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

by Fisher, H, Michael

  Abu-al-Fazl explained his (and Akbar’s) major ideological and political goals for these Indic translation projects.46 Accurate translations would inform Muslims and Hindus about the actual content of their own and each other’s sacred texts. This would disempower those pretentious religious leaders who deviously misrepresented these texts.

  Such cross-cultural exchanges helped Akbar locate himself in Indic traditions and, conversely, helped Hindus identify with his Persianate court culture. Akbar, his wives and some courtiers also patronized literature and musical lyrics in Braj Basha and other popular north Indian languages.47 These translation and literary projects also fostered Akbar’s other policies that created a new imperial ideology centered on him as the peerless imperial pir and universal sovereign, superior to all other human religious or political authority.

  A devotional sect dedicated to Akbar developed at his court, perhaps as early as 1582. But its nature, composition and goals were controversial, then and today. This cult had secret mystical practices so only full initiates knew them. The most extensive surviving descriptions were by Badauni, an outsider and bitter opponent. Even the name was disputed. Frequently, Badauni called it Din-i Illahi (‘Religion of God’ or ‘Divine Religion’), a name used by many later commentators but not the initiates. Further, recent scholars who characterize Akbar as secularist question the use of din (‘religion’).48

  In other places, Badauni wrote ‘His Majesty gave his religious system the name of Tauhid-i-Ilāhi’.49 The Arabic term tauhid has a long philosophical tradition and range of meanings including: ‘belief in the unity of God’ and ‘the fifth degree of perfection in Sūfī life, where the divine essence is contemplated as void of any attribute conceived by thought.’50 This ideology resonated with the theology of wahdat al-wujud (‘unity of existence’), most prominently expounded by the Arab Andalusian Sufi Ibn al-‘Arabi, whom Akbar’s supporters explicitly evoked.51

  The imperial cult had an exclusively elite membership. Some contemporary texts listed only 19 members, all high mansabdars in Akbar’s inner circle. But other sources suggested many of Akbar’s personal bodyguard (totaling hundreds of men), or even a majority of high mansabdars were admitted.52 The initiation reportedly involved especially deep prostration to Akbar and vowing: ‘I … voluntarily, and with sincere predilection and inclination, utterly and entirely renounce and repudiate the religion of Islám … and do embrace the [Tauhid-i Ilahi] of Akbar Sháh, and do accept the four grades of entire devotion, viz., sacrifice of Property, Life, Honour, and Religion.’53 Initiates received from Akbar an icon of the sun, a special turban and a small portrait of him to wear on the turban or breast. Imitating Akbar, but going against orthodox Muslim custom, many disciples shaved off their beards. Further, initiates stopped using among themselves the conventional Arabic greeting as-salam alaykum (‘peace be upon you’) and response wa alaykum-us-salam (‘and unto you peace’), instead substituting Allah-o Akbar, with the response jalla jalaluhu (‘glorified be His glory’), evoking Akbar’s title, Jalal-ud-Din. Akbar and his initiates periodically performed sun and light worship, presumably further development of rituals Akbar had devised in his late Fatehpur years. This imperial cult bound the initiated to him, overriding their other loyalties, including ethnicity and kinship.

  But not all those invited would join. In 1587, Raja Man Singh responded that he would convert to Islam if Akbar ordered, but he would not join this new cult: ‘If Discipleship means willingness to sacrifice one’s life, I have already carried my life in my hand: what need is there of further proof? If, however, the term has another meaning and refers to Faith, I certainly am a Hindú. If you order me to do so, I will become a Musalmán, but I know not of the existence of any other religion than these two.’54 While some courtiers clearly benefitted from their initiation, Man Singh’s refusal did not noticeably hurt his subsequent career.

