Laura E. PARODI University of Genoa
Humayun’s
Sojourn at the Safavid Court PARODI
than about living with comfortable answers”
Toby FALK
In December 1543, the Mughal Emperor Humayun crossed the border into Iran, along with a few dozen followers, to seek asylum at the Safavid court after losing the throne of Hindustan at the hands of an ambitious Afghan jāgīrdār, Sher Khan Sur.1
Shah
Tahmasp’s acceptance of the Emperor’s plea to enter his territory, on the
official pretext of a pilgrimage to Makka, would soon disclose a unique
opportunity for two of the great monarchs of the time to meet face-to-face, not
in the throes of a battlefield, as is usually the case in world history, but in
the ease and relaxed atmosphere of the court.
On his way to (and, later, from) the Shah’s court, Humayun was entertained by local authorities in all major cities, negotiated several digressions2 which took him virtually to all major shrines (where he spent nightly hours in prayer, made vows for his welfare and even left traces of his passage in verse),3 and longed for a whole month in the welcoming warmth of Herat, the former Timurid capital, now under Safavid control but still devoted to the Timurid cause, where he took part in the Nawruz celebrations.
In
July 1544, in the neighbourhood of Qazvin, Humayun finally met Tahmasp. There
followed a series of formal receptions and informal encounters.4 Relationships
between the two monarchs were at times tense, probably due to Tahmasp’s demand
of Humayun that he and his followers convert to the Shi‘i creed. But,
altogether, this was an extraordinary occasion, whose effects on the
development of Safavid-Mughal relations, both in the diplo matic and in the cultural
domain, were of great consequence.5
It
is widely acknowledged that Humayun’s sojourn at the Safavid court had an
invaluable bearing on the development of the arts in Timurid India: some of the
painters Humayun met while in Iran were, in fact, to join him soon after he
regained a hold on Kabul, and would afterwards direct the first steps of the
Mughal atelier in Hindustan.6 But the story has so often been repeated that we
possibly risk missing part of the picture.
In
fact, most scholarship on the subject still appears to rely on assessments
first made when the Timurids, with their complex ideology, made up of Iranian
and Turco-Mongol cultural features, were still imperfectly understood and far
less known than the Safavids, their artistic creations generally labelled as
“Persian”, and their legacy on successor dynasties largely ignored. Even Milo
C. Beach (1987: 8), one of the undisputed authorities in the study of Mughal
painting, in an essay published before such pioneering work as Golombek and Wilber’s
(1988) or Lentz and Lowry’s (1989), which radically changed the course of
Timurid studies, appears to share this view as he states that “Tahmasp was
wealthy and immensely cultured; his court exemplified imperial splendour and
power [and] Humayun, by establishing a visible association with Tahmasp, could
therefore only increase in stature” (Beach 1987: 8).
Progress
made by scholarship in recent years now makes a reassessment of this encoun ter
possible, and the preliminary results of a research conducted on available
material are indeed very promising.
Of
the two protagonists, Tahmasp is doubtlessly the better known, or at least the
one on whom more has been written. Aged thirty at the time, and reigning since
the tender age of ten, Tahmasp, like his father Isma‘il, had been a very
precocious child: appointed the nominal governor of Herat, the former Timurid
capital, when he was barely two years old, he had spent six years there, in
close contact with the city’s renowned literary and artistic circles. These had
been invaluable for his formation, and he had returned to court with a highly
developed taste and a remarkable personal interest in the visual arts.7
However,
about the time of Humayun’s visit, the Safavid ruler was beginning to show the
signs of a religious crisis that eventually led him to discontinue patronage of
the arts. The Shah’s religious preoccupations actually surface several times
during the two rulers’ encounters, at times seriously affecting their
relationships.8
Who,
on the other hand, was Humayun? Was his background really so different from
Tahmasp’s? Did he really perceive himself as culturally, as well as
politically, inferior to the Safavid Shah, as most scholarship appears to
assume, besides the obvious embarrass ment of finding himself deprived of his
throne and all of his wordly possessions, but for a handful of gems from the
royal treasury he still kept with him (Tadhkīra: 67-68)?
Older
by about six years,9 the Timurid ruler had seen his father Babur’s fortunes wax
and wane in Central Asia while still a child, ruled over Badakhshan on his
behalf and fought at his side on several occasions since the age of twelve. He
had been Babur’s most trusted and capable general during the conquest of
Hindustan,10 and had succeeded him in 1530. Soon, his reign had been troubled
by revolts in the provinces, and his power challenged by his brother Kamran,
who would provide the greatest hindrance to Mughal stability in the
Subcontinent until Humayun’s painful decision to have him blinded and exiled
(or, as was customary in those times, “granted permission to go to Makka”), in
1553.11
Early
in his reign (1530-34), before the restless years began, Humayun had some time
to show his taste for the beautiful: as his chronicler, the aged Khwandamir
(formerly a historian at the court of Sultan-Husayn in Herat), relates, the
Emperor founded a city called Dīnpanāh (Qānūn: ff. 82-84) and devised new
styles of clothing, as well as wondrous pavilions meant to delight and
impress12; Wescoat (1990) has vividly outlined the imprint he gave to the
Mughal approach to urban and garden design. True to his Timurid origins,
Humayun was also an accomplished man, both fond of the sciences (astronomy in
particu lar)13 and an amateur poet.14 He can, moreover, be considered as the
initiator of Mughal painting: his father Babur, who had a keen interest in
architecture, makes several refer ences to, and even names, architects and
builders who were in his employ (see for example Bāburnāma: ff. 291b and f.
357b), but never mentions painters or paintings done for him in his
autobiography; on the other hand, there is evidence that Humayun had painters
in his employ even before his sojourn at the Safavid court.15
Thus,
the Mughal emperor can hardly be said to have been less cultured, or less inter
ested in the arts, than Tahmasp; nor had his court been less rich or less
sumptuous in its heyday.16 On the contrary, we should pay due attention to the
fact that, despite his condition of refugee, Humayun still was a Timurid, descended
from a lineage whose name still commanded respect. The Safavids’ rule over
Iran, by contrast, had been established only a few decades earlier, and the
dynasty arguably had at that time more enemies than admirers.17
Humayun
is probably the least known, and least studied, among the “Great Mughals”: not
only was his reign mostly one of warfare and exile, between the epic conquest
of Hindustan under his father Babur and the prosperous fifty-year’s rule of his
son Akbar, but the paucity of architectural and artistic evidence from his
reign (at times controversially dated)18 and the almost complete absence of
official chronicles (the Qānūn covering only its very first years) have
probably contributed to discourage many.19
However,
sometimes unofficial and unpretentious sources provide more reliable and less
stereotyped information than official ones; and it is precisely this type of
sources that we have at our disposal when examining the history of Humayun,
particularly concerning his sojourn in Iran. For when Akbar succeeded his
father, he too realised that the history of the dynasty had not been adequately
documented; and he commanded all those who had been the direct witnesses of
events to write down whatever they remembered about the late Emperor, so as to
have Humayun’s life recorded and eventually included in the official history,
the Akbarnāma. Three of these sources have come down to us, one of them
incomplete, and two are of particular relevance in this context: the Tadhkīrat
al-Vakiāt (hence Tadhkīra), by Jawhar, who was Humayun’s aftabachï
(ewer-bearer) and had accom panied him in Iran, providing an extraordinary
firsthand account; and the Humāyūnnāma, by Gulbadan, Humayun’s sister. Although
Gulbadan is at times inaccurate with dates and historical circumstances (she
was still a child when Humayun ascended the throne), and though her work is
only partly preserved to us, both texts are invaluable for the insight they
provide into the Emperor’s personality, including at times intimate, and even
embarrassing, details which were carefully expunged from the official version
of facts given in the Akbarnāma.20 The third of these sources, the Tadhkīra-i
Humāyūn va Akbar, by Bayazid Bayat, is not comparable to the other two in
detail and, consequently, importance, but it does provide some additional
information.21 Other sources also add to the picture: the Bāburnāma and the
Tabaqāt-i Bāburī in particular, for Humayun’s formative years; the Akbarnāma,
on the other hand, gives insight into the official image the emperor’s son and
successor wanted to impose; finally, Haydar Mirza Dughlat’s Tārīkh-i Rashīdī is
of consid erable relevance in sketching out Humayun’s character and
intellectual biography. Then, of course, there is previous historiographical
work, among which Ray’s book Humāyūn in Persia (Ray 1948) still stands out.22
Although
Humayun had entered Safavid territory with only his closest followers, in a
sheer contrast to the multitudes of elephants and horsemen that had made up his
army only a few years before,23 by the time he actually met Tahmasp, his morale
must have been considerably higher, having by then spent over a month in Herat,
the former Timurid capital (Ray 1948: 12-14), where he was welcomed and hailed
as the legitimate heir of the Timurid throne, catalysing the hopes of the
dispossessed Timurid élite. As Maria Szuppe (1992: 148) observes, in a
contemporary work by Amir Mahmud, Khwandamir’s son, who had remained in Herat,
le
personnage de Homāyun devient la projection de la nostalgie timouride, sentiment
encore vivant à Herat vers le milieu du XVIe siècle. Remarquons pourtant le
contraste entre cette image traditionnelle et la réalité du rôle historique
joué par Homāyun, contraste que ses contemporains ne percevaient visiblement
pas de même manière.
As
I suggest elsewhere (Parodi, forthcoming), we should perhaps wonder whether it
is not our perception that is distorted. When Humayun reached Herat, his exile
from Hindustan had just begun, and no-one knew it was going to last twelve more
years, eight of which were spent in continuous struggle with his brother; and
of course, no-one could possibly imagine his life would be ended abruptly by a
trivial accident (related in Akbar nāma I: f. 363) only six months after his
return to Delhi. Moreover, at that time, his situation was not altogether
unlike his father’s, whose political achievements are judged so differently by
modern scholarship: Babur too had conquered and lost Samarkand (his real
objective) three times; and had only resolved to conquer Hindustan once he had
lost all hopes of wresting the former Timurid heartland from the Uzbeks
(Bāburnāma: f. 145). We know from his personal witness that neither he, nor
many of his followers, found Hindustan appealing (Bāburnāma: ff. 273b-274;
294b-295b).24 Humayun was ousted from Hindustan just like Babur had been ousted
from Central Asia; by reconquering Kabul and, later, Hindustan, he would secure
a throne for himself and his descendants, just like his father had. We may even
question whether contemporaries actually perceived his misfor tunes as a
“fifteen-year exile” at all: the bulk of it being represented by the years
between 1544 and 1553, when Kamran and Humayun were contending over the Timurid
throne (the real crux of the matter, besides any territorial considerations) in
Kabul. Indeed, the whole geopolitical perspective in which Mughal history is
usually set appears to be biased by an approach centred on “India” as conceived
by the British Raj and, subsequently, by post Independence historians. When discussing
16th century Timurid history, such a perspective is entirely misleading.
It
is thus only reasonable that contemporaries did not see as great a difference
as we do between Babur and Humayun, especially against such a troubled
background as that of early sixteenth-century Central Asia25; not to mention
the fact that Babur had in his turn entered into an alliance with the Safavid
Shah, in 1511, and that it was only with the aid of troops provided by
Tahmasp’s father, Isma‘il, in exchange for a formal adhesion to Shi‘ism – in a
complete parallel with Humayun’s situation – that he was temporarily able to
reconquer Samarkand and hold it for a short while.26
Both
Humayun and Babur, moreover, were scions of Timur, from whom (as is testified
by their formal adhesion to Shi‘ism) they apparently inherited a liberal and
unprejudiced attitude towards Islam, and a sheer pragmatism in politics. But
there is also ground to support the hypothesis that, unlike perhaps Babur in
respect to Isma‘il, Humayun had reasons to feel superior to Tahmasp: he had
been the ruler of a much larger and wealthier country (a revealing incident,
mentioned in Tadhkīra: f. 75, will be discussed below) and, besides this, as
some clues appear to indicate, he was possibly acknowledged as a man with a
saintly aura and the reputation of a worker of miracles (Tadhkīra: f. 57).
Jawhar reports this as the people’s opinion after an officer who had deserted
Humayun died soon after the emperor had cursed him; he also relates other
significant episodes: for example how, finding the gate to the Mashhad shrine
locked upon his first visit (it was late at night), the Emperor turned away,
then retraced his steps and, after invoking the Imam, broke the chain open by
the simple touch of his hand (Tadhkīra: f. 67b).
This
may be taken as just poor evidence, especially considering that the latter
‘miracle’ occurred by the intercession of the Imam Riza. However, Humayun’s
saintly reputation is better taken seriously, at least by those interested in
the history of culture: it is something I repeatedly came across while
researching the issues connected with the construction and perception of the
Emperor’s mausoleum (built by Akbar in Delhi in 1662-71). Both the form of the
tomb, recalling that of Central Asian shrines, and the way Humayun is presented
in the Akbarnāma27 appear to point to the fact that the Emperor was exalted,
after his death,
as
a saintly ancestor and a protector of his lineage (see Parodi, forthcoming). To
a large extent, this reputation must have been due to some specific trait in
Humayun’s personality, and/or to his deliberate choice to make such an
impression already in his lifetime.28 But Humayun also had, so-to-say, the
necessary ‘pedigree’ for it, since his mother was, ac cording to Mughal sources,
a descendant of Ahmad Jami (Akbarnāma I: f. 121). Through a carefully planned
(though initially contrasted) matrimonial alliance with a girl from the same
lineage, Humayun secured an even clearer ‘saintly pedigree’ for his son,
Akbar.29 In this sense, Humayun’s role as a partial forerunner for Akbar’s
religious policies, and the latter’s purported role as a mujtahid, is worthy of
attention. I shall return to this point.
Humayun’s
saintly aura, or the construction of it, does not appear unusual against the
political and social background of the times; politics, in the late 15th and
early 16th century, was deeply imbued with mysticism, the most pertinent and
recent precedent being that of Tahmasp’s father, Isma‘il.30 Indeed, it is
perhaps not too far-fetched to hypothesise that Humayun had actually drawn
inspiration from the latter (rather than from Tahmasp, as is usually claimed),
possibly in the context of a political programme for which a clue may be
envisaged in the name Dīnpanāh (literally, Asylum of the Faith) Humayun chose
for the city he founded in 1533 (see Qānūn: ff. 82-84). Could it have been
intended as a sanctuary (specifically aimed at the Timurid élite) against
Safavid intolerance?
Although
Khwandamir’s account of Humayun’s institutions only covers the first few years
of his reign, and despite its pompous and literary style which often conceals
more than it reveals, the text provides interesting clues to support this
hypothesis. The most remarkable is probably the description of the Crown of
Magnificence (Tāj-i ‘Izzat) Humayun had devised and adopted for himself and the
members of his court. Like most of the institutions and features described in
the Qānūn, it is usually interpreted as one of several extravagant innovations
introduced by the Emperor, in accordance with a scholarly approach that has
consistently viewed Humayun as an eccentric and somewhat frivolous man. I know
of no serious attempt to place his institutions in an organic context, nor,
with the exception of Adle (2000: 173), of any attempt at reconciling the
description of the Tāj-i ‘Izzat with evidence from contemporary miniatures.
This may be partly due to the fact that most scholarship, especially when it
comes to art history, still relies on very old and often inaccurate English
translations; still, this silence is remarkable.
On
the other hand, an accurate reading of the Persian text of the Qānūn makes it
possible to identify the Tāj with the headgear appearing in Humayuni
miniatures: a sort of innov- ative and
colourful reinterpretation of the turban, wound around a Mongol cap, that is
seen in all surviving paintings from his reign (Figs. 1 and 2) and is one of
the safest ways of dating works which could otherwise be mistaken, at least in
some instances, for products of Akbar’s workshops. None of these miniatures
date earlier than Humayun’s return to Kabul after his sojourn at Tahmasp’s
court, and some of them have been ascribed to the Safavid masters he first met
in Iran; but the headgear they shown can, indeed, be reconciled with
Khwandamir’s description31:
The
“Crown of Magnificence” (Tāj-i ‘Izzat) represents the fulfilling of the ideas
of this beloved descendant of the caliphs. It is sewn with precious fabrics
such as velvet from the West, golden brocade, multicoloured tāja,32 rough
material and high-quality woollen squares. This headdress, so rich and
colourful, is made of several clefts33 and many bands. On both sides of the
turban, there is a “v”-shaped vent. If the two vents are put close, we can see
two “v”s which in algebra correspond to number seventy-seven (vv), a clear ref
erence to the word ‘izz34 that means honour and high rank. Thus, this styling
and this ornament, whose qualities far exceed the mere description that can be
made, has been known everywhere under the name of Tāj-i ‘Izzat.
The
king’s headdress is of one colour, whereas that of the high dignitaries of the
court has the clefts and the inner part of the turban of a colour, and the
other parts of another one.35
Furthermore,
the one who rules over seas and countries provides each notable with a
different hat, thus freeing them from unworthy clothes, and bestowing a Tāj on
those at the top of the hierarchy.
Although
the rendering of the characteristic ‘Humayuni turban’ in contemporary
miniatures does not include all the details given by Khwandamir (such
representations are highly conventional), a large V-shaped vent is clearly
visible, and appears as its most salient feature; supposing the back side
(which is never shown) had one too, we would have a strong element to reconcile
the depictions with the description.36 Even more importantly,
there
is reason to believe that the introduction of the Tāj-i ‘Izzat was far more
than an innovation in the field of fashion: Khwandamir’s description immediately
brings to mind the Safavids’ characteristic turban, the Tāj-i Haydarī. The
latter had reportedly been adopted by Isma’il’s father, Haydar, after the Imam
‘Ali had described it to him in a dream.37 Interestingly, the dream itself has
an almost direct parallel with Humayun’s bio graphy, since we are told that
Ahmad Jami, dressed in green, had appeared to him in a dream to predict the
birth of a son “from his lineage”, Akbar (Humāyūnnāma: 145).38
The
regular experience of this kind of dreams is especially present in the Eastern
Islamic world in the early decades of the sixteenth century,39 and may be
understood as part of a conscious attempt on the part of rulers to shroud
themselves in an aura of mystical cha risma, at a time when the Caliphs’
authority was no longer there to claim it.40 And if Haydar, or Isma‘il, Safavi
provide a precedent for the Mughals, the remarkable importance of dreams in
Akbar’s official sources is clearly anticipated by his father’s experience.
This is only one of several instances in which Humayun appears to have been a
forerunner for his much better known son and successor.41
The
existence in Timurid India of a headgear whose imagery was centred on the
number seven, as against the number twelve of the Tāj-i Haydarī, nearly a decade
before Humayun’s visit to the Persian court, far from being the expression of
an eccentric character, as it has so far been interpreted, deserves all our
attention: it points to the fact that the Emperor had his Safavid counterpart
well in mind, even before meeting Tahmasp under the pressure of circumstances.
We may even venture to hypothesize that the Tāj was part of a political project
in which Humayun’s mystical aura would have had some place, had everything not
been overwhelmed by political pressures.
Jawhar
reports an interesting episode, that is worth discussing in connection with
this issue: when Bayram Beg, who had been sent as an envoy to Tahmasp in
advance of the royal party, was received at court, the Shah ordered him to
shave his hair, and wear a Tāj-i Haydarī, but the nobleman represented that he
was the servant of another person, and could only obey his orders (Tadhkīra: f.
69). The episode has always been considered as an anticipation of the Shah’s
request of Humayun and his people to convert to Shi‘ism; but Bayram Beg, a
Qaraqoyunlu nobleman, already was a Shi‘i (Ray 1948: 40), which is why he was
chosen as envoy in the first place. His refusal to wear the Tāj-i Haydarī,
therefore, must be explained otherwise. And why not, indeed, as a matter of
Tāj-i Haydarī versus Tāj-i ‘Izzat or, in other words, a controversy regarding
symbols of mystical-political affiliations?
A
few decades later, Akbar’s political-religious synthesis – the Dīn- (or
Tawͥīd)-i Ilāhī – would significantly be based on a pīr/murīd-like
relationship, symbolized by a shast (a word usually referred to the thread worn
by Brahmins),42 bearing the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (Ā‘īn-i Akbarī I: 174-5).43
Affiliation to the Dīn-i Ilāhī, and the honour of the shast, had to be gained
through an initiation. This was probably the case already with the Tāj-i
‘Izzat, for, as Khwandamir writes44:
The
Author himself, even before he got the [current] honour, in a qasīda composed
in honour of the king, defender of the world (Jahānbānī), had so reported:
“My
head didn’t receive from the king the honour of the rank hat,
Therefore
I fell, disheartened and lost”.
From
this brief (but precious) reference, it may be inferred that the Tāj was a
special honour, possibly subject to a process of initiation, since even the old
and venerable Timurid historian had to earn it for himself.
Humayuni
miniatures would seem to confirm this: although generally regarded as ‘the’
turban typical of Humayun’s reign, the Tāj-i ‘Izzat is not worn by all and
sundry in con temporary paintings: only the highest dignitaries and people
closest to the Emperor wear it; all others (servants in particular) either wear
Mongol caps or, more frequently, standard Timurid turbans.45 This so far
unnoticed feature indicates that the use of this highly original headgear was
not just a matter of fashion, but signified a precise status, rank, or (in a parallel
with Akbar’s Dīn-i Ilāhī) degree of proximity to the Emperor.
Odd
as the idea of Humayun as the head of a sort of ‘mystical brotherhood’ may
seem, it is not out of place in its historical context, and the relative lack
of evidence in contem porary sources should not surprise: what official sources
do we have, besides the Qānūn, and that, too, covering only the first three
years of Humayun’s reign? And even if we had more, should we expect them to
deal with the issue in detail? As concerns the Dīn-i Ilāhī, the Ā‘īn-i Akbarī
does not; were it not for Bada‘oni’s work (in some sense an “unauthorised
biography” of Akbar) and the information provided by the Jesuite Fathers,
little about this institution would be known; perhaps even too little for it to
have attracted significant scholarly attention.
In
spite of all these difficulties, a careful reading of Khwandamir’s passage does
yield further information. It indicates, for example, that Humayun’s title
Jahānbānī (Protector of the World), usually regarded as the emperor’s
posthumous name along with Jannat Ashiyānī,46 was already ascribed to him in
his lifetime. This is another detail that has so far been entirely overlooked
by scholarship (including myself). Yet, such a title is entirely consonant with
the city’s name of Dīnpanāh, and with the hypothesis of an attempt, on the part
of Humayun, at creating an aura of sanctity around his figure.
It
is worth recalling that Humayun was a child of three, and a direct witness of
events, at the time when Babur entered into an alliance with Isma‘il Safavi in
an attempt to win back Samarkand from the Uzbeks.47 The corresponding section
of the Bāburnāma is sadly lost to us; but we may presume that, as a sign of his
acceptance of the Shi‘i creed, Babur and his men were required to shave their
heads and wear the Tāj-i Haydarī. This could have made an impression on the
child Humayun, and the future emperor may later have been drawn to the idea of
adopting similar paraphernalia to exalt his public image. They would have served
him well in laying down the ideological, as well as social, foundations of the
Indo Timurid state.
Babur’s
conquest of Hindustan had been a military adventure, many of whose prot
agonists had soon made their way back to Central Asia; despite all subsequent
scholarly rhetoric, based essentially on Erskine’s enthusiastic assessment
(1854), Humayun had not inherited anything like a state as he ascended the
throne. Indeed, many of the institutions described in the Qānūn, fanciful as
they may seem, appear to aim at a very concrete object ive: that of
centralising power in the sovereign’s hands, and minimising tensions among
different power groups at court. This, in turn, was probably inspired by, and
at the same time projected against, the changing international scenario within
the early sixteenth century Muslim world, where the Ottomans and, subsequently,
the Safavids were in the process of transforming polities based on tribal
alliances in the tradition of “steppe em pires” into centralised states headed
by charismatic sovereigns endowed with a highly spiritual, as well as temporal,
authority (see Necipoālu 1993: 306, 309). This was a far cry from Timur’s
legacy and political approach, which was still embodied by Babur (as well as by
Humayun’s brother, Kamran); and Humayun (not Akbar, as is usually claimed)
appears to be the first Timurid fully aware of the changing international
context, and the first to act in response to it. It is possible that the
opposition he met with, and the temporary loss of Hindustan and the Timurid
throne, were motivated by resistance to these reforms, both from other members
of the Timurid family and from the Timurid amīrs at large. The issue is, of
course, too complex to be discussed in detail in the context of the present
essay; but there is at least one hint of recognition of Humayun’s precursory
role in previous schol arship that is worth mentioning (Streusand 1989: 36-37):
[Humayun] introduced a new model of administration and social structure, which suggests that he intended major changes in the doctrine of kingship. He divided the imperial servants into three groups […] The classification of other Tīmūrids with imperial servants marks the abandonment of the concept of the appanage state and modification of the doctrine of collective sovereignty. Being a Tīmūrid no longer made a prince a co-sover eign, entitled to an autonomous domain. He became a servant of the current ruler and his potential successor. [...] Humāyūn spent most of his career dealing with consequences of collective sovereignty [and] most likely sought to modify the doctrine of collective sover eignty in response to this ordeal. His idea is an important, but hitherto unnoticed, precedent for Akbar’s programme.
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