The Complexity of the Mughal Empire

(Just before I charge on, I should say hello to all Ian's regular readers- for reasons he's outlined below, he has left this blog to my stewardship, I only hope that I give you something to enjoy whilst he is away and well here is an article about India)

The Eurasian landmass has at its peripheries, in Europe, the Middle East, India and China, seen the creation of large imperial states, of civilisations even which have come and gone. The classic narratives of their rise and fall picture them interracting with the Eurasian hinterland- the steppe- in a destructive manner. Either they conquer it or they fall before it- the choices seem to be either the fate of Julius Caesar of the fate of Boethius. But of course the historical options are much more open than that makes them seem- and influences from the steppe have shaped the way that the civilisations at the peripheries have grown and formed.

The example of Europe is an easy one- the influences of the Mongols say upon Russia are so manifestly obvious as to make them almost a historical truism. Isabel de Madariaga's biography of Ivan the Terrible (reviewed by me here) shows how even such a famous Russian prince, so identifiable as an icon of Russian nationality, was married to a Mongol and modelled many of his policies and his court upon Mongol examples. Its always easy though to see how one's own historical backwater has been shaped by outside currents and the general rhythms of the historical sea. The image of the other parts of the periphery though, China and India, as homogenous blocks which have remained purely Indian or Chinese for centuries and are thus available to our orientalising imaginations as China or India through the ages, is much more seductive and difficult to get rid of. Notice some of the rather naive writing about the Arab consciousness from Western journalists and 'experts'.

So this article by Lisa Balabanlilar is a welcome addition to what is available online about India. Its difficult as a Westerner to realise the importance of the Steppe in Indian history- the original Aryans, those who wrote the Vedas- the historical scriptures of Hinduism, came from somewhere in Afghanistan. But Balabanlilar writes about much more recent history and her analysis is fascinating both for revealing how false the idea of 'India' as an unchanging reality is and how false the idea of an unchanging 'Islam' is. Her article concentrates upon the Early Modern Period of Indian history, marked by the invasion and solidification of India by the Mughals. In particular, she focuses on the Emperor Jahangir who reigned from 1605 until 1627. The Mughals were in origin descended from Timur (famous in Europe as Tamerlame) and Genghis Khan, both ferocious Mongol chieftens. Timur who is particularly relevant to the Mughals came from Transoxiana, a region of Uzbekistan roughly 50 miles south of Samarkand.

What Balabanlilar points out is that Mughal history after the conquest of India was exceptionally influenced by the legacy of Timur. They organised their kingdom in the same way that he did, maintaining hereditary customs inherited from his reign long after their related descendents of Timur- the Ottoman and Safavid dynasties in Persia and Turkey had abandoned them. These customs she shows meant that the empire of the Mughals was incredibly unstable- Mongol warlords allowed their sons and brothers to take charge of provinces as governors, giving them thus an easy base for rebellion and after the monarch's death civil war. The Mughals continued with this practice of assigning their heirs governorships- leading to civil war and succession quarrels. (Contrast that with the Ottoman practice of simply killing any alternative heir once a Sultan had come to power.) Politically as well, the Mongol legacy dominated the way that Mughal emperors saw themselves. Continually they felt the pressure to maintain a claim to Samarkand, the birthplace of their dynasty. Jahangir was even acclaimed as a second Timur when he took the throne in 1605 and all the Mughal emperors used Timur's title, son-in-law (reflecting his marriage to an heiress of Genghis Khan) to cement their rule over India.

The impact of Mongolia on Mughal rule of India though was not merely in the political sphere. Balabanlilar has done some incredible work on the culture of the Mughals, on the way for instance that they revered the garden as an icon of culture. The way that Mughal princes summoned to a council would set up tents rather than stay in palaces. She provides fascinating insights into poetry and the routes to patronage that the Mughals offered artists and showed how those have Timuric roots. But it is in the Mughals' attitude to Islam and particularly in their patronage of one particular set of Sufi mystics that Balabanlilar finds perhaps her most interesting evidence of the cultural hang over of Timur. The Mughals needed to be tolerant of other faiths, and by and large they, as Muzzafar Allam has shown, were. But their toleration came clothed in a particular type of Mongol spirituality- they referred to Mongol interpretations of traditional Islamic texts and used the Sufi mystics that Timur himself had used to cement their religious credentials.

This is a fascinating article. Balabanlilar does acknowledge that by the time of Jahangir the world had moved on- envoys from the Mughal empire travelling north now found the climes too cold north of the border. Furthermore Mughal India was affected from other directions- its rulers slowly abandoned their Turkish language (though all the princes were still educated in Turkish until the 18th Century) and used Persian to write with. Likewise Allam has shown how there were strong ties between Indian and Persian Islam at this time and at previous times. The trends within contemporary Hinduism, within the Deccan and within India at large effected the Mughals as much as they effected them. Persia had an influence, so one might think would China have had an influence as well.

Balabanlilar in charting the important influence of the steppe on later Indian politics reminds us once again how fluid the supposed boundaries between civilisations actually are. She has done a wonderful job of showing how the worlds of the Steppe and supposed civilisation met and through the medium of conquest, how Mughal India was a melding together of Mongol and Indian traditions. Breaking down the historiographical barriers and the barriers in the mind between various regions of the world is an enterprise only to be applauded- this article in my assessment fulfills that function admirably!