamitra and begun to bring out a hundred meanings from his pen. He then went to the court of Raja Janaka and won the hand of Sita at her svayamyar by bending a bow. Throughout this passage, his characteristic obsession with the letters of the Persian alphabet pursues Nek Rai. The marriage of Rama and Sita takes place and they return to Awadh, meeting Parashurama on the way. But once in Awadh, problems begin with his stepmother. Rama is obliged to leave town for his forest exile (bīshagirdī) with Lakshmana and

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Sita, they head for the Deccan. Nek Rai recounts the incident of the golden deer, leading to the futile chase by first Rama and then Lakshmana, and Sita’s kidnapping by Ravana to Lanka. Hanuman enters, leaping the seas (daryā-’i shor) in search of Sita. He sets fire to Lanka and returns. With his army of monkeys, Rama then builds a bridge over the sea and reaches the island of Lanka. The battle begins and Ravana’s son Indrajit wounds Lakshmana. Hanuman then flies off to find the sanjivani herb, carrying back the whole mountain instead and traversing a thousand leagues in the wink of an eye. Eventually, Rama kills Ravana with an arrow and sends him to hell (wasīl-i jahannam); Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita return to Awadh. Rama begins to rule, for his father has died in the meanwhile. When his end approaches, it is written in history books (ke chunānche dar tawārīkh-i Hind), he gathers certain companions and departs in the direction of the Sarais of Eternity. Even now, says Nek Rai, coming to Awadh one feels an unseen presence—his own party felt it. Four days later, the party covered the forty leagues to the town of Lucknow. The stone fort and bazaars of this town strike our author favourably, to say nothing of the excellent bridge with high arches on the Gomti river which passes below the town flowing towards Jaunpur. The town itself is populous and the matchlockmen (bandūqchīs) of the area are well known throughout India. But this competence also causes problems for the faujdārs of the area: there is much potential rebelliousness here. From Lucknow the party moves on to Qannauj; Nek Rai has some snide remarks on the miserly nature of the people here. Near it lies Makanpur, where one finds the shrine of the mystic Badi‘-ud-Din Madar, known as Shah Madar, of the silsila of ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani. This is a relatively brief mention with some praise, but no stories of his prowess are added. In fact, it is not even clear that Nek Rai actually visits Makanpur, since it seems a bit out of the way. The party is then quickly on its way to Agra. The experiment with new patrons has clearly failed, ending in jealousy and unhappiness. Nek Rai’s father now goes to Gwalior, to enter once more into the service of an old employer, Amanullah Khan, son of Ilahwardi Khan. The khan sends him as amīn of his own jāgīr at Jalesar. Jalesar is described as a place with a mud fort

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which is, however, as strong as those of stone. Here too is a dargāh of one Sayyid Ibrahim, a place frequented by pilgrims, especially on Thursday evenings.31 The town is noted for its enamel workers (mīnāgarān), known for embedding pieces into pots and dishes, including calligraphy with enamel. Here are several furnaces in which special stones of the region are treated. There seems to be some link between the enamel workers and the dargāh of Ibrahim, who may have been some sort of founder-pīr of the settlement. The enamel work is described as being done in the manner of wax melted by the Biblical David. Nek Rai describes his visit to one of the workshops (kārkhāna) to inspect the works there. He remains in Jalesar for about a year in all, continuing his education with the letters of Abu’l Fazl as well as the other texts that he has mentioned. His knowledge of Abu’l Fazl deepens, and he cites some crucial passages and aphorisms from his letters (az qalam-i ‘Allāmī Shaikh Abu’l Fazl īn nikāt-i chand), including reflections on the question of religion (mazhab). There is clearly a continuity between this and the earlier passage on wahdat al-wujūd. The continuing influence of Abu’l Fazl on the munshī class is evident here, not only in terms of his political philosophy but also his understanding of the working of a bureaucracy, the seven key principles for the functioning of a state, and so on. In similar vein Nek Rai quotes from the Mu‘ammiyāt-i Husainī, and from Jami, but these are less significant in the text than his quotations from Abu’l Fazl. Among the other new texts he studies at this time are the Dīwan-i ‘Urfī Shirāzī, Kulliyāt-i Hakīm Auhad-ud-Dīn Anwarī, Tuhfat al‘Irāqain, Dīwan-i Afzal-ud-Dīn Khāqānī, all briefly mentioned and commented upon. Khaqani struck him, for example, for his profound use of words. He cites verses from some of these books. This is also the time when he begins to read contemporary Mughal poets (tāza gūyān), which—as their name (‘fresh-speakers’) suggests—gave him a sense of freshness. Amongst these are Sa’ib Tabrizi and Mirza Jalal ‘Asir’: the latter is praised highly; verses from both poets are cited. He also quotes some of his own verses, which follow the style of Tabrizi. He reads the poems of Ghani Kashmiri, whose use of double31Ibid.,

fl. 27a.

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entendre (san‘at-i īhām) is noted, and those of Wahid Tahir. The list continues with Haji Muhammad Jan Qudsi, the malik al-shu‘arā’ of the time of Shah Jahan, and Abu’l Barakat Munir, Talib Amuli, Kalim, and Muhammad Quli Salim. In each case, Nek Rai provides examples and his appreciation of particular skills. He also reads the Majālis al-‘Ushshāq of Sultan Husain Baiqara, the section on poets in Khwandmir’s Habīb al-Siyār, and Maulana ‘Arif al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi’s Zafar Nāma. The list is extensive and would seem to make up the complete education of the munshī. This is also the occasion for him to point out the crucial differences between Iranian and Indian poets. These include Munir Lahauri’s critique of the style of the tāza gūyān (the ‘innovative’ Mughal–Safavid poets), as well as the comments of Mulla Shaida, with a brief mention of who these authors were. Nek Rai also mentions several less-noted Indian poets, such as Mulla Anwar Lahauri, Mulla ‘Ata’i Jaunpuri, and Mulla Tufaili Fathpuri, and offers praise of them, thus locating his own position in the debate squarely on the side of the tāza gūyān. These are presented in the context of various debates (munāzarāt), including one between Mulla Firuz and Talib. At issue is the capacity to utter verses as well as understand them (shi‘r gū’ī versus shi‘r fahmī). Here, Nek Rai seems to anticipate in some respects the position taken by the grammarian and critic Khan-i Arzu in the eighteenth century. All this literary training occupied Nek Rai up to the age of 14, the remaining time having been spent in Jalesar and then perhaps Agra. He now returns briefly to his family’s residence in Mathura.32 Although it is finally time to move towards the Deccan, in which direction the emperor himself has already set out, he spends a further six months in Mathura. His first son is born there, with the chronogram for his birth date given as mewa-’i bāgh-i dil (the fruit of the heart’s garden). Extensive celebrations are held on the occasion, with music and other signs of joy. But this happiness is about to be diminished, for Nek Rai’s father dies in ah 1097. His passing is recorded with a large number of verses of mourning. The chronogram of his father’s death is given as ‘Lal Bihari left the world like a sigh.’ This was the end of his carefree youth, writes Nek Rai, and the beginning of serious 32Ibid.,

fl. 34b.

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responsibilities. Thus, a new phase is marked by his father’s death, coinciding with his own passage to fatherhood. The time of my early youth had passed And the time of frolicking too had gone.

The moment has come for him to find employment, and some six months later—after long reflections on this subject—he takes action. The routes from Delhi to Agra were at the time disturbed by bandits and trouble-makers. So, a powerful noble of Iranian origin (and uncle to Aurangzeb), Shayista Khan, was brought in from Bengal as governor in place of Khan Jahan Bahadur. In search of greater security, Nek Rai decided to leave Mathura for Agra with his mother and other relatives. A brief description of Agra follows, including its impressive buildings, gardens (a number of which are mentioned by name), and sarā’īs, the marble tomb of Mumtaz Mahal (the Taj Mahal) and the fact that the town was founded shortly after ah 900. The sites of Sikandra and Akbar’s tomb there are also mentioned in passing. By now we are in the latter half of the 1680s. It is known, Nek Rai says, that the Deccani cities of Dar al-Zafar Bijapur and Dar alJihad Hyderabad were conquered in the thirty-second regnal year, creating a number of new opportunities. Nek Rai’s older brother, Sobha Chand, who was both competent and courageous, had already obtained a job in Bijapur as intendant of the topkhāna (artillery) and the dāgh wa tashīha (branding of horses and recruitment of men). Sobha Chand was the head of the family and at the time about forty years old. It was thus time for Nek Rai to seek his fortune there too, and on 18 Shawwal of the thirty-third regnal year he and his family reached Bijapur, accompanying his brother’s party. A brief account follows of the journey between Agra and Bijapur, in the course of which Nek Rai himself fell rather ill. The travel is compared to the Sufi’s penance (chilla) as the journey was not easy, passing through jungles and mountainous territories, with rains impeding their progress. The itinerary is then detailed.33 After Agra, the next large 33Ibid.,

fl. 44b.

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town is Gwalior, at a distance of three manzil. There were beautiful women to be seen all along the way, as Nek Rai’s roving eye notes. On reaching Gwalior, he refers to the excellent and high fort there, considered to be one of the largest in Hindustan. Those imprisoned by the emperor’s direct order are kept there. Inside the fort is a large pond. The speech (here perhaps a form of Braj or Madhyadeshi, identified by Khan-i Arzu in the eighteenth century as ‘Gwaliyari’) in the place is very sweet, and there are also lots of chamelī flowers to be seen. The betel-leaf (pān) in the area is of high quality. From Gwalior the party makes its way to Narwar, where too the pān leaves catch his attention, as do the birds. A large step-well (bāolī) is to be seen outside the town of Narwar, where people gather in the evening. Women who come to get water from the bāolī bearing a rope are described as marvellous, capable of giving even those magical creatures Harut and Marut lessons in sorcery. The people in general are of an excellent temperament and wear colourful clothes; to wear white here is taken as a sign of mourning. If one were to spend time looking at the women all day long, one would lose one’s heart several times. Yet one is not even allowed to touch them with one’s hand. Here too a river flows below the fort. Nek Rai believes that this is the fort of Raja Nal, of whom that great poet malik al-shu‘arā’ Abu’l Faiz ‘Faizi’ had written in his masnawī on Nal–Daman. From Narwar they move on to Sironj, a place with excellent air and a good bazaar with quality grapes. Here too the language is sweet to the ear, the people wear attractive clothes and are pleasing to the eye. A small river is crossed, and then they move on to Sarangpur. All these places seem to please our traveller, who praises them in poetic terms quite unstintingly, noting that this part of the journey is full of pleasure (‘aish). Presently they reach Shahjahanpur, a qasba with royal buildings where they prepare to cross a major hurdle in the form of a river. Having reached the other side, they find both sides of it prosperous and populous. The bridge on the river too is excellent in terms of its arches. They find that they are now in Dar al-Fath Ujjain, a town remarkable for its prosperous character, a paradisial city which is among the most ancient in Hindustan. It was here according to the Hindus (ba i‘tiqād-i mardum-i Hunūd) that the famous and generous Raja Bikramajit (Vikramaditya) had his

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throne (takhtgāh), and it is also a sacred city. Stories of this monarch circulate extensively in Hindustan, writes Nek Rai. The artisans of the area are remarkable for their skills, in particularly with jewellery. From this place on, Sobha Chand is given an imperial escort. Among the excellent places in the vicinity of the town is a waterfall (called ābshār-i Kaliyada). This inspires a verse to the effect that in all of Hindustan Nek Rai has seen no place more beautiful than Kaliyada. Four manzils later they come to the banks of the river Narbada, which is considered to be the frontier of Hindustan and the Deccan (sarhad-i Hindūstān ast wa Dakan). The waters flow so rapidly that it seems dangerous to boats. Crossing the river they reach a place called Baqirpur, saying farewell at last to Hindustan proper. The travel from now on is far more unpleasant, largely by camel-back, including the crossing of a pass which leads them to Jahangirpur. Their passage is very picturesque, however, and they next traverse an extensive plain to reach Burhanpur. They also pass by the great fort of Asir, a league to the north of Burhanpur; this is located on a high hill and reminds the author of Daulatabad. Here too are imperial prisoners. Burhanpur for its part is described as a town with good waters, excellent and handsome people, and a popular bazaar. Through the Fardapur pass they go on to Aurangabad. This is a rougher and more mountainous route, with dry and rocky ground, and many mules are to be seen in these areas carrying goods from one spot to the other. Eventually, with some difficulty, they reach Aurangabad, some distance from the fort of Daulatabad, a formidable and high spot. Certain people in the service of the Mughals arrive from Bijapur to meet the party there. Two weeks later, they set out with these others and consider going via Parinda fort, and from thence to Sholapur in the region of Bijapur. This was a pleasant spot, reminiscent in many respects of Hindustan, for which Nek Rai has already begun to feel homesick. Crossing the Bhima river they eventually reach the city of Bijapur. A few verses celebrate their arrival; here with the help of his older brother (and the grace of the emperor) Nek Rai is given a job. Engaged in this work Nek Rai spends four years, to the time of the completion of his account, when he is still in his early twenties. By way of conclusion, he writes:

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In sum, having completed the journey, the town of Dar al-Zafar was reached. With the aid and intercession of my older brother, who was full of high virtues and ethics, and who held me in affection and benevolence, I was given the honor of the service of the assessment of the expenses of the parganas of sarkār Haweli Dar al-Zafar and Nusratabad. Until, on account of the convergence of good fortune and the gift of God (‘atā-’i wāhib al‘atiyāt), in the beginning of fortunate Zi-Qa‘da of the thirty-eighth regnal year, my brother was honoured by being appointed the peshdast of the Mir Atish, and this smallest of slaves [of God] in his place was appointed to the intendancy of the topkhāna and the dāgh wa tashīha of Bijapur. And a very appropriate mansab, in keeping with my present stature, was granted.

Nek Rai thanks God for this bounty and ends the text with the appropriate verses. The copyist’s colophon follows, suggesting that the text and its author’s family continued to have a connection with the Deccan.34

Conclusion As we suggested at the outset, the text of the Tazkirat al-Safar falls into a larger category of materials, wherein notables and literati from Mughal India wrote first-person accounts in which travel played a more or less important role. We have already mentioned the case of ‘Abdul Latif Gujarati from the early-seventeenth century, and we could add other near-contemporary texts such as those of Mirza Nathan and Shihab-ud-Din Talish to our list, though these last authors also insert wider historical materials into their accounts. Later in the eighteenth century, writers such as Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’ then raised this form to an ever higher level of subtlety, since it permitted them to be ironic about their own communities, the political system, and even the monarchy. In each of these writings, elements of the ethnographic are quite strongly present, as are ekphrastic aspects— including, in the case of Nek Rai, the description of towns, sites, 34On Kayasthas and Khatris in the eighteenth-century Deccan, see Karen Isaksen

Leonard, Social History of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: 1978), pp. 23–35.

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buildings, and the like. Such descriptions are perhaps characteristic of individuals who inhabited the fringes of the Mughal state, since they borrow from the vocabulary of the state (with its own drive to produce gazetteer-like dastūr ul-‘amal texts in the seventeenth century). It would probably not be too abusive to see in these materials the formation of a North Indian class that was similar to the Chinese literati class, even though the existence of the examination system and its curriculum in imperial China somewhat skewed the nature of that knowledge formation.35 We are unable at present to follow the later career of Nek Rai, or to determine the extent of success he eventually enjoyed as a munshī in the later decades of Aurangzeb’s reign. In any event, his trajectory as an individual interests us less than his exemplary character, as a member of the Persianized Hindu scribal groups that came increasingly to serve the Mughals in the seventeenth century. We have seen how comfortably he straddles a diversity of cultural and literary heritages, and this is a comfort that we shall find in later characters of the eighteenth century such as Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’.36 Nek Rai is of course aware that he is not a Muslim, and that the story of Rama is a part of his own heritage, but he is equally comfortable with Chishti saints and their shrines. The term ‘composite culture’ has been much used and abused in recent years, but arguably one can find it in the life and education of such a munshī. Four key features of his education as suggested in Nek Rai’s text immediately spring to mind. The first is an absence, for it is noticeable that he does not speak of the technical aspects that other texts (like the Nigārnāma-’i Munshī) insist upon. In view of the post that he eventually came to hold in the Deccan, Nek Rai must have learned siyāq, and had a course in fiscal literacy (as it were); the affairs of the dīwān must have been no mystery to him. Yet nowhere in his account of his education does he even speak of it, as if such 35There

is a vast literature on this subject, but see the useful overview in Benjamin A. Elman and Alexander Woodside, eds, Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600–1900 (Berkeley: 1994). 36Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Acculturation or Tolerance? Inter-Faith Relations in Mughal North India, c. 1750’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, no. 33, 2007, pp. 427–66.

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banal details were beneath mention. A second aspect is the close relationship between the curriculum of texts that he sets out, and that defined for his own son by Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’, which makes it clear that the latter’s view was no idealized normative template but a rather practical piece of advice. No doubt different teachers took different routes to these texts, and each student too must have developed his own tastes and preferences. Nek Rai’s own fondness for writers such as Wahid Tahir, Ghani Kashmiri, Sa’ib Tabrizi, and Mirza Jalal Asir has already been noted. A third aspect, in our judgement a crucial one, is the fulcral role of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl in the world of the seventeenth-century munshī. Nek Rai admires and imitates the style and also the attitudes of the great Mīr Munshī, and he was surely not alone in this matter. For Abu’l Fazl had come by this time to stand for a point of view in which ecumenical learning and religious pluralism were given a high standing, besides the fact that he (together with his brother, the poet Faizi) also embodied a self-confident Indian claim to the use of the Persian language. A specifically Mughal political and literary tradition thus had come to exist by the mid-seventeenth century, one that differed from its Central Asian and Iranian counterparts, and we must trace this back in part to the late-sixteenth century and its usages, when Abu’l Fazl was the great ideologue of the remembered Akbari dispensation. A fourth aspect is the broader cultural framework within which Nek Rai places the issue of his Bildung. If he eschews narrowly technical questions regarding his training and education, it is also clear time and again that the Persian language itself plays a key role in his view of the world. It is through this language, its metaphors and possibilities, that he accedes to and imagines the world around him. The philosophical universe within which he conceives of all matters—including issues of social and religious conflict—is impregnated with Persian, and with all the richness of the ‘secular’ tradition that Indo–Persian represented by the seventeenth century. It is in this sense that we must understand what it meant to become, and to be, a munshī in the later Mughal world.

8

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s elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent, the early eighteenth century in the northern Tamil country saw the rise to prominence of a new type of state, the autonomous nizāmat, or what the British were apt to call the ‘nawabi’ state, operating under the carapace of Mughal sovereignty. For some other parts of India, notably Bengal under Murshid Quli Khan (1700–27), Shuja‘-ud-Din (1727–39), and their successors, the story has been told often enough for us to be familiar both with its broad outlines and its myriad unresolved contradictions.1 The northern Tamil country, or Karnatak Payanghat in the Mughal terminology of the epoch, is another story. For here, the attention of historians has traditionally perked up only with the Anglo-French wars of the 1740s, a period on which H.H. Dodwell laid his imprimatur, for better or for worse, for the generations to follow.2 Commenting on this Ashin Das Gupta remarked that it seemed impossible to compare the pattern of development on the Coromandel coast in the eighteenth century with that in Gujarat and Bengal ‘because of the paucity of our knowledge about it.’3 Where he 1See, for example, the account in John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal (Cambridge: 1993). 2Cf. H.H. Dodwell, Dupleix and Clive: The Beginnings of Empire (London: 1926). 3Ashin Das Gupta, ‘Trade and Politics in Eighteenth-Century India’, in D.S. Richards, ed., Islam and the Trade of Asia (Philadelphia: 1970), p. 202. This is a classic and oft-cited essay.

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did consider himself on safe-enough ground was for the period after 1730, and more particularly the 1740s and 1750s, the years when he could make use of Ananda Ranga Pillai’s celebrated and voluminous diary (or at least its incomplete translation into English).4 Writing seventeen years later, Das Gupta was able to advance somewhat further—mainly on the basis of a monograph published by Sinnappah Arasaratnam.5 He pointed now to the continuity of the trade of Tamil Maraikkayar merchants (calling them ‘Chulias’, in deference to Arasaratnam) in ports such as Kadalur (Cuddalore), Naguru (Nagore), and Mahmud Bandar (Porto Novo).6 Elsewhere, in the central part of the Coromandel coast, he underlined the relative success of Mylapore or São Tomé (known by then in English records as San Thome). ‘This port’, wrote Das Gupta, ‘formerly a Portuguese enclave under its Mughal administrators successfully challenged the English establishment and drew to itself much of the trade still going towards the west mainly in the vessels of the Pathan merchants and even the trade of English private merchants coming from the east.’ Yet, once more, searching for details of the sort Das Gupta is able to provide for Bengal and Gujarat, one is left frustrated. The problem is partly one of identifying the participants in commercial 4J. Frederick Price and K. Rangachari, ed., The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Dubash to Joseph-François Dupleix, Governor of Pondicherry, 12 vols (Madras: 1904–28); for the Tamil text, see Pirattiyekamana Ānanta Rankappillaiyavarkalin costa likita tinappati ceti kurippu, 12 vols (Putuvai, 1998–2005). 5This was in his chapter titled ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the 18th Century’, in a well-known volume on Indian Ocean history that Das Gupta jointly edited with M.N. Pearson, namely India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (Calcutta: 1987). The monograph by S. Arasaratnam is Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740 (Delhi: 1986). For the debate around this work, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Asian Trade and European Affluence? Coromandel, 1650 to 1740’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1988, pp. 179–88, and the reply by S. Arasaratnam, ‘Coromandel Revisited: Problems and Issues on Indian Maritime History’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 1989. The narrative was then continued, within roughly the same paradigm, in S. Arasaratnam, Maritime Commerce and English Power: Southeast India, 1750–1800 (New Delhi: 1996). 6This idea was further explored in Bhaswati Bhattacharya, ‘The Dutch East India Company and the Trade of the Chulias in the Bay of Bengal in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in K.S. Mathew, ed., Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History (New Delhi: 1995), pp. 347–61.

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networks and placing them in some form of recognizable sociological framework; but it also lies in supplying the missing ties between ‘trade’ and ‘politics’. What, after all, was the political context of these shifting mercantile fortunes, beyond the familiar clichés of greedy revenue-farmers, and unstable local despots? As Das Gupta remarks: ‘The hinterland is just as important if we wish to understand the history of the Coromandel coast.’7 This chapter attempts to sketch the main lines of development in the hinterland, or the Arcot nizāmat under, first, Da’ud Khan Panni, and then the founder of the Nawayat ‘dynasty’, Muhammad Sa‘id, or Sa‘adatullah Khan. It does so using some materials of a sort familiar to readers of Das Gupta’s work, namely the very extensive account of the Venetian adventurer Nicolò Manuzzi (1638–c.1720), and the Dutch East India Company records; but it also explores other materials, both in Persian and, more limitedly, Tamil. We argue that the Arcot state attempted to keep a relatively tight hold on the conduct of external commerce, and that Sa‘adatullah Khan in this respect followed the trend set by the formidable Da’ud Khan Panni, his predecessor in the nizāmat. However, it is also necessary to point to the evolution between the earlier and the later decades of our period, especially in relation to the role played by newcomers from North India in this context, notably the redoubtable network of Khatris (and to an extent, Kayasthas and Gujaratis) that developed in this period. And finally, we suggest that the 1730s mark a turning point in this respect, for it was then that the balance between the nizāmat and European (English and French) political power turned unfavourable to the former, eventually leading to the widespread fiscal crisis that gripped states in Tamilnadu in the latter half of the eighteenth century.8 One should thus caution against working backwards from the period after 1730 to generalize concerning the 7Ashin Das Gupta, ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the 18th Century’, in Das Gupta and Pearson, eds, India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, pp. 131–61, citations on pp. 146–7. 8For this transition, see the remarks in Catherine Manning, Fortunes à faire: The French in Asian Trade, 1719–48 (Aldershot: 1996), pp. 206–8. For a related casestudy from an area slightly further south, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Politics of Fiscal Decline: A Reconsideration of Maratha Tanjavur, 1676–1799’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 32, no. 2, 1995, pp. 177–217.

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relationship of trade and politics in the Karnatak Payanghat in the early years of the nizāmat.

Political Geography and Political Economy A somewhat longer-term reflection may not be wholly out of place to set the stage. Between the mid-sixteenth century and the 1640s, the area between the rivers Krishna and Kollidam in south-eastern India was a heavily contested region. In the years before 1550 the area had been under Vijayanagara domination, and towns such as Kondavidu, Venkatagiri, Udayagiri, Siddhavatam, Velur, Padaividu, and Arni had played an important role in regional geo-politics during the reigns of Krishnadevaraya (1509–29) and Achyutadevaraya (1529–42). These centres all came to be fortified in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and were the places of residence of a variety of Velama and Reddi lineages from Andhra, and occasionally of migrant Kannadiga warrior families.9 Then, in the second half of the sixteenth century, a realignment took place in the region, during the rule of the fourth (or Aravidu) dynasty of Vijayanagara. Faced with pressure from the Golkonda Sultanate to the north, some of the towns and fortresses on the southern fringes of the Krishna, like Kondavidu, changed hands several times. The Aravidu rulers for their part installed themselves after 1590 in Chandragiri, in the Tirupati region further to the south, giving that centre a particular political and even economic importance. Still further into the Tamil country, Senji emerged as the major political and commercial centre, outstripping such towns as Arni and Padaividu. While Arni continued to have a certain importance, Padaividu had fallen into decline by 1590. Senji was now the seat of a Nayaka dynasty, which ruled from the midsixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries in the very area which was later to form the core of the nizāmat of Arcot. 9Cf. the important analysis in Noboru Karashima, Towards a New Formation: South India under Vijayanagar Rule (Delhi: 1992), pp. 15–63; also David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Men Who Would be King? The Politics of Expansion in Early 17th Century Northern Tamilnadu’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 225–48.

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The political geography of the region is well described by European observers in the 1610s and 1620s. The three main seats of political power, as they saw it, were Chandragiri, Senji, and Velur—the last a centre used by the Aravidus from 1602 as an alternative capital. From these fortified centres the Aravidu Rayas and the Senji Nayakas collected agrarian and other revenues, using a system of revenuefarming, with the farmers very largely being Balijas, Beri Chettis, and Komatis.10 The area, while agriculturally poorer than the Krishna delta to the north or the Kaveri delta to the south, nevertheless afforded a quite reasonable revenue from its production of commercial crops like rice, cotton, indigo, and sugar, and from taxes on textile production— which was carried out mostly in the villages along the coast. The whole area between Kunjimedu and Armagon (the so-called central Coromandel region) produced textiles which were much in demand in the Southeast Asian market. Ports like Parangippettai (Porto Novo), Tirupapuliyur, Puducheri, Devanampattinam, Mylapore, and Pulicat exported these products and channelized the imports of precious metals, copper, porcelain, pepper, spices, horses, and elephants to the inland courts, and to other smaller consuming centres.11 From 1640 Madras gradually emerged as the major centre of external trade, while further south the relatively obscure port of Sadras (Sadrangapatnam) also grew in importance after 1660. The revenue potential of the region and those lying still further south eventually attracted the attention of the sultanates of Bijapur and Golkonda, with whom the Vijayanagara rulers had maintained an uneasy political equilibrium since the 1570s. In the late 1630s and 1640s Bijapur and Golkonda launched a series of major campaigns directed at the Aravidus and Senji Nayakas. By the 1650s Golkonda conquests engineered under the generalship of Mir Muhammad Sa‘id Ardistani extended almost as far as Mylapore along the coast, and included most of the erstwhile domains of the Chandragiri 10For details, see V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka-period Tamil Nadu (Delhi: 1992), pp. 82–112. 11Cf. the extensive discussion of these questions in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500–1650 (Cambridge: 1990).

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Raja.12 Bijapur’s ascendancy, on the other hand, extended via Mysore to encompass much of the Senji Nayakas’ former territories, and eventually posed a threat to the Nayakas of Tanjavur. The last ruler of the Aravidu dynasty, Sriranga Raya, resisted by both military and diplomatic means, unlike the Senji dynasty which capitulated and allied itself with Golkonda’s Mir Jumla, Mir Muhammad Sa‘id. Sriranga attempted in the 1650s to negotiate with Prince Aurangzeb, at the time sūbadār of the Deccan, to retain a position for himself as a tributary chieftain under Mughal suzerainty.13 In this he largely failed, and his territories passed under Golkonda control, to remain there until 1687. The precise nature of the fiscal arrangements put in place in their Karnatak conquests by Bijapur and Golkonda is unknown to us. It appears however that revenue-farming was persisted with, at least in the coastal districts. In formal terms the Golkonda authorities followed their normal practice of administering the region through a number of tarafdārs and hawaldārs, and the area as a whole was given to the charge of, first, Mir Muhammad Sa‘id, then to Riza Quli Beg (Neknam Khan), and in the 1670s and early 1680s to Akkanna Pandit.14 Muhammad Sa‘id, who manipulated the region virtually as a semi-independent state, chose as his centre of operations the hitherto obscure fort of Gandikota, transforming it in the space of a decade into a major fortress-town. The centre of Gurramkonda, which had in the early decades of the seventeenth century played a role of importance as the residence of the family of Gobburi Obaraja, as well as Chandragiri itself, were eclipsed by Gandikota. The taraf Karnatak, with its 16 sarkārs and 162 parganas, is believed to have 12For

details, see Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla, the General of Aurangzeb, 2nd edn (New Delhi: 1979). 13For details, see the correspondence in Abu’l Fath Qabil Khan, Ādāb-i ‘Ālamgīrī, ed. ‘Abdul Ghafur Chaudhuri, 2 vols (Lahore: 1971), vol. I, pp. 168–73, 169–71, 305–8, 346–7. For an earlier discussion, also see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘An Eastern El-Dorado: The Tirumala-Tirupati Temple-Complex in Early European Views and Ambitions, 1540–1660’, in David Shulman, ed., Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian Civilization in Honour of Velcheru Narayana Rao (Delhi: 1995), pp. 338–90. 14Political details may be found in H.K. Sherwani, History of the Qutb Shāhī Dynasty (Delhi: 1974), pp. 448–62, 626–34.

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had as its jama‘ in 1685–6 a sum of 8 million rupees (2.67 million hūns). When Golkonda fell to Aurangzeb in 1687, these revenues came to be attached to the Mughal state.15 In 1688, soon after the conquest, Aurangzeb detached 12 sarkārs south of the Gundalakamma river and placed them under a separate faujdār with his seat at Kanchipuram. A former Golkonda noble ‘Ali ‘Askar Khan was the first appointee to this post; he was followed by ‘Ali Mardan Khan in 1690, then Zu’lfiqar Khan, and eventually Da’ud Khan Panni. The faujdār attempted to administer the erstwhile Golkonda territories, while, further to the south, Mughal armies engaged in combat with the Marathas, who laid claim to the areas conquered by Bijapur in the 1640s. The struggle centred largely around Senji, where Rajaram of the Bhonsle clan had installed himself; Senji fell in 1698 to Zu’lfiqar Khan after a protracted siege. It is significant that for purposes of revenue classification, though, the areas of Senji (Nusratgadh), Velur, Dharmavaram, and so on were included, still in 1705–7, under the separate head mulk-i maftūha (‘the conquered territories’). The twelve sarkārs which were included under the ‘regular’ territories were further divided into two groups. Five were included in sūba Karnatak, and seven in sūba Karnatak Payanghat. In the former category were the sarkārs of Siddhavatam, Gandikota, Gutti, Gurramkonda, and Kumbum; in the latter were the coastal sarkārs of Addanki, Tadimari, Narasipur, Sarvepalli, Chandragiri, Chengalapattu, and Kanchipuram. In 1706, the total jama‘ of these twelve sarkārs and the mulk-i maftūha added up to some 15 million rupees, obviously somewhat more than what had been extracted by Golkonda in 1685–6. This was not done by a thorough-going revenue re-survey, which none of the faujdārs and dīwāns before 1710 seem to have been able to manage, but rather by continued recourse to revenue-farmers (mustājirs and ijāradārs), and also by extending control over regions in the interior where Golkonda control had been limited, or contested by Bijapur. The two decades after Mughal conquest see changes, but they are 15Sherwani, Qutb Shāhī Dynasty, pp. 655–6, citing Girdharilal Ahqar, Tārīkh-i Zafarah (Gorakhpur: 1927) (compiled in 1771–72, on the basis of late-seventeenthcentury data).

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not always the predictable ones. Large amounts of the jama‘ were alienated, for example, in jāgīrs given to specific Velama notables of the area, to persuade them to support the Mughals. In the second half of the 1690s, Kumara Yachama Naidu of the Recherla clan was given a jāgīr extending over Venkatagiri, Nellore, and Tirupati, and worth over 2.5 million rupees in jama‘, besides a mansab of 6000/6000.16 To compensate these large alienations, additional tributes were occasionally levied on the Maratha rajas of Tanjavur, on the Wodeyars at Srirangapatnam, and the Madurai Nayakas.17 The whole revenue system bore the stamp of hasty improvisation, and this is understandable when one sees that as late as 1706 5.2 million rupees from the jama‘ was set aside for sih-bandī, the maintenance of troops. Such a high degree of militarization in relation to available resources brings home that, even in the early eighteenth century, the Karnatak was still a frontier area, not only on account of the Marathas but because the Velama, Reddi, and other warrior clans of the region remained unsubdued. The conflict that eventually led Zu’lfiqar Khan to behead the powerful Kumara Yachama Naidu is one sign of the tension that simmered beneath the surface of the accommodation that the Mughals sought to make in these years.18 It was from this apparently unpromising raw material that Sa‘adatullah Khan carved the Arcot ‘kingdom’ in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. The emergence of Arcot from about 1700 was part of a somewhat larger process. Da’ud Khan Panni, who has already been noticed as 16For

an excellent discussion, see John F. Richards, ‘The Hyderabad Karnatik, 1687–1707’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, 1975, pp. 241–60; also, more generally, the discussion in J.F. Richards, Mughal Administration in Golconda (Oxford: 1975). 17Some details may be found in M.A. Nayeem, ‘Mughal Documents Relating to the Peshkash of the Zamindars of South India, 1694–1752’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 12, no. 4, 1975, pp. 425–32. 18Yachama Nayaka (or Naidu) was a member of the well-known Velugoti family of Telugu warriors, of the Velama caste and the Recherla gotra; for details of this family, later better known as the Rajas of Venkatagiri, see N. Venkataramanayya, ed., Velugotivāri vamśāvali (Madras: 1939), and the discussion in Shulman and Subrahmanyam, ‘The Men Who Would be King?’

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faujdār of the Karnatak in the early eighteenth century, also harboured ambitions of creating a territorial base for his family, which was of Afghan origin, descended from a certain Khizr Khan Panni. When Da’ud Khan was appointed sūbadār of the Deccan in around 1710, he thus brought his brother Ibrahim Khan to Haidarabad, as nā’ib sūbadār; earlier members of his family had played roles of significance in the Payanghat. In 1715, Da’ud Khan was eventually killed in battle while opposing Sayyid Husain ‘Ali Khan Barha, but by that time Ibrahim Khan had established himself as first kotwāl and then faujdār of the interior town of Karnul. His descendants Alf Khan and Himmat Bahadur Khan succeeded to the positions of nawabs of Qamarnagar (Karnul); eventually, in 1751, Himmat Bahadur Khan was killed by the forces of the Hyderabad ruler, Salabat Jang, after having played a major role in the succession struggle that followed Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah’s death in 1748 by having a hand in the death of two of the major contenders, Nasir Jang and Muzaffar Jang. Karnul was plundered in 1751, and Himmat Bahadur Khan’s family and children were taken prisoner, though his descendants were later partly reinstated. Elsewhere, in Kadappa, another Mughal noble, ‘Abdul Nabi Khan Miyana emerged as faujdār by the 1720s, while ‘Abdul Majid Khan, grandson of a former Bijapur noble, ‘Abdul Karim Khan, held a similar position at Bankapur. Further west, in Chittur, Sira, and Dodballapur, other faujdārs sought a similar position: Amin Khan and his successor ‘Abdul Rasul Khan at Sira, Tahir Muhammad Khan at Chittur. It is thus worth bearing in mind that several of the major nobles who accompanied Aurangzeb or Zu’lfiqar Khan Nusrat Jang to the Karnatak sought to put down local roots in the years between 1700 and 1725; this has certain parallels with Mir Jumla’s own attempts to create a sub-state centred around Gandikota in the 1640s and 1650s, but at the same time has something original about it. The attempt in the early eighteenth century to transform faujdārīs into compact regional ‘kingdoms’ under the umbrella of Mughal suzerainty required the partial displacement of autochthonous lineages (of Telugu or Kannada origin), the creation or expansion of a court-centre (Kadappa, Karnul, Savanur, Sira, Dodballapur, or Bankapur) with a regional idiom, and also negotiation with the great

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power-broker Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, who ultimately held the balance in the region after the mid-1720s.19 The table below summarizes the broad fiscal situation in the Karnatak a decade after the fall of Senji to Zu’lfiqar Khan’s forces. The materials have been collated from the researches of J.F. Richards and M.A. Nayeem into the Persian records of the still-expanding Mughal state, and offer us a glimpse of the raw materials from which the Arcot state could be constructed in the decades that followed.20 Table: The Fiscal Situation of the Karnatak (ca. 1706) (in rupees) A. Disbursements Khalisa Major Jagirs Minor Jagirs Outside Jagirs Sihbandi Poligars etc. Paibaqi

B. Revenue-Resources 990,678 908,486 3,171,861 2,013,875 5,249,305 2,629,217 662,648

I. Sūba Karnatak I.1 Sarkar Kumbum I.2 Sarkar Gutti I.3 Sarkar Gandikota I.4 Sarkar Siddhavatam I.5 Sarkar Gurramkonda Total

1,077,098 896,869 1,168,865 757,171 765,453 4,665,456

II. Sūba Karnatak Payanghat II.1 Sarkar Addanki 427,236 II.2 Sarkar Sarvepalli 675,637 II.3 Sarkar Narasipur 582,943 II.4 Sarkar Tadimari 484,760 II.5 Sarkar Chandragiri 507,616 II.6 Sarkar Kanchi 1,015,523 II.7 Sarkar Chengalapattu 501,415 Total 4,195,130 TOTAL

15,626,070

III. Mulk-i maftūha TOTAL

6,765,484 15,626,070

19For Nizam-ul-Mulk’s dealings in the Deccan, see the useful materials in P. Setu

Madhava Rao, Eighteenth-Century Deccan (Bombay: 1963). Also M.A. Nayeem, Mughal Administration of Deccan under Nizamul Mulk Asaf Jah (1720–1748 AD) (Bombay: 1985), and most recently Munis D. Faruqui, ‘At Empire’s End: The Nizam, Hyderabad and Eighteenth-Century India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, 2009, pp. 5–43. 20Nayeem, Mughal Administration of Deccan, pp. 104–26.

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One may make what one wishes of this miraculously ‘balanced’ budget, which obviously involved a certain fiscal sleight-of-hand. Of particular significance is the relative importance of the southern ‘newly conquered’ territories in the whole, since the northern and relatively arid part of the Karnatak Payanghat represented a less likely fiscal source than the areas further south.

The Foundation of Arcot The standard source through which historians have hitherto reconstructed the early history of the Arcot nizāmat is a well-known chronicle in Persian, the Tūzak-i Wālājāhī, composed by Munshi Burhan Khan ibn Sayyid Hasan, born in Tiruchirappalli, but descended from ancestors who had long resided in Bijapur. The text was written in the years 1781–6, thus in the reign of Nawwab Muhammad ‘Ali Walajah at Arcot.21 This fact ideologically charges the text somewhat, and provides it with a particular slant concerning the early rulers of Arcot; the author is divided between a desire to justify the creation of the sub-state and a certain desire to downplay the role of, in particular, Sa‘adatullah Khan. Further, as has been noted by several authors, Burhan Khan writes from an explicitly Shi‘i perspective, which also lends a special flavour to his version of the past. The Tūzak-i Wālājāhī extends and elaborates on an earlier text by the malik ush-shu‘rā’ of the Arcot court, Mir Isma‘il Khan Abjadi, who had written a masnawī on the exploits of the first of the Walajah rulers, Anwar-ud-Din Khan, entitled Anwar Nāma, in 1760–1.22 Burhan Khan notes that although the town Arcot had already existed before 1700, and does find some mention in the accounts of the campaigns of the period when Zu’lfiqar Khan still dominated the region, it was only later that it became a major political centre. In the Dutch letters before about 1705 the tendency is to refer 21Munshi

Burhan Khan Handi, Tūzak-i Walājāhī, ed. T. Chandrasekharan and Syed Hamza Hosain Omari (Madras: 1957); Tūzak-i-Wālājāhī of Burhān ibn Hasan, trans. S. Muhammad Husyan Nainar, vol. I (Madras: 1934). 22Mir Isma‘il Khan Abjadi, Kulliyāt-i Abjadī, 3 vols, ed. S. Muhammad Husayn Nainar and Muhammad Husayn Mahvi (Madras: 1944–51), vol. I (for the Anwar Nāma).

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to the Nawwab as resident in a camp (leger); only thereafter does Arcot (‘Arkadoe’) receive the epithet of ‘the place of His Excellency’s usual residence’ (de plaetse van Syn Excellenties ordinaire residentie). Zu’lfiqar Khan and then Da’ud Khan may be thought, therefore, to have considerably consolidated the centre of Arcot, while at the same time maintaining a rather close eye on what transpired on the coast. Senji, which (as noted above) had been captured from the Marathas in February 1698 after a protracted siege, had been given over to a qil‘adār of Bundela extraction; the other major centre in the region with accumulated political prestige, namely Velur, was after its capture from the Marathas in the latter half of 1702 handed over to the charge of Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, brother of the dīwān Muhammad Sa‘id. In sum, rather than making use of one of the existing prestigious centres of the area, the nizāmat chose, even after it had captured Senji and Velur, to opt for a new centre, no doubt in order to distinguish the new dispensation from those that had preceded it. Any consideration of the beginnings of Arcot takes us ineluctably to the career of the celebrated Da’ud Khan Panni. Now Da’ud Khan is, of course, one of those important and enigmatic personages who occupy considerable space in the Mughal chronicles between the last years of Aurangzeb and the early years of Farrukhsiyar. His father, Khizr Khan Panni, is known to have belonged to an Afghan family of Mahdawi leanings, and as having entered the service of the ‘Adil Shahi rulers of Bijapur in the third quarter of the seventeenth century after an earlier career as a trader. Da’ud Khan for his part moved to Mughal service by 1682, in which year he, his brother Sulaiman Khan, and his uncle Ranmast Khan are to be found receiving robes of honour (khil‘ats) from Aurangzeb in the Deccan.23 By 1700 he was firmly associated with Zu’lfiqar Khan in his Deccan campaigns; the following year he was appointed Zu’lfiqar Khan’s deputy (nā’ib) in the Karnatak Haidarabadi, and began to reside at Arcot. This 23Saqi

Must’ad Khan, Ma’āsir-i ‘Ālamgīrī: A History of the Emperor Aurangzib‘Alamgir (Reign 1658–1707 AD), trans. Jadunath Sarkar (rpnt. Calcutta: 1986), pp. 137–8. For later details of Da’ud Khan’s career, see pp. 260 (1700), 298–99 (1705), passim. Also see the contemporary account by Bhimsen, Nuskha-i Dilkushā: Memoirs of Bhimsen Relating to Aurangzib’s Deccan Campaigns, trans. Jadunath Sarkar, ed. V.G. Khobrekar (Bombay: 1972), pp. 200–1, 206.

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association with the ‘Irani’ faction brought him the condemnation of Mughal chroniclers such as Khafi Khan, who makes it a point in his Muntakhab ul-Lubāb to paint Da’ud Khan in dark hues, as one who secretly negotiated with the Marathas, who had excessive truck with Hindus in general (his close associate being a certain Hiraman Baksariya), whose character was unreasonable, and who was even probably impotent! Contrasted with him is the flower of the Turani notables, especially Chin Qilich Khan (later to be celebrated as Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah). 24 By early 1704 Da’ud Khan had been promoted to the high mansab of 6000/6000, and given a position as nā’ib of Prince Kam Bakhsh in sūba Bijapur; however, it is clear that he continued to operate for the most part out of the Senji–Arcot region. Indeed, he remained associated with that region until 1713, when he was transferred to Gujarat; he was eventually killed on 6 September 1715 near Burhanpur, in a battle that came to be celebrated in both the Persian chronicles and semi-literary texts in Marathi. 25 Da’ud Khan is also the subject of considerable discussion in Nicolò Manuzzi’s Storia del Mogol, since Manuzzi had fairly extensive dealings with him through the first decade of the eighteenth century, while resident at Madras. Manuzzi’s portrayal of him, based on a mixture of rumour and direct observation, is startling: here is a veritable monster who dashes his own female infants to the ground and kills them (pace Kamsa and his nieces and nephews), sets his vicious dogs on unsuspecting victims, is constantly drunk on imported European wine, and so on. The picaresque aspects of Manuzzi’s account aside, what emerges from his detailed description of dealings between Arcot and Madras is the underlying tone of hostility that characterized the relationship between the English Company and the emerging autonomous nizāmat. Indeed, glimpses of hostile relations can be seen as early as 1696, when Sulaiman Khan Panni, the brother of Da’ud Khan, held charge of the region around Porto Novo. In 24Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, Muntakhab ul-Lubāb, 2 vols, ed. K.D. Ahmad and T. Wolseley Haig (Calcutta: 1869), vol. II, pp. 750–4. 25Muhammad Hadi Kamwar Khan, Tazkirat-us-Salātīn Chaghtā, ed. Muzaffar Alam (Bombay: 1980), pp. 212–13; ‘Dāvūd Khān Pannīci Bakhar’, in Sanshodhan, vol. 18, nos 3–4, 1949, pp. 113–17.

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February 1698 the English Company, fearing an attack on their Fort St David at Devanampattinam, repulsed a Mughal party that was at the gates of the fortress, killing Da’ud Khan’s own brother-in-law in the process. After several months of hostilities, the English governor at Madras was obliged to pay an indemnity to Zu’lfiqar Khan to settle the matter. One may imagine the situation as viewed from a Mughal perspective. Arriving on the Coromandel coast, they found themselves confronted in the late 1680s by a whole series of European fortified settlements, of a sort that they did not easily permit elsewhere in their domains. Of these, the most significant were the Dutch Casteel Geldria at Pulicat, the English Fort St George at Madras (both in former Golkonda territories), and Fort St David at Devanampattinam (Kadalur) in the Karnatak Bijapuri; other fortresses, such as Tranquebar and Nagapattinam, fell under the rule of the Maratha dynasty at Tanjavur. While the Mughals did have some experience in dealing with such Portuguese fortresses as Daman and Diu, they were also embroiled in a rather violent quarrel in the 1680s with the English, which augured ill for their future relationship; relations with the Dutch in Surat and elsewhere at this time were, as Ashin Das Gupta has shown, rather vitiated by issues of convoying vessels to the Red Sea in face of the threat posed by European piracy in the western Indian Ocean.26 One possible strategy was thus for the Dutch or English to develop a relationship with the regional Mughal elite, insulated from the possible repercussions of what might transpire in Gujarat or Bengal. The search for likely sympathizers was thus a pressing priority for the Europeans. In these years, the letters of the Dutch East India Company, like those of the English, point to the gradual rise of Da’ud Khan Panni, as Zu’lfiqar Khan’s preoccupations took him away from the Karnatak region—without his abandoning that area entirely, however. The main power-broker through whom the Dutch dealt with Da’ud Khan was a Maharashtrian Brahmin, Krishnaji Pandit, referred to on more than one occasion as the factotum (albeschik) of the former. It was Krishnaji who broke the news to the Dutch, in April–May 1702, that orders had arrived from the ‘emperor’s court’ 26Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, c. 1700–1750 (Wiesbaden: 1979), ch. 2.

