THE LORDS OF THE AUSPICIOUS CONJUNCTION: TURCO-MONGOL IMPERIAL IDENTITY ON THE SUBCONTINENT A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Lisa Ann Balabanlilar, M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Stephen Dale, Advisor Professor Jane Hathaway ____________________________ Professor Geoffrey Parker Advisor Graduate Program in History Copyright by Lisa Ann Balabanlilar 2007 ABSTRACT Contemporary studies of the Mughal dynasty in India have long been dominated by nationalist, sectarian and ideological agendas which typically present the empire of the Mughal as an exclusively Indian phenomenon, politically and culturally isolated on the sub- continent. Cross disciplinary scholarship on the Middle East and Islamic Central Asia assigns to the Mughals a position on the periphery. Omitting reference to a Central Asian legacy, scholars instead link the Mughals to the preceding nearly one thousand years of Muslim colonization in India. Yet to insist on a thousand years of Muslim continuity in India is to ignore the varied religious, cultural, and political traditions which were transmitted to the subcontinent by a widely diverse succession of immigrant communities. This study radically re-evaluates the scholarly and intellectual isolation with which the Mughals have been traditionally treated, and argues that the Mughals must be recognized as the primary inheritors of the Central Asian Turco- Persian legacy of their ancestor Timur (known in the West as Tamerlane). Driven from their homeland in Central Asia, the Timurid refugee community of South Asia meticulously maintained and asserted the universally admired charisma of their imperial lineage and inherited cultural ii personality. The imperial success of the Mughals lay in their ability to identify and reproduce in the Indian context potent symbols of Islamic and Timurid legitimacy which allowed them to successfully affirm their political legitimacy and develop a meaningful imperial identity on the subcontinent. Specific institutions and traditions of the Central Asian Turco- Mongol Timurids: succession patterns, interpretation of Islamic law, the facilitation of migrating sufi orders, the role of women and Persianate literary culture, can be identified and traced from the centers of Timurid politics and culture in Transoxiana to the Indian subcontinent, where they were manipulated and adapted by Timur’s descendants in order to bolster Mughal political legitimacy. Certain of these cultural threads were so successfully transplanted by the Mughals that they became deeply embedded into the fabric of Indian society, not only supporting Mughal political claims but remaining in place long after the Mughals had lost effective power by the mid- eighteenth century. The shaping and defining of the imperial identity of the Mughals in India through the conscious manipulation of the Central Asian legacy of Tamerlane can be seen as a case study of the movement and migration of symbols of legitimacy and the reproduction of identity by a refugee community in permanent exile. In identifying and examining those links this dissertation will position the Mughal dynasty in the center of the early modern Islamic world as the direct successors of a powerful influential political and religious tradition. iii Dedicated to Mufit and Sara Perihan, who have spent the past several years living patiently with Jahangir and Gulbadan and far too many ill-balanced stacks of books. For your love, and your endless encouragement and pride in me, I thank you. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my most heartfelt gratitude to Stephen F. Dale, my advisor and mentor. Any success I might have as a scholar is due to his enthusiasm, unerring guidance, advice, inspiration and support. Thank you. Additionally, my thanks to Jane Hathaway, who has offered me years of academic support, the best editing anyone could wish for and warm friendship. I would like to thank Geoffrey Parker for his insight, guidance and encouragement and, most importantly, his wonderful intellectual curiosity. I am indebted to Carter V. Findley and Dona Straley for their years of support, Allen Beyerchen for his interest and encouragement, Howard Crane for his gentle guidance and to Kevin Boyle for his pitch perfect advice when I needed it most. For generous support over many years, I thank the Ohio State University Middle East Studies Center, particularly the director, Alam Payind. The Department of History at the Ohio State University and Richard Hermann of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies have been remarkably generous in their financial support, making possible my research abroad in England and India. My sincere thanks to both. v Special thanks to James Lenaghan and to my Persian teacher, Farah Shadchehr, for their invaluable friendship. Others at the Ohio State University deserve my sincere thanks: Cynthia Brokaw, Parvaneh Pourshariati, Gail Summerhill, Chris Burton and Jan Thompson. To Joby Abernathy, warm thanks. In appreciation of the friendship and intellectual support which made possible this dissertation: Emre Sencer, Rajiv Khanna, Yiğit and Zulal Akin, Gunhan Börekçi, Safa and Heather Saraçoğlu and Febe Armanios. To the residents of the third floor office, in thanks for the academically-themed illicit potlucks and scalding humor: Christianna Thomas, Jim Weeks, Dustin Walcher, Steve Hyland, John Winters and Rob Padilla. Special thanks to Scott Levi at the University of Kentucky and Robert McChesney of NYU for their kind support. I am grateful to Jerry Bentley at the Journal of World History for his interest in my work, and to his patient and wonderful editor, Deborah Sasaki, aloha. To my early mentor, Dr. Jon Mandeville of Portland State University, who insistently sent me on this path, and to Pelin Başçi, also of Portland State, thank you. My gratitude to Arif Çetintaş for his enthusiastic support and encouragement. Thank you to Lalita Du Perron at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and Ayşegul Sönmez of Istanbul. In memory of the late Şinasi Tekin, my beloved teacher of Ottoman Turkish. Most of all, thank you to my beloved parents, Richard and Jocelyn Fanning, who brought their own fascination with Central Asia to the family dinner table and encouraged their children to travel far and seek knowledge. vi VITA January 14, 1958 ……………………….…………………. Born- Detroit, Michigan 1998…………………………………………………………Bachelor of Arts, cum laude History/Middle Eastern Studies Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 2003………………………………………………………… Master of Arts History (Islamic/Ottoman Middle East) The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2001-2004……………………………………….………..Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. “The Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction: Turco- Mongol Imperial Identity on the Subcontinent,” The Journal of World History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2007) pp. 1- 39. 2. “Jahangir,” Encyclopedia Iranica, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History (South Asia and the Eastern Islamic World; the Ottoman Empire) vii TABLE OF CONTENTS page Abstract ….……………………………………………………………….………….… ii Dedication ………………………………….………………….…………..……….…...iv Acknowledgments ……….……………………………………………………………..v Vita ……………………………………………………………...………………….….vii Chapters: 1. Introduction ……………………………………………….….……......................1 The Timurid- Mughal Mentalité ………………………………………….3 Timurid Refugees: “All the Begums and Khanums Went” ………………7 The Contents of This Study ……………………………………………..11 2. The Development and Defense of a Timurid Cultural Identity ………………..15 In the Absence of Timur ………………………………………………...27 The Timurid Cultural Personality………………………………………..32 Religious and Literary Patronage ……………………………………….35 Babur’s Mawarannahr and the Timurid Denouement …………………..45 Rout of the Timurids …………………………………………………….53 Babur’s Kingdom ………………………………………………………..59 3. Development of the Mughal Imperial Identity ………………………………….72 Genealogy and the Guregeniyya ……………………….………………..71 The Mythical Homeland ………………………………………………...80 The Use of Literature and Art in the Production of Identity in India …...84 Illustration as a Tool in the Imperial Identity Project …………………...96 The Imperialism of Architecture and Landscape ………………………108 Recognition of the Timurid Legacy of the Mughals …………………...120 viii 4. Women in Timurid- Mughal Dynastic Politics ………………………………..123 Babur and the Late Timurids …………………………………………..127 The Imperial Harem as an Akbari Institution ………………………….137 Power, Patronage and Youth …………………………………………..143 Timurid- Mughal Motherhood …………………………………………149 Marriage and the Mughal Princess …………………………………….154 Non- Timurid Wives of Timurid Rulers ……………………………….156 Timurid- Mughal Continuity ..…………………………………………157 5. Mughal Princes and the Imperial Succession……………………….………….160 Training Princes to Rule: The Imperial Appanage ...…………………..165 Timurid Tanistry and the Mughal Princely Succession ...……………...174 Humayun and the Failure of Imperial Partition………………………...179 Akbar and the Princely Appanage: Timurid Traditions Transformed …183 Atekes, Naukars, Allies ...………………………………………………188 Adapted Succession Systems Among Mughal Contemporaries ...……..191 Restless Princes, Fratricide, and Timurid Imperial Partition ………......195 Brothers at War ...………………………………………………………201 How Succession Wars Served the Dynasty ...………………………….208 6. Ethics and Morality