CHAPTER 11 GREATER ASIA : INDIA, HINDUTVA AND HISTORY
CHAPTER 11: GREATER ASIA
Map of the Eurasian
Steppes.The Tribes of the Eurasian Steppes
Before proceeding further in our study of the history
of South India, we will step back to take a look at the wider world around it.
We have read in Chapter 2 about the extension of the
Greek and Seleucid empires into the northwest of the Indian sub-continent via Afghanistan,
where they occupied territory from Pakistan into Indian Punjab. Major centres
of these empires were Bactria (Afghanistan), Gandhara (Pakistan) and Punjab (of
Pakistan and India).
The Mauryan Empire had alliances with the Seleucids. Under Ashoka, the Mauryan Empire extended into Gandhara. With him, if not earlier, Buddhism came to Gandhara and Bactria. through wandering ascetics.
Successive waves of tribes from Mongolia and northern China travelled westwards over the Eurasian Steppes to invade and form kingdoms in Persia, Bactria, Gandhara, Balochistan, Sindh and Multan where they came to be known as the Parthians (or Pahlavas), the Shakas (Scythians), the Kushans and the Huns. The Huns emerged in the 5th century from the Eurasian Steppe. They are known in the West as the “White Huns” who terrified the Europeans under their famous chief – Attila the Hun.
These tribes were always extraordinarily open to the local religions of the places where they settled. They became Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Christian, and later Muslim, depending on where they found themselves.
We read about the Shakas, Parthians and Kushans in
previous chapters. After the Huns of the 5th century, who also came
to North and West India, the next wave of tribesmen to come out of the Eurasian
Steppes that are relevant to our story were the Turks who emerged from there in
the 6th century (318). Owing perhaps to the association with Turkey,
not many of us know that the Turks and their language came from Mongolia!
The Turks probably began as a tribe that roamed about
Mongolia’s Altai Mountains. They followed a tribal faith – Tsengrism - found
among the tribes of Mongolia that considered the sky as their god. They did not
have a written script, but spoke Turkic – a language which they went on to give
the world (319).
These doughty tribesmen seem to have been almost
entirely without any of the barriers to other cultures and religions that are
so typical, to this day, of the settled civilisations. Once they settled in
their conquered lands, both the Turks and their fellow tribals, the Mongols,
seem to have taken an almost sponge-like attitude to the culture and religion
of their new home. They were extraordinarily open to the local religions of the
places where they settled. They became Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Christian, and
later Muslim, depending on where they found themselves.
We saw in previous chapters how it was the same with their predecessors from the Eurasian Steppes – the Parthians, Shakas, Kushans and Huns.
One reason for this was love – for the most part they travelled without their women, and so found love and married where they settled, absorbing the culture and religion of their womenfolk. Again and again in previous chapters, we have seen how women, especially of aristocratic origins, acted as the carriers and preservers of their creed and culture among new peoples and places. This is a historic phenomenon that deserves deeper study.
Another reason for the extraordinary acceptance of
other creeds among the conquerors and settlers of the Eurasian Steppes was
politic. As they acquired kingdoms, they found it best over time to adopt the
faith of their subjects. This helped them consolidate their rule, gain the
allegiance of their subjects, and make allies with neighbouring kingdoms.
A third reason might have been that the administrative
and social structures of the settled peoples that they encountered, and the
associated cultural and religious beliefs, were needed by them in order to
transition from the nomadic and tribal lifestyle of their ancestors to settled
life. There are a number of examples of this dynamic at play when tribal and
nomadic-pastoralist communities decide for whatever reason to adopt settled
life (320).
Sometime in the mid-500 ADs, the Turks defeated the
Juan-Juan tribe that had held sway for over a century over a vast swathe of the
Eurasian Steppes from Mongolia to Central Asia. The Turks took the Juan-Juan’s
title of “Khan” or “Kaghan” – a title that we have come to associate with
Muslims, but which came from Mongolia, where it was used centuries before the
birth of Islam (321).
The Huns had by this time conquered and settled in
Bactria, Gandhara (northern Pakistan) and Transoxiana, also known as “Sogdiana”
and later “Ma Wara an-Nahr”. Transoxiana comprised the region between two
Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya (or “Oxus”) and Syr Darya (or “Jaxartes”).
It included parts of modern Uzbekistan, including the important silk route
towns of Bukhara and Samarqand, and other Central Asian countries.
The western wing of the Turkic Kaghans, known as the Western Goturk Khaganate, expanded southwards under their leader Istemi (321). They made an alliance against the Huns, including a matrimonial alliance, with the Zoroastrian King Khusrau Nushirvan, the ruler of Sassanid Persia.
The conquered lands of the Huns were divided between
the allies, with the Sassanids taking Khurasan (northeast Iran and Afghanistan)
and the Goturks taking Transoxiana. The Amu Darya formed a natural boundary
between the two kingdoms. On the east of Goturk lands was another kingdom which
will enter our story shortly called Khwarizm, whose northern boundary extended
up to the Aral Sea.
The Story of Greater Asia from 1 AD to 600 AD in Maps
1 AD: The Indo-Scythians (Shakas) and Parthians (Pahlavas). Map
by Thomas Lessman via Wikimedia Commons.
