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Persian Nuqṭawīs and the Shaping of the Doctrine of “Universal Conciliation” (ṣulḥ-i kull) in Mughal India

CONTENTS 

List of Contributors  

ix Préface  

 xv Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi 

Introduction: Conflicting Synergy of Patterns of Religious  Authority in Islam  1 Orkhan Mir-Kasimov 

PART ONE 

LANGUAGES, CONCEPTS AND SYMBOLS 

La transgression des normes du discours religieux : Remarques  sur les shaṭaḥāt de Abū Bakr al-Shiblī  ................................................ 23 Pierre Lory 

Religious Authority & Apocalypse: Tafsīr as Experience in an  Early Work by the Bāb  ............................................................................. 39 Todd Lawson 

La transmigration des âmes. Une notion problématique dans  l’ismaélisme d’époque fatimide  ............................................................. 77 Daniel De Smet 

Promised One (mawʿūd) or Imaginary One (mawhūm)?  Some Notes on Twelver Shīʿī Mahdī Doctrine and its Discussion  in Writings of Bahāʾ Allāh  ....................................................................... 111 Armin Eschraghi 

To the Abode of the Hidden One: The Green Isle in Shīʿī,  Early Shaykhī, and Bābī-Bahāʾī Sacred Topography  ....................... 137 Omid Ghaemmaghami

PART TWO 

POST-MONGOL TENDENCIES:  

MYSTICISM, MESSIANISM AND UNIVERSALISM 

The Kūfan Ghulāt and Millenarian (Mahdist) Movements in  Mongol-Türkmen Iran  ..............................................................................  William F. Tucker 

Intercessory Claims of Ṣūfī Communities during the 14th and  15th Centuries: ‘Messianic’ Legitimizing Strategies on the  Spectrum of Normativity  .........................................................................  Devin DeWeese 

Ummīs versus Imāms in the Ḥurūfī Prophetology: An Attempt at  a Sunnī/Shīʿī Synthesis?  ...........................................................................  Orkhan Mir-Kasimov 

The Occult Challenge to Philosophy and Messianism in Early  Timurid Iran: Ibn Turka’s Lettrism as a New Metaphysics  ...........  Matthew Melvin-Koushki 

Timurid Experimentation with Eschatological Absolutism:  Mīrzā Iskandar, Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī, and Sayyid Sharīf  Jurjānī in 815/1412  .......................................................................................  İlker Evrim Binbaş 

PART THREE 

FROM MYSTICISM AND MESSIANISM TO CHARISMATIC KINGSHIP:  OTTOMANS, SAFAVIDS AND MUGHALS 

L’idéologie d’État concurrencée par son interprétation :  les Melāmī-Hamzevī dans l’empire ottoman  ....................................  Paul Ballanfat 

Kaygusuz Abdal: A Medieval Turkish Saint and the Formation of  Vernacular Islam in Anatolia  .................................................................  Ahmet T. Karamustafa

The World as a Hat: Symbolism and Materiality in Safavid Iran  ....  Shahzad Bashir 

Persian Nuqṭawīs and the Shaping of the Doctrine of “Universal  Conciliation” (ṣulḥ-i kull) in Mughal India  ........................................  Abbas Amanat 

Messianism, Heresy and Historical Narrative in Mughal India  ........  A. Azfar Moin

By: Abbas Amanat

The principle of “universal conciliation” (ṣulḥ-i kull), the core doctrine of  the “Divine Religion” (dīn-i ilāhī) conceived under the Timurid ruler of  India Jalāl al-Dīn Akbar (r. 1556–1605), has been the subject to a number  of historical studies and diverse interpretations. It is praised by some as  a genuine religious innovation but more often as an ephemeral royal cult  contemplated in the inner circle of Akbar’s influential minister, Abū-l Faḍl ʿAllāmī, and his brother, the chief court poet Abū-l-Fayḍ Fayḍī. Little  attention however has been paid to the make up of this circle and more  speciijically to the role of the agnostics, such as Nuqṭawī exiles from Iran  and their advocacy of a post-Islamic millennial dispensation.1

Nuqṭawīs advanced a theory of mystical materialism and cyclical  renewal that essentially called for a renewed humanist creed beyond the  pale of Islamic dispensation. Almost exclusively consisted of Persian émi grés, refugees and self-exiles to India who escaped persecution in Safavid  Iran, they were often depicted in the hostile sources under the general  rubric of mulḥids (heretics; atheists; agnostics) and for obvious reasons  their presence and influence were downplayed, and their traces were  paled if not entirely wiped out by their contemporaries or by later Islamic  sources. 

Yet despite meager information about them, it is clear that the Nuqṭawī  advocates, and more so the Nuqṭawī ideas, thrived in the multi-confessional  environment of India as late as the 17th century where they remained  part of the intellectual and literary landscape. Even after the execution of  Prince Dārā Shikūh (1615–1659) and elimination of his cultural circle by  his prevailing brother Aurangzeb (1658–1707), the Nuqṭawī beliefs seem to  have lingered among the itinerant Khāksār dervish order in India and Iran   and survived as defuse motifs in the poetry of the period. By the time the  author of Dabistān-i Madhāhib rendered his relatively accurate account  of Nuqṭawīs some time in the latter half of the 17th century, there were  still Nuqṭawī leaders and followers in India. The author of Dabistān, pre sumably a follower of Ādhar Kaywān’s neo-Zoroastrian school in India, or  possibly his son, may very well have been in contact with the Dārā Shikūh  circle where Nuqṭawīs were free to confess their beliefs. He interviewed  six of them whom he identiijied by name. Among whom there are four  “trustees” (umanāʾ), which in turn suggests the existence of a Nuqṭawī  network.2 

It may also be argued that the rise of the neo-Ṣūfī conservatism in  the latter part of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century in part was  because of the popularity of Nuqṭawī and similar heresies in the Indian  subcontinent. The conservative, even puritanical, theology of waḥdat-i  shuhūd (unity of vision), a transcendental interpretation of divinity as  being completely distinct from human existence, advanced by the well known Naqshbandī theologian Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624) and his  followers. Reassertion of the Islamic sharīʿa under emperor Aurangzeb  was in large part inspired by Sirhindī’s teachings in responses to the prev alence of the doctrines of the “unity of being” (waḥdat-i wujūd). At least  since the 13th century the doctrine of “unity of being” was favored among  majority of Ṣūfī thinkers in the Persianate world. In its extreme form, this  doctrine was close to the Nuqṭawī theory of “pointism” (from the term  nuqṭa: point as the building block of man and universe) and its corollary,  the doctrine of the universal conciliation (ṣulḥ-i kull).3

Rise of the sharīʿa-dominated Shīʿism in Safavid Iran from the ijirst  quarter of the 16th century on the other hand and sporadic persecution  of nonconformists of all sorts, as has been recorded from the early part of  the 17th century, drove off a large number of mystics, poets, philosophers  and artists with libertarian afijinities to neighboring Ottoman and Mughal   persian nuqṭawīs and doctrine of “universal conciliation” 369 empires. More speciijically, there were at least two rounds of widespread  persecution of Nuqṭawīs, known as “heretic-killing” (mulḥid-kushī); the  ijirst c. 1575–76, toward the end of Tahmāsp’s reign (r. 1524–76) and after  a respite, the second round under ʿAbbās I (r. 1588–1629) between 1590  and 1592 at the turn of the Islamic millennium.4 

Nuqṭawīs in Mughal India

It goes without saying that the prosperous and religiously tolerant Timu rid court of India, and its provincial vassalages and autonomous princi palities that were not yet incorporated into Mughal Empire, offered luring  alternatives to the suffocating conformity in Safavid Iran. The flight of  intellectual and artistic talents contributed to the impoverishment of the  Safavid intellectual milieu and helped to reinforce conformity in the pub lic sphere, as for instance in the philosophical discourse of the Iṣfahān  school, and even in the much praised artistic and literary circles of the  late Safavid era. With the growth of ḥadīth studies, most notably under  Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī and his students in the latter half of the 17th  and early 18th centuries, the jurists increased their attack on the Ṣūfīs and  the philosophers (ḥukamāʾ). Pressure on the antinomian literati in turn  encouraged practice of dissimulation (taqiyya) as a defensive posture not  only in the hostile neighboring Sunnī lands but more commonly at home  in the public sphere, what is often deijined as the ẓāhir. The madrasa and  teaching circles, the royal court, the coffee houses and even the virtual  space of literary biographical dictionaries (tadhkiras) were to comply with  the unwritten code of disguise. Instances of purging Nuqṭawī heretics was  an important turning point in the emergence of what may be deijined as  the Safavid “persecuting society.” The joint forces of the state and the cler ical establishment were potent enough to quash, even uproot, intellectual  dissent especially if it involved religious skepticism and freethinking.5 

As with all historical records of the nonconformists and agnostics here  too in the case of Nuqṭawīs in the 16th and 17th centuries the sources  are enigmatic though not entirely silent about the victims and their fates.  The Nuqṭawī flight to Mughal India offered a level of security that made  it safe to divulge their true antinomian beliefs. We can identify by name  at least thirty six individuals as Nuqṭawīs and probably about a dozen  more who were suspected of Nuqṭawī afijiliation. Such a meager data base (mostly put together thanks to Ṣādiq Kiyā’s pioneering work in the  1950’s),6 is nevertheless signiijicant. It represents, we can safely argue, the  leadership of the movement, or at least its intellectual elite in the last  quarter of the 16th century between 1570’s and 1600’s. 

Of the thirty two identiijied Nuqṭawīs in the Iranian and Perso-Indian  sources a majority of them are categorized as poets, artists, philosophers,  physicians or simply as wandering dervishes (darwīsh). In addition to  these individuals there were Nuqṭawī followers in the cities, among arti sans, marginalized groups often coded as “riff raffs” (asāijil wa adānī),  some of them coming curiously from among the Safavid Qizilbāsh. In  the countryside, especially in the villages in northern-central Iran around  Kāshān, Naṭanz and Iṣfahān there was also a Nuqṭawī grass-roots sup port. The Nuqṭawī geographical distribution however was wider than Iraq  ʿAjam and Iṣfahān regions and included Qazwīn, Shīrāz, Yazd, Nīshāpūr,  some semi-rural communities in Māzandarān, and in Azerbaijan. Though  we know little about the identity of converts beyond Safavid Iran and in  Mughal court, it is not unlikely that Nuqṭawī itinerant dervishes, patron ized by influential ijigures in royal court, found followers in Kashmir and  elsewhere or in some semi-autonomous principalities within the Mughal  empire. 

Remarkably, about half of the identiijied Nuqṭawīs, seventeen of them,  either fled from Safavid persecution or else voluntarily left for India.7 Of  the other half that stayed behind, twelve were perished; either executed as  mulḥids by government agents (some personally in the hand of ʿAbbās I)  and others killed by the mob. Of the remaining three, one was blinded  and only two were saved after they repented. In a few cases, executions  were endorsed by jurists but in other cases the killings were apparently  the outcome of the Shāh ʿAbbās’s own initiative and as a reaction to fear  of a Nuqṭawī-provoked uprising at the turn of the Islamic millennium  (1591–92).8 

Such a terrible end may explain meager presence of Nuqṭawīs and their  sympathizers in the Safavid sources. Even in Mughal India the Nuqṭawīs  were not free from criticism, denouncements and persecution by the  Sunnī ʿulamāʾ. They soon learned however to blend in with the nonde script wandering dervishes and to attach themselves to the less-strict Ṣūfī  orders rather than to establish a distinct identity of their own as an organized community. Nuqṭawism, as a millennial movement after the 1600’s  thus remained just that; a defuse agnostic, anthropocentric, post-Islamic  tendency dormant in the Ṣūfī milieu of India with converts that are dif ijicult to identify except from their communal associations or their utter ances especially through poetry. 

Mīr Sharīf Āmulī and Doctrine of Universal Conciliation 

At the height of the movement in the late 16th century we can detect  a number of influential Nuqṭawīs ijigures in the court of Akbar and the  circle surrounding his celebrated minister Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī. Perhaps  the most well-known Nuqṭawī sympathizer is the celebrated court poet  ʿUrfī Shīrāzī who having been accused of heresy, apparently because of  his earlier association with the Nuqṭawī leader, Abū-l-Qāsim Amrī, dur ing a Nuqṭawī uprising in Shīrāz. He fled his homeland for India while  Amrī stayed behind and perished. As a protégé of Fayḍī, ʿUrfī soon gained  fame as probably the greatest poet of the so-called “Indian School” (sabk-i  hindī) but died prematurely in 1590.9 Of implicit afijiliation with Nuqṭawīs  we may also identify Ḥakīm Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī, an influential physician,  literary ijigure, and conijidant of Akbar who was a patron of ʿUrfī and a  few other Iranian Nuqṭawīs. Badāʾūnī, the rigid Sunnī court historian of  Akbar, reproaches Gīlānī for his “agnosticism and other disdainful habits”  though praises his sharp mind and his literary accomplishments.10 Also  of signiijicance is the poet Mīr ʿAlī Akbar Tashbihī Kashānī who is identi ijied as an itinerant qalandar of a humble origin. In dervish guise he visited Akbar’s court a number of times to promote the Nuqṭawī cause. As  Badāʾūnī informs us, Tashbihī was instrumental in persuading Akbar in a  qaṣīda to “remove the creed of those who follow emulation (taqlidiyān) so  that truth arrives at its focal point and (only) pure unity (tawḥīd-i khāliṣ)  endures.”11 

Yet the most well-known Nuqṭawī activist in India by far is Mīr Sayyid  Sharīf Āmulī, a mystic of some weight who moved to India and soon  became prominent enough in Akbar’s court to play a part in multi-confes sional debates that led to declaration of 987/1579 (maḥḍar lit. the [royal]  presence but here came to mean petition or declaration) announcing  Akbar’s infallibility as a temporal ruler, a major step toward later emergence of Dīn-i Ilāhī. The gathering in the ʿIbādat-khāna (lit. house of wor ship) established by Akbar and his two major advisors: Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī  and Fayḍī, and often in the presence of Akbar was devoted to free theo logical debates and setting broad religious guidelines. This was a remark able forum for exchanges among the Sunnīs and Shīʿīs as well as later  among them and the Jewish rabbis, Parsi Zoroastrian mobads, Buddhist  monks, Hindu Brahmans, Jain priests, Sikh gurus, Portuguese Jesuits, as  well as antinomians of different sort including the Nuqṭawīs and follow ers of Ādhar-Kaywānī neo-Zoroastrianism. Āmulī may even have been  a major impetus behind the subsequent oath of allegiance in 1001/1581  to the “four degrees” that formally initiated the practice of the Dīn-i Ilāhī (or the Ilāhiya creed according to the author of Dabistān) and implementing the doctrine of ṣulḥ-i kull.12 

Āmulī had left Iran before the 1576 Nuqṭawī persecution presumably  “out of fear of antagonism of the jurists of his time” (az bīm-i maḍarrat-i  fuqahā-yi ʿaṣr). He spent some time probably as an itinerant dervish in an  unspeciijied Ṣūfī convent (khāniqāh) in Balkh, then moved to the court  of the Sulṭānate of Deccan and then to the Sulṭānate of Malwa in cen tral northern India just after Akbar conquered it. Yet each time he was  driven out of his refuge because of expressing heretical views. An entry  in the Indo-Persian biographical dictionary Ma⁠ʾathir al-umarāʾ informs us  that he was extremely well versed in the sciences of his own time as well  as in Ṣūijism and in what is deijined as “truths” (ḥaqāʾiq; a code word for  Nuqṭawī beliefs) which he combined with “heretical and agnostic ideas”  (ilḥād wa zandaqa) so as to pronounce “pantheistic beliefs and proclaim  that all [humans] are Allāh” (daʿwī-yi hamih ūst mīkard wa hamih-ra Allāh  mīguft).13 

Upon Āmulī’s arrival in the Mughal court in 984/1576, he was acclaimed  as a great scholar and was given an audience with Akbar. Advocating  alternative religious views, possibly with a post-Islamic proclivity, soon he  was ranked among Akbar’s close advisors. Ma⁠ʾathir al-umarā informs us  that since at the time he became aware of the popularity of the doctrine  of ṣulḥ-i kull and “doctrinal openness” (wusʿat-i mashrab), he persuaded  Akbar that “kingship is a reflection of the divine authority (rububiyat),  thus such emanation should not be conijined to a speciijic group [i.e. the  Muslim subjects] but all peoples of diverse creeds (mukhtalif al-aḥwāl)  and of shifting circumstances (mutalawwin al-aḥwāl) should beneijit from  it (and hence) differences of religions should not be a divisive factor.”14 

