This book invites students of South Asian history and religion into the world of the Mughal Empire, framing the contemporary debate on Aurangzeb's impact and legacy in accessible and engaging terms. Crucially, the author insists on evaluating the man in terms of the norms and traditions of his own day, and not those of later, more polarized times. Eaton, University of Arizona. Following British historians of the colonial era, Indian nationalists used the last and most controversial of the great Mughals in ways that simultaneously distorted Mughal history and served as a goad to Hindu cultural renewal.
Audrey Truschke's project of looking at Emperor Aurangzeb afresh is thus a welcome and timely one and will interest readers in academia and beyond. In order to practice Islamic law in the empire correctly, Aurangzeb insisted on compiling Islamic law into a codified book that could be much more easily followed. He thus brought together hundreds of scholars of Islam from all over the Muslim world to organize such laws.
It was known as the Fatawa al-Hindiya in the rest of the Muslim world and is well-respected as a compendium of Hanafi law. Using the Fatawa-e-Alamgiri as a guidebook, Aurangzeb sent officials throughout the empire to enact Islamic law and end socially corrupt practices.
As such, alcoholism, gambling, and prostitution were combated by the imperial government. To make up for the loss in tax revenue, Aurangzeb adopted a very simple lifestyle and did not live in a lavish manner as his father had. He is commonly cited as a temple-destroyer and someone who attempted to eliminate non-Muslims in his empire.
For the truth, some more context is necessary. With regards to his attitudes towards Hindus and Sikhs in general, he was not prejudiced nor discriminatory. Dozens of Hindus worked in his royal court as officials and advisers. More non-Muslims in fact were part of his court than the court of Akbar, who is commonly cited as the most religiously tolerant Mughal emperor. With Hindus and Sikhs occupying positions in his government and military, clearly Aurangzeb was not simply a religious bigot that refused to acknowledge the contributions of his non-Muslim subjects.
That he ordered such actions is a historical fact that cannot be disputed. Preservation of temples with Islamic religious justification is a long-running tradition in India. The first Muslim army to come to India in under Muhammad bin Qasim promised religious freedom and security of temples to Hindus and Buddhists.
The same policy had been followed for hundreds of years before the Mughals. However, Aurangzeb did not disregard the Islamic laws regarding protection of religious minorities. The answer lies in the political nature of temples in the s. Hindu and Sikh temples were not just places of worship. They also had political significance. Temples acted as political offices and state property, and the priests that were in charge of them were in the employ of the government.
When seeking to get the support of Hindus in a particular area, Mughal emperors and even Hindu kings in non-Mughal areas would rely on the priests to rally the local population through the temple. For instance, Aurangzeb wrote repeatedly in letters about the safety of roads. He once demoted his son Azam Shah for not effectively dealing with highway robbery.
Aurangzeb struck hard against enemies who threatened the integrity or peace of the Mughal state, no matter their status or religion.
When another son, Prince Akbar, revolted, Aurangzeb drove him out of India, where the prince remained until his death decades later. Over his nearly year rule, Aurangzeb probably destroyed a total of a few dozen Hindu temples. Contemporary Mughal sources do not even mention his execution, probably because, from a state perspective, it was unexceptional. Many moderns perceive this episode as a case where an Islamist king sought to stamp out Sikhism in its early days.
A commonly repeated story is that Aurangzeb asked Tegh Bahadur to convert to Islam and then executed him when the Sikh guru stood firm in his faith. Plentiful evidence attests that Aurangzeb issued orders protecting Hindu and Jain temples, and granted temple associates land and other favours. Aurangzeb even chastised Muslims who troubled pious Brahmins. What the Mughal state protected, however, it could also take away. At times, Aurangzeb destroyed select temples, especially when their associates supported insurgents or otherwise undermined Mughal state interests.
In total, over his nearly year rule, Aurangzeb probably destroyed a few dozen Hindu temples. At the time, people did not draw a firm line between religion and politics, and it was normal to treat temples as legitimate targets of punitive state action. Today, however, the thought of temple-destruction enrages many people. A urangzeb bore the burden of upholding the ideal of Mughal kingship. He wrote in letters about his Mughal ancestors, seeing his kingdom as a precious gift from his forebears.
When in Delhi, Aurangzeb sat on the Peacock Throne, a symbol of Mughal kingship that dazzled onlookers with its many gems. Mughal court rituals were highly formal, and Aurangzeb wore splendid silks and jewels while nobles stood awestruck, arrayed by rank in the Mughal hierarchy. Mughal kingship involved a great deal of latitude, and Aurangzeb availed himself of the opportunity to shape Mughal court culture to reflect his own aesthetic and religious tastes.
For example, like his forefathers, Aurangzeb devoted state financial resources to patronage. But whereas his great-grandfather was known for translating Hindu Sanskrit texts into Persian, his grandfather for his painting studio, and his father for building the Taj Mahal, Aurangzeb sponsored the Fatawa-i Alamgiri , a collection of Hanafi law codes.
Aurangzeb upheld the Mughal tradition of including Hindus in the nobility. For a century, Hindus had constituted roughly 20 per cent of all Mughal nobles. In the second half of his reign, Aurangzeb enlarged by 50 per cent the proportion of Hindus in the Mughal nobility, hardly a course of action that indicated he was bent on destroying Hindus or Hinduism. This rise in the number of Hindu nobles did not prevent anti-Hindu policies from being enacted, such as the jizya tax on most non-Muslims that Aurangzeb began levying in , and a recall of endowed lands given to Hindus in We lack records of state revenues from the jizya , but some evidence suggests that most of the money ended up in the pockets of greedy tax-collectors rather than in the Mughal treasury.
We have better records concerning the recall of endowed lands, and the order was unenforced in many provinces of the empire. In Bengal, for instance, the Mughals actually accelerated their grants of endowed lands to Hindus after The emperor spent his 60s, 70s and 80s living out of tents while he fought for Mughal conquests in central and south India.
At first, his victories were swift. But thereafter Mughal victories lagged. The s and the first seven years of the s saw protracted sieges and weak morale among Mughal soldiers.
Even as an old man, when age required that he be carried around the Deccan and south India on a palanquin, Aurangzeb often personally oversaw military activities.
Often, the true purpose of ahistorically condemning Aurangzeb is to galvanise anti-Muslim sentiments. Aurangzeb seemed to lose himself, and perhaps the Mughal empire too, in southern India. Things went poorly thereafter, however. Enemies of the Mughals grew stronger, and the state began to break apart. This debate thrives, in part, on the stunning contrasts that characterise his reign. Aurangzeb grew the Mughal empire to its greatest extent, adding four new provinces that collectively constituted more than one-quarter of the Mughal kingdom.
Yet he might have overextended imperial resources, positioning the Mughal empire to collapse after his death. He was the richest king of his day, boasting items such as the Timur ruby and the Koh-i-noor diamond. Yet Aurangzeb preferred a simpler life, reciting the Quran and knitting prayer caps by hand. However, many in modern India are uninterested in recovering the historical Aurangzeb, preferring instead to slander a distorted memory of the king. This approach to history as a blank slate that can reflect our modern ideas — even to the extreme of entirely rewriting the past — is dangerous.
We must embrace the project of understanding Aurangzeb on his own terms in order to gain a more accurate perspective on this influential emperor and the world he helped to create. Studying Aurangzeb also helps to challenge modern ignorance and hate by presenting us with a complicated man that we cannot explain by simple reference to modern categories and biases.
They are spreading like branching plants across the globe. Should we rein cities in or embrace their biomorphic potential? Josh Berson.
0コメント