Great Mogul Research Articles

British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770-1870, edited by Sutapa Dutta

Reviewed by: British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870 ed. by Sutapa Dutta Meg Dobbins (bio) British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870, edited by Sutapa Dutta; pp. viii + 246. London and New York: Routledge, 2020, $160.00, $44.05 ebook. Part of the Routledge Research in Gender and History Series, British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770–1870 offers an intimate glimpse into the understudied lives and writings of a diverse group of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British women travelers. The collection will be received enthusiastically by anyone interested in travel writing, women’s writing, and historical and cultural studies of the British Empire. Perhaps the greatest strength of this fresh and accomplished volume is its gendered elaboration and historical situating of the inherently nebulous genre of travel writing in the context of British imperialism. The editor Sutapa Dutta makes the case in a framing introduction that women’s travel narratives from 1770 to 1880 provide a “unique refractive perspective” on British imperialism and colonial rule (4). Beyond recovering the words and experiences of individual women writers of the period (itself a worthy undertaking), this volume aims further to illuminate British women’s contributions to Western and Anglocentric forms of travel, mobility, and imperial knowledge-making in the decades during which Britain was coming into imperial world power. Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of how British women travelers contributed to and shaped important cultural, scientific, religious, and material colonial discourses of the time. The chapters offer close readings of an impressively diverse range of public and private genres of women’s travel narratives including travel guides, memoirs, published and unpublished letters, cookery, and proto-ethnographic and archaeological writings on a variety of stimulating topics. In a laudable effort to track British women travelers across as many continents and in as many countries as possible, the volume is broken down into three parts focused on Europe, the British colonies, and settler colonies. There are many benefits, and perhaps a few inevitable drawbacks, to this geographical structuring. In the first section especially, on British women’s travels throughout the Continent, it is not always clear how or if the chapters intend to address the larger questions of British imperial knowledge and discourse posed in the introduction. In an excellent chapter on Elizabeth Inchbald’s travels to France in 1776, for example, Ben P. Robertson makes the persuasive case that Inchbald appropriated French culture for British consumption. The word “colonise” is deployed here as a synonym for other kinds of adaptation, translation, and cultural commodification (21). Yet when the chapter turns to consider Inchbald’s awareness of specific colonial affairs in India (evidenced by her 1784 drama The Great Mogul and the fact that she briefly contemplated immigrating to India herself), the differences among these various modes of appropriation come to feel significant. How—and why?—did Inchbald’s capitalizing on French culture lay the groundwork for her cultural colonization of India later on? In this chapter, as in Barbara Tetti’s fascinating account of British archaeological engagements with Roman monuments and ruins, British views of India are touched on but not fully integrated into discussions of British tourism throughout the Continent. Reading Tetti’s chapter, one wonders how the nascent archaeological notion of time that evolved in travel narratives written by Katherine Elwood and Judith Montefiore in Rome further developed when these women headed to the Middle East and India; unfortunately, this chapter concludes right at this exciting juncture before any such connections [End Page 461] can be made. Overall, then, while chapters in this section of the book do a wonderful job recovering the writings of individual writers and elucidating forms of British identity and culture that emerged vis-à-vis women’s travels in the Continent, the larger framework of the British Empire sometimes falls out of view. One of the central and perhaps most provocative contentions of this volume is that British women’s travel writing was not “radically different” from men’s. As Dutta asserts, it is “time to relinquish the idea of searching for a ‘feminine’ perspective in the writings of women writers, or a ‘feminine’ perspective of the world” (6). Some...

Religious tolerance as a condition for the prosperity of a multi-religious state: a historical example of India of the Great Mogul era

In 1175, Gaz Sultan Muhammad Guri conquered India, starting a new era in its history. In 1206, Muhammad Guri died, and his commander, Kutb ud-Din, declared himself ruler of Delhi, establishing the Delhi Sultanate, which lasted 320 years and which changed the five dynasties.

