The Emperor Who Never Was
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78. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 301.
79. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 308.
80. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 5–6.
81. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 6. The prince refers to the Platonic and Sufi conception of the soul as a prisoner in the cage of the body.
82. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 47.
83. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 115.
84. For a critique of modern nationalist and reformist readings of Sirhindi, see Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
85. For a translation and analysis of this incident, see Carl Ernst, “Lives of Sufi Saints,” in Religions of India in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 495–512, 507–508.
86. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 47–48.
87. Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir, Jahangir-nama (Tuzuk-i Jahangiri), ed. Muhammad Hashim (Tehran: Farhang, 1980 / 1), 325; translated as The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 320.
5. The Chosen, 1642–1652
1. Catherine Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 212.
2. Abdul-Hamid Lahori, Badshah-nama, eds. Maulvi Kabir-ud-Din Ahmad, Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahim, and W. Nassau Lees, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1867–1872), 2: 346.
3. Tawakkul Beg Kulabi, Nuskha-i ahwal-i shahi, British Library, MS Or. 3203, fol. 48a.
4. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 48b. As Tawakkul Beg had earlier served under Shuja, he may have had a hand in the prince’s entrance into Mulla Shah’s order.
5. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 50a. For Mutaqid Khan’s relation to Dara Shukoh’s network and his closeness to Iraj Khan, a close associate of Dara, see Nawab Shahnawaz Khan, Maasir-ul-umara, ed. Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahim, 2 vols. (Calcuta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1888), 2: 268–272. For a discussion of the khanazad (house-born) imperial servants, see John Richards, “Norms of Comportment among Mughal Imperial Officers,” in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 255–289.
6. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 50b.
7. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 50b–51a.
8. For recent scholarship examining how Mughal emperors appropriated Sufi authority, see A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 94–170; John Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 105.
9. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 52a.
10. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 50a.
11. On this custom, see Richards, “Norms of Comportment.”
12. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 363.
13. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 363–364.
14. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 51a–51b.
15. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 367–368.
16. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 369.
17. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 379–380.
18. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 52a.
19. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 52b.
20. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 52b–53a.
21. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 376.
22. Mirza Muhammad Tahir Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas-i Shahjahan-nama, ed. Jamil-ur-Rahman (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 388; translated as The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan, trans. A. R. Fuller, eds. W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 313.
23. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 397–398, 411 (on the Gujarat assignment).
24. Sipihr Shukoh was born on Shaban 11, 1054 AH (October 13, 1644), noted in Lahori, Badshah-nama, 388.
25. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 408–409.
26. Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo, Des Hoch Edelgebornen Johan Albrecht von Mandelslo Morgenländische Reyse-Beschreibung (Schleswig, Germany: Johan Holwein, 1658), 60–61; translated in The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick, Duke of Holstein … Whereto are added The Travels of John Albert de Mandelslo, trans. John Davies, 2 vols. (London: Thomas Dring and John Starkey, 1662), 2: 30. See also Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo, Voyage en Perse et en Inde de Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo, 1637–1640, trans. Françoise de Valence (Paris: Chandeigne, 2008), 96–97, 240–241.
27. “Qui de tout tems a fait profession d’une devotion affectée,” Jean de Thévenot (d. 1667), Les Voyages aux Indes Orientales, ed. Françoise de Valence (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008), 53–54; translated in Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, trans. Surendranath Sen (Delhi: National Archives of India, 1949), 13–14.
28. See chap. 3, 101.
29. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 53a.
30. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 53a–53b.
31. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 54a–54b.
32. See B. G. Gokhale, “Tobacco in Seventeenth-Century India,” Agricultural History 48.4 (1974): 484–492.
33. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 54a.
34. Quran 9:36. See also Meir Jacob Kister, “ ‘Rajab Is the Month of God’: A Study in the Persistence of an Early Tradition,” Israel Oriental Studies 1 (1971): 191–223.
35. Dara Shukoh, “Risala-i Haqqnuma,” in Muntakhabat-i asar: Risala-i Haqqnuma, Majma-ul-bahrain, Upankihat Mundak, ed. Muhammad Raza Jalali Naini (Tehran: Taban, 1956 / 7), 2–3.
36. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 444.
37. Among Muhibbullah’s many works are: the Tarjumat-ul-kitab, an Arabic commentary on the Quran, manuscripts of which are located in the British Library, MS India Office Islamic, 1369, and Maulana Azad Library, Tonk, MS 123 / 78; a Persian treatise outlining twenty-seven manazir for the Sufi seeker, the Manazir-i akhass-ul-khawass, ed. Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Ali (Santiniketan, Bengal: Visva Bharati Research Publications, 1993); and an Arabic commentary on Ibn Arabi’s Fusus, couched in the philosophical idiom of Avicennian Neoplatonism, at-Taswiya bayn-al-ifada wa-l-qabul (The Equivalence Between Giving and Receiving), translated in G. A. Lipton, “The Equivalence” (Al-Taswiya) of Muhibb Allah Ilahabadi: Avicennan Neoplatonism and the School of Ibn ‘Arabi in South Asia (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009). In addition to Lipton, for a list of more of Muhibbullah’s writings, see Yusuf Husain Khan, “Shah Muhibbullah of Allahabad and His Mystical Thought,” Islamic Culture (Hyderabad) 34 (1964): 315–322, 318–319. See also the treatment of Muhibbullah in Shankar Nair, Philosophy in Any Language: Interaction Between Arabic, Sanskrit and Persian Intellectual Cultures in Mughal South Asia (PhD thesis, Harvard, 2014).
38. An epistolary correspondence between Muhibbullah and Abd-ur-Rahman can be found in the collected letters of Muhibbullah, Maktubat-i Shaikh Muhibbullah Ilahabadi, Aligarh Muslim University, Subhanallah collection, MS 297071 / 13.
39. First letter from Dara Shukoh to Muhibbullah, Maktubat, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, MS Sprenger 1972, fols. 14b–15a (correspondence dated 1055/1645-6). The exchange is abbreviated in Fayyaz-ul-qawanin, British Library, MS Or. 9617, fols. 37a–39a. I am indebted to Carl Ernst, who kindly shared with me his unpublished paper, “Some Notes on the Correspondence between Dara Shikuh and Shah Muhibb Allah Allahabadi,” originally presented at a conference of The Indian History and Culture Society, New Delhi, February, 1979. Here Ernst provides a useful summary of the codicological and bibliographic record of the epistolary exchange.
40. See chap. 4, 115.
41. First response from Muhibbullah to Dara Shukoh, Maktubat, Berlin MS, fols. 15a–31a; also recorded, without Dara Shukoh’s epistles, in Muhibbullah, Maktubat, Aligarh MS, fols. 193b–213b.
42. Second letter from Dara Shukoh to Muhibbullah, Maktubat, Berlin MS, fol. 31a; see Fayyaz, fol. 39a. The key expression in the letter is “wajdi kih muwafiq nayuftad ba-qaul-i khuda o rasul basi bihtar-i anast.” The line of verse quoted at the end of the passage runs: “mara hech kitabi digar hawala makun / kih man haqiqat-i khud ra kitab midanam.”
43. Second response f
rom Muhibbullah to Dara Shukoh, Maktubat, Berlin MS, fols. 31b–33b; and in Muhibbullah, Maktubat, Aligarh MS, fols. 214a–217b.
44. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 543.
45. M. Athar Ali, “The Objectives behind the Mughal Expedition into Balkh and Badakhshan 1646–47,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 29 (1967): 162–168.
46. On this title, which was used at various times by Timurid, Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal dynasts, see Lisa Balabanlilar, “Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction: Turco-Mongol Imperial Identity on the Subcontinent,” Journal of World History 18.1 (2007): 1–39; Corinne Lefèvre, “In the Name of the Fathers: Mughal Genealogical Strategies from Bābur to Shāh Jahān,” Religions of South Asia 5.1 / 2 (2011): 409–442; Moin, Millennial Sovereign, 23–55; for its earlier use, see also Naindeep Singh Chann, “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction: Origins of the Ṣāḥib-Qirān,” Iran and the Caucasus 13.1 (2009): 93–110.
47. Irfan Habib, “Timur in the Political Tradition and Historiography of Mughal India,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 57 (1996): 289–303, esp. 296–299.
