No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2020
There is a long tradition of describing Sindh as peculiarly prone to Sayyid veneration. On the face of it, the biographical section of Tuhfat al-Kiram or Gift for the Noble, an eighteenth-century history and geography written in Persian in Sindh, appears to confirm this idea. In listing the notables of Thatta, Sindh's premier city, the author, Mir ʻAli Shir Qaniʻ, orders them by groups, giving priority in his hierarchical arrangement to Sayyids. However, this article examines Tuhfat al-Kiram not as a transparent description of Sindh, but rather as a normative exposition of a Sayyid-led social order. It draws attention to Qaniʻs project of reconciling individual excellence with lineage in a post-Mughal context without a discerning sovereign to uphold a meritorious order. By exploring Qaniʻs silences, particularly on Hindus and women, this article investigates the anxieties that run through this text about the threat to the old Persianate elite of Thatta. This threat spurred Qaniʻ to reimagine a social order in Sindh where claims of descent served to close off mobility in an otherwise meritocratic Persianate society. Sayyid priority in eighteenth-century Sindh was not an established fact, but a newly-fashioned claim, which remained contested and contradictory, even within Tuhfat al-Kiram.
I would like to thank Julien Levesque and Laurence Gautier for their invaluable comments on this article.
1 On the English East India Company's diplomatic relations with the Talpurs, see Huttenback, R., British Relations with Sind, 1799–1843: An Anatomy of Imperialism (Karachi, 2007)Google Scholar.
2 Burnes, J., Narrative of a Visit to the Court of Sinde at Hyderabad on the Indus (Edinburgh, 1839), pp. 75–76Google Scholar.
3 On Richard Burton, see Kennedy, D., A Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World (Cambridge, MA, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arondekar, A., For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Durham, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Burton, R., Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 232–361Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., pp. 232–257.
6 Ibid., pp. 232–233.
7 Ibid., p. 233.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., pp. 367–368.
10 See for example Juggonath, N., Sindhu jo Nirvaru (Karachi, 1865), pp. 35–45Google Scholar; Beg, M.Q., Qadim Sindh: Una ja Mashhur Shahr ai Manhun, 7th edition (Hyderabad, 2014)Google Scholar.
11 See, for example, Cohn, B., An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi, 1988)Google Scholar; Dirks, N., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar; Mantena, K., Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilmartin, D., Blood and Water: The Indus River Basin in Modern History (Oakland, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 For a history of these terms and their intersection with empire, see Sneath, D., The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoler, A. L., Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 The seminal work of pre-colonial social history remains Bayly, C. A., Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar. Recent monographs on Mughal society and culture include Lal, R., Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Sharma, S., Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court (Cambridge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinra, R., Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary (Oakland, 2015)Google Scholar.
14 It has been an important source for many histories of Sindh. For example, see Mihr, G. R., Taʻrikh-i Sind (Jamshoro, 1958)Google Scholar; Beg, Qadim Sindh.
15 On universal histories, see Meisami, J., Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh, 1999)Google Scholar; Tavakoli-Targhi, M., Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography (Houndmills, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bashir, S., ‘A Perso-Islamic Universal Chronicle in its Historical Context: Ghiyas al-Din Khwandmir's Habib al-Siyar’, in Historiography and Religion, (eds.) Rupke, J., Rau, S. and Otto, B. C. (Berlin, 2015), pp. 207–223Google Scholar.