TAJ MAHAL – THE CRAVING FOR OUTLIVING THE TRANSIENCE

Through the architecture of mausoleum, the world will get to know some of the most magnificent works of Islamic art, which sometimes forms the impression that “beauty in itself carries the power of survival” (Malraux) and that by the sublimity and completeness of its aesthetic and artistic expression it justifies immortality. Some of these works of Islamic architecture in Mogul India can be considered the most beautiful works of art that have ever occurred; they have never been surpassed by any architectural works. The most famous among them certainly is the Taj Mahal that – by a reflection of the inner origin in its forms, its overall structure, clearly discernible form, the fundamental spiritual hinterland and the baraqat of Persian and Indian Sufis addressed from within, by the energy and special metaphysical quality of beauty that it emanates – it testifies that it is the exceptional masterpiece of the artistic genius of Islam and perhaps his swan song in India. It seems as if in it the Islamic art touches the ultimate limits of its historic achievement and reaches some kind of formal perfection, which in the historical order of things and the world experience almost always signifies some kind of ending. This paper is a certain hermeneutical – interpretative effort to understand the uniqueness of the architecture of the Taj Mahal and polysemy of its symbolism from the horizon of Islamic spirituality, metaphysics and the philosophy of art. Keywords: Taj Mahal, the Great Moguls, mausoleum, architecture, art, symbolism

MUSLIM HETERODOXY, PERSIAN MURTADDUN AND JESUIT MISSIONARIES AT THE COURT OF KING AKBAR (1580–1605)

The Jesuit mission to the Court of the Great Moguls Akbar (1542–1605) and Jahângîr (1605–1627) stands in need of a fresh examination in the context of an encounter between Muslims and Christians; not least because it manifests certain unusual characteristics.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Theatricality and Cosmopolitanism in Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem

act 3 of Hannah Cowley's 1780 comedy The Belle's Stratagem, (1) the character Hardy contemplates the choice of a costume for an upcoming masquerade: Let me see.--What shall my dress be? A Great Mogul? No.--A Grenadier? No;--no, that I foresee, would make a laugh. Hang me, if I don't send to my little Quick, and borrow his Jew Isaac's dress:--I know the Dog likes a glass of good wine; so I'll give him a bottle of my Forty-eight, and he shall teach me. Aye, that's it--I'll be the Cunning Little Isaac! If they complain of my want of wit, I'll tell `em the cursed Duenna wears the breeches and has spoiled my part. (3.1, p. 40) The humor of this scene relies on a metatheatrical in-joke: Hardy was originally played by the versatile actor John Quick (1748-1831), who had played not only the role of Isaac Mendoza in Sheridan's The Duenna (1775) but also Tony Lumpkin in a 1773 production of She Stoops to Conquer. (2) Cowley counts on her audience to recognize the transparency of Hardy's announcement: Quick both calls attention to the idiosyncrasies of his previous role and reminds us that he only plays at being Hardy here. This metatheatrical moment is consistent with Cowley's attempt to foreground performance throughout her comedy as she encourages her audience to recognize a Shakespearean paradox: if human subjectivity is defined by constant role-playing, then only on the stage do people really appear as what they are. The actor is the only truly sincere being since her performance is the explicit demonstration of ever-shifting human potential. And so in act 4, Quick plays Hardy playing the Jew Isaac Mendoza, whom the audience (and presumably the characters also, for they seem to have seen The Duenna as well) recognize not as an actual Jew--nor even as a representation of an actual Jew--but as a specific dramatic rendering of Jewish identity. Hardy enters into an altercation with another masker, who taunts him with racial slurs: Why, thou little testy Israelite! Back to Duke's Place; and preach your tribe into a subscription for the good of the land on whose milk and honey ye fatten.--Where are your Joshuas and your Gideons, aye? What! all dwindled into Stockbrokers, Pedlars, and Rag Men? Putting his fingers to his head, Hardy replies: No, not all. Some of us turn Christians, and by degrees grow into all the privileges of Englishmen! the second generation we are Patriots, Rebels, Courtiers, and Husbands (4.1, p. 50). This is certainly an interesting response, that could be played in a number of different ways. Is the playwright condemning or condoning the process by which Mendoza's ethnic origins are erased? Is a Jew who has turned Christian still a Jew who only masquerades as what he is not? Does he therefore only perform the role of Patriot, Rebel, Courtier, or Husband, thereby covering, hiding, or disguising what was originally stamped upon his character? Or, is Cowley here endorsing the idea that the Jew turned Christian leaves behind his origins and that he successfully adopts a new English identity? On the hand, as a play, The Belle's Stratagem evinces an awareness of the destabilizing effects of performance as well as the anxiety this destabilization can produce. As the character Sir George Touchwood complains, society has become one universal masquerade, all disguised in the same habits and manners (2.1, p. 27). He is unsettled because he can no longer recognize distinction of character or class of female. Indeed, the masquerade scene in act 4 introduces us to a variety of poseurs--shady characters who exploit appearances to get what they want. Miss Flutter claims she can tell the histories of half the people at the event: In the next apartment, she alleges, there's a whole family, who, to my knowledge, have lived on Water-Cresses this month, to make a figure here to-night--; but to make up for that, they'll cram their pockets with cold Ducks and Chickens, for a Carnival to-morrow (4. …

Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction: Preliminary navigations The Lusiads and the Asian reader Banyan trees and fig leaves: some thoughts on Milton's India Appropriating India: Dryden's Great Mogul James Mill and the case of the Hottentot Venus Hegel's India and the surprise of sin Feminizing the feminine: early women writers on India Monstrous mythologies: Southey and The curse of Kehama Understanding Asia: Shelley's Prometheus unbound Macaulay: the moment and the minute Afterword: from center to circumference Notes Index

On Baluchi Separatism

0.1. Amongst the Iranian peoples and ethnic formations a highly important place is occupied by the Baluchis, due to their ancient and specific culture, rich historical background and because of their political weight in the ethnic mosaic of the region. In spite of that the Baluchis have always been an integral part of the continuum of peoples inhabiting Iran, and from the earliest times have played an important role in the creation and consolidation of the Iranian state; though, from the other side, the ideas of separatism and ambitions of creating their own state have never been alien to them. However, the lack of a clearly formed national ideology and national consolidation, along with a number of other factors, have always been an obstacle in the way of the realization of these ideas. In any case, the Baluchis (around 6 million) are the largest Iranian ethnicity after the Persians, Kurds and Afghans. 1.1. In the XVII century by the efforts of the Brahui and Baluchi tribes, as a result of struggle against the Great Moguls, the Khanate of Qelat was founded. This historical period is not thoroughly studied and now it is difficult to say who played the main role in the foundation of the Khanate: Baluchis or Brahuis? However, the period of the Khanate of Qelat is considered as a part of Baluchistan's history. The rulers of Qelat, during many years, fought either with the Kalhurs of Sind, or with the Gilzais of Afghanistan, and the Khanate's borders were continuously changing, including in certain historic periods the regions of Quetta-Pishin, Qachchi, Sibi, etc. The rulers of the Khanate were often subject to the influence of either the rulers of Iran (Nadir-shah, for instance), or the Afghans of Qandahar, up to the period of Nasir Khan's reign the most authoritative leader of Qelat. Nasir Khan managed to bring all the local sardars under his jurisdiction and enlarged the territory of the Khanate approximately up to the borders of the modern Pakistani province of Baluchistan. With the penetration of the Dutch, and afterwards the British into the Persian Gulf, the value of the Khanate of Qelat and Baluchi territories began to increase gradually. The foreigners considered Baluchistan as a foothold for their expansion in the directions of India, Iran and Afghanistan. According to an agreement between the British Mission and Qelat signed in 1839, the Baluchis were to guarantee the safety of British power and transportation to the Afghan border, in return, they were given guarantees of the preservation of their sovereignty and the borders of the Baluchi territories. From that time Baluchistan gradually began to lose its influence in the region. 1.2. As a result of the over enhancing spread of the Great Britain's influence further to the West, Persia also remembered its vital interests.In order to protect their own interests, the Persians began intensive interference in Baluchistan. During the reigns of Nasereddin-shah and Reza-shah they actively tried to subject the Baluchi tribes to the central government. A considerable part of Baluchistan up to 1 947 was considered the territory of the British Empire. It is necessary to note that the division of Baluchi lands took place at the end of the XIX century, due to an agreement between Iran, Afghanistan and Britain, leading to a formal demarcation line through the enormous Baluchi tribal massive and the emergence of the Iranlian, or Western,

