The Jesuit Antoni de Montserrat, European Interpreter of Emperor Akbar

ARTICLE CREDITS

Jesuit Studies Series: Modernity Through the Prism of Jesuit History

João Vicente Melo

Edited & Translated Portuguese text

Lena Wahlgren-Smith

Translated Latin text

Joan-Pau Rubiés

Foreword

A Historical Overview

The Mughal emperor Jalal-ud-din Akbar (1542–1605), heir to the Timurid  dynasty that conquered much of India in the sixteenth century and who  reigned with remarkable energy and success for over fifty years, between 1556  and 1605, has traditionally been perceived as one the greatest Indian rulers. Not only did Akbar dramatically expand and consolidate the territories controlled by the dynasty beyond their core in northwest India, from Kabul and  Kandahar (in modern Afghanistan) in the west to Bengal in the east, and from  Kashmir in the north to Sind, Gujarat, and the northern Deccan in the south; he also created the imperial structures of a patrimonial-bureaucratic state  that would serve his successors until the eighteenth century, with a particularly bold and successful policy of incorporating the defeated Rajputs, who as  Hindu subjects were considered by more orthodox Muslims as mere idolaters, into the ruling military elite (he even married a Rajput princess who was the  mother of his heir, Salim [1569–1627], future emperor Jahangir [r.1605–27]).   Akbar was also a remarkable patron of the arts, distinguished for example  by sponsoring a vast program of production of illuminated manuscripts in  Persian that incorporated many classics of Iranian and Indian literature and  history, including translations from the Sanskrit and Turkic languages (he was  reputedly illiterate, but this was no obstacle to a passion for having books read  to him).1 In this respect, under his direct patronage, poetry, painting, and archi tecture all evolved toward new forms that combined the rich Timurid tradi tions of Persianate courtly culture with local Indian artistic elements. Finally, Akbar was also original in the way he engaged with religion. In particular, he  widened the scope of his Muslim religiosity, tinged with Sufi themes (as was  already characteristic of the Timurids), by seeking to incorporate the various  religious traditions—biblical or non-biblical—found in India into a syncretic  royal cult, rather than emphasizing their mutually exclusive claims to the most  fundamental truths. His legacy was therefore wide-ranging and of enormous  consequence.

An image of antoni de montserrat

Akbar’s quasi-mythical status as a great charismatic leader invites con tinuous re-assessment of the primary sources upon which our knowledge  of his personality and historical agency has been built. Fortunately, his  multi-ethnic court, closely attached to the Turkic and especially Persianate  historiographical traditions cultivated by the Timurid dynasties, produced a  number of contemporary histories of this exceptional reign, usually framing  Akbar’s achievements in relation to the conquest of Hindustan by his grand father Babur (1483–1530), and its subsequent loss and recovery by his father  Humayun (1508–56, r.1530–40, 1555–56).3 Of these, the most “official” account  was the Akbarnama (History of Akbar) produced by Akbar’s close associate  and chief ideologue Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602), a court bureaucrat in charge of dip lomatic correspondence and of the translation bureau. His narrative was often  detailed but also obscenely biased—as far as he was concerned, Akbar was the  perfect ruler and his status quasi-divine: indeed, he considered him a mani festation of the “divine light” (in Sufi terms, divine wisdom).4 Thus the inte gration of ancient Iranian (Sassanid) monarchical models with Islamic Sufi  ideas of spiritual perfection offered the basis for Abu’l Fazl’s exalted ideology  of sacred royalty, which apparently was shared by Akbar himself, since he spe cifically commissioned the historical work in 1588 and kept promoting Abu’l  Fazl until the latter was assassinated in 1602.5 By contrast, the Tabaqat-i Akbari by Nizam al-Din Ahmad Bakhshi (1551–1621), who was an imperial administra tor from a family originally from Khorasan that had long been loyal to Babur’s dynasty, is more sober and offers much alternative and useful information.6 His narrative was often closely followed by another important contemporary  court historian, his friend the theologian and translator Abdul-Qadir Badayuni  (1540–1615), who, however, was not afraid to add his own interpretative bias, one imbued with a strict sense of Muslim orthodoxy (as well as some personal  resentment). Thus, Badayuni was openly critical of Akbar’s religious experi ments, in particular his tolerance of Hindus, and offers a valuable counter point to the celebratory rhetoric of Abu’l Fazl.

In these and a few other historical works produced in Akbar’s court, the rhe torical conventions of Persianate historiography, which tend toward open par tisanship and extravagant exaggeration, often weigh heavily. The most obvious  model was the Zafarnama (Book of victories) by Ali Yazdi (d.1454), a 1425 his tory of Akbar’s ancestor, the great conqueror Timur (a Chagatai Turk known in Europe as Tamerlane [1336–1405, r.1370–1405]), that combined the narra tive of events with ornate poetry and exerted a strong influence on subsequent  Timurid writers. By contrast, the less elevated genres not directly focused on  the deeds and misdeeds of kings, princes, and emirs could be more straight forward and wide-ranging in the kind of information they supplied—we may  in this respect consider Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari (Administration of Akbar),  a supplementary volume to the (already voluminous) Akbarnama, offering a  remarkably rich and precise compilation of administrative, fiscal, and ethno graphic information about Akbar’s empire.7 This kind of material, less ideo logically charged than the often pretentious high genres of dynastic history  writing, is what the modern historian often looks for in order to obtain a broader  perspective on how the Mughal elites understood their own empire. But ide ally, one also needs works written from outside the rhetorical conventions and  concerns of Mughal court historiography. Although we are generally limited to  elite testimonies, there are also Hindu (for example Rajput) historical sources, often in the form of poetical compositions; however, some of these seem more  concerned with justifying the internal acceptance of Mughal overlordship by  particular Rajput lineages than with offering contrasting information.8

Because of their relative objectivity, and despite their own cultural biases, European sources from this period follow different rhetorical expectations, in  particular those pertaining to late humanist historiography (whether secu lar or religious). Whenever available, they are therefore crucial as a counter point. Abundant for the seventeenth century, they are few and usually quite late for the reign of Akbar. The detailed account by the Catalan Jesuit Antoni  de Montserrat (c.1536–1600) of his mission to Akbar’s court in 1570–82, writ ten in Latin with the title Mongolicae legationis commentarius (Commentary  on the embassy to the Mughal court), offers the greatest exception and hence  is uniquely valuable. As the British historian of the Jesuit missions to the  Mughals Edward Maclagan (1864–1952) wrote in 1932, besides providing our  main source of knowledge concerning the first Jesuit expedition to the Mughal  court, Montserrat’s Commentary may be considered “the best account written  by any European of the court and character of Akbar.”9

