ASHA: Blast From The Past

The relationship between the Mughal state and Hindu temples remains trapped within binary narratives of either unqualified tolerance or systematic destruction. This essay argues for a fundamental reconsideration based on verified documentary and epigraphical evidence. Drawing upon the theological framework of the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, the documentary archive of the Vrindavan region, preserved and made accessible through the efforts of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, and epigraphical evidence from temple inscriptions, this essay demonstrates that the Mughal state maintained a secular and multi-religious character that found concrete expression in the sustained patronage of temples across successive reigns. Far from being an aberration, the patronage of temples by Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and even Aurangzeb reflects the institutionalisation of sulḥ-i kul (universal peace) as a coherent ideology of statecraft.

Beyond Binary Narratives

The history of Hindu–Muslim relations in pre-modern India has long been held hostage by a false dichotomy: either the Mughal empire was a paradise of secular tolerance, or it was a destructive iconoclastic machine. Both narratives fail to capture the lived reality of the early modern period. The secular character of Mughal rule, understood not as the absence of religion but as the principled impartiality of the state toward diverse religious communities, is among the best-documented features of the empire, yet it remains systematically obscured by contemporary polemics.

The sacred geography of Vrindavan offers an especially revealing case study. The revival of this landscape as a centre of Krishna devotion occurred not in an ancient pre-Islamic past but specifically within the early modern Mughal ecumene. The Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, as articulated by scholars such as Shri Shrivatsa Goswami of Vrindavan, developed a theology of divine love (prema) that refused to separate the sacred from the material. As Goswami has elaborated, the soil, trees, and rivers of Vrindavan are not metaphors for the divine but manifestations of bhakti itself, a living theology that paradoxically required the patronage of Muslim emperors to build its most magnificent temples.

This essay proceeds in five parts. First, it discusses what the Vrindavan documents are and how we got them, and then goes on to examine the ideological foundations of Mughal secularism in the doctrine of Sulḥ-i Kul. Third, it presents the documentary evidence for temple patronage across the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Fourth, it reconsiders the complex legacy of Aurangzeb, drawing on epigraphical evidence often overlooked. Fifth, it situates temple patronage within the broader social history of Braj as recovered by Habib and Mukherjee, demonstrating that the secular framework operated from the imperial court down to the village level.

The Preservation of the Vrindavan Documents: The Role of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami

Before examining the content of the Vrindavan Documents, it is essential to understand the remarkable circumstances of their preservation and the crucial role played by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami in making this archive available to historians.

The Vrindavan Documents, a treasure trove of Mughal-era Persian and Braj records, were preserved for centuries by the Chaitanya Goswamis of Vrindavan. These documents include Mughal imperial decrees (farmans), land grant records, and sales deeds that provide an unparalleled window into the social, economic, and political life of the Braj region during the Mughal period.¹

The modern scholarly engagement with these documents began in the 1970s, when Tarapada Mukherjee (1928-1990), a faculty member at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, began collecting Mughal-era documents that were in the possession of the Chaitanya Goswamis and their temples in the Vrindavan–Mathura region.² It was Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, a renowned mystic and scholar of Vrindavan, who played an indispensable role in facilitating this effort. As Irfan Habib has repeatedly acknowledged, it was owing to the “valuable support from Shri Shrivats Goswami” that the collection grew and became accessible to academic research.³

In a letter to Habib dated 20 October 1986, Mukherjee proposed that they work in collaboration on the Persian portion of the documents he was collecting. With the support of Shrivatsa Goswami, the collection expanded significantly. In 1987 and 1989-90, Habib and Mukherjee published several ground-breaking papers based on these documents, evaluating Mughal relations with the Goswamis during the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, as well as the nature of land rights in the latter half of the sixteenth century.⁴

Tragically, Mukherjee passed away on 7 July 1990. However, Habib continued working on the project, honouring a promise made to his late colleague. He sought the approval of Dr. Emma Mukherjee, his friend’s widow, and carried the work forward. Over the decades that followed, Habib worked intermittently on what became known as the “Vrindavan Documents,” deciphering, transcribing, arranging, numbering, analysing, and publishing articles and book chapters based on them.⁵

The documents analysed by Habib and Mukherjee fall into two principal categories: (1) Mughal orders concerning grants to temples and their custodians; and (2) sales deeds of rights to land bought or sold by temple servants or their devotees. The Persian documents are written in shikaste, a difficult-to-read cursive script, which required considerable expertise to decipher. Habib’s deep historical and geographical knowledge of the period, combined with his ability to work with Persian sources, enabled him to discern forgeries from authentic documents, correct faulty dates, and identify defective seals.⁶

Thanks to the preservation efforts initiated by the Goswamis and facilitated by Shrivatsa Goswami, and the subsequent scholarly labour of Habib and Mukherjee, the Vrindavan Documents are now available for research. The original documents are housed in the institute run by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami at Vrindavan, the Sri Caitanya Prema Samsthana, as well as in the library of the Centre of Advanced Study at Aligarh Muslim University.⁷

Shri Shrivatsa Goswami (born 27 October 1950) is himself an eminent Indologist and Gaudiya Vaishnava religious leader. A graduate in philosophy from Banaras Hindu University, he has taught philosophy and religion at his alma mater and was a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions in the mid-1970s. He has been associated with the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (serving on the board of editors of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophers) and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (which sponsors his Vraja Research Project).⁸ His scholarly publications focus on Vaishnava philosophy and theology, as well as the religious culture of the Braj region. In recognition of his contributions to interfaith cooperation, he serves as the honorary president of Religions for Peace.⁹

The preservation of the Vrindavan Documents stands as a testament to the trust between the Goswami tradition and modern scholarship, a trust embodied in the person of Shrivatsa Goswami, who made possible the historical reconstruction that follows.

The Ideological Foundations of Mughal Secularism: Sulḥ-i Kul

The Mughal commitment to religious pluralism was not merely pragmatic but explicitly ideological. Under Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), the state formally adopted the policy of sulḥ-i kul, variously translated as “universal peace,” “peace with all,” or “absolute peace”, as the cornerstone of enlightened rule.¹⁰

As Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s court historian and principal ideologue, articulated in the Akbarnama, the Mughal emperor stood above all religious and ethnic groups, mediating among them and ensuring that justice and peace prevailed for all subjects regardless of their faith. The concept of sulḥ-i kul guaranteed that all religions and schools of thought had freedom of expression, with the sole condition that they did not undermine the authority of the state or fight among themselves.¹¹

This was not merely theoretical. The policy was implemented through concrete state measures:

“The nobility under the Mughals comprised a composite body and the Muslims, the Hindus, the Iranis, the Turanis, the Afghans, the Rajputs, the Deccanis all were given positions and awards purely on the basis of their service and loyalty to the king, and not on the basis of their religion.”¹²

Most significantly, Akbar abolished the tax on pilgrimage in 1563 and the jizya (poll tax on non-Muslim subjects) in 1564, explicitly recognising that these levies were based on religious discrimination. Instructions were sent to officers throughout the empire to follow the precept of sulḥ-i kul in administration. As Professor Shireen Moosvi has noted, drawing on contemporary chronicles: “Akbar travelled incognito from Mathura to Agra to realise that it is not justified to tax a person on pilgrimage. On his return, Akbar abolished the Pilgrim tax.”¹³

The translation projects of Akbar’s court further demonstrate the intellectual commitment to pluralism. Moosvi has documented that “Akbar supervised translations of Singhasan Battisi, Atharva Veda, Mahabharata, Harivamsa and other scriptures into Persian.”¹⁴ These were not merely political gestures but reflected a genuine intellectual engagement with India’s diverse religious traditions, an engagement that Abu’l Fazl himself theorised as proto-nationalism, identifying Akbar with India and with a vision of religious conciliation.¹⁵

Documentary Evidence: Temple Grants under Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan

The Vrindavan Documents provide concrete evidence of systematic Mughal temple patronage. Contrary to claims that only Akbar patronised temples, the documents demonstrate continuity across multiple reigns. According to Habib and Mukherjee’s analysis of Mughal farmans:

“Akbar enlarged and consolidated all grants to temples and temple-servants in the Mathura region by his farmans [imperial edicts].”¹⁶

These grants supported thirty-five temples in Vrindavan, Mathura, and their environs, providing systematic state support for Vaishnava and Brahminical institutions.

The evidence for continuity under Jahangir is particularly striking:

“Jehangir not only continued these grants, but substantially added to them. He added at least two temples to the list of the 35 already supported by Akbar’s grant of 1598. In addition, he provided land for families of temple sevaks [servants]. Jehangir also visited Vrindavan temple in 1620.”¹⁷

This pattern is further corroborated by a royal farman issued by Jahangir in his 16th regnal year (1621 CE), which is preserved in the National Museum collection, New Delhi.¹⁸ This document orders the continuation of 50 bighas of land to the pujaris (priests) of a temple situated at Ankpad, explicitly mentioning that the jagir (land grant) had been originally granted by his late father, Emperor Akbar. The farman further directs local officers, including Chaudhris, Qanungos, and Muqaddams, not to disturb the priests and to let them live peacefully forever.¹⁹

The secular principle underlying such grants is unmistakable: the state recognised and protected religious institutions of all communities as a matter of routine administration, not as an exceptional act of royal generosity.

Shah Jahan’s reign, despite his reputation for greater orthodoxy, also continued this tradition. In one of his farmans issued by him, it is specifically mentioned that worship in the temple was “parastish i Ilāhi (prayer to God), as was namaz. Historical records indicate that “grants were issued for the repair of a number of temples in the reigns of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, after they had been destroyed during war.”²⁰

Aurangzeb: Complexity, Not Contradiction

The reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) has often been seen as a decisive break from the secular policies of his predecessors. The reimposition of jizya in 1679 and documented instances of temple destruction have led many to characterise his rule as one of religious intolerance. However, a careful examination of the full evidentiary record, including epigraphical sources, reveals a more complex picture consistent with the secular framework of the state, albeit with a different emphasis.

The policy of providing grants for the repair of temples destroyed during war continued under Aurangzeb as it had under Shah Jahan.²¹ More significantly, epigraphical evidence from temple inscriptions themselves documents Aurangzeb’s patronage of Hindu religious institutions.

An Allahabad-based historian, Pradeep Kesherwani, has documented the case of the ancient Someshwar Mahadev temple on the banks of the Sangam in Arail. According to Kesherwani’s research:

“The pillar has 15 sentences in Sanskrit inscribed on it mentioning, ‘The ruler of the country visited the temple in 1674 and gave heavy grants to the temple, both in form of land and money.'”²²

While the inscription has become partially illegible due to the regular application of vermilion, its existence and content have been documented by multiple sources.²³

The historical record of Aurangzeb’s temple grants was also attested to in a formal proceeding before the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. On July 27, 1977, former Allahabad mayor Vishamber Nath Pandey (who later became Governor of Odisha) informed the House that during his tenure as chairman of the Allahabad Nagar Palika, a dispute over a temple came before him. One of the parties presented documents regarding grants by Aurangzeb. The matter was referred to a committee headed by Justice T. B. Sapru, which sought documents from all temples that had received jagir (land) or money as donation from Aurangzeb. Pandey stated:

“Several temples, including the Mahakaleshwar temple of Ujjain, the Balaji temple of Chitrakoot, the Umanand temple of Guwahati, Jain temples of Saranjay, and some temples of South India, produced such testimonials before the committee.”²⁴

This duality, temple destruction in some contexts, temple patronage in others, is not evidence of incoherence. Rather, it reflects the pragmatic logic of pre-modern statecraft operating within a secular framework. Temple destruction typically occurred in politically sensitive regions, often following rebellions or as part of military campaigns against recalcitrant elites. Temple patronage, by contrast, occurred in stable regions where imperial authority was secure and where supporting local religious institutions served to legitimise Mughal sovereignty. Both policies were instruments of the same imperial project: the maintenance of Mughal political control over a diverse subcontinent.²⁵

The Social World of Temple Patronage: Evidence from the Vrindavan Documents

The significance of these grants extends beyond the merely political. The integration of temples into the Mughal administrative order reflects a deeper social reality in which the secular character of the state was actively maintained at every level of society.

Significantly, as the documents reveal, Hindu–Muslim religious tensions were not a significant feature of Mughal-era Braj Bhum. Even in the reign of Aurangzeb (Alamgir), who is often accused of religious intolerance, the dynasty’s longstanding patronage of the Goswamis continued apace. In 1704, for example, Mukhtar Khan, then governor of Agra, ordered an annual payment of one rupee from every village across 18 parganas totalling roughly Rs. 2,000 (a tidy sum for those days) to Brajanand, the presumed head of the Govind Dev temple in Vrindavan.²⁶

The evidence for amiable everyday relations is extensive:

“The presence of Muslim mendicants in the Vrindavan–Mathura region, the willingness of the Goswamis to feed Hindu and Muslim beggars alike, the reality of conversion to as well as from Islam (the latter with no official comment by Muslim religious authorities), the dependence by non-Muslims on the qazi courts to register and authenticate documents, the use of Islamic expressions such as ‘Allahu Akbar‘ (‘God is great’) and ‘Jazak Allah‘ (‘May God reward you’) by non-Muslim correspondents, the existence of Muslims among panch notables, and evidence that Muslims acted as sellers to non-Muslims and witnesses for non-Muslims all point to relatively amiable everyday religious relations.”²⁷

Tensions, when they do appear in the documents, generally pitted different Goswami lineages against each other or Goswamis against other Vaishnavite sects such as the Radha-vallabhis, Haridasis, and Ramanandis, not Hindus against Muslims. And each side sought to deploy alliances with local Mughal officials to strengthen their hand vis-à-vis their co-religionist competitors.²⁸

The Mughal state emerges from these documents as a remarkably effective protector of property rights. The Goswamis were anxious to record even their pettiest transactions in Persian, recognising that the Mughal state had become an effective guarantor of their rights in both town and country.²⁹ This trust in the state’s legal framework is itself powerful evidence of the secular character of Mughal governance.