16 ʻAli Kufi's Chachnamah (1216), Mir Muhammad Maʻsum's Taʻrikh-i Sindh (1601), Qasim Khan Beglari's Beglarnamah (1608), Tahir Muhammad Nisyani's Taʼrikh-i Tahiri (1621), and Mir Muhammad Jalal's Tarkhannamah (1655) are some prominent regional histories of Sindh before Tuhfat al-Kiram. Aminuddin Khan's Maʻlumat al-Afaq (1715) is an example of a world geography written in Kufi, Thatta. A., Fathnamah-i Sindh al-maʻruf bi Chachnamah, (ed.) Baloch, N. A. (Islamabad, 1983)Google Scholar; Maʻsum, M., Taʼrikh-i Sindh al-maʻruf bi Taʻrikh-i Maʻsumi, (ed.) Daudpota, U. (Karachi, 2014)Google Scholar; Beglari, Q., Beglarnamah, (ed.) Baloch, N. A. (Hyderabad, 1980)Google Scholar; Nisyani, T., Taʼrikh-i Baldah-i Thatta al-maʻruf bi Taʻrikh-i Tahiri, (ed.) Baloch, N. A. (Hyderabad, 1964)Google Scholar; Jalal, M., Tarkhannamah, (ed.) Rashdi, H. (Hyderabad, 1965)Google Scholar; Khan, A., Maʻlumat al-Afaq, translated by Khan, M.A. (Lucknow, 1873)Google Scholar.
17 Notable examples of each include Muhammad Aʻzam's Tuhfat al-Tahirin (1776) on the Sufis of Thatta and Muhammad Ibrahim's Tazkirah-i Takmilah-i Maqalat al-Shuʽara (circa 1890) meant to bring Qaniʻs tazkirah of Persian poets of Sindh up to the end of the nineteenth century. Aʻzam, M., Tuhfat al-Tahirin, (ed.) Durrani, B. A. (Karachi, 1956)Google Scholar; Ibrahim, M., Tazkirah-i Takmilah-i Maqalat al-Shuʽara, (ed.) Rashdi, H. (Karachi, 1958)Google Scholar.
18 On the Sammas, see Islam, R., ‘The Rise of the Sammas’, Islamic Culture XXII (1948), pp. 359–382Google Scholar.
19 Markovits, C., The Global World of Indian Merchants 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 10–12Google Scholar; Alam, M., ‘Trade, State Policy and Regional Change: Aspects of Mughal-Uzbek Commercial Relations, c. 1550–1750’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient XXXVII (1994), p. 212Google Scholar. On the trade of Thatta during this period, see Subrahmanyam, S., ‘The Portuguese, Thatta and the External Trade of Sind, 1515–1635’, Revista de Cultura XIII/XIV (1991), pp. 48–58Google Scholar.
20 For a detailed history of the Kalhora, see Mihr, Taʻrikh-i Sind, i and ii.
21 Khan, S., Maʼasir al-Umara, (tr.) Qadiri, Muhammad ʻAyub (Lahore, 1968), i, pp. 811–812Google Scholar.
22 The most historically significant Kalhora capitals were Khudabad and Hyderabad. Khudabad was built by Miyan Yar Muhammad in 1701. It remained the capital of the Kalhora until 1750. Miyan Ghulam Shah built Hyderabad in 1768, which continued to serve as the capital of the Talpurs, who took power in 1782, until British annexation in 1843. For a detailed account of Kalhora capitals, see Lakho, G. M., ‘Kalhora ja Takhtgah’, Mehran III (1983), pp. 215–235Google Scholar.
23 C. A. Bayly has noted the parallel rise of the Muslim gentry, including Sayyids, in eighteenth-century north India. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 230–238.
24 Kia, M., ‘Space, Sociality, and Sources of Pleasure: A Response to Sanjay Subrahmanyam’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient LXI (2018), p. 266Google Scholar.
25 Hermansen, M. and Lawrence, B., ‘Indo-Persian Tazkirahs as Memorative Communications’, in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, (eds.) Gilmartin, D. and Lawrence, B. (Gainesville, 2000), p. 152Google Scholar.
26 Mana Kia, ‘Contours of Persianate Community, 1722–1835’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2011), pp. 256–309.
27 See ‘Maqalat al-Shuʽara’, British Library APAC Add. 21589; ‘Miʻyar-i Salikan-i Tariqat’, British Library APAC Add. 21589.
28 Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, British Library APAC Add. 21589, f. 254b.
