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Encyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies

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Nathalie Kouamé
, 
Éric P. Meyer
, 
Anne Viguier

C

Court Chronicles in Mughal India

Chroniques de cour dans l’Inde moghole

Harit Joshi

Résumé

Les chroniques de cour en langue persane écrites sous les règnes des empereurs moghols comptent parmi nos sources principales pour l’histoire de l’Inde du xvie au xviiie siècle. Rédigées par les historiens de cour sous le patronage impérial dans le cadre d’un projet historiographique de large envergure, elles présentent la version officielle des événements qui se sont produits pendant le règne ainsi que le contexte politique de l’époque. Cet article fournit un aperçu global de ces œuvres : leur contenu, la manière dont l’information fut collectée et traitée, les objectifs visés, les points forts et les faiblesses des chroniques ainsi que l’influence qu’elles exercèrent sur les œuvres composées en langues vernaculaires.

Texte intégral

Introduction

1The Mughal Empire was one of the most powerful political regimes of the early modern world. Founded by Zahir al‑Din Muhammad Babur (1483‑1530) in 1526 and consolidated by his successors, it exercised unparalleled influence for more than a century and a half over a large part of modern‑day South Asia. Claiming descent from Chingiz Khan (c. 1167‑1227) and Timurlane (1336‑1405), two emblematic figures of the medieval era, the Mughal emperors carved out a new dynastic ideology, using the enormous military and material means at their disposal to subjugate regional adversaries and extend their realms, while at the same time providing generous patronage to works of art, architecture and literature. Theirs was an inclusive model of governance which attracted, nurtured and rewarded the best available talent from India and abroad, irrespective of religion, ethnicity and race. Although a variety of factors brought about the steady decline of imperial authority during the early decades of the eighteenth century, the later – weak, impoverished and by now purely symbolic – members of the dynasty continued to command respect as descendants of their illustrious predecessors until the British formally put an end to their line in 1858.

The Linguistic Medium and some General Features of Official Histories

  • 1 Alam, 2004.
  • 2 Rao, Shulman and Subrahmanyam, 2003.

2The Mughal Empire has been referred to as a “paper empire” owing to the enormous quantity of written material that it produced. This includes official records of government dealings, epistolary exchanges and administrative manuals along with works emanating from the “unofficial” realm such as biographical dictionaries of eminent personalities, treatises on religion, medicine, philosophy and jurisprudence as well as literary compositions. Persian – and not Arabic, Turkish, Sanskrit or Hindawi – was the preferred idiom of communication. As the historian Muzaffar Alam explains, the Persian language enjoyed a long‑standing association with learning and refinement and was not exclusively linked to any single religious community, thus making it an appropriate linguistic medium within the composite Mughal political culture.1 Besides, the use of Persian had been widely prevalent since the days of the Delhi Sultanate (c. 1200‑1526), facilitating interaction with far‑flung provinces, each having its own vernacular, and enabling the circulation of individuals and ideas over the larger Islamicate world. From the early fifteenth century onwards, an increasing number of Hindus belonging to the scribal castes, notably Kayasths and Khatris, had gained command over Persian, an indispensable prerequisite for securing employment as munshis (clerks) in the ever‑expanding state apparatus.2

  • 3 Rosenthal, 1968; Gibb, 1982.
  • 4 Hardy, 1997.

3The imperial court chronicles (tarikh) constitute our principal source of information for the history of the Mughal Empire. Their origins can be traced back to the classical tradition of Arab and Persian historiography3 and the practice of composing such histories had been in vogue in India since the times of the sultans of Delhi.4 These chronicles represent the official version of a reign, and portray the image which an emperor wished to leave behind for posterity. Although their form and content vary from one work to another, some (not necessarily common) features stand out. They may begin with a summary of the careers of previous sovereigns, in a bid to highlight the incumbent ruler’s dynastic pedigree, which could even be traced back to mythological times. This was in certain cases followed by a short relation of his childhood, his days as a prince and a depiction of the political circumstances which led to his coronation. A detailed year by year account of the reign often constitutes the main body of the text. This includes a description of the principal occurrences – military campaigns, administrative measures, festive occasions, promotions and rewards granted to officers and other happenings of interest. Copies of the diplomatic correspondence exchanged with foreign monarchs and orders issued to tributary chiefs at times also find a place as do extracts from panegyric verses composed in praise of the emperor by court poets. Some chronicles furnish short biographical sketches of eminent personalities who lived during the reign – those holding high ranks in imperial service, religious figures, physicians and men of letters.