50
AD: The Kushans settle in Bactria, the Parthians expand into Scythian (Shaka)
territory.
The Kushan Empire expands into Pakistan and Northern India,
pushing out the Parthians.
400 AD: The Huns emerge from the Eurasian Steppe going all
the way to Europe and the Sassanid Empire is formed in Persia. Map by Thomas
Lessman via Wikimedia Commons.
500 AD : The Juan Juan tribe of the Eurasian Steppe reign
from Northern China to the Sassanid Empire.
Mid 500 AD: The Juan Juan are defeated by the Turks of the
Eurasian Steppe.
600
AD : The Turks split into the Eastern and Western Khaganates.The Sassanids and Western Goturks soon found themselves in competition with each other. The Western Goturks formed an alliance with age-old enemies of the Sassanids, the neighbouring Christian Byzantine Empire (then the eastern wing of the Roman Empire), centred in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul of Turkey) (322). The Nestorian sect of Christianity emerged there, and spread to Iraq, Persia and China. The Mongols and Turks went on to develop a long history of giving protection to Nestorians.
The Western Goturks eventually conquered the Byzantines,
and expanded westwards upto near the Greek Islands.
The Arabs
In the 7th century AD, another tribal
people of superb warriors began transitioning into settled life, forming
kingdoms and expanding outwards from their native lands. These were the Arabs
who had consolidated behind one leader, the Prophet Mohammad, who had also
founded the new religion of Islam in 622 AD.
The Arabs expanded into Iraq, where they formed the
Umayyad Caliphate. Over the course of the next few years, they went on to conquer
Sassanid Persia in Iran and Afghanistan, and Turkic Transoxiana. The Karluks, a Turkic branch of the Eastern
Goturk Khaganate allied with the Arabs, as they considered the Western Goturk
Khagans of Transoxiana to be their enemies.
Outside of Iraq, the Arabs established suzerainties in
their conquered territories, keeping the local rulers in place, as we saw in
our study of expansion by Indian rajas in previous chapters. With the Arabs
opening the route to China through the conquered Western Khaganate, Nestorian
Christians, Manicheans (who had been persecuted by the Zoroastrians of
Sassanid) and Buddhists began travelling eastwards. Many of them came as far as
China.
The Umayyad Caliphate was overthrown by the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Turks
The Arabs had a system of taking non-Arab mercenaries
and captives into their armies. This system was interesting in its relative
lack of ethnic or class prejudice in that once they were recruited into the
Arab armies, the mercenary or slave soldiers could rise to become chiefs with
their own troops of men, and also be appointed governors of Arab provinces. In
the course of their careers the more able recruits were able to accumulate such
power and might as to become sultans and found kingdoms in their own right.
Turko-Mongol tribes of the Eurasian Steppes continued
to travel into Central Asia and Persia. One such group of tribes defeated the
Eastern Goturk Khaganate to form the Uyghur Khaganate. Many of these Turks
joined the armies of the newly founded Arab kingdoms. When the Turks arrived in Persia and
Transoxiana of the 8th century, they found the various new kingdoms
of the Arabs, whose armies they joined.
The Abbasids, like the kings of India, ran federated
empires, with local kings and governors exercising direct power in the various
kingdoms that made up their empire. By the end of the 8th century
these local kings and governors became increasingly assertive, with a
succession of them declaring independence, starting with Tahir bin al Hussain
of Khurasan. The Tahirids were of Persian descent. They were followed by the
Saffarids, who were able to expand into Kabul.
In the late 9th century, the Turkic
governors of Transoxiana declared independence and formed the Samanid kingdom. The
Saffarids were defeated by the Samanids. At its height, the Samanid kingdom
extended from Transoxiana to Khurasan, thus covering modern-day Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan and north-eastern Iran. They made their capital in Bukhara (322A).
The area east of the Samanid kingdom, around the Syr
Darya River, had been conquered by another Turko-Mongol tribe called the “Seljuks”.
They converted to Islam in the mid-10th century under the influence
of the neighbouring Samanids. They first allied with them but later took over
Khurasan and Khwarizm under their leader Tughril, declaring their capital in
Nishapur. Then they allied with the Abbasid Caliphate (which was unhappy with
their tributaries in Baghdad) and defeated the Byzantine Empire. It was in
Byzantine, in what later became Turkey, that a branch of the Seljuks founded
the Sultanate of Rum (323).
In the mid-10th century AD, an enterprising
Turkic commander called Alptekin (or Alptagin/Alptegin) from Khurasan was appointed
governor of the Samanid principality of Ghazn (in modern-day Afghanistan). He
was succeeded by his son-in-law, Sabuktigin (or Sabuktegin/Sebuktegin), who declared
independence from the Samanids (323A). This is how the Kingdom of Ghazn came to
be formed. Sabuktigin began pushing eastwards, sending a number of raids into
Peshawar in the Indus Valley. Sabuktigin’s son was the famous Mahmud of Ghazni
(324).
Ghazni formed an alliance with another Turkic tribe,
the Kara Khanids, and together they defeated the Samanid empire in 999. The
Kara Khanids were a confederation of Turkic and Mongol tribes and their settled
descendants from the Goturk Khanates and the
Khazakastan-Kyrgystan-Tajiskistan-Uyghur (Chinese) region. It was agreed that
the Khara Khans would keep Transoxiana, while Ghazn would take the former Samanid
domains of Khurasan and Khwarizm (325).
