River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  “Bibi Raji was camping in Etawah. She held an emergency meeting of her noblemen. She fired Mohammed Shah and crowned her younger son, Hussain. Now there were two kings of Jaunpur. The brothers fought. Mohammed Shah was an excellent archer. When he wanted to shoot his foes he found his arrows were useless. His mother had had all their iron tips removed earlier. Mohammed Shah was slain.

  “Hussain Shah is an excellent musician. He has inherited a vast kingdom, extending upto the borders of Bengal. He should rest content and devote his time to his music but Bibi Khonza, his wife, like his mother Bibi Raji is also a Syed princess. She is a niece of Bibi Raji and daughter of Allauddin Alam Shah. She keeps urging Hussain Shah to capture Dehli.”

  My head reeled as I heard this rigmarole. Nevertheless, I think I am getting the hang of Indian politics. Everybody wants to capture power at Dehli and for that purpose they make and break alliances, go to war and swap allegiances all the time.

  We entered the city gate. I was struck dumb by the sheer magnificence and grandeur of Jaunpur’s Egyptian-style buildings. And I have realised that the lives of the kings and queens who live inside these noble halls are full of high drama, tragedy and triumph. The overriding passion is the acquisition of power and glory, however transient it may turn out to be. I am staying in one of the numerous inns constructed by Good King Ibrahim. Each of these serais has a garden, a well, a mosque and a free-kitchen. There is a separate staff and free kitchen for Hindu travellers.

  His Majesty is a warrior-king, but he is also popularly known as Sultan Hussain Nayak (performing artiste) and has composed a number of melodies. (Ragas and raginis, somewhat akin to our maqamat). He calls his melodies ‘khayals’, which means thought in Arabic. Jaunpur and Gwalior are two big centres of classical music today and there is much traffic of musicians between the two cities. Unlike Bahlol Lodhi of Dehli, Sultan Hussain is as proud as a peacock. He is fond of wine and women. Because of his mastery of Hindustani classical music and his creative genius, he is called the Supreme Nayak of the time. He must be the only monarch in the world who also carries the title of a performing artiste. His durbar contains a galaxy of famous musicians who live in an interesting locality called Dharitola—Dhari being the name of their caste. Everybody in India belongs to a caste, and the Dhari caste includes Hindus and Muslims.

  One afternoon my Persian mentor took me to Jannat Mahal overlooking the Flower Tank. After going through a lot of protocol we were ushered into the royal presence. His Majesty sat on a masnad tuning a tamboura (our tembour). One cannot imagine how this gentle musician could have forcibly subjugated Orissa and Gwalior and several districts of the Lodhi Sultanate. Like his grandfather, Ibrahim Sharqi he, too, has become a formidable monarch. Only two years ago, I was told, he invaded Dehli with his huge army and war-elephants. Bahlol Lodhi humbly asked to be allowed to remain in Delhi as a Sharqi governor. Hussain Shah haughtily told him to get lost, so the Afghans fought back with all their might. He has broken many a pledge with the Lodhis in his relentless pursuit of imperial power.

  I had never met a king before. He looked regal and arrogant, although he seemed pleased when he saw my certificates of excellence in Arabic, Persian, Turki and classical Greek. A hajib or aide-de-camp came forward and His Majesty said something to him in the local Hindvi language. Then he turned towards me and said, “Now you must learn another language, young man—Sanskrit. I have important work for you to do.” I was speechless and couldn’t quite believe my ears.

  In short, I was appointed supervisor of calligraphists and copyists of the scriptorium and also attached to the Bureau of Translations. I was given the customary robe of honour and silver inkstand and pen confirming my appointment, and I was ordered to proceed to the Fort Secretariat and get my papers. All of which was too good to be true. Like Feroze Shah Tughlaq who had had a lot of Sanskrit works rendered into Persian, Hussain Shah is also an antiquarian.

  Therefore today I, Kamaluddin, am happy to record for the benefit of posterity, that I am living in the jurisdiction of Sultan Hussain Shah Sharqi who holds sway over Night and Day, who builds cities on the Foundation of Justice. The Ring of his Governance is like the Ring of Solomon. He is gorgeous like Darius and a speck of dust like myself has been illumined by the Rays of the Sun called the Mighty Monarch of the Sultanate of Sharq. Allah be praised.