Hosten and Montserrat's Manuscript

Father Henri Hosten (1873–1935), a Belgian Jesuit based in Calcutta, first  gave notice of the autograph manuscript of the Commentarius in 1911 and in  1914 published a carefully annotated edition of the original Latin text in the  Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in what may be considered an example  of the continuity of the contribution of “Catholic orientalism” to the British  system of imperial knowledge well beyond the early modern period.10 This  edition, however, has remained difficult to access and, being in Latin, has had  relatively few readers. Its impact was nonetheless felt in one of the classic  books on Akbar produced by the British imperial experience, Akbar the Great  Mogul by Vincent Smith (1843–1920), first published in 1919. An English transla tion by Hosten and another Jesuit, Father J. Gense, soon appeared in successive  issues of the Catholic Herald of India between 1920 and 1921—unfortunately, it  was never collected in book form. Not long after, in 1922, a meritorious English  translation by John S. Hoyland (1887–1957) of Hislop College in Nagpur was  published by Oxford University Press, with historical notes by S. N. [Sikhar  Nath] Banerjee, and this has become the standard version of Montserrat  known to most international scholars for the last century.11

Antoni Montserrat (born in the Catalan town of Vic), or Antonio Monserrate,  as his name is usually found in the Portuguese and Spanish (Castilian) docu ments that he signed or those produced by other Jesuits under the Portuguese  padroado of their oriental missions, is known to us through the numerous  and remarkably well-preserved documentation produced by the Jesuits in  the sixteenth century, including not a few of his own letters and reports.12

For the Indian missions of the sixteenth century, much of the primary mate rial was carefully edited in the second half of the twentieth century by Josef  Wicki (1904–93) in the Documenta Indica series.13 Hence we know not only  how his fellow Jesuits chose to remember him in public writing by means of  the biographical and historical genres characteristic of the order, often tinged  with hagiography, but also what some of his superiors in India wrote in their  ordinary and confidential catalogs to the Society’s Superior General in Rome.  The first catalogs recorded objective information concerning nationality, age,  health, status within the Society and education, while the second catalogs  gave an assessment of personality and mental capacities. For example, the  catalog of December 1594, when Montserrat was still a captive in Sanaʿa, reads  as follows:

Father Antonio de Monserrate, Catalan from the city Vic, 61 years old,  of mediocre strength, of 39 years in the Society; studied cases [of con science] for four years, read Latin for many years; was vice-rector of the  College of Santo Antão in Lisbon and rector of Salsete; did votes as spiri tual coadjutor on January 1, 1579.14

The second catalog, produced separately, was obviously more confidential: “Good wits [buen ingenio], poor judgment and prudence; experience in nego tiations and practical things, knows well cases [of conscience]; choleric, talent  for practical affairs and dealing with people.”15 The distinction between wits  (intelligence) and judgment (prudence) is interesting: Montserrat’s compan ion in captivity, Pedro Páez (1564–1622), for example, had the opposite assess ment and was perceived as having mediocre ingenio, buen juicio y prudencia (mediocre intelligence, good judgment, and prudence). It is also interesting  to note that Montserrat’s reputation as having a “rare talent for others” (raro  talento con los próximos) was long-standing and had already been mentioned  twenty years earlier when he left for India, in the catalog of 1574.16

Best known for his Mughal mission, the Catalan Jesuit in fact had substan tial previous experience in Europe. Although he joined the order in Barcelona,  he spent the best part of his youth abroad in Portugal, where he studied and  taught the humanities, was a tutor at the court of the young king Sebastian  (1554–78, r.1557–58), and became particularly active promoting various chari table initiatives, in particular during and immediately after the great plague  that hit Lisbon in 1569. He thus was already mature—around forty—when he was granted his wish to travel to India, which he reached, together with  a large number of Jesuits, in 1574, in the company of the all-powerful Visitor  Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606). Between 1577 and 1579, he was based at  Cochin, where he played an important role in the policy of integrating the  native Christian communities of the Serra (the chain of mountains along side Malabar) into the Catholic Church, supposedly converted in ancient  times by Saint Thomas the Apostle and traditionally connected to the Syriac  churches of Mesopotamia. The task was delicate because, due to this connection, these Syriac churches were mainly Nestorian and thus considered hereti cal by Roman Catholics. During that mission, Montserrat already produced  some interesting ethnographic material on the Saint Thomas Christians.17 It  was probably this experience with frontline missionary efforts that involved  a limited degree of cultural accommodation, together with his reputation  for social skills and (perhaps) some knowledge of Arabic, that suggested him  as a member of the expedition to Akbar’s court prompted by the emperor’s direct invitation in 1579.18 The enterprise, not meant to be confrontational, was  undertaken under the illusion of the possibility of the Mughal’s imminent conversion to Christianity, which in turn suggested the prospect of a top-down process of evangelization. It was Montserrat, rather than the head of the mis sion and better theologian Rodolfo Acquaviva (1550–83), whom Akbar chose in  1583 as a member of a planned Mughal embassy to Philip II in Spain (1527–98,  r.1556–98) (although the project was eventually abandoned). Having acquired  a fair knowledge of Persian, he was subsequently selected by the provincial  Pedro Martins (1542–98) to revive the flailing Jesuit mission in the Christian  (but not theologically orthodox) kingdom of Ethiopia—yet another task char acterized by the need to develop a friendly relationship in a courtly setting. Alas, the attempt in 1588 by Montserrat and his companion the younger Pedro  Páez (also from Spain) to reach the isolated East African kingdom from Goa  disguised as Armenian merchants ended with their capture on the southern  Arabian coast by the Ottoman authorities. Montserrat’s main focus during his  captivity in Yemen seems to have been on perfecting his Commentarius, the  completion of which he dated at Sanaʿa on January 7, 1591. By the time the  Jesuits were ransomed for a considerable sum and were able to return to Goa  in late 1596, Montserrat’s health was broken. He died in 1600 in the College  of Salcete.