The Mughal State as a Secular Formation

The evidence presented above, preserved through the efforts of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, analysed by Habib and Mukherjee, and corroborated by epigraphical sources, necessitates a fundamental reconsideration of how we understand the Mughal state’s relationship with religion. The Mughal state was secular not in the sense of being irreligious or anti-religious, but in the sense of maintaining an impartial stance toward the diverse religious communities under its rule.

The continuity of these policies across multiple reigns, from Akbar through Aurangzeb, demonstrates that sulḥ-i kul was not merely the idiosyncratic policy of a single enlightened ruler but a coherent state ideology that transcended individual emperors. The fact that even Aurangzeb, despite his personal orthodoxy, continued to issue land grants to temples in various parts of the empire, and that temple priests themselves preserved these grants as the basis for their continued claims for generations, speaks to the institutionalisation of this secular framework.

As this essay has shown, the temples of Vrindavan were built with Mughal support and preserved through Mughal grants. The original documents that attest to this history remain housed in the institute run by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami at Vrindavan, a living testament to the trust between a Hindu religious tradition and the Mughal state, and to the possibility of religious pluralism as a coherent and durable basis for state power.

This history offers a profound lesson for our own polarised times. The Mughal model of secular governance, rooted not in atheism or religious indifference but in the principled impartiality of a sovereign who serves as the guarantor of peace among diverse communities, represents an important alternative to both European-style secularism and contemporary religious nationalism.

Footnotes

¹ Irfan Habib and Tarapada Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times: The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020), 1-5.

² Munis D. Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, published online 21 February 2024.

³ Farhat Nasreen, “Layers of History Documented,” The Book Review 45, no. 1 (January 2021). As Nasreen notes: “With valuable support from Shri Shrivats Goswami, a renowned mystic of Vrindavan, the collection grew. In fact Habib repeatedly thanks the past and present gosā’ins who facilitated the preservation and the eventual use of these documents.”

⁴ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.

⁵ Nasreen, “Layers of History Documented.” Habib writes: “It was largely owing to the vision and effort of co-author Tarapada Mukherjee (1928-90), that an exceptionally large amount of very valuable documentary material became available to the historians of Mughal India.” See also Shafey Kidwai, “Two intellectuals across disciplines collaborate to bring out a book on the region of Braj under the Mughals,” Siasat.com, 6 December 2021.

⁶ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.

⁷ Ibid. For the Vrindaban Research Institute’s manuscript collection, see V.B. Gosvami, comp., A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Vrindaban Research Institute, ed. R.D. Gupta and R. Shastri (Vrindaban: Vrindaban Research Institute, 1991). For Shrivatsa Goswami’s institute, see “Shrivatsa Goswami,” Wikipedia.

⁸ “Shrivatsa Goswami,” Wikipedia.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ On sulḥ-i kul, see Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1907–1910), vol. III, 366–367; and a number of papers contributed by M Athar Ali, Irfan Habib and Shireen Moosvi.

¹¹ Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, 203–204.

¹² NCERT, Themes in Indian History, Part II, Chapter 5, section on “Composite Nobility.”

¹³ Professor Shireen Moosvi, remarks at the symposium on Akbar’s 477th birth anniversary, Aligarh Muslim University, October 2019, reported in “Of Akbar’s Religious Tolerance, Administration and Relevance,” NDTV, 15 October 2019. See also Shireen Moosvi, Episodes in the Life of Akbar (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005), 67–69.

¹⁴ Moosvi, remarks at AMU symposium, NDTV report, 2019.

¹⁵ See Abu’l Fazl’s introduction to the Ain-i Akbari, translated in H. Blochmann, The Ain i Akbari (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873), vol. I, 17–20.

¹⁶ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 42.

¹⁷ Ibid., 45.

¹⁸ Jahangir, Farman regarding continuation of 50 bighas land to the pujaris of the temple at Ankpad, 16th regnal year (1621 CE), National Museum, New Delhi, Accession No. 92.16/9049. Available at: https://museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/nat_del-92-16-9049

¹⁹ Ibid. The farman explicitly states: “The aforesaid 50 bighas of land granted by His late Majesty [Akbar] are continued to the said pujaris.”

²⁰ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 48. For the specific case of temple repairs under Shah Jahan, see also the discussion in Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals, Part II (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2005), 312–313.

²¹ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 48.

²² Pradeep Kesherwani, research on Someshwar Mahadev temple inscriptions, cited in “Aurangzeb donated grants to temples, claims Allahabad historian,” The Economic Times, 13 September 2015.

²³ Ibid. The report notes that “the inscription has turned partially illegible after devotees applied vermilion regularly.”

²⁴ Vishamber Nath Pandey, statement before the Rajya Sabha, Rajya Sabha Debates, Vol. 92, No. 7, 27 July 1977, cited in “Aurangzeb donated grants to temples,” The Economic Times, 13 September 2015.

²⁵ For a balanced assessment of Aurangzeb’s policies, see Satish Chandra, Medieval India, 340–345; and John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 170–176.

²⁶ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid. See also Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 73, for a document recording a dispute between Damodardas Radhaballabh and Kishan Chaitan resolved through Mughal intervention.

²⁹ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 67–70. See also Kidwai, “Two intellectuals across disciplines.”

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

Note: Attempt has been consciously made to cite only basic works which are available in public domain.

The reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb ‘Ālamgīr (r. 1658-1707) occupies a singular place in the legal and intellectual history of South Asian Islam. If Akbar came to be remembered for experiments in sovereignty that seemed to place the emperor above the competing claims of jurists, theologians, and Sufi divines, Aurangzeb’s memory became closely tied to an opposite movement: the restoration of a more visibly sharīʿah-minded idiom of kingship, the strengthening of the place of the ‘ulamā’ in the imperial order, and the sponsorship of the monumental Ḥanafī compendium known as the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī, or al-Fatāwá al-Hindiyyah.¹ Yet the significance of this text lies not merely in imperial patronage. It lies more fundamentally in the way it crystallized a long Indian engagement with Ḥanafī fiqh, gathered together authoritative rulings dispersed over centuries, and placed juristic discourse in a new relationship with Mughal governance. Properly understood, the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī was neither simply an abstract manual of law nor a modern code; it was a vast juristic digest that simultaneously preserved the cumulative structure of Ḥanafī legal reasoning and enhanced the capacity of the Mughal state to govern through a more uniform and authoritative legal language.²

Central to this achievement was the figure of Aurangzeb himself. While Alan M. Guenther rightly cautions against reducing the emperor’s motivations to pure piety or pure expediency, the historical record demonstrates that Aurangzeb was not merely a patron but an active, engaged, and decisive force in the compilation’s creation.³ His role transcended the traditional model of royal sponsorship; he functioned as a sovereign deeply involved in the juristic enterprise, shaping the text’s content, monitoring its progress, and ultimately using it to redefine the relationship between imperial authority and Islamic law.

The Historical and Juristic Precedent

The relationship between temporal power and religious authority has been a persistent tension in Islamic history. From the earliest caliphs, Muslim sovereigns required legal legitimation and practical guidance, while the jurists (fuqahā) sought to preserve the autonomy of the sharīʿah from direct absorption into political power.⁴ This structural tension persisted in South Asia. Some ‘ulamā’ accepted offices as qāżīs or muftīs under royal patronage; others preferred a critical or semi-detached stance toward the state. The evolution of the madhāhib (legal schools), and especially the Ḥanafī school, provided a durable framework for transmitting legal authority across regions and generations. Originating in the teachings of Abū Ḥanīfah (d. 767) and his disciples Abū Yūsuf (d. 798) and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī (d. 805), the Ḥanafī school developed a method giving prominence to reasoned argument and the cumulative authority of prior jurists.⁵ Over time, its rulings were elaborated in commentaries, abridgements, responsa collections, and compendia that became normative for later scholars.

In India, Ḥanafī fiqh arrived already furnished with a mature textual tradition from Transoxiana and the wider Persianate world. Works such as al-Marghīnānī’s Hidāyah (d. 1196) became foundational teaching and reference texts.⁶ However, Indian Muslim scholars did not remain mere consumers of Central Asian and Middle Eastern jurisprudence. They began to produce their own compendia and fatwā collections, selecting from prior authorities in ways that responded to Indian conditions. The Fatāwá-i Ghiyāthiyyah (13th century), the Fatāwá-i Tātār Khānī (14th century), and later Indian juristic works demonstrate that by the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal periods, India had become a productive centre of Ḥanafī legal scholarship in its own right.⁷ The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī emerged from this long trajectory. It was not an isolated eruption of Aurangzebian zeal but the culmination of centuries of juristic accumulation, adaptation, and regionalization within the Ḥanafī school.

Legitimacy, Piety, and the Imperative for Codification

The political context of Aurangzeb’s accession is essential to understanding why this compilation assumed such importance. Aurangzeb’s seizure of power in 1658 was shadowed by a crisis of legitimacy. He had deposed his father Shāh Jahān (r. 1628-1658) and defeated his brothers, most notably Dārā Shukoh (d. 1695). The chief qāżī initially refused to recite the khuṭbah (sermon) in his name.⁸ Contemporary scholarship notes that Aurangzeb had to secure the support of scholars such as Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (d. 1675) to persuade the chief qāżī of the legality of his accession, demonstrating that his rule depended fundamentally upon religious sanction.⁹ However, Aurangzeb was not content with merely securing a one-time endorsement. He sought to permanently embed his sovereignty within a framework of Islamic law, thereby making his legitimacy self-sustaining. A visibly Islamic mode of rulership carried immense political value, and his appeal to sharīʿah-based governance, including prohibitions of intoxicants, music, dancing, and extravagant pilgrimages to Hindu places of worship, helped present him as a ruler whose authority was aligned with Sunnī orthodoxy rather than the eclectic theological claims associated with his predecessors.¹⁰

Yet, it would be reductive to treat Aurangzeb’s patronage as mere political theater. As Guenther argues, one must not force a simple opposition between piety and expediency.¹¹ What matters historically is that Aurangzeb believed, or consistently acted as though, the strengthening of Ḥanafī jurisprudence was integral to just government. The Mughal historian Khāfi Khān records: “the Emperor gave such extensive powers to the Qāḍis in the civil administration and general and detailed affairs of the state that it become a cause of jealousy and envy of the leading nobles of the Empire.”¹² The commissioning of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī therefore signaled both an ideological preference for orthodox Sunnism and a practical administrative need. Existing Ḥanafī doctrines were dispersed across a large number of texts, often with contradictory opinions and variant levels of authority. For qāżīs and muftīs charged with issuing rulings, this body of literature had become unwieldy. According to tradition, the project was begun relatively early in his reign and completed roughly between 1667 and 1675, absorbing enormous imperial resources.¹³

The Emperor as Editor-in-Chief: Personal Supervision and Scholarly Selection

What distinguishes Aurangzeb’s role from that of typical royal patrons is the depth of his personal involvement. According to the accounts preserved by Shāh Walī Ullāh (d. 1762) through his father, Shāh ‘Abdurraḥīm Ṣāḥib Dehlvi (d. 1719), one of the compilers, Aurangzeb did not merely authorize the compilation and then withdraw. Shaikh Niẓām (d. 1679), the project’s overseer from Burhānpūr, read finished pages to the emperor daily.¹⁴ On one occasion, when Shaikh Niẓām accidentally read a marginal note along with a confusing text, the emperor immediately noted the inconsistency and demanded an explanation, leading to an investigation and ultimately the dismissal of Shāh ‘Abdurraḥīm.¹⁵ This anecdote implies not only a “keen interest” but also a “knowledgeable evaluation of the contents” by Aurangzeb. As Guenther concludes, “One can estimate that such regular scrutiny of the sharīʿah would have had a considerable impact on his own law-making, and motivated an on-going reform rooted in Islamic principles.”¹⁶ The emperor was, in effect, acting as the final editor-in-chief of the entire enterprise.

Aurangzeb’s personal authority extended to the selection and dismissal of the scholars themselves. Historical accounts describe him conducting periodic examinations of the list of all those employed in compiling the fatwās, personally issuing orders for appointments and removals.¹⁷ The composition of the scholarly board reveals a calculated balance between expertise and loyalty. Guenther notes that the collaborators included ‘ulamā’ from diverse regions of Mughal India, Jaunpūr, Awadh, Bihār, Agra, Delhi, Lahore, and even Sindh, under the oversight of Shaykh Niẓām.¹⁸ Some estimates suggest that as many as 500 experts in Islamic jurisprudence were involved, drawn not only from South Asia but also from Iraq and the Hejaz, demonstrating that Aurangzeb sought not merely a regional legal text but a work of pan-Islamic authority.¹⁹ This breadth ensured that the final work could claim to represent the considered judgment of a wide Indo-Ḥanafī scholarly network rather than a local clique.

Crucially, Aurangzeb demonstrated a capacity to prioritize scholarly competence over political enmity. Several of the chief editors, including Shaykh Wajīhud Dīn and Qāz̤ī Muḥammad Ḥusayn, had served under Shāh Jahān and been linked to his rival Dārā Shukoh. Rather than purging them, Aurangzeb recognized that “their scholarship and organizational abilities were more important than their rival political affiliations.”²⁰ This strategic inclusivity suggests a ruler who understood that the authority of the final text depended on the credibility of its authors, not merely their political compliance.

