The Sufi method behind the Mughal ‘Peace with All’ religions: A study of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘taḥqı̄q’ in Abu al-Fazl’s preface to the Razmnāma
Modern Asian Studies (2022), 56, 902–923
doi:10.1017/S0026749X21000275
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Christian
Blake Pye
Department of Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America/Email: blake.pye@utexas.edu
Abstract
The mystical method of taḥqīq (‘realization’ or ‘verification’ of divine truth), as promoted by the Andalusian thinker Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), was central to the project of managing religious difference in the Mughal empire. The key architect of deploying taḥqīq for imperial purposes was emperor Akbar’s senior minister, ideologue, and spiritual devotee, Abu al-Fazl. Specifically, I analyse how the concept of taḥqīq appears in Abu al-Fazl’s 1587 preface to the Razmnāma (‘Book of War’), the first translation into Persian of the Sanskrit religious epic Mahābhārata. The Mughal Razmnāma was a monumental achievement, the foremost product of Akbar’s push to translate non-Islamic religious works into Persian. In its elaborate preface, Abu al-Fazl clearly outlines that this translation was an exercise in taḥqīq, made possible by a sovereign who had achieved spiritual perfection, and he calls the Mughal empire a ‘Caliphate of Taḥqīq’. As such, this study bridges two scholarly conversations which have been previously distinct. One is the renewed focus in Islamic studies on Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas, specifically on taḥqīq in the late medieval and early modern periods across the Islamic world. The other is the recent interest in Mughal historio graphy on ṣulḥ-i kull (Total Peace). This article positions Ibn ‘Arabi’s taḥqīq within an elite Persianate intellectual milieu that carried the concept to Mughal South Asia, and it demonstrates, through an analysis of the Razmnāma’s preface, that taḥqīq was politicized by Abu al-Fazl and Akbar to develop the imperial policy of managing religious difference, which came to be known as ṣulḥ-i kull.
Keywords:
Mughals; Ibn ‘Arabi; Mahābhārata; ṣulḥ-i kull
Introduction
In the early 1580s, during the reign of Jalal al-Din Akbar (r. 1554–1605), a com mittee of trained scholars completed a monumental achievement: the firs translation into Persian of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, referred to as the Razmnāma (‘Book of War’). This was perhaps the foremost project of Akbar’s push to translate non-Islamic religious works into Persian for the benefit of all.1The Mughal court savant Abu al-Fazl ‘Allami (d. 1605) described the intel lectual and religious context for the creation of this translation in his 1587 pref ace to the work. This preface is best understood as an imperial manifesto for the management of religious difference in the new ‘millennial’ era of Akbar:
And
now that the time for increasing the sight of the blind and fog-enveloped
humanity—nay, the era of life for the dead-hearted of the elemental world—has
arrived, and in this form of wondrous character [of Akbar] the inner meaning of
sovereignty (salṭanat) and the secret of caliphate has been confirmed and
realized (ta’kīd-o-taḥqīq yāfta). . . And through the wondrous means of this
chosen one of God, the House of the Despotism of Taqlīd (bayt al-tasalluṭ-i
taqlīd), which over the passing of years and the turning of centuries had been
strong of foundation, having collapsed, has become the House of the Caliphate
of Taḥqīq (dār al-khilāfat-i taḥqīq).2
In
this passage, Abu al-Fazl is ecstatic about the future of the world. A long era
of blindness and despotic taqlīd, ‘imitation’ or total adherence to precedent,
was coming to an end thanks to the thoroughly divinized personage of the
emperor. The era was being overturned for a new dispensation, the ‘Caliphate of
Taḥqīq’. I argue that taḥqīq in this text, meaning ‘verification’ or
‘realization’, is the apex of a bāṭini (inward or esoteric) approach for deriv
ing universal truths from both scripture and cosmos dating back to the Andalusi
Sufi and theorist of human perfection Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240). In this view, no
single religion or religious text could rightfully claim exclusive tran
scendent truth for itself. As such, I also assert that the ethos of taḥqīq, as
it appears in this preface, went hand-in-hand with the radically universalist
policy of ṣulḥ-i kull, ‘Total Peace’.3
Ibn
‘Arabi’s impact on Mughal cosmology and sovereignty has been long established.
One cannot deny the dual impact, especially during Akbar’s reign, of so-called
waḥdat al-wujūd (‘Oneness of Being’), the metaphysical claim that everything in
existence is a manifestation of one or more of God’s perfect attributes, and
al-insān al-kāmil (‘Perfect Human’), the archetypal and often physically
embodied human that is the full actualization of all of those attri
butes.4Perhaps by virtue of its relatively unassuming appearance as just one
more Form II Arabic verbal noun, however, taḥqīq has only recently been
observed as a distinct term at work in the Mughal elite milieu. In her book
Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, historian Audrey Truschke
points to the term as it exists in the preface to the Razmnāma. She rightly
notes the term’s opposition to taqlīd, the ‘blind following’ of precedent,
legal or otherwise, often castigated by Muslim intellectuals of the early
modern per iod, and she defines taḥqīq as ‘inquiry’ and ‘an active
investigation that admits new sources of wisdom, including Sanskrit texts’.5One
can even go further to say that taḥqīq had revolutionary importance for Islamic
epistemologies in that it radically expands the sources of divine Truth (ḥaqq)
beyond the scriptural canon of Islam. As a philosophical method, it
unapologetically affirms the epistemological value of all scripture and thus
rejects all forms of religious exclusivism and aligns with the prerogative of ṣulḥ-i
kull, effectively a variant of universalism in which religions must be
reconciled to one another and coex ist in ‘Total Peace’. This argument will be
borne out through a close analysis of Abu al-Fazl’s preface, but first more
must be said of taḥqīq’s progression from the time of Ibn ‘Arabi to the time of
the preface’s completion in 1587. We must examine the philosophical nature of
taḥqīq and how it developed over the centuries, mixing with other religious
trends and political institutions, to provide a foundation for an imperial
policy that outlawed all exclusivist views of religious truth.