Early Islamic Culture
The emergence of the Arabs in the 7th
century AD from wandering nomads in desert caravans to becoming founders of
kingdoms under the world’s newest faith was for them a time of great curiosity,
discovery and thinking about the world outside. Arab merchants had long
travelled the seas, meeting new races, religions and cultures. Now the Arabs
had the institutions of a wealthy and powerful settled kingdom to study them.
The Abbasid capital of Iraq became a great centre for the translation and
systematic study of the works of other civilisations - from Greece and Rome in
the West, to India and China in the East (8).
Some historians credit the Age of Renaissance in
Europe to the translations of ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy
and science that were rediscovered and translated by the Arabs in the time of
the Abbasid Caliphate. These re-discovered texts entered Europe through the
outer reaches of the Arabs’ European possessions in Granada and Cordoba of
Spain and Sicily of Italy. It was in
this way that Europe re-discovered, for instance, the works of Aristotle.
The Arabs also translated Sanskrit works from India,
and made studies in mathematics, developing the so-called “Arabic numerals”,
which replaced the Roman numeral system. It was in this way that the Arabs transmitted
the concepts of decimal notation and the “zero” from India to the world.
Philosophical debates that took place under the
Abbasids give an idea of the intense and eclectic intellectualism of the time.
A key point of contention, which we see among ancient philosophers of India as
well, was whether god had attributes, or was what Indians called “nirguna”,
that is, without attributes.
Scholars believe that the Mutazila thinkers who
flourished in the time of the Abbasid Caliphate and evolved the non-dualist
formless conception of the Divine, had similarities with various Hindu, Buddhist
and other doctrines of India.
The historian SAA Rizvi says “Both the Mu’tazila and
the Ash’ari [their philosophical opponents] depended on Aristotelian logic to
counter and discredit the beliefs of their respective opponents. However, the
legacy of Near Eastern Hellenism, semi-orientalised by Aramaic and Christian
influences, which had survived in [Egypt, Turkey and Iran] was inherited by the
Falasifa or Muslim philosophers. The intellectual mysticism of Plotinus, and
the doctrines of Hermetic origin, also made a deep impact upon them. The corpus
of Greek literature translated under the Abbasids solved the difficulties of
suitable terminology and went a long way towards producing [various Abbasid philosophers]
…. (326)”.
Sindh was conquered by the Arabs in the 8th
century AD. Hindu and Buddhist scholars were sent from there by the Arabs to
the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century for the purpose of
intellectual exchange and discussion.
Turko-Persianate Culture
While the Arabs were new to the world, and also to
themselves as a newly settled people with a new religion in the 7th
century, on their conquest of Persia they encountered one of the oldest
kingdoms in the world. By this time, Persia had seen successive ruling
dynasties for over 1000 years. The Sassanids had been ruling here for over four
centuries when the Arabs overthrew them. In Persia, the Arabs also encountered
a magnificent courtly culture that they began to adopt.
Successive regimes in Persia tended to carry on using
the bureaucratic organisation of their predecessors, leading to the development
of a permanent administrative and scribal class. The Arabs continued using the
scribes and administrative officials of the Sassanids.
The use of Sassanid officials and systems expanded in
particular after the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate by the Abbasid
Caliphate, which historians describe as a revolution led largely by “Arabized
Persian speakers in [Khurasan] and Central Asia” (327).
The Persianisation of the Arab kingdoms in West and
Central Asia was additionally spurred by the Abbasids having established their
capital in Baghdad, just 25 km away from the former Sassanid capital of
Ctesiphon. Sassanid royal archives and manuals on statecraft were translated
into Arabic.
There was also the emergence of “New Persian” that was
the Persian language with Arabic infusions which was spoken by the wealthy
aristocrats that largely remained in place in Persia after the Arab conquest,
even under the Umayyads who had made Arab the language of administration. A new
hybrid Turko-Persian culture developed around the literature of the new hybrid
language of New Persian.
New Persian was adopted by the Samanids in Transoxiana
by the end of the 9th century and spread to other Turkic
principalities in Afghanistan and Persia, including Ghazn.
When the Samanids were defeated by the Seljuks in
Nishapur, the Seljuk prime minister Nizam-ul-Mulk Tusi, kept in place the
Persian administrative system of old.
In this way, the Turko-Persianate culture flourished
in all the Turkic possessions of Transoxiana, Khurasan, Ghazn, Balkh and
Khwarizm.
Sufism
A major contributor to the Turko-Persianate culture
were the sufis. The sufis were ascetics who traced their origins to the
companions of Prophet Mohammad. They engaged in spiritual practices of
austerity and renunciation. Their name “sufi” is an evolution from their early
name of “Ahl-al-Suffa” or “Ashab-i-Suffa” (328).
The sufis crossed the Muslim establishment from the
start. In Basra (Iraq) which developed into a major centre of Islam after Mecca
and Medina, a renowned sufi, Hasan Basri, was compelled to go into hiding in
705 for having criticized the Umayyad governor. The first sufi to be known by
that name was Abu Hashim of Kufa (also from Iraq) who had to flee to Mecca for
offending his king in 774-5 (329).
