7
A Muslim State in a Non-Muslim Context
The Mughal Case
MUZAFFAR ALAM
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY with the ascendancy of the Mughals, an important step in the development of imperial political culture and ideology occurred in South Asia. Power in the Indian countryside was mostly in the hands of large and small Hindu family and kin groups. These groups had emerged as the great consolidated Rajput caste, spread over a very large part of northern India and incorporating the various erstwhile ruling elements and the newly brahmanized tribal/pastoral chiefs. They enjoyed claims over the surplus produced by the peasants and were masters of their respective territories. The Mughals referred to them as zamindar, a generic term whose earliest reference occurs in the fourteenth century. Caste cohesion and caste affinity had encouraged conditions in which members of a subcaste lived close to each other in a cluster of villages, known in Mughal India as pargana. Caste, zamindari, and pargana boundaries often coexisted (Habib and Raychaudhuri 1982, 244–49; Habib 1965).
The conditions created by the expansion of the Mughal state after 1560 enabled a new set of assumptions to emerge from political questions that had been debated in South Asia since at least 1200 and the founding of the sultanate of Delhi. In particular, how was one to resolve the demands of an imperial center with powerful local and regional traditions? How could the existing ideas deriving from Arabo-Persian and Central Asian traditions be adapted to a situation in which a predominantly Muslim group ruled over a largely non-Muslim population? Political management in the Mughal Empire, thus, required the integration of very diverse cultural groups into a political community.
This problem of cultural diversity was by no means unique to the Mughals, but it was somewhat exaggerated because as a Muslim ruling group they were a distinct minority in a realm predominantly Hindu among significant other minority groups. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Muslim authors such as Fakhr-i Mudabbir and Ziya’ Barani had written treatises on how Muslims should govern non-Muslim peoples.1 Since Tughluq times (fourteenth century) Hindus had begun to appear in state service. Sikandar Lodi (r. 1489–1517), generally remembered otherwise for his bigotry, did encourage the Hindus to learn Persian high positions in the state, and the rise to power of the Sur sultan Sher Khan (r. 1540–45) depended considerably on his ability to integrate the Rajputs into his army (Hasan 1963, 311–39; Kolff 1990, 71–116). By the time of the early Mughals (Babur, r. 1526–30, and Humayun, r. 1530–40 and 1555–56), Hindu presence in the Muslim state was so pronounced that it began to threaten some sections of the Muslim notables (shurafa’) (I. A. Khan 1977). Furthermore, much of the strength of the regional sultanates seems to have depended on the sultans’ ability to coordinate their relations with the territorial Hindu magnates.2
Under Akbar and his successors, the Mughals reinforced this coordination and developed a new political vocabulary and syntax to legitimate it. Indeed, so successfully did the Mughals wed existing political discourse with innovations that many of the local Hindu elites began to identify themselves, to a certain degree, not simply with the Mughal state system but also with the Mughal Persian culture. There were three important idioms, namely, the Sufi ideology and practice, the Nasirean akhlaqi norms, and a Persian cosmopolis. The Mughals used them to articulate and reinforce their political management. This chapter is an attempt to understand these idioms, focusing in particular on how Nasirean akhlaq shaped and influenced the course of Mughal politics.
Pre-Mughal Beginnings
Early in the thirteenth century, after the establishment of the Turkish sultanate in northern India, a delegation of eminent theologians approached Sultan Iltutmish with a demand to implement the shari‘a in his sultanate. The infidels, according to the theologians’ shari‘a, were to be given the option of “Islam or death” (imma al-Islam, imma al-qatl). In the assessment of the sultan and his nobles, the theologians’ demand was clearly impossible to carry out. It was, however, also difficult to simply set it aside. His response was somewhat evasive.
The sultan realized the nature of the conflict between the narrowly defined shari‘a and the demands of governance. He feared he might lose the support of the ulama. There was little help in the manner in which Fakhr-i Mudabbir and Ziya’ Barani, the early two Muslim political theorists, carried the siyasah al-shar‘iyah discourse from the Islamic lands. Indeed, Barani’s plea was for repudiating outright all that he saw as non-Islamic. In his Fatawa-i Jahandari, he sketches a rather impractical framework for governance and insists that the ruler who does not follow it does not deserve to be called a Muslim (Barani 1972; Habib and Khan 1961, 40). The Muslim king should not be content with merely levying the jizyah and kharaj from the Hindus. He should establish the supreme position of Islam by overthrowing infidelity and by slaughtering its leaders (imams), the Brahmans (Barani 1972, 165–66; Habib and Khan 1961, 46). There is a place for exceptions by the ruler (zawabit) in Barani, but he makes it very clear that zawabit were to be justified on grounds of political expediency in a situation when Muslim rulers were unable to implement the regulations of the shari‘a in full. The aim of framing the zawabit was to reinforce the shari‘a, to recuperate and complement it; the zawabit were not to work separately from or contrary to the shari‘a (Barani 1972, 217; Habib and Khan 1961, 64).
We may also consider here briefly the work by Sayyid Ali ibn Shahab Hamadani (d. 1384) titled Zakhirah al-muluk (Hamadani n.d., fol. 2a, 6a, 19b), even though it is not strictly an Indo-Islamic text. Hamadani’s name, however, is often associated with the history of Islam in Kashmir (Rafiqi 1972, 28–85).3 Hamadani wrote the Zakhirah with an aim to discuss and elaborate the principles of both the form and the substance of power and governance (lawazim-i qawa’id-i saltanat-i suwari wa ma‘nawi) for the Muslim rulers and state officials who wish to set right the affairs of religion (istislah-i umur-i din). The thrust and the contents of the passages on principles of saltanat, the qualities and duties recommended for the king, and the categories of the people or ri‘aya are all discussed with reference to shari‘a. He divides the ri‘aya into kafir and Muslim and dwells only on the category of the latter (ahl-i iman) (Hamadani n.d., fol. 19b, 92). The rights of the ri‘aya, according to Hamadani, should follow their religions. The Muslims and the kafirs both enjoy the Divine compassion (rahmat-i Haqq). Nonetheless, they have to be treated differently by the Muslim rulers. The kafirs living in a Muslim territory are ahl-i zimmah; the Muslim rulers should protect their lives and properties, provided they (ahl-i zimmah) maintain the conditions laid down in the agreement (ahdnamah) that the Second Pious Caliph Umar made with the People of the Book and the fire worshippers (majus wa ahl-i kitab) (Zakhirah al-muluk, fol. 99, 91a).
For Barani, kingship with all its attendant attributes was a sin for which the king must make compensation (kaffarah) (Barani 1972, 277). In the process, bigotry and narrow religious sectarianism became integral to his political theory. Hamadani’s prime concern, wherever he discussed statecraft, was to advise a Muslim ruler to ensure the welfare of the people of the Faith. They all saw the king as a Muslim ruler, to manage in the first place the interests of the Muslims. Besides the kharaj, jizyah, and jihad, there was not much in their writings to help the ruler to negotiate a political settlement with his non-Muslim subjects.
