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.