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South Asia Across the Disciplines
The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam
At the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the first Islamic millennium, the powerful Mughal emperor Akbar declared himself the most sacred being on earth. The holiest of all saints and above the distinctions of religion, he styled himself as the messiah reborn. Yet the Mughal emperor was not alone in doing so. In this field-changing study, A. Azfar Moin explores why Muslim sovereigns in this period began to imitate the exalted nature of Sufi saints. Uncovering a startling yet widespread phenomenon, he shows how the charismatic pull of sainthood (wilayat)―rather than the draw of religious law (sharia) or holy war (jihad)―inspired a new style of sovereignty in Islam.
A work of history richly informed by the anthropology of religion and art, The Millennial Sovereign traces how royal dynastic cults and shrine-centered Sufism came together in the imperial cultures of Timurid Central Asia, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India. By juxtaposing imperial chronicles, paintings, and architecture with theories of sainthood, apocalyptic treatises, and manuals on astrology and magic, Moin uncovers a pattern of Islamic politics shaped by Sufi and millennial motifs. He shows how alchemical symbols and astrological rituals enveloped the body of the monarch, casting him as both spiritual guide and material lord. Ultimately, Moin offers a striking new perspective on the history of Islam and the religious and political developments linking South Asia and Iran in early-modern times.
A work of history richly informed by the anthropology of religion and art, The Millennial Sovereign traces how royal dynastic cults and shrine-centered Sufism came together in the imperial cultures of Timurid Central Asia, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India. By juxtaposing imperial chronicles, paintings, and architecture with theories of sainthood, apocalyptic treatises, and manuals on astrology and magic, Moin uncovers a pattern of Islamic politics shaped by Sufi and millennial motifs. He shows how alchemical symbols and astrological rituals enveloped the body of the monarch, casting him as both spiritual guide and material lord. Ultimately, Moin offers a striking new perspective on the history of Islam and the religious and political developments linking South Asia and Iran in early-modern times.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 11, 2015
If you’re interested in kingship in its charismatic or its sacred aspects, then this is a book for you, whether or not you have a particular interest in Mughal India, Safavid Iran or Timurid Central Asia. I have never read a book that so enlightened me on kingship; it was a revelation.
Like every history that knocks my socks off lately, it calls itself anthropological and ethnographic. What does that entail? In this case, that he puts aside the ‘intellectual tradition’ by which we tend to write of Islamic statecraft in the past: the prescriptive literature, doctrine, law, political theory, mirrors for princes. Because kings didn’t necessarily operate by the intellectual tradition. Moin looks at practice, at acts, more or less naked of the highbrow level of culture.
Another thing he does is ignore present-day political or religious frontiers, which capture too much written history in divides that weren’t applicable back then -- "the more expansive forgotten geographies of the past." This means he passes freely from Central Asia to Iran to India and sees connections.
Astrology and saints were in fashion; he thinks astrology is neglected now as irrational, but it was both popular practice and elite science then. Kings made cults of themselves on the pattern of Sufi saints, in a manner ‘transgressive’ or ‘heretical’ by doctrine, but that spoke to people. Akbar’s religious experimentation is put into this context; he’s the axle of the book, I suppose. Akbar is among the most fascinating if puzzling of kings, and Moin has a new way to look at him.
Like every history that knocks my socks off lately, it calls itself anthropological and ethnographic. What does that entail? In this case, that he puts aside the ‘intellectual tradition’ by which we tend to write of Islamic statecraft in the past: the prescriptive literature, doctrine, law, political theory, mirrors for princes. Because kings didn’t necessarily operate by the intellectual tradition. Moin looks at practice, at acts, more or less naked of the highbrow level of culture.
Another thing he does is ignore present-day political or religious frontiers, which capture too much written history in divides that weren’t applicable back then -- "the more expansive forgotten geographies of the past." This means he passes freely from Central Asia to Iran to India and sees connections.