4The challenging task of writing the official history of a reign was assigned to an individual who mastered the art of elegant prose composition. It carried much responsibility but also reaped great financial rewards. The leading literati of the empire jostled for this enviable position and presented samples of their works to the emperor in the hope of gaining his favour. Once appointed, the official chronicler had all necessary documents from the government archives placed at his disposal for reference and was expected to complete his assignment expeditiously.

  • 5 Dale, 2004 and 2012; Thackston,1993.
  • 6 Askari, 1982.
  • 7 Thackston,1996.

5The founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babur, died merely four years after his conquest of north India. His autobiography, the Waqi’at‑i Baburi (“Events in the life of Babur”) or the Baburnama (“The Book of Babur”), shows him to be deeply imbibed in the sophisticated Persianate culture of the times (see the entry “Autobiographies impériales mogholes” in this Encyclopaedia). It provides a vivid account of his tumultuous life – from his early years as a young Timurid prince struggling to maintain a tenuous hold over his ancestral domains to his valiant attempts at carving out an empire away from his homeland.5 Other more or less contemporary works written at their own initiative by people who accompanied him serve as useful complements. Thus, Zain Khan Khwafi (?‑1533/34), one of his learned associates, while drawing heavily from Babur’s memoirs, furnishes valuable additional information about that formative period in his Tabaqa‑i Baburi (“Tales of Babur”), which employs a more euphistic style of prose.6 Similarly, Mirza Haidar Dughlat (1499/1500‑1551), Babur’s younger maternal cousin, penned the Tarikh‑i Rashidi (“History of Rashid”, named after Abdul Rashid Khan and completed in 1546), a history of the khanate of Mughalistan, in a bid to keep the memory of its rulers alive.7

  • 8 Hosein, 1940.

6Babur’s son and successor Nasir al-Din Muhammad Humayun (1508‑56) inherited his father’s intellectual tastes and continued the tradition of granting patronage to scholars. He conferred the title of Amir‑i Muwarrikh (“Chief chronicler”) upon the erudite historian, Mir Ghiyas al‑Din Muhammad Husaini, better known as Khwandamir (c. 1475‑1535), who had formerly been in the service of the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail (1487‑1524) before heading to India in the closing years of Babur’s reign (September 1528). The venerable scholar composed, at the emperor’s behest, the Qanun‑i Humayuni (“The Laws of Humayun”), which though not quite a chronological history as such, provides a florid account of the elaborate organization and ceremonial functioning of Humayun’s court and some of the innovative structures that were constructed by him.8

The Imperial Historiographical Project under Akbar and his Successors

  • 9 Digby, 2001.

7It was during the lengthy reign of the third and most celebrated ruler of the dynasty, Jalal al‑Din Muhammad Akbar (1542‑1605) that the imperial Mughal historiographical project was carried out on a truly extensive scale. Akbar had successfully pursued an ambitious policy of military expansion, bringing large swathes of territory under his control. It was an epoch that witnessed increasing economic prosperity, technological advance and contacts with the outside world. Moreover, as the historian Simon Digby reminds us, the consolidation of Mughal power over much of North India coincided with the anxiously awaited millennium of the Hijri era in 1591.9 With the impending date drawing near, the transformation it was expected to bring about underlined the need to conceive a new ideological basis for the empire. Amidst the main figures behind this venture were Abu’l Fazl ʻAllami (1551‑1602), the emperor’s official historian and close confidant. The members of this inner circle of collaborators had an important role to play in the production of an immense corpus of narrative material, much of which served, in Digby’s opinion, to elaborate an imperial millenary doctrine.