Sharīf Āmulī’s assertion in the course of a debate with the Sunnī  ʿulamāʾ further reafijirmed the Mughal emperor millennial presumptions.  According to Dabistān in a place identiijied as Dibalpur (possibly Jibal pour) Āmulī openly defended the doctrine of Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī and  “convinced” his ʿulamāʾ opponents.15 Though the proceedings of this  debate is yet unknown, this is indeed the clearest indication in the con temporary sources of Āmulī’s advocacy of a post-Islamic dispensation. Yet  in the aftermath of the same debate, as it was noted by the biographical  dictionary Ma⁠ʾathir al-umarā, Āmulī was compelled by his opponents to  “give pledges” (ilzām-hā dād), presumably not to advocate the Nuqṭawī  cause anymore. If this was the case, such a commitment did not seem to  have concerned Akbar. The Ma’athir al-umarāʾ following Dabistān further  asserts that the Mughal ruler “did not turn away his favorable sight from  Āmulī but [rather] enhanced his [ijinancial] stature.”16

Of particular interest in the above accounts is the clear link between  Āmulī’s pantheistic views—or more speciijically his anthropocentric mysti cal beliefs—which was at the core of the Nuqṭawī pointist cosmology—and  the pluralist idea that people of all creeds and all intellectual orientations  are to be reconciled and treated equally; in other words the very essence  of the idea of ṣulḥ-i kull. The use of the Persian expression: hama-ūst (lit.  “all is Him”) moreover implies a new Persian-inspired interpretation of  pantheism that was apparently coined, or made current, by Āmulī instead  of the common Arabic concept of “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd). This  neology may be taken as another indication of the Nuqṭawīs’ effort to con stitute a Persianized mystical philosophy independent from the Islamic  Ṣūfī discourse.17 

Akbar as a manifestation of the divine authority echoed in a novel way  the ancient Persian theory of kingship, and more speciijically was reminis cent (as many other traits in Nuqṭawīsm) of the ancient Persian notion  of charisma ( farr) and the king as shadow of God on earth. Along with  it, the Persian theory of the just treatment of all subjects was also given  an unprecedented twist. As apparent in Āmulī’s statement, equality of  believers of all religions and all intellectual trends seem to have preoccupied pantheists and freethinkers like him. The title of one of his books,  Tarashshuḥ-i ẓuhūr (emanation of manifestation), now presumably lost,  may imply the same principle of pointism that embraces all humanity  regardless of religious creed. In the same spirit, the reverential reference  in Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī portrays him as a “unitarian” (muwaḥḥid); an allusion  to the Nuqṭawī idea of the unity of creation and the human beings’ mon istic essence.18

Āmulī’s views, it should be understood, was in harmony with the great  Indian religious synthesis of the time both in the Muslim and Hindu cir cles. Earlier, syncretistic religious reformers such as Ramananda, Kabir and  Guru Nanak in the 15th and early 16th centuries attempted to harmonize  Vedantic Hinduism with Ṣūijism. Traces of the ancient Buddhist-Hindu  materialist philosophy Charvaka may have also found its way to specula

tions of Hindu rationalist school in early modern era. Dabistān offers a  convincing picture of how such trends were still accessible to people from  different religious walks of life. Moreover, Ibn al-ʿArabī’s theory of onto logical monism (waḥdat al-wujūd) was highly popular with Indian Ṣūfīs  of the late medieval and early modern period; among others by Akbar’s  own Persian teacher, Mīr ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, and later by one of his spiritual  guides, Shaykh Mubārak, and Mubārak’s two sons Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī and  Abū-l-Fayḍ Fayḍī. It was indeed very probable that the notion of ṣulḥ-i  kull (if not the terminology) ijirst originated in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s theory of  common divine origin of all religions. Their apparent diversity, he argued,  was the outcome of periodic shift in divine self-revelation (tajallī) at any  time point.19 

Āmulī’s contribution to the discourse of ecumenical reconciliation may  very well be seen on two areas, which are somewhat distinct from ear lier theories of government. On the one hand, he may have articulated  the notion of ṣulḥ-i kull beyond its mystical connotation to something of  a political statement. He may have also been instrumental in tying the  doctrine of universal conciliation to the rule of Akbar as a millennial king

prophet who initiated a new anthropocentric cycle. As with regard to the  ijirst point, it is not without reason that the principle of ṣulḥ-i kull was ijirst  reported in 989/1581 in a letter written presumably on behalf of Akbar  by his counselor Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī to Sharīf Āmulī whereby “universal  peace” is deijined as “accommodating oneself to people, good and bad,  and regarding oneself, with one’s all defects, as a necessary part of this  [whole] world.”20 Here the Ṣūfī pantheistic perspective is well evident,  devoid of any absolute value of good and evil. Gīlānī’s letters to Āmulī,  and to other dignitaries, conijirm not only close doctrinal ties between  these two Persian émigré in the Mughal service, but the existence of a net work of likeminded freethinkers at odds with the Mughal Sunnī orthodox  establishment on the issue of universal reconciliation.21 

The second point concerns the time and circumstance of the dec laration. We know that Akbar’s ṣulḥ-i kull proclamation came after his  dissociation from Islamic sharīʿa in the aftermath of the crucial theologi cal debates in 987/1579. In his innovative ʿIbādat-khāna the doctrine of  ṣulḥ-i kull seems to have taken its ijinal shape. Prominently present in this  debates were Shaykh Mubārak, Fayḍī and Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī. Despite hold ing high ofijices and despite their close proximity to Akbar, the three—the  father and his two sons—have already been condemned by Sunnī jurists  for their alleged heretical beliefs. While Mubārak was earlier accused of  the Mahdawiyya messianic heresy, the poet laurite Fayḍī and the chief  minister ʿAllāmī, were strongly denounced for their agnostic propensity; a  charge routinely brought against them by such enemies as Badāʾūnī. 

Badāʾūnī’s extremely disparaging remarks about Mubārak, who earlier  served as the his patron, and about Mubārak’s sons and their supporters  in the Mughal court, point to a deep anxiety for the loss of the Sunnī  position vis-à-vis freethinking faction among whom there were crypto Nuqṭawīs such as Āmulī and advocates of Ādhar Kaywān. Akbar’s shift  from Islamic sharīʿa to the ecumenical ṣulḥ-i kull, though never concrete  and conceptually articulate, was keenly connected to the millennial spirit  of the time; a spirit shared not only by the Nuqṭawīs in Mughal court but  curiously by Badāʾūnī as well. Badāʾūnī’s unpublished “mystical” writings  reveals that he too, despite his merciless attacks on the heretics associ ated with the ʿAllāmī’s camp, himself entertained millennial convictions.  His reverence for the two 15th century messianic ijigures: Muḥammad  Nūrbakhsh, the founder of the Nūrbakhshī movement originated in Iran,  and Mahdī of Jowanpur, the founder of the Mahdawiya in India, and his  sympathetic treatment of doctrine of transmigration among the Ahl-i  Ḥaqq (also shared by the Nuqṭawīs), no doubt complicate his recognized  status as the voice of conservative Sunnī orthodoxy.22 

Likewise, a few of the Persian correspondence (maktūbāt) of Shaykh  Aḥmad Sirhindī, the prominent Muslim Sunnī Naqshbandī theologian of  Akbar’s era and the initiator of what posthumously came to be known  as the revivalist Mujaddidī movement, also reveals a degree of procliv ity toward messianic trends at the turn of the Islamic millennium. His  earlier career in the Akbar’s court in the late 1580’s and early 1590’s no  doubt must have exposed him to antinomian themes as he witnessed the  declaration of ṣulḥ-i kull. As a protégé of Fayḍī it is difijicult to believe that  he was opposed to Dīn-i Ilāhī even if he was not its advocate either. Later  his stern sharīʿa-oriented Ṣūijism, after his conversion to the Naqshbandī  order, should be seen as a direct reaction to this early experience. His  preoccupation in his maktūbāt with the prevailing disbelief (kufr) may  also be taken as a reference not only to the Hindus, Parsis, Jews and Chris tian missionaries in the Mughal court who stood to beneijit from ṣulḥ-i  kull doctrine, but more so to the philosophers and the atheists (mulḥids and zindīqs). Even study of rational sciences, among them geometry, and  study of such benign works of Persian literature as Saʿdī’s Gulistān and  Būstān rendered harmful to true adherence to Islam. 