Astrology and saints were in fashion; he thinks astrology is neglected now as irrational, but it was both popular practice and elite science then. Kings made cults of themselves on the pattern of Sufi saints, in a manner ‘transgressive’ or ‘heretical’ by doctrine, but that spoke to people. Akbar’s religious experimentation is put into this context; he’s the axle of the book, I suppose. Akbar is among the most fascinating if puzzling of kings, and Moin has a new way to look at him.
August 29, 2024
an idea central to explaining the reincarnation of the messianic being from one era of time to another was the transmigration of the soul (tanasukh) from body to body. This concept is usually thought to be part of Indic religious traditions and anathema to Islam.
To understand the salience of the millennium for Timurid, Mughal, and Safavid sovereigns, we must first grasp the fact that for the people of that era the future was as important as the past, divination as important as genealogy, and astrology as valuable as history. Indeed, as far as practices of sacred kingship were concerned, history and astrology were sister disciplines. Astrologers worked as annalists, and historians served as oracles.
In other words, the primary site where the “sacred” resided was in everyday life and popular imagination, not elite genres of writing. What we need, then, is an ethnography of sacred kingship that recovers the social processes by which the charisma of the sovereign was produced, institutionalized, and transmitted to posterity.
Elite texts, however, constitute most of our sources. To recover everyday life and cultural practice from these works is an uphill task. These sources must be read against the grain. Texts from different genres must be read alongside and against one another. Rumors, slurs, and innuendo must be given due weight while confessional statements treated with caution.
it is not sufficient to locate the “sacred” in the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet, and the traditions of Islamic law derived from these sources. Indeed, the way early modern Muslim sovereigns transgressed the norms of doctrinal Islam reveals that their engagement with the sacred lay in some other sphere of culture. Their antics, shocking as they may seem from a modern “reformed” Muslim perspective, were much more than ignoble heresy or popular superstition.
This contradiction of an overstated Islam in South Asian history and an understated India in Islamic history can be overcome by exposing the common roots of Safavid and Mughal sacred kingship and the competition for messianic and saintly status between the two dynasties. To put it another way, the Mughals of India were as much a part of “Islam” as the Safavids of Iran, because they were just as interested in the “millennium.” At the same time, India suffered much less “Islam” under the Mughals, who did not impose it upon the local population, than Iran did under the Safavids, who, over the long term, enacted a policy of forced conversion to Twelver Shiʿism.
Timur became a master symbol of sacred kingship that endured for centuries in social memory across Iran and India. That this memory was preserved and transmitted in a millennial mode is evident from Timur’s famous but little-understood title, Lord of Conjunction (Sahib Qiran).
Chinggis was a cruel “pagan” conqueror who uprooted Islam and imposed his own law in its place. Ali, on the other hand, was a foundational figure of Islam—first cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, the fourth caliph of Islam, revered by his partisans ( shiʿa) as the first leader (imam) of the Muslims after the Prophet.
In buruz, the projecting body did not die, and the receiving one did not have to be in the womb, as was the case with transmigration. The notion of buruz had been used by other Sufi theorists to explain how saints were able to be in more than one place at the same time,
He admired these buildings, even comparing one set of temples to the design of an Islamic madrasa. He also noted the “lower chambers,” where idols were kept, but recorded no distaste or urge to destroy. Why were the idols on the mountainside “beheaded” but the idols in the temple’s inner sanctum left untouched? The answer could well be that the giant statues, which loomed large over the landscape with their uncanny gaze fixed upon it, interfered with Babur’s imperial performance and his own imperial gaze. Whatever the case may be, Babur, by feasting and arranging, tasting and observing, planting and building, had begun to merge his royal self with the landscape of his new dominion. But it was Humayun who upon ascending the throne gave this ritual process a formal, cosmological shape.
