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Of Jewels and Horses: The Career and Patronage of an Iranian Merchant under Shah Jahan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Elizabeth Lambourn
Elizabeth Lambourn*
Affiliation:
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
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Extract

“Seeing that cAli Akbar is a merchant and knowledgeable about jewels and horses it i s probable that he will be able to administer ports in a fitting manner.”

Events of 1056/1646, Lahawrī's Pādshāh Nāmah

Though Cambay is Now a Provincial Backwater, for Over Five Centuries—between the late tenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries A.D.—it was the main port of western India, home to a cosmopolitan population of merchants and traders from all over India and the Islamic world, and a major center of architectural and artistic patronage. Cambay is probably best known among Islamic art historians for its monumental fourteenth-century Friday mosque, the adjacent Kazaruni tomb complex (d.734/1333), and the large body of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Islamic inscriptions and tombstones that survives there. However, the port conceals many Islamic remains that have not been published.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 2003 , pp. 213 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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Footnotes

*

The research on which this article is based was generously funded by the British Academy, the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), the University of London Central Research Fund, and INTACH UK. I am especially grateful to Dr. Paul Losensky, Associate Professor in the Departments of Central Eurasian Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, for polishing and substantially completing my own awkward translations of the relevant passages from Lahawri's Pādshāh Nāmah and to Professor Yahaghi, Professor of Persian Language and Literature at SOAS, and Dr. Sussan Babaie, Assistant Professor of Islamic Art at the University of Michigan, for transcribing and translating the foundation inscriptions.

References

1. Since Lahawri's Pādshāh Nāmah has not been fully translated into English, relevant passages from his text are given in an appendix at the end of this article along with an English translation. For this quote see Appendix II, lines 13–15 in the Persian text and lines 18–20 in the English text for this quote. Lahawri's work is available in a Persian edition, ˓Abd al-Hamid Lahawri, The Badshah nama, 2 vols., Persian text ed. al-Din Ahmad, M. Kabir and ˓Abd al-Rahim, (Calcutta, 1867–68).Google Scholar

2. For the Friday mosque and Kazaruni tomb complex see Burgess, James On the Muhammadan Architecture of Bharoch, Cambay, Dholka, Champanir, and Mahmudabad in Gujarat (London, 1896), 23–29Google Scholar and Plates XVII–XXIV; and more recently Lambourn, Elizabeth “‘A collection of merits…’: Architectural Influences in the Friday Mosque and Kazaruni Tomb Complex at Cambay in Gujarat,” South Asian Studies 17 (2001): 117–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lambourn, Elizabeth “‘Those slain in God's way…’: The martyrdom of ˓Umar al-Kazaruni and his grave at Cambay in Gujarat,” Inscription as Art in the World of Islam, Hofstra University, Long Island, Conference (proceedings in press).Google Scholar For the corpus of Islamic inscriptions at Cambay see Desai, Z. A. “Arabic Inscriptions of the Rajput Period in Gujarat,” Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement (1961): 1–24Google Scholar and Desai, Z. A. “Some Fourteenth Century Epitaphs from Cambay in Gujarat,” Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement (1971): 1–58.Google Scholar

3. Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy (henceforth ARIE), (1954–55), inscs. C 44–45.

4. The reading of the inscription differs in some details from that summed up in the ARIE since these state that the composer and writer of the text, a certain Muhammad son of Haydar Naraqi, included his name in the inscription.

5. There are an additional two inscription slabs built into the qibla wall, above the two side miḥrābs. These appear to relate to an earlier mosque, though not necessarily at this site. The inscriptions record the reconstruction of a mosque that had been destroyed in 1037. 1627-28. Neither has been published though they are listed in the ARIE, (1954–55), insc. C 46.

6. Burgess, James Revised Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Archaeological Survey of India, 1897), 96Google Scholar, entry (3).

7. See for example the mosques of Sayyid ˓Usman, Malik Sha˓ban and Shakar Khan (Plates LXXXIII, LXVIII and XCIII respectively in vol. I of Burgess, James The Muhammadan Architecture of Ahmadabad, (London: Archaeological Survey of Western India, 1900–1905)Google Scholar as well as the Fathi and Isanpur mosques, Plates XLI and XLIII in vol. II. Unfortunately the volumes provide no ground plans of any seventeenth-century mosques in Ahmedabad.