  Bazaar rates as of today: wheat, one maund for one tanka; 20 sers of pure ghee: one tanka. Rice, three maunds: one tanka. If you earn two tankas a month you can live well. The populace is happy and has enough time to indulge its one great passion—religion. Right now their Bhakti and Sufi cults are flourishing. The city and the countryside are teeming with all manner of picturesque hermits who remind me of the wandering dervishes of the land I come from. The qalandars of the Madari order hobnob with the yogis.

  This elegant city of Jaunpur is also called Shiraz-i-Hind. It has a very large number of colleges and schools and more than a thousand eminent theologians who arrive at the Cathedral Mosque on Fridays, riding grandly in their palanquins. These Ulema-i-Zahir, Scholars of Exterior Knowledge, are quite conceited while the Scholars of Interior Knowledge, Ulema-i-Batin, the Sufis, are mostly humble folk and come to the mosque on foot. I have rented a house in the locality of these schoolmen. Most of these colossal buildings were built by Ibrahim Shah and his daughter-in-law, Bibi Raji.

  In the course of my Sanskrit studies I came across a poem by Vidyapati Thakur. He has referred to the Muslims of Jaunpur as Turks and has said that they salaam one another, call each other Abay, drink a lot and read books. This is how he has described Ibrahim Shah’s capital. “In his durbar, the poor petition the generous king and get what they are destined to get. In his palace there is a water fount for the public, hamams, much decoration and tall mirrors. And twenty-seven horses of the sun chariot go around a spire stamping their hooves. What there is inside the palace, I do not know.”

  Nor do I, Kamaluddin. But I am lucky to have been right inside the zenana gardens. It happened thus—all very honourable and above-board. The Rose Tank is an artificial lake built in the shape of a huge redstone flower. It is a marvel of underground hydel engineering, with automatic fountains and friezes which seem to float on the water. There are separate steps for men and women where they bathe. The tank is surrounded by royal residences called Roshan Mahal and Jannat Mahal which extend upto Bibi Raji’s Red Gate Palace. The Queen Mother is not only an astute politician, she is a learned woman and has had a college and grand mosque built specially for women. The redstone complex is connected with the Red Gate Mahalsara through an underground passage so that the ladies can go back and forth freely.

  I fell in love. One afternoon I was busy with my Sanskrit grammar in the library when a Georgian slave-girl stepped in smartly. She handed me a little note. It was from Ruqqaiya Bano Begum, a kinswoman of the Sultan, who lived in Roshan Mahal and went to the women’s college inside the Red Gate every morning. I had glimpsed her once on the grand staircase of Roshan Mahal as she hurried down towards the subway. The note said she wanted a copy of Diwan-i-Rudaki. I sent it to her with the message that I was always at her service, her humble servant.

  In her college the faculty consists of pious spinsters of royal blood who are unmarried because men of equal status or lineage could not be found. There are also old and learned war-widows of whom there is no dearth. Young widows remarry in no time. The teachers are called Mullani-ji, or Ato-ji. A few doddering old maulanas from the local colleges come there off and on to deliver their lectures, and the students are mostly daughters of noblemen. The next time when my lady scholar sent me a note requiring a certain book, I wrote back. “You know, fair lady, Laila and Majnun were classmates as children. It’s a pity that in our Shariat a girl studies with boys in a mosque-school only up to the age of nine. If you and I had attended the same school . . . ,” etc., etc. So, we started corresponding.

  Then we met. The rendezvous was arranged by the clever Georgian, Maria. We met in the evening in a quiet, se
cluded corner of the Roshan Mahal back garden. The slave-girl stood behind a tree to warn Bano if anybody was coming. Bano was beautiful and intelligent. She sat demurely at a distance, on the edge of a fountain.

  Conversation was academic and intellectual. I told her about the lady scholars of Seville and Cordoba, she told me about her college syllabus. She was dressed in an azure gown of soft Banaras silk. I asked her what the silk was called.

  “Gulbadan,” she replied. “Queen Mother, Bibi Raji, had a very able and highly educated lady-in-waiting called Gulbadan Begum. She gave her name to this silk.”

  Suddenly the huge lamp in the gate-house lit up and I had to leave in a hurry. This lamp is another marvel of the city of Jaunpur. It contains certain ingredients which make it light up automatically at sunset, and it is because of this lamp that the royal ladies’ residence is known as Roshan Mahal or Palace of Light.

  I work in the scriptorium located in the Palace of Forty Pillars, inside the Fort. This area houses administrative offices and is adjacent to the army headquarters and barracks. The Palace of Forty Pillars was also built by Ibrahim Shah, and may have been the mansion described by Vidyapati in his poem. Hussain Shah lives in Jannat Mahal, overlooking the Rose Lake.

  Later, during our clandestine meetings, Bano often talked about her remarkable family. They had certainly produced two outstanding individuals—Ibrahim Shah and his grandson, Hussain Shah.

  “The friendships and alliances among kings are mercurial,” said Bano. “When the going was good Bahlol Lodhi himself arranged the marriage of Dehli’s last Syed King Allauddin Shah’s daughter, Bibi Khonza, with our Hussain Shah. Now that she has become Jaunpur’s Malika Jehan, Empress of the World, she has clean forgotten the good turn the large-hearted Pathan did her. She keeps goading her husband to topple her benefactor, Sultan Bahlol, so my cousin Hussain Shah spends half his time waging wars against Dehli, instead of composing his music,” she concluded unhappily.

  “What you are saying can be construed as treason against the Queen. This Georgian girl could report you, she comes from the world of Byzantine intrigue,” I reminded her.

  “Maria has become sufficiently Indianised to know whose salt she eats. She is my personal maid.”

  Bano lived within the Roshan Mahal complex. Her father was a close relative of the King and so her primary loyalty was to Hussain Shah, not his wife. Having spent some time in India I realised that blood ties, caste and regional affinities, and “salt” were what counted most in personal and collective relationships. But blood ties became meaningless in the quest for power.

  “What I am saying is common knowledge. Everybody in this kingdom knows that His Majesty is madly in love with his beautiful Malika Khonza and does what she says.”

  1 A tanka was the ancestor of the present-day Indian rupee, coined by Bahlol Lodhi.

  12. Hussain Shah Nayak

  We spent many a languid summer afternoon in the bower while the mango-birds cooed and everybody slept in the Palace. Sometimes one could hear the haunting notes of a noontime rhapsody wafting out of the King’s chambers, whenever His Majesty was in residence in Roshan Mahal. In fact this music became a kind of time-keeper for us. As long as the King was doing his riaz we sat in our secluded nook in the arbour; when the singing stopped, Bano slipped away. Thus I came to recognise many a raga composed by this extraordinary man.

  Once I wrote a Persian ghazal for Bano, then a qasida in Arabic in the style of Arabic-Andalusian odes written five hundred years ago. I told her about the Age of Romance and Chivalry in Muslim Spain. Bano was fascinated. It is amazing that Indian Muslims know nothing about the west—they live in an Enchanted Forest of their own. India’s Eternal Primeval Jungle has claimed them. I even tried to write a few dohas in Hindvi, the polyglot language which consists of Prakrit, Persian, Turki and Arabic words spoken by common people in the Indo-Gangetic plain. Sufis and bhaktas also use this language to preach their cult of love and free themselves from the stranglehold of the clergy. But the mullahs and pandits are ganging up against them. At present their target is a mystic called Kabir Das, a poor weaver of Kashi. The Muslims call him Mian Kabir.

  Once Bano said rather pointedly, “We are also Syeds, like you. It’s a canard spread by our enemies that our grandfather, Ibrahim Shah, was a water-carrier in the service of Khwaja Jehan Malik Sarwar who founded this Sharqi kingdom, and that he was an African. Do we look like Abyssinians to you?”

  I knew what Bano was driving at. I took the hint, smiled to myself and visualised my glorious future as a son-in-law of the mighty House of the Sharqis. I’ll even call my parents and the entire family from Nishapur. I have now spent nearly four years in royal service and am counted among the junior courtiers. Friends are urging me to take a wife.