Humayun’s efforts in laying the symbolic foundations of empire are preserved in a panegyric work called Qanun-i Humayuni (Canons of Sovereignty, and a play on Humayun’s name: Canons of Being a Humayun), composed by the famous Timurid historian Ghiyas ad-Din Muhammad Khwandamir (or Khvand Mir, d. c. 1537). It is significant that Khwandamir composed this work. Not only was he the greatest Persian historian of his time, but he had also served both the Timurids and the Safavids,
The first man the young prince met was called Murad Khwaja. Murad means goal or desire, which made this chance meeting a good omen. Soon afterward, Humayun saw another man carrying wood. His name turned out to be Dawlat Khwaja. Dawlat means fortune or dominion, another good omen. Humayun remarked that if the third person’s name was Saʿadat, which means felicity and fortune, it would be a most amazing and fortunate coincidence (ittifaq). Within the hour, he came across a boy grazing cows whose name was indeed Saʿadat Khwaja. At this incident, all his servants were amazed and convinced that this prince destined for sovereignty (padishah-i humayun fal) would in little time, with the help of divine fortune (saʿadat-i azli), obtain the greatest ranks of dominion and fortune (maratib-i dawlat o iqbal). Humayun was so taken by this augury that when he ascended the throne he used it to organize his court and administration. He divided his entourage into three divisions, each of which was named according to the auspicious names the emperor had come across that day
Each of the three groups was assigned two days for court appearance, according to the astral auspiciousness of each day (see table 4.3). Thus Humayun’s schedule, which set the rhythm of empire, was marked both by the founding royal augury and by the auspicious positions of the planets. Moreover, each day just before dawn the royal drums (naqqara) announced the Time of Felicity (nawbat-i saʿadat), reserved for worship and meditation. Then at sunrise the Time of Dominion (nawbat-i dawlat) would be sounded, and at sunset the Time of Desire (nawbat-i murad).
planet Saturn, the protector ( murabbi) of shaykhs and ancient lineages ( khandanha-i qadim).
Thursday is associated with Jupiter, which is the planet of the Prophet’s family and religious scholars. On these days, the monarch meets with his managers of the system of knowledge and worship ( naziman-i manazim-i ʿilm o ʿibadat).
Thus each of the twelve ranks of Humayun’s entourage was assigned a “golden arrow” ( tir-i mutallaʾ) of varying quality. The purity of the gold in each arrow or rank increased from one to twelve. The ranking of the imperial court and camp had, in other words, an alchemical basis. All men were ordered according to the purity of their being, the most pure being the emperor. The first eleven ranks or arrows were assigned to the nobility, court, army, and servants. The twelfth arrow, the highest-ranking one, was reserved for Humayun, since it was “equivalent ( mawafiq) to the measure ( ʿiyar) of red gold and [belonged] to the quiver of the emperor.” Red gold, it should be noted, was the purest form of gold that an alchemist could produce. The number twelve also suggested both an astrological reference as well as a messianic one, as the twelfth imam was supposed to return as the messiah, the purest of beings who would inaugurate the last millennium.
All affairs in which the lighting of fire was involved, such as Fire (Sarkar-i Atish) instruments of war; the chief of this service always wore red The Service of Air Jurisdiction over the domain of the imperial kitchen (Sarkar-i Hava) ( bavarchikhana), stables ( astabal), and the necessities of adornment and beautification The Service of Water All the affairs of drink ( umur-i sharbatkhana), the digging of (Sarkar-i Abi) canals ( juryan-i nahr), and oceangoing missions ( muhimmat-i bahar) The Service of Earth All matters pertaining to agriculture ( ziraʿat), construction (Sarkar-i Khaki) ( ʿimarat), and the extraction of essences ( zabt-i khulasat)
referred to the Safavid crown with the same name that he had given his own imperial headgear—Taj-i ʿIzzat. This was perhaps Humayun’s (or Aftabchi’s) way of lessening the insult that Humayun had to undergo in this ritual of submission.
According to prophetic tradition, a Mujaddid was supposed to appear at the beginning of every Islamic century to renew or revive Islam. As this scriptural tradition about the centennial Mujaddid indicated, the label carried within it a conception of cyclical time. Overall, it was a more restrained way of making a claim of sacrality than that afforded by the more openly messianic category of mahdi. That it carried such a messianic meaning in the case of Akbar is suggested by the evidence adduced for his status as the millennial Mujaddid: an occult calculation based on the letters of the emperor’s name and the apocalyptic science of jafr.
