Tag Archives: Mughal Emperor Akbar

Akbar The Great Mughal: The Definitive Biography’ review: Light from many faiths

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NEW DELHI :

In Ira Mukhoty’s narrative, Emperor Akbar is an able reformer, the earliest advocate of inter-religion dialogue, and marked for greatness because of his quality of empathy

Charismatic, curious, catholic, compassionate — Emperor Akbar (1542-1605) has long exercised the imagination of Indians of all hues. For the lay person, he is the lumbering giant with the booming voice and grand moustache as depicted by the actor Prithviraj Kapoor in K. Asif’s magnum opus Mughal-e-Azam (1960); while ostensibly a love story between Akbar’s son, Salim, and Anarkali, the film belongs to the father in the eponymous role of the Great Mughal.

For the liberals, Akbar is the embodiment of pluralism, multiculturalism and the earliest advocate of inter-faith dialogue.

For the right-wing ultra-nationalists he is the most ‘tolerable’ of all the Muslim rulers for his reverence for all faiths and abolition of the religious tax, jiziya, from non-Muslims.

An Indian icon’

From school textbooks to the Akbar-Birbal qissa-kahani to popular culture, Akbar has consistently remained an Indian icon.

Several books too have been written on him, both by the professional historian and by non-academic but extremely engaged and passionate writers. In the latter category are two recent books, both eminently readable and both written by journalists: the simply-titled Akbar by Shazi Zaman and Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today’s India by Manimugdha Sharma. Ira Mukhoty’s gargantuan book is nevertheless a welcome addition.

However, her assertion that “few full-length biographies have been written in recent times” is not entirely true. One is also wary of the sub-title; “definitive” biography sounds like a publisher’s overkill, for a book’s size alone (over 600 pages) cannot define its scope nor ward off any future explorations on the subject.

Given the absence of Endnotes, Bibliography and Index in the uncorrected proof copy sent for review, one is unable to fully gauge the extent of sources and primary texts studied by the author and whether, if at all, she has accessed Persian sources that have largely been beyond the reach of non-academic writers relying as they do on English translations.

One is, however, struck by two curious omissions by the author. One: footnotes to indicate where quoted matter is sourced from.

Two, a similar omission in the photographs of Mughal miniatures; more detailed captions and information about sources would have been helpful given, especially, that the book focuses on the role played by the royal ateliers (tasvir khanas) in chronicling the lives of the royal patrons and leaving behind a vast visual archive of Mughal history, a rich load that is now being mined by art historians as a supplement to recorded history.

Access to a king

Mukhoty’s strength as a writer lies in her ability to recreate a scene, flesh out characters, find the human element, in a word, narrate history.

Her previous book, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire, contained ample evidence of her sophisticated prose and her felicity in providing a luminous account of the many women who lived in the shadow of their men yet led remarkable lives during the Mughal period. Here, too, she impresses with her ability to make history accessible in ways that professional historians sometimes don’t, or can’t.

Mukhoty shows her mettle as a narrator virtually from the opening paragraph where she describes two young hostages, a young Akbar and his sister, on their way to meet their uncle Kamran: “In the frigid mid-winter of 1544, two children were sent north from Kandahar to Kabul, 500 kilometres away. While the snow fell silently and relentlessly on a desolate landscape, the small party stumbled on through the mountain passes and ravines, their horses’ steaming breath loud in the night.”

She goes on to chart the growth of that terrified child upon whom the weight of being Emperor of Hindustan is thrust at the tender age of 13 when his father, Humayun, dies unexpectedly: “In fact, Akbar was a distracted, undisciplined, rambunctious child and youth who, in the parlance of the twenty-first century, may have suffered from an attention-deficit disorder. So unruly and self-willed was Akbar that no tutor was able to hold his attention and he grew up effectively unschooled and practically illiterate.”

Pioneering genius

And yet this young emperor would evolve into a fine human being, a patron of the arts, initiator of some of the greatest works of translation not to mention a pioneer in ship-building, metallurgy, alchemy, military technology as well as administrative reforms. Mukhoty shows us the man behind the emperor who brought in the largest territory — after Ashoka and his Mauryan empire — under his control.

Despite Akbar’s intellectual curiosity, his epiphany at the age of 36, his visionary idea of sulha kul (universal peace), it is his compassion and empathy that marks him for greatness. As he said in one of his proclamations: ‘The best prayer is service to humanity.’

Akbar The Great Mughal: The Definitive Biography; Ira Mukhoty, Aleph, ₹999.

The reviewer is a writer, translator and literary historian.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Reviews / by Rakshanda Jalil / June 13th, 2020

Tomb of Kashmir’s last Muslim ruler lies in ruins at Nalanda

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Biswak Village – Nalanda, BIHAR  :

Yusuf Shah Chak, the last independent Muslim Ruler of Kashmir Valley, is buried in Nalanda and his tomb is in disrepair and unprotected.