The Sufis and the Sultans
The sultan thus looked for legitimacy from the Sufis, who by then had amply demonstrated that truth, the Islamic truth, was not confined to the pages of a book on shari‘a alone. Sufism was now growing into a system and had its own social mission. Sufis had now their own paths and orders (tariqah) and had also served the sultans outside India in their political missions (Trimingham 1971, 1–30; Eaton 1978, xiii–xxxii). In India, they encouraged and promoted many things held in common by local communities and the Muslims. Besides, even among those Sufis who were puritanical in their attitudes and uncompromising on questions of adherence to shari‘a in purely juridical terms, there were examples of general charity and tolerance. They shunned ritualism and ceremonialism, spoke the language of the commoners, and gave impetus to linguistic and cultural assimilation. All this represented a deliberate Sufi intervention in politics and an attempt at defining its direction. Later, the sultan tried to establish his links with the Sufis in a rather exaggerated way. Soon the Sufis’ support to the sultan acquired a clearly articulated ideological basis as Sufic beliefs and practices centered around the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud (Unity of being).
In the sixteenth century, the influence of the ideology of wahdat-i wujud was very strong in northern India. For example, Muhammad Ashraf Simnani, the ancestor of the famous saintly family of Kachhauchha (in the modern district of Faizabad), was an eloquent defender of the doctrine. Besides writing a number of treatises to explain it, Simnani popularized the use of the expression Hamah Ust (All is He), thus emphasizing the belief that anything other than God did not exist. Rudauli (in the modern district of Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh) was another major Sufi center where the doctrine received unusual nourishment. The khanqah of Shaikh Ahmad Abd al-Haqq (d. 1434) has been mentioned as the “clearinghouse” of Hindu yogis and sanyasis. Shaikh Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (d. 1537) was among the eminent Sufis who later became associated with this khanqah. Among his significant writings is listed Rushd-namah (Gangohi n.d.), a treatise on tawhid (monotheism) that consists of his own Hindavi verses and those of his preceptor (pir-i dastagir), together with the Persian and Hindavi verses of other saints including the noted twelfth-century Persian saint and poet Shaikh Farid al-Din Attar. The Rushd-namah identified Sufi beliefs based on wahdat-i wujud with the philosophy and practices of the Hindu Shaivite Gorakhnath and received inspiration from the “syncretistic” religious milieu of Rudauli. Some of these verses with slight variations often appear in the Nath poetry as well as in the doha verses of the weaver-mystic Kabir. Several important issues are discussed in this treatise. These include the origins of the universe, the purpose of the creation of Man, the “path” or “direction” (nahw, samt) to the Truth, the real nature of life, the sama‘ or spiritual music, the Truth (haqq) as it is illumined in the heart of a mystic, and the justification for prostration (sijdah) before one’s spiritual master—all adumbrated as illustrations of tauhid.4
Rushd-namah represented an important Sufi trend. The sentiments and philosophical approaches enumerated therein found a fascinating expression in the mid-sixteenth century in another Chishti treatise, Haqa’iq-i Hindi of Mir Abd al-Wahid Bilgrami (d. 1608), in which Bilgrami sought to reconcile Vaishnava symbols and the terms and ideas used in Hindu devotional songs with orthodox Muslim beliefs. According to Bilgrami, Krishna, a Hindu deity, and other names used in such verses symbolized the Prophet Muhammad, or “Perfect Man,” or even sometimes the reality of human being (haqiqat-i insan) in relation to the abstract notion of oneness (ahadiyat) of the Divine Essence. Krishna’s female devotees, the gopis, sometimes stood, Bilgrami wrote, for angels, sometimes for the human race in relation to the relative unity (wahidiyat) of the Divine attributes. Braj and Gokul signified the different Sufi notions of the world (alam) in different contexts, while the Yamuna and the Ganga stood for the sea of unity (wahdat) and the ocean of gnosis (ma‘rifat), or otherwise the river of hads (origination) and imkan (contingent or potential existence); the murali (Krishna’s flute) represented the appearance of entity out of nonentity and so on (Bilgrami 1957; Rizvi 1965, 60–62).5
All this became acceptable in the context of the Sufi doctrine of wahdat-i wujud, popular then with the Chishtis. There is an unmistakable imprint of the doctrine on the ideas of Abu al-Fazl (d. 1602), the noted ideologue of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), as well (Nizami 1972, 33–44; Rizvi 1975, 339–73; Habib 1998, 332–53). It is not necessary for us to go into the details of the influence of these mystic developments on Abu al-Fazl. A number of measures and innovations of the time of Akbar and his successor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) were inspired by this doctrine. Akbar had shown a keen interest in local culture and mystic traditions. He invited some Hindu scholars to his court and inquired about their religions and philosophy. He is reported to have organized a separate quarter for the yogis in Agra (Bada’uni 1865–69, 2:324–25; Engl. trans., 334–35). The support for the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud or the unity of being, and the associated philosophy and practice of generous accommodativeness to the local social beliefs and customs, continued through the seventeenth century. Following the example set by Akbar, Jahangir also had close contacts with Hindu scholars and yogis (Mubed 1983, 1:94; Engl. trans. Shea and Troyer 1843, 164). Jahangir often held discussions around spiritual and religious matters with Jadrup, the noted Vaishnavite divine at Ujjain and Mathura. The result of all these discussions was a belief that the Vedantic philosophy of the Hindus and Sufi ideas were more or less identical among the Muslims (Jahangir 1864, 250–51, 252–53, 279, 280, 281; Jahangir 1968, pt. 2, 49, 52–53, 104, 105, 108; Mubed 1983, 1:184–86, 1:159; Engl. trans. Shea and Troyer 1843, 2:159; Mu‘tamad Khan 1865, 543–44, 556–57).6
It is well known that the Sufistic leanings of the seventeenth-century Mughal prince Dara Shukoh led him to explore the depths of Hindu religion. By his patronage and partly through his own efforts, several Sanskrit works were translated into Persian (compare Hasrat 1953, 174–292; and Qanungo 1952, 241–68). These works include Bhagavadgita, Yoga Vasistha, and Prabodhacandrodaya. Dara himself is reported to have translated the Upanishads, and to emphasize that the Hindu scriptures are also sacred and divine, he named the translation Sirr-i Akbar (Divine secret). After a critical examination of Hindu religions, he found that all religions are identical and lead to the same goal. His work Majma‘ al-bahrayn is devoted to highlighting the similarity between the beliefs and practices prescribed in Islamic tasawwuf and those of Hindu Yoga.7 The author of the Dabistan-i mazahib prepared a new translation of Amrit Kund and named it Khawas al-Hayat (Mubed 1983, 182). The celebrated seventeenth-century savant Chandra Bhan “Brahman” compiled a treatise known as Mukalmah-i Dara Shukoh wa Baba Lal, focusing on the discussion the prince had had with the saint of that name.8
Among the best interpreters and defenders of the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud during this century were Shaikh Muhibb Allah (d. 1648) and Shaikh Abd al-Rahman Chishti (d. ca. 1683). The reputation of some of the treatises Shaikh Muhibb Allah wrote to expose and elaborate on the doctrine brought him into close contact with Prince Dara Shukoh. His Risalah-i taswiyah (Treatise on equality) (Muhibb Allah n.d.) evoked a storm of opposition in orthodox circles and later under Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), who is reported to have taken strong exception to its contents. The text was ordered to be burnt in public. Shaikh Muhibb Allah also laid emphasis on the acquisition of mystic knowledge from Hindu yogis. One of his eminent disciples, Shaikh Muhammadi, undertook study and training in yoga from Brahmans after he had perfected his grounding in Islamic Sufism under Shaikh Muhibb Allah (Rizvi 1965, 340).9
In another case, Shaikh Abd al-Rahman Chishti, a descendant of Shaikh Abd al-Haqq of Rudauli (d. 1434), commented on the text of the Yoga Vasistha and other materials in a treatise he wrote under the title of Mir’at al-makhluqat (Mirror of the creatures), framed as a conversation between Mahadev, Parvati, and the sage Vasishta. Abd al-Rahman sought to explain at some length the Hindu legends and, as Rizvi points out, made a plea for them to be adapted to Muslim ideas and beliefs. He also prepared a recension in Persian of the Gita entitled Mir’at al-haqa’iq (Mirror of realities), presenting it as an ideal exposition of the doctrine of Hamah Ust (Rieu 1885, 3:1034).10 Abd al-Rahman’s attitude in these texts is somewhat complex, however; if his translations show appreciation for Hindu scriptures, they also read like a kind of polemic (Alam 2012).
