Abstract
In recent years much has been written about the ‘composite culture’ said to have evolved in medieval and early modern India. Prof. Siddiqui’s present study contributes to this body of scholarship by presenting ten chapters divided in three parts: Life and Culture, The Delhi Sultanate and Central Asia, and Gender Studies. These chapters are really independent essays, as the book has no narrative thread, overarching argument or conclusion. What we do have, however, is a series of thoughtful and important essays based on a wide range of original materials, mainly Persian chronicles. Preceding these ten chapters is an Introduction that, rather than actually introducing the book, traces the social history of western India (Sindh, Multan, Punjab) under Arab, Ismaili, Ghaznavid and Ghurid rule between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. If the book has a single thesis, it would be that policies established by these rulers ‘inspired the sultans of the [Delhi] Sultanate to adopt a conciliatory policy vis-à-vis the Hindus’ (p. 33). Prof. Siddiqui also invokes the oft-repeated trope that Arabs brought to eighth century Sindh an ‘egalitarian undercurrent’ inspired by their Islamic faith, and that this probably proved appealing to the region’s lower castes (p. 4). However, he does not argue that Sufis had ‘preached Islam’ among non-Muslims or played any role in conversions to Islam, positions he had once held.
The book’s first chapter focuses on the rapid growth of Delhi under the early sultans, together with the city’s cosmopolitan character produced by, among other things, the influx of refugees fleeing repeated Mongol threats to the subcontinent (1220 to ca. 1320). The growth of the Persian language as a lingua franca and its increasing usage by Hindus, increased international trade, the expansion of irrigation and the introduction of new technologies such as paper-making are all part of this story. The second chapter addresses the position of Hindus in the Delhi sultanate. Here, Prof. Siddiqui discusses how the term ‘Hindu’ was used in Persian sources, noting that chroniclers like Zia al-Din Barani and Minhaj Juzjani included only land chiefs, Brahmans, or other high castes in that category. He also touches on the growing number of Hindus in the sultanate’s administrative apparatus under the Khalajis (1290–1320), and the use of the Devanagari script in provincial administration. In the Tughluq period, he notes, Hindu chiefs were admitted into the ruling class in ways usually associated with the policies of Akbar. The book’s third chapter discusses the fusion of Unani and Ayurvedic medical practices.
Timur’s invasion and the sacking of Delhi in 1398–99 greatly diminished the sultanate’s importance and influence in the early fifteenth century, but in the second half of that century the state saw a dramatic recovery under the Lodi Afghans, which is the subject of Chapter 5. The author argues that the reign of Sikandar Lodi (1488–1517) saw an exceptional degree of Hindu–Muslim coexistence, and that a ‘process of cultural fusion that had accelerated in the fourteenth century was by now complete’ (p. 91). The fact that the revenue department under Sikandar was completely manned by Hindus, and that only Persian was used in his administration (p. 92), implies a huge influx of non-Muslims into the Persophone world.
Chapter 6 examines the diplomatic relations between the Lodi sultans of Delhi and the wealthy maritime state of Gujarat in the early sixteenth century, a time when Rajput princes were gaining power, Malwa was weakening and Babur, still in Kabul, was preparing to invade north India. Indeed, one of the factors drawing the Mughals into India was the appeal that Sultan Ibrahim Lodi’s uncle made to Babur in 1523 for help in overthrowing his nephew, the sultan of Delhi. This was because although Gujarat’s Muzaffar Shah had given him refuge, the Lodi refugee received no material support, apparently owing to Muzaffar’s desire to remain on good terms with Ibrahim Lodi. After Babur took Delhi in 1526, Afghans scrambled to regain their footing in a vastly transformed north India. Apart from Sher Shah Sur, most Afghan nobles fled to Gujarat, encouraging the Gujarat sultan to try to dislodge Humayun from Delhi. In short, by considering the role played by Gujarat in this tumultuous period, Prof. Siddiqui adds a fourth dimension to what is conventionally considered a three-cornered contest for power in north India between Mughals, Rajputs and Afghans.
The two chapters in the book’s second part discuss relations between South and Central Asia in the Mongol age. Chapter 7 focuses on the brief but remarkable story of the Khwarazm sultanate which, during the early decades of the thirteenth century, had brought under its control nearly all of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran before bearing the brunt of Mongol destruction. Here Prof. Siddiqui traces the extraordinary career of Jalal al-Din Khwarazm Shah, who struggled to recover his royal inheritance after Chingiz Khan had dislodged his father, Sultan Muhammad, from his throne. Jalal al-Din spent most of his career on the run, evading Mongol armies sent out to destroy him. When Sultan Iltutmish of Delhi denied him refuge or aid, he attacked Lahore, Multan and coastal Sind, wandered through Kirman and Fars in southern Iran, and attacked Tabriz and Tiflis before the Mongols finally hunted him down in eastern Anatolia. The chapter reveals just how unsettled the Delhi Sultanate was in the early years of Iltutmish’s reign. Chapter 8 reconstructs the considerable extent of Mongol encroachment on the sultanate during the reigns of Balban (r. 1266–87) and the Khalaji sultans, and their lingering presence in the western Punjab. The book closes with two short chapters highlighting the political roles of some prominent palace women, and Sufi perspectives on women and marriage in the Delhi Sultanate period.
Although the book’s title contains the phrase ‘composite society’, this notion is never adequately explained. What we have instead are occasional references to accommodation between Muslim rulers and Hindu chiefs, or to the prominence of Hindus in administrative capacities of the Delhi Sultanate. We also hear the voices of cool pragmatism from contemporary writers like Amir Khusrau or Zia al-Din Barani, in contrast to strident demands by immigrant clerics that ‘infidels’ be offered the choice of conversion or death. But the author’s picture of a monolithic Muslim society informed by an egalitarian ethic, juxtaposed to a stratified non-Muslim society, seems much too neat. Fractured by ethnic divisions between Iranians, Turks and Afghans, religious divisions between Sufi shaikhs and Hanafi or Shafi’i clerics, or social and legal cleavages between elite slaves and freeborn Turks, Muslim society in the Delhi sultanate was anything but monolithic. Indeed, it would seem that Muslim society itself was perhaps a ‘composite’ one, depending on how that term is theorised.
Finally, the book could have benefited from a map, since many of the author’s arguments are geographically contextualised. Nonetheless, Prof. Siddiqui is to be congratulated for publishing a number of finely-researched individual essays on a period of Indian history that remains far too neglected.