Ibn
‘Arabi and early taḥqı̄q
In
1165, Ibn ‘Arabi was born in Murcia, Andalus (Muslim-controlled southern
Iberia) to a well-positioned family. His father was employed in service to gov
ernment—first the local government of Murcia and then the Almohad Caliphate
(1147–1248) in Seville. For a time, Ibn ‘Arabi followed in his father’s
footsteps but, after several religious experiences, eventually forsook his
career and took up the Sufi path. In the beginning of the thirteenth century,
he left Andalus and migrated west, staying in Mecca for an extended period and
then travelling throughout the Levant, Anatolia, and Iraq before finally
settling in Damascus. After a productive and prolific life of writing and
teaching, which earned him the title ‘The Greatest Shaykh’, he died in Damascus
in 1240.6 Ibn ‘Arabi scholars believe that he wrote hundreds of works, with
only a small percentage still extant today. Fewer still have received critical
editions. Nevertheless, two of his books—the Bezels of Wisdom (Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam)
and the Meccan Revelations (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya)—are perhaps unanimously
recog nized as his most influential works.7The Revelations is an expansive work
that elaborates upon the concepts found in the Bezels. The Bezels, however, has
received far more commentaries as well as references in other works. The
overwhelming popularity of the Bezels, for both the shaykh’s supporters and his
critics, is likely to be due to the work’s comparative brevity and pro vocative
nature. As a concise and oft-interpreted work, then, the Bezels was essential
to the spread of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas throughout Islamic civilizations from the
late medieval to early modern periods.8
To
begin to understand the impact of Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy, and taḥqīq more
specifically, on Abu al-Fazl and the Mughals, a brief overview of that phil
osophy is required. We can start by stating that his cosmology of God’s imma
nent divinity in creation effectively re-enchanted the world. His view of a
divinized cosmos, as Michael Ebstein has effectively demonstrated, was likely
to have been influenced by the Andalusi mystic and emanationist philosopher Ibn
Masarra (d. 931), whose Neoplatonic works predated the arrival of Sufism in
Spain. In addition to being a Sufi, then, Ibn ‘Arabi belonged to a long trad
ition of Muslim Neoplatonism, which itself dates back to the origins of
Isma’ili Shi’i cosmology or even further.9
In
Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique contribution to this tradition, the entire universe becomes
infinitely more significant as ḥaqq, divine truth, and one of God’s Names, can
be found in all things, but ḥaqq can only be perceived through taḥqīq. In
brief, taḥqīq is the process for seeing beneath the surface (ẓāhir) of created
manifestations (maẓāhir) and unveiling (kashf) the ḥaqq that resides in the
interior (bāṭin) of those manifestations. These ḥaqqs are the realities or
essential divine qualities of things, present ‘in the transcendent reality of
the Universal Intellect (that is, the divine spirit)’, as William Chittick has
put it.10 In addition to being an epistemological method, taḥqīq is also the
method for realizing the Perfect Human. By ascertaining God’s perfections, his ṣifat
(attributes) and ḥuqūq (pl. ḥaqq) can then be actualized by the aspiring
seeker, the muḥaqqiq. The seeker is meant to ‘verify’ and understand ḥaqq of
their own accord, rather than through imitation of another or ‘rote learning’,
both of which constitute taqlīd.11
Although
ḥaqq, often used interchangeably with ḥaqīqat (‘reality’), can be found in all
existing things, it is even more evident in the Quran and Sunna, which are
codices of infinite meaning for the shaykh. Indeed, Ibn ‘Arabi’s innovative
interpretation of scripture and Hadith is the backbone of his phil osophy.12
Without his creative taḥqīqi readings of the Quran, several of his most
controversial ideas would have been without support. The shaykh derives even
the method of taḥqīq itself from the Hadith corpus: ‘Your soul has a ḥaqq
against you, your Lord has a ḥaqq against you, your guest has a ḥaqq against
you, and your spouse has a ḥaqq against you. So, give to each that has a ḥaqq
its ḥaqq.’13 There is also reason to believe that the highly Quranic nature of
his work is one of the primary reasons why it was so readily received by
Muslims. This firm foundation in scripture is what separated Ibn ‘Arabi from
other theorists with similar ideas and influences.14 To put it plainly, Ibn
‘Arabi broke dogmatic restraints on scriptural interpretations through taḥqīq,
and he was entirely Islamic in doing so.15
In
two sections of the Bezels of Wisdom, the shaykh uses Quranic stories,
innovatively interpreted, to put forth a universalist theory of the truth
behind all religion that presages the reconciliation of religious doctrines
that occurs in Abu al-Fazl’s preface to the Razmnāma. In the passages of the
Bezels devoted to the wisdom of the prophets Moses and Noah, Ibn ‘Arabi
develops his stance on paganism and idolatry.16 As for Moses, the shaykh
positions the prophet and the pharaoh in a state of dialectical tension,
declaring that both are particular manifestations of God acting according to
His plan. As such, the pharaoh can not be condemned for simply playing his
role. Furthermore, the shaykh emphasizes the pharaoh’s near-death conversion,
declaring that his belief was accepted by God, thereby nullifying his past
sins.17 Ibn ‘Arabi’s view on the pharaoh in particular became a common critique
from polemicists who maintained that God could not have possibly accepted
pharaoh’s ‘submission’ immediately before death.18
Ibn
‘Arabi’s rehabilitation of pagans in the Quran continues in his section on
Noah, wherein he elaborates on the presence of God in all things, even idols
and humans. This Bezel contains much of what Sufis in the future would begin to
say about paganism and idolatry in the post-Mongol age. It is worth while here
to give an example of the shaykh’s taḥqīq through scriptural inter pretation,
since the commentator and translator Ralph Austin states in relation to this
section that ‘Ibn ‘Arabi’s approach to the Qur’anic material in this chap ter
is, at best, reckless, and, at worst, flagrantly heretical.’19 For example,
The
Prophet connected knowledge of the Real [al-ḥaqq] with knowledge of the self
(or soul), saying: ‘Whoever knows himself (or his soul) knows his Lord’ (man
‘arafa nafsahu ‘arafa rabbahu). And God said: ‘We shall show them Our signs on
the horizons,’ meaning the outside world, ‘and in themselves (or in their
souls),’ meaning the inside world, ‘until it becomes evident to them,’ meaning
to the observer, ‘that He is the Real’ (Qur’an 41:53), in that you are His
form, and He is your spirit.20
This passage, in which the shaykh firmly established the interconnected natures of God and humankind, is a model for taḥqīqi interpretation which occurs constantly in the Bezels. Ibn ‘Arabi begins with a Hadith oft-cited by Sufis and connects it to the Quran, which he then interprets in his own bāṭinī (esoteric) way. Here, knowing the soul is equated with knowing one of God’s signs. God’s signs—rather than simply being evidence that God has cre ated the world—become evidence for his immanent divinity in that world and also in mankind.21 This principle of God’s immanence is then applied to the story of Noah, whose efforts to proselytize the pagans of his day came to naught. Ibn ‘Arabi justifies the people’s rejection of monotheism, saying,
In their [the pagans’] deceit they said: ‘Do not abandon your gods, do not abandon Wadd, Suwa‘, Yaghuth, Ya‘uq and Nasr’ (Qur‘an 71:23). If they renounced their gods, they would not know the Real in the measure of their renouncement, for the Real is reflected in every worshiped god, whether one knows or does not know (this fact).22
He
states explicitly, then, that worship in and of itself is laudable since all
things are reflections of al-ḥaqq. It is impossible to worship anything other
than God.
It
must be stated here, despite writings such as these, that Ibn ‘Arabi was not in
any practical sense an antinomian mystic or political revolutionary. In a 1213
letter to the Seljuk sultan Kayka’us I, he advocated a strong shar‘ī stance
against the public religion of non-Muslims: ‘I tell you that among the worst
things that can befall Islam and Muslims . . . are the ringing out of church
bells, the public display of unbelief and the elevation of words of wor ship of
other than God (shirk).’23 Many Sufis who integrated his philosophy into their
own felt similarly.24 Nevertheless, Ibn ‘Arabi’s works contained radical
possibilities for governance and religious reconciliation to which the largely
apolitcal shaykh did not himself subscribe.
These
potentialities had been actualized by the Mughal era. The Ibn ‘Arabian esteem
for idols appears in Abu al-Fazl’s writings in the late sixteenth century,
wherein he censures Muslims who call idol worshippers ‘idiots’:
All
[the inhabitants of this land] believe in the unity of God. As for the honor
they show to images made of stone, wood, and other things that idiots consider
idol worship, it is not so. The writer of this felicitous book has sat
conversing with many wise and righteous men, and it is clear that they fashion
images of some who have approached the court of the Purified One as aids to prevent
the mind from wandering and render worship of God indispensable. In all their
practices and customs, they seek favor from the world-illuminating sun and
count the holy essence of incomparable God as higher than action.25
In
this passage, Abu al-Fazl asserts the philosophy of God’s unity as a means to
defend the worship of idols. In this view, the idols are loci of divinity which
render worship possible. As the last sentence also denotes, the author had no
quarrel with polytheists who pay proper homage to Akbar (‘Purified One’ and
‘world-illuminating sun’), another relatable or comparable manifestation of
divinity (maẓhar-i ḥaqq) to make up for the fact that God is ‘incomparable’.
This
way of thinking about God and religion is a clear descendant of the
universalism found in the Bezels of Wisdom, which Ibn ‘Arabi justified through
constant reference to scripture. The shaykh emphasizes this theme of God’s
comparability and incomparability, or his simultaneous immanence and
transcendence, through poetry:
If
you insist only on His transcendence, you restrict Him,
And
if you insist only on His immanence you limit Him.
If
you maintain both aspects you are right,
An
Imam and a master in the spiritual sciences.
Whoso
would say He is two things is a polytheist,
While
the one who isolates Him tries to regulate Him.
Beware
of comparing Him if you profess duality,
And,
if unity, beware making Him transcendent.
You
are not He and you are He and
You
see him in the essences of things both boundless
And
limited.26
Both
immanence and transcendence, manifestation and non-manifestation, are imperfect
descriptors of God’s nature; thus, both non-monotheist and monothe ist—Hindu
and Muslim in the Mughal context—can be equally wrong in their belief. As such,
it is the taḥqīq practitioner’s task to unite in the mind these seemingly polar
opposites. I assert that the translation of the Mahābhārata and its preface are
meant to aid the religious communities of the Mughal empire in performing this
paradoxical act of taḥqīq to realize their perfection: one can hold in mind the
idea of a transcendent God outside of the cosmos while still recognizing the
emperor as an immanent manifestation of God’s divinity.