In the early eighteenth century, the implication of these doctrines and the Sufi endeavor to define the larger political and social trajectory is well illustrated by the career of Shah Abd al-Razzaq Bansawi from the province of Awadh. Aurangzeb’s bigotry and the association of the Mughal state with Sunni orthodoxy then threatened a serious rupture in the relationship between the communities in the province. The clashes of Rajput zamindars with the Muslim revenue-grantees were a major source of tension in the countryside. The keepers of the symbols of Islam (sha‘a’ir-i Islam) and the shurafa’ encountered serious threats from the “infidels” surrounding their habitats. Strong-arm tactics in the handling of the “rebel” zamindars had further aggravated the problem (Alam 1996). This tension was to be resolved only by a policy of adjustment of the claims of the dominant Rajputs on the one hand and the Muslims and non-Rajput Hindus on the other. This political balancing received strength from the prevailing Sufi ideology of the region, which, even if it had received a temporary setback (in the seventeenth century), was repeated with remarkable dexterity by Sayyid Shah Abd al-Razzaq Bansawi, the founder of a Qadiri Sufi center in Bansa, a small town near Lucknow.
Nasir al-Din Tusi and His Akhlaq in Mughal India
However, while the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud continued to support accommodation between the sections of Hindus and Muslims, a tradition within the Sufi circle also emerged in the seventeenth century that contested the legitimacy of the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud. During the century, Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624), the noted disciple and the khalifa of Khwaja Baqi Billah (d. 1603) and the founder of the Mujaddidiya branch of the Naqshbandiya silsila, is said to have commanded considerable reputation in Mughal Muslim society. He rejected the doctrine of wahdat-i wujud and rearticulated Shaikh Ala al-Dawlah Simnani’s (d. 1336) doctrine of wahdat-i shuhud (Friedmann 1971, 23–31). His influence on Mughal politics, however, was of little consequence until the end of Shah Jahan’s reign (1627–58) (Friedmann 1971, 77–86; Habib 1960, 209–23). The participation of the Hindus in state management remained unprecedented. This participation, I would suggest, became possible in part because the mythic code of normative behavior among the Mughals, the Tura-i Chengizi or Yasa-i Chengizi, weakened the determining role of the shari‘a. But more important, it was the tradition of the akhlaqi norm of governance (mamlikatdari), as reflected in Nasir al-Din Tusi’s Akhlaq, that influenced and shaped state building under the Mughals. Akhlaq-i Nasiri, as we know, drew on Ibn Miskawayh’s Tahzib al-akhlaq or Kitab al-taharah. But the book was much more than a mere translation. Besides the first discourse, which was a summary of Ibn Miskawayh’s Tahzib arranged anew, Tusi added two new discourses, one on household and family management (tadbir-i manzil) and another on politics (siyasat-i mudun), as parts of practical wisdom (hikmat-i amali) drawing on the Greco-Hellenic philosophical writings and blending them with his own “Islamic” view of man and society. In his discussion on the categories of social order, Tusi followed the classification of the noted tenth-century Muslim philosopher Farabi. The civil society (tamaddun), according to him, is first to be divided into two categories: (1) the ideal or excellent city and state (al-madinah al-fazilah) and (2) the bad or unrighteous city. The second type was again divided, this time into three categories: the astray-going or misguided city (al-madinah al-zallah), the evildoing city (al-madinah al-fasiqah), and the ignorant city (al-madinah al-jahilah) (Sharif 1966, 1:704–14). Like Farabi, Tusi also suggested that it was possible for the ideal city to be composed of peoples with diverse social and religious practices.11 The leader of the ideal city was ideally to be the philosopher-king under whose care and protection each member of the society, secure in the place best suited for him, was to aspire and struggle to achieve perfection (Tusi 1976, 286, 288).
The Akhlaq-i Nasiri is a work of theory, idealistic and normative in character. It is difficult to take the text as evidence of the circumstances that actually prevailed when it was prepared. Still, one is tempted to point to the fact that the book was composed at a time when the kings’ religious views did not correspond with those of a large number of their subjects. In 1235, Tusi dedicated the book to an Isma’ili prince of a region that in Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasat-namah was identified as an especially disturbed and misguided one (Tusi 1964, 262–67). Later, when the Mongols’ power increased within the world of Islam, Tusi wrote a new preface without changing its contents and dedicated it to the pagan Mongol king of Maraghah. The region was in such turbulence that Tusi envisaged an ideal ruler to ensure uniformity, harmony, and a coordination of the conflicting interests of the diverse social and religious groups in the state. The crisis the Muslim world encountered in the face of the Mongol disaster created conditions for the acceptability of Tusi’s idea.
There is not much in available medieval Indian intellectual and literary history to indicate the exact time and the place of the first entry of Tusi’s Akhlaq into the subcontinent. The book was, however, widely read in Mughal India. The Mughals received and appropriated Nasirean ethics as part of the legacy of Babur, the founder of their rule in India, who in turn inherited it from the Timurids of Herat after their extirpation at the hands of the Shaybanis. Sultan Hussein Bayqara (r. 1470–1506), the last great Timurid in Herat, even though a Sunni, seems to have disapproved of his government’s being run exclusively on narrow Sunni Islamic lines.12 This attitude is supported by his policy that at least two versions of Tusi’s work, Akhlaq-i Muhsini by Mulla Hussein Wa’iz al-Kashifi and Dastur al-vizarah, better known as Akhlaq-i humayuni, by Qazi Ikhtiyar al-Din Hasan bin Ghiyath al-Din al-Husseini, were prepared at his behest.13 Of these two, a tour of Ikhtiyar al-Husseini’s treatise helps us, in particular, to identify some reasons for Tusi’s special status in Mughal Persian reading lists.
Akhlaq-i humayuni was first titled as Dastur al-vizarah and is a book of modest size on ethics and politics. The author claims he has described in tabulated form and summed up in an “elegant” Persian the subtle, abstruse, and complex discourses on human nature, family, household, and governance (ba ikhtisar rashahat-i masa’il ra dar mashari‘-i jadawil jaryan dad) that he had read in numerous books including, and in particular, the works by Ibn Miskawayh and Nasir al-Din Tusi. The purpose of writing this book was to provide a manual for day-to-day activities (dastur al-amal-i ruznamah-i ayyam) for state officials (ashab-i riyasat wa arbab-i siyasat) as a means to manage their religious and worldly fortunes as well as to promote the stability of the state (sabab-i salah wa falah-i suwari wa ma‘nawi wa ba‘is-i dawam wa khulud-i mulk wa dawlat).