The sufis were not renegades or apostates, even though
the kings and Muslim orthodoxy tried to describe them as such, and even executed
them on such allegations from time to time. Had they been simple rebels it
would have been easy to crush them. But though they espoused austerity as a
spiritual discipline (with some fascinating exceptions) they came from within
the Muslim establishment. Some claimed a lineage going back to the family of
the Prophet himself. Others belonged to powerful princely or merchant families.
Royal and aristocratic families gave their sons and
daughters in marriage to the sufis, who were not generally celibate. Some early
sufis and their sons participated in worldly life to the extent of fighting in
the battlefield next to sultans and princes.
These deep connections with the wealthy, ruling,
warrior and intellectual classes of Islamic society, combined with their
popularity among the people made it difficult for the Muslim orthodoxy to stamp
the sufis out, though they never stopped plotting against them.
Sufis are best understood as iconoclasts of the
Islamic world (330). People who commanded both loyalty and influence in Islamic
society, while at the same time being men of immense learning and personal
integrity. The sufis were in a position to speak truth to power, and so they
did. When they saw fit, they would speak out against the ulema (Muslim
scholars, jurists and imams) for being formalistic or ignoring the true spirit
of Islam.
The sufis were also in a position to endorse and build
support for aspiring kings in the competitive firmament of Islamic kingship.
They often exercised this power in the form of blessings and predictions for
one or other claimant in a succession battle. But they used this power
sparingly. Though they sometimes acted as power-brokers, the sufis were always
more than that.
They never took on the role or trappings of kings
themselves. With some exceptions, they were scrupulous about living in
austerity. They set up khanqahs - establishments where the sufi preceptor (or “pir”)
would live, preach and give food and blessings to supplicants.
Many sufi khanqahs had the rule that by the end of the
day all offerings made to them should be given away. It is on the strength of
this integrity, austerity and generosity that the sufis maintained their
credibility and authority generation after generation in Islamic society in the
first millennium.
Proselytization was not a project with the sufis. As
wandering sages they were open and welcoming to all. Their primary concern was
establishing a spiritual rather than a formal or doctrinal relationship between
the laity and the Divine.
This is not to say that the sufis were not advocates
of Islam. They were often instrumental in persuading both commoners and kings
to espouse Islam. However, at the same time, they operated as spiritual guides
and granters of wishes in a wider sphere, which included followers of other
religions.
Islam worked through the sufis with a sense of
purpose, but not insistently or invidiously, and with an abiding sense of the
essential humanity of all men, and the essential nobility of all creeds.
As spiritualists, sufis were interested in asceticism
of all kinds. They also took an interest in the theological ideas of other
religions. By the time of the Prophet Mohammad, the entire region comprising Iraq,
Iran, Afghanistan, Indo-Pak and Central Asia was the scene of wandering
ascetics and preachers of all denominations – Jews, Christians, Hindus,
Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians and Manicheans.
SAA Rizvi says that Christianity had a deep impact on
the early development of sufism. They considered Jesus Christ to be an exemplar
of renunciation and the saintly life (331).
The appeal of sufism across faiths was an early
phenomenon. Readers will recall the legend recounted in previous chapters of
Hindus and Muslims quarrelling over whom Kabir belonged to when he died. A
similar legend exists in respect of Kharkhi, of the early 9th
century, after whose death in Baghdad, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all
said to have quarrelled over who had the right to lift his bier (332).
The legends of the sufis and sayings attributed to
them belie the idea that has unfortunately taken root in the late 20th
century of Muslims as a closed and doctrinaire people. The famous sufi poet Rumi
is said to have remarked of the quarrelling sects of Islam that he was in
agreement with all 73 of them. When someone confronted Rumi saying
that this was the wrong attitude, Rumi smiled and said, “I am also in agreement
with whatever you say (333)”.
This was typical of the way in which the sufis would
disarm you.
When the Arabs moved into Iraq, sufis established
themselves in Baghdad, Basra and Kufa. Between the 8th and 10th
centuries, sufis travelled into other lands conquered by the Arabs,
establishing sufi centres in Khurasan, Transoxiana, Nishapur (in Iran), Fars (also
in Iran), Egypt and Syria.
Sufism occupied a prominent place in the Seljuk
capital of Nishapur. A prominent sufi from here was the thinker and ascetic
Ghazali. He believed that sufism should combine both the intellectual and the
spiritual. He wrote a number of books on Aristotelian logic. At the same time,
he said that mysticism could not be approached through rational thought alone
and required “zawq” or “tasting”, i.e., a state of ecstasy achieved through
ascetic exercises.
Sufis in the Khurasan-Transoxiana region encountered
Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. Rizvi says that in
the early years of the Caliphates, these other faiths continued to be practiced
here as they were far away from the more orthodox capitals of the Umayyad and
Abbasid Caliphates in Damascus and Baghdad, respectively. In this way, he
argues that sufis were influenced by all these religions both by discussions
with their followers and readings of their texts, as well also upon the entry
into the sufi fold of converts from these other religions (334).