The
post-Mongol reception, development, and application of taḥqı̄q
While
similarities between Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings and those of Abu al-Fazl are clearly
observable, to say that Abu al-Fazl and Akbar were following their own
unmediated interpretation of the shaykh’s philosophy would be to omit centuries
of historical developments between the time of the shaykh and the 1580s.
Beginning after the death of Ibn ‘Arabi in 1240, the muḥaqqiqs—those in the
tradition of the shaykh were grouped by their adherence to taḥqīq— greatly
expanded upon his ideas of perfection and religious universalism as part of the
institutionalization and popularization of his thought. This is the process by
which so-called wujūdi philosophy was eventually uprooted from its relatively
quietist Sufi context and resituated in the political sphere to suit the aims
of empire.
Ibn
‘Arabi’s philosophy first spread to his stepson Sadr al-Din Qunawi (d. 1274)
and other immediate followers in the mid- to late thirteenth century before
synthesizing with Sufism at large. That synthesis was largely due to the broad
popularity of his Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikām (Bezels of Wisdom), its many commentar ies,
and the degree to which early Sufi adopters—especially the loosely defined
Kubrawiyya order—packaged his work in easily understandable poetry and prose.27
When it comes to poetry, of course, one must not neglect to mention the
contribution of the poet and Suhrawardi Sufi Fakhr al-Din ‘Iraqi, whose work
brought the shaykh’s thought to a much larger audience.28 The accept ance of
his philosophy was also spurred forward by dramatic shifts in Islamic history,
namely the Mongol invasion and the subsequent material rise in the power of
Sufi institutions.
According
to Azfar Moin, the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in 1258 deprived rulers
of their primary means to the ritual investiture that could tie them to a
sacred chain of being which stretched back to Muhammad and God and was embodied
in the caliph’s person. As a result, kings were forced to seek out new sources
of sacral power. Among them were Sufi saints, both living and enshrined, whose
wilāya (spiritual power and proximity to God) was vigorously sought by Turkic
and Mongol sovereigns. These rulers, then, patronized saints, shrines, and Sufi
orders whose lineages were typically traced to ‘Ali, the Prophet’s nephew and a
man of immense spiritual power in his own right.29 As an enchanted framework
which sacralizes the world and allows for the ascension of Perfect Humans,
then, Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy meshed quite well with the rising clout of
institutionalized Sufism in the service of sovereigns. As a system of thought
with both political utility and broad accept ability among Sufis, Ibn ‘Arabi’s
philosophy—including taḥqīq, of course— quickly spread throughout the Islamic
world.
The
late medieval and early modern periods were the apex of taḥqīq as an elite
cultural phenomenon expanding the range of acceptable sources of knowl edge, as
opposed to taqlīd, which represented intellectual stagnation.30 Recently,
Khaled el-Rouayheb has written how Sufi taḥqīq arrived in the Ottoman Middle
East in the late seventeenth century during the migration of many Sufis from
India. These Sufis brought taḥqīq from the Persianate Mughal realm to the
Ottoman domain, most significantly bilād al-sham, Egypt, and the Hijaz.31 To be
certain, this was indeed the taḥqīq of Ibn ‘Arabi, but why was it coming from
India when Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought had presumably arrived in India from the Middle
East in the first place? In truth, the moment of taḥqīq’s broad popularity had
already passed. What arrived from India in the mid- to late seventeenth century
was the remnant of a longer tradition.32
As
Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Evrim Binbas have shown, taḥqīq in Iran and the
larger Middle East reached its peak during the reign of the Timurids and the
rise of the Safavids in which taḥqīq could be used for political ends well
beyond what Ibn ‘Arabi could have imagined.33 For Binbas, this turn to taḥqīq
is best represented in the person of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, the author of
the Zafarnama and the mastermind behind Timur’s sovereign legend as ṣāḥibqirān
(‘Lord of Conjunction’) and insān-i kāmil. As a self-identified member of the
ahl-i kashf wa taḥqīq (‘People of Unveiling and Verification’), Yazdi believed
in the unity of existence and occult interpretation of the Quran in the vein of
Ibn ‘Arabi. This Timurid example is especially relevant for consid ering taḥqīq
in the Mughal context since the Mughals themselves inherited the Timurid
legacy.34 Likewise, Abu al-Fazl and Yazdi shared the same profession: they
lived in total service to the divinizing aims of their sovereigns, writing
sacred ‘histories’ and panegyrics for their respective patrons.35 In other
words, they both sought to demonstrate how their patrons had become fully
realized (muḥaqqaq) Perfect Humans.
Melvin-Koushki
shows how the Timurid taḥqīq revolution carried on into the Safavid and Mughal
empires.36 Although he emphasizes the aspect of taḥqīq as progressivism and
scholarly verification, he nevertheless notes the term’s connection to Ibn
‘Arabi’s philosophy as a method for human realiza tion and knowledge
acquisition. More importantly, however, he demonstrates how taḥqīq had been
synthesized with several other intellectual traditions by the time of the
Safavid rise to power, most notably during the reigns of Shah Isma’il (r.
1501–1504) and Shah Tahmasb (r. 1524–1576). This is best exemplified in the
school of Isfahan which pioneered what would come to be called ‘irfān
(‘gnosis’), a mixture of Ibn ‘Arabian, Illuminationist, and Twelver thought.
The Isfahani school produced famous muḥaqqiqs such as Mir Damad (d. 1631/32)
and Mulla Sadra (d. 1636). As for the former, he counted himself among the
ahl-i taḥqīq in stating that the cosmos and scripture alike are to be read for
their divine realities, their ḥaqqs.37
Although
Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought was first spread to India by migrating Sufis,38 the intellectual
history of taḥqīq in the Mughal empire was linked with the religious and
political dynamics in Iran, spurred by the renaissance of Neoplatonism across
the eastern Islamic world after the Mongol invasions.39 In this vein,
Melvin-Koushki traces the line of taḥqīq to the Mughals as repre sented by Abu
al-Fazl’s language in a 1584 firmān concerning the institution of the
millennial ilāhi calendar, written only three years prior to the completion of
the preface to the Razmnāma:
.
. . Having freed, that is, the neck of their doctrine from the chain of
imitation—repudiated by the prophet-leaders of every nation and people, its
flagrant and corrupting effects denounced in every religion in the most vivid
of terms—, they are to seek rather the means of verification. They are to
pursue no universal or particular objective, down to the most minor, save by
way of demonstrative proof and conclusive argument, and their perspicacious,
perfecting minds, inspired by divine effluxion and occult guidance and aid in
accordance with the sublimest of principles, are to continually consider
scientific truths and philosophical complexities.40
In this decree, Abu al-Fazl presents the same dichotomy between taḥqīq and taqlīd as the quoted passage in the introduction to this article and reflected in the aforementioned history of taḥqīq. Here imitation is a chain that corrupts the communities of the world, whereas verification should be sought by all. Only through that means can one sufficiently attain uncorrupted divine truth.
This
version of taḥqīq, as represented by Abu al-Fazl and other political ideolo
gues such as the aforementioned Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, then, was the result
of centuries of development that was not confined to Sufism alone. What I have
attempted here is to give an, admittedly brief, overview of taḥqīq. As of
today, no comprehensive history of taḥqīq yet exists. It will be the task of
future scholarship to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. What we can know now,
however, is the par ticular use and importance of taḥqīq as it appears in the
preface to the Razmnāma.
Reconciling
religions by translating scriptures: taḥqı̄q vs. taqlı̄d
A
primary motif arising from recent scholarship on Mughal-sponsored trans lation
of Sanskrit texts into Persian is the relationship between translation and
religio-cultural reconciliation. Key questions that scholars have grappled with
are whether the texts in translation were religious in nature and whether the
terms ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Islam’ are beneficial for understanding this process.41
Carl Ernst, for example, in his combined study of Arabic and Persian transla
tions of Sanskrit texts—the Razmnāma among them—questioned whether pre modern
Arabic and Persian translations of Sanskrit texts were actually representing a
‘Hindu religion’.42 In his perspective, only colonial-period and later
translations could be said to represent Hinduism as we might think of it now.
As such, the view of Hinduism as a distinct religion is the product of British
colonialism.43 Building on this foundation, Ernst declares that the preface to
the Razmnāma as a whole, despite Abu al-Fazl’s religiously charged language and
philosophical inquests, was a political project in service of Akbar’s aims.