The author, Ikhtiyar al-Din al-Husseini, the chief qazi of Herat and a vizier in the time of the Timurid sultan Hussein Bayqara, came from an eminent family of the ulama of Turbat-i Jam, who held high positions in Timurid Central Asia (Khwandamir 1973, 4:355–56, 311, 376, 377, 382, 298, 514, 685; see also Blochet 1905–34, 2:37). He prepared the earlier version of the book in the time of Sultan Abu Sa‘id Mirza (r. 1459–69) for the young prince Hussein Mirza (later Sultan Hussein Bayqara), who was then the chief prop and support of the saltanat and acted virtually like the vizier (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fols. 4a–6b). Later, after the collapse of Timurid power in Herat, al-Husseini—lucky to escape the fate of many of his contemporaries (imprisonment and execution)—chose a life of retirement in his hometown, Turbat, “accompanied and favoured there by the souls of the great saints and of his ancestors.”14 Then a day came when he heard that “the lamp of the illustrious Timurid house” was again alight in Kabul with the valiant efforts of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur. Subsequently he arrived at the court of Babur, accompanied by several princes.
The young Babur impressed al-Husseini with his unusual accomplishments, specifically his support for learning and his active participation in learned debates. Ikhtiyar himself had long discussions with Babur on diverse branches of sciences and on the laws and forms (qawanin wa adab) of government. The result, as the author claims in the second preface to the book, was a treatise with the title that he thought very appropriately should be Akhlaq-i humayuni because it represented the high ethical ideals of the king Babur (chun in risalah partawist az nataij-i akhlaq-i humayuni-i hazrat-i ali, an ra Risalah-i Akhlaq-i humayuni nam nihad). We know that this treatise was the same as the one that the author had earlier compiled for Prince Hussein Mizra. At any rate, al-Husseini was very conscious of the value of his work, and, just as he had earlier advised Hussein Mizra to keep it always with him, he now hoped it to be a source of strength for Babur, as well as later for his “illustrious descendants” in running the government (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fols. 2a–6a).
The main part of akhlaq texts generally begins with a discussion on human dispositions and the necessity of disciplining and sublimation. The discussion is interspersed with the Qur’anic verses and the traditions of the Prophet, with a bearing on universal human values. Thus the reference points are unequivocally the man (bashar, insan, bani adam), his living (amr-i ma‘ash), and the world (alam, afaq). The perfection of man according to the authors of these texts is to be acquired through admiration and adulation of Divinity, but it is impossible to be achieved without a peaceful social organization where everyone could earn a living though cooperation and mutual assistance.
The goal of discourse on political organization in akhlaq literature is thus “cooperation,” to be achieved through justice (adl) administered in accord with law, protected and promoted by the king, whose principal instrument of control should be affection and favors (ra’fat wa imtinan), not command and obedience (amr wa imtisal). The shari‘a here refers to an elaboration not strictly based on the Islamic law. The reader here is reminded of the Qur’anic verse that there is a single God who has sent prophets to different communities, with shari‘as to suit their times and climes.
Justice (adl) emerges as the cornerstone of the social organization. But how the “cooperation” was sought as a valuable destination could be gauged from the fact that Tusi initially suggests mutual love (mahabbat), a much higher and nobler means, as the ultimate and the most powerful guarantor of this cooperation. Justice occupied second place in the order of Tusi’s preferences; it was an artificial way to create social balance, as it could be attained only through the king’s exercise of power and through the coercive means of government machinery.
Justice leads to artificial union, whereas love generates natural unity, and the artificial in relation to the natural is compulsory, like an imposition. The artificial comes after the natural, and thus it is obvious that the need for justice, which is the most accomplished human virtue, is because of the absence of love. If love among the people were available, insaf (justice) would not have been needed. “[The word] insaf comes from nasf [which means taking the half, reaching to the middle]. The munsif [the dispenser of justice] is called so [because he] divides the disputed object into two equal parts [munasafah]; division into halves [tansif] implies multiplicity [takassur] whereas love is the cause of oneness” (Tusi 1976, 258–59).15
The akhlaq literature recommends the evaluation and treatment of man on the strength and level of his natural goodness or his malady (khair wa sharr-i taba‘i) (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fols. 37b–38b). The rights of the ri‘aya do not follow their religions. The Muslim and the kafir both enjoy Divine compassion (rahmat-i Haqq). For that reason, categories such as kafir, kufr, zimmah, and discrimination find no place in akhlaq treatises. The true representative, the shadow of God on earth, is the king who could guarantee the undisturbed management of the affaire of His (God’s) “slaves,” so that each could achieve perfection (kamal) according to his competence and ability. This pattern of governance is called siyasat-i fazilah (the ideal politics), which establishes on firm foundation the leadership (imamat) of the king. There is also a flawed and blemished politics (siyasat-i naqisah), against which the ruler is warned to guard himself, because faulty and perfunctory politics leads eventually to the ruination of the country and its people (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fol. 28b).
The man of ideal politics is always on the right path and considers the ri‘aya as his sons and friends. His intellect enables him to refrain from greed and lust (hirs wa shahwat). The man of faulty politics resorts to coercion, regards the ri‘aya as his slaves (even as women), while in actuality such a man is himself a slave of greed, lust, and desire for wealth (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fol. 29a).
In akhlaq texts justice is defined as social harmony, the coordinated balance of the conflicting claims of the diverse interest-groups that may as well adhere to more than one religion in an ideal state. The ruler, like a good physician, must know the disease of the society, its symptoms and its correct treatment. Because society is composed of groups of diverse interests and of individuals of conflicting dispositions, the king must take all possible care to ensure justice (adl) and a balance of their interests (i‘tidal) in the society. This is how all parts of the body politic are held together into a healthy single unit. Divergence from adl causes conflict and eventually destruction. No one should get less or more than what he deserves in terms of his class. Excess, shortage, or defect (ifrat wa tafrit) dislocate the union and the relations of companionship (Akhlaq-i humayuni, fols. 30a–b). The emphasis in akhlaq texts was on the maintenance of balance in society and not on the eradication of infidelity and idolatry. One of the primary items of advice to the king was to consider subjects as “sons and friends” irrespective of their faith. Against this background, it was a matter of considerable significance that these treatises began over time to be taught at the Sunni madrasas in Mughal India.
Nasirean Ethics and Mughal Politics
Babur’s “illustrious descendants,” however, did not relish much of Ikhtiyar al-Husseini’s simplified recension of the works of Ibn Miskawayh and Tusi. Introduced as they were now through Akhlaq-i humayuni, they preferred to read and understand by themselves the fuller, even if “convoluted,” original texts. Akhlaq digests were among the most widely read and cited texts in Mughal India. Tusi’s book was not simply among the five most important books that Abu al-Fazl wanted to be read before the Emperor Akbar regularly: it was among the most favorite readings of the Mughal political elites. The emperor issued instruction to his officials to read Tusi and Rumi in particular.
Furthermore, in the discourses on justice, i‘tidal, harmony, siyasat, reason, and religion, the influence of akhlaq literature is unmistakable in a large number of Mughal edicts and texts (Rizvi 1975, 197, 355–56, 366–69). To illustrate this influence, I quote an extensive passage from an imperial order from the collection of Abu al-Fazi’s insha’ (epistolography). The order is referred to as a proclamation of the royal code of conduct and a working manual (Manshur al-adab-i ilahi wa dastur al-amal-i agahi) issued by the Emperor Akbar to the managers (muntaziman) and officials (karpardazan), including the princes, the high nobles, the mansabdars, the amils, and the kotwals in charge of the towns and the villages throughout the empire. It runs as follows:
In all works, from the routine and mundane duties to prayers, they should endeavor to please God. . . . They should not seek solitude [khalwat-dust] like the recluses, nor should they mix freely with the commoners as the people of bazaar do; they should always adhere to the balanced middle and should never abandon the path of equipoise [miyanah-rawi, sarrishtah-i i‘tidal]. . . .