Yasir Iqbal, a descendant of Yusuf Shah Chak, at the tomb of Kashmir’s last Muslim ruler’s grave in Nalanda. (HT Photo )
Yasir Iqbal, a descendant of Yusuf Shah Chak, at the tomb of Kashmir’s last Muslim ruler’s grave in Nalanda. (HT Photo )

With the Centre revoking Article 370 which gave special status to J&K, the Kashmir Valley is once again in focus. But Yusuf Shah Chak. the last independent Muslim ruler of the Valley, has remained obscured and unknown for a long time.

Chak is buried in Nalanda and his tomb is in disrepair and unprotected.

Chak was exiled to Bihar by the Mughal emperor Akbar. The area where he had settled along with his family and relatives in Biswak village in Nalanda and also maintained a cavalry force of 500 horses, was later known as Kashmiri Chak. Though the exiled Kashmiri ruler died in Odisha in 1592, his body was brought to Bihar and has been lying buried along with the tombs of his wife, sons and other relatives at the graveyard at Biswak near Kashmiri Chak.

Though his Mazaar is encircled with boundary wall, the land outside this wall at the cemetery is open and has remained prone to encroachments in the past. Some concrete structures and thatched roof hutments too have come up around its periphery.

Earlier, some locals erected a boundary wall around his Mazaar, but the entire area of the cemetery outside this wall is open to encroachment.

A view of the ‘mazar’ of Yusuf Shah Chak, the last Muslim ruler of Kashmir Valley. ( HT Photo )
A view of the ‘mazar’ of Yusuf Shah Chak, the last Muslim ruler of Kashmir Valley. ( HT Photo )

Recently, Yasir Iqbal, a descendant of the Chak ruler’s relative, wrote a letter to the Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, drawing the attention towards the increasing threats of encroachments at the site of the cemetery .

He has made an appeal to take steps to stop encroachment and has also requested for the boundary wall at the cemetery. In the letter, Iqbal also made requests to preserve this piece of history and to take initiatives to tap tourism potential of the site.

“The minority welfare department has forwarded the request letter to the department concerned which is responsible for creating the boundary walls at graveyards and has directed to take actions as necessary,” SI Faisal, special secretary cum director, minority welfare department, said.

The site has a great tourism potential and it can be tapped. “But it’s the domain of the tourism department. They should take initiatives in this direction and should develop it,” he said.

Yasir Iqbal said many Kashmiris have been eager to come here to pay tribute to their last ruler. “Many intellectuals have also been coming here, but the place lack even basic infrastructure. Even the road to Kashmiri Chak village was developed in 1977 when Sheikh Abdulla, the prominent leader of Kashmir had arrived to witness Yusuf Shah’s tomb” he said. There is also no place at the village to stay. “You have to find the accommodation whether at Islampur or at Rajgir,” he said.

However, the biggest concern has been encroachment of the land. “The cemetery is spread over five acre land area at Biswak and over one acre land at Kashmiri Chak. But the tombs of Yusuf Shah, his wife and sons for decades remained unknown. There was almost a jungle around it and the tombs were hardly visible. Then we got it constructed a few years ago. But the area outside is still open and is being encroached inch by inch. Some concrete structures and thatched roof hutments have also come up on its border areas,” he said.

Yusuf Shah Chak ruled Kashmir from 1579 to 1586. In 1579 he was deceitfully imprisoned by the Mughal emperor Akbar, but was later released and was exiled to Biswak area of Bihar.

“He had a Mansabdaari of 500 horses. In fact, his love and knowledge of art and literature had impressed Mughal Badshaah and that became the reason for his release. He had married Habba Khatoon, the legendary poetess whose verses are still sung by the locals in Kashmir,” he said.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> India> Cities> Patna / by Reena Sipan, Hindustan Times, Patna / August 07th, 2019

Great dynasties of the world: The Mughals

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INDIA :

Ian Sansom on a clan whose empire became synonymous with India

Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal. / Photograph: dbimages/Alamy
Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal. / Photograph: dbimages/Alamy

In the month of Ramadan of the year 899,” writes the great Babur (1483-1530) in his autobiography, The Baburnama, “and in the 12th year of my age, I became ruler in the country of Fergana.” Babur – his name means “tiger” – inherited the tiny kingdom of Fergana, in what is now Uzbekistan, from his father. The family was descended from Genghis Khan and Tamerlane the Great; Babur the boy-king became the first of the Mughal emperors, a family of Turko-Mongol rulers who, according to the historian Abraham Eraly, “so decisively stamped their personalities on India that the Mughal Empire became, in the public perception, synonymous with India.”

