On the Mughal Empire

On my current visit in the Indian Subcontinent, I decided to familiarize myself with the history of the region. One of the books that I have read is Abraham Eraly's The Mughal Throne (Phoenix House, 2014). It is a lengthy introduction to the Mughals from Babur to Aurengzeb.

The first time I heard about the Mughals was in undergraduate class in Islamic Studies in South Africa. Just as in other dynasties, this one was clothed in a vision of a succession of amirs or sultans representing the power and glory of Islam. Since then, that reputation has been tarnished by a better understanding of history and reality and the battle over identity in modern public spheres.

Eraly's narrative is a refreshing and detailed account of the Mughals. Like other modern Indians, he has a preference for Akbar and even more for the British who succeeded the Mughals. But generally, this is an almost dispassionate account of invasion, plunder, empire building and religion - in that order. The religious inspiration is not central in the narrative, but it is not tucked away either. When he comes to Aurangzeb, Eraly goes on about his excessive religious zeal. But he then follows with an account of the realpolitik of building an empire and keeping it under control.

Even though Eraly concludes the book with a lament that the Mughuls did not build any institutions, he leaves us with fascinating details on administration, judicial practices and organization. Some of the Mughal rulers and officers seemed to have had the vision and the guts of building an empire that stretched across different territories and languages. And for the most part, they seem to consider it their right and responsibility to rule over this territory.

And this is the part that I think inspired them for hundreds of years. These central Asian warriors entered history and changed it in a way that most can only dream about. It was not just a matter of religion, good or bad. Reading about this empire, like any political epic, gives one a sense of history and purpose.

Of course, this right and responsibility often came at a price. Eraly occasionally turns away from the imperial record, to shine a light on the price paid for the Mughal empire by the peasants and workers. They worked hard and paid a lot simply for being spared. Very often, they found that joining the armies fighting each other offered better prospects than being plundered by them. Either be a plunderer or be plundered - seems the motto that occupied most of the people who lived in the shadow of the Mughal warrior Sultans.

Surely, there was more going on in Mughal India than this, but Eraly is a great place to start.

On Nouman Ali Khan's YouTube Tafsir - ethics and self-reflection

Like other special guests in recent years, Nouman Ali Khan attracted hundreds of worshipers to the grand Gatesville Mosque in 2019.  He seems to be part of a phenomenon in which middle-class mosques in recent years in Cape Town expended great effort and money to attract the biggest crowds. 

Given his popularity and wanting to know more about his appeal, I decided to look for him on Youtube. I watched the first lesson that came up in my search. It was a discourse on the Prophet Dawud (David) from the 38th chapter in the Qur'an (Sad 38:17-25). 

Khan presented a very clear and moving account of Dawud, his status as a prophet, and his reaction to a group of intruders who demanded that he judge between them. He began his talk with a short criticism of Muslim scholars who related this event to Biblical accounts. Muslims, he proclaimed, had a different and more correct version of the story which did not implicate the Prophet in impropriety.

He then proceeded with an interpretation that emphasised the ethics of judging between two individuals. Overwhelmed by the rude intrusion of the complainants, the Prophet Dawud made a hasty decision. In the case in question, he only listened to the person who had one sheep and complained that his rich compatriot who had ninety-nine wanted his as well. The Prophet Dawuod “understood that We had tried him” (Qur'an) and according to Khan, corrected himself. Khan dwelt on the theme of making fair judgments, by listening to both sides of a story. In this interpretation, the man with 99 sheep was wronged by not being heard by the Prophet. 

It was an impressive delivery, executed with great flair and conviction. I could begin to appreciate how thousands of followers turned to him for advice and guidance on social media.

I decided to read a number of commentaries to see how he produced such a compelling account. On the one hand, I was impressed by how Khan had managed to wade through the complexity of the exegetical literature to produce a clear and simple message on Islam’s ascendancy over previous scriptures, and its message of justice. 

On the other hand, this retelling was taking away an important and deep self-reflection embedded in the verses, and brought up by many commentators from al-Tabari in the 9th century onwards. Like Khan, most of these commentators also seemed to work with the doctrine that Dawood was a prophet of God who should not be accused of moral impropriety.

But unlike Khan, most of them retold the Prophet Dawood's alleged attraction to a beautiful woman he had seen bathing. All commentators with the exception of Ibn Kathir mentioned this in one way or another. Many also mentioned that the Prophet had asked that her husband be sent at the head of battle until he was killed. And they say that the Prophet then married this woman. One commentator offered a lexical analysis of the word for sheep (na’ja) and suggested it could also refer to a woman or wife, thus pointing to a direct relationship between the verses of the Qur’an and its Biblical version. 

In the exegetical (tafsir) tradition, then, this event or versions thereof was told just enough to allude to the Biblical story.  While skirting directly the implication of the Prophet’s deeds, an impropriety was implied. 

But most of all, premodern commentators insisted that this was a story of temptation with which the Prophet Dawud was tested. They did not say he failed, but they emphasised the fact that he realised his temptation. Their meditations turned around the very verse that Khan asked his audience to skip: "And [suddenly] Dawood understood that We had tried him: and so he asked his Sustainer to forgive him his sin, and fell down in prostration, and turned unto Him in repentance." (Quran 38:24).  This is a prostration (sajda) verse which, when heard or read, requires an immediate prostration. The prostration was a ritualised embodiment of reading and listening to a particular verse. In the story of the Prophet Dawud, it embodied his realisation that he was being tested (fatannahu)

Nouman Ali Khan offered an attractive message on ethics and justice. Prefaced with the conviction that Islam was better than other religions, he confirmed an unquestioned truth and guided his listeners towards ethical virtue.

But he avoided an uncomfortable truth in this exposition. In this particular case, the ethic of justice without deep introspection seems to truncate the message of the Prophet Dawud. Preaching about justice without a prostration misses an important method of the Qur’an. 

But Khan did demonstrate an uncomfortable truth of modern Islamic discourse. Many modern middle-class Muslims like to listen to lectures on the superiority of Islam over other religions. And they accompany this with the conviction that they ought to be just to merit this distinction. Of course, it helps to know that they can keep their "99 sheep." But they often stop short of taking that additional step into the self, the step exemplified in Prophet Dawud’s prostration. 

While scholars of religion and media stress the importance of mediation, they too often ignore the ethical choices and constructions made in the process. There may be considerable value in following this line of research more extensively than what I have shown in this brief review.