When they are free from the public work, they should read books written by the pious and saintly, like the ones on akhlaq that cure moral and spiritual ailments. . . . They should appreciate what religion [dindari] in truth is so that they do not fall into the impostors’ trap [arbab-i tazwir wa khud‘ah].
The best prayer is service to humanity. They should welcome all with generosity, whether they are friends, foes, relatives, or strangers; in particular, they should be nice to the recluse and seek the company and advice of the pious.
They should investigate judiciously the nature of the crimes and offenses of the people [ba mizan-i adalat], and they should assess which of these offenses is worth punishing [saza-dadani], which one is forgivable and is to be ignored [pushidani wa guzashtani]. Most of the crimes which look to be of lesser magnitude require to be dealt with drastically, while most others, which appear large and serious, should just be ignored. They should first try to admonish and reprove the culpable, should resort to tying, beating, severing of limbs, and execution only after they fail to correct them by admonition and reproof. They should never encourage killing and should refer the cases of execution to the royal court, even if they fear mischief [due to delay in execution caused] by their dispatch and imprisonment. They should refrain from skinning and trampling the offenders under the feet of the elephant and from the other practices of the barbarous rulers. The punishment should be commensurate with the nature of the offender, for an angry look [niqah-i tund] works better on the good than killing, while for the ignoble even a severe blow [lakad] is ineffective.
They should not encourage flattery; most of the works are left undone because of [the evil influence of] the flatterers. They should personally look into the grievances of the people, should note the names of the aggrieved, and should not allow delay in providing them with redress. . . .
In moments of anger they should not give up the thread of reason [sarrishtah-i aql]. They should instruct the wise among their servants to check them when they are full of rage or are overwhelmed with grief [dar zaman-i hujum-i gham wa ghussah]. They should not swear habitually, as this inspires lack of trust [saugand khurdan khud ra muttaham dashtan ast]; they should not resort to abusive words which behove only the ignoble. Their troopers should not occupy the houses of the people without their consent. . . . They should ever be watchful about the conditions of the people, the big and the small. Leadership or rulership means to guard and protect [the people] [sardari ibarat az pasbani ast].
And they should not interfere [muta‘arriz] in any person’s religion [din wa mazhab]. For, wise people in this worldly matter, which is transient, do not choose a thing that harms. How can they then choose to inflict losses on themselves in matters of faith which pertain to the world of eternity? If he is right, they [the state officials] would oppose the truth [in case they interfere]; and if they have the truth with them and he is unwittingly on the wrong side, he is a victim of ignorance [bimar-i nadani] and deserves compassion and help, not interference and indignation [mahall-i tarahhum wa inayat ast na ja-i ta‘arruz wa inkar]. They should be fair, well-disposed, and friendly to all [neku-kar, khayr-andish wa dustdar-i har guruh]. . . .
They should not eat like an animal, beyond the necessary limit. They should not indulge in jocularity and frivolousness. They should regularly receive information through more than one purveyor of intelligence and should never rely on the information given by one person, because people are generally not absolutely honest and free from greed. The intelligence people should follow and check each other without their knowing that each of them is under surveillance [bar har amr chand jasus ta‘y’in kunad ki az yek digar khabardar nabashand]. They should not let the wicked and ill-natured men come close to them, even as such men are useful and could be utilized in chastising the other evildoers. They should be careful that those who are close to them should not be oppressive, and they should refrain from the company of the unsound and glib-tongued [charb-zaban-i nadurust] who are dangerous and who are an enemy in the guise of a friend. There should be adequate arrangement to disseminate and promote learning, to encourage generously the learned and the accomplished, and to tutor and train [the scions of] the reputed, literally, “ancient” families.
The expenditure should always be less than the income. Those who spend in excess of their income are fools, while those whose expenses equal their income are neither fools nor wise. And they should not lie and should always honor their word. They should go hunting only occasionally to pass time and for the drilling and exercise of the soldiers.
In each town [qasabah], city [shahr], and village [dih], the officials should work in tandem to find out the number and the kind of the inhabitants there, depute the mir [chief] of the mahallah [quarter, locality] to supervise the local business, and appoint intelligence persons to supply news of daily developments. They should see that, in case of mishap or fire, the neighbors should help each other; in case of theft, that goods stolen should be recovered and that if they fail in this, they should lose their job. They should see that the property of deceased and missing persons goes to their rightful heirs or else is deposited in the treasury. The sale, distillation, and drinking of wine should be allowed only as a medicine. They should try to ensure a reasonable price [arzani-i nirkh] for goods and should not allow the practice of repricing. (Abu al-Fazl 1863, 57–67)
Clearly, this imperial dastur is inspired by the akhlaq texts. A close examination might possibly show that even the wording, language, and style of the Mughal political writings bear the impact of the akhlaq texts. The following passage from Akhlaq-i humayuni (fols. 37b–38b), which relates to the manual for the king, demonstrates the nature and extent of such influence:16
In each matter which the king takes up, he should regard himself as a subject and the other as the king. He should not tolerate for others what he considers improper for himself. He should not wait for the time for the needy to approach his court. He should not be given totally to bodily joys and pleasures. Benevolence and favor and not force and violence should be the cornerstone of his activities.
He should endeavour to please his people for God’s sake. He should not disobey God for people’s sake. He should be just and fair when people ask from him his decision, and be forgiving when they expect mercy from him.
He should seek the company of the pious and thus obtain peace of heart. Each should be kept within the limits of his ability. It is not enough that he is not a tyrant. He should manage the country in a manner that none in his territory can afford to be cruel.