In a long letter to two sons of his Ṣūfī teacher, Bāqī Billāh, one example  among many in his Persian letters, Sirhindī reiterates compliance with the  sharīʿa as mandatory for the true seeker of the Ṣūfī path and attacks the  philosophers, agnostics and inijidels for liberating themselves from sharīʿa,  prophethood (nubuwwa) and even the conventional notions of divinity.  He denies them eternal salvation despite their this-worldly success and  affluence. Relying on Ibn al-ʿArabī, moreover, the differentiation between  the theory of “unity of being” (waḥdat-i wujud) and his concept of “unity of  appearance” wahdat-i shuhūd becomes blurred and inconspicuous as he  strives to reconcile his own puritanical approach with monistic Ṣūijism.23

What survived from his early experience, however, was a millenarian  presumption. He repeatedly insinuated in his letters to the “renovator of  the second millennium” (mujadd-i alf-i thānī) as a veiled reference to his  own spiritual status. Inspired by Ibn al-ʿArabī’s discourse of renewal, a  borrowing which he shared with Fayḍī and with the post-Islamic skeptics  in Akbar’s court, Sirhindī’s implicit claim nevertheless was new within the  sphere of sharīʿa-abiding Ṣūijism of his time. Even though the notion of a  centennial renovator (mujaddid-i raʾs-i miʾa) probably did exist earlier, the  idea of a millennial renovator with a semi-prophetic mission at the turn of  the Islamic millennium should be viewed as a legacy of the Nuqṭawīs and  like-minded agnostics who ijirst advocated the termination of the Islamic  cycle. Such an influence naturally was to be glossed over by Sirhindī him self and by the later Mujaddidī promoters. 

What sharply distanced Sirhindī and Badāʾūnī from the discourse of  ṣulḥ-i kull and its advocates however was the latter’s unequivocal advo cacy of a fresh ecumenical order at the turn of the Islamic millennium.  During the auspicious reign of Akbar as a new king-prophet the advocates  of Dīn-i Ilāhī (the divine creed) not only called for toleration toward all  creeds as equal and as divinely inspired but in effect anticipated the end  to the Islamic supremacy, or the Arab cycle (dawr-i ʿArab) as Nuqṭawī  teaching had it. It was expected that in this unique experience in Islamic  history (perhaps only comparable to the 10th century Qarmaṭī republic in  Aḥsāʾ and Bahrain) the new creed supersede Islam’s eternal prevalence  as a perfect divine order. This was the bone of contention between the  Islamic and supra-Islamic tendencies in Akbar’s court and further in the  religious milieu of Mughal India for another half century after him.

That ʿAllāmī and his camp held the upper hand in the ijinal years of  Akbar’s rule (and before ʿAllāmī’s assassination in 1601, the outcome of a  plot contrived by prince Salīm who eventually succeeded his father as  Jahāngīr in 1605) may indicate that hostility expressed by Badāʾūnī and  his cohorts in part was tainted by the inner court rivalry. Judging by part  three of Badāʾūnī’s history, where the author provided a biographical dic tionary of major literary and religious ijigures of his time, one may also  sense an ethnic tension between the indigenous scholars from India and  the émigré Iranian scholars who despite their often unorthodox beliefs  were favored by Akbar and his minister ʿAllāmī. In part two of his history  Badāʾūnī only briefly records Mīr Sharīf Āmulī’s arrival in Akbar’s court  in a highly offensive tone. In part three he does not even spare him a  short entry in his biographical dictionary. Likewise other Iranian dissent ers with suspect heretical afijinity don’t fair any better.24 

Islamic Millennium and the Divine Creed 

Beyond divisions in Akbar’s court over the interpretation of the millen nium, there is a chronological puzzle to be resolved about the timing of  the declaration of the Dīn-i Ilāhī. The year 990/1582, when the declara tion was issued, still was a decade too soon for the Islamic millennium in  1000 AH (1591–92) and thus early to engender a momentum in the Akbar’s  court. The answer may be in the way the beginning of the Islamic millen nium was calculated by the Nuqṭawī millenialists. Although from the early  Islamic centuries the Hijra (622 CE) was universally held as the start of the  Islamic calendar, it was not always held as the start of Muḥammad’s mis sion. Rather, it is likely that the Islamic millennium was calculated from  the beginning of Muḥammad’s mission in circa 610 CE, about a decade  before the Hijra. This way the end of the Islamic millennium corresponded  to the year 988/1580–81, the date that witnessed the beginning of Akbar’s  post-Islamic creed and his proclamation that he is a king-prophet.  Yet we know from Tārīkh-i Alfī, the millennial history that was com missioned by Akbar in 993/1585, and from other historical sources of the  period, that Akbar appointed a committee of historians to accomplish the  task. They were instructed to consider the death of the Prophet in the year  10/632 (rather than the Hijra or the start of Muḥammad’s mission) as the  starting point and the basis for all calendric calculation throughout. This  millennial history was to abrogate (naskh) all earlier histories. Accord ing to this starting date, the Islamic millennium corresponds to the year  1010/1601, sixteen years after the commission date of 993/1585.25  The very composition of the Alfī history and the heated debates between  the Shīʿī and Sunnī historians concerning the events in the early Islamic  history (that cost the life of its chief author and editor-in-chief, Qāḍī  Aḥmad Tatawī), was a remarkable evidence of the millennial momentum  in Akbar’s court. One of several scholars contributing to Tārīkh-i Alfī was  the celebrated scientists and mathematician, Mīr Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī, who   was responsible for the adoption of the Divine calendar (Tārīkh-i Ilāhī).  The new solar calendar was identical with the Persian Jalali calendar of the  Saljuqid era, devised by the celebrated ʿUmar Khayyām, and itself based on  the Zoroastrian pre-Islamic calendar. It celebrated not only Nowrūz at the  start the vernal equinox but other Persian monthly Zoroastrian holy days.  Change of the calendar from lunar Islamic to solar Persian was a clear  marker of the end of the Islamic era. Initiated in the year 992/1584, the  Year One in this new Ilāhī calendar predated to the accession of Akbar in  year 963/1556. A remarkable mathematician and inventor, Shīrāzī’s post Islamic calendar betrayed an obvious Nuqṭawī propensity which is also  evident in his other astrological speculations and scholarly production.26 

Astrological calculation may indeed be an important impetuous for the  rise of earliest millennial anxieties. As mentioned above, it was ijive years  before declaration of the ṣulḥ-i kull that the ijirst anti-Nuqṭawī campaign  began in 983/1575–76 in Safavid Iran presumably as the Nuqṭawīs began  to calculate the end of the “Arab cycle” (dawr-i ʿArab) and beginning of  the “Persian cycle” (dawr-i ʿAjam). It was these millennial activities, and  the anxieties they stirred among the Shīʿī authorities in Iran, that in the  ijirst place had brought Āmulī to India. A striking number of measures  adopted in the years preceding and after the year 1000 in Mughal India  pointed at a deliberate attempt to break away from Islam.27 

Millennial anxieties of a different sort were also evident in the Safavid  court. In 1001/1593–94 the royal astrologer Jalāl al-Dīn Munajjim Yazdī rec ommended that in order to avoid the ominous influence of a comet that  appeared on that year, ʿAbbās I should temporarily abdicate his throne.  Consequently Darwīsh Yūsuf Tarkishdūz, a leader of the Iṣfahān Nuqṭawīs,  was persuaded to ascend the throne on 9 August 1593 to sustain the bad  omen. He was deposed three days later and executed by the order of the  Shah. The disturbing episode, even if the comet ever appeared and even if  the victim was lured to condone his fatal end, contains untold dimensions   unknown to the posterity. Whatever they were, the episode served as a  clever ploy to destroy the Nuqṭawī network and start off a mass execution  of the heretics.28 

A reference to Sharīf Āmulī’s role in predicting a millennial manifesta tion also appears in Badāʾūnī’s Muntakhab al-tawārīkh. Here he states that  Āmulī furnished evidence based on the prophecies of Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī  that in “the year 990 (1582) a certain person will be the eradicator of  the falsehood (bardarandih-yi bāṭil shakhsī khwāhad būd).” According  to Badāʾūnī, Āmulī had identiijied this “certain person” with the Mughal  ruler Akbar whose numerological equivalent in abjad system presumably  was 990.29 

Also influential in Akbar’s declaration was another Iranian Nuqṭawī  refugee known as Khwāja Mawlānā Shīrāzī, who seems to have also  belonged to the circle of Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī. A specialist of the Science  of Letters (ʿilm al-jafr), he offered to Akbar a treatise, which he claimed  was from the Sharīf of Mecca, in which, at the basis of the Islamic ḥadīth,  it was predicted that the doomsday and the advent of the Mahdī at the  end of the seventh millennium from the time of Adam is impending. Corresponding to Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī’s super-cycles, the idea of seven millennial cycles, originally a Zoroastrian concept, was long popular among the  Ismāʿīlīs and other heterodox Shīʿī circles. Moreover, to convince Akbar,  as Badāʾūnī puts it, among other “Shīʿī superstitions” the Nuqṭawīs relied  on a chiliastic quadrant attributed to Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the Ismāʿīlī poet,  philosopher and propagandist:

In the year nine hundred and ninety by the ordinance of the fate, Gather all the stars in one place.

In the year Leo, month Leo, day Leo,

Walks out from behind the curtain God’s lion.

Badāʾūnī considers this prediction as the beginning of Akbar’s claim to  prophecy. As he puts it “not nubuwwa in so many words but in other terms  (i.e. in deeds),” for he was perceived by Nuqṭawīs as the “Lord of the Age”  (ṣāḥib al-zamān) and God’s lion (Asad Allāh).” The Nuqṭawīs insisted that  by doing so Akbar removed the communal barrier between the seventy two nations (haftād u dū millat) of Muslim and Hindu persuasions.30 

What is more remarkable is a strong Persian proto-nationalist aware ness that came with the implementation of the Dīn-i Ilāhī at the turn of  the millennium. A clear set of counter Islamic measures after 1580 include  exile of Sunnī clergy from the court on the charge of opposing Dīn-i Ilāhī (which may have also caused Sirhindī’s departure or perhaps expulsion  from Mughal court in Agra), relaxing prohibition on wine selling and wine  drinking, regulated legalization of prostitution, lifting Islamic ban on eating pork, rehabilitation of dogs as ritually clean, permissibility of the use  of silk and gold banned in the sharīʿa, and lifting prohibition on inter-faith  marriage especially among Muslims and Hindus. 

Even more striking measures were putting an end to the state’s enforce ment of the Islamic obligatory daily prayers, congregational prayers, fast ing and pilgrimage; a prescribed duty of any Muslim ruler. A year later in  1583 study of Arabic and Islamic scholastic curriculum was discouraged  throughout the Mughal domain. Even Arabic letters that rendered unpro nounceable in Persian were omitted from the Persian alphabet, a measure  that brought drastic reform into transcribing words of Arabic origin in  Persian. Still more, if we believe the hostile report of Badāʾūnī, names and  titles of the Prophet of Islam were banned, churches were allowed to be  constructed and ijinally in 1593 a decree granted complete freedom to all  religions in the Mughal Empire. 

The remarkable departures from prevailing Islamic beliefs and prac tices coincided with ofijicial inauguration of the Ilāhī era in 991/1584 coin ciding with initiation of a group of nineteen early converts to the new  creed. Among the Hindus and Muslim primal initiates was Mīr Sharīf  Āmulī, Shaykh Mubārak, his sons ʿAllāmī and Fayḍī and Akbar’s own son  Salīm (later Jahāngīr). It is difijicult to downplay, as some observers did,  the impact of these revolutionary measurers and their symbolic effect on  a society long accustomed to superiority of the Islamic creed. Given the  emphasis of Nuqṭawī teachings on a proto-nationalist Persian identity, it  is also hard to believe that such radical ideas were not at least partially  inspired by the Nuqṭawīs and likeminded heretics. That the followers of  the neo-Zoroastrian Adhar Kaywān—who himself fled to India fearing  Safavid persecution circa 1570– shared similar pro-Persian sentiments, fur ther conijirms a strong urge among Iranian exiles for constructing a new  Persian identity distinct in its time reckoning and transcript and free from  Arabic influences as much as distant from Islamic teachings.31

Acclimation of the Nuqṭawīs in India 

We know that not only Āmulī remained an advisor to the emperor, but  in 993/1585 he was promoted to the ofijices of amīn and ṣadr in Kabul, a  coveted provincial post of some signiijicance. Later in 1000/1591–92 he was  promoted to amīn and ṣadr of Bihar, a center for Adhar Kaywānīs, and to  Bengal. Later he was promoted to other high ofijices in various provinces  of the empire with elevated administrative rank.32 Though Akbar treated  him kindly, it is not unlikely that shortly after declaring Dīn-i Ilāhī Āmulī  was sent off to provinces, a digniijied exile perhaps, to fend off controver sies arising from enforcement of new measures. He received assuring let ters from Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī, along with advice as how to allocate pensions  to a network of Nuqṭawī dervishes, what Gīlānī euphemistically refers to  as Aḥādiyān. Yet there was a hint of containing the spread of Nuqṭawism.  It is as if the comfortable posts with lucrative income were meant to turn  the former dervish into an affluent ofijiceholder with an income from his  assigned land tenure and other sources. 

More than a decade later Āmulī still was in ofijice serving under  Jahāngīr (r. 1605–27), Akbar’s son and successor who revoked many of his  father’s measures but in spirit remained faithful to aspects of Dīn-i Ilāhī.  In 1014/1606 Jahāngīr offered Āmulī a monetary award and a new post and  described him in his memoirs as a “pure-hearted, lively-spirited man.”

Though he has no tincture of current sciences [presumably meaning no for mal religious education], lofty words and exalted knowledge often manifest  themselves in him. In the dress of a faqir he made many journeys, and he  has friendship with many saints and recites the maxims of those who pro fess mysticism. This is his conversation and not his practice (qālī ast na ḥālī).  In the time of my revered father he relinquished the garment of poverty  and asceticism, and attained to amirship and chieftainship. His utterances  are exceedingly powerful, and his conversation is remarkably eloquent and  pure, although he is without Arabic. His (verse) compositions are not devoid  of verve.33

On the surface Āmulī’s shift of career may seem something of an anti climax for a millenarian heretic. We may understand Jahāngīr’s reference  in the enigmatic passage above, as an indication that Āmulī no longer is  a practitioner (ḥālī) of his earlier beliefs; namely advocacy of Nuqṭawism. 

Yet still his utterances are effective and powerful and free of Arabic,  another indication of his proto-Persian convictions. 

We also know that even under Jahāngīr he leveraged his high ofijice to  build up a dervish constituency. Later that year when we hear of him for  the last time, he is receiving a gift of 9,000 rupees “to be given in alms to  faqirs and other poor people.”34 It is tempting to think that Āmulī and  likeminded freethinkers of his day helped perpetuating the spread of  agnostic Nuqṭawī ideas through itinerant dervishes possibly as far as the  Safavid realms.

Amnesia or Suppression?

It is important to note that despite the presence of Āmulī and a number  of Nuqṭawīs in Akbar’s court and while enjoying moral support of ʿAllāmī  and Fayḍī, the Nuqṭawī contribution to Akbar’s religious synthesis was  often ignored if not purposefully suppressed by the later historians. This  is ijirst evident in the case of Badāʾūnī’s history, Muntakhab al-tawārīkh,  which was written covertly while he was in Akbar’s service. A decade after  Akbar’s death when in 1024/1615 it was ijirst became known to the public  it was immediately banned by Jahāngīr because of openly acknowledging  Akbar’s heretical beliefs and his afijinity with the Nuqṭawīs. Muḥammad  Hāshim Khāfī Khān, the author of the late 18th century Muntakhab  al-lubāb, who acknowledges suppression of Badāʾūnī’s history under  Jahāngīr states:

ʿAbd al-Qādir the author of Tārīkh-i Badāʾūnī for a while was among inner  attendants of the Imām (i.e. Akbar), may he reside in the sublime heav ens. He was an established scholar who apparently was at odds on religious  issues with other scholars of that era including Shaykh Fayḍī and Shaykh  Abū-l-Faḍl (ʿAllāmī), sons of Shaykh Mubārak. Therefore he spelled out  some statements (in his history) that were contrary to Islamic dogmas about  both brothers and about a group of their protégés who were favored by the  king and allowed to speak out (in his presence). He also alleged in a few  instances a number of unmentionable claims foreign to sound reason about  the late His Majesty.

