The different strands of cosmopolitanism, the hallmarks of Deccan identity, came together on Wednesday at a day-long seminar on ‘Cosmopolitan Deccan’ at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University.
Seema Alavi built and shared her research on Indian Muslim scholars who travelled the world, dodged power-centres and tried to carve a niche for themselves beyond flat identities between British empire and the Ottoman Empire.
Ms. Alavi, whose “Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire” triggered new ways of seeing identities, spoke about Syed Fadl, who travelled from Malabar in present day Kerala to the edge of Empire. “They tested kinship, trade, commerce, and information networks and brought together the political economies and cultures of the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean worlds while retaining their self-identity,” said Ms. Alavi, professor of history at Ashoka University.
Two practising fabric designers, Ariba Khanam and Binil Mohan, shared how Kalamkari designs, created and crafted in the Coromandel region, reflected the world.
Heritage conservation consultant Sajjad Shahid linked the evolved language of Deccani with food habits, dress and architecture. He spotlighted poets who travelled from elsewhere in the country and decided to settle down by singing peans about the land and the people in Deccan.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India> Telangana / by The Hindu Bureau / September 18th, 2024
Seema Alavi’s narrative is about the little known stories of five Islamic men of learning who played key roles in the 1857 rebellion against the British, fled India and made their way to west Asia, notes Dr Asiya Alam.
Book: Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire Author: Seema Alavi Publisher: Harvard University Press Pages: 504 Price: Rs 495
In Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire, Seema Alavi makes an admirable and successful attempt to rethink some key assumptions of South Asian and global history. Specifically, the book inserts into history five important Muslim men of religion, including Sayyid Fadl, Rahmatullah Kairanwi, Haji Imdadullah Makki, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan and Maulana Jafer Thanesri, who were hounded by the British government for their role in 1857 and fled India to seek their fortunes in different cities of the Ottoman Empire.
Alavi’s broader aim is to challenge the paradigms of empire-based, global history. The “contours of global history need to be redrawn at the porous intersection of the British and Ottoman Empires” she argues. By focusing on Indian Muslims instead of Britons as key players, she offers new insights into the understanding of imperialism. Located at the cusp of British and Ottoman empires, these men became significant actors in trans-Asia politics of the 19th century involving the British, Arab polities, Ottomans and the Russian Empire.
Alavi skilfully demonstrates how Mughal pathways of trade and Sufi networks along with later British and Ottoman imperial connections and technological innovations in print, communications and shipping enabled these men to flee in the aftermath of 1857 and travel across the Indian Ocean.
To contextualise the lives of these five men, Alavi hypothesizes the emergence of a ‘Muslim cosmopolis’ in the 19th century, characterized by an intellectual sensibility as well as global networks that allowed these men to navigate imperial boundaries. The cosmopolitan sensibility constituted the eclecticism and compromised of Delhi Naqshbandi Sufi Shah Waliullah reflecting the social diversity of India; proficiency in Arabic, Persian and Urdu that aided these men to access both Indo-Persian society and Middle Eastern Arabic world; and support for Ottoman reforms that advocated ideas of science, reason and rationality. Alavi writes that the Muslim cosmopolis provided a ‘perfect global canvas’ for Ottoman Caliph Abd-al Hamid II to execute his reforms. Muslim emigres, in turn, brought back their cosmopolitanism to India, creating global interconnectedness between Middle-Eastern and South Asian societies.
Alavi also adds new discoveries to South Asian history. The multilingualism of these religious scholars isn’t accidental but an outcome of the Arabicist cultural and intellectual grid that emerged in South Asia in the late 18th and early 19th century. Exemplified by Shah Waliullah, Alavi argues it was based on compromise between the “more liberal Sufi saint Ibn-i Arabi and the conservative Naqshbandi Sufi sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi” which “produced an India-specific Arabic tradition with its stress on the individual, scriptures and social leveling” so that “religious knowledge was slowly disembodied from its hitherto inaccessible encasings: the person of the king, the body of the Sufi saint and single-copy Persian manuscripts”. Alavi attributes this gradual transition to the larger Mughal crisis, its disintegration in the late 18th century.
After laying out this rich, historical backdrop, Alavi foregrounds the individual, devoting a separate chapter to each of the five men, who have their own brand of Muslim cosmopolitanism. The life of Sayyid Fadl highlights the large presence of Arabs — immigrant and Deccan born — in Hyderabad, and signifies ethnic ambiguity and territorial connections of the ‘Indian Arab’, a category coined by the British. Rahmatullah Kairanwi’s life suggests a concern with cosmopolitan education. He started a madrasa in Mecca to combine religious and scientific learning offering a critique of the intellectual environment of the Hijaz that would later become a model for the Deoband seminary.
