A Short History of the Mughal Empire (I.B.Tauris Short Histories)

by Fisher, H, Michael

  From Akbar’s youth onward, he prided himself on his personal courage, periodically plunging into combat. For instance, in 1562, while hunting a hundred kilometers from Agra, he was approached by a Brahmin complaining about oppression from local brigands who had murdered his son and plundered his property. As Akbar personally recounted, he drove his elephant and small personal bodyguard against thousands of entrenched bandits: ‘Seven arrows hit [Akbar’s] shield … five went through … and two stopped in the shield …. At last [Akbar’s elephant] broke down the wall and entered … and a large number of the audacious rebels were killed …. Nearly a thousand of them were sent to the abode of annihilation by the fire of the Divine anger.’12 Akbar would repeatedly prove his personal courage in battle, and in politics.

  Akbar always treated Bairam Khan as a foster-father, affectionately and respectfully calling him Khan Baba (‘Nobleman Father’). However, as Akbar matured through his teenage years, competing courtiers conspired to arouse his resentment against Bairam Khan’s continued paternalism. Among those challenging Bairam Khan’s regency were two rival clans within Akbar’s household, each opportunistically supported by factions among the imperial commanders.

  One ambitious clan was led by Shams-ud-Din, who had saved Humayun’s life during the disaster at Kanauj in 1540. Two years later, Shams-ud-Din had requested as his reward that his wife would become a wet-nurse and foster-mother of baby Akbar, making Shams-ud-Din his foster-father and their children Akbar’s milk-siblings. When Humayun and Hamida Banu had to abandon newborn Akbar, Shams-ud-Din’s family remained with him, even during his years of confinement in Kabul, earning his grateful affection. Especially after Shams-ud-Din’s faction eventually helped displace Bairam Khan, more of the clan received high ranks in Akbar’s administration than almost any other.13

  Even more decisive in ousting Bairam Khan from regency was the rival faction, centered on another of Akbar’s wet-nurses and foster-mothers, Maham Anaga. These foster-relatives highlighted for Akbar the alleged arrogance of Bairam Khan and also instigated a series of affronts to Bairam Khan’s prestige. Bairam Khan’s assertively proud and resentful responses to these perceived insults led to heightened tensions between him and Akbar. As a courtier later recounted: ‘the Emperor himself (because he had not absolute power in his own kingdom, and sometimes had no voice in some of the transactions relating to expenses of the Exchequer, and because there was no privy purse at all, and the servants of the Emperor had but poor fiefs, and were kept in the depths of poverty, while [Bairam Khan’s] were in ease and luxury) wished that the circle about him should be put on a different footing. But he had no power to accomplish this…’14

  As the factional forces concerted against Bairam Khan began to push him aside, he stubbornly resisted demeaning himself by begging submissive forgiveness in person before his protégé Akbar. Instead, Bairam Khan futilely marshalled his remaining forces against the imperialist army that Akbar sent to subdue him. But when Akbar issued an imperial farman (‘decree’) against Bairam Khan, many of his supporters deserted and joined Akbar, while the remnant was easily defeated. In 1560, Bairam Khan surrendered his symbols of rank, relinquished his official offices and assigned revenue lands, and requested permission to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.

  Akbar retained his gratitude for Bairam Khan’s surrogate parenthood, but also recognized the need to remove him honorably from Hindustan. Akbar reassigned him some land revenues as a pension during his pilgrimage and in retirement after his return. Bairam Khan, however, was assassinated en route in Sind by hostile Afghans. Reflecting Bairam Khan’s cultural identity, his family sent his body for burial to Mashhad, an Iranian city sacred to most Shi‘as.

  Even as Akbar struggled to assert his own control, Bairam Khan’s displacement occasioned even more conflict among those vying to replace him as regent. Initially successful in asserting her personal influence over Akbar, Maham Anaga supported Munim Khan, an old favorite of Humayun, as official Wazir, while she largely dictated policy and promoted her younger son and Akbar’s milk-brother, Adham Khan. During this period, Mughal armies conquered Malwa (1562) from Rajputs and also the Chunar fortress in the east from resurgent Indo-Afghans. But Adham Khan clashed with Akbar over the division of captured royal and slave women and other spoils; Adham Khan reportedly killed some of these women rather than relinquish them to Akbar. Then, seeking even more power, Adham Khan and his companions assassinated Shams-ud-Din in 1562 (recounted above).