8. de Thevenot, Jean Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri; being the 3rd part of the travels of M. de Thevenot into the Levant and 3rd part of ‘A voyage round the world by Dr. John Francis Gemelli Careri’, ed. Sen, S. (New Delhi, 1949), 22.Google Scholar

9. ˓Ali Muhammad Khan, Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadā, trans. and ed. Lokhandwala, M. F. Mirat-i-Ahmadi. A Persian History of Gujarat (Baroda, 1965), 12.Google Scholar

10. Foster, William The English Factories in India 1646-1650. A Calendar of Documents in the India Office, Westminster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), 63, 68.Google Scholar

11. de Thevenot, Indian Travels, 22.

12. Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste Travels in India. 2 vols., ed. Ball, V. and Crooke, W. (New Delhi, 1995), 1: 6.Google Scholar

13. Campbell, J. M. ed., Gujarat Population: Musalmans and Parsi (Bombay: Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. IX, Part II, 1899), 131Google Scholar, note 1.

14. M. Nazim, “Inscriptions of the Bombay Presidency,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1933–34), insc. No. 3422, 32–33 and plate XIX (b) and insc. No. 3421, 33 and plate XIX (c). The language and epigraphic style of these inscriptions correspond perfectly to the date given in the chronogram. Substantial portions of the mosque have survived and it is planned to publish the structure shortly.

15. The most extensive work on brick and timber construction in Gujarat though his research focuses on domestic architecture, is Pramar, V. S. Haveli: Wooden Houses and Mansions of Gujarat (Ahmedabad, 1989).Google Scholar

16. Burgess, Muhammadan Architetcure.

17. Michell, George and Shah, Snehal eds., Ahmadabad (Bombay, 1988).Google Scholar

18. In spite of this he is not mentioned in Gokhale's history of seventeenth-century Surat, although this work provides the biographies of a number of administrators of Surat and Cambay. See Gokhale, Balkrishna G. Surat in the Seventeenth Century, A Study in Urban History of Pre-modern India, (London, 1979).Google Scholar

19. The Pādshāh Nāmah was used as a source for several other histories which have been translated into English, notably ˓Inayāt Khan's Shāh Jahān Nāmah (˓Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama. An abridged history of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, compiled by his royal librarian, ed. and completed by Begley, W. E. and Desai, Z. A. [New Delhi, 1990]Google Scholar) and the eighteenth-century history of Gujarat the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī (Baroda, 1965)Google Scholar which seems to reproduce Lahawri's text almost verbatim.

20. Appendix I lines 2–3 in the Persian and 2–5 in the English translation. The same information is repeated in the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī, 196.

21. Jahangir, Tuzūk. Eng. trans. Rogers, A. ed. Beveridge, H. 2 vols. (1909–14, reprint New Delhi, 1989), 1: 417.Google Scholar Repeated in the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī, 196. The translator of the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī states that ˓Ali Akbar settled in Cambay during the twenty-first year of Shah Jahan’s reign. However, this appears to be a misinterpretation of the Persian. Hazrat-i Jannat Makani was the honorific title given to Jahangir after his death. Furthermore, ˓Ali Akbar could not have settled at Cambay in the twenty-first year of Shah Jahan's reign when he was already appointed to administer the port in the twentieth year of his reign.

22. Appendix I, lines 9–10 in the Persian and line 13 in the English, also Appendix II, lines 2–3 in the Persian and line 1 in the English.

23. Appendix II, lines 3–5 in the Persian and lines 5–6 in the English. The same information is given in Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī, 196.

24. Foster, The English Factories, 196.

25. Foster, The English Factories, 63, 68.

26. Appendix II, line 14 in the Persian and lines 18–19 in the English, repeated in the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī, 196.

27. Foster, The English Factories, 130. ˓Ali Akbar is not mentioned by name, only the words “our Governour” are used in this passage. However, given the complaints against ˓Ali Akbar cited in numerous English letters, it seems likely that the person referred to is ˓Ali Akbar, the administrator of the ports of Surat and Cambay.