  Contemporary writers, both favorable and critical, also noted that there was also a public sect of worshippers of Akbar—the Darshaniyyah, those who sought Akbar’s darshan. Badauni wrote critically:

  [Those] not admitted into the palace, stood every morning opposite to the window … and declared that they had made vows not to rinse their mouth, nor to eat and drink, before they had seen the blessed countenance of the Emperor. And every evening [assembled] needy Hindús and Musalmáns, all sorts of people, men and women, healthy and sick, a queer gathering and a most terrible crowd. No sooner had His Majesty … stepped out into the balcony, than the whole crowd prostrated themselves.55

  To some extent, Babur and, even more so, Humayun had evoked the model of the emperor as ‘Shadow of God on earth.’ But Akbar’s publicist Abu-al-Fazl repeatedly proclaimed him ‘divine light’ itself: an earthly embodiment of the sacred, the millennial sovereign. Some recent scholars explain that Akbar was asserting this status above all other sovereigns to wipe out, either in his own mind or diplomatically, the shame of Babur’s and Humayun’s humiliating religious and political submissions to the Safavids. However, Akbar’s contemporary critics, including Naqshbandi pir Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624), Badauni and other orthodox Sunnis, condemned Akbar for making heretical pretensions of his own divinity.56 Such claims affronted orthodox Sunni Islam’s unqualified monotheism and absolute prohibition against worshipping any except Allah.

  Another factor probably strengthening Akbar’s millennial ideology was the approaching Hijri year 1000 (1591–2 ce), when many Muslims expected the Mahdi to reveal himself and lead the faithful to eternal salvation. In anticipation, in 1585 Akbar ordered seven courtiers to begin to co-author the Tarikh-i Alfi (‘History of the First Thousand Years’), chronicling Muslim rulers from the death of the Prophet Muhammad to Akbar. He later ordered ‘Era of the Thousand’ minted on his coins.

  Despite Akbar’s decades of adulation by his courtiers and the significant expansion of his empire, he had to confront his own mortal limitations. As Akbar approached age 50, he reflected on his dynasty’s place in history. He commissioned his aunt, Gulbadan Begum, and other courtiers and attendants who had personally known Babur or Humayun to write or dictate their memories of those predecessors.

  The death of Mirza Hakim had ended any fraternal challenge to Akbar (as the deaths of Babur’s and Humayun’s brothers had for them). But Akbar’s own three maturing sons were each maneuvering for independent power, encouraged by dissidents against Akbar. As Akbar aged, he faced the conflicting desires of both protecting his sons from each other and also securing the unity of his empire. Accomplishing both would have been unprecedented since none of Akbar’s ancestors had done so (nor would any of his imperial descendants). Further, everyone anticipated the opportunities and dangers of the inevitable new regime.

  In military and diplomatic terms, the Empire’s western frontier had stabilized by the late 1590s. Kabul, Sind, Kashmir and Qandahar seemed secure. Akbar’s hopes of retaking Badakhshan from the Uzbeks proved ever less plausible. However, the threat of an Uzbek invasion diminished due to a succession struggle beginning in 1598. Akbar thus shifted even more resources and attention to the last promising major frontier, the Deccan. To supervise these southern initiatives, Akbar moved his court not back to Fatehpur but rather to the Deccan and eventually to Agra, where he largely remained for the rest of his life.

  IN THE FIELD IN THE DECCAN, 1598–1601, AND IN AGRA, 1601–1605

  Akbar invaded any neighboring kingdom or territory that appeared promising. By 1595, Akbar had 1,823 mansabdars, with an official collective obligation to provide for imperial service an estimated 141,000 or more cavalrymen.57 Additionally, there were considerable forces directly under Akbar’s command. By 1598, Akbar clearly decided to devote much of this manpower and his other resources to advancing the Empire’s southern frontier.

  The Deccan had been politically unstable since the fragmentation in 1527 of the Bahmani Sultanate into rival successor states: Ahmadnagar (which annexed Berar in 1572), Bidar, Bijapur and Golkonda. Additionally, Khandesh stood between th
ese and the Mughal Empire. Even before conquering the Deccan, the Mughal administration anticipated their potential revenue value. An early (1591) version of Abu-al-Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari includes the estimated revenues of all the Deccan Sultanates and Khandesh, listing each city and district.58 However, these estimates were inaccurately high, making the prospective Mughal conquest appear far more lucrative than it proved (Akbar’s descendants learned this to their cost since even partial conquest would take nearly a century and never paid off financially). While the other Deccan kingdoms lay beyond Akbar’s immediate scope, he had long sent diplomatic and military expeditions to Ahmadnagar and Khandesh. These imperial initiatives intensified as Akbar shifted from Lahore.