Khushhal Khan Togatus: A Pathan Poet in Roman Dress

KhushhalKhan, hereditary Khan of the Khatak tribe of Pathans, lived from a.d. 1613 to 1689. For the first half of his long life Khushhal enjoyed the favour, and in some degree the friendship, of the Mogul Emperor Shah Jehan, whose feudatory he was and to whose state he did some service. But in 1658 Aurarigzeb succeeded to the throne, having defeated and deposed his father. With that Khushhal's fortunes began to decline, and in 1664 he was arrested, clapped in irons, and sent down into Hindustan, where he spent five weary years in captivity. Having somehow procured his release, he laid himself out for revenge, and began to play a part not unlike that of William Wallace or Owen Glendower. The rebellion which he fomented by his pen and furthered by his sword can be counted as not least among the causes which on the death of Aurangzeb brought about the dramatic downfall of the Great Moguls. This in turn opened the way for the East India Company to become the paramount power in India.

More about the Marsden Manuscripts in the British Museum

A part from a few brief notes of a general nature, the Marsden manuscripts were first described in any detail as a collective whole, by Father H. Hosten, S.J., in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, August, 1910 (New Series, vol. vi, No. 8, pp. 437–461) from material supplied to him by Messrs. Philipps and Beveridge. With the transfer of the most valuable portion of William Marsden's magnificent Library from King's College to the School of Oriental Studies in 1918, the Marsden MSS., both those in the British Museum and those now in the School, formed the topic of two articles in the Bulletin of the S.O.S.—the first by Sir Denison Ross in vol. ii, pp. 513–538 (1923), and the second by Father Hosten, S.J., in vol. iii, pp. 129–150 (1925). A few years later Sir Edward Maclagan, who had already published some documents in extract in the JASB. for 1896, catalogued those dealing with Northern India and Bengal amongst the Letters and Reports which he listed on pp. 369–388 of his standard work, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London, 1932).

Old Malay Legal Digests and Malay Customary Law

Digests of law collected from all the races of the Malay archipelago fill many printed volumes. In the Malay peninsula they are of three main types. There are digests and tribal sayings that embody the mild indigenous matriarchal law of agricultural clans, the 'adat perpateh or Law of Prime Ministers, found among the Minangkabaus of Sumatra and their colonists in Negri Sembilan. There are digests of patriarchal law deterrent to criminals, the 'adat Temenggong or Law of the Minister for War and Police, evolved for the mixed population of ports, law introduced largely from India along with commerce by traders and adventurers, at first Hindu and later Muslim. (This second type of law may be further divided into general digests of constitutional criminal and civil; law, full of relics of indigenous custom and borrowings from the period of Hindu influence but modelled on text-books of Muslim canon law and containing many of its provisions; secondly, digests of port rules adopted by countries like Acheh and Kedah from regulations of the kind India knew from the days of Chandra Gupta to the time of the Great Moguls; and, thirdly, digests of maritime law compiled, it is said, for Bugis trading vessels.) The last of the main types requires no comment, being Malay translations of orthodox Muslim works of the school of Shafi'i, especially treatises on the law of marriage, divorce, and the legitimacy of children, the only branch of Muslim canon law that Malays have adopted practically unchanged.

