Three Iranian voices in the Renaissance under Akbar

Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ Gīlānī

Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ belonged to Gilan in Iran, where his father Maulānā ‘Abdu’r Razzāq, an eminent scholar, served as s[adr under Aḥmad Khān, the local ruler. The latter was deposed in 1567, whereafter ‘Abdu’r Razzāq was imprisoned and died while in confinement, Abū’l Fatḥ apparently found circumstances in Iran difficult for him thereafter and came to India along with his brothers to seek opportunities here. They appeared at Akbar’s court in 1575. ³

This event was important enough, presumably in view of Abū’l Fatḥ’s subsequent rapid promotion, for both Abū’l Faẓl and Badāūnī to record it in their own respective styles. Abūl Faẓl reports,

These young men of pleasing liberal manners received refuge at the Imperial court and their intellect and fortunes progressed with the attention of the emperor. Though all the three brothers were excellent in traditional attainments, yet Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ was especially remarkable in understanding the pulse of the time, reading the lines of the forehead and possessing many humane qualities. ⁴

Badāūnī attributes Fatḥullāh’s success to his ability to shape his views to what Akbar wished to hear:

[All] the three brothers from Gilan were taken into service and the eldest brother [Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ] by his courtly expertise obtained surprising ascendency over the emperor. He resorted to pure flattery and adapted himself to every change in the religious ideas of His Majesty, even going in advance of them and soon enough attained the highest level of proximity to him. ⁵

In another passage, Badāūnī tells us that when Abū’l Fatḥ arrived, he was so orthodox that he rebuked Badāūnī for having a shorter beard than allowed by the Shari‘at, with Badāūnī answering that the fault lay with the barber, not him! But later, to keep up with Akbar’s rejection of orthodoxy, Fatḥullāh turned into as clean-shaved a person as traditional Muslim mendicants! ⁶

Abū’l Fatḥ joined the court shortly after the commencement of the ‘Ibādat Khana discussions, then confined to Shaikhs, Ulema, pious men, and a few of the Emperor’s companions and attendants. ⁷ These debates began to turn acrimonious and tumult often occurred. ⁸ Badāūnī reminisces that in discussions on religious matters, there was no match to Abū’l Faẓl, except Abū’l Fatḥ and Mullā Yazdī. ⁹

In October 1578 in Abū’l Faẓl’s words, the openness of Akbar’s enterprise and his greatness became evident when ‘the sufis, philosophers, orators, jurists (Sunni and Shi‘a), Brahmans, Jews, Charvaks, Nazarenes, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and various others were also admitted to these discussions’. ¹⁰

Soon afterwards Abū’l Fatḥ was appointed S[[adr and Amīn of Bengal and left for his assignment in 1578. ¹¹ During the rebellion in Bengal in 1580, he was captured by the rebels ¹² and with much difficulty succeeded in escaping from Tanda fort along with Rāi Patar Dās. ¹³ He came back to the court in 1581, ¹⁴ so that he was away from the capital at the time of the issuance of the maḥz]ar in 1579 by the leading ‘ulamā, assigning Akbar the status of the Imām-i ‘Ādil and of Akbar’s subsequent alienation from orthodox Islam and the beginning of the policy of Sulḥ-i kul.

On his return, however, the Hākīm joined the reigning trend at the court. Badāūnī, indeed, accuses Hakim Abū’l Fatḥ along with Abū’l Faẓl and Birbal of having turned Akbar away from religion (dīn) and gradually leading him to reject the Quranic Revelations, the truth of prophethood, miracles and the Shari‘at. ¹⁵

Badāūnī might here be exaggerating, but there was certainly some basis for his belief that Abū’l Fatḥ, sensing the trend, even went in advance of the stage of scepticism in respect of many Islamic beliefs that Akbar might on his own have reached at some point in his pursuit of Sulḥ-i Kul.

Abū’l Fatḥ on his return in 1581 also presented a report of the affairs of Bengal to the Emperor with much eloquence ¹⁶ and so retained his trust and favour. In the same year (1581), he was appointed the s[adr of the provinces of Delhi, Malwa and Gujarat. ¹⁷

It is interesting to note that Qāẓī Nūrullāh Shustrī a devout Shi‘a entered imperial service on the recommendation of Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ. ¹⁸ It was also on his recommendation that Mullā Aḥmad Thattavī, an erudite Shi‘a scholar, was ordered to compile the account from the thirty-sixth year onwards for the Tarīkh-i ‘Alafī, the official history of the millennium since the Prophet’s death. Badāūnī, whom Mullā Aḥmad replaced, laments that he wrote according to his Shī‘ite beliefs and prejudice completing two volumes coming down to Chingez Khān before he was murdered by Mirza Faulād, after a quarrel over a sectarian issue. ¹⁹ He also recommended Ḥayātī Gīlānī whom Badāūnī describes as a good poet, quoting some of his verses, one of these being:

Ḥayātī, don’t sit before me and disturb my cries.

I am a lover, you are a man of wisdom. I need the company of a possessed companion. ²⁰

Thus Abū’l Fatḥ was quite open to helping his countrymen. Nor did his choices, in Badāūnī’s view, turn out to be justified in all cases. He reports that Abū’l Fatḥ presented to Akbar a poet named ‘Ubaidī who later turned out to be just a ‘one-couplet miracle’. ²¹

Abū’l Fatḥ was a practitioner of Yūnānī medicine and remained faithful to his profession as is borne out by the fact that when the Emperor sought counsel form his principal advisers about measures for people’s welfare in 1582, Abū’l Fatḥ proposed the construction of a hospital and arrangements for its maintenance. ²²

It is true, as Badāūnī remarks, that Abū’l Fatḥ was a man suited more to the life of a courtier and civil administrator than the battle field. ²³ This is evident from the fact that, while in 1585 he received the rank (mans[ab) of 800, ²⁴ the highest rank that he could reach was only 1,000, ²⁵ in spite of his great proximity to Akbar.

Yet, Abu’l Fatḥ’s intellectual attainments were appeared undeniable: ‘he was unparalleled in his sharpness of intellect, excellent disposition and perfection in all human accomplishments, prose, or poetry’. ²⁶ While no piece of poetry of his apparently survives, the specimens of his prose are available in his Ruqa‘āt (letters written mainly to his brothers and Mughal nobles, in 1580–81). ²⁷ Besides exhibiting an elegance of style, these also reveal certain other attributes of his character. In one letter, he writes to his brother Ḥakīm Hammām that he had bought a slave boy and paid him two tankas a day for memorising ten couplets of the poet Anwarī, but he in fact was able to memorise eight additional couplets to earn one more tanka! ²⁸

Another letter shows his sense of modesty: in March 1581, he was assigned the task of drafting an important farmān, the emperor approved the draft and remarked ‘It has been well written’. But Abū’l Faẓl also brought a draft unasked to the emperor, Abū’l Fatḥ politely writes that from it ‘some matters, which ought to have been included, were incorporated in my draft’. ²⁹

While we know of Abū’l Fatḥ’s increasing turn towards the theory of Sulḥ-i Kul, it is refreshing to get a whiff of it from Abū’l Fatḥ’s own pen. In a letter to Sharīf Āmulī, himself a controversial figure, he asked him to recognise that ‘in this market (of the world)’ there should be ‘no loss but always a just exchange’, and ‘living well with both good and bad, and considering oneself, with all of one’s failings as a necessary part of this work-place, is a necessary element of Sulḥ-i Kul’. He ends with the hemistich: ‘Seek in yourself whatever you desire for yourself’. ³⁰

Badāūnī in his account of Shaikh ‘Ārif Ḥusainī attributes Abū’l Fatḥ’s death to a curse by that saint, after a veil he used to conceal his face with was forcibly removed by the Ḥakīm, at the instance of Akbar. Badāūnī, always ready to be superstitious, alleges that Abū’l Fatḥ died (in Kashmir in the summer of 1589) as a result of this curse. ³¹ Abū’l Faẓl, who along with Abū’l Fatḥ was accompanying the Emperor on this journey, has a totally different version of their meeting with the same ‘Ārif Ardābalī, and attributed Abū’l Fatḥ’s death to dysentery. ³² Badāūnī himself, when recording Abū’l Fatḥ’s death, subsequent to that of Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī, seems to have forgotten his animosity for a while and quotes the following verse:

In the estimation of two eyes (it is) just the loss of one person

In the reckoning of intellect, (it is) of more than a thousand

He hastens, however, to follow these words of high praise with the chronogram ‘God punished him’. ³³ Fatḥullāh was buried near Hasan Abdal (in the Punjab) according to Akbar’s orders. Faiẓī and ‘Urfī composed elegies to mourn the deaths of both Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī and Abū’l Fatḥ. ³⁴

Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī

There is little in the Mughal accounts about Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī’s earlier life in Iran and the Deccan. ³⁵ Badāūnī, who knew him well, says he was a Sayyid of Shīrāz and had for long been a ‘follower’ (subordinate or pupil) of officials and great men of Fārs (Persia proper). There he had acquired knowledge of all the ‘deduced sciences (jamī‘ulūm-i naqalī), such as medicine, astronomy, geometry, astrology, geomancy, arithmetic, secret mechanisms, delusive devices and load-moving machines’, and also was master of traditional learning in branches such as Arabic, the Prophet’s Tradition, Quranic commentary and theology. He had also written books which Badāūnī does not name, and which have not apparently survived. ³⁶ According to Abūl Faẓl, he had studied under Khwāja Jamāluddīn Maḥmūd, Maulānā Kamāluddīn Sherevānī and Maulānā Aḥmad Kurd, apparently in Iran. ³⁷ He had also been a pupil of Mīr Ghiyās]uddīn Mans[ūr Shīrāzī, who had not been particular about religious rituals, and so Fatḥullāh could be expected to be liberal in such matters. ³⁸ He had himself apparently accumulated sufficient reputation as a scholar to be invited by Ismā‘il ‘Ādil Shāh to join his court at Bijapur. ³⁹ When Isma‘il ‘Ādil Shāh was assassinated in 1581, Fatḥullāh played some part in securing the succession of Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh, so that he must have enjoyed a high position in ‘Ādil Shāhī administration. ⁴⁰

Akbar, having learnt of Fatḥullāh’s reputation, invited him to his court in 1583, alerting all jāgīrdārs on the way to facilitate his passage. ⁴¹ Badāūnī tells us of the exceptional reception he received at the court. ‘Abdu’r Raḥīm Khān-Khānān and Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ were deputed to receive him, and a large jāgīr with favourable concessions was assigned to him. ⁴²

There is no doubt that part of the reason for the warm reception given to Fatḥullāh was the reputation he bore of administrative integrity. In 1586, he was given the designation of ‘Amīnu’l Mulk’ (Assessor of the Empire) and asked to identify and rectify defects in revenue administration. Here, he was placed above Rāja Todar Mal, the dīwān, and could take his own decisions. He prepared a detailed set of proposals which showed his close knowledge of revenue matters and also his sense of moderation. Akbar approved his proposals which Abū’l Faẓl has, to our advantage, reproduced. ⁴³ He had already been appointed chief s[adr and given the title of ‘Azdu-daula (along with a gift of 50,000 rupees, horse and robe of honour), in 1585 and so made in-charge of land grants throughout the empire. ⁴⁴

In respect of Akbar’s religious views, Fatḥullāh seems to have adopted a cautious position. As s[adr, he seems to have followed Akbar’s policy of restricting or reducing land grants to theologians. Badāūnī alleges that he did not have the power to sanction a grant of even five bīghas (1.2 hectares), while he was busy reclaiming older grants. ⁴⁵ Towards the end of his life, Fatḥullāh was granted in jāgīr the area (Basāwar) where Badāūnī himself had his house and land grant. Fatḥullāh set about resuming land grants, in order to present the Emperor with the state money so saved, which Akbar generously returned to him. This sin, says Badāūnī, with his usual malice, hastened Fatḥullāh’s demise. ⁴⁶ Badāūnī also claims that a theologian Ibrāhīm Sirhindī was sent to the Ranthambhor fort as a prisoner because of his having entered into arguments with Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī, Abū’l Fatḥ and Abū’l Faẓl. ⁴⁷

It, however, appears that Fatḥullāh did not go to the extremes that his two colleagues, Abū’l Fatḥ and Abū’l Faẓl, were ready to go to in religious matters. Badāūnī tells us that he openly offered prayers in the Shi‘a fashion in the Imperial Dīwān, which no one else dared do; and that when Akbar openly questioned how the Prophet could have bodily ascended to heaven or physically split the moon, he did not join the other courtiers in lauding the Emperor’s wisdom. He remained silent, with his head bowed down. ⁴⁸

Fatḥullāh’s contribution to the ‘Renaissance’ associated with Akbar was in two other spheres. The difficulties that the Hijri era introduces in ordinary life, in being based on the lunar cycle, and so inconsistent with the weather-cycle, make it unsuitable for taxation purposes where harvests must determine the calendar. Yet, as Abū’l Faẓl complained, ‘the narrow-minded ones’ regarded the lunar calendar as religiously ordained. ⁴⁹ Akbar, therefore, wished to have it replaced with an accurate solar calendar.

We now know that the solar year must accord with the earth’s completion of a circle around the sun, which never accords with the close of a complete day and night at the end of the period. Our pre-Copernicus predecessors who calculated the time between equinoxes and solstices knew too that the period cannot end with a complete day and night and, therefore, needs adjustment from year to year. When Akbar decided to shift to a complete solar era (with months too detached from lunar cycles), close calculations became necessary. Abū’l Faẓl, who offers two accounts of the new solar era, acknowledges that Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī, mathematician and astronomer, was responsible for the calculations required for the ‘Ilāhī’ era that came into effect in 1584. ⁵⁰

Since Fatḥullāh was well versed in the traditional sciences, it was natural that when in 1582, the project of the Tārīkh-i Alafī, a history of the millennium since the death of the Prophet, was mooted by Akbar, that Mīr Fatḥullāh should be involved in it. Badāūnī says, he was asked to draft the account of Year 2 after the Prophet’s death. ⁵¹

The major field, in which Akbar’s interest was unique for his time, was also one in which Fatḥullāh made important contributions. Akbar’s interest in technology has already received scholarly attention. ⁵² Some of the inventions in which Akbar was interested appear to be those of Mīr Fatḥullāh. When the Emperor organised a bazaar on 20 March 1583, Mīr Fatḥullāh displayed in his shop ‘load-moving machines (jarr-i as]qīl) and other fanciful devices’. ⁵³ Niz]āmuddīn Aḥmad in his short notice of Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī tells us that he was an expert in fanciful and wonderful devices such as a grain-mill on a moving cart, which (mill) moved of itself; a moving mirror in which from far and near strange shapes appeared, and one by which twelve muskets were (together) fired (sar mī shud). ⁵⁴

Setting the moving mirror aside, the two other devices can only be understood by reference to the descriptions Abū’l Faẓl’s Ā’īn-i Akbarī provides of inventions made at Akbar’s court. While M.A. Alavi and A. Rahman chose well to proclaim Fatḥullāh as an ingenious scientist in their monograph on him, their discussion of his inventions was unfortunately weakened by their inaccurate impression of the level of technology at Akbar’s time and apparent reliance on Blochmann’s translation (not text) of the Ā’īn-i Akbarī. ⁵⁵ The field has been much clarified by Irfan Habib’s paper, ‘Akbar and Technology’, ⁵⁶ though, as will be seen, points for disagreement still remain.

Let us, first, consider the cart mill, also described by Abū’l Faẓl, but as an invention of Akbar, which might be treated as a courtier’s piece of flattery. ⁵⁷ One can imagine that the cart had an axle joining the two cartwheels and that on this axle, there was a small vertical wheel with horizontal bars at the rim, which enmeshed at the top with a horizontal double wheel with vertical bars which the projecting bars of the axle–wheel collided with and moved. This is now called pin-drum gearing, which is illustrated in Mughal painting. ⁵⁸ (Toothed gearing was not in use.) The upper horizontal wheel had the form of a rotating millstone for milling the corn.

The second invention has some problems. At first sight, it seems to be identical with the Barghū mill, as Alavi and Rahman as well as Irfan Habib think to be the case. As Irfan Habib has established, the latter mill, described by Abū’l Faẓl, ⁵⁹ was designed to smoothen a number of musket barrels simultaneously by rotating a large horizontal wheel which enmeshed at its rim with smaller vertical wheels that turned bars thrust inside musket barrels. ⁶⁰ But the problem is that Niz]āmuddīn Aḥmad, by using the phrase sar mi shud, refers to the simultaneous firing of muskets rather than the finishing of the insides of musket barrels. ⁶¹

If Niz]āmuddīn Aḥmad meant to say that Fatḥullāh invented a device by which several muskets could fire at once, this would rather correspond to the device referred to with unwelcome brevity by Abū’l Faẓl when he tells us of a contraption, again attributed to Akbar’s ingenuity, by which seventeen cannon pieces could be fired all at once by one match. ⁶² If one here replaces cannon pieces by muskets, we would have Fatḥallāh’s device. The trouble is that, unlike the barghū ‘machine’, we do not just now know how this device worked.

About Fatḥullāh Shīrāzī as a person one can only turn to the loquacious Badāūnī. He says, Fatḥullāh was very unconventional. He used to carry a musket on his shoulder and a pouch at his waist, and to run about in the field, thus abandoning ‘all academic dignity’ (shān-i ‘ilmī). He loved to teach young children of nobles (including a slave boy of Ḥakīm Abū’l Fatḥ and a son of Abū’l Faẓl), going about from house to house. ⁶³ Badāūnī also saw a contradiction in his conduct: while in meetings with others, he was very ‘hospitable, considerate and good-natured’, it was otherwise when he taught or lectured to students (shāgirdān). Then he was ‘foul-mouthed, using bad words and showering ridicule’, so that few persons went to obtain instruction from him and he failed to leave behind any sincere pupil. ⁶⁴ About his family, little is known, except that after his arrival at Akbar’s court, he had married the younger daughter of Muz]affar Khān, a high Iranian noble of Akbar, who had been killed by the rebels in Bengal. ⁶⁵

Fatḥullāh could spend only 7 years at Akbar’s court, for he died suddenly in Kashmir in the summer of 1589 while accompanying Akbar in the valley. Akbar deeply mourned the loss of ‘his deputy (vakīl), sage (ḥakīm), physician (t]abīb) and astronomer (munājjim)’. Abū’l Faẓl provided perhaps the most touching tribute, when he acknowledged that ‘after seeing this spiritually great man I became a different person’. ⁶⁶ Badāūnī too for the moment forgot Fatḥullāh’s supposed demerits to record the date of his death in abjad by the words: ‘He was an angel’. ⁶⁷

‘Urfī Shīrāzī

The third Iranian immigrant we have chosen to study displayed the full splendour of the Mughal-Indian renaissance in the realm of Persian literature. His verses not only mirror the new atmosphere of free thought that Akbar’s measures created, but in their radicalism went far beyond the limit that even the officially encouraged beliefs did not cross. In the history of Persian literature, ‘Urfī has seldom received his due, though Shibli, in his great Urdu history of Persian poetry, does well to extend recognition to that poet by devoting a whole chapter to him. ⁶⁸

Even so, despite the contemporary recognition of the high standards of ‘Urfī’s poetry, not much is known about the poet himself. Since ‘Urfī never formally entered Akbar’s service, Mughal chronicles do not have any report to give about his career in India and earlier life. What can be pieced together amounts to the following details. His name was Khawāja Sayyid Muḥammad and nickname Jamāluddīn, and he belonged to Shīrāz where his father Sayyid ‘Alī Zainuddīn had been a dārogha (superintendent) to the qāẓī and so looked after matters of shara‘ (religious law) as well as of customary law (‘urf). The poet’s adoption of ‘Urfī for his pen name (takhallus) was taken as a reference to his father’s occupation. ⁶⁹ But it is more likely that since ‘urfī also means the common run, this reflected his scorn on others of his profession who adopted fancy poetic designations. Even in his adoption of ‘Urfī as a pen name, there ran in him a streak of pride that never left him.

According to Amīn Aḥmad Rāẓī, author of Haft Iqlīm (1602–03), leaving Iran ‘Urfī first went to the Dakhin by sea, where, however, he did not get the recognition he thought his talents deserved, and so he came to Northern India. ⁷⁰ Badāūnī in his biographical note on ‘Urfī, however, speaks as if he directly arrived at Fateḥpur (Sikri) from Vilāyat (Iran). ⁷¹ He adds that first of all he made his acquaintance with the famous court poet of Akbar, Faiẓī, ⁷² who himself wrote thus of the encounter.

He thus, as was his usual wont, patronised ‘Urfī, but according to Badāūnī the friendship went sour when ‘Urfī unnecessarily insulted his new-found patron. Visiting Faiẓī’s house and observing Faiẓī’s dog, he asked Faiẓī the name of this gentlemen (makhdūmzād). Faiẓī, perhaps, casually replied that it was a ‘common’ dog (‘urfī). ‘Urfī, seeing his own pen name so used, retorted, ‘Let it be mubarak (felicitous)’, but Mubārak was the name of Faiẓī’s father and he took ill of this as impudence on ‘Urfī’s part. ⁷⁴ ‘Urfī then attached himself to Abū’l Fatḥ Gīlānī, the first of our Iranian trio, who introduced him to ‘Abdu’r Raḥīm Khānkhānān. After Abū’l Fatḥ Gīlānī’s death in 1589, Khānkhānān became ‘Urfī’s main patron and introduced him to the imperial court as well as to Prince Salīm (the later Jahāngīr). ⁷⁵ ‘Urfī wrote laudatory poems (qas[īdas) for both his patrons and received rewards in return.

He remained attached to Khānkhānān till the end of his life which unfortunately came within a matter of 2 years. Nihāvandī, fortunately for us, reproduces some of his qas[īdas (odes in praise) ‘Urfī composed in these 2 years. These were really extraordinarily long ghazals, full of rich ideas and allusions, where only a few couplets in praise of his patron’s father Bairam Khān (also titled Khānkhānān) are inserted to justify the nominal qas[īda form. ⁷⁶ They certainly bring into question Abū’l Faẓl’s acidic comment that ‘Urfī’s ‘blossoming genius faded before it could flower’. ⁷⁷ Undoubtedly, ‘Urfī’s rivalry with Faiẓī, Abū’l Faẓl’s elder brother, played some part in Abū’l Faẓl’s placing ‘Urfī at the fifth place in his biographical notices of the poets of Akbar’s time and also in his brief comments, entering a criticism of ‘Urfī’s attitude of contempt towards the earlier great poets.

‘Urfī died of dysentery on 29 July 1591. Abū’l Faẓl noted on his death that ‘a pearl of eloquence has gone’. ⁷⁸ Badāūnī in his vein wrote that the poet had died of the ‘pain of existence’. ⁷⁹ In his last moments, ‘Urfī is said to have composed the following quatrain:

‘Urfī the moment has arrived of death, and you are yet sunk in your usual intoxication

After all, what good you have done to take with you

Tomorrow there will be a friend in Paradise with money in hand

Seeking to exchange it for your stock, and you will find yourself empty handed. ⁸⁰

‘Urfī bequeathed, to his patron ‘Abdu’r Raḥīm Khānkhānān, just before his death, manuscripts of his work to be edited and arranged in a Dīwān. There were 14,000 verses that he had composed in India, to add to 8,000 verses that he wrote before coming to India, but the latter have been reportedly lost. On Khānkhānān’s orders, Sirājā Is[fahānī arranged the surviving 14,000 verses in a dīwan. ⁸¹

Despite ‘Urfī’s own pen name, meaning commoner, he was a man of, to what others seemed, an inflated sense of self-respect. On this, his contemporaries as diverse as Abū’l Faẓl, Niz]āmuddīn Aḥmad and Badāūnī are all agreed. ⁸²

But Nihāvandī has an explanation to offer: Since ‘Urfī attained the position among poets at Shīrāz rivalling the likes of Mullā Ghairatī and all the other poets of that place, he considered himself perfect and unique in all genres of Persian poetry. ⁸³ He adds that ‘Urfī not only received rewards and gifts; in fact, he attained a status in one respect that no one else reached in the service of Emperors or their grandees. He was exempted from bowing before and saluting (kornish-o-taslīm) his patron (s[āḥib-i khwud) and was given the liberty to sit in whatever manner and style he liked. He never rendered any other service except writing verses for his patron. ⁸⁴

A perusal of his odes shows that even these are used by ‘Urfī to express his own ideas since the verses of praise remain few and restrained. The prevailing environment of court culture was quite strange to him, which explains the following verse:

I am a bird of Paradise, I am lost in this town

I don’t recognise its environment. ⁸⁵

Whatsoever be the opinion of his contemporaries about him, some of ‘Urfī’s verses also reflect considerable modesty on his part.

Even if ‘Urfī had self-admiration, conceit and vanity, justified or unjustified, what marked his poetry is not self-proclamation, but a surprising degree of radicalism, which went even beyond the limits of liberalism of Akbar’s court. So far as his celebration of diversity is concerned, Abū’l Faẓl quotes his famous couplet.

The author of the famous Dibistān, a unique work on the diverse religions, c. 1650, quotes this very verse, as a worthy epitaph for Kabir, the great monotheist. ⁸⁸

In one verse, ‘Urfī shows indifference to both Islam and infidelity.

He was, perhaps, still within the realm of the ‘official’ Renaissance, when he went further, and, while attacking ‘the Shaikh and the Brahman’ saw a future when the toiler would be rewarded and the idle punished:

Tomorrow when they summon members of all classes

And demand the account of deeds from both the Shaikh and the Brahman

From those who have laboured and harvested they will take not even a single barley-grain

But from those who have not (laboured and) tilled the land they would demand grain in heaps.

Despite an anticipation of Shelley here, the quatrain is reproduced in a truncated form by Abū’l Faẓl, but fully by Niz]āmuddīn Aḥmad and Badāūnī. ⁹⁰

In one of his verses, already quoted, ‘Urfī pays homage to Ḥāfiz] the great Persian poet of the fourteenth century. It would be legitimate to say that not only does ‘Urfī follow Hāfiz] in his bold defiance of orthodoxy, but also goes much beyond him, and in so doing, perhaps, crosses the limits of what had become permissible even in Akbar’s India. For example, let us take this defiant verse:

Kufr, no; Islam, no; Islam mixed with kufr no!

Kufr generally meant Hinduism in India, so that ‘Urfī was here affirming the inadequacy of both Islam and Hinduism. But by bringing in ‘kufr-mixed Islam’, he goes on obviously to stress the inadequacy of Akbar’s religious thought as well, which was believed to be an attempt to accommodate elements of Brahmanical philosophy with Islamic pantheism.

It is true, though, that some of ‘Urfī’s verses, obviously anti-Islamic, would have passed muster at Akbar’s court:

For example:

Never say that Ka‘ba is better than the idol-house. Wherever the beloved displays her beauty, that is the better place. ⁹³

Whether you turn towards the Ka‘ba or towards Somnath.

Should not trouble your heart, for six directions are provided for rendering obedience (to God). ⁹⁴

Finally:

I went to break the idol, but while returning.

Out of shame I left behind my own religion with the Brahman. ⁹⁵

Perhaps only ‘Urfī could express the intensity of his abhorrence of religious intolerance with such incredible boldness.

One can go on in this vein, quoting ‘Urfī. One can now understand why Badāūnī, on the side of the orthodox, and Abū’l Faẓl, the philosophical courtier, both had such reservations in respect of that defiant voice. Badāūnī would call him ‘Enemy of God (dushman-i Khudā)’ in a chronogram for his death, ⁹⁶ and Abū’l Faẓl blames him for looking too much at himself and not living properly. ⁹⁷

But people—or at least the contemporary Persian reading public in India—thought otherwise. Badāūnī conceded that ‘he (‘Urfī), and Ḥusain S]anāī, have obtained such good fortune from their poetry that there is no lane or marketplace where booksellers do not sell their dīwāns (collections of poems) on the roadside and both Iranians and Indians buy these as sacred items’. ⁹⁸ The author of the Ma‘ās]ir-i Raḥīmī, writing some 20 years later, recognised that ‘Urfī was being ranked with the great Persian poets such as Khāqānī, Anwarī, Sa‘dī and Nizāmī and ‘his fame had spread to such an extent that the dīwān containing his lyrics and odes of praise were kept by their sides by literary men and critics day and night as if these were a talisman’. ⁹⁹

If this is true, why was our reading world then in popular choice so very different from what it is today?