The Mughals’ concern for akhlaqi norms is also reflected in their extraordinary interest in facilitating conditions for their subjects (jumhur-i anam) to appreciate each other’s religion and tradition. It is interesting to note here the terms in which Abu al-Fazl accounts for Akbar’s encouragement of the translation of the Hindu scriptures. In his introduction to the Sanskrit epic Mahabharat’s Persian translation, he writes,
The generous heart [of His Excellency] is naturally inclined toward the well-being of all the classes of the people [islah-i ahwal-i jami‘-i tabaqat-i baraya’]; friend and foe, relations and strangers are all equal in his farsighted view. This [consideration for all] is the best method for the physicians of bodies, should be highly appropriate for the physician of the soul [as well]. Why should this beneficence then not be the [distinctive] feature of [His Excellency], the chief physician of the chronic ailments of the human soul (pashima-i karima-i sar-i daftar-i mu‘alijan-i amraz-i muzmanah-i nufus chira nabashad)? He noticed the increasing conflict [niza‘] between the different sects of the Muslims [farai’q-i millat-i Muhammadi], on the one hand, and the Jews and the Hindus [Juhud-wa Hunud] on the other, and also the endless efforts to deny each other’s [faith] among them. The sagacious mind [of His Excellency] then decided to arrange the translations of the sacred books of both communities [fariqayn], so that with the blessing of the most revered and perfect soul [the emperor] of the age, they both refrain from indulging in hostility and disputes, seek truth, find out each other’s virtues and vices, and endeavor to correct themselves. Also in each community [ta’ifah] a group of illiterates, fanatics, and petty-minded people have gained prominence. Pretending to be leaders of religion, they have misguided the people with their frauds and fallacies [tazwirat wa talbisat] to treat as significant those matters which are far from the path of wisdom and prudence. These inauspicious impostors [muzawwiran-i bi sa‘adat], because of their ignorance or dishonesty, hankering after their carnal desires, misinterpret the ancient scriptures, the wise sayings and doings of the sages of the past. When the books of both these communities are rendered into simple, clear, and pleasant style, simple-hearted folks would appreciate the truth and be free from the [traps of] trivialities [fuzuliyat] of the fools who go around pretending to be learned and wise [nadanan-i dana-nama]. It was therefore ordered that a translation in a plain style of Mahabharat, which consists of most of the basic principles and rites of the Brahmans of India and is their most honored, most sacred, and most detailed book, be prepared in collaboration with the experts of [both the Persian and the Sanskrit] languages and under the judicious scrutiny of the learned and the wise of both the communities. (Qazvini 1979, 18–19)
It is difficult to measure the exact impact of the translations of such books on the manner in which the two communities viewed each other. It is noteworthy that in seventeenth-century Mughal India, a number of Muslim scholars included the pre-Muslim Indian past in the histories they wrote and thus instructed their readers to appreciate and appropriate Indian tradition as part of human history. Indeed, Abu al-Fazl stated that this too was one of the objectives of the translation of Mahabharat. He wanted the Muslims in general, who believed that the world is only seven thousand years old, to know the age of the history of the world and the people (kuhnagi-i alam wa alamiyan). Further, he wanted the kings, who loved to listen to histories, to learn from the experiences of the past (Qazvini 1979, 19).
Among such histories is Rawzah al-tahirin, compiled in 1603 by one Tahir Muhammad Imad al-Din Hasan Sabzawari. The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter deals with the histories of the pre-Islamic prophets, the Greek philosophers, and the Persian and Arab kings. The second chapter then describes the histories of the Pious Muslim caliphs and the subsequent developments in the lands of Islam. The third describes the history of the Turks and the Mongols. The fourth gives the histories of the pre-Islamic Indian rulers; a summary of the Mahabharat; lineages of the Surajbansi and Chandrabansi (solar and lunar) kings and their successors; an account of Nandghosh, Gautam, and their sons; an account of Kamdev; and the histories of Bengal, Pegu, Ceylon, Martaban, and other islands. The fifth and final chapter is a history of the Muslim rulers in India down to the age of Akbar with an account of the contemporary nobles, scholars, and poets (Sabzawari 1603, author’s preface). It is noteworthy that all those whom Sabzawari included in his history were, as the title suggests, intended to be among the tahirin, that is, the pure, clean, and holy. Sabzawari’s book was a history of mankind, and the author saw himself as an inheritor of the heritage of all of humankind.
Thus the tradition of Nasirean ethics contested the norms of governance mentioned earlier in Barani’s Fatawa (1972); it proved to be an important support to facilitate stable and enduring Mughal rule in the complex religiocultural conditions of India. The Mughals took pride in the fact that the followers of different religions lived in peace in their empire. Jahangir (1864, 16) contrasts this peaceful coexistence boastfully with the conditions of “intolerance and bigotry” in the territories in control of the Uzbeks and the Safavids in Central Asia and Iran. In the assessment of a noted religious divine and Chishti Sufi, Shaikh Abd al-Rahman, the Mughals ensured the supremacy of din with their exaggerated concern for social harmony (mashrab-i i‘tidal). In Mughal India, he noted, unlike in Uzbek Central Asia and Safavid Iran, the followers of all religions (adyan wa mazahib) lived in peace and performed their rites and social practices freely. And yet the Mughals acted in complete accord with the injunctions of their faith (nusus) (Chishti n.d., fol. 507a).
The manuals on Nasirean ethics contributed significantly to the making of an intellectual milieu in which nonsectarianism and a serious concern for justice and harmony among the elite were desired, especially noticed, and highlighted. The seventeenth-century noble Shayistah Khan, according to the compiler of the author of a Mughal political treatise, Intikhab-i Shayistah Khani, rose head and shoulders above his contemporaries because he was totally free from bigotry, was a man of sulh-i kul (universal peace), and saw all as his friends and possible allies, whatever their personal faiths and religions (Intikhab-i Shayistah Khani, fol. 3a). Shayistah Khan’s din (faith) was thus not in conflict with his liberal and open-ended approach.
Also noteworthy here are two contemporary observations on the existing atmosphere of the high Mughal period. They help us understand the extent to which the Mughal state either followed or disregarded the demands of narrow religious considerations. An example of this extent is a remark of Abd al-Qadir Bada’uni, the noted historian of Akbar’s time, about the reception accorded in India to Mir Muhammad Sharif Amuli, the Iranian scholar and leader of the deviant Nuqtawi sect, who had to flee Iran for fear of persecution. Bada’uni, as we know, was narrow-minded and an orthodox and conservative Sunni. He detested the nonorthodox ideas of Amuli and disapproved of the prevailing situation in which deviants like Amuli were welcome. He writes, “Hindustan is a wide place, where there is an open field for all licentiousness, and no one interferes in another’s business, so that every one can do just as he pleases” (Bada’uni 1865–69, 2:253). Relevant for us are also the observations of the French traveler François Bernier, who visited India decades later in Aurangzeb’s time. After commenting disapprovingly on “strange” Hindu beliefs and rituals regarding the eclipse, he remarks, “The Great Mogol, though a Mahometan, permits these ancient and superstitious practices; not wishing, or not daring, to disturb the Gentiles in the free exercise of their religion” (Bernier 1972, 303). Even in matters such as sati (the immolation of widows), the Mughals intervened only indirectly; Bernier writes that “[t]hey [the Mughals] do not, indeed, forbid it [sati] by a positive law because it is a part of their policy to leave the idolatrous population, which is so much more numerous than their own, in the free exercise of its religion; but the practice is checked by indirect means” (1972, 306).
The Mughal Persian Cosmopolis
The Persian cosmopolis was the third important idiom to reinforce the Mughal political discourse. The resources for the development of this Indo-Muslim imperial idiom, which we will consider briefly, came from the world of Persian literary culture. The Mughals showed a rather unprecedented interest in patronizing Persian literary culture under their rule. Mughal India has hence been particularly noted for its extraordinary achievements in poetry and a wide range of prose writings in Persian. In terms of sheer profusion and variety of themes, this literary output was probably incomparable with that under any other Muslim dynasty. The Mughals were, of course, Chaghatay Turks by origin, and we know that, unlike the Mughals, the other Turkic rulers outside of Iran, like the Ottomans in Asia Minor and the Uzbeks in Central Asia, were not quite so enthusiastic about Persian. Indeed, in India too, Persian did not appear to occupy such a position of dominance at the court of the early Mughals. It is noteworthy that Babur recounted the story of his exploits in Turkish (the Babur-namah) and that Turkish poetry enjoyed an appreciable audience at his son Humayun’s court even after his return from Iran (Reis 1975, 47, 49–51, 52–53).
