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On Becoming Muslim in the City of Swords: Bhoja and Shaykh Changāl at Dhār*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2012
Extract
On the ancient ramparts of the city of Dhār, overlooking the moat, is the tomb of a saint called Shaykh Changāl (Fig. 1). The tomb has been rebuilt in recent times, but stands on a high stone platform dating to the fifteenth century. The long staircase up to the tomb has two arched gates. A Persian inscription is placed in the upper gate over the door and is protected nowadays by a metal door. Written in forty-two verses, it is dated ah 859/ 1454–55. The verses were composed in the reign of the Maḥmūd Shāh Khaljī, the Sultan of Mālwā from 1436 to 1469. The purpose of this essay is to provide the text of this inscription with a new translation and commentary.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2012
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to Michael Willis for photographs of the tomb and inscription and for encouraging me to study the poem published here. I am also happy to thank Reza Babagolzadeh and Mohammad Ismail Salehi Moghaddam for helping me with difficult passages in the translation.
References
1 The most useful history is Day, U. N., Medieval Malwa (Delhi, 1969)Google Scholar now available online at http://www.archive.org/
2 G. H. Yazdani, “The Inscription on the Tomb of ‘Abdullah Shāh Changāl at Dhār”, Epigraphica Indo-Moslemica (1909–10), pp. 1–5.
3 Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy (1971–72): 80, no. D. 71.
4 Eaton, Richard, Essays on Islam and Indian History (Delhi, 2002), pp. 96–98Google Scholar.
5 Siddiqui, Iqtidar Husain, Authority and Kingship under the Sultans of Delhi (Delhi, 2006), pp. 283–284Google Scholar.
6 See Willis, “Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī,” in this JRAS issue.
7 The text of this inscription is taken without change from the article by Yazdani mentioned in footnote 2. The bracketed words are Yazdani's conjectures; the dots in Line 39 mean that Yazdani was not able to read the verse. – Ed. JRAS.
8 For this article I am using the Persian edition: Mowlānā Jalālo'd-Din Moḥammad Balkhi, Masnavī Ma'navī (Tehran, 2008), p. 133.
9 Masnavī Ma'navī, p. 134.
10 Closely related ideas are found in the writing of the Bahmani court poet cAbd al-Malik, see Eaton, Richard, Temple Desecration and Muslim states in Medieval India (Gurgaon, 2004), p. 100Google Scholar.
11 Schimmel, Annemarie, The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalāloddin Rumi (Albany, 1993), p. 144Google Scholar.
12 Translation by Lewis, Franklin D., Rumi – Past and Present, East and West (Oxford, 2000), p. 212Google Scholar.
13 The wider devotional context of the fifteenth century is beyond the scope of this article.
14 Zafar Hasan, Epigraphica Indo-Moslemica (1909–10), pp. 13–14, pl. II, no. 2; Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy (1971–72), p. 81, no. D. 73. A wider context for early Islamic settlements is set by Lambourn, Elizabeth, “India from Aden – Khutba and Muslim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century India”, in Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm, c. 1000–1800, (ed.) Hall, Kenneth (Lanham, 2008), pp. 55–97Google Scholar.
15 See, for example, Eaton, “Who are the Bengal Muslims? Conversion and Islamization in Bengal”, in Essays on Islam, pp. 249–275.
16 For details, see article by A. K. Singh in this JRAS issue.
17 Personal communication December, 2010.
18 Eaton, “Temple Desecration”.
19 Maṣnavị Ma'navị, p.132.
20 For the wider debates about region and legitimacy, read this with Sheikh, Samira, Forging A Region Sultans, Traders, and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200–1500 (Delhi, 2010) – edGoogle Scholar.
21 See Willis, “Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī”, in this JRAS issue.
22 Eaton, “Temple Desecration”, pp. 96–98.
23 Trivedi, H. V., Inscriptions of the Paramāras, Chandellas and Kachchapapaghātas and two Minor Dynasties, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Volume 7, 3 parts (New Delhi, 1979–91) 1, pp. 53–54Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., p. 53. I am grateful to Michael Willis for his observations on the problems surrounding Bhoja II and for pointing me to the references given here.
25 Tawney, C. H., The Prabandhacintāmaṇi or Wishing-stone of Narratives (Calcutta, 1901)Google Scholar; Simhāsanadvātriṃśikā, (ed.) F. Edgerton (Cambridge, Mass, 1926).
26 Bhojacarita of Rājavallabha, (ed.) B. Ch. Chhabra and S. Sankaranarayana (Calcutta, 1964).
27 The translation of this verse is tentative.