The wonder that was india

The continued devotion of the musicians to the sufis, particularly the Chishtiyya sufis, stimulated the classical style of music. Famous musicians were proud to play before Shaykh Baha'u'd-Din of Barnawa (d. 1628) and frequently visited him. In his old age Tan Sen is also said to have performed before the Shaykh and to have sent his son to sit at the Shaykh's feet. According to the Shaykh, dhrupad, invented by Raja Man Singh, was a disservice to the classical forms of music and was designed to cheapen the art. The Shaykh, accompanied by his carpenters, would personally select the wood from local forests for musical instruments, which were made to his own specifications and under his supervision. Of all his inventions the most interesting was a musical instrument in the shape of a pen case (qalamdan) which opened to reveal a series of strings and pegs. This instrument, which the Shaykh called a sazkhyal, soon became popular. Unfortunately, none of the instruments described in his biography survive. The accounts of his contributions to the develpment of music, together with those of Hindu mystics and other sufis, are culturally very revealing, however. It is also remarkable that the Shaykh succeeded in establishing contact with Hindu devotees in the Deccan who were expert in Karnataka music.17

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CONCLUSION

The history of the eighth to twelfth centuries in northern India is, in the words of The Wonder That Was India, Volume I,

a rather drab story of endemic warfare between rival dynasties. . . . In the 9th and 10th centuries the Gurjara-Pratiharas, who probably originated in Rajasthan, were masters of Kanyakubja, and the most powerful kings of northern India. They successfully resisted the Arabs, who, in 712, had occupied Sind, and who, for over a century, made frequent attacks on their eastern neighbours.*

Except during the Mauryan period, political unity was unknown, and the highly organized and tightly controlled administration of the ancient Indian state had no counterpart in inter-state relations, where endemic anarchy was only mitigated by a tradition of fair play in warfare, which was by no means always followed. †

Akbar was the greatest ruler ever to have governed India. . . . This is written advisedly with Asoka in mind. We know only the 'public image' which Asoka chose to present and thus we have no valid means of comparing Asoka's moral greatness with that of Akbar. Judged by results, however, Akbar was a far greater ruler than Asoka, since Asoka's reforms ended and his empire disintegrated with his death, while Akbar established a regime which lasted in full force for over a century after him and laid down principles of government which are still more or less valid in comtemporary India. ‡

The ground was prepared for Akbar, however, by the Delhi sultans. Iltutmish carved out the north-west boundary of the Delhi sultanate, which he consolidated as far as Bengal and Assam in the east. Although the Mongols devastated the Muslim lands west of the Indus, the peace and prosperity of Iltutmish's reign made India a rendezvous for intellectuals, military leaders, and holy men from Iran and Central Asia. After his death, the religious classes supported Iltutmish's daughter, Raziyya, but the Turkic clique overthrew her. The subsequent scramble for power among this group plunged the country into anarchy. Balban, who emerged

* The Wonder That Was India, London, 1954, pp 69-70.

† Ibid, p. 77.

‡ A. L Basham, Foreword to Fathpur-Sikri by S. A. A. Rizvi and V. J. A. Flynn, Bombay 1975, p. VII.

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triumphant, destroyed the strength of the other Turkic leaders. His understanding of the problems of foreign rule on Indian soil was realistic. Thus, although he shed some crocodile tears at his inability to govern the country by orthodox Islamic principles, he evolved firm administrative laws on the basis of expediency, and the shari'a (Islamic law) was not allowed to override considerations of jahandari (worldly administration) and jahangiri (world conquest).

Balban's ideals were firmly implemented by 'Ala'u'd-Din Khalji, who ascended the throne by treacherously assassinating his uncle and father-in-law, after amassing vast riches from his conquest of Devagiri in western Deccan. He subsequently conquered Rajasthan and Gujarat and extended his rule in the Deccan to Madurai. The revenue reforms and price-control system he introduced made the rural areas and the capital interdependent.