As a ruler, for Akbar to claim the status of a mujtahid was a particularly bold act but not entirely without precedent. There had been the infamous case of the Abbasid caliph al-Maʿmun (r. 813–833) in Baghdad, who had launched the so-called inquisition ( mihna) in an attempt to coerce leading Muslim jurists to recognize him as the ultimate authority in matters of Islamic doctrine and law.
The era of the Hijra was now abolished [in 990 AH/1582 AD]. . . . Reading and learning Arabic was looked on as a crime; and Muhammadan law, and the exegesis of the Quran, and the Tradition, and also those who studied them, were considered bad and deserving of disapproval. Astronomy, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, poetry, history, and epics were cultivated and thought necessary. Even the letters which are peculiar to the Arabic language . . . were avoided. Thus in pronouncing ʿAbdullah, people ignored the initial letter ayn [specific to Arabic]; and for Ahadi they ignored the letter ha [specific to Arabic],
in metempsychosis, the soul leaves a body that is dead in order to enter one that is ready to receive life; by contrast, in projection of the soul, the perfecting ( mukammil) soul irradiates ( tajalli) itself along with the perfect ( kamil) soul and thus makes its existence complete ( mukammal). Moreover, in projection, a soul never leaves a body to enter another, but instead it simply overpowers another soul in much the same way that the rays of a powerful lamp overcome the light of a weaker one.
Before Jahangir, we only know of Babur and Shah Tahmasb who wrote about themselves in such a manner. That the “memoir” was not quite yet a genre in its own right—that it had no canon of its own—is evident from the fact that such rare works continued to be classified under other better-established forms of writing, like “chronicle” or “epic” ( nama), “remembrances” ( tazkira), “annals” ( waqia ʿ), “daily affairs” ( ruznamcha), and “regulations” or “norms of behavior” ( tuzuk), all of which typically dealt with the life or deeds of someone other than the author.
a ferocious lioness jumped onto the back of his elephant, he swung around and, using his gun as a club, killed it with a single blow. This famous incident was depicted in multiple paintings over the next century by his descendants, but, in his own memoir, Jahangir gave it but a brief mention: “Since it is not seemly to write such things of myself ( chun az khud nivishtan khushnuma nist), I will cut these reports short.”
the illustrated epic Hamzanama (The Book of Hamza) produced for Akbar had fourteen hundred poster-sized paintings and took ten years to complete. Indeed, no Muslim ruler of the time could outdo Akbar either in conquest or in the production of visual and aesthetic monuments to celebrate sovereignty. These grand achievements may have been the reason Jahangir did not try to compete with his father on similar terms, keeping instead a diary, something his illiterate—perhaps dyslexic—father had not been capable of.
From the mysterious Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa) of the tenth century and the Illuminationist philosopher Suhrawardi of the twelfth to the activist millenarians like the Nuqtavis and the quietist gnostics of the “School of Isfahan” in early modern times, all referred to the wisdom of Hermes in their endeavors to unveil once and for all the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.
To understand the salience of the millennium for Timurid, Mughal, and Safavid sovereigns, we must first grasp the fact that for the people of that era the future was as important as the past, divination as important as genealogy, and astrology as valuable as history. Indeed, as far as practices of sacred kingship were concerned, history and astrology were sister disciplines. Astrologers worked as annalists, and historians served as oracles.
In other words, the primary site where the “sacred” resided was in everyday life and popular imagination, not elite genres of writing. What we need, then, is an ethnography of sacred kingship that recovers the social processes by which the charisma of the sovereign was produced, institutionalized, and transmitted to posterity.
Elite texts, however, constitute most of our sources. To recover everyday life and cultural practice from these works is an uphill task. These sources must be read against the grain. Texts from different genres must be read alongside and against one another. Rumors, slurs, and innuendo must be given due weight while confessional statements treated with caution.
it is not sufficient to locate the “sacred” in the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet, and the traditions of Islamic law derived from these sources. Indeed, the way early modern Muslim sovereigns transgressed the norms of doctrinal Islam reveals that their engagement with the sacred lay in some other sphere of culture. Their antics, shocking as they may seem from a modern “reformed” Muslim perspective, were much more than ignoble heresy or popular superstition.