48. Ahmad Rabbani, “ ‘Haran Munara’ at Sheikhupura (Punjab) and Some Problems Connected with It,” in Armughan-i Ilmi: Professor Muhammad Shafi‘ Presentation Volume, ed. S. M. Abdullah (Lahore: The Majlis-e-Armughan-e Ilmi, 1955), 181–199, p. 181.
49. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 634. For the observation, on the other hand, that Dara’s children were unwell rather than their mother, see Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 54b.
50. Dara Shikoh Album, British Library, Add. Or. MS 3129.
51. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 3.
52. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 3–4.
53. “Tu batin-i shar gar na-dani ba-khusus / w-ar ham na-kuni nazar tu bar naqd-i nusus // yak dan o ma-dan tu ghair-i u dar do jahan / in ast haqiqat-i Futuhat o Fusus,” Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 4. The translation of the verse is taken from the English translation of the Haqqnuma in Dara Shukoh, “The Compass of Truth,” in Sufi Meditation and Contemplation: Timeless Wisdom from Mughal India, trans. Scott Kugle and Carl Ernst (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, 2012), 129–164, 134.
54. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 4.
55. While Ibn Arabi puts forth a typology of three worlds, other Sufi thinkers such as Ala ud-Dawla Simnani present a fourfold division of the realms of existence, such as that depicted in the Haqqnuma and the Majma-ul-bahrain. See Jamal Elias, Throne Carrier of God, The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ Ad-Dawla As-Simnānī (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 61.
56. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 5–6.
57. Sayyid Murtaza died in 1661. The edition of the Yoga Qalandar is included in Banglara Suphi Sahitya, ed. Ahmad Sharif (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1969), 87–116. Another Bengali work treating yoga that appears to have drawn considerably on the Yoga Qalandar is the Cari Mokamer Bhed, attributed to Abd-ul-Hakim. This is the subject of a detailed study and translation by David Cashin, Middle Bengali Sufi Literature and the Fakirs of Bengal (Stockholm: Association of Oriental Studies, Stockholm University, 1995), 116–157.
58. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 9. I have used my own translation to more literally reflect the text, though it shares the phrase “gathers into unity” with Kugle and Ernst’s translation, 144.
59. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 9–10.
60. Dara Shukoh, Haqqnuma, 13.
61. These are described, for instance, in the Hathayogapradipika (c. 1400), the Shivasamhita (c. 1300–1500), and the later Gherandasamhita (c. 1700).
62. Verses 5:36–37 and 5:42–43 in The Shiva Samhita, ed. and trans. James Mallinson (Woodstock, NY: YogaVidya, 2007), 112–113. See also a roughly similar account in verses 5:73–76 of the Gheranda Samhita, trans. James Mallinson (Woodstock, NY: YogaVidya, 2004), 107–108. Craig Davis also notes this similarity. See Craig Davis, “The Yogic Exercises of the 17th-Century Sufis,” in Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 303–317.
63. For instance, manuscript copies of the Arabic text on hatha yoga, the Hauz-ul-hayat (Pool of Nectar), are sometimes attributed to Ibn Arabi, while other manuscripts of a treatise on yoga claim the authorship of Muin-ud-Din Chishti. See Carl Ernst, “Two Versions of a Persian Text on Yoga and Cosmology Attributed to Shaykh Mu‘in al-Din al-Chishti,” Elixir 2 (2006): 69–76, 124–125.
64. Rajeev Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 39.
65. For a discussion of Malajit Vedangaraya’s lexicon entitled Parasiprakasha, see Sreeramula R. Sarma, “Persian-Sanskrit Lexica and the Dissemination of Islamic Astronomy and Astrology in India,” in Kayd: Studies in History of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology in Memory of David Pingree, eds. Gherardo Gnoli and Antonio Panaino (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009), 129–150; and more broadly, Audrey Truschke, “Defining the Other: An Intellectual History of Sanskrit Lexicons and Grammars of Persian,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 40.6 (2012): 635–668.
