Cities, Courts, and Saints:

Muslim Cultures of South Asia

September 22, 2012

This conference brings together the leading historians of South Asia and specialists of Indo-Muslim cultures. Its theme of “Cities, Courts, and Saints” presents new research on the way Islam spread across and became part of the Indian subcontinent. Since the arrival of Islam in South Asia, Muslim communities thrived in cities, giving them a unique shape with new forms of courtly and spiritual life. A key aspect of Indo-Muslim culture was, and remains, the popularity of Sufi saints and their shrines. The papers presented here focus on the entire range of Indo-Muslim history, from the medieval era to modern times, to shed new light on forms of social etiquette, literature, music, and architecture.

Bengal, Gujarat, and the Deccan: New Indo-Muslim Courts of the 14^th-15^th Centuries

Dr. Richard M. Eaton, University of Arizona

Three Indo-Muslim courts—in Bengal, Gujarat, and the Deccan—achieved independence from the Delhi Sultanate over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. To express their autonomy from Delhi, these regional states developed distinctive political ideologies and court cultures. However, in doing so, they were shaped by local and regional social conditions as well as international styles and universal models. Thus we see the rise of innovative courtly forms that drew upon Bengali, Gujarati, and Deccani norms and practices but melded them with the ideals of Timurid Samarqand, Abbasid Baghdad, and Sasanian Ctesiphon. This paper will trace the history of these three post-Delhi Sultanate regimes and compare the way they articulated their claims to legitimacy.

Professor Richard Eaton teaches at the University of Arizona where his research interests focus on the social and cultural history of pre-modern India (1000-1800), and especially on the range of historical interactions between Iran and India, and on Islam in South Asia. He has published books on the social roles of Sufis (Muslim mystics) in pre-modern Bijapur, on the growth of Islam in Bengal, and on the social history of the Deccan from 1300 to 1761. He is currently co-authoring a monograph to be titled Power, Memory, and Architecture: Contested Sites in the 16th Century Deccan.

Mughal Letters and Mughal Lives: A Brahman Munshi at Shah Jahan’s Court

Dr. Rajeev Kinra, Northwestern University

In this lecture, I will discuss the Persian letters of Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. 1662-3), a celebrated munshi and littérateur at the court of Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58).  His letters are an excellent example of the genre of insha’, a highly polished style of Persian writing which governed imperial correspondence and secretarial reports. This lecture will examine the importance of these literary sources for understanding Mughal court culture. Through a reading of Chandar Bhan’s letters, I will explore his life as a courtier, his friendships and professional relations at court, and his dealings with the Mughal Emperor. In the process, I will shed new light on the notions of civility, social mobility, religious pluralism, and cultural cosmopolitanism in seventeenth century South Asia, before the rise of European power.

Professor Rajeev Kinra teaches at Northwestern University. He specializes in South Asian intellectual history, particularly early modern Indo-Persian literary and political culture under the Mughal and British Empires (16th-19th centuries). His research draws on several linguistic traditions (especially Persian, but also Hindi-Urdu and Sanskrit), using archival sources to investigate diverse modes of civility, tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and modernity across the Indo-Persian and Indian Ocean worlds. He is currently working on a book project tentatively titled Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary.

Sufism and Kingship in the Mughal Empire: From Babur (d. 1530) to Jahangir (d. 1627)

 Dr. Azfar Moin, Southern Methodist University

In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, Mughal court culture borrowed heavily from the practices of Sufi saints. The most well-known example is that of muridi or discipleship in which Mughal courtiers were enrolled as devotees of the emperor, who thus became both an earthly sovereign and a spiritual guide. This lecture will examine the history of why and how this happened. It will begin with the Central Asian and Iranian experience of the first two Mughal emperors, Babur and Humanyun, and end with the developments in India under their successors, Akbar and Jahangir. In it, I shall discuss how this interaction between kings and saints influenced Mughal literature and painting, which became imbued with the rituals and symbols of Sufism.