Haji Imdadullah Makki’s career suggests a vibrant culture of Muslim cosmopolitanism in Mecca, blending different Sufi orders, Naqshbandi reformism and a middle ground on religious issues. Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan was based in Bhopal and his political career and publications indicate his use of imperial networks and print technologies to further his ideas and connections with the Ottoman world.
Finally, Maulana Jafer Thanesri’s writings highlight a notion of ‘mulk’ or ‘felt community’ and his ideas of ‘Hind’ produced a proto-nationalist critique of British discrimination. In each of these lives, Alavi questions a pan-Islamic approach and repeatedly shows that they weren’t only motivated by religion but operated within imperial rivalries and opportunistically pushed their careers, ambitions and desires.
This excellent book subverts dominant frameworks of our past and should be necessary reading for anyone interested in South Asian and global history.
(Dr Asiya Alam is an Islamic Studies scholar at Nirmala Niketan College.)
source: http://www.dnaindia.com / DNA / Home> Lifestyle / by Asiya Aslam / December 05th, 2017
Muzaffar Alam’s ‘The Mughals and the Sufis’ is a remarkable and original work of scholarship.
Mughal emperor Jahangir chooses the Sufis. | Public Domain
The literature on the precepts of Sufism and the chronicles of its saints across various orders has a deep and prodigious lineage: from the great Kashf al-Mahjub of al-Hujwiri and the Risala of al-Qushayri, through Abdul Rahman Jaami’s Nufahat-ul-Uns, the wonderfully lucid Sakinat ul Auliya and Safinat ul Auliya, written by the 17th century Mughal Crown Prince Dara Shukoh, to the monumental compendium, A History of Sufism, by Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, in our own times. The examination of the subtle and complicated interplay between religious doctrine, political influence, legitimacy and kingship throughout the Islamic period in India, though, is more recent.
Muzaffar Alam’s earlier book, The Languages of Political Islam in India c 1200-1800, published in 2004, was an important contribution to this discourse. It offered a fresh perspective by decoding the political vocabulary of those times to reveal the calibrations in theology, injunction and juridical practice, as Islam gradually became more “Indianised”.
In his new book, The Mughals and the Sufis – Islam and Political Imagination in India: 1500–1750, Alam once again breaks new ground, this time by harmonising two major domains of scholarship – Mughal History and Indian Islam – honed with painstaking care over a lifetime of study. What emerges is a highly nuanced and complex examination of the relationship between Mughal political culture and the two dominant strains of Islam’s Sufi traditions in South Asia: one centred around orthodoxy, the other focusing on a more inclusive and mystical spirituality.
The Sufi trajectory
The constituent chapters in the book, which can also be studied as stand-alone essays, chart the trajectory of the various Sufi silsilas and their principal actors, from the early, tenuous days of Babur and Humayun, through the 16th and 17th centuries, as the imperial position shifted from the more liberal outlook of Emperor Akbar (r 1556–1605) to the rigid attitudes of his great-grandson, Aurangzeb ’Alamgir (r 1658–1701).
Alam premises his critical study on a large number of contemporary Persian texts, court chronicles, epistolary collections, and biographies of Sufi mystics. Interestingly, the Maktubat-i Khwaja Muhammad Saif al-Din, compiled by Muhammad A’zam, Khwaja Muhammad Nasib Andalib’s Nala-i’ Andalib, and Muhammad Akram bin Shaikh Muhammad Ali’s Sawati‘al-Anwar are accorded no less importance than the staple Akbarnama or Badauni’s Muntakhab al-Tawarikh, known to every student of Mughal history.
This particular approach to Alam’s programme of study for his latest book serves two functions. First, his focus on relatively lesser-known figures and their writings, as well as many rare manuscripts, automatically inducts these long-underutilised texts into the bibliographical repertoire of mainstream historical research. Second, his own investigations enable Alam to challenge popular notions about the Sufis, upend unitonal hagiographic narratives of Sufi silsilas, and provide an alternate system of coordinates through which to view our cultural and religious history, in the process, reorienting our understanding of political Islam during the Mughal period.
A fundamental aspect of reappraisal is the relationship of a Sufi leader with the Mughal emperor. The usual perception is that the sole function of a Sufi saint was to be a spiritual pir (preceptor) for his murids (disciples), including those of royal blood. Alam cites numerous instances to the contrary, following a tradition that harked back to the Naqshbandi Sufis of Timurid times.
One of the key figures to emerge in this context is Khwaja ’Ubaid-Allah Ahrar, whose disciples included Timurid rulers and a number of their vassals throughout Central Asia. He and several of his descendants claimed they were not spiritual masters alone, but also the source of strength and assistance in the dispensation of politics as well as power struggles.
Although Khwaja Ahrar had died several years before Babur appeared at the threshold of Hindustan, the latter nevertheless ascribed many of his military achievements to the benediction of the pir. Most famously, at the Battle of Panipat against Ibrahim Lodhi in 1526, Babur, facing an enemy force that vastly outnumbered his own, is said to have meditated upon the image of the Khwaja, who then appeared as a horseman dressed in white, routing the Afghans.
Breaking myths
The Mughals and the Sufis also dispels some lingering stereotypes around the positions of the pirs in the Chishti and Naqshbandi orders. For instance, the Chishti pirs didn’t necessarily find ready disciples in the early Mughals and winning their allegiance was no trivial matter. A case in point is Shaikh ’Abd al-Quddus Gangohi, a member of the Sabiri branch of the Chishti order.
Khwaja Gangohi was a prominent preceptor of the Afghan elite at the Lodhi court, in fact, very nearly – the official royal pir. But as Babur established his supremacy in northern India through a series of brilliant, swift military campaigns, it took all of the Khwaja’s wisdom, tact and diplomacy, to reconcile himself to the rapidly changing realities. For his very vocal support of the Afghans, he had to suffer humiliation at the hands of the Mughals.
A similar stereotype concerns the perception of the non-inclusive, intransigent position of the Naqshandis throughout their history, as something of a monolith. Alam shows that the fervour of orthodoxy did sustain itself, from the pirs who were contemporaries of Amir Timur, to the Ahraris in the 15th and 16th centuries, through to the strident conservatism of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi and his followers in the 17th century. Aurangzeb’s unwavering support of the Naqshbandis ensured that the family of Shaikh Sirhindi enjoyed a favoured position at the imperial court.
Not only did this influence continue well after Alamgir’s reign, evidence is sighted of its influence outside the court in Delhi, for instance in literary circles, and beyond the capital, making inroads among sections of the civil society in Awadh, hitherto firmly entrenched in the Chishti-Sabiri tradition.
Through the following two centuries, however, Alam explains how a more muted and inclusive tenor of discourse developed within the Naqshbandi order, their change in position underscored by the triple forces of reformism, revivalism and modernism or Westernisation. Certainly, challenges from the West played a material role in changing the approach of modern Muslim intellectuals to Sufism.
Underlying many of the discussions are themes of influence, rivalry and conflict. Documentary evidence points to Sufis playing a role in informing and modulating imperial policy. Likewise, it is shown how the struggle for supremacy among rival princes (and princesses) was mirrored in the rise and fall of imperial allegiance to various silsilas.
Thus, when Akbar, at the peak of his religious innovations, is confronted by the outraged Naqshabandis, it is the latter who have to recant. And not long after Aurangzeb ascends the throne as the emperor Alamgir, Dara Shukoh’s Qadiri pir, Mullah Shah, is summoned to the imperial court and interrogated by the ’ulama. When it comes to a deeply critical and iconoclastic element of the Sufis, such as Sarmad Kashani, nothing less than execution would satisfy the emperor and conservative clergy. Viewed through this prism, the narrative of political Islam appears as a glazed mirror of the vicissitudes of princely wars of succession, and the leanings and idiosyncrasies of successive emperors.
What the women did
One of the criticisms that is often levelled against the academic patriarchy of medieval history is its scant attention to the women of the imperial household, their role and influence in contemporary politics and decisions that morphed and changed the empire. In this regard, the chapter-essay, “Piety, Poetry, and the Contested Loyalties of Mughal Princesses, c 1635-1700”, is a welcome inclusion in the present volume.
The legend of Jahanara, as the other-worldly princess who eschewed imperial titles in favour of the sobriquet of al Fakira, is well known. What is less well-known, though, are her allegiances to specific Sufi pirs and silsilas, and those of her sister, Roshanara, and her niece, Aurangzeb’s daughter, Zebunissa. This essay juxtaposes the contrasting religious beliefs and mystical leanings of these three ladies of the imperial household, despite their common upbringing.
Jahanara, even though she was initiated into the Qadiri sect, continued to retain a close spiritual affinity for the Chishti saints, in particular, Nizamuddin Auliya. Her choice is both a continuation of the pluralistic ethos instituted as imperial policy by Akbar, and a reflection of the deeply syncretic views of her favourite brother, Dara Shukoh – views that she wholeheartedly shared with him.
Roshanara played a far less public role than her sister, although she was a shrewd political observer, and increasingly, a key player in the filial strife that led to the War of Succession in 1657, ending with Aurangzeb’s ascendancy to the throne. Her close connection with the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi order saw her acting as a mediator, during the attempts made by the sect to expand their influence over the entire imperial zenana.
Their sustained efforts to maintain dealings with the princess Zebunissa notwithstanding, the latter was far more inclined towards the practice and patronage of literary pursuits, than to the encouragement of the Mujaddidi brand of Islamic revival.
In a volume that offers much new perspective, the most insightful and striking essay is the penultimate chapter, “In Search of a Sacred King, Dara Shukoh and the Yogavsisthas of Mughal India”. In the author’s estimate, the Mughal Empire finds its intellectual and spiritual apotheosis not in the figure of Akbar, but Dara Shukoh, who, he boldly asserts, “is a step ahead of his great grandfather, Akbar”.
With this, Alam breaks with an unbroken line of rather uncritical adulation as regards Akbar that has stretched across generations of historians. For all his astute matrimonial alliances with Rajput chieftains, within the pecking order of the Hindu caste system, Akbar could only aspire to the status of a Kshatriya, Alam points out. Dara’s quest was far loftier – like Visvamitra, he sought to synthesise and embody the dual powers of the Kshatriya Raja and the Brahmin Rishi.
Akbar’s interest in Hindu scriptures, mythology and epics such as the Mahabharata reflect his curiosity about India’s political culture, but there was no great imperative for him to imbibe Indic norms of governance. In contrast, Dara’s project of translating the Yogavasistha goes well beyond intellectual curiosity or the inclination to recognise alternative formulations of spirituality. He becomes deeply immersed in the text, to the point of inhabiting it.
For Dara, the book is not only a philosophical treatise, worthy of study for a syncretic practicing Sufi – but a political manifesto – as the Crown Prince grapples with the eternal conflict between spiritual truth and temporal power. Rama Chandra is not the indigenous god from a hoary past but, in Dara’s dream, Lord Rama is a fellow-seeker of Truth, an elder brother.
In his quest for mystical and spiritual learning, Dara had perused the texts of several religious cultures, including his own. But it is only in the Yogavasistha, Alam proposes, that Dara finally found his model for the saint-king, one on which he wished to build the moral foundations of his own reign.
In a refracted light, The Mughals and the Sufis can perhaps be seen as an intellectual self-portrait, painted in the hues of scholarship, investigation and analysis. Now approaching his mid-70s, Alam remains as indefatigable as ever, poring over forgotten texts and rare manuscripts, to reveal the haqa’iq wa ma’arif (realities and truths) hidden within them.
The Mughals and the Sufis – Islam and Political Imagination in India: 1500-1750, Muzaffar Alam, Permanent Black.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Review / by Avik Chanda / April 28th, 2021
History professor Seema Alavi from Delhi University addressing an international history seminar at Farook College on Monday
Two major colleges of Malabar are jointly hosting an international history seminar in honour of well-known academic P.P. Abdul Razak, who is retiring soon from P.S.M.O. College, Tirurangadi, as its History Department head.
Calicut University Vice Chancellor K. Mohammed Basheer inaugurated the seminar on ‘Early modern and colonial in history: concepts and cases in South Asia’ at Farook College on Monday.
Dr. Basheer called upon historians and researchers to take a diversion from the traditional methods of historiography. He exhorted them to widen the study of history by including the colloquial languages and local history.
“History should be linked to the lives of ordinary people,” he said. Several reputed historians, including Seema Alavi from Delhi University, Mahmood Kooria from Leiden University, Nirmal Renjit Devasiri from Colombo University, K.N. Ganesh and K.S. Madhavan from Calicut University, are attending the two-day meet.
Farook College principal K.M. Naseer presided. T. Mohammedali, head of History Department at Farook College, welcomed the gathering. Kerala History Congress general secretary N. Gopakumaran Nair, Farook College History Old Students Association president P. Ramdas, Vijaya Lakshmi from Malayalam University spoke. K. Lukmanul Hakeem from Government Arts and Science College, Kozhikode, proposed a vote of thanks. While Farook College hosted it on the first day, PSMO College, Tirurangadi, will host the proceedings on Tuesday.
The National Higher Education Mission is supporting the seminar jointly organised by Farook College and PSMO College in association with the Social History Collective, Kozhikode.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Staff Reporter / Malappuram – March 05th, 2019
