Debating knowledge: Rethinking Critical Management Studies in a changing world

Abstract

In the year 1627 of the common era (1036 AH), Mutribi al-Asamm al-Samarqandi – poet and scholar, and a courtier well versed in the refined etiquettes of the Persianate world which straddled large swathes of the Asia of his times – presented himself at the royal court of Emperor Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir, ruler of the mighty Mughal Empire in India, where he was received with due dignity and lavished with expensive gifts. The traveler from Samarqand stayed at the Mughal court for more than two months, during which time he and the Indian emperor developed a close relationship and held a number of extended conversations that provided the material for an account penned by the Central Asian visitor. In his account (generally known as Khātirāt-i-Mutribī Samarqandī ), 1 Mutribi ranges over a variety of areas and, among other things, offers the reader several comparisons between Central Asia and Mughal India. As the historians Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2007) highlight in their commentary on the Khātirāt , Mutribi’s account showers praise after praise on Emperor Jahangir – “one of the greatest rulers of the age,” in Mutribi’s words (p. 121) – and by means of a series of comparisons brings out “the wonders and the superiority” of India over Central Asia (p. 128). Indeed, observe Alam and Subrahmanyam (2007: 128), it seems that Mutribi’s Khātirāt almost wishes to represent the Mughal emperor himself as one of the great wonders of India and virtually serves as a “vehicle for the expression of Jahangir’s [and not only Mutribi’s] opinions and prejudices.”