Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court

by Sunil Sharma

At its height in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Mughal Empire was one of the largest empires in Eurasia, with territory extending over most of the Indian subcontinent and much of present-day Afghanistan. As part of the Persianate world that spanned from the Bosphorus to the Bay of Bengal, Mughal rulers were legendary connoisseurs of the arts. Their patronage attracted poets, artists, and scholars from all parts of the eastern Islamic world. Persian was the language of the court, and poets from Safavid Iran played a significant role in the cultural life of the nobility. Mughal Arcadia explores the rise and decline of Persian court poetry in India and the invention of an enduring idea―found in poetry, prose, paintings, and architecture―of a literary paradise, a Persian garden located outside Iran, which was perfectly exemplified by the valley of Kashmir.

Poets and artists from Iran moved freely throughout the Mughal empire and encountered a variety of cultures and landscapes that inspired aesthetic experiments which continue to inspire the visual arts, poetry, films, and music in contemporary South Asia. Sunil Sharma takes readers on a dazzling literary journey over a vast geographic terrain and across two centuries, from the accession of the first emperor, Babur, to the throne of Hindustan to the reign of the sixth great Mughal, Aurangzeb, in order to illuminate the life of Persian poetry in India. Along the way, we are offered a rare glimpse into the social and cultural life of the Mughals.

Genres: History

280 pages, Hardcover

Published November 27, 2017

Reviews

[Imran]

My experience in reading medieval South Asian history so far can be compared to adding spices to a plain dish of rice. The histories of temple destruction, military-labor markets, vagabond rulers seeking empire have enhanced my image of the Indian world. Now, when reading a book on a particular group or movement, I try to think about how each new group fits in the larger tapestry of communities that were part of South Asian history. Sunil Sharma’s Mughal Arcadia makes the case for an Iranian émigré community – understood as a Persian linguistic category as opposed to a cultural one – of poets that played an important role in shaping Mughal identity and preserving its history. Sharma does this by employing the New Historicist approach, which is a form of literary theory whose goal is to understand intellectual history through literature and its cultural context. Because Mughal Persian literary culture possesses diverse archives of texts, images, and buildings, it lends itself to the analytical tools of this method. What Sharma means by the literary term Arcadia is, “an idealized space that was peaceful and close to nature” (pg. 4). Hence, this book is about the process by which the metaphor of Mughal Arcadia, which represents the image the empire aspired for, came to be articulated in the literature of Akbar’s and Shah Jahan’s reign, especially in the Persian topographical narrative poem (pg. 6). The place that became the most popular subject for both courtly and mystical poetry was Kashmir since it was, in many ways, the manifestation of the archetypal Persian garden and a synecdoche for the entire empire. Throughout the book, Sharma makes exegesis of poems he believes demonstrate this central assertion. He highlights the literary works and personal narratives of Amir Khusrau, Faizi, ‘Urfi, Munir, Kalim, ‘Abdul-Rahman Khanan, and Zafar Khan to expose how Mughals viewed the world around them.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the book is Sharma’s inquiry into the origins of Iranian immigration into the empire. It is not surprising that Babur’s progeny had a high regard for the arts. In fact, it becomes quite evident that imperial patronage of the arts became a tool of imperial propaganda. Sharma paints a picture of an entire industry in which the commodity of Persian literature was fiercely sought after and learning Persian was a way to worldly success. Sharma attributes the 16th and 17th century Persophone-poet “brain drain” to the abundant opportunities for lucrative employment offered by the Mughals. In fact, Sharma states, “a poem was a commodity that poets could use to further their chances of social mobility” (pg. 126). Additionally, conservative and inexperienced rulers in Iran who eschewed non-religious poetical pursuits gave reason to those poets to leave their homeland. The poets found it easy to integrate into Mughal society not only because of Mughal appetite for Persian poetry but because the garden was already a trope in many of their poems. This made it convenient for them to replace their works with Mughal or Indian subjects. However, this created a sense of competition and jealousy with the Indian poets. As a consequent, a dynamic process of exchange occurred with the passing of time in a cosmopolitan environment where on one end Persian tropes entered into Mughal poetry and indigenous Mughal ideas such as the wondrous city, city of decline, and the Indian woman (i.e. sati) permanently influenced Persian poetry even outside of the Mughal context.

The last part of the book, in which Sharma attempts to explain how Mughal Arcadia was lost, is least impressive to me. The attitude of the Persian poets, who were once arbiters of Persian language on behalf of the Mughals, seems to dramatically shift in a negative way. A more thorough history would have been useful and although he does not put all of the blame on Aurangzeb’s iconoclasm, I couldn’t help but feel like Sharma fell into the typical narrative of painting Aurangzeb as a fanatic who did away with culture. Perhaps I am being harsh in my accusation, but it points to certain observation I have made in our series of readings about the attitude of our authors towards religion in the Mughal era. It seems one of the few areas in which a critical engagement is lacking. Why do certain interpretations of the religion result in outcomes that inhibit poetry? If emperors like Auranzeb eschewed non-religious poetry in order to safe his subjects from wine drinking, why is his reason not given some merit? What were the precursors for certain “conservative” Mughal rulers to differ from their predecessors? I am tempted to assert that a “classical” or “orthodox” Islam had far more presence in the empire than is currently portrayed. As opposed to there being anomalous periods of conservatism, what accounts for the continuities between, for example, Humayun and Aurangzeb’s reigns?

[Rohan Rajesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into how India, in particular Kashmir, was idealized in the Persianate cultural imagination at the height of the Mughal empire. While this book specifically focused on "Arcadian" Indo-Persian poetry, I think it could have been aided by a more comprehensive look into the general menagerie of Indo-Persian poetry and a more standardized romanization of Persian verses.

[Khayyam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of the Mughal court's encounters with persian.