Perhaps the most important testimony of the pious version of Montserrat’s life by members of his own order is the account given by Páez in his remark able history of the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia, because between 1588 and 1596  they spent many years in intimate contact with each other, that is, during the  journey to the East African kingdom that ended with a seven-year period of  captivity in Yemen and the Red Sea.19 The younger Páez went on to try to reach  Ethiopia alone some years later, this time more successfully, entering Abyssinia  in 1603, and eventually played a crucial role in the Jesuit attempt to subject  the native Christian church to Roman rite, doctrine, and discipline (like the  parallel experience with the Syrian churches of Malabar, this effort gener ated much local resistance and eventually backfired). His História da Etiópia (History of Ethiopia), completed in 1622 not long before Páez passed away in  Gorgora, was the history of an apparent triumph of the faith over the heresies  of a barbarian church, given that Emperor Susenyos (c.1571–1632, r.1606–32) had publicly accepted the Catholic doctrine in 1621 and rejected the many  “errors” of the traditional Ethiopian church (notably circumcision, the celebration of the Sabbath, and a monophysite Christology that did not sufficiently  distinguish between the human and divine natures of Christ).20 Páez’s narra tive was, however, thoroughly rewritten by his successors because it was overly  polemical against the alternative historical claims concerning the Catholic  missions in East Africa published in 1610 and 1611 by the Dominican Luis de  Urreta (c.1570–1636) in Valencia (the two orders were, here as elsewhere, bitter rivals). It was also corrected, it was alleged, for its imperfect Portuguese  style, Páez being a Castilian at a time of heightened nationalist tension within  the united Spanish monarchy. Thus, the original autograph manuscript did  not see publication until the twentieth century.21 Nonetheless, Páez’s account,  duly edited, became the basis for the official Jesuit historiography of the  Ethiopian mission through the subsequent versions by Manuel de Almeida  (1580–1646) and, finally, Baltasar Teles (1596–1675), whose Historia geral de  Ethiopia a Alta ou Abassia do Preste Joam (General history of Upper Ethiopia,  or Abyssinia of the Prester John) was published in Lisbon in 1660. In this way, the pious life of Montserrat, as written by the “apostle of Ethiopia,” reached the  European public.

Documenting the Mughal Mission: Montserrat's Method

Montserrat’s Commentarius, based on a journal kept at the orders of his  superior Ruy Vicente (1523–87), is permeated by humanistic pretensions to  antiquarian learning, although the Latin is often awkward.22 This ethos of pious  learning was clearly explained by the author in his dedication of the work to  Superior General Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615, in office 1581–1615): in imita tion of “the diligence of the ancients” who “would note down most carefully the  everyday occurrences of their travels,” the modern travel writer aspired to contribute with new studies of geography, history, and navigation to the Republic  of Letters.23 Following the practice of the order from the days of Ignatius of  Loyola (c.1491–1556) “to write down whatever occurs,” Montserrat described  the events of the mission as he saw them with his own eyes. Afterward, he  amplified the information about the “Mongols” (Mughals) with other books  available at Akbar’s court, facilitated by the emperor, or subsequently by those  found in Goa, such as the recently published fifteenth-century account of the  embassy of Ruy González de Clavijo (d.1412) to the court of Timur.24 Finally, the  Jesuit sought to use the new information to “correct, clear up, and reconcile” what previous ancient and humanist geographers and historians had written  about India, or (in a separate lost book he produced in Yemen) about Arabia.25

The extended text was also accompanied by a path-breaking map of India,  which combined Montserrat’s own personal latitude calculations with other  sources. There was also a second volume of the Commentarius, now sadly lost, in  which Montserrat gathered all the geographical, ethnological, and antiquarian  information about India north of Goa that he had been able to find.26 Despite  this loss, the extant text of the Commentarius is by itself sufficiently impressive  and testifies to Montserrat’s intimate knowledge and positive appreciation not  only of Akbar’s personal qualities as a ruler but also of Mughal court culture  and Indian civilization, in particular the expressive capacity of the Persian lan guage (which Montserrat learned with Abu’l Fazl), the wealth of cities such  as Lahore, and the architecture of the new royal capital Fatehpur Sikri. It fully  belongs to the Renaissance paradigm that made it possible to value positively  a non-Christian civilization according to European cultural norms inspired  by the classical past.27 It is true that as an effort at antiquarian scholarship it  remained tentative—there were few modern authorities on whom he could  rely, with one of the notable exceptions being the Portuguese historian João de  Barros (1496–1570), who had little to say about north India beyond the coastal  areas frequented by the Portuguese. Driven by the author’s desire to identify in  India peoples and places known from ancient historians and geographers such  as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, the Commentarius contains many examples  of erroneous identifications—something not uncommon among the cosmog raphers of that period. Montserrat was in this respect typical in his adoption  of the aims and methods of the humanist models at his disposal, including  the works by Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius [1405–64, r.1458–64]), Raffaello  Volterrano (1451–1522), and Marcantonio Cocci Sabellico (1436–1506), as well  as Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) on the Ottoman Turks.28

However, rather than the erudition, what seems most significant is the  intellectual attitude displayed: first, in the dominant role played by pre cise personal observation, obviously by means of a travel diary kept during  the journey; and second, in the relative lack of cultural prejudice revealed  by the effort to integrate these observations with both classical authorities  and Persian historical sources, in order to create a comprehensive histori cal and geographical synthesis. In this respect, the section toward the end  of the Commentarius devoted to reconstructing the double genealogy of the  Mughals, from Genghis Khan (c.1162–1227, r.1206–27) on the maternal side and  from Timur on the paternal side, reflects Akbar’s dynastic self-understanding  and is symptomatic of Montserrat’s considerable effort at cross-cultural understanding, notwithstanding the difficulty of recognizing many of his Latin  transliterations of Persian names and other errors of interpretation. While the  previous English edition by Hoyland and Banerjee excised and relegated these  “ill-authenticated tales” to an appendix, the new translation offered in this  volume by Wahlgren-Smith and Melo rightly restores these passages to where  they belong.