Nonetheless, it was not Turkish but Persian that came to symbolise the Mughal triumph in India. One may conjecture that in matters of language, the Mughals had no other choice and that they simply inherited a legacy and continued with it. Such a conjecture sounds somewhat plausible. Persian had established itself in a large part of northern India as the language of the Muslim elite (Ghani 1941, 152–233, 381–485). The famous line of Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1398), “All the Indian parrots will turn to crunching sugar with this Persian candy which goes to Bengal” (Hafiz [Shirazi] 1967; 1972), was a testimony to the receptive audience that Persian poetry had in India. However, there seems to have been a setback in the subsequent trajectory of Persian. India had hardly any notable Persian writers in the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries,17 while in Hindavi, texts such as Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavat represented the best expression of Muslim Sufi ideas. Use of Persian did not appear to be very strong under the Afghans from whom the Mughals assumed the reins of power. Most of the Afghans, Babur writes, could not speak Persian. Hindavi was recognized as a semiofficial language by the Sur sultans (1540–55), and their chancellery scripts even bore transcriptions in the Devanagari script. This practice is said to have been introduced by the Lodi sultans, who had been the Mughals’ immediate predecessors (Mohiuddin 1971, 28).18 For the extraordinary rise of Persian under the Mughals, the explanation may be found more in a convergence of factors within the Mughal regime than in the Indo-Persian heritage of earlier Muslim regimes.
The Mughals were not content with establishing a mere paramount and imperial authority over the numerous local and regional power groups. They aspired also to evolve a political culture, as we have seen earlier, arching over the diverse religious and cultural identities. Persian in the existing circumstances promised to be the most appropriate vehicle to communicate and sustain such an ideal. Persian was known to the Indians, from the banks of the River Sind to the Bay of Bengal. If Amir Khusrau (d. 1325) is to be believed, as early as in the fourteenth century “Persian parlance enjoyed uniformity of idiom throughout the length of four thousand leagues [parasangs], unlike the Hindavi tongue, which had no settled idiom and varied after every hundred miles and with every group of people” (Khusrau 1950, preface, 173). As late as the eighteenth century, Hindavi had not evolved a uniform idiom even in northern India. Siraj al-Din Ali Khan Arzu (d. 1756), a noted eighteenth-century poet, writer, and lexicographer, mentions Gwaliyari, Braj, Rajputi, Kashmiri, Haryanavi, Hindi, and Punjabi as diverse authentic forms of Hindavi in addition to the dialects of Shahjahanabad Delhi and Akbarabad Agra (cited in Abdullah 1968, 75). Sanskrit, or Hindi-ye kitabi (Hindi of the Book) as Khan-i Arzu calls it, might have been a candidate to replace Persian as the empire’s language. But Sanskrit, as Mirza Khan, the author of Tuhfah al-Hind, noted in Aurangzeb’s time, was not taken as an ordinary human tongue; it was a deva-bani (language of the gods) and akash-bani (language of the firmament). The language was too sacred, too divine. No mlechha (polluted outsider) would perhaps have been allowed to contaminate it by choosing it as a symbol and vehicle of his power. The mlechha could not have used it to create the world of his vision. On the contrary, Prakrit, which was a patal-bani, the language of the underground and of the snakes, was considered too low by the Mughals to be appropriated for lofty ideals. Braj or Bhakha, the language of this world, was also a regional dialect. Furthermore, in the Mughal view, Bhakha was suitable only for music and love poetry (Muhammad 1977, 1:51–52).
Persian poetry had integrated many things from pre-Islamic Persia, and poetry had already been an important vehicle of liberalism in the medieval Muslim world, as illustrated earlier in the verses of Amir Khusrau and Hasan Sijzi Dihlawi (d. 1336). In Mughal India, Persian poetry helped significantly in encouraging and promoting conditions to accommodate diverse religious and cultural traditions. Among the Persian books that Akbar had read aloud to the emperor every night was the Masnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273). The emperor’s nonsectarianism must have been inspired by Rumi’s verses such as the following (Rumi 1976, 2:173):19
Tu baray-i wasl kardan amadi
ney baray-i fasl kardan amadi
Hindiyan ra istilah-i Hind madh
Sindiyan ra istilah-i Sind madh
(Thou hast come to unite,
not to separate
The people of Hind worship in the idiom of Hindi
The people of Sind do in their own)
The echoes of these messages and the general suspicion of mere “formalism” of the faith are unmistakable in the Mughal Persian poetry as well. Faizi (d. 1595), the Mughal ideologue, poet laureate, and brother of Abu al-Fazl, had the ambition of building “a new Ka‘ba” with stones from the Sinai:
Biya ki ruy be mihrab-gah-i nau benahim
Banay-i Ka‘ba-i digar ze sang-i Tur nahim
(Come, let us turn our face toward a new altar
We shall take stones from the Sinai and build a new Ka‘ba)
(Faizi 1983, 470)
The idol (but) to the poet was the symbol of Divine beauty; idolatry (but-parasti) represented the love of the Absolute. The Brahman deserves a high stature because of his sincerity, devotion, and faithfulness to the idol. Furthermore, the poet is also delighted to be privileged with a love for the idol that made him embrace the religion of the Brahman (Faizi 1983, 53).
Shukr-i Khuda ki ishq-i butan ast rahbaram
bar millat-i brahman-o bar din-i Azaram
(Thank God, that the love of idols is my guide,
I follow the religion of the Brahman and Azar)
The temple (dair, but-kadah) and the wine house (mai-khanah) were the same to the Mughal poet Urfi (d. 1591) as the mosque and the Ka‘ba. The Divine Spirit pervaded everywhere (Urfi Shirazi 1915, 445).
Chiragh-i Sumanat ast atish-i Tur
buwad zan har jihat ra nur dar nur
(The lamp of Somnath is [the same as] the fire at the Sinai,
from which light spreads all around)
This feature of Persian poetry remained unimpaired even when Aurangzeb tried to associate the Mughal state with Sunni orthodoxy. Nasir Ali Sirhindi (d. 1696), a major poet of his time, echoed Urfi’s message with real enthusiasm (Ali Sirhindi 1872, 15).
Nist ghair az yek sanam dar parda-i dair-o haram
key shawad atash du rang az ikhtilaf-i sangha
(In the temple or in the Ka‘ba, the image is the same behind the veil.
With the change of flints, where does the color of fire change?)
In fact, neither the mosque nor the temple was illumined by Divine beauty; it is the heart (dil) of the true lover wherein lies its abode. The message was thus to aspire for the high place that lovers occupy. Talib Amuli (d. 1626) called for transcending the difference in names (Amuli 1967, 688):
Na malamat-gar-i kufr am na ta’assub-kash-i din
khanda-ha bar jadl-i Shaikh-o Barhaman daram
(I do not condemn infidelity, I am not a bigoted believer,
I laugh at both, the Shaikh and the Brahman)
In this milieu the plea to the conqueror was for conquest and dominance without staining the victor’s skirts with the blood of the vanquished (Urfi Shirazi 1915, 3):
Zakhm-ha bardashtim-o fath-ha kardim lik
hargiz as khun-i kasi rangin nashud daman-i ma
(We have suffered wounds, we have scored victories,
but our skirts were never stained with anyone’s blood)
The desire to build an empire where both Shaikh and Brahman could live with the least possible degree of conflict also necessitated the generation of adequate information about the diverse traditions of the land. Akbar’s historian, Abu al-Fazl, is not content in his Akbar-namah with a mere description of the heroic achievements of his master; he concludes his book with what he calls the A’in (institutes) of Akbar. The A’in contains a survey of the land, the revenues, the peoples of the empire, and, above all, an empathetic treatment of the social conditions and the literary activity, especially in philosophy and law, of the Hindus, who “form the bulk of the population, and in whose political advancement the emperor saw the guarantee of the stability of his realm” (Abu al-Fazl 1965, v–ix). Moreover, in order to make the major local texts accessible to the Muslims and thus to dispel their ignorance about the local traditions, Akbar took special care in rendering the Indian scriptures into Persian. The translations of these religious texts were followed in Akbar’s own time and later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Persian renderings of a large number of texts on “Hindu” religion, law, ethics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, romances, moral fables, and music (Rizvi 1975, 203–22; Mujtabai 1978, 70–91).
