Sajjad Rizvi (University of Exeter ,s.h.rizvi@exeter.ac.uk)
Aligarh
Historians’ Society Workshop at Indian History Congress 2015
Much of the literature on the time of Akbar is characterized by praise for his latitudinarian approach to different religious confessions: let a thousand flowers bloom in the gardens of Hindustan so to speak! In particular, this religious policy has been linked to the notion of sulḥ-i kull or universal peace (or perhaps peace towards all confessions), that an earlier generation argued was the ethical instrumentalisation of the Sufi doctrine of monism (waḥdat al-wujūd) as adopted by the Chishtī order;1 however, more recently Azfar Moin has countered that the notion began with Akbar and was central to his self-realisation as a ‘millennial sovereign’, underpinned by the ideological formulation of Abu-l-Fażl in the Akbarnāma.2 Besides, certain acts of persecution of Shiʿa notables and divines in this period do seem to raise questions about the efficacy of sulḥ-i kull.3 Broadly speaking this policy, of placing the Mughal Emperor about the petty confessionalism of elements of the court, was then further developed under Jahāngīr. One of the main arguments seems to be that the plurality of confessions at court (including prominent Iranian notables who were Shiʿi) required a policy of tolerance of religions.4 But the question then arises: how can we understand the role of Shiʿism at court in this period? How do we make sense of the execution of the Iranian theologian Sayyid Nūrullāh Shūshtarī in 1610 on the orders of Jahāngīr? Was India immune to the ‘sectarian’ turn of the early modern period as exemplified in the Ottoman-Safavid conflict, an imperial conflagration that replaced the earlier Timurid tendency of ‘confessional ambiguity’ or even tashayyuʿ-yi ḥasan?5
In
order to address these questions, I shall examine one debate between two
Iranian émigré thinkers at the Mughal
court in Agra, contextualizing it within the intellectual history of polemical literature in the
Persianate world as well as the attempts to discern the distinctions between Safavid Iran and
Mughal India. I will then conclude with some
comments on its implications for our understanding of Mughal religious
policy and return to the particular
question of the execution of Shūshtarī.
While it is certainly evident that religious difference does not necessitate violence nor do contemporary phenomena of sectarian violence provide evidence for the political manifestation of ‘age-old hatreds’, it is also clear that sectarian bias, discrimination and at times violence, both objective and subjective were not inventions of the colonial state.6 Perhaps the fundamental question was if the Mughal polity was open to religious pluralism did it mean that confessions could openly profess their beliefs without any fear of reprisal: more specifically in the case of the Shiʿa, did it mean that the time for dissimulation (taqīya), of hiding one’s true beliefs for fear of persecution, was over? This was at the heart of the debate between Sayyid Nūrullāh Shūshtarī and Mīr Yūsuf Astarābādī in Agra.7 Sayyid Nūrullāh himself argued that because Akbar was a just ruler, there was no need for taqīya.8 Of course, those critical of Akbar such as Badāyunī actually did allege a streak of anti-Sunnism if not philo-Shiʿism in the policy of Akbar led astray by the likes of Abū-l-Fażl.9 Even the latter mentions this accusation in the Akbarnāma, alongside Akbar’s pleasure with those who eschewed confessional bigotry.10 Badāyūnī even decried the short-lived experiment of debates in the ʿIbādatkhāna as ‘attacks on the very basis of the faith’.11
Sayyid Nūrullāh was a significant figure, who featured prominently in many biographical dictionaries both Iranian and Indian.12 One of the earliest accounts of his life is by his son Sayyid ʿAlāʾ al-Mulk who found patronage in Bengal with Prince Shujāʿ (and which may account for his silence on how his father died).13 He came from the southern borderlands of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict in Tustar/Shūshtar, from a bilingual social context, where he was born in 956/1549. His father Sayyid Sharīf al-Dīn had been a student of Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Qaṭīfī, the independent minded jurist originally from Eastern Arabia active at the Safavid court.14 He himself studied with ʿAbd al-Waḥīd Shūshtarī who was linked to the philosophers of Shiraz. He moved to Mashhad to continue his studies arriving in 1572; however, the turmoil following the death of Shah Ṭahmāsb in 1576 led to his decision to move to India. He was already an accomplished scholar before he left for India in 993/1585. He gained the patronage of Akbar and was appointed a judge in Lahore according to the Sunni legal rites – Rizvi is adamant that the evidence suggests that Akbar knew he was Shiʿi.15 This might have been partly because after the campaigns in Punjab, engaging with Kabul and the pacification of Sind, Akbar had sent the ʿulamāʾ of Lahore into these regions and there was a need to replenish personnel in this major city; he may also have needed more compliant and loyal ʿulamāʾ following the revolt of the Shiʿi qāżī of Jaunpur Mullā Muḥammad Yazdī and who better to fill that role than another ‘foreigner’.16 So recipient of imperial favour was certainly Sayyid Nūrullāh’s lot. In a letter than must have been penned probably in the 1590s to Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1621), the Shaykh al Islām of Isfahan and a friend of his father’s, he wrote:
After traversing long distances and undergoing considerable pains and agony, I reached the Indian capital. There luck favoured me and I obtained an opportunity to benefit from the luminous sun and found repose under the shadow of the great Sultan, Akbar Through divine grace and blessings, I obtained a lofty position and the honour of the companionship of the emperor…[whose] patronage and favours increase daily. In fact my success is due to divine munificence and the benevolence of the Prophet and the friend of God, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. The high position and nearness to the Emperor did not, however, make me forgetful of myself. I was always conscious of the hereafter and of the ultimate end of mortal beings. In refuting the arguments and the rationale of the Nawāṣib [anti-Shiʿi Sunnis], I was guided by the holy traditions of my ancestors. In these circumstances, I came to the conclusion that in India, taqiyya was a great calamity. It would expel out children from the Imāmīya faith and make them embrace the false Ashʿarī or Mātūrīdi faiths. Reinforced by the kindness and the bounty of the Sultan, I threw away the scarf of taqiyya from my shoulders and, taking with me an army of arguments, I plunged myself into jihād against the Sunni ʿulamāʾ of this country. I was convinced that active religious polemics and discussions against the Sunni ʿulamāʾ was the jihād which would make the best provision for the world hereafter. First of all I wrote Maṣāʾib al-nawāṣib which refutes the Nawāqiḍ al rawāfiḍ. My arguments in that book smeared the beard of the author of the Nawāqiḍ with filth. Then I wrote al-Ṣawārim al-muhriqa. Because of my book the bitter attacks by the author of the Sawāʾiq on the Shīʿīs rebounded upon him and reduced the Sawāʾiq, which claimed to be lightening to ashes. God also gave me the strength to perform other deeds.17
In
such a correspondence with a major figure of the Safavid court – a space that
was rife with polemics and in which the
Shiʿa need not worry about the consequence of
enunciating their version of sacred history and theology – it would be
perhaps self-serving for Sayyid Nūrullāh
to claim such a courageous position of defending the faith. And it also assumes that the court would have a strong
religious hue (as one assumed it did in Iran
and at the Ottoman and Uzbek courts). One also sees how his own
portrayal of his life as a heroic figure
is fashioning himself as a major scholar and a leading divine of his age furthering the Safavid Shiʿi cause – despite
being in India.