8When this exercise was underway, it was realized that several events dating from Humayun’s reign had not been consigned to writing. The search thus began for survivors who could be called upon to retrospectively throw light upon it. Amidst those who responded to the imperial summons was Gulbadan Begum (1523‑1603), the late emperor’s sister and Akbar’s aunt who authored the Humayunama or the Ahwal‑i Humayun Badshah (“The Affairs of Emperor Humayun”), which provides a unique female insight into the inner family politics of the royal household. Others included retired officials who had once formed part of Humayun’s entourage such as Mihtar Jawhar, his ewer‑bearer (aftabchi), who dictated the Tazkirat‑al Waqi’at (“Memoir of Events”) to a scribe specially sent to note down his reminiscences and Bayazid Bayat, another eyewitness whose Tazkira‑yi Humayun wa Akbar (“The History of Humayun and Akbar”) was completed in 1591‑1592. As part of this enterprise, Babur’s memoirs were translated from the by then less commonly employed Chagtai Turkish into the more widely read Persian language by ʻAbdul Rahim Khan‑i Khanan (1556‑1627, see below), the erudite son of Akbar’s former guardian and one of the leading grandees of the court.

  • 10 Digby, 2001.
  • 11 Kumar, 2007, Anooshahr, 2012.
  • 12 Anooshahr, 2012.

9Although the earliest instances of the revival of interest in history can be traced back to the composition of a narrative poem (masnawi) commemorating Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat in 1573 and to ʻArif Qandahari’s Tarik‑i Akbari (“History of Akbar”) presented to the emperor in 1577‑1578, it was in the following years that a series of historical works saw the light of the day in quick succession.10 A team of officially nominated writers completed the Tarikh‑i Alfi (“History of the Millennium”), a general history of the Muslim world since the death of Muhammad (632), with illustrations by artists of the imperial atelier, in 1588‑1589 while the Tarik‑i Khanda Timuriya (“History of the clan of Timur”), attributed to an unknown author, furnished an account of Timur and his successors right down till Akbar. One of the pioneering works dating from this period and the earliest general history of India was the Tabaqat‑I Akbari (“Tales of Akbar”, 1592‑1593) by Khwaja Nizam al‑Din Ahmad (1551‑1594), a leading general and a scholar of note. His manner of chronicling the past was a path‑breaking one, diverging from the hitherto employed norms of historical writing. Nizam al‑Din conceives the Indian subcontinent as a distinct political and cultural entity, setting it apart from the rest of the Islamic world.11 His attention is not merely focused on the ruling classes but embraces a broader segment of people. Perhaps the most significant feature of Nizam al‑Din’s approach is that he shifts away from the tendency of contemporary Indo‑Persian chronicles to hold divine intervention, fate or miracle‑mongers responsible for whatever happened and places human agency at the core of his understanding of history, reflecting a radically different world‑view that was emerging at that time.12

  • 13 Storey, 1989, see below.

10The main official history of Akbar’s reign and arguably the most influential chronicle from the Mughal era is the Akbarnama (“The Book of Akbar”) by Abu’l Fazl (see the entry on the Akbarnama in this Encyclopaedia). It is considered to be composed of three daftars (registers, books), of which the first, completed in 1596, i.e. the forty‑first regnal year, is subdivided into two parts. One deals with Akbar’s birth, presenting a genealogy of the Timurids and an account of the reigns of Babur and Humayun while the other takes the narrative to the seventeenth year of his rule. The second daftar covers the period till the author’s death in the forty‑sixth year (it was posthumously completed to bring it up to the end of Akbar’s reign). The third daftar, known by the independent title of Ain‑I Akbari (“The Regulations of Akbar”) deals with the administration and statistics of the empire.13