28. See Appendices I and II.

29. For the main study of the pre-Mughal period see Digby, S. War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate: A Study of Military Supplies, (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar As far as I am aware there is no comparable study of horses in India for the Mughal and post-Mughal periods though aspects of this trade are regularly mentioned in various studies, for example: Chaudhuri, K. N. Asia before Europe. Economy and Civlisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990), 277-85Google Scholar; Dale, Stephen F. Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (Cambridge, 1994), 25–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moosvi, S. The Economy of the Mughal Empire, c.1595: A Statistical Study (Delhi, 1987), 242.Google Scholar

30. Appendix I. Similar horse-collecting missions initiated directly by Mughal emperors are described during the reigns Jahangir and Akbar (Dale, 25).

31. Appendix I, lines 9–11 in the Persian and lines 13–5 in the English translation. The same information is given in the Shāh Jahān Nāmah and in the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī.

32. Appendix II. The same information repeated in the Shāh Jahān Nāmah and the Mir˒’āt-i Aḥmadī. There is an error in the passage translated and edited by Begley and Desai. They calculate the equivalent of the hijrī date 20 Ramadan 1056 as 19 October 1647, whereas it is in fact equivalent to 30 October 1646 in the Gregorian calendar (I. Khan, 365). The Shāh Jahān Nāmah also indicates that the court was then encamped “somewhere between the Behat and Chenab” in the Punjab.

33. Appendix II lines 9–10 in the Persian and lines 13–14 in the English translation.

34. Meaning that ˓Ali Akbar held a rank of five hundred cavalry but actually commanded only three hundred. ˓Ali Akbar sawdāgār (merchant) is also listed among the manṣab holders of five hundred at the end of Lahawri's work (Lahawrī, 2: 747).

35. Appendix II, lines 13–16 in the Persian and lines 18–21 in the English. The same events are recounted almost verbatim in the Mir˒āt-i Aḥmadī (M. A. Khan, 196). Another version is given in the Shāh Jahān Nāmah which says that “in requital for his service, ˓Ali Akbar was loaded with favours and had his brightest words realized from the munificent presence by being invested with the government of Bandar Surat and Cambay, as well as a suitable manṣab” (I. Khan, 365). ˓Ali Akbar's appointment is also mentioned in the English factory records of Surat in a letter dated 16 December 1646 (Foster, 620). By this period the administrations of Surat and Cambay were often, though not always, linked since Cambay had decreased in importance as a port while Surat was on the rise. However, the port and the fort at Surat were always placed under separate administration. For further details on the administration of seaports, and Surat in particular, see Saran, P. The Provincial Government of the Mughals 1526-1658 (Bombay, 1973), 198–202.Google Scholar

36. Gokhale, Surat, 54 and M. A. Khan, 183.

37. If this reasoning is correct it would also mean that the foundation took place sometime between the end of Ramadan and the end of Dhu’l-Hijja 1056 or sometime between early November 1646 and 5 February 1647. The mosque was presumably finished quite quickly since ˓Ali Akbar died just over a year later on 26 Dhu’l-Qa˓da 1057/23 December 1647.

38. Foster, The English Factories, 185.

39. Foster, The English Factories, 196.

40. Foster, The English Factories, 196–97.

41. Foster, The English Factories, 196.

42. M. A. Khan, 197.

43. Foster, The English Factories, 197.

44. There was no time during fieldwork to obtain permission to take a sample for formal testing.

45. For the of history pietre dure decoration in India see P. A. Andrews, “Parčīnākārī”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. CD-ROM Edition, v.1.0. (Leiden, 1999) and the extensive footnotes in Koch, Ebba “Shah Jahan and Orpheus: The Pietre Dure Decoration and the Programme of the Throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi,” in Mughal Art and Ideology: Collected Essays, (New Delhi, 2001), 61–129.Google Scholar

46. See Lambourn, E. “The English Factory or “Kothi” gateway at Cambay—an unpublished Tughluq structure from Gujarat,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 65, (2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. The only vaguely comparative material at Cambay is a sixteenth-century miḥrāb located in an open-air grave platform in the Lal Mahalla quarter, which still follows thi s traditional heavy Gujarati type. It has a heavy relief-carved lintel decorated with miniature niches, while the center of the niche is occupied by a depiction of a suspended lamp. This miḥrāb is not dated but is associated with two graves commemorating deaths in 928/1522 and 979/1571, and in all probability can be dated to the sixteenth century. Neither the miḥrāb nor the headstones have been published but are recorded in the ARIE, 1959–60, inscs. D 101 and D102.

48. Perhaps the easiest example to quote is that of the famous Kufic bismillāh design known from the headstone of ˓Umar al-Kazaruni (d.734/1333) at Cambay. This design was revived in the 1330s, from an earlier attempt at the same design in the 1280s. After a lull of half a century in which the design features on no known gravestones, it was revived and updated again in the 1410s and became standard in all fifteenth-century headstones produced at the port. The lamp design that it replaced was left aside, but was revived again in the nineteenth century for the headstones of the nawabs of Cambay.

49. Shokoohy, Mehrdad Bhadresvar. The Oldest Islamic Monuments in India, (Leiden, 1988), 16–17.Google Scholar

50. Asher, Catherine B. Architecture of Mughal India (New Delhi, 1995), 135.Google Scholar

51. Michell and Shah, Ahmedabad, plate 43.

52. The technique is widely found on the later monuments of Jahangir and on those of Shah Jahan: on the mausoleum of I˓timad al-Dawlah at Agra (1036-37/1626-28), the cenotaph of Jahangir at Shahdara in Lahore (1037-47/1628-38), as part of the reconstruction of the Red Fort at Agra (1037-46/1628-37), throughout the Taj Mahal (1041-52/1632-43) and in the Red Fort in Delhi (1048/58/1639-48).

53. The argument is summed up neatly in Koch, “Shah Jahan and Orpheus,” n. 32.

54. The Friday mosque at Ahmedabad also includes large square blocks of a blackish stone that are built up into the wall above the central miḥrāb, see Plate 14.

55. R. Nath also cited pietre dure inlay work in the temple of Rishabhadeva at Ranakpur in Rajasthan founded in 1438 A.D., however, Ebba Koch rightly casts doubt on this assertion. See Koch, “Shah Jahan and Orpheus,” 77, n. 32.

56. Gujarati miḥrāb niches were frequently marked by a relief-carved lotus rosette, the inlaid rosettes thus continue the standard rules of miḥrāb design.

57. Burgess, Muhammadan Architecture, 1: Plate XLV 3 and 4, and Soundara Rajan, K. V. Ahmadabad (New Delhi, 1980), 25.Google Scholar In his study of mother-of-pearl overlaid furniture Simon Digby dates this cenotaph to the mid-fifteenth century A.D.. See Digby, Simon “The mother-of-pearl overlaid furniture of Gujarat,” in Skelton, R. Topsfield, A. Stronge, S. and Crill, R. eds., Facets of Indian Art (London, 1986), 214.Google Scholar

58. M. Brand, “The Khalji Complex in Shadiabad Mandu” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986), 255, quoting from the Ma˒āthīr-i Maḥmūd Shāhī of Shihab Hakim, Bodleian Ms. Elliot 237, fol. 109a.

59. Brand, “The Khalji Complex,” 262, 255. One may wonder whether the disappearance of inlay work at Ahmedabad after the mid-fifteenth century is to be explained by Maḥmud Khaljī's search for craftsmen for his projects at Mandu.

60. Brand, “The Khalji Complex,” 162, citing the excavation report by Barnes.

61. Brand, “The Khalji Complex,”160.

62. “Numerous slabs of sandstone … inlaid with white, black and yellow marble in the form of small mihrabs. In addition diamond shaped pieces of black, white and yellow marble have been found,” Brand, “The Khalji Complex,” 174, citing the excavation report by Barnes.

63. For an overview see Atil, E. Renaissance of Islam. Art of the Mamluks, (Washington, DC, 1981), 198–99 and Cat. 107.Google Scholar Also Zakariya, Mona “Technique de construction du mihrab mamelouke,” in Hommages à la mémoire de Serge Sauneron, ed. Vercoutter, Jean 2 vols. (Cairo, 1979).Google Scholar

64. Flood, Finbarr B. “Light in Stone. The Commemoration of the Prophet in Umayyad Architecture,” in Bayt al-Maqdis. Jerusalem and Early Islam, ed. Johns, J. (Oxford, 1999), 311–60.Google Scholar

65. Flood, “Light in Stone,” 316, 318.

66. Flood, “Light in Stone,” 319.

67. Flood, “Light in Stone,” 321 and Fig. 1.

68. Flood, “Light in Stone,” 320–21.

69. M. Brand, “The Khalji Complex,” 255, quoting from the Ma˒āthīr-i Maḥmūd Shāhī of Shihab Hakim.

70. Janaki, V. A. The Commerce of Cambay from the Earliest Period to the Nineteenth Century (Baroda, 1980), 27, 43Google Scholar (giving various descriptions of these crafts). See also Tavernier, 1995, 1:56.

71. See Digby, “The mother-of-pearl overlaid furniture.”

72. See Digby, “The mother-of-pearl overlaid furniture,” 217–18, Fig. 6, a casket in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IS. 155-1866) decorated with “spade-shaped tree[s] of slightly scalloped outline” and Fig. 7 a caskets from Green Vaults, Dresden, recorded in an inventory of 1602 A.D., which is decorated with a much simpler and more abstracted tree design.

73. Battuta, Ibn The Rehla of Ibn Battuta (India, Maldive Islands and Ceylon), ed. Husain, Mahdi (Baroda, 1976), 172.Google Scholar For the Arabic original see Battuta, Ibn Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, Arabic text ed. and French trans., Defrémery, C. and Sanguinetti, B. R. 4 vols., (Paris, 1914–26), 4: 53.Google Scholar

74. For example ˓Ali ibn Husayn al-Masudi, Murūj al-dhahab wa ma˓ādin al-jawhar, Arabic text edition and French translation by de Meynard, B. and de Courteille, P. ed. Pellat, C. 5 vols. (Paris, 1962–79), 1: 154.Google Scholar

75. The literature in this area is quite considerable and this article only mentions the material most relevant to this conclusion.

76. Desai, “Arabic Inscriptions of the Rajput Period,” 4–7.

77. Ibn Battuta, The Rehla, 172–73.

78. See Lambourn, “A Collection of Merits.”

79. “Des cas de cet ordre se présentent par dizaines à la lecture des sources,” Aubin, J. “Marchands de Mer Rouge et du Golfe Persique au tournant des 15è et 16è siècles,” in Marchands et Hommes d’Affaires Asiatiques dans l’Océan Indien et la Mer de Chine, 13è-20è siècles, ed. Aubin, J. and Lombard, D. (Paris, 1988), 89.Google Scholar

80. Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire, (New Delhi, 1993), 154–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 165–68 and footnotes. His life is one of the few to be covered by a full biography, see Sarkar, J. N. The Life of Mir Jumla. 2nd ed. (Delhi, 1979).Google Scholar

81. Aubin, “Marchands de Mer Rouge,” 89 (unfortunately the article has no footnotes or references).

82. There is an extensive bibliography on Maḥmud Gawan, of which one may mention Sherwani, H. K. Mahmud Gawan: The Great Bahmani Wazir (Allahabad, 1942)Google Scholar and relevant sections in Yazdani, G. Bidar. Its History and Monuments (Delhi, 1995).Google Scholar

83. Aubin, Jean “Les princes d'Ormuz du XIIIe au XVe siècle,” Journal Asiatique 241 (1953): 89–99Google Scholar; Shokoohy, Mehrdad “Architecture of the Sultanate of Ma'bar in Madura, and other Muslim Monuments in South India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1, (1991): 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84. Jamal al-Din Ibrahim's career and those of his relatives are well documented in Aubin, “Les princes d’Ormuz,” 77–138, based on the main source for his life, the Persian historian, Wassaf.

85. Sircar, D. C. “Rashtrakuta Charters from Chinchani”, Epigraphia Indica 32 (1957-58): 47.Google Scholar

86. Moraes, G. M. The Kadamba Kula. A History of Ancient and Medieval Karnataka (Bombay, 1931), 185-86.Google Scholar

87. Perhaps a copyist's error for ghuzz, a breed of horse mentioned in the second passage, see line 5 of the Persian text below (and line 7 of the English translation).