Sayyid Nūrullāh was known for the polemics that he wrote, most of which were penned in India. It is odd that some biographers refer to Majālis al-muʾminīn as a polemical work – it was more a vindication of Shiʿi Islam through an appropriation of previous Sufis and a whole range of cultural, religious and intellectual figures as Shiʿi. The text was an attempt to demonstrate the primordiality and contribution of the Shiʿa to Islamic history and civilization, and is only indirectly polemical. It was completed in Lahore in Dhū-l-Qaʿda 1010/May 1602. Yet according to the sources, it was its discovery that led to much consternation among the Sunni ʿulamāʾ at Jahāngīr’s court. One needs to locate the polemics within a wider context of Shiʿi responses to Sunni accusations.18 These took the form of (at least) four cycles of texts. The first was the Risāla ʿUthmānīya of al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869), which was written around the year 240/854, to which a number of classical authors penned responses such as the Refutation (Naqḍ) of the famous theologian al Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī (d. c. 310/922) and especially Bināʾ al-maqāla al-Fāṭimīya of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 673/1274).19 The second cycle of texts began with Minhāj al-karāma of ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 725/1325), written probably in 710/1311 for the Il-Khan Uljaytu, which was refuted by the Minhāj al-sunna of Ibn Taymīya (d. 728/1328) a few years later, not the only anti-Shiʿi polemic he wrote.20 The third cycle, and a little known one, started with al-Risāla al-muʿāriḍa fī-l-radd ʿalā l-rawāfiḍ (Refutation of the Rejectors) of Yūsuf b. Makhzūm al-Aʿwar al-Wāsiṭī in the 9th/15th century which led to a refutation in al Ḥilla in 839/1435 by Najm al-Dīn Khiḍr al-Ḥabalrūdī entitled al-Tawāḍīḥ al-anwār bi-l-ḥujaj al-wārida li-dafʿ shubhat al-Aʿwar (The Clarifying Lights through scriptural proofs warding off the objections of the One-Eyed).21 The fourth, which is crucial for Sayyid Nūrullāh, began with Ibṭāl nahj al-bāṭil (Invalidity of the path of falsehood) written around 909/1503 by Faḍlallāh b. Ruzbihān al-Khunjī (d. 927/1521), a prominent Timurid historian and theologian in refutation of Nahj al-ḥaqq wa-kashf al-ṣidq of ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī.22 It was this text to which Nūrullāh responded with Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq completed in Lahore in 1605.23
The
Ottoman-Safavid conflict was a critical backdrop with its literary
production excoriating the other as well
as the fatwas produced in the Ottoman realms against the Shiʿa.24 Apart from fatwas, Jaʿfarīyān cites
around nine Ottoman texts in the early Safavid
period that anathemised the Shiʿa in a number of ways, either directly
attacking Shiʿi beliefs and practices or
focusing on the Qizilbash and their supposed allies in Ottoman controlled Anatolia or the recounting of the
Abū-Muslim-nāmas that were popular in
Khurāsān.25 A further work of central importance for South Asia was the
fatwa of the ʿulamāʾ of Central Asia in
response to the question posed from Mashhad after the Safavid takeover. During the siege of Mashhad by
ʿAbdullāh Khān Uzbek, the Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ of
Mashhad requested a fatwa to protect their lives and properties in the
event of an Uzbek takeover. The response
of the Central Asian Sunni Ḥanafī jurists was not exactly comforting; while they accepted that the
lives and properties of all those who profess to believe in God and the Prophet were
sacrosanct at the same time they warned that if those people also violated the norms of behaviour
towards the way of the Sunnis and excoriated
them then the original freedom was curtailed. This influenced the
polemics of Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī and
demonstrated that the polemics in India were affected not just by the Ottoman-Safavid conflict but also by
developments in Central Asia (and arguably the
Uzbek-Safavid conflict which to an extent became the Turānī-Īrānī
division at the Mughal court).26
While
he is credited with more than a hundred works, it was his three voluminous polemics that became famous. The first was Maṣāʾib
al-nawāṣib written in India in Rajab
995/1587 in seventeen days in response to the Sunni Iranian exile at the
Ottoman court Mīr Makhdūm Sharīfī (d.
995/1587).27 Sharīfī, a descendent of the famous theologian Mīr ʿAlī Jurjānī (d. 1414) had dedicated his work
in 987/1580 to Sultan Murād III. The second
was al-Ṣawārim al-muhriqa in response to Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī’s
scriptural refutation of Shiʿi Islam
entitled al-Ṣawāriq al-muḥriqa; like the other polemics it was popular in
India and written after Maṣāʾib and
Majālis.28 And the third completed late in 1605 in Lahore – which was certainly the cause of much
grumbling at court – Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq. His works were well known but the Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq and Majālis
al-muʾminīn were not so – and it was the
latter that came to the attention of the Sunni ʿulamāʾ and led to them
bringing a case before Jahāngīr.
What
changed later in the reign of Akbar for Sayyid Nūrullāh was the loss of the
support of his influential friends dying
one by one: Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī in 1589, the Gilānīs, and Abū-l- Fażl in 1602.29
From a position of prominence at court and as chief judge of Lahore, a major Mughal city for sure, he seemed to be
slowly sidelined.30 By the time he completed
Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq in 1605, he was already complaining of the loss of
patronage. Two years before that he had
lamented to Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī again:
For some time luck has deprived me of its favours. The mean and wretched India has caused me unbearable pain and shock. Not only has the Sultan ended his patronage and benevolence towards me, but he has closed the doors of my departure to Khurāsān and Iraq. When the tyranny and oppressions against me began to mount and the sufferings and anguish stepped up I began to imagine India (Hind) was the same Hind (bint ʿUtba) who ate the liver of my great uncle Ḥamza (ibn Muṭṭalib).31
Sayyid
Nūrullāh’s final supporter at court – by this time of Jahāngīr – Ḥakīm ʿAlī
Gīlānī died in 1018/1609.32 The context had turn against him, and the time was
not so favourable for a courageous
polemicist.
So let us turn to the correspondence before returning to the death of Sayyid Nūrullāh. What do we know of his interlocutor? The editor based on some extant works and the meager mention in the biographical record says that Mīr Yūsuf ʿAlī was a sayyid of Astarābād (a prominent city in Khurasan whose sayyids played a major cultural and intellectual role from the time of Shah Ṭahmāsb onwards).33 He moved to Mashhad in 969/1561–62 and then onto India in around 971/1563–64 (because in one of his autographs dated 1011/1602–3 he mentions having spent forty years in India). He was clearly somewhat homesick as suggested in his works – but he probably moved to India in search of patronage as many others did. He may well have been related to Mīr Fakhr al-Dīn Sammākī, Mīr Abū-l-Qāsim Findiriskī and Mīr Muʾmin Astarābadī (all of the same sayyid family) who had strong links to India. The other main work he seems to have penned is a hagiography of the Shiʿi Imams entitled Fawaḥāt al-quds.34 Āqā Buzurg in his bibliographical work al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-shīʿa cites him as an ‘Akhbārī’ who corresponded with Sayyid Nūrullāh in 1019/1610, the year of his death.35 This ideological difference is significant but I think misleading. There is nothing as such in the correspondence that would indicate such a leaning – and it would be too early historically speaking; besides we have yet to delve deeply into the question of what actually constituted (and constitutes now) Akhbārism in India.36
The
text itself is primarily about the nature of the knowledge of the Prophet and
the Imams in which Mīr Yūsuf takes a
maximalist position (later known as one of walāya takwīnīya, of the cosmic authority of the
Imams as perfect manifestations of the divine
names including knowledge).37 As such it could be considered within the
context of debates on religious
exaggeration (ghulūw) in this period. Sayyid Nūrullāh in his response – and I remain unconvinced that Mīr Yūsuf was
an Akhbārī since it is somewhat early in
the history of the movement – adopts a common strategy of questioning
the validity of the sources upon which
Astarābādi relies such as the (in)famous khuṭbat al-bayān attributed to ʿAlī.38 If anything both seem to be taken
with Sufi figures and concepts and with forms
of reasoning through law and theology. There is no real evidence for a
difference of opinion in matters of
legal method, which begs the question of why the editor placed that at the heart of the title.
There
are twelve epistles and eleven responses (since the final epistle is
somewhat formulaic praise perhaps it did
not require an answer). Some of the more interesting debates include the sixth on whether the text
of the Qurʾan was corrupted and the true
revelation remains with the Imams alone. The text is extensive and gives
us an insight into the debates in
Persianate Shiʿi Islam of the time; it reveals the significance of the genre
of the scholarly question and answer in
epistle form as a means for gauging intellectual history.
Nevertheless
the key epistle is the tenth on the question of taqīya.39 Not surprisingly it
is one of the longest responses that
Sayyid Nūrullāh gives. Mīr Yūsuf’s question begins with his unhappiness at the response to the ninth
epistle in which Sayyid Nūrullāh expressed
some impatience with the circuitous and careful nature of the
correspondence no doubt inspired by the
fear of someone intercepting the epistles. One has to be careful with what one professes:
I am careful not to write what causes harm either to myself or to one who reads it. Your writings have caused harm to yourself and to those who have read them…If one forsakes taqīya, one may come to harm. You must, of course, know that taqīya is obligatory, and forsaking what is obligatory is a sin. You must also know that all the Infallibles performed taqīya, and even the Prophet performed taqīya.40
He
then gave an example from Imam Riḍā who was asked about whether the Prophet
did and how he stopped doing taqīya
after the revelation of Q. 5:67 – ‘God will protect you from the people’. He then goes onto attack
Sayyid Nūrullāh for endangering people in
Kashmir:
Someone
wrote a work that caused harm, that one sees clearly in Kashmir. You sent your work to one of the Shiʿa there and Aḥmad
Bēg the governor of Kashmir found out
and sought to harm him, however some people intervened and by taking a
false oath saved him. Thus is it more
important that such a work come to the attention of one’s friends and foes or that one is
safeguarded from death? The truth, which is
apparent, is that sending a copy of such a work to someone unaware is
blameworthy. Have you forgotten what
happened to Mullā Aḥmad of Thatta and came to pass? And what happened to many other elders before
who wrote such works? No opponent comes
to the truth this way; the writing of such works [polemics] is pointless.41
He
then makes it clear that he means Maṣāʾib al-nawāṣib, which was
unnecessary:
Even
if your intention was to refute the words of Makhdūm [Sharīfī], this was unnecessary because the truth of the matter
is apparent to the Shiʿa and in no terms
should it have come to the attention of the others.42
Sayyid
Nūrullāh prefaces his response by making it clear that Mīr Yūsuf will not
appreciate it. Sometimes one needs to
respond to polemics and disputation, not only because it is impolite not to respond (which suggests that
the opponent is unworthy of response) and
also because it reflects an arrogance and stubbornness – and can further
support the obstinacy of the opponent.43
He then cites some of the great Shiʿi scholars of the past who engaged in polemics such as Khwāja Naṣīr
al-Din Ṭūsī (d. 1274). Sometimes one has to
point out what is irrational. Sometimes the best response is to write a
refutation or engage in a disputation
and it was the standard practice of the Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ. Similarly it cannot
be devoid of wisdom because even the
Imams sometimes forsook taqīya.44
As
for what you have said about no one being able to speak in a way that is acceptable to everyone, then this is not
established since there is much by way of
prose and poetry that is widely accepted, whether they are in accord
with a sound nature and mind or not.45
It
is impossible to write something that all will accept – just as the Shiʿa would
never accept the Nawāqiḍ and the Sunnis
consider the Tajrīd of Ṭūsī to be inauspicious!46 Sayyid Nūrullāh then
addresses the personal nature of the critique:
As
for what you have written about my works being the cause of harm, then its response is that I only write for the
pleasure of God and do not identify myself to the opponents but I say that it is the writing of
a student of the ʿulamāʾ of Iraq and Iran.
So what harm can come to me from that? And whether someone may read it
and it causes them harm, how can that be
specific to me?47
This
is a somewhat odd claim since his works are signed. He goes on to mention
polemics that are very harsh and known
in India and yet they do not harm anyone.
You
are incorrect in your belief that taqīya is obligatory in all times and the
Imāmī ʿulamāʾ should not have written polemical works… As far as taqīya is
concerned, I believe that, as there is a
just ruler in India, there is no justification for performing taqīya. In any
case it is not obligatory for men like
me who believe that being killed supporting the true religion glorifies the faith. God (ṣāḥib-i sharʿ) has allowed
such persons not to perform taqīya. Only those who are not steadfast in their faith, do not care
to strengthen it, and are not strong in intelligent discourse should have recourse to it…Taqīya
is obligatory at some times and for some
people.48
He
then explains the Kashmir incident where he sent the rough draft of Maṣāʾib to
Mullā Muḥammad Amīn who was desperate for it given the polemical context under
the governorship of Aḥmad Bēg Kābulī. It
was solicited under duress (apparently he was told ‘if you don’t send it, then tomorrow at
Judgment, I will complain to your ancestor) and he responded and there was no intention to bring
anyone into harm.49
Polemics
do have a place. Sayyid Nūrullāh refutes the point about the futility of
polemics:
If what you say were acceptable, then for the last thousand years each work of the Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ written in refutation of the opponents would be pointless since the truth is always apparent to the people who uphold truth. Then surely there would be no need for works such as Kashf al-ḥaqq of Jamāl al-Dīn [Ibn] al-Muṭahhar [al-Ḥillī] and his work al-Alfayn and Nahj al-karāma or al-Ṭarāʾif of Ibn Ṭāwūs and their like, which are innumerable.50 Similarly there is no doubt that there is a God who is the Necessary being which is more evident than any other issue in theology and yet theologians always write epistles and works to establish that. Surely according to your claim all these works are pointless? It is also not sufficient to refute Mīr Makhdūm alone but all the claims in that as well as the [Sunni] commentaries on al Mawāqif, al-Maqāṣid and al-Tajrīd.51
On
interesting point is his response that he is not overly concerned with matters
of the occult and prognostications.
Before that he puts in a dig at India – and indirectly at Mīr Yūsuf for protecting his patronage:
In
India, melons are sour. Whenever one comes to India, one sees the fresh
melon before him even though it has no
taste, praying would that it were pleasurable. But when one puts it in one’s mouth, one curses
it.52
He
ends with conciliatory words that his response is not to accuse but to offer
friendly advice. Believers should think
good of each other and not be like the follower of Imam Ḥasan who accused him of betrayal when he
made a truce with Muʿāwiya. He ends with a
hemistisch: ‘We are who we were – and love is everlasting’.53 Sayyid
Nūrullāh is constant – and steadfast in
walāya.
In
the course of the letter the real issue is Sayyid Nūrullāh’s denial that the
Imams know the states of all people at
all times – he cites the famous suspicion of infidelity against ʿĀʾisha the wife of the Prophet as he also
rejects the evidence of the khuṭbat al-bayān which is not even a ḥadīth.54
There is a clear theological gap between the two thinkers – that extends to how one might express the
difference in the public sphere. What emerges
from this exchange is a self-fashioning of Sayyid Nūrullāh as a
combative and assertive scholar who will
not comprise on matters of faith either for the lure of patronage or to avoid the gallows. That makes some of the
standard accounts of his death all the more
unlikely.
One
instructive biographical account that insists on his taqīya was penned by the
modern Indian scholar of Nadwat
al-ʿulamāʾ Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī (d. 1922) entitled ‘Nūrullāh al-Tustarī’.55 He claims that
Sayyid Nūrullāh remained in taqīya and claimed to judge according to the four Sunni schools.
Al-Ḥasanī accuses him of secretly writing
against the Ashʿariyya in Iḥqāq and Majālis (the latter is a strange
addition here). Some ʿulamāʾ got hold of
the latter and showed to Jahāngīr. He got angry at the taqīya and had him flogged to death. Al-Ḥasanī then cites
Sayyid Nūrullāh’s own affirmation of his Shiʿism at the end of Iḥqāq to betray his hypocrisy
as well as his attack on India condemning Agra
as a place of infidelity, ignorance and deceit. Thus for this biographer
he stands condemned in his own
words.
One account that has recently come to light is ʿAbd al-Sattār Lāhawrī’s Majālis-i Jahāngīrī.56 7 Jumāda II 1019/28 August 1610 on Saturday eve – majlis 31: Nūrullāh was arrested on account of his own work [because he hid his faith] as the common people are bigoted and pure Sunnis (sunnī-yi mutaʿaṣṣib u ghalīẓ).
May
God preserve all from the illness of bigotry. Because we – the absolute manifestation of the divine (maẓhar-i kull) –
reflect the mercy of God upon all, we
forgo looking at the confession of people (qaṭaʿ-yi naẓar az maẕhab u
millat) and have compassion and mercy to
all. However, everyone’s acts and their recompense is upon us such that we will not allow anyone to
fall outside of the circle of justice and
equity (har kas rā ʿamalī u jazāʾī bar mā-st kih az dāʾira-yi ʿadālat u
inṣāf kas rā qadam bīrūn nihādan naguẕārīm).57
This
account is immediately following by one of Muḥammad Amīn Kashmīrī who was Shiʿi and now Sunni – and about the problem
of the bigotry of the Iranis who supported
him before, suggesting that he was unconcerned about whether a subject
was Sunni or Shiʿi. What is most
striking is the apologetic nature of the event. There is a recognition
that something bad has happened – but
the victim is to blame because the royal and sacred prerogative of the emperor cannot be
mistaken. It certainly reveals that the question of Jahāngīr’s religious policy is indeed quite
complex; it also suggests that Moin’s reading of the status of the Mughal Emperor as standing
above petty religious affiliations has much
to commend it.
Another
early source, Taqī Awḥadī-yi Balyānī, who visited Agra in 1611–12, also
mentions that Sayyid Nūrullāh was
flogged to death for pretending to be Shāfiʿī (i.e. practicing taqīya) when questioned by Jahāngīr.58 He
reports that Nūrullāh was well known for his
Shiʿism, and in response to a question from Jahāngīr who ‘had made peace
between Sunni and Shiʿi and held them
both in their own place’, said that he was Shāfiʿī. Jahāngīr became angry and had him severely flogged during
which he died. It is not clear to me why
Jahāngīr ought to have become angry on this point to justify such a
major punishment. Balyānī seems to cast
doubt upon this reason by saying, ‘but in truth, he was a man whose speech and actions were on the whole in
conformity and he spoke the truth, except when
he was composing satirical verse’. Another early account is by Mīrzā Muḥammad
Ṣādiq Iṣfahānī who was a
rapporteur/intelligence scribe (wāqiʿa-navīs) under Shāhjahān and whose Ṣubḥ-i Ṣādiq and Shāhid-i Ṣādiq owes
much to the Majālis al-muʾminīn.59 He also
opts for a subdued taqīya narrative. The nineteenth century account of
the Sunni Sufi Raḥmān ʿAlī in his Taẕkira-yi
ʿulamāʾ-yi Hind only praises him as an author of excellent works such as Majālis al-muʾminīn.60 It
mentions his favour with Akbar but just says that he died in 1610 and not why.
It
seems odd for Jahāngīr to have acted in such a way. Much has been written about
his openness to the Shiʿa and to the
faction of his wife Nūrjahān; perhaps Sayyid Nūrullāh was an isolated case.61 In the Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī,
the Emperor lamented the bigotry in Safavid
Iran and praised his own compassion:
The professors of various faiths had room in the broad expanse of his incomparable sway. This was difference from the practice in other realms, for in Persia there is room for Shiʿas only and in Turkey, India and Turan there is room for Sunnis only. As in the wide expanse of the divine compassion there is room for all classes and the followers of all creeds so on the principle that the shadow must have the same properties as the light, in his dominions, which on all sides were limited only by the salt sea, there was room for the professors of opposite religions and for beliefs good and bad and the road to altercation was closed. Sunni and Shiʿa met in one mosque, and Franks and Jews in one church and observed their own forms of worship.62
While
the Tuzuk does not mention the punishment of Sayyid Nūrullāh, the wording of
the beginning of this second paragraph
cited above mirrors closely the justification in the Majālis-i Jāhāngīrī and suggests perhaps an
indirect reflection.
Despite
the absence of any mention in the works of Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī, later Naqshbandī sources such as Rawżāt
al-qayyūmīya of Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Iḥsān (d.
1149/1736) claimed that it was only after the release of Sirhindī from
prison a year before Sayyid Nūrullāh’s
death and his hearing from his disciples of the influence of the latter through the vizier Āṣaf Khān (not mentioned
as a patron or protector of Sayyid Nūrullāh
in any other source) that Sirhindī agitated for action.63 Thus the
execution is presented as a defence of
Sunni Islam. It seems so many of the sources including modern secondary ones (such as the entry in the Encylopaedia
of Islam) suggest that taqīya was at the heart of the issue. Hansvī and Rizvi present it as a
case of the bigotry of Jahāngīr – the former
quotes a contemporary Shaykh Farīd Bhakkarī who in his Ẕakīrat al-khawānīn
mentions that it was the taqīya that
angered Jahāngīr and hence he had Sayyid Nūrullāh flogged to death (dar ghażab-i Jahāngīr kushta shud).64
The most unusual suggestion – which
somewhat follows Bhakkarī in its line of thought – is Husted who imagines
that Jahangir’s failed adventures in
alcoholism got the better of him.65 Misled by miscreants, in an alcoholic rage, he had Sayyid Nūrullāh
condemned. Of course, there is no textual evidence for this speculation.
If one takes the correspondence with Mīr Yūsuf Astarābādi along with a consideration of the polemics that Sayyid Nūrullāh penned himself and the deteriorating context in which he found himself and was cognizant, then it seems most likely that he did not perform taqīya in front of Jahāngīr. It may well be as he indicated in the response to Mīr Yūsuf that people like him ought to embrace martyrdom. What is clear is that some complaint was made at court that could not be deflected by any interests (since the faction of Nūrjahān and Āṣaf Khān had yet to achieve their ascendency), and probably had no role for the Naqshbandīs either. Jahāngīr found himself in an awkward position where he was probably pressured to condemn him – his religious policy was still probably raw. But the Absolute Divine Manifestation must be above whim or bigotry and so it must have been the bigotry of the accused himself that led to the execution. In a classic trope of sectarian literature, the Shiʿi scholar stood accused, condemned, and punished by his own words and actions. In the political theology of the time, only the Emperor could be responsible for the condemnation of political and religious dissent – but also consistent with the aura of the sovereign put forward since at least Akbar, he could not be seen to be complicit in the petty squabbles of subjects. As such therefore Jahāngīr’s actions demonstrate the fallibility of the model of Mughal infallible and messianic kingship.
Notes
1
M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006,
158–72, who also denies, contra Rizvi, any Shiʿi influence on Akbar on this
issue. What can be deduced is Akbar’s
attempt to place himself above the confessional differences of his nobility.
Another recent work argues that the
Mughal emperors fostered an atmosphere of confessional harmony which included
an assumption that Shiʿi notables would
not be too public about their beliefs – see Afzal Husain, ‘Section II: Medieval India . Sectional President’s
Address. Accommodation and Integration: Shiʿas in the Mughal nobility’, Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress, 69th session, 2008, 211–24.
2
Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship & Sainthood in Islam,
New York: Columbia University Press,
2012, 141–59. He would argue that attempts to locate the concept in Sufism or
even in Bhakhti devotionalism – such as
Savitri Chandra, ‘Akbar’s concept of sulh-i kul, Tulsi’s concept of Maryada
and Dadu’s concept of Nipakh: A
comparative study’, Social Scientist, 20 (October 1992), 31–37 – are
misguided. 3For example, Sayyid Aḥmad
Thaṭṭavī, a prominent Shiʿi thinker who was the first redactor of the
Tārīkh-i Alfī, was murdered by Mīrzā
Fawlād Barlas in 1585 in Lahore and later his tomb was desecrated – see Abū-l
Fażl, Akbarnāma, ed. Maulavī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society,
1877, III, 527, tr. Beveridge, Calcutta:
The Asiatic Society, 1939, III, 804; Husain, ‘Shiʿas in the Mughal nobility’,
216; Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the
Muslims in Akbar’s Reign, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975, 256–57, 269.
4
See Afzal Husain, The Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir, New Delhi: Manohar,
1999. 5 On confessional ambiguity or ‘philo-imamism’ or ‘good Shiʿism’, see
Mohammad Masad, The Medieval Islamic
Apocalyptic Tradition: Divination, Prophecy, and the End of Time in the 13th
Century Eastern Mediterranean,
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, 2008, esp. 156–166;
Evrim Binbaş, Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī
(ca. 770s-858/ca. 1370s-1454): Prophecy, Politics, and Historiography in Late
Medieval
Islamic
History, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009, 76–174;
Matt Melvin-Koushki, The Quest for a
Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī
(1369-1432) and Intellectual
Millenarianism in Early Timurid Iran, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale
University, 2012, esp. 69–77; Adam
Jacobs, Sunnî and Shîʿî Perceptions, Boundaries, and Affiliations in Late Timurid
and Early Ṣafawid Persia: An Examination
of Historical and Quasi-historical Narratives, unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, School of Oriental and
African Studies, London, 1999; Cornell Fleischer, ‘Shadow of Shadows: Prophecy
in Politics in 1530s İstanbul’, in B.
Tezcan and K. K. Barbir (eds), Identity and Identity Formation in the
Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in
Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, Madison: Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, 2007, 51–62; Ihsan
Fazlıoğlu , ‘İlk Dönem Osmanlı İlim ve Kültür Hayatında İhvanu’s-Safâ ve Abdurrahman Bistâmî’, in
Dîvân İlmî Araştırmalar Dergisi, Istanbul, 1996, 2/229-40, available at http://www.ihsanfazlioglu.net/EN/
publication/articles/1.php?id=114; idem, ‘Forcing the Boundaries in Religion, Politics and
Philosophy: Science in the Fifteenth Century’,
http://www.ihsanfazlioglu.net/EN/publication/articles/1.php?id=151. In
an earlier generation, a number of authors
wrote about syncretic beliefs centred on spiritual attachment to the Imams:
Marijan Molé, ‘Le Kubrawiya entre
Sunnisme et Shiisme aux huitième et neuvième siècles de l’hégire’, Revue des
Études islamiques 29 (1961), 61–142;
Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien, Paris: Gallimard, 1971, I, 1–38. There is also
a forthcoming volume on Confessional
Ambiguity, ed. Judith Pfeiffer, Leiden: Brill, 2017. 6 Cf. the classic essay by
the late Christopher Bayly, ‘The pre-history of ‘communalism’? Religious
conflict in India, 1700-1860’, Modern
Asian Studies, 19 (1985), 177–203.
7I
am certainly not the first to discuss this correspondence. Mīr Hāshim Urmavī
does so in the introduction to his
edition of al-Ṣawārim al-muhriqa of Sayyid Nūrullāh as does Rizvi, A
Socio-Intellectual History, I, 357– 62. I am merely taking advantage of a
recent critical edition of the text: Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya: jidāl-i
andīshagī-yi tafakkur-i shīʿa-yi uṣūlī
bā akhbārī. Mukātibāt-i Mīr Yūsuf ʿAlī Astarābādī va shahīd Qāżī Nūrullāh
Shūshtarī, ed. Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān, Tehran:
Kitābkhāna, mūza va markaz-i asnād-i Majlis-i Shurā-yi Islāmī, 1388Sh/2009.
8Bayāż of ʿInāyat Khān Rāsikh, MS Aligarh Habib Ganj Collection 50/335 (Fārsī),
fol. 94r–95r, cited in Husain, ‘Shiʿas
in the Mughal nobility’, 217.
9Badāyūnī,
Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, ed. Maulavī Aḥmad ʿAlī, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 1869, III, 137.
10
Abū-l-Fażl, Akbarnāma [The History of Akbar], ed./tr. Wheeler Thackston, The
Murty Library, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2016, vol. 2, 47.
11
Badāyūnī, Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, II, 255; Rizvi, Akbar, 124–26.
12
Modern studies include: ‘Muqaddima’, to Shūshtarī, Maṣāʾib al-nawāṣib fī-l-radd
ʿalā Nawāqiḍ al-rawāfiḍ, ed. Qays al-ʿAṭṭār,
Qum: Dalīl-i mā, 1426 H/2005, I, 12–28; Sayyid Sibṭ al-Ḥasan Hansvī, Taẕkira-yi
majīd: Shahīd-i sālis, Karachi: Dār
al-thaqāfa al-islāmīya, 1962; Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual
History of the Isnāʿasharī Shīʾīs in
India, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986, I, 342–88; Wayne Husted, Shahīd-i
Sālis: Qāżī Nūrullāh Shūshtarī: An
Historical Figure in Shīʿite Piety, unpublished PhD dissertation, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992; Sayyid Żamīr
Akhtar Naqvī, Shahīd-i sālis ʿAllāma Qāżī Nūrullāh Shūstarī [sic!], Karachi: n.p., n.d. Classical sources
include: Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ wa-ḥiyāḍ al-fuḍalāʾ, ed. Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī al-Ashkiwarī, Qum:
Maktabat Āyatullāh al-Marʿashī, 1981, V, 265; al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Amal al-āmil, ed. Sayyid Ṣādiq Āla Baḥr
al-ʿulūm, Najaf: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḥaydarīya, 1966, I, 226; Sayyid ʿAlāʾ al Mulk Ḥusaynī
Shūshtarī (son of Sayyid Nūrullāh), Firdaws dar tārīkh-i Shūshtar, ed. Mīr
Jalāl al-Dīn Urmavī, Tehran: Anjuman-i
āsār u mafākhir-i farhangī, 1378 Sh/1999, 16–46; Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Ḥusaynī
Zunūzī (d. 1228/1808), Riyāḍ al-janna, ed. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī, Qum: Kitābkhāna-yi
Āyatullāh Marʿashī Najafī, 1390 Sh/2011,
V, 205–8.
13
ʿAlāʾ al-Mulk Shūshtarī, Firdaws; Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, II, 3.
Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṣādiq Iṣfahānī (d. 1651) in his Ṣubḥ-i Ṣāḍiq draws heavily upon
the work of Shūshtarī and on his friendship with ʿAlāʾ al Mulk on the biography
of Sayyid Nūrullāh. There are numerous manuscripts of this latter work of which
I have consulted MS British Library Or.
1728, a 19th century copy.
14
An ijāza dated 944/1537 authorising the teaching of the legal manual Irshād
al-adhhān of ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī is
reproduced in Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ
al-turāth al-ʿarabī, 1990, CV, 116– 23.
15
Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History of the Isnāʿasharī
Shīʾīs in India, Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1986, 349; see also Hansvī, Taẕkira-yi majīd, 37–38.
16
See Douglas Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1989, 155; cf.
Abū-l-Fażl, Akbarnāma, tr. H. Beveridge, rpt., Calcutta: The Asiatic Society,
2000, III: 415–22; Badāyūnī, Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, ed. Maulvī Aḥmad ʿAlī,
rpt., Tehran: Anjuman-i āsār u mafākhir-i farhangī, 1380 Sh/2001, II: 266–76.
17
Bayāz of ʿInāyat Khān Rāsikh, MS Aligarh Habib Ganj Collection 50/335 (Fārsī),
fol. 94r–95r, translated by Rizvi in A
Socio-Intellectual History, I, 357–58.
18
There is still a dearth of serious academic literature on polemics. These are
good starting points that are relevant
for this study: Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Puritanism,
Sectarian Polemics and Jihād, Canberra:
Maʿrifat Publishing House, 1982, and Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i
rūzgār-i ṣafavī, Tehran: Nashr-i ʿilm,
1388Sh/2009, I, 11–124.
19
Al-Ḥasan al-Nawbakhtī was a member of a famous family of theologians and court
officials on whom see ʿAbbās Iqbāl
Āshtiyānī, Khāndān-i Nawbakht, Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Ṭāhūrī, 1345Sh/1966. He
was the author of a famous work on
heresiography Firaq al-shīʿa (ed. Helmut Ritter, Istanbul, 1931, tr. ʿA.
Kādhim, London: ICAS Press, 2007) and
also a commentary on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, ed./tr.
Marwan Rashed, Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 2015; but the authorship of this latter text has been disputed – see Ḥasan Anṣārī, ‘Āyā Talkhīṣ al-kawn wa-l-fasād
taʾlīfī az Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī ast?’ Barrasī-hā-yi tārīkhī, available at
http://ansari.kateban.com/post/2772 accessed 18 April 2016. The original text
of the later author is Ibn Ṭāwūs, Bināʾ
al-maqāla al-Fāṭimīya, ed. Sayyid ʿAdnān al-Ghurayfī, Qum: Muʾassasat Āl
al-Bayt li-iḥyāʾ al-turāth, 1991, and the classic study is Asma Afsaruddin, A
Shii Polemic against al-Jāḥiẓ: the Bināʾ al-maqāla al-Fāṭimiyya of Aḥmad Ibn Ṭāwūs, unpublished
PhD dissertation, 1995.
20
For a discussion, see Tariq al-Jamil, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī’,
in S. Ahmed & Y. Rappaport (eds),
Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010, 229–46; but
see also the polemical Yahya Michot,
‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Critique of Shīʿī Imamology’, Muslim World, 104 (2014), 109–49.
21 On this cycle and attestations of some manuscripts in Najaf and Mashhad, see
Sayyid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ṭabāṭabāʾī, ‘Mawqif
al-shīʿa min hujūm al-khuṣūm’, Turāthunā, 6 (1407/1986), 32–96. This is
generally a very scholarly consideration
of the manuscripts in polemics and considers much that fed into the ʿAbaqāt al
anwār of Mīr Ḥāmid Ḥusayn Mūsawī Kintūrī (d. 1880).
22
The most recent Shiʿi work in this cycle is Dalāʾil al-Ṣidq of Muḥammad Ḥasan
al-Muẓaffar (d. 1375/1955) which was
first published in 1953 and more recently re-issued in an excellent six volume
edition by the shrine in Najaf in 2011.
23
Another possible cycle worth mentioning was initiated by Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī
(d. 973/1565) and his al Ṣawāʾiq al-muḥriqa to which Sayyid Nūrullāh responded
with al-Ṣawārim al-muhriqa.
24
Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i rūzgār, I, 44–51.
25
Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i rūzgār, I, 73–77.
26
Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i rūzgār, I, 53–72.
27
Sayyid Nūrullāh Shūshtarī, Maṣāʾib al-nawāṣib fī-l-radd ʿalā Nawāqiḍ al-rawāfiḍ,
ed. Qays al-ʿAṭṭār, Qum: Dalīl-i mā,
1426/2005, II, 275. For a detailed discussion, see Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat u
farhang-i rūzgār, I, 85–99. On Sharīfī,
see Rosemary Stanfield Johnston, ‘Sunni survival in Safavid Iran’, Iranian
Studies, 27 (1994), 123–33; Shohreh
Golsorkhi, ‘Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi’, International Journal of
Middle East Studies, 26 (1994),
477–88.
28
The text was edited by Sayyid Hāshim Urmavī and published in the 1950s – a
recent printing is Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Mashʿar, 1385 Sh/2006.
29
On the Gīlānīs in India, see Sayyid ʿAbbās Āzmūda, Gīlānīyān dar dayār-i Hind,
Rasht: Intishārāt-i Bilūr, 1394 Sh/2015.
30
One cannot be too prescriptive about the Mughal court’s presence in a ‘capital
city’ but Lahore throughout the 16th and
early 17th century was probably as much of the capital as was Agra and Fatehpur
Sikri – see John F. Richards, The New
Cambridge History of India I.5: The Mughal Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993, 49–52.
31
Bayāz of ʿInāyat Khān Rāsikh, MS Aligarh Habib Ganj Collection 50/335 (Fārsī),
fol. 97r–97r, translated by Rizvi in A
Socio-Intellectual History, I, 370.
32
Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, I, 377.
33
On the intellectual importance of the sayyids of Astarābādī, see Rula Abisaab,
‘Peasant uprisings in Astarabad: the
Siyāh Pūshān, the Sayyids, and the Safavid state’, Iranian Studies, 49 (2016),
477–82; Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān, Tārīkh-i
tashayyuʿ dar Jurjān va Astarābād, Mashhad: Bunyād-i pazhūhish-hā-yi Islāmī,
Āstān-i quds-i Riżavī, 1383 Sh/2004.
34
Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ, V, 401.
35
Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-shīʿa, Najaf: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḥaydarīya,
1938, I, 94.
36
The question of what Akhbārism might have meant at this time is difficult to
discern. 37 On this notion, see Sajjad
Rizvi, ‘Seeking the Face of God: the Safawid ḥikmat tradition’s
conceptualization of walāya takwīnīya’,
in F. Daftary & G. Miskinzoda (eds), The Study of Shiʿi Islam, London:
Tauris, 2014, 391– 410.
38
Although a ḥadīth-centred approach in Shiʿi thought before the Safavid period
was not unusual, it is safer to say that
the Akhbārī movement began with Muḥammad Amīn Astarābadī (d. 1626) and his
circles from Shiraz into the Deccan and
Eastern Arabia on which I concur with my friend and colleague Robert
Gleave,
Scripturalist
Islam: the History and Doctrines of the Akhbāri Shīʿī School, Leiden: Brill,
2007. On the text and the controversy
over the khuṭbat al-bayān, see Mohammed Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of
Shiʿi Islam, London: Tauris, 2011,
103–32, inter alia.
39
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 120–45.
40
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 123.
41
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 123–24.
42
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 124.
43
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 125.
44
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 127.
45
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 135–36.
46
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 139.
47
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 136.
48
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 137–38; Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, I, 360. Cf.
Hansvī, Taẕkira-yi majīd, 47–55 on
Sayyid Nūrullāh forgoing taqīya.
49
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 138–39.
50
Being some of the famous classical Shiʿi polemics on the imamate.
51
Referring to the famous Sunni commentaries on theological compendia of the
middle period.
52
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 142–43.
53
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 144–45.
54
Asʾila-yi Yūsufīya, 133.
55
Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir wa-bahjat al-masāmiʿ
wa-l-manāẓir, Rai Bareilly: Dār ʿarafāt,
1992, V: 459–62.
56
ʿAbd al-Sattār Lāhawrī, Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, ed. ʿĀrif Nawshāhī, Tehran:
Mīrās-i maktūb, 1385 Sh/2006, 78.
57
Cf. Husain, ‘Shiʿas in the Mughal nobility’, 219.
58
Awḥadī-yi Balyānī, Taẕkira-yi ʿArafāt al-ʿāshiqīn wa-ʿaraṣāt al-ʿārifīn, ed. Muḥsin
Naṣrābādī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Aṣāṭīr,
1388Sh/2009, VI, 4006; cf. S.A.A. Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements, Agra,
1965, 317???? 59 See Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History of the
Isnāʿasharī Shīʾīs in India, Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1986, II, 4.
60
Raḥmān ʿAlī, Taẕkira-yi ʿulamāʾ-yi Hind, ed. Yūsuf Bēg Bābāpūr, Qum: Majmaʿ-yi ẕakhāʾir-i
islāmī, 1391 Sh/2012, 304.
61
Husain, ‘Shiʿas in the Mughal nobility’, 220–21; Sajida Alvi, ‘Religion and
state during the reign of Nūr al-Dīn
Jahāngīr’, in Perspectives on Mughal India. Rulers, Historians, ʿUlamāʾ
and Sufis, Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2012, 197–218; Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, II, 6–10 on
the Nūrjahān circle. 62 Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī or the Memoirs of Jahangir, trs.
Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge, London: The Asiatic Society, 1914, I, 37–38.
63
Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, I, 381–82 citing the manuscript in the
Asiatic Society of Bengal. 64 Hansvī, Taẕkira-yi
majīd, 60; Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, I, 376–86.
65
Husted, Shahīd-i sālis, 56–64.