11Abu’l Fazl himself explains how he proceeded with the compilation of his monumental work, affirming that “much labour and research” (ghayat takapuy wa nahayat justjuy) went into the endeavour. He spent a long time interrogating those who had been in the service of the state and veteran members of the imperial family, writing down their testimonies initially in the form of rough drafts and then rendering them in an elegant style. He could at times seek the evidence of up to twenty reliable witnesses to an event, and admits that this multiplicity of sources occasionally posed difficulties. Helpful material was also obtained from the Records Office which had been set up in the nineteenth regnal year. Originals or copies were procured of most of the imperial commands that had been issued to the provinces from the time of Akbar’s accession and of the minutely detailed reports submitted by the official news-writers (waqi'a nawis) to inform the emperor about the happenings in the distant regions of the empire. “Contradictions and imperfections” (ikhtilaf o tanaquz) however remained and whenever Abu’l Fazl entertained any doubt regarding the authenticity of a report, he requested the emperor, who “by virtue of his perfect memory, recollects every occurrence in gross and in detail, from the time he was one year old” to clear them.

  • 14 Richards, 1997.

12The Akbarnama portrays Akbar as a superior, divinely inspired being whose proximity to God granted him esoteric knowledge and authority greater than even the most accomplished of men.14 It traces Akbar’s ancestry right back to Adam, through the Biblical prophets and Alanquwa, a mythical queen of Mughalistan who was miraculously impregnated by a ray of light, before linking him to charismatic historical figures of the medieval world, Chingiz Khan and Timurlane, thus granting him an irreproachable dynastic legitimacy. Although the highly partisan nature of the work has been commented upon by critics ever since its completion, the Akbarnama nevertheless represents a staggering achievement in the art of historical composition, setting a benchmark for entire generations of later writers to emulate.

  • 15 Storey, 1989.

13Usually treated as a distinct book, the Ain‑i Akbari is a voluminous almanac cum gazetteer containing extensive statistics about the Mughal administrative apparatus besides historical and geographical information on both India and the rest of the world. It is divided into five daftars, dealing with themes as varied as the imperial household and court, state service, arts and crafts, a description of the provinces, Hindu religious beliefs and social customs, eminent Muslim holy men of the past and present, former Indian rulers and grandees in the service of the empire, scholars and poets before closing with a lengthy list of sayings on philosophical, ethical and moral issues attributed to Akbar.15 By the sheer volume of data that it furnishes and the nature of the subjects that it treats, it serves as an indispensable tool for our study of the Mughal empire.

  • 16 Anooshahr, 2006.

14If, on the one hand, Abu’l Fazl’s portrayal of Akbar is an excessively eulogistic one, a distinctly unsympathetic image of the emperor emerges from the Muntakhab al‑Tawarikh (“Selection from History”), a sort of counter‑narrative of the reign written by his contemporary and rival ʻAbdul Qadir Badauni (1540‑c. 1615). Although both historians joined imperial service at about the same time, Badauni’s career graph had failed to follow a favourable trajectory. He had, for instance, been forced to collaborate against his will on Akbar’s ambitious translation project as part of which several Hindu religious works (the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, treatises on philosophy, etc.) were adapted to Persian. Embittered by adverse circumstances, Badauni censors the emperor’s administrative policies and his unorthodox religious views in his surreptitiously written chronicle. This acrimonious discourse has led numerous scholars over the years to summarily dismiss the author as a bigoted fundamentalist at odds with the liberal atmosphere prevailing in Akbar’s court. However, Ali Anooshahr’s reappraisal of the work has questioned conventional logic and shown that seen in their entirety, Badauni’s writings are more than merely the disgruntled grumblings of an ignored mulla that they are often made out to be. The historian, for instance routinely criticizes the attitude of the ulema and, contrary to what one may expect, does not extol former paragons of Sunni orthodoxy in India or elsewhere in the Islamic world, nor does he display any nostalgia for their rule. What the Muntakhab al‑Tawarikh does betray, however, is Badauni’s disdain for any sort of royal absolutism, claims to divine legitimacy and supposed display of supernatural powers by contemporary or past sovereigns, beliefs that were inconsistent with those of the emperor.16

  • 17 Marshall, 1985 and Lefevre, 2005.

15Akbar’s son and successor Nur al‑Din Muhammad Jahangir (1569‑1627) lived his entire life in the shadow of his father. Although his political and military accomplishments do not measure up to those of his predecessor, he was nevertheless a learned man of refined aesthetic sensibilities. The principal source of his reign is his autobiography, the Jahangirnama or the Tuzuk‑i Jahangiri (“The Regulations of Jahangir”) which he wrote in Persian. Along with the Akbarnama and the Tabaqat‑i Akbari, it provided material for the Iqbalnama‑i Jahangiri (“Felicitous book of Jahangir”) of Mu’tammad Khan, completed in the fifteenth year of the emperor’s reign (1619‑1620) and later continued till his death. The three volumes of this work are devoted respectively to Babur and Humayun, Akbar and Jahangir. Another chronicle, the Maasir‑i Jahangiri (“The illustrious acts of Jahangir”) by Khwaja Kamgar Husaini (entitled Ghairat Khan) was completed in 1630, when Jahangir’s successor was in power, and may actually have been written to present an account of events from the new emperor's perspective.17

  • 18 Lefèvre, 2005.

16Jahangir’s reign also saw the composition of other important works which were based on the model of the imperial court chroniclers and dedicated, not to the ruler but to leading nobles. One of these was the voluminous Maasir‑i Rahimi (“The illustrious acts of Rahim”), written by ‛Abdul Baqi Nihawandi for his master, ‛Abdul Rahim Khan‑i Khanan (see above) who, in the course of his lengthy career in Mughal service, earned the reputation of being a seasoned statesman and a generous patron of literature. At a time when the Khan‑i Khanan had been accused of collusion with rival powers in the politically volatile Deccan region and his relations with Jahangir had taken a turn for the worse, this work may have served as an instrument for redeeming his reputation, a public relations exercise aimed at regaining the emperor’s favour.18

  • 19 Lefèvre, 2005.

17A similar motive probably lay behind Khwaja Ni’matullah al‑Harawi’s Tarikh‑i Khan‑i Jahani wa Makhzan‑i Afghani (“History of Khan‑i Jahan and repository of the Afghans”), dedicated to the author’s patron, the powerful Afghan amir Khan‑i Jahan Lodi (1587‑1631). Once again, the work adheres more to the standard format of Mughal official chronicles rather than to the somewhat oral tenor of the earlier Afghan histories. It aims to highlight the pre‑eminent position of the amir amidst the officers of the age and contributes to the “redefinition of Afghan identity”. As Corinne Lefèvre has noted, this exaltation of the past in works such as the Tarik‑i Khan‑i Jahani represents more than mere nostalgia for a bygone age (the Afghan Lodi dynasty had ruled over large parts of north India prior to the advent of the Mughals and another resurgent Afghan clan, that of the Surs, had gained control over the region for a decade and a half after having ousted Humayun from power) and is more a sign of the constant tension that existed between the recognition of Timurid sovereignty, on the one hand, and the affirmation of a glorified communal ethos on the other.19

  • 20 Begley & Desai, 1990.

18The reign of Jahangir’s son and successor Shihab al‑Din Muhammad Shah Jahan (1592‑1666) once again witnessed historiographical composition being undertaken on a massive scale. One of the earliest persons to whom the task of writing the Badshahnama (“The Book of the Emperor”), the official court chronicle (other contemporary works bearing similar titles also exist), was assigned was Mirza Jalala Tabataba’i, an immigrant from Iran, who after having drafted an account of the first five years was prevented from carrying on ostensibly due to factional rivalry.20 His fellow countryman, Mirza Amina Qazvini, a munshi in the records department, then took over before himself being probably removed sometime in the eleventh regnal year (1638). His replacement was the elderly Shaikh ՙAbdul Hamid Lahori (?‑1654), considered to be the leading exponent of the much appreciated florid style of prose associated with Abu’l Fazl, who was summoned from retirement and handed over the responsibility of writing down the history of the reign. After his death, the work was completed by his pupil, Muhammad Waris (see the entry on the Badshahnama in this Encyclopaedia).