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(keijsers hof) that all the European nations on the Coromandel coast were to be dealt with as enemies and eventually expelled, adding somewhat ironically that ‘since this was not really possible to put such a thing into effect, a beginning had been made with the English’, with the others to follow in due course!27 This was the thin edge of the wedge for negotiations concerning the weaver and washer villages around Pulicat that the Dutch Company (or VOC) controlled, and on account of which they had a fiscal dispute with the Mughal dīwān. It is thus clear that these European-controlled ports accounted for a good deal of the trade of the region (even if one cannot attempt a precise quantification), while retaining a distasteful status from the Mughal point of view of peshkash-paying autonomous centres. The situation is brought home to us clearly when one considers Manuzzi’s account of his own mission in January 1701 to the Mughal camp in Arcot, on behalf of Governor Thomas Pitt at Fort St George. He carried letters for Da’ud Khan, with whom he had a previous acquaintance, as also for the dīwān of the Karnatak Payanghat, Muhammad Sa‘id; accompanied by the Brahmin and Company factotum Ramappa, Manuzzi took along a gift of about Rs 3000 to Rs 4000, two cannon, some scarlet and gold cloth, mirrors, pistols, and a variety of odds and ends to be distributed to notables. On arriving at Arcot, Manuzzi was allowed to see Da’ud Khan, who apparently complained to him of lack of courtesy on the part of the English (in contrast with their Portuguese neighbours, who had been reinstated after a gap of several decades in São Tomé). Manuzzi claims that he was let down in his mission by Ramappa, who behaved in a duplicitous and devious fashion, trying to hold back the present in cash for Da’ud Khan. An aspect of Manuzzi’s account worth remarking on is his meeting with the ‘chief minister’ or dīwān, Muhammad Sa‘id, described by him as ‘one of the most polished men to be found among the Mahomedans’, who ‘invited me to his table and entertained me magnificently.’ At the same time, the resentment felt by the Mughals against the English as a consequence of the dealings at Devanampattinam in 1698 resurfaced rapidly. Manuzzi reports how he protested his 27NAH

(Nationaal Archief, The Hague), OBP, VOC. 1664, ‘Translaet brief door de heer Kistnosie Pandiet uijt het moors leger voor Mandras ... den 3en Meij 1702 ontfangen’, pp. 197–9.

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own transparent sincerity as intermediary, but also reports Da’ud Khan’s response. His reply was that, as for me, he would do anything I wanted but that the English, settled within the country of the king, his master, possessed a strong place most useful and highly suitable for all sorts of merchandise and traffic. They had always been left undisturbed, and yet, without regard to the past, they now treated him in the most cavalier spirit, and gave him next to nothing. They failed to reflect that they had enriched themselves in his country to a most extraordinary degree. He believed that they must have forgotten that he was general over the province of the Karnatak, and that since the fall of the Golkonda kingdom they had rendered no account of their administration, good or bad, commencing with 1686. Nor had they accounted for the revenues from tobacco, betel, wine, et cetera, which reached a considerable sum every year.28

Manuzzi’s own reply, whether real or invented ex post facto, is not devoid of interest. He stressed, first, the fact that Madras had been created by the English from a ‘vast plain full of sand, uninhabited’, and transformed by them into a port that was ‘highly populous, full of active merchants and other residents.’ The good government of the English, and their sense of justice, were responsible for this; this was why so many merchants, weavers, and printers of cloth had decided to reside there. If Da’ud Khan took harsh measures against them, the English would simply leave the place, and the other European nations would follow them from Coromandel. The losers would be the local merchants and weavers who earned lakhs of pagodas each year in the process of trade. At the same time (and there is a contradiction in the argument here), the English would very likely resort to violence if expelled, and ‘seize every ship they came across, and thereby spread ruin and desolation throughout the Mogul empire.’ There is nothing particularly novel about these arguments, indeed their interest lies precisely in their very familiar character. 28Niccolao Manucci, Mogul India, or Storia do Mogor, trans. William Irvine, 4 vols (London: 1907–8), vol. III, pp. 369–70. For a full discussion of this author, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Further Thoughts on an Enigma: The Tortuous Life of Nicolò Manucci, 1638–c.1720’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2008, pp. 35–76.

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The English provide safety, security, and justice; they bring in gold and silver coin, and provide a livelihood for local merchants and weavers. On the one hand they are really indifferent to whether they are allowed to trade or nor (‘they set little store by the place’), and on the other they are to be feared at sea, where their capacity to generate violence is considerable. In any event, Manuzzi’s mission cannot be judged a success, since (despite his own typically self-congratulatory version) it turns out that Governor Pitt and his council were rather unhappy with Da’ud Khan’s treatment of their letters.29 Several months later, while en route from Arcot to Tanjavur to collect an annual peshkash from the Maratha rulers, Da’ud Khan once more made direct contact with the English. In May 1701, he is known to have been given a gift by the chief of Fort St David, who met him near Kadalur; on his return he is also reported to have visited the French at Pondicherry, the Dutch at Sadrasapatnam, and finally the English at Madras. The last of these visits occurred in July 1701, and both in this year and in 1702, on the occasion of another visit, the procedure followed by Da’ud Khan is significant. He appears consistently to have set down his camp in Mylapore (São Tomé), dealing from there with the English. This port was to be given a privileged role in his conception of things, and this is doubtless the reason why, in August 1702, the dīwān Muhammad Sa‘id is reported by Manuzzi in Mylapore as having given orders to build an ‘earthen wall to be made all around San Thome, including not only the quarter of the Mahomedans, but that in which the Portuguese dwell.’30 Again, in November 1706, when Da’ud Khan paid a visit to the Madras region, he is reported to have stayed first at St Thomas Mount, and then in São Tomé, ‘in a large tent erected on the sea-shore and fitted with carpets.’31 Manuzzi notes that a particular complicity existed between him and the Portuguese Bishop of Mylapore, Padre Gaspar Afonso Álvares S.J., until the latter died in office in November 1708. 29For details from the English documents of the period, see Henry Davison Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640–1800: Traced from the East India Company’s Records Preserved at Fort St. George and the India Office, and From Other Sources, 3 vols (London: 1913), especially vols I and II. 30Manucci, Storia, vol. III, p. 274. 31Ibid., vol. IV, p. 123.

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It is clear enough that the attempt to redevelop São Tomé was part of a larger strategy on the part of Da’ud Khan. From these years dates the presence in Mylapore of a number of important ‘Pathan’ merchants, to whom reference has already been made above; these men were obviously Indo-Afghans from Bijapur encouraged to settle there by Da’ud Khan. Basing himself on English records, for example, Arasaratnam argues that Da’ud Khan’s subordinates deliberately kept taxes low in the port (at 2½ per cent on imports and exports), gave traders full exemption from inland duties for a time, and even established a mint there in 1707. He traces the trade of these ‘Pathans’ (the term being found in the English records) to such places as Pegu, Tenasserim, Bengal, Surat, Mokha, and the Persian Gulf, in brief over a series of regions both east and west. Further, he insists that these traders ‘had close links with Mughal administrators’, and that at times their trade was directly financed by sleeping partners who were themselves ‘wealthy officials’ (and who kept two-thirds of the profits).32 In the 1710s, in Arasaratnam’s view, the trade of São Tomé would have been at least half that of Madras, and even if it declined in the 1720s it continued to worry the English Company as late as the 1730s and 1740s, so that they seized control of the port as soon as they could, in the late 1740s.33 It was somewhat paradoxical that the settlement where their activity was focused was São Tomé which had had an altogether chequered history from the 1510s, when the first private Portuguese traders settled there. Created a bishopric and city (cidade) in 1606, São Tomé suffered in the first half of the seventeenth century from the vicinity of the Dutch at Pulicat, who kept up a sustained attack 32Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce, pp. 171–2. Note that the Persian chronicles too develop this association (practically a cliché in Tamilnadu today) between Afghans and moneylending (istiqrāz); cf. the chronicle of Jaswant Rai cited below (especially fl. 133b). 33Of obvious interest in this connection is the document in the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon, Codex 49–I-57, containing a Portuguese complaint against the English seizure; also see Biblioteca Pública e Arquivo Distrital, Évora, Map Section, P/1–8, for a map of São Tomé‚ as it was when handed to the English in 1749, in D. António José de Noronha, Sistema Marcial Asiático: Político, Histórico, Genealógico, Analítico e Miscelânico, ed. Carmen M. Radulet (Lisbon: 1994).

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on private Portuguese shipping from the town.34 In 1662 São Tomé was captured by Golkonda forces, and thereafter it came briefly under French control. However, in the late 1680s the Portuguese made a further attempt to resettle the town with a Mughal farmān, with the intention of attracting those Portuguese traders who had settled in Madras (under English protection) and in Porto Novo, to resume trade in the port. This attempt seems to have met with only rather limited success. Besides the bishop, Padre Gaspar Afonso Álvares, the governor of the Estado da Índia, D. Rodrigo da Costa, had pinned his hopes on the Madras merchant Lucas Luís de Oliveira and the Porto Novo-based entrepreneur Manuel Teixeira Pinto, who also find uncomplimentary mention in Manuzzi’s account.35 The coexistence between Afghans and Indo-Portuguese appears to have been distinctly uncomfortable, but the Portuguese had little choice in the matter. Violent incidents flared up from time to time, for instance in the first year of the captaincy of Nuno Sodré Frade, who replaced Mateus Carvalho da Silva in 1704. The presence of a Mughal faujdār in the vicinity (in 1704, a certain Mir ‘Usman, or Sayyid ‘Usman) did not help calm matters either. Manuzzi provides us a detailed account, confirmed by English Company records, of a public disturbance in São Tomé on 4 October 1704, on the occasion of the procession of the Feast of the Rosary. Several of the faujdār’s men are said to have been killed or injured, as were some Portuguese. The captain Nuno Sodré Frade himself was wounded, and abandoned by his compatriots; chagrined by this, he asked Goa to be relieved of his post shortly thereafter.36 At the same time, it is clear that Da’ud Khan’s plans in respect of São Tomé could not be fully carried through. He had built a fine residence there, as noted by both the Indo-Persian and Tamil chronicling traditions; but his real purpose, of fortifying the port, 34Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1700 (Delhi: 1990), pp. 47–67, 188–215. 35Manucci, Storia, vol. III, pp. 120–2; also see the discussion in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (London: 1993), pp. 202–7. 36Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, pp. 204–5, citing letters in the Boletim da Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa, nos 38–40, pp. 231, 260–2.

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remained unfulfilled. Manuzzi makes mention of it, in relation to his account of events in the year 1706: ‘I have already mentioned that the officials governing the Karnatik requested leave from the Mogul to build a new fortress at the port of San Thome. His Majesty refused his permission upon the excuse that the Europeans would take possession of it, since it was so close to the sea. Nay, he would be highly pleased if they could be deprived of those towns where they already resided.’37 Of the European nations, the Portuguese were obviously the most vulnerable by the early eighteenth century. The English for their part sheltered more or less securely behind the walls of Fort St George, and attempted a combination of threats, tributes, and diplomacy. The French at Pondicherry were in an intermediate position, and so made a far more concerted effort to woo Da’ud Khan (whom they describe in their letters as an ‘amy de la Nation’), while at the same time making it a point to maintain good relations with the powerful Bundela qil‘adār of Senji, Sarup Singh. Again, this was in contrast with the English at Fort St David, whose relations with Sarup Singh were at best strained, and at worst downright violent. As early as 1704, they claimed that the Senji governor was planning to ‘break down the Banks of the River [Ponnaiyar] and turne the Course of the water from comeing into the Right Honourable Companies Bounds’, and they therefore sent out troops to Tirupapuliyur to ‘deter him from that Villainous designe’.38 But things only went from bad to worse. In 1710, for example, in the course of a dispute over some defaulting revenue-farmers who had taken refuge with the English, Sarup Singh (or, as the English letters term him, ‘that stupid inhuman Creature Suroop Sing’) took it upon himself to capture and hold prisoner two English Company servants, Captain Hugonin and Ensign Reay, in his stronghold of Senji; the English Company then attacked and burnt some fifty villages in the region, destroying thousands of pagodas worth 37Manucci,

Storia, vol. IV, p. 254. of Fort St George (henceforth RFSG), Letters to Fort St. George, 1703–1704, vol. 9 (Madras: 1931), Gabriel Roberts and Council at Fort St David to Thomas Pitt at Fort St George, 27 April 1704, pp. 20–1 (and for the sequel, the letter of 6 May 1704, p. 38). 38Records

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of rice that awaited harvest.39 The hostilities, in which the English Company servant Gabriel Roberts had a major (and, as it later turned out, somewhat unsavoury) role to play, continued intermittently for nearly two years, with the articles of peace being signed only in May 1712.40 English attitudes on the affair veer uncertainly between shrill self-righteousness and a certain remorse. In one letter dated 25 October 1711, the factors at Fort St David admit to their superiors in Madras: ‘Wee must Indeed owne there is no [...] express order for Commencing a Warr or Plundering the Country & Destroying that vast quantity of Grain but the Gentlemen concerned desire youll be pleas’d to Consider that as they were Oblig’d in Duty they acquainted their superiors at Fort St George of every pace they tooke.’ They then go on rather shamefacedly to declare: ‘But the Destruction of 50, or 60,000 Pagodas worth of Graine, about 52 Villages & Townes among which was his [Sarup Singh’s] favourite Towne Yembollam and Killing the Pandarum there are things which really makes his demands carry too much justice with them.’41 It may be noted, as an aside, that in the course of negotiations in January 1712, one comes across the figure of ‘Senhor Nichola Manuch, formerly inhabitant of Madras now at Pondicherry’, who had interceded in the affair with the Mughal administration at Arcot, describing ‘our [the English] quarrell with Surop Singh with advantage on our side.’42 Finally, the Dutch East India Company occupied an interesting place in the Karnatak scheme of things, less bellicose than the English, less marginal than the French or the Portuguese. By the early years of the eighteenth century, the Dutch headquarters on the Coromandel coast had been established firmly at their fortress in Nagapattinam (from where they had expelled the Portuguese in 1658), which gave 39For details of these hostilities, see RFSG, Letters to Fort St. George, 1711, vol. 12 (Madras: 1931), pp. 11–12, 15–16, 51–2, 81–2, 113–14, 121–2, passim. 40RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book of 1713 (Madras: 1929), pp. 75–6, 88, 183, passim. 41RFSG, Letters to Fort St. George, 1711, p. 114, Robert Raworth and Council at Fort St David, 25 October 1711, to Edward Harrison, etc. at Fort St George. It may be noted that the tendency by now was to blame all ills on the villainy of Gabriel Roberts. 42RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book of 1712 (Madras: 1929), pp. 5–6.

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the Dutch a rather different perspective on matters than when they had operated out of a centre further north, in their Casteel Geldria at Pulicat. The main Dutch centres that lay under the control of Arcot were, from north to south, Pulicat, Sadras, and Porto Novo, but they also had a less significant interest in ports such as Kunjimedu and Kovalam (Covelong). In order to protect their interests in these ports, the Dutch had, as has been seen, an ally in the Mughal camp in the early years of the eighteenth century: this was Krishnaji Pandit, with whom they kept up a close correspondence. Besides, they also made an effort to keep up a flow of minor gifts (schenkagie) to the major Mughal notables, the ‘heer Nabab’ (that is, Da’ud Khan), the dīwān, the bakhshī, as well as the faujdārs and hawaldārs who controlled the vicinity of the three ports in which they operated. On occasion, they also supplied Persian and Arabian horses as part of the package, and less frequently elephants from Sri Lanka (which the Maratha rajas of Tanjavur, for their part, received regularly from them in gift). The main interlocutors of the Dutch were the hawaldārs in or around the three ports that have been mentioned above, as also the faujdār at Ponneri (near Pulicat), and his counterparts at Chengalapattu, Chidambaram, and Tirukasugudam. But there was another factor to be taken into consideration, too, particularly in the areas around Porto Novo and Sadras. The Mughals, like the Bijapur rulers before them, did not wholly succeed in displacing the autochthonous lineages of Tamil and Telugu kāvalkārars who collected transit dues and a number of other cesses. These visiadoors (as the Dutch termed them) continued in the early years of the eighteenth century to find mention in Dutch records, as did their conflicts with both the Mughal authorities and the Dutch themselves, on those occasions when they took on the transit tolls (cunkam) in revenue-farm. In the years 1717–19, for example, severe conflicts broke out in the Sadrasapatnam area with the groote visiadoor, a certain Chinna Tambi Nayaka.43 In general, one is left with the impression that, during the years when Da’ud Khan was at the helm of affairs in the Payanghat, Dutch affairs were in better favour with him than those of the English. 43NAH,

OBP, VOC. 1912, letter from Adriaan de Visser etc at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 21 August 1718, pp. 16–17.

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Whether this was mainly due to the intervention of Krishnaji Pandit or not, one has no means of knowing for sure. Already in 1702, much before their quarrel with Sarup Singh, the English at Fort St David seem to have been on bad terms once more with the Mughals, which the Dutch records go so far as to call a ‘war between the English and the Moors’; in contrast, in September that year, the Dutch were invited by Da’ud Khan to settle at Kunjimedu, a port where the English Company had formerly had a factory, since abandoned. The situation was described thus in a Dutch letter from Nagapattinam to Batavia of September 1702. The region of Conimede lying in the kingdom of Singi has on account of a long drawn-out war been sufficiently depopulated, that the English, who had had the said place in their possession before this, seeing nothing more come out of it than excessive expenses, without it ever being brought around to a tranquil state of commerce and to some sales of goods or purchases of cloth, were obliged—the more so in order to be free of the vexations of the lords of the land (landregenten) by which the said place was and still continually is plagued—to leave the said Conimede altogether and to bring their trade over to Tegenepatnam, where they were also followed by all the craftsmen (arbeijtsluyden) who were still over there.44

The place had thus lain practically ‘deserted’ for some years, until in 1701 Da’ud Khan had decided to ‘present’ it to the Dutch. But complications followed that are not devoid of significance. For it soon transpired that Da’ud Khan’s word was not enough. Instead, a document of ‘confirmation’ was needed from the dīwān Muhammad Sa‘id, who declared himself ready to give it, but for the sum of Rs 8000 for himself, soon raised somewhat deviously to Rs 13,000, for himself, his secretary, and others. The Dutch fumed and fretted but noted that the dīwān’s star was distinctly on the rise already. The new faujdār of Chengalapattu, Buland Khan, was reputedly his man; other agents like his ‘secretary’ (on whom more below) also appear to have had a significant role to play in fiscal and financial matters in the region. This is still a phase when Zu’lfiqar Khan (‘de heer Julfacharchan’ 44NAH,

OBP, VOC. 1664, pp. 534–5, Governor Dirck Comans and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 30 September 1702.

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to the Dutch) held the key to affairs in the Payanghat, but it would appear that the balance of power between his subordinates Da’ud Khan and Muhammad Sa‘id was still uncertain. The latter insisted, as noted above, that Da’ud Khan’s grants (qaul) were of ‘no worth so long as they were not given a parwāna of confirmation by the dīwān’; eventually the VOC was obliged, in August 1702, to send him the equivalent of Rs 13,000 (3782 pagodas) to Arcot. But matters were then further delayed, since Muhammad Sa‘id had gone to look to the affairs to Velur, recently taken from the Marathas (on account of the capture of which he had just received a mansab of 3000/2000); all of this confirmed to the Dutch that the dīwān was not merely greedy and unreasonable in his claims, but also unreliable when it came to delivering his own parwānas and arranging hasb-ul-hukms. In the years that followed Muhammad Sa‘id (or Sa‘id Khan as he was now titled) appears to have fallen briefly into disgrace, perhaps on account of his disputes with Da’ud Khan concerning a number of matters.45 In his place as dīwān, one finds a certain Ziya-ud-Din Khan (‘Sawidichan’), who in turn put his own men into place, while at the same time maintaining a considerable role for Maharashtrian Brahmins (such as a certain Sankarji Malharji Pandit, an erstwhile opponent of the Mughals) in the fiscal administration, in deference to the continuing political weight of Krishnaji Pandit. It is with Ziyaud-Din Khan that the VOC had to deal concerning the problematic affair of the widow and daughter of a certain Pieter Josephszoon, taken into the household of a Persian merchant of Pulicat, Aqa Raza; the hawaldār of Pulicat, Sundardas, appears to have been somewhat less than sympathetic to the Dutch in this matter, as well as on the question of money-changing between silver rupees and gold pagodas.46 However, by early 1707, when news of the death of Aurangzeb and the prospects for the succession had begun to trickle into the Payanghat, Sa‘id Khan had already been reinstated as dīwān. Da’ud Khan, absent at this time in the vicinity of Kadappa, appears to 45These may have included disputes over the administration of Da’ud Khan’s jāgīr in Wakinkheda, which Sa‘id Khan had given out in ta‘ahhūd (‘lease contract’). 46NAH, OBP, VOC. 1745, Governor Joannes van Steeland and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 31 March 1707, pp. 37–8, 64, passim. Manucci, Storia, vol. IV, pp. 254–5, has a confused account of the incident.

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have been facing troubles within his own ranks in 1705–6, notably in the form of the faujdār of Palaiyamkottai, a fortress lying due west of Porto Novo in the hinterland. Instead of being supported in this by the court, Da’ud Khan had reputedly found Aurangzeb unsympathetic to his cause; one of the effects of bringing Sa‘id Khan back into power was that he was able to intercede in the region, bringing in a certain ‘Abdul Nabi Khan Miyana (already responsible for Porto Novo in about 1698, and later to achieve prominence in Kadappa), as faujdār over Chidambaram in place of the somewhat incompetent incumbent ‘Inayat Khan.47

The Rise of Sa‘adatullah Khan Detailed news of Aurangzeb’s death first reached the Dutch in Nagapattinam on 7 April 1707 in the form of an olai (palm-leaf letter) from the VOC wakīl, the Brahmin Ramayya, who resided in Arcot, written on the first of that month. Ramayya, in turn, reported news that had arrived via Kadappa that Aurangzeb had died on 3 March at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, as well as the subsequent activities of Prince Muhammad A‘zam and the wazīr Asad Khan. Da’ud Khan and Zu’lfiqar Khan were naturally supporters of this faction in the struggle (the wazīr being the latter’s father), with difficulties being expected from Kam Bakhsh (who laid claim to the erstwhile Golkonda and Bijapur territories), and especially from Shah ‘Alam, who was in north India and counted on a very substantial military backing. Ramayya sagely expected the struggle to last another two or three years at least, and was keeping himself informed through the Tirukasugudam faujdār, Shaikh Islam, as well as Da’ud Khan’s factotum (albeschik) Krishnaji Pandit.48 Things did not quite turn out as expected. A letter dated 15 February 1710, from Monsieur Hebert of the French Company in Pondicherry, explains the situation in the Karnatak to his superiors 47NAH,

58–9.

OBP, VOC. 1745, Nagapattinam to Batavia, 31 March 1707, pp.

48Ibid., ‘Translaet Mallabaarse ole doors’ Comps courantier den bramine Rama-aijen uijt Arkadoe (...)’, pp. 149–52.

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in the metropolis (with some minor inaccuracies): ‘The Great Mogol Aurengzeb being dead and having left three sons, who declared war in order to possess the kingdoms of their father, Azemtara who was the oldest having been defeated in the month of October 1708 [sic] by Chaalem his brother, he killed himself at the end of the combat; Cambax his other brother who had retired to Golconda was abandoned by his soldiers and wounded by Davud Kan governor of the Carnatic who made him prisoner; this prince died three days after, and Chaalem who is aged 70 years is left master of all the estates of his father. This prince has dispersed the Rajepoutes who during his absence had besieged Agra his capital.’49 The letter-writer argues, moreover, that this succession struggle, which had the effect of diverting Da’ud Khan’s energies towards the north, involuntarily interrupted a process of Mughal consolidation in the far south. In this region, kingdoms such as Madurai (under its Nayaka dynasty), Tanjavur (under a branch of the Bhonsles), and other territories still managed to preserve a limited degree of autonomy, paying peshkash to the Mughals only on the show of force. However, in Hebert’s view, further campaigns were unlikely in view of the fact that Shah ‘Alam ‘likes war not at all, and has always led a soft and effeminate life.’ As is well known, despite their having supported Prince Muhammad A‘zam, the careers of neither Zu’lfiqar Khan nor Da’ud Khan suffered in the short run after the defeat of their master. The former continued to be a power in Mughal politics until the ascension of Farrukhsiyar to the throne (when he was killed in ignominious circumstances, in 1713); the latter survived till 1715, as noted above, having played a stellar role in the defeat and capture of Kam Bakhsh together with his Afghan associates (afghānān hamrāhī-i Dā’ūd Khān).50 However, from about 1710 Da’ud Khan’s influence in the Payanghat is decidedly of a lower order than before, as affairs of a different nature and scale occupy his time. Instead, it is increasingly the dīwān (always something of an éminence grise) who 49Archives Nationales, Paris (henceforth AN), Archives du Ministère des Colonies, Correspondance Générale, C²69, fls 1–24, lettre de Mr Hebert … Pondichéry le 15 février 1710. 50Kamwar Khan, Tazkirat-us-Salātīn Chaghtā, p. 36.

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openly controls affairs, though as late as 1711 the clients of Da’ud Khan were not entirely devoid of influence in the zone. Muhammad Sa‘id, who from about 1710 was definitively titled Sa‘adatullah Khan (a title that he had originally from Aurangzeb, who had then later named him Kifayat Khan, ‘Economical’ Khan—a title that its recipient naturally disliked), now strove with some vigour to carve out of a viable domain in the Karnatak Payanghat, another domain that would offer him sufficient autonomy, while nevertheless stopping considerably short of a direct repudiation of Mughal rule.51 He can be observed at work both from the Persian materials produced at his own behest, and from the letters and papers of the European factories perched on the very edge of his zone of operations. It is inevitable that the latter, while not uniformly hostile in character, are nevertheless rather less complimentary to him than his own panegyrists.52 A major source for an understanding of Sa‘adatullah Khan’s functioning in the 1710s is a Persian text patronized by him, the Sa‘īd Nāma of Jaswant Rai Munshi.53 This elaborate work, in ornate rhymed Persian prose (nasr-i musajja’), was authored by a poet and writer in Sa‘adatullah Khan’s circle, himself a Jalput Saraswat Brahmin with origins in northern India. It is made up of three daftars, with a fourth having been planned but never written by its author, and carries the account of the activities of its hero (the Sa‘id of the title) as far as 1723, beginning with his birth at Bijapur on Wednesday 17 Jumada I 1061 (28 April 1651). It stresses the high birth of Muhammad Sa‘id, whose 51See the brief discussion in Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society (Cambridge: 1989), pp. 151–4; also N.S. Ramaswami, Political History of Carnatic under the Nawabs (New Delhi: 1984). 52Muhammad Sa‘id also appears as Sa‘adatullah Khan in the standard Mughal biographical dictionary, Shahnawaz Khan Samsam-ud-Daulah, Ma’āsir ul-Umarā’, ed. Maulavi ‘Abdur Rahim and Ashraf ‘Ali, 3 vols (Calcutta: 1888–95), vol. II, pp. 513–14. 53British Library, London (henceforth BL), Oriental and India Office Collections (henceforth OIOC), Persian Mss. I.O. 3177 (Ethé 2843), fls 1–184 (copy dated 1849); in the same Mss, fls 1–37, is the Waqā’i‘-i Sa‘ādat taking the history of Arcot to Ghulam Murtaza Khan. Incidentally, one may note the existence of another text incorrectly attributed to Jaswant Rai; this appears in Muhammad Yusuf Kokan and Syed Hamza Hussain, ‘Musawwadat-e-Jaswant Rai’, Bulletin of the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library (Madras), vol. 2, no. 2, 1949, pp. 129–47.

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father it is noted was Muhammad ‘Ali bin Ahmad bin Sa‘id-ud-Din bin Muhammad Sa‘id of the Banu Hashim, whose family had migrated from Medina to Ahmadabad in about 810 ah, during the rule of Sultan Ahmad Shah Gujarati. Subsequently, after Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat, they had moved to Nizam Shahi service in Ahmadnagar (receiving a large part of the Konkan in tuyūl), and then eventually—after Mahabat Khan’s campaigns in the area in the seventeenth century—to the service of the ‘Adil Shahis of Bijapur, coming to be a part of the community called the Nawayats in the Deccan.54 At the time the clan moved to Bijapur, it is noted that its head was a certain Qazi Sa‘id, who was normally a part of the vanguard of the Bijapuri army. On his death in battle, his nephew Mulla Ahmad Nawayat continued to play a role of great significance; he was thus named governor (hāris) of Bidar, before joining Mughal service through the intercession of Shayista Khan, with the high rank of 6000/6000.55 Muhammad Sa‘id’s father, it is noted, was related through marriage as hamzulf, or ‘co-brother-in-law’ in common North Indian usage, to Mulla Ahmad. Returning thus to our hero, he had been born at dawn, and, in view of the very auspicious hour of his birth, the leading astrologers of Bijapur such as Mulla Murtaza Mashhadi and Mulla Abu’l Hasan were called in; they all concurred on reading his horoscope (zaicha or tāli‘nāma) that he had a great future, and suggested he be named Muhammad Sa‘id (meaning ‘auspicious’). The text goes on to note a few details of Muhammad Sa‘id’s early career, such as that he had been faujdār at Ramgir in Bidar before coming to the Payanghat; he was married for the first time in 1671 to the daughter of Mukhlis Khan but apparently had no male children.56 Burhan Khan Handi, in the Tūzak-i Wālājāhī, provides 54Cf. S.A.R. Bokhari, ‘Carnatic Under the Nawabs as Revealed through “Sayeed Nama” of Juswant Rai’, M.Litt. thesis, Department of Indian History, University of Madras, 1965, pp. 37–41. 55Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 16a-19a. 56The first wife of Sa‘adatullah Khan is reported by Jaswant Rai (Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 40a-40b) to have died at Arcot on 14 Muharram 1114 ah, despite the ministrations of doctors of four schools (firangīya, tilangīya, hindīya, and yūnānīya). He is then reported to have remarried the next year in Velur, on 27 Rajab 1115 ah, but only under some persuasion; his bride was the daughter of Qazi Shaikh urf Shaikh Husain, and 3 lakh rupees (‘ālamgīrī) was given as bride-price.

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us some further rather curious details on the manner in which Muhammad Sa‘id was recruited into Mughal service, together with brother Ghulam ‘Ali.57 Uncomplimentary reflections and mildly scandalous stories were permitted to the chronicler of the Walajahs, but would surely have been out of place coming from Jaswant Rai’s pen. In contrast to Burhan Khan’s chronicle, the Sa‘īd Nāma, sets out to do far more justice to its subject. But before entering this text it may be useful to turn briefly to the career of its author, details of which he himself provides, here and elsewhere. Jaswant Rai, as noted above, was a Saraswat Brahmin, the son of a certain Bhagwant Rai, in turn the son of Sundardas. At four generations’ remove in the ancestry was a certain Malik Debani, who had like his ancestors resided in Ghazni. Expelled in the last part of the fourteenth century from there (at the time of Timur), Malik Debani had apparently moved to Lahore, and then to Kakriwal (west of Patiala), where he became a zamīndār. However, Jaswant Rai reports, his son Malik Hardas had a taste for letters, and so left home to become a munshī, so that the family became attached to the household of a certain Jalal Khan Kakar (and his descendants, Kakar Khan and Purdil Khan). In the time of Aurangzeb, he reports, Jaswant Rai had first made the acquaintance of Muhammad Sa‘id (in 1118 ah), by writing a qasīda in his praise. Pleased, the latter had appointed him his official biographer, in which matter the intercession of a certain Lala Dakhni Rai (on whom more below) had been of aid as well. The Sa‘īd Nāma begins with characteristic praise for the Almighty (who had caused the tender buds of the poet’s heart to blossom forth into the full bloom of floral poesy); particular praise (manqabat) then follows for Imam ‘Ali bin Abi Talib and the five members of the Prophet’s family, in keeping with the isnā‘asharī proclivities of Sa‘adatullah Khan that have been already noted above. The main body of the work then details Sa‘adatullah Khan’s attempts to ‘settle’ the area of the Payanghat and his relations with the refractory zamīndārs in annual campaigns to collect peshkash; these include the Madurai Nayaka dynasty by then resident at Tiruchirappalli, and the Maratha rajas of Tanjavur. Year after year, even as an aged warrior of seventy, Sa‘adatullah Khan seems to have set out personally to demand their 57Burhan

Khan, Tūzak (text), pp. 74–5; (translation), pp. 67–8.

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dues from these rulers in an unending series of confrontations and minor skirmishes. As it happens, this is confirmed both by the Dutch Company’s records, and by the peshkash documents of the region.58 Interspersed with these details of unending campaigns are Jaswant Rai’s own poetic efforts, for the work is written in a Persian that is extremely (and surely deliberately) ornate, challenging the reader to keep up with the author. The Sa‘īd Nāma, like the Tūzak-i Wālājāhī, mentions the presence of a large number of nawāyats who had either accompanied Muhammad Sa‘id, or had been invited by him to follow once he had attained a position of power. His brother, Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, qil‘adār of Velur, is the best known of these, but a number of others are also worthy of mention, such as his brother-in-law Muhammad Shafi‘, and his nephew Muhammad Sadiq, both of whom held positions of importance in the administration. Others, notably Afghans and men from Badakhshan, were not absent either in the campaigns of the 1710s: men such as Ghalib Muhammad Khan, Daulat Khan Khizrzai, or Roshan Beg Khan. Amongst the Mughal functionaries who came south with the Mughal advance, and settled down in the Karnatak Payanghat in these years, were also men of other ethnicities, Iranians who had once been associated with Zu’lfiqar Khan, Bundelas and Shekhawats amongst the Rajputs, and so on. Perhaps most significantly from our point of view, there was also a very large number of Khatris, who even find mention in the Tamil chronicle mentioned earlier, the Karnātaka rājākkal cavistāra carittiram. Indeed, according to this text, when orders came from the Mughal court to name Da’ud Khan faujdār of the Karnatak with Muhammad Sa‘id as his dīwān, the posts of both dīwān peshkar and sarrishtadār were given over to Khatris. In sum, the reader of the Sa‘īd Nāma soon perceives that the text is about two heroes rather than one. Omnipresent in the text, and constantly active as an agent and advisor to Sa‘adatullah Khan, is the 58For one of a number of examples, NAH, OBP, VOC. 1863, fls 295v–296r, letter from Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 10 August 1715, where Sa‘adatullah Khan is mentioned as being at Chidambaram, while on his return from Tiruchirappalli to Arcot.

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figure, briefly noted above, of Lala Dakhni Rai.59 This character is introduced into the text fairly early on; it turns out that his father, Khushhal Rai, had already been associated with Muhammad Sa‘id early in his career. This man, in turn the son of a certain Sadanand Qutbuddinkhani, hailed from the celebrated town of Badayun in Hindustan. Other members of the family may also be found in the entourage of Muhammad Sa‘id: notably Dakhni Rai’s uncle Anandi Das, and his son Khub Chand, the latter (in Jaswant Rai’s words) having ‘been brought up from his childhood in the court of the Nawab.’ Other figures that we shall have occasion to encounter include the coastal hawaldārs Dayaram and Sundardas, and Lala Todar Mal, who often acted as Sa‘adatullah Khan’s representative in diplomatic and revenue affairs.60 The close relationship between Jaswant Rai, a Saraswat Brahmin, and these Khatris is not entirely surprising. Commenting on the situation in the Bengal nizāmat in the early eighteenth century, where too the Khatris played a role of some importance, John McLane notes their close ties with their purohits the Saraswats, with whom they even practised commensality with a relative degree of facility.61 Elsewhere in the Mughal domains, a similar place to that of the Khatris was held by the Kayasthas, notably in Hyderabad once it came to be dominated by the Turani faction of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah.62 Mention of Dakhni Rai can be found in the Dutch records as early as 1702 (‘sijnen secretaris ... Deckenerauw’), but mention of the former as the ‘factotum’ of Sa‘adatullah Khan (the preferred 59On the ambiguous image of the Khatris, between merchants and warriors (and their consequent self-image in the eighteenth century), see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Acculturation or Tolerance? Inter-Faith Relations in Mughal North India, c. 1750’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, no. 33, 2007, pp. 427–66. 60For a list of Dakhni Rai’s main relations in the Karnatak, see Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 59b-60a. Those listed included Lala Danishmand, Lala Khub Chand, Mukund Rai, Debi Chand, Budh Chand, Todar Mal, Ganj Mal, Nawal Chand, Tika Ram Munshi, Rup Narayan, and Diyanat Rai. 61McLane, Land and Local Kingship, pp. 131–4. 62Cf. Karen Leonard, ‘The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 1971, pp. 569–82.

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Dutch usage of the epoch, albeschik) must await the 1710s. In point of fact, the domination of the Khatris appears to have been contested in a lively fashion in the transition from Da’ud Khan to Sa‘adatullah Khan. In 1711, for example, the Dutch letters report the temporary absence of Sa‘adatullah Khan in Mysore, where he had gone on a tribute-gathering mission from the Wodeyars (sijn optogt tegen den Maijsoerder); in place in Arcot were his brother’s son, Muhammad Sadiq (to whom the Dutch addressed the dues from their revenue-farm over Sadrasapatnam, where incidentally they had begun fortifications), and a certain Ja‘far Khan, who was apparently a sort of privileged agent.63 Earlier in the same year, it is reported that Dayaram and Sundardas, both of whom had positions in the fiscal hierarchy near Pulicat, had been displaced, and Maharashtrian Brahmins—namely, a certain Narasimha Rao, and Raghuji Pandit— put in their place.64 The letters attribute these local rivalries in turn to the larger rivalry between Da’ud Khan (who still cast a residual shadow over the area) and Sa‘adatullah Khan. The former continued to act, in part through Krishnaji Pandit, but more especially to Shaikh Islam, the faujdār of Pulicat. In 1712, however, Sa‘adatullah Khan found his hand strengthened, as the Dutch letters make clear. In late November that year the Nagapattinam Council takes note of his departure from Tanjavur, where he had been to collect his peshkash, and settle residual matters stemming from the death on 28 September 1711 of Shahaji, and the succession of his brother Sarabhoji. However, rather than return to Arcot, ‘the usual place of his residence’, Sa‘adatullah Khan had decided to go to Velur, in view of some important news: ‘He had received good news from the royal camp (hof leger), that the new emperor [Jahandar Shah] had given him, the duan [dīwān] the title of Nabab, and a mancep [mansab] of a thousand riders, and for the payment of the said riders had assigned him some land in Jagier or rent.’65 Sa‘adatullah Khan had then returned to Arcot, but then 63NAH, OBP, VOC. 1811, Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 28 November 1711, p. 58. 64Ibid., 10 July 1711, pp. 108–10. 65NAH, OBP, VOC. 1842, Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 28 November 1712, pp. 53–4.

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gone on to Velur en route to his annual tribute-gathering mission to Mysore. The VOC officials realized that he had now become thoroughly entrenched and begun to wonder what to offer him in gift. These reflections continued into the next year, by which time the Company was aware of great changes in the Mughal domains, with the accession of Farrukhsiyar to the throne. Taking advantage of these rumours and confusions, the Dutch managed to put off their gift to Sa‘adatullah Khan, despite the fact that the English in Madras and the French in Pondicherry stole a march on them thereby. In August 1713, in a letter, the VOC Council declared themselves content with Sa‘adatullah, and even with their dealings with his albeschik Dakhni Rai—for the most part. They admitted that, so far, the factories in southern Coromandel had been relatively peaceful and tranquil during his time, but also expressed scepticism concerning how long this could last, given the fact that the ‘Moorish government’ was always plagued by a greed for money.66 In the case of Sa‘adatullah Khan, too, they were afraid that the desire for money ate away at his bosom (‘de geld sugt in sijnen boesem zo wel als bij andere regenten’), and that, at some time or the other, this would have its effect. These prejudices were subsequently confirmed in the VOC’s eyes by the troublesome affair of Periya Chinna Tambi Maraikkayar, an important Muslim merchant of Porto Novo, who died in 1712 leaving a sum of money that was disputed between his nephews Khoja Maraikkayar, Chinna Chinna Tambi Maraikkayar, and Ibrahim Maraikkayar, with the last two having complained to Arcot about the role of the first in the division of the estate (boedel). The affair has that baroque quality to it that the VOC’s dealings with Indian rulers often did, with small issues being blown out of all proportion. It turned out that the Company was itself directly concerned, to the extent that the former governor Joannes van Steeland had for some reason taken into his charge a chest containing olais and accounts of the Maraikkayar, which his heirs claimed had a bearing on their dispute. It was further claimed that the Maraikkayar had personally given the sum of 2600 pagodas (or 15,600 florins) to Steeland, a fact that his successors in the Company administration were unwilling to admit. 66Ibid.,

30 August 1713, pp. 36–9.

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A considerable correspondence now developed over the years 1714 and 1715 on the question, with the hawaldār of Porto Novo, Venkatarayalu, playing a role therein, to mediate with the new nā’ib dīwān at Arcot, Muhammad Sadiq. The comings and goings of emissaries, the exchange of letters with the Company wakīl at Arcot Tiruvengada Ayyan, and the receipt of parwānas is noted in the Dutch factory records, both from the ‘Nabab’, and from Dakhni Rai’s relative, Lala Todar Mal (‘den heer Todderamaloe’), who was on his way to collect the peshkash from Tanjavur and Tiruchi in July 1714.67 A rare glimpse is available here into the role of other minor Kayastha or Khatri administrators (Madho Das, Beni Das) in the affair. By early September, the VOC Council had decided it was not worthwhile to put their factories in Porto Novo, Sadras, and Pulicat at risk over this affair, and it was therefore decided to send the sealed chest (which had languished thus far in the Company’s warehouse at Nagapattinam) by a special sloop to Porto Novo. However, the money that Van Steeland had reputedly taken proved a more difficult question to resolve, since one suspects that this had to do with his private affairs rather than Company business. The Company’s partial capitulation was the result of considerable pressure, for, in August 1714, a party of twelve horsemen and some foot-soldiers had arrived in Porto Novo with a peremptory demand, in the name of Sa‘adatullah Khan, that Khoja Maraikkayar be handed over to them, and with letters containing further threats.68 Khoja Maraikkayar is known to have been detained for more than a year thereafter in Arcot, until the matter was settled to the satisfaction of the rival heirs; he eventually returned to Porto Novo from Arcot and Velur only in February 1716, with matters settled more or less to his liking too; his rivals, Chinna Chinna Tambi and Ibrahim Maraikkayar, are reported meanwhile to have settled down in Madras or Mylapore.69 67NAH, OBP, VOC. 1849, Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 6 September 1714, fls 366–8. 68NAH, OBP, VOC. 1855, letters from Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, dated 21 April, 7 August, and 6 September 1714, pp. 7–10, 115–16, and 213–14. 69NAH, OBP, VOC. 1884, letters from Daniel Bernard and Council, and Adriaan de Visser and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, dated 12 February 1716 and 30 April 1716, pp. 84–6, 247–9.

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Finally, in 1715, the Company had to undergo still further humiliation, being obliged at last to hand over the sum of 2600 pagodas that was claimed from Steeland to Sa‘adatullah Khan’s chūbdār (‘staff-bearer’), Muhammad Husain, sent expressly for this purpose. The Nagapattinam Council’s resolution of 5 February 1715, summed up in a later letter to Batavia, sets out the pros and cons in the affair.70 On the one hand the VOC was convinced that the nizāmat had too much at stake in Dutch trade at Porto Novo and Sadras, which brought in considerable revenues (redelijk schat) to Arcot, to actually implement its threats. But, it was argued, even if an interruption of two to three weeks was imposed (by means of an inland blockade) on these factories, two to three months’ worth of trade could be lost in view of the time taken to get back to a state of normalcy, and because of the advances already given out for textile procurement. This loss would hence easily mount to far more than the 15,600 florins that were demanded, indeed so much so that a loss of face could be countenanced to maintain the trade channels. The Dutch were also aware that all was not well in the Khoja Maraikkayar affair from certain other points of view; it turned out that the chest that they had had in their custody (allegedly sealed on Periya Chinna Tambi’s death in 1712) had been tampered with, a fact that could thus cause problems if investigated too closely.

Consolidating a ‘Kingdom’ There was, of course, one remotely possible solution, for the VOC’s officials had now begun to hope that sooner or later Sa‘adatullah Khan would be recalled by the court to the Deccan, or even to Delhi. The departure of Chin Qilich Khan (‘Siglischan’) as sūbadār of the Deccan, and the arrival of Sayyid Husain ‘Ali Khan gave them some more hope, but it was soon dashed; whatever the changes further north, Sa‘adatullah Khan was there to stay.71 The fact that in the 70NAH, OBP, VOC. 1869, Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 23 April 1715, pp. 121–30. 71Ibid., Daniel Bernard and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 10 August 1715, pp. 267–9.

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early part of Farrukhsiyar’s reign he had taken care to send large remittances to Delhi, 14.4 lakhs of rupees and five elephants in one version, 25 lakh rupees and an unspecified number of elephants (chand fīl) in another, as well as gifts of semi-precious stones, could only have helped strengthen his case for staying on.72 In this process of looking to its own rather narrow interests, the Dutch also (rather curiously) forgot to take note of a rather significant set of events that took place in the immediate hinterland of Porto Novo and Sadras in the latter half of 1714, and which marks a significant point of inflection in the consolidation of Sa‘adatullah Khan’s position. It may be appropriate here to mention the question of Senji, which has been discussed elsewhere at considerable length, not only in its literal aspects (the crushing of a recalcitrant qil‘adār), but for its symbolism in terms of redefining the relationship between Sa‘adatullah Khan and the very mixed stratum of zamīndārs, some of them members of relatively ancient lineages (like the Velugoti rajas of Venkatagiri, who were Velamas), others more recent arrivals from the north, most notably Afghans and Rajputs.73 Let us recall too the particular prestige of Senji, which together with Velur was an older political centre of gravity, besides having the reputation of being an unassailable fortress. It was from Senji that the Telugu Nayakas had ruled over Tondaimandalam, the core of the region that formed the Arcot nizāmat; and it was here too that the governors of Bijapur had been located after their conquest of the region in 1649, building a number of imposing monuments there. Again, Senji had formed the major locus of Maratha resistance to Mughal designs in the 1690s, frustrating a Mughal siege force for long years until its capitulation in 1698, the year when it came to be renamed Nusratgadh for its conqueror, Zu’lfiqar Khan Nusrat Jang. The Dutch factors, who had a long if selective memory, still called the hinterland of Porto Novo and Sadras ‘the kingdom of Senji’ (Singijse rijck) in the eighteenth century. 72Kamwar

Khan, Tazkirat-us-Salātīn Chaghtā, pp. 187 and 193 (for different accounts of the remittance); p. 199 (for a description of a piece of pale amber, ambar-i ashhab, worth some 1 lakh rupees). 73Cf. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Friday’s Child: Or How Tej Singh Became Tecinkurajan’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 1999, pp. 69–113.

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Thus, to insist, the importance, both real and symbolic, of Senji, was not a purely partisan invention of Senji Narayanan Pillai, writing his chronicle of the Karnātaka rājākkal in the early nineteenth century. The much-reviled qil‘adār resident there in the early eighteenth century, Sarup Singh, belonged to a minor Bundela lineage from Jetpur, and was like a number of his clansmen associated with Zu’lfiqar Khan in his campaigns. His difficulties with the English Company in Fort St David in the early 1700s have already been noted; in contrast, his relations with the Dutch and the French seem to have been relatively free of problems. However, his death in December 1713 precipitated a crisis of some dimensions, for a number of reasons. In a letter of February 1714, the French governor Du Livier at Fort St Louis in Pondicherry, described the situation in the following terms to his principals in France: I have received news of the death of a Gentile Prince called Soubrousingue [Sarup Singh], governing the Gingy country fifteen leagues from here, that he had handed over his Government to his brother while awaiting the return of his son who was at the Court to solicit the continuation [of the qil‘adārī], and that the Divan or Chief Intendant named Mathmet Sal [Muhammad Sa‘id] had sent 200 horsemen and 500 pions, to extract a considerable sum from the successor of this governor, and the restitution of several villages, that he claims that the late Prince had usurped from the estates of the Mogol, and which he had given to this Company and that of England, as also to the Paliagares [pālaiyakkārars] or Chiefs of the Forests. It is said that he has so far extracted the sum of 400,000 Rupees which make up 600,000 livres in French money, and we are assured that he is about to send 100 horsemen and 200 men on foot to seize not only the said villages, but also those which we were given in gift by Daoud Khan, former viceroy of this province, a friend of our nation, and who is at present in Guzerat ...74

In short, while the Dutch in Porto Novo were preoccupied with Periya Chinna Tambi Maraikkayar’s affairs, trouble was brewing in the not-so-distant hinterland. These troubles find echoes in the 74AN,

Archives du Ministère des Colonies, Correspondance Générale, C²69 (1710–1716), letter from M. Du Livier, 14 février 1714, fos 76v-77r.