An early sufi, al-Hallaj, came to India sometime in
the late 9th century. In 903, he went to Mecca wearing only a loin
cloth and an angavastram (shawl) in the Indian way. He spoke of having had
mystical experiences of union with god – “I am He whom I love, and He whom I
love is I; We are two spirits dwelling in one body”. This upset the Muslim
orthodoxy who had him hanged (335). But this sense of ecstatic connection with the
Divine continued to be typical of the way in which sufis expressed themselves, and became
a major part of sufi practice through “sama”, i.e., singing, dancing and poetry.
Its similarities with Bhakti, Evangelism and other forms of religious mysticism,
both ancient and modern, are obvious.
The ritual practices of the Naqshbandiya sufis of
Transoxiana, who were the preceptors of the ancestors of the Mughals, were
suffused with yogic practices. For example, the practice of “Yad kard” is
described by Khwaja Ghujduwani of Bukhara thus:
“The sufi controls his breath from below the navel,
shuts his lips tightly and fastens his tongue to his palette to avoid
suffocation. He then diverts the spiritual heart into a union with the physical
heart which is pineal in shape and zikr is begun. It takes the following form.
The utterance of la (no) involves a process whereby the word is lifted from the
navel to the brain; Ilaha (God) is expressed at the same time as the right
shoulder is jerked sharply and il’Allah (but Allah) is uttered as if the heart
of flesh has been soundly struck. This process produces a spiritual heart which
ontologically circulates throughout the body. The negation involved in the word
(la) represents the fact that the world is transitory and the affirmation of
il’Allah symbolizes the eternal nature of God. A trainee should be perpetually
occupied with this form of zikr for it to achieve a lasting imprint on his
heart of the Unity of God (336).”
A controversial sufi sect called the “Hujuli” had a
conception of the spirit as being eternal, similar to that found in Hindu,
Chinese and Tibetan beliefs. There are also references to sufis called the “Shikaftiyyah”
in Khurasan who lived in caves, probably inspired by this practice among
Buddhists or Jains in the area (337).
Abu Yazid or Bayazid, a famous sufi of Khurasan of the
9th century spoke of the state of “fana” (connection with god) in
terms that have been compared with ideas of the total identity of the self with
the Divine in the Hindu Upanishads. He may have learnt of the doctrine of
“fana” from his teacher, Abu Ali Sindi, who appears from his name to have been
from Sindh, which was populated by Hindus at the time. Rizvi writes that
“ancient Indian thought and ideas on mysticism had continually aroused interest
in the Khurasanian region” (337A). Bayazid also advocated the use of controlled
breath, an idea that is at the foundation of Hindu (and Jain and Buddhist) yogic
and meditation practices.
Sufis spread their message through poetry, song and dance. They would compose their poetry in the language of the people where they lived. So sufis in the Turko-Persianate world, such as Rumi, composed poetry in New Persian, rather than Arabic. Rumi was also the inventor of the whirling dance of dervishes that is the hallmark of Turkish sufism till today.
Baba Farid, the famous sufi of Ajodan (Pakpattan in Pakistani Punjab), preached and composed poetry in the local Punjabi. His beautiful verses are even to be found in the Sikh religious text – the Guru Granth Sahib. The Sikh gurus rose in Punjab in the same area and among the same people where Baba Farid lived two centuries before.
The earliest sufi to make his home on the Indian subcontinent was Husain Zinjani. He settled in Lahore in the late 10th century (341). But sufism would have been known in India for centuries before that. Buddhist, Jain and Hindu ascetics roaming beyond the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan would have long carried back tales of their encounters with the sufis to the area that constitutes modern India.
Husain Zinjani was succeeded in Lahore by Sheikh
Hujwiri whose mazhar (tomb) is in Lahore. He was affectionately called Data
Ganj Baksh meaning “Giver of Unlimited Treasure”. The sufi Sheikh Kaziruni from
Shiraz (Iran) established a centre in neighbouring Multan in the 11th
century AD. He was said to have engaged in spirited discussion with wandering
yogis in those parts (342).
The importance and love of the Indian subcontinent in
Islam is demonstrated in the legend of Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka. It is said
that when Adam descended from heaven he landed on the top of a mountain in Sri
Lanka. This mountain is called Adam’s Peak and has a formation that is believed
to be the footprint of Adam. There is a sufi cult based around this site.
There are legends that Kublai Khan send an embassy to
Ceylon in 1284 requesting the relics of Adam (344). At the same time, the site
is also held to be sacred to Shaivites and Buddhists, who believe the footprint
to be that of Shiva and the Buddha, respectively.
It is common for people to attribute natural beauties
and remarkable sites around them to their gods and prophets. This is one of the
ways in which we humans express our wonder at the miracle of existence, and our
love for the places that we inhabit.
Ghazni and Ghuri
Mahmud Ghazni began pushing eastwards into Indo-Pak
from Ghazn in today’s Afghanistan in the 11th century. He sent raids
into what is today Pakistan and the northern and western territories of India,
including Rajasthan and Gujarat. The latter are raids that Hindutva-thinking
has made into an epic grievance, even though our study of a millennium-and-a-half
of Indian history previous to this has shown that such raids were a common and
even necessary exercise of power in the age of kings.
Ghazni embodied the Turko-Persianate culture described
earlier. The Mahmud of Ghazni that Hindutva-historians characterise as a
barbaric looter was in fact sovereign of a vast kingdom that stretched from
Iran and the Aral Sea to Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Firdaus, who
consolidated New Persian into a language of literature, was among his court
poets, and completed the famous Shahnama in his reign.
Richard Eaton’s description of Firdaus’s Shah Nama
puts one in mind of the magnificent courtly literature of the Deccan described
in the previous chapter: “a vast narrative canvas of some 50,000 verses
surveying both mythological and pre-Islamic historical kings of Iran, but
within a global framework that embraced Europe and China. In time, the Shah
Nama would be read, imitated, and argued about by peoples across the Balkans,
Anatolia, Iraq, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Kashmir, north India, the
Deccan, the rim of the Bay of Bengal, and as far as the Malay peninsula (345).”
Ghazni created the position of “amir al-shu-ara” or
poet laureate in his court, and had an entourage of 400 Persian poets.
.jpg)
.jpg)
The political and emotional distance between the
Kingdom of Ghazn and its suzerain-in-name, the Abbasid Caliphate and figurative
head of Islam needs to be understood by Indians who are too ready to see Muslim
rulers as a block.
Mahmud’s father and grandfather retained their Turkic
names of Alptegin and Sebuktegin. They may not even have yet converted to
Islam. As we will see in later chapters, though the Turks and Mongols found and
accepted Islam in their kingdoms in South, Central and West Asia, it was often
several generations before they would themselves convert to this religion.
“Tegin” means prince, so Alptegin and Sebuktegin may
have been well-born Turks and not, as it is assumed “slaves” (318). They could
have joined the Sassanid armies as high officials or amirs without necessarily
having converted to Islam. This was a form of recruitment into Muslim armies
that we see later in South India.
There was also a political distance between Ghazn and
the Abbasid Caliphate. Afterall, the new kingdom had risen by breaking off from
the Samanids who ruled Persia and Afghanistan-Pakistan under the suzerainty of
the Abbasids. Thus, in a sense, Ghazn had been formed in defiance of the
Caliphate. This is how the historian Khaliq Ahmad Nizami describes the
relationship between Mahmud of Ghazni and the Abbasid Caliphate:
“A new epoch begins in the history of Islam with the
advent of Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin (999-1030), who is reckoned as the first
Sultan of ‘Ajam [Note: “Ajam” is
the term used for non-Arab lands conquered by the Arabs in West and Central
Asia, particularly Persia, Central Afghanistan and Pakistan], while the Abbasid
Caliphat continued as a formal symbol till it was extinguished by [Hulegu] Khan
in 1258 ….
….Throwing off the yoke of his Samanid overlords,
Mahmud approached the Caliph with the request to grant him the patent of
sovereignty and thus accord sanction to the rise of a new dynasty. The grant of
manshur by the Caliph in 999 AD confirmed Mahmud in his newly acquired
territories and re-established, though nominally, the religious and political
supremacy of the Caliphate, which had broken down at the end of the Samanid
period. Still, Mahmud never cared for the Caliph’s wishes when his own
interests were involved. In 1012-13 he compelled the Caliph, Al-Qadir Billah,
to hand over to him some districts of Khurasan and when the latter refused,
Mahmud threatened the Caliph’s ambassador in these words:
“Do you wish me to come to the capital of the Caliphate with a thousand elephants in order to lay it waste and bring its earth on the backs of my elephants to Ghaznin?”
On another occasion, when the Caliph demanded the execution of [a noble in Ghazn], he assumed a definitely defiant attitude. But Mahmud fully realised the magnitude of the Caliph’s moral prestige and, in spite of his quarrels, continued to humour and placate him. In law, Mahmud was the lieutenant of the Caliphs (346).”
The reference above to Hulegu Khan in 1258 is to the
defeat of the Abbasids in Baghdad by the Mongols in that year lead by Hulegu
Khan. At this time the Mongols were Tsengrist, and possibly Buddhist and
Nestorian Christian. Hulegu was the grandson of Chengiz Khan.
The extinguishment of the Abbasid Caliphate by the
Mongols rendered ever more nominal the already tenuous political authority of
the Caliphs in West, Central and South Asia. As we will see in the following
chapters, this was demonstrated again in India, when ambassadors of Hulegu Khan
were welcomed with great pomp and ceremony by the Delhi Sultanate shortly after
he had defeated the Abbasid armies and killed their Caliph.
Even before the Mongols, a rising Muslim power had
challenged the Abbasid Caliphate. These were the Shahs of Khwarizm. They had
demanded that the Abbasid Caliph Nasir be content with a purely spiritual
dominion over the Muslim umma in their lands. Muhammad Shah of Khwarizm even began
marching with an army in the direction of the Caliph. But his mission was
aborted owing to the invasion of his lands by the Mongols under Chengiz Khan,
which we will read about below (346B).
JJ Saunders writes that by the time of the Ghaznavids
and Seljuks, Turks everywhere in Central Asia and Persia had become “strongly
impregnated by Persian culture.” He said that Persian art and literature
captivated the later Ottomans and Mughals “and the Arabs, whose political
independence survived only in the deserts of Arabia, were depressed to a poor
third” among kingdoms ruled by Muslims (346A).