The Magnitude of Patronage and the Imperial Message

The scale of the project testified to Aurangzeb’s commitment in unmistakable terms. The Mughal historian Khāfi Khān recorded that Rs. 200,000 of the imperial coffers were spent on the project.²¹ Such expenditure was not merely administrative necessity; it was a public declaration of priorities. In a culture where rulers competed to be remembered as patrons of learning, Aurangzeb was sending a clear signal regarding his commitment to a sharīʿah-centered governance.

The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī, rather than being a collection of primary fatwās (answers to specific questions) as the name might imply, is a comprehensive legal text of Ḥanafī fiqh.²² It cited at least 124 sources, including not only classic transregional authorities but also Indian works such as the Fatāwá-i Ghiyāthiyyah, Fatāwá-i Qarā Khānī, Fatāwá-i Tātār Khānī, and Fatāwá-i Barhāniyyah.²³ In size, it is four times that of the Hidāyah, containing a greater number of cases in each of its sections. The work was organized deliberately to follow the Hidāyah while adding new sections on judicial procedure (muḥāḍir wa al-sijillāt), legal forms (shurūṭ), legal devices (ḥiyal), and inheritance (farāʾiḍ).²⁴ These additions are significant because, unlike the fifty-seven other sections dealing with details of laws regarding religious rites, economic transactions, and land, they appear to deal more with principles of determining and applying the laws.

The project’s completion resulted in a text that, while originally composed in Arabic for scholarly prestige, was soon translated into Persian for practical use across the empire. The Mirāt al-ʿĀlam records that ‘Abd Ullāh Chalpi Rūmī, a scholar from Asia Minor, was appointed along with his pupils to translate the work into Persian.²⁵ The fact that it later circulated in Ottoman and Central Asian domains under the title al-Fatāwá al-Hindiyyah confirms that Aurangzeb’s patronage had successfully inscribed Indian scholarship into the mainstream of Sunnī legal tradition across the Arabic-writing world.²⁶

The Text, Its Juristic Function, and the Question of Codification

In form and content, the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī remained thoroughly rooted in the Ḥanafī tradition. Its discussion of the qāżī’s role (in the section Ādāb al-Qāḍī) explicitly acknowledges the limitations of contemporary scholarship, noting that “in our days” no one possesses the qualifications for full ijtihād (independent legal reasoning).²⁷ As Guenther observes, the repeated use of the phrase “in our days” indicates the compilers’ conscious adaptation of legal theory to their context, a pragmatic dynamism within a tradition that outwardly revered the past.²⁸ The text also addresses the order of authorities to be observed in the practice of law: the Qur’ān, then the Ḥadīth, then the consensus (ijmāʿ) of the Prophet’s Companions and the Successors, and finally, where there is disagreement or no ruling, the qāżī (if qualified as a mujtahid) is to give a ruling consistent with established principles of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh).²⁹

Crucially, the text was not a collection of primary fatwās issued by Aurangzeb, nor a promulgated state code. Rather, it was a systematic work of substantive law (furūʿ), a collection of “secondary fatwās” (in Wael Hallaq’s typology) that had been edited and abstracted to delineate principles of Ḥanafī law.³⁰ Hallaq describes the function of such furūʿ works as providing “jurisconsults with a comprehensive coverage of substantive law … expected to offer solutions for all conceivable cases so that the jurisconsult might draw on the established doctrine of his school, and to include the most recent as well as the oldest cases of law that arose in the school.”³¹ This description aptly applies to the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī.

However, as Muhammad Khalid Masud and other scholars have argued, the question of whether the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī represented an “official” codification requires careful qualification. Schacht characterized the Hanafi school as having “enjoyed exclusive official recognition in the whole of the Ottoman Empire,” while describing its position in India more cautiously as “well represented.”³² Masud has argued that for a madhhab to be officially recognized, it must become “the exclusive source of legislation in the state, and the judges are required to adhere to it exclusively”, a threshold not met in Mughal India.³³ Yet this distinction is not a diminishment of Aurangzeb’s achievement. The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī was neither a modern state code nor a purely private scholarly digest. It was, as some recent scholarship terms it, a “proto-codification”, an intermediate form that engaged the Islamic juristic devices of siyāsa (public policy) and taqnīn (codification) in new ways.³⁴ This intermediate character is precisely what made it so effective: it provided standardization without rigid codification, enhanced the state’s legal capacity without completely displacing juristic mediation.

The Emperor’s Independence from His Own Creation

Paradoxically, Aurangzeb’s active role in the compilation also gave him the authority to depart from it when political necessity demanded. The emperor was not a prisoner of the text he had helped create; rather, the text was an instrument at his disposal. A revealing anecdote illustrates both his legalism and his independence. When captured rebels received a relatively lenient Ḥanafī ruling, Aurangzeb rejected it, remarking that “This decision [is] according to the Hanafi school; decide the case in some other way, that control over the kingdom may not be lost.”³⁵ He explicitly invoked the plurality of legal madhhabs as justification for seeking a different outcome. The qāżī and muftīs returned with a new ruling, still based on the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī and therefore still within Ḥanafī fiqh, which decreed execution.³⁶ This incident reveals that Aurangzeb understood Islamic law not as a monolithic, inflexible code but as a tradition containing internal plurality that could be mobilized for reasons of state. The Mughal sovereign governed not by surrendering to the text but by drawing upon it as an authoritative reservoir while retaining ultimate political discretion.

This is further demonstrated by Aurangzeb’s use of other legal sources alongside the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī. Guenther shows that the emperor also relied on Ẓawābiṭ-i ʿĀlamgīrī and other qānūn-i ʿurfī or customary law.³⁷ A farmān (directive) issued to Gujarat in 1669/1670 reflects sections of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī on land revenue administration but stipulates rates of taxation in excess of those given in the text and omits clauses bearing no relation to Indian realities.³⁸ Mughal governance under Aurangzeb did not collapse the distinction between fiqh and siyāsa; it managed their relationship. The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī strengthened the reach of fiqh within administration without abolishing the ruler’s practical discretion.

The Afterlife of the Text and Its Scholarly Legacy

The enduring importance of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī is confirmed by its reception in subsequent centuries. English translations of portions were made in the mid-nineteenth century by Niel B. E. Baillie (d. 1883), who considered it a pity that the Hidāyah had been adopted instead of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī as the standard authority for the East India Company’s courts of civil justice.³⁹ Baillie argued that the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī had the advantage of being compiled in India by the authority of an Indian Muslim ruler.⁴⁰ The work was first translated and published in Urdu in the late nineteenth century by Maulānā Sayyid Amīr ʿAlī of Lucknow (d. 1919).⁴¹ Under British colonial rule, it became a foundation of Anglo-Muhammadan law, particularly in matters such as waqf (religious endowments).⁴²

Modern scholarship has continued to engage with the text. Aziz Ahmad describes the compilation as “the theoretic crystallization of Awrangzīb’s theocratic principles.”⁴³ S. A. A. Rizvi sees in the choice of the ‘ulamā’ a shift from a reformist message to a co-option of their efforts by the state and a focus on fiqh.⁴⁴ More recently, scholars such as Mouez Khalfaoui have examined the text’s methodology and its treatment of non-Muslims, while others have explored its role in the development of Ḥanafī jurisprudence in South Asia.⁴⁵

Conclusion

In the final analysis, the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī stands as a monument to Aurangzeb’s distinctive vision of sovereignty, one in which the emperor’s authority was both grounded in and legitimated by active engagement with Islamic jurisprudence. Aurangzeb was not merely a patron who funded scholars and then withdrew; he was personally involved in the daily review of the text, the selection and dismissal of its compilers, and the strategic deployment of its rulings in governance. The text simultaneously preserved the cumulative structure of Ḥanafī legal reasoning, incorporated Indian scholarship into the global Ḥanafī tradition, and enhanced the Mughal state’s capacity to govern through a more uniform legal language.

Seen in the broader sweep of Muslim history, the compilation of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī and what it demonstrates of the relationship between the ‘ulamā’ and the ruler is consistent with the pattern established in the formative period of Islamic law. Yet with the fuller involvement of the ‘ulamā’ both in the scholarly activity of researching the texts of fiqh and in influencing state laws, it is perhaps closer to the ideal relationship desired by the ‘ulamā’ than under the previous Mughal rulers in India.⁴⁶ Under British colonial rule, it became the foundation of Anglo-Muhammadan law, demonstrating that Aurangzeb had not merely commissioned a court manual for immediate administrative use but had helped produce one of the great enduring monuments of Indo-Islamic jurisprudence. The emperor’s role in its creation, as legitimator, supervisor, editor, and ultimate arbiter, remains central to understanding both the text’s content and its lasting historical significance.

Footnotes

¹ On the contrast between Akbar and Aurangzeb, see M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163-195; and S. A. A. Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975). The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī is also known as al-Fatāwá al-Hindiyyah in the Arab world, reflecting its reception beyond South Asia.

² Alan M. Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India: The Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī,” in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711-1750, ed. Richard M. Eaton (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 209-230. For the distinction between juristic digests and modern codes, see Wael B. Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 42-58.

³ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 215-218.

⁴ For the classic treatment of this relationship, see Ira M. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no. 4 (1975): 363-385. Also relevant is Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 235-260.

⁵ On the formative period of the Ḥanafī school, see Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 31-46; and Nurit Tsafrir, The History of an Islamic School of Law: The Early Spread of Hanafism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

⁶ On the Hidāyah and its importance, see J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Hedaya: A Study of the Reception of Islamic Law in British India,” in Law and Tradition in England and India, ed. J. D. M. Derrett (Bombay: Tripathi, 1967), 126-145.

⁷ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 210-212. On the Fatāwá-i Tātār Khānī, see Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, “The Fatāwā-i Tātārkhānī and its Importance,” Islamic Culture 34, no. 4 (1960): 231-242.

⁸ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 215.

⁹ Ibid. See also Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History, 312-318.

¹⁰ On Aurangzeb’s decrees, see J. N. Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols. (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1912-1924), 3: 125-148.

¹¹ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 215-216.

¹² Khāfi Khān, Muntakhab al-Lubāb, cited in Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 216.

¹³ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 217. The dating varies slightly across sources; some place the beginning in 1664 and completion in 1672.

¹⁴ The account is preserved in Shāh Walī Ullāh’s writings. See Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 218-219.

¹⁵ Ibid., 219.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 219-220.

¹⁸ Ibid., 222-224.

¹⁹ On the composition of the scholarly team, see Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History of the Isna ‘Ashari Shi’is in India, 2 vols. (Canberra: Ma’rifat Publishing House, 1986), 2: 145-147.

²⁰ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 224.

²¹ Khāfi Khān, cited in Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 218.

²² Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 219-221.

²³ Ibid., 220.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid., 221.

²⁶ On the reception of the Fatāwá al-Hindiyyah in the Ottoman Empire, see Guy Burak, The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 142-148.

²⁷ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 225-226.

²⁸ Ibid., 226.

²⁹ Ibid., 226-227.

³⁰ Wael B. Hallaq, “From Fatwās to Furūʿ: Growth and Change in Islamic Substantive Law,” Islamic Law and Society 1, no. 1 (1994): 29-65.

³¹ Hallaq, “From Fatwās to Furūʿ,” 48.

³² Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 87.

³³ Muhammad Khalid Masud, “The Official Madhhab and the Judicial System in India,” paper presented at the conference “The Madhhab in Islamic History,” Harvard University, 1999, cited in Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 215n.

³⁴ On the concept of “proto-codification,” see Mouez Khalfaoui, “Al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyya: A Hanafī Legal Compendium from Mughal India,” Journal of Islamic Studies 25, no. 3 (2014): 291-312.

³⁵ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 229, citing Khāfi Khān.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 227-229.

³⁸ Ibid., 228.

³⁹ Niel B. E. Baillie, A Digest of Moohummudan Law, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865-1869), 1: viii-ix.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 221.

⁴² On the colonial reception of the Fatāwá-i ʿĀlamgīrī, see Scott Alan Kugle, “Framed, Blamed and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic Jurisprudence in Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 2 (2001): 257-313.

⁴³ Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 205.

⁴⁴ S. A. A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times (Canberra: Ma’rifat Publishing House, 1980), 148-152.

⁴⁵ Khalfaoui, “Al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyya,” 291-312; also Ebrahim Moosa, “The Indian Appropriation of Hanafi Fiqh: The Case of the Fatāwā ʿĀlamgīriyya,” Islamic Law and Society 22, no. 3 (2015): 215-245.

⁴⁶ Guenther, “Hanafī Fiqh in Mughal India,” 230.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The reign of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir presents a unique paradox for historians. While the emperor himself discontinued the tradition of official court historiography after his tenth regnal year, his period is paradoxically one of the richest in terms of historical source material, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Collectively, the archives in India and abroad contain more records for Aurangzeb’s reign than for all preceding Mughal emperors combined. To understand this crucial epoch, however, one must look beyond the Persian court chronicles to a diverse body of evidence including official histories, private memoirs, epistolary collections, European travel accounts, Maratha bakhars, legal compendia, numismatic and epigraphic remains, and vernacular chronicles from regional courts. Each source carries its own biases, and a balanced reconstruction requires their careful triangulation.

