Class 12 NCERT History chapter - 9

             King and Chronicles 

                        The mughal Courts

                   (C. Sixteenth - Seventeenth Centuries )

Introduction 

• The monarchs of the mughal Empire saw themselves as legitimate rulers of a large and heterogeneous popular
• The mughal kings commissioned court historians to write accounts of their achievements recorded  the events of the emperor's time .
• Chronicles are an indispensable source for any scholar wishing to write a history of the mughal 
• The workings of this rich and fascinating dimension of the mughal empire.

The mughals and their empire 

• The name mughal derives from mongol 
• The first mughal ruler , was related to Ghengiz khan from his mother's side .
• The name Mowgli is derived from the young hero of Rudyard Kipling's jungle book  
• The founder of the empire, Zahiruddin babar was driven from his central Asian homeland farghana , by the warring Uzbek
• Nasiruddin humayan (1530-40;1555-56 ) expanded the frontiers of the empire but lost it to the Afghan leader shershah sur  
• In 1555 Humayan defeated the surs 
• Akbar had three fairly able successors in Jahangir (1605-27) , shah jahan (1628-58) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 ),Much as their characters varied 
• After 1707, The death of Aurangzeb , the power of the dynasty diminished.

The production of chronicles 

• They were written in order to project a vision of an enlightened kingdom to all those who came under its umbrella .
• The rule of the mughals that all resistance was destined to fail 
• The rulers wanted to ensure that there was an account of their rule for posterity 
• Their tittles ,such as the Akbar Nama , Shayahan nama , Alamgir Nama , that is the story of Akbar , shah jahan and Alamgir 

From Turkish to Persian

• Mughal court chronicles were written in Persian
• The mughal were Chaghtai Turks by origin .
• Turkish was their mother tongue 
• The people using Persian in the 16th and 17th centuries came from many different regions of the subcontinent 
• Persian too became Indianised by absorbing local idioms
• A new language, Urdu , Sprang from the interacting of Persian  with Hindavi  
• The translations of Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana into Persian .

The Making a Manuscripts 

• The center of manuscript production was the Imperial kitab khana 
• Paper makers were needed to papers the folios of the manuscript , scribes to copy the text.
• Calligraphy, the art of hand writing , was considered a skill of great importance 
• Akbar's favorite was the nastaliq, a fluid style with long horizontal strokes . 

The painted Image 

• Painters were involved in the production of Mughal manuscripts 
• Painting possess special powers of communicating ideas about the kingdom and the power of kings in ways that the written medium could not .
• Quran is described an incident from the life of the prophet Muhammad
• Muslim rulers in many Asian region during centuries of empire building regularly commissioned artists to paint their portraits and scenes of life in their kingdoms

Example :  The names of painters such as that of Bihzad - Contributed to spreading the cultural fame of the Safavid court far and wide .

The Akbar Nama and the Badshah Nama

• The Akbar Nama and Badshah Nama are the most well known .
• The author of the Akbar - Nama , Abul Fazl grew up in the mughal capital of Agra .
• Beginning in 1589, Abul Fazl worked on the Akbar Nama for thirteen year .
• The Akbar Nama is divided into three books of which the first two are chronicles 
• The third book is the Ain - i - Akbari 
• Abdul Hamid lahori is known as the author of the Badshah Nama 
• Akbar Nama and Badshah Nama were first published by the Asiatic Society in the 19th century 

The ideal kingdom 

A divine light 

• Court chroniclers drew upon many sources to show that the power of the mughal kings came directly from good 
• Abul -Fazl placed mughal kingship as the highest station in the hierarchy of objects receiving light

 

A Unifying force 

• Mughal chronicles present the empires as comprising many different ethic and religious communities Hindu, Jainas , Zoroastrians and Muslims 
• Abul -Fazl described the deal of sulh-i -kul as the cornerstone of enlightened rule 
• The mughal was a composite one comprising Irains, Turanis , Afghans , Rajputs ,Deccanis 
• Akbar abolished the tax on pilgrimage in 1563 and jizya in 1564.

Capitals and Courts 

Capital cities 

• In 1560s akbar had the fort of Agra constructed with rd sandstone quarried from the adjoining .
• In the 1570s , he decided to build a new capital fatehpur sikri 
• In the 1585 the capital was transferred to lahor to bring the north-west under greater control and Akbar closely watched the frontier for thirteen years 
• In 1648 the court , army and household moved from Agra to the newly completed imperial capital shah jahanabad

The mughal court 

• The physical arrangement of the court , focused on the sovereign mirrored his status as the heart of society 
• Social control in court society was exercied through carefully defining in full detail which were acceptable in court 

Titles and Gifts 

• Grand titles were adopted by the mughal emperors 
• The granting of titles to men of merit was an important aspect of mughal polity .
• Titles could be earned or paid 

The Imperial household 

• The term harem is frequently used to refer to the domestic world of the mughals 
• Meaning of harem in Persian word haram 
• Haram meaning a sacred place 
• In the mughal household a distinction was maintained between wives who came from royal families and other wives who were not or noble birth .
• Jahanara participate in many in many architectural projects of shah jahan's new capital shahjahanabad   
• The mughal is the humayun Nama written by Gulbanan Begum , she was the daughter of babur 

The Imperial officials 

Recruitment and rank 

• The nobility was recruited from diverse ethic and religious groups 
• The officer corps of the mughals was described as a bouquet of flowers held together by loyalty to the emperor 
• The Akbar's imperial service, turani and Iranian nobles were present from the earliest phase of carving out political dominion 
• Two ruling groups of Indian origin entered the imperial service from 1560 onward the Rajputs and the Indian muslim 
• Iranians gained high officers under Jahangir whose politically influential queen, Nur jahan was an Iranian

Beyond the Frontiers 

The Safavids and Qandahar 

• The political and diplomatic relations between the mughal kings and the neighbouring countries of Zran and Turan 
• A constant aim of mughal policy was to ward off this potential danger by controlling strategic outposts - notably Kabul and qandahar 
• Qandahar was a bone of contention between the Safavids and the Mughal 

The Ottomans :Pilgrimage and trade 

• The relationship between the mughal and the ottomans was marked by the concern to ensure free movement for merchants and pilgrimage in the territories under ottoman control .
• The mughal emperor usually combined religion and commerce .

Jesuits at the mughal court 

• The Jesuits accounts are the earliest in pressions of the mughal court ever recorded by European writers .
• The first Jesuits missions reached the mughal court at fatehpur sikri in 1580 .
• Two more missions were sent to the mughal court at Lahore , in 1591 and 1595.