Page 24 - ISLAM Rock n Roll

Completed in 1674 under
the patronage of Awrangzeb
(r. 1658–1707), the Badshahi Mosque, Lahore (Pakistan), represents the last great Mughal building. Made of red sandstone with domes and minaret canopies clad in white marble, the mosque, one of the largest in South Asia, accommodates at least 40,000 worshippers. A er Ranjit Singh (d. 1839), the Maharaja of the Sikh Empire conquered Lahore in 1799, the mosque courtyard was used as stable and soldiers occupied some of the perimeter buildings. When the British took control of Lahore in 1846 they continued to use the mosque courtyard as a military garrison. The British restored the building to a functioning mosque in 1852.
Mughal Demise
The reign that followed Shah Jahan was characterised by a policy of Sunni dogmatism that sought to over- turn what his successor, Aurangzeb, saw as the excesses and unsavoury social behaviours of the Mughals
and Muslims in general. Aurangzeb reduced o cial patronage of the arts and is reported to have banned music and dance in his court. Rather, he focussed his attention on rebuilding mosques, such as the Pearl Mosque, in Shahjahanabad, and the Badshahi Mosque, in Lahore (built 1673–1674), as well the renovation of older religious buildings and infrastructure. He also demanded those who were Muslims to follow a strict Sunni practice and reinstated the jizya on non-Muslim subjects. In much of his religious zeal, Aurangzeb found common cause with the Naqshbandi tariqa. As a seasoned military commander, he also led campaigns against the Pathans, tribal peoples in northwestern India and undertook to eliminate the surviving Deccan Shiʿi sultanates of the ʿAdil-Shahis of Bijapur and the Qutb Shahis of Galconda. A er his victories in the Deccan, he moved his imperial capital in 1681 from Shahjahanabad to his former princely Aurangabad
in Maharashtra state. This soon bene tted from the ruler’s patronage and building programme, and on the death of his wife, Begum Rabi’a Dawrani, he ordered the construction of her mausoleum, the Bibi ka Maqbara, which has an uncanny resemblance to the Taj Mahal. However, Aurangzeb’s own death in 1707 ushered in a period of Mughal decline hastened by the conquest in 1738–1739 of Delhi by the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran, Nadir Shah (d. 1747), wars with local non-Muslim groups including the Sikhs, Marathas and Jats, a depleted treasury, the rise of independent rulers and states, and the growing power of the British.
Between Empires and Seas East Africa to Southeast Asia
Throughout the history of Islam, the Indian Ocean
region with its vast coastline has seen constant interaction between Muslims of di erent religious, linguistic, ethnic, class and occupational backgrounds. For many Islamic dynasties, its ancient trade routes were fundamental to their wealth and power, and it was this strategic impor- tance that largely determined the region’s character and development. However, much of its story remains untold
as the navigators, merchants and others who used and
lived along the trade networks le few records of their experiences. This is particularly so for the many thousands of slaves from Eastern Africa. While the fate of some of them is known, particularly those that were freed, such as Abu’l-Misk Kafur (d. 968), later the Ikshidid governor of Egypt, and the Zanj slaves of Iraq, who rose up against their Abbasid masters and controlled southern Iraq for 15 years, the majority lived, as did most people in the pre-modern age, with little individual record in history, enriching the dynasties they predominantly served ghting in armies and working in their palaces and administrations. Another vital group of the Indian Ocean region were the ship captains (Persian, nakhuda), instinctively secretive to preserve
the rare knowledge of their connections and methods of navigation, the only evidence of their activity and skill in the wide dispersal of the cargoes they carried, along with shipwrecks and fantastical stories. But this mysterious and complex system of Indian Ocean seafaring was disrupted by the arrival of the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, the result scholars have since speculated of the route to India being shown to Vasco da Gama by a Muslim, possibly the Omani Arab navigator called Ahmad b. Majid (d. ca. 1500), or perhaps an unnamed Gujarati nakhuda.
Whatever the truth of how the Europeans came into the Indian Ocean trade and travel network, their threat
to the Islamic world was soon realised. In Oman, in the Arabian Peninsula, the Ibadhis and Sunni Sha ʿis were locked in a series of bitter tribal and religious wars and so, taking advantage of this turmoil, the Portuguese captured the capital, Muscat, in 1515. Later, in 1552, the Ottoman navy, under the great admiral, navigator, cartographer and
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