Babur established his empire through conquest, successfully invading India in 1526. His son, Humayun (1508-1556), who succeeded him, came close to losing everything that his father had achieved. It wasn’t until the rule of Akbar (1542-1605), Humayun’s son, that the Mughal Empire was consolidated. Akbar, like Margaret Thatcher, slept only four hours a night. When he was awake, which was most of the time, he set about expanding the Mughal territories abroad and reforming the government at home. He ended the tax imposed on non-Muslims. He invited Jesuit missionaries into his court. And he formed his own religion. Above all, he knew how to make friends as well as enemies. According to his court historian, Abul Fazl, “His majesty forms matrimonial alliances with princes of Hindustan and of other countries; and secures by these ties of harmony the peace of the world.”

Jahangir (1569-1627) succeeded his father, Akbar, in 1605. He preferred to drink and carouse rather than to rule, and his wife, Nur Jahan, took on the responsibility of the state. The fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan (1592-1666), was more like his grandfather Akbar and his great-great-grandfather Babur: a schemer, a man of grand plans and ideas. When his wife, Mumtaz, died in 1631, Shah Jahan was grief-stricken, so much so that, according to one observer, he “gave up the practice of plucking out grey hair from his beard”. He also decided to build his wife a memorial. The English travel writer Peter Mundy described the construction: “The building is begun and goes on with excessive labour and cost, prosecuted with extraordinary dilligence, Gold silver esteemed common Mettal, and Marble but as ordinarie stones.” According to Rudyard Kipling, the place was “the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy, and all things unhappy”. It was the Taj Mahal.

Shah Jahan’s rule ended with a war of succession between his sons, in which Aurangzeb (1618-1707) emerged triumphant. Having killed his brothers, he imprisoned his father. After Aurangzeb the decline of the Mughals began. In 1738, India was invaded by the forces of Nadir Shah, ruler of Iran. Territories were divided. Then the British East India Company moved in.

The last of the long line of Mughal emperors was Bahadur Shah II, known as Zafar. “Personally, he was one of the most talented, tolerant and likeable of his dynasty,” writes William Dalrymple in The Last Mughal  (2006). The first emperor, Babur, had been a warrior. Zafar was an aesthete – a poet and an architect. Alas, empires tend not to survive under aesthetes. “While the British progressively took over more and more of the Mughal Emperor’s power,” writes Dalrymple, “the court busied itself in the obsessive pursuit of the most cleverly turned ghazal, the most perfect Urdu couplet.”

Zafar died in exile in Rangoon in 1862. His courtiers were hanged and much of Mughal Delhi was destroyed. “The death of the ex-King may be said to have had no effect on the Mahomedan part of the populace,” wrote the British commissioner at the time, “except for a few fanatics who watch and pray for the final triumph of Islam.”

source: http://www.theguardian.com / The Guardian – International Edition / Home> Family> Great Dynasties of the World / by Ian Sansom / July 16th, 2019

Revisiting Sheikh Salim Chisti’s tomb

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Fatehpur Sikri (Agra District), UTTAR PRADESH :

Soothing experience: Sheikh Salim Chisti’s tomb in Fatehpur Sikri | Photo Credit: V_V_Krishnan
Soothing experience: Sheikh Salim Chisti’s tomb in Fatehpur Sikri | Photo Credit: V_V_Krishnan

Reminiscing a slow but stimulating journey to Akbar’s capital city

When Marion and Sally, two English teachers of St Thomas’ School, Mandir Marg, set out on a trip to Fatehpur Sikri in 1978, they boarded the last train from Delhi. “It sounds ominous, like the last plane from Da Nang, when South Vietnam was overrun by the Viet Minh,” remarked Sally, “Yes,” recalled Marion. “Many struggled to board the plane. Some were left behind but in the melee an enterprising Western reporter was not only able to capture the heart-wrenching scene, but also played the hero by helping a hysterical woman and her kid take his seat on the plane as he jumped down to shoot what later turned out to be award-winning pictures of the airport scramble.”

The last train from Old Delhi station did not cause any such frenzied commotion. Over 40 years ago it was the one that was supposed to leave just before midnight, but the departure was invariably delayed. From Delhi Main station it ran up to Agra Cantt, its destination, and took seven hours to do so, usually even more. The passenger train had a whole lot of policemen travelling in it. As a matter of fact, right from the ticket window they made their presence felt when they pulled suspicious-looking youths out of the queue and slapped and punched them before asking questions like, “Where are you going? Where did you get the money to buy the ticket? Are you drunk? Who else is travelling along with you? Where do you live?” before searching them with their shirts off and pants down,” the two teachers recalled.