  The consequent dramatic assertion of Akbar’s personal power, and the embarrassing flight of many leading courtiers and powerbrokers, enabled him to emerge as dominant in his own court. He expanded his supremacy during the next four decades in the face of many challenges and through almost constant battlefield and ideological wars. Akbar never again allowed any single official to concentrate power. Rather, he carefully divided the consolidated authority held by Bairam Khan among ministers who worked under Akbar’s direct supervision and usually held nearly equal power and rank: Wakil (‘agent’), Diwan-i Kul (‘overall revenue and finance minister’) and Mir Bakhshi (‘minister in charge of supply, logistics, personnel, news-gathering and the emperor’s personal security’).15 Further, Akbar relied for advice on an inner circle of courtiers who did not necessarily hold the highest offices or ranks. Little evidence has survived about how much influence and practical power Akbar’s mother, step-mothers, leading wives and other female relatives exercised.

  Akbar himself was illiterate (possibly due to dyslexia). Yet he had a remarkably retentive memory, mastering the vast volumes of records, documents and official letters that his attendants read out to him. Imperial chroniclers attributed omniscience to Akbar, so their accounts may be exaggerated, but they recorded that Akbar personally dictated all important orders, appointments, promotions, demotions and awards of titles to the hundreds of high-ranking imperial officers and officials. He directed overall diplomatic and military strategy and commanded campaigns (either in person or through designated deputies). He also intervened in all other matters brought to his attention by his courtiers and by an elaborate network of newswriters, with regular and confidential reports coming to him independently from separate offices in every province. Fawning accounts credit Akbar with inventing many weapons in the imperial arsenal and with master superintendence of the imperial horse and elephant stables. Akbar also expanded his pool of loyal supporters, binding diverse men and women to him through strong personal affinities, including through political marriages.

  AKBAR EXTENDS HIS HOUSEHOLD AND SUPPORTERS THROUGH POLITICAL MARRIAGE ALLIANCES

  Especially in a patrimonial state, the ruler’s various political marriages can provide him with significant ways to define and extend his household, allies and body of officials and officers. Conversely, the ruler’s new relatives by marriage link themselves to his regime and can gain access to its power and prestige. Often affecting the consequences of a political marriage are the relations between the ruler and his bride, including personal affection. Apart from that, a wife who bears sons, especially if one of them is favored as heir or inherits the throne, customarily enhances her position. Surviving source material does not describe fully the lives, roles, or political influences of most of Akbar’s many brides, or how their lives in the imperial harem (and bed chamber) changed when political relations between him and their natal family flourished or turned hostile.

  Neither Akbar nor his first bride had much choice in their wedding, although the Islamic nikah is legally a personal contract between groom and bride, willingly accepted by both. Following the convention of intra-Timurid marriages, Humayun (while still ruling only in Kabul) wed Akbar at age nine to Shahzadi Ruqaiya Sultan Begum, the equally young daughter of Hindal. While this marriage solidified family bonds, lasted until Akbar’s death, and provided her with an honored and influential place as senior begum in the imperial harem, it did not produce any surviving children. Instead, Ruqaiya Sultan Begum later fostered prince Khurram, a grandson of Ak
bar and a junior co-wife.

  As Akbar reached his late teens and was emerging from regency, he chose his own second marriage, probably still influenced by his first wife, his foster-mothers and other senior Timurid women. After Bairam Khan’s displacement and subsequent assassination in 1561, Akbar married one of his widows, Salima Sultan Begum (a granddaughter of Babur and thus both Akbar’s and his first wife’s cousin).

  While this wedding followed intra-Timurid marriage conventions, it also showed Akbar taking over Bairam Khan’s establishment. Thus, Akbar informally adopted Bairam Khan’s four-year-old son (by another wife) ‘Abd-ur-Rahim. Later, Akbar enhanced these personal ties by giving a foster-relative as bride to ‘Abd-ur-Rahim. He proved loyal throughout his long career, attaining his father’s premier title, Khan-i Khanan, and high administrative posts. Further, Akbar selected for imperial service members of Bairam Khan’s staff, including his Iranian fiscal supervisor, Khwaja Muzaffar Khan Turbati; Akbar perceived him to have ‘aptitude for business, and [so] granted him his life.’16

  Salima Sultan Begum held a prominent place in the imperial harem, made herself a respected poet under the penname Makhfi (‘Hidden/Concealed One’), and long outlived Akbar. However, she had no surviving children. Thus, Akbar’s first two marriages defined his household within Timurid traditions, but neither perpetuated his dynasty nor extended his political alliances among Indians.