Professor Azfar Moin teaches the history of South Asia at Southern Methodist University. His research focuses on Indo-Persian cultural history, especially the Mughal empire and its historical relationship with Safavid Iran and Timurid Central Asia. He is the author of a number of articles and translations from Persian into English. His book The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam is being published by Columbia University Press. In it, he shows how the charismatic pull of sainthood (wilayat)—rather than the draw of religious law (sharia) or holy war (jihad)—inspired a new style of Muslim kingship in sixteenth century India and Iran.

The Begum of Bhopal: A Muslim “Queen” Holds Court in Colonial India

Dr. Barbara D. Metcalf, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (emerita)

Nawab Sikandar Begum ruled the princely state of Bhopal from 1844 until 1868. Of Afghan heritage, she was a phenomenal administrator, a shrewd politician, and something of a bon vivant. A French travel writer, Louis Rousselet, who spent several months at the Bhopal court, called her a remarkable reine. The Begum’s lively court is well documented not only by colonial records but also by pictures taken by a military photographer, visitors’ accounts, and the drawings of a Belgian artist who sketched the courtly ceremonies over which Sikandar Begum presided. This paper hopes to convey something of this remarkable ruler and her courtly setting in remote Bhopal.

Barbara D. Metcalf was President of the American Historical Association in 2010. She is Professor of History Emerita, University of California, Davis, and from 2003 to 2009 was Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is a specialist in the history of South Asia, especially the colonial period, and the history of the Muslim societies of India and Pakistan. She is the author of a number of books, including Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton University Press, 1982) and, most recently, Husain Ahmad Madani: The Jihad for Islam and India's Freedom (Oneworld, 2009), and editor of Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton University Press, 2009).

From One Empire to Another: The City of Delhi, 1707-1858

Dr. Thomas Metcalf, University of California, Berkeley (emeritus)

The city of Delhi experienced significant transformations during the period of Mughal decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this era, first the local notables and then the British residents of the city increasingly displaced the emperor as the center of political and cultural life and patronage. This paper will assess how these shifts affected the culture of the court, broadly conceived. It will focus on such transformative moments as the 1739 invasion of the Persian ruler Nadir Shah and the British conquest of 1803. I will examine how, despite all the turmoil of the first century of British imperialism in India, the city and its cultural pre-eminence survived until the mutiny of 1857.

Thomas R. Metcalf is the Emeritus Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies and Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a historian of South Asia, especially colonial India, and of British imperialism. His most recent research project examined India's position as an imperial 'center' from which ideas, personnel, and institutions flowed out to the entire Indian Ocean region in the later 19th century. This culminated in the book Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920. Some of his other works of history include A Concise History of Modern India (with Barbara Metcalf), Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire, and Ideologies of the Raj.

The Social History of Song Collections: Awadh, Delhi, and Hyderabad (circa 1800)

Dr. Katherine Schofield, King’s College, London

The turn of the nineteenth century was a critical moment of political transition in South Asia, away from Muslim courts towards British political dominance. Few have noticed, however, that at this historical moment there was an upsurge in the production of manuscript collections of lighter courtly songs, predominantly khayal, tappa, ghazal and tarana. While many of these song collections were produced for Muslim elite patrons in courts such as Awadh, Delhi and Hyderabad, a significant number were also written for or purchased by European collectors—including women—residing in these cities. In this paper, I will examine the social and historical implications of this changing state of patronage in the Indian musical field.

Professor Katherine Schofield is a cultural historian and ethnomusicologist whose work focuses on South Asia. Her research interests lie in the areas of South Asian music, the history of Mughal India (1526-1858), music and Islam, and music and empire. Katherine also has emerging interests in female vocalists; Muslim devotional sound-art; and musical transitions to European colonialism in the Indian Ocean region. She is also writing a book on the cultural history of music, musicians and their patrons in Mughal North India, entitled The Place of Pleasure: Hindustani Music in Mughal Society, 1593-1707.