Persian thus promoted conditions in which the Mughals could build a class of their allies out of heterogeneous social and religious groups. While this class cherished universalistic human values and visions, the emperor was seen, in the words of the noted late sixteenth–early-seventeenth-century Hindi poet Keshavdas, as duhu din ko sahib (the master of both religions), possessing the attributes of Vishnu, the Hindu god (Keshavdas 1969). Din in this atmosphere assumed a new meaning; the king could blend “Hindu” social practices and Rajput court rituals with his Islam at the Mughal court. These practices ranged from applying tika (the vermilion mark) on the foreheads of his political subordinates, to tuladan (the weighing ceremony), and to jharoka darshan (the early morning appearance of the emperor on the palace balcony) (Sharma 1972, 30–74). Again, as Abu al-Fazl emphasized the legendary origins of the Mughals from light, he intended perhaps to highlight their affinity with new local allies, the Rajputs, in whose legends fire and light occupied a special position (compare Abu al-Fazl 1873–86, 1:122). True, the influence of the illuminationist philosophy of Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi Maqtul (d. 1191) on Abu al-Fazl cannot be underestimated (Richards 1998). The Mughals married Rajput princesses and allowed them to observe their rituals ceremoniously in their palaces. However, the alliance also received nourishment from the local Hindu culture in Rajputana and developments within the Rajput society. The Rajput saw the Mughals as a subcategory of their own jati. In their tradition, the Mughal emperor held a high rank, was held in high esteem, and was often equated with Ram (Zeigler 1998), the prominent Kshatriya cultural hero and ideal and exemplary king of Hindu tradition. The Rajputs began to identify themselves with the Mughal house, to be defended in the same way as their own families and houses.20
Conclusion
My purpose in this chapter has been to touch upon a number of resources that the Mughals mobilized to construct and extend their notion of an inclusive polity in a society that had a high potential for conflict and was outside the conventional domain of Islam. These included the Nasirean akhlaqi norms of governance, traditions of mysticism, and Persian literary culture. All these were seen, both in Mughal times and later—when historians and others looked back on the Mughals—as part of the peculiar political synthesis that helped constitute imperial identity under their rule. In stressing elements of accommodation and creative synthesis, it has not been my intention to claim that no conflicts took place under the Mughals, whether in the towns or in the countryside. Such conflicts were many, whether in the time of Akbar or under later rulers. However, the existence of such conflicts should not lead us to neglect the fact that the Mughals built a high political culture that was meant to incorporate and extend, that is, to draw the ri‘aya in, rather than to control them by mere force. The Mughals, as much as any other early modern dynasty, wanted to be seen by their very diverse subjects as legitimate rulers. The long period between the actual seizure of power by the English East India Company in 1765 of an important region of the empire and their displacement of the Mughal emperor in 1857 suggests that they did succeed in good measure in this difficult task.
1. Fakhr-i Mudabbir, also known as Fakhr al-Din ibn Mubarak Shah (d. early thirteenth century), and Ziya’ al-Din Barani (d. ca. 1360) were among the early Muslim thinkers and historians in India. Fakhr-i Mudabbir’s major works included Adab al-harb wa al-shuja‘ah, while Ziya’ Barani is best known for his history, Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi (1860–62[2005]), and a treatise on political theory, Fatawa-i Jahandari (1972). Cf. Aziz Ahmad 1969, 79, 80.
2. For some relevant references, see Sherwani, Yazdani, and Joshi 1973, 1:289–490; and Sheikh 2006.
3. For a different view of the spread of Islam in Kashmir, see M. Ishaq Khan 1994, 1–21.
4. Compare Rushd-namah (Gangohi n.d.), fol. 2a, 35b, 39a–43a, 43b, 45b, and 49a, for instance. See also Digby 1975, 1–66; Rizvi 1978, 1:335–40.
5. For Bilgrami’s biography, see Azad Bilgrami 1910, 3:65–66.
6. Jadrup died in AD 1637.
7. For a critique of Dara Shukoh’s approach, see Omar 2005.
8. For a discussion on this text, see Kinra 2006.
9. For an interesting discussion on the theme, see Muhibb Allah, n.d.
10. For a discussion on the Mir’at al-makhluqat’s translation, see Vassie 1988; 1999.
11. “The People of the Virtuous City, however, albeit diversified throughout the world, are in reality agreed, for their hearts are upright one toward another and they are adorned with love for each other. In their close-knit affection they are like one individual.” Cf. Tusi 1976, 286–87; 1964, 215.
12. According to S. A. A. Rizvi, Sultan Hussein Bayqara had decided to have the khutbah read in the names of the Twelve Imams, but his prime minister Mir Ali Sher Nawa’i (d. 1501) and some other authorities stopped him from doing so. Compare Rizvi 1986, 1:165–66. Rizvi cites Nur Allah Shushtari’s Majalis al-mu’minin. Using several contemporary chronicles, Jean Calmard has recently shown that Bayqara discouraged strict legalistic Sunni Islam, had Shi‘ite leanings, and also proposed to proclaim Shi’ism as the state religion. See Calmard 1993, 113.
13. Hussein Wa’iz Kashifi’s Akhlaq-i muhsini is available in print; among its several editions is the one published from among its early editions from Newalkishor, Lucknow, in 1774/AH 1291. Husseini’s Akhlaq-i humayuni, also known as Dastur al-vizarah, has not been published; a manuscript copy (no. 768) is preserved in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. See Blochet 1905–34, 2:37–38.
14. Khwandamir says that Abu al-Fath Muhammad Shaybani retained him in the office of qazi. But after his death he was dismissed. Husseini then retired to Turbat to lead the life of an agriculturist (Khwandamir 1973, 4:355).
15. For further elaboration and a discussion on different categories of love, see Tusi 1976, 251–74; and Tusi 1964, 196, 195–211.
16. al-Husseini n.d., fols. 37b–38b.
17. For the history of Persian in the period, see Husaini 1988; Schimmel 1973, 21.
18. Mohiuddin cites from Maulavi Muhammad Shafi’s article in Oriental College Magazine (Lahore), May 1933, for a reference to UP State Archives Document no. 318, an edict of Sher Shah dated AH 947. For Babur’s remark about the Persian of the Afghans, see Babur 1970, 459–60. (Also see John Leyden and William Erskine’s 1921 edition [Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press] and W. M. Thackston’s 1996 edition [Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, and New York: Oxford Univ. Press]).
19. For Akbar’s administration and fondness for the masnawi of Maulana Rumi, see Abu al-Fazl 1873–86, 1:271.
20. This identification is best illustrated in Raja Ram Singh Hara’s reported response to the anxiety expressed by Prince Muhammad A‘zam’s wife (a Safavid princess), who asked what the Raja was planning to defend her with against the Marathas who were threatening her party. The Raja, who was then escorting the princess from the emperor’s camp to the camp of Muhammad A’zam, exclaimed, “the honor of the Chaghtais is one with the honor of the Rajputs.” Cf. Sarkar 1919, 4:302.