  Much earlier, Akbar had made several moves southward toward Ahmadnagar, including a hunting expedition in 1576 warily watched by that Sultan as a possibly disguised invasion.59 Then, after a disputed Ahmadnagar succession in 1588, the unsuccessful younger brother, Burhan Shah, fled to Akbar for shelter. Akbar protected this refugee and encouraged him to fight for the throne, but was not yet willing to provide military support. Nonetheless, Burhan Shah himself mounted a successful campaign for the Ahmadnagar throne in 1591.

  As Sultan Burhan Nizam Shah II, however, he resisted Mughal pressures to submit, including from a diplomatic mission led by the prominent poet-courtier Shaikh Faizi in 1591–3. But on Burhan Nizam Shah’s death in 1595, another disputed succession offered an opening for Akbar, now ready to commit resources to the Deccan. He sent Prince Murad to invade Ahmadnagar from neighboring Gujarat. Meanwhile, in Ahmadnagar, a royal widow, Khanzada Humayun Sultana (known popularly as Chand Bibi), had seized power as regent over the infant heir, Bahadur Nizam Shah. She defended Ahmadnagar fort against Murad until 1596, when she negotiated recognition of Akbar’s supremacy and ceded Berar to the Mughals in exchange for remaining regent.

  When Mirza Murad died in Berar in 1599, Akbar appointed his third son, Mirza Daniyal, to command renewed assaults on Ahmadnagar fort. In 1600, Khanzada Humayun Sultana offered to submit if the boy sultan received mansab 5,000 and she continued as regent. Instead, her rivals within the fort assassinated her and tried unsuccessfully to hold out. Finally, Mughal forces seized the fort, imprisoned the young sultan and annexed much of Ahmadnagar. But Malik Ambar, a liberated Ethiopian military-slave, led continued resistance for decades under the banner of puppet Ahmadnagar princes.60

  Akbar had been unsuccessfully working for decades to incorporate Khandesh through military expeditions, reciprocal political marriages and other means. In 1599, Mughal forces under Mirza Daniyal seized the Khandesh capital, Burhanpur, and imprisoned the ruler, Bahadur Shah (who died in prison in 1624). Akbar himself commanded the siege of the strong fortress of Asirgarh, the last Khandesh holdout (although he did not personally take part in the fighting). Asirgarh fell in 1601 and Khandesh became a Mughal province.

  Akbar then put Daniyal in command of all Mughal forces and administration in the Deccan and turned back to Agra. Mughal armies, however, did not continue their expansive assaults in the Deccan until after Akbar’s death. Instead, the revolt of Mirza Salim set Mughal armies against each other, leading to five years of danger at the Mughal center.

  Mirza Salim’s revolt, followed by Akbar’s demise after nearly half a century of rule, created apprehension and even panic among many within the Empire. While assessing popular sentiment four centuries later remains difficult, we can see the trauma—occasioned by Akbar’s death and the uncertainty of the succession by the recent rebel Salim—in the personal account of Banarsidas, a Jain jewel merchant in Jaunpur. Long-reigning Akbar was the only sovereign whom Banarsidas and most others in north India had ever known. Nevertheless, painful memories of the devastation that had accompanied previous successions remained strong. Thus, on hearing the shocking news of Akbar’s end, Banarsidas immediately collapsed, wounded his head, and was ‘put to bed with my sobbing mother at my side.’ Banarsidas continued that the whole city likewise panicked:

  People felt suddenly orphaned and insecure without their sire. Terror raged everywhere …. Everyone closed the doors of his house in panic; shop-keepers shut down their shops. Feverishly, the rich hid their jewels and costly attire underground; many of them quickly dumped their wealth … on carriages and rushed to safe, secluded places. Every householder began stocking his home with weapons and arms. Rich men took to wearing thick, rough clothes such as are worn by the poor …. Women shunned finery, dressing in shabby, lusterless clothes …. There were manifest signs of panic everywhere although there was no reason for it since there were really no thieves or robbers about.61

  Only after a terrified ten days did news of Salim’s relatively peaceful accession reach Jaunpur and life resume its normal course.

  Over Akbar’s long reign, he and his close advisors developed the key elements of the Mughal Empire. Subsequent emperors all built, with varying degrees of success, on those foundations. Thus, for Mirza Salim, who acceded as Emperor Jahangir, and his successors, Akbar provided standards against which they each compared themselves.

  Part III

  The Mughal Empire Established, 1605–1707

  7

  EMPEROR JAHANGIR AND THE EFFLORESCENCE OF THE IMPERIAL COURT, 1605–27

  In counsels on State affairs and government it often happens that I act according to my own judgment and prefer my own counsel to that of others.

  Emperor Jahangir1

  For nearly five years, Prince Salim ruled his self-proclaimed imperial court in Allahabad, openly rebelling against Emperor Akbar in Agra. Already in his early thirties, Prince Salim had long anticipated his own accession and had considerable experience maneuvering against his rivals. As Akbar’s death approached, Salim humbly resubmitted himself to his father’s authority, accepted humiliating but brief chastisement, and, with the intercession of influential Mughal women, received forgiveness just before Akbar died. Salim then selected his new imperial name, Jahangir. His own 22-year-long reign built on Akbar’s extensive imperial foundations but with embellishments of his own devising.

  YOUTH AND REVOLT

  The Mughal dynasty never institutionalized primogeniture. Instead, virtually every emperor tried to arbitrate his own succession, although few accomplished it. Emperors rightly feared their own premature displacement by any heir whom they made too powerful. Further, emperors simultaneously dreaded both an internecine war for succession that would kill all but one son and also a division of their hard-earned empire. Babur and Humayun had followed the family’s Central Asian tradition of assigning appanages to junior sons, thus seeking to protect them but also keep the Empire linked loosely together. While subsequent Mughal emperors moved to a more individualized imperial model, Akbar, Jahangir and most of their successors still tried to balance power among their sons. Conversely, almost every Mughal prince, as emperor-in-waiting but also potential casualty of the inevitable succession struggle, maneuvered ruthlessly against his brothers (often each supported by his mother, foster-mother, sisters and his wives’ families).

  Prince Salim, Akbar’s long hoped for first surviving son, had been especially favored throughout his early youth, although Akbar had also advanced his two younger sons, each from a different mother. Having created the mansab system, Akbar awarded the eight-year-old Salim rank 10,000, double that of any other mansabdar except for seven-year-old Prince Murad at 7,000 and five-year-old Prince Daniyal at 6,000. These unmatched ranks provided each prince (guided by his experienced guardian) with vast resources to build up his own household, military forces and court faction. As each prince grew, Akbar increased their mansabs: by 1584, 15-year-old Salim ranked 12,000, Murad 9,000 and Daniyal 7,000.

  Akbar kept Salim mostly at court. But there he quarreled with his younger brothers. Thus, in 1591, Akbar posted Murad as governor of Malwa, then Gujarat, reportedly ‘in order to set the distance between East and West between the two brothers, and that they might remain safe.’2 Similarly, Akbar later appointed his third son, Daniyal, govern
or of distant Allahabad. As their subjects bemoaned, these princely governors and their guardians asserted arbitrary and oppressive authority, amassing resources to strengthen their respective factions for the coming succession struggle.3

  Suddenly, in 1591, courtiers noted with dismay that Akbar’s ‘constitution became a little deranged and he suffered from stomach-ache and colic, which could by no means be removed. In this unconscious state he uttered some words which arose from suspicions of his eldest son, and accused him of giving him poison …’4 Although Akbar eventually recovered, tensions between him and Salim and among the three princes intensified. Typically for emperors, Akbar determined to hold power as long as he lived and to determine his legacy.

  To elevate yet another contender for accession, in 1594 Akbar awarded the high mansab 5,000 to Prince Khusrau, eldest son of Salim and his first wife (Kachhwaha Rajput Manbhawati Bai), although the boy was only seven. To strengthen Khusrau’s faction, Akbar appointed powerful Raja Man Singh (Khusrau’s maternal uncle) as his guardian. This made Khusrau another plausible heir, especially if Akbar lived as long as he intended.5