This contradiction of an overstated Islam in South Asian history and an understated India in Islamic history can be overcome by exposing the common roots of Safavid and Mughal sacred kingship and the competition for messianic and saintly status between the two dynasties. To put it another way, the Mughals of India were as much a part of “Islam” as the Safavids of Iran, because they were just as interested in the “millennium.” At the same time, India suffered much less “Islam” under the Mughals, who did not impose it upon the local population, than Iran did under the Safavids, who, over the long term, enacted a policy of forced conversion to Twelver Shiʿism.
Timur became a master symbol of sacred kingship that endured for centuries in social memory across Iran and India. That this memory was preserved and transmitted in a millennial mode is evident from Timur’s famous but little-understood title, Lord of Conjunction (Sahib Qiran).
Chinggis was a cruel “pagan” conqueror who uprooted Islam and imposed his own law in its place. Ali, on the other hand, was a foundational figure of Islam—first cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, the fourth caliph of Islam, revered by his partisans ( shiʿa) as the first leader (imam) of the Muslims after the Prophet.
In buruz, the projecting body did not die, and the receiving one did not have to be in the womb, as was the case with transmigration. The notion of buruz had been used by other Sufi theorists to explain how saints were able to be in more than one place at the same time,
He admired these buildings, even comparing one set of temples to the design of an Islamic madrasa. He also noted the “lower chambers,” where idols were kept, but recorded no distaste or urge to destroy. Why were the idols on the mountainside “beheaded” but the idols in the temple’s inner sanctum left untouched? The answer could well be that the giant statues, which loomed large over the landscape with their uncanny gaze fixed upon it, interfered with Babur’s imperial performance and his own imperial gaze. Whatever the case may be, Babur, by feasting and arranging, tasting and observing, planting and building, had begun to merge his royal self with the landscape of his new dominion. But it was Humayun who upon ascending the throne gave this ritual process a formal, cosmological shape.
Humayun’s efforts in laying the symbolic foundations of empire are preserved in a panegyric work called Qanun-i Humayuni (Canons of Sovereignty, and a play on Humayun’s name: Canons of Being a Humayun), composed by the famous Timurid historian Ghiyas ad-Din Muhammad Khwandamir (or Khvand Mir, d. c. 1537). It is significant that Khwandamir composed this work. Not only was he the greatest Persian historian of his time, but he had also served both the Timurids and the Safavids,
The first man the young prince met was called Murad Khwaja. Murad means goal or desire, which made this chance meeting a good omen. Soon afterward, Humayun saw another man carrying wood. His name turned out to be Dawlat Khwaja. Dawlat means fortune or dominion, another good omen. Humayun remarked that if the third person’s name was Saʿadat, which means felicity and fortune, it would be a most amazing and fortunate coincidence (ittifaq). Within the hour, he came across a boy grazing cows whose name was indeed Saʿadat Khwaja. At this incident, all his servants were amazed and convinced that this prince destined for sovereignty (padishah-i humayun fal) would in little time, with the help of divine fortune (saʿadat-i azli), obtain the greatest ranks of dominion and fortune (maratib-i dawlat o iqbal). Humayun was so taken by this augury that when he ascended the throne he used it to organize his court and administration. He divided his entourage into three divisions, each of which was named according to the auspicious names the emperor had come across that day
Each of the three groups was assigned two days for court appearance, according to the astral auspiciousness of each day (see table 4.3). Thus Humayun’s schedule, which set the rhythm of empire, was marked both by the founding royal augury and by the auspicious positions of the planets. Moreover, each day just before dawn the royal drums (naqqara) announced the Time of Felicity (nawbat-i saʿadat), reserved for worship and meditation. Then at sunrise the Time of Dominion (nawbat-i dawlat) would be sounded, and at sunset the Time of Desire (nawbat-i murad).
planet Saturn, the protector ( murabbi) of shaykhs and ancient lineages ( khandanha-i qadim).