  In contrast, one of Akbar’s key pioneering policies was to negotiate many political marriages for himself and his sons with Hindu Rajput rulers. Some earlier Muslim sultans had taken Hindu Rajput noblewomen as wives or concubines, often as war booty, and customarily converted them to Islam. But Akbar innovatively honored his Rajput wives by respecting their religious traditions and choices; some converted to Islam, but others freely performed Hindu rituals in his harem, often with Akbar’s participation. He also recognized their sons as his legitimate heirs, and enrolled their menfolk into the highest levels of imperial service.

  Additionally, Akbar supported his Rajput in-laws against other branches of their clan, against other Rajput clans, and against those of his Muslim courtiers who held anti-Hindu sentiments. Further, Akbar recognized the hereditary right of loyal Rajputs to rule their traditional kingdoms with some autonomy, albeit under Mughal sovereignty. Historically, aspiring Rajputs had long practiced hypergamy, giving brides to more powerful Rajput clans; now many Rajputs related similarly to the Mughal dynasty.17

  As we saw, 14-year-old Akbar had been approached by Raja Bihari Mal of Amber, successfully seeking his support. Five years later, as Akbar emerged from regency and was making a pilgrimage to the Sufi shrine of Khwaja Mu‘in-ud-Din Chishti at Ajmer (near Amber), Raja Bihari Mal again approached. He proposed a more personal and enduring alliance by offering as a bride his eldest daughter, Harkha Bai (d. 1613, also known as Hira Kunwari, ‘Diamond Princess,’ and Mariam-uz-Zamani, ‘Mary of the Age’). According to Akbar’s approving amanuensis:

  The Rajah from right-thinking and elevated fortune considered that he should bring himself out of the ruck of landholders and make himself one of the distinguished ones of the Court. In order to effect this purpose he … [placed] his eldest daughter, in whose forehead shone the lights of chastity and intellect, among the attendants on the glorious pavilion [i.e., Akbar’s harem].18

  No surviving evidence shows how much senior women on either side influenced the wedding negotiations or if the bride had any voice in them.

  Bihari Mal also sent his son and heir, Bhagwantdas (r. 1573–89), to serve Akbar, followed by his 11-year-old grandson and future ruler of Amber, Man Singh (r. 1589–1614). Man Singh grew up within the imperial household, rising to the highest ranks and offices over his lifetime of service, to the advancement of his imperial Mughal relatives and his Kachhwaha clan.

  Despite Akbar’s growing number of wives, as he reached his late twenties he still had no surviving children—a daughter and twin sons having died soon after birth. Seeking divine intervention, Akbar humbly made a pilgrimage from Agra 36 kilometers to the Chishti Sufi Shaikh Salim, who dwelled near Sikri village. Harkha Bai soon became pregnant. For the birth, Akbar sent her to a palace he built near Shaikh Salim’s home. Akbar named his first son and eventual heir Mirza Salim (1569–1627, r. 1605–27), pet named Shaikhu Baba. Akbar then appointed Shaikh Salim’s daughters and daughters-in-law as the baby’s wet-nurses, the Shaikh’s second son as the child’s tutor, the Shaikh’s grandsons as the child’s foster-brothers, and other male descendants of the Shaikh as high-ranking imperial officials. Further, Akbar erected an entirely new capital city, Fatehpur Sikri, adjacent to Shaikh Salim’s grave. Similarly, Akbar’s two other sons, Mirza Murad (1570–99) and Mirza Daniyal (1572–1604), were soon born respectively at the Chishti shrines of Shaikh Salim and Shaikh Daniyal (a disciple of Khwaja Mu‘in-ud-Din) at Ajmer. These long-awaited births bound Akbar to Shaikh Salim and the Chishti order.

  As Akbar’s sons matured, he married each to many Hindu Rajput wives (and also many high-born Muslim spouses). Fifteen-year-old Mirza Salim’s first Rajput marriage was with his mother’s brother’s daughter, Manbhawati Bai. The wedding combined Islamic and Indic-Hindu wedding rituals:

  … the Emperor celebrated the [nikah] ceremony of [Salim and Manbhawati Bai’s] marriage in the presence of the Qazís [Muslim clerics] and nobles. And the sum of [500,000 Rupees] was fixed as the marriage settlement [mehr]. And they performed all the ceremonies, which are customary among the Hindús, such as lighting the fire &c …. Rájah [Bhagwantdas] gave as his daughter’s dowry, several strings of horses, and a hundred elephants, and boys and girls of Abyssinia, India, and Circassia, and all sorts of golden vessels set with jewels … the quantity of which is beyond all computation.19

  Political marriage alliances with Rajput brides meant all subsequent Mughal emperors had Hindu ancestors and many had Hindu mothers and wives.