Antoni de Montserrat at the royal court

Modern scholars have sometimes complained that the very term “Mughals” is a European distortion that exaggerates Mongol dynastic claims and does  not do justice to the dynasty’s Timurid origins: the members of the dynasty in  India usually called themselves “Gurkani” (literally “son-in-law,” after Timur’s marriage to a female descendant of Genghis Khan).29 Montserrat, however, no  doubt partly responsible for this emphasis on Mongol origins in the very title  of his most influential work, the “Relation on Akbar, King of the Mughals,”  was not ill-informed about how the dynasty understood these origins: he  explained that Akbar himself had emphasized that he was a descendant of  Genghis Khan through the female line (albeit not through his own mother);  noted that the Timurid Mongols were, unlike the Tartars, closely connected  linguistically to the Turks, although their Chagatai language was quite differ ent from the one spoken by the Ottoman Turks in the west; and established  the genealogical connection between Chagatai (1183–1242, r.1227–42), one of  Genghis Khan’s sons, as ruler of Samarkand, and the later emergence of Timur, Akbar’s direct ancestor on the male side, as a Chagatai Turk who established  his rule in that same area. He also appreciated that this Turco-Mongol heritage  had been overlaid by Persian language and culture and adapted by Akbar to  Hindustani realities, with many “Gentiles” appointed to positions of trust in  his court and army. While the Jesuit could not settle where the name “Mongols” had first been acquired, he associated them with the ancient Scythians—an  identification symptomatic of his classical training, but not one that he used  to erase Akbar’s own narrative of origins. What seems to be Montserrat’s most egregious error—the idea that before the Muslim conquests, India had  been ruled by Christian, rather than “Gentile” (Hindu) rulers—was prob ably inspired by an otherwise authentic fifteenth-century travel narrative, the  account of the embassy led by González de Clavijo to the court of “Tamerlán” (Timur) in Samarkand at the orders of King Henry III of Castile (1379–1406,  r.1390–1406) in 1403–6.30

Although Montserrat’s Mughal writings are extremely informative, there  is no consensus about his intellectual qualities, in contrast with the praise  heaped on contemporary missionaries such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). In  this respect, it is interesting that Montserrat’s progress within the Society of  Jesus was limited to the status of a “spiritual coadjutor” and that he never  reached the highest level of the “professed,” which involved a fourth vow  (putatively of special obedience to the pope). Formally, this may have been  related to the fact that Montserrat, albeit educated in Barcelona, Coimbra,  and the Jesuit College of Santo Antão in Lisbon, primarily pursued studies  in the humanities, rhetoric, and logic and never completed his theological  training.31 The Jesuit order remained rigidly hierarchical, and while men of  aristocratic status were quickly promoted, others of less illustrious background  found more difficulties. In this respect, it seems that Montserrat came from a  quasi-patrician background—filho de pais honrados (of honored parentage),  according to Páez, which suggests that his father was one of the ciutadans  honrats (honored citizens) in the town of Vic that, in imitation of the social  system of Barcelona, constituted the privileged urban class in many Catalan  towns.32 He did not, however, belong to the upper nobility, by contrast with, for  example, Rodolfo Acquaviva, the son of a southern Italian duke and nephew  of the Superior General of the order, Claudio Acquaviva, who was educated  in the Collegio Romano and, despite his youth (he was barely thirty years old  in 1580, in contrast to Montserrat’s forty-five), was placed in command of the  mission to Akbar’s court very soon after arriving in India.33 Some historians, Hervé Pennec in particular, have emphasized the shortcomings of Montserrat’s training as a theologian in order to explain his limited status within the order  as a spiritual coadjutor, a vow that he took in 1579.34 In this interpretation, the  mission in Ethiopia was not considered a high priority by the superiors of the  Indian province, and for that reason two Jesuits who had not yet professed  their fourth vow—one of them very young—were sent on what was bound to  be a very dangerous journey.35 However, in that period professed Jesuits with  four vows were very rare in the vast province of India: according to the littera  annua (annual letter) that Montserrat himself composed, in 1579 only nine out  of 123 priests had reached this elite status (less than ten percent).36 

Montserrat's Approach: From Personal Observation to Historical Correction

Leaving aside the issue of whether it is correct to deduce that the provin cial Pedro Martins did not consider a project sponsored personally by Philip II particularly important (this is certainly not how others saw it, including an  enthusiastic Páez in his letters to his Jesuit friends in Spain), we know that  Valignano, the powerful Jesuit Visitor of the eastern missions with whom  Montserrat first traveled to India, did not develop a particularly high opinion  of the Catalan Jesuit’s abilities and personality, and this might have affected  his chances of further promotion. Valignano was himself a man of aristocratic  status who believed in exercising strong leadership and was prone to think ing in terms of extreme racial and social hierarchies. While Montserrat was  widely perceived as pious and especially talented at dealing with people, in  1589 Valignano questioned whether he had the endurance to lead the mis sion to Ethiopia.37 Nonetheless, as João Melo suggests in his introduction to  this volume, Valignano was probably negatively influenced by a previous disagreement in 1576, when Montserrat and other Jesuits complained about the  working conditions among the Parava fishermen in Punnaikayal (Coromandel  Coast, modern Tamil Nadu) and were removed from that mission. To this, we can add that when Montserrat became rector of the College of Salcete, in  the south of Goa, in 1583, following the violent death of Rodolfo Acquaviva  and many other Christians massacred in the Hindu village of Cuncolim (an  event quickly constructed as a martyrdom), he soon asked to be relieved of  the administrative responsibility that had fallen upon him, to which he felt  unsuited.38 This paints a picture of a man happier with books or acting as  a Latin tutor at royal courts than engaged with grassroots ministries among  Tamil- or Konkani-speaking villagers. In any case, Valignano’s doubts do not  really target Montserrat’s intellectual abilities as much as his moral disposi tion, and after his capture in Yemen his superiors also complained about his  lack of judgment ( juicio) when choosing to travel via Ormuz, where he could  be recognized, rather than his intelligence (ingenio). This explains why it was  Montserrat who was chosen as tutor for one of Akbar’s sons, Prince Murad  (1570–99); produced an unprecedented map of the Mughal territories in North  India all the way to Kabul; and wrote the most detailed account of the Mughal  court available to his generation. While the larger Latin commentary became  a lifetime’s intellectual project and remained a single manuscript, the shorter, more synthetic Portuguese “Relation of Akbar, King of the Mughals” of 1582  was widely copied, reached Europe quickly, and became a fundamental source  for many other historians, especially the Jesuit historians of their overseas  missions.39 The reader will find a fresh translation of this influential report at  the start of this edition of the Commentarius.