The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Book reviewed in this article:MODERNIST ISLAM Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh. By Charles C. Adams, Ph.D., D.D.MODERN MOSLEM MOVEMENTS Whither Islam?: A Survey of Modern Movements in the Moslem World. Edited by H. A. R. Gibb.RURAL INDIA Up from Poverty in Rural India. By D. Spencer Hatch, M. Sc. in Agriculture, Ph.D. Foreword by H.E.RURAL INDIA Reconstruction and Education in Rural India. By Prem Chand Lal, Ph.D.RURAL INDIA Review of Rural Welfare Activities in India, 1932. By C. F. Strickland, C.I.E.TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF MORAVIAN MISSIONS 200 Jahre Brüdermission. I. Band: Das Erste Missionsjahrhundert. Von Karl Müller. M. 8. 1931. II. Band: Das Zweite Missionsjahrhundert. Von Adolf Schulze.JESUITS AND THE GREAT MOGUL The Jesuits and the Great Mogul. By Sir Edward Maclagan.MISSIONARIES AND SIMPLER LIVING Ventures in Simpler Living. By Daniel Johnson Fleming.KAGAWA Kagawa. By William Axling.ELEVENTH WORLD'S SUNDAY SCHOOL CONVENTION The Living Christ in the World Fellowship of Religious Education: Official Record of the Eleventh World's Sunday School Convention. Held in Rio de Janciro. Compiled by W. C. Poole.ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA St John's College, Agra: 1850–1930. By J. P. Haythornthwaite and T. D. Sully.

Book Review: The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

Book Review: The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

Review of Book: The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

Review of Book: The Jesuits and the Great Mogul

An Illustrated History of the Moslem World Written for the "Great Mogul"

THE Mughal Emperors of India were great connoisseurs and collectors of illuminated manuscripts and their Imperial Library at Delhi contained a priceless collection of these works of art. On the decay of the dynasty, portions of this library were appropriated by the Mahrattas and also by the Persian invader. Nadir Shah, in the XVIIIth century: it was finally broken up during the Mutiny of 1857. Great were the vicissitudes of some of these valuable manuscripts and miniature paintings before they again found safety in museums or in the hands of modern collectors. Several were acquired as loot by rebel sepoys and were found folded up in their bedding or crammed into their haversacks in a badly mutilated condition. Many of those which were not actually destroyed during these disturbances have been preserved, and recently a group of miniature paintings from the library of the “Great Moguls” came to light, having been discovered by Mr. Ajit Ghose of Calcutta, a connoisseur of Indian and Persian art. These pictur...

An Illustrated History of the Moslem World Written for the “Great Mogul”

An Illustrated History of the Moslem World Written for the “Great Mogul”

The Empire of the Great Mogul: A Translation of De Laet's 'Description of India and Fragment of Indian History'

The Empire of the Great Mogul: A Translation of De Laet's 'Description of India and Fragment of Indian History'

Akbar the Great Mogul, by Vincent Smith

Akbar the Great Mogul, <i>by Vincent Smith</i>

&lt;italic&gt;Akbar, the Great Mogul, 1542–1605&lt;/italic&gt;. By &lt;sc&gt;Vincent A. Smith&lt;/sc&gt;, M.A., M.R.A.S. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1917. Pp. xv, 504. $6.40.)

Journal Article Akbar, the Great Mogul, 1542–1605. By Vincent A. Smith, M.A., M.R.A.S. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1917. Pp. xv, 504. $6.40.) Get access Akbar, the Great Mogul, 1542–1605. By Smith Vincent A., M.A., M.R.A.S. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1917. Pp. xv, 504. $6.40.) E. Washburn Hopkins E. Washburn Hopkins Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 23, Issue 2, January 1918, Pages 378–381, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/23.2.378 Published: 01 January 1918