Aurangzeb halted the practice of commissioning a formal imperial history after 1668, and the reasons cited in contemporary speculation are multiple: a desire to suppress his political failures, most notably the execution of his brothers Dara Shukoh and Murad Bakhsh as well as the imprisonment of his father Shahjahan, financial strain resulting from the protracted Deccan campaigns, or his orthodox religious inclinations which viewed the chronicling of royal glory as un-Islamic. Regardless of the motive, this decision means that the only official history of his reign is the Alamgirnama of Muhammad Kazim Shirazi, which covers only the first ten years from 1658 to 1668. As an official work, the Alamgirnama is invaluable for its chronological precision, detailed records of mansab appointments and promotions, and its access to state archives. However, its subjectivity is pronounced. It suppresses embarrassing events such as Shivaji’s sack of Surat in 1664 and avoids any direct reference to famines or food grain scarcity. It also provides a partisan justification for the War of Succession, placing the entire blame on Shahjahan and Dara Shukoh while invoking shariat to legitimise Aurangzeb’s actions. Muhammad Kazim Shirazi, despite being an eyewitness to most events he describes, consistently presents the official version of controversial developments. For instance, the treatment meted out to Dara, Murad, and other supporters is justified on religious grounds, even though other sources reveal that this religious slogan was raised primarily to justify political acts. Nevertheless, the Alamgirnama remains irreplaceable for the period it covers, and later historians have tended to follow its framework for the first decade.

For the War of Succession itself, the Alamgirnama is corroborated by another important source, the Waqi’at-i ‘Alamgiri of Aqil Khan Razi. Aqil Khan was not merely a contemporary but an active participant in the struggle on behalf of Aurangzeb, and his account is extremely rich in detail and accurate in dates. Remarkably, despite being a partisan, he exhibits a degree of objectivity by omitting the religious preamble of the agreement entered into between Aurangzeb and Murad Bakhsh, which had labelled Dara as the rais-i mulahida or chief of heretics. Aqil Khan gives the impression that the war was fought on political and personal considerations, not on religious grounds, thus offering a valuable counterpoint to the later official narrative.

After the Alamgirnama ends, the historian must rely heavily on semi-official and private chronicles. The Ma’asir-i Alamgiri of Saqi Musta’id Khan, compiled soon after Aurangzeb’s death, functions as a gazetteer of the entire reign. It is a vital source for the last forty years, listing promotions, transfers, and the workings of the administrative system. The author’s candid remarks on the character and functioning of officers and nobles are of great value, and his work is based on contemporary state archives and documents. However, Saqi Musta’id Khan was not a great scholar of history; he wrote as a loyal servant of the emperor, presenting Aurangzeb as a devout Muslim ruler who set himself upon establishing the rule of Sharia and humiliating the infidels, namely the Rajputs and Marathas. Unlike other writers, he found no fault in Aurangzeb’s policies and offers little information about society or the economic condition of the people. His approach is that of a court official recording dry facts in strict chronological order without analysis. Yet, despite these shortcomings, the Ma’asir-i Alamgiri is invaluable because no other contemporary or semi-contemporary account exists for the last forty years in such comprehensive form.

In contrast, the Muntakhab ul Lubab of Muhammad Hashim, better known as Khafi Khan, is arguably the most comprehensive and analytical source for the entire reign. Khafi Khan was born in 1664 and served down to the reign of Muhammad Shah, dying around 1731-32. His work is a history of India from its Muslim conquest down to his own time, but the portion dealing with Aurangzeb is of particular importance. He claims, and appears to have been, an eyewitness to most events, and he also consulted other eyewitnesses, checked imperial office records, and drew upon contemporary chronicles including the Alamgirnama and the Ma’asir-i Alamgiri, spending sixteen to seventeen years on its compilation. Khafi Khan was conscious of the duties of a historian, stating that a historian should be faithful, without hope or fear, showing no partiality or enmity. He follows this principle to a great extent: he praises Aurangzeb for his religious zeal and concern for public good, yet he does not conceal his disapproval of the emperor’s attitude towards Shahjahan, Dara, Murad, and others. His account is balanced and reliable. Unlike the Ma’asir-i Alamgiri or the Nuskha-i Dilkusha, which merely mention grants of mansabs and military expeditions, Khafi Khan provides a total picture of the entire reign, showing the interaction of political and economic developments. He gives valuable details about the imperial policy towards the Marathas and Deccani rulers, the condition of the fighting parties during prolonged campaigns, and the influx of Deccani nobles into the Mughal nobility. He also offers comments on the agrarian and economic crisis of the period, the mutual jealousies among princes and nobles, and the effects of these jealousies on the administration. Although Khafi Khan is said to have been a Shi’i and thus possibly prejudiced in favour of Iranis, he does not refrain from criticising them, and he remains a great admirer of Aurangzeb. The Muntakhab ul Lubab is therefore extremely valuable, and no other source contemporary or semi-contemporary approaches it in terms of content, narrative scheme, and analysis.

Another important indigenous source is the Nuskha-i Dilkusha of Bhimsen, a Hindu officer born at Burhanpur in 1648-49 who served under Rao Dalpat Bundela in the Deccan and took part in many wars. After the death of Prince Kambakhsh in 1709, he left imperial service and settled at Burhanpur, where he compiled his work based on personal observations and recollections. His account covers Aurangzeb’s reign from the march from the Deccan in 1658 to the defeat of Prince Kambakhsh in 1709, with a special focus on military transactions in the Deccan. Bhimsen had close contacts with numerous officers and nobles, had travelled widely, and was an actual witness to the state of affairs. His information on appointments, promotions, postings, and transfers is accurate and dated, and his work functions as a kind of gazetteer. After the Alamgirnama, details of this kind are not found in any other source, making the Nuskha-i Dilkusha indispensable for the military and administrative history of the Deccan.

The non-Persian Sources

Beyond these Persian chronicles, a crucial set of sources that is often underutilized consists of the Maratha bakhars. These are chronicles written in Marathi that provide the perspective of the Maratha polities against whom Aurangzeb campaigned for decades. The Sabhasad Bakhar and the Chitnis Bakhar are particularly important, offering an opposing view of Shivaji’s guerrilla warfare, the siege of Jinji, and the execution of Sambhaji. Where the Persian sources portray Maratha leaders as rebels and infidels, the bakhars present them as defenders of Hindavi swarajya (self-rule). Reading these alongside the imperial chronicles allows the historian to escape the one-sided narrative of the Mughal court and to understand the conflict as a clash of competing state-building projects rather than simply a religious war.

The Fatāwa

Another major omission from the standard list of sources is the Fatawa al-Alamgiriyya, also known as the Fatawa-i Hindiyya. This massive compendium of Hanafi law was compiled under Aurangzeb’s patronage by a board of jurists and completed in the 1670s. While it is a legal text rather than a historical chronicle, it is an essential source for understanding the ideological framework of Aurangzeb’s reign. The emperor’s frequent invocation of shariat to justify political actions, from the execution of Dara to the reimposition of jizya in 1679, is given concrete form in this legal digest. The Fatawa reveals what the official interpretation of Islamic law was on matters of state, taxation, treatment of non-Muslims, and the conduct of war. Without consulting this text, any assessment of Aurangzeb’s religiosity or his policies towards the Rajputs and Marathas remains incomplete.

Epistolary and archival sources add another dimension. The letters of Aurangzeb himself, collected in the Kalimat-i Taiyebat and the Raqaim al Karaim, reveal the crisis with which the empire was faced towards the close of his reign, as well as the emperor’s determination to face that crisis. These letters also throw light on his relations with his sons and nobles. In addition, the Factory Records, reports sent by the factors of European trading companies to their home governments, are a mine of raw material for the study of the economic condition of the empire. They provide detailed information on trade and commerce, corrupt practices of Mughal officials, the functioning of mint-houses, rates of interest, the role of banias, and the system of hundis or indigenous bills of exchange. For the study of seventeenth-century trade and commercial activity within the Mughal Empire, these factory records are extremely useful and full of information.

European travellers’ accounts also provide unique perspectives. Niccolao Manucci, an Italian traveller, wrote the Storia do Mogor, which has been translated by William Irvine into four volumes. Although Sir Jadunath Sarkar dismissively called him “gossipy Manucci,” a careful study reveals that this judgement cannot be sustained. Manucci gives the salaries of different mansabdars which tally with the dastur-ul-amals (official rate-books), provides lists of titles given to Hindu and Muslim nobles, and mentions titles given to persons of various professions including scribes, musicians, dancing girls, and elephant-drivers. He also provides important clues for understanding the functioning of the administrative apparatus. While he does include certain scandals regarding the imperial household, these can be easily discarded, and the remainder is highly useful for the study of the second half of the seventeenth century. Another important European traveller is Francois Bernier, a Frenchman who came to India at the close of Shahjahan’s reign in 1656 and joined the service of Dara Shukoh. His account, written in the form of letters to his overlords back home, provides one of the most detailed contemporary analyses of the Mughal Empire. In his letter to Lord Colbert, he elaborates on the causes of Mughal decline, pointing to the agrarian crisis and the transfer system inherent in the mansabdari and jagirdari system. Bernier looked at India through European glasses and dedicated his account to the French emperor, but his observations on the economy and administration remain valuable. He famously called the War of Succession “The Tragedy,” and his letters provide a vivid, if biased, outsider’s view.

Beyond written texts, the historian must also consider non-literary sources. Numismatic evidence, the coins minted during Aurangzeb’s reign, provides important information about the chronology of his rule, the extent of his imperial control, and his ideological declarations. Coins bearing the Kalima or the names of the first four Caliphs reflect his religious orthodoxy, while the mint names indicate which provinces remained under loyal control during the revolts of his later years. Epigraphic evidence, including inscriptions on mosques, wells, bridges, and forts, similarly provides dated records of imperial patronage, military campaigns, and public works. For example, inscriptions recording the construction of mosques in newly conquered territories or the repair of roads in the Deccan offer material confirmation of events described in the chronicles. Likewise, the architectural remains of the period, including Aurangzeb’s own modest tomb at Khuldabad and the Bibi ka Maqbara in Aurangabad (a poor imitation of the Taj Mahal), offer visual sources for understanding the changing aesthetic and ideological priorities of the empire. Finally, regional vernacular chronicles from Rajput courts such as Mewar and Marwar, written in Rajasthani and Braj Bhasha, provide non-Mughal perspectives on state policy, particularly on the reimposition of jizya and the Rajput wars of the 1680s. These chronicles often preserve details of local resistance, diplomatic negotiations, and the lived experience of Mughal rule that are absent from the Persian court narratives.

In conclusion, the sources for Aurangzeb’s reign, despite the lack of a continuous official history, are remarkably abundant and varied. The core Persian corpus of the Alamgirnama, Ma’asir-i Alamgiri, Muntakhab ul Lubab, and Nuskha-i Dilkusha provides the backbone of political and administrative history, but each must be read critically for its particular biases, from official suppression to private analysis. The War of Succession is illuminated by Aqil Khan Razi’s participant account, while the economic and commercial history is richly documented in the Factory Records. European travellers like Manucci and Bernier offer external perspectives, flawed but invaluable. To these traditional sources must be added the Maratha bakhars for the opposing viewpoint, the Fatawa al-Alamgiriyya for the legal-ideological framework, numismatic and epigraphic evidence for material confirmation, vernacular Rajput chronicles for regional perspectives, and architectural remains for visual and aesthetic history. Critically employed and triangulated, this diverse body of evidence allows the historian to reconstruct not just the political and military events of Aurangzeb’s half-century of rule, but the deeper administrative, economic, social, and ideological crises that defined the twilight of the Mughal Empire. No single source tells the whole story, but together they illuminate one of the most consequential and contested reigns in Indian history.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The following writeup is based on a dialogue which I held with Guru Shrivatsa Goswami Ji of Vindravan held in October 2020. It can be accessed on my YouTube channel. The talk, on which this is based, was transcribed by Ms Paridhi Massey.

This is being posted in view of the 500th Anniversary of the establishment of the Mughal rule in India on 21st April 2026.

*

In an era defined by stark dichotomies, sacred versus secular, tolerance versus destruction, spirit versus matter, the voice of a tradition rooted in the Braj region of India offers a radical alternative. To sit in discussion with a figure like Shrivatsa Goswami of Vrindavan is to encounter a theology that refuses these divisions. Yet this theological vision did not develop in a vacuum. It unfolded within the complex political realities of Mughal India, where temples were neither simply patronized nor simply destroyed, but actively negotiated. The history of Vrindavan’s sacred architecture thus becomes a powerful case study: the living temple, born of divine love (prema), was also a political institution shaped by imperial pragmatism.

The Theology of Place

The first pillar of the Goswami philosophy is the re-enchantment of the material world. In the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, the world of Vrindavan is non-different from the divine abode of Krishna. The soil, the trees, and the rivers are not metaphors but manifestations of bhakti. To walk through the groves of Vrindavan, as Goswami might describe, is to walk through the living heart of the divine. The highest spiritual truth is not found in renunciation of the world, but in the transformation of one’s relationship to it through the lens of prema, unconditional, selfless love.

Furthermore, this tradition elevates relationship over abstraction. The highest rasa (aesthetic flavor) is madhurya-rasa, the love of the gopis for Krishna, not mundane eroticism, but the soul’s ultimate longing to lose itself in the beloved. The goal is not to dissolve the ego but to purify it so that it may love perfectly.

The Historical Construction of Sacred Geography

What is striking, however, is that this sacred geography was not merely inherited but actively constructed, and relatively late. The very idea of “Braj” as a defined sacred territory emerges clearly only in seventeenth-century Persian sources. The revival of Vrindavan as a pilgrimage landscape was closely tied to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s movement in the sixteenth century. And crucially, this movement was characterized by strategic engagement rather than confrontation. Rather than resisting the Indo-Islamic political environment, Chaitanya’s disciples, the Goswamis—sought to work within it, establishing relationships with imperial and regional powers.

The Moment of Synthesis: Govind Dev Temple

The construction of the Govind Dev temple in the late sixteenth century, under Raja Man Singh of Amber during Akbar’s reign, stands as the most compelling example of this interaction. The temple reflects not only Rajput devotion but also Mughal sanction and support. The use of red sandstone, associated with imperial architecture, and, the involvement of artisans trained in Mughal building traditions suggest a close connection with contemporary projects like Fatehpur Sikri. In this sense, the temple cannot be seen as a purely “Hindu” monument standing apart from Mughal culture; rather, it embodies a shared architectural language.

Its relative restraint in external sculptural ornamentation, unusual for a temple of its scale, represents an aesthetic negotiation with the sensibilities of an Islamic political environment. This was not merely patronage but “dialogue”, different cultural systems interacting to produce something new. The temple was at once a divine dwelling and a political document.

The Pragmatic Empire

This dialogical framework extended to the administrative sphere. Mughal records from Vrindavan contain numerous grants, land assignments, revenue remissions, and protections, issued to temples and religious leaders. Temples were integrated into the imperial order as economic nodes controlling land and pilgrimage traffic. The Mughals treated them not as idols to be smashed for doctrinal purity, but as institutions to be managed for imperial stability. Akbar’s inclusive approach (sulḥ-i kul) gave way to tightening under Shah Jahan and rupture under Aurangzeb, but even destruction was often linked to political control and rebellion rather than simple religious intolerance.

The Fragility of Synthesis

The partial destruction of the Govind Dev temple in the later seventeenth century exemplifies this complexity. While traditionally attributed to Aurangzeb’s religious policy, such actions were likely connected to broader political developments, including tensions with Rajput elites. The same empire that facilitated monumental temple construction could also sanction their destruction under different circumstances. The grandeur of Vrindavan was built not in spite of the Mughals, but in dialogue with them. The eventual destruction was not the inevitable outcome of a “clash of civilizations” but the result of specific political failures.

The Living Dialectic

In conclusion, an amalgamated understanding, drawing from both Shrivatsa Goswami’s theology and Mughal historical records, reveals that sacred space in early modern India was neither purely transcendent nor merely political. It was both. The temples of Vrindavan were living embodiments of divine love, demanding the devotee’s total surrender. Yet they were also material institutions that required land grants, imperial protection, and architectural negotiation with sovereign power.

To reduce this history to a single narrative, of unbroken tolerance or of systematic destruction, is to miss the point entirely. The Mughals were neither secular humanists nor religious fanatics; they were pragmatic sovereigns. And the Goswamis were neither political collaborators nor quietist renunciants; they were strategic architects of a sacred landscape. Their shared history is one of coexistence and contestation, synthesis and rupture. It offers a profound lesson for our own polarized times: that the sacred is always already embedded in the political, that love does not escape power but negotiates with it, and that the truest understanding of the past requires us to hold contradiction together.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The Question of Mughal Urban Planning

The study of urban planning during the Mughal period in India has perhaps yet to receive adequate attention, with most works remaining confined to descriptions of urban centres as sites of commercial activity rather than developing a coherent theory of planning. However, the reigns of Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) and his grandson Shah Jahan (1628-1658) represent particularly fertile periods for such an inquiry, for it was during their rule that three distinct models of imperial urbanism emerged. As Javed Hasan has noted, almost all the major urban centres of historical importance in northern India received their basic imprint in this period. Yet, apart from Fathpur Sikri and Shahjahanabad, it is generally held that no other Mughal town was planned. In this paper, an attempt is being made to describe the broad outlines of Mughal town planning through a study of Agra, Fathpur Sikri, and Shahjahanabad, utilizing plans, poetical descriptions, archaeological surveys, and the identification of masons’ marks to demonstrate that Mughal urbanism was far more sophisticated and deliberate than has often been acknowledged.

Pre-Mughal Traditions and the Mughal Departure

To understand the innovation of Mughal planning, one must first appreciate the traditions it overturned. Students of history and architecture have put forward three major models of pre-modern town planning: the European, the Islamic, and the Hindu. The authors of the Shilpa-sastra categorized town models on the basis of their physical pattern into circular, crescent or half-moon, cross, square, and rectangular types. In each of these pre-Mughal models, the citadel along with the public buildings and the main place of worship was placed at the centre, with roads from all sides leading to them. The full city concentrated its attention on the citadel which was the seat of power, with fortifications surrounding it. There was no other distinguishing or monumental form, the rest of the city being left unfortified and defenceless. In pre-Mughal towns, the city of the inhabitants grew fairly freely, although following by and large the logic of caste or professional hierarchy. The priestly and warrior classes, being closer to the seat of power, were usually placed in areas close to the citadel, while the menial and labouring classes were relegated to the very periphery of the town. Secondly, and most critically for the case of Agra, when a city was to be built on a river bank, it was always to be on the right bank, for amongst the pre-medieval Indians there was a deep-rooted belief that it was an ill-omen to build a city on the left bank of the river.

The Mughal town, on the other hand, appears to have a strong centralizing basis that departed from these traditions. Its colossal hydraulic works for irrigation, the efficient well-planned roads, streets and by-lanes, and the presence of a large number of monumental gardens all point to the desire of the Mughal architects to redesign the urban landscape. Two major sources appear to have informed this new urban design. The first was the Mughal encampment procedure. Discussing a typical Mughal camp, Abul Fazl writes that the imperial quarters were pitched at the centre, with the tents of royal ladies and princes placed at specific distances to the right and left, the karkhanas behind them, and the bazaars at the four corners of the camp. The nobles were encamped on all sides, according to their rank, outside the complex reserved for imperial use. By and large, the plan of a Mughal town was laid down accordingly, with the fort or citadel at the centre, surrounded by the mansions of nobles, and beyond them, the markets and commercial areas.

The second source for Mughal urban design was the chahārbāgh garden with its centripetal symmetry. The axes, joints and modules of a chahārbāgh were turned architecturally, from time to time, into pavilions, platforms, waterfalls, pools, caravanserais, and symmetrical streets. The grids and proportions of a garden were enlarged into the planning of a Mughal town. Like in a chahārbāgh, the town was divided into various distinct divisions revolving around a localized central structure on the one hand and aligned symmetrically with the actual centre on the other. This garden-inspired geometry, combined with the hierarchical logic of the imperial encampment, formed the dual foundation of Mughal urbanism.

Agra: The Riverfront Garden City

Agra, apart from being an administrative centre, was a major commercial centre as well. Though the antiquity of this town is shrouded in mystery, we know that Sikandar Lodi (1489-1517) was the first Muslim ruler who gave it the status of a military headquarters. Subsequently, under Akbar, it was turned into the capital city. Agra apparently developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into a thriving metropolis. However, it was Babur who set the agenda for the development of Agra. The Baburnama is full of references to the Emperor lamenting the existing landscape and his attempts to mould it. It was the desire to reshape the landscape and iron out the chaos on the one hand, coupled with the inherent ancient taboo not to build on the left bank of the river, which led Babur and his successors to get away from the noise and confusion of old Agra and build an uninterrupted sequence of gardens on the free left bank of the Yamuna, which was linked with the city both by boat and by land.

An old plan of Agra dating back to the 1720s, preserved at the Jaipur Palace Museum, depicts around sixteen gardens situated on the left bank of the river. Some of the famous gardens on this side were Aram Bagh (originally Bagh-i Nur Afshan, now known as Ram Bagh), Zohra Bagh, Moti Bagh, Baland Bagh, and Mahtab Bagh. The famous Mahtab Bagh is depicted along with other gardens on the left bank, just opposite the Taj Mahal, where Babur is alleged to have built an astronomical observatory. The right bank of the river was also provided with a long chain of gardens, tombs, and havelis of the nobles of the empire. The plan depicts gardens located between the Taj and the Fort, including an extensive garden with a waterside building of red sandstone known as Bagh Khan-i Alam, and another garden nearby called Tatiyar ka Baghicha, which according to Fuhrer is also known as the Garden of Mahabat Khan.

A glance at the plan goes to prove the assertion of the Dutch traveller Pelsaert that “the breadth of the city is by no means so great as the length, because every one has tried to be close to the river bank, and consequently the water front is occupied by the costly palaces of all the famous lords, which make it appear gay and magnificent, and extend for a distance of 6 hos or 3.5 Holland miles.” Among some of the palaces mentioned by Pelsaert which were situated on the river bank were those of Bahadur Khan, Ibrahim Khan, Rustam Gandhi, Itiqad Khan, Wazir Khan, and Baqar Khan, apart from the quarters of some of the princesses of royal blood. The plan under discussion too depicts around nineteen such havelis, some of which are identified as those belonging to Agha Khan, Khan-i Dauran, Asalat Khan, Mahabat Khan, Hasdan Khan, Azam Khan, Mughal Khan, and Yamtan Khan Rumi. A set of at least eight radial roads can be discerned which converge from all directions towards the main gate of the fort. The city was surrounded by a bed-sandstone and rubble wall which had eight main gates apart from around twenty-five smaller gateways. Towards the west is located the Chaharsuq Darwaza through which the road passed straight towards the fort. This road was lined by a huge market linked with shops on both sides, and beyond it lay the main square of the city known as the Bara or Badshahi Chowk.

An eighteenth-century ghazal from Rajasthan, translated into Hindi by Dr. B.L. Bhadani, provides a vivid description of Agra’s commercial landscape. According to the ghazal, there was a big market in this Chowk where all kinds of goods were available. Provisions like diamonds, semi-precious stones, cloths, and swords were sold here. This market also had a number of shops owned by banya merchants dealing with sweetmeats and other goods. Hawkers too frequented this market. Beyond this was located a Tripolia which again had a variety of shops frequented by a large number of merchants. Nearby was yet another market selling paper, adjacent to which were the grain-market and the cloth-market. To its north was situated yet another market inhabited by sweetmeat sellers, who had their houses in the nearby locality. Adjoining this locality was located the Muhalla Roshan where Jain merchants were residing, and nearby was another locality inhabited by Hindus.

Beyond the lane of the sweetmeat sellers was situated the Jauhari Bazar where precious stones were sold. Adjacent to this pearl market were the innumerable houses of big merchants, and it was here that the Imperial Mint was situated. Beyond the Imperial mint but within the second wall of the town were Hing-ki Mandi and Munga Bazar. The ghazal also mentions Nai-ki Mandi along with a very good market known as Gari-i Siyah, beyond which was the so-called garden of Jodhbai, where all kinds of vegetables were sold. On the other side of the Chaharsuq Bazar and the Badshahi Chowk were the markets selling utensils and dairy products. Towards this side were the houses of cloth merchants and the mansions of nobles. Other localities mentioned are Chhipi para (now known as Chhipitola), Hazrat Mandi, Chirimartola (the locality of bird catchers), Namak-ki Mandi, Loha Mandi, Perfume Market, and Chohatta Bazar. The ghazal also mentions certain gardens like Motibagh and Achanak Bagh which were situated opposite the Itimadud Daulah’s tomb on the left bank of the river.

A survey of Agra town shows that apart from these markets mentioned in the ghazal, there were a large number of wholesale markets in the Tajganj area as well. In the English Factory Records we have constant references to the cotton textile procured by the English and other Europeans at Tajganj. The mercantile area of Tajganj, or Muntazabad as it is known in the Persian sources, had a very large ferry and consequently a number of serais and warehouses. From the above discussion, it would be apparent that the town of Agra, like any other Mughal city, was a well-laid-out township with separate localities for various professions. The citadel, or the Fort, like in a Mughal encampment, was surrounded all around with beautiful gardens and well-laid-out mansions of the noble class. Beyond the residential structures and gardens were the localities of the mercantile classes and the markets. The commercial area, along with the central mosque and the citadel, was protected by fortifications. The lesser-important classes of the merchants and the civilian population too were surrounded and protected by an all-encompassing city wall. Most of the important roads led to the centrally located administrative centre, and most of them were lined with shops or residences of various kinds of people. The left bank of the river was sparsely populated and lined with pretty gardens and tombs of the nobles. The very planning and development of the city of Agra reflects a conscious attempt by the powers that be to protect the commercial importance of the town and an endeavour to bring order into the visual chaos.

Fathpur Sikri: The Encampment City and Its Autonomy

While Agra represented the transformation of an existing settlement into a riverfront imperial capital, Akbar’s most ambitious urban project was the construction of an entirely new city at Fathpur Sikri. Founded in 1571 and serving as the capital until 1585, Fathpur Sikri embodied a different set of planning principles. The city was built on a ridge, not along a river, and its layout drew inspiration not from the waterfront but from the Mughal encampment and the chahārbāgh. However, a closer look at the remains and a reading of the text points to a city that did not develop at one point of time, nor does it appear to have followed a single plan. Fathpur Sikri emerged gradually over a period of years, and as a survey of the site reveals, many changes were wrought in the original plan, if any existed at all.

The initial order to build the shahr was given in 1571, when a compulsory decree was issued that nobody should obstruct anyone who wanted to build a house within the said circuit. In anticipation of a large number of people settling in the new city, the emperor in 1576-77 further decreed that five shops of red stone should be constructed from the royal court to the Agra gate, and close to the darbar a chaharsuq comprising well-decorated shops was built. A Tripoliya, or three-arched structure, of red stone was built towards the bazaar. Arif Qandhari also mentions the order for the building of mosques, baths, and caravanserais in the city, all erected to fulfil the needs of the common people and the commercial classes.

The Jami’ Masjid at Fathpur Sikri was explicitly a public edifice built with an eye to the future citizens. Regarding its construction, Qandhari writes that its court was raised on steps, and subterranean reservoirs were covered and made level with the surface of the courtyard. In some places they were latticed so that whenever it rained, the water collected in the courtyard poured through those lattices into the subterranean tanks. Thus the general public had its need for water fulfilled. My survey of Fathpur Sikri revealed five Akbari markets and at least four serais catering to visiting merchants. Even after Fathpur Sikri ceased to be an imperial town, it continued to flourish as an important commercial centre. In 1581, Hakim Abul Fath Gilani mentions that commerce was better pursued at Fathpur when the town was still the capital. Then in the second decade of the seventeenth century, after twenty-five years of its abandonment as the capital, it had turned into a centre of indigo plantation attracting foreign merchants. Pelsaert mentions the manufacture of carpets that could be woven fine or coarse as required.

This economic resilience is crucial for understanding the difference between Agra and Fathpur Sikri. Agra’s economy, while robust, was intimately tied to the presence of the imperial court and the nobility who maintained riverfront gardens. Fathpur Sikri, by contrast, possessed a remarkable economic autonomy, continuing to flourish long after the court had departed for Lahore. When we examine the actual layout of the two cities, the relationship between palace and noble housing was one of difference rather than emulation. In a typical noble’s mansion at Fathpur Sikri, the entry was through a main gate which opened into a courtyard or a deorhi with sharp bends, frustrating any attempt to peep into the house. This courtyard formed the mardankhana, and through an interconnecting passage one could enter a second courtyard serving as the zanankhana. The plans of the emperor’s mansion and the noble’s mansions were different in utility perception and concept of space, and when one compares a common man’s house with a noble’s mansion, Blake’s thesis of unidirectional copying is not found even remotely substantiated. Furthermore, the noble’s mansions at Fathpur Sikri were mostly confined to one region, namely the top of the north-eastern ridge, arguing against the thesis that they created satellite growth equating to districts and provinces. The imperial city catered to the needs of the nobility, but this would be true for any city. Fathpur Sikri was founded at a junction on the important Agra-Rajasthan-Gujarat route; fancy or reverence for a saintly presence was only a secondary factor. The town continued to flourish even after the court shifted to Lahore. If we accept Blake’s thesis, Fathpur Sikri should have disappeared from the map along with the transfer of capital. That it did not proves that the Mughal Empire was neither a patrimonial-bureaucratic empire in the sense Blake uses the term, nor was Fathpur Sikri an extension of the imperial household.

The Sources and Inspirations of Urban Design at Fathpur Sikri

The Mughal emperors being often on the move, the traditional plan of the Mughal encampment appears to have been the principal inspiration for town planning at Fathpur Sikri. Being one of the first organized towns to develop, Fathpur Sikri appears to have drawn on the various principles used in setting up such camp cities. Even the vocabulary applied by the Persian sources to describe the permanent stone structures is often the same as was used for the temporary portable dwellings. The public audience hall is sometimes referred to as bargah-i am (the large audience tent), the sleeping or retiring room of the emperor as khalwatkada-i khas (the tent of privacy), the haram as saraparda or saraparda-i ismat (the screened-in area of chastity), such being the names also of different categories of tents.

Explaining the plan of a Mughal imperial encampment, Abul Fazl writes that the shabistan-i iqbal (the haramsara), the daulatkhana (the imperial palace or quarters), and the naqqarkhana (the drum house) are all pitched within a distance of 1530 yards. To the right and left of these, and behind them, an open space of 300 yards is reserved for guards. Within the principal enclosure, at a distance of 100 yards from the centre, are pitched the tents of the royal ladies and the princes. Behind the tents, at some distance, the buyutat (karkhanas or workshops) are placed; and at a further distance of 30 yards behind them, at the four corners of the camp, the bazaars. The nobles are encamped on all sides, according to their rank, outside the complex reserved for imperial use. According to this scheme, the central area was reserved for imperial use, flanked by the princes’ area, which was surrounded by that of the nobles. The bazaars and markets were located behind the workshops, that is, at the outer limits of the camp.

At Fathpur Sikri, due to the topography of the site, the camp’s single north-south axis was broken into two constituents: the axis of progression from public to private and the axis of royal appearance. The axis of progression was laid out from north-east to north-west, aligning the diwan-i am, daulatkhana, and the haramsara. The main ceremonial access to the emperor’s sight was obtained by an opening from the Hathipol to the khwabgah, on a north-south axis. Further, like a Mughal encampment, the language of the palace at Fathpur was one of pavilions and enclosures. Large spaces alternated with stone pavilions. As in an encampment, we find that the palace was surrounded by rings of bureaucratic establishments, nobles’ houses, and habitations of the common people. The markets were constructed in a linear fashion along the sides.

Another possible source of its design appears to have been the Mughal garden, the chaharbagh. According to Petruccioli, the centripetal symmetry of the chaharbagh could be an inspiration for the Mughal urban design. The axes, joints, and nodules of a garden were turned architecturally into pavilions, platforms, waterfalls, pools, caravanserais, and symmetrical roads. Thus it was the modular grid that became a systematic design instrument. The town was divided into various distinct divisions revolving around a localized central structure on the one hand, and aligned symmetrically with the main centre, on the other.

For the individual structures and buildings, the inspiration came from a number of traditions. By the time Fathpur Sikri began to be constructed, the traditions of Rajput and Gujarat architecture had already been incorporated in the buildings of the pre-Mughal Muslim rulers of India. At Fathpur Sikri, the dominant influence appears to be that of the Timurid and Gujarati Sultanate architecture. In a number of structures at Fathpur Sikri, the central vaults over the chambers are masked by a flat roof. This may at one level be a combination of the structurally accurate with the visibly trabeate. We have this example in the khwabgah, the emperor’s seat in the diwan-i am, the daftarkhana, the Tansen Baradari, Todarmal Baradari, Hada Mahal, Qushkhana, and the city gateways. Central Asian features are also encountered in the hammams, caravanserais, and pavilions on top of palace buildings where Timurid masonry vaults form the ceilings. The Rang Mahal and complexes around it, the four-storeyed pavilion erroneously known as ‘Panch Mahal’, and the ‘Hawa Mahal‘ adjoining the haramsara are all based on the Iranian and Timurid post-and-beam porches. In Iran, such structures were known as talar and in Trans Oxiana as aiwan. The trabeate construction of these structures is marked by a strong sense of weight and measure. Geometrical precision appears to be the hallmark of Akbari structures. Echoes of wooden architecture are also encountered—the ceilings of the hujra-i Aniptalao and the chaharkhana, the pillars of the Rang Mahal and the so-called Badi Mahal remind us of wooden structures.

The Plan and Layout of Fathpur Sikri

Describing the plan of Fathpur Sikri, Abu’l Fazl writes that a stone masonry fort was erected and several noble buildings arose in completion. Although the royal palace and the residences of many of the nobles are upon the summit of the hill, the plains likewise are studded with numerous mansions and gardens. Adjacent to the town is a reservoir, and on its embankments, His Majesty constructed a spacious courtyard, a Minār, and a polo-ground where elephant fights are organized. In its vicinity is a quarry of red sandstone whence columns and slabs of any dimensions can be excavated. Under His Majesty’s patronage, carpets and fine stuffs are woven and numerous handicraftsmen have full occupation.

Arif Qandhari also points out that when in 1571 orders were issued to begin building Fathpur Sikri, Emperor Akbar ordered it to have a two or three kuroh circumference on the face of the earth, for houses to be built on the top of the hill, and that they should lay out orchards and gardens at its periphery and centre. Trees were planted in the environs which had formerly been the habitat of rabbits and jackals; mosques, markets, baths, caravanserais, and other fine buildings were constructed in the city. Father Monserrate, who visited the court of Akbar in 1580, also gives a very detailed account of the city. He notes that the most noteworthy features of Fathpur are, firstly, the king’s audience chamber, which is of huge size and very beautiful in appearance, overlooking the whole city; secondly, a great building supported on arches around which is a very spacious courtyard; thirdly, the circus where elephants fight; fourthly, the baths; fifthly, the bazar, which is more than half a mile long, and is filled with an astonishing quantity of every description of merchandise, and with countless people.

From these passages it becomes clear that most of the imperial structures and the houses of the influential sections of the nobility were located on top of the ridge; the civic population inhabited the areas below the ridge, where gardens were also located; the vicinity of the lake was adorned with pleasure resorts; there was a brisk commercial activity in the township; the town was oriented towards the lake where was situated the main gateway to the official area; and the whole town, along with its civic population, was placed within fortified walls.

The fortification wall of Fathpur Sikri had eight gateways to the city: the Ajmeri Darwaza, Tehra Darwaza, Dholpur/Gwalior Darwaza, Chandra Pol, Birbal/Bir Pol, Agra Darwaza, Lal Darwaza, and the Dehli Darwaza. As in the case of the Central Asian cities, where the walls encompassed not only the madina or shahristan (the town proper with the palace), but the rabaz (the suburbs) as well, the city wall and gates of Fathpur Sikri contained within them not only the imperial quarters and the houses of the nobility but also the habitation of the common population comprising merchants, traders, professionals, and others. This would suggest a fairly close relationship between the political authority and the commercial classes.

The whole town was intersected by two horizontal roads, one running between Ajmeri Darwaza and Lal Darwaza, and a second connecting Terha Darwaza with Agra Darwaza. A branch of the latter branched off from the Agra Gate and went straight to the eastern opening of the diwan-i am. Two other roads cut the township vertically. These roads were planned on a grid pattern and laid out with stone pieces dressed to wedge shape and set in mortar with their thinner ends projecting downwards. This setting allowed for a smooth surface and gave stability and strength to the road. The main arterial roads were 15.40 metres wide, with a packing thickness of between 34 and 50 centimetres. There were a number of secondary roads that emanated from these arterial roads, which were approximately 3.6 metres in width. Excavations revealed four roads, each with secondary lanes, emanating at right angles from the main road.

These intersecting roads divide the whole town into ten quarters, of which the central was reserved for the imperial establishments and bureaucratic offices. The area between the main roads was reserved for the higher nobility, while another was given to the ‘new’ township of Fathpur. The modern city of Fatehpur is also situated in the same zone. In the open spaces towards the periphery of the town and the banks of the lake were pleasure pavilions, open fields, and gardens. The commercial classes appear to have been settled in the zone where the main road between the Agra Darwaza and the diwan-i am was situated. This was also the area where the main shopping complex was situated.

When one compares the plan of Fathpur Sikri with the plan of the city of London as it existed until 1750, striking similarities emerge. In both the Mughal city and London, the middle class and professional residential quarters adjoined the aristocratic residential quarter. In both, the main shopping complex was situated within the city walls at a distance from the imperial quarters. In both, the industrial area and artisans’ dwellings were located at the farthest point from the imperial quarters, with the bulk of this area situated outside the city walls. At Fathpur Sikri, the areas of indigo cultivation, leather works, and abattoirs were situated either close to the city wall or outside of it. My survey of a structure excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India near the Dehli Darwaza revealed that it was an ironsmith’s cottage comprising two rooms and a masonry furnace. There are, however, points of variance: the amusement and vice area in London was situated adjacent to the aristocratic residential quarter, whereas the Shaitanpura or the brothels at Fathpur Sikri were constructed outside the city limits. Further, if one compares the colonial plan of Lutyens’ Delhi with that of Akbar’s Fathpur Sikri, one is struck by the similarity of the placement of the main shopping complex, Connaught Circus vis-à-vis Akbar’s palace at Fathpur, and the Mall at New Delhi with the broad road marked with shops between Ajmeri Darwaza and the Hathipol at Fathpur.

Residential structures could not but be near the markets. There are at least two residential neighbourhoods within the town mentioned by our sources and one outside its walls. The first of these is the area of Salim Chishti, also known as Shaikhpura or Nayabad, located behind the Jami Masjid. The second residential neighbourhood was that of Khwaja-i Jahan where Mulla Abdul Qadir Badauni used to live. Outside the city walls was the neighbourhood inhabited by the prostitutes known as Shaitanpura. We also hear of Khairpura, Dharampura, and Jogipura situated outside the city limits. We have the testimony of Abu’l Fazl that the residences of the Akbari nobles were situated on the summit of the hill, while the other residential structures were situated below it in the plains. Following the excavations by the ASI and the team from the Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh, it was found that a large number of structures associated with the nobility were constructed on the northern ridge, between the so-called Tansen Baradari and the sarai near the Agra Darwaza. The discovery of clay tablets used by Shi’ites while praying (sijdagāh) in one of the excavated structures in this area suggests that this area was possibly inhabited by members of the Iranian nobility.

Thus, we see that the plan of Fathpur Sikri accords fairly well with that of the imperial encampment described by Abul Fazl. It also duly takes into account the contours of the site: the main mosque and the imperial palaces and offices were placed on the ridge. Water was supplied to this area by lifting it from the lake using a water wheel and then transporting it using aqueducts. The quarters of the civil population were assigned where the lake and wells provided direct access to water. The residences of the nobility and the lower strata were well separated. The planned construction of shops on long avenues, built obviously at imperial expenditure, and then presumably leased out to private shopkeepers is a very notable feature of the planned city, as is the construction of the caravanserais, built again under imperial aegis, to accommodate merchants and travellers. Not only was Fathpur Sikri, then, well planned, there was also a considerable investment of imperial resources in it to ensure that it fulfilled its proper functions as an imperial town of a new empire.

Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City

It was with Shah Jahan’s construction of Shahjahanabad that the Mughal imperial city reached its fullest and most self-conscious expression. In 1639, Shah Jahan decided to shift his capital from Agra to a new location in Delhi, and over the next decade, he oversaw the creation of a walled city that would serve as the ultimate symbol of Mughal sovereignty. As Stephen Blake has argued in his seminal study Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, this city embodied a new model of urbanism that Blake terms the “sovereign city” or “patrimonial-bureaucratic capital.” According to Blake, Shahjahanabad was not merely a collection of buildings but a carefully orchestrated urban environment designed to reflect and reinforce the absolute authority of the emperor. Drawing on Max Weber’s theory of patrimonial-bureaucratic empire, Blake argues that the city functioned as an “enormously extended household” at the micro-level and a “miniature version of the kingdom” at the macro-level. In this model, the palace-fortress stood for the city, and the mansions of great nobles for the provinces, districts, and other subdivisions of the state.

The physical layout of Shahjahanabad exemplifies this vision. At the city’s heart stood the Red Fort, an enormous fortress-palace complex that housed the emperor, his household, and the administrative machinery of the empire. The fort was situated on the banks of the Yamuna River, following the riverfront tradition established at Agra, but with a crucial difference: where Agra’s riverfront was a linear sequence of noble gardens, Shahjahanabad’s riverfront was dominated almost entirely by the imperial palace. The great nobles were not permitted to build directly on the riverfront as they had at Agra; instead, their mansions were located within the walled city, arranged along grand thoroughfares that led from the fort’s gates. This represented a significant centralization of imperial authority, with the emperor asserting exclusive control over the most prestigious waterfront locations. The city was enclosed by a massive stone wall, punctuated by fourteen gates, which served both defensive and symbolic purposes. Within these walls, the urban fabric was organized according to a clear hierarchy: major roads or bazaars formed the primary circulation network, with smaller public streets leading to residential blocks. Within these blocks, narrow lanes called kuchas, galis, or katras formed the basic units of neighbourhood organization, each with its own name and identity. These smaller units often clustered into larger quarters known as mohallas, which were typically structured around religious sanctuaries.

The commercial heart of Shahjahanabad was the Chandni Chowk, a grand boulevard running from the Red Fort’s Lahore Gate to the Fatehpuri Mosque. This was not merely a market street but a carefully designed urban space, lined with shops and caravanserais, that served as the city’s main commercial artery. According to the contemporary chronicler Shaikh Muhammad Waris, the monumental fortress palace, Jama Masjid, Akbarabadi Mosque, and Fatehpuri Mosque, along with the royal bazaars, formed the backbone of the urban master plan conceived and executed by the emperor with a team of dedicated experts. This emphasis on planning and expert knowledge marks Shahjahanabad as distinct from the more organic growth of Agra and the gradual, decree-driven development of Fathpur Sikri. The selection of the site itself was governed by rational criteria: abundance of water and a temperate climate were major considerations. The Yamuna River and the system of canals and reservoirs were vital to the landscape of urban life, and the existing waterways were used and transformed through the laying out of formal gardens into a sophisticated water system derived from the Nahr-i Bihisht.

The provision of water was central to Shahjahanabad’s urbanism. The Shah Nahr, or royal canal, was constructed to bring water from the Yamuna at Karnal, over 150 kilometres away, to the new capital. This canal fed the gardens, fountains, and water channels of the Red Fort and the nobles’ mansions, as well as providing water for public use. The infrastructure of water thus connected the imperial centre to the agricultural hinterland, the garden suburbs, the inner city, and the fort complex in a single integrated hydrological landscape. This sophisticated system, which required ongoing maintenance and imperial oversight, was both a practical necessity and a powerful symbol of the emperor’s ability to command nature itself. The relationship between the emperor and the nobility in Shahjahanabad was complex and carefully managed. Unlike at Agra, where nobles competed directly for riverfront plots, the nobles of Shahjahanabad were housed within the walled city, their mansions arranged along the major thoroughfares leading from the Red Fort. This spatial arrangement reinforced the emperor’s centrality: all roads led to the fort, and the nobles’ residences were positioned along these roads, symbolizing their dependence on and connection to the imperial centre.

Complementary but Distinct: Three Models Compared

If we now compare the three cities, their complementary but distinct characters become clear. Agra’s urban model was linear, terraced, and symmetrical, oriented outward towards the Yamuna. Water was its primary organizing axis and aesthetic medium. The city was designed to be viewed from the river, and the riverfront garden became the ultimate status symbol shared among the nobility. Commerce and finance, while present and significant, were accommodated behind the garden frontages. As Javed Hasan’s analysis of the plan and ghazal demonstrates, Agra was a well-laid-out township with separate localities for various professions, radial roads converging on the fort, and a left bank lined with gardens rather than habitations, all reflecting a conscious attempt to protect commercial importance and bring order to the visual chaos.

Fathpur Sikri, by contrast, was an inland city built on a ridge, oriented not towards a natural feature but towards the intersection of trade routes. Its plan was nucleated, enclosed within an oblong wall that contained the entire urban population. Where Agra’s planning was driven by the river and the chahārbāgh, Fathpur Sikri’s planning was driven by the Mughal encampment, with the palace as a stone transformation of the imperial camp. The city grew gradually through imperial decrees that encouraged voluntary settlement, suggesting a more organic and less rigidly enforced aesthetic regime. Most significantly, Fathpur Sikri’s economy possessed an autonomy that Agra’s never achieved, continuing to flourish as a commercial centre long after the court had departed.

Shahjahanabad represents a synthesis and transcendence of both earlier models. From Agra, it inherited the riverfront orientation and the integration of water as a central organizing principle. But where Agra’s riverfront was shared among the nobility, Shahjahanabad’s was dominated exclusively by the imperial palace, signalling a centralization of authority. From Fathpur Sikri, it inherited the concept of the walled city containing both imperial and noble residences, but where Fathpur Sikri’s walls encompassed a relatively dispersed settlement, Shahjahanabad’s walls enclosed a densely planned urban fabric organized along hierarchical principles. The street system of Shahjahanabad, with its gradation from major bazaars to dead-end alleys, represents a more sophisticated and deliberate approach to urban spatial organization than anything found at Agra or Fathpur Sikri. And the water management system of Shahjahanabad, with its canal bringing water from over 150 kilometres away, represents an unprecedented investment in urban infrastructure.

Conclusion: Mughal Urbanism as Adaptive Art

In conclusion, the town planning of Mughal India under Akbar and Shah Jahan cannot be reduced to a single model or described adequately by any single theoretical framework. Instead, what we find are three complementary but distinct urban models, each responding to different circumstances and embodying different priorities. Agra represents the riverfront garden city, a linear, terraced, and water-oriented imperial capital where aesthetic display along the Yamuna was paramount and where the nobility shared in the privilege of riverfront construction. Fathpur Sikri represents the encampment city, a nucleated, walled, and trade-oriented capital where commercial autonomy and gradual, decree-driven growth were characteristic, and where the city continued to thrive even after the court departed. Shahjahanabad represents the sovereign city, a planned, centralized, and hierarchically organized capital where the emperor’s absolute authority was inscribed in every aspect of the urban fabric, from the monumental Red Fort dominating the riverfront to the carefully graded street system and the sophisticated water management infrastructure.

The sources of Mughal urban design were multiple and varied: the hierarchical logic of the imperial encampment provided the basic template for the spatial organization of the city; the centripetal symmetry of the chaharbagh offered a modular grid for the division of urban space; and the architectural traditions of Timurid Iran, Gujarat, and indigenous India supplied the formal vocabulary for individual structures. At Fathpur Sikri, we see these sources combined in a unique synthesis, resulting in a city that was at once a stone encampment, a monumental garden, and a thriving commercial centre. The archaeological evidence from my surveys, including the identification of five markets, four serais, fourteen step-wells, and numerous residential structures, demonstrates that Fathpur Sikri was not merely an imperial capital but a fully functioning urban centre with a life of its own. The presence of masons’ marks and signatures on the stones of the city further reveals the human dimension of this grand enterprise, allowing us to glimpse the individual craftsmen who actually built Akbar’s vision.

When one compares the plan of these Mughal imperial towns with the plan of the city of London as it existed until 1750, striking similarities emerge that challenge the notion of a uniquely “Asiatic” urban form. In both the Mughal cities and London, the middle-class and professional residential quarters adjoined the aristocratic residential quarter, while the main shopping complex was situated within the city walls. In both, the industrial area and artisans’ dwellings were located at the farthest point from the imperial quarters, with the bulk of this area situated outside the city walls. The Mughal preference for what Rapaport has termed “dispersed capitals” in contrast to “compact capitals” may have reflected the mobile, militaristic character of the empire, as well as the personalistic nature of Mughal sovereignty, where the emperor’s presence rather than any fixed location constituted the true centre of power. When Shah Jahan finally fixed the capital permanently at Shahjahanabad in 1648, he was in effect making permanent what had previously been fluid, transforming the nomadic sovereignty of the earlier Mughals into a settled, monumental, and architecturally codified imperial presence. Together, these three cities demonstrate that Mughal urban planning was not a monolithic or unchanging practice but a flexible and adaptive art, capable of producing radically different yet equally sophisticated models of the imperial city, each integrating commercial vitality with imperial symbolism in its own unique way.

References:

Primary Sources

· Abul Fazl. Ain-i Akbari. Nawal Kishore, Lucknow, 1882.
· Abul Fazl. Akbarnama. Ed. Agha Ahmad Ali and Molvi Abdur Rahim. 3 vols. Calcutta, 1873-87.
· Badauni, Mulla Abdul Qadir. Muntakhab ut Tawarikh. Ed. Ali Ahmad and W. Nassau Lees. 3 vols. Calcutta, 1864-9.
· Babur, Zahiruddin Muhammad. Baburnama. Tr. and ed. A.S. Beveridge. London, 1921 (reprint Delhi, 1970).
· Faizi, Abul Faiz. Insha-i Fayzi. Ed. A.D. Arshad. Lahore, 1973.
· Finch, William R. “Travels of William Finch.” In Early Travels in India: 1583-1619, ed. W. Foster. London, 1921.
· Gilani, Hakim Abul Fath. Ruqa’at. Ed. M. Bashir Husain. Lahore, 1968.
· Jahangir, Nuruddin Muhammad. Tuzuk-i Jahangiri. Ed. Saiyid Ahmad. Ghazipur and Aligarh, 1863-4.
· Lahori, Abdul Hamid. Badshahnama. Ed. K. Ahmad and Abdur Rahim. Calcutta, 1867.
· Monserrate, Father Anthony. The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J. Tr. J.S. Hoyland and S.N. Banerjee. London, 1922.
· Mundy, Peter. Travels in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667. London, 1907-36.
· Pelsaert, Francois. Jahangir’s India or Remonstratie. Tr. W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl. Cambridge, 1925 (reprint Delhi, 1972).
· Qandhari, Arif. Tarikh-i Akbari. Ed. and annotated Muinuddin Nadwi, A.A. Dihlavi, and Imtiyaz Ali Arshi. Rampur, 1962.

Secondary Sources

· Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. “The Conquest of Catholic Art: The Mughals, the Jesuits, and Imperial Mural Painting.” Art Journal, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 24-30.
· Blake, Stephen P. Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639-1739. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
· Brand, Michael, and Glenn D. Lowry (eds). Fatehpur Sikri: A Source Book. Cambridge, MA, 1985.
· Gaur, R.C. Excavations at Fatehpur Sikri. New Delhi, 2000.
· Hasan, Javed. “Mapping the Mughal City of Agra.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 51, 1990, pp. 241-245.
· Koch, Ebba. The Complete Taj Mahal: And the Riverfront Gardens of Agra. Thames & Hudson, 2006.
· Petruccioli, Attilio. “The Process Evolved by the Control Systems of Urban Design in the Mogul Epoch in India: The Case of Fatehpur Sikri.” Environmental Design, No. 1, 1984, pp. 18-31.
· Rezavi, Syed Ali Nadeem. Fathpur Sikri Revisited. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
· Rezavi, Syed Ali Nadeem. “Uniqueness of the Eastern ‘Imperial City’? Testing the Model with Fathpur Sikri.” In Reason and Archaeology, ed. Krishna Mohan Shrimali. University of Delhi.
· Rizvi, S.A.A., and V.J.A. Flynn. Fathpur Sikri. Bombay, 1975.
· Trivedi, K.K. Agra: Economic and Social History of a Mughal City. Primus Books, 2014.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

Sufism may be best described as Islamic mysticism or asceticism, which through belief and practice helps Muslims attain nearness to Allah by way of direct personal experience of God.¹ While there are other suggested origins of the term Sufi, the word is largely believed to stem from the Arabic word suf, which refers to the wool that was traditionally worn by mystics and ascetics.² Belief in pursuing a path that leads to closeness with God, ultimately through encountering the divine in the hereafter, is a fundamental component of Islamic belief. However, in Sufi thought this proximity can be realised in this life. This paper examines the core doctrines and practices of Sufism, its metaphysical foundations, and its particular development in medieval India, where it produced a unique synthesis of Islamic mysticism with local religious traditions.

The Structure of Sufi Orders

Sufi orders, known as Tariqas, are found throughout the Muslim world, with each order taking on its own distinct identity based on its practices and structure, and often reflecting the cultural and linguistic context in which it is set.³ While structures vary greatly between different Sufi orders, the basic components are that of the murshid, the spiritual guide, and the murid, a follower who pledges allegiance (bayah) to the murshid.⁴ These spiritual guides derive their authority and legitimacy from a chain of successive tutelage and instruction, the silsilah, which through continuous generations may reach back to a prominent saint or mystic and eventually to the Prophet Muhammad himself.⁵ The role of the murshid is to act as a facilitator to the murid, instructing them on how to experience the divine.

Several key terms define the Sufi spiritual path. Sharia (Islamic law) represents the external path, while tariqa (the Sufi path) is the intermediate spiritual journey. Beyond these lie haqiqa (truth), the inner reality, and marifa (gnosis), which is direct experiential knowledge of God.⁶ The ultimate goals of the Sufi journey include fana (annihilation of the ego) and baqa (subsistence in God).⁷ Sufis further believe in a hidden hierarchy of saints, headed by the Qutb (pole or axis), who is understood to spiritually sustain the world.⁸

---

Sufi Practices: Dhikr, Sama, and Ritual

A central component of Sufi worship is the rite of dhikr, which involves constant, meditative remembrance of God, done both communally and individually, geared towards cultivating greater connection with the divine.⁹ The concept of dhikr is rooted in the Quran as an instruction to all Muslims to devote time towards specific acts of remembrance and repetition of the names of Allah, praying supplementary prayers, and can be extended to other activities that contribute towards achieving an experiential connection with the divine.¹⁰ Other practices or rituals that Sufis engage in, which vary from order to order, include prayers and fasting, the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (Mawlid), the visitation of, and performance of rituals at shrines and graves, meditation, and abstinence.¹¹

Some Sufi orders use devotional music (sama) and ritual movements, akin to dance, to further enhance the experiential nearness to God they are seeking.¹² This practice is most commonly associated today with the Mevlevi Sufi order’s Dervishes of Turkey, often referred to as the ‘Whirling Dervishes.’¹³ In South Asia, sama evolved into qawwali, a devotional music form popularized by the Chishti order and its celebrated disciple, the poet-musician Amir Khusrau (d. 1325).¹⁴

---

Sufi Metaphysics: Wahdat al-Wujud and Wahdat ash-Shuhud

Sufi metaphysics is centred on the concept of waḥdah (unity) or tawhid (oneness of God). Two main Sufi philosophies prevail on this topic. Waḥdat al-wujūd literally means “the Unity of Existence” or “the Unity of Being.” Wujūd (existence, presence) here refers to God.¹⁵ This doctrine posits a non-dual state where the illusion of separation between observer and observed is resolved, and it coincides in certain respects with the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.¹⁶ On the other hand, waḥdat ash-shuhūd, meaning “Apparentism” or “Monotheism of Witness,” holds that God and his creation are entirely separate, with any experience of unity being purely subjective.¹⁷

The Sufi saint most characterized in discussing the ideology of Sufi metaphysics in deepest details is Ibn Arabi (d. 1240). He employs the term wujud to refer to God as the Necessary Being. He also attributes the term to everything other than God, but insists that wujud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wujud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun.¹⁸ From the perspective of tanzih (transcendence), Ibn Arabi declares that wujud belongs to God alone, and in his famous phrase, the things “have never smelt a whiff of wujud.”¹⁹ From the point of view of tashbih (similarity), he affirms that all things are wujud‘s self-disclosure (tajalli) or self-manifestation (zohur). In sum, all things are “He/not He” (huwa/la huwa), which is to say that they are both God and not God, both wujud and not wujud.²⁰ In his book Fusus al-Hikam, Ibn Arabi states that “wujūd is the unknowable and inaccessible ground of everything that exists. God alone is true wujūd, while all things dwell in nonexistence; so also wujūd alone is nondelimited (mutlaq), while everything else is constrained, confined, and constricted.”²¹

Ibn Arabi’s doctrine of wahdat al-wujud focuses on the esoteric (batin) reality of creatures instead of the exoteric (zahir) dimension of reality. Therefore he interprets that wujud is one unique reality from which all reality derives. The external world of sensible objects is but a fleeting shadow of the Real (al-Haqq), God. God alone is the all embracing and eternal reality. Whatever exists is the shadow (tajalli) of the Real and is not independent of God. This is summed up in Ibn Arabi’s own words: “Glory to Him who created all things, being Himself their very essence (ainuha).”²²

In opposition to this doctrine, Waḥdat ash-Shuhūd was formulated by the Persian Sufi ‘Alā’ al-Dawlah Simnānī (d. 1336) and later attracted many followers in India, including Ahmed Sirhindi (d. 1624), who provided some of the most widely accepted formulations of this doctrine in the Indian subcontinent.²³ According to Ahmed Sirhindi’s doctrine, any experience of unity between God and the created world is purely subjective and occurs only in the mind of the believer; it has no objective counterpart in the real world. The former position, Shaykh Ahmad felt, led to pantheism, which he considered contrary to the tenets of Sunni Islam. He held that God and creation are not identical; rather, the latter is a shadow or reflection of the Divine Names and Attributes when they are reflected in the mirrors of their opposite non-beings.²⁴ Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi and Abd al-Karim al-Jili were also proponents of apparentism. Some reformers have claimed that the difference between the two philosophies differs only in semantics and that the entire debate is merely a collection of “verbal controversies” which have come about because of ambiguous language.²⁵ However, the concept of the relationship between God and the universe is still actively debated both among Sufis and between Sufis and non-Sufi Muslims.

Sufism in Medieval India: Arrival and Expansion

Sufism arrived in South Asia alongside Turkic invasions and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526). However, it flourished not primarily through state patronage but through the immense spiritual and social influence of Sufi saints, who adapted Islamic mysticism to the Indian context.²⁶ Two major Sufi orders dominated medieval India. The first was the Chishti Order, founded in India by Khwaja Mu‘in al-Din Chishti (d. 1236) in Ajmer (now Rajasthan).²⁷ This became the most popular and indigenized order. The Chishtis emphasized sama (devotional music) to induce ecstatic states despite orthodox criticism, social service and feeding the poor (langar), and accommodation with local traditions.²⁸ They adopted yogic practices including breathing control (habs-i dam), chanting (zikr-i jahri), and inverted seclusion (chilla-i ma‘kus), and they wrote poetry in local languages like Hindavi, Punjabi, and later Urdu.²⁹ Key Chishti figures include Baba Farid (d. 1265), Nizam al-Din Auliya (d. 1325), Nasir al-Din Chiragh-i Dilli (d. 1356), and the poet Amir Khusrau.³⁰ The Chishtis generally stayed aloof from the Sultanate court.

The second major order was the Suhrawardi Order, founded in India by Baha al-Din Zakariyya (d. 1267) in Multan (now Pakistan).³¹ Unlike the Chishtis, this order was more aligned with the state. Suhrawardis accepted royal grants, engaged in political counsel, and emphasized outward piety and knowledge of Islamic law alongside mysticism.³²

Impact on Medieval Indian Society

The impact of Sufism on medieval Indian society was profound and multifaceted. A significant development was the Bhakti-Sufi synthesis, whereby Sufi concepts of divine love (ishq), annihilation (fana), and Wahdat al-Wujud deeply influenced the Bhakti movement. This is especially evident in the poetry of Kabir (d. 1518), Guru Nanak (d. 1539), and Mirabai (d. c. 1550).³³ Furthermore, while Sufism was not the primary method of mass conversion, Sufi shrines (dargahs) became centers of intercommunal devotion. Hindus and Muslims alike visited Sufi tombs to seek intercession (wasila), offer flowers, and tie threads, creating a shared religious space.³⁴ Annual death anniversary festivals (urs) remain major events in South Asia to this day.

Sufis also produced vast mystical poetry (masnavi), biographical dictionaries (tazkiras), recorded discourses (malfuzat), and letters (maktubat), thereby shaping north Indian literary culture.³⁵ The interaction between Sufism and local traditions extended to yoga as well: the eleventh-century Persian text Amritakunda (Pool of Nectar) was translated into Arabic and Persian, and Sufis like Muhammad Ghawth (sixteenth century) integrated yogic postures (asanas) and breath control into Chishti practices.³⁶

The dargah (tomb-shrine) became the focal point of popular Sufism. Devotees offer nazar (votive offerings), recite fatiha (the Quranic opening chapter), and seek blessings. The most famous medieval Indian shrines include Ajmer (Mu‘in al-Din Chishti), Delhi (Nizam al-Din Auliya), and Pakpattan (Baba Farid).³⁷ However, not all Muslims accepted these practices. The Naqshbandi order, especially Ahmad Sirhindi (already discussed as a proponent of Wahdat ash-Shuhud), criticized shrine worship, sama, and the monistic tendencies of Wahdat al–Wujud.³⁸ Later, modern reformist movements such as Deoband and Ahl-i Hadith (nineteenth to twentieth centuries) condemned popular Sufi practices as bid‘a (innovation).³⁹

Women in Sufism

No discussion of Sufism would be complete without acknowledging the role of women. Early mystics like Rabia al-Adawiyya (d. 801, Iraq) introduced the concept of divine love (ishq) as selfless devotion, moving away from fear-based piety.⁴⁰ In medieval India, figures such as Bibi Jamal Khatun (sister of a Chishti saint) and Bibi Fatima Sam served as spiritual guides, though Sufi orders were predominantly male-led and women’s participation was often limited to devotional attendance at shrines rather than formal initiation into tariqas.⁴¹

Conclusion

Sufism in medieval India created a rich, pluralistic spiritual landscape that blurred boundaries between Hindu and Muslim traditions. By the Mughal period (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries), emperors like Akbar patronized Sufis, while Dara Shukoh translated the Upanishads through a Sufi lens.⁴² Though orthodox critiques persisted, the Sufi emphasis on direct love of God, music, poetry, and saint veneration remains deeply embedded in South Asian Islam to this day. The doctrines of Wahdat al-Wujud and Wahdat ash-Shuhud continue to be debated, and the practices of dhikr, sama, and pilgrimage to dargahs remain vibrant, attesting to the enduring legacy of Sufism in the subcontinent.

Footnotes

1. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 3–4.
2. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (London: Routledge, 1914), 1–2.
3. J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1–5.
4. Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 106–108.
5. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 99–100.
6. William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 10–12.
7. Chittick, Sufism, 45–47.
8. Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 132–133
9. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 167–169.
10. Quran 33:41–42; see also Ernst, Shambhala Guide, 85–86.
11. Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 194–196.
12. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 178–182.
13. Shems Friedlander, The Whirling Dervishes (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 15–17.
14. Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 38–41.
15. Chittick, Sufism, 78–80.
16. S. H. Nasr, Sufi Essays (Albany: SUNY Press, 1972), 96–98.
17. Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktubat-i Imam Rabbani, trans. Fazlur Rahman (Karachi: Hamdard Academy, 1978), vol. 1, letter 38.
18. Ibn Arabi, Fusus al-Hikam, ed. A. Affifi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1946), 48–49.
19. Ibn Arabi, Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya (Cairo: Bulaq, 1911), vol. 2, 312.
20. Chittick, Sufism, 81–82.
21. Ibn Arabi, Fusus, 50.
22. Ibn Arabi, Fusus, 52.
23. J. G. J. ter Haar, Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) as Mystic (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 84–87.
24. Sirhindi, Maktubat, vol. 1, letter 52.
25. Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 137–138.
26. Richard M. Eaton, The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 15–18.
27. K. A. Nizami, The Life and Times of Shaikh Nizam-u’d-din Auliya (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1991), 12–14.
28. Nizami, Shaikh Nizam-u’d-din, 45–47.
29. Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 118–121.
30. Muhammad Habib, Hazrat Amir Khusrau of Delhi (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1927), 56–58.
31. Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 45–46.
32. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 23–25.
33. John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 37–40.
34. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 55–57.
35. Nizami, Shaikh Nizam-u’d-din, 89–92.
36. Ernst, Eternal Garden, 130–133.
37. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 112–114.
38. Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1971), 63–65.
39. Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 109–111.
40. Margaret Smith, Rabia the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 4–6.
41. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 426–428.
42. Dara Shikoh, Majma-ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of Two Oceans), trans. M. Mahfuz-ul-Haq (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1929), 2–4.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Ibn Arabi. Fusus al-Hikam. Edited by A. Affifi. Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1946.

Ibn Arabi. Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. 4 vols. Cairo: Bulaq, 1911.

Quran. Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Quran, 2001.

Shukoh, Dara. Majma-ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of Two Oceans). Translated by M. Mahfuz-ul-Haq. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1929.

Sirhindi, Ahmad. Maktubat-i Imam Rabbani. 3 vols. Translated by Fazlur Rahman. Karachi: Hamdard Academy, 1978.

Secondary Sources

Chittick, William C. Sufism: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oneworld, 2000.

Eaton, Richard M. The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Ernst, Carl W. Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Ernst, Carl W. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.

Friedlander, Shems. The Whirling Dervishes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Friedmann, Yohanan. Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity. Montreal: McGill University Press, 1971.

Habib, Muhammad. Hazrat Amir Khusrau of Delhi. Bombay: Times of India Press, 1927.

Haar, J. G. J. ter. Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) as Mystic. Leiden: Brill, 1992.

Hawley, John Stratton, and Mark Juergensmeyer. Songs of the Saints of India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Sufi Essays. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972.

Nicholson, Reynold A. The Mystics of Islam. London: Routledge, 1914.

Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad. The Life and Times of Shaikh Nizam-u’d-din Auliya. Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1991.

Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.

Smith, Margaret. Rabia the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928.

Trimingham, J. Spencer. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi