Page 20 - ISLAM Rock n Roll

founder, Babur (d. 1530), who traced his ancestry to Timur through his mother and to Chingiz Khan through his father, was born in Farghana, a Central Asian principality in present-day Uzbekistan, where his father was the ruler. A er a series of unsuccessful campaigns in Central Asia, Babur established himself in Kabul, Afghanistan. Then he moved to India, where he defeated the Delhi Sultan at the battle of Panipat in 1526 and took over Delhi and Agra. In the next few years Babur attempted to consolidate Mughal rule over Afghanistan and northern India but died in
1530 before establishing a solid power base. His successor, Humayun (d. 1556), sought to continue his father’s endeavour, but was challenged and defeated by Shir Shah Sur (d. 1545), a local Afghan chief of Bihar. As a result, Humayun was forced to ee India and was for een years exiled in Iran in the court of Shah Tahmasp I. Therea er, Humayun returned to India and remounted a successful assault on Shir Shah’s descendants and then established himself at Delhi and Agra.
Akbar the Great
However, under Akbar (r. 1556–1605), Humayun’s son and Babur’s grandson, the Mughals securely established their empire in India. Akbar ascended the throne at the age of 14 but grew to be a great statesman and general. He expanded Mughal territory from Kabul to Bengal, including parts
of northern and central India, and Gujarat, whose Indian Ocean ports, albeit under the control of the Portuguese, facilitated trade with both the East and the West. Akbar gave the empire a central administration and fostered an ecumenical and multi-ethnic outlook. His court and o cials (mansabdars) comprised both Hindus, many of them from the Rajput caste, and Muslims of Afghan, Persian and Indian background. Seeking to cement alliances with the Hindu ruling classes, Akbar married non-Muslim Rajput women, and perhaps also seeking to avoid interreligious con icts, or just genuinely curious about the perennial truths of all faiths, created his own syncretic religion called Din-i illahi that drew on the tenets of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, an experiment that was later
criticised by both his descendant Aurangzeb and Su groups such as the Naqshbandi tariqa.
At the heart of Akbar’s new empire was his palace-
city complex of Fatehpur Sikri, built in phases a er his successful conquest of Gujarat in 1573. Its site, a strategic crossroads of pilgrimage and trade routes near Agra, was reportedly chosen when Salim Chishti (d. 1572), a local
Su shaykh and saint of the Chishtiyya tariqa, accurately predicted that Akbar would father three sons. Completed
in 1585, Fatehpur Sikri contained a great congregational mosque with a monumental portal (Buland Darwaza), Salim Chishti’s shrine-tomb (mazar), which soon became
a place of Chishti pilgrimage, audience halls, the emperor’s apartments, guest rooms, a library, a caravanserai, a royal mint and other administrative buildings, all laid out in a modular system and uni ed by red sandstone pavements interspersed with courtyards and gardens. Its architectural style in uenced other Mughal buildings, epitomising
the aesthetic of blending the formalist symmetrical and monumental elements of Central Asian Timurid architecture and elements derived from India. Akbar occupied Fatehpur Sikri for 14 years before moving his court into Lahore.
Akbar also lent his patronage to other arts, in particular the production of books and miniature paintings. His court library reportedly held at least 24,000 volumes, in Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Greek and other languages. Manuscripts of poetry and illustrated chronicles of the Mughal rulers were also produced by the nest calligraphers and painters from both India and Iran. One of the most important pro- jects was the Hamza-nama (produced 1562–1577), an illustrated work of tales about the adventures of Hamza,
the Prophet’s uncle, containing some 1,400 paintings. Akbar also enjoyed the naturalist styles of painting being produced in Europe, which he may have been exposed to through diplomatic gi s and the work of Jesuit missionaries, who were promulgating Christianity in India during
his reign.
Archival photograph of the interior arcade in the Friday Mosque of the palatine city
of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra (India), which from around 1571 to 1585 served as Akbar’s administrative capital. The city’s buildings and pavements are made of red sandstone. Water, an important feature of the
city plan, was made available by damning a nearby river and creating a lake, and by cutting channels into the pavement and building tanks around
the city complex to collect rainwater, cool various spaces and beautify the surroundings.
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Akbar’s successors
Akbar’s successors, his son Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) and grandson Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658), further expanded Mughal political and economic power. Jahangir established diplomatic ties with the Safawids, particularly Shah
ʿAbbas i. By contrast Shah Jahan’s embassy to the Ottomans resulted in only lukewarm relations, despite their shared Sunni beliefs. Both emperors, however, tried to ensure the allegiance of their outlying provinces, but faced a number of internal rebellions and external threats, particularly from the Portuguese. A er Vasco da Gama’s successful navigation of the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal established
several trading colonies in India, particularly in Goa, and controlled many of the sea routes between India and other parts of the world. However, in 1618 the East India Company, an English commercial trading company formed in London in 1600, secured a concession from Jahangir and established their headquarters at Surat, in Gujarat, and later in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), which they acquired from the Portugese. Dutch and French traders also established their presence in Surat in 1617 and Pondicherry in 1664, respectively. Among the goods India exported were textiles (cotton, muslin and silk), pepper and other spices, and the goods imported