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English records of Fort St David, and also merited a long series of dispatches from Pondicherry that have been analysed by us elsewhere. Rather than rehearse the perspective of the European records, it may be interesting to approach the problem here from another viewpoint, that of Jaswant Rai’s Persian chronicle, which equally devotes considerable attention to the ‘conquest’ of Senji after the Bundela rebellion there. To this chronicler, the Senji campaign was a mark of Divine Grace, for it showed that Sa‘adatullah Khan was no ordinary mortal, but a man cut out for great things. Thus, his chapter on the revolt of the Bundelas and their alliance with the Marathas (to be found in the second daftar of his chronicle) begins by noting the following. When God, the Eternal and Omnipotent, bestows on anybody age and status from the beginning of [his] existence, and makes him as strong as the foundations of the sky, if someone else, out of short-sightedness, jealousy and malice tries to pull him down, and spares no effort in his vile designs, his efforts will soon come to naught, and in a few days the edifice of his dreams will be washed away, and be uprooted from its foundation. This maxim is best illustrated in the case of Rup Singh, otherwise known as Tej Singh, son of Sarup Singh, son of Mitr Sen, son of Chandrabhan, son of Nar Singh Dev Bundela, who in the peaceful days of Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, at the instance of Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir had killed that savant, that unparalleled mole on the face of the word and poetry, the fragrance of amber on the brow of meanings new and old, the sugar-crunching parrot of the Garden of Revelation (ilhām), the singing nightingale of the garden of wisdom (ifhām)—may God bless him—the Shaikh Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, while he was on his return from the spacious country of the Deccan at a place near Gwalior, which is like the flower-garden of everlasting spring, and had earned for himself, on that account, the contempt and condemnation of both the worlds.75

Jaswant Rai thus makes sure that the reader realizes what sort of antecedents these Bundelas had, and, in case the point should have escaped, reiterates: ‘And since it is futile to expect good fruit from a 75Jaswant

Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fl. 101a. Bokhari, ‘Carnatic Under the Nawabs’, p. 191, translation revised and corrected.

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bad tree, or try to cultivate in a barren field, his grandson too trod the path of his forebear, as the [Qur’anic] saying has it: Everything ultimately returns to its source.’ The outline of past events is then sketched out. Sarup Singh had ‘ruled well for seventeen years’ (since the fall of Senji to the Mughals in 1698), and had brought in a large number of Bundelas to aid him; besides Sa‘adatullah Khan considered him to be a close associate. However, on his death his son Tej Singh decided to rebel, by refusing to hand over the prebend (tuyūl) to the official (mutasaddī-yi pā’ibāqī) who had been sent to recover it to the royal treasury. Instead, he is reported to have set about repairing the fortress and getting munitions ready; he is equally reported to have had relations with Narada and Mahada, the sons of the Maratha warlord Baharji Ghorpade, whose raids in the region are mentioned by the Dutch as early as 1707.76 Besides offering to hand over Senji to the Marathas, he is said to have mounted a joint attack with them on the fortress of Satgadh, lying in the interior, in the region controlled by Tahir Muhammad Khan, faujdār of Sira. The latter complained to Sa‘adatullah Khan, who thus left from Velur on his campaign; after a halt at Gudiyattam, he and Tahir Khan defeated their opponents, and went on to Dodballapur. Thereafter, he returned to Velur, deputing Lala Dakhni Rai to take care of the affairs of Senji. The chronicle now turns its attention to Dakhni Rai’s proceedings. He is reported to have first gone to Arni, brought together some forces there, and also sent out spies to enquire on Tej Singh’s activities. Gathering that the latter was in no mood for peace, he suggested Sa‘adatullah Khan might want to join him from Velur. On the 9 Ramazan 1125 ah, despite the fact that he was fasting, Sa‘adatullah Khan set out for the rendezvous at Arni, accompanied by the chronicler Jaswant Rai. At this stage Sarup Singh’s brother, Sultan Singh, who was rather more prudent than his nephew, sent envoys pleading for peace. But Tej Singh himself was unmoved, forcing the Arcot forces to move, first to Chettapattu, and then to Devanur. Still, Sa‘adatullah Khan, it is noted, chose peace over war, sending out Lala 76NAH, OBP, VOC. 1745, Joannes van Steeland and Council to Batavia, 31 March 1707, pp. 58–9: ‘Op de tijdinge dat de marattys sterck 25000 ruiters onder hare hoofden Damasie en Baijrosie Gorpadda weder naar dese Carnaticase landen quamen afsacken, is den heer Julfacarchan in aantogt geweest ...’

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Todar Mal, and three others to parley with Tej Singh, while at the same time awaiting the ‘Id, an excellent occasion as it turns out for Jaswant Rai to demonstrate his poetic talents. Rather than a long-drawn-out siege, the affair finished rather quickly. It was early October 1714, the returning north-east monsoon was on the Tamil country, and the Arcot army made its way with some difficulty on that account. Sa‘adatullah Khan had, besides his generals such as Daulat Khan Khizrzai and Imam-ud-Din Khan, the aid of some Maratha auxiliaries under Subhanji, and the Velugoti forces commanded by Bangaru Yachama Nayaka. Further, Jaswant Singh Shekhawat and the versatile Lala Dakhni Rai were also present to lead a part of the expeditionary force. Crossing difficult and marshy ground, the Arcot forces were camped on the banks of the Varahanadi river, when they were suddenly attacked, first by an advance force under a certain Bapu Rai, and then by Tej Singh himself, with a force of a mere 170 horsemen. His lightning attack on Sa‘adatullah Khan’s vanguard very nearly carried the day, and Jaswant Rai himself admits that ‘the fate of the battle on that day hung in balance.’ He goes on to state, giving this opponent his due, after all that Tej Singh left no stone unturned of prowess, courage, and dexterity in the art of war. But since Fate had decreed otherwise, and the Grace of God was with the nawwab, the helper of the poor and the oppressed, Tej Singh fell from his horse wounded and dying, and as many as 170 heroes also fell around him.77 These bodies were eventually sent back to Senji fort, where the wives of the Rajputs became satīs, in a collective conflagration witnessed by Jaswant Rai. Despite some residual resistance on the part of the other Bundelas, the fortress was occupied by the end of 1714, and a new qil‘adār appointed. However, Sa‘adatullah Khan did not remain long there. Having ordered the construction of a mosque at the foot of the Rajagiri fort, and improvements to the Chettikulam tank, he is reported to have departed on 12 Zi-Hijja 1125 ah (early 1715) for Tiruvannamalai. His brother-in-law Muhammad Shafi‘ was left there as administrator. Senji would never serve Sa‘adatullah Khan though as his political capital, for the choice of Arcot had already 77Bokhari,

‘Carnatic Under the Nawabs’, p. 198.

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been made. On the other hand a particular effort would be made to affirm the symbolic nature of the ‘re-conquest’ in 1714. Besides a victory inscription on the east (Pondicherry) gate, declaring that ‘Islam has expelled Infidelity’ (kard Islām kufr rā bīrūn), a mosque was built (as noted above), as also an ‘Idgah and a fountain. All of these carry inscriptions of Sa‘adatullah Khan within three years of his quelling the Bundela rebellion.78 Senji also came to serve another purpose, as a place of incarceration. Thus, in late 1717 the Dutch Council at Nagapattinam reports a rather curious incident, also noted in some of the Persian chronicles. A man allegedly called ‘Aqibat Mahmud, but claiming to be the Mughal prince Muhammad Akbar (referred to by the Dutch as ‘the legitimate Mogol prince Sulthan Mahometh’), had decided in 1713–14 to make a bid for the Mughal throne, and thereupon set out for the Deccan (perhaps from Bengal).79 First wrecked and brought ashore at Srikakulam, he did not find the welcome there to his taste and so decided to head further south. However, after an armed conflict, Sa‘adatullah Khan decided to seize and hold him prisoner in Senji rather than allow his foolhardiness to persist. This he managed despite the fact that ‘Aqibat Mahmud was supported in his endeavours by a number of local pālaiyakkārars. One of his representatives, a Telugu Brahmin, managed to escape and wrote letters from Devanampattinam to the Dutch, asking their help to set his master free, and offering them entire control of the ports of Masulipatnam, Karedu, Ramayyapatnam, Pulicat, Sadrasapatnam, and Porto Novo in exchange.80 The Company prudently declined, but it is noteworthy that Sa‘adatullah Khan too would give no room for such adventurism. His role was to watch developments at the 78Muhammad Yusuf Kokan, Arabic and Persian in Carnatic, 1710–1960 (Madras: 1974), pp. 16–17, 36; also Ziyaud-Din Desai, A Topographical List of Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of South India (New Delhi: 1989), nos 453 and 454. 79Kamwar Khan, Tazkirat-us-Salātīn Chaghtā, p. 196, giving details obtained az waqā’i‘-i Dakan; for further details, see Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 95a–95b. 80NAH, OBP, VOC. 1896, Adriaan de Visser and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 30 November 1717, pp. 17–18. The fact that the so-called Mughal Prince Muhammad Akbar was confined at Senji is confirmed by a Marathi document, BL, OIOC, Mackenzie Collection, General, vol. IX, 13 (e), pp. 140–61.

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Mughal centre and play his cards with prudence to consolidate his regional position; adventurism on a grand pan-Indian scale was simply not his style. Nevertheless, with the capture of Senji and the defeat of a powerful combination of zamīndārī as well as Maratha interests, there is a perceptible change in Sa‘adatullah Khan’s level of confidence and the nature and extent of his projects. To be sure, he remained in the latter half of the 1710s (and even later) vulnerable to Maratha attacks, buying off threats from the Ghorpades and others on more than one occasion. However, it is clear that a concerted attempt was now made to go beyond the idea of a mere conquest-state. True, the idea of frontier state-building remains: Sa‘adatullah Khan continues his own (or his representatives’) annual peshkash-gathering expeditions to Tiruchi and Tanjavur on the one hand, and, albeit less regularly, to Mysore on the other. But a new wave of market-building, and a renewed and vigorous presence in the ports of the sea coast, is visible, with the idea of placing Arcot at the centre of not merely a fiscal but a commercial network. However, the reader should not be left with the impression that consolidating the ‘kingdom’ of Arcot was a matter of trade alone. Sa‘adatullah Khan, on replacing Shafi‘ Khan as dīwān of both the Karnataks, had made a particular effort at fiscal management, if one is to believe Jaswant Rai. He had had fiscal details prepared for each village, with the aid of deshmukhs, deshpāndes, and kulkarnis. Equally, the chaukīs were systematically strengthened, while markets, bazaars, and such centres were put under the overall charge of a nā’ib dīwān with a mutasaddī in charge of each one. A dastūr (or regulation) was defined for the traders (bepārīs), and at the same time details of all the prebends of all mansabdārs in the region were also made ready. The man who was initially placed in charge of many of these operations was a certain ‘Alam Chand Khatri from the Punjab.81 But Sa‘adatullah Khan also made every effort to make Arcot appear to be a courtly centre, as well as taking upon himself the image of a 81Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 31a–31b. For a more general reflection on the role of Punjabi Khatris in early-eighteenth-century Mughal politics, see Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748 (Delhi: 1986), pp. 169–74, 183–4, 203, passim.

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ruler. The chronicle that he commissioned is unsparing in its details, telling us about his daily schedule as if he were no less than a minor monarch. This was already during Aurangzeb’s lifetime, and was clearly still another of the sources of conflict between Sa‘adatullah Khan and Da’ud Khan Panni. From about 1710 Sa‘adatullah Khan and those allied with him had spared no effort to transform and improve Arcot even further. Tanks had been dug and trees planted; new and exotic fruits and vegetables had been brought in, and planted in places such as the special gardens called Humayun Bagh and Nau Jahan Bagh. In Jaswant Rai’s vision the city had become full of gardens, while a number of new hawelīs too had been made inside the fort. Indeed, it is noted that Da’ud Khan’s old hawelī had now proven inadequate, so that Muhammad Sharif, the mīr-i ’imarat, was asked to supervise a new hawelī on the edge of a tank, outside the fort. While not on campaign, here is how the chronicler describes, in an idealized form, the life led by Sa‘adatullah Khan in this prosperous new centre. Rising in the morning, he is said to begin the day by reading the Qur’an and theology. Then he went on to the dīwānī to take care of fiscal affairs, and to conduct discussions with the ‘ulamā’. At midday, after prayers, he is portrayed first meditating alone, and then meeting persons concerned with the administration. Interestingly, these included faqīrs and dervishes, poor widows and other needy persons, in a series of activities that culminated with the late afternoon prayer. Now, at last, there was a bit of physical exercise in the polo (chaugān) field, and Sa‘adatullah Khan and his friends also engage in martial activities. As the lamps came on, he listened to poetry, stories, and history with men such as the celebrated Shaikh Muhammad Amin ibn Bani Isra‘il of Meerut.82 After the last prayer he usually returned home, but at times there was music by men such as La‘l Khan Dholakiya Zu’lfiqarkhani and his sons; in the court was also resident a certain Jan Sen, who claimed to be descended from 82Muhammad

Amin was not merely a poet (cf. Kokan, Arabic and Persian), but a well-known munshī; cf. BL, OIOC, I.O. 2894 (Ethé 2122), for the Majma‘ ul-inshā’, collected by him in 1733–4, and which includes some letters from the Karnatak Payanghat. Also see GOML, Madras, Persian Mss. nos 955 and 1078, for two copies of the Gulshan-i Sa‘ādat, comprising letters from Sa‘adatullah Khan to his correspondents.

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no less a personage than Miyan Tansen, as well as another musician, Hasan Khan Kalawant Mukhliskhani, from Aurangabad. At times the works of great poets were heard, and these included Mirza ‘Abdul Qadir Bedil, Nasir ‘Ali Sarhindi, and some Deccani poets such as Nusrati. A particular annual feature was the celebration of Muharram in Arcot. Marsīyas were read in the Deccani tongue, and in this month the Nawwab asserted his identity as a Shi‘a.83 As it happens, one of Sa‘adatullah Khan’s pet projects after the fall of Senji was the idea of building a fortified port-town, in imitation of, and as a riposte to, the European efforts in that direction (and perhaps not unlike Da’ud Khan’s earlier plans for Mylapore). As it turns out, the European menace finds repeated mention in Jaswant Rai’s chronicle. Already, while discussing the fall of Velur into Mughal hands in 1702, he notes that the expeditions against the fort were in part due to the fact that the emperor’s orders concerning the coming and going of ships (jahāzāt) were not properly executed. The man who held charge of Velur on behalf of Rajaram, a certain Sankarji Malharji (mentioned briefly above), was suspected of relations with the Europeans in the ports of the Karnatak (kulāh-poshān-i banādir-i daryā kanār-i Karnātak dayār), who for their part were notorious for creating all sorts of problems with their invidious dealings.84 A decade later, just before the capture of Senji, mention is similarly made of the link between hinterland politics and the Europeans (notably the English) perched on the coast in their enclaves. In particular, there are references to Sa‘adatullah Khan’s military expeditions against the powerful pālaiyakkārar Chellappa Nayaka (called ‘Chīl Zalīl’, or ‘Chil, the sinner’ in the chronicle), who from his base near Tiruvannamalai had built links with the ‘hat-wearers’ (kulāh-poshān), creating considerable trouble in the towns and villages around Senji, by attacking old hereditary zamīndārs as well as traders and travellers from Tiruchi, Tanjavur, and Rameswaram.85 Da’ud Khan had proved 83Jaswant

Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 34b-37a. fls 27b-28a. 85Cf. RFSG, Letters to Fort St. George 1711, p. 16, where he appears as ‘Chela Nargue a great Pulligar near Chingee [who] has desir’d our protection for some of his people at Trepopolore.’ It is further noted that he is ‘a profest Enemy to Suroop Sing.’ Also see ibid., pp. 51, 68, and 122, for details of his opportunistic alliance with the English. 84Ibid.,

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incapable of controlling the depredations of this man, and finally it had as usual fallen to Lala Dakhni Rai and his relatives to take care of the matter. All this provides us with useful background material, showing that maritime affairs were a lasting concern of Sa‘adatullah Khan, who came moreover from stock that had always laid stress on both tijārat (trade) and zarā‘at (agriculture).86 His choice in terms of a port from which to make a statement fell on Kovalam (Covelong), a few miles to the north of Sadrasapatnam, where the VOC had one of its important factories. In 1717 the process of building Sa‘adat Pattan (or Bandar) began, a port to which the Arcot régime made every effort to attract both local and distant merchants, much to the unhappiness of both the English and Dutch. The Sa‘īd Nāma has a fairly elaborate discussion, both of the circumstances leading to the foundation, and the act of foundation itself. Jaswant Rai approaches the issue indirectly, by noting the existence of conflicts between the faujdār Dayaram and the English in Madras, which he attributes to the fact that the firangīs of the town (which he terms Chinnapattan) had begun to construct buildings between their place of residence, and Mylapore. The unruly elements (aubāshān) of the town of Madras had encouraged the English in this design, and once the conflict became open, the Europeans had managed to defeat Dayaram, and in the process his son Basant Rai had been killed. The Persian chronicler goes on to note that Dayaram had been supported throughout in this struggle by Sayyid ‘Usman (or Qadir ‘Ali Khan), who was resident at Mylapore. As for Sa‘adatullah Khan himself, one is left with the impression that he had always had reservations concerning Dayaram’s actions in this regard, as well as those of Qadir ‘Ali Khan.87 Nevertheless, Jaswant Rai would have us believe that as a consequence of conflicts such as that described above, Sa‘adatullah Khan was rather concerned with finding the means for dealing with the Europeans. Once certain pressing affairs in the Balaghat had been settled, the chronicle’s attention turns first to the process of building peths (market-towns) in the interior, an activity that was 86BL,

OIOC, I.O. 3177, Waqā’i‘-i Sa‘ādat, fl. 2b. Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fl. 138b.

87Jaswant

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apparently supported in the period by a powerful (and, thus far, rather obscure) magnate-figure, a certain Baisaji Bhakariya.88 Lala Dakhni Rai too is known to have taken a lively interest in the matter through the construction of the important new interior market-town of Sa‘adat Nagar (founded on 10 Zi-qa‘da 1126 ah, and completed the following year), at three kos distance from Arcot. In it, there were not merely shops for Hindus and Muslims, and rest-houses for travellers, but reservoirs, bunds, and gardens.89 All of this serves as a preamble for the main action that concerns us, namely the actual decision to build up Sa‘adat Pattan or Sa‘adat Bandar which, Jaswant Rai suggests, was taken in 1130 ah. It was not that there was a particular shortage of ports in Payanghat, he notes, but the problem with the European ‘hat-wearers’ of Chinnapattan and elsewhere was great in a number of them. Given that their fortress was protected by the sea, they had become arrogant over time; even large traders resident in Bandar Mylapore had problems with them. Hence, Sa‘adatullah Khan in the goodness of his heart had thought that building a port with his own name (the name of a man who had, in his time, broken the kulāh-poshān) near Mylapore, with a goodly fort, and lovely buildings, with Hindu and Muslim quarters, would help settle the matter. In fact, this question had, in Jaswant Rai’s view, been dear to his master’s heart for a long time, but it was only now that he had brought it before Dakhni Rai. The ever-active Dakhni Rai hence chose a site and invited him there to inspect it; the Nawwab made his visit duly, praised God at the sea’s shore, and gave Jaswant Rai an occasion to compose further poetry.90 The Christian churches in the vicinity were inspected, specific mention being made of the Armenian churches, which were rather different from those of the Europeans. The chronicler’s curiosity extends to the nearby 88Baisaji Bhakariya has already found mention in the chronicle (fls 58a-59a) as a man who had helped set up a number of peths in both the Balaghat and the Payanghat; he was hence awarded the qānūngū’ī of the whole Deccan. 89Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fl. 146a, passim. Similarly, for the foundation of the market town of Fateh Nagar, near Senji, by Basant Rai (probably the brother of Jaswant Rai) in 1128 ah, see fl. 128b. 90For a collection of his poems, see BL, OIOC, I.O. 1454 (Ethé 1695), Dīwān-i Munshī (collected around 1712 ad.). Other copies are to be found in the GOML, Madras, Persian Mss. D. nos 93 and 794, Kulliyāt-i Munshī.

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Europeans as well: he notes having seen beautiful European women and observed their evening parties.91 The Nawwab’s party thus fell to exchanging and reciting poetry, profiting from the presence of various other notables on the occasion; the main subject around which their poetic imaginations revolved was that, inevitably, of the topos of firang, the land of the Franks. Soon after this visit, the chronicler notes, work began in earnest; gardens were constructed, buildings put up, and eminent traders brought in to settle there. As for Sa‘adatullah Khan, having left his subordinates in charge of the affair, he apparently returned to Arcot via Kanchi, reflecting all the while on the need to build way-stations and houses to facilitate trade and merchant activity. Besides Dakhni Rai, it is noted that a certain Qadir Husain Khan Yazna played a major role in the affair, which took on a greater urgency after the formal inauguration of Sa‘adat Pattan, at a suitably auspicious time on Thursday, 12 Rajab 1131 ah. On this day, the fort and the palace had their foundations laid, and the new name was given officially to the town; it is noted that merchants, whether Indians, Southeast Asians, Armenians or European, were encouraged to settle there and bring big ships to trade.92 Once the construction had been completed, the Nawwab himself visited the spot in order to reassure the traders on Saturday, 29 Shawwal 1131. There, however, he learnt of rebellions among the local pālaiyakkārars and had to leave post-haste to attend to them, after having remained a mere two days in Sa‘adat Pattan; on his departure, it is noted that he was accompanied by the commander of the Tiruchi forces, Ramanna. The delights of the high-flown literary description of Jaswant Rai aside, it is clear that this was not a project that eventually enjoyed great success. Of the Europeans, the only ones who participated in it were the Ostenders, who had arrived off the Coromandel coast in May 91Compare the accounts in John O’Kane, trans., The Ship of Sulaiman (London: 1972), and Sayyid Muhammad ‘Ali al-Husaini, Tārīkh-i rāhat-afzā’, ed. S. Khurshid ‘Ali (Hyderabad: 1947), cited in Simon Digby, ‘Indo-Persian Narratives of Travel of the Close of the 18th and Beginning of the 19th Century’, unpublished paper from a conference on Traditions, Transmission or Invention? The Resources of History, EFEO-IFP, Pondicherry, 1997. 92Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 148a-150b; also see Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce, pp. 22–3, 173.

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1719 in their ship Keyser Carolus VI. The Dutch were little enthused by the presence of this new set of European traders, who in their view were likely to bid up the prices of procurement. The comportment of the commander of the Ostenders, the St Malo-based Frenchman Godefroy de la Merveille, failed to work marvels on them, and they were distressed by the very large sum of Rs 80,000 the Ostenders reportedly paid Sa‘adatullah Khan to be allowed to settle in Kovalam (Sa‘adat Pattan) and Porto Novo.93 Matters were worsened from the VOC viewpoint by the fact that it was a famine year in the area north of the Kollidam as far as Pulicat, so that despite imports of rice from the Kaveri delta it was proving difficult to have weavers meet orders. More rivalry was the last thing the Dutch Company, never noted for its competitive spirit at the best of times, wanted. The very rapid failure of Sa‘adat Pattan can be explained by a series of factors. By the late 1710s the situation was even less propitious for a new port, operating outside European networks in southern Coromandel, than a decade earlier. On the one hand there was Madras, on the other Pondicherry and Nagapattinam, which straddled the space in which other ports such as Kovalam tried to breathe. The surviving ports from which Indian shipowners operated were enclaves of communities such as the Maraikkayars, namely Porto Novo and Naguru, and their relative weight in the external trade remains a matter of debate. The remaining years of Sa‘adatullah Khan’s career that are recounted in the Sa‘īd Nāma (which finishes abruptly in 1723) continue to harbour instances of conflicts with Europeans, and especially the English at Madras (Chinnapattan). Jaswant Rai reports how in 1723 the Nawwab, who at that time was visiting Sa‘adat Pattan, had decided to pay an impromptu visit to Mylapore, staying en route at a place that the chronicler terms Firangi Kot. Reaching Mylapore in the morning, Sa‘adatullah Khan sojourned in the house and garden of Aqa Muqim, 93NAH,

OBP, VOC. 1927, Adriaan de Visser and Council at Nagapattinam to Batavia, 18 August 1719, pp. 37–40. The Ostenders’ local broker in this affair was a certain Mara Chetti, well known to the VOC. For brief discussions, also see Manning, Fortunes à faire, pp. 111–12, and Jan Parmentier, De holle compagnie: Smokkel en legale handel onder Zuidnederlandse vlag in Bengalen, ca. 1720–44 (Hilversum: 1992), pp. 9–14.

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mutasaddī of the port (this man also bore the title of Ahsan Khan). Traders from the ports used the occasion to come and visit the Nawwab and offer presents; a stern message was equally sent out to the Madras governor, to pay up arrears of tribute that were due to Arcot. Mention is also made of Rama Chetty and Lachma Rao Sahu (two resident merchants of Madras) who possessed great buildings in many of the ports of the coast and were apparently leading traders in the Karnatak. However, since they had become exceedingly arrogant as a result of English protection, the Nawwab was obliged to send them a message to bring them down to earth too, from the ‘wine of arrogance’ they had drunk.94 While the English and those under their protection were viewed with particular discontent, troubles with the Dutch too came to the surface in this period. In April 1722 a letter from Sa‘adatullah Khan to the Dutch governor in Nagapattinam, Gerrit Westrenen, noted for example that the former had sent his chūbdār, a certain Shitab Khan, and several other subordinates to Jaffna and Colombo for the purchase of elephants and other goods; these men had been ill treated by the Dutch there, and even imprisoned. The Nawab thus voiced his unhappiness in no uncertain terms, for this was still another instance of European recalcitrance.95

From Sa‘adat Pattan to Sidi Jauhar Bandar As Jaswant Rai’s chronicle draws to a close in the years 1134 ah/1723, the reader learns of the return of Sa‘adatullah Khan from his visit to the coast and to gather peshkash, and his entry into Arcot on Friday 21 Sha‘ban. But appropriately the last references in the text are to the Nawwab’s alter ego, Lala Dakhni Rai (who has now been exalted in status to Rai Dakhni Ram), and who after a visit to Vishnu Kanchi and Siva Kanchi returnd to the capital a day after his master. One learns moreover that his wife had died on Friday, 11 Rajab 1134 ah; and that he was being persuaded by his friends to marry the daughter 94Jaswant

Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, fls 181a-182a. OBP, VOC. 1981, Book II, ‘Translaet Persiaanse missive geschreven door den Nabab Sadoulachan ... ontfangen den 8e April Anno 1722’, p. 240. 95NAH,

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of Madari Lal from Hyderabad, an event that eventually occurred on 5 Ramazan 1134 ah. Interestingly, the remarriage of Dakhni Rai also finds mention in the Dutch records, in the context of the rapidly declining fortunes of Sa‘adat Pattan (or ‘Kouwelang’, as the Dutch factors continued to call it). The Dutch factors at Sadrasapatnam, Van Outvelt and Turnhout, reported the imminent visit of ‘de heer Nabab’ and ‘zijn duan Deckenaraijen’ to the ‘town and fortress of Kowalam’ in late March 1723, noting besides that they were very likely to pay a visit to the Dutch factory on their return. As usual, wrangles began on the giving of gifts, which the messengers from Arcot hinted strongly should be given; the Dutch factors for their part could offer only some scarlet, rosewater, and sandalwood. Then, on 5th April, news arrived that the Nawwab had left Lalapettai (perhaps a market-town named for Lala Dakhni Rai) for Kaveripak, and that Dakhni Rai (who had been held up for a day or two ‘due to a heathen festival’) would soon join him. The Dutch factors took the occasion to ruminate on the fate of Sa‘adat Pattan. From Kowelang, the last reports state that the place and the little fort (kasteeltje) put up there, are in great dilapidation, and the bulwarks have all caved in; some 80 houses have been abandoned by their owners, 70 still stand covered with their tiles, and 115 with straw; of 80 boutiques only 30 are still used, and all the buildings are in very bad shape, but now with the rumoured arrival of the Nabab there, the inhabitants are being forced by the son of the regent with violence to repair their houses. The Ostenders are still there, three persons strong besides a priest (paap); their chief now once again obtains 100 ropias per month for his expenses from the above-mentioned regent [or] his son. He knows how to keep the natives continually fed with the hope of the imminent arrival of their ships. So, he says he has received letters from there, and spreads it about that in such and such a place a certain number of ships are ready, and in this way manages to carry on. How long this can last, one cannot say with certainty ...96 96NAH, OBP, VOC. 1997, letters from Van Outvelt and Turnhout at Sadrasapatnam to Westrenen at Nagapattinam, dated 21 March and 9 April 1723, pp. 281–9 (citation from pp. 287–8).

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The Dutch governor at Nagapattinam, Westrenen, in a slightly later missive (of September the same year), notes not only the visit in question but the particular need to give a substantial present (een sinal geschenkje) to Dakhni Rai ‘to felicitate him for his marriage.’ Thus, despite this obstinate show of interest, by 1723 the Sa‘adat Pattan project was no longer viable, even if it has been noted that ‘Pathan’ merchants from the coast continued to use the port to a limited extent as late as the 1730s.97 True, Kovalam continued to play an administrative role into the end of the 1720s, and one may note the role played by the faujdār resident there, a certain Bada Sahib, in the years around 1728.98 Meanwhile, it is worth noting that Sa‘adatullah Khan’s interests obliged him to turn elsewhere. The year 1724 witnessed a substantial crisis in Deccan politics, with the defeat of the sūbadār Mubariz Khan by Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, who managed as a consequence to impose himself on Arcot as a superior authority. Since historians are aware that Arcot chose to support Mubariz Khan in this struggle (despatching Diler Khan, Ghalib Khan and ‘Abdul Nabi Khan Miyana to fight at Shakar Kheda), Sa‘adatullah Khan obviously found himself awkwardly placed in the affair.99 The next year, troubles in the Mysore area reared their head, and the Nawab was obliged himself to lead an expedition there against the Wodeyars.100 Finally, the second half of the 1720s sees a rearrangement in Arcot politics of which one can only dimly glimpse the outlines. The fortunes of the Khatri magnates who had so clearly dominated the previous fifteen years are somewhat on the wane now (with the possible exceptions of first, Khub Chand, and second, ‘Alam Chand Khatri), and new figures may be found jockeying for power. Amongst 97Arasaratnam,

Merchants, Companies and Commerce, p. 173. OBP, VOC. 2102, pp. 69–70, passim, for the correspondence between the faujdār at Kovalam, the faujdār at Ponneri Mirza Baha-ud-Din, the Dutch chief at Pulicat, and the dīwān at Arcot, Mulla Shaikh Hasan, especially on the subject of minting rights. 99BL, OIOC, I.O. 3177, Waqā’i‘-i Sa‘ādat, fl. 11b. 100For details see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Warfare and State Finance in Wodeyar Mysore, 1724–5: A Missionary Perspective’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 26, no. 2, 1989, pp. 203–33. 98NAH,

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these was Ghulam Imam Husain Khan (or ‘Imam Sahib’), who would play a major role in the Arcot area with a direct interest in trade at the French port of Pondicherry through the 1730s, eventually leaving to be named faujdār of Masulipatnam under Nizam-ulMulk in about 1740.101 In 1728 it was Ghulam Imam Husain Khan who was named qil‘adār of a new fortress to be built at the coast in Alambaram, just south of Sadrasapatnam. The project is redolent of the earlier attempt at Sa‘adat Pattan, save that on this occasion the Nawwab did not sink his own prestige into it directly. Rather he left matters on the one hand to Qadir Husain Khan, and on the other to a notable whose name suggests his Abyssinian origins, namely Sidi Jauhar Khan. The latter is reported by the Dutch in September 1728, who were as before distressed by the affair, to have decided to build a ‘stronghold or fortress’ there, on a flat space created by the dunes, ‘made up with five bulwarks, with its front extending to the north.’ The front of this fortress would be very close to the area where the Dutch Company was asked to build a factory, indeed it would lie right by the place where the Nawwab’s flag would fly. Furthermore, it is noted that a number of leading merchants from Arcot had been asked to participate in building up the port, to be called Sidi Jauhar Bandar. They included Shankar Parikh, Venkatapati Chetti, Sunku Narayanappa Chetti, Sunnampettai Rama Chetti, as also men such as the leading sarrāf Sangana, as well as a certain ‘Samarauw’, described as Sidi Jauhar Khan’s factotum (albeschik). As many as forty-two new houses were under construction, half for various unnamed Arcot merchants, others for men like ‘Samarauw’ and his brother Baba Rao, the hawaldār Dhondhu Pandit, as well as the leading merchants mentioned above.102 It is known that although Sa‘adatullah Khan asked the French Company, among others, to participate in making the new port a success, Sidi Jauhar Bandar too had a rather limited success. Arasaratnam notes that Sidi Jauhar Khan went very far in his effort to establish the port, ‘abolished all customs on imports and exports 101For a brief summing up of his career, see Manning, Fortunes à faire, pp. 208–9. 102NAH, OBP, VOC. 2102, letter from Sadrasapatnam factors to Nagapattinam, 18 September 1728, fls 163–93, especially fls 174–7.

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for five years, and all inland import duties from there to Arcot.’103 Further north along the coast, members of Sa‘adatullah Khan’s own family, such as Baqir ‘Ali Khan, continued to evince a considerable interest in these very years in providing a countervailing force to that of the Europeans so far as maritime trade was concerned.104 These efforts continued beyond the death of the old warrior Sa‘adatullah Khan himself on 8 October 1732, and in 1734 (when the departing Dutch governor Adriaan Pla left a memoir for his successor) the men to reckon with were still Sidi Jauhar Khan and his trusted subordinate (‘desselfs vertrouwde’) Imam Sahib.105 Indeed, the former had just received confirmation from the Mughal court (or so the Dutch stated) of his extensive control of the coastal region stretching from Pulicat to Alambaram. Less than a decade later, by the early 1740s, however, the political climate in the region would be completely transformed. Men like Ghulam Imam Husain Khan would now be obliged to find a niche for themselves further north, in the territories directly controlled by Nizam-ul-Mulk, and even this would not last into the 1750s. A new political dispensation would be put into place in Arcot (with the ascension of the Walajah dynasty under English patronage), and control over the activities of the kulāh-poshān would now be a distant thought for participants in the political system.

Conclusion Between the 1960s and the early 1980s, a rather clear division of labour existed in the field of ‘medieval Indian history’ between maritime historians and land-lubbers.106 The former worked largely 103Arasaratnam,

Merchants, Companies and Commerce, pp. 172–3.

104NAH, OBP, VOC. 2243, translations of diverse Persian letters by Sa‘adatullah

Khan, Imam Sahib, Bada Sahib, and Sa‘id Mustafa, dated 1731, pp. 2023–51. 105NAH, Hoge Regering van Batavia, no. 340, Memorie left by Governor Adriaan Pla for successor Elias Guillot, Nagapattinam, 28 February 1734, fls 30–1. 106Cf. the eloquent statement in Ashin Das Gupta, ‘The Maritime Merchant of Medieval India, c.1500–1800’, Presidential Address to the Indian History Congress, Medieval Section, 35th Session, Jadavpur (1974), reproduced in Ashin Das Gupta, The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800: Collected Essays of Ashin Das Gupta (Delhi: 2001).

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with European records, the latter with indigenous ones (including those in Persian). The former concerned himself or herself with the fate of port-cities, and of the manufacturing centres around them, the latter with agrarian production, peasants, prebend-holders, and inland cities. True, the documents of Foster’s and Fawcett’s The English Factories in India were there for all to pillage at will, but for the rest the worlds and sources of the twain did not meet. This arrangement, which seems for a quarter century to have appeared largely satisfactory to all concerned, was challenged in the course of the 1980s by a number of authors. For this challenge to fructify, some conceptual changes were necessary, and in the first place the assumption that the world of inland politics existed as a separate and autarchic domain, which could be invoked as a deus ex machina to ‘explain’ the rise and fall of trading systems, was called into question. Historians of South Asia are, as it happens, still largely at the questioning stage, but gradually accumulating studies have helped break down the disciplinary Berlin Wall erected in the 1960s. It is now possible to pose even the history of inland regions in relation to the problem of trade routes and the control over them, rather than simply assume that the agrarian overlords who controlled such regions regarded trade with disdain for reasons of caste ideology, steppe mentality, or whatever else.107 Here, the attempt has been to further this methodological entente by deliberately juxtaposing the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perspectives. The reader of the above pages will have been struck by possible parallels with the rather better-known case of the Bengal nizāmat (evoked at the outset), where too a process of ‘regional centralization’ with implications for the control of external trade was begun by Murshid Quli Khan.108 Some similar dramatis personae can be found in the 107Cf. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Trade, State Policy and Regional Change: Aspects of Mughal–Uzbek Commercial Relations’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 37, no. 3, 1994, pp. 202–27, for a case-study; also Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Of Imārat and Tijārat: Asian Merchants and State Power in the Western Indian Ocean, 1400–1750’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 37, no. 4, 1995, pp. 750–80, for an overview of positions, and a broad attempt at reinterpretation. 108See the relevant sections in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Introduction’, in Alam and Subrahmanyam, eds, The Mughal State, 1526–1750 (Delhi: 1998).

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two cases, from the Khatris (who founded some powerful zamīndārīs in Bengal) to the Armenians, as well as other groups operating within the overarching Mughal system as it still functioned in the early eighteenth century. This comparison will not be pursued further here, and one may rest content merely with noting that as the Mughal centre was weakening under Farrukhsiyar and Muhammad Shah, the strategies and institutions associated with Mughal rule were often gaining hold in the peripheries. As two maritime provinces, Bengal and the Karnatak Payanghat often presented similar opportunities to ambitious notables, be they Afghans, Nawayats, or Shaikhzadas. Yet, in the case of the Karnatak Payanghat the picture has often been clouded by the persistent view that the years after the 1680s represent a phase of more or less unremitting gloom. In even the relatively nuanced picture presented by S. Arasaratnam for the years up to 1740, the reader is left with a view of ‘the breakdown of hinterland administration, the consequent disruption of communication between port and hinterland, the impoverishment of merchant groups, [and] the declining profitability of trade’; elsewhere, one hears from him of ‘the messy process of the establishment of Mughal administration over the Karnatak [which] seems to have ... [caused] an increase in the number of inland customs posts along major land routes and in and out of major market towns.’109 Arasaratnam does qualify this view, particularly in relation to what he depicts as the conspicuous success of ‘Pathan’ merchants trading out of São Tomé in these very years, but the overall image of Mughal expansion in the region leading to a collapse in the commercial potential of the hinterland lingers. Contrasted to this is the view presented by the historian of French trade in the Indian Ocean, Catherine Manning: for here, Sa‘adatullah Khan is portrayed as a ruler who ‘efficiently centralized and organized his administration’, controlled all the key strategic nodes in his domain, and campaigned energetically to raise resources so that he could ‘maintain his army and bureaucracy and pay the necessary tribute to Hyderabad’. Indeed, writes Manning, Sa‘adatullah Khan’s ‘policies were in many ways textbook examples of the building of a successor state under the shelter of Mughal rule.’110 109Arasaratnam,

110Manning,

Merchants, Companies and Commerce, pp. 168, 354–5. Fortunes à faire, p. 207.

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On the face of it, the position outlined here may appear rather closer to that of Manning than Arasaratnam, even if no one is perfectly sure of what the ‘textbook’ in question really was. Of course, one should caution against being seduced by the rhetoric and the triumphalist rhymed prose of Jaswant Rai; but it is nevertheless the prose, it should be stressed, of a chronicler associated with an expanding rather than declining state. The Arcot nizāmat was not created by the energy of its Nawayat ruler or the literary alchemy of his chronicler, but by a combination of circumstances, and the intervention of a number of groups, including some that were relatively new to the Tamil landscape. As a centralizing regional dispensation, with the potential of a substantial coastline before it, the drive to the control of the ports was a natural outgrowth of the nizāmat’s consolidation. But its European opponents were already rather too well entrenched by 1710 for them to be dislodged summarily from their coastal settlements, or even brought around to substantially less recalcitrant behaviour. To compete with them was possible either for communities with a well-defined trading niche (thus, the Maraikkayars of Porto Novo or Naguru), or exceptionally for groups such as the mysterious ‘Pathans’ of São Tomé, whose internal articulation as a community is one of a number of questions that surely deserves closer investigation.111 The eventual consequences of this slowly shifting balance of commercial and political power would surface suddenly, in the middle years of the century. The nāzims of the 1710s and 1720s would thus be transformed, within a generation of their deaths, into the representatives of a rather distant Ancien Régime. And chroniclers in Persian and Tamil as diverse as Burhan Khan Handi and Senji Narayanan Pillai would be left to ruefully recall the ‘good old days’ of Da’ud Khan Panni and Sa‘adatullah Khan. In conclusion, then, one could do worse than to cite the words of a well-known Ottomanist addressing the issue of the ‘transformation of trade’ in the Ottoman empire at a period roughly contemporary to 111Notably, it is clearly important to work through the surviving administrative papers of the Arcot nizāmat, in the National Archives of India, New Delhi (‘Inayat Jang Collection), and the Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad (both of which have already been used to an extent by Richards, Mughal Administration in Golconda, and Nayeem, Mughal Administration of Deccan).

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the one treated here. ‘Finally, the problem had political rather than economic dimensions. If there was a crisis in the Ottoman empire, it does not in fact concern a true economic crisis—at least internally— but instead a political crisis whose origins should be sought in part in the appetites of the Great Powers; and as for the reproach that one can address to the Ottomans, would it not be of having been unable to build barriers before these appetites ...?’112

112Robert

Mantran, ‘Transformation du commerce dans l’empire ottoman dans le dix-huitième siècle’, in Thomas Naff and Roger Owen, eds, Studies in EighteenthCentury Islamic History (Carbondale: 1977), p. 235.

9

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Introduction

T

here are undoubtedly numerous fruitful ways of organizing debates on the historical sociology of the Mughal empire. Of these, perhaps the most salient concerns how one understands the very nature of class formation in this very large entity, as well as changes in it over time. Surely the best-known view of Mughal class structure, one that has seen various incarnations of slightly lesser or greater familiarity, is one that posits the existence of two classes at the polar ends of the spectrum, and very little in between.1 At one end would be the very rich, composed of Mughal dynasts, prebend-holders, and regional and local magnates (jāgīrdārs and zamīndārs) associated with the state and its extractive apparatus; 1For

this view, see Irfan Habib, Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (New Delhi: 1995), pp. 180–232; also the claim by Shireen Moosvi, People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India (Delhi: 2008), p. 4, that ‘there is little doubt that the Mughal social structure displayed an enormous concentration of resources gained from a land tax that was practically identical with rent.’ For economists’ attempts to make sense of these materials and claims, see Angus Maddison, Class Structure and Economic Growth: India and Pakistan Since the Moghuls (London: 1971), and Branko Milanovic, Peter H. Lindert, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’, NBER Working Papers 13550, 2007, http:///www.nber.org/papers/w13550.

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on the other a largely impoverished peasantry and artisanal class that is barely able to claim a viable subsistence from year to year, let alone innovate, improve productivity, or produce visible forms of qualitative change such as those once summed up as the ‘roots of capitalism.’ To be sure, there might still be gradations within this underclass on account of factors such as caste, or further inequalities in the distribution of power. On this view, that of the celebrated ‘Aligarh School’ (but also for that matter present in any common or garden view of Oriental Despotism), there is a sort of ‘missing middle’ which would presumably distinguish the Mughal domains in a rather radical way from contemporary early modern empires in Europe, but also probably from Ming and Qing China, which were after all noted for their vibrant and viable middling literati strata.2 The view has not been without its sceptics, even within the narrow sphere of traditional Mughal historiography, where some authors have sought to find a substantial middle or professional class among such groups as doctors and surgeons, calligraphers, architects, and above all scribes and service people.3 Moreover, it would seem that these groups in fact grew in importance as the Mughal empire consolidated itself, and may even have claimed an increasing share in its resources. Some would thus say that the eighteenth century was arguably the century of the scribe in South Asian history.4 But, cynics might argue, which century before that had not been? Scribes had existed long before, and scribes would exist afterwards, even with the advent of print; but in this century, they came—more or less everywhere in the subcontinent—to take on a truly protean quality, to use their scribal profession as a point of departure to embark on the conquest of a number of new horizons. Though the groundwork 2Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley: 1998). 3Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Middle Classes in the Mughal Empire’, Presidential Address, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Medieval Section, Aligarh, 1975; Zahir Uddin Malik, ‘The Core and the Periphery: A Contribution to the Debate on the Eighteenth Century’, Social Scientist, vol. 18, nos 11–12, 1990, pp. 3–35. 4Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748 (Delhi: 1986), pp. 169–74; Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: 2003), pp. 131–98.

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had been laid variously by scholars like Jadunath Sarkar, S. Nurul Hasan, and Noman Ahmed Siddiqui, two of the central figures in the Western academy who helped conceptualize this shift in the role of the munshīs, kanakkuppillais, and karanams were Frank Perlin and C.A. Bayly.5 Perlin, using a somewhat Foucauldian language, concentrated on ‘the ‘library’ of categories and techniques that scribes and managers deployed on behalf of states as well as great households in the context of the eighteenth century.6 Bayly then drew upon the work of Perlin and others to argue that the transition between the later Mughals and the East India Company’s rule was crucially mediated by such groups. In this chapter, we return briefly to work that we ourselves have done either separately or jointly to ask a series of slightly different questions regarding the scribal communities of South Asia. Our central issue concerns the triangle between scribe, historian, and politico-military actor, three potentially distinct roles which we shall argue were often collapsed in the context of the eighteenth century—if not in the same individual then in the same community. The first two fell into the broad category in Persianate vocabulary of arbāb-i qalam, ‘lords of the pen’, and the third of arbāb-i saif, ‘lords of the sword’; but the pen was notoriously no less mighty than the sword in the eighteenth century. Our principal focus here will 5See Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib’s Reign (Calcutta: 1933); S. Nurul Hasan, ‘Nigar Nama-i-munshi: A Valuable Collection of Documents of Aurangzeb’s Reign’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 15th Session, 1952, pp. 258–63; Noman Ahmad Siddiqui, ‘Khulasat-us-siyaq’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 22nd Session, 1959, pp. 282–7, for various approaches to scribal groups. Many of the relevant writings of Frank Perlin, which began to appear in the late 1970s, may be found in idem, The Invisible City: Monetary, Administrative, and Popular Infrastructures in Asia and Europe, 1500–1900 (Aldershot: 1993). C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: 1983), and idem, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: 1996), are two complementary approaches to the problem of the ‘service gentry’ and its link to the information economy. Finally, see the reflections in Burton Stein, ‘Towards an Indian Petty Bourgeoisie: Outline of an Approach’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 26, no. 4, 1991, PE9–PE20, for a longer view of the matter. 6Perlin, The Invisible City, pp. 42–6.

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be on the Mughal empire, and our attention will particularly be drawn to actors from the Kayastha and Khatri communities. In a concluding reflection, we will point to some useful contrasts with a neighbouring world which was less one of empires than of emporia, namely scribal-intellectual figures from the Malay world in the same epoch of transition such as the prolific Munshi ‘Abdullah and more obscure Ahmad Rijaluddin. We shall throughout draw extensively on the writings of members of these groups, thus combining insights into aspects of their own subjectivity with a consideration of the ambient (as it were, objective) circumstances. To set the stage let us begin with a couple of salient and well-known examples of successful munshī figures from the epoch to set the stage. A significant, now somewhat forgotten, figure from the eighteenth century in northern India is a certain Nawal Rai (d. 1750). He was a Kayastha of the Saksena subcaste who hailed from the Etawa area where his family had reputedly been the qānūngos of a village. Nawal Rai’s rise to prominence dates to his patronage by Sayyid ‘Abdullah of the celebrated Barha Sayyids in the eighteenth century, via the good offices of ‘Abdullah’s dīwān Ratan Chand.7 He then entered the service of the equally celebrated Shi‘i magnate Abu’l Mansur Khan Safdar Jang (best known today for his magnificent tomb near Delhi’s Jor Bagh) as a lowly munshī but over time rose to the post of bakhshī. Nawal Rai apparently had an excellent reputation for evenhandedness as an administrator and as a consequence, in October 1743, he was appointed nā’ib sūbadār of Awadh. He also came to hold some villages in Bahraich as a grant, to which he then added other villages in Lucknow. In 1748, Safdar Jang also made him deputy governor over Allahabad and he was equally awarded the title of first Raja and then of Maharaja Bahadur. From scribe and go-between, he had become a significant political actor. Nawal Rai eventually died on the battlefield at Khudaganj, some 35 km south-east of Farrukhabad, on 13 August 1750, while fighting on behalf of Safdar Jang against 7On these figures, see Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–1740, 4th edn (Delhi: 2002), pp. 147–8; Mehta Balmukund, Letters of the King-Maker of the Eighteenth Century: Bālmukund Nāma, trans. Satish Chandra (London: 1972).

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the Pathans, especially those of Bangash, with whom he had had substantial difficulties over time.8 (On the other hand we may note that he was always supported by the Barha Sayyids.) When killed by a bullet by one of the army of Ahmad Khan Bangash, he was mounted on an elephant, firing arrows at the Afghans in the traditional and heroic mould of the Rajput rather than the Kayastha. Nawal Rai is supposed to have known some Hindu shāstras, and all in all to have been a rather devout and observant Hindu. He constructed the Nageshwar Nath and Lakshmiji temples in Ayodhya, and also built houses and tanks in that city and Allahabad, besides founding the town of Nawalganj, 20 km south-west of Lucknow, with buildings and gardens, a brick wall, moat, and gates. This town was important in the eighteenth century for its extensive settlement of merchants and artisans. To its east, he also built Khushhalganj, named for his son Khushhal Rai. The modern historian A.L. Srivastava, who was rather sympathetic to him, noted though that ‘Nawal Rai’s chief fault appears to have been his addiction to wine (…). But it seems that he usually drank during the night only.’9 Nawal Rai can fruitfully be compared with another character whom we know all too well by now: Lala Dakhni Rai or Rai Dakhni Ram, the factotum of Sa‘adatullah Khan at Arcot in the 1710s and 1720s. We have noted that Dakhni Rai was a Khatri who moved south with the Mughal armies, and came to play a crucial role in state-building in the Karnatak Payanghat. He appears as a prominent figure both in regional Mughal chronicles, such as Jaswant Rai’s Sa‘īd Nāma, and in the letters of Dutch and English East India Company factors, who portray him as a crucial intermediary in dealing with the Mughal aristocracy of the area. Like Nawal Rai, he too was a builder of towns and markets, moving nimbly between commercial and political roles. His skills were recognized not only in the Persian tradition, but by karanams and kanakkuppillais such as Senji 8On the Bangash Afghans, see Jos J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (Leiden: 1995), pp. 125–33. 9Ashirbadi Lal Srivastava, The First Two Nawabs of Awadh, 2nd edn (Agra: 1954), pp. 258–60. The chief sources for Nawal Rai’s career and its end are Ghulam Husain Tabataba’i, Siyar al-Mutakhkhirīn, 3 vols (Lucknow: 1866), vol. III; and Sayyid Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, ‘Imād al-Sa‘ādat (Kanpur: 1897), pp. 47–8.

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Narayana Pillai writing their own historical accounts of the affairs of the Karnatak at the turn of the nineteenth century. But while acting over a large surface, Dakhni Rai, like Nawal Rai, never himself assumed a role as historian or chronicler of his times. We have to see the world not through his eyes but through those of men-of-the-pen who accompanied his activities and painted him in a more or less hagiographical light. Who were these other men who picked up the pen, and how distinct was their view of the world from those of the actors briefly described above? An earlier chapter has shed light on the ‘making of the (Mughal) munshī’, focusing on the hitherto obscure autobiographical narrative from the 1670s and 1680s of a certain Nek Rai. In this chapter we look forward from that time to the eighteenth century, especially its second half. But in order to do so we must once more begin in the late seventeenth century. The crucial (or hinge) figure here, we would argue, is that of the Khatri author Sujan Rai Batalvi (or Bhandari), the author of a significant text that marked a new departure and gave a new sense of self-consciousness to the Persianized Hindu scribal elites of the time, the Khulāsat al-Tawārīkh. The Khulāsat has been much read and cited, but also arguably much misunderstood. The debt of the author to Shaikh Abu’l Fazl in a number of matters is patent, especially in the matter of introducing ethnographic and descriptive aspects into history that had not been given much prominence before.10 It is thus no coincidence that the text by the munshī from Batala contains a description in its first part of India with its flora and fauna, the customs of the people, and the boundaries of provinces, handicrafts and industries, revenueresources, and some topographical details. The second part then also takes up a thread from Abu’l Fazl and gives a history of India from Yudhishthira to Prithviraj amongst the Hindu kings, and then an account of Muslim rulers until late in Aurangzeb-‘Alamgir’s reign in 1696. Sujan Rai’s history was meant to carry matters further into his own times, but for some reason it stopped short of its full intent. Of 10Sujan Rai Bhandari, Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh by Sujan Rai Bhandari of Batala, ed. M. Zafar Hasan (Delhi: 1918), pp. i-vii, alif-ha (editor’s Introduction); also see Sujan Rai Bhandari, Khulāsat al-Tawārīkh, Urdu trans. Nazir Hasan Zaidi (Lahore: 2002), pp. 13–21 (editor’s Introduction).

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the author’s life we know little beyond the fact that he came from Batala (in modern Gurdaspur District), that he was dabīr to several nobles, and that he was also possibly the author of another text on inshā’. He died sometime in the early eighteenth century. However, misunderstandings abound, including with regard to his name, which colonial historians initially read to be ‘Subhan Rai’, as well as his place of origin which they took to be Patiala. Further, deceived by his Persianized style and having read him in a somewhat superficial manner, John Dowson (the less talented collaborator of H.M. Elliot) was of the opinion that the work was ‘written with the intolerance and virulence of a bigoted Musulman.’11 This is patently false; if anything, Sujan Rai’s intellectual lineage must be traced back to the tendency developed (as we have noted above) by Abu’l Fazl. However, he also differed from the latter: his style is far more straightforward, which also accounts in some measure for the fact that he was frequently read and cited both in the eighteenth century and thereafter by authors such as Ghulam Husain Tabataba’i, who copied extensively from Sujan Rai in the first part of his well-known chronicle. The later and continuing influence of the work can be seen in a version with additional sections which appeared from Fort William College in 1808 by Sher ‘Ali Ja‘fari ‘Afsos’ under the title Ārāyish-i Mahfil, a nineteenth-century French translation thereof by Monsieur Bertrand, and an English rendition by Major Henry Court.12 We must read Sujan Rai’s preface and the introduction to his work in order to get a proper sense of his text and its purposes.13 The text begins with allusions to Creation, alluding to certain Qur’anic 11H.M. Elliot and John Dowson, The History of India as Told By Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, vol. VIII (London: 1877), p. 7. 12See Sher ‘Ali Ja‘fari ‘Afsos’, Kitāb-i ārāyish-i mahfil, hāsil-i mazmūn-i Khulāsat al-Hind (Calcutta: 1808); Sher ‘Ali Ja‘fari Afsos, The Arāish-i Mahfil, Or, the Ornament of the Assembly, trans. Major Henry Court, 2nd edn (Calcutta: 1882), for these versions; also vol. I of Ghulam Husain Tabataba’i, Siyar al-Mutakhkhirīn, and the comments by W. Nassau Lees, ‘Materials for the History of India for the Six Hundred Years of Mohammedan Rule Previous to the Foundation of the British Indian Empire’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, New Series, vol. 3, no. 2, 1868, pp. 414–77 (in particular p. 423), as well as the weak refutation of his view in Elliot and Dowson, The History of India, vol. VIII, pp. 8–9. 13Bhandari, Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh, pp. 1–9; Urdu translation, pp. 23–34.

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concepts in relation to God’s bringing forth of the human race. Man’s central purpose is thus to praise God and recognize him and his qualities. In these sections lie the sources of the confusion regarding the author’s identity, for here we find clear and repeated references to esoteric Sufi language on the confusion between appearance and reality. The section ends with an appropriate verse, where one may also detect a reference to the social position of the Khatri: O my heart! Truth be told, we neglected our real task. We spent our whole life running helter-skelter. We could purchase nothing, And our capital (zar) ran out.

The following part then is the hamd, or praise of God. God, it is noted by Sujan Rai, has not only created mankind and other creatures, but also a variety of communities and beliefs. Different prophets were sent down by him to spread these varied faiths. However, each community thinks it alone is right and the others wrong, and this has led them to persecute others and become bigots. But those who have seen the light and the correct path do not associate God’s mercy with any particular community. Such men realize that, like sunlight and rain, God’s mercy is available to all, a vantage point that Sujan Rai associates in turn with the sulh-i kull ideology developed under Akbar.14 Yet (he adds) it is difficult to accede to the Reality of God, which is concealed behind many layers. Concepts of gnosis (ma‘arifat) are repeatedly insisted upon in this section. Sujan Rai then goes on to praise knowledge (‘ilm) as the crown of all skills, which opens out hidden realities to the seeker, while using suitable verses in aid of his presentation. It is clear from his skilful use of words and phrases in this section that Sujan Rai had had a sound Islamic education and was familiar with a number of key concepts in Islamic theology, such as tā’ir-i lāhūtī (the divine bird), ‘ālam-i malakūt (the world of the angels), or qāba qausain (the Prophet’s two bows’ distance to God on the occasion of his ascension). But his use of them is heavily influenced by Sufism, and his purpose is inevitably 14Muzaffar

Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–1800 (New Delhi: 2004), pp. 74–5.

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to be non-sectarian. For instance, he equally refers in this section to the miraculous doings of Indian yogis, but states that their only real purpose is to reach God. A third part of the introductory section comprises a brief description of the motives for writing the book.15 When men are free from their cares, writes Sujan Rai, they have different ways of using their leisure time. People of understanding, however, use this time in the praise of God rather than in useless affairs. This is why one should read books on akhlāq, tasawwuf, and the like. Amongst such noble activities, in his view, is that of reading books on history, for history is the key to intelligence and draws back the veil of ignorance, and can even produce a kind of bliss. Reading accounts of ancient kings and rulers gives a sense of how unstable the world is. How lucky the man who can devote his life to the pure task of history! That is why history has no substitute, since in fact it prepares one for the life hereafter. Sujan Rai now adds a few autobiographical notes, stating that since his youth he had served some nobles as a secretary (dabīr). In this context he was able to gather together and read many works of history in Persian, such as Razm Nāma (referring to the Kauravas and Pandavas), which for him is no less than a ‘reliable history of Hindustan’, and translated from Sanskrit into Persian at the orders of Akbar by Mulla ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni and Shaikh Muhammad Sultan Thanesari under the supervision of Naqib Khan, with an introduction by none other than Shaikh Abu’l Fazl. He also goes on to note that the Harivansha Purāna, with the deeds of Shri Krishna and other sages and rajas, had been translated on Akbar’s orders by Maulana Tabrezi; in similar vein the Rāmāyana had been translated into Persian. To these he adds other texts, such as the strange stories of the Kitāb Bhāgawat Jog Basisht translated under the orders of the prince Dara Shikoh by Shaikh Ahmad and others; the Singhāsan Battīsi regarding Raja Bikramajit, set down by Pandit Braj the wazīr of Raja Bhoj and translated into Persian as Gul Afshān; the Padmāvat regarding Raja Ratansen of Chitor who fought Sultan ‘Ala-ud-Din to defend the honour of his queen; the Rājāvalī of Bidya Dharamsar, with genealogies of ancient kings which was in the Hindi tongue and then translated into Persian by Sahu Ram, the disciple of Wali 15Bhandari,

Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh, p. 5 et seq.; Urdu translation, p. 29 et seq.

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Ram; and the Rājataranginī in which Pandit Raghunath Kalhana had written the detailed history of the kings of India, translated into Persian by Maulana ‘Imad-ud-Din. But Sujan Rai equally wishes his readers to understand that he had not entirely confined himself to texts from Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars translated into Persian in various Mughal ateliers. Rather, he stresses that he had also read such texts as Maulana ‘Unsuri’s Tārīkh regarding Sultan Mahmud Ghazni; the history of Sultan Shihab-udDin Ghuri who destroyed the power of the Hindu rajas of India; the history of Sultan ‘Ala-ud-Din Khalji, a famous ruler of India; Maulana Ziya-ud-Din Barani’s Tārīkh-i Firūz-Shāhī; the Tarīkh-i Afāghina of Husain Khan Afghan regarding Sultan Bahlul Lodi and his lineage, and Sher Shah Suri and his sons which traces the past of the Afghans to the older brothers of Joseph and the Bani Isra‘il; Maulana Sharaf-ud-Din Yazdi’s Zafar Nāma regarding Amir Timur and his conquests; Hatifi’s versified Tīmūr Nāma; the Wāqi‘āt-i Bāburī in its Persian version by Khan-i Khanan; the Akbar Nāma by ‘Allami Shaikh Abu’l Fazl; the Tārīkh-i Akbarshāhī of Asad Beg Qazwini; Shaikh Ilahdad Murtaza Khan’s Akbar Nāma; the Tabaqāt-i Akbarī of Khwaja Nizam-ud-Din, which was a comprehensive version of the history of India; Muhammad Sharif Mu‘tamad Khan’s Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī going back to Amir Timur; the Jahāngīr Nāma or Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī in which the emperor wrote down his views in a royal style; the Tārīkh-i Shāhjahān of Muhammad Waris which had been corrected in various places by Sa‘dullah Khan; Mir Muhammad Kazim Munshi’s Tārīkh-i ‘Ālamgīrī which runs from the return of Aurangzeb from the Deccan to fight Dara to his ascension to the throne; Maulana Shah Muhammad Shahabadi’s Persian translation (from the Kashmiri language) of the Tārīkh-i Kashmīr with 4000 years of events; the Tārīkh-i Bahādur Shāhī with details of Gujarat, Sind, and the sultans of Thatta; and similarly other histories of Multan, Malwa, Daulatabad, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal, and Orissa. These areas, he notes, were once under the control of the sultans of Delhi but then became independent; the accounts of their rulers can be found in diverse histories. Besides these named texts, Sujan Rai also notes that he had perused certain other histories of Hindustan and Iran which he does not care to list.

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This is an interesting list or curriculum of sorts, especially when we compare it with that of Nek Rai. A number of standard items naturally recur, especially amongst the classics of pre-Mughal and Mughal historiography, but what sets the two apart is clearly Sujan Rai’s far greater interest and immersion in the translations from Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars. The introductory section continues by telling us of the use he then made of these extensive works. One day, he reports, Sujan Rai thought to prepare a digest history based upon all these texts. With this in mind he began to make a summary of each text, beginning with the Pandava king Raja Yudhishthira to the time of Rai Pithaura, noting the transition from one dynasty to another. In a similar way, he traced the rule of the Muslim sultans, their year of accession, their justice and tyranny, their deeds, and their successions. Beginning with Nasir-ud-Din Subuktugin he followed matters to the time of Aurangzeb-‘Alamgir, and then decided to call the book Khulāsat al-Tawārīkh (Essence of Histories). Sujan Rai claims not to have copied directly from the other texts but to have stated everything in his own language while citing appropriate verses periodically, many his own but also those by other poets. This work, he writes, took him some two years to prepare, and was ready for 1107 ah, the emperor ‘Alamgir’s 40th regnal year, which he significantly also gives us in other calendars as Salibahan 1618, 1753 Vikrami, and 4797 years into the Kaliyuga (he naturally does not tell us that this was also 1696 ce).16 The introductory section thus concludes, and the text proper now begins with a highly patriotic description of Hindustan, praising the extensive size and population of the land, which the author states far exceeds that of all other places in the world. The limits of Hindustan are defined to the east, he notes, by Bengal, to the south by the Deccan, and to the west by Thatta in Sind, with mountains to the north. The reader is then treated to a rather poetic description of the flora and then the fauna, especially elephants and rhinoceros. We then get the Hindu cosmogony from Brahma and creation forward, with a description of the chief sciences, branches of knowledge, and 16Bhandari,

Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh, p. 8.

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texts in Sanskrit.17 Sujan Rai’s patriotism extends, we may note, to great pride in the quality of women in Hindustan, whom he describes with great affection. He particularly mentions the invention of clocks and time-keeping as part of the ‘Indian sciences (‘ulūm-i Hindī)’.18 Hindu yogis and their breath-control practices are briefly described, as are the systems of four āshramas and four varnas. Hind, he notes, is the place where people from different lands in the world—Rumis, Zangis, Firangis, Iranis, Turanis—all settle, becoming Hindustanis as a consequence.19 The whole section concludes with a few salient fiscal details, noting that Hindustan has 20 sūbas, 192 sarkārs, 4152 mahāls, with a total revenue of 8,68,26,80573 dāms.20 The text of the Khulāsat is thus made up of an interesting sequence. It begins (as we have noted) with an introduction or dibācha in three parts, with a beginning, a hamd section, and a motivating statement (though no praise at all of the Prophet or the Caliphs). What follows then, after the general description of Hindustan, is a more detailed account of the provinces, followed in turn by sections devoted to the Hindu rulers, the Muslim sultans prior to the Mughals, and then an extensive section (slightly under half the text) devoted to the Mughals and Surs.21 While the originality of this scheme is surely less than total (in the sense of having been partly anticipated by Abu’l Fazl), the schematization is nevertheless crucial in a number of respects. Sujan Rai here clearly establishes what might have been implicit in 17Here again, compare vol. II of the Ā’īn-i Akbarī: Abu’l Fazl ‘Allami, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, ed. H. Blochmann, 3 vols (Calcutta: 1876–7); Ā’īn-i Akbarī, trans. H. Blochmann, D.C. Phillott, and H.S. Jarrett, rev. Jadunath Sarkar, 3 vols (Calcutta: 1927–49). 18Bhandari, Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh, pp. 18–21. 19Ibid., p. 27. 20Ibid., pp. 27–8; Urdu translation, p. 56; also see Shahbaz Amil, Critical Edition, Translation and Annotation of Khulasat-ut-Twarikh [sic] of Sujan Rai Bhandari (New Delhi: 2006); and the important earlier account in Jadunath Sarkar, The India of Aurangzib (Topography, Statistics, and Roads) Compared with the India of Akbar; With Extracts from the Khulasatu-t-tawarikh and the Chahar Gulshan (Calcutta: 1901). 21In the text of Bhandari, Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh, the different sections occupy the following place: account of the provinces: pp. 28–88; account of Hindu rulers: pp. 89–159; account of the pre-Mughal Muslim sultans: pp. 160–279; the Mughals (including the Surs): pp. 279–540.

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the Mughal project of the translation of Sanskrit and vernacular texts, namely the legitimacy of the pre-Adamite tradition and a break with Biblical and related chronologies while writing history.22 In this he was again anticipated perhaps by the Zoroastrian dasātīrī tradition of the mid-seventeenth century, but his originality still lay in bringing this into play in the field of history. Even if his history of the Hindu rulers remains far briefer than his account of Islamic rule in India, it set a precedent for a whole series of writers, especially those of Khatri and Kayastha origin, who followed him. However, they did not necessarily follow him in all respects. Many commentators and later historians were somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Sujan Rai was periodically quite credulous in respect of miracles, and in fact especially with respect to Hindu temples. He reports for example that in the temple at Nagarkot devotees would routinely offer their heads to the goddess. This is quite distinct from the rather less credulous spirit on display in Abu’l Fazl, whatever the other genealogical relationships between the two. Indeed, Sujan Rai 22See

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘Contested Memories of Pre-Islamic Iran’, The Medieval History Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 1999, pp. 245–75. Sujan Rai’s attitude is in marked contrast with that of Muhammad Qasim Firishta, who was surely aware of the complications produced by ‘Hindu’ chronologies but summarily rejected them. See Muhammad Qasim Hindushah Astarabadi Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta, vol. I (Poona: 1247 ah/1832), pp. 13–14; Tārīkh-i Firishta, Urdu trans. ‘Abdul Hayy Khwaja, 2 vols (Deoband: 1983), vol. I, pp. 45–60, where the account is replete with numerous confusions. Firishta uses and cites the work of Fakhr-ud-Din Davud Banakati, Tārīkh-i Banākatī, ed. Ja‘far Shear (Tehran: 1348 Sh./1969), pp. 311–36, and also resumes Abu’l Fazl’s introduction to the Persian Mahābhārata, but then insists on the traditional Islamic account that the descendants of Noah lie at the origins of the population of India. Thus: ‘the kāfirs of India like those of China say that Noah’s tempest did not reach their country, and instead reject it (…). They attribute strange and bizarre deeds to Ram, Lakhan et cetera, which do not correspond to the human condition (…). All this is words and sound which has no weight in the scale of reason (…). The Hindus say that from the time of Adam more than one lakh years have passed. This is totally false, and the fact is that the country of Hind, like the other countries of the inhabited quarter of the world, was settled through the descendants of Adam (…). The oldest son of Ham was Hind, who reached the country of Hind and settled it in his name. His brother Sind reached the country of Sind, and settled Thatta and Multan in the name of his children. Hind had four children: Purab, Bang, Dakan and Nahrawal, and each settled a kingdom, which even today are known by those names.’

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remains broadly true in many respects to the Mir Munshi and to the construct of sulh-i kull, so that when he reports the destruction of temples at the onset of Muslim rule he does not comment on it in any particular way or express great sorrow. This is then a thread that is worth following into the eighteenth century, as the number of Kayastha and Khatri actors in the middle rungs of the Mughal polity increases apace (as does the presence of Persianized Brahmin subcastes who follow in the footsteps of the celebrated seventeenthcentury figure of Chandrabhan).23 An interesting example of such a later figure is Rai Chaturman, author of the Chahār Gulshan. He was a Saksena Kayastha about whom (as with Sujan Rai) not much is known beyond the fact that the family was long associated with Mughal service and one of his ancestors had been a peshkār in Bengal.24 Chaturman himself had apparently been with the imperial army in the Deccan, and this is reflected in the relevant part of his account. In the later part of his life he was associated with Ghazi-ud-Din Khan, who had been wazīr ul-mamālik of the short-lived emperor Shahjahan II. His text, also called Akhbār ul-Nawādir or Khulāsat ul-Nawādir, was apparently left incomplete at his death and his grandson Rai Chandrabhan eventually brought together the scattered pages and added his own secondary Introduction (or Preface). The original text seems to have been completed 1173 ah or 1759–60 ce, but the additions take it to 1204 ah or 1789–90 ce. In his own Introduction to his work, Rai Chaturman writes of his desire to compile a history but unlike Sujan Rai does not speak much of his sources. One of his own principal teachers seems to have been a certain Sufi by the name of Mir Muhammad ‘Ali urf Mir Najm ‘Ali Khan ‘Azimabadi, and this seems to have left something of an imprint on him, as we shall see below. The work is made up of four sections, and these begin with an account of the Kings of Hindustan (dar ahwāl-i bādshāhān-i 23Muhammad

‘Abdul Hamid Faruqui, Chandra Bhan Brahman: Life and Works with a Critical Edition of his Dīwān (Ahmadabad: 1966); Rajeev K. Kinra, ‘Secretary-Poets in Mughal India and the Ethos of Persian: The Case of Chandar Bhan “Brahman”’, PhD dissertation, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, 2008. 24Sarkar, The India of Aurangzib (Topography, Statistics, and Roads).

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Hindūstān) running from Yudhishthira to Shahjahan II.25 The same section also includes an account of the major and even many minor Sufis living in and around Delhi, as well as a description of some of the principal temples and fairs for the Hindus in northern India. It ends with an account of the provinces of the empire and their resources. A second section is then made up of an account of the southern provinces (junūbistān) of the empire, including Berar, Khandesh, Aurangabad, Bijapur, Hyderabad, and Bidar. A third, perhaps best known, is a description of the empire’s communications networks, with way-stations and distances as measured from Shahjahanabad– Dehli. Finally, a fourth and final section is concerned with a variety of Hindu ascetic orders, and holy men including Guru Nanak, as well as Ajit Singh and Mata Sundari (it is entitled dar zikr-i salāsil-i fuqarā wa durweshān-i Hunūd). This also includes a brief initial account of the chief Sufi orders in and around India. If a certain disorder seems to characterize this text, it is quite explicable in terms of its genesis. The short preface by Chandrabhan, the author’s grandson (who terms himself Chandrabhan Munshi Kayath Saksena, titled ‘Raizada’), dated 1204 ah, states that he had found some scattered fragments (ajzā-yi chand) of his grandfather’s text, felt that they were very interesting, and decided to put them together in a more coherent form. He was, of course, aware that there were already many books on history, but here everything had been put in a succinct way, a river stored in a vase as it were (daryā rā ba kūzā āwurda). The text proper begins with a hamd including verses in praise of God, where the author too describes himself as Chaturman of the Saksena Kayastha community (qaum saksena Kāyasth laqab rāyzāda). He notes that he had long held the belief that there should be a brief work in which there would be a description of the kings, and also of the provinces etc. of Hindustan. Yet he could find no such text that satisfied him. This raises the question of whether he did not know of Sujan Rai’s work or was simply dissatisfied with it. At any rate, Chaturman too decided that he would make a digest of the works of history in his own possession, leading to the production of the Chahār Gulshan. 25We

follow the text in Rai Chaturman, Chahār Gulshan (Akhbār al-Nawādir), ed. Chander Shekhar (New Delhi: 2008), which we had the opportunity to consult in proofs.

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II Figures like Sujan Rai and Chaturman point to the growing presence of groups which had been acculturated into the Indo–Persian ‘republic of letters’ in the course of Mughal rule, and were conspicuous in the production of historiography.26 These men became witnesses to empire but also chose frequently to frame that empire in a particular way, taking its history back beyond the Ghurids or the Ghaznavids into far earlier, pre-Islamic, times. However, a second literary route is also worth identifying and tracking into the eighteenth century. This is of scribal figures, once more from the upper and middling castes, who came to play a significant role in the complex genre of belleslettres or inshā’, with a particular emphasis on correspondence.27 By the late-eighteenth century these were numerous, as we have seen in a study of Kishan Sahay, who served the Franco–Swiss mercenary Antoine Polier.28 Again, their tradition harked back to Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, whose inshā’ compendium was undoubtedly required reading for many amongst them. Another figure of significance, who was elevated still further during the time of early East India Company rule, was Harkaran Das Kamboh, author of the Inshā’-i Harkaran from the early-seventeenth century; a third was Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ from the time of Shahjahan a generation later.29 An important practitioner of this form in the early-eighteenth century was a certain Madho Ram who was eventually elevated to the status of mīr munshī. Initially employed by Lutfullah Khan, son of Sa‘adullah Khan, in order to draft his letters, Madho Ram then became mīr munshī of the prince Jahandar Shah. When the prince became emperor, for a period of about nine months in the earlyeighteenth century Madho Ram continued to hold high positions 26Alam, ‘The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan’, pp. 131–98. 27Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli, ed., The Mughal State and Culture: Selected Letters and Documents from ‘Munshaat-i-Namakin’ (New Delhi: 2007), pp. 28–34. 28Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I‘jāz-i Arsalānī (Persian Letters 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (Delhi: 2001), pp. 13–14. 29Francis Balfour, Inshā’-i Harkaran (The Forms of Herkern) (Calcutta: 1781); Kinra, ‘Secretary-Poets in Mughal India’.

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and was closely associated with Nawwab Kokaltash Khan. Over the years he had acquired a huge accumulation of papers, but they were apparently lost or destroyed in the succession struggles of the time along with his own household goods. A few were somehow saved through the intercession of someone he terms his ‘brother’ (whether literally or metaphorically), namely, a certain Lala Har Prashad.30 These were the letters that were eventually brought together in his inshā’ collection. In it the first part contains official letters while a second contains personal letters; the chronogram for its completion is stated to be: Zahe munsha’āt-i Mādho Rām. The personal letters in the collection are addressed—sometimes more than once—to a sprinkling of middle-level personalities for the most part. They include Nawwab Lutf-Allah Khan Bahadur, Safavi Khan, Hasan Quli, Miyan Nur-ud-Din, Miyan Nurullah Nujumi, Khalifa Hasan ‘Ali, Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Sha‘ir ‘Jur’at’, Mirza Afzal ush-Shu‘ra, Mirza Riza ‘Ali Sha‘ir, Mirza I‘timad Sha‘ir, Rai Nir Das, Rai Satpar Das, Thakur Lokman, Thakur Nirmal Das, Thakur Mohan, Thakurdas Munshi, Thakur Harkishan Das, Lala Talab Chand, Lala Nihal Chand, Lala Mukund Rai, Lala Gulab Rai, Lala Nayansukh, Lala Nawal Rai (who has appeared earlier in this chapter), Bhagwant Das, Pitambar Das, Bhagat Das Bairagi, Lokman Rai Da’udkhani, and Munshi Chainsukh. The reader will recognize amongst these a mix of names, suffixes, and titles, but one in which a Kayastha and Khatri flavour plays a role of some significance.31 They include letters of congratulations for an appointment, letters asking after people’s health, letters setting up meetings, as well as some minor personal gossip (often involving the Deccan). The letters seem to have been actual instances of correspondence elevated here to the status of exemplars of style, but they do not carry dates or places. Madho Ram’s style is difficult to the point of being convoluted. Clearly, he had considerable literary pretensions, as we can also discern from the fact that a number of his correspondents were themselves poets. This 30Madho

Ram, Inshā’-yi Mādho Rām, ed. Mir Hasan Rizvi (Lucknow: 1260 ah/1844). 31Compare these names to those in Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India, pp. 171–3, and passim.

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was another conception of matters than that of Sujan Rai, one where history was not necessarily the most elevated or justified of pursuits. Still, it was a measure of the growing confidence of men from these ‘new’ scribal groups that they could not merely imitate but actually strive to dominate forms of literary expression and use them—as was the case with Madho Ram—as vehicles that also gained them a certain measure of political success. All of this may have been appropriate to times when the Mughal empire still inspired confidence and appeared to dominate the political horizon. The events of the eighteenth century, for reasons that are obvious, did not always bring comfort to those who had chosen to throw in their lot in an explicit fashion with the Mughals. Here, the sentiments of witnesses came to be mixed in curious and interesting ways with the deeds of actors and agents. An example of this comes to us from the pen of a minor but observant writer of the later-eighteenth century, a certain Prem Kishor ‘Firaqi’, author of a text entitled Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī.32 This is a text in the form of a daily account (roznāmcha) covering a period of two months in the reign of the emperor Shah ‘Alam II. This was a time when we learn that on account of the influence over the emperor of Afrasiyab Khan, he had decided to go from Delhi to Agra via Tilpat. Firaqi for his part accompanied the emperor and his army from Tilpat to Sayyidpur, and there took employment with Rao Raja Machhadi. In this very period Afrasiyab Khan was killed and the major Maratha warlord Mahadaji (Madhav) Sindhia Patel rose to exercise power at the court of Shah ‘Alam. The account may be found in a manuscript at Rampur’s Raza Library which was written by Firaqi’s paternal cousin, and then corrected by the author himself; it is thus close to being an autograph account in most respects.33 Though the period covered is technically two months, we may note that Firaqi begins by recounting the history of Shah ‘Alam from his accession up to the 32Kunwar

Prem Kishor Firaqi, Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālam Shāhī, ed. Imtiyaz ‘Ali Khan ‘Arshi (Rampur: 1949). 33The colophon refers to Firaqi’s intention to write a Tārīkh-i Shāhī. The Rampur manuscript was completed at ‘Azimabad-Patna, 8 Zi-Hijja 1205 ah (August 1791), and written by Nand Kishor, the cousin of Firaqi.

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date that his own personal narrative begins, by using the chronicler Munna Lal’s Shāhnāma.34 We are fortunate to know a great deal more about Firaqi than about the other authors we have surveyed so far. Firaqi was the son of Anand Kishor and the grandson of the quite celebrated Jugal Kishor (d. 1759), who was a bhāt or bard by caste, and originally a liquor-seller by profession. A conspicuous case of eighteenth-century social mobility, Jugal Kishor came to assume a position of importance in the entourage of Alivardi Khan Mahabat Jang, Nawwab of Bengal, and served as his wakīl in the court of Muhammad Shah.35 He possessed massive prebendal estates in Murshidabad, and in 1744 his monthly revenue was estimated at Rs 24,000 while his expenses were stated to be half that amount. The marriage of his son Anand Kishor was a huge affair in Delhi and he was clearly a big spender, even if he claimed to have been ruined in large part by Nadir Shah’s invasion of northern India. At any rate, by 1752, the poet Mir Taqi ‘Mir’ reports that he claimed to be poor and only have a torn shawl. The relevant anecdote from Mir’s autobiography runs: ‘One day I complained of hard times to Raja Jugal Kishor. That noble person turned red and yellow with shame (az khajlat surkh-o-zard shuda) and said, “My own shawl is full of holes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t deny it to you if I had anything.” Then one day he rode out to the house of Raja Nagar Mal and, after mentioning me to the Raja, had me sent for. I went and was introduced to the Raja by him. The Raja greeted me warmly and said, “It’s a poor man’s banquet, and you will get your share of it.” I was relieved and took my leave.’36 Jugal Kishor was also close to Safdar Jang and intervened as his agent with the Bangash Afghans in November 1748. In the time of ‘Alamgir II (r. 1754–9) he was killed in a mysterious incident while riding on an elephant from Makanpur to Farrukhabad accompanied by ‘Imad 34This

is a reference to Munshi Munna Lal ibn Bahadur Singh’s text Tārīkh-i Shāh ‘Ālam or Shāh ‘Ālam Nāma, also referred to by W. Francklin, The History of the Reign of Shah-Aulum, The Present Emperor of Hindustaun (London: 1798), and of which several manuscripts are extant. The author is also termed Mannu Lal in some versions. 35C.M. Naim, Zikr-i-Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Poet: Mir Taqi Mir (Delhi: 1999), pp. 152–3. 36Naim, Zikr-i-Mir, p. 79.

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ul-Mulk and Ahmad Khan Bangash (each on his own elephant). It is reported that at Natua he dismounted for some reason, and that his elephant attacked and killed him. His estate and goods were then confiscated by Ahmad Khan so that the current rumour was that the Bangash Afghans had in fact killed him. Firaqi’s father Anand Kishor was thus initially brought up in the lap of luxury, but then fell on hard times. His father’s death led him to become vulnerable, especially as Ahmad Khan Bangash continued to harass him. It is thus reported that he eventually renounced the world and went off to Brindaban, suggesting that he was a devout Vaishnava. However, Mir Qudrat Allah Qasim, author of the Majmu‘a-i Naghz, a biographical dictionary of Urdu poets from the early-nineteenth century, claimed to have known him well and insists that, though a kāfir on the outside, Anand Kishor was inside a true Muslim (mu’min).37 Qasim is also a significant source of information on Firaqi himself, whom he describes as ‘handsome, well-behaved, humble, cultured, soft-spoken, of good character, intelligent and caring.’ He was an accomplished poet in both Persian and rekhta, unlike his grandfather Jugal Kishor, whose poetic pretensions Mir was rather dismissive of (noting that he ‘didn’t find [his verses] worthy of correction’).38 Firaqi for his part used to have his poetry corrected by Barakatullah Khan ‘Barkat’ of Delhi; the text of the Waqā’i‘ contains some of his verse, of which we cite two examples below. The first, translated from the Persian, runs as follows: O love-sick one, what will medicine do for you? He who is sick from love of you, That sickness is medicine enough.

Another from Urdu (which we are certain is his own composition) concerns a ‘beloved’ by the name of ‘Gulabi’: 37Mir Qudrat Allah Qasim, Majmu‘a-i Naghz: Ya‘nī tazkira-yi shu‘arā-yi Urdū, ed. Hafiz Mahmud Shairani (Lahore: 1933). 38Naim, Zikr-i-Mir, p. 76. On the other hand, it may be noted that Mir was a notoriously demanding critic.

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Hū’ī ānkhen gulābī rote rote Gulābī kī na dekhī shakl afsos From crying incessantly, My eyes have turned pink (gulābī). Alas! I could still not see the face of Gulabi.

Besides being a poet, Firaqi was also apparently an excellent calligrapher (especially in khatt-i shikast) in which matter he had been trained by a certain Prem Nath ‘Aram’. It is also reported that he was accomplished at archery (tīr-andāzī) and so may not have been devoid of warrior pretensions. However, because his grandfather’s fortune had run out, Firaqi was obliged to seek regular employment, falling back on the possibility of being a regular munshī. He thus reports in his text that on 16 Sha‘ban 1198 H (5 July 1784) he went to the royal camp at Tilpat, where he lodged with the royal supplier (shāhī modī) Rai Ram Ratan and his sons, Lala Ram Narayan and Lala Har Narayan. Eventually, some six months later, on 3 Rabi‘ I 1199 ah (15 January 1785), he managed to enter the service of Rao Raja Machhadi but this does not really seem to have worked out in the long term. We thus see him returning some years after the text’s completion on 6 Jumada I 1206 ah (1 January 1792) to Murshidabad by boat on the Ganges. The tazkira-writer Qasim, whom we have already cited above, notes for his part that late in life Firaqi returned to Murshidabad, sold his grandfather’s remaining properties, and lived out his life using the proceeds. According to Karim-ud-Din, the author of the Tabaqāt-i Shu‘rā-yi Hind, he too—like his father— more or less renounced the world towards the end of his life.39 We have seen that, according to some views, Firaqi’s father Kunwar Anand Kishor had a great deal of sympathy for Islam. Firaqi himself showed a fair amount of inclination in that direction (in particular Shi‘ism) and his text begins with a hamd, a na‘t for the Prophet, and a manqabat for ‘Ali which distinguishes him clearly, say, from Sujan Rai who does not go beyond a hamd. It is also odd and notable that he calls other Hindus such as Shivram Das and Narayan Das by 39Karim-ud-Din,

1983).

Tabaqāt-i Shu‘arā-yi Hind, ed. Mahmud Ilahi (Lucknow:

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the term kāfir in his own text. We are unclear whether Firaqi’s sons, such as Harchand Kishor, who accompanied him on some travels, followed him in this respect. Firaqi was a quite prolific poet, and even wrote some masnawīs—one of which was seen by contemporaries like Ghulam Muhammad—but none of these have come down to us. Only the Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī has survived amongst his major writings. This text is written in a somewhat curious register of Persian which scholars have deemed to be of less than the highest quality on account of its awkward word combinations, especially between Arabic and Persian, and between Persian and the Indian vernaculars. Indeed, his great fondness for vernacular usage seems to be very much a sign of his times. There is also the matter of his humour and wordplay, which have at times been deemed to be in poor taste. On this we shall have occasion to comment further. The circumstances of the writing of the text of the Waqā’i‘ are clear enough, at least on the face of it. We have seen that Firaqi had joined the royal camp in July 1784. But it was only several months later, on 12 Muharram 1199 ah (25 November), when the royal camp was moving from Tilpat to Sayyidpur Sikri, that Ram Narayan and Har Narayan, as well as their own munshī Debi Ram ‘Abad’, all urged Firaqi to start writing a text of the roznāmcha-yi Shāhī. Encouraged by them, he began composing the text and eventually decided to divide it into two parts: the first a retrospective account that began from the blinding of emperor Ahmad Shah and ran to the period of the accession of Shah ‘Alam II, and then went on to cover the events until 24 November 1784; the second, the diary proper, that ran from 12 Muharram 1199 to 11 Rabi‘ I 1199 ah (two months less a day). Firaqi notes that he was obliged to leave the text aside at this stage on account of his new employment with Rao Raja Machhadi. Now this text, like several earlier ones by Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, on which we have commented elsewhere, is relatively unusual in that it is not written on royal orders.40 It therefore exhibits a greater freedom 40Muzaffar

Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Acculturation or Tolerance? Inter-Faith Relations in Mughal North India, c. 1750’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 33, 2007, pp. 427–66; Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, Safar Nāma-i Mukhlis (The Diary of the Travel of Ānand Rām Mukhlis, d. 1164 AH), ed. Sayyid Azhar ‘Ali (Rampur: 1946).

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even in commenting at times on the emperor himself (though Firaqi seems genuinely devoted to him). One such occasion refers to tensions between the emperor and Sindhia, when the two have a petty tussle about moving camp. However, it is patent that Firaqi has no sympathy whatsoever for Sindhia; rather, he is concerned about the declining pride and status of the Mughal house. In the second half of the text we find interesting details regarding Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, and Rajputs, as well as the helplessness of the emperor. Even other courtiers show open insolence to the emperor, and on one occasion fisticuffs break out in his presence.41 The Mughal court of Shah ‘Alam as described by Firaqi has thus come a certain distance, both in terms of its chief dramatis personae and the nature of its tensions, from that described by Antoine Polier somewhat earlier, when matters were largely dominated by Najaf Khan (d. 1782).42 Particularly troubling to Firaqi is obviously the heavy influence exercised by the Marathas. He thus describes how, on a certain day, Madhavji Sindhia Patel sends some rich cloths to the emperor. But he found nothing there suitable for his favourite daughter, nicknamed Mayyan Sahib, and hinted strongly that the Maratha should do better. Sindhia eventually sent a more suitable gift of cloth but clearly felt humiliated at the treatment. This created tension in the camp and led to the following incident described by Firaqi: Mendha Singh, Kumedan [Commandant] of the troop (paltan) of the Patel, one morning stopped the butchers, according to his own faith (tarīqat-i khwud), from killing cows. The butchers became discontented and this was reported to the emperor. The emperor sent Shah Nizam-ud-Din to the 41Cf. Francklin, The History of the Reign of Shah-Aulum; and for an insider’s view, Mirza ‘Ali Bakht, Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, eds T. Chandrasekharan and Syed Hamza Hussain Omari (Madras: 1957). For modern historiography on this monarch, also see Kalikinkar Datta, Shah Alam II and the East India Company (Calcutta: 1965); Muhammad Khawar Jamil, Shah ‘Ālam Sāni Āftāb: Ahwāl wa adabī khidmāt (Lahore: 1997); and ch. 10 below. 42Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, Shah Alam II and His Court, ed. Pratul C. Gupta (Calcutta: 1989); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd Series, vol. 10, no. 1, 2000, pp. 43–60.

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Patel, and he said to him: ‘What is this action that your people have taken?’ The Patel, who was proud of his loyalty and fidelity to the emperor, called in the Kumedan and reprimanded (tashnī‘) him. He then wrote back to the emperor: ‘He is a Mendha [sheep], and from fear of his own life tangled with the butchers for fear that they might string him up.’ The emperor found this witticism excellent. He then read a hemistich: In the slaughterhouse of love, only the virtuous should be killed. It was reported thereafter to the emperor that the singers of the Patel’s army were singing the following quatrain that day: Shiva’s conch sounds out strong, A hundred thanks that the faith of the Indians (dīn-i hindiyān) has been renewed. The heads of the Mlecchas now crown the doorway to the court of the Patel, the world’s support. The emperor was [however] busy in his own enjoyment, until the time came to retire.43

The anecdote has multiple implications. At the first level is the issue of the insolence and duplicity of Sindhia. The idea is that he has chosen to repay a perceived insult in this rather roundabout way. What is significant, however, is that the ‘faith of the Indians’ (dīn-i hindiyān) is of no particular concern to Firaqi, nor indeed is the matter of the slaughtered cows. Rather what is crucial for him is the carelessness and indifference of the emperor, who has allowed all this to happen under his very nose. Indeed, it would appear, if one is to follow Firaqi’s account, that the Marathas have come to hold the upper hand in all matters at the Mughal court, even that of witticism. An incident is thus recounted by him regarding the Persian-speaking munshī of Madhavrao Sindhia, a certain Sadashankar Nagar. The emperor had been ill, and upon 43Firaqi, Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālam Shāhī, pp. 56–7. If this verse was indeed sung in the form that is cited, it was clearly meant as a taunt, and also intended to be overheard.

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his recovery Madhavrao apparently came with the munshī and his nephew Balaji to make an offering as sadaqat. The emperor accepted the gift and then read out a self-abnegating Brajbhasha dohra verse which he had written out with his own hand. Mulak māl sab kho’e kar pade tumhāre bas Madhav aisī kījiyo āve tumko jas I’ve lost the land and wealth which have fallen into your hands, O Madhav, act in a way so as to bring you fame!44

Not to be outdone, the Marathas then responded with three quite elaborate praise-verses in Persian. The Brahmin Sadashankar so distinguished himself in this matter that he was then appointed a sort of munshī for dealings between the two, and at the Patel’s request the emperor said he would have the right to look over the farmāns he issued. One of these praise-verses ran: Shāh-i ‘ālam rā tulū-yi subh-i daulat āftāb Zarra-parwar, qadrdān ‘Alī Gauhar wālā janāb Chūn kamar bar intizām-i Saltanat bar bast chust Rao Mādhav āmadā hasb ut-talab jald-o-shitāb. May the sun of fortune rise for Shah ‘Alam The support of the humble, just measure of value, high-statured ‘Ali Gauhar, When he set out to reform the state Rao Madhav was called in, who rushed to attend.

The emperor was reportedly so happy with these poems that he gave Sadashankar and his nephew each a do-shāla, a double-shawl.45 44For other examples of Shah ‘Alam’s own vernacular poetry, see Abu’l Muzaffar Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Shah ‘Alam Sani, Nādirāt-i Shāhī, ed. Imtiyaz ‘Ali Khan ‘Arshi (Rampur: 1944). 45Firaqi, Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālam Shāhī, pp. 67–8. There was an obvious play in this verse on Shah ‘Alam’s own pen-name of āftāb or ‘sun’.

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Firaqi’s sceptical view of the Marathas continues to be evident in his account of the Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti, which was celebrated in early January 1785 (on 27 Safar 1199 ah). He notes that the festival involved bathing and celebration at the Govardhan Mountain and that the Marathas were so concerned with the observance of the festival that they put off going to Delhi, which was at that time under threat by the Sikhs. Too clever by half in some matters, they were manifestly not clever enough in others. It is further noted that the Sindhia Patel sent a quantity of sesame mixed with sugar (kanjad-i safed) to the court, and the emperor distributed it but also took it to the women of his household. One of the women commented that such sweets were given to slaves and horses when they were purchased in order to ensure their loyalty, and that the emperor by eating this from the Patel was thus required to be loyal to him. To this piece of manifest insolence the emperor only replied with a weak witticism that he had of course eaten the sweets, but the tradition was that slaves were never loyal anyway.46 At any rate it was clear that Shah ‘Alam had learnt nothing from this implicit humiliation. Two days later, Khandu Rao Apaji and Ganga Prashad, the dīwān of Anandi Bai (sister of the Sindhia Patel), came to court with small gifts and received some shawls in return. The Bai sent two silver thālīs, also with the kanjad-i safed and some sugar which the emperor again accepted. In Firaqi’s view, then, a considerable gulf separated men like himself from the Marathas, and he struggles to find an appropriate language in which to express this difference. For every dexterous Sadashankar it seems that there are many others in the Maratha camp who lack adequate knowledge of proper Mughal functioning and etiquette. Once seen as upstarts, men like him have now become the guardians and gatekeepers of Mughal culture. He thus notes for example that on 6 Rabi‘ I 1199 ah, near Brindaban, Apaji Khandu returns to be appointed imperial chamberlain (khānsāmān). However, since he is incapable of handling the affairs of the earlier (and now dismissed) chamberlain, he has to bring along his Persian-knowing 46Firaqi,

Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālam Shāhī, pp. 111–12.

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munshī (munshī-i fārsī khwān-i khwud) to deal with matters.47 At the same time he makes it clear that this has little or nothing to do with the Mughal court’s prejudices against Hindus as such. Thus, his text carries a very elaborate description of a place called Barsana, which is associated by him with the story of love between Radha and Krishna. It is noted that the spot—the abode of various sorts of Vaishnava saints and ascetics—is extremely pleasant, especially in the rainy season, and a description of it is offered by a courtier in response to a question by the emperor. In this passage, Firaqi makes it clear that the court has a rather positive view of the Vaishnavas. The emperor Shah ‘Alam, when he heard the description, apparently declared that if God gave him the chance he would be happy to live in such a place, where his heart would be free of care.48 At the same time Firaqi portrays the Marathas as rather incompetent, obsessed with their rituals of bathing (ghusl) and pūjā, when in fact they should be defending the empire.49 But it seems the Mughals just cannot do without them; here he reports a conversation in the court where Shah ‘Alam crudely boasts that he will shove the stick of the loincloth-wearers (langotā-bandān) up the arse (kūn) of his enemies. An older courtier, Hafiz ‘Abdur Rahman, responds that the emperor should be aware that these people were their traditional enemies. He should shove the stick with his own hand and not use others. The Marathas, he noted (and Firaqi clearly espouses his viewpoint), were strangers (bigāna), whereas the other courtiers had long served the Mughals. It was noted that from the time of Timur to that of Bahadur Shah, these southern people were often abused in the Persian chronicles. However, Shah ‘Alam has now so much fallen into their hands that he swears by them. If the Mughals are now reduced to boasting of using the Marathas, then the Caliphate’s time is in fact over. The Mughals’ relationship to their traditional 47Ibid., pp. 131–2. This once again raises interesting questions regarding the precise extent of the penetration of Persian into various levels of the Maratha polity, which was clearly highly uneven. 48Firaqi, Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālam Shāhī, pp. 136–8. 49Ibid., pp. 141–2. This parallels in curious ways the reproaches of East India Company officials regarding the ‘superstitious’ character of many aspects of Maratha political functioning. Our reading of this text thus diverges considerably from that in Malik, ‘The Core and the Periphery’.

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courtiers is depicted by ‘Abdur Rahman with a metaphor: it is as if a beautiful woman has been called in, but the suitor is impotent and feels ashamed. The emperor replied that he was constrained by circumstances and could do no better. Firaqi’s account thus comes to a close on this rather despondent note. The Mughal court is clearly riven by factions. The Marathas rule the roost but are incompetent in many matters. The other courtiers are unhappy and the emperor is impotent. Finally—the cherry on the cake—we learn of incessant Sikh raids on various parts of northern India. It is the other powers, and not the Mughals, who seem destined to control the future of northern India. Firaqi thus appears as an impotent witness to matters that, in the three generations between his upwardly mobile grandfather and himself, have gone beyond not merely the control of the munshī and his pen, but of the entire Mughal establishment.

III Though the English East India Company features very little in Firaqi’s view of the world, some of the munshīs of his generation would indeed find employment with that new power, producing translations and interpreting textual knowledge, but also initiating the British (and French) into the arcane matters of the Mughal chancery and adab. But some from this class also took another route, and it is with an important and unusual member of this latter group that we close the Mughal section of this chapter before making some concluding remarks of a comparative nature. Here we shall briefly refer to the trajectory of a certain Mirza Muhammad Hasan ‘Qatil’, best known as the author of the Haft tamāsha. Qatil’s family, like that of Sujan Rai, originated from Batala, and he was a Bhandari Khatri who was originally called Diwani Singh.50 A genealogy exists of the family, some survivors of which lived later in Lucknow and this establishes a succession over at least five generations from a certain Achint Rai to his son Diwan Fateh Chand, and then to Qatil’s grandfather Rai Lalji 50Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil, Haft tamāsha, Urdu trans. by Muhammad ‘Umar (Delhi: 1968). The translator’s useful introduction runs over pp. 11–48; the text then has a new pagination.

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Mal. Lalji Mal’s son was Dargahi Mal, who in turn had two sons, Jawahar Singh (who did not convert) and Diwani Singh. The family was prominent, and Qatil’s maternal grandfather was possibly the distinguished tazkira-writer Siyalkoti Mal ‘Warasta’. A major source on Qatil’s life, the Nashtar-i ‘ishq by Aqa Husain Quli Khan ‘Ashiqi, states that his ancestors, notably a certain Surat Singh, had once lived in Batala but then moved to Baghpat further east where Qatil’s grandfather and father were born.51 Lalji Mal eventually died in 1736, and after his death Dargahi Mal moved closer to Delhi and lived for about three years in Dasna. At this time a Mughal noble, Hidayat ‘Ali Khan, took on the Delhi–Shahjahanabad area in revenue-farm, and since he was an old acquaintance he called Dargahi Mal from Dasna to Delhi to his service with an annual salary of Rs 1000 but with no particular job in mind. After this, Dargahi Mal remained in this particular noble’s orbit, at times in Dasna and at times in Delhi. By the time Diwani Singh was born in Delhi in 1758 ce (1172 ah), his family was thus a service family with a characteristic munshī profile. Diwani Singh’s education thus was carried out within what are for us familiar parameters by now. By the age of 17 he had learnt traditional sciences such as grammar, arithmetic, philosophy, logic, prosody, and been immersed in Arabic and Persian literature. He was clearly deeply influenced by the figure of his tutor, Mirza Muhammad Baqir Kermanshah Shahid Isfahani (who was apparently in the service of Najaf Khan Zu’lfiqar al-Daula), and also developed a taste for poetry and its composition. It was under Baqir’s influence that Diwani Singh converted secretly to Twelver Shi‘i Islam at the age of 14, becoming Muhammad Hasan. However, for two years he concealed this fact from his family, and on eventually revealing it separated from them, and also never married (though he consorted a great deal with courtesans). Perhaps on account of his Shi‘ism, Qatil eventually went to Lucknow, and this may have further reinforced his religious views.52 His skills as a munshī certainly came in handy 51Aqa Husain Quli Khan ‘Azimabadi, Nashtar-i ‘ishq, ed. Sayyid Shah ‘Ata urRahman ‘Ata Kakwi (Patna: 1968). 52For the religious situation in Lucknow at this time, see Juan R.I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shī‘ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: 1988). But also compare the case of the Kayasthas, many of

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in the early part of his career, when he worked for a time in Najaf Khan’s army in and around Delhi, in the years between 1776–7 and the warlord’s death in 1782. In these years, however, it became clear that he possessed skills as a poet, and he began to participate in poetry readings in Delhi, especially in the household of Ghulam Hamadani ‘Mushafi’, with whom he became very close. Qatil is known to have influenced a tazkira of poets that Mushafi wrote called ‘Iqd-i Suraiyā and supplied him with extensive materials for it. After Najaf Khan’s death, Qatil left for Lucknow in 1783–4, and seems largely to have remained there until his death on 2 March 1817 (23 Rabi‘ II 1233 ah), with a brief stint in Kalpi. Qatil thus made two significant transitions. First, he actually converted to Islam, unlike all those whom we have considered above. Second, he came to be seen as a major writer and poet with whom other writers, such as Ghalib, crossed swords in polemics. His major works included a Persian dīwān with 5000 verses; Chahār sharbat, a Persian grammar; Ma‘dan al-Fawā’id, a collection of his letters compiled by his disciple Khwaja Imam-ud-Din ‘Imami’; Shajarat al-amānī written for Mirza Muhammad Husain on inshā’; Samar (or Samrāt) al-Badā’i‘ also a work on inshā’; Hadīqat al-inshā’, still another work on the same subject; and not least of all, Haft tamāsha.53 The Haft tamāsha was written by him at the request of Mirza Muhammad Husain, an Iranian visitor who visited Lucknow in the early-nineteenth century from Karbala, at the request of Nawwab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan. Qatil and he had never met but they had exchanged letters, and he asked the former Diwani Singh to write to him of the customs and practices of both the Hindus and of the Indian Muslims (both the old ones and the new converts). Qatil thus wrote an ethnographic text of sorts, not at the prodding of the British (as some other munshīs were doing at the time) but on the urging of an Iranian. It is also interesting that, in his Preface, he continues to evoke the tradition of the likes of Abu’l Fazl and Faizi, whom migrated to Hyderabad in this period; cf. Karen Leonard, Social History of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: 1978). 53Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil, Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil, Samrat al-Badā’i‘ (Selected Inshā’), ed. Munshi Muhammad Rahmatullah Khan (Lucknow: 1272 ah/1855).

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but maintains that his own ambitions are suitably modest. The seven tamāshas that he presents are then entitled as follows: (i) The belief of the Smartas (mazhab-i smārtagān); (ii) The birth of man and the divisions into religious communities; their beliefs and the changes in them; (iii) Hindu heterodox beliefs (which are outside their own sharī‘a); (iv) The auspicious days of the Hindus, their festivals, etc.; (v) The rituals of the Hindus; (vi) Indian Muslims, their customs and regulations; and (vii) Some strange matters. We have come some distance here from Sujan Rai and his attempts to incorporate the pre-Islamic past of India into a general history written in Persian. Nor is this the semi-ironic tone adopted by a Firaqi, who sits uncomfortably astride a complex divide between Mughal court culture, and what he sees as the uncouth (but cunning) ways of the Marathas. Here, Qatil has stepped away from his own culture of origin and made himself its ethnographer. What is of interest is that this was done in the early-nineteenth century, when the East India Company’s star was considerably on the ascendant. That Qatil chose Lucknow as his preferred location was undoubtedly in part a religious choice, but it must equally have been a political one. It was here perhaps that something of the world of the Mughal munshī, as his ancestors may have conceived it, still survived even if in much attenuated form. The next generation or two would for the most part have to make other choices. This situation parallels, but also differs in some important ways with what obtained in the Malay world in the same time-period. Here, historians of literature have often suggested that not much changed in either the form or the content of classical Malay literature at the time of the sultanates that correspond chronologically with Mughal rule in India, and that ‘for writers to break out of the established pattern and begin to subject their society and its norms to an even moderately critical scrutiny (…) required some form of “cultural shock”.’54 This shock, it is further suggested, was only provided by colonial conquest on account of which writers like first Ahmad Rijaluddin and then Munshi ‘Abdullah innovated, but only because 54Cyril

Skinner, ‘Transitional Malay Literature: Part 1: Ahmad Rijaluddin and Munshi Abdullah’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, vol. 134, no. 4, 1978, pp. 46–87.

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they were ‘confronted with a way of life that was clearly alien, yet surprisingly (often dismayingly) successful in solving (…) many of the problems (not least the political problems) faced by his own society.’ This then is a slightly modified model of challenge-and-response. Yet the works of the two authors mentioned often sit uneasily within this schematization. Rijaluddin wrote a narrative account of travels to Bengal while accompanying a British patron, but his account scarcely resembles any known European travel-account. A generation later, Munshi ‘Abdullah’s quite prolific writings—including a remarkable version of his travels to Mecca—are equally hard to comprehend as simply mimicking a newly available set of practices and models.55 We have striven to suggest in our analysis that the situation, in Mughal India at least, must be understood in quite different terms. To be sure, Persian and Persianized culture were already present in good measure before the Mughals came to dominate northern India, but the newly arrived dynasty did much by 1600 to entrench the place and power of this politico-linguistic complex. In the seventeenth century a number of middling groups thus availed themselves of the new cultural horizon that the Mughal state presented, developing a mode of engagement with it through the category of the munshī. By the late-seventeenth century, many of these newly arrived scribes and intellectuals were feeling sufficiently confident of their position to propose changes in received models of history-writing and new framings for old histories. This is what we see with Sujan Rai and those who followed him, whether in regard to history or belleslettres more generally. The first half of the eighteenth century saw the expectations and ambitions of these groups scale new heights. The social mobility and political flux of the times suited their mode of functioning well, even if it carried great risks with it, as we see from the instances of Nawal Rai or Jugal Kishor. In turn, the last four decades of the eighteenth century brought with them major disappointments. The decline of the Mughal centre and its power, growing vernacularization, and the rise of ever-newer groups meant that rewards did not necessarily flow to those who had accepted the 55Raimy

Ché-Ross, ‘Munshi Abdullah’s Voyage to Mecca: A Preliminary Introduction and Annotated Translation’, Indonesia and the Malay World, vol. 28, 2000, pp. 173–213.

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challenge posed by Persianization. This was the context of the irony and even sarcasm one finds in authors such as Prem Kishor Firaqi, who obviously did not need to have contact with the Europeans to ‘subject their society and its norms to an even moderately critical scrutiny.’ The generation that followed his would either take recourse to the relatively modest resources still available in regional centres that remained more or less committed to a Mughal-inflected court culture, or seek greener pastures with the East India Company. In the process, the world of the munshī would come to be transformed one way or the other. And as inevitably transpires in such circumstances, there are still some today who look back wistfully at what they imagine might have been the ‘Golden Age of the Munshi’.

10

The Political Thought of a Late-Eighteenth-Century Mughal Prince Bravo, for dream-dealing is better than that in wakefulness. —Khwaja ‘Abdul Karim, Bayān-i Wāqī‘1

Introduction

I

n the mid-nineteenth century, an East India Company official wrote a report on the state of the Mughal salātīn (described as ‘the descendants of former emperors going back to Shah Jahan’) then living within the walled city of Delhi. They were in fact rather numerous, with reportedly about 800 of them receiving Mughal pensions in 1836, and well over 2000 in 1848. Major George Cunningham’s report depicts the deplorable state of these men, and later historians of the Mughal empire in its decline such as Percival Spear have seized upon this portrayal as exemplifying ‘nothing but the depths to which pride can reduce men.’ Spear quotes the following telling passage from Cunningham’s report: 1For a discussion of this mid-eighteenth-century text, written by a resident of Delhi, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Empiricism of the Heart: Close Encounters in an Eighteenth-Century Indo–Persian Text’, Studies in History, (N.S.), vol. 15, no. 2, 1999, pp. 261–91.

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The salātīn quarter consists of an immense high wall so that nothing can overlook it. Within this are numerous mat huts in which these wretched objects live. When the gates were opened there was a rush of miserable, half-naked, starved beings who surrounded us. Some men apparently eighty years old almost in a state of nature, who from the earliest infancy had been shut up, others young men, some sons of kings whose mothers had either died or not been in favour (…) others young children who had the space within these walls to look forward to as their world.2

The portrayal leads quickly to a view of a court that is more tinsel than reality, full of unhealthy intrigue and corruption, some simply gibbering idiots, other princes drinking themselves to death steadily on Hoffmann’s cherry brandy, and still others notable only for their vanity and absurdity—such as a certain Mirza Babur, who ‘affects the manners and habits of Europeans.’ To Spear, then, the later Mughal court was ‘like a marble pavilion built over a cesspool’, the only saving grace of which was the fact that it was still ‘the school of manners for Hindustan’. Yet was the later Mughal empire as moribund as that? Did it have the capacity to reflect upon the changing political circumstances and produce a cogitation on politics and sovereignty which amounted to more than a simple refraction of what the Europeans brought to it? Now, the true nature of sovereignty in the Mughal empire is even today the subject of some controversy, despite several decades of vigorous academic debate on the issue. The central question turns around the basis or bases upon which the monarchs of the Mughal dynasty built their claims to rulership, and whether any major changes occurred in this respect over the three centuries and more that they reigned over northern India, and much of the rest of the subcontinent besides. It is clear that a number of possible bases existed for the claim to sovereignty, of which the first was the prestigious descent of the dynasty from the major figure of Amir Timur Gurgan (1336–1405), whose image was however not entirely shorn of ambiguity in the northern Indian context as 2Percival Spear, Twilight of the Mughuls: Studies in Late Mughal Delhi, 2nd edn (Karachi: 1973), p. 62.

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a consequence of his bloody attack on Delhi in 1398.3 A second possibility, which has been much highlighted in recent years, was the attempted creation of a wide-ranging theory of kingship. Broadly illuminationist in character, this drew on the idea that the ruler must stand in some privileged relationship to the Divine and thus mediate between that relatively inaccessible level and the run-of-the-mill of, first, his courtiers, and second, his subjects more generally.4 A third strand, related to the second in some measure, proposes moreover that this mediation came to be seen as the exclusive privilege of a single person at any given moment in time, rather than the shared attribute of a group. This position, often attributed to the Aligarh historian Iqtidar Alam Khan, proposes a clear evolution between the first two generations of Mughal rulers in India (that is, Zahirud-Din Muhammad Babur and his sons), and the third generation, when this laterally spread-out, so-called ‘Turko-Mongol theory of kingship’, yielded place to a far more unitary conception.5 Some doubts have been cast on this rather neat resolution that is attributed to the third Mughal dynast in India, Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, and his ideologues such as Shaikh Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, though the debate has been somewhat skewed by the Aligarh historians’ insistence that any such doubts are somehow ‘anti-national’ in character. This slightly specious defence of a thesis cannot however conceal the very real weaknesses in its conception, and also in the structure of the evidence that purportedly sustains it. A good deal of material points instead to the possibility that in the Mughal empire, as late as the eighteenth century, sovereignty was still widely considered to be a shared attribute amongst a large group of kinsmen of the ruler. It is easy enough to demonstrate this with respect to two well-known moments in high Mughal political history. One of these concerns the succession war of the 1650s, that 3See Irfan Habib, ‘Timur in the Political Tradition and Historiography of Mughal India’, Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, nos 3–4, 1997, pp. 297–312, for a discussion. 4See John F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir’, in Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia (1978), 2nd edn (Delhi: 1998), pp. 285–326. 5Iqtidar Alam Khan,The Political Biography of a Mughal Noble: Mun‘im Khān, Khān-i Khānān, 1497–1575 (New Delhi: 1973), pp. ix-xiii.

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preceded the setting aside of Shahjahan and the assumption of power by Aurangzeb-‘Alamgir. As is well known, four candidates presented themselves for the succession, of which the two most celebrated were Aurangzeb and his older brother Dara Shukoh, who was more or less the heir apparent. Yet it becomes clear that the two other brothers, Murad Bakhsh and Shah Shuja‘, were not devoid of royal attributes themselves, as different sorts of evidence suggests. In the case of Shuja‘, his reported death in the court of Arakan, where he had taken refuge after his military defeat, actually fuelled widespread rumours and permitted the periodic appearances of royal doubles claiming to be the Mughal prince. In the case of Murad, the fact that Aurangzeb at one stage in the succession wars went so far as to suggest the division of the provinces of the Mughal empire between the two of them, in keeping with a formal agreement (‘ahd-nāma), is even more effective evidence to show how deep the idea of shared sovereignty really ran. The same conception can be found again in the earlyeighteenth-century succession wars after the death of Aurangzeb, where once more the idea surfaces of dividing the territories up amongst feuding princes.6 There were of course limits to this notion, as is demonstrated by the fact that these ideas in Mughal India were never really put into practice, as opposed to say Transoxania, where various forms of divided statehood emerged after the relatively brief period of centralization that ended with the death of the Shaibanid ruler ‘Abdullah Khan in 1598. But the persistence of the theme of the royal double, as also the proliferation of their number in the eighteenth century, can only be ignored by the historian of Mughal India at his own peril. It is thus no coincidence that the ideological overdetermination that has governed much Mughal history in the past decades, and especially the writings of Aligarh historians, has resulted in a failure to address this question, just as historians have failed to address so many other fecund regions, preferring to return time and again to till rather barren historiographical fields. 6For

an earlier discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State— Structure or Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 29, no. 3, 1992, pp. 291–321.

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The Age of Shah ‘Alam II Our concern in this chapter is to return to the vexed question of the nature of sovereignty from a somewhat neglected historical source that was written in the early years of the nineteenth century. But in order to gain a better sense of the larger context, we may need to provide our readers a somewhat more general view both of our central text and its author. The text in question is the so-called Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, written by a Timurid prince called Mirza ‘Ali Bakht (1759–1818).7 The text, completed in the early-nineteenth century (in about 1221 ah/1806–7), is preserved in various locations including Chennai (Madras), where the author spent the last years of his life under the protection of the Walajah Nawwabs of Arcot. But earlier still, the author had spent a good deal of time in Shahjahanabad–Delhi, at this time under the rule of the Mughal sovereign Shah ‘Alam II (r. 1759–1806). Now, this last ruler’s reputation as it comes down to us in the historiography is a rather mixed one. Contemporary writers, including officials of the English East India Company, had a scarcely concealed contempt for him, seeing him as ‘weak, effeminate and irresolute’, the very epitome of an empire that was tottering on its last legs.8 Among the kinder portrayals is that of the Franco–Swiss mercenary Antoine Polier, who describes the emperor as ‘good to the point of weakness’ and dominated by a wazīr who ‘used his influence on the spirit of Scha Alow for the sole purpose of distancing the prince from the servants who were truly loyal’; a particular evil genius is attributed to the Afghan warlord Najaf Khan, who dominated the court for some decades in the early part of the reign.9 However, such 7For

the Persian text, see Mirza ‘Ali Bakht, Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, ed. T. Chandrasekharan and Syed Hamza Hussain Omari (Madras: 1957), and for an earlier, and generally serviceable, Urdu translation, see Muhammad Husain Mahvi Siddiqi, Wāqiāt-i-Azfarī (Madras: 1937). 8W. Francklin, The History of the Reign of Shah-Aulum, The Present Emperor of Hindustaun, (1st edn. London: 1798; rpnt Lucknow: 1973), p. 19. 9See Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, Shah Alam II and His Court, ed. Pratul C. Gupta (Calcutta: 1989); as also Sanjay Subrahmanyam,‘The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, vol. 10, no. 1, 2000, pp. 43–60.

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an interpretation has not gone unchallenged, particularly on account of the efforts of cultural historians. These have tried to demonstrate the vitality of an emergent vernacular literary culture under Shah ‘Alam, who appears here as a crucial transitional figure between Muhammad Shah in the first half of the eighteenth century and Bahadur Shah II in the mid-nineteenth century. In such a revisionist view (which may also draw sustenance from Jean Law’s rather favourable portrayal of Shah ‘Alam),10 much emphasis would be placed not only on the court, and its figures such as Mir Taqi ‘Mir’ or Mirza Muhammad Hasan ‘Qatil’ (author of the Haft tamāsha), but on Shah ‘Alam himself as a literary and cultural innovator.11 The emperor, it emerges, was a prolific author in Urdu, Braj Bhasha, Persian, Punjabi, and the mixed language of rekhta, authoring a vast number of poems, many of which were collected at his own behest in a work entitled the Nādirāt-i Shāhī.12 But he is also the author, under his pen-name of ‘Aftab’, of an elaborate dāstān (romance), entitled ‘Aja’ib al-Qasas, which has unfortunately only survived in an incomplete form.13 Apparently completed in 1207 ah (or 1792–3), the text dates to a period when the emperor was blind, as a result of circumstances that will be discussed below. The initial section of the work thus contains the following verse in several variants, suggesting both that the author was in a saddened state, and that he was a Shi‘i: Durust kījiyo yā rabb mere umūr-i shahī Ba haqq-i Ahmad-i mukhtar aur ‘Alī-yi walī. 10Jean

Law de Lauriston, Mémoire sur quelques affaires de l’Empire Mogol, 1756–1761, p. 329, cited in Spear, Twilight, pp. 66–7. 11Mirza Muhammad Hasan ‘Qatil’, Haft tamāsha, Urdu translation Muhammad ‘Umar (Delhi: 1968). On Qatil (1758/59–1817), also see the discussion in ch. 9 above. 12See Muhammad Khawar Jamil, Shah ‘Ālam Sānī Āftāb: Ahwāl wa adabī khidmāt (Lahore: 1997), for extensive excerpts from Shah ‘Alam’s poetry; and Abu’l Muzaffar Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Shah ‘Alam Sani, Nādirāt-i Shāhī, ed. Imtiyaz ‘Ali Khan ‘Arshi (Rampur: 1944), for a valuable edition of the text, compiled in 1212 ah. Also the brief comments in Francklin, History of Shah-Aulum, p. 138. 13Shah ‘Alam II, ‘Ajā’ib al-Qasas, ed. with an Introduction by Sayyid ‘Abdullah (Lahore: 1965).

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O God! Set right my royal affairs Through the intercession of the Prophet and the saintly ‘Ali.

The story of the dāstān itself tells in Urdu prose (of which it is an early example) of the ruler of Cathay (Khita and Khotan), who is childless, as is his wazīr. The two are hence helped by a dervish, who grants each a son, and the two boys grow up as close friends and companions. Meanwhile, the ruler of Rum, Qutlugh Khan, is also childless, and so is his wazīr. They are granted two daughters by the intercession of astrologers, and these two girls for their part become boon companions. The story is essentially of the romantic relationship between one of the princes, Shuja‘ al-Shams, and the princess Malika Nigar, interspersed with accounts of various battles with supernatural creatures. There are also twenty riddle-like questions that are put to the prince by Qutlugh Khan, to which he must provide answers. The extant text ends after the answers have been given, but before all the hurdles have been crossed, and so the romance remains incomplete in its currently available version. We need not of course subscribe to the reductionist view according to which such texts as the dāstān should be seen as mere forms of escapism, given the trying circumstances in which the author, and Mughal high culture more generally, found themselves in the period. The broad narrative of the attendant political circumstances is told easily enough, of course.14 The progressive emergence of regional states under the carapace of Mughal sovereignty is visible enough from the 1720s, and accelerates further after the successful invasion of North India by Nadir Shah Afshar in the late 1730s, and then the Abdali raids from Afghanistan in the decades that follow. By the last third of the eighteenth century, the Mughal centre was thus paradoxically held up in some measure by its own erstwhile rivals, whether the Marathas, or some of the newly sprungup Afghan polities, which existed both in North and Central 14For a narrative account and schematic analysis, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘L’Inde au XVIIIe siècle: Politique, économie, culture’, Historiens & Géographes, no. 353, 1996, pp. 119–32.

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India.15 The reign of Shah ‘Alam II can thus be seen as a progressive hollowing out of the real content of Mughal power, while at the same time all the major political actors—including the English East India Company—continued to insist on the utility of preserving the Mughals as the titular sovereigns of a pan-Indian polity. It is here that the view of Mirza ‘Ali Bakht ‘Azfari’, himself resident in the hollowedout heart of the empire at Shahjahanabad, is of particular interest. Now, the Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī is an elegantly written memoir, though drafted without a clear division into sections or chapters, and instead comprising some 166 brief sections or entries. Beginning with a very brief, almost perfunctory, praise of God and the Prophet, followed by a more elaborate praise and prayer for the emperor Badshah Shah ‘Alam (‘May God preserve his country and power, and may He gift the whole world with his munificence and grace’), the text can however be divided for purposes of convenience into four parts. The first concerns the author’s life in Delhi at the end of the eighteenth century, and will be our main concern here. The second part concerns his clandestine departure from the Mughal capital and a phase of adventures and misadventures in West and Central India. The third part is largely centred on the author’s life in Lucknow, where he was for a long time a guest of the nawab, Asaf-ud-Daula. And finally, the last part of the text has him resuming his travels until he reaches Madras through a tortuous route down the east coast of India, after a detour in Bengal.16 What can we say about the author of this quite unusual memoir? The text is written by Muhammad Zahir-ud-Din Mirza ‘Ali Bakht, known to his contemporaries as Mirza-i Kalan (‘The Big Mirza’). He tells us at the outset of the text that his pen-name is ‘Azfari Gurgani’ (the latter epithet deriving from Timur), and adds with uncharacteristic modesty that he is a mere wanderer in the ‘steppe of astonishment’ (dasht-i tahayyur). He further identifies himself in quite precise terms as the son of the maternal grandson of the early15On these Afghan polities, see Jos J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (Leiden: 1995). 16A translation of the travel sections of this text was prepared for publication by Simon Digby. We shall therefore not deal in detail with those sections here, but summarize them in closing.

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eighteenth-century Mughal ruler Jahandar Shah, who had himself been the grandson of ‘Alamgir (Aurangzeb). He also recounts that, nine years after leaving the fort of Shahjahanabad, when he was in the city of Murshidabad, in the month of Zi-Hijja 1211 ah (May– June 1797), he had first thought of writing an account of what he terms the ‘destruction’ (tabāhī) of the Timurid dynasty (khāndān-i gūrgāniya) at the hands of Ghulam Qadir Khan Yusufza’i. But Azfari had also thought of adding some details concerning his own escape from what he terms the ‘Prison of Princes’ (qa’id-i-salātīnī), his wanderings through different territories (sa’ir-i chand dayār-o-amsār) and to lend documentary support to all this with copies of his own correspondence. The purpose of this, he states, was so that the reader might have an idea of the prose style used by various scribes and secretaries (munshīs) of the time, and that children could thus use it as a sort of exemplary letter book, or inshā’ collection. A second purpose was that if some of his own descendants were to reach any of those cities where he had himself wandered, they might recall how he had been received and what his own status had been in the days of yore. The name that he himself gives the book is Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, clearly a reference to the Persian title given to the memoirs of his illustrious ancestor with whom he shared the name Muhammad Zahir-ud-Din, namely the early-sixteenth-century founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, Babur.17 We may note that Azfari was quite inordinately proud of his own learning, and mentions at various points in his text that, besides his dīwān in Urdu, he had authored a Chaghatay Turkish dictionary while resident in Lucknow (entitled Lughāt-i Turkī-yi Chaghatāy), produced a rhymed translation of ‘Ali Sher Nawa‘i’s Mahbūb al-Qulūb (entitled the Marghūb al-Fu’ād), a Turkish grammar, as well as a treatise in Turkish and Hindi (titled TengrīTārī) in the style of no less a personage than Amir Khusrau.18 17The

original Turkish text of Babur’s memoirs was entitled the Bābur Nāma, but its Persian translation by ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan from the late-sixteenth century was termed the Wāqi‘āt-i Bābūri; see Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, Wāqi‘āt-i Bābūrī; Bābūrnāma: Chaghatay Turkish Text with Abdul-Rahīm Khānkhānān’s Persian Translation, ed. and trans. W.M. Thackston, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: 1993). 18For a listing of his works, and their locations, see C.A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, vol. I, pt 1, reprint (London: 1970), pp. 642–3. For his

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Of these texts, the Marghūb al-Fu’ād (completed in the year 1208 ah/1793–4) holds a particular interest for us, in view of what it reveals of the author’s view of the relative place of Turkish and Persian in Mughal culture. Written in a crisp, elegant and eloquent Persian, and divided into three sections (qism), the text first discusses the condition of commoners, then the relative place of virtuous (hamīda) and wicked (zamīma) acts, and finally contains a section with proverbs and maxims. Broadly conceived within the tradition of akhlāq, the text does far more than provide a mere translation of a prestigious original. For Azfari was firmly of the opinion that the Mughal royal family had unjustly neglected its Turkish heritage, and that this had become particularly flagrant from the reign of Muhammad Shah (bar Muhammad Shāh Turkī tamām shud).19 He thus laments that, of the princes of his own generation, he alone possessed a full command of Turkish, which he had learnt from several masters such as Mir Karm ‘Ali, Mulla Muhammad Zaman Tabrizi, and Mirza Kazim Sauda. Of these teachers, the first had apparently insisted to Azfari that Turkish was crucial for the power of the Mughals in India, and should indeed be seen as a sort of whip to keep the populace in subjection (Turkī zabān chābuk-i saltanat-i Hind ast); he believed further that from the day the Mughals neglected that language their rule had been fatally weakened (az ayyām-i ki Turkī az alsina-i īn khāndān sust gardīda, saltanat-i Hind zu’f pasandīda). In sum then, once effeminate Persianate culture had overwhelmed the real strength of the Mughals, namely their Turkish sensibility (Turkī hissiyat), the writing was pretty much on the wall.20 Echoing Azfari’s own image of himself, a recent historian of poetry, see Mirza ‘Ali Bakht, Dīwān-i Azfarī, ed. Muhammad Husain Mahvi Siddiqi (Madras: 1939). We have unfortunately been unable to consult the work of Péri Benedek, ‘A török írás-és szóbeliség nyomai a mogul-kori Indiában: Mirza Ali-baxt Gurgani Azfari Mizan at-Turki címû grammatikai értekezése és ami körülötte van’, PhD dissertation, Chair of Turkic Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2000, with the full Persian text in appendix of Azfari’s Mizān al-Turkī. 19For details on the text, see Sayyid ‘Abdullah, ‘Mīr ‘Alī Sher ki ek dilchasp kitāb’, in Sayyid ‘Abdullah, Fārsī zabān-o-adab: Majmū’a-i maqālāt (Lahore: 1977), pp. 288–93. The author uses the unique Punjab University manuscript, copied in Lucknow on 12 Sha‘ban 1208 ah (14 March 1794) by Mirza Muhammad Zafarud-Din (alias Mirza Husain Bakhsh). 20Compare this with the case of the Ottoman Prince Cem (1459–95), who is described as having an ‘interest in things Turkish at a moment of an increasing

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the career of Turkish in India writes: ‘Azfari is the last of the long line of Timurids whom we know of for sure that he cultivated the family tradition of promoting Turkic language and literature.’21 Now it is made clear from the outset that Azfari, though a Mughal prince (as well as a man of some scholarly pretensions), was in fact held prisoner in Shahjahanabad along with a number of other princes. As we shall see, there was an explanation for this ‘Prison of Princes’, but it is a factor of primary importance that must be taken into account in order to understand the memoir. For though the tradition of holding princes and potential successors to the throne in forms of confinement was common enough in a host of early modern polities, the late-eighteenth-century Mughal case was rather peculiar. Rather than being confined (as they later seem to have been) within the interior depths of the fort, the Mughal princes instead functioned in a rather loose system of ‘house arrest’, which allowed them a fair degree of flexibility during the day. There existed the possibility of socializing with one another, as well as receiving certain visitors in their mansions. Though under surveillance, their world was marked by a curious claustrophobia, in which certain windows of opportunity nevertheless opened up periodically. This is the ambience that Azfari powerfully evokes, suggesting that, though a ‘prisoner’, he and his cousins were not quite excluded from the world of power. A brief first section opens the account, and is concerned with the so-called ‘destruction’ of the sultanate of Shah ‘Alam Badshah. This part commences with the ‘unspeakable and indescribable’ (nā guftanī wa nā nawishtanī) story of Ghulam Qadir Khan and his rebellion, which destroyed the edifice of the sultanate, and who not only harassed people unjustly but also put out the eyes of the king, separating him for a time from his throne.22 The purpose of providing turn to cosmopolitanism in Ottoman cultural life’; see Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: 1995), pp. 147–8. 21Péri Benedek, ‘Turkic in Babur Empire’ (sic), in Yusuf Halacoğlu, et al., The Turks, Volume II: The Middle Ages (Ankara: 2002), pp. 970–6 (citation on p. 973). 22In other times, the blinding of Shah ‘Alam might well have disqualified him from being the ruler; his restoration was thus itself an unusual feature, reflective perhaps of changing notions of sovereignty.

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such an account, so Azfari notes, is essentially didactic, in order to furnish a lesson for those to come, a view supported in the text by appropriate Qur’anic verses. Further, our author clarifies, the political difficulties of the time attained not just the sultanate but the relatives and associates of the emperor, such as the author himself. Now it is noted that Shah ‘Alam’s name prior to his becoming emperor had been Mirza ‘Abdullah ‘Ali Gauhar, but he had also been known as Lal Miyan or Mirza Bulaqi in his youth. He was the son of Muhammad ‘Aziz-ud-Din, better known as ‘Alamgir II, who was in turn the son of Mu‘izz-ud-Din Jahandar Shah. As for our author, Azfari, his own links with the emperor were as follows. Azfari was the son of Sultan Muhammad Wali, better known as Manjle Sahib (‘the second-born’), in turn the son of Sultan Muhammad, Pisar-i Kalan, son of Nawwab Iffatara Begam, daughter of Muhammad Mu‘izz-ud-Din Jahandar Shah. Thus, it might be said that the emperor Shah ‘Alam was located two generations above Azfari in the primary Mughal genealogy. By clarifying these matters, Azfari enables us already to grasp something to which we shall return, namely the relatively extensive spread of the notion of ‘Mirza’ (in the technical sense of a Mughal descendant) in the late-eighteenth century. This can be compared perhaps to the equally wide usage of the term at the time of Babur, when the descendants of Timur had spread themselves across a good part of southern Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Now Azfari notes that the ‘unspeakable and indescribable’ incidents to which he has referred took place despite the numerous kindnesses shown by the emperor to Ghulam Qadir, who had proved to be black-faced and of an ungrateful nature (namak-harām rū siyāh). He therefore feels the need to provide some background information concerning who this Ghulam Qadir in fact was. His account thus backtracks to Najib Khan (or Najib-ud-Daula), who had been a very powerful man and who had in his time controlled a good part of the sūba of Delhi. After his death from natural causes in his residence and stronghold of Ghaus Garh, his son Zabita Khan had been given the high post of bakhshī; and one of his deputies, Shaikh Qasim, had even been appointed with 1000 horse as the qil‘adār of the Qil‘a-i Mubārak, the Auspicious Fort of Shahjahanabad–Delhi. Now, as it happened, Zabita Khan had proved to be of an unruly nature, and so the

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emperor had had him expelled from the fort through the intercession of the Maratha warlord Madhavji Patil Sindhia, in one of those typical eighteenth-century alliances. There is a description in Azfari’s account of how this had led to a fight in and around the Asad Burj in the Red Fort, which was damaged in the process and had had to be repaired thereafter. But Zabita Khan, though defeated, then rebelled a second time from his base at Ghaus Garh, and a force again was sent against him under Mirza Najaf Khan and ‘Abdul Ahad Khan Majd-ud-Daula, with the emperor himself being present on the occasion. But on the intercession of another powerful Maratha warlord, Tukkoji Holkar, Zabita was forgiven and reinstated once more. Then he rebelled once more, and the emperor set out against him once again. This time the Rohilas (for Zabita Khan belonged to this Afghan group) were roundly defeated, the greater part of Zabita Khan’s family captured, and Zabita Khan’s 8- or 10-year-old son, Ghulam Qadir, brought back to Delhi. The other members of Zabita Khan’s family were summarily expelled from Ghaus Garh and dispersed. Azfari recounts that Ghulam Qadir was now brought to Qudsiya Bagh in Delhi, an enclosed garden not far from today’s Inter-State Bus Terminus, and outside the walled city of Delhi. He was given servants and guards, and fed magnificently three times a day. The fifty-year-old emperor (born in 1728) would meet him frequently, and even looked directly to his education—to the point of calling him his son (farzand) and giving him the title of Raushan-ud-Daula. When, missing his parents, the child wept, the emperor would reassure him saying he would be released soon. But some Mughal nobles resisted this idea, and as a result Ghulam Qadir was kept on in a sort of gilded prison. Meanwhile Zabita Khan went back to his old ways, attacking Amir Nagar and other places; another force was sent out against him, but it was defeated and the Mughal noble in charge was forced to retreat. A second encounter took place, in which there were many casualties, and the Mughal general Abu’l Qasim Khan (the brother of Majd-ud-Daula) was killed and beheaded, his head being carried off ignominiously as a trophy. Resentment against Ghulam Qadir now grew apace at the Mughal court, but he continued to be protected by the emperor. There appeared to be a strange bond between Shah ‘Alam and the young Afghan boy, and

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Azfari recounts how on a certain occasion the emperor had recited a number of mixed verses in rekhta in his honour. One of these, using the emperor’s pen-name of Aftab, ran: Farzand-i khāss hai yeh aur hain ghulām sāre, ābād rakhiyo yā rabb fidwī kā ghar hamāre. Phūlā rahe hamīsha bāgh-i murād iskā, hargiz khizān na phatke is bāgh ke kināre. Sāye main parwarish ho zill-i ilāh ke yeh, hai Āftāb jab tak anwar falak ke tāre. He is [my] special son, and the others mere slaves, O God ! Keep the house of my devotee ever inhabited. May his Garden of Desire always be in flower, may autumn never touch even the edges of his garden. May he be reared under the shadow of God, so long as Aftab (the sun) shines, and there are stars in the sky.23

The implication clearly is that the affection that the emperor had for the boy went beyond ‘normal’ bounds. But this did not stop the nobles from protesting, and perhaps even encouraged them. Majdud-Daula in particular wanted Ghulam Qadir’s head in revenge for that of his brother. The emperor retorted that the innocent son should not be held responsible for the deeds of his miscreant father. Instead, he took the extraordinary measure of sending one of his confidants with the boy at night, with plenty of goods, back to his own father, in order to ensure his safety. What is more, Zabita Khan was again restored to favour and made bakhshī, though he died a few years later. The son Ghulam Qadir, for his part, now grew as arrogant ‘as the Pharaoh himself ’ (in Azfari’s words), and began to threaten that he would come to Delhi to avenge his captivity and all that had transpired there, sinking the very Red Fort into the river Jamuna. People in Delhi began to be frightened by these threats, and some months later (we are in 1787) he really did arrive with his forces at Shahdara and Andhyaoli, the latter a village to the north of the fort. 23Wāqi‘āt-i

Azfarī (text), p. 6.

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From here he began to fire cannon-shot against the fort. But for one or the other reason he had to abandon this attack and return to his territories. At this time, Azfari says, he himself sent a letter in secret through one of his aunts to the emperor, protesting at what had transpired as a consequence of ill-conceived policies. But the emperor replied that Ghulam Qadir was a poor orphan (yatīm); he was astonished at people’s enmity towards him. He also told the intermediary (that is to say, Azfari’s aunt) that Azfari and the other Mughal princes were mere children who understood nothing of these matters. Ghulam Qadir had been brought up by him and eaten his salt; he would never really act against the emperor. All these were thus merely mischievous rumours spread by people. Azfari could hardly restrain himself at this response, and quotes an appropriate verse to the effect that when Death approaches, even the physician becomes an imbecile.24 So it was that, a year later, this very Ghulam Qadir became the source of the worst possible troubles. A physical description of Ghulam Qadir follows in Azfari’s account, to the effect that he was a great consumer of bhang, opium, and hashish. It was also said of him that he suffered from ubnah, meaning an itch in his arse, the insinuation being the nature of his relationship with the emperor.25 He had reached the age of about twenty, and though yet lacking a beard he was handsome (khush rū), with down on his cheek (sabza-i khatt); but the fact was that he was a man of bad habits, quarrelsome, somewhat short of stature, and generally of average build. He had large eyes and a high, aquiline nose.26 From the point of view of physiognomists (practitioners of ‘ilm-i qiyāfa), 24Amongst the works attributed to Azfari is a Persian translation of a treatise on signs of approaching death, ostensibly from the pen of Hippocrates! This text is the Risāla-i qabriya (Storey, Persian Literature, p. 643). 25The homophobia of Azfari’s account is somewhat unusual for Mughal culture; but also see C.M. Naim, trans., Zikr-i-Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Poet Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ (Delhi: 1999), as well as C.M. Naim, ‘The Theme of Homosexual (Pederastic) Love in Pre-Modern Urdu Poetry’, in Muhamad Umar Memon, ed., Studies in the Urdu Gazal and Prose Fiction (Madison: 1979), pp. 120–42. 26Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī (Persian text), pp. 8–9.

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writes Azfari, such people had a particular predilection to sedition (fitna). Majd-ud-Daula, who knew this science, had already noted this of Ghulam Qadir when he was young and had even said as much to Zabita Khan. Azfari’s account now details the disturbances that followed in the fort, which began with a great tumult and hubbub that reached Azfari. A fairly long passage on the consequences of Ghulam Qadir’s attack and the blinding by him of Shah ‘Alam follows, beginning with the temporary raising of the Mughal prince Mirza Bidar Bakht to the throne on 29 Zi-Qa‘da 1201 ah (12 September 1787) with the title of Shahjahan II; only later do we come more precisely to the chaos and confusion around Ghulam Qadir’s attack on the fort, the imprisonment of the other Mughal princes, and then the subsequent raising to the throne of still another prince, Mirza Akbar Shah. Azfari tells us that he avoids the truly gory details (of the blinding of the emperor and the rape of the royal women), else the reader’s bile would spill out of his belly. He nevertheless mentions the attack on the fort two months after the enthronement of Bidar Bakht, starting early Muharram 1202 ah (a month or so after the raising of the new ruler to the throne).27 A particularly traumatic day was 10 Muharram 1202 ah (22 October 1787), when the roar of cannonshot made it seem the trumpet for the Day of Judgement was being sounded. The roofs of houses in the fort flew like balls of cotton from the carder’s loom, doors were broken down, and people’s panicstricken cries were everywhere to be heard. Even at Bahadurgarh, twelve leagues from Delhi, this noise was apparent. The account then continues with the capture and death of Ghulam Qadir at the hands of the Maratha warlord Sindhia, the cutting off of his ears, nose, and lips, and his blinding at Mathura in March 1789; each of these items was put in a separate box and they were then sent to Shah ‘Alam by the Marathas. The emperor being blind could not of course see this 27A

chronicle of these events may be found in Kalikinkar Datta, Shah Alam II and the East India Company (Calcutta: 1965). Ghulam Qadir in fact controlled Delhi from 18 July to 2 October 1788, and he had entered the city for the first time on 5 September 1787. Shah ‘Alam was deposed on 30 July 1788, and Bidar Bakht, son of Ahmad Shah, was enthroned; the emperor was eventually blinded on 10 August 1788.

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gory gift, but he nevertheless ordered it sent around to the princes (salātīn) in the fort, who had a chance to inspect it.28 Now, for a time, another prince Mirza Akbar Shah (a son of Shah ‘Alam) had been raised to the throne for a period of thirteen days, after Bidar Bakht had been unseated by Ghulam Qadir at Meerut. Azfari notes that he himself was particularly happy when Akbar Shah was raised to the throne, and even wrote verses to be used on his eventual coins (though he discreetly kept these to himself ). The same Akbar Shah eventually arrived in Delhi from Meerut after Ghulam Qadir’s death and met Azfari affectionately. The latter complimented him profusely and showed him the verses he had penned in his honour. They ran: The royal seal was struck with the tablet of the moon, by the Khedive Shah Jahangir, Akbar the Second.

Having shown him these verses, however, Azfari took them back, pointing out that Shah ‘Alam II was still officially the ruler. He promised to keep them in reserve if ever Akbar Shah really became emperor; Azfari’s close associates, two other princes called Mirza Mughal and Mirza Tughal (on whom more below), were witnesses to this incident. It is noted by Azfari that Akbar Shah kept in more or less constant touch with him, visiting his residence in the fort on several occasions with his brothers Mirza Sulaiman Shukoh and Mirza Sikandar Shukoh, who at the time the text of the memoir was written lived in Lucknow. In this same period Azfari was even visited by the blind Shah ‘Alam, the visit being the subject of a short section in the text.29 Now, Azfari had written a rubā’ī or quatrain in the mixed zabān-i rekhta on the unfortunate events around Ghulam Qadir. On ‘Id ul-Fitr day, Shah ‘Alam came to see Azfari in his residence (the Hindi word deorhī is used). This was a signal occasion, for it was the first time that the emperor had left the mahal after the disturbances, and he chose to visit Azfari (a sign, naturally, of the latter’s importance). Apparently, Shah ‘Alam and Azfari generally 28Wāqi‘āt-i 29Ibid.,

Azfarī (Persian text), p. 13. pp. 16–17.

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enjoyed exchanging verses and the former often challenged the latter to respond to his compositions. On this occasion Azfari recited his Persian, Turkish, and rekhta poetry, which Shah ‘Alam much appreciated, including a chronogram verse using the phrase ‘ālam ka gham (‘the sadness of the world’). This yielded 1202, rather than the current year 1201 Hijri, but was still seen as appropriate enough.

Encounters in Captivity Azfari however expresses disappointment with Shah ‘Alam’s treatment of him after his restoration to the throne, in view of the services he had rendered him in times of trouble. In fact, Shah ‘Alam had promised him many things through Mirza Akbar, including that he would release him from his princely imprisonment, or qa’id-i salātīnī and make him an amīr, but he did not keep these promises (promises that were, as it happened, reiterated at the time of the visit on ‘Id). It is clear that Azfari grew unhappy with him—evident from the section titled ‘An Account of the Agreement (‘ahd) that the Emperor had with the Writer’.30 This runs as follows: Over the time of the Afghan misfortunes (āfat-i afghānān) I rendered appreciable services to the emperor, and subsequently I sent him a letter through the heir-apparent and the two Mirzas [Mughal and Tughal, nephews of the emperor]. The emperor sent back a response to the petition with his own signature: if God by His Grace brought him back to power, he would reward this servitor (khānazād) for his services by delivering him from the qa’id-i salātīnī and incorporate him into the category of amīr. And I had made it clear that I would serve him with dedication, without ever an eye on a share in the sultanate, and that I would never commit the sin of deviating from the norms of etiquette. It is now of no use to provide details of those promises, for: That cup has broken, and that cup-bearer is no more. 30Ibid.,

pp. 17–19.

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It may be noted that even after losing his eyesight the emperor continued decorating petitions with his own signature. As a matter of fact I still have some such petitions with me. However, when power was restored to the emperor, he did not keep his word. Rather, he flatly refused to do anything. I then took a pledge on the sharī‘a that if those promises were not fulfilled, I would not remain in prison. I then left my residence and came to the mosque adjacent to Delhi Gate by the New Quarter, where the emperor had been placed by the accursed Ghulam Qadir Rohila, in the environs of the residences of the Salatin. The emperor was meant to move back to the royal residence. I sat in that mosque and, taking God as my witness, requested Ahmad ‘Ali Khan and Kunwar Shankar Nath, son of Raja Ramnath, to convey my message to the emperor. I insisted upon it, warning that if this word did not reach the emperor they would repent of it. I said I had expressed what was in my heart, in the manner of true men (mardān-i sādiq), so that no could accuse me of deceit and thus condemn my actions. Ahmad ‘Ali Khan replied, ‘Forgive my insolence, but will Your Honour fly out of prison?’ In reply I said, ‘By God, I will get out of this place by whatever means He gives me.’ To this they replied that I was speaking out of anger, and so for my sake decided not to report this to the emperor. Eventually, what was in my heart and which I spoke out, came to be, and they had to repent.

The passage thus anticipates Azfari’s eventual flight from Delhi, but also gives us a sense of the geography of princely residences. We thus learn that the princes (salātīn) were normally kept resident in the New Quarter by the Delhi Gate, and that their imprisonment was not onerous enough to prevent their circulation within the city walls. What then was the precise nature of such royal imprisonment? This takes Azfari in the next sections to a reflection on his years as a prisoner in the Red Fort, a matter of central importance if one is to understand that ideas of shared sovereignty still persisted amongst the Mughals at this time. The custom of keeping the princes (shāhzāda) in imprisonment had been re-established, he notes, in the time of Jahandar Shah in the early-eighteenth century. For about a hundred years since that time, this was the custom of the Timurid line (nasl-i tīmūriyya). His two paternal uncles used often to regret that they would not be able to escape, but predicted that the next generation

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would surely be able to manage it; they felt that they themselves were destined never to see the thirteenth century of the Hegiran calendar. When the nephews asked how they were so sure, they never gave a full answer. Azfari’s father died on the night of 28 Muharram 1200 ah, his uncles a few years before that.31 So, only in the thirteenth century Hijri was he himself destined to escape, three years and two months after his father’s death. Some seven years before his escape, Azfari and some of his brothers had sent a message to a certain gifted dervish called Miyan Ghulam Chishti, through a certain Hakim ‘Inayatullah Khan, asking his opinion on whether they would ever be able to escape. He had replied that after seven years, a calamity of dimensions unheard of would take place in the sultanate and overtake the emperor in Delhi. Fortress walls would be shaken and threaten to fall. In these circumstances Azfari and the others would escape and reach their desired goals. Azfari promptly noted this prediction on the flyleaf of a book. When the Afghan attack took place, he consulted the prediction and found that the dates matched, even though the Chishti himself had died some days earlier. Similarly, another ascetic and emaciated holy man called Shah ‘Azim had met him some years before at his residence, soon after the death of his father. Meeting Azfari at the time of the Ramazan fast, he told him he had a gift for the prince. This was a certain object through which Azfari could gain all that he desired. The latter replied that what he wanted most of all was to escape prison. The dervish replied that this would certainly come to pass. But he wanted something in return for the gift. Azfari believed his escape would take some considerable time, but the other reassured him that it would transpire quite quickly. Still, since Shah ‘Azim was certain that he himself would die before that, he asked Azfari to take care of his daughter and son-in-law, Munsif ‘Ali Khan. He also taught him an occult practice (‘amal-i ismī), based on the notion of grace (jamālī) rather than wrath (jalālī). But Azfari was also told that he could not teach it to anyone else, or deviate from it in the slightest. The practice 31On

the death of his father, Manjle Miyan, Azfari notes how both he and some other poets had composed elegiac verses.

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was thus not given as a gift (hiba), but a limited permission (rukhsat). Azfari notes that he did not believe in its effectiveness at the time, considering all this to be the customary prattle of faqīrs. But two months later, Shah ‘Azim died. Now, Azfari began to half-believe him, though lack of time prevented him from fully employing the occult practice. When the Rohila problem began, and rumours began to float that all the princes would be carried off, Azfari’s Mirza cousins Mughal and Tughal (their real names being Muhammad Ikram-udDin and Muhammad ‘Abdul Muqtadir) requested him in secret to use any such practice (‘amal) that he might have in his possession. So Azfari at last began to employ his occult gift, both for practical reasons and also in order to test its effectiveness. As it turned out, the Rohilas carried off many others, but not Mughal and Tughal. When the Rohilas returned, to save his family and wealth Azfari began to use the ‘amal again, and it worked once more by the grace of God. Now, at long last, he really began to believe in it and began employing it towards his escape too. He thus underwent two or three penances of forty days (chilla), which—as is seen later—in fact worked to good effect. He thus assures his readers that Shah ‘Azim was an angel with a human face, the greatest saint (sāhib-i kamāl) he has ever seen, even after his wanderings have begun. So perfect a man was he that he would never denigrate anyone, and even under provocation would remain silent or express himself mildly. Most other so-called saints, he assures us, were mere impostors, hardly comparable in their depth to this great man.32 Some time later, when Azfari had begun corresponding with the raja of Jaipur and concretely planning his escape, he also made contact with another perfect astrologer (nujūmī-yi kāmil). This man worked in the ahshām-i sarkār-i wāla (imperial army) and his name was Mahtab Rai. He came to Azfari’s residence (deorhī), and the discussion turned to astrology. The account continues: I asked him, ‘I have heard that you have a good knowledge of astrology. Please tell me what is presently in the movement of the stars of my destiny.’ He measured the height of the sun with a stick, and wrote down my name 32Wāqi‘āt-i

Azfarī (Persian text), pp. 22–5.

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and my horsocope (zā’icha) on a piece of paper. He then looked at it, smiled, and grew pensive. When I asked, ‘What have you discovered?’, he delayed responding. The thought struck me that perhaps he had sensed weakness in my stars and so demurred. I then said, ‘On your own faith (qasam-i dharam-i khwud), tell me what you have found, without adding or taking anything away.’ He replied, ‘What can I say? If three stars come together in the zenith (sharaf) of a man’s horoscope, he becomes emperor. At present, in the zenith of the horoscope of Your Honour, there lie two-and-a-half stars. This indicates that the constellation has gone a step beyond the status of a wazīr. If, at this time, you continue to strive for rulership, it can be accomplished. What more can I say?’ I failed to see how this were possible in my state of imprisonment, for even the very word sultanate seemed unattainable at the time. The emperor’s eunuchs and soldiers spied constantly on me. Growing frightened I said to him, ‘Why joke with me? These sorts of pleasantries should not be made with prisoners like us. Perhaps you’ve lost your mind, you talk so crazily. May God preserve the rule of the emperor Shah ‘Alam over us, for his rule is ours too.’ Giving him a bīda of betel-leaf (pān) I packed him off as quickly as I could and began to hope for better days. In the end, [what he had foreseen] turned out true. For, within two months, when I escaped and reached Jaipur and Jodhpur, the rulers there had made a throne (takht) and parasol (chatr) for me and served me in great style.33

The oscillation between hope and despair was thus clearly a feature of the sort of life that the princely prisoners led. But the recourse to people with special powers, insights, and occult practices did not stop there. At times they could even go seriously wrong, with dire consequences. For Azfari now turns to another anecdote concerning life in the city as he had known it. It turned out that some years before (when his father and uncles were still alive) he had met a woman who was hugely knowledgeable (‘allāma-i rūzgār) in the Persian sciences, writing capably in the shikast script and dealing in predictions made from the manipulation of numbers (‘ilm-i taksīr). She also knew some Arabic and claimed she was of Sayyid stock. Through the intercession of some dishonest brokers, one of Azfari’s paternal cousins had gone and married her daughter, but 33This

royal status was of course wholly ephemeral, but that is another matter.

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the couple began to quarrel largely because of the behaviour of the groom’s mother. The bride’s mother and aunt naturally took their daughter’s side, and eventually matters came to the point where they secretly poisoned the son-in-law. However, on the very night of his death, through some magical arts this enchantress managed to make the groom’s entire family wholly obedient to her daughter, to the point that they almost neglected the fact that the prince had died, and instead seemed preoccupied with serving his widow. This was in fact astonishing to see, writes Azfari. One day, some weeks later, Azfari even bluntly asked the prince’s mother why she had changed her attitude with regard to her son’s widow to the extent of quite forgetting her sorrow. She replied that her son had not really died; he came back in all his glory each night to sleep with his wife in the bridal bed (chhaparkhāt-i murassa‘), and to feast with all of them. Azfari says he himself was thus witness to such a bizarre declaration. Things had reached the point where a certain Anjab-un-Nisa Begam, alias Putli Begam, granddaughter of the emperor Bahadur Shah, would rise to pay her respects to this bogus Sayyid woman. The emperor himself came to be so impressed by her that for a time he granted her whatever she wanted, but eventually saw through her and turned her out of the fort.34 Clearly, the degree of neurosis in the houses of the imprisoned salātīn was rather high, a fact of which Azfari himself is uncomfortably aware. For, other such stories follow in his text concerning a foreign magician called Yaqin Shah, a middle-aged man who visited Azfari and began to show his tricks. This shah came gradually to control Mirzas Mughal and Tughal, and eventually, Mirza Mughal became his close disciple. But a year later they became heartily disgusted with him, accusing him of being a trickster and a cheat. Azfari hastens to explain to the reader the circumstances of this disillusionment. Within roughly a week after the death of Prince Mirza Baba ‘Ala-ud-Daula, father of Mirza Mughal and Mirza Tughal, a stranger and magician (sihrdān) called Shah Yaqin, quite advanced in age, entered the Auspicious Fort on some pretext. Through his trickery he reached my residence and that of 34Wāqi‘āt-i

Azfarī (Persian text), p. 28.

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the two Mirzas and began to show his powers (karāmat), which were in fact based on illusion (istidrāj). One of his tricks was as follows: On a certain night, both Mirzas saw their deceased father naked in a dream. They asked the trickster for an interpretation of this. The trickster told them to donate a set of the dead man’s clothes to a saintly person. The Mirzas did as they were told, but then again saw their father naked in a dream. When they asked the trickster for its interpretation next morning, he replied, ‘The person to whom you have given the clothes did not deserve them. If you give them to another really deserving saintly person, you will see your father clothed once more.’ The Mirzas took an expensive set of clothes (libās-i fākhira) belonging to their father and gave them to him, saying, ‘In our view, there is no one more saintly than Your Excellency. Please accept these.’ He made a show of refusing but eventually took the clothes back home. That night the Mirzas dreamt of their father in the very same clothes they had given away. Subsequently, all their other relatives, upon hearing this story, became the trickster’s great devotees (mu‘taqid). The following night, their father appeared once more in a dream and asked for his sword and other expensive weapons, and said, ‘You should know that whatever you give in my name through Shah Yaqin reaches me at that very moment.’ The next morning, in keeping with that dream, they handed over all the above-mentioned weapons to the trickster. In sum, using every trick and deceit that he knew, he took away everything that belonged to the deceased from his heirs.

But things did not stop there. Mirza Tughal became wholly fascinated with the devious Shah Yaqin, who for his part always made sneering remarks about the truly holy men (mashā’ikh) of Delhi. He was not content with this, writes Azfari, and used even to denigrate Hazrat ‘Ali. Eventually, Mirzas Mughal and Tughal, and their sisters Faqira Begam and Jiona Begam, fell out with many of the saintly people of Delhi, such as Khwaja Mir Dard and Maulawi Fakhr-udDin, on account of this wily man. Now, the two Mirzas, though technically Azfari’s uncles (that is, one generation above him in the primary Mughal genealogy), deferred to him in regard to important and delicate questions, as well as in matters literary and knowledge of Turkish. Azfari hence tried to admonish them, and convince them to see through the Shah. But when Shah Yaqin heard this he became Azfari’s bitter enemy and stopped visiting him at his residence. As for

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the two Mirzas, they naively went on writing long letters to Azfari, full of extravagant praise for Shah Yaqin and his powers. Mirza Mughal even wrote, one day, that the shah had given him an amulet (ta‘wīz) that allowed him to see whatever he wanted. Sitting alone, he declared he could conjure up visions in his head of thousands of people, white and black, though of small size. He more or less became a formal disciple (murīd) of that heretic (murtadd). But, as noted above, within a year of this there was equally a falling out between them, and everything turned sour. On this occasion Mirza Mughal sent Azfari a long and confidential letter in Turkish through a certain ‘Inayat Rasul Khan, complaining against Shah Yaqin and mourning the loss of his money. He said that he feared for his very life. For it turned out now that Shah Yaqin had above all gained powers over Mirza Mughal’s sister, Jiona Begam (or Qutlugh Sultan Begam), who was also the wife of Prince Mirza Jawan Bakht, son of Shah ‘Alam. The trickster had apparently taken huge sums of money off her, and Mirza Mughal asked for Azfari’s help to somehow expel Shah Yaqin from the city. However, this had to be done secretly, for otherwise the shah would use his occult powers to take revenge on the letter-writer, Mirza Mughal. A detailed account of the tricking of Jiona Begam follows. In those days Mirza Jawan Bakht, husband of Jiona Begam, had left the Auspicious Fort without the emperor’s permission and gone off to Lucknow.35 His family and children were still in the fort with the emperor and were in prison. Jiona Begam was desperate, and even driven crazy (diwānawār) by the desire to see her husband, and be at his side, by whatever means, no matter how much money it took. So, as is the nature of women (mazhab-i zanān), she often approached holy men (pīrzādaha) for amulets and charms. When the trickster [Shah Yaqin] came to know of this, he contacted her and said, ‘I can assume the responsibility of getting you to Lucknow in the night-time through the help of occult agents (mu’akkilan-i ghaibī).’ Using these pretexts, for about a year he kept tricking her and went on postponing her travel to Lucknow. He managed by this means to extract a huge sum of money from her, himself becoming very wealthy. His last trick was this: One day, he gave her an amulet and said, ‘Do this and that sort of practice 35On

Jawan Bakht’s escape, see Francklin, History of Shah-Aulum, pp. 109–14.

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(‘amal), and in the middle of the night, go to the roof and sit there on your bed (palang), with as much of your best jewellery and expensive things on it as you can carry. Do not fear. You will see the play (tamāsha) of the power of God, for occult agents will come and will carry your bed to its desired destination.’ When night fell, the Begam, in keeping with the trickster’s instructions, got herself ready. Suddenly, the bed rose about a yard above the ground and then came down again. She then kept waiting for a long time, hoping for something more to happen, but saw nothing. Early in the morning she sent for the trickster (muzawwir), and he said, ‘Something fell short in what we had explained to you. But don’t worry. If you do penance (chilla) a second time, we shall take you to your promised land.’ He then left and disappeared [from Delhi], saying he had to make a ten-day trip. The Begam sent many people in every direction to find out about him, but they could find no trace. The people who practice occult arts (ahl-i takassur) say that when this scoundrel became rich, he neglected this science’s requirement to remain vegetarian. When he saw that he could not manage what he claimed, and that he was going to be exposed, he ran off and hid.

Azfari says a whole book could be filled with the deeds of this particular trickster; he has taken so much space over them for a particular reason. ‘The purpose of these stories is to show that since I have left the Auspicious Fort, I have never seen anyone endowed with these sorts of powers (kamālāt), either in the saintly or in the devilish way (che dar ‘ ilm-i alwī che dar siflī). I have, however, heard many stories of this sort.’36 Azfari’s attitude towards Shah Yaqin is thus interesting for its ambiguity. While seeing him constantly as a trickster, he does not in fact deny that the other possessed magical or occult powers. The powers existed, but it was largely a question of the use to which they were put, as well as their limits, interestingly linked here to the idea of vegetarianism as a preservative of ascetic power. The idea of wondrous powers (kamālāt)—of both a virtuous and a malevolent hue—clearly played a central role in the lives of imprisoned princes and their households. But powers of another sort existed too, and these other powers (karāmat) were linked to the forms of charisma possessed by truly holy men like the great Sufis of Delhi, as elsewhere. It is thus only natural for the text to move 36Wāqi‘āt-i

Azfarī (Persian text), p. 32.

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on to another story, this one deriving from Azfari’s mother, who was herself from the great Sufi family of Khwaja Abu’l ‘Ula’, Khwaja Muhammad Mah, and Khwaja Nurullah Naqshbandi Akbarabadi, about whom much had been written in Sufi hagiographies.37 Azfari’s mother spoke often about these saintly people, as did Nawwab Taj Mahal Begam, the emperor Muhammad Shah’s wife and maternal grandmother of Azfari’s mother. Azfari recounts a set of anecdotes which he heard from his mother’s maternal uncle concerning the purity of this Taj Mahal Begam. It was said of her that she would never take a male child on her lap, even when he was a suckling infant, because she felt deeply shy in the face of masculinity (zat-i zakūr), even if it took the form of an infant. From her adolescence to her death she had therefore never allowed her pulse to be taken nor her urine to be examined by any (male) physician. In the brief reign of Ahmad Shah, when her health began to deteriorate, the emperor, her own son, told her that physicians needed to check her pulse in order to treat her illness properly. To which she replied, ‘O light of my eye, in all my life, with the exception of your father (that is the late emperor), no other man ever touched my hand. Now that my last days have come, God forbid that such a thing should happen.’ Soon after this she died, preferring this sad fate to having her purity sullied. Similarly, Azfari notes that his mother would never take even her own brother’s sons on her lap. When these children were over 4 years of age, she would be veiled in their presence (sūrat-i khwud rā nīz poshīdand wa baz bi’l mushafa nadīdand). If male ascetic power was linked to vegetarianism, in Azfari’s world the power—whether potential or fully realized—of royal women was deeply tied to their modesty, even if this modesty could take exaggerated forms.

The Power of Dreams Clearly then, for Azfari royal power was linked to certain forms of charisma that verged on the magical, and this was not a feature 37These marital links cast interesting light on the evolving relationship between the Mughal dynasty itself and the Naqshbandi Sufi order in its eighteenth-century version.

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limited to the world of the Sufis.38 It was this fact which separated the Mirzas from the Mughal subjects in general, for descent from the line of Timur gave them powers that set them, potentially at least, above the populace. To be a true Mughal was to possess such charismatic potential, and there thus follows a section concerning Azfari’s dreams and powers (karāmāt), which he clearly believed he possessed. He admits however that even if in his family no real fault (qusūr) had ever happened, a substantial decline (futūr-i ‘azīm) had set in so far as their piety and purity (taqwa wa tahārat) were concerned, leading in turn to a fall in their miraculous and spiritual powers. Still, on occasion these powers manifested themselves, and he gives us some examples thereof. In point of fact, even others of the Mughal line, such as the emperor Shah ‘Alam, had such powers, but he refrains from detailing them. In his own case, one of these incidents runs as follows. Five or six years before I escaped from the Auspicious Fort, one night I saw a dream in which there was a break in the western wall of the fort—through which I come out and head southwards. In the evening I reach a place where there is the shrine of a holy man, with imposing and beautiful buildings. Around the grave of the saint there is a silver railing too high to allow me to place flowers on it. I keep trying, but my hand cannot reach. After many attempts I manage to place the flowers. When in fact I left the fort and arrived at the shrine of Khwaja Mu‘in-ud-Din Chishti [in Ajmer], everything happened exactly as in the dream, and I saw it with my own eyes.39

Another story follows, this one concerning a dream that took place three or four months before he left the fort. In this dream it seemed to be evening, and the doors to his apartments were shut, as was routine for princes in house arrest like himself; a royal eunuch was sent out each evening to lock the princes into their apartments for the night, only to release them the next morning. The account continues: A woman was calling me by name, and saying, ‘Lachmi, which is to say Wealth in Hindi, is standing at the door and calling you.’ Someone else 38For

an earlier discussion of the issue of charisma in Mughal politics, see ch. 3 above. 39Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī (Persian text), p. 34.

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said, ‘Is she just calling Mirza-i Kalan [Azfari] or others too?’ I then heard Lachmi calling out in her own voice, ‘I have come to meet Mirza-i Kalan.’ I then came out of my house and approached Lachmi. She saw me through a hole in the door, and said again, ‘I am here to meet you. Should I come in ?’ I said, ‘Do come in.’ She said, ‘If I come in, how will you treat me?’ I said, ‘I’ll do whatever I can.’ She said, ‘Very good. I’m coming.’ At this point in the conversation, I awoke. When, after a few months, I escaped, the rajas invited me to take up the [reins of the] sultanate, but this could not come about. I don’t know what happened and what impropriety I committed [in the dream] that the situation changed so soon, and so drastically.40

The theme of the magical, and of his own powers, thus takes Azfari out of a relatively well-defined Islamic context in which the future can be seen (to the extent that it had already transpired in another parallel world), into a world in which Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and fortune, has to be placated to gain power and the throne. The magical thus has a bridging function, which is also characteristic of the dream itself, taking one freely from one set of religious referents to another.41 In a similar vein, still writing of the prescient power of his dreams, Azfari notes that on 9 Muharram 1202 ah (21 October 1787), the night before the Afghans set fire to the powder magazine of the fort, he was already vigilant and trying to resist sleep. The news at the time was that Ghulam Qadir was leaving the fort with his army, having barred the doors. But some hours later he changed his mind, and decided to return to the fort with the intention of killing all the princes (salātīn). The shouts of the Afghans were resounding 40Ibid.,

p. 35. general reflections, see Sara Sviri, ‘Dreaming Analyzed and Recorded: Dreams in the World of Medieval Islam’, in David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds, Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York: 1999), pp. 252–73, and Nile Green, ‘The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, vol. 13, no. 3, 2003, pp. 287–313. Also see, for Ottoman comparisons, Cornell Fleischer, ‘Secretaries’ Dreams: Augury and Angst in Ottoman Scribal Service’, in Ingeborg Baldauf and Suraiya Faroqhi, eds, Armağan: Festschrift für Andreas Tietze (Prague, 1994), pp. 77–88, and Robert Dankoff, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1662), As Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels (Seyāhat-nāme) (Albany, NY: 1991). 41For

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in the fort, and all the princes were in fear of their lives and honours before this threat. At this moment Azfari dozed off unexpectedly, while still in a seated position. Then, while still half-awake, he sensed that he was being struck on his back, as if with a sword or whip, which caused him some pain. He then awoke, with a sense of being under direct threat. When he felt his back there was, however, no wound or sign. He exclaimed, and then after a while dozed off again. This time he heard a terrible sound in his sleep and saw that everything had turned black. Stones, bricks, and other objects were raining down. People were shouting and crying out in distress but it was so dark that their faces were not visible. Again, he awoke with a start, and this time could not fall asleep until the time of the morning prayer. When he went out to guard the door of his house, it was as if his dream were being repeated with the same awful sound, the same cries, and so on, but this time on account of the explosion of the powder store. He concludes that such ‘true’ dreams (rūyā’-i sādiq) often appeared to him when he was a prisoner in the walled city of Delhi. But since his removal from there it seems that this power has deserted him and such visions no longer came to him. Thus, it would appear that for a Mughal prince to possess such powers consistently, location counted to some extent, and not merely descent. In developing this dream theme at such length, it is clear that Azfari drew on a number of resources. We are aware that in the Islamic tradition in general, dreams were divided into two categories, namely, rūyā’-i sādiq (mentioned above) and azghās-i ahlām. The first of these was regarded as a fully reliable source of knowledge in the Sufi tradition, and was in fact drawn upon very extensively by the ‘Uwaisi order, and through their influence in India, also by the Naqshbandis.42 The use of dreams as a framing device in certain texts was also rather common—as inspection of a certain number of prefaces shows. A 42See Julian Baldick, Imaginary Muslims: The Uwaysi Sufis of Central Asia (New York: 1993); and, in the Indian context, Meenakshi Khanna, ‘Dreams and Visions in Northern Indian Sufi Tradition, ca. 1600–1800’, PhD thesis, CHS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2002, for a particular discussion of the figure of Sayyid Hasan Rasul Numa Dehlawi, as well as Simon Digby, ‘Dreams and Reminiscences of Dattu Sarvani, a Sixteenth-Century Indo-Afghan soldier’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 2, pts 1 and 2, 1965, pp. 52–80, 178–94.

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celebrated example is the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh’s preface to his translation of Yogabashist, in which he states explicitly that his resolve in the enterprise was strengthened (khwāhish-i tajdīd-i tarjuma ziyāda gasht) when he saw the sage Vashishta in a dream and was presented by him directly to Rama and Lakshmana; Azfari’s encounter with the goddess Lakshmi was thus not wholly unprecedented.43 If some of the royal charismatic power was thus instinctive and directly experienced, other parts of it were linked to more ‘scientific’ pursuits. This brings Azfari to the fact that he knows some astrology (‘ilm-i ramal), allowing him to predict certain events, including the dates of the capture of Ghulam Qadir and the return to power of Shah ‘Alam, or the date when Shah Yaqin would disappear. In each of these cases he had actually written his predictions down on a board and shown them to his brothers. He had even sent word of his prediction regarding Ghulam Qadir to console the emperor, and it turned out to be exactly the case. The most convincing proof of this was that when the prince Akbar Shah visited Azfari’s abode alongside the other princes, he had shown him the board with his predictions. On account of these repeated proofs of his powers, when the Ghulam Qadir troubles broke out many of these princelings had come and asked Azfari for his predictions on how things would turn out eventually. On their insistence, he looked into the matter, and with the aid of God saw that all signs pointed in the unexpected direction of safety and well being. Then, hesitatingly, he announced this to his cousins, and also declared that he could protect others in troubled times. This was in fact what transpired. Thus, Azfari claims that he came to be famed throughout Delhi for having saved various people in hard times.44 43British

Library, London, Ms. Ethé 1972, fls. 1b-2a. Also see British Library, Ms. I.O. 3563 (Ethé 3001), ‘The Register of Tipu Sultan’s Dreams’, which still awaits a detailed study. Later, even nineteenth-century Muslim modernists and reformers invoked dreams to explain, legitimate, and add strength to their message; cf. ‘Sir Sayyid ke khwāb’, in Muhammad Isma‘il Panipati, ed., Maqālāt-i Sir Sayyid, vol. 15 (Lahore: 1963), pp. 171–81; as also ‘Haqīqat-i rūyā’, in Maqālāt, vol. 13 (Lahore: 1963), pp. 222–44. One may also cite the instance of the novelist Nazir Ahmad Dehlawi, in texts such as Rūyā’-i Sādiqa and Taubat-un-Nusūh. 44Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī (Persian text), p. 37.

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Now, two years before all these incidents, the chief eunuch appointed to his apartments, the pious (muttaqī wa faqīr-dost) Ghulam Muhammad, had come to him and said that he too had had a strange dream. In this dream, there was huge commotion and confusion in Delhi. The sultanate had declined, everyone was in despair. But two flags were flying, and a town-crier (munādī) was crying out that the first flag was that of Mirza ‘Ali Bakht Mirza-i Kalan (that is, Azfari himself ), while the second that of Mirza Humayun Bakht (who features later in the memoir too). Those who took shelter under these flags would be well protected. The eunuch then reported that in his dream he had seen Azfari with his soldiers and servants under the first banner, and under the second the other Mirza. When Azfari heard the eunuch’s account, he saw it as pleasant tidings and rejoiced. He thus responded that, if God so willed, this might happen for the common good. When the Afghan troubles broke out the same eunuch (recalling his own dream) came and deposited cash and goods worth several thousands of rupees with Azfari, and even placed himself under his protection. Besides, reports Azfari, a number of other rich people from the fort brought their cash and goods (naqd-ojins), and deposited them with him. In the event, every house around his residence was left unharmed, including that of Mirza ‘Ali Akhtar, whose house shared a common wall with Azfari’s. This was not merely a question of chance, but also because they fought valiantly (or so Azfari claims) against the Rohilas. Similarly, the house of ‘Inayat Rasul Khan, the nazīr, was left unharmed. Once the troubles ended, Azfari returned the cash and goods to their original owners. When news of this spread, even the emperor regretted he had not left the cash and best jewels of the royal treasury (sarkār-i wāla) with Azfari—they would have been better protected. This extended account of his powers and dreams concludes the first part of Azfari’s memoirs, and its reflections on life in Shahjahanabad as a prisoner in a sort of gilded cage. It is followed by an account of his escape from Delhi, and his flight to first Jaipur, and then Sambhar, before his eventual arrival via Ajmer in Jodhpur. The memoir then discusses the attempt by Azfari to raise a military force with the aid of the Raja of Jodhpur, and the difficulties that he faced both with the Marathas and with a certain Isma‘il Beg Hamadani, as

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well as with two other dubious characters called Namdar Khan (an Afghan), and a certain Amar Datt, both of whom grievously misled him. In these sections Azfari returns periodically to the question of his long years of captivity, noting that since he had been held prisoner in Delhi until the age of thirty, this explains his innocence in political matters and his tendency to make mistaken alliances. By his own account the Mughal prince appears confused and indecisive, for people constantly give him contradictory advice. Should he stay in Jodhpur? Or go to Ajmer? Or go to the north-west? Or go to Sind, in particular to visit Shahnawaz Khan Latti at Umarkot? There is even an exchange of correspondence with Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah in Hyderabad, who regretted that he himself was now old and could not fight to place Azfari on the throne—as he would have in the good old days.45 Eventually, after further misadventures with an Afghan group in the mountains of western India, Azfari began to think of going either to Hyderabad or to Arcot. In order to do so he first made for the town of Pali via a hard and mountainous route, then Nathdwara, and eventually Udaipur. In this part of his travels Azfari also had occasion to deal (usually indirectly) with another Mughal prince called Mirza Ahsan Bakht (son of Shah ‘Alam), who had also escaped from Delhi and who was apparently openly staking claims to the Mughal throne. After further time spent at Shahpur and Kishangarh (where Azfari’s portrait was painted by the celebrated school of artists at the court), our wandering Mughal prince eventually returned to Jaipur, where he heard the sad news of the murder in Delhi of two princes, Muhammad Bidar Bakht and his brother. Further, it turned out that three months after Azfari’s departure from Delhi his own brothers, including Mirza Jalal-ud-Din or Chhote Mirza, were taken out of the fort and sent into close confinement in the house of Isma‘il Khan, and actively persecuted by the governors of Delhi, to be released only several years later. This news, and the discomfort occasioned by his rivalry with Ahsan Bakht, who by now had reached Jaipur and roundly abused the raja there for treating Azfari better than himself (although he was the real son of Shah ‘Alam), eventually 45Ibid.,

Nizam’s letter, pp. 57–9.

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led Azfari to think that he had better seek a more stable and protected site in which to live. So, on 4 Rabi‘ I 1204 ah (22 November 1789), he left Jaipur disguised under the name of Mirza ‘Abdullah, while three days later Ahsan Bakht also left there for Kabul to live under the protection of the Abdali ruler Zaman Shah. Two months of quite rapid travel followed for Azfari, through Bayana, Rampur, and Rae Bareli, to Lucknow. Though rather disapproving of the lastmentioned city, which he found much inferior to Jaipur, our Mughal prince was consoled by the fact that Asaf-ud-Daula and his people treated him very well, giving him substantial revenue grants and the like. In a long stay of nearly seven years at Lucknow, Azfari once more found a measure of conviviality with other Timurid princes ‘in exile’, and had occasion to see many of his cousins who were now living there. Amongst these, a particular friend appears to have been Mirza Jawan Bakht Jahandar Shah, son of Shah ‘Alam and himself a noted poet in rekhta. But one also gathers that some resentment persisted against Azfari in other princes, such as Mirza Sulaiman Shukoh, who suspected him of harbouring excessive ambitions. Perhaps Azfari’s superior sense of himself, which is manifest in particular in terms of his claims to speak and write Turkish (the language of Babur) in a superior fashion, contributed in some measure to this alienation between him and certain other salātīn. We have already noted how Azfari saw in his access to Turkish an element that made him the true bearer of the Mughal tradition, as opposed to his effete and excessively Persianized cousins. Perhaps on account of these tensions Azfari became receptive over the years to offers to move elsewhere. It turned out that one of his paternal cousins, a certain Mirza Humayun Bakht (already mentioned in the context of Delhi), had taken refuge in Madras (called Chinapattan Mandraj in the text) with Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Nawwab Walajah, and in 1210 ah (1795–6) Azfari received letters from him urging him to move south. This was also on account of Humayun Bakht’s anxiety to establish his own legitimacy in Madras, where another ostensible Mughal prince (a certain so-called Mirza Jangli, claiming to be the son of Shuja‘-ud-Daula) had appeared and sought to cast doubt on Humayun Bakht’s royal origins. It is thus clear that the vast proliferation of salātīn had the potential

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to create some degree of confusion on who was or was not the genuine article; it is interesting to note that, in Humayun Bakht’s case, Azfari in fact had a mahzar document prepared certifying his origins, and had it stamped with various princes’ seals in Lucknow, and also countersigned by several weighty qāzīs and muftīs. This correspondence with Humayun Bakht eventually persuaded Azfari of the need to seek his fortune further south, and so in Rajab 1211 ah (January 1797) he at last left Lucknow for Benares, then Patna, and eventually Murshidabad (Maqsudabad), where he found to his chagrin an impostor already in place, claiming to be none other than Mirza Azfari. After chastising him, the real Azfari finally let him go, in a rather strange twist to the ‘identity politics’ of the time. It was here, in Murshidabad, that Azfari also began setting down the text of the Wāqi‘āt at the request of the poet Mirza Jan Tapish, whom he met and whose company he enjoyed. The following sections of the text take Azfari in his travels along the east coast, via Katak and Vijayanagaram, to Madras—where he eventually arrives on 16 Zi-Qa‘da 1212 ah (3 May 1798). His arrival in the city and subsequent stay there finds mention in the official chronicle of the nawwabs of Arcot in the following terms. During the reign of ‘Umdatu’l-Umara Bahadur Amiru’l-Hind Nawwab Walajah II, Mirza ‘Ali Bakht Bahadur, another illustrious prince, visited Madras in 1211 ah [sic]. He was a most unique prince, deeply read and an erudite scholar. Two or three days after his arrival ‘Umdatu’l-Umara Bahadur Nawwab Walajah II arranged to decorate the dīwān-khāna of Kalas-mahall and invited the prince Mirza ‘Ali Bakht Bahadur in a manner suited to his rank and had an interview with him. He then sent him to ‘Inayat-bagh, well known as the bungalow of Brajdas Mudali, along with Taju’l-Umara Bahadur, Ra’isu’l-Umara Bahadur, Amiru’d-Dawla Bahadur, Iftikharu’dDawla Bahadur, Bahram Jang Bahadur, and Mir Asadullah Khan Bahadur. Next day the nawwab went with his nephews and nobles and paid a return visit, and became ennobled by meeting him. Nawwab Walajah II provided for all his expenses.

The account then continues: ‘One day, Nawwab Walajah II, in the course of a talk with the prince, inquired of him about his family

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and why they were left at home and not invited to Madras. The prince replied that he could not make provision for their journey. Then nawwab sahib obtained information from the prince about the number of people and the sum required for the journey, and sent a hundī for that amount to Lucknow.’46 We thus gather that in the years that followed Azfari was joined by his brother Mirza Muhammad Amin-ud-Din, who also brought along Azfari’s wife and various other members of the family. Some years later, the chronicle equally reports that Azfari was given ‘two years’ leave’ by the governor of Madras, and allowed to set out for Lucknow to visit another of his brothers, Mirza Jalal-ud-Din. However, after making the trip by boat to Calcutta, he eventually managed to meet his brother in Murshidabad, and then returned with the latter’s son to Madras, with this son too eventually being granted a pension by the Walajahs. By the next generation intermarriages had ensured that the family had firm roots in the south, and little desire to return to Delhi. Indeed, already by the close of the text of the Wāqi‘āt, in 1221 ah (1806–7), it seems that Azfari has completely renounced his royal ambitions. Instead, he is content to live under the protection of the English Company, now finding the English to be the very paragons of justice, who have brought peace to India and who are not merely brave but real seekers after knowledge. Though still clearly nostalgic for his past life in Delhi, on which he produces a brief retrospective to close the text, it would seem that a page had quite definitively been turned.

Conclusion Returning to his account of the days spent in Delhi, however, the reader cannot but be struck by a number of features in Azfari’s view of the nature of sovereignty in a Mughal context. These views are 46See Sources of the history of the Nawwābs of the Carnatic: Sawānihāt-i-Mumtāz by Muhammad Karīm, trans. S. Muhammad Husayn Nainar, 2 vols (Madras: 1940–4), vol. II, pp. 48–9; for the Persian text, see Muhammad Karim, Sawānihāt-i mumtāz: Mushtamil bar waqā’i‘-i zindagānī-i Nawwāb ‘Umdat al-Umara’ Bahādur, ed. Habib Khan Surush ‘Umari (Madras: 1961).

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not articulated here in the form of a treatise, nor is the Mughal prince quite a political theorist, even if his literary skills are certainly quite superior in quality. It is clear from the proliferation of princes, pretenders, and impostors in the decades from 1780 to 1810 that the issue of Mughal succession was still quite an open one in these years. To sum the matter up simply, we might say that a Mughal ‘gene pool’ existed of princes claiming descent from the grand line that ran from Babur to Aurangzeb, and who could all stake their claim in some measure to the throne. These princes were the principal objects of the qa’id-i salātīnī, the ‘Prison of Princes’ in which Azfari passed the first three decades of his life, and their lives seem thus to have been spent in a loose form of house arrest, with the main constraint being on their movement outside Delhi.47 Thus, when Azfari made his escape, he had to devise an elaborate subterfuge, claiming a prolonged illness in order to mislead the royal eunuch whose task it was to ensure that by evening he had returned to his residence and locked in it. Those who escaped usually made their way to a rival regional centre, be it Lucknow, Bengal, Arcot (and Madras), or Kabul, where they could then dream one day of returning to seize hold of the centre. This situation was one where aspirations to full sovereign power were restricted to members of the Mughal royal family, unlike far earlier times when every Chaghatay noble had dreamt of a share in royalty; yet it was arguably still one in which the core Timurid notion of shared rather than unitary power remained valid. A second part of Azfari’s reflection is centred on the idea of the specific qualities to be found in a true Mughal prince, and here his insistence on the idea of karāmāt (extraordinary powers) is of significance. To trace the origins of this idea in the Mughal domains is a complex task, though we may be certain that Abu’l Fazl already made this claim on behalf of his patron Akbar. By the earlynineteenth century such a belief seems to have become widespread in the transmitted legend of Akbar’s rule, as we see from the celebrated 47This may be contrasted with the situation of the fort of Gwaliyar, which—as William Hodges noted in the 1780s—was ‘the state prison, where the obnoxious branches of the [Mughal] Royal Family were always confined’; cf. William Hodges, Travels in India During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783 (London: 1794), p. 134.

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work by Muhammad Husain Azad (1834–1910) on that monarch.48 In Azad’s view Akbar had begun performing miracles even while he was in his mother’s womb, and he attributes his victories both to his powers of foreseeing the future (the defeat of Hemu, for example) as well as his instinctive ability to recognize the inner qualities of both friends and foes. Such a view does not seem to have been restricted to Akbar.49 For, as we have seen, whether it took the form of the power to predict the future, protect others’ property (and one’s own) in a calamity, or see and interpret dreams, it is clear that Azfari believed that those of royal descent in the Timurid line were marked out in this way from the population at large. Yet a variant of such wondrous powers were at times to be found in others too, whether genuine saints like Shah ‘Azim, or frauds and cheats such as Shah Yaqin. These reflections, when read together with his anecdotes on the nature of the relationship between purity, saintliness, and Sufi lineage among the women of the Mughal household in the eighteenth century, are a powerful demonstration of the complex ways in which royal power and legitimacy were understood from within the late Mughal polity. In the world of Azfari, then, not only kings but princes could be thaumaturgical. It was, then, merely a question of consolidating the potential that every member of the lineage possessed in this sense, but for that one needed political skill and astuteness. But there lay the rub. By transforming the palace into a prison the Mughal political system of the late-eighteenth century may have done nothing to take away the charisma of the princes, or even their literary talent, but it certainly left them oddly bereft of the practical means to transform charisma into political power, or karāmat into saltanat. This is what gives the account and vision of Mirza Azfari its charm, as also its tragi-comic quality. For, unlike the memoirs of his illustrious ancestor Babur, the text was destined to remain not a practical guide to power that would be read, savoured, and translated by its writer’s descendants, but a relic that was for the most part consigned to the archives. 48Muhammad Husain Azad, Darbār-i Akbarī: Ya‘nī Jalāluddīn Akbar Bādshāh-i Hindūstān aur uske darbār ke umara’-yi jalīl al-qadr (Lucknow: 1965), pp. 3–4, passim. 49Cf. the incident that is reported of Aurangzeb’s powers of penetration in the Tūzak-i Wālājāhī; a discussion may be found in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India (Delhi: 2001), pp. 202–3.

Epilogue: Mughals in Exile When the temper of the world was stricken with disease, the ruler should have turned physican. But the ruler too has fallen ill, He knows the symptoms of sickness have spread. Gradually the disease became chronic; The longer it has lasted, the more severe its effects. As long as the doctor does not prescribe the tonic of justice How can the forlorn patient be saved? Cupidity is a special, horrid affliction; Melancholia is difficult to cure. —Mustafa ‘Ali, Künh ül-Akhbār (late-sixteenth century)1

B

y the end of the eighteenth century, some two-and-a-half centuries from the time of Babur’s victory at Panipat, the Mughal empire had entered a phase usually characterized simply as one of ‘decline’. Both observers from within the polity, and those on its fringes, passed summary judgements on it, and the materials containing such judgements came to form a corpus of ‘decline literature’ comparable to that which existed with the Ottomans, or which had existed already in the first half of the seventeenth century with the Spanish Habsburgs or the Ming in China.2 A characteristically 1Translation

in Cornell Fleischer, ‘Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and “Ibn Khaldūnism” in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 18, nos 3–4, 1983, pp. 198–220 (p. 213). 2Cemal Kafadar, ‘The Question of Ottoman Decline’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, vol. 4, nos 1–2, 1997–8, pp. 30–75; William S. Atwell, ‘Ming

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moralizing observer of one of these processes claimed that it was ‘a clear demonstration that misgovernment, in suffering all manners of Frauds, and neglecting the interest of a nation, will soon bring the mightiest of Kingdoms low, and lay their honour in the dust.’3 What is notable is that this statement could as easily be found in the literature on Ming China, the Ottomans or the Mughals, as that in which it really occurs, namely, on Habsburg Spain. It is therefore necessary to take a more nuanced view of the matter, taking a leaf from John Elliott’s argument that ‘there is something more to Spain’s seventeenth century than the question of decline.’ What we propose here is to listen closely to a series of voices from one particular context, namely that of authors in the city of Lucknow. In so doing, we have also heeded the advice of our friends in Urdu literary studies to take the materials produced in that language more seriously than has usually been done by historians of the Mughals.4 Though it had been a garrison and administrative centre of some importance through much of the Mughal period in northern India, Lucknow truly emerged into prominence in the latter half of the eighteenth century—when the Mughal empire as a political structure was entering into a phase of marked decentralization under the long rule of Shah ‘Alam II.5 In this respect it was like a number of regional courts and urban centres (the examples of Murshidabad, Bhopal, Arcot, and Hyderabad also come to mind) which profited from the considerable reorientations of the eighteenth century in order to construct or consolidate their own profiles. The fact that they did so at Observers of Ming Decline: Some Chinese Views on the “Seventeenth-Century Crisis” in Comparative Perspective’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2, 1988, pp. 316–48. 3Slingsby Bethel (1681), cited in J.H. Elliott, Spain and its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven: 1989), p. 213. See the valuable discussion that follows on pp. 213–86, entitled ‘The Question of Decline’. 4Here, we refer in particular to C.M. Naim and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. See C.M. Naim, Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim (Delhi: 2004); Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, ‘A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part I: Naming and Placing a Literary Culture’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: 2003), pp. 805–63. 5See Violette Graff, ed., Lucknow: Memories of a City (Delhi: 1997), pp. 16–48.

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the expense of the declining imperial centre at Shahjahanabad–Delhi lent this process a bitter-sweet taste to a number of contemporary observers, many of whom were obliged for economic and more general material reasons to migrate from Delhi to these newlyprosperous centres of power. This brief epilogue is largely concerned with the nature of the tensions that were inherent in this process, as seen through the eyes of some princes and poets who flocked from Delhi to Lucknow in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The memoirist ‘Abdul Halim ‘Sharar’ (1860–1926) famously described Lucknow as the ‘last exemplar of eastern culture in Hindustan (Hindūstān mem mashrīqī tamaddun kā ākhirī namūna)’ in the nostalgic essays that he published in the journal Dil Gudāz between 1913 and the early 1920s.6 A patriotic denizen of the town, he traced its past back to distant antiquity, as far as the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata, using the folk etymology that linked Lucknow (Lakhnau) to Lakhan (or Lakshmana), the brother of the hero and god Rama. His rather imaginative early history of the town also tied it to the activities of the legendary warrior-saint Salar Mas‘ud in the eleventh century, and he claimed that ‘a large population of Hindus and Muslims were settled there before Akbar’s reign.’ A crucial figure in his account is that of a certain Shaikh ‘Abdur Rahim Bijnauri, who he stated made his residence there and was granted lands and revenues by the Mughals at the very end of the sixteenth century. His descendants and other Shaikhzadas, some of Afghan origin, are depicted by Sharar as the great local powerholders in the area for much of the high Mughal period until the early-eighteenth century, when the major Iranian noble Sa‘adat Khan Burhan-ul-Mulk decided for his part to make his power-base in the area. The central task of Burhan-ul-Mulk was thus to rein in the pretensions of the Shaikhzadas, and create a new dispensation based on a deeper fiscal penetration into the countryside and its resources.7 Despite the prestige of 6‘Abdul Halim Sharar, Hindūstān mem mashrīqī tamaddun kā ākhirī namūnā ya‘nī Guzashta Lakhnau, ed. Rashid Hasan Khan (New Delhi: 1971); the English translation is Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, trans. E.S. Harcourt and Fakhir Husain (reprinted Delhi: 1989). 7Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Awadh Regime, the Mughals and the Countryside’, in Graff, ed., Lucknow: Memories of a City, pp. 16–31.

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Lucknow, which had by now also acquired a significant presence of learned ‘ulamā’ in centres such as the celebrated Farangi Mahal (itself consolidated in Aurangzeb’s reign), Burhan-ul-Mulk chose to centre his activities further to the east, in a town that came for a time to overshadow Lucknow in the region—namely, Faizabad.8 In turn, Burhan-ul-Mulk was succeeded as the chief regional powerbroker by his son-in-law Muhammad Muqim Nishapuri, titled Safdar Jang (d. 1754). His presence in the area appears to have increased the Shi‘i flavour to Muslim settlement there, and this continued under the rule of his son Nawab Shuja‘-ud-Daula (1732–75), who also built up the site of Faizabad to a considerable degree after having initially preferred Lucknow.9 The balance was definitively redressed away from Faizabad and in favour of Lucknow only during the following reign, that of Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97) and then eventually in that of Yamin-ud-Daula Nawab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan (r. 1798–1814).10 Faizabad and Lucknow had certainly managed to attract a number of migrants from Delhi by the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Sharar’s account is very evocative of this change. He writes: As soon as it was known that Shuja‘-ud-Daula had decided on Faizabad for his headquarters [in 1765], crowds flocked in that direction, and thousands came and settled there. The entire population of Shahjahanabad seemed to be making preparations to move there. Most of the eminent people of Delhi bade farewell to their domiciles and turned towards the east. Night and day people kept coming and caravan after caravan arrived to stay and become absorbed into the environs of Faizabad. In no time persons of every race and creed, literary men, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, individuals of every rank and class had gathered there.11 8Francis Robinson, The ‘Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (Delhi: 2001). 9On Shi‘ism in the region, see the important analysis in J.R.I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi‘ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: 1988). 10For the standard account, see Richard B. Barnett, North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720–1801 (Berkeley: 1980). Also, more recently, the more culturally-oriented account in Madhu Trivedi, The Making of Awadh Culture (Delhi: 2010). 11Sharar, Guzashta Lakhnau, pp. 44–5; Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, p. 31.

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Two of the great poets of Delhi, Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ and Mir Hasan, were however not amongst the first wave of migrants but rather belonged to a second moment, when Asaf-ud-Daula had moved the centre of affairs to Lucknow a decade later, in the mid1770s. Of the two, Mir (1723–1810) is uncharacteristically tactful regarding Lucknow in his usually quite acerbic memoir Zikr-i Mīr, where he describes the splendid reception given to Warren Hastings by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula in 1784 in the most fulsome terms (glossing over the fact that the same period was one of famine and misery in northern India, a fact that did not escape an embarrassed Hastings).12 The account of the region by his younger contemporary Mir Hasan (1736–86), which has attracted less attention, is spread over several texts from his pen.13 It is one of his later writings, the Masnawī Sihr al-Bayān, which has been most frequently cited, and by the time of its writing it is clear that Mir Hasan had reconciled himself to Lucknow, the Shi‘i culture of which would eventually be fervently defended by his grandson Mir Anis. However, we gather a rather different impression when we look to his earlier writings such as the Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram, completed in 1192 ah/1778.14 This long text concerns Mir Hasan’s departure from Delhi and arrival in Lucknow via Makanpur; alongside a relatively brief description of Lucknow, there is a far more extensive section on Faizabad, which he much prefers. Here is how the poem begins: Since the time Hindustan was shattered, my Destiny took me to the East My heart was attached to an idol there [Delhi], and it was difficult to be separated from it. That image is still present in my eyes, like a stone embedded in a goblet. Even though I left the place, still the fact of separation tortures me. 12C.M.

Naim, Zikr-i Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth-Century Mughal Poet: Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ (Delhi: 1999), pp. 121–4. 13On Mir Hasan, also see Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda, Mir Hasan (Cambridge: 1968). 14For this text, see Mir Hasan, Masnawiyāt-i Hasan, ed. Wahid Qureshi (Lahore: 1966), pp. 175–212.

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I have travelled in a carriage helplessly trapped like a bird in a moving cage Though I moved from one stage to another, my heart was left behind at each station.15

It is thus clear that Mir Hasan saw his departure from Delhi as something to regret, indeed a form of bitter exile, which he assimilated—whether literally or as a mere poetic device—to separation from a beloved. He notes, for example, that ‘on the pretext of having left my homeland behind/ I turned the jungle into a river with my tears.’ After passing through the important Jat centre of Dig, he eventually joined a procession to the town of Makanpur in honour of the heterodox saint Shah Madar.16 Gradually, a combination of regular access to the good things of life, such as snacks and sweetmeats, and some amorous adventures seem to have assuaged his bitterness somewhat while on the road. However, the tone of derision resumes as soon as he arrives in Lucknow, and indeed the heading of that particular section is bluntly indicative of this: Rasīdan be-sijn wa wāzih shudan ma‘anī-yi: ‘Al-duniyā sijnunlil-mūminīn wa jannatun-lil-kāfirīn’ (Arrival in the prison-house, and my understanding the verse: The world is a prison for believers, and a paradise for infidels). Here he writes: O cup-bearer! Bring a jade-coloured goblet Place more precious stones at its rim. When I arrived in the land of Lucknow I saw no pleasure (bahār) in that town. Grief had so besieged my soul, I felt I could never take to this place. Even if there are many pious people here, What shall we do if the place itself is bad?17 15‘Masnawī

Gulzār-i Eram’, in Mir Hasan, Masnawiyāt-i Hasan, p. 177. Shah Madar and Makanpur, see Anna Suvorova, Muslim Saints of South Asia: The Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries, trans. M. Osama Faruqi (London: 2004), pp. 171–7. 17‘Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram’, in Mir Hasan, Masnawiyāt-i Hasan, p. 186. 16On

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Mir Hasan saw the problems of Lucknow as partly associated with the physical site of the town itself, as well as the fact that it seemed quite disorderly in its construction—evident to him by comparison with the greater orderliness of Shahjahanabad. His verse account thus continues: This country is settled on bumpy ground, So that its paths wind all up and down. Some houses are up near the sky And the huts of some are almost underground. When we say, ‘It’s not Lucknow, but because of this age’, We blame this age for no fault of its own. The paths and customs here are all dirty. At times it’s low, and sometimes it rises up. This town is so crowded together, That it’s scarcely possible to take a breath. Each lane is so narrow here, That even the wind cannot pass through. The sludge in the lanes is black with mud, Like sweat from the body of an Ethiopian.18

The denigration thus continues in verse after verse. He complains that the houses are far too small, while their wells are like tiny specks with water oozing out like pus from a wound in the chest. To be sure, the place had an ancient past going back practically to the time of the legendary Decius, but its lanes were labyrinthine, and even the crossroads were so narrow that it was hard to take a horse through them. The Shi‘i Mir Hasan even compares Lucknow to Kufa near where Imam Husain was killed, complaining in turn of the miserliness of its people, its vulnerability to attacks by wild animals like wolves, and the fact that its river—the Gomti—overflowed its banks practically every year. As for what transpires here during the rains, What can I say about its horrors? 18Ibid.,

pp. 186–7.

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When the Gomti rises all round, Houses begin to drown like bubbles in a stream. No wood can be found, nor logs for a fire, There’s water all around, and grain is dear. There’s so much water in the place, That it’s not a town but a water-pot instead.19

In later passages, however, Mir Hasan attempts for a time to soften the tone of his criticism somewhat. He notes that at least a few generous patrons have settled in the town, even if most of them have their origins in Delhi. One of them was a certain Khwaja Basit. But if there’s one place, it is Khwaja Basit’s, Quite in keeping with the Khwaja’s status. May God protect him and that abode, For here it is the symbol of Delhi. Bravo! See the tastes and desires of lovers, Songs in an assembly, and the recollections of friends. It is one of the exemplars of Hindustan, It is a page from that wonderful album.20

In a more politic vein he also concedes that the Nawwab-Wazir Asaf-ud-Daula has begun to effect great improvements in the town, by way of constructing great public buildings and imposing some order on what was otherwise a rather chaotic situation. May Asaf-ud-Daula be kept safe forever, For he made the plans for his stay in this place. He laid foundations for such buildings here, That their spectacle had the whole world in raptures. He put an end to all the dirtiness here, And gave a real shape to Lucknow. O God! May this leader live forever, who made the town of Lucknow into a garden.21 19Ibid.,

p. 189. p. 190. 21Ibid., p. 191. 20Ibid.,

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At the same time it is clear that Mir Hasan’s distaste for Lucknow does not stem from the comparison with Shahjahanabad alone. Rather, he also has extended passages in the same masnawī where he makes evident his own strong preference for Faizabad, which he portrays in the most glowing terms. If the poet sees Lucknow as a ‘cruel city (shahr-i bedād)’, Faizabad for him is no less than a ‘flower-garden’. O cup-bearer! Fill my goblet rapidly. Take my boat across to the other side. I am now fed up with the narrowness of this place [Lucknow], And each hill here is like a rock on my chest. When I saw this condition of the place, A wave came one day over my breast: Why not make a trip to Faizabad? And so I raised up my heart and left. As soon as I entered that town, It felt as if heaven’s door had opened.22

This town, the seat of power built up by Shuja‘-ud-Daula, was in the poet’s words full of ‘open bazaars and wide-open streets/ like lines on a white piece of paper.’ He rejoices in the extended description of the Tripuliya quarter, as well as other bazaars, with jewels, clothmerchants, money-changers (sarrāfs), and metal-workers. Indeed, it is evident that the commercial prosperity of Faizabad impresses him no end, what with flowers, fruits, sugarcane, and sweetmeats (fīrnī and fālūdā) as well as many other products, including kebabs of different varieties. There is also a vast number of occasions and locations for sociability, whether in the coffee-shops, or in establishments where prostitutes (randiyān) as well as young boys (launde) from Kashmir and elsewhere preen themselves. Mir Hasan waxes eloquent in several passages regarding the dresses and ornaments worn by the people, and especially the women, of Faizabad. These include flirtatious women covered with perfume (‘itr) and sandal essence, whose dresses often reveal their breasts. If Lucknow is chaos then, Faizabad for the poet is a commercial, culinary, and erotic paradise.23 22Ibid. 23Mir

Hasan’s presentation of the ‘public sphere’ is briefly discussed in a recent

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Lucknow also comes in for some rather harsh criticism in another of Mir Hasan’s texts, the Masnawī Hajw-i Hawelī (Poem Denigrating His Mansion), from 1189–90 ah.24 This is written in a far more humorous tone than the poem cited above, and we cite the opening passages to give a flavour of its contents. Ever since I took on a house here, For a rent of two rupees a year, Has anyone, since the world was created, Seen such a house, so I’ve debated? The people in it are always annoyed, It’s not a house but a mortal killjoy. The house, I found, has a strange quality, I entered it and got a feverish malady. My cheek threw up a dreadful swelling, As if I’d been butted by that dwelling. As if instead of a kiss of affection, My face had been bitten at first inspection. What shall I say of its courtyard all bare, Just four cots can be spread out there. A thatched roof about five planks wide, So thin the sun burns through all day long inside. A veranda made of nine or ten spare beams, While a thatched roof over it leans. An old ladder just to clamber up and down, Of rough bamboo, just lies around. Everyone is in peril day and night, A slip, and it’s your death from a height. essay by Farhat Hasan, ‘Forms of Civility and Publicness in Pre-British India’, in Rajeev Bhargava and Helmut Reifeld, eds, Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions (New Delhi: 2005), pp. 84–105. 24‘Masnawī Hajw-i Hawelī’, 1189–90 ah, in Mir Hasan, Masnawiyāt-i Hasan, pp. 153–69.

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And if your skirt gets caught up in that bamboo, Its notches tear your clothes quite in two. Know the truth, it’s plain enough to state, It’s all crooked here, and nothing’s straight. The chief quality of that yard can be found, In the fact that it goes up and down. At every breath, your foot may be twisted, So you walk as if only tiptoes existed. There’s no kitchen, or even a privy space, As if there were no such habit in this place. In mid-courtyard is a plain raised square, With the sludge from it spreading everywhere. As a curtain, two dusty wooden shutters, That will soil the hands of the man who enters. The courtyard’s slope is made so cunning It’s into the house the water’s always running. That helpless water: where can it go? It too must return to its own abode. And when you need to relieve yourself, Close the door to the house where you dwell. So that a guest arriving there by chance, From the closed door divines at a glance, And thinks: well, if the door is shut Someone must be sitting on the pot.25

Humiliated and constantly assailed by heat, dust, and the scourge of thousands of ants who seem to swarm all around Lucknow, the poet’s life in the town is described in this poem as a veritable purgatory. With one’s nostrils full of mud, what poetry can one write, asks Mir Hasan rhetorically. The fate of the poet and writer in Asaf-ud-Daula’s Lucknow is thus seen as anything but joyous. 25Ibid.,

pp. 153–5.

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Fortunate that man, who from disgust At the troubles of the world, gave up the ghost. And like the ants, disappeared in the sod, And took the earth to be his abode. If you laugh at it all, it might seem not so sad, But if not, perhaps, there’s a lesson to be had.26

But the reality seems to have been far more complex than the dark picture painted by Mir Hasan in these verses, some simply gloomy and some bitingly humorous. For many poets in both Persian and Urdu can be listed in Lucknow in these times, some Muslims such as Mir or Mir Hasan, and others Persianized Kayasthas and Khatris.27 A decade or so after Mir Hasan’s salvos we get a somewhat different view of Lucknow under Asaf-ud-Daula from the pen of a princely Mughal writer who also resided there for a time. This is the central figure of our previous chapter, Mirza ‘Ali Bakht ‘Azfari’, a direct descendant of the Great Mughals who we have seen growing up in Shahjahanabad and remaining there until about the age of thirty, as a sort of elite prisoner.28 Eventually, Azfari—like many of his cousins who were in a similar situation—managed to escape by profiting from a breach in the city walls. He made his way to a variety of courts in Rajasthan where he pleaded with their rulers to support him in a bid for the throne. In this endeavour he met with very limited success, so that he was eventually tempted by the prospect of migrating to the Asaf Jahi court in the Deccan. When this proved too difficult, he decided to try his luck with Asaf-ud-Daula in Lucknow.29 Making his way to the Rohila principality of Rampur, he wrote letters from there to the Nawwab-Wazir (that is Asaf-ud-Daula), his 26Ibid.,

p. 169. Farooqui, Awadh ke Fārsī-gū shu‘arā (1134–1273 Hijrī/1721–1856) (Delhi: 2003); on Urdu poets, see for example Abu’l-Lais Siddiqi, Lakhnau kā dabistān-i shā‘irī (Delhi: 1965). 28On Azfari, see ch. 10 above. 29Mirza ‘Ali Bakht Azfari, Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, ed. T. Chandrasekharan and Syed Hamza Hussain Omari (Madras: 1957), pp. 95–119. For an Urdu translation of this text, see Wāqi‘āt-i-Azfarī, trans. Muhammad Husain Mahvi Siddiqi (Madras: 1937). 27Zohra

Epilogue: Mughals in Exile

479

deputy, and a certain notable called Maharaja Jhao Lal explaining his situation to them and received positive responses with promises of good treatment. The Mughal prince proceeded cautiously, however, and only left Rampur after a few months. On his arrival in Lucknow in the early 1790s, Maharaja Jhao Lal greeted him and had him stay at Gau Ghat. Like Mir Hasan, Azfari was initially far from impressed; the lanes, bylanes, bazaars, land, and buildings of Lucknow were in his view all still in rather poor shape. The streets were narrow, he complained, and the ground was all up and down so that the town compared in his eyes unfavourably with Jaipur, which he had already visited. On the other hand Asaf-ud-Daula had built matchless buildings there; still, it seemed that the town’s very foundations and temperament (uftād-i ān balda) were somehow asymmetrical (nāmauzūn). This notwithstanding, he noted it was now well populated and many accomplished people from the different arts lived there. Azfari then adds sarscastically that the people here were so perfect that one needed God’s protection from them.30 Eventually, it appears that Azfari warmed somewhat to the place, its people, and especially to the court of Asaf-ud-Daula. After a year in Lucknow he thus seems to have decided that he would settle there in a more permanent way, and so sent for his own family from Shahjahanabad. He writes in his memoir the Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī that Asaf-ud-Daula, his deputy (nā’ib) Sarfaraz-ud-Daula, and others were so diligent in their service to him that he eventually remained in the town for all of seven years and two months. His social interactions with these aristocrats are described as excellent. As an instance of the culture and refinement of the court, Azfari notes that he used to engage in archery (tīr-andāzī), but that Asaf-ud-Daula was such a great archer that Azfari and his cousin Mirza Jalal-ud-Din became his disciples. We learn from the Wāqi‘āt that over the years a number of other Mughal princes from Delhi had taken refuge in Lucknow. However, with the elapse of time Asaf-ud-Daula had ceased to pay too much attention to some of them (especially the minor princes), a fact that stuck somewhat in Azfari’s craw. It so happened that not long after his arrival, in the season of the Holi festival, the nawwab called 30Azfari,

Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī (Persian text), p. 96.

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him to witness music and dance (raqs-o-surūd) at the court. On this occasion Azfari stated that it did not behove the nawwab’s quality and justice to treat his cousins as he did, since they were also after all of Timurid descent. To make his point, he then extemporized a verse. When Timur’s family came to seek your shelter, Your glory lay in making them rich and contented. But what have their cousins done to deserve humiliation (zalīl-okhwār)? For it is far from justice that two breezes blow through the same roof.31

He reports that on hearing this Asaf-ud-Daula smiled and said regretfully he had been too busy with his own household and their sustenance (ma‘āsh). However, he would now give greater attention to all the Mughal princes, paying them a proper stipend each month. Azfari counts his intervention in favour of his cousins something of a success, for this assurance continued to be upheld for quite some time; it was only when Nawab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan came to power that he took back the grants (wazīfa or ma‘āsh) from them. Azfari’s time in Lucknow also brought him into contact with other Mughal grandees such as Nawwab Madar-ud-Daula who, though only loosely a member of the Timurid clan, commanded great respect. Indeed, he reports, Asaf-ud-Daula respected him so much that—despite certain persisting tensions between the two—he would stand up from his throne when he entered and seat him at his side. Madar-ud-Daula was apparently still in possession of a great estate with horses, camels, and elephants and had a large family with many wives. His dealings with Azfari were courteous; he insisted it was the latter who had a higher status since he was a direct descendant of the emperor Jahandar Shah on his mother’s side while Madarud-Daula himself was not (man az nasl-i Tīmūriyya nīstam). It was through Madar-ud-Daula, it seems, that Azfari eventually came to understand that he would need to modify his somewhat abrupt manners if he wished to do well in the all-too-polite high society of Asaf-ud-Daula’s court. Azfari thus notes that he was initially not 31Ibid.,

p. 97.

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given to such courtly habits, but little by little picked up the required manners over his years in Lucknow. He was thus able to show off his extensive erudition not merely in Persian, but in Arabic and Turkish, and grew so influential that he arranged a number of important marriages amongst the Mughal elite in Lucknow. It would appear however that the treatment received by Azfari in Lucknow was better than that meted out to the run-of-the-mill Mughal prince, even if Asaf-ud-Daula generally remained mindful of the proprieties and did not overly abuse etiquette. Other Timurid princes who were present in Lucknow at the time included Mirza Sulaiman Shukoh, Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh, and Mirza Husain Bakhsh. At the same time, the Nawwab was sensitive to slights, both real and perceived. Azfari reports for example that one of his cousins, Mirza Jawan Bakht Jahandar Shah, had fled Delhi for Lucknow and developed a close friendship for a time with Asaf-ud-Daula, to the extent that the latter had set aside Rs 50,000 for his household expenses. However, after a few years, the Mirza left for Delhi without the consent of the Nawwab to bring his relatives from there, and this offended Asaf-ud-Daula. Eventually, when the prince came back to Lucknow, the Nawwab used an occasion for the exchange of witticisms to humiliate Jawan Bakht to the point that the latter left for Banaras, never to return. On the other hand, whenever Asaf-ud-Daula was visited by Azfari he always made it a point to stand up respectfully and seat the Mughal prince next to him, even on one occasion when the Nawwab was suffering as a result of a fall from a horse. Asaf-udDaula’s cautiousness with regard to the use of the symbols of royalty is emphasized by Azfari in the following anecdote: I lived in Lucknow for seven years and saw the procession of the Nawwab a thousand times. He never allowed a fly-whisk (morchal) to be used above his head. I heard that one day he said to the princes who had come from Delhi, ‘I feel embarrassed that I used a fly-whisk in the presence of such highstatured people such as yourselves.’ He therefore stopped using it. However, in the procession, over the amarīs and haudas of around twenty elephants, the morchals would also be in accompaniment, but the elephant upon which he rode did not itself have a morchal. He commanded that an ordinary handkerchief (rūmāl) be used to swat flies for him. Several times I have been

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to his palace and also visited the house of Hasan Raza Khan with him, but he never sat on a throne (masnad) in front of me and he did not use a morchal to whisk away the flies, although he did use a large fan (bādkash).32

The degree of courtesy shown to Azfari by Asaf-ud-Daula was also not necessarily reflected in the attitude of all those in his court. The Mughal prince muses for example on an episode that took place at the time of the Holi festival, when a certain Sharaf ‘Ali Khan, a courtier and cousin of Sarfaraz-ud-Daula, rather rudely threw a ball full of water on his back. The faux pas offended the Nawwab considerably, and Azfari himself had to intervene in order to defuse the situation, reminding the Nawwab that ‘etiquette and regard and respect for elders are all set aside in playing Holi.’ Over the years he spent in Lucknow, Azfari thus seems to have experienced both unease and an occasion to develop his own not inconsiderable self-esteem. He also grew to appreciate that court culture in Lucknow had its own rhythms and values, and in some instances was less attuned to West and Central Asia than Shahjahanabad. The following anecdote which he recounts illustrates this: In a private meeting, in my presence, one Shah Husain who was fresh from abroad (wilāyat), was a good reciter, and also sang several maqāms well from the music of wilāyat, came to the court. Shah Husain was considered to be peerless as nobody like him had come to Lucknow before. He came to the court and started reciting the book, Dih Majlis. One of the courtiers in a tone of appreciation addressed the Nawwab: ‘Do listen to the beautiful and attractive voice in which the Shah is reciting. He is an expert of the art. There is no match for him perhaps even in wilāyat. It is so good that such a distinguished person visited your court in your period and because of you, even we can enjoy this beautiful voice.’ The Nawwab replied, ‘Perhaps you say this on account of your knowledge. This banda [meaning, himself ] is totally illiterate in this art.’ Evidently, the Nawwab was weary of the recitation. The point of this response was that he did not approve of the recommendation even if it had come from his own mother. When this harsh remark of the Nawwab reached Shah Husain, he became uncomfortable, and later he 32Ibid.,

p. 107.

Epilogue: Mughals in Exile

483

told me, ‘Now, even if I am chained, I will not stay in Hindustan’, and he did precisely that. In actuality, in the practice of his own wilāyat, he was fully accomplished. When he arrived here, he did not listen carefully to the songs of Hindustan and gave preference to the songs of wilāyat over those of Hindustan. When he heard Indian songs, however, he liked them very much and accepted that real music is what the people of India sing.33

All this however was not enough, in the final analysis, to keep Azfari in Lucknow. After spending the greater part of the 1790s in Asaf-ud-Daula’s court, he decided (as we have seen) to seek his fortune elsewhere. Departing for Banaras and Calcutta, he eventually made his way after considerable travails to Madras and Arcot, where he settled under the Walajah Nawwabs.34 However, it has been noted that his family connections with Lucknow remained intact even after his departure in 1796; his brother, cousins, and nephews continued to be patronized by Asaf-ud-Daula and his successors: ‘In the meanwhile all my brothers and cousins arrived in the Lucknow of Nawwab Asaf-udDaula and are safe there. The Nawwab has treated them generously. They are all living in peace. My real brother is enjoying appropriate hospitality even from the deputy wazīr and is honoured and safe there. He has two sons and two daughters, the elder son being named Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh and the younger Mirza Izad Bakhsh, may God bestow upon them knowledge, wisdom and honour and may they enjoy a long natural life.’35 The received wisdom on Lucknow tends to highlight two moments. One is the early phase under Asaf-ud-Daula, usually associated with the activities of European savants and collectors, men such as Claude Martin and Antoine Polier. This moment is usually thought of as embodying a particular style of cosmopolitanism, when East and West came together. A second moment is that of the end of the nawwabi regime in the 1850s, captured in fiction by Munshi Premchand in a celebrated story and then committed to the screen by Satyajit Ray as Shatrañj ke khilādī (The Chess Players). Here we see a 33Ibid.,

pp. 104–5. Muhammad Husayn Nainar, trans., Sources of the History of the Nawwābs of the Carnatic: Sawānihāt-i-Mumtāz by Muhammad Karīm, 2 vols (Madras: 1940–4), vol. II, pp. 48–9. 35Azfari, Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī (Persian text), p. 118. 34S.

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Lucknow that has become effete and depleted of creative energy, an overripe fruit waiting to be plucked by the greedy hand of the colonial power. In this brief epilogue we have attempted to add some further voices and perceptions to those that are normally encountered in the historiography. In so doing we hope to have contributed in some modest way to an understanding of the varieties of meaning attached to ‘Mughal decline’ in the later-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historians are often embarrassed by the teleological bind in which they are placed by the crippling effects of hindsight. Writing in the late-twentieth or early-twenty-first centuries, we are naturally aware that Mughal rule in India came to an end in the mid-nineteenth century, but we should be equally conscious that we cannot see this end as somehow already existing, in embryonic form, in 1600 or 1650. Yet this form of radical anachronism has consistently been practised both by an older historiography which persisted in seeing the Mughal state in structural (and therefore largely static) terms, and by a more recent ‘revisionist’ trend that has tried to read Mughal history backwards from the latter half of the eighteenth century, as if the Mughals’ historical role was merely to prepare the ground for the triumph of the East India Company. In the preceding chapters we have attempted to deploy a variety of strategies against both these historiographical trends, showing the nature and complexity of change on the one hand (and thus of ‘process’ rather than ‘structure’), while on the other hand resisting facile generalizations regarding the degree of ‘continuity’ between the Mughals and the East India Company. Our focus throughout has been on a concrete set of histories, those which reflected the experiences and subjectivities of neither peasants nor aristocrats, but largely of middling groups with a talent for written expression. If what we have produced here is scarcely meant to be a history from below, it is quite distinct from being the view from the foot of the throne as well. Amongst other things, we hope thereby to have affirmed that the last frontier in Mughal history—whether in terms of unearthing fresh source materials or posing intriguing new questions—is quite far from having been crossed. With regard to a large number of crucial issues, we can instead state confidently that the surface has in fact scarcely been scratched. The prospect for future historians of the Mughal empire remains an exciting one.

Index Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā, or ‘Truthshowing Mirror’ 263, 308 Ā’īn-i Akbarī 2, 9, 20, 88. See also Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Shaikh ‘Abdul Halim ‘Sharar’ 469–70 ‘Abdul Karim, Khwaja 429 ‘Abdul Latif Gujarati 321 ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni, Mulla 54, 211, 314, 404 Faizi’s assessment of 210 Faizi’s Deccan mission, comment on 181 ‘Abdul Qadir ‘Bedil’ 382 ‘Abdul Qadir Lahauri, Sayyid 327 ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan 11, 150–51, 152, 153, 187, 193, 195, 197, 200 ‘Abdullah ‘Ali Gauhar, Mirza. See Shah ‘Alam II ‘Abdullah, Munshi 399, 426, 427 ‘Abdullah, Sayyid 399 ‘Abdur Rahim Bijnauri, Shaikh 469 ‘Abdur-Rahman 93, 94 ‘Abdus Samad Jaunpuri, Shaikh 319 ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri 25, 31, 264–8, 269, 287, 304 and Akbar 267, 269

and Christianity, knowledge of 304 and Jerónimo Xavier, collaboration with 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270–1 Latin sources, use of 273 Muslim-Jesuit debates, account of. See Majālis-i Jahāngīrī and Naqib Khan, relations between 287 religious leanings of 273–4 and Samrat ul-Falāsifa. See Samrat ul-Falāsifa translation of Christian texts 267–8, 270–1 writings of 265 Abu’l ‘Ula’, Khwaja 455 Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak (Faizi) 1, 24–5, 31, 208, 208n.8, 209, 209n.9, 210, 211, 334, 338 Ahmadnagar, report on 182–5 and Akbar, relations between 180, 209 Badayuni’s assessment of 210 and Bhagwant Rai, influence on 242 Bijapur, report on 185

486

Index

Burhan Nizam Shah, report on 182–3 Burhanpur, description of 182 Deccan mission of 176, 180–1, 182–6, 209n.9, 218 employment in Mughal court 209 Golkonda, report on 185 Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah, account of 185 Iran, report on 182, 186, 187–9, 191 ‘Ishq (love) vs ‘aql (intellect), views on 213, 215–16, 217 Junūn, views on 217 kingship, views on 222–4, 233 metaphors, use of 211, 212, 214–15, 231–2, 241, 248 and Mirror of Princes genre 25 as Mughal poet laureate 209 and Nal-Damayanti story 204, 206–7, 210–11. See also NalDaman Portuguese, account of 186, 192 religious beliefs of 210 and Shah ‘Abbas, report on 187–90, 191 and Sufi idea of love 218, 239, 243 Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Shaikh 1, 2, 20, 53, 91, 96, 100, 142, 143, 144, 155, 170, 194, 209, 223, 269–70, 431, 465 assassination, account in Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg 134, 135, 136–41 and Burhan Nizam Shah, views on 175–6 Faizi’s Deccan mission, comments on 180, 181

Hindustan, description of 88 and inshā’ genre 411 Jahangir’s role in death of 134, 136, 155, 327 Jaswant Rai’s account of death of 376 munshīs, influence on 331, 338 Nek Rai, influence on 321, 331 and Sujan Rai Batalvi, influence on 401, 402, 409 Abu’l Hasan, Khwaja 303 Abu’l Khair 209 Aceh, Sultanate of 89, 90, 106–14, 122 camphor from 107, 113 cannibalism in 107–8, 113 customs of 108–10 -Mughal trade, role of Gujarat in 91 and Mughals, diplomatic contacts 106–7 natural resources of 110 and Ottomans, relations between 91, 92–3, 94 and Portuguese 109–10, 121 Safīna-i Sulaimānī, account in 121–2 Seyfi Çelebi’s description of 95 Sultans of 110–12 Achyutadevaraya 342 Acquaviva, Rodolfo 257, 259 Aden 48–9 ‘Adl-i Jahāngīrī 6, 8 Afghans 29, 52, 53, 57, 70, 78, 356, 368, 374, 448, 457 and Mughals 167, 168 See also Pathan merchants; Sur, Islam Shah Afonso Álvares S.J., Gaspar 355, 357

Index

Agha, Mustafa 50 Agrarian System of Moslem India, The 9 Agrarian System of Mughal India, The 15–16, 17, 20, 27 Ahmad, Nizam-ud-Din 166 Ahmad ibn Zain al-‘Abidin ‘Alawi, Sayyid 308, 309 Ahmad Khan, Sir Sayyid 5–6, 18 Ahmad Qadiri, Sayyid 290 Ahmadnagar Sultanate 24, 166, 171, 180 Akbar’s expansion into 174, 193 Faizi’s report on 182–5 Mughal conquest of 177–8, 192–3 Ahmed, Ziya-ud-Din 134 Ahsan Bakht, Mirza 461, 462 Ahwāl-i Firangistān 265, 268–73 ‘Ajā’ib al-Qasas 434–5 Akbar, Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad 98, 99, 167–8, 431 and ‘Abdus Sattar Lahauri 267, 269 and Abu’l Faiz ‘Faizi’ 180, 209 Abu’l Fazl’s assassination, reaction to 135–6, 140 Ahmadnagar campaign 174, 193 Aligarh historians and 20, 21 and Asad Beg Qazwini 141, 142–4, 145, 146, 147–8, 149–50, 152, 155 charisma of 126, 163 conversion of, Jesuit perception 258 death, account in Nuskha-i Ahwāl 154–5, 156, 158–9 death, account in Ardhakathānak 127–8 educational policy of 314

487

and idea of karāmāt 465–6 and Jahangir, transition between 161 Jerónimo Xavier’s account of 161–2 Jerónimo Xavier’s account of death of 129–30, 131, 132 and Jesuits 170, 260–1 and King Nal, comparison 219 Mughal consolidation under 168 and Mughal-Portuguese relations 169–70 Nal-Daman, commissioning of 206–7 and Rajputs, alliance with 168 Samrat ul-Falāsifa, commissioning of 269 sulh-i kull ideology of 403 Akbar Nāma 1, 90, 170, 180, 181 report on Sultan Bahadur Shah’s death 53, 54. See also Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak Akbar Shah, Mirza 444, 445 ‘Akbar’s Dream’ 249 Akhbār ul-Nawādir or Khulāsat ulNawādir. See Chahār Gulshan ‘Alam Chand Khatri 389 ‘Ala-ud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah al-Qahhar 92–3, 113–14 ‘Ala-ud-Din Ri‘ayat Syah Sayyid alMukammil 112, 114 Albuquerque, Afonso de 36, 172 Albuquerque, Matias de 171, 260 ‘Ali, Mustafa 467 ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah 178, 202 and Jesuits 178, 252–4, 255, 286 ‘Ali Akbar, Mirza 11 ‘Ali Akhtar, Mirza 460

488

Index

‘Ali Bakht ‘Azfari’, Mirza 26, 433, 436–8, 461–2, 464–6 and Asaf-ud-Daula 462, 479–80, 481–2, 483 and English East India Company 464 literary works of 437 and Nawwab Madar-ud-Daula 480 as prisoner in Shahjahanabad 433, 439, 447, 461, 465 royal power and legitimacy, views on 465–6 and Shah ‘Alam II 439–40, 445–7 settlement in Madras 463–4, 483 stay in Murshidabad 463 and Turkish language 438–9, 462 See also Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī; Marghūb al-Fu’ād ‘Ali Beg, Mirza 152, 155 ‘Ali bin ‘Azizullah Taba’taba’i, Sayyid 175 ‘Ali Beg Akbarshahi, Nawwab Mirza 148, 152, 155 ‘Ali Husaini 5 ‘Ali Khan, Ghulam 368 ‘Ali Mughayat Syah 113 ‘Ali Ri‘ayat Syah 112, 114 Aligarh historians 14–15, 26, 30, 98, 431 Mughal historiography and 18, 20–3 Mughal diplomatic relations, views on 95 See also Habib, Irfan Aligarh Muslim University 14–15 Allahabad historians and Mughal historiography 12, 13, 14, 24 Almeida, D. Francisco de 42, 167 Almeida, Dom Lourenço de 40–41

‘Ambar, Malik 172, 193, 200, 201, 202 and Asad Beg Qazwini 147, 195–6 Amin-ud-Din, Khwaja 143, 146, 153 Amir Husain al-Kurdi Bash al-‘Askar 36–9, 49–50 death of 45 Ibn Iyas’s account of 39, 42 Indian Ocean expedition of 36–8 Jiddah, stay in 38–9 and Malik Ayaz, alliance with 39, 40, 41 and Portuguese, engagement between 40–1, 42 Venetians and 37. See also Egyptians; Mamluks Amir Khusrau 211, 289, 326 and deliberate ambiguity, idea of 208 Anand Kishor, Kunwar 414, 415, 416 Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’ 315, 336, 337, 417 Anderson, Benedict 125, 126 Anis, Mir 471 Anjab-un-Nisa, Begum 451 Antoninus, St 271 Anwar Nāma, 349 Apaji, Khandu Rao 421–2 Apologia pro Christiana religione 309 Aqa Husain Quli Khan ‘Ashiqi 424 ‘Aql (intellect) 213, 219, 223, 241 and ‘ishq 215–16, 233, 239 Arakan, Tahir Muhammad’s description in Rauzat 105–6 Arasaratnam, S. 340, 356, 393, 394 Sidi Jauhar Bandar, account of 390–1

Index

Aravidu dynasty (Rayas) 173, 342, 343, 344 Ārāyish-i Mahfil 5, 402 Arcot 25, 341, 342, 350, 374, 379, 380–1 and Asaf Jah, Nizam-ul-Mulk 389 consolidation of 394 and Dutch trade 360, 373 early history, sources of of 349–50 and East India Company 351–2 emergence of 346–7 Europeans and 341, 394 Manuzzi’s mission to 353–5 political rearrangement in 341, 389–90, 391, 394 See also Da’ud Khan Panni; Sa‘adatullah Khan Ardhakathānak 127–8, 321 Armenians, 263, 385, 393 Army of the Indian Moghuls, The 8 Arni 342, 377 Asad Beg Qazwini 24, 106, 133–4, 135, 150, 161, 194, 201. See also Nuskha-i Ahwāl Asaf Jah, Nizam-ul-Mulk 347, 348, 351, 373, 391 and Arcot nizāmat 389 and Mirza Azfari 461 Asaf-ud-Daula, Nawwab 470, 471 improvement of Lucknow, Mir Hasan’s account 474 and Mirza Azfari 462, 479–80, 481–2, 483 Āsār al-sanādīd 5 ‘Ata, Khwaja (Cojeatar) 36 Athar Abbas Rizvi, Saiyid 18 Athar Ali, M. 17, 18, 22 Aubin, Jean 35–6 account of Malik Ayaz 41

489

Aurangzeb 22, 327, 344, 345, 350 Burmese embassy and 89 conquest of Golkonda 345 death of 363 death of, effect on Deccan expansion 364 Jadunath Sarkar’s representation of 13, 11 succession of 432 and succession struggle, account of 364 Aurangzeb-‘Ālamgīr par ek nazar 6 Autobiographical accounts 320–1, 336–7 ethnographic elements in 336–7. See also Nek Rai, Munshi Ayaz, Malik 39–40, 41, 58 and Amir Husain, alliance between 39, 40, 41 and Christians 50 and Egyptians 41 Jean Aubin’s account of 41 and Ottomans, alliance with 48–51 and Portuguese, alliance with 42 and Sultan Selim, letter to 47–50 Azad, Muhammad Husain 6, 466 ‘Aziz Koka, Mirza (Khan-i A‘zam) 131, 140, 141, 176, 209, 277, 287, 305 and Jahangir, conspiracy against 156, 157, 158 and religious debates 291, 292, 293, 301, 302 Ba Faqih, report on Bahadur Shah’s death 54–5, 56 Babur, Mirza 430

490

Index

Babur, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad 1, 21, 52, 167, 320, 440 revival of historical interest in 29 Bahadur Shah, Sultan 33, 36, 52, 53, 57, 66, 69 Ba Faqih’s report on death of 54–5, 56 ‘Capítulo das cousas’, account in 55–8 capture of Chitor 56, 60 Castanheda’s account of 61, 64, 67, 71 cession of Diu to Portuguese 61–3 death of 53–5, 70–1, 72 Dom João III, letters to 67–8, 82–6 letters 79–87 and Martim Afonso de Sousa 60, 62–3 and Nuno da Cunha 54, 59–60, 62, 66–7, 68, 70, 71 Nuno da Cunha, letters to 64, 70, 80–1, 86–7 and Ottomans 61, 68–9 and Portuguese 58–9, 71. See also Dom João III, letters to; Nuno da Cunha above and Silhadi, relations between 57 sources of history of 55–7 war with Mughals 57, 59, 60, 66, 69 Bahmani Sultanate 166 Bahār-i ‘Ajam 315 Baha-ud-Din Isfahani, Shaikh 191 Baha-ud-Din, Khwaja 191 Bahmanis of the Deccan, The 19 Bahr ul-asrār 115 Baiju Kalawant149, 152 Bakhshi, Rai Chand 140 144

Balasore 89 Balkhi, Mahmud Wali 97, 115 Banarasidas, and Ardhakathānak 127–8 Bandar Chamba, description in Rauzat 101 Bangash, Ahmad Khan 400, 415 Bangash Afghans 400, 414, 415 Baqir Ansari, Khwaja 97, 98, 113 Barakatullah Khan ‘Barkat’ 415 Barsana 422 Basit, Khwaja 472 Bassein, cession to Portuguese 59, 60, 71, 83 Bataks 113 Bayān-i Wāqī‘ 429 Bayly, C.A. 27, 398 Beg, Chalpai 191 Beg, Hamza Hasan 187 Beg, Hasan ‘Ali 195, 196 Beg, Husain 186, 190 Beg, Ibrahim 153 Beg, Muhammad Husain 116, 117 Belles-lettres 320, 427. See also inshā’, genre of Bengal 52, 100, 101, 104, 106, 167–8 Bay of Bengal littoral ports and 89 Jesuits in 256 Man Singh’s escape to 158, 159 Mughal expansion in 168–9 Portuguese presence in 168–9 Bengal nizāmat 339, 369, 392–3 Beveridge, Annette S. 9 Beveridge, Henry 8–9 Bey, Tuman 44 Bhagwant Rai ‘Rahat’ Kakorwi, Munshi, 242. See also NalDaman Hindī

Index

Bhakariya, Baisaji 384 Bhimsen 320 Bibliotheca Indica 4, 14 Bidar Bakht, Mirza 444–5, 461 Bijapur Sultanate 24, 166, 178, 180, 193, 343, 344 Asad Beg Qazwini’s mission to 194–5, 196–201 and Dutch East India Company 203 Faizi’s report on 185 Goa and 172 Jesuit mission to 252–4 and Mughals 178, 179, 202 Nek Rai’s journey to 333–6 and Portuguese 172, 178, 202, 254 and Safavids 178–9. See also ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah; Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II Bikramajit (Vikramaditya) 334–5 Blochmann, Heinrich Ferdinand 4–5 Bolts, William 123 ‘Book of the History of the Monarchs of the Countries of Hind’ (Ottoman text) 94, 95 Boxer, C.R. 91 Brahmans 313, 322, 327 Persian and 320 Braj Bhasha 2, 28, 434 British ICS historians 14, 12 Bulaqi, Mirza. See Shah ‘Alam II Bundela, Bir Singh Deo 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 327 Bundela, Indrajit 137, 139 Bundelas 375, 376, 377 and Abu’l Fazl, attack on 137, 138 and Marathas, alliance with 376

491

rebellion of, Jaswant Rai’s account of 376–9. See also Bundela, Bir Singh Deo above Burhan Khan ibn Sayyid Hasan, Munshi 349, 366–7, 394. See also Tūzak-i Wālājāhī Burhan Nizam Shah 171 Burhan Nizam Shah II 174, 183 Abu’l Fazl’s views on 175–6 Faizi’s account of 182–3 Mughals and 174, 175–6, 180, 181–2 and Portuguese 176–7 Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri 166, 184 Burhān-i Ma’asir 175 Burhanpur, Faizi’s description 182 Burhan-ul-Mulk, Sa‘adat Khan 469–70 Bustān us-Salātīn 91 Cabral, António 257 Cambridge Economic History of India, The 21, 22 Camphor, Tahir Muhammad’s description 107, 113 Cannibals, Tahir Muhammad’s description 107–8, 113 ‘Capítulo das cousas que passarão . . . Sultão Modafar’ 55, 56–8 Casale, Giancarlo 92–3 Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de 55, 57, 166 conspiracy against Nuno da Cunha, account of 70 Humayun’s letter to Nuno da Cunha, version of 64–5, 66 Martim Afonso’s expedition to Daman, account of 57, 58–9

492

Index

Sultan Bahadur, account of 59, 61, 67, 71 Sultan Bahadur’s letter to Nuno da Cunha, version of 64 treaty between Sultan Bahadur and Martim de Sousa 62–3 Castro, Dom João de 73 Islam Shah Sur’s response to letter 76–7 letters to Islam Shah Sur 73–5, 77–8, 251 Castro, José de 295–6, 307 and ‘Abdus Sattar, religious debates between 297–9 Ceylon, Tahir Muhammad’s description 101 Chahār Gulshan 409–10 Chanchal (elephant), account of 145, 155, 199, 201 Chand Sultana, Queen 192 Chandra, Satish 13 Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ 315–16, 327, 338, 409, 411 Chandragiri 342, 343, 344, 345, 348 Charisma 125, 126, 127 Akbar and 126, 163 Greek origin of 125 of holy men 454–5 Max Weber’s views on 124–5 Mughals and 162–3 Persian usage of 125 political power and 466 royal power and 455–6 Chaturman, Rai 409–10, 411 Chaul 41, 49, 171, 174, 176–7, 186 Chellappa Nayaka 382 Chetty, Rama 387 Chézaud, Aimé 309 Chin Qilich Khan. See Asaf Jah, Nizam-ul-Mulk

Chitor 56, 60 Chittur 347 Christianity 303–4 debates in Jahangir’s court. See Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Christians 48, 50, 63, 255 and Jews 302, 303. See also Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Circassian Mamluks 36, 43, 44 Considerations on India Affairs 123 Coromandel Coast 339–40, 343, 385 Dutch settlements on 202, 352, 359–60, 371. See also Porto Novo; Pulicat English settlements on 352, 353. See also Madras trade along 340, 343 Correa, Cosmo 258–9 Correia, Gaspar 56, 57 Corsi, Francesco 276, 277, 307 Costa, D. Rodrigo de 357 Couto, Diogo do 58, 91, 99, 170–1, 173, 177 Humayun, account of 258–9 Coutre, Jacques de 193–4 Coverte, Captain Robert, report on Jahangir 306 Crónica Anónima 37 Cunha, Nuno da 33, 66 conspiracy against, Castanheda’s account 70 and Dom João III, letter to 72 Humayun’s letter to 62, 64–5, 66 and Sultan Bahadur Shah 54, 59, 60–1, 62, 66–7, 68, 71 Sultan Bahadur Shah’s letters to 63–4, 70, 80–1, 86–7 Cunningham, George 429

Index

Da Ásia 170–1 Da’ud Khan Panni 89, 171, 341, 345, 346–7, 350–1, 368, 383, 394 and Aurangzeb 363 and Dutch, relations between 360–1 and English, relations between 351–3, 354, 355 and French 358 influence, decline in 364 and Muhammad Sa‘id (Sa‘adatullah Khan), rivalry between 361–2, 370, 381 Mylapore (São Tomé), development of 355–6, 357–8 Nicolò Manuzzi’s meeting with 353–5 Nicolò Manuzzi’s portrayal of 351 and Prince Muhammad A‘zam, support for 363, 364 Dabhol 42, 49, 179 Dakhni Rai, Lala 367, 368–9, 371, 372, 383, 387–9, 400–1 and Sa‘adat Bandar 384, 385 Senji siege, role in 377–8 Daman 166, 352 Martim Afonso’s expedition to 58–9 Daman (Damayanti).See Nal-Daman Daniyal, Prince 134, 146, 193, 195 Bijapur bride for 194, 199, 200 Dara Shukoh 11, 432, 459 Darbār-i Akbarī 6 Dargahi Mal 424 Das Gupta, Ashin 89, 339, 340, 352 Das, Banarasi 321 Das, Gopal 136, 140, 141

493

Das, Harkaran 315 Dāstān-i Ahwāl-i Hawāriyān 268 Dāstān-i Masīh 266–7, 268, 307 Datt, Amar 461 Daulat, Khwaja 146 Dayaram 369, 370 conflict with English 383 De la Merveille, Godefroy 386 Debani, Malik 367 Deccan Asad Beg’s mission to. See Asad Beg Qazwini Faizi’s mission to 176, 180–1, 182–6 Iranian migrants in 178–9 Mughal expansion in 171, 172, 174, 192–3. See also Deccan Sultanates below Deccan Sultanates 166 decline of 40, 174 Mughals and 201–2, 203 and Safavids, ties between 166, 179. See also Deccan above; Ahmadnagar Sultanate; Bijapur Sultanate; Golkonda Sultanate Decline literature 467 Dehlawi, Amir Hasan Sijzi 211, 274 Desai, Z.A. 212 Devanampattinam 343, 352, 353 Dewal Rānī Khizr Khānī 211 Dias, Melchior 252 Dias, Pedro 256 Digby, Simon 12, 15, 28, 95–6 Dil Gudāz 469 Dilawar Khan Habashi 185 Diplomacy 34 and Mughals 24, 34–5, 95. See also Gujarat Sultanate

494

Index

Diu 39, 42, 49–50, 53, 58, 59, 66, 67, 69, 73, 352 centre of Mamluk operations 40 cession to Portuguese 62, 63, 71 Diwani Singh 424. See also Muhammad Hasan ‘Qatil’, Mirza Dodballapur 347 Dodwell, H.H. 339 Dowson, John 3, 135, 402 Dreams as a framing device 458–9 in Islamic tradition 458 Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī, account in 456–9, 460 Dutch 202, 352, 386, 387 and Arcot nizāmat 373 and Chinna Tambi Maraikkayar, dispute with 360, 371–2, 373, 375 and Da’ud Khan Panni 360–1 and Mughals 352–3, 360 in Porto Novo 360, 372, 373, 375 in Pulicat 352, 353, 356, 360, 362, 372 and Sa‘adat Pattan, report on 388, 389 and Sa‘adatullah Khan 361–2, 371, 373, 387 and Sarup Singh 375 settlement at Kunjimedu port 361–2 and Ziya-ud-Din 362 See also Dutch East India Company below Dutch East India Company (or VOC) 203, 353, 359–60 Casteel Geldria at Pulicat 352. See also Dutch above

East India Company (English) 484 and Arcot nizāmat 351–2 and Inshā’-i Harkaran 313 and Mughal historiography 2, 3 Mughals and 123–4, 311, 436, 484 and Munshīs 311–12, 423, 428 Persian and 311 and Shah ‘Alam II 433. See also English below Eaton, Richard 30 Egyptians Aden, attack on 48–9 defeat of 42, 42n.22 and Gujarat Sultanate, relations between 40, 41 and Ottomans, encounter between 43–4. See also Amir Husain al-Kurdi Bash al-‘Askar; Mamluk Sultanate Elliot, Henry Miers 3, 5, 8 Elliott, John 468 English and Da’ud Khan Panni 353, 354, 355, 358 and Dayaram, conflict between 383 and Mughals 352, 353, 361 and Sarup Singh, relations between 358–9, 361, 375. See also East India Company above English Factories in India, The 392 Equivocation, idea of 208 Estado da Índia 24, 51, 52, 58, 73, 166–7, 170, 173, 193, 202, 251. See also Portuguese Europeans 91, 352, 358, 382, 388, 391, 428, 430

Index

in early Indo-Persian literature 96, 97 Mughals and 269, 310, 385. See also Dutch; English; French; Portuguese Ezpeleta y Goñi, Jerónimo de. See Xavier, Jerónimo Ezpeleta, Don Bernardo de, Jerónimo Xavier’s letter to 261–2 Faizabad ‘Abdul Halim ‘Sharar’s account 470 Mir Hasan’s description of 475 Faizi Fayyazi. See Abu’l Faiz ibn Mubarak Faqira Begam 452 Farangi Mahal 470 Farid, Shaikh 140, 142, 143 Farrukhsiyar 364, 371, 374, 393 Faruqi, Raji ‘Ali Khan 175, 181, 183 Fath-Allah Shirazi, Mir 313, 314 Fathiyya-i ‘Ibriya 5 Fathullah Shirazi, Mir 190 Fawā’id al-Fu’ād 274 Ferreira, Simão 56, 61, 62, 63, 64, 81 ‘Firishta’, Muhammad Qasim Hindushah Astarabadi 2, 55, 175, 264, 408n.22 Burhan Shah-Portuguese conflict, account of 176–7 Fort St David 352 English at 358–9, 361, 375 Fort St George, Madras 352, 353, 358 Frade, Nuno Sodré 357 Francis Xavier, Saint 251 Franks 49, 50, 96 description in Rauzat 98–9, 101, 106, 109, 110.

495

See also Christians; Jesuits; Portuguese French 355, 357, 363, 371, 390 and Da’ud Khan Panni 358 and Sarup Singh 358, 375 Fróis, Luís, account of Jesuit mission to Bijapur 252–3 From Akbar to Aurangzeb 9 Gama, Dom Francisco da 193 Gandikota 344, 345, 347 Ganjawi, Nizami, and Nal-Daman 211, 214, 215, 241 Garcês, João 256 Gender, studies on 31 Ghalib Shahid, Sayyid 329 Ghiyas-ud-Din ‘Ali Naqib Khan, Sayyid 280, 281, 284 Ghorpade, Baharji 377 Ghulam Chishti, Miyan 448 Ghulam Hamadani ‘Mushafi’ 425 Gilani, Hayati 289 Ginzburg, Carlo 285–6 Goa 49, 58, 71, 99, 166, 186, 201, 203 ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah and 178, 202, 254 as centre of Estado da India 166, 176 and Gujarat, trade links 169 Jesuits in 249, 250, 251, 252 Portuguese settlement in 172. See also Portuguese Tahir Muhammad’s embassy to 98, 99, 100 Vijayanagara’s decline, effect on 173–4 Góis, Bento de 261 Golkonda Sultanate 13, 180, 202, 342, 344

496

Index

Aurangzeb’s conquest of 345 Faizi’s report on 185 and Karnatak conquests 343–4 Mughals and 178, 179 and Vijayanagara, relations 343 Gospel, debates on 299, 301–2 Grimon, Leon 259 Guadagnoli, Filippo 309 Gujarat 30, 35, 52, 167 Aceh-Mughal trade, role in 91 and Aceh-Ottoman relations 91, 93–4 and Dom João de Castro 73–5, 77–8, 251 and Goa, trade links 169 Humayun’s retreat from 69, 70 Jesuits in 256 Mughal conquest of 94, 168, 171 Mughal-Portuguese relations in 169–70 Ottoman expedition to 73 and Southeast Asia, relations between 89 and spice trade 91. See also Gujarat Sultanate below; Bahadur Shah, Sultan Gujarat Sultanate 52, 57 and Cairo 40, 41 decline of 52–3 fragmentation of 72–3 Jean Aubin’s study of 35–6 and Ottomans 24 and Portuguese 24, 52, 58, 59. See also Bahadur Shah, Sultan; Gujarat above Gulbadan Begam 1 Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī 2, 175 Guzīda-yi Zafarnāma 265 Habib, Irfan 15–17, 20, 22, 26, 126

Habib, Mohammad 14–15 Hadim Süleyman Pasha 33, 38, 73 Haft tamāsha 423, 425–6 Haidar Dughlat, Mirza 12 Hajj, and Mughal-Portuguese relations 169–70 Hamadani, Isma‘il Beg 460 Hamārā tarz-i hukūmat 6–7 Har Narayan, Lala 416, 417 Hardas, Malik 367 Harrison, J.B. 10 Hasan, Farhat 30 Hasan, Mir 471–2 and Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram. See Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram and Masnawī Hajw-i Hawelī 476–8 Hasan, Mohibbul 17 Hasan, S. Nurul 13, 14, 398 Hastings, Warren 312, 471 Hawkins, William 305 Hebert, Monsieur 364 Henriques, Francisco 257 Hikāyat Aceh 90 Hindawi 206, 314, 319 Hindustan 1, 51–2 Abu’l Fazl’s description 88 connection with Noah, Islamic view 408n.22 description in Khulāsat alTawārīkh 401, 406–7 História da Índia 169 Historia S. Petri (or, in Persian, Dāstān-i San Pedro ammā ālūda) 308 History and Culture of the Indian People 12 History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources 11 History of India as Told by Its Own

Index

Historians: The Mohammedan Period, The 4 History of the Qutb Shahi Dynasty 19 Holkar, Tukkoji 441 Holy trinity, discussion on 301, 303 Humayun 21, 52, 59, 60, 66, 73, 163 and Bahadur Shah, war with 59, 60 and Christianity 258–9 expansionary ambitions of 167 Gujarat, retreat from 69, 70 historical interest, revival of 29 and Nuno da Cunha, letter to 64–5, 66 and Nuno da Cunha, negotiations with 62 and Portuguese, diplomatic contact between 167 Humayun Bakht, Mirza 460, 462–3 Husain ‘Ali Khan Barha, Sayyid 347 Husain ‘Ali Khan, Sayyid 373 Husain Bakhsh, Mirza 481 Husain, Khwaja, of Marw 209 Husain, Shah 482–3 Hussain, Muhammad 373 Hyderabad 333 I‘tisam-ud-Din, Mirza 114 I‘tidāl (or equilibrium) and kingship 213, 222, 233 I‘timad-ud-Daula 287 ‘Ibādat khāna (Hall of Prayer) 257 Ibn Hasan, Dr 13, 16 Ibn Iyas 40 account of Amir Hussain 39, 42 Ibrahim, Haji 187 Ibrahim Adil Khan. See Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II below

497

Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah I 202 Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II 134–5 183, 185, 197, 201, 202 Abu’l Faiz’s report on 185 Asad Beg Qazwini, meeting between 198–200 Jacques de Coutre’s assessment of 193–4 and Mughals, relationship between 194 and Portuguese, relationship between 178 Shah Abbas, of Iran, letter to 179. See also Bijapur Sultanate Ibrahim, Sayyid 331 Idol, theme of in Nal-Daman 221 in Persian poetry 214–15 Ilahi Bakhsh, Mirza 481 India at the Death of Akbar 9 Indian historiography, Mughals and 1–2 Informatione del regno et stato del Gran Rè di Mogor 258 Inshā’, genre of 318, 411–12 Inshā’-i Harkaran 2, 313, 411 Intellect. See ‘aql Interreligious debates. See Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Iranians 314 Abu’l Faiz’s report on 182, 186, 187–9 in Deccan 178–9 embassy to Thailand 115, 116–19, 122 in Mughal court 190, 191. See also Safavids Irvine, William 8, 10 views on Aurangzeb 11

498

Index

‘Ishq and ‘aql (intellect) 213, 215–16, 239 in Hindustan 217 human vs divine 217–18 and husn 216 and junūn 217, 220, 232, 233, 241 Iskandar Muda 90 Iskandar, Teuku 90 Islam, Riazul 15, 16–17, 23 Isma‘il Khan Abjadi, Mir 349 Ja‘far Asaf Khan, Mirza 136 Ja‘far, Ilahwardi Khan 323, 324, 330 Jāgīrdārī system 22 Jāgīrdārs 396 Jahandar Shah 370, 411, 437, 440, 447, 480 Jahangir, Nur-ud-Din Muhammad 31, 127, 275, 288–9, 304–5, 321 ‘Abdus Sattar and 264 Abu’l Fazl’s assassination, involvement in 134, 136, 155, 327 accession of 156, 157–8, 159–61 Asad Beg Qazwini and 151–4, 155 Christianity and 275, 276–7, 279 conspiracy against 156, 157, 158 interreligious debates and. See Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Jerónimo Xavier’s account of 129, 130–3, 274–85 Jesuit vision of 162 and Mughal Deccan policy 202 revival of historical interest 29 Robert Coverte’s report on 306

succession of, account in Ardhakathānak 128 and visual arts 279–80, 289 Jahangir, Shah Ashraf 325 Jaipur, Mirza Azfari’s escape to 460, 461, 462 Jalal Asir, Mirza 331, 338 Jalal-ud-Din, Mirza 461, 464, 479 Jamal-ud-Din Husain Inju Shirazi, Mir 147, 194–5, 196–7, 199, 200, 201 Jan Tapish, Mirza 463 Jangli, Mirza 462 Jaswant Rai, Munshi 365, 367–8, 369, 394. See also Sa‘īd Nāma Java 125 Sayyids of 111, 114 Jawan Bakht Jahandar Shah, Mirza 453, 462, 481 Jesuits 170, 249–50, 251, 256, 258, 304–5 and ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah, interaction between 178, 252–4, 255, 286 and conversion of Mughal Emperor 310 Goa, arrival in 250, 251 interreligious debates and. See Majālis-i Jahāngīrī and Jahangir 133, 162, 274–5, 276–9, 280–5, 306–7 mission to Bijapur 252–4 mission to Mughal court 257, 259–60 presence in Akbar’s court 170, 260–1 and rise of Islam 133. See also Xavier, Jerónimo Jesus, debates in Jahangir’s court 283–4, 294–5, 297–9

Index

crucifixion of 277–8, 292–3, 297–8 divinity of 282–3 dual nature of 291, 292, 293, 298, 301 as god 289, 293, 304 José de Castro vs ‘Abdus Sattar’s views 297–8, 299 as prophet 303, 304 raising of the dead 291, 301, 303 as son of god 289, 292, 304 and Dāstān-i Masīh 267 Jews, discussion in Majālis-i Jahāngīrī 289–90, 302, 303 Jiddah 38–9, 41, 44, 45 Jiona Begam 452, 453–4 Jizan 38 João III, Dom 173 Bahadur Shah’s letters to 67–8, 82–6 Nuno da Cunha’s letter to 72 Jugal Kishor, Raja 414–15, 427 Junūn (frenzy) 220, 229, 232, 233 and ‘ishq (love) 217, 241 Kadalur (Cuddalore) 340, 352 Kali 213, 246n.31 Kali Prashad 247, 247n.32 Kam Bakhsh 364 Kamālāt, idea of 450, 454 Kamal-ud-Din Uwais Shaikh Ikhtiyar 81 Kamboh, Harkaran Das 313, 315, 411 Kamboh, Muhammad Salih 2 Kanakkuppillais 398, 400 Karāmāt, idea of 465–6 Karanams 313, 398, 400. See also Munshī

499

Karim-ud-Din 416 Karishma. See Charisma Karm ‘Ali, Mir 438 Karnatak faujdārīs, and regional kingdoms 347–8 fiscal administration by Golconda 344 fiscal situation under Mughals 348 as frontier area 346 Mughal expansion in 171–2, 203 revenue administration under Mughals 345–6. See also Karnatak Payanghat below Karnatak Payanghat 339, 342, 343, 348, 349, 393, 400–1 Dutch in 359–60, 361 political geography 342–3 Portuguese in 358 revenue potential 343. See also Karnatak above; Da’ud Khan; Sa‘adatullah Khan Karnātaka rājākkal cavistāra carittiram 368, 375 Kashmiri, Ghani 331, 338 Kayasthas 14, 313, 315, 369, 399, 408 and Persian language 314, 318, 320 Kazim Sauda, Mirza 438 Khan, ‘Abdul Majid 347 Khan, ‘Abdul Rasul 347 Khan, ‘Abdullah 432 Khan, Abhang 193 Khan, Abu’l Qasim 441 Khan, Afrasiyab 413 Khan, ‘Ali ‘Askar 345 Khan, ‘Ali Mardan 345

500

Index

Khan, Alf 347 Khan, Amanullah 323, 330 Khan, Amin 347 Khan, Amin-ud-Din 96 Khan, Anwar-ud-Din 349 Khan, Asad 363 Khan, Asaf 61, 68–9, 139, 142, 143, 145 Khan, Bairam 168 Khan, Baqir ‘Ali 391 Khan, Chinggis 167 Khan, Chingiz 93, 94 Khan, Diyanat 144 Khan, Farhad 187, 188 Khan, Ghalib Muhammad 368 Khan, Ghulam ‘Ali 350 Khan, Ghulam Imam Husain 390, 391 Khan, Ghulam Qadir 459 Azfari’s account of rebellion of 439, 440, 441–5 and Shah ‘Alam, relationship 441–2, 443, 444, 444n.27 Khan, Hidayat ‘Ali 424 Khan, Himmat Bahadur 347 Khan, Husain 188 Khan, Husain ‘Ali 327–8 Khan, Ibrahim 347 Khan, Ikhtiyar 53 Khan, Inayat 363 Khan, Iqtidar Alam 17, 18, 431 Khan, Ja‘far 370 Khan, Khafi 351 Khan, Khudawand 72 Khan, Mahabbat 160, 296 Khan, Mirza 312 Khan, Mubariz 389 Khan, Muqarrab 288 Khan, Murshid Quli 339, 392 Khan, Murtaza 303

Khan, Musa 18 Khan, Mustafa 196 Khan, Najaf 418, 424, 433 Khan, Najib 440 Khan, Namdar 461 Khan, Naqib 142, 280, 285, 289 and ‘Abdus Sattar, relations 287 Khan, Nasir 150 Khan, Peshrau. See Asad Beg Qazwini Khan, Qadir ‘Ali 383 Khan, Qadir Husain 390, 391 Khan, Ranmast 350 Khan, Roshan Beg 368 Khan, Sa‘id (Chaghatai) 112, 112n.49, 157, 162 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad 14 Khan, Sharif 160 Khan, Shayista 333, 366 Khan, Sidi Jauhar 390–1 Khan, Tahir 325 Khan, Tahir Muhammad 347, 377 Khan, Zabita, Azfari’s account of 440–1, 442 Khan, Ziya-ud-Din, and Dutch 362 Khandesh 180 Khan-i A‘zam. See ‘Aziz Koka, Mirza Khasakhail, Jabbar 138 Khatri, ‘Alam Chand 380 Khatris 25, 313, 315, 320, 370, 393, 399, 408 in Karnatak 341, 368, 389 and Persian 313, 314, 318 and Saraswats 369 Khizr Khan Panni 350 Khizrzai, Daulat Khan 368 Khub Chand, Lala 369, 389 Khulāsat al-Siyāq 319 Khulāsat al-Tawārīkh 5, 401–6

Index

Hindustan, description of 401, 406–7 motives for writing of 404, 406 pre-Islamic Indian history, account in 406–7, 426 schematization of 407–8. See also Sujan Rai Batalvi Khusrau, Prince 131, 132, 156, 157, 158, 159 Khusrau, Amir 208, 211, 274, 326 Khusrau, Haji 187 Khwajagi Shaikh Shirazi 192 Kingship 248, 430–2 divinely sanctioned ancestry and 126 and equilibrium, notion of 213, 222, 233, 239 Faizi’s view of 222–4, 233 theory of 431 Koch, Ebba 30 Kokaltash Khan, Nawwab 412 Kolff, D.H.A. 57, 165 Kondavidu 342 Kosambi, D.D. 16 Kovalam 383, 389 Krishnadevaraya 342 Krishnaji Pandit 352–3, 360, 361, 362, 363, 370 Künh ül-Akhbār 467 Kunjimedu port, Dutch settlement at 361–2 Kurd, Daulat Yar 188–9 Lahori, ‘Abdul Hamid 2 Lakshmi, Goddess, Azfari’s encounter with 456–7, 459 Lal Bhagwant Rai, Munshi 242. See also Nal–Daman Hindī Lal Bihari 324, 325, 327, 330, 332–3

501

Land-lubbers vs maritime historians 391–2 Law, Jean 434 Layihasi, Selman Re’is, Gujarat expedition of 51 Layli–Majnūn 211, 214 Le Gobien, Charles 285–6 Lees, W. Nassau 5 Lendas da Índia 56, 57 Lewis, Bernard 95 Lombard, Denys 90, 92 Louis de Dieu, critique of Jerónimo Xavier 308 Love, Sufi idea of 218, 239, 243. See also ‘ishq Lucknow 468, 469–70, 483 ‘Abdul Halim ‘Sharar’s account of 469–70 Azfari’s stay in 479–80, 481, 482, 483 Masnawī Hajw-i Hawelī, description in 476–8 Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram, description in 472–5 Lütfi (Ottoman envoy) 92, 93, 94, 95 Ma‘lumāt al-āfāq 97 Machhadi, Rao Raja 416 Maclagan, Edward 265, 266 Madar, Badi‘-ud-Din 330 Madar-ud-Daula, Nawwab 480 Madho Ram 411, 412–13 Madhumālati 206 Madras 343, 386 port, development of 353–4 Madurai Nayakas 346, 364 Maghrib, kingdom of 99, 100 Mahabat Jang, Alivardi Khan 414 Mahbūb al-Qulūb, 437

502

Index

Mahdawis 174, 174n.15, 175, 210 Mahmud, Aqibat 379 Mahmud Bandar. See Porto Novo Mahmud Begarha, Sultan 39, 174n.15 Mahmud Gawan, the Great Bahmani Wazir 19 Mahmud, Sultan 72 Mahtab Rai, Munshi 449–50, 459 Majālis-i Jahāngīrī 25, 265, 273–4, 275–85, 286–95, 304–5 Christianity, debate on 290–1, 294, 295, 297 Christians and Jews, account of 289–90, 302, 303 Gospel, debate on 301–2 Holy trinity, discussion on 301, 303 Jahangir, portrayal in 288–9, 304 Jahangir’s dream, account of 303 Jahangir’s role in making of 287 Jesus, debates on. See Jesus Prophet Muhammad, debate on 296–9 Sattar’s conversion, account of 293–4, 296–7 as a Sufi malfūzāt (table-talk) 274, 287 Virgin Mary and Joseph, debate regarding 299–300 and Jerónimo Xavier’s letters, difference between 300, 304–5 Majd-ud-Daula, ‘Abdul Ahad Khan 441, 442, 444 Majmu‘a-i Naghz 415 Majumdar, R.C. 12 Makhzan al-Asrār 211

Malay 89 scribes of 399 classical literature 426 Malfūzāt-i Jahāngīrī 274. See also Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Malharji, Sankarji 362, 382 Mamluk Sultanate 42 Indian Ocean expedition of 36–7. See also Amir Husain Ottoman conquest of 42–4. See also Egyptians Man Singh, Raja 131, 133, 156, 157, 170, 274 escape to Bengal 158, 159 Mandu fort, Muzaffar Shah’s victory over 46–7 Manning, Catherine 393, 394 Manuel, Dom, king of Portugal 172 Manuzzi, Nicolò 8, 341, 355, 358, 359 Arcot mission, account of 353–5 Da’ud Khan Panni, portrayal of 351 Maraikkayar, Chinna Tambi, and Dutch 360, 371–2, 373, 375 Maraikkayar, Ibrahim 371, 372 Maraikkayar, Khoja 371, 372, 373 Maraikkayar, Periya Chinna Tambi 371–2, 373 Maraikkayars 340, 386, 394 Marathas 17, 350, 351, 362, 426 and Bundelas, alliance between 376, 377. See also Senji and Mughals 345, 435 in Shah ‘Alam II’s court 418, 419–20, 421, 422, 423 Marghūb al-Fu’ād 437, 438 Maritime historians vs land-lubbers 391–2

Index

Markaz-i Adwār 211 Martin, Claude 312, 483 Marxists, view of Mughal history 15. See also Habib, Irfan Mary and Joseph, debate on 299–300 Mary Magdalene, debate on 295 Mas‘ud, Salar 469 Mascarenhas, Dom Francisco 100 Māsih-i Misqal-i Safā-i Ā’īna-yi Haqq-numā (‘Corrector to the Mirror’) 309 Masnawī, verse narrative form of 204, 206, 208, 211 Masnawī Gulzār-i Eram 471–5 Faizabad, description in 475 Lucknow, description in 472–5 Masnawī Hajw-i Hawelī (‘Poem Denigrating His Mansion’) 476–8 Lucknow, description in 476–8 Masnawī Sihr al-Bayān 471 McLane, John 369 Melaka 49, 71, 88, 91, 250, 251 Melo, Luís de Brito de 306 Mesquita Pimentel, Diogo de 56, 57, 60 Mir Muhammad ‘Ali urf Mir Najm ‘Ali Khan ‘Azimabadi 409 Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ 414, 434, 471 Mīr Munshī. See Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Shaikh Mir’āt ul-Quds 266–7, 268, 304, 307 Mir’āt-i Sikandarī 57 Miracles, debates on 282–4, 285 Mirāt al-Istilāh 315 Mirāt-i Sikandarī 55 Mirkhwand 2

503

Mirror of Princes, genre of 25, 313, 312 Mirza, notion of 440. See also Timurid Mirzas Misqal-i Safā (‘The Mirror Polisher’) 308 Miyana, ‘Abdul Nabi Khan 347, 363 Moluccas 101, 251 Mongoliecae Legationis Commentarius 170 Monogamy, discussion on 279 Montserrat (or Monserrate), Antoni 170, 257–8, 259 Moosvi, Shireen 17 Moreland, William Harrison 9–10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18 Mu‘ina’i, Khwaja 186 Mu‘tamad Khan, Mirza Sharif 157 Mubarak Nagauri, Shaikh 208, 209 Mughal, Mirza 445, 446, 449 Mughal(s) 21, 52, 88, 167–8, 347, 360, 451, 452, 453, 484 Aceh Sultanate and 90, 91, 106–7, 112 and Akbar, consolidation under 168 art and architecture of, studies on 30 autobiographical works and 320–1 Burhan Nizam Shah and 174, 176 and centralization of power 21 class formation under 397–8 and Coromandel coast 352 Deccan, expansion in 171, 172, 174, 192–3, 260 and Deccan Sultanates 201–2, 203. See also Ahmadnagar Sultanate

504

Index

Bijapur Sultanate; Golkonda decentralization under Shah ‘Alam II 468–9 decline of 393, 467–8 diplomacy and 24, 34–5, 95 and Dutch 352 and dynastic succession 127, 128–9 and English East India Company 2, 123–4, 436 and English, relationship with 352, 353, 361 and Europe 95–6, 97, 310 expansion of empire 168, 169, 170–1 Gujarat, conquest of 94, 168, 171 Hindu scribes and 337. See also munshīs Ibrahim‘Adil Shah and 194. See also Ibrahim‘Adil Shah Iranians and 190, 191 and Jesuits. See Jesuits later, Percival Spear’s view 430 Malik ‘Ambar and 195–6 and Marathas 345, 422–3, 435 Moreland’s conception of 16 and Muzaffar Shah 176 and Ottomans, diplomatic relations 34 Persian and 206, 313–14, 317, 427 personal charisma and 162–3 political system of 163–4 and Portuguese 168–70, 256, 352 prince, qualities of 465 principles of governance 123 and regional states 435 revenue administration of Karnatak 345–6 and Southeast Asia 88–9, 90

and shared sovereignty 431–2, 464–5, 447 Shibli Nu‘mani’s defence of 7–8 state formation, analysis of 165–6 studies on 30–1 and succession 127, 128–9 and succession war of 1650 432 and Sultan Bahadur Shah 57, 59, 60, 66, 69 theory of kingship 430–1. See also kingship Turkish heritage, neglect of 438 W.H. Moreland’s view 9, 11. See also individual entries Mughal historians 1–2. See also Mughal historiography/history below Mughal historiography/history Aligarh historians and 18, 20–3, 95 Allahabad historians and 12, 13, 14, 24 British ICS historians and 8–10, 12, 14 communalist interpretation of 12, 13 English translation of 2, 4 English historians’ view of 3–5 Marxist perspective of 15. See also Habib, Irfan neglected periods of, interest in 29 new trends in 27–32 and Persianized literati class 5 philology and 4, 5, 10 post-Partition 11–12, 13 secular interpretation of 12 Urdu and 468 Mughal Administration in Golconda 26

Index

Muhammad ‘Ali Walajah, Nawwab 349 Muhammad A‘zam, Prince 363, 364 Muhammad Amin ibn Bani Isra‘il, Shaikh 381 Muhammad Amin-ud-Din, Mirza 464 Muhammad Ashraf, Kunwar 15 Muhammad Baqir Kermanshah Shahid Isfahani, Mirza 424 Muhammad Hasan ‘Qatil’, Mirza 26, 423–6, 434 conversion to Islam 424, 425 literary works of 425–6 Muhammad Husain, Mirza 425 Muhammad Jaunpuri, Durwesh 324 Muhammad Jaunpuri, Sayyid 174n.15 Muhammad Mah, Khwaja 455 Muhammad Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk (Qutb Shah) 185 Muhammad Rabi‘ 115. See also Safīna-i Sulaimānī Muhammad Raza, Mir 319 Muhammad Sa‘id Ardistani, Mir 343, 344, 347 Muhammad Shah, Emperor 438 Muhammad Sultan Thanesari, Shaikh 404 Muhammad Taqi, Khwaja 146 148 Muhammad Zahir-ud-Din Mirza ‘Ali Bakht. See ‘Ali Bakht ‘Azfari’, Mirza Muhammad Zaman Tabrizi, Mulla 438 Muhammad, Prophet, debate on 296–9 Muhammad, Ghulam 460 Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh 6

505

Muhsin Badakhshi, Mirza 138 Mukhliskhani, Hasan Khan Kalawant 382 Mukhtar Beg, Mirza 144 Munna Lal, Munshi 414 Munshīs 14, 25–6, 312–15, 319, 398, 427–8, 484 Abul Fazl’s influence on 331, 338 and belles-lettres genre 411. See also Madho Ram and colonial surveying 312 contribution to Indo-Persian literature 315 cultural curriculum for 316–17 dependence on patrons 320, 324, 325 and East India Company 311–12, 423, 428 educational requirement 312, 313 growth of class 320 as historians 398. See also Chaturman, Rai; Jaswant Rai; Sujan Rai Batalvi ideal 315–16 importance of 397–8 and Mughal State 427 and Persian language 314 as politico-military actors 398. See also Nawal Rai; Dakhni Rai social mobility of 414, 427 technical curriculum of 318. See also individual munshīs Munshi, K.M. 12 Muntakhab ul-Lubāb 351 Muqim, Aqa 387 Murad Bakhsh 432 Murad, Shah 193 Murtaza Khan, Sayyid 157, 158

506

Index

Murtaza Nizam Shah 174, 175, 177 Mustalahāt al-Shu‘arā’ 315 Muzaffar Shah III 171 Muzaffar Shah, Sultan 51, 52, 55, 57, 176 Qasim Sherwani’s report to 44–5 and Sultan Selim, letter to 45–7, 48 Sultan Selim’s letter to 43–4 victory over Mandu fort 46–7 Mylapore. See São Tomé Nadir Shah Afshar 435 Nādirāt-i Shāhī 434 Nagapattinam 352, 386 Dutch headquarters in 359–60, 363 Nagar, Sadashankar 419, 420, 421 Naguru (Nagore) 340, 386, 394 Nahrawali, Qutb-ud-Din 61 Najaf Khan, Mirza 418, 425, 433, 441 Nal-Daman 1, 206–8, 213–14, 215, 218–41, 248, 334 ascetic’s advice on kingship 222–4, 248 bird, role of 227–9 commissioning of 206–7, 213–14 critique of 212–13 Daman’s abandonment 234–5, 236 Daman’s beauty 221, 224 Daman’s birth, story of 222, 224 Daman’s letter to Nal 229–30 Daman’s love 226–7 Daman’s reunion with parents 236 Daman’s sati 240

Daman’s svyamavara 230–1 exchange of letters 227–30 Faizi’s purpose behind 212–13 ‘Ishq and junūn in 217, 233. See also Nal’s ‘ishq; Nal’s junūn below ‘Ishq as central theme 215–18 ‘Ishq vs ‘aql in 215–16 kingship as theme in 241 Nal as Bahuk darvesh 236, 237–8 Nal, description of 218–19 Nal’s abdication of throne 239 Nal’s address to Daman 224–6, 227 Nal’s death 239–40 Nal’s employment with King Rutbarn 236 Nal’s encounter with snake 236 Nal’s exile 233–4 Nal’s incompetence 234 Nal’s ‘ishq 219–20, 221 Nal’s junūn 220, 233 Nal’s letter to Daman 227, 228, 229 Nal’s loss of i‘tidāl (balance) 233 Nal’s lovesickness 219–20, 224 Nal’s re-establishment as king 238–9 Nal’s reunion with Daman 237–8 Nizami Ganjawi as model for 211, 214, 215 pagan gods in 231, 232 portrayal of love in 224–7. See also Nal-Daman Hindī; NalaDamayanti story below Nal-Daman Hindī 205, 242–7 theme of Kali in 246n.31 Nala-Damayanti story 204–5

Index

Bhagwant Rai’s version. See NalDaman Hindī Faizi and 204, 205, 206–7, 210–11. See Nal-Daman above Faizi’s version vs original/ Ur text 212–13 Faizi’s vs Bhagwant Rai’s version 242–3, 245, 246n.31, 247 and Mughal ideology 25 Nal, fort of 334 Narai, description in Safīna-i Sulaimānī 116, 117, 120 Narain, Brij 9 Narayana Pillai, Senji 401 Nashtar-i ‘ishq 424 Nationalist historians. See Allahabad historians Nathan, Mirza 336 Nawa‘i, ‘Ali Sher 437 Nawal Rai, Munshi 399–400, 427 Nayaka, Chellappa 382 Nayakas, of Tanjavur 344, 346. See also Senji Nayakas Nek Rai, Munshi 25, 320, 321, 401 and Abul Fazl 321, 331, 338 and Chishti saints 326, 337 and ‘composite culture’,example of 337 education 337–8 and Persian language 324, 338. See also Tazkirat al-Safar wa Tuhfat al-Zafar Nigārnāma-’i Munshī (Munshī’s Letterbook) 312, 318–19, 337 Nishapuri, Muhammad Muqim 470 Nizāmats, rise of 339. See also Arcot Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad 18 Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad, Khwaja 100 Nizam-ud-Din Awliya 274, 326

507

Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri, 166, 184, 192 Nu‘mani, Shibli 6–8, 15 Nurullah Naqshbandi Akbarabadi, Khwaja 455 Nuskha-i Ahwāl-i Asad Beg or (Waqā’i‘-i Asad Beg) 134, 135–61, 194, 203 Abu’l Fazl’s assassination, account of 134, 135, 136–41 Akbar, relationship with, account of 142–4, 145, 146, 147–8 Akbar’s death, account of 148–9, 154–5, 156, 158–9 Bijapur mission, account of 194–5, 196–201 Deccan missions, account of 134, 145–6 147–52, 155 Ibrahim Adil Shah, account of 198–200 Jahangir, account of 151–4, 155, 156, 157–8, 159–61 Malik ‘Ambar, account of 195–6 Nusrati 382 O’Hanlon, Rosalind 31 Oliveira, Lucas Luís de 357 Oriental Despotism16, 124, 126, 127 Oriente conquistado a Jesus Cristo 265 Ostenders 386–7, 388 Ottomans 41, 50, 52, 94, 97, 162, 163, 251, 258, 394–5 and Aceh, relations between 92–3, 94 and Bahadur Shah 61, 68–9 and Gujarat Sultanate, diplomatic relations 24 and Gujarat, expedition to 51, 73 and Malik Ayaz, alliance between 48–51

508

Index

and Mamluk Sultanate conquest of 42–5 and Mughals, diplomatic relations 34. See also Selim, Sultan Padaividu 342 Padmāvat 206 Pandit, Sankarji Malharji 362, 382 Parangippettai. See Porto Novo Parmanand 140, 144 Pathan merchants Mughals and 356 in Sa‘adat Pattan 389 in São Tomé 340, 356, 393, 394 Pearson, Michael 96 Pegu, description in Rauzat 101, 102–5, 106 Pereira, António Pinto 169 Pereira, Dom Gaspar de Leão 178, 252, 253 Pereira, Gil Eanes 256–7 Perlin, Frank 398 Persian language 5, 28, 317–18 Hindus and 314 Indian claim to 338 Mughals and 206, 313–14, 317, 427 and Sanskrit 206 Peruschi, Giovanni Battista 258 Pierozzi, Antonio 271 Pillai, Ananda Ranga 340 Pillai, Senji Narayanan 375, 394 Pimenta, Nicolau 263 Pinheiro, Manuel 261, 263, 264, 307 Pinto, Manuel Teixeira 357 Pipli 89 Pir Quli, Khwaja (‘Coge Percolim’) 70 Piri Re’is 97

Pitt, Thomas 353 Polier, Antoine 312, 411, 418, 483 Shah ‘Alam II, portrayal of 433 Pondicherry 355, 358, 371, 386, 390 Porto Novo 343, 351, 357, 363, 374, 379, 386 Dutch in 340, 360, 372, 373, 375 Maraikkayars of 340, 386, 394 Portugal 99, 100 Portuguese 50, 51, 66, 166, 186, 192, 201, 256 and Aceh 109–10, 121 and Afghans 357 and Bahadur Shah 54, 58–9, 69, 70–1 and Bassein 59, 60 and Bijapur Sultanate 172, 178, 202, 254 and Burhan Nizam Shah, conflict with 176–7 Calicut, arrival at 36 and Diu 58, 62–3, 66, 71 and Goa 49, 172, 252. See also Goa and Gujarat Sultanate 24, 52, 58, 59, 251 and Humayun 167 and Malik Ayaz, alliance between 42 and Mughals, in Bengal 168–9 and Mughal’s Deccan expansion 172, 260 in Mylapore (São Tomé) 356–7 and Vijayanagara empire, relations 172–3. See also Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de; Sousa, Martim Afonso de; Cunha, Nuno da

Index

Premchand, Munshi 483 Prem Kishor ‘Firaqi’ 414, 416–17, 423, 426, 428 employment with Raja Machhadi 416, 417 Islam, interest in 416–17 poetry of 415–16, 417 and Shah ‘Alam II. See Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī Price Revolution 22 Prison of Princes 437, 439, 465 Azfari’s escape from. See Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī Pulicat 343, 379 Dutch at 352, 353, 356, 360, 362, 372 Qannauj 330 Qansuh al-Ghauri, Sultan 43, 44, 49 Qasim, Khwaja 144 Qasim, Shaikh 440 Qazi ‘Isa 302 Qazwini, Mir Ziya-ul-Mulk 156, 157 Qazwini, Muhammad Amin 2 Qomi, Malik 191 Qudrat Allah Qasim, Mir 415, 416 Quli Afshar, Husain 186 Qureshi, I.H. 12 Qutb-ud-Din, Hazrat Khwaja 326 Raghuji Pandit 370 Rai, Lalji Mal 424 Rajputs, Akbar’s alliance with 168 Ram Narayan, Lala 416, 417 Rama Raya, Aravidu 173 Ramappa 353 Ramayya 363 Ramdas, Raja 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150, 157, 159

509

Rander port 52, 58, 169 Raniri, Nur-ud-Din al- 91 Rao, Narasimha 370 Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn (‘The Immaculate Garden’) 97–115, 122 Aceh, description of. See Aceh Arakan, description of 105–6 Bandar Chamba, description of 101 Batak, description of 113 Ceylon, account of 101 element of marvellous in 100 Moluccas, description of 101 Pegu, account of 101, 102–5, 106 Portugal, description of 99, 100 Portuguese/Franks, account of 98–9 as source for Southeast Asia 114–115 Spain, account of 99 Raychaudhuri, Tapan 15–16, 18, 21, 22 Razm Nāma 212n.16, 280, 404 Reddis 342, 346 Regional histories, new studies on 30 states, emergence of 435 Religious debates, publication of 307–9. See also Majālis-i Jahāngīrī Revenue-farming 343, 344, 345, 346 Richards, John F. 26, 30, 125, 126–7, 348 Rijaluddin, Ahmad 399, 426, 427 Roberts, Gabriel 359 Rodrigues, Gonçalo 252, 253, 254, 286 Ross, Edward Denison 12 Rouffaer, G.P. 90

510

Index

Royal double, theme of 432 Royal power and legitimacy, Azfari’s views 465–6 Roznāmcha 413. See also Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī Rukn-ud-Din Rohila, Shaikh 157 Rumis 52, 72, 75 Rustam, Mirza 153 Rustamkhani, Uday Raj 319 Ruzbih (or Ruzbihan) Shirazi, Maulana 290, 301, 302 Sa‘īd Nāma 365–6, 367, 368, 387–8 Bundela rebellion, account of 376–9 Dakhni Rai, account of 369, 387–8, 400 Dayaram-English conflict, account of 383 Sa‘adat Pattan port, account of. See Sa‘adat Pattan below Sa‘adatullah Khan, account of. See Sa‘adatullah Khan below Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan, Nawab 480 Sa‘adat Nagar 384 Sa‘adat Pattan 383, 384–5 Dutch report on decline of 388, 389 failure of 386 Ostenders in 386–7, 388 Pathan merchants of 389 Sa‘adatullah Khan 341, 346, 349, 362–3, 365–6, 383, 391, 394 Arcot as capital of 379, 380, 381–2 Burhan Khan Handi’s account of 366–7, 368 Catherine Manning’s views on 393–4

Chellappa Nayaka, expedition against 382 consolidation of power 364–5, 370, 373–4, 379–80 and Da’ud Khan Panni, conflict between 361–2, 370, 381 and Dutch, ties between 361–2, 371, 373, 387 and English, conflict with 386–7 fiscal management of Arcot 380 Manuzzi’s account of 353, 355 and Marathas, conflict with 380. See also Senji maritime concerns of 383 and Payanghat, settlement of 367, 368–9 and Sa‘adat Pattan, construction of 384–5. See also Sa‘adat Pattan above and Senji campaign 376–9 tribute gathering missions of 367–8, 370, 371, 380 and Wodeyars 346, 370, 389 Sa‘id, Muhammad. See Sa‘adatullah Khan above Sadiq, Muhammad 368, 370, 372 Sadras (Sadrangapatnam) 343, 360 Dutch trade at 373 Safar Salman, Khwaja 54, 55 Safar-us-Salmani, Khwaja 72–3 Safavids 43, 167, 201 Abu’l Faiz’s report on 187–9, 191 and Burhan Nizam Shah 182 and Deccan Sultanates 166, 178, 179 Safdar Jang, Abu’l Mansur Khan 399, 414 Safīna-i Sulaimānī (The Ship of Sulaiman) 115–21, 122 Aceh, description of 121–2

Index

and Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn comparison 122 Thailand, account of 115, 116–21 Sahay, Kishan 411 Sahu, Lachma Rao 387 Salātīn 429–30, 451, 462–3, 465 and kamālāt, notion of 450, 454. See also Shah Yaqin royal imprisonment of 447 Samarqandi, ‘Abdur Razzaq 2, 40 Samarqandi, Mutribi 265 Samrat ul-Falāsifa (The Fruits of Philosophers) 265, 268–73 Greece, description of 272–3 Italy, description of 272 and Latin sources 273 Sanskrit texts, translations 247–8, 408 Santiago, João de 60 São Tomé 340, 343, 355–7 Da’ud Khan, development under 355–6 Dutch attacks on 357 English control of 356 Pathan merchants of 340, 356, 393, 394 Portuguese settlement in 353, 357 Saran, Parmatma 13 Sarfaraz-ud-Daula 479 Sarhindi, Nasir ‘Ali 382 Sarkar, Jadunath 10–11, 13, 16, 26, 398 Sarwani, ‘Abbas Khan 166 Sassetti, Filippo 173 Sati 240, 241, 378 Sawa, ‘Adil Khan 49 Sayyids, of Java 111, 114 Scribes 311, 337, 397–8. See also Munshīs

511

Sebastião, Dom 99, 100 Selim, Sultan 42 Malik Ayaz’s letter to 47–50 and Mamluk Sultanate, expedition against 42–4 and Sultan Muzaffar Shah, letter to 43–4 Sultan Muzaffar Shah’s letter to 45–7, 48 and Western India 51 Selman Re’is 50, 51 Sen, Indar 319 Sen, Jan 381 Senji 350, 374–5, 382 campaign, account in Sa‘īd Nāma 376–9 fall of 345, 374 as seat of Nayakas. See Senji Nayakas below Senji Nayakas 342, 343, 344, 374 Bijapur campaign against 343, 344 and Golkonda, alliance with 344. See also Senji above Seyfi Çelebi 94–5 Seydi ‘Ali Re’is 97, 163 Shafi‘, Muhammad 368 Shagraf-nāma-i wilāyat 114 Shah ‘Abbas, of Iran 288 Faizi’s report on 187–90, 191 Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah’s letter to 179 See also Safavids Shah ‘Alam II 114, 364, 433, 436, 444–5, 459 Azfari’s account of 439–40, 445–7 blinding of 444, 444n.27 decentralization under 468–9

512

Index

and Ghulam Qadir, relationship between 441–4 history of. See Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī and Marathas 418, 419–20, 421, 422, 423 vernacular literary culture and 434–5 Shah ‘Ali Isfahani 147 Shah ‘Azim 466 Azfari’s encounter with 448–9 Shah Isma‘il I 167 Shah Shuja‘ 432 Shah Sulaiman, of Iran 115, 116, 117 Shah Tahmasp 167 Shah, Jahandar 447, 480 Shah, Malik Muzaffar 40 Shah, Muhammad 393 Shah Yaqin 451, 466 Azfari’s account of 451–4, 459 Shahjahan, Emperor 202, 432 Shahjahanabad 326, 424, 440, 469, 470, 451 Azfari’s stay in 433, 436, 437, 439, 447, 460, 478 Ghulam Qadir’s attack on fort of 442–3, 444 Zabita Khan’s expulsion from 441 Shahjahanpur 334 Shāhnāma 414 Shahrukh, Timurid ruler 40 Shahrukh, Mirza 148, 149, 150, 155, 195 Shared sovereignty, Mughals and 431–2, 464–5, 447 Shatrañj ke khilādī (The Chess Players) 483 Sher ‘Ali Ja‘fari ‘Afsos’ 5, 402

Sherwani, Haroon Khan 17, 18–20, 51 Sherwani, Qasim 44–5 Shirazi, Mir Jamal-ud-Din Husain Inju 194–5, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201 Shivaji Bhonsle 172 Shuja‘-ud-Daula, Nawab 470, 475 Shuja‘-ud-Din 339 Shukrullah Shirazi, Maulana 302 Siddhavatam 342 Sidi ‘Ali Al-Andalusi 41 Sidi Jauhar Bandar 390 Sikandar ibn Manjhu 55, 57 Sikandar Shukoh, Mirza 445 Sikhs 423 Silhadi 57 Silva, Mateus Carvalho da 357 Sind, Mughal conquest of 168, 171 Sindhia, Madhavji Patil 413, 418–19, 420, 421, 441, 444 Singh, Chetan 30 Singh, Sarup 358, 375, 377 Dutch and 375 and English 358–9, 361, 375 French and 375 Singh, Sultan 377 Singh, Tej 376, 377–8 Sira 347, 377 Siyalkoti Mal ‘Warasta’ 315, 424 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 16 Sobha Chand 333, 335 Society of Jesus 249–50. See also Jesuits Sousa, Martim Afonso de 33, 250 Daman, expedition to 57, 58–9 and Sultan Bahadur 60, 62–3, 66, 67 Southeast Asia 343 Mughals and 24, 88–9, 90

Index

Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn as source on 115. See also Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn. See also Aceh; Arakan; Pegu Sovereignty, as a shared attribute 431–2, 464–5, 447 Spain, account in Rauzat 99 Spanish Habsburgs 467, 468 Spear, Percival 430 Spice trade 89, 91, 343 Sprenger, Aloys 3 Sriranga Raya 344 State formation, Mughals and 165–6 State power, nature of 124, 125 Storia del Mogol 8, 351 Succession, among Mughals 127, 128–9 Sufis 28, 43, 458 and love, idea of 218, 239, 243 Sujan Rai Batalvi (Bhandari) 5, 401–2, 408, 411, 412, 427 and Abu’l Fazl, influence of 401, 402, 409 religious ideology of 403–4, 409 study of historical texts 404–6. See also Khulāsat ut-Tawārīkh Sulaiman Khan Panni 350, 351 Sulaiman Shukoh, Mirza 462, 481 Süleyman, Sultan 61, 69, 163 Asaf Khan’s letter to 68–9 Sulh-i kull, ideology of 223, 403, 409 Summa Historialis or Chronicon 271 Sundardas 369, 370 Sur dynasty, Portuguese and 251 Sur, Islam Shah 251 and Dom João de Castro, exchange of letters 73–5, 76–7 Sur, Sher Shah 52, 53, 167

513

Taba’taba’i, Ghulam Husain 314, 402 Tabaqāt-i Shu‘rā-yi Hind 416 Tabrizi, Sa’ib 331, 338 Tahir Husaini, Shah 192 Tahir Muhammad Sabzwari 24, 97–115 embassy to Goa 98–9. See also Rauzat ut-Tāhirīn Tahir, Wahid 332, 338 Tahmasp, Shah 167 Taj Mahal Begam, Nawwab 455 Talish, Shihab-ud-Din 5, 336 Tamil Maraikkayar merchants (Chulias) 340 Tanjavur 344, 346, 352, 355, 360, 364, 367, 370, 372, 380 Tansen, Miyan 382 Taqi-ud-Din Muhammad, Mir 190 Taqiya Shushtari, Maulana 290–1, 302 Tārīkh-i Dilkushā 320 Tārīkh-i Firishta 408n.22 Tārīkh-i Hind-i Gharbī 94 Tārīkh-i Rashīdī 12 Tazkirat al-Safar wa Tuhfat al-Zafar 320, 321–2 Agra, account of 333 Allahabad, description of 323 as autobiographical account 336 Asir fort, description of 335 Awdh, description of 329 Burhanpur, description of 335 Gorakhpur, description of 325, 328–9 Gwalior, description of 334 Jalesar, description of 330–1 Kachauchha, account of 325 Lord Ram’s story, version in 329–30

514

Index

Lucknow, description of 330 Mathura, account of 327, 332 Narwar, account of 334 Nek Rai’s birth, account of 322 Nek Rai’s early life, account of 324–5 Nek Rai’s education, account of 324, 326–7, 328, 329, 331–2 Nek Rai’s family, account in 323–4 Nek Rai’s journey to Bijapur, account of 333–6 Shahjahanabad (Delhi), account of 326 Sironj, account of 334 Ujjain, account of 334–5 unity of religions, Nek Rai’s views on 328 Tej Bhan, Khwaja 315 Tennyson, Alfred 249 Thailand, description in Safīna-i Sulaimānī, 115, 116–21, 122 Tieffenthaler, Joseph (Jesuit) 307 Timur, Amir 167, 430–1 Timurid Mirzas 52, 440, 456 and notion of shared sovereignty 465 Tipu Sultan 4, 98, 114 Tirupapuliyur 343, 358 Todar Mal, Raja 313, 320, 369, 378 Lala Todar Mal 372 Toungoo Dynasty 89, 105 Trade 21–2, 91 Aceh and 91, 112 Arcot and 341. See also Porto Novo; Sa‘adat Pattan; São Tomé Coromandel region and 340, 343, 353, 354

Gujarat and 91, 169 and inland politics 341, 392, 393 Madras as centre of 343 between Mughals and Portuguese 169 between Mughals and Southeast Asia 89 and Pathan merchants. See Pathan merchants between Portuguese and Bijapur 202 spice 91 Tranquebar 352 Transit tolls (cunkam), conflicts over 360 Translations, study of 29 Transoxania, and divided statehood 432 Treaty of Submission for Bijapur and Golkonda 202 Tripathi, Ram Prasad 13 Tughal, Mirza 445, 446, 449, 451, 452, 453 Tughlaq Nāma 289 Tuhfat al-Hind (Gift of India) 312 Tur 38, 42 Turkish language, Mughals and 438–9, 462 Tūtī-Nāma 247 Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī (or Jahāngīrnāma) 129, 287, 288 Tūzak-i Wālājāhī early history of Arcot nizāmat in 349–50 Muhammad Sa‘id, account of 366–7, 368 Udayagiri 342 Ulughkhani, Hajji ud-Dabir 12, 55, 57, 61

Index

Urdu and Mughal historiography 2, 5 Nal-Daman story in 205. See also Nal–Daman Hindī Uwais, Shaikh 59, 60, 61, 64 Uzbeks 188, 189, 191 Van Steeland, Joannes 371, 372 Vas, António 256 Velamas 342, 346, 374 Velur 342, 343, 345, 350, 362, 374, 377, 382 Venetians 37, 51 Venkatagiri 342, 346, 374 Vijayanagara empire 169, 342–3 and Deccan sultanates 343 decline, effect on Goa 173–4 and Portuguese, relations between 172–3 Von Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph 34 Von Ranke, Leopold 34 Walajah Nawabs, of Arcot 349, 391, 433, 483 Walajah, Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Nawwab 349, 462, 463 Waqā’i‘-i ‘Ālamshāhī 413–14, 415–16, 417–20 account of Shah ‘Alam II’s court 418, 419–20, 421, 422, 423. See also Prem Kishor ‘Firaqi’ Waqā’i‘-i Hawāriyān-i Dūāzdagāna 268 Wāqi‘āt-i Azfarī 433, 436–7, 439–40, 463, 466, 479–80 Asaf-ud-Daula and Mirza Azfari, interaction between 436, 462, 479–80, 481–2 astrology, discussion in 449–50, 459

515

dreams, Azfari’s account of 456–9, 460 escape from prison, Azfari’s account 436, 437, 447, 448, 449, 450, 460, 461, 465, 478 Ghulam Muhammad’s dream, Azfari’s description of 460 Ghulam Qadir Khan’s rebellion, Azfari’s account of 439, 440, 441–5 Nawwab Taj Mahal Begum, Azfari’s account of 455 occult practices, Azfari’s description of 448–9 purpose behind writing 437 Sayyid woman, Azfari’s description of 450–1 Shah ‘Azim, Azfari’s encounter with 448–9 Shah ‘Alam II -Azfari relationship, account of 445–7 Shah ‘Alam II, Azfari’s account of 439–40 Shah Yaqin, Azfari’s account of 451–4 Zabita Khan, Azfari’s account of 440–1, 442 Weber, Max 124–5 Wendel, François-Xavier 307 Westrenen, Gerrit 387, 389 William of Rubruck 257 Withington, Nicholas 305, 306 Wodeyars 346, 370, 389 Xavier, Jerónimo (Jerome) 261–3, 286, 304, 305, 306–7 and ‘Abdus Sattar, collaboration between 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270–1

516

Index

Akbar, portrayal of 161–2 Akbar’s death, account of 129–30, 131, 132 Christ, debates with ‘Abdus Sattar on 291–3, 294–5 Christ, account of debates on 277–8, 282–3 Don Bernardo de Ezpeleta, letter to 261–2 Ghiyas-ud-Din ‘Ali Naqib Khan, description of 280 Gospel, account of debate on 280–1 interreligious debates in Jahangir’s court, account of 275–85 Jahangir’s succession, account of 129, 130–3, 274–5 Louis de Dieu’s critique of 308 miracles, account of debate on 283–4, 285 monogamy, account of debate on 279, 283 Muhammad, discussion regarding 281–3, 284–5 and Persian, proficiency in 262–3, 305 publication of works of 307–8 visual representation of God, discussion on 279–80

Ya‘qub Aqa 151, 152, 153 Ya‘qub Khan Zu’l-qadr 186, 189– 90 Yachama Naidu, Kumara 346 Yamin-ud-Daula Nawab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan 470 Yanbu‘ al-Bahr 38 Yazdi, Sharaf-ud-Din 2 Yazna, Qadir Husain Khan 385 Yogabashist 459 Yusuf ‘Adil Khan 166 Yusufza’i, Ghulam Qadir Khan 437 Zafar al-Wālih 12, 57 Zain al-‘Abidin, Sultan 114 Zakaullah, Munshi 6 Zamīndārs 14, 397 Zikr-i Mīr 471 Zu’lfiqar Khan Nusrat Jang 171, 346, 347, 349, 352, 361 Da’ud Khan Panni, association with 350 Prince Muhammad A‘zam, support for 363, 364 Senji, capture of 345, 374 Zu’lfiqarkhani, La‘l Khan Dholakiya 381 Zuhuri, Maulana 191, 198