Ebba Koch
Life is transitory. after my death, god forbid, that mansion may be taken over by the state.
Mir Muhammad Ma‘sum Bhakkari “Nami”,
courtier and poet of akbar
Introduction
for over 30 years i have been conducting a project dedicated to “The palaces and gardens of Shah Jahan (ruled 1628–58)” which consists of a survey, documentation and analysis of all the palaces (daulatkhānas) and formal gardens (bāghs) of this Mughal emperor that I found in the sources and in the field. To a certain extent my investigation also includes the residences of the members of the imperial family and the nobility, and that led me to concerns which i did not have in mind when i started out. These issues arose from the material at hand; hence i found myself thinking about landownership, property rights and the practices of escheat—the reversion of property to the state or a lord—during the reign of Shah Jahan. i thus moved beyond my discipline and into the field of legal studies. I discussed the ownership of gardens and palaces briefly in my reconstruction of Mughal agra in The Complete Taj Mahal,1 and would like to give fuller attention to this topic in the present chapter. i hope that i do not tread too hard on the toes of legal historians. perhaps i can even entice them to look at these matters more closely, from the vantage point of their discipline.
I embarked on the study of Shah Jahan’s palaces and
gardens because i was curious to know about these building types that
had been largely neglected in the literature despite their
prominence in the cityscapes of agra, Delhi and lahore, and despite
having been commissioned by such an eminent architectural patron as
the builder of the Taj Mahal. This was in the late 1970s, a time when,
especially in india, palaces received no serious study: vernacular
architecture and the social conditions of its creation had moved to the
centre of academic attention. Court culture met with a similar fate. The
trend initiated by Norbert Elias’s pioneering and highly influential
Die höfische Gesellschaft (1969)2 was ignored in india, where the
dominant aligarh school focused on economic and administrative issues and
viewed cultural and social studies, including art and architectural
history, with distrust.
This meant that I had to figure out by myself how to approach the subject. it did not help that the methodological training i had acquired at Vienna university based the study of architecture on the formal analysis of existing plans and drawings. it was obviously not possible to use this method in a situation where hardly any architectural surveys of Shah Jahan’s palaces had been undertaken, and where they had been, as in the case of his great fortress-palaces of agra, Delhi and lahore, by the respective archaeological Surveys of india and pakistan, only a few of the results had been published. Since unpublished materials were not easily accessible in the archives of indian institutions i realized that i had to undertake my own surveys. as the project progressed i was able to acquire funding from austrian government institutions which allowed me to employ professional draftsmen and architects. I was fortunate to find in the indian architect richard a. Barraud a gifted and dedicated collaborator. he has been working with me since 1982.
Before carrying out the
fieldwork on the monuments themselves I had to find out
which projects were commissioned by Shah Jahan, beyond the well-known
fortress-palaces and the imperial gardens in Kashmir, lahore and
Delhi.
The first pillar, as it were, of my work involved the study
of the textual sources of Shah Jahan’s
reign. I have been reading these ever since, with the
help of the late Dr Syed Mohammed Yunus Jaffery, an expert on 17th-century
Mughal Persian.3 Most relevant were the still untranslated and only
partly published court chronicles written by amina-yi Qazvini, Jalal
al-Din Tabataba’i, ‘Abd al-Hamid Lahauri,
Muhammad Waris and Muhammad Salih Kanbu, and the poetic works
of Shah Jahan’s court poets, especially those by his poet laureate
abu Talib Kalim Kashani.4 We combed these works for references to
patronage, architecture, art, court practices, ceremonial,
administration, ideas about rulership and the court society of Shah
Jahan.
The search brought to light about 50 palaces
(daulatkhanas) and formal gardens (baghs) constructed or rebuilt by
Shah Jahan, or built by a member of the imperial family or nobility
for the emperor’s use.
Fortunately for the historically-minded architectural
researcher, the historians of Shah Jahan describe his architectural
projects in great detail, with quite precise measurements and consistent
terminology. from them we also learn about the function of the buildings.
it is noteworthy that these texts on architecture formed
part of the official history of Shah
Jahan’s reign, in the writing of which the emperor took an active
interest: we are told that he supervised and edited the drafts of his
historians in personal meetings and we even get to know, incidentally,
that these meetings—which as several historians claim occurred on a daily
basis—took place in the so-called Shah Burj or King’s Tower, a pavilion
which formed part of the programme of palace buildings instituted
by Shah Jahan (figure
1).5 Thus the detailed texts dealing with Shah Jahan’s
architectural projects reflect his personal involvement. Clearly, he
wanted to have his architecture—the monuments of his reign—recorded
correctly for posterity. His scientific
approach to observing and documenting the visual world which
he inherited from his predecessors, especially Babur and Jahangir, was
here directed towards his own creations. Nowhere else in the
persian-speaking world at the time do we find such precise texts on
architecture. A distinctive and unique contribution of this period, they
enable us to appraise Mughal architecture on its own terms.
The second pillar of my
work, the field investigations, revealed that of some 50
buildings and complexes mentioned in the sources, about 34 were still
standing, though some in an advanced state of ruin. i carried out
detailed surveys of 28 complexes that were still preserved, measuring
and photographing the buildings. This work eventually led to a new
project, the survey of the entire Taj Mahal complex (1995–2005), because
i realized that it would not be possible to understand the palace and
garden architecture of Shah Jahan without a detailed study of the
chef-d’œuvre of his patronage.6
 |
| East front of the Agra fort, founded in 1564. The white marble buildings were added by Shah Jahan in 1637: from left to right—Bangla-i Jahanara, Aramgah (sleeping pavilion), Bangla-i Darshan, Shah Burj withDiwan-i Khass behind and Hammam. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 1990s. |
For my surveys in india i received special permission
from the archaeological Survey of india (aSi) and also, for several
complexes, from the indian army: large parts of the Delhi fort were under
military administration in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and much of the
agra fort still is today.
Though my work focuses on the palace and garden projects
of Shah Jahan, it was not possible to isolate his projects from
those of the other members of the imperial family and those of his
nobility, his amīrs and manṣabdārs. This larger context has been even
less studied than the imperial palaces and gardens.7 one of the reasons
for this is that not many of them survive. another reason is that the
evidence is not readily available: as a rule non imperial projects were not
described in detail in the literature of the period. The textual
information has to be pieced together
From the occasional remark in contemporary sources and from
a few cases of escheat, considered particularly noteworthy by the
historians.