Khāfī Khān further elaborates that since Badāʾūnī in a few places had writ ten things about Akbar that “to wise people clearly reeked bias and selijish  intentions,” after his death Jahāngīr not only ordered the arrest of his son  and plunder of his house, but took written pledges from booksellers not  to buy or sell Badāʾūnī’s history. Fearing Jahāngīr’s rage, Khāfī Khān points  out that at least three historians of that era completely stayed clear in  their works from the issue of Akbar’s beliefs.35 

Even traces of Nuqṭawī influence seems to have been modiijied, if not  entirely edited out, from later renditions of ʿAllāmī’s well-known Akbar nāma and his Aʾīn-i Akbarī. As Kiyā points out, Muḥammad Hāshim Khāfī  Khān is the only biographer who acknowledges such omission in chroni cles of Jahāngīr’s reign. In a marginal passage to his Muntakhab al-lubāb he  states, “since the author of these pages does not speak but of the truth and  does not bother to have the approval of the chiefs and the ministers, after  much research and examination he gleaned from Badāʾūnī’s history and  other sources whatever had been said [about Akbar] and described the  truth of the matter on the principle that citing disbelief is not disbelief.”36 

Omissions may also have been made in later renditions of Tārīkh-i Alfī.  The last historian of this multi-authored history, Jaʿfar Bayg Qazwīnī, bet ter known as Aṣaf Khān (d. 1612), was commissioned to cover events up  to the year 997/1589 (or possibly even up to 1010/1601, the millennium of  Muḥammad’s death) but most extant copies of this history, which witnessed numerous revisions at the time of Akbar and later, only covers up  to the year 984/1576. That is the same year that Akbar initiated Dīn-i Ilāhī and the new Ilāhī calendar. Moreover, both the prologue (muqaddima)  and the epilogue (muʾakhkhara) to this history which are penned by Abū l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī, is missing from all extant copies. The omission prompt us  to conclude that the ijinal part of the original version of this history— covering the emergence of Dīn-i Ilāhī and the corresponding events— was deemed heretical and unijit to Akbar’s later image and thus it was  expunged from the text.37

The “success story” of Sharīf Āmulī stands in stark contrast to the fate of  Nuqṭawī leaders and Nuqṭawī “intellectuals” in Safavid Iran. The tolerant  court of Mughal emperor and the spirit that it generated in the multi-con fessional society of early Mughal era, offered a public sphere for debate  and dissention which in turn contributed to a new synthesis. By contrast  in Safavid Iran Nuqṭawīs were forced to go underground and leave barely  any tangible mark on the Safavid cultural landscape, at least directly. The  terrible fate of Nuqṭawī thinkers and activists such as Abū-l-Qāsim Amrī  from Quhpāyih (in the vicinity of Iṣfahān) is just one example. Amrī, a  poet of some innovation who among other works produced a dialogue  in verse entitled dhikr wa ijikr (remembrance and thinking), was blinded  by the order of Tahmāsp in 973/1565, perhaps becoming the ijirst victim  of anti-Nuqṭawī harassment in Safavid Iran. A quarter of a century later  in 999/1590–91 he was again arrested for advocacy of Nuqṭawī beliefs and  this time was lynched by the Shīrāz mob at the outset of the second anti Nuqṭawī campaign under ʿAbbās I. His chronogram composed by a hostile  source was “enemy of God” (dushman-i khudā = 999). He and his follow ers in the Nuqṭawī circle in Shīrāz were accused of collaborating with  the rebellious minister of Fārs, Mīrzā Jān Bayg, in organizing a massive  anti-Safavid revolt in the Fārs province which, given the date, must have  carried a millennial undertone. Predictably the ʿulamāʾ and sādāt (those  who claimed to be descendants of the Shīʿī Imāms) in Shīrāz played a piv otal part in inciting the public to mutilate Amrī’s body. Even the victim’s  denouncing Nuqṭawī afijiliation did not help the blind poet of Shīrāz.38 

Another Nuqṭawī leader, Mīr Sayyid Aḥmad Kāshī (Kāshānī) met his  terrible end when he was cut into two halves by the sword of ʿAbbās I  during the mulḥid-kushī of 1002/1593–94. We were told that not only he  believed that the world was “eternal” (qadīm) but he stood accused of  denying the Final Day and resurrection of the bodies. Instead, he con sidered “the reward for the good and punishment for the evil not in otherworldly Heaven and the Hell but in the happiness or misery (ʿāijiyat  wa [ yā] madhallat) of this world.” His gravest sin, as noted by Iskandar  Bayg Munshī, the author of Tārīkh-i ʿalamārā-yi ʿAbbāsī, was that he was accused of receiving a decree (manshūr) from Akbar’s chief minister,  Abū-l-Faḍl ʿAllāmī. This was held against him as proof of his treason.39  Yet despite different treatment in Mughal India and Safavid Iran, over  time Nuqṭawism and similar nonconformist and agnostic trends left little  lasting impact on the mainstream culture of the two empires. We surely  may attribute this to the esoteric nature of Nuqṭawī thought and its com plex cabalistic system inaccessible to the ordinary people. Yet there was  enough intellectual vigor in the movement and enough speculative com petence among its activists to synthesize and streamline the core ideas of  Pasīkhānī’s cyclical renewal and his anthropocentric call for divorcing the  heavens and returning the Adamic essence to earth.40 

The ṣulḥ-i kull was conijined to its rudiments, and by implication its  desire to enforce state’s supremacy over a plural religious environment,  was never fully realized. Yet in essence it remained a powerful initiative  that lingered for another century in Mughal environment. If an ideal cli mate for a new religio-cultural synthesis was conceivable anywhere in  the early modern Muslim empires, it was in Akbar’s India. Yet the eclipse  of Nuqṭawism, and its desire to supersede the Islamic cycle, as prophesized at the time, may well be attributed to the passing of the millennial  momentum after the year 1000 (or perhaps as late as 1010). The decade  long period before the Islamic millennium was long enough to allow a  new religious fermentation in which the Nuqṭawīs participated but not  long enough to encourage a lasting synthesis. 

Legacy of the Nuqṭawīs

Nuqṭawism lingered as an identiijiable heresy perhaps up to 1700, mostly  clandestinely, within some dervish circles. Nuqṭawī texts also seem to have  circulated in India and in Iran and may have influenced the 19th century  Bābī thinking on similar themes of cyclical renewal and anthropocentric  “pointism.” Interestingly, the original adherents to Dīn-i Ilāhī consisted  of nineteen initiates, which is identical with the nineteen Bābī Ḥurūf-i  Ḥayy (letters of living).41 Parallels between Nuqṭawī beliefs and symbol ism and the Bābī though are indeed striking. Preoccupation of Sayyid ʿAlī  Muḥammad Shīrāzī, the Bāb, the founder of the movement, with numer ology and occult sciences (ʿulūm-i gharība) and his self assumed status as  the Primal Point (nuqṭa-yi ūlā) of the new prophetic dispensation at the  least hints at a textual continuity between the Nuqṭawīs and the Bābīs.42

The idea of ṣulḥ-i kull also ceased to exist as a state ideology during  Jahāngīr’s year and its unorthodox roots were downplayed. It may have  survived in essence at least up to the 18th century within such circles as  Dārā Shikūh and the Indo-Ṣūfī mystical thought articulated there. As a gen eral concept, implying religious toleration and acceptance of all religions,  it also survived in the Iranian milieu and may have influenced the Bahāʾī  idea of universality of divine revelation. Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Akhūndzādih’s  famous play, Yūsuf-i tarkash-dūz, moreover, was a nostalgic dramatization  of the brutal treatment of the Nuqṭawīs under ʿAbbās I. Nearly a century  later, in the 1960’s Jalal Al-Ahmad’s novella, Nūn wa-l-qalam, which was an  allusion to the events of his own time, was also inspired by the Nuqṭawī  memory, even though his portrayal is colored by a predictable idealiza tion of Shīʿī martyrdom narrative. 

As often been noted the age of Aurangzeb witnessed near complete  reversal of earlier Mughal religious policy in favor of strict sharīʿa orientated interpretation of Islam evidently as a reaction to ecumenical  tendencies of Akbar’s court. The “neo-Ṣūfīs,” followers of Sirhindī—as Faḍl  al-Raḥman identiijies them—were deeply suspicious, and vocal in their  criticism of waḥdat-i wujūd Ṣūijism let alone heretical millenal exhortations of heretics such as the Nuqṭawīs. Greater reassertion of orthodox  Islam by Sunnī theologians and jurists only compounded the pressure on  freethinkers not only in the Indian subcontinent but in other Muslim soci eties of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 

Later traces of Nuqṭawīs and Nuqṭawī symbolism is nevertheless noticed  by a few authors. Among them is the early 19th century Niʿmatullāhī Ṣūfī  leader Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī better known by his Ṣūfī title  Majdhūb-ʿAlī Shāh. A sharīʿa-orientated Ṣūfī, Majdhūb in a number of  treatises attacked Nuqṭawīs as heretics and materialists as if they were his  contemporaries.43 The dervish Ṣūfī order known as Khāksār (earthly) with a Perso-Indian network active up to the 20th century also is considered as  a relic of the earlier Nuqṭawīs.44 

Beyond manifest and latent traces, a crucial point differentiated  Nuqṭawīsm and other agnostic trend of the early modern Persianate world  from their equivalents in Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries. Whereas  in Mughal India under Akbar and his immediate predecessors a climate  for toleration allowed concentration of freethinkers such as the Nuqṭawīs  for at least seven decades, this important window did not result in the  rise of a lasting philosophical movement similar to the early Enlighten ment in such places as the Dutch Republic. Whereas Descartes, Spinoza  and Leibnitz among others, laid the ground for what is often deijined as  Radical Enlightenment, in Mughal India similar tendencies represented  by likes of Sharīf Āmulī, Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī, and ʿUrfī Shīrāzī took a very  different course. The former group, advantaged by the print revolution of  the early modern times, managed to establish roots and gain readerships  in the public sphere beyond such safe havens as Amsterdam, Leiden and  Hague and despite strong opposition from the church and from most of  Europe’s rulers. Even by the late 16th century burning of heretics at the  stake was not uncommon in Europe. 

In Iran by the late 16th century the prevalence of sharīʿa scholasticism  not only seriously hindered even the benign speculative philosophy of  the School of Iṣfahān—what Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī named the “wisdom of  divine.” It has been suggested that the growth of speculative thought in  16th and early 17th century Safavid Iran may have been inspired by dis courses of Ādhar Kaywānīs and Nuqṭawīs. That ʿAbbās I before persecuting  Nuqṭawīs showed interest in their ideas, as evident from his attendance of  the Nuqṭawī convents in Qazwīn and Iṣfahān, may have encouraged him  to patronize philosophical pursuits. It is quite likely that such encounters  had a deep impact on the otherwise erratic and merciless ruler. Yet even  if the philosophers of the school of Iṣfahān were inspired by heterodox  speculations, they did not look at such a legacy very kindly. Nuqṭawīsm,  whether in Iran or in India, faced a monumental challenge. By question ing the ijinality of Islam as a divine dispensation and by attempting to  emancipate mankind from the yoke of a repressive theology, it barely had  the means or the philosophical preparation to deliver its message. 

Even in Mughal India such trends despite their speculative groundings  never managed to break away from the court patronage. And when it  did, it took refuge in the dervish convents, Ṣūfī circles and poetic gather ings. Despite a strong Ṣūfī tradition conducive to doctrinal break from the  sharīʿa, agnostic thought never seriously opted for a rational methodology (if not actively opposing it for being detrimental to mystical truth).  Although resistance to reason was mostly to the scholastic logic and the ology of medieval Islam, in the process counter-rationalism even rejected  dabbling in speculative philosophy of earlier centuries. In such climate  it is not surprising to witness rapid decline of antinomian thought once  Mughal patronage ceased to exist. 

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Notes

1 For religious policy under Akbar and the emergence of Dīn-i Ilāhī see Ahmad, Dīn-i  Ilāhī, Sharma, The Religious Policy 18–68, Roychoudhury, The Dīn-i Ilāhī, Ahmad, Akbar  21–38, and more recently Grobel, Der Dichter. Aziz Ahmad’s assertion in his EI2 entry that  “the trend of recent scholarship is to treat the Dīn-i Ilāhī as a heresy within Islam, rather  than a form of apostasy” is typical of the anxieties in the scholarship of Indian Islam which  tends to view Dīn-i Ilāhī within tenets of Islam rather than a break from it.

2 Dabistān. Eighth chapter (taʿlīm-i hashtum) deals with the Nuqṭawīs who are identi ijied as Wāḥidiyya. For the author of Dabistān see Mojtabaʾi, Dabestān who identiijies him  as Mīr Dhulijiqār Ardistānī better known as Mullā Moʾbad or Moʾbadshāh. This identiijica tion however has been soundly rejected (along with earlier erroneous identiijications) by  R. Riḍāzāda Malik in his scholarly edition of Dabistān ii, 9–76. He identiijies Kaykhusraw  Isfandīyār son of Ādhar Kaywān the only possible author. Such proposal, if can be proven  beyond doubt, conijirms close relations between Nuqṭawīs and Ādhar Kaywānīs in India.

3 For signiijicance of nuqṭa (point) in Nuqṭawī doctrine see Amanat, Nuqṭawī Move ment 284–289. Recent studies on Sirhindī suggest that even Sirhindī was preoccupied with  millenarian themes. See below.

4 For persecution under the Safavids see Amanat, Nuqṭawī Movement 289–95, and  idem, Apocalyptic Islam 83–89. See also below. 

5 I borrowed “persecuting society” from Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Soci ety. Though Moore’s thesis drew criticism from European medievalists (see for example  Laursen and Nedermann, Beyond the Persecuting Society), the core idea remains viable  when applied to societies governed by a deijining belief system that sharpens the notion  of “self ” versus the “other.” See also Zagorin, Religious Toleration, especially chapter One.  Late Safavid Iran and to a large extent the 19th century Qajar Iran lend themselves well to  the concept when a state-clergy symbiosis rigorously searched for a internal “other” to be

differentiated and persecuted in order to solidify a Shīʿī conforming community. See also  Amanat, Iranian Identity Boundaries 13–20, and idem, Historical Roots, especially 180–181. 6 Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān. 

7 The number of the Nuqṭawīs who left for India is based on my sifting through Kiyā’s  Nuqṭawiyān, which still remains the most comprehensive assessment of primary sources  on the Nuqṭawīs. In his article Nuqṭawiya, Dhakāwatī-Qaraguzlū arrives at number ijifteen  (though he fails to cite Kiyā as his primary source). Oddly enough Sharīf Āmulī, the most  prominent of Iranian Nuqṭawīs in India, is missing from his list.

8 For persecution under the Safavids see Amanat, Nuqṭawī Movement 289–95 (Amanat,  Apocalyptic Islam 73–89) and cited sources. See also Babayan, Mystics 57–117.  9 Badāʾūnī, Muntakhab iii, 195–96. As it is his habit to scandalize Iranian nonconform ists, Badāʾūnī speaks of ʿUrfī with great contempt but he only mentions his association  with other skeptics and agnostics such as Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī. For his association with Amrī  see for instance sources cited in Dhakawatī-Qaraguzlū, Nuqṭawiya 160. See also Losensky,  ʿOriji Ṧirazi, which makes a brief reference to antinomian proclivities of ʿUrfī’s poetry.

10 Badāʾūnī, Montakhab iii, 115. See also collection of Gīlānī’s letters, Ruqa’āt, and   editor’s long introduction, ibid. i–xxxvii. This collection contains a number of letters to  Mīr Sharīf Āmulī (see below) and other Nuqṭawī afijiliates whereby he offers his moral and  ijinancial support for them.

11  Badāʾūnī, Montakhab iii, 142. See Also Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 52 citing a quartet by Tashbihī  in Khulāṣat al-ashʿār with qalandari connotation: 

I am a sea of generosity, the weight of whose largess should I bear?  I am engrossed in nothingness, whose existence should I utter?

They say bow we must before the Truth (Ḥaqq, i.e. God),

But since I became all the Truth, to whom should I bow? 

12 For a thorough but slightly outdated study of Akbar’s religious initiatives see Roy choudhury The Din-i Ilahi, 4th ed., especially chapter VI, 140–171, where the author offers  a descriptive chronology of Akbar’s religious policies that ultimately came to be known as Dīn-i Ilāhī. A major shortcoming of this otherwise well researched study is a general disre gard for the role of the antinomians in the Mughal court and more speciijically the impor tance of millenarian themes in abrogating the Islamic sharīʿa. Though he relies heavily  on Dabistān, Roychoudhury systematically omits references to Nuqṭawīs, Ādhar-Kaywānīs  and other trends that were well appreciated by ʿAllāmī, his brother and his father Mubārak,  as well as other agnostic ijigures in the court. He only makes a passing reference to Sharīf  Āmulī for instance and does not discuss the origins and development of the doctrine  of ṣulḥ-i kull. Yet as a timely response to prevalent view offered by earlier interpretation  of Akbar’s religion (e.g. Smith, Akbar) it sets the ground for a balanced understanding of  Akbar and his religion. 

13 Shāhnawāz Khān, Ma⁠ʾathir iii, 285, cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 45. See also Athar Ali,  Sharīf Āmulī, and cited sources.

14 Ibid.

15 Dabistān 324. 

16 Shāhnawāz Khān, Ma⁠ʾathir iii, 285. Cf. Dabistān 324. 

17 Persian and Perso-Indian dictionaries that I consulted have no trace of such expres sion. Neither al-Ṭahānawī, Kashshāf, nor Sajjādī, Farhang have a reference to hamih ūst,  though through reading of Ṣūfī texts may offer clues.

18 Athar Ali, translates the term as “monotheistic” which seems inaccurate given Āmulī’s  agnosticism. The Nuqṭawīs are also referred to as Wāḥidīs (uniterians; from wāhid: one) as  for instance in Dabistān. The only extant manuscript of Sharīf Āmulī in Iranian libraries,  Sharḥ-i qaṣīda, Suʾalāt, may throw new light on his philosophical orientation. 

19 See for instance Chittick, Imaginal Worlds 123–76, which is based on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s  al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya

20 Athar Ali, Ṣulḥ-i kull. The author does not specify the source for Akbar’s letter. Same  as Roychoudhury, Athar Ali too holds that Akbar’s teacher, Mīr ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was respon sible for introduction of the concept to the Mughal ruler. Evidence about ṣulḥ-i kull in  Persian literature is mostly from the 18th century as for instance in a verse by Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī  who resided in India. In the Persian dictionary Ghiyāth al-lughat, produced in India, ṣulḥ-i  kull is associated with the Muwaḥḥids, which is synonymous with the Nuqṭawīs. 

21 Gīlānī, Ruqa’āt, contains two letters to Āmulī (no. 54, p. 127 and no. 65, p. 150). Both  letters denote close friendship between the two yet neither one have unambiguous refer ence to such issues as ṣulḥ-i kull.

22 I am grateful to Professor Azfar Moin for generously sharing observation concerning  Badāʾūnī’s mystical beliefs. See Moin, Challenging Mughal Emperor 390–400.  23 Muntakhabāt, i: 266, pp. 142–175. For Sirhindī and his evolving image see for example  Friedman, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī and his entry Aḥmad Serhendī (1) and Giordani, Aḥmad  Serhendī (2), in EIr and cited sources.

24 See Badāʾūnī, Muntakhab ii, 170–712, where he renders a sarcastic portrayal of Āmulī.  Under Sarmadī Iṣfahānī, presumably another Nuqṭawī suspect, Āmulī is only mentioned in passing (idem iii, 169). Ḥakīm Abū-l-Fatḥ Gīlānī (idem iii, 115), the influential advisor  to Akbar does not receive any kinder treatment. Yet a close reading of Muntakhab, and  especially part three, may reveal much about suspect Nuqṭawīs and other heretics of the  time.

25 The year 1010 also corresponded to the beginning of the 17th century in the Christian  Gregorian calendar; a fact that no doubt was known to Akbar and people in his court given  the presence of the Jesuit missionaries in the Mughal court. This conjunction may have  encouraged calendric and astrological computations in order to advance Akbar’s Divine  Religion beyond the pale of Islam as a universal creed

26 See Introduction to the last part of Tatawī, Tārīkh-i Alfī 13–39. To add to the calendric  complexity, we may speculate that the starting date for computing the new millennium  was based on the astrological time cycles current in the Mughal court rather than on the  Islamic Hijra or the beginning of Muḥammad’s revelation. The astrological triplicity shift  (combination of three signs of the zodiac) in 571 CE was the starting point for 240 or 360  solar calendar year cycles (rather than Islamic lunar calendar). According to this calcula tion the millennium occurs in 1571, ten years before the above 988/1580–81 date. I am  thankful to Dr. Eva Orthmann for drawing my attention to this astrological feature. See  also her Circular Motions 101–15. 

27 For a full account see Roychoudhury, Din-i Ilahi.

28 See Amanat, Nuqṭawī Movement 291–92. 

29 Cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 33. Another version of Āmulī’s millennial prophecy  appears in Shāhnawāz Khān, Ma⁠ʾathir ii, cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 48.  30 Badāʾūnī, Muntakhab ii, 286–88.

31 For a list of Ilāhī measures see Roychoudhury, Din-i Ilahi 177–97, which is largely  based on Badāʾūnī’s Muntakhab, esp. ii, 209–24, and on Dabistān, Chap. 10.

32 Shāhnawāz Khān, Ma⁠ʾathir iii, 285–60, cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 45–48.

 33 Jahāngīr, Tuzuk 47–48.

34 Ibid. 81.

35 Khāfī Khān, Muntakhab i, 197–98, cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 33–34 n. 4.  36 Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān 33–34 n. 4 citing from a marginal note in a manuscript copy of  Khāfī Khān’s Muntakhab 197–198.

37 Storey, Persian Literature i, 118–22 and Āl-i Dāwūd, Introduction to Tārīkh-i Alfī  15–17, 39–49. It is important to note that in the year 1000/1591–92 Akbar reportedly com missioned Badāʾūnī to revise the widely-disputed history in order to assure factual and  chronological accuracy. In his Muntakhab ii, 221–22, Badāʾūnī states that he only revised  the ijirst two parts but left the ijinal part to Aṣaf Khān Qazwīnī. We may thus surmise that  Aṣaf should be held responsible for revisions of the third part, and hence the enigma of  the missing ijinal years. Given Badāʾūnī’s well-known hostility toward all non-orthodox  trends in Akbar’s court, his report should be treated with caution. Before examining all the  extant manuscript copies and careful reconstruction of the timeline of various revisions, it is difijicult to determine under which circumstances and at what point of time omissions  had occurred. 

38 An account of Amrī’s life and death appears in Awḥadī, ʿArafāt. Amrī’s account was  ijirst cited in Kiyā, Nuqṭawiyān, 59–61 from a manuscript copy in Malik Library, Tehran.  Awḥadī, himself a poet, had interviewed Amrī in his old age and carried poetic exchanges  with him.

39 Munshī, Tārīkh i, 476–77.

40 See Amanat, Nuqtawi Movement 284–79, reprinted in idem, Apocalyptic Islam  77–82.

41  Ahmad, Dīn-i Ilāhī.

42 See Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal 13–14, 134–35, for resemblances with Nuqṭawī  themes.

43 See for instance Majdhūb’s reference to the Nuqṭawīs in his treatise Iʿtiqādāt  (dogmas; also known as al-ʿaqāʾid al-Majdhūbiya) accusing them of being atheists and  believers in reincarnation (Majdhūb, Rasāʾil 3–26 (11, 21). See also Dhakāwatī-Qaraguzlū,  Nuqṭawiya 157, which cites Majdhūb’s Mirʾat 91, conijirming the author’s encounter with  heretical Ṣūfīs, a veiled reference to the Nuqṭawīs. Aqā Muḥammad-ʿAlī Bihbahānī, the powerful Uṣūlī mujtahid of Kirmānshāh and son of Aqā Muḥammad-Bāqir Bihbahānī,  was an acknowledged anti-Ṣūfī inquisitor of the early Qajar era. He acquired the title of  Ṣūfī-kush (Ṣūfī killer) because of his anti-Ṣūfī fatwas that led to execution of a number of  Ṣūfīs. In his polemical work Khayratiya, which primarily refutes Niʿmatullāhī Ṣūfīs, he con demns “dissenters,” “deviators” and “heretics,” who followed Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī. It is likely  that Bihbahānī’s earlier residence in India made him conscious of the Nuqṭawī heretics  (Bihbahānī, Khayratiya ii, 16–62 and 176–94). The latter is a summery citation of Thuqūb  al-shihāb iji rajm al-murtāb by a unanimous author.

44 Connection with the Khāksār, suggested among others by Mudarrisī Chahārdihī,  Khāksār 8, deserves further investigation. See also Dhakāwātī-Qaraguzlū, Nuqṭawiya 154.

 


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