66. Waris, Padshah-nama, British Library, I.O. Islamic 324, fol. 112a; Muhammad Waris, Badshahnamah of Muhammad Waris, trans. Ishrat Husain Ansari and Hamid Afaq Qureshi (Delhi: Idara-i Adabiyat-i Dehli, 2017), 132.
67. Kavindracharya Sarasvati, Kavindrakalpalata, ed. Lakshmikumari Chundavat (Jaipur: Puratattvanveshana Mandir, 1958), 4.
68. “Indra sam, chandra sam, yogamen Macchindra sam,” Kavindracharya, Kavindrakalpalata, 48.
69. “Dara Nadir yaun vane, jaise Sitaramu / kiratimurati mati sumati, paramanand ke dham,” Kavindracharya, Kavindrakalpalata, 54.
70. “Aur aur kaha kahe, jagat vahe hai brahm,” Kavindracharya, Kavindrakalpalata, 41.
71. See, for instance, Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fols. 64a, 145b, 233b, and 433b.
72. The collection is also known as Tibb-i Dara-shukohi (Medicine of Dara Shukoh). For a description of the work and its author, see Fabrizio Speziale, “The Encounter of Medical Traditions in Nūr al-Dīn Šīrāzī’s “ʿIlājāt-i Dārā Šikōhī,” eJournal of Indian Medicine 3.1 (2010): 53–67.
73. Nur-ud-Din Shirazi, Ilajat-i Dara-shukohi, Majlis Library of Tehran, MS 6226, 3–6.
74. “Ma mashrab-i sulh-i kull girifta,” Shirazi, Ilajat, 6.
75. For more information, see Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, “Dimensions of Sulh-i kul (Universal Peace) in Akbar’s Reign and the Sufi Theory of Perfect Man,” in Akbar and His Age, ed. Iqtidar Alam Khan (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1999), 3–21; and Rajeev Kinra, “Handling Diversity with Absolute Civility: The Global Historical Legacy of Mughal Ṣulḥ-i Kull,” The Medieval History Journal 16.2 (2013): 251–295.
76. For instance, the opening to Abu-l-Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, ed. Heinrich Blochmann, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1872–1877), 1: 3; translated as The Āʾīn-i Akbarī, trans. Heinrich Blochmann, ed. Douglas Craven Phillott, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1927–1949), 1: 4.
77. Abd-ul-Hayy Lakhnawi, Nuzhat-ul-khawatirwa-bahjat-ul-masami wa-n-nawazir, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 1999), 5: 654, §671.
78. See for instance, Shirazi, Ilajat, 3, 1454ff, 1555ff. For more on the Zakhira-i Iskandarani, see chap. 6, 161.
79. Muhammad Salih Kamboh, Amal-i Salih, ed. Ghulam Yazdani, 3 vols. (Lahore: Majlis-i Taraqqi-i Adab, 1958–1960), 2: 493; Mohammad Quamruddin, Life and Times of Prince Murād Bakhsh (1624–1661), (Calcutta: M. Quamruddin, 1974), 73.
80. Salih Kamboh, Amal-i Salih, 2: 494; Quamruddin, Life and Times, 76.
81. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 56b.
82. Quamruddin, Life and Times, 84.
83. Arthur Neve, Picturesque Kashmir (London: Sands & Co., 1900), 100–101.
84. For instance, see Krishan Lal Kalla, Kashmir Panorama (Delhi: Raj Publications, 1997), 110.
85. There are some missing pieces in Tawakkul Beg’s report, however. Engraved upon the gateway to the complex built at the lower spring, now known as Chashma-i Shahi, is a chronogram that dates it to
1042 AH (1632 / 3). This suggests that some sort of complex had been constructed there for Shah Jahan before his trip to Kashmir in 1634. In a further twist to this puzzle, another verse in the same inscription is thought to refer to Ali Mardan Khan, who entered Mughal service only in 1638. For details of the verses, see Anand Koul, The Kashmiri Pandit (Calcutta: Thacker and Spink, 1924), 136.
86. Neve, Picturesque Kashmir, 101.
87. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 56a–56b.
88. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 58a.
89. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 58b.
90. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 59b. Compare with the forty thousand rupees for mosque and twenty thousand for homes for faqirs in Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas, 534–535; translation, 458.