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Abstract
This essay discusses the commemoration of the Mughal emperor Humayun (r. 1530–40, 1555–56) by his son Akbar (r. 1556–1605), focusing both on Akbar’s practice of visiting the tomb and the way in which these tomb-visits were dealt with by contemporaneous chroniclers. The article shows how Akbar’s chief ideologist, Abu’l Fazl, misrepresented Akbar’s history of visiting his father’s tomb, predating these visits by decades and exaggerating their extent. This manipulation of history formed part of Akbar’s broader effort to present himself as a sacred ruler who was unchallenged by his own dynasty.
Notes
1 Michael Brand, ‘Orthodoxy, Innovation, and Revival: Considerations of the Past in Imperial Mughal Tomb Architecture’, Muqarnas 10 (1993), pp. 323-34. The last great Mughal ruler Aurangzeb was buried in a very modest grave.
2 For instance, A.S. Bhalla, Royal Tombs of India (Ahmedabad, 2009); Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture. An Outline of its History and Development (1526–1858) (Oxford, 2002); Ebba Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra (London, 2006); F.W. Bunce, Islamic Tombs in India (New Delhi, 2004); Neeru Misra and Tanay Misra, The Garden Tomb of Humayun. An Abode in Paradise (New Delhi, 2003); John D. Hoag, ‘The Tomb of Ulugh Beg and Abdu Razzaq at Ghazni. A Model for the Taj Mahal’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 27 (1968), pp. 234-48; Krupali Uplekar Krusche, et al., ‘History, Morphology and Perfect Proportions of Mughal Tombs: The Secret to Creation of Taj Mahal’, Archnet – International Journal of Architectural Research 4 (2010), pp. 158-78.
3 D. Fairchild Ruggles, ‘Humayun’s Tomb and Garden: Typologies and Visual Order’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design (Leiden and New York, 1997), pp. 173-186, here p. 177.
4 Babur himself had first made circumambulations of sufi sheiks in the Delhi area. Ebba Koch, ‘Shah Jahan’s Visits to Delhi Prior to 1648: New Evidence of Ritual Movement in Urban Mughal India’, Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre 1 (1991), pp. 18-29, here p. 20.
5 Ruggles, ‘Humayun’s Tomb and Garden’, p. 177. This reverence for Humayun’s tomb may be caused by the fact that it was the first great Mughal burial monument in India and under the political control of Akbar — the first Mughal ruler Babur had been buried near far-away Kabul, which was under the control of Akbar’s brother Hakim until 1582. For the rivalry between Akbar and Hakim, see Munis Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48 (2005), pp. 487-523.
6 Koch, ‘Shah Jahan’s Visits to Delhi’, p. 24.
7 Hoag, ‘The Tomb of Ulugh Beg’; Lisa Golombek, ‘From Tamerlane to the Taj Mahal’, in A. Daneshvari (ed.), Islamic Art and Architecture: In Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn (Malibu, 1981), pp. 43-50.
8 Maria Eva Subtelny, ‘The Timurid Legacy: A Reaffirmation and a Reassessment’, Cahiers d’Asie centrale 3/4 (1997), pp. 9-19; Stephen Frederic Dale, ‘The Legacy of the Timurids’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, 8 (1998), pp. 43-58; Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire. Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (London, 2012).
9 The most recent biography of Babur is Stephen F. Dale, The Garden of the Eight Paradises. Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483–1530) (Leiden, 2004).
10 See the introduction to The Baburnama. Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Oxford, 1996), pp. 20-24. See also Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge, 2007), on the political structure of the Timurid empire.
11 Thomas Welsford, Four Types of Loyalty in Early Modern Central Asia: The Tūqāy-Timūrid Takeover of Greater Mā Warā al-Nahr, 1598–1605 (Leiden, 2012).
12 Maria Eva Subtelny, ‘Babur’s Rival Relations: A Study of Kinship and Conflict in 15th–16th Century Central Asia’, Der Islam 66 (1989), pp. 102-18.
13 Baburnama, p. 66. Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, trans. and ed. H. Beveridge, 3 vols (new edn, Delhi, 1973), vol. I, pp. 225-8, does not mention this event.
14 Dale, Garden of the Eight Paradises, p. 95.
15 Baburnama, p. 149.
16 The phrase ‘Madrasa and Khanaqah’ serves as an alternative for ‘gur-i amir’, because it refers to buildings that were originally part of the complex to which the mausoleum was later added. Archnet.org, Sites: Gur-i Amir. https://archnet.org/sites/2127 [accessed 5 January 2018].