Shankar Nair, by contrast, argues for a return to the category of religion,
albeit more cautiously and with careful attention to its historically
contingent and constructed nature such that emic classifications modulate the
etic.44 He turns to the problems of translation and religion in his work on the
Jūg Bāsisht, the Persian translation of the Laghu-Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha.45 Nair
analyses the Jūg Bāsisht in its intellectual, religious, and linguistic
contexts to learn how ‘early modern Hindu and Muslim intellectuals co-existed,
interacted, and comprehended one another’s religious and philosophical
traditions’.46
While
religious and political motives are difficult to separate, it is neverthe less
salient to point out that the formation of new empires has often created social
and political conditions that lead to the rationalization of religious ideas
and practices, giving rise to a heightened self-consciousness of religious iden
tity and difference.47 Indeed, the resolution of religious contradictions was
central to the Eurasian empires of the sixteenth century, and the Mughals were
no exception. In her study of early Ottoman conversion narratives, Tijana
Krstić asserts that the Ottomans and Safavids were very much a part of the
so-called ‘Age of Confessionalization’, when European polities rigidified along
religious lines to form disciplined and cohesive subject peoples.48 In roughly
the same period of time, the Safavids embraced a rigorous Twelver Shi’ism,
creating Sunni and Sufi Others, while the Ottomans moved towards Hanafi Sunnism
and persecuted Shi’is (often more vigorously than non-Muslim minorities).
Although Krstić’s study stops at Iran, her model can be expanded to include the
Mughals who, beginning with Akbar, sought to classify and identify the
religions of their realm, contributing to a renewed sense of religious identity
among their subjects.49 Indeed, making religions into distinct and comparable
entities was the necessary prerequisite for ṣulḥ-i kull, a paradigm under which
religions were made equal in their subor dination to the emperor. This set the
Mughals apart from their neighbours. In his letter to the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas,
for instance, Akbar chides the Shi’i emperor for his persecution of the Nuqtavi
sect, and he encourages the ruler to instead enact ṣulḥ-i kull for the benefit
of his realm.50 This demonstrates how ṣulḥ-i kull had become the Mughals’
institutionalized imperial approach to religions, whereas the Safavids and
Ottomans embraced sectarian identities.
In
this era then, at least, religion and religious identity had become defined
social categories, antedating the arrival of British colonialism. Although the
term ṣulḥ-i kull would be officially coined after the completion of the
Razmnāma,51 Abu al-Fazl touches on the concept through his reference to taḥqīq
and through his equal regard for opposing religions in the preface, to which
this article now turns.
Prior
to mentioning taḥqīq, and even his reasons for translating the Mahābhārata, Abu
al Fazl characteristically begins with a panegyric for Akbar, who is a
messianic figure in this work. The panegyric establishes the qualities of the
emperor in order to make him the ideal, ḥaqq-seeing (dīda-yi ḥaqq) axial pivot
from an era of taqlīd to one of taḥqīq.52 Two of those passages of praise are
especially relevant for emphasizing Akbar’s roles as a saint, a Perfect Human,
and a protector of religion in order to promote him, as was mentioned in the
introduction to this article, as the ‘chosen one of God’ by which the ‘house of
the despotism of taqlīd’ can become ‘the house of the caliphate of taḥqīq’.
The
first of these sections emphasizes Akbar’s supreme spiritual gifts and innate
perfections (kamālāt). The emperor was initially not aware of these gifts and
searched for a perfect being to emulate, until it became manifest that he
himself was that being.
A
bulwark of religion who, despite holy essential perfections (kamālāt-i
qudsiya-yi dhātiya) and innate, God-given spiritual states—that even the
observers of innate essences ( jawāhir-i fiṭrat) and the connoisseurs of the
inner and outer qualities of humankind (bawāṭin-o-ẓawāhir-i insāniyat) have
rarely accomplished—became a seeker of the perfect being.53
[Verse]
That which he possessed himself, he desired from a stranger!
Abu
al-Fazl argues that the emperor encompasses and protects all religions as the
Perfect Being who can see the merit in those religions as a manifestation of
divinity. Akbar has the attributes or essential perfections of that archetypal
figure who knows the ‘inner and outer qualities of humankind’. In other words,
he has fully realized the privileged spiritual rank of humankind—as Ibn ‘Arabi
and his followers theorized it—due to their being made in God’s image (‘alā ṣūratihi)
and also possessing God’s spirit or essence.54
Quite
similar to the previous praiseworthy quality, Abu al-Fazl goes on to write that
Akbar is a ‘bulwark of sainthood’:
A
bulwark of sainthood (wilāyat), even though he hides himself beneath the cloak
of concealment and veils—but some of those perfectly sincere disciples
(mūrīdān-i kāmil-i ikhlāṣ), by way of orienting toward the qibla [Akbar’s
person] and by means of correct sincerity, enabled themselves to discover the
perfection of this great saint (walī)—it came to be abun dantly manifest that
even in the thick of worldly occupations, he, having immersed himself in
contemplating the divine and witnessing its unend ing beauty, travels in the
world of divine unity (waḥdat).55
This
passage qualifies Akbar as a saint who is also a ‘guide’ (murshid) in that he
is followed by disciples who are perfect in their sincerity. Furthermore, he is
a perfect guide since, for Ibn ‘Arabi and his intellectual descendants, the
saints are manifestations of the Perfect Human. In spite of the fact that Akbar
must deal with worldly affairs as a temporal ruler, these disciples see him as
he truly is due to their own status as Perfect Humans in the making. They
realize that Akbar is ceaseless in his contemplation and witnessing of God’s
divine beauty as he spiritually moves in the world of divine unity while still
being attentive to his duties as a monarch.
After
establishing the bona fides of Akbar’s spiritual and temporal rulership, Abu
al-Fazl then describes what he considers to be the regretful condition of the
world before Akbar, and why translation is a necessary means for overcom ing
that condition. For Abu al-Fazl and his patron, the main problem of the
civilizations of the world is the conflict between religious communities:
‘According to his [Akbar’s] own perfect comprehension, he found the dispute
between the Muhammadans, the Jews, and the Hindus to have increased, and the
overabundance of their denial toward each other [’s faiths] has become
clear.’56 The reference to Jews and Hindus here should be considered idiomat
ically. While there were certainly Jews in the subcontinent at the time, this
expression is a metonym for generalized religious difference in comparison to
Islam. The emphasis on difference is rhetorically important since the cen tral
issue at hand is ‘dispute’ (nizā‘) and ‘denial’ (inkār) of each other’s doctrines
(i‘tiqād). He continues by equating the dispute and denial with ‘fault finding’
(ta‘anut) and ‘antagonism’ (‘inād). It is understood that this is largely the
result of adherence to taqlīd—keeping to the established suppositions and
scriptural truths of one’s own religion at the expense of others.
For
Abu al-Fazl the malign influence of taqlīd is the work of a few specific groups
within each religion, and he pulls no punches in naming each one of them. The
first seems to be the elite class of both religions—the ‘ulamā’ of Islam and
the Hindu Brahmans:
Also
from each religious community is one group, considering themselves to be great
men of religion, who has put forward the sayings of the abom inable
exaggerating know-nothings. Having done that, they have convinced the common
people of arguments far from the straight path of knowledge through disguise
and deception. These damned falsifiers have suppressed— sometimes from
ignorance and sometimes from corruption, being driven by fanciful desires and
greed—the books of the ancients, the wise words of the sages, and the measured
works of past people (a‘māl-i sanjīda-yi guzashtagān) so that they might
misrepresent them.57
This
group is primarily guilty of misinforming others and knowledge suppression. The
particular knowledge being suppressed is sage wisdom and ancient works. For the
Mughals, these included Hellenic sources that were seen as either Hermetic or
Zoroastrian, the very works that influenced figures like Ibn ‘Arabi and Shihab
al-Din Suhrawardi al-Maqtul (d. 1195).58 Both of these men were essential to
the paradigm of sovereign embodiment at work in the Mughal court of this
time.59 As this is a preface to the Mahābhārata, how ever, the suppressed
knowledge is also that of the ancient Brahmans, whose cosmology and philosophy
form the subject of the latter section of the preface.
Abu
al-Fazl continues to deal out criticisms to both Hindus and Muslims alike by
directly accusing them of taqlīd and of preventing the common people from
engaging in taḥqīq:
The
bigots without religion and the leaders of the imitators of Hind see their own
religion as the creed above all others. They believe that the superstitions
(muzakhrafāt) of their doctrines are above fault, due either to non-discernment
(bī-tamayyuzī) or dishonest means, and they turn toward the path of imitation
(rah-i taqlīd). They have taught the unsophis ticated commoners (sāda-lawḥān)
these few arguments, thereby holding them back from the taḥqīq of true meanings
and, instead, firmly establish ing them in false belief. All this while the
appointed ones of the Ahmadi religion [Muslims], not knowing the highest of
subjects and the noble sciences of the Brahmans, consider this group to have
only mere trifles.60
Several
points here are worthy of further address. First, the author directly relates
taqlīd to religious exclusivism and a sense of supremacy, the very oppo sites
of ṣulḥ-i kull. This perspective is common among both Hindus and Muslims.
Furthermore, Abu al-Fazl is castigating certain religious doctrines as
‘superstitions’, which are not recognized as such, effectively due to a lack of
taḥqīq. On the matter of taḥqīq, he laments that taqlīd among intellectuals
leads to a lack of taḥqīq among the ‘unsophisticated commoners’, who are con
sequently unable to ascertain ‘true meanings’. This is another way of saying
that they are prevented from reaching ḥaqq, as the bāṭini meanings are covered
up by the surface meaning of a text and they are thus prevented from perfect
ing themselves. Abu al-Fazl recognizes that those surface meanings—which in his
view are ‘superstitions’—are being taught as if they are essential doctrines,
thereby resulting in bigotry. A final point of note in this quote is the
author’s term for Islam, the adherents of which he rebukes for not considering
the value of Hindu doctrines. Rather than saying ‘Islam’ outright, he calls it
the dīn-i ahmadī, the religion of Ahmad or the Ahmadi religion. Although it may
seem as if Abu al-Fazl is using baroque language to say ‘Islam’ in more words,
it would be more correct to say that he is parochializing Islam by quali fying
it as one religion among others: Ahmad’s (that is, Muhammad’s) religion. This
is Abu al-Fazl’s method of criticism, taḥqīq, which impartially considers the
potential ḥaqq of the Quran and other scriptures, treating both Hinduism and
Islam as flawed religions above which Akbar must stand.
Abu
al-Fazl mostly criticizes religious scholars, but his last prolonged salvo of
criticism, here more measured, is aimed at common Muslims who know little to
nothing of their faith’s more mystically inclined thinkers:
As
for the common Muslims, who have not read well the pages of their heav enly
scriptures and have not opened the various histories of the past from the
Chinese, Hindus, and others to take heed of their example—moreover they have
not read the sayings of the great ones of their own community like Imam Jafar
al-Sadiq, Ibn ‘Arabi, and others like them—they [the common Muslims] believe
that humankind began only 7,000 or so years ago. They consider these scientific
truths and fine points of understanding, widely known among the communities of
the earth, to be among the results of the ideas of a 7,000-year-old
humankind.61
The
common Muslims suffer from a general lack of knowledge, whether of their own
scriptures or of the histories of foreign peoples such as the Chinese or the
people of Hind. The reference to the peoples further east to Muslim domains is
itself an innovation marked by the new perspective of post-Mongol Islamic his
torical awareness, best represented by Rashid al-Din Tabib’s (d. 1318) Jāmi‘
al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles). This universal history was one of the
first of its kind, positioning Islam within a much larger world history, one
that included the Mongols, the Franks, and the peoples of the subcontinent.62
Abu al-Fazl, then, is accusing common Muslims of historical myopia that, if remedied, could serve to broaden perspectives and lessen the effects of taqlīd. Of equal note in the above passage is that the ‘great ones’ (buzurgān) here are known mostly for their metaphysical works. In fact, Abu al-Fazl mentions no jurist as a great religious figure. Additionally, Jafar al-Sadiq and Ibn ‘Arabi were also both claimed by different Muslim sects, the former for Shi’ism and the latter for Sunnism. The author was likely to have been purposeful in this juxtaposition, choosing to elide this sectarian tension. Of course, Ibn ‘Arabi’s mention here is also significant for his link to taḥqīq, but a lesser-known idea of Ibn ‘Arabi is his view of human history which is much closer to the Vedic model—discussed later in the preface—than the traditional Islamic view of 7,000 years. For the shaykh, there have been many Adams and many Islams.63 Mentioning Ibn ‘Arabi in this context, then, was meant to emphasize how some Muslim thinkers—and never a representative of dogma—have, in Abu al-Fazl’s view, considered the question of the world’s age more rigorously, much like the ancient Brahmans.
The
examples cited thus far have demonstrated the poor condition of the world
according to Abu al-Fazl and his patron Akbar. To solve the problem of
religious bigotry, the two propose taḥqīq, truth acquisition, and self
realization. Akbar himself is referred to in the preface as the
‘Verification-Demanding Mind’ (khāṭir-i taḥqīq ṭalab), requiring his subjects
to think beyond the typical restraints of their dogma. This necessitates the
evalu ation of varied sources of knowledge. The appreciation of those sources,
how ever, is hampered by linguistic difference. The project of translation,
then, is one of taḥqīq seeking to create a more perfect polity:
The
Perceptive Intellect [Akbar] decided that the sacred scriptures of the two
groups should be translated into the opponent’s language in order that both—by
the Blessing of the Holy Breaths, His Majesty the Most Perfect of the Age—rise
above their severe fault-finding and antagonism and become [instead] the
pursuers of Truth (ḥaqq).64
In
other words, Akbar believed that translation would serve to make muḥaqqiqs out
of the believers of both religions. Abu al-Fazl continues by declaring what is
meant to come after the end of ‘severe fault-finding’ and bigotry, stating
‘Being aware of the good and bad qualities of one another, they might then
demonstrate beautiful effort (masā’i-yi jamīla) in the reformation of their
spiritual states (iṣlāḥ-i aḥwāl-i khūd).’65 Taḥqīq must necessarily lead to the
perfection of individuals and their faiths, and Akbar oversees that process as
the ‘Most Perfect of the Age’.
It
is not just any kind of book that needs to be translated, however: it is spe
cifically scripture, or holy texts of divine self-disclosure. These texts hold
truths that must be impartially considered in order to eliminate religious con
flict. The Mahābhārata, for Akbar and Abu al-Fazl, is an ancient scripture on
par with (or perhaps even superior because of its antiquity) to the Quran—which
nevertheless goes unmentioned—in terms of the wisdom it conveys. The latter refers
to the book as ‘the writing of the skilled lords . . . [which] contains most of
the doctrines of the Brahmans, there being not a single book from this group
that is greater, more esteemed, or more-elaborated-upon (mufaṣṣal-tar) than
it’.66 As the Mughals were a minority government in charge of a Hindu major
ity, it is only natural then that the Mahābhārata would be among the first in
line for translation. With this goal in mind, skilled and right-minded intellec
tuals with knowledge of Sanskrit were gathered together to sit ‘in deep reflec
tion and pondering’ (az ru-yi ta‘ammuq-o-ta’ammul) in order to translate the
Mahābhārata. Upon completion of this project, Abu al-Fazl continues, members of
different religions were then to distribute the translated text far and wide:
‘to the ends of the earth’ (bih aṭrāf-o-aknāf-i ‘ālam).67 This statement may be
a rhetorical flourish on the part of the author, but it reflects the preface’s
general sentiment regarding Akbar’s role in the world’s perfection, its taḥqīq.
On
the matter of said perfection, Abu al-Fazl further specifies how transla tion
brings spiritual benefit, stating
Wherever
the scripture of opposing religious communities are translated in a clear and
common style with the understanding of the elect ( fahm-i khāṣṣ-pasand), the
unsophisticated commoners, having reached the ḥaqīqat (truth or reality) of the
matter and being saved from the foolishness of the know-nothing posers
(nā-dānān-i dānā-numā), orient themselves toward the goal of ḥaqīqat.68
Translations
into the common tongue must be done by those with under standing to counteract
‘know-nothing posers’, presumably the same groups mentioned earlier. In doing
so, even common people can grasp ḥaqīqat. By using ḥaqīqat in this way, Abu
al-Fazl is stating that translation will aid the common people in taḥqīq, their
pursuit of truth and self-perfection. It is only natural, according to the
author, that this would lead to the end of bigotry and to the beginning of a
new religious unity in which ‘the deniers, having reined in their denial, turn
away from extremism (bi-i‘tidāli)’ and in which ‘the unsophisticated believers
(mu‘taqidān-i sāda-lawḥān), having become a bit ashamed of their beliefs, might
become seekers of truth (ṭālib-i ḥaqq shavand)’.69 In other words, the
Mahābhārata’s translation was meant to facili tate the creation of muḥaqqiqs, a
class of believers who search for ḥaqq, divine ‘truth’, in all things.
The
remainder of the preface is complementary to this goal. Abu al-Fazl describes
in greater detail why the Mahābhārata is important, while also defin ing Hindu
concepts that readers will need to know. He is accurate, if a bit remedial, in
his descriptions. He is concerned with the following issues, regard ing which
the Mahābhārata is enlightening: cosmogony, metaphysics, the antiquity of the
earth, and the substance of the universe. Knowledge in each of these subjects
is ḥaqq, and by knowing more, the communities of the earth come closer to
perfection. In each case, however, traditional Islamic views are disrupted. Of
course, this is no issue for Abu al-Fazl and his patron; rather, it is a
positive feature of the text. By upsetting standard Islamic beliefs, the reli
gion is then relativized as one more religion within the ṣulḥ-i kull paradigm. While
this brief article is an inappropriate vehicle for an exhaustive cataloguing of
all these points, two are worth closer inspection.
The
question of the earth’s age, as has already been mentioned, is one of the first
mentioned in the preface. Abu al-Fazl states that it is, in fact, one of the
most disagreed-upon issues in the subcontinent, whether one asks philoso phers,
ascetics, or jurists.70 He also relates this topic to the importance, for both
rulers and the common people, of learning from history. It is clear that Abu
al-Fazl does not recognize a distinct boundary between genres like scripture
and chronicle. The two are blurred together in the Mahābhārata since he
believes it to contain both the bulk of Hindu doctrines as well as bene ficial
examples from which to learn. These lessons are the primary reason to know
history:
Also,
the minds of the masses of mankind—especially the great sultans— have a deep
propensity to listen to the histories of the communities [of the earth] because
God in his divine wisdom has made the science of history popular among their
hearts—And this is reason for the historians’ lesson—so that they would learn
from the past, consider the present a gift, and spend their precious time with
the things that God likes. Because of that, kings are all in greater need to
hear of the conditions of the past.71
If
the age of the world is far older than 7,000 years, then there is all the more
history for people, and especially monarchs, to learn from and thereby perfect
themselves. Historical awareness becomes necessary for the taḥqīq of all.
One
other point to address is the composition and cosmology of the uni verse
itself. Abu al-Fazl introduces the fact that Vedic cosmology purports the
existence of five elements instead of four (water, earth, fire, and wind); the
fifth element is akāsha, which the author has some difficulty describing. He
states that if one consults with the common people of Hind, they seem to equate
akāsha with the heavens (āsmān-hā), but the elite intellectuals declare that it
is nothing other than the empty space also known as ‘air’ (hawā). Thus there is
no ‘thing’ that can properly be called ‘the heavens’. Within those
pseudo-heavens are suspended the ‘heavenly bodies’ (kawākib), which are the
holy essences of great past generations that—by way of ascetic culti vation of
the self and holy acts of worship—attained luminous forms and spiritual bodies
and realized the embodiment of divine attributes and the imitation of divine
reality. Thus, they became sovereign in degrees of ascension.72
The
stars and planets, which both Persianate and Indic cosmology agree have
influence over worldly affairs, are here said to be divine figures who ascended
in ages past due to their ‘ascetic cultivation’ and ‘holy acts of worship’. The
statement that they ‘realized the embodiment of divine attributes and the
imitation of divine reality’ (takhalluq bih-akhlāq-i ilāhī wa tashabbuh bih-awṣāf-i
kamāhiya paydā karda) is especially relevant for this study in that it is
cognate with taḥqīq and the embodiment of the Perfect Human. To ‘realize’ (
paydā kar dan) is essentially the same principle behind taḥqīq. ‘Awṣāf-i
kamāhiya’ can also be translated as the ‘attributes of the essences of things,’
or ‘attributes of things as they really are’. Awṣāf is also synonymous with ṣifāt,
the attributes of God which are represented in created things. They are, in
other words, the ḥuqūq of things that can be actualized in order to become a
Perfect Human.
The point is that Abu al-Fazl attempts to either reconcile Hindu and Indic principles with Islamic and Persianate ones or to challenge Islamic beliefs. In the second note on cosmology, the Hindu belief in ascendant individuals is encapsulated in language that is coded with taḥqīq, or becoming perfect. In the first example, however, the age of the world is put into question, thereby rendering the original Islamic timeline obsolete. As the translation of the Mahābhārata is a millennial project completed near the beginning of the ilāhi calendar’s institution in 1584, this disruption of tradition is para mount. The Islamic conception of time could no longer be believed in good faith, but the advent of Akbar as a messianic figure allows for a new dispensa tion to replace it. Furthermore, with taḥqīq, one had no need to fear their own religion’s shortcomings, which were, after all, only the products of taqlīd. In other words, the age of taqlīd had ended, but the Caliphate of taḥqīq had only just begun, setting the stage for ṣulḥ-i kull or Total Peace.
The
conditions of taḥqīq’s ascendancy lived on for at least a century, into the
reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), as the writings of ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti
(d. 1683), the Sufi shaykh and spiritual adviser to Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658),
make evident. In these texts, the esteem given to Ibn ‘Arabi and his particular
brand of Sufism remains unparalleled. As for his Mir’at al-Asrār (Mirror of
Secrets), ‘Abd al-Rahman refers to both taḥqīq and Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘ilm-i haqā’iq,
the science of divine realities, by name, while he also champions the prosper
ity brought about by ṣulḥ-i kull.73 As any good Sufi would have at this time,
he viewed each of these concepts as wholly Quranic, having read the book from a
taḥqīqi perspective. He even uses taḥqīqi interpretation of the Quranic account
of Jesus’s birth as an analogy to provide a scriptural foundation for the
Alanqo’a myth, which establishes the divine lineage of the Mongols through
immaculate conception.74 Likewise, in his book Mir’at al-Ḥaqā’iq, the shaykh
interprets both the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita alongside one another to reveal
the unity of religion. He additionally chooses to depict Krishna as a Perfect
Human rather than a god in his own right (though the gap in meaning between the
two is more of a crevice than a chasm).75 Although ‘Abd al-Rahman’s writings
show that he is a firm believer in Islam, Abu al-Fazl would not have accused
him of taqlīd; rather, the Sufi’s loyalty to ṣulḥ-i kull and his insistence on
the continu ing relevance of non-Islamic religions mark him as a true muḥaqqiq
living well after the establishment of the Caliphate of taḥqīq.
Conclusion
In
the preface to the Razmnāma, Abu al-Fazl presents taḥqīq as a revolutionary
method in Islamic epistemologies that is meant to overcome the long night of
taqlīd. Although Ibn ‘Arabi originally intended it to be a method for a radical
reading of the Quran and cosmos, it could be used to rethink the nature of
‘reli gion’ and ‘religious difference’ more generally. This is all the more
evident when taḥqīq is properly considered with wujūd, the so-called ‘Oneness
of Being’. In philosophical terms, together the two result in the principle
that, since every ‘existent’ has its own ‘truth’ (ḥaqq), the cosmos is a
compendium waiting to be read by a spiritually adept ‘diviner of truth’ (muḥaqqiq).
This shift disrupted the idea that Islam alone was the proper path to God, as some Muslims, and especially Sufis, recognized the implications of an enchanted cosmos that cannot help but reflect the ḥaqq of God. Categories such as ‘infidel’ and ‘believer’ begin to lose their valence. When the ‘pagan’ Mongols came to power, these potentialities were fully activated as the method received official sanction. This politicization occurred first and foremost because it provided a basis for the divinization of the ruler, allowing kings to become saints. After all, to become a Perfect Human, one must actualize or ‘realize’ the totality of God’s attributes. However, as underscored by the inter-religious translation project of which the Razmnāma was a product, taḥqīq in the Mughal court was institutionalized and deployed to unapologet ically eliminate the problem of religious difference in all its manifestations. Thus, ṣulḥ-i kull required the ‘caliphate of taḥqīq’.