  One evening Bano said to me, “Look, I don’t want to end up like those erudite spinster Mullani-jis of the Madrassa-i-Niswan. Please hurry up and send your proposal to my father.”

  On the way home I met my old friend and benefactor, the Persian hermit. He lived in his lodge in the forest and rarely came to town. He was accompanied by a good-looking young fellow who carried a travel kit and a staff. The Persian introduced us to each other. He belonged to Mithila, Bihar, and right now he was coming from Patan, Gujarat. “You are a wandering scholar sufi!” I exclaimed.

  “And you a court historian!” he retorted, rather sarcastically. I was taken aback by his hostile tone.

  “This Brother here belongs to the Order of the Chishtis,” the Persian explained to me, peaceably.

  “Well, are you one of those chroniclers who write that their Sultan killed so many crores of people in such and such expedition? At that rate this country should have been depopulated by now!” the young man remarked as we picked our way through jostling crowds in the main bazaar. We strolled down to a popular eating house run by an excellent cook-bhatiari called Lado. It was full, so we had to sit near the entrance. A girl came to take the order. The young man from Bihar looked up at her approvingly. She rattled off the evening’s menu. I ordered chicken pulao, qorma and naan, the girl shouted the order back to her mother. I turned to the guest. “Yes, I am writing a chronicle, but not officially. It is my personal diary.”

  He was still thinking of the bhatiari’s luscious daughter. “Our Vidyapati Thakur,” he began, blinking his long eyelashes, “must have seen females like her, eh? In his ode to your Sultan Ibrahim Shah he waxes eloquent about the lotus-eyed women of Jaunpur—where the golden spires of the temples sparkle and shine and the Sultan sits in his balcony and is pleased to see the happy multitudes down below. His face is radiant like the full moon.”

  “I have read that poem,” I replied airily. I am afraid I was not above showing off my newly and diligently acquired knowledge of Indian affairs. “When Malik Arsalan invaded Mithila, Raja Kirti Singh sought his overlord Sultan Ibrahim’s help, and the poet describes the soldiers of the enormous Sharqi army as so many lotuses spread over a lake. That’s an odd kind of simile—comparing a horde of military men to water-lilies!”

  A literary argument followed. In between, the Persian dervish aired his anti-monarchist views.

  “Hafiz has said the mysteries of statecraft are known only to the Chosroes of this world. Hafiz! You are a mere beggar sitting in a corner. Don’t make a noise!” I reminded him.

  “That’s why we chose to live in the forest. We follow the tradition of Abuzar Ghafari. He had been a Companion of the Lord Prophet. He was so disgusted that he left Medina when the rulers started behaving like Sassanian kings. You know, I told Sultan Hussain to be less warlike. He ignored my advice so I have stopped going to the Palace.”

  The inn-keeper’s wife continued to sit behind the platform of her massive oven, counting her tankas and jaitals, quarrelling with the customers. It was a normal, peaceful evening. The streets outside heaved with what Vidyapati had described as “an ocean of human beings which had entered the resplendent bazaars of Jaunpur”. The Persian addressed me again. “Hey, Brother Kamal
, listen. The bazaars are full of rumours that the Supreme Nayak is about to take on the Dehli Afghans once again. Is this so?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have heard nothing. I am busy with my books.” I didn’t add that I was too engrossed in my platonic affair with Bano to notice anything else. The bhatiara lad brought an aftaba and chilamchi for us to wash our hands in. Another placed rakabis and Chinese cups in front of us on a low table. Then he brought a huge round tray full of subtly fragrant pulao. “Ah,” the Iranian dervish said, attacking a roast chicken, “last time when Hussain Shah reached the banks of the Jamuna—it was his third and the seventh Sharqi campaign against Delhi—poor Bahlol Shah went hotfoot to the tomb of Bakhtiar Kaki in Mehrauli. He stood beside the grave of the saint and prayed all night. At daybreak an unknown man came along and gave him a stick. A great many sheep have arrived at the gate of Delhi, drive them away, quoth he.

  “And Bahlol was victorious. And he is such a kindly, nice man,” the dervish sighed.

  We ate in silence. The newcomer Sufi was hesitantly nibbling at a kofta.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, peeved, “Why don’t you eat?”