The next great ruler, Muhammad bin Tughluq, wished to assert his authority over the regions under the Mongols, but his schemes were misunderstood and unimaginatively implemented by his officials. His energies and resources were needlessly frittered away in suppressing rebellions. An independent Muslim kingdom consequently arose at Madurai, lasting till it was overthrown by the newly established Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagara. In central Deccan the Muslim Bahmanid kingdom which came into being lasted for about 170 years. After its dismemberment, five independent sultanates were established in the Deccan. Of these, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golkonda remained autonomous for more than 150 years, and before long their capitals became prosperous towns, attracting merchants and adventurers from Arabia, Ethiopia, Iran, and Transoxiana.

Muhammad bin Tughluq's successor, Firuz Shah, restored the authority of the Delhi sultanate over Bengal and Sind, but Timur's invasion in 1398-9 again fragmented India. Innumerable Muslim provincial dynasties emerged; the Rajput rajas of Rajasthan in particular became very powerful.

In 1526 Babur, who was descended from Timur on his father's side and from Chingiz through his mother, founded the Mughal empire, but his son and successor, Humayun, was driven out of India by an able Afghan leader, Sher Shah Sur. Sher Shah founded a second Afghan empire in Delhi; the first one, ruled by the Lodis, had been overthrown by Babur. Sher Shah united the restless Afghan leaders into a powerful force. He introduced fiscal and land reforms of far-reaching importance. His network of roads, dotted with caravanserais in close proximity to each other, restored peace and prosperity to the regions he had conquered. His successors,

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however, were unable to retain control when Babur's son, Humayun, reconquered India ten years later.

Humayun died after a few months, leaving the throne to this thirteen-year-old son, Akbar, who was the real architect of the Mughal empire, for which some foundations had thus been laid. Akbar's vast conquests convinced him that kingship was a divinely ordained institution which did not exist solely for the benefit of Muslims. His two immediate successors adhered to his policy, but his great-grandson, Aurangzib, gave preferment to Muslim religious law, to the detriment of the empire. Aurganzib's heirs tried to revert to Akbar's policies but they were unable to inject his dynamism into the government system, although there was no dearth of gifted Muslim and Hindu political leaders in eighteenth-century India. A prevailing apathy weakened Mughal rule to such an extent that the empire became vulnerable to local rebellions and foreign domination.

Hindu polity was governed by the concept of the chakravartin raja, or the overlord emperor. That position was achieved by 'Ala'u'd-Din Khalji through brute force, but Akbar invested his kingship with an additional mystical aura in order to make his dignitaries sacrifice life, religion, honour, and wealth to help him gain his political ambitions. He made these four stringent requirements of discipleship an intrinsic element of his system of rule, and his descendants retained this mystical dimension. Even Aurangzib, as a prince, always addressed Shahjahan as a pir wa murshid (spiritual guide), and Aurangzib's sons spoke to him in the same manner.

The Delhi sultans had introduced a decimal chain of military command and had granted their commanders iqta's, or the right to collect land revenues from the peasants in their assigned areas through a hierarchy of local leaders. In return they maintained troops to extend and consolidate their conquests and placed these at the sultan's disposal as and when ordered. Akbar's mansabdari system was based on the same principle, with an iqta' called a jagir, but the Mughal system of classification was more complex and stratified than that of the Delhi sultans. Muslims of different racial groups, and even Hindus, were admitted to the rank of mansabdar. Akbar and his successors opened government positions to talent and awarded mansabs to competent candidates of all races and religions. Among the more successful and prominent groups were the Turanis from the Mughal Sunni ancestral lands, Iranis from the Shi'i regions, Hindu Rajputs, Indian Muslims, and Afghans. Even Aurangzib was not influenced by religious and sectarian considerations when granting the most important mansabs and senior government positions. By the eighteenth century, however,

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the emperors were unable to harness religious and racial interests to consolidate and unite the empire.

During the reigns of the early Delhi sultans, village leaders were known as ranas and rawats. From the reign of Akbar, however, all those who were invested with higher rights and duties than the peasantry were known as zamindars. The hereditary rulers of Rajasthan were given the more respectful title of zamindar rajas. The process of integrating the rajas into the administration was further augmented under the Mughals. Loyalty became more profitable to them than rebellion. They helped graft Mughal urban culture upon villages, and the entire administration, from the capital to the villages, was unified. The presence of Muslim zamindars and Muslim madad-i ma'ash (subsistence grant-holders) in villages promoted cultural rapprochement between religious communities there.