Foot
notes
1Audrey
Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016), Chapter 3. Truschke’s book on Sanskrit
literature at the Mughal court is a welcome balance to a field which has, until
quite recently, focused on Persian literati and their works.
2Abu
al-Fazl Ibn Mubarak, ‘Muqaddama’, in Mahabharat: Buzurgtarin-i Manzumah-i
Kuhnah-yi Mawjud-i Jahan bih Zaban-i Sanskrit [Razmnāmah] (Mahabharata: The
Oldest and Longest Sanskrit Epic), (eds) S. M. Reza Jalali Naini and N. S.
Shukla (Tehran: Kitabkhanah-i Tahuri, 1979–1981), p. 4. All translations from
the preface are my own.
3Ṣulḥ-i
kull had yet to become an operative term by the time of the Razmnāma’s
completion. This changed as the millennial aspect of Akbar’s reign took more
definitive shape and the ṣulḥ-i kull ideal was retroactively applied to
previous years and imperial projects. See the article by Jos Gommans and Said
Reza Huseini as well as the framework article by A. Azfar Moin in this special
issue. The exclusivism mentioned here, according to Jan Assmann, is inherent to
monotheisms. See Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2010).
4Saiyid
Athar Abbas Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s
Reign, with spe cial reference to Abul Fazl, 1556–1605 (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers, 1975); Irfan Habib, ‘A Political Theory for the Mughal
Empire—A Study of the Ideas of Abu’l Fazl’, Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress 59 (1998), pp. 329–340. These authors have shown, in greater detail,
the intellectual debt that Abu al-Fazl owed to the work of Ibn ‘Arabi and his
followers. For another reference to a Mughal ruler as the Perfect Human, see
Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, The Baburnama in English (Memoirs of Babur),
(trans.) Annette Beveridge (London: Luzac and Co., 1922), Appendix D.
5Truschke,
Culture of Encounters, p. 128.
6For
a detailed biography of Ibn ‘Arabi’s life, see Claude Addas, Quest for the Red
Sulfur, (trans.) Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993).
7
William Chittick, Ibn ‘Arabi: Heir to the Prophets (Oxford: Oneworld Press,
2005), pp. 1–10. 8For an overview of the spread and development of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
philosophy, see William Chittick, ‘Ibn ‘Arabi and His School’, in Islamic
Spirituality: Manifestations, (ed.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: Crossroad,
1990), pp. 49–79.
9
Michael Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn
al-‘Arabi and the Isma’ili Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Regarding Isma’ili
Neoplatonism, particularly that promoted by the Brethren of Purity (ikhwān
al-safā’), the secretive ninth-century philosophical collective and another
probable influence on Ibn ‘Arabi, see Ian Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists: An
Introduction to the Brethren of Purity (London: Routledge, 2003).
10
Chittick, Ibn ‘Arabi, p. 77
11
For more on Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of taḥqīq, see Chittick, Ibn ‘Arabi, pp.
77–82; and William Chittick, ‘Ibn ‘Arabi’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
2019: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ ibn-arabi/, [accessed 14 July 2021].
12
Chittick, Ibn ‘Arabi, pp. 17–18: ‘In his view, each word of the Qur’an—not to
mention its verses and chapters—has an indefinite number of meanings, all of
which are intended by God. Proper reci tation of the Qur’an opens up the reader
to new meanings at every reading. “When meaning repeats itself for someone who
is reciting the Qur’an, he has not recited it as it should be recited. This is
proof of his ignorance” (F. IV 367.3).’
13
Quoted in ibid., p. 81.
14
James Winston Morris, ‘Ibn ‘Arabi and his Interpreters. Part II: Influences and
Interpretations’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986), p. 740.
Morris has shown how many of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas were similar to other Andalusi
philosophers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These include Ibn Sab’in,
polemically targeted by Ibn Khaldun, and Awhad al-Din Balyani, a purveyor of
cosmology akin to waḥdat al-wujūd. These similarities may be the result of
their common intel lectual heritage leading back to Ibn Masarra. See Ebstein,
Mysticism and Philosophy.
15
Shahab Ahmed argues that Islam—although many have equated it with shari’a and
legalism in their studies —is defined by exploration of revelation (that is,
the Quran), which is reflective of the larger reality of Divine Truth. From
this perspective, Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy, which is in perpetual conversation
with both revelation and Divine Truth, falls well within the realm of Islam in
spite of its controversial status among the religion’s traditionalist
interpreters. See Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2015).
16
The Bezels of Wisdom are named as such in that each individual ‘bezel’ ( faṣṣ)
contains the ‘wis dom’ (ḥikma) of one of the prophets named in the Quran. There
are bezels devoted to prophets ranging from most well-known (Muhammad) to the
most obscure (Luqman).
17
For Ibn ‘Arabi’s commentary on this Quranic account (Quran 10:88–90), see Ibn
‘Arabi, Bezels of Wisdom, (trans.) R. W. J. Austin (Mahwah: Paulist Press,
1980), pp. 250–266. Arabic: Ibn ‘Arabi, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, (ed.) Abul Ela Afifi
(Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1966), pp. 197–213.
18
Concerning the polemics against Ibn ‘Arabi, see Alexander Knysh, Ibn ‘Arabi in
the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam
(New York: SUNY Press, 1998). 19 Ibn ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 71.
20
Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam: An Annotated Translation of ‘The
Bezels of Wisdom’, (trans.) Binyamin Abrahamov (London: Routledge, 2015), p.
37. Arabic: Ibn ‘Arabi, Fuṣūṣ, p. 69. 21 On the following page, it is further
developed through the Quran that God is both immanent and transcendent at once:
‘God said: “There is nothing like Him” (Quran 42:11), thus making Himself
transcendent, and “He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing” (ibid.), thus
likening Himself to creation. (However), when He says “there is nothing like
His likeness (kamithlihi)”, He likens Himself to creation and makes Himself
two, and when He says “the All-Hearing the All-Seeing”, He makes Himself
transcendent and united.’ Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Fusus, p. 38. Arabic: Ibn
‘Arabi, Fuṣūṣ, p. 70.
22
Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Fusus, p. 40. Brackets are my own. Arabic: Ibn
‘Arabi, Fuṣūṣ, p. 72. 23 Quoted in David Thomas, ‘Islam and the Religious
Other’, in Understanding Interreligious Relations, (eds) David Cheetham,
Douglas Pratt and David Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 163.
24
Both Shankar Nair and Muzaffar Alam have written how one’s proclivity for Ibn
‘Arabi’s teach ings did not preclude scrupulous adherence to Islamic law. M.
Alam, ‘The Debate Within: A Sufi Critique of Religious Law, Tasawwuf and
Politics in Mughal India’, South Asian History and Culture 2 (2011), pp.
138–159, is an excellent study that details the wide spectrum of Sufi belief in
the Mughal period. He shows how Sufis received, interpreted, and reinterpreted
Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings in varied ways, some for more ecumenical aims and others
for exclusivist ends. Nair points specif ically to Muhibb Allah Ilahabadi (d.
1648), a pious Sufi whose worldview supported the idea that the writings of
different religions have truth value: S. Nair, Translating Wisdom (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2020), Chapter 3.
25
Quoted in Truschke, Culture of Encounters, p. 152.
26
Ibn ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 75. Arabic: Ibn ‘Arabi, Fuṣūṣ, p. 70.
27
Regarding the Fusus and its commentaries, as well as the generations of
scholars following Ibn ‘Arabi, see Chittick, ‘Ibn ‘Arabi and His School’, pp.
49–79. On the Kubrawiyya’s embrace of Ibn ‘Arabi and their consequent
development of his philosophy, see Seyed Shehabeddin Mesbahi, ‘The Reception of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s School of Thought by Kubrawi Sufis’, PhD thesis, University of
California at Berkeley, 2001; on Ibn ‘Arabi in Sufi didactic poetry, namely
that of Mahmud Shabestari and his commentator Muhammad Lahiji, see Leonard
Lewisohn, Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud
Shabistari (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995). These men were articulators of taḥqīq
par excellence, emphasizing the universalist elements of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
philosophy for the post-Mongol age. As for Kubrawi prose, the Transoxianan Sufi
theorist Aziz Nasafi deserves special mention for his ability to summarize and
simplify the concepts of wujūd, al-insān al-kāmil, and taḥqīq. See Lloyd
Ridgeson, Persian Metaphysics and Mysticism: Selected Treatises of ‘Aziz Nasafi
(London: Routledge, 2002).