There are precise contexts in which Shah Jahani sources
mention the houses or gardens of his courtiers:
(1) When the emperor paid a visit to the owner. This
would often happen when a house or garden was completed. on such
occasions the noble or member of the imperial family had to make certain
mandatory presentations, namely pāy-andāz (spreading out precious fabrics on
the path of the emperor), nisār (the scattering of gold coins) and
pīshkash (the presentation of certain specific
valuable objects—horses, elephants, cash, or other
things which the giver assumed would meet with the approval of Shah
Jahan).8
(2) When the house or garden of a mansabdar or a member
of the imperial family was used by the emperor. in certain instances
nobles were even ordered to build a new residence, and in those cases a
house or garden had to include certain building types that were deemed
indispensable for imperial performance and comfort, ceremonial processes
and court proceedings, e.g. a place of audience or a sleeping pavilion
(khwābgāh, ārāmgāh).
(3) When a building or its rebuilding was completed. (4) When
a garden was situated in the region of Kashmir. The topographical
descriptions are a special genre in Mughal literature.9
(5) When the owner of a house or a garden died. This
brings us to the problem i would like to discuss here, namely
landownership, property rights and the escheat practices of the Mughal
emperor.
Landownership and Escheat Practices
landownership in Mughal india is still unclear, and the same
is true of the escheat laws. Mughal law is altogether understudied.
in the entire discussion of landownership and escheat practices hardly
any attention has been given to how buildings and gardens of the Mughal
nobility were managed. The historians Ranajit Guha, Irfan
Habib, John Richards and Joan-Pau Rubiés
chiefly considered the primary Dutch, French or English sources, with the
french author françois Bernier as their chief evidence for the assertion
that in Mughal india the emperor claimed the right over all land:
The reason why such names
[=honorific titles]10 are given to the great, instead of titles
derived from domains and seigniories, as usual in Europe, is this: as the
land throughout the whole empire is considered the property of the
sovereign, there can be no earldoms, marquisates or duchies. The royal
grant consists only of pensions, either in land or money, which the king
gives, augments, retrenches or takes away at pleasure.11
...(T)he Omrahs [i.e. umarā, pl. of amīr] of Hindoustan
cannot be proprietors of land, or enjoy an independent revenue, like the
nobility of France and the other states of Christendom. Their income, as
i said before, consists exclusively of pensions which the king grants or
takes away according to his own will or pleasure. When deprived of
this pension, they sink at once into utter insignificance, and find it
impossible even to borrow the smallest sum.12
The observations of Bernier and other european sources
were seriously questioned, and the debate has been subsumed in two works:
those of Ranajit Guha and Joan-Pau Rubiés. Guha looked at landownership
in the Mughal empire in retrospect and from a post-colonial point of view
in his famous A Rule of Property for Bengal (1963, with several later
editions), where he analysed the brainstorming by British and french
thinkers that preceded the “most decisive—and certainly the most
disputed—land legislation in the history of British india. in 1793 a proclamation
by Lord Cornwallis settled ‘permanently’ the revenue to be paid by
landlords to the state, giving them immunity against revenue increase in
addition to security of ownership.”13 Bernier’s claim that in Mughal
india all land belonged to the king was evaluated as a biased polemical
view, but 17th-century Mughal sources were not considered. a more recent
analysis was made by Joan Pau Rubiés, who looked at the problem in his
“Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism”. He presented
Bernier’s views as a carefully crafted depiction inspired by
earlier literary models (such as Sir Thomas roe, francisco pelsaert and
Johannes de laet), in which the french traveller intended to display to
the court the excesses of an asian monarch, depriving his nobility
of the right to own land, as a warning to louis XiV against absolutist
tendencies, turning into an oriental despot himself.14 Rubiés judged authors
who tended to agree with Bernier, such as irfan habib,15
as being influenced by a Marxist
tradition, seeing Bernier as exaggerating the lack of private property
in rural India. Rubiés felt that a more revisionist perspective,
such as that adopted by John f. richards, came closer to the indian
realities. richards had pointed out that the situation was more complex,
because the native rural elites or zamindars did hold property rights
over land.16 More recently, J. albert rorabacher saw the right of the
zamindars as that of “landholders who paid tribute to or assessed and
collected revenue on behalf of the Emperor from the
tillers of the soil ... who ‘owned’ a right to a share of the
revenue they collected but … did not own the land”; he held that the
peasants only owned the right to work the land over which they had no absolute
ownership, and that the idea of private property rights was only
introduced by the British.17 he relied again on Bernier when stating that
no portion of a mansabdar’s property was
inheritable, and that this led to conspicuous
consumption as a normal part of the Mughal pattern of dominance.18
Zafarul islam examined Mughal legal sources and
analysed two works written during the reigns of akbar and aurangzib
respectively. The first is the Risālah dar Bay‘-i Arāżī, compiled in
arabic by Shaikh Jalal al-Din Thanesari (d. 1582). This author pleaded
for full proprietary rights of persons who held a revenue grant (madad-i
ma‘āsh), a type of grant chiefly given to members of the ulama and
theologians, which was in opposition to the official view held by the
Mughal emperors that such grants were devoid of property rights.19 The
second treatise, Aḥkām al-Arāżī, was compiled by Qazi Muhammad a‘la
Thanawi during the reign
of aurangzib. it was written in arabic, but the third
section, which deals with the nature of land rights in Mughal india,
is in persian. Qazi Muhammad came to the conclusion that land was
not the specific property of anyone, neither zamindars nor peasants, so
its sale and purchase would be unlawful. Since land was ownerless
property, it came under the purview of the bait al-māl,20 and therefore
could be utilized by the Muslim ruler, as a trustee of the bait al-mal,
for all the purposes that islamic laws prescribed.21 Zafarul Islam
thought that Qazi Muhammad’s view was too limited, and that “in fact land
in india belonged to different categories and
it would be unreasonable and unhistorical to
apply the author’s point of view to the entire land of that time”.22
While this appears to be a reasonable conclusion, it does not bring us
any closer to understanding the property rights of the grand amirs and
mansabdars in the service of the Mughal court.
What is needed to shed more light on the matter is a
more differentiated approach: to establish
in detail which social groups had which rights to own
what type of land and property, and at what time.
Bernier’s and other European observers’ views,
for instance, were regarded as applying generally: it was not taken into
account that what they spoke of related to a specific group, the Mughal
mansabdars, and especially to the khāṣṣān—those closest to the emperor,
who acted as the highest administrators of the empire. and what has been
lacking in this debate is a consideration of the most obvious evidence of
their right to own property, namely the ownership of their houses
and gardens.
