Dissertation / Doctoral Thesis
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DISSERTATION / DOCTORAL THESIS Titel der Dissertation /Title of the Doctoral Thesis „Between Court and Coast: Tracing the layers of Mughal- Portuguese relations (1570-1627)“ verfasst von / submitted by Manya Rathore angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doktorin der Philosophie (Dr. phil) Wien, 2018/ Vienna 2018 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 792 312 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Dissertationsgebiet lt. Studienblatt / Geschichte field of study as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ. Prof. Dr. Thomas Ertl Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ i Maps and Figures ...............................................................................................ii I. LAYING THE FOUNDATION ............................................................................. 1 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 3 1.1 Chapter Overview ................................................................................... 8 1.2 Statement of thesis and the research questions ...................................... 9 1.3 State-of-the-Art and Theoretical Framework .......................................... 11 1.4 Trends in Historiography of Portuguese in India ..................................... 12 1.4.1 Historiography on the Court ................................................................. 14 1.4.2 Historiography of the coast ................................................................... 16 1.5 Situating the project in global maritime framework ............................... 18 1.6 ‘Maritime Consciousness’ of the Mughals: Introduction of the Concept .. 22 1.7 Methods and Approaches ...................................................................... 24 1.8 Source Criticism ..................................................................................... 27 1.8.1 Mughal and Regional sources from the Indian subcontinent ............... 27 1.8.2 From the Portuguese Lens. ................................................................... 29 1.9 The Setting in Time and Space................................................................ 31 1.9.1 Understanding the early modern in the connected history ................. 31 1.9.2 Defining space in early modern Mughal-Portuguese relations ............ 33 1.9.2.1 Drawing the Mughal frontier Membrane ............................................. 34 1.10 Conceptual Framework .......................................................................... 35 2 READING THE EMPIRES IN A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK: THE PORTUGUESE AND THE MUGHALS ...................................................................................... 37 2.1 The Portuguese ‘Sea borne Empire’ ........................................................ 38 2.1.1 Laying the foundations of a maritime enterprise ................................. 38 2.1.2 Layers of Portuguese Authority ............................................................. 39 2.1.3 Religion in the Overseas Portuguese Enterprise ................................... 41 2.1.3.1 The Portuguese Missionaries and non-Portuguese Christians in India ..................................................................................................... 41 2.1.3.2 