  • 21 Begley & Desai, 1990.

19The Badshahnama is an excellent example of how an emperor’s ideological inclinations, his religious views or simply his personal tastes had a major bearing on the manner in which the official chronicles were written. Thus, shortly after coming to power, Shah Jahan decided that each decade of his reign was to be treated as a separate volume since he considered the number ten to be an auspicious one. He was for instance the tenth ruler in direct descent from his ancestor Timurlane whom he held in high esteem and whose title inspired him to have himself referred to as Sahib‑i Qiran‑i Sani (“The second Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction”). Moreover, in what is often cited as an example of Shah Jahan’s orthodox religious outlook, he did a major volte face regarding the chronological organization of the history in his tenth year in power, decreeing that the regnal years would from then onwards be calculated as per the Islamic lunar calendar and not on the basis of the Persian solar one as had been the practice since the times of his predecessors. The newly appointed chronicler Lahori thus had to revise the entire first volume and rewrite it according to lunar reckoning. The final work, incidentally, makes no mention of the fact that an earlier version had been written on a different pattern as this would have implied inconsistency on the emperor’s part and shown him in an unfavourable light, nor was any reference made to the other historians who had contributed to the project in its initial stages.21

  • 22 Butler Brown, 2007.
  • 23 Storey, 1989.

20Towards the close of Shah Jahan’s reign, the war of succession that broke out between his four sons ended with the victorious claimant to the throne being crowned as Abu’l Muzaffar Muhi al‑Din Muhammad Aurangzeb ‛Alamgir (1618‑1707), the sixth and last of the great Mughal emperors. Muhammad Kazim’s (?‑1681) ‛Alamgirnama (“The Book of the World‑conqueror”) is the official history of his first decade in power. It is a classic court chronicle, written in ornate prose and centred around the ruler’s person, partisan in nature and critical of Aurangzeb’s rival brothers. The composition of official chronicles is said to have then been discontinued as, in the words of one of the historians (Saqi Musta‛idd Khan), “the lord of the apparent and hidden worlds, cognisant of their lofty and lowly secrets, preferred laying the foundations of esoteric structures to the display of external signs”. This decision has traditionally been linked to the much maligned sovereign’s excessively pious nature and his disdain for personal glorification. However, as more recent studies on Aurangzeb have pointed out, the writing of historical works did not end as such and accounts of the reign continued to be produced by individuals at their own initiative.22 For instance, the emperor himself granted permission for the MiratAlam (“Mirror of the World”), a universal history commencing from Creation and ending with Aurangzeb’s times, authored by Bakhtawar Khan (?‑1684), a scholarly eunuch and one of his close confidants, to be published (by which we mean that the work secured official approval paving the way for the preparation of copies for circulation) after its author’s death. Among the other significant contemporary sources are the Futuhat‑i Alamgiri (“Victories of the World‑conqueror”), which covers the period dating from the war of succession to the thirty‑fourth year of the reign (1690‑1691) by Isardas Nagar (1655‑ after 1749) who held some minor administrative posts and the Tarikh‑i Dilkasha (“Exhilarating history”), completed in 1708‑0179, the personal recollections of Bhimsen, who served during the military campaigns in the Deccan.23 On Aurangzeb’s demise, Saqi Musta‘idd Khan (c. 1650‑1723), another former munshi, prepared an abridged version of the ‛Alamgirnama. Completed in 1710, this succinct and factual account, devoid of the verbosity of the original, was known as the Maasir‑i Alamgiri (“Illustrious acts of the World‑conqueror”). The existence of these narratives, and some other lesser‑known ones, all of them authored by individuals who were part of the imperial administration, confirms the fallacy of the view that history writing as an exercise ceased after the first decade of Aurangzeb’s reign.

Imperial Decline and the Rise of Successor States: Writing History from the Periphery

  • 24 Marshall, 1985; Storey, 1989.

21As Mughal power waned over the first half of the eventful and much debated eighteenth century, so did much of the patronage that had been granted to artists and men of letters in former times. The dynamism was now increasingly shifting towards the new political dispensations that emerged following the disintegration of the Mughal empire. Historical works nevertheless continued to be produced both in Delhi and in the lately autonomous regional centres. While some of these chronicles, in keeping with standard practice, dwelt upon the reigns of the earlier members of the Timurid ruling house, others broke with tradition and commenced their narrative from Aurangzeb’s death. Yet others confined themselves to the description of an event of contemporary importance: a military campaign or a foreign invasion. A number of them were predominantly regional histories dealing with happenings in Sind, Punjab, Bengal or Hyderabad.24 As many of these later works have remained in manuscript form and not been translated, relatively less attention has been devoted to them by most modern scholars.

  • 25 Haq, 1975; Syed, 1977.
  • 26 Storey, 1989.

22One of the most authoritative chronicles dating from this period is the Muntakhab al‑Lubab (“The Quintessential Selection”), a general history ranging from the Muslim conquest of India to the middle of the reign of Emperor Muhammad Shah (1702‑1748), the second volume of which deals with the Mughals. The author, Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan (c. 1663‑c. 1731), had formerly been employed as news‑writer in the provinces. Although criticized for his penchant for quoting almost verbatim from earlier sources without citing them (these being Muhammad Sadiq’s Shahjahan‑nama and Abu’l Fazl Ma’muri’s untitled account of Aurangzeb’s reign), the work nonetheless provides us with an invaluable, somewhat nostalgic view of the Mughal past.25 Another important contemporary source, the Siyar a‑Mutaʾakhkhirin (“A Review of Modern Times”), relates, in addition to a history of India from the death of Aurangzeb to 1781, the steady implantation of colonial rule in Bengal. Its writer, Ghulam Husain Khan Tabataba’i, epitomizes those times of transition, having served both the nominal Emperor Shah ʿAlam (r. 1759‑1806) and the British.26

Conclusion

23Amidst the commonly formulated criticisms of Mughal court chronicles has been their elitist perception of history, a portrayal of the past that is almost entirely centred around the lives and deeds of members of the ruling political classes. The subaltern milieu and its preoccupations are hardly ever deemed worthy of being treated in detail (sections of the Ain‑i Akbari could, in certain ways, be considered as rare exceptions). When issues concerning the common masses are evoked, such as their sufferings during natural calamities and the benefits they derived from imperial largesse, this is done to highlight a ruler’s magnanimity and concern for his subjects’ welfare. Another often pointed out shortcoming is that the description of the activities of those in power is confined to the events in the public sphere: within court, during military campaigns and in times of outdoor festivities. The happenings in the private domain, such as their interactions with the members of the zenana, remain strictly out of bounds.

24The manner in which many (albeit not all) official histories portray the Mughal emperors as paragons of religiosity and bulwarks of Islam, engendered considerable misconceptions regarding the nature of their rule amidst nineteenth and twentieth century historians and indeed continues to do so even today. Taking this rhetoric at its face value coupled with the tendency to perceive the past through what has been referred to as the “blurred looking-glass of the present” led several British scholars of the colonial era and later their Indian nationalist counterparts to assign a greater place to religion in the polity of the Mughal and other Indo‑Muslim states than was probably actually the case. A number of enduring clichés were thus born regarding the alleged large‑scale forced conversion of members of the non‑Muslim majority and the desecration of Hindu places of worship. As more recent studies have revealed, in the functioning of these regimes, religious considerations often had a secondary role to play as compared to more pragmatic and material ones.

  • 27 Deshpande, 2007; Chatterjee, 2008.
  • 28 A case for Brajbhasha, for instance, is presented in Busch, 2010.

25On a more positive note, the Mughal court chronicles contributed significantly to the dissemination of Persianized influences amidst the diverse historical traditions that flourished in various vernacular languages during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. The later bakhars (narrative accounts composed as biographies of rulers, genealogies of eminent families or descriptions of momentous battles) that emerged in the Maratha domain and the mangalkavyas (corpus of narrative poetry often dealing with mythological themes but also serving to eulogize the lineage of patrons and transmitted as per written or oral traditions) popular amongst a wide spectrum of social classes in Bengal selectively incorporated stylistic and formulaic features and terminology from the Mughal official histories.27 Of late, scholars have stressed upon the need to break the hegemony of court chronicles and give due recognition to hitherto relatively disregarded non-Persian language sources in order to arrive at a more balanced understanding of early‑modern India.28

Bibliographie

Books

Alam Muzaffar, 2004, The Languages of Political Islam, India 1200‑1800, Hurst and Co, London, 344 p. [9788132110286]

Askari Syed Hasan (trans.), Shaikh Zain Khan Khwafi, 1982, Tabaqa‑i Baburi, Idarah‑I Adabiyat‑i Dilli, Delhi.

Begley Wayne & Desai Ziauddin (eds.), ‛Inayat Khan, 1990, Shahjaha‑nama, translated by Fuller Abraham, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

Dale Stephen, 2004, The Garden of Eight Paradises, Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483‑1530), Brill, Leiden‑Boston, 538 p. [9789004137073]

Deshpande Prachi, 2007, Creative Pasts, Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700‑1960, Columbia University Press, New York, 320 p. [9788178242071].

Haq S. Moinul, 1975, Khafi Khan’s History of ‛Alamgir: being an English translation of the relevant portions of the Muntakhab‑ul Lubab, Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, 577 p.

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Papers and Contributions to Books

Anooshahr Ali, 2006, “Mughal Historians and the Memory of the Islamic Conquest of India”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol43, no 3, p. 275‑300.

Anooshahr Ali, 2012, “Author of One’s fate: Fatalism and Agency in Indo‑Persian Histories”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 49, n2, p. 197‑224.

Busch Alison, 2010, “Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha poets at the Mughal Court”, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 44, n2, Cambridge University Press, p. 267‑309.

Butler Brown Katherine, 2007, “Did Aurangzeb Ban Music? Questions for the Historiography of His Reign”, Modern Asian Studies, vol 41, no 1, p. 77‑120.

Chatterjee Kumkum, 2008, “The Persianization of Itihasa: Performance, Narratives and Mughal Political Culture in Eighteenth Century Bengal”, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, n2, p. 513‑543.

Dale Stephen, 2012 [2004], “Indo‑Persian historiography” in Encyclopaedia Iranica.

Digby Simon, 2001, “The Indo‑Persian Historiography of the Lodi Sultans” in Grimal François (ed.), Les Sources et le Temps (Sources and Time), Institut français de Pondichéry‑École française d’Extrême‑Orient, Pondichery, p. 243‑264.

Gibb Hamilton, 1962, “Tarikh” in Shaw Stanford & Polk William, Studies on the Civilisation of Islam, Beacon Press, Boston p. 108‑137.

Notes

1 Alam, 2004.

2 Rao, Shulman and Subrahmanyam, 2003.

3 Rosenthal, 1968; Gibb, 1982.

4 Hardy, 1997.

5 Dale, 2004 and 2012; Thackston,1993.

6 Askari, 1982.

7 Thackston,1996.

8 Hosein, 1940.

9 Digby, 2001.

10 Digby, 2001.

11 Kumar, 2007, Anooshahr, 2012.

12 Anooshahr, 2012.

13 Storey, 1989, see below.

14 Richards, 1997.

15 Storey, 1989.

16 Anooshahr, 2006.

17 Marshall, 1985 and Lefevre, 2005.

18 Lefèvre, 2005.

19 Lefèvre, 2005.

20 Begley & Desai, 1990.

21 Begley & Desai, 1990.

22 Butler Brown, 2007.

23 Storey, 1989.

24 Marshall, 1985; Storey, 1989.

25 Haq, 1975; Syed, 1977.

26 Storey, 1989.

27 Deshpande, 2007; Chatterjee, 2008.

28 A case for Brajbhasha, for instance, is presented in Busch, 2010.

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