Thursday is associated with Jupiter, which is the planet of the Prophet’s family and religious scholars. On these days, the monarch meets with his managers of the system of knowledge and worship ( naziman-i manazim-i ʿilm o ʿibadat).
Thus each of the twelve ranks of Humayun’s entourage was assigned a “golden arrow” ( tir-i mutallaʾ) of varying quality. The purity of the gold in each arrow or rank increased from one to twelve. The ranking of the imperial court and camp had, in other words, an alchemical basis. All men were ordered according to the purity of their being, the most pure being the emperor. The first eleven ranks or arrows were assigned to the nobility, court, army, and servants. The twelfth arrow, the highest-ranking one, was reserved for Humayun, since it was “equivalent ( mawafiq) to the measure ( ʿiyar) of red gold and [belonged] to the quiver of the emperor.” Red gold, it should be noted, was the purest form of gold that an alchemist could produce. The number twelve also suggested both an astrological reference as well as a messianic one, as the twelfth imam was supposed to return as the messiah, the purest of beings who would inaugurate the last millennium.
All affairs in which the lighting of fire was involved, such as Fire (Sarkar-i Atish) instruments of war; the chief of this service always wore red The Service of Air Jurisdiction over the domain of the imperial kitchen (Sarkar-i Hava) ( bavarchikhana), stables ( astabal), and the necessities of adornment and beautification The Service of Water All the affairs of drink ( umur-i sharbatkhana), the digging of (Sarkar-i Abi) canals ( juryan-i nahr), and oceangoing missions ( muhimmat-i bahar) The Service of Earth All matters pertaining to agriculture ( ziraʿat), construction (Sarkar-i Khaki) ( ʿimarat), and the extraction of essences ( zabt-i khulasat)
referred to the Safavid crown with the same name that he had given his own imperial headgear—Taj-i ʿIzzat. This was perhaps Humayun’s (or Aftabchi’s) way of lessening the insult that Humayun had to undergo in this ritual of submission.
According to prophetic tradition, a Mujaddid was supposed to appear at the beginning of every Islamic century to renew or revive Islam. As this scriptural tradition about the centennial Mujaddid indicated, the label carried within it a conception of cyclical time. Overall, it was a more restrained way of making a claim of sacrality than that afforded by the more openly messianic category of mahdi. That it carried such a messianic meaning in the case of Akbar is suggested by the evidence adduced for his status as the millennial Mujaddid: an occult calculation based on the letters of the emperor’s name and the apocalyptic science of jafr.
As a ruler, for Akbar to claim the status of a mujtahid was a particularly bold act but not entirely without precedent. There had been the infamous case of the Abbasid caliph al-Maʿmun (r. 813–833) in Baghdad, who had launched the so-called inquisition ( mihna) in an attempt to coerce leading Muslim jurists to recognize him as the ultimate authority in matters of Islamic doctrine and law.
The era of the Hijra was now abolished [in 990 AH/1582 AD]. . . . Reading and learning Arabic was looked on as a crime; and Muhammadan law, and the exegesis of the Quran, and the Tradition, and also those who studied them, were considered bad and deserving of disapproval. Astronomy, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, poetry, history, and epics were cultivated and thought necessary. Even the letters which are peculiar to the Arabic language . . . were avoided. Thus in pronouncing ʿAbdullah, people ignored the initial letter ayn [specific to Arabic]; and for Ahadi they ignored the letter ha [specific to Arabic],
in metempsychosis, the soul leaves a body that is dead in order to enter one that is ready to receive life; by contrast, in projection of the soul, the perfecting ( mukammil) soul irradiates ( tajalli) itself along with the perfect ( kamil) soul and thus makes its existence complete ( mukammal). Moreover, in projection, a soul never leaves a body to enter another, but instead it simply overpowers another soul in much the same way that the rays of a powerful lamp overcome the light of a weaker one.