28
William Chittick, ‘ʿERĀQĪ, FAḴR-al-DĪN EBRĀHĪM’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica,
https://iranicaonline. org/articles/eraqi, [accessed 13 July 2021].
29
A. Azfar Moin, ‘The Political Significance of Saint Shrines in the Persianate
Empires’, in The Persianate World, (eds) Abbas Amanat and Assef Ashraf (Leiden:
Brill, 2019), pp. 105–124; and A. Azfar Moin ‘Sovereign Violence: Temple
Destruction in India and Shrine Desecration in Iran and Central Asia’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History 57 (2015), pp. 467–596.
30
Matthew Melvin-Koushki, ‘Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd in the Renaissances of Western Early
Modernity’, Philological Encounters 3 (2018), pp. 193–249. In this article,
Melvin-Koushki argues for taḥqīq as an early modern Islamicate, progressivist
ethos, also contrasting it with taqlīd, as a way of complicat ing traditional
Great Divergence style narratives of philology and intellectual history.
31
Khaled el-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century:
Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017), Chapters 7–9. For el-Rouayheb, ‘Sufi taḥqīq’ is but
one kind of taḥqīq which was in vogue in the sixteenth and seven teenth
centuries. It is unclear what the connection between them may have been other
than a shared regard for independence and rigour in scholarly pursuits.
32
Zachary Valentine Wright, Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and
the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2020) has also pointed to a more limited sort of taḥqīq, visions of
Muhammad which verify juridical assertions, at work in the Maghribi Tijaniyya
Sufi order. This may very well have been an intellectual descend ant of the
North African Ash’ari taḥqīq—mentioned by el-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual
History, Chapters 4 and 5—which encouraged believers to ‘verify’ their belief
in the Muslim creed in order to be assured of their salvation in the hereafter.
33
Ilker Evrim Binbas, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī
Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016). See footnote 30 for reference to Melvin-Koushki.
34
Regarding the ahl-i kashf wa taḥqīq, see Binbas, Intellectual Networks, Chapter
3. On Yazdi’s con tribution to Timur’s posthumous legend, see Chapter 7.
35
The Akbarnama is in the same genre-bending category as its forebear, the
Zafarnama. To refer to either of these as simple ‘chronicles’ (tarikh) would be
a mistake.
36
Melvin-Koushki, ‘Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd’, p. 235.
37
This scientific approach to cosmos and ḥaqq is nearly synonymous to Shankar
Nair’s term ‘wisdom’ (standing in for a host of emic concepts such as dhawq
[‘tasting’], kashf [‘unveiling’], and ‘irfān [‘gnosis’]), which refers to ‘a
variety of knowing in which philosophical, dialectical dis course, on the one
hand, and literary, metaphorical, paradoxical, or otherwise non-philosophical
expression, on the other, are deemed to be non-contradictory or even
complementary in purpose and function’: Nair, Translating Wisdom, p. 17. To
this I would also add sciences, ‘occult’ or otherwise, such as astrology,
letterism, and dream interpretation, to name just a few.
38
See William Chittick, ‘Notes on Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Influence in the Subcontinent’,
The Muslim World 82 (1992), pp. 218–241.
39
See the article by Gommans and Huseini in this special issue.
40
Melvin-Koushki, ‘Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd’, p. 213. (Translation is Melvin-Koushki’s.)
41
As has already been mentioned, Truschke’s research in Cultural Encounters on
the Persian trans lations of the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana has been
essential to this article’s genesis. She herself, as the title of the work
implies, tends to see these translations as attempts at cultural
reconciliations rather than religious ones. Muzaffar Alam ‘World Enough and
Time: Religious Strategy and Historical Imagination in an Indian Sufi Tale’, in
Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India, (eds)
Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield (Cambridge: Open Book
Publishers, 2015), pp. 107–136, has written how the Sufi master ‘Abd al-Rahman
Chishti’s Mir’āt al-Makhlūqāt brought together normative Islamic texts and a
number of Puranas to meld Islamic and Hindu cosmologies and eschatologies,
while still somewhat subordinating Hinduism to Islam. It was an attempt on the
part of a Muslim to take Hindu concepts seriously. Alam sees his subject text
as an act of religious reconciliation, albeit one without much political
consequence.
42
Carl Ernst, ‘Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and
Persian Translations from Indian Languages’, Iranian Studies 36 (2003), pp.
173–195.
43
Outside of Translation studies, this view of Hinduism and the problem of
religion extend into the study of South Asian history in general. See Romila
Thapar, ‘Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search
for a Hindu Identity’, Modern Asian Studies 23 (1989), pp. 209–231; and also
Heinrich von Stietencron, ‘Religious Configurations in Pre-Muslim India
and
the Modern Concept of Hinduism’, in Representing Hinduism: The Construction of
Religious Traditions and National Identity, (eds) Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich
von Stietencron (New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, 1995), pp. 51, 81.
For a contrasting view, see David Lorenzen, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1999), pp. 630–659.
44
Nair, Translating Wisdom, pp. 9–10.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., p. 25.
47
This rationalization is akin to that described by Clifford Geertz, ‘“Internal
Conversion” in Contemporary Bali’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected
Essays by Clifford Geertz (London: Hutchinson, 1973), pp. 170–189. The Axial
Age is the classic example of new imperial formations leading to the rise of
new religious formations. On the impact of the Axial Age on religion and pol
itics, see Alan Strathern, Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in
World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
48
Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change
in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
49
Nair effectively says as much when he—in contrast to scholars who de-emphasize
religion— declares, ‘Far from a religiously “ambiguous” or “vernacular” space,
Mughal-era translations generally self-consciously present two discrete
religious traditions—each with its own distinct scripture(s), religious law,
ritual regimens, etc.—which can nevertheless be fruitfully compared with one
another’: Nair, Translating Wisdom, p. 8. See also the articles by Dalpat
Rajpurohit and
Christopher
Atwood in this special issue for examples of Mughal and Mongol-era religious
iden tities being shaped in engagement with imperial formations.
50
A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 165. Also see the framework
article by Moin in this special issue.
51
On the coining of this term, see the article by Gommans and Huseini in this
special issue. 52 Abu al-Fazl, ‘Muqaddama’, p. 4.
53
Ibid., p. 8.
54
Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 166–167.
55
Abu al-Fazl, ‘Muqaddama’, p. 13.
56
Ibid., p. 18.
57
Ibid., pp. 18–19.
58
See the article by Gommans and Huseini in this special issue. Ishraqi rituals
and terminology were used during Akbar’s reign as a way of aligning the emperor
with the glory of the sun, the nayyir-i azam (‘The Greater Luminary’).
59
Moin, Millennial Sovereign, Chapter 5.
60
Abu al-Fazl, ‘Muqaddama’, p. 19.
61
Ibid., pp. 19–20.
62
For an extended overview of this compendium, its author, and their historical
context, see Stefan T. Kamola, Making Mongol History: Rashid al-Din and the
Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). D. O. Morgan,
‘Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn Ṭabīb’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, (eds) P. Bearman et
al., http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6237,
[accessed 8 December 2020].
63
On this view of time, see Alam, ‘World Enough and Time’.
64
Abu al-Fazl, ‘Muqaddama’, p. 18.
65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid., p. 20.
68
Ibid., p. 18.
69
Ibid., p. 19.
70
Ibid., p. 20.
71
Ibid., p. 19.
72
Ibid., p. 23.
73
A. Azfar Moin, ‘III. The Millennial and Saintly Sovereignty of Emperor Shah
Jahan According to a Court Sufi’, in The Empires of the Near East and India:
Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, (ed.)
Hani Khafipour (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), p. 213.
74
Ibid., p. 211.
75
Roderic Vassie, ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti and the Bhagavadgita: “Unity of
Religion” Theory in Practice’, The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, Vol. 3,
(ed.) Leonard Lewisohn (London: Khaniqah-i Nimatullah, 1992), pp. 367–378.
Cite this article: Pye, Christian Blake. 2022. “The Sufi method behind the Mughal ‘Peace with All’ religions: A study of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘taḥqīq’ in Abu al-Fazl’s preface to the Razmnāma”. Modern Asian Studies 56 (3), pp. 902–923. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X21000275