A view of Hiran Minar
A view of Hiran Minar

When they caught the train they didn’t see those young men again. The train made three false starts, provoking someone to remark that the driver was shaking the compartments to fit in more passengers. Finally it started rolling, with several urchins rushing to catch it. By the time the train reached New Delhi station it was nearly 1 a.m. After that the Passenger stopped at every station big or small and as people got down, many were detained and searched by policemen on the platform. But the two girls reached Agra Cantt station safely. From there they were escorted by friends Sam, Lewis and this scribe by car to Sikri.

The shrine at Fatehpur Sikri is one of the most venerated places. Where wild animals once roamed a gem of a monument now greets the eye,” disclosed Sam. “It was here on a hill that Sheikh Salim Chisti dwelt and thither came Akbar the Great to seek his help for the birth of a son and heir apparent. He came on foot, leaving his camels, elephants and horses behind. The hermit sat with a rosary (tasbi) reciting the 99 names of Allah. The emperor’s prayers were heard and his Rajput queen bore a son, Salim, whom Akbar always called Sheikhu Baba, after the saint. Not only that, he built this magnificent city to commemorate the event and dwelt here with his Nine Jewels, like the Nine Worthies of the ancient world. “I have heard about the Nine Jewels,” said Marion, “but who were the Nine Worthies?” “Hector, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon,” replied Sam without batting an eyelid.

Akbar’s legacy

Sam related his tale standing by Sally’s side. She listened, her doe eyes thoughtful. As they approached the trellis of the shrine where people who seek favours tie a thread, she tied one too, making Sam wonder what she had sought. They next went to the Buland Darwaza and saw the town of Sikri spread out before them. Nearby is the water works set up by Akbar and from above the ramparts a man dived 80 feet into the baoli or step-well. They looked aghast. “Just you wait and see,” said Sam as Lewis nodded in approval. Soon a dare-devil emerged and salaam-ed them. They tipped him and he walked away to prepare for another demonstration. “These divers have been continuing the tradition for several centuries. VIPs and common people alike tip them. Perhaps, it will continue so long as there is water in the baoli. But it is a paradox that Akbar, who built a new capital here, had to desert it because of water scarcity.” Sam informed the party. They went down the steps of Buland Darwaza, Sam pointing out the Hiran Minar from where the shikar was shot in Mughal times, though some think that Akbar’s famous elephant was buried there and perhaps that’s why it is also called Elephant Tower.

At Sikri town they had the fabulous 24-layer Mughalia parantha. “Why is this parantha so thick?” enquired Marion. “It could feed one whole family.” “Quite right,” said Sam. “Ask Sally, when we were last here she had to take half the parantha to Delhi where we had it for breakfast the next day and the remainder for lunch.”

“Did Akbar really play with women as chess pieces? “enquired Sally.” Off course he did,” replied Sam. “Don’t talk rubbish. Listening to you one would imagine the great Akbar had nothing else to do but seduce maids of honour”, admonished Lewis. From there the party went to the Taj Mahal and then caught the Taj Express back to Delhi after a memorable day. Marion and Sally are now back in England and Sam works in Bangalore, where Lewis keeps reminding him of the visit whenever he rings up from Kolkata.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture – Down Memory Lane / by R.V. Smith / October 01st, 2018

”Taj – A Monument Of Blood”: New Series On Mughal Empire In The Pipeline

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Agra, UTTAR PRADESH :

The series will capture the dark side of the story of the Mughal empire and had emperors like Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.

Mumbai :

“Taj – A Monument of Blood”, a period drama series on the rise and fall of the the Mughal empire, is set to be produced by Applause Entertainment in partnership with Contiloe Pictures, who are confident of presenting a story with a mix of blood, betrayal, power, beauty, deceit and heartbreak.

The series will capture the dark side of the story of the Mughal empire, which ruled India for just over 3 centuries and had emperors like Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. Writing is currently underway.

The tale will be told over 5 seasons of twelve episodes each, using the birth and death of Shah Jahan as bookends. It will delve deep into the Mongol origins, bloodlines mixing with Persian and Rajput royalty, the court and palace intrigues, the repeated purging of aspirants to the throne, and the arrival of the British and Portuguese.

Sameer Nair of Applause Entertainment calls himself a big fan of revisionist narratives of history.

“Our history books have been written by victors and often paint very two-dimensional pictures about past empires. When Abhimanyu Singh (Contiloe Pictures) and I first discussed this idea, we immediately moved away from a typical historical to a darker and edgier version of the Mughal empire, a version in which symbolically the Taj is more a monument of blood, than a monument of love,” Mr Nair said in a statement.

Mr Singh, who has produced a slew of historicals for the small screen, says the new series will show viewers the historic journey through a fresh lens.

“It will take viewers on a historic journey showing them an unseen perspective of this illustrious dynasty which lead to their rise as the greatest empire in medieval times and the quest for power, within it, that finally lead to its downfall.”

source: http://www.ndtv.com / NDTV / Home> All India / by  Indo-Asian News Service / July 12th, 2018