While the kingdom of Ghazn was rising in power and
prestige under its Sultan Mahmud and his predecessors, the Seljuks formed an
alliance with the Kara Khitay (also called the Chitan), a kingdom formed by a
defeated Chinese ruler of the Liao dynasty. He led his people westward when
they were defeated by the Jin dynasty of northern China.
Kara Khitay lands comprised parts of China, Mongolia
and Central Asia. They had adopted the Buddhist faith that had travelled to
China by then, including through Mongol tribes who had settled in Tibet (347). In
this alliance between the Buddhist Kara Khitay and the Muslim Seljuks we see,
as we have seen many times in the previous chapters, that religion neither
determined, nor motivated the battle and politics of the time. Both alliances
and antagonisms crossed religious lines.
After the death of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazn, his son,
Masud, lost both Khurasan and Khwarizm to the Seljuk-Kara Khitay alliance. In
the mid-12th century, governors of the Ghaznis, called the Ghuris,
took over the throne of Ghazn. The Ghuris also had their origins in the Turkic
tribes of the Eurasian Steppes. Alauddin Ghuri’s attack of Ghazn was so forceful
that it earned him the moniker “Jahan Suz” or “Incendiary of the World” (348).
Transoxiana, then under the Kara Khans, also fell to
the Seljuk-Kara Khitay alliance. The Kara Khans were left in place in
Transoxiana first under Kara Khitay- and then under Seljuk-suzerainty. Gur
Khan, the king of the Kara Khitay brought his Buddhist faith to Transoxiana.
But like all Turkic-Mongol kings, he tolerated all religions in his domains,
giving protection to Nestorian Christians (347). In this way, Buddhism and
Nestorianism flourished in Transoxiana, where the ancestors of the Mughals
belonged.
The Persian Shahs were retained as governors of
Khwarizm by the Seljuks. The Shahs declared independence from time to time in
the same saga of alternating tributary-ship and sovereignty that we have
witnessed among Indian provincial rulers.
At one point, the Shahs replaced the Kara Khans in
Transoxiana. They allied with the Kara Khitay to push into the kingdom of Ghazn
where the Ghuris now ruled. The Ghuris lost Balkh and Herat in Afghanistan to
them. The Shahs now turned against their Kara Khitay overlords and took over
Transoxiana (349).
It was now that that Mohammad Ghuri began pushing
eastwards into Indo-Pak. In 1175 AD he defeated the Ismaili rulers of Multan.
He then tried taking Patan in Gujarat but the arduous crossing over the Thar
desert weakened his armies, and they were roundly defeated in Gujarat by the
Chalukya Mularaja II. Ghuri then made his base in Peshawar, and turned his
attention to Lahore. It took him seven years to finally conquer that kingdom.
The borders of Ghazn now touched those of the Chauhans
or Chahamanas in India. The Chauhan kingdom was based in Rajasthan. It extended
north into Punjab, Delhi and parts of Uttar Pradesh, and south into Gujarat.
Ghuri fought the Chauhans twice. The first time he was
defeated. But the second time, in 1192, he defeated and killed Maharaja
Prithviraj of the Chauhan Empire. There is no indication that Hindu kings in lands
neighbouring the Chauhan’s rallied to the cause of Hinduism to help Prithviraj
Chauhan fight off Ghuri. Indeed, many of them were his enemies as he had
wrested lands from them to expand his own empire. In 1196, four years after
Prithviraj Chauhan’s death, the Chalukyas, Chauhans and Mher tribe of Ajmer did
attempt a rebellion, but they were defeated.
Ghuri successfully pressed further eastwards into the
Indo-Gangetic plain, taking all the land including Kannauj, Delhi, Bihar and Bengal,
from the River Ravi in Punjab in the west to Assam in the east. But Ghuri had
to rush back to Afghanistan almost immediately to deal with the Seljuks and
Kara Khitay. He was assassinated en route, and his Turkic governors in
India, who had risen as slave commanders in his armies, declared independence.
Thus began the Delhi Sultanate. It was 1206.
Chengiz Khan
The year 1206 was significant for another reason. This
was the year that a number of warring tribes in Mongolia united under a great
warrior and stateman – Chengiz Khan (350). This visionary young chief saw
tribal rivalries as weakening his people and reorganised his followers into
divisions where the tribes were mixed. The rest, as we know, is history.
Chengiz Khan was astonishingly successful in his
mission. He led his armies eastward to China and Indonesia; and westward to
Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan. By the time of the arrival of Chengiz,
Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan were divided into a number of kingdoms under
different Turkic rulers. Chengiz Khan wiped them all out.
Monument
to Chengiz Khan, Ulaanbaator, Mongolia. By the early 1220s, the Muslim Turks had been replaced by the Tsengrist Mongols in Khurasan, Khwarizm and Afghanistan. The Mongols pushed the Seljuks into Asia Minor (western Turkey) where they were joined by Turks fleeing Chengiz from Khurasan. These Khurasani Turks and Seljuks (also Turks) eventually went on to form the Ottoman Empire.
Chengiz Khan proposed an alliance to the Shahs of
Transoxiana. They refused, only to be routed in battle by him.
A Chengezi patrol is said to have reached the River Indus,
but decided to turn back as the men were discouraged by the heat of the Indus
plains; and were also, apparently, not confident, as had been the case with the
troops of Alexander nearly two thousand years earlier, about how their horses
would fare against the legendary war elephants of India.
Chengiz Khan is said to have gone into what today
constitutes the north-east of India. The Nagas have a deity called “Tsungrem”
which might be connected to the Mongol Tsengrism (351).
Chengiz Khan returned to Mongolia in 1225 placing his
four sons in charge of his conquered lands (350). His eldest son, Ogedei, took
over as the Great Khan in Mongolia after Chengiz died in 1227. His other son,
Tolui, was placed in charge of Mongol territories west of the Amu Darya, all
the way to Turkey. This included all of Afghan country to the west of Kabul and
all of Iran. Tolui’s domain came to be known as the “Il Khanate”.
Chengiz’s grandson through Tolui, Kublai Khan,
famously founded the Yuan empire in China. Uyghur, Kara Khitay and Transoxiana
went to Chengiz’s third son, Chagatai, the ancestor of the famous Timur, who
was in turn the forebear of Babur. Chengiz’s fourth son, Jochi, was given the
area around Azerbaijan and the Volga, where the princes of Russia paid him
tribute.
In 1257, another of Chengiz’s grandsons through Tolui,
Hulegu, proposed an alliance with the Abbasid Caliphate. They refused and met
with the same fate as the Shahs of Transoxiana.
With the defeat of the Abbasid Caliphate, Muslim
rulers, both Arab and Turkic, from Transoxiana to Rum were now replaced by the
Mongols.
Monument
to Chengiz Khan, Ulaanbaator, Mongolia. When the Mongols swept away the Abbasid Caliphate, beheading the reigning Caliph and defeating all the Muslim rulers of the Turko-Persianate world, the sufis became the sole leaders of Islam in the region. For though, as it turns out, the Mongols were tolerant of Islam, the Turko-Persianate elites chose to flee the Mongols, some going to the Seljuk Empire in Asia Minor, and others to India where the governors of the assassinated Mohammad Ghuri had declared independence from Ghazn to establish the Delhi Sultanate (352).
A family that left Balkh on the invasion of the
Mongols to settle in India where the Delhi Sultanate had just been established,
was that of Amir Khusroe (353). Another famous sufi with origins in Balkh was
Jalaluddin Rumi who had been born there (354). His father had had to move from
there to Syria owing to differences with the reigning sovereign. Rumi spent
most of his life in the Sultanate of Rum.
Sufis in India
Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti was the first sufi to settle
within the boundaries of today’s India – although it bears noting that sufis
had already been setting in Lahore, Sindh and Multan, i.e., in today’s Pakistan, for
centuries. It is not clear whether Chisti came before or after Sultan Muhammad
Ghuri’s victory in India. But he was definitely a witness to the formation of
the Delhi Sultanate. There are legends that he settled in Ajmer in Rajasthan in
the lifetime of Prithviraj Chauhan, who tried in various ways to get rid of him
as he grew increasingly popular among the people, and even among Prithviraj’s
own officials (363).
The Khwaja established the Chistia Silsila of sufis in
Ajmer. A “silsila” is like a branch or school of sufis, each with their own
succession of chief pirs, body of poetry and ceremonies. The most well-known
sufis of North India belong to the Chistia Silsila.
Another important sufi centre that came up in
Rajasthan was Nagaur. The sufi Sheikh Hamiduddin Nagauri settled here, living a
life of deep simplicity and asceticism. He had been a disciple of Khawaja
Moinuddin.
His father had migrated from Lahore to Delhi where
Hamiduddin was born. Sheikh Hamiduddin preached vegetarianism and love for all
living creatures. He was among the many sufis to cross the ulema, who objected
to his not attending Friday congregational prayers. He replied that such
attendance was not required of him under Islamic law, as he lived in a village
and not a town (364).
An interesting sufi among the many who migrated to
Nagaur following the establishment of this creed there by Hamiduddin Nagauri,
was Khwaja Ziyauddin Nakshabi (365). Khwaja Ziyauddin’s ancestors were from
Sogdiana which they left after the arrival of the Mongols to settle in Nagaur.
Nakshabi was a disciple of Baba Farid’s and a gifted
writer. One of his works, the Tuti Nama (“Stories from a Parrot”), is a Persian
version of a Sanskrit work called the Suka Saptati by Chintamani Bhatta. Khwaja
Ziyauddin was clearly inspired by Jainism and Buddhism when he wrote at the end
of the Tuti Nama:
“Oh Nakshabi! Adopt the religion of those who follow a
middle course.
The Prophet himself has ordained to do so.
The middle of the road policy is praiseworthy.
The commandment of Islam is moderation (366).”
Ziyauddin also wrote a book on the erotic pleasures
called the Lazzatu’n Nisa which is said to be based on a local work called the
Rati Rahasya or “Mysteries of Passion” by one “Kokapandita” or “Kukkoka”. Rizvi
says that this work of Ziyauddin’s shows “a deep influence of the Hindu view of
desire and love of “kama”, which involved a belief in education rather than
inhibition in sex (366)."
We will see in the following chapters, that the
influence of Jainism and Hindu asceticism on the sufis, which began in the
regions of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 7th-8th
centuries, continued in India well into the 18th century.
Click here for Table of Contents and full paper
Comments
Post a Comment