29 See Paul, J., ‘The Histories of Herat’, International Society for Iran Studies XXXIII (2000), pp. 93–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noelle-Karimi, C., The Pearl in its Midst: Herat and the Mapping of Khurasan (15th–19th centuries) (Vienna, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 For example, Muhammad Aʻzam's Vaqiʻat-i Kashmiri (1747) on Kashmir and ʻAli Muhammad Khan's Mirʻat-i Ahmadi (1761) on Gujarat. See Aʻzam, ‘Vaqiʻat-i Kashmiri’, BL APAC Add. 26282; Khan, ‘Mirʼat-i Ahmadi’, BL APAC Add. 6580.
31 See, for example, K. Khan, ‘Haft Gulshan-i Muhammad Shahi’, BL APAC Or. 1795; L. Ram, ‘Tuhfat al-Hind’, BL APAC Add. 6584. Audrey Truschke has also noted this trend in some seventeenth century histories, where Mughal kings were ordered within a longer line of pre-Muslim Indian kings. See Truschke, , Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York, 2016), pp. 221–223Google Scholar.
32 See, for example, his history of the Mughal period, where Qaniʻ lists the Mughal governors of Thatta and ignores the governors of Bhakkar in upper Sindh. Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 281a–4a.
33 Ibid., f. 288b.
34 See Noelle-Karimi, The Pearl in its Midst.
35 Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 309a.
36 Qaniʻ, ‘Maqalat al- Shuʽara’, f. 521b, 523b.
37 Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 311b.
38 This claim has been disputed by many scholars, who have found reference to Thatta in historical sources as early as the thirteenth century. Chablani, S. P., ‘The Origin of Thatta’, in The Samma Kingdom of Sindh, (ed.) Lakho, G.M. (Jamshoro, 2006)Google Scholar; Rashdi, H., ‘Maklinama’, in Maklinamah, (ed.) Rashdi, H., (tr.) Shauq, N.A. (Jamshoro, 2011), pp. 122–140Google Scholar.
39 Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 312a.
40 Ibid.
41 On tabaqat literature, see Cl. Gilliot, ‘Tabakat’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (eds.) P. Bearman et al.; Rosenthal, Franz, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden, 1968)Google Scholar.
42 Mazhar-i Shahjahani, written by Yusuf Mirak (d. 1639) at Sehwan in the seventeenth century, imagined social order as having the sovereign at its apex followed by his officials and then the people of religion. This last was divided into nine groups. Sayyids were the seventh out of these nine. See Alvi, S., ‘Mazhar-i Shahjahani and the Province of Sindh under the Mughals: A Discourse on Political Ethics’, in Perspectives on Mughal India: Rulers, Historians, ʻUlamaʼ and Sufis, (ed.) Alvi, S. (Karachi, 2012), pp. 28–50Google Scholar.
43 ‘Tuhfat al-kiram’, f. 312a-b.
44 See U. Rubin, ‘Nur Muhammadi’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.
45 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 2a.
46 Ibid., f. 323a.
47 Ibid., f. 323b.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., f. 328b.
50 Ibid., f. 330b.
51 Ibid., f. 332a–b.
52 ʻAllami, A. F., ʽAʼin-i Akbari, (ed.) Ahmed, S. (Aligarh, 2005), pp. 210–246Google Scholar.
53 Ibid., p. 210.
54 Ibid.
55 This is a far cry from the realities of the early days of Akbar's rule. He started his reign under the overbearing viceregency of Bairam Khan. The early decades of his rule were also rocked by bitter factional struggles at his court. Even as Akbar amassed greater power over his subjects in later years, his authority was never unassailable. In the final years of his rule, his own son, Prince Salim, rose up in rebellion. While the rebellion was quelled, Salim had Abuʼl Fazl, the architect of the ideal expression of Akbari sovereignty, assassinated, exposing, not without a touch of irony, the gap between ideals and reality.
56 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 312b.
57 The significance of the occult, astrology, supernatural, and miraculous in shaping political and social life has been highlighted by other scholars, too. See Moin, A., The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 312b.
59 For recent ethnographies of dreaming in the Muslim world, see Mittermaier, A., Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley, 2011)Google Scholar, Taneja, A., Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford, 2018)Google Scholar.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Kia, ‘Space, Sociality, and Sources of Pleasure’, p. 272.
63 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 312b.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., f. 312b–3a.
67 Ibid., f. 313a.
68 Ibid., f. 314b.
69 Ibid., f. 317a–b.
70 Ibid., f. 318a.
71 For example, he describes Mir Zainuʼl-ʻabidin, a descendant of Sayyid ʻAli II, as “a man of perfection, a refuge for the greats, possessing laudable qualities. He was the head of the Sayyids in his own time and considered by many to be the seal of greatness, chief of the mighty, and having much knowledge. The text Khair al-Bashar or The Best of Humanity is known among his works. He composed masterly poetry and had the pen name Qaniʻ”. Ibid., f. 313a.
72 Ibid., f. 1b.
73 He includes his name and the names of his two sons in the biographies of the Shukrullahi Sayyids of Thatta. However, he says no more about himself there. Ibid., f. 316b. Conversely for an earlier time, in thirteenth-century Sindh, Manan Ahmed Asif has noted the importance of claiming Arab lineage as a source of prestige for writers at Nasiruddin Qabacha's court. See Asif, M. A., A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 55–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74 Burton, Sindh and the Races, pp. 232–233.
75 For example, Qazi Ibrahim served as judge of the army under Shahjahan; Makhdum Hamid was a local judge; Makhdum Abuʼl Khair was one of the scholars working on Aurangzeb's Fatava-yi ʽAlamgiri. Ibid., f. 324a–b, 324b, 324a.
76 For example, Mulla Shaikh Ishaq's family controlled his shrine at Makli, which was a place of pilgrimage, while Miyan Kabir Muhammad Naqshbandi's descendants continued to hold his position as Naqshbandi master. Ibid., f. 328b, 330b.
77 Muhammad Ashraf from a family of judges was a poet and calligrapher, while Makhdum Muhammad Muʻin is noted for Persian and Hindi poetry and for his knowledge of music, in addition to his scholarship in religious sciences. Ibid., f. 325a, 327b–8a.
78 Mihr, Taʼrikh-i Sind, i, pp. 127–138.
79 Alam, M. and Subrahmanyam, S., ‘Eighteenth-Century Historiography and the World of the Mughal Munshi’, in Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (New York, 2012), p. 428Google Scholar.
80 Burton, R., Scinde or the Unhappy Valley (London, 1851), p. 232Google Scholar.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., pp. 224–233.
83 See Cook, M., Annexation and the Unhappy Valley (Leiden, 2016), pp. 21–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
84 Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, pp. 11–12. On Thatta's economy under the Mughals, see Subrahmanyam, ‘The Portuguese, Thatta and the External Trade of Sind’, pp. 48–58.
85 Hamilton, A., A New Account of the East Indies (Edinburgh, 1727), i, p. 127Google Scholar.
86 Pottinger, H., Travels in Beloochistan and Sindh (London, 1816), pp. 77–8, 344, 11–12Google Scholar.
87 The history of these trading communities can be found in Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants; Levi, S., The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550–1900 (Leiden, 2002)Google Scholar; Cook, M., ‘Getting Ahead or Keeping your Head? The “Sindhi” Migration of Eighteenth Century India’, in Interpreting the Sindhi World: Essays on Society and History, (eds.) Boivin, M. and Cook, M. (Karachi, 2010), pp. 133–149Google Scholar.
88 Advani, B., Sindhu ji Hindun ji Tarikh (Hyderabad, 2006), pp. 100–101Google Scholar.
89 Ibid., pp. 192–195.
90 Ibid., pp. 222–224.
91 Ibid., p. 109.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., p. 116.
94 Ibid., p. 109.
95 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 309b.
96 The increasing participation of Hindus in Persian literary culture is a broader and well-documented phenomenon across the Mughal empire. See Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire; Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World.
97 See ʻUtarid, S., Inshaʼ-yi ʻUtarid, (ed.) Naushahi, K. (Hyderabad, 2013)Google Scholar.
98 Qaniʻ, ‘Maqalat al-Shuʽara’, f. 526b.
99 Ibid., f. 490b.
100 Ibid., f. 458a, 482b.
101 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 288b.
102 Their names are Asaram, Udairam, Bishan Gopal, Balchand, Thariyah Mal Baina, Tegh Mal, Munshi Chaturbhuj, Partab Rai Khushdil, Banvali Das Khushnud, Darkahi Mal, Daulat Rai, Daula Ram, Inchand Dastur, Chandar Bhan Rahib, Sri Ram, Mahtab Daula Ram Shauqi, Shaivak Ram ʻUtarid, Tik Chand Farhang, Kafir, Shaivak Ram Mukhlis, Migraj, Parsaram Mushtarab, Bhupat Rai Wahshat. ‘Maqalat al-Shuʽara’, f. 457b, 458a, 461a, 461a, 462a, 463b, 465b, 468b, 468b, 469b, 470a, 470a, 470a, 474a, 476b, 481b, 490b, 495b, 511b, 515b, 520b, 520b, 523b.
103 Scholars have pointed out resentment in north India against a new class of powerful merchants and shopkeepers that rose in eighteenth-century Delhi after the invasions of Nadir and Ahmad Shah. One has called them the umaraʼ-yi jadid, and noted their participation in Urdu literary culture. See Syed, M. A., ‘How Could Urdu Be The Envy of Persian (Rashk-i-Farsi)! The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature’, in Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, (eds.) Spooner, B. and Hanaway, W. (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 298–299Google Scholar.
104 ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, f. 303a.
105 Bakhtavar Khan, ‘Mirʼat al-ʽAlam’, BL APAC Add. 7657, f. 109b–111a.
106 On Javahir al-ʻAjaʼib, see Szuppe, Maria, ‘The Female Intellectual Milieu in Timurid and Post-Timurid Herat: Faxri Heravi's Biography of Poetesses, “Javaher al-Ajayeb”’, Oriente Moderno XV (1996), pp. 119–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
107 On the growing presence of women in Persian literature, see Sharma, S., ‘Fa'iz Dihlavi's Female-Centered Poems and the Representation of Public Life in Late Mughal Society’, in Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires, (ed.) Rizvi, K. (Leiden, 2018)Google Scholar. Mughlani Begum became an important figure in the Punjab in the 1750s after the death of her husband and the governor, Muʼin al-Mulk. Ghulam Hussain Khan wrote Taʼrikh-i Dil Afruz, a history of Hyderabad Deccan, in 1814 on the request of Chanda Bibi, an influential woman at the court of the Nizam. See G.H. Khan, ‘Taʼrikh-i Dil Afruz’, BL APAC Add. 26260.
108 See Latif, S. A., Risalo, (ed.) Shackle, C. (Cambridge, 2018)Google Scholar; Schimmel, A., Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India (Leiden, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
109 These were the shrines of Bibi Tari, Bibi Fatima, the Abdali sisters, Bibi Rani, the seven sisters. M. Aʻzam, Tuhfat al-Tahirin, pp. 48, 91, 138, 140, 175.
110 Qaniʻ, Maklinamah, pp. 69, 54–56.
111 Faridi, N. A., Sindh ke Talpur Hukumaran (Multan, 1984), p. 58Google Scholar.
112 Ibid., p. 69.
113 Tuhfat al-Kiram was used as an important source for Shaikh Muhammad Aʻzam Thattavi's Tuhfat al-Tahirin (1780), a text on Sufi sites of pilgrimage in Thatta, and Hiʼat al-ʽAlam (1793–94), a world geography. See Azam, Tuhfat al-Tahirin. Aʻzam, ‘Hiʼat al-ʽAlam’, undated, Sindhi Adabi Board MS-38.
114 The Talpurs commissioned an illuminated manuscript of Tuhfat al-Kiram between 1829–32. The Sindh Archives also contains a Tuhfat manuscript whose scribe is a Hindu from Hyderabad by the name Monumal, son of Kandinamal. See Qaniʻ, ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, 1829–32, British Library APAC Add. 21589; ‘Tuhfat al-Kiram’, 1808, Sindh Archives MS367/348.