17 Baburnama, p. 121.
18 In fact, Ron Sela, ‘The “Heavenly Stone” (Kök Tash) of Samarqand: A Rebels’ Narrative Transformed’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, third series 17 (2007), pp. 21-32, argues that from the eighteenth century onwards, a large stone in the Gur-i Amir tomb complex (not to be confused with Timur’s cenotaph) was used as a coronation site; sitting on the ‘Kök Tash’ (blue stone) would give a claimant legitimacy. Perhaps this is also what Babur did. Mirza Haidar mentions Babur’s second coronation in Samarkand in October 1511, without referring to any specific stone or throne, or even the tomb of Timur. Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, Tarikh-i Rashidi: a history of the Khans of Moghulistan, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Cambridge, MA, 1996), chapter 25.
19 Baburnama, p. 234.
20 Baburnama, pp. 237-8: when Babur was in Herat he visited numerous sights, among them a number of tombs belonging to his relatives. One belonged to his uncle Sultan-Ahmad Mirza and another to other unnamed mirzas. No mention is made of paying respects.
21 Gulbadan Begim, Humayunnama ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, in Three Memoirs of Homayun (Costa Mesa, 2009), vol. I, pp. 1-67. See for a re-appraisal of Gulbadan Begim’s work Ruby Lal, ‘Historicizing the Harem: The Challenge of a Princess’ Memoir’, Feminist Studies 30 (2004), pp. 590-616; and idem, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005).
22 Gulbadan Begim, Humayunnama, p. 17. This episode is left out of Jawhar Aftabachi, Memoire of events, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, in Three Memoirs of Homayun (Costa Mesa, 2009), vol. I, pp. 69-179. Bayazid Bayat, Tarikh-i Humayun, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, in Three Memoirs of Homayun (Costa Mesa, 2009), vol. II does not shed light on Humayun’s early years in India, as it starts only in 1542–43.
23 Aftabachi, Memoir of Events, pp. 84-5.
24 Gulbadan Begim, Humayunnama, pp. 29-31. Aftabachi, Memoir of Events, pp. 84-5, describes the events but does not mention Kamran’s visit to Babur’s tomb.
25 Aftabachi, Memoir of Events, p. 90. Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. I, pp. 343-6, recounts the reconciliation between the brothers, but does not mention Babur’s garden as the venue of the reunion. Kamran’s visit to Babur’s grave is omitted as well. Humayun also spent the night in this garden, after he had returned to Agra after another hairy encounter with Sher Khan. But at dawn, an arrow was fired at him from the Sikri mountain. This, in the end, seemed to be the last time Humayun stayed in Agra. Aftabachi, Memoir of Events, p. 94.
26 Salome Zajadacz-Hastenrath, ‘A Note on Babur’s Lost Funerary Enclosure at Kabul’, Muqarnas 14 (1997), pp. 135-142, here pp. 135, 137.
27 Brand, ‘Orthodoxy, Innovation, and Revival’, p. 326.
28 Glenn D. Lowry, ‘The Tomb of Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Humayun’, (PhD Diss., Harvard University, 1982), p. 138.
29 Lowry, ‘Tomb of Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Humayun’, p. 138.
30 Hoag, ‘The Tomb of Ulugh Beg’, p. 241.
31 Koch, ‘The Delhi of the Mughals’, p. 176.
32 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama.
33 Misra and Misra, Garden Tomb of Humayun, p. 3.
34 Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, ed. and trans. Brajendranath De, 3 vols (Calcutta, 1936).
35 Abdu’l Qadir ibn Muluk Shah al-Badauni, Muntakhabu’t-tawarikh, ed. and trans. W.H. Lowe, 3 vols (Delhi, 1899; reprint 1973).
36 Bayazid Bayat, Tarikh-i Humayun.
37 Lowry, ‘Tomb of Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Humayun’, p. 138. He quotes Abu’l Fazl and Nizamuddin Ahmad.
38 Ebba Koch, ‘The Delhi of the Mughals Prior to Shahjahanabad as Reflected in the Patterns of Imperial Visits’, in Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology. Collected Essays (Oxford, 2001), pp. 163-182, here p. 168.
39 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, pp. 411, 489, 511; vol. III, pp. 322, 360, 547, 705, 1118.
40 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. III, pp. 542, 858. The first visit coincided with a campaign against Mirza Hakim. During the second visit he also ‘grieved over the tombs of M. Hindal [his uncle] and M. Hakim [his brother] who sleep near at hand’. Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, vol. II, p. 605, only mentions the visit in 1589. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, pp. 303, 383, mentions neither the 1581/2 nor the 1589 visits.
41 Misra and Misra, Garden Tomb of Humayun, p. 3.
42 Bayat, Tarikh-i Humayun, vol. II, p. 108: ‘Toward the end of the month of Shawwal of that year [1560], Lahore was honoured by the advent of the emperor to circumambulate the tomb of H.M. Jannat-Ashyani, and Bika Begim, who had been serving the tomb, paid respects to the emperor and was given permission to go to the quarters of Mahabbat Khan Qazwini.’ This episode is not mentioned in Akbarnama. Bayat may have confused the tombs of Babur (Firdaws Makani) and Humayun (Jannat Ashyani); Humayun’s remains are not known to have rested in Lahore, while Bika Begim was the one who brought Babur’s remains from Agra to the north when the Mughals were chased out by the Afghans.
43 Badauni, Mutakhabu’t-tawarikh, vol. II, pp. 92, 111, 127, 259, 261, 305 and 358.
44 Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, vol. II, pp. 507 and 605.
45 Lal, Domesticity, p. 54.
46 Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, On History and Historians of Medieval India (New Delhi, 1983), p. 240.
47 Shireen Moosvi, ‘Making and Recording History — Akbar and the Akbar-nama’, in Iqtidar Alam Khan (ed.), Akbar and His Age (New Delhi, 1999), pp. 181–7, here p. 184.
48 Nizami, On History, p. 142.
49 A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign. Sacred Kingship & Sainthood in Islam (New York, 2012), pp. 138-46,
50 Moosvi, ‘Making and Recording History’, p. 183; Nizami, On History, p. 150.
51 Heike Franke, Akbar und Ğahangir: Untersuchungen zur politischen und religiösen Legitimation in Text und Bild (Schenefeld, 2005), p. 187.
52 Corinne Lefèvre, ‘Din-i ilahi’, in Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, et al. (eds), Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE (online publication, 2015), pp. 81-3, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3 [accessed 18 October 2017].
53 The Ibadat-khana was created in 1575; Akbar declared the din-e ilahi in 1582.
54 Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, p. 263.
55 Alam, ‘The Mughals, the Sufi Sheikhs’, p. 164. I my opinion, this is rather an understatement. From around the nineteenth regnal year, c.1575, more accurate records were being kept by the newly established Record Office. The lack of such records before 1575 gave Abu’l Fazl room for manoeuvre. Moosvi, ‘Making and Recording History’, p. 182.
56 Harbans Mukhia, Historians and Historiography During the Reign of Akbar (New Delhi, 1976), p. 111.
57 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, p. 489.
58 Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, p. 110.
59 Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, vol. II, p. 353.
60 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, p. 496.
61 Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, p. 111.
62 Franke, Akbar und Ğahangir, p. 73.
63 Finishing of Humayun’s tomb: Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, p. 135. Yearly pilgrimages noted on pages 45 (1562); 108 (1568); 111 (late 1568); 127 (1570); 137 (1570); 143 (1572); 168 (1573).
64 Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, vol. II, pp. 540-41. Also, Ahmad starts reporting supernatural occurrences after this date: Akbar makes the rain stop by breathing three times on a mirror and then placing it on a fire; Akbar falls into some sort of ecstasy and communicates with God; Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, vol. II, pp. 511-12.
65 Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Mughals, the Sufi Sheikhs and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation’, Modern Asian Studies 43 (2009), pp. 135-74, here pp. 156-7. Alam, p. 162, goes on to argue that the Chishti order voiced Akbar’s own developing religious opinions, striving for a religious synthesis based on universal love instead of conflicts between the faiths. However, the decreasing visits to Ajmer indicate that the Chishti’s, too, were falling out of favour as Akbar’s religious innovations took shape.
66 Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, vol. II, p. 45.
67 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, p. 237.
68 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, p. 243.
69 Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’, passim.
70 Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’, p. 494; Zajadacz-Hastenrath, ‘A Note on Babur’s Lost Funerary Enclosure at Kabul’, pp. 135, 137.
71 Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’, p. 503. Unfortunately, we do not know enough about Mirza Hakim’s daily life to say anything about visits to the tomb.
72 Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’, pp. 504-05.
73 Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’, p. 498.
74 Paul B. Fenton, ‘The Symbolism of Ritual Circumambulation in Judaism and Islam — A Comparative Study’, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997), pp. 345-69; here p. 345.
75 Fenton, ‘Symbolism of Ritual Circumambulation’, pp. 345-6.
76 Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, p. 137.
77 Moin, Millennial Sovereign, pp. 138-9.
78 Moin, Millennial Sovereign, pp. 139-41.
79 Lowry, ‘Tomb of Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Humayun’, p. 141; Koch, ‘The Delhi of the Mughals’, p. 169.
80 Ruggles, ‘Humayun’s Tomb and Garden’, p. 177; Koch, ‘Shah Jahan’s Visits to Delhi’, p. 24.
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Liesbeth Geevers
Dr Liesbeth Geevers is a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University (Sweden). She is the project leader of a project titled ‘Re-thinking Dynastic Rule: Dynasties and State Formation in the Habsburg and Oldenburg Monarchies, 1500–1700’, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. She has focused on dynastic history in both Europe and western Asia, particularly in the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy and Safavid Iran, writing about the role of junior family members in dynastic rule and the conceptualisation of dynasties.