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While surveying textual sources, iconography, and other historical evidence for the development of Hanuman's popular cult, this chapter also interrogates the explanatory narratives that have been constructed around this evidence by earlier scholars. After examining attempts to locate Hanuman's origins in pre-Vedic religion or in the Rig Veda, and in the cult of yakshas or earth-spirits, it examines the role of the wind (Hanuman's legendary father) in Ayurveda, and Hanuman's additional kinship with Shiva and Shaivism. It then traces the development of Hanuman's persona over roughly two millennia from the Valmiki Ramayana to the Rama tales in the Puranas, in the literature of Jainism, and in vernacular language epics. Interrogating a recent and influential theory that Hanuman's cult reflects a Hindu response to the excesses of Muslim hegemony, the chapter reexamines three historical periods that often figure in this argument: the late Vijayanagara empire, the early Maratha kingdom, and the “warrior ascetics” of the Ramanandi sadhu order in the late Mughal Empire and early colonial periods. It is argued that the apparent efflorescence of devotion to Hanuman in each of these contexts reflects a more complex range of historical and social factors than has generally been recognized.

The idea of trusteeship in international society originates in late 18th century British India. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the emergence of trusteeship as a justification of political power in territories administered by the East India Company. The chapter has five sections: From Merchant to Sovereign in British India; The Claim to Rule; The Relations of Ruler and Subject; The Purpose of the Office of Government; and Providing Protection, Directing Improvement.

The Mughal intervention in Afghanistan started with the Chaghtai Turkish warlord named Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur. Babur mainly faced rural insurgencies. Afghanistan even today is a land of small villages. Approximately 80 per cent of the population lives in the countryside. Military recruitment for the Afghans was important because only 12 per cent of Afghanistan’s land is arable even now. The Mughals, Safavids, and the Uzbeks, despite being Muslim themselves, faced tough opposition from the Afghans. This does not imply that Islam has played no role in Afghan insurgency. Rather, the chapter underscores that Islam in general and jihad in particular are not crucial components of Afghan opposition to external invaders in their homelands. From the medieval era, the control for Afghanistan represented a sort of ‘Great Game’ for controlling the heart of Eurasia. The Mughals were more successful than the British in maintaining a permanent presence in Afghanistan.

This introductory chapter outlines the core theme of the book, which involves an exploration of the cultures of history writing in early modern Bengal. The seventeenth, eighteenth, and the first decade or so of the nineteenth centuries provide the temporal framework for this study — a period which witnessed the consolidation of the Mughal political and cultural order, its subsequent political decline and the transition to early colonial rule. A related theme which runs through the book is the connection between culture and the production of history and specifically, between a Persianized Mughal political culture and history writing. The chapter then presents a critique of pre-modern Indian historiography, followed by discussions of the Mughal Empire and Persianization, and interactions between Islamicate and Indic cultures. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter traces the development of East India Company’s colonial system in the 1690s. It argues that, despite serious setbacks, including the invasion and occupation of Bombay by Mughal-allied forces in 1689, there was continuity between the Company’s earlier efforts, as described particularly in chapters 1 and 3, and those in the last decade of the seventeenth century to preserve and enhance its establishment abroad. In the aftermath of the invasion of Bombay, Company leaders became ever more convinced of the need for a strong and vibrant political system in Asia. It continued to emphasize the growth and prosperity of its settlements, sought new ones, such as Fort St. David and Anjengo, and continued to seek a firm grant from the Mughal Empire that could secure its rights in India. It also confronted new challenges to its authority, particularly Anglo-American pirates in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, which both created a political crisis for the Company with Mughal authorities but also presented opportunities to expand its maritime jurisdiction and power.

Anglo-French worldwide rivalry extended to India, where both nations traded through their East India companies. This rivalry, which had led to almost continuous warfare since the 1740s, merged into the rivalry of the Indian powers that were emerging as independent successor states from the breakdown of the Mughal Empire. The Europeans formed alliances with Indian princes. These alliances gave the British and French a potentially commanding influence over some of the Indian states. This influence led to total British control over Bengal in the events that followed the overthrow of the local ruler at the battle of Plassey in 1757. In the south, the British were able to defeat the French, but their position was weaker. Even so, by the end of the war the British East India Company had become a major territorial power in India, closely allied to the British state.

This chapter discusses some aspects of urban society which provided a background to all these conflicts, specifically rapid population movement and poverty. It explains that relationship between political power, elite consumption, trade and the agrarian society established in the mid-eighteenth century had come under pressure by 1830 and this pressure originated in the incompatibility of the colonial state and the Indian successor regimes to the Mughal Empire. It argues that many conflicts between different social groups reflect the changing role of the state. The British had eroded the old forms of government and redistribution without replacing them with new system.

Abu-l Fazl (1551–1602), the imperial chronicler for Akbar the Great (1556–1605), recorded the regulations regarding the Mughal haram. The term haram came to be the most common description of the women's sphere and signified important changes in Mughal domestic life. Mughal women—or at least most of them—became invisible in the public pronouncements and activities of the empire. This invisibility is especially striking in the case of Akbar's wives, including the mothers of his sons. Akbar's foster community pushed the boundaries of what would normally be recognized as blood relations and relationships of marriage and birth. This chapter demonstrates how Abu-l Fazl established new norms by representing Akbar's domestic life. It investigates how Mughal's palace women responded to the new imperial regulations, and how women's negotiation of the new sovereign ideals became a crucial element in the making of the monarchy—at times, by rupturing those very ideals. It also examines the visible matriarchs of the Mughal Empire, intercession and counseling by senior women, and senior women's hajj under the leadership of Gulbadan Begum.

Chapter 3 makes the point that neither ethnic linkages nor geostrategicinterests were sufficient for strong cooperation in the history of the long relationship between the Ottoman and Mughal dynasties. The chapter, thus, discusses the ethnic commonalities including the Turkic roots of the two ruling families and makes the point that kinship ties militated against comity and instead provoked competition. The chapter then charts the evolution of political and geostrategic relations since sixteenth century between Ottomans and India and the introduction of the triangular relationship with the advent of the British Raj in India. The chapter concludes by the dynamics of this triangular relationship and the dilemmas it has created for the Indian Muslims in view of the increasingly hostile British attitude against the Ottoman Empire against the will of the Indians.

This chapter scrutinizes some of the elements of the “minoritization” of Muslims in India and China. Indian Muslims have a history that gives them a centrality in processes of state formation in India, as exemplified by the Mughal Empire, but also by the postcolonial formation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, which cannot be found in the history of Chinese Muslims. In the comparison between India and China, the chapter highlights that despite the differences in numerical strength it is the transformation of Muslims from a variety of different groups into a “minority” that in both cases require scrutiny in relation to the construction of a national majority.

From the middle of the eighteenth century the British in India used treaties with South Asian rulers to give legal form and sanction to their growing military and territorial power. While the British East India Company used treaties to subordinate or ally with other Indian regional states, British critics of the Company’s military conquests questioned the legitimacy of its diplomatic activities and accused the Company of violating the principles of the law of nations. Thus treaty making became a critical site for generating new imperial imaginaries in Britain, as well as for extending British power in South Asia. By the end of the eighteenth century British officials were using increasingly unequal treaties with Indian states, justified by pervasive stereotypes of “faithless” and despotic Indian rulers, to assert their imperial hegemony.

The mainstream view in historical studies considers the main sources of modern world history to be the Reformation, the expansion of Europe into America and Asia, the formation of trading companies, and scientific discoveries. All these originate in Europe, considering the non-European world (Egypt included) “outside of history.” The book attempts to redress this bias by exploring a number of channels. One of these is to identify worldwide trends, such as international trade, that touched not only Egypt but also India, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and had a bearing on many aspects of life. A second channel explores Egypt’s position in this trade. The vitality of its textile industry and trade (prior to the introduction of mechanized production) allowed it to export its cloth to many parts of the world. Another channel is the exchanges of know-how and technology. The book shows that in the 18th century these were far from being one-way exchanges from Europe to the rest of the world. Multiple exchanges in numerous directions that included the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires suggest a multi-centered rather than a unipolar world during the early modern period.

This chapter examines the role of gender and age in the construction of domesticity in the Mughal Empire. It argues that the increasing number and invisibility of women in the imperial harem in Mughal India marked the changing claims by the sultan to a differentiating divinity. This chapter also suggests that the secreting of the women allowed Hindu and Muslim ritual practices to coexist so that the two cultures could be connected and that the mixing of cultures took place behind the mystifying screens of the harem itself.

In 1656, towards the end of a brilliant two-decades-long scholarly career, Dara Shukoh commissioned a translation of the Upanishads. He believed he had found the lost kitab al-maknun, or hidden/protected book, referred to in the Quran as humanity’s first monotheistic text. This chapter explores the journey that led Dara Shukoh to proclaim the Upanishads’ importance to Muslims and to the world; it interrogates the prince’s reliance on Shankaracharya, the eighth century Advaita Vedantin, for commentary on the Upanishads; and it investigates the political context in which Dara Shukoh was operating to indicate one possible way to understand his idiosyncratic editorial decisions and his controversial proclamations.

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Mughal Empire in sixteenth-century India, and its antecedents and parallels in Timurid Central Asia and Safavid Iran. These interconnected milieus offer an ideal window to explore and rethink the relationship between Muslim kingship and sainthood, for it was here that Muslim rulers came to express their sovereignty, and embody their sacrality in the manner of Sufi saints and holy saviors. In their classical phases, both the Mughals and the Safavids embraced a style of sovereignty that was “saintly” and “messianic,” modeling their courts on the pattern of Sufi orders, and fashioning themselves as the promised messiah. This style of sovereignty resulted in the development of a set of knowledge and rituals to make the body of the king sacred, creating a prophesied savior, a figure who would set right the unbearable order of things, and inaugurate a new era of peace and justice—the new millennium.

This chapter recounts Humayun's—the Timurid king of India and Babur's successor—kingship. Humayun provides a particularly illuminating specimen of sacred kingship in sixteenth-century Iran and India, because he experienced the same degree of highs as the Safavid Shah Ismaʿil in achieving divinity in the eyes of his followers, and suffered the same depths of lows as his father, Babur, in becoming a Safavid subordinate and disciple. During his twenty-six-year reign (1530–1556), Humayun spent fifteen years (1540–1555) outside Hindustan after losing Delhi to Sher Shah of Sur, on the run from his enemies, wandering the wastelands of Sindh and Baluchistan, in exile in Iran, and in a struggle to take Kabul from his brother with the aid of the Safavids. His deep interest in magic and astrology was considered as his greatest sin. Thus, he receives mention today mainly for two things: for losing the fledgling Mughal Empire in northern India to the Afghans, and for the “strangeness” of his beliefs.