  Following the same political marriage strategy as the Kachhwaha, other aspiring Rajput clans also offered daughters as wives to Akbar and his sons. Of Akbar’s many official wives, at least 11 (and probably far more) were from Hindu Rajput families, and he married his sons to at least six Hindu Rajput brides. Many Rajput clans also supplied sons to serve Akbar, but no clan proved as successful as the Kachhwahas. At Akbar’s death in 1605, 27 Kachhwahas held high rank in Akbar’s service out of 61 from all royal Rajput clans.20 On their part, Rajput imperial wives, their male relatives in Mughal service and outside of it, and various other Hindus amalgamated into their own Indic-Hindu cultural traditions many of the Persianate customs developing in Akbar’s court.

  These Rajput clans located the Mughal imperial clan in the same social and divine order as themselves, with similar martial dharma. Bards wrote praise poems to their Rajput patrons, in Rajasthani, Braj Basha and Sanskrit, sometimes celebrating heroic opposition to the Mughal emperor, sometimes lauding valiant service to him, both as justified by Rajput dharma. For instance, Amrit Rai’s 1585 biography of Raja Man Singh—Kachhwaha ruler of Amber, repeatedly a bride giver to the Mughal house and a leading imperial general—identifies Akbar as a worthy divine master within the Indic-Hindu cosmic order:

  a portion of the supreme being descended to earth

  to destroy the suffering of others.

  He is the rightful universal emperor [chakravartin] of the Chaghatay clan, a protector of the entire earth.

  Long live Shah Jalal-al-Din [Akbar], the world-conqueror, the jewel of the world!21

  This poet continues:

  His measureless power adorns the three worlds ….

  The emperor upholds dharma. His rule stabilizes the earth ….

  The goddess Lakshmi shares her time between Vishnu’s embrace and nestling at Akbar’s breast.22

  Such praise singers thus glorified their Rajput patrons by elevating their employer and sovereign Akbar to semi-divine status and intimacy with Hindu goddesses. Significantly, such praise poems avoided mentioning the giving of Rajput brides to the emperor, since th
at had negative gendered implications, whatever the practical political benefits to both parties.

  The growing presence in Akbar’s harem of Hindu Rajput wives and in the Mughal administration of their male relatives and other Rajput and non-Rajput Hindus correlates with Akbar’s religious and political policies from early in his reign. In particular, Akbar terminated several levies and regulations that discriminated against non-Muslims including his ending the prohibition on the construction of new Hindu, Jain, Parsi and other non-Muslim temples. Akbar made inams (‘endowments of land revenue’) to Hindu temples (including at Vrindavan) and to non-Muslim holy men. In 1564, Akbar halted the collection of jizya, regarded as a discriminatory tax by many non-Muslims, including Akbar’s growing number of Rajput officials. In contrast, some orthodox Muslims regarded jizya as an appropriate and legally required penalty on subjects who refused to convert to Islam; they convinced Akbar to re-impose it in 1575. However, these imperial orders largely went unenforced and Akbar officially reconfirmed its abolition in 1579. We can never know the full extent that Akbar was influenced by the increasing number of Hindus in his household and service, but these policies evidently gained support from many non-Muslims, who comprised the vast majority of his subjects.

  The wealth and territorial acquisitions gained by some Rajput ruling clans through imperial service afforded them status, resources and political power unavailable to their merely locally based ancestors, especially since their Rajasthan homeland was not agriculturally rich. Further, the concept ‘Rajput’ changed through their interactions with the Mughal Empire, evident in: clan genealogies and histories highlighting sacred ancestry; Persianate literary, artistic and administrative vocabulary and expertise; sartorial and other fashions emulating imperial court style; and the primacy of the royal clan head above his tributary kinsmen.23 Moreover, Rajput imperial officials increasingly served far from their homelands, often forming marriage and other alliances with Rajputs they met there. They used incomes and rewards from imperial service to fund the expansion of their natal estates and to patronize Hindu temples and other devotional sites. They thus gained financially and politically, particularly compared to rival Rajputs who disdained participation in the Mughal Empire and expended their limited resources resisting it.