With this new English translation of Montserrat’s key works by Lena  Wahlgren-Smith, the volume’s editor João Melo does not simply offer a newly  annotated text but also a proposal of how to read the Jesuit’s account in the  light of the most recent historiographical concerns. The last four decades  have seen the emergence of a new history of the early modern Christian  missions (notably, but not exclusively, by members of the Society of Jesus), one  less bound than used to be the case by religious apologetics and, instead,  largely devoted to exploring their social and political implications and the  mechanisms of cross-cultural interaction at the micro-historical level. In some  cases, there has also been a new effort to identify longue-durée cultural trans formations connected to these missions. Some of the traits that make this  first Mughal mission particularly illuminating are the fact that very little was  known at that point about the Mughal Empire in Europe or, indeed, in Goa,  and that it belongs to the period of around four decades, between 1575 and  1615, when various forms of cultural accommodation were being explored by  an outstanding generation of Jesuits in South India, Japan, China, and Ethiopia.  It is from this perspective that we can re-examine the old problem of assess ing the value and significance of how the Jesuits interpreted Akbar’s attitude  to Christianity and the Europeans in a new light. Melo, in the rich introduc tion to this volume, writes about a chronicle of disappointment. Even though,  as he rightly emphasizes, Acquaviva and Montserrat developed some specific  strategies for converting a Muslim ruler (and it would be valuable to consider  in more detail how they compare to Christian missionary strategies in other  parts of the Islamic world), these bore little fruit in North India no less than in  Ottoman or Safavid lands. No narrative of conversions to Roman Catholicism  in the Mughal Empire could ever compete with some of the reports coming  from Japan in that period, or from China a few decades later. For this reason,  the uniqueness of Akbar’s religious attitude may in the end have been less sig nificant to the Portuguese than the opportunities this Jesuit legation offered to  observe the Mughal court and its army.

Map of Montserrat’s travels in Mughal India

Notwithstanding the religious mission’s lack of progress, Montserrat’s admi ration for Akbar’s personal qualities still permeated the physical and moral  description of the emperor that he wrote upon his return to Goa and that  came to shape the emperor’s European image. That he had granted the Jesuit  priests exceptional access to his person and treated them with great courtesy  no doubt left a lasting impression. In Montserrat’s report, Akbar emerged as  a sharp, prudent, courageous, and affable ruler, as well as a man remarkably  engaged with all kinds of intellectual matters, notwithstanding his illiteracy: “He does not know how to read or write, but he is very curious, and always  surrounds himself with men of letters whom he orders to debate various sub jects or read aloud diverse histories.”40 This fits in well with what we know  about the emperor from Abu’l Fazl, including a collection of his sayings that  may at various points be compared to those of a Stoic philosopher king, determined to control desire and anger and to value virtue for its own sake rather  than through a fear of death.41 On the other hand, it seems clear to modern  historians that Akbar’s agenda was not about choosing the best religion but  rather about using rational elements from all of them in order to construct for  himself a position as supreme interpreter of Islam that would in turn allow  him to strengthen tolerant policies toward Hindus, an aim he perceived as  politically desirable. He was not, however, a cynic, as the whole process seems  to have been accompanied by genuine curiosity and led to the creation of an  elite syncretic mysticism within the court. It was not too difficult for someone  in his position to find some positive elements in Christianity, and in particu lar the figure of Jesus, who of course was already recognized by Muhammad  as a prophet, while keeping his distance from the usual polemics about the  divine nature of Christ or the authenticity of the Gospels.42 During the expe dition to Kabul, for example, which Montserrat was allowed to accompany  as Prince Murad’s tutor and that forms one of the most valuable parts of the  Commentarius, Akbar would ask Montserrat why Christ allowed his own pas sion to go ahead, or what was the point of clerical celibacy, while treating him  with every consideration. In this process, his main concern when inciting the  Jesuits to offer their learned arguments, or when praising Parsis and Hindus in  public disputations, was not to declare any non-Islamic religion as superior,  but rather to weaken the more intolerant branch of orthodox Islam.

It was natural that the Jesuits, infused with evangelical zeal and a militant  spirit, would initially imagine that Akbar might truly convert to Christianity, since they approached the issue as an either/or choice. They were therefore  disappointed when they finally realized that Akbar was constructing his own  eclectic religion, one in which what was distinctive about Christianity played  no significant role. Although the presence of the Jesuits was still politically useful to Akbar, both symbolically (their presence at the side of others bore witness  to his religious universality) and in relation to diplomacy with the Portuguese  and their new king, Philip II (I of Portugal [1527–98, r.1556–98/1580–98]), “the  ruler of the Franks,” Montserrat concluded that the Mughal ruler was tram pling on “the pearls of the Gospel.” It is, on the other hand, surprising that the  wishful thinking of Akbar’s public conversion to Catholic Christianity, albeit  for political reasons, still found its way into some serious twentieth-century scholarship. For Maclagan writing in 1932, “it is a fair conjecture that amongst  other possibilities he was considering the feasibility of experimenting with  Christianity as a faith to be imposed on all his subjects.”43 Nothing in Abu’l Fazl  or any of the courtly sources justifies this interpretation. What we can fortu nately do is to explore how the agreements and discrepancies between differ ent documents, European and Mughal, may illuminate the complex agendas  at stake.

An interesting example is the account of the ordeal by fire proposed at one  point, but prudently declined, in order to settle the differences between the  Christian missionaries and some of their Muslim opponents. Abu’l Fazl’s pages  devoted to the religious disputations on Thursday evenings at the house of  worship constructed for that purpose in the royal capital of Fatehpur Sikri are  clearly geared toward presenting Akbar’s own spiritual accomplishments, and  it is in that context only that the European fathers have a place in the chron icle of his reign (the political significance of the Portuguese—the “Franks” in  India—is, on the other hand, uniformly minor in his narrative). The cosmopolitan “search for truth” pursued by learned men from “the seven climes,” of all  nations and ethnic groups, is opposed to the limitations of Akbar’s local oppo nents, “deceptive, dishonorable persons” who clung to their opinions—these are of course orthodox Muslims unwilling to entertain the idea that the truth  could be found elsewhere.44 Rodolfo Acquaviva is presented in this context as  a uniquely intelligent man who humiliated Muslim fanatics with logical argu ments. These fanatics, in turn, resorted to attacking the text of the Gospels as  corrupt, in contrast with the perfection of the Qurʾan.45 In this context, accord ing to Abu’l Fazl, Acquaviva issued a challenge: he should walk into a big fire  with the book of the Gospels in his hand, and his opponents would do the  same with the Qurʾan. The “black-hearted” fanatics, who could only superfi cially be considered Muslims since they sought to impose their faith through  coercion rather than rationally (which here equates to inner spiritual con viction), refused and withdrew with ignominy, “and the whole assembly was  enlightened by the splendour of debate.”46