Temporary Ownership of Houses and Gardens
i became aware of the problem when trying to piece
together the history of gardens and houses from their isolated
mentions in Shah Jahani historical and poetic sources. By
themselves those do not tell us very much, but when taken together
and correlated with the evidence of surviving buildings they allow
us to form an idea of how ownership was handled. it became evident that
the architectural patronage of the Muslim elite was affected by
restricted property rights. This is most obvious when we consider
residential architecture. With few exceptions, the Muslim amirs and
mansabdars did not build large palaces,23 but resided in formally-planned
gardens containing pleasure houses, in pavilions
set in artificial tanks, or, from the
17th century onwards, also in a type of (courtyard) building known
as manzil and then as ḥavīlī. The same was true of members of the
imperial family, the princes, the
princesses and the emperor’s wives. in addition, the
Muslim elite sponsored works for the common good, such as mosques,
hammams, caravanserais, bazaars, bridges and wells, with which a patron
could make him or herself a name and ensure divine rewards in the next
world. The specific character of the architectural patronage of the
elite was generally governed by the fact that they could own their
houses and gardens only on a restricted temporary basis, and that they
could not bequeath them to their heirs.
Shah Jahan’s Escheat Practices
like the matter of landownership, to which it is closely
related, the issue of inheriting property has been a matter of
great controversy among modern scholars. in recent decades M. athar
ali, Zafarul islam and firdos anwar have given special attention
to this problem, weighing the opinions of european
travellers against what could be gleaned from Mughal legal works
and escheat cases that they found in the official histories of
Akbar’s, Jahangir’s, Shah Jahan’s and Aurangzib’s reigns.24
They established that in islamic inheritance law there is
no provision for escheat, but that the practice can be traced back
to the abbasid caliphs. here athar ali suggested that slavery provided
the caliphs with a legal pretext for claiming the property of their slave
officers, and that this approach was also adopted by the Delhi sultans.25
The Mughal mansabdars were not real slave officers, but had a sort of
honorary slave status that expressed closeness to the emperor. This finds
expression in the rhetorical form with which the Mughal court is
referred to in official histories: “bandagān-i
hażrat”, “the slaves of his Majesty”.26 This nominal slave status of the
mansabdars deserves more attention in the discussion about their right
to inherit.
according to Zafarul islam, the standard legal opinion
in Mughal india was that “a) the property of a deceased person
would not be distributed among his heirs unless his debt [that is the
amount he had borrowed from the imperial treasury, the muṭālaba] has been
paid, and b) the heirless property would be deposited with the Bayt
al-māl” and consequently distributed among the poor and needy or used for
projects for the common good.27
We even find confirmation of this legal practice by the emperor Jahangir himself. in his Jahāngīrnāma he writes that after his accession he issued the decree:
When anyone dies in the realm, be he infidel or Muslim,
his property was to be turned over to the heirs, and no one was to
interfere therein. if there was no heir, an overseer and bailiff
would be appointed separately to record and
dispose of the property so that the value might be spent on licit
expenditures such as constructing mosques and caravanserais, repairs to
broken bridges, and the creation of tanks and wells.28
But there was a clear difference between theory and
practice. from the escheat cases that athar ‘ali, Zafarul islam and
firdos Anwar assembled, it can be deduced
that, to quote Athar Ali’s discussion of Shah Jahan’s
practice when ‘Ali Mardan Khan died in 1657, “the imperial right did not
remain confined to realising the mutaliba, i.e. the amount borrowed by
the deceased noble from the imperial treasury, but extended to the
disposal of his entire inheritance in complete disregard of the Muslim
law of inheritance. The law gave equal share to all brothers and the
sisters are given half the brother’s share.”29 The above-mentioned
authors were apparently not at ease with their findings, because in their
conclusions they contradicted their own evidence, and accorded the Mughal
nobility the right to dispose of property.
in fact, from the cases they studied one cannot but see
a great arbitrariness and disparity in the handling of individual
estates—from escheating the entire property of a mansabdar who had died
heirless to escheating the property to repay state dues or private debts
even when heirs existed; deducting state dues and restoring the remainder
to the heirs; giving all to the heirs, who had then to pay the state
dues; escheating parts of the property without any indication of debts
owed to the state; and restoring the deceased’s entire property to his
heirs. What one notices in particular is an arbitrary division among the
heirs: for instance by order of Jahangir the entire property of i‘timad
al Daula was handed over to his daughter, Nur Jahan Begum (who was the
emperor’s wife), despite the fact that he also left several sons.30
elephants as property were in a special category: they had
to be sent directly to the emperor.31 for instance, from the
property of Mahabat Khan, who died in 1634, Shah Jahan kept only
the elephants (which the noble had held so dear that he used to
feed them with lotus-rice and persian melons); everything else he
gave to Mahabat Khan’s sons.32 Zafarul Islam’s own findings about the
arbitrariness of the Mughal emperor’s escheat practices did not keep him
from railing against “the hollowness of the opinion of
foreign travellers who claimed that state
officials (nobles) during the Mughal empire were denied the right
of private ownership”.33
Firdos anwar, who focused on escheat under Shah Jahan,
came to the conclusion that it was only carried out in a few cases of
particularly wealthy mansabdars, as a symbolic display of imperial
authority, and that they were recorded in the Pādshāhnāma only because they
were unusual occurrences. he held that the system
of escheat, at least during Shahjahan’s
reign, was more theoretical and legal in nature and had a
nominal economic significance. It seems to
be more symbolic of Crown’s [sic] supremacy than anything
else. That is why its enforcement did not cause any breach between
the crown [sic] and the nobility as is suggested by our contemporary and
later authorities. pertaining to these implications, perhaps, escheat could
not invite special attention of the Persian chroniclers of
Shahjahan’s period. it could excite the feelings and enrage the
minds of only the foreigners against whose generalisations, one
should always be on his guards [sic].34
If one tries to establish a rule, one could say: the higher
the status of a noble, the greater the insecurity regarding what he
could bequeath to his heirs. Such was the case with a famous
escheat instance of Shah Jahan’s reign,
that of Asaf Khan. This high-ranking
noble had played a significant role
in the installation of Shah Jahan as ruler and was the father of
the emperor’s favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
In 1641, when Asaf
Khan was dying at lahore, the emperor visited his
father-in-law on his deathbed and caused him to lay open his entire
estate. in addition to his fabled residence at lahore and other
houses and gardens in Delhi, Kashmir and agra, including a
waterfront palace garden at agra, his estate consisted of jewels, coins,
gold and silver valued at 2 crores and 50,000 (20,050,000) rupees.
Shah Jahan gave 20 lakhs (2,000,000)—the value of the palace at Lahore—to
Asaf Khan’s sons and daughters; the Lahore
palace itself he granted to his favourite son, Dara Shukuh, the
grandson of asaf Khan. in this way the landed property remained in
the family of the deceased though his sons were bypassed through
escheat. everything else went to the crown.35
As in the case of asaf Khan, it is typical that in reports
about escheat cases the houses and gardens of a Muslim amir or
mansabdar are mentioned only as part of his possessions as a whole.
The impact of Escheating Land and houses on
architectural Patronage
That the escheating of houses and gardens was a common
practice and consequently had a dampening
effect on non imperial architectural patronage
finds textual confirmation in Shaikh Farid
Bhakkari’s Ẕakhīrat al-Khawanīn, in which he describes the life and
works of Mir Muhammad Ma‘sum Bhakkari (d. 1606–07), a well-known courtier
of akbar, who was also a poet with the pen-name Nami, and quite a
colourful character. Mir Muhammad Ma‘sum wrote inscriptions on buildings
wherever he went, travelling widely in iran, present-day
afghanistan, Kashmir and in India, where
he accompanied Akbar’s Deccan campaigns. he also
composed inscriptions for the elephant gate (Hathi Pol) of the Agra fort
and the gate of Akbar’s great mosque at fatehpur Sikri. he was himself a
generous patron of architecture, and constructed 38 mosques, serais,
dargahs, bridges, wells and stepwells in many places, and a great
mausoleum as well as a garden for himself in panjab. But he did not
invest much in his residence, for which he gave as a reason a key
statement for our argument:
life is transitory. after my death, god forbid, that
mansion may be taken over by the state.36
This Mughal source supports what european observers had
to say about the issue. Sir Thomas roe, envoy of James i of england
to the Mughal court of Jahangir from 1615 to 1619, who sought to
obtain trade privileges for the east india Company, remarked in his
account:
His [the Mughal pādshāh’s] owne houses are of stone;
both in good forme and fayre; but his great men build not (for want
of inheritance), but, as farr as i have yet seene, live in tents, or
houses woorse than a cottager. Yet where the King affects,
as at Agra, because it is a cytty erected
by him,37 the buildings are (as is reported) fayre and of carved
stone. in revenu doubtlesse he exceeds eyther Turke or persian or any
easterene prince. The summs i dare not name; but the reason. all the land
is his; no man hath a foote. he maynteynes by rent, given of seignoryes
counted by horses, all that are not mechanique; and the revenews
given to some are a german princes estate. Secondly, all men ryse to
greater and greater seignoryes, as they rise in favour, which is only
gotten by frequent presents, both rich and rare. lastly, he heyre all
mens good that dye, as well those that gayned by industry (as merchants)
as those that lived by him; and takes all theyr mony, leaves the
widdow and daughters what he pleaseth, gives the sonnes some little
seignorye and putts them a new to the world, whose fathers dye woorth two
or three million.... all the polycye of his state is to keepe the
greatest about him, or to pay them
afar off liberally. No counsell, but every
officer answers to the king apart his duty.38
Roe exaggerated in suggesting that the emperor inherited the property of all his subjects, but it is certainly true that he claimed the houses and gardens of his military and administrative elite, his amirs and mansabdars. After the death of such a figure, a palace or a garden would usually be taken by the crown. houses and gardens could also be taken away from a noble when he fell into disgrace,39 or a noble could be forced to present his house to the emperor.40 if the emperor did not keep such a property for himself, it would be given to another member of the imperial family, or to another noble. The new owner would then refashion the building and/or the garden. The palace or the garden of a Mughal queen, prince, princess, amir or mansabdar could thus go through a chain, a silsila, of owners.
 |
2 “Masjid” Mubarak Manzil, Agra. Despite its name, the Masjid Mubarik Manzil was never a mosque, but it has a large hall rather like the audience hall of the Divan-i ‘Amm in the Agra fort. It was part of Aurangzib’s havili complex at Agra. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 2004 |
The longest chain of changing ownership that i have been
able to establish is for the havili at agra whose last Mughal owner
was aurangzib. What is left of it is now known as Mubarak Manzil:
its history can be traced back to the middle of the 16th century
(figure 2). At the beginning of
Akbar’s reign the riverfront property belonged to
Khan-i Khanan Bairam Khan Turkman, wakīl (chief minister) and guardian of
the emperor, who was then a minor. When Bairam Khan fell from power in
December 1560, Akbar gave his title and office, as well as his residence
at Agra, to the new Khan-i Khanan, Mun‘im Khan (about whom more
below).41 Upon the latter’s death in 1575, the property reverted
 |
| 3. Detail of a map of Agra made for the Maharaja of Jaipur, showing from left to right: the havili of Asaf Khan, the havili of ‘Alamgir (Aurangzib) consisting of two courtyards, the “Masjid” Mubarak Manzil and the havili of Sasat (=Shayista) Khan, 1720s. Cloth; 272 x 292 cm. © Trustees of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, City Palace, Jaipur, cat. no. 126. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 1986. |
to the crown. after Jahangir came to the throne he granted it
to his eldest son, Khusrau, together with 1 lakh rupees to rebuild
it.42 The next owner was Shah Jahan, who, to ensure his own succession,
had murdered Khusrau. De laet in 1631, three years after Shah Jahan’s
accession, lists in his De imperio Magni Mogolis43 a house north of the fort as
that of “prince Sultan Khrom [i.e. Khurram, Shah Jahan]”. (De laet gives
this name to the fourth plot north of the fort, whereas on the plan of
agra of the 1720s in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh ii palace Museum at Jaipur,
the compound of Shah Jahan’s successor
Aurangzib appears as the fifth and
sixth walled-in enclosure [figure 3], and
on a panoramic manuscript scroll in the British Museum
showing riverfront agra, dating to c. 1827–35, as the sixth and
seventh complex [figure 4]). In February 1628 Shah Jahan, still a
prince, stayed in his residence—which was then called daulatkhana,
the term used to designate an imperial palace—for 12 days in order
to await the auspicious hour (calculated by his astrologers as the 14th
of the month) for his formal entry into the palace of the agra fort for
his accession ceremony.44 in March 1633 prince Shah Shuja‘, Shah Jahan’s
second son, resided there on the occasion of his wedding.45 The emperor
continued to use it: later that year, in June, when plague had broken out
in agra, he moved there “because of its spaciousness, closeness to the
water and purity of air”.46 The description of
a famous elephant fight that took place
while he was there confirms the location of Shah Jahan’s princely
residence north of the fort.47 eventually the property came to
aurangzib: on the occasion of his wedding in May 1637 the historian
lahauri mentions that Shah Jahan had granted it to his son “after
his [=Shah Jahan’s] accession”.48 The Mubarak Manzil is still
standing; its alterations and later additions show that it continued to
change owners in its post-Shah Jahani history.49
 |
| 4. The havili of ‘Alamgir and Masjid Mubarak Manzil, detail of a panoramic scroll map of riverfront Agra by an anonymous artist, c. 1827–35. English wove paper backed with linen; 32 x 7763 cm. Courtesy of the British Library. Or. 16805. Inscriptions: No. 14 The Moobarik Munzil Mosque. Masjid-i Mubārak Manzil. Shāhjahān Pādshāh ne banvāyā thā. (The Blessed House Mosque. Emperor Shah Jahan had it built.) No. 15 Aulumgeer’s Palace. Havilī-yi ‘Ālamgīr. Shahjahān Padshāh ne ta‘mīr kiyā. (The havili of ‘Alamgir. Shah Jahan constructed [it].) |
The garden of Hafiz Rakhna
at Sirhind, now known as Am Khas
Bagh, was laid out during Akbar’s reign
c. 1580 by Hafiz Sultan Muhammad rakhna of herat when
he was karōrī (revenue collector) of Sirhind, then taken over by
Jahangir, and, after his accession, by Shah Jahan. Both emperors made
alterations to the garden; between 1634 and 1638 Shah Jahan added a
new palace complex with courtyards, to turn it into a daulatkhana
(figure 5).50 it is noteworthy that the garden palace kept the
association with its builder and was still referred to as “Bagh-i Hafiz
Rakhna” early in Shah Jahan’s reign, though later it became the
“daulatkhāna-i Sirhind”.51
 | |
| 5. The palace complex of Shah Jahan at Sirhind, added between 1634 and 1638 to the garden of the noble Hafiz Rakhna, now know as Am Khas Bagh. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 1993. |
Especially in Kashmir, many gardens originally owned by members of the older nobility were taken over by the emperor or a member of the imperial family. Bagh-i Shahabad, built by Muhammad Quli Turkman when he was governor of Kashmir, became a khāṣṣa (imperial) garden during the princehood of Shah Jahan; after he had acceded to the throne he gave it to Dara Shukuh.52 Bagh-i ilahi, on the bank of a branch of the river lar, built by Mirza Yusuf Khan Mashhadi during his governship of the ṣūbah, was listed as an imperial garden in 1634.53 The garden that the court eunuch Jawahir Khan Khwajasara created for himself during the reign of Jahangir was granted to Shah Jahan’s favourite daughter, Princess Jahanara.54 We do not know how these gardens came to the crown: they were probably escheated.
 |
| 6. I‘tiqad Khan’s garden, Agra, detail of a panoramic scroll map of riverfront Agra by an anonymous artist, c. 1827–35. English wove paper backed with linen; 32 x 7763 cm. Courtesy of the British Library. Or. 16805. Inscription: No. 3 Itikad Khan’s Garden. Bāgh-i Navāb I‘tiqād Khān. Navāb I‘tiqād Khān ne ki mansabdār-i panj- hazārī thā Shāhjahān ke ‘ahd me banvāyā. (The garden of Nawab I‘tiqad Khan. Nawab I‘tiqad Khan, who held the rank [mansab] of 5,000, had [it] built in the age of Shah Jahan.) |
The emperor would also claim a garden by more or less
subtle coercion, as in the case of the havili/manzil of i‘tiqad
Khan, brother of asaf Khan and thus uncle of Mumtaz Mahal, which,
according to the emperor’s historians, was “the finest of those superb
edifices erected by the opulent nobility in the metropolis [agra] along
the banks of the Jumna”.55 “at the august desire of his Majesty,” i‘tiqad
Khan presented it to Shah Jahan as a pishkash, which
was rather unusual for this type of
offering, which the nobility had to make on certain occasions.56 in
1643 the emperor granted it in turn as a special favour (in‘ām)57
to ‘ali Mardan Khan, the former Safavid governor of Qandahar, to
reward him for his defection to the Mughal court. The garden of i‘tiqad
Khan still appears on the right bank of the river Yamuna north of the
fort on the scroll of riverfront agra of the early 19th century in
the British Library (figure 6). Before receiving this property
‘ali Mardan Khan had been lent the house of Saif Khan, the maternal
grandfather of ‘inayat Khan, the historian, who was governor at agra in
1639.58 Several years earlier, when after his defection ‘ali Mardan
Khan was received by Shah Jahan at lahore in November 1638, he was given
“the mansion of the late prime Minister i‘timad al-Daula, which was now
the private property of the crown”.59
 |
| 7. Bagh-i Safa on the shore of Manasbal Lake, Kashmir, rebuilt in 1634 by Jahanara Begum, now known as Jharoka Bagh, reconstructed view from the northeast, illustrating the features mentioned in Mughal textual sources, with the Ahatung mountain across the lake. Drawing: R.A. Barraud and Ebba Koch, 2014. © E. Koch. |
We also can observe certain preferences in the
transmission of gardens. “gendered” transfers could take place in the
case of imperial women: after his accession Shah Jahan gave to
princess Jahanara the Bagh-i Nur afshan on the bank of the Behat
river and achabal/achul, both in Kashmir, which had belonged to
Jahangir’s queen Nur Jahan.60 The latter garden remained
in female hands: in the 6th year of his reign aurangzib granted
achabal to Zib al-Nisa.61 Jahanara was given several other older gardens,
among them the Bagh-i Safa on the shore of Manasbal Lake in Kashmir
(figure 7). Its history can be traced back to the author of Tārīkh-i
Rashīdī, Mirza haider Dughlat, a relative of the Mughals from
Moghulistan, who conquered Kashmir for humayun and held it between 1540
and 1551, when he died in battle.62 The fact that Jahanara was given the
garden of the eunuch Jawahir Khan Khwajasara may have had something to do
with his connection to the harem. Direct inheritance in the female
line was also possible in an exceptional case: the garden of Mumtaz
Mahal at agra went directly to Jahanara, her daughter, who after
her mother’s death in 1631 took her
place as the first lady at court
(figure 8).63 Kinship, ethnic and religious considerations seem to
have played a role when Shah Jahan gave raja Jai Singh Kachhwaha four
havilis at agra, previously in the possession of Kachhwaha and rathore
rajas, in return for the property on which the emperor planned to
construct the Taj Mahal.64
A tomb was exempt from escheat, and thus it became the favoured building type of the Muslim nobility, besides structures for the common good. francisco pelsaert, senior factor of the Dutch east india Company at agra from 1621 to 1627, did not fail to notice the peculiarities of the architectural patronage of the Mughal nobles, and informed his readers that “here the great lords far surpass ours in magnificence, for their gardens serve for their enjoyment while they are alive, and after death for their tombs, which during their lifetime they build with great magnificence in the middle of the garden.”65 in this way the landscape of riverfront agra changed slowly from a residential one into a funerary one, where Shah Jahan set the ultimate accent with the Taj Mahal. Thus a tomb rather than a palace or a formal garden became the building type with which the nobles rivalled each other as patrons of architecture. only asaf Khan came close to competing with imperial projects with his monumental Nishat Bagh in Kashmir (figure 9). In his listing of the gardens of Kashmir of 1634 the official historian Lahauri provides only a short sober description of it, but we learn from the unofficial historian Muhammad Salih Kanbu that the Nishat Bagh had nine levels “like the layers of heaven, in nine levels higher than the nine celestial spheres and altogether higher and a thousand times better than paradise itself”, which was truly a daring thing to say about a non-imperial garden.66
 | |
|
To return to a point made earlier, unlike the case in
europe the prestige of a Muslim amir or mansabdar depended not on
his right to own land but rather on his closeness to the emperor. To
belong to the khassan counted more than being a zamindar.67 The heads of the
old-established hindu rajput clans, on the other hand, were in a
different category: they were allowed to own heritable
property, and they built large palaces that rivalled the imperial
fortress palaces in their ancestral dominions, such as those
at Amber (figure 10), Udaipur, Jodhpur
and Bundi.68
This could also include rajputs who showed willingness
to accept Mughal sovereignty and served as officers in the Mughal
mansabdar system. The Kachhwaha clan had
been the first rajput house to cooperate with the Mughals
under akbar. even when serving the emperor as mansabdar and as subadar of
Bihar and Bengal, raja Man Singh raised a substantial palace in the
fort at rohtasgarh which was completed in 1596. it is a large complex
with several courtyards, and from the formal point of view it falls into
the category of an imperial daulatkhana (figures 11 and 12).69
Jahangir’s favourite, Raja Bir Singh Deo
(Dev) Bundela (r. 1605–27), built large palaces at Orchha and Datia
in Bundelkhand, of which the latter displays an architecturally
ambitious plan of perfect symmetry according to ancient indian shastric
concepts (figure 14).70
We have no surviving evidence of a similar complex built
by a Muslim mansabdar, although we have palaces in Mughal forts
where imperial and subimperial patronage merge. an example would be Jaunpur,
where palace buildings in the fort founded in 1359 by firuz Shah Tughlaq
were used by akbar in 1565 and 1566 when quelling the rebellion of its
governor, Khan-i Zaman ‘ali Quli Khan. During his second stay in 1566
akbar had plans to build a great palace and for the amirs to construct
mansions and houses (within it?) “according to their status”.71
What seems to have been realized of this project are the buildings
that Mun‘im Khan constructed when appointed after ‘ali Quli Khan as
governor at Jaunpur in 1567. He added a gate (figure 13), palace
buildings, and a grand hammam to the fort, and completed the splendid
bridge over the gomti in 1568 which had been begun in 1564 by his
predecessor. Mun‘im Khan also constructed a palace for himself near the
bridge, but that structure has not survived.72
Another and more prominent case is the small fortress
of Salimgarh at Delhi situated opposite the northeastern corner of
Shah Jahan’s fortress-palace, the Red Fort. It was built by Salim Shah
Sur (r. 1545–54) and when humayun retook Delhi in 1555 he built a
pleasure house below it on the bank of the Yamuna. akbar gave Salimgarh
to Murtaza Khan (Shaikh farid Bukhari, d. 1616) who raised some
structures there which Jahangir used as a place to stay whenever he came
to Delhi. after the death of Shaikh farid the emperor built a daulatkhana
in Salimgarh with “delightful pavilions (nashīman-hā) and pleasant houses
(manzil hā)” which Shah Jahan used as a residence during his Delhi visits
before he constructed his own fortress-palace opposite it (figure
15).73
Though rajput rights were more respected, the ownership
of their houses could be handled with
some fluidity. Rajputs of a lesser rank when serving as
mansabdars in the imperial administration could be treated like their
Muslim colleagues: their rights to inherit according to hindu law would
be ignored, as the rights of Muslim mansabdars under islamic law
were disregarded.74 raja ram Das i Kachhwaha even had his Matiyaburj
palace confiscated when Jahangir was
furious about his and ‘Abdullah Khan
Firuz Jang’s failure to control Malik ambar, the
ethiopian army leader of the ahmadnagar sultans, in the emperor’s Deccan
campaign of 1612.75 Shah Jahan wanted a piece of land at agra that had
been in the possession of the Kachhwahas since the death of raja Man
Singh in 1614 for the construction of the Taj Mahal. he made it a point
to acquire the land in a legally correct manner from Man Singh’s
grandson, Mirza raja Jai Singh, by giving him in exchange four other
mansions from the crown estate at agra.76 These were the
havilis of hindu rajas whose names were listed in the
imperial farmān,77 namely raja Bhagwan Das Kachhwaha (d. 1589), the
father of raja Man Singh and father-in-law of Jahangir;78 Madhu Singh, a nephew
of raja Man Singh; rupsi Bairagi, also a Kachhwaha rajput;79 and Chand
Singh, son of Suraj Singh rathore (d. 1619) and thus a maternal cousin of
Shah Jahan.80
Shah Jahan perhaps felt entitled to dispose of the houses
of rajputs because on the one hand, three of the havilis had been
in Kachhwaha possession and thus stayed in Jai Singh’s family; as to the
fourth, the emperor himself was related through his mother, Jagat gosein,
to the rathore clan. The indigenous aristocracy when integrated into the
mansabdari system or tied through kinship to the imperial house evidently
had less right to property than the simple homeowners at agra whose
houses Shah Jahan had to buy for demolition in 1637 when widening the
bazaar leading to the new Jami‘ Masjid sponsored by his daughter
Jahanara.81
 |
9. Nishat Bagh, Kashmir, completed in 1634. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 2011. |
 | |
10. The fortress-palace of the Kachhwahan Rajputs at Amber, 16th and 17th centuries. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 2018. |
In conclusion, if we try to form a picture of the right of
the elite of the Mughal empire to own houses and gardens under Shah
Jahan, we have as yet no legal texts regulating it, but we have
evidence of legal practice, handled with
some fluidity. More research would be needed to understand whether
and how this practice changed over time, but it appears that during
Akbar’s and Jahangir’s reigns bequeathing a garden to a noble’s heirs was
something to which the emperor paid attention. The decree that Jahangir
issued after his accession, that he would not touch the property of his
subjects, does not specifically mention houses or gardens,82 but we
learn, again from his own words in the Jahāngīrnāma, that “a garden in
agra had been left by Shah Quli Khan Mahram and as he had no heirs i
handed it over to ruqayya Sultan Begum, the daughter of hindal Mirza, who
had been the honored wife of my father”.83 This implies that if
Shah Quli Khan had had heirs the property would have gone to them
and not to the crown. By the reign of Shah Jahan the escheating of houses
and gardens of the mansabdars seems to have become standard practice, and
it appears as if the emperor commanded a pool of houses and gardens that
cyclically would return to the crown, either to remain with it or to be
given out once again.84 It remains to be
established how the mansabdars’ rights to
own houses and gardens and bequeath them to their heirs was handled under
aurangzib and his successors.85
 | |
11. Raja Man Singh’s palace at Rohtas, completed in 1596. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 1981. |
 | |
| 12. Plan of the Rohtas Palace (after M.H. Kuraishi, List of Ancient Monuments...of Bihar and Orissa, Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series 51, Calcutta, 1931). |
 | ||
13. Munim Khan’s Gate, Jaunpur Fort, 1560s. Photograph: Ebba Koch, 1981.
|
 | |
15. View of the Delhi Palace from Metcalfe House by Mazhar Ali Khan, 1844. Illustration in Sir Thomas Metcalf’s Delhie Book. Inscribed below: naqsha-i tripoliya va Salimgarh va qil‘a-i Shahjahanabad. Mazhar ‘Ali Khan. (Drawing of the castle [tripoliya] of Salimgarh and the fort of Shahjahanabad. Mazhar Ali Khan.) Salimgarh is the smaller island fort on the left. Add Or 5475 f16 (B20045-15). © The British Library Board. |
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Rubiés 2005: Joan-Pau Rubiés.
“Oriental Despotism and European
orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu”. Journal of Early Modern
History
9/1–2: 109–80.
Sarkar 1952: Jadunath Sarkar. Mughal Administration. fourth
edition.
Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar and Sons.
Sharma 2016: Sunil Sharma. “Kashmir and the Mughal fad of
persian
pastoral poetry”. in Euroasiatica. Quaderni di studio su
Balcani, Caucaso
e Asia Centrale 5, Borders: Itineraries on the Edges of Iran.
edited by
Stefano Pellò. Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, pp.
183–202.
Sharma 2017: Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia. Persian Literature
in an Indian
Court. Cambridge Ma: harvard university press.
Siebenhüner 2013: Kim Siebenhüner. “approaching Diplomatic
and
Courtly gift-giving in europe and Mughal india: Shared
practices
and Cultural Diversity”. The Medieval History Journal 16:
525–46.
Thackston 1996: W.M. Thackston. “Mughal gardens in persian
poetry”.
in Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, and
Prospects.
edited by J.l. Wescoat, Jr. and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn.
Washington DC:
Dumbarton oaks research library and Collection.
1
for this and the following see Koch 2006/2012, pp. 27–28. i discussed the problem more fully in the
lecture “land ownership of Mughal
gardens” delivered as the second of the i.h. Qureshi Memorial Lecture Series,
St Stephen’s College, Delhi, February 3,
2012, and have also touched on it in Koch forthcoming.
2
elias 1983 (english translation).
3 When Dr Jaffery started to work with me in
1976 he taught at Dr Zakir husain Delhi
College. it is very sad to report that he passed away at the end of august 2016 while still
actively working on persian sources.
4 Qazvini; Tabataba’i; Lahauri 1866–72; Kanbu
1967–72 (Kanbu relies in large part on
Tabataba’i); Waris (unpublished); Kalim 1957. For a fuller assessment of the textual sources of
Shah Jahan relevant for the study of
architecture, see Koch 2013, pp. 351–79.
5 For
Shah Jahan’s palace
programme see Nur
Bakhsh 1903–04; Necipoğlu 1993; Koch 1994; and Harit Joshi in
this volume.
6
published in Koch 2006/2012.
7
See the general observations by Muhammad 1986, asher 1993, and the brief, but in our context very useful,
comment by parihar 2006, p. 187.
8
on presentations at the Mughal court see Siebenhüner 2013. She places the Mughal pīshkash in the context of
gift-giving in the West and the handling
of pishkash in iran, and rightly points out that the Mughal pishkash was not a gift but an
obligatory presentation of particular
items, like a tax, that the elite had to make to the emperor on certain occasions. pishkash could
also be a tribute by subjected rulers.
See also Stephan popp in this volume.
9
Sharma 2016 and Sharma 2017, especially chapter 4. 10 On
honorific names in Muslim culture see e.g. Hodgson 1974, Vol. 1, p. 17.
11
Bernier 1891, p. 5.
12
ibid., p. 65; cf. “William hawkins 1608–13” in foster 1921, p. 104.
13
amartya Sen in his introduction to guha 1981, pp. ix–x. in this classic work, guha analysed the views of
alexander Dow, henry pattullo, philipp
francis and John Shore.
14 Rubiés 2005. See pp. 137–54 for “an analysis of the theme of the ruler’s unconstrained access to private
property, which writers of the second
half of the seventeenth century would make central to all ills of despotism”.
15
habib 1999.
16
richards 1993, pp. 190–96, 290–97.
17
rorabacher 2015, pp. 284–85 and passim.
18
ibid., pp. 290–91.
19
islam 1987, p. 48.
20
according to islam 1987, p. 51, n. 22: “Bayt al-Māl, theoretically, is the treasury of the Muslim State, where
proceeds of the lawful taxes and
revenues and heirless property are deposited .... in Mughal empire [sic] it denoted the
institution for distributing charitable
gifts, and allowances among the poor and needy”, with further
references. For a
general definition see
the collective article by Coulson, Cahen and le Tourneau
1979.
21
islam 1987, pp. 46–62.
22
ibid., p. 62.
23
The exceptions are assembled by asher 1992a.
24
ali 1997, pp. 63–68 (with a brief look at previous reigns); islam 1988; anwar 1992, 2001. in the older literature,
Sarkar 1952, pp. 146–60, focused in some
detail on escheat practice under aurangzib.
25
ali 1997, p. 63. for a detailed analysis of the social status of the personnel of the Delhi sultans who were
described as slaves see Kumar 2006 and
2014.
26
eaton 2006, p. 122, also mentions a similar form, “bandagān-i dargāh”. The most common form in Shah Jahani
sources is “bandagān-i hażrat”.
27
islam 1988, p. 23.
28
Jahangir 1999, p. 26; persian text Jahangir 1359/1980, p. 6, fol. 4a; also cited in Sarkar 1952, p. 151.
29
ali 1997, p. 63.
30
islam 1988, p. 32.
31
ibid.; anwar 1992, pp. 268, 271; anwar 2001, pp. 47–48. 32 Shah Nawaz Khan
1952, Vol. 2, p. 27.
33
islam 1988, p. 36.
34
anwar 1992, p. 272; cf. anwar 2001, pp. 45–48. Similarly Day 1970, pp. 192–95.
35
lahauri 1866–72, Vol. 2, pp. 257–59; Shah Nawaz Khan 1952, Vol. 1, p. 293; islam 1988, p. 30; anwar 1992, p.
267.
36
Bhakkari 1993, pp. 147–51; the quotation is on p. 150. My attention was drawn to this passage by parihar 2006, p.
187, where he briefly comments on the
property rights of Mughal nobles. on Mir
Ma‘sum’s life see also Shah Nawaz Khan 1952, Vol. 2, pp. 61–63.
37
agra was of course not built by Jahangir. it has an old history, for which see Koch 2006/2012, ch. 1.
38
roe 1926, p. 105.
39
as in the cases of Bairam Khan and raja ram Das: see below. 40 as in the case
of i‘tiqad Khan: see below.
41 Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami 1979, Vol. 2, pp. 187–88;
Pandey 1978, p. 260. 42 Jahangir 1999, p. 27.
43
De laet 1928, pp. 38–39.
44
Qazvini, fol. 121a/refoliated 122a; lahauri 1866–72, Vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 86–87; Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 1, pp. 186–87;
‘inayat Khan 1990, p. 15. 45 lahauri
1866–72, Vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 463.
46
Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 1, p. 460.
47
Beach, Koch and Thackston 1997, cat. no. 29, in particular the entry by Koch, pp. 185–87.
48
lahauri 1866–72, Vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 268; Beach, Koch and Thackston 1997, in particular Koch, p. 187, n. 10.
49 I
identified the chief
remains of Aurangzib’s
complex, the Mubarak Manzil, on March 12, 2004 with the
help of its present Owner, Naveen Chand,
who kindly allowed a brief survey of the
architecture and provided details of the acquisition of the building and its history. according to what he told
me, the building has been known since
the 19th century as the Mubarak Manzil,
Custom house, permit Kothi, and now as Tara Niwas. it was used from 1810 to 1877 as the Custom House or the
Head Office of the Salt Department in
Agra, and in 1817 it was largely modified, with
a second storey added. a plan of agra dated 1867–68 in the British library shows the Custom house at the head of
the pontoon bridge. The building was
sold by the British government on June
28, 1878 in a public auction for the sum of 17,000 gold mohurs to Seth hira lal of a family known as the
Seths of Mathura, the ancestor of its
present owner. in 1902 the Muslim community of
agra brought it to the notice of lord Curzon and claimed it as a place of worship, but since no evidence of
mosque architecture could be found, their
petition was denied (Curzon papers, British
library Mss eur f111/621, pp. 170–71). a year later, a.C. polwhele, executive engineer, agra, reported that the
Mubarak Manzil was used as the east
indian railway goods depot, and that, with the
permission of the then owner, Seth Chuni lal, the son of hira lal, a
marble tablet had
been affixed to
it, with an
inscription that
reproduced
the local tradition about the building having been erected by aurangzib after the battle of
Samugarh in June 1659 (see the Annual
Progress Report of the Archaeological Surveyor United Provinces and Punjab, 1903–04, p. 23). for
more detailed references on the Mubarak
Manzil see Koch 2006/2012, pp. 74–75 and
corresponding notes pp. 267–68; and Koch and losty 2017 for an illustration and discussion of the agra
scroll.
50
parihar 2006, pp. 189–206 for a detailed study of the garden and its history, including architectural drawings.
51
‘inayat Khan 1990, p. 122; Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 2, pp. 314, 352 and passim.
52
lahauri 1866–72, Vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 27.
53
ibid., p. 28.
54
ibid., p. 27.
55
‘inayat Khan 1990, p. 299; cf. Shah Nawaz Khan 1952, Vol. 1, p. 715. This is also mentioned by harit Joshi in this
volume.
56
See note 8 above.
57
for this type of gift given by the emperor see Stephan popp in this volume.
58
manzil-i ‘Alī Mardān Khān amīr al- umarā [the new title of ‘ali Mardan Khan] kih khāna-i Saif Khān būd wa bi-ṭarīq-i
‘āriyat bi-amīr al- umarā marḥamat shudah … wa ḥavīlī-yi I‘tiqād Khān kih bihtarīn
manzil-i Agra-ast bi-ṭarīq-i in‘ām
bi-khān-i mazkūr marḥamat farmūdand.
Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 2, p. 315; cf. ‘inayat Khan 1990, p. 299 and
(for Saif Khan) p. 53.
59
‘inayat Khan 1990, pp. 251–52.
60
lahauri 1866–72, Vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 27.
61
Muhammad Kazim 1865–68, p. 836.
62
See Koch forthcoming.
63
Kalim 1957, pp. 346–51; for a detailed discussion see Koch 2006/2012, pp. 41–42.
64
for this exchange transaction see below.
65
pelsaert 1972, p. 5.
66
Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 2, p. 29. Cf. the translation of Thackston 1996, p. 255.
67
This emerged from a discussion i had with Sunil Kumar of Delhi university during the Shah Jahan Workshop in
Vienna in May 2014.
68
asher 1992a, p. 162 also felt that “Construction on a watan jagir, an ancestral landholding of a vassal prince
seems to have been more secure.”
69
on the architectural patronage of raja Man Singh see asher 1992b; Asher does not address the issue of the
raja’s property rights. 70 asher 1992a, pp. 162–64. The groundbreaking study on
the palaces of the raja is rothfarb
2012.
71
ahmad 1936, Vol. 2, pp. 298–99, 312–13.
72
iqtidar alam Khan included the architectural patronage of Mun‘im Khan in his study (Khan 1973, p. 121); asher
1992a, pp. 86–88. 73 Koch 1993/2001, pp.
169–70, 172.
74
ali 1997, p. 64; islam 1988, pp. 28–29; anwar 1992, pp. 267–68; asher 1992a, p. 162: “and just as the houses
and gardens built by the Muslim nobility
were considered state, not private property,
the same held true for the hindu amirs.”
75
ambastha 1984, pp. 125–28. asher 1992a, p. 162, drew my attention to this passage and i thank Sunil Kumar for a
scan of the relevant pages of ambastha.
76
Koch 2006/2012, pp. 28, 97. This point is of great concern to indians of a nationalistic persuasion, who believe
that the Taj Mahal was built on the site
of a hindu temple and speculate about the nature of buildings on the Kachhwaha
property bought by Shah Jahan. i had,
for instance, a long correspondence on the subject in february 2014 with anand Dabak, an indian
engineer in Dallas, Texas.
77
Tirmizi 1995, Vol. 2, pp. 53–54. The farman is reproduced, with its translation, in Begley and Desai 1989, pp.
168–69.
78
on this raja see Shah Nawaz Khan 1952, Vol. 1, pp. 404–05. 79 ibid., Vol. 2,
pp. 617–19.
80
ibid., pp. 914–17.
81
Kanbu 1967–72, Vol. 2, pp. 162–63; hasan 1990, pp. 241–45; Koch 2006/2012, p. 32.
82
See above and note 28.
83
Jahangir 1999, p. 46.
84
i am borrowing the idea of the “pool of houses” from the “pool of lands” of Miranda 2015, pp. 169–80,
especially p. 175, which i read for
comparative study. it analyses the contradicting factors of the legal regime in Bassein and
Daman—indigenous on the one hand and
“colonial imported” on the other—for regulating the ownership of land.
85
That aurangzib sought to control the construction of houses of his nobles is evident from the order he
issued in November 1677 among others
restricting the display of wealth and luxury: “No manṣabdār above the 4-sadi [a manṣab above
400] should begin the construction of
pucca [solid] houses without permission.” Saqi
Musta‘ad Khan 1947/2008, p. 100.
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