Abstract
In the recent past, cultural and social developments have generally been kept on the margins of studies pertaining to the Delhi Sultanate. In existing historiography, the venture of Islam in India is seen more as a political force, aiming at consolidation through the building of new administrative institutions. Except early attempts made by Marxist historians and a few others from the Chicago school of historiography, no serious effort has been attempted to situate the social and cultural context of the arrival, expansion and consolidation of a totally new ruling class having a separate religion as well. Such limitations of historiography at times has left a dangerous vacuum for potential portrayal of political Islam in India as an aggressor ‘limited to bloody expansion, temple desecration and political exigencies and institutions only’. The work under reference marks a departure from this trend.
Planned into eleven chapters and two appendixes along with an introduction, the volume deals with four thematic trends, namely, economic developments, socio-cultural aspects, literary traditions and scientific temperament. The context is to explain important factors responsible for social change in India during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. The volume builds up a very strong case for the idea of cultural diffusion through Arab Islamic proselytisation. Foreign trade carried on by Arab merchants, who held sway in the world trade, linked the countries of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. These merchants made possible the arrival of foreign merchandise that led to the introduction of new crafts and modifications in the indigenous ones, and also the exchange of information about different cultural traditions, scientific ideas, instruments and literature. Thus, the coming of Islam into India reflects more of a cultural experience rather than just an intrusion. The process of acculturation induced social mobility within Indian society, hitherto unavailable within existing structures of Indian society. Yet the very sultans of Delhi who benefited from the egalitarian concerns of merit under the sultanate polity of the Ghaznavid sultans, at times, disowned the tradition in favour of blood hierarchies. It indicates a two-way acculturation.
The first and third chapters along with the last one analyse patterns of political behaviour which in turn guided economic structures to ensure ‘public welfare’. The author argues that in spite of Ghaznavid influence, the processes were reflection of an intellectual exercise by the thinkers of the Delhi Sultanate. The requirement for centralisation and mobilisation of resources affected by Central Asian turmoil developed a commodity market based on monetisation. Thus, space for urbanisation with bazaar culture transformed the nature of Indian polity. Nonetheless, here one can say that the progress of material culture was embedded in the exigencies of political economy, bereft of any fundamental transition in favour of capitalist tendencies unlike contemporary Europe. Thus, as the last chapter shows the disintegration of the core city resulted in the percolation of urban process downwards leading to the rise of the peripheries. The syncretic culture of the Delhi Sultanate helped regional powers in gaining legitimacy in their endeavour to emerge as a political alternative to the Delhi Sultanate. So the Mughals inherited an economic and cultural continuity.
The second theme of social mobility discussed through the second, fourth and sixth chapters uses the agencies of urbanisation, food and new social groups to build up the case. Here lies the strength of the work as it explains the social experience of Islam in India in building up a symbiotic relationship which materialised through Muslim Sufis and Hindu ascetics. The use of food and dinning to gain social legitimacy by political authorities is quite an enriching study. Islamic acculturation of the festival of Nauroz, a pre-Islamic tradition, shows how cultural filters transmitted and worked upon the idea of Islam across regions. The same stands for adaptation to Indian social hierarchies. Cooking and consumption of food became a public activity, impacting trade and job opportunities.
Elitist rulings by Minhaj-i-Siraj and Ziauddin Barani indicate that upward mobility of the Khaljis, Afghans, low-caste converts, Hindus and Jains was very much a part of the overall developments. The political requirements of the sultanate and regional kingdoms were matched at the social level by Khanqahs of Sufi saints and madrasas. In fact, with territorial expansion the need to expand the social base was also explicit. References to the formation of Muslim biradaris indicate the transmission of influences of the Hindu caste system. The process of urbanisation provided the much desired social context for breaking up of the rural agrarian structure entrenched in the caste system, leading to demographic mobility.
The status of science and technology in medieval India has been a much debated issue. The author argues that the technique of pyrotechnics and gun casting and producing gunpowder ensured the rise of new crafts like atishbazan and created opportunities for traders in the essential constituents of gunpowder, such as, saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal. The potentiality of exploring the social role of firearms has just been indicated through the case of Hemu during Sher Shah Sur’s reign. The growth of scientific temperament in the Delhi Sultanate along with inquisitiveness has been located in a double-edged manner. Central Asian tradition as well as pre-Islamic Hindu knowledge both enriched astronomy even prior to the scientific revolution in Europe. There are enough indications about cross religious interaction. At least till the sultanate period astronomy and astrology had a ‘shared interest’ for the Indian elites.
The empirical reality of education embedded in the religious context of medieval India is the next major theme. The Islamic education system was closely based on state patronage but the role of individual Sufi scholars was equally significant. In fact, the author argues that availability of madrasas and its teachers enhanced upward social mobility for all classes. Even some of the Sufis could not tolerate this egalitarian role of education. This openness promoted a literary culture which in turn patronised maintenance of libraries. This intellectual stability introduced a syncretic tradition by maintaining acquisition of knowledge as a secular exercise. Nevertheless, classical languages being the only preserve of the elite, syncreticism remained socially hierarchical.
In a way this work makes a strong statement arguing for the formation of a syncretic tradition. It was produced through the diffusion of acculturation process from Islamic Arab and Central Asian lands to the core of the Delhi Sultanate, that is, Delhi, which in turn filtered downwards to muffassil regions of India. The work claims to be ‘Breaking the conventional belief that urbanization was shaped solely by economic factors’. This coming from a senior historian from Aligarh is certainly interesting. The use of unconventional sources is the strength of the work. Even to well-known sources the author adds new dimensions. The tapping of vernacular literature holds enormous possibilities for the future.