This account stands in stark contrast to the narrative of these disputations  offered by Abdul-Qadir Badayuni, who belonged to the group of mullahs  ridiculed by Abu’l Fazl (the two men were personal opponents). He com plained that Akbar would divide Muslims by questioning the foundations of  belief and instead favor other religions: Zoroastrians, Christians, and especially Brahmans.47 It was simply scandalous that the Catholic fathers from  Europe, who followed the doctrines of the Roman pope, were allowed to  give normal currency to their Trinitarian arguments and teach Christianity  to Prince Murad.48 Thus, at one point they were challenged to an ordeal of  fire by a Muslim holy man, Shaikh Qutb-ud-din of Jaleswar, but they refused,  and Akbar even punished the “victorious” Muslim challenger by sending him  into exile.49 What is interesting is that Montserrat’s version of the trial of fire  event generally confirms the facts—not their interpretation—proposed by  the scandalized Badayuni, rather than those offered by the more tolerant, but  often unreliable, Abu’l Fazl. According to the Jesuit, it was the Muslims who, having been “defeated” (or offended?) by Acquaviva when discussing the con tradictions of the Qurʾan and the Gospels, issued the challenge, and they were  immediately supported by Akbar, while Acquaviva refused to accept, arguing  that miracles were not necessary in the context of a rational disputation. The  Jesuits, so as not to be perceived as men unwilling to die for their faith, subse quently suggested to the king that since they were not men without sin, they  could not be certain that they deserved a miracle on their own behalf, and,  indeed, that asking God for a miracle by provoking an ordeal was contrary to  the example of Christ; however, they offered themselves for unilateral mar tyrdom (knowing perfectly well that Akbar would refuse this). Montserrat’saccount also offers illuminating details about Akbar’s private explanation to  Acquaviva of what he was up to when he declared that, having heard enough  arguments, he supported the challenge: his aim was not to actually see the  ordeal by fire take place or harm the priests, but to shame the Muslim shaikh  who had arrogantly issued it, presumably by asking him to go first. He thus  requested that the Jesuits play along. Acquaviva’s reply, that the king needed  no subterfuge to punish that man, was, according to Montserrat, well received  by the nobles at the court.

There are many other examples of how the Mongolicae legationis commen tarii, together with the “Relation of Akbar, King of the Mughals” and other let ters by Montserrat and Acquaviva, can today help us reach a more balanced  understanding of Akbar and the conditions of his empire, once we have recog nized the ideological biases and cultural assumptions that permeate the early modern genre of missionary travel and historical writing. Of course, we also  need to undertake a similar critical analysis of the Mughal sources: there is  no simple dichotomy here between (un)reliable native versus (un)reliable for eign documents, but rather a complex set of cultural assumptions, rhetorical  conventions, and individual motivations that need to be disentangled system atically in all cases, in order to read these various narratives together. And if  we want to do this with a reasonable chance of success, few things are as use ful to the scholarly community—the modern heir to the Republic of Letters  Montserrat was writing for—as having an annotated edition of a reliable trans lation of the most informative primary texts. This new edition of Montserrat’s key writings, which is the end result of a Marie Curie research project under taken by João Melo at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, has been many  years in the making and will no doubt become, for the foreseeable future, a  new standard text.

Antoni de Montserrat with scholars

Acknowledgments

This book was written in different places. From Universitat Pompeu Fabra  in Barcelona, where this project began, I would like to thank Joan-Pau  Rubiés, Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Manel Ollé, Daniele Cozzoli, and  Claudia Contente for their crucial support, encouragement, advice, friend ship, and help. At the University of Liverpool, I am indebted to Nandini Das  and Harald Braun for their encouragement and insights. I am very grateful  to Emma-Louise Whitehead for her perseverance while dealing with all the  bureaucratic aspects that helped this project move forward. This book would  not be possible without the excellent translation of Lena Wahlgren-Smith. At  the University of Oxford, I would like to thank Peter Davidson and Giuseppe  Marcocci for sharing their expertise. At both Liverpool and Oxford, I shall  always remember the camaraderie of Haig Z. Smith, Lauren Working, Tom  Roberts, and Emily Stevenson. Words of gratitude are also due to Jyotsna Singh  for her encouragement, help, and feedback. The companionship, patience, and  love of Margarida made things easier. Rita made everything worthwhile. And  Mica always remembered the importance of simple things. Research for this  publication was supported by a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant under  the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development  and Demonstration Activities (618240-EURINDIS).

Abbreviations

• AN The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl
• ANTT Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo
• ARSI Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu
• BNP Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
• DRI Documentos remetidos da India ou livros das Monções
• OT Original text
• TN Translation note

📝FOOTNOTES

• 1.Being illiterate (ummi) was not a disgrace, since it was also a charismatic mark of piety— Muhammad himself was reputedly illiterate when he received the Koran from the angel Gabriel. Akbar, who was aware of that tradition, could therefore have chosen to cultivate that reputation, and his chief propagandist Abu’l Fazl indeed suggested that his unlettered learning was a “gift from God.” See Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art, and Culture (London: Reaktion, 2004), 33. A more natural explanation of his dif ficulties with the alphabet, put forward by Ellen Smart forty years ago, is that he may have been dyslexic. See Ellen Smart, “Akbar, Illiterate Genius,” in Kalādarśana: American Studies in the Art of India, ed. Joanna Williams (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), 99–107.
• 2. In this respect, rather than a broad religious movement, it may be best understood as a spiri tual brotherhood restricted to select members of the court.
• 3.Babur produced his own autobiography, inaugurating a historiographical tradition closely connected to the founding figure of the imperial dynasty. Although written in his native Chaghatay Turkic, Akbar had it translated into Persian, the dominant court language. For an English translation, see Wheeler M. Thackston, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (New York: Modern Library, 2002), superseding the earlier effort by Annette S. Beveridge (1842–1929). Humayun, who died soon after re-conquering Hindustan from his Afghan rivals (after falling down the stairs of his library while rushing to prayer), is primarily known by the materials written under the patronage of his son Akbar. Of these, perhaps the most notable is the account produced by Humayun’s half-sister, Gulbadan Begum (1523–1603). See Annette S. Beveridge, ed. and trans., The History of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-Nāma) (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1901). See further Wheeler M. Thackston, ed. and trans., Three Memoirs of Homayun (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2009).
• 4.The English translation by Henry Beveridge (1799–1863), which has served generations of historians, is now being superseded by a new edition of the Persian text with English translations by Wheeler M. Thackston: Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, 7 vols., Murti Classical Library of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015–21).
• 5.Abu’l Fazl was murdered at the instigation of Prince Salim, Akbar’s heir and the future emperor Jahangir, whose succession he had opposed. Jahangir’s personal memoirs are fairly open about his role in the murder.
• 6. The Tabaqat-i Akbari was in reality a first attempt at a comprehensive history of the various Muslim dynasties that ruled India up to Akbar and did not seek to compete with Abu’l Fazl’s Akbarnama but managed to offer a substantial and independent account. Nizam al-Din was a prudent official who had a good relationship with Akbar and (unlike Badayuni) seems to have kept his more orthodox religious opinions to himself.
• 7.Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, ed. and trans. Heinrich Blochmann and Henry S. Jarrett, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873–96; new ed. revised by D. C. [Douglas Craven] Phillott and J. [Jadunath] Sarkar, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1939–49). This is not to deny the enormous interest of works produced within the immediate royal circle. Of these, the personal memoirs of Babur and Jahangir are particularly fascinating and give us exceptional access to the minds of these two very different rulers, which is, unfortunately, unat tainable for Akbar, who—we must assume—was a much more interesting man than would appear from the heavy propaganda rhetoric of Abu’l Fazl.
• 8.See Cynthia Talbot’s illuminating analysis of the Surjanacarita (The deeds of Surjan), a Sanskrit poem commissioned either by the Rajput lord and Mughal officer Rao Surjan of Bundi (d.1585) or, more likely, his son Bhoj (d.1607), upon his succession in 1585: Cynthia Talbot, “Justifying Defeat: A Rajput Perspective on the Age of Akbar,” Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient 55 (2012): 329–68. This account of the deeds of the Rajput lord was imbued with a sense of heroic lineage comparable to that of the Timurid aristocracy, but it deploys specifically Hindu ideas of spiritual liberation in order to justify his submission to Akbar’s overlordship as a religious choice, an embarrassing action con trary to the traditional Rajput warrior code.
• 9.Edward Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: Burns & Oates, 1932), 148. Sir Edward Maclagan, born in the Punjab, was a high-ranking officer in British India and became governor of the Punjab in 1921. Upon his return to England, he presided over the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, at which point he also wrote his impor tant work on the Jesuits and the Mughals.
• 10.Henry Hosten, S.J., “Mongolicae legationis commentarius, or First Jesuit Mission to Akbar, by Father Antonio Monserrate, S.J.,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3, no. 9 (1914): 513–704. This edition, with its important critical apparatus, remains the last word on the history of the text and the stages of its composition. On the British colonial appropriation of Catholic missionary learning, see Ines G. Županov, “The Historiography of the Jesuit Missions in India (1500–1800),” in Jesuit Historiography Online, ed. Robert A. Maryks, November 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2468-7723_jho_COM_192579 (accessed April 30, 2021).
• 11.S. N. [Sikhar Nath] Banerjee, ed., and John S. Hoyland, trans., The Commentary of Father Monserrate S.J. on His Journey to the Court of Akbar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922). There is also a Catalan translation from the Latin original: Antoni de Montserrat, Ambaixador a la cort del Gran Mogol, ed. Josep Lluís Alay (Lleida: Editorial Milenio, 2002).
• 12.Montserrat usually wrote in Portuguese, which he mastered completely, or in Castilian (which, for example, he used when writing to the Superior General of the order Everard Mercurian); Antonio Monserrate, or alternatively Antonio de Monserrate, is an adapta tion of his Catalan name Montserrat to those languages. Translating names was the usual practice in the peri
• 13.Josef Wicki, S.J., ed., Monumenta historica Societatis Iesu: Documenta Indica, 18 vols. (Rome: IHSI, 1948–88) (hereafter DI).
• 14.“First and Second Catalogues of the Province of India,” Goa, December 15, 1594, DI, 16:987. I have translated from the original Spanish. Salsete (Salcete) is here the region south of Goa, not the Island of Salsette where Mumbai/Bombay is located (also in Portuguese hands at that time). Although unsigned, the probable author of the 1594 catalog was the provincial,
• 15.“First and Second Catalogues of the Province of India,” Goa, December 15, 1594, DI,
• 16.988. 16 DI, 9:240.
• 17.See the report on the Christians of Saint Thomas written in January 1579 to the then Superior General Everard Mercurian, published in DI, 11:512–21. The document has close parallels with an undated “Report on the Christians of Saint Thomas,” written, according to Josef Wicki (1904–93) (who recognized the handwriting), by the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pacheco (1549–9
• 18.The fact that Montserrat in 1579 was acting as secretary to the provincial in Goa, Ruy Vicente, with an opportunity to display some of his writing skills, probably helped too. For example, that year he wrote the Annual Letter for the Goan province. At the Mughal court, the Catalan Jesuit also claimed to have known some Arabic, learned in North Africa.
• 19.Pedro Páez, História da Etiópia, ed. Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec, and Manuel João Ramos (Lisbon: Assírio & Alvim, 2008). Montserrat’s biography appears on 562–63. See also the English translation published by the Hakluyt Society: Isabel Boavida et al., ed. and trans., Pedro Páez’s History of Ethiopia, 1622, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 2001).
• 20.It was a very short-lived triumph, but Páez did not live to see the unraveling of all his efforts when—largely as a reaction to the heavy-handed approach of the new Jesuit head of the mission, Patriarch Afonso Mendes (1579–1659)—a civil war quickly broke out that eventually led to Susenyos’s replacement by his more orthodox (according to the Ethiopian church) son
• 21.Camillo Beccari, Rerum aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo XVI ad XIX, vols. 2 and 3 (Rome: Casa Editrice Italiana, 1905–6). Now superseded by a critical edition of the autograph manuscript (see n. 19 above).
• 22.He even adopted a personal motto, In pondere, numero et mensura (By weight, number, and proportion), echoing the biblical book of Wisdom: “Pondere, mensura, numero Deus omnia fecit”—that is, God has ordered all things by measure, number, and weight.
• 23.Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 518. The title of the work was directly inspired by the third-person narrative of Julius Caesar (100 BCE–44 BCE), who “took this labour upon himself when the wrote the Commentaries of his wars” (Hosten, “Mongolicae legatio nis,” 518).
• 24.The book traveled remarkably quickly from Spain, where it was published in 1582, to Goa, where Montserrat probably read it between 1582 and 1588.
• 25.Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 520. During his captivity, Montserrat also attempted to write an antiquarian geography of the southern Arabian Peninsula, but this seems lost too.
• 26.For a discussion of this second book, to which Montserrat refers in his 1591 preface to Acquaviva, see Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 523–28. Hosten deduced that this second book was still in existence in British India in the early nineteenth century, since it was used and quoted by Colonel Francis Wilford (1761–1822) in various of his contributions to Asiatick
• 27.On the distinction between Christianity and civilizations, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, “New Worlds and Renaissance Ethnology,” History and Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1993): 157–97.
• 28.See Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 533, for Montserrat’s list of his ancient and modern authorities.
• 29.See further, Thackston, Baburnama, xlvi–xlvii. Thackston himself (xli) suggests that the concept of Moghuls originated in the Persianate Muslim urban culture of cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand when confronted with the “uncivilized” nomadic steppe peoples who had been united by the Mongols (even though the majority were Turkic).
• 30.Montserrat offered this claim in his Relation of Akbar as well as the Commentaries. See especially Francisco López Estrada, ed., Embajada a Tamorlán (Madrid: Castalia, 1999), 288, where it is clear that the Castilian author, writing from Samarkand and relying on interpreters, confused Parsis and Hindus with Christians. It is quite possible that the widespread use
• 31.He did, however, study cases of conscience—moral casuistry, a Jesuit specialty—for the purposes of confession.
• 32.Honored citizens placed themselves a step above merchants and very close to the lower gentry. Of course, Páez, or Montserrat himself when talking to him, could have exaggerated. The social elite of a small town such as Vic was in any case less elevated than that of Barcelona. According to Páez, Montserrat was attracted to the Jesuit order when studying in Barcelo
• 33.Páez’s statement that Montserrat had been offered the position but turned it down is very doubtful.
• 34.Hervé Pennec, Des jésuites au royaume du Prêtre Jean (Éthiopie): Stratégies, rencontres et tentatives d’implantation 1495–1633 (Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003), 100–9. As a spiritual coadjutor, Montserrat took the usual perpetual vows of poverty, chas tity, and obedience but was no longer eligible for professing the four vows and therefore barred
• 35.As argued by Boavida, Pennec, and Ramos in their critical edition of Páez, História da Etiópia, 18.
• 36.DI, 11:644. Montserrat counted 258 Jesuits in the province, of which 121 were ordained as priests and the rest brothers. Only nine had professed four vows, and eighteen three; thir teen were trained spiritual coadjutors, ten trained temporal coadjutors, eighty-one were scholastics (being trained for the priesthood), and the rest (127) were novices.
• 37.Valignano was shocked when he learned of the appointment: “It was unreasonable to send there [to Ethiopia] a man already well known from experience not [to have the right disposition for the task] and who could be trusted and relied upon, and who could be expected to give consolation to the two old [Jesuit] men who were there, who always endured so much hardship.
• 38.The massacre of Christians (analyzed by Melo in his introduction) is best understood as an episode in the history of local Hindu resistance to forced Christianization and was fol lowed by a punitive expedition from Goa that was no less violent. Although Montserrat actively participated in the construction of Acquaviva’s hagiography, in 1583 the situation in Salcet
• 39.In particular, it was a fundamental source for Giovanni Battista Peruschi’s Informatione del regno e stato del gran rè di Mogor (Brescia, 1597) and the relevant sections of Luis de Guzmán, Historia de las missiones que han hecho los religiosos de la Compañía de Jesús para predicar el Sancto Evangelio en la India Oriental y en los reynos de China y Japón, 2 vols.
• 40.“Relaçam do Equebar, rei dos Mogores,” November 26, 1582, DI, 12:649.
• 41.Akbar’s sayings were collected in the Ain-i-Akbari. Consider, for example: “The Hindu philosopher says that in the garnering of good works one should have death constantly in view, and, placing no reliance on youth and life, never relax one’s efforts. But to me it seems that in the pursuit of virtue the idea of death should not be entertained, so that freed from
• 42.Akbar’s courteous approach was to treat the Gospels—he was presented with a copy of Plantin’s polyglot Bible—with great public respect while openly confessing that the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity were to him incomprehensible. He was impressed that the Jesuits, and in particular Acquaviva, had such good knowledge of the Qurʾan as well as their own
• 43.Maclagan, Jesuits, 28. Maclagan believed that Akbar was looking for an alternative to both Islam and Hinduism, but he misses the point that he did not believe in imposing one single religion on everybody—his courtly religious circle was, in this respect, obviously elitist.
• 44.Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:55 (year twenty-three of Akbar’s reign, 1578–79).
• 45.Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:59.
• 46.Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:61. The target is made clear: those superficial, dishonest Muslims who had been exposed in the debate were also those who wanted to coerce Hindus—those “inclined to the religion of the Brahmans”—to convert. The Jesuits were the emperor’s tool for the public ritual of shaming his most inflexible Muslim opponents.
• 47.Quite clearly, the courtly debate about Akbar’s religious policy primarily concerned Muslims and their tolerance of Hinduism, with European Christians playing an exotic but secondary role.
• 48.Abdul Qādir bin Malūk Shā al-Badāonī, Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh, trans. W. H. [William Henry] Lowe (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1884), 2:262–68. Abdul-Qadir Badayuni had been appointed to the court office of grand mufti of Hindustan by Akbar in 1575 and was also employed as a historian while translating the Sanskrit epics. However, he was deeply uncomfortable with Ak
• 49.Al-Badāonī, Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh, 308. According to this version, the fire was actually made, and Qutb-ud-din tried to pull a Jesuit toward it. This holy man, of the same party as Badayuni, apparently died during his exile in Bhakkar and is not to be confused with the tutor of Prince Salim, Qutb-ud-din Muhammad Khan, governor of Gujarat.