Before Jahangir, we only know of Babur and Shah Tahmasb who wrote about themselves in such a manner. That the “memoir” was not quite yet a genre in its own right—that it had no canon of its own—is evident from the fact that such rare works continued to be classified under other better-established forms of writing, like “chronicle” or “epic” ( nama), “remembrances” ( tazkira), “annals” ( waqia ʿ), “daily affairs” ( ruznamcha), and “regulations” or “norms of behavior” ( tuzuk), all of which typically dealt with the life or deeds of someone other than the author.
a ferocious lioness jumped onto the back of his elephant, he swung around and, using his gun as a club, killed it with a single blow. This famous incident was depicted in multiple paintings over the next century by his descendants, but, in his own memoir, Jahangir gave it but a brief mention: “Since it is not seemly to write such things of myself ( chun az khud nivishtan khushnuma nist), I will cut these reports short.”
the illustrated epic Hamzanama (The Book of Hamza) produced for Akbar had fourteen hundred poster-sized paintings and took ten years to complete. Indeed, no Muslim ruler of the time could outdo Akbar either in conquest or in the production of visual and aesthetic monuments to celebrate sovereignty. These grand achievements may have been the reason Jahangir did not try to compete with his father on similar terms, keeping instead a diary, something his illiterate—perhaps dyslexic—father had not been capable of.
From the mysterious Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa) of the tenth century and the Illuminationist philosopher Suhrawardi of the twelfth to the activist millenarians like the Nuqtavis and the quietist gnostics of the “School of Isfahan” in early modern times, all referred to the wisdom of Hermes in their endeavors to unveil once and for all the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.
February 3, 2016
Fascinating and unique thesis on emulations of power and divinity in establishing authority in the post-Mongol, early modern Islamic dynasties.
May 7, 2017
3.5 / 5.0
Confusing at first particularly regarding definition of term Millenial. Explores modes of legitimacy for Islamic Rulers in India and Persia around the Islamic millennium. Particularly India Mughal dynasty. Final half of book flows well. May just be because of focused reading and acclimation to style. Dense interesting information
Confusing at first particularly regarding definition of term Millenial. Explores modes of legitimacy for Islamic Rulers in India and Persia around the Islamic millennium. Particularly India Mughal dynasty. Final half of book flows well. May just be because of focused reading and acclimation to style. Dense interesting information
April 13, 2021
a bunch of novel ideas!
December 30, 2015
This book is not meant to be for casual reading, but it is definitely readable. Those who live in the regions today that are covered by this work (Pakistan/Northern India/Afghanistan/Iran) should spend the time to read it.
It’s groundbreaking in how it describes the rise of Islam in the Indian subcontinent & Persia. It really helps the reader rethink how we should look at the Mughal and Safavid Empire in this regard.
Millenialism, as a concept, is key to understanding history. It’s a recurring theme in Christianity, Zoroastrianism and even the Nazi Reich. With this book, the author does a great job on showing its influence on Mughal history and Islam.
As a Pakistani, it helps give me gain several insights into how our society has embraced Islam and why certain idiosyncrasies exist. The Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mausoleum in Karachi is a great living example of the author’s thesis.
If nothing else, the key discovery about “Allahu Akbar” having a secondary meaning (see page 144) is worth the read.
It’s groundbreaking in how it describes the rise of Islam in the Indian subcontinent & Persia. It really helps the reader rethink how we should look at the Mughal and Safavid Empire in this regard.
Millenialism, as a concept, is key to understanding history. It’s a recurring theme in Christianity, Zoroastrianism and even the Nazi Reich. With this book, the author does a great job on showing its influence on Mughal history and Islam.
As a Pakistani, it helps give me gain several insights into how our society has embraced Islam and why certain idiosyncrasies exist. The Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mausoleum in Karachi is a great living example of the author’s thesis.
If nothing else, the key discovery about “Allahu Akbar” having a secondary meaning (see page 144) is worth the read.
January 2, 2015
Some very interesting points but gosh, it really is a dense read - worth it though!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews