The relative stability and economic prosperity of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries permitted powerful members of the three courts to patronize and promote various branches of the arts and learning. The essays in this chapter illustrate how this activity was carried out within a wider historical context of Muslim kingship and the role of patronage in its early modern manifestations. In the first essay, Maryam Moazzen provides a sketch of the Safavid promotion of the religious sciences through the examination of the endowment deeds (waqfiyyas) of a major madrasa (a seminary college) in the Safavid capital of Isfahan. The deed under analysis belongs to Madrasa-yi Sultani, the largest seminary built toward the end of the Safavid period. By analyzing the endowment deeds of the Royal college, Moazzen sheds light on the mechanism and structure of organizing a major Shiʿi educational and charitable institution. The motivations expressed and implied in its establishment, and the branches of knowledge that were taught and debated, point to the Safavid state’s direct influence on the college. Moreover, the religious orientation that this royal seminary college adopted, and the beneficiaries (students and scholars) that its large endowment supported, were guided by its patrons’ particular attitude toward learning, and in turn helped shape a religious community’s outlook in eighteenth-century Isfahan.
In the second essay, Murat Umut Inan examines the Ottoman patronage of litterateurs by analyzing three major biographies of poets (tezkires) compiled respectively by such sixteenth-century Ottoman luminaries as Sehi Bey (d. 1548), Latifi (d. 1582), and Aşık Çelebi (d. 1572). By doing so, Inan provides the contours and contexts of literary patronage in the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a period during which literary production increased significantly, mainly due to the Ottoman sultans’ and the ruling elite’s lavish support. As he explains, there were two interrelated reasons for the continued interest in and support for literary creation in this period. First, literature, and especially poetry, enjoyed great popularity among members of the court and elite households, most of whom were avid readers of poetry, and others were skilled poets in their own right. This enthusiasm in turn led to a dramatic rise in patronage of literature. Another reason literary figures and works were continuously and generously funded had much to do with the Ottoman imperial project to create a literary culture that would represent a powerful empire that presented itself as the new heir to, and patron of, the Islamic literary tradition. The tezkires translated here provide a wealth of anecdotal, biographical, and historical information that shed light on the forms as well as the workings of the Ottoman patronage of literature in the early modern era.
In the third essay, Rajeev Kinra examines a letter of advice from a high-ranking Mughal bureaucrat to his offspring regarding education, ethics, and cultural refinement. The letter was composed in Persian by the Mughal poet and state secretary (munshi), Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. c. 1670), and addressed to his son Tej Bhan (dates unknown). As their names indicate, Chandar Bhan and Tej Bhan were both high-caste Hindus, but they were nevertheless deeply immersed in Mughal court culture and the broader cosmopolitan literary and political culture of the Indo-Persian world. Drawing on the deep traditions of Indo-Persian treatises on worldly “advice” (nasihat), Chandar Bhan counsels his son on a variety of topics related to the life of a Mughal courtier, especially the life of a successful imperial munshi.
One of the significant themes that runs through the letter (and Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre more generally) is the importance of leading a “balanced” life (i‘tidal). He advises Tej Bhan to pursue knowledge, but to privilege the pursuit of practical knowledge from a range of disciplines including history, literature, ethics, statecraft, and accounting over merely abstract or theoretical knowledge. He encourages him to lead a life of piety and devotion (significantly, without specifying any particular sect or deity) and to aspire to the ascetic ideals of “nonattachment” (bi-ta‘alluqi) common to the mystical dimensions of both Hinduism and Islam, even as he acknowledges that for most people the practical realities of living in the world require a commitment to work, family, and the society of others.
In short, the letter offers a fascinating window onto the values of mystical civility, pluralism, a strong work ethic, and a respect for learning held dear by the seventeenth-century Mughal intelligentsia. It also presents us with a useful “syllabus” of sorts for the kinds of texts, authors, and genres that an educated Mughal gentleman would consider to be essential reading for the cultivation of good character.
FIGURE 10.1 Entrée du Medreseh Chah-Sultan-Hussein, Ispahan
Sketch of Madrasa-yi Sultani in Isfahan, Iran, in the mid-nineteenth century.
Artist: Pascal Coste
Date: 1851–54.
Place of origin: Paris, France
Credit: New York Public Library Digital Collections