Muslim rule also stimulated urbanization. Even the Arab rulers of Sind had founded new towns and had added an Islamic character to those already existing, by establishing mosques, schools, and bazaars where the Hindu caste and class taboos were shaken. From the thirteenth century the pace of urbanization, which had been retarded by the feudal Rajputs of ancient India, gained impetus. The jungles were cleared, facilitating military movement and trade and breaking the isolation of villages from the towns. In ancient times, pilgrimage centres and trade settlements had developed into new towns; now the headquarters of leading iqta' holders, strategic fortifications, and military cantonments gave rise to a proliferation of new towns. The growing number of sufi khanqahs and tombs transformed many villages into towns. Many caravanserais also developed into towns due to the escalation of trade and commerce. As they grew in size near the rural hinterlands from which they obtained food and materials, the harmony between government, artisans, craftsmen, merchants, and villagers intensified. Most important was the role of the Hindu moneylender, who dominated the economic life of both village and town. Iqta' holders and mansabdars alike paid money-lenders high rates of interest in order to borrow funds to raise troops at short notice and to meet the wasteful needs of their luxurious way of life. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, villages such as Khairabad and Daryabad in Avadh developed into towns, mainly through the fame of their textiles. The urban sprawl, in many cases vast, beyond the ramparts of the capital towns led to the growth of prosperous suburbs and satellite towns.

In the technological and industrial fields there was much development. The Muslims improved the ancient Indian araghatt,

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the precursor of the Persian wheel, for irrigation purposes. By the time Babur arrived in India, it was mechanically more sophisticated. The growing demand for different varieties of cloth stepped up the use of the bow-string for carding cotton and of the spinning-wheel. Refined sugar was also much in demand. Mulberry trees, silk worms, and cocoons were introduced into Bengal, and silk weaving, which had earlier depended upon imported raw materials, thus made rapid progress. Sericulture was commenced in Kashmir. Firuz Tughluq's orchards in the vicinity of Delhi produced grapes in abundance, while Babur introduced new varieties of fruit trees and planted orchards and Mughal gardens known as charbaghs.

In 1508 the Portuguese introduced tobacco cultivation into the Deccan. Early in the seventeenth century Asad Beg Qazwini, Akbar's envoy to Bijapur, brought some tobacco and a pipe back to Agra. Akbar himself smoked it and asked his foster-brother, the Khan-i A'zam Mirza 'Aziz Koka, to try it. The royal physician refused to copy European customs blindly, wishing to test it himself. Akbar supported Asad Beg, observing that it was not advisable to reject a popular innovation on the grounds that Muslim books did not mention it. Even so, Akbar himself did not smoke again, although he did not prohibit it. Jahangir forbade the use of tobacco, and the 'ulama' issued fatwas (legal decrees) condemning it. But the habit was too firmly entrenched; by the end of Aurangzib's reign, tobacco was widely cultivated in the Surat and Agra regions. The Portuguese also introduced cashew nuts (badam-i farangi) and pineapples.

Before the rise of Islam, Indian merchants had settled in the Yemen, and the Jat population in the Persian Gulf ports was substantial. After the Arab conquest of Sind and the establishment of the Delhi sultanate, a phenomenal expansion occurred in both maritime and overland trade and communication. The Delhi sultans exchanged gifts, luxuries, and novelties with West Asian and Central Asian courts; Muhammad bin Tughluq sent Ibn Battuta as his envoy to China; horses from Arabia were exported to India from all the southern ports on the Persian Gulf and were bought by both Hindu rajas and Muslim sultans. The sultans and the Hindu rulers owned ships on the western coast of India, as did rich Hindu and Muslim merchants and the Mughal emperors and dignitaries. Although Portuguese control over the west coast ports was politically disastrous, the Indians learnt improved shipbuilding techniques from them and other Europeans. According to Ovington, in 1689 the Indian ships' carpenters at Surat could build a ship after the 'Model of any English Vessel, in all curiosity of its

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building . . . as exactly as if they had been the first contrivers'.*

Under the Mughals the demand for luxury goods to meet the extravagance of the court and nobles improved the quality and quantity of manufactured commodities. The enormous variety of cotton fabrics mentioned in the English factory records emerged in response to the escalation of export demands; the same was true of the production and export of silk from Bengal. Indigo was now extensively produced to meet the needs of European merchants. Both the court dignitaries and members of the middle income group acquired valuable jewellery and used silver and gold utensils. The imperial karkhanas employed a variety of meticulous craftsmen, and there was an equal degree of talent and specialization among the local artists. The mining of diamonds developed, due to demand from both the imperial court and Europeans. European labour-saving devices were not used in Indian mining, however, and, although the Indians cut and polished the diamonds skilfully, they could not compete with the more sophisticated European finish. According to Tavernier, had the Indians possessed iron wheels like those used in Europe they 'could give the stones a better finish than they do'.† No wonder that in 1584 Akbar took the English gem expert William Leeds into his service. Jahangir also employed European jewellers, including a Venetian. Mir Jumla contributed a great deal to the refinement of lapidary works in India.

The superiority of Indian manufactured goods resulted from the skill and workmanship of the artisans and not from the tools, which remain primitive even to the present day. Mughal karkhanas employed highly skilled craftsmen, while Europeans sometimes hired an entire village of weavers to mass-produce textiles for export purposes. The Mughal rulers and dignitaries were so confident of the competence of their artists and craftsmen that they believed any rare commodity imported from Europe could be easily imitated in India. European travel narratives suggest that they were not wrong.

It was the Mughal indifference to improvements in artillery manufacture that proved disastrous for their rule. Akbar himself took a keen interest in the development of guns, and Mir Fatu'llah Shirazi produced valuable inventions at his court. As Manrique points out, however, matchlockmen, known as tufangis in the Mughal army, were without rank‡; it was skill with the sword that

* Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the year 1689, ed. H. C. Rawlinson, London, 1929, p. 166.

† Tavtrnier, Travels in India, 1640-67, tr. V. Ball, 2 vols., London, 1949, II, p. 58.

‡ Manrique, Travels, 1629-43, tr. C. E. Luard, 2 vols., London, 1927, II, p. 125.

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Mughals and Rajputs valued. The strength of their enormous manpower resources allowed Akbar's successors to neglect the new techniques of warfare. Even Shahjahan's repeated failure to seize Qandahar did not open his eyes in this respect, while Aurangzib plunged himself into the thick of the war against Shivaji's hill-forts and guerrillas without improving his artillery.

The most fascinating aspect of Muslim history in India is Indo-Islamic architecture. This is characterized by the adaptation of Indian resources, expertise, design, and motifs to the needs of Islam. The unique stalactite bracketing beneath the balconies of the tapering cylindrical Qutb Minar was executed by Hindu workmen under the direction of their Muslim masters. The horseshoe shape of the central opening of the 'Ala'i Darwaza was never imitated, but its grace and charm cannot be questioned. Tughluq architecture, with its heavy, severe lines, influenced monuments in Malwa and the Deccan. Iranian curvilinear architecture is juxtaposed with traditional Hindu ornamentation in mosques at Cambay, Ahmadabad, and Champanir.

Although Akbar deliberately chose to follow Hindu architectural styles, what emerged was an eclectic pattern. In the Fathpur-Sikri palaces, Hindu imagination was superimposed on Iranian simplicity. The niches and false windows give a unique lightness and airiness to Humayun's tomb. The kiosks, or chains, at its corners make the mausoleum typically Indo-Islamic. The terraced structure of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, near Agra, reminds one of Buddhist monuments. It seems that the imposing Panch Mahal (the five-storeyed palace) of Fathpur-Sikri was transferred to Sikandra in a new form. The elegant mausoleum of Jahangir's father-in-law, I'timadu'd-Dawla, marks the transition from the pre-Shahjahan era to the phase of Shahjahan's imperial structures. Its delicate inlay work, in hard stone, foreshadows the ornamentation of Shahjahan's monuments in Delhi and Agra. The elegance and majesty of the Taj Mahal, which Shahjahan built to immortalize his queen, Mumtaz Mahal, ensured its place as one of the wonders of the world; the imagination and sensitivity of its designer made it the unparalleled flower of Indo-Islamic civilization.

The Mughal miniature was another important aspect of the blossoming of Indo-Islamic civilization. It offered an opportunity for the blending of influences from European figurative art, particularly Flemish and Belgian, with the art of the East.

Indian influence on Islam was markedly chequered. The puritanically orthodox Muslim leaders of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries exhibited deep hostility towards the brahmans and pleaded with their rulers to annihilate them or reduce them to

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abject poverty. The Chishtiyya sufi leader Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awliya', however, urged his own disciples to learn a lesson from the brahmans' devotion to their faith, which Muslim persecution could not destroy. The sight of Hindus bathing in the Jamuna transported the Shaykh into a state of ecstatic joy. As early as the thirteenth century Nath yogis visited the khanqahs of Chishtiyya sufis, who had adapted such important Nath yogi practices as breath control to their own meditational exercises.

The death anniversaries and other celebrations in sufi monasteries developed into significant cultural institutions eagerly awaited by the whole population, rich and poor alike. Sufis began to write Hindi poetry for their sama' (musical) parties from the very beginning of the thirteenth century. The subtle refinement of Hindi music, combined with Persian conventions and artistry, gave fresh meaning and depth to Indian sufi sama'. A knowledge of the local dialect offered sufis a spiritual satisfaction they could then share with Hindu bhaktas, whose spirit equally thirsted for the higher reaches of reality. Hindi sufi poets and bhaktas rebelled against all forms of religious orthodoxy, hypocrisy, and stupidity, and tried to create a new world in which spiritual bliss was the all-consuming goal. They were unconcerned with converting each other to their respective religious beliefs, and their main desire was to promote spiritual consciousness and the understanding of different religious symbols. The followers of the philosophy of Ibn al-'Arabi (1165-1240) were not confined to mystics; they founded a religious and social movement seeking to eradicate religious differences and disputes. Akbar incorporated these ideals into politics and made them the corner-stone of his policy of universalism, aimed at promoting peace and concord between all religious communities. In Jahangir's reign, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, the Mujaddid, reinterpreted the Wahdat al-Shuhjud (Unity of Appearances) doctrines of 'Ala'u'd-Dawla Simnani (1261-1336) in order to influence Jahangir's dignitaries to reverse Akbar's broadly based policies; but the Mujaddid's ideology made little impact during the reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan. Although Aurangzib respected the Mujaddid's descendants, he never gave them unqualified support either. The 'ulama' of Aurangzib's time, particularly those from the Panjab, declared the Mujaddid's theology to be sacrilegious, and the Emperor banned the teaching of the Mujaddid's letters at Aurangabad.

In the eighteenth century the conflict between the two groups gained further momentum. The Sunni and Shi'i polemics at the end of the century, and the impact of the Wahhabi ideologies from the Arabian peninsula in the nineteenth century, almost resulted in

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open religious and sectarian warfare. Nevertheless, despite their inanity and loss of power, Aurangzib's successors to the Mughal throne in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries never changed their policy of peace and friendship with all religious communities. Religious polarization did not take effect until the end of the nineteenth century, when competition for positions in the newly constituted British civil service was one of the major factors in exacerbating the differences which eventually led to the partition of India at Independence in 1947.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

The following standard abbreviations are used:

b. Born.

ed. Edited by.

edn Edition.

Encyclopaedia

of Islam2 The Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by H. A. R. Gibb et al., new edition (Leiden and London, 1960).

Ethe Manuscript in the India Office Library, London, in the Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, by H. E. Ethe (Oxford, 1902, 1937).

JASB Journal of the Astatic Society of Bengal.

JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

M. Muhammad.

n.d. Manuscript undated.

Rieu Manuscript in the British Library, London, described in the Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, but C. R. Rieu (London, 1879-83).

S. Sayyid.

Sh. Shaykh.

Storey Manuscript mentioned in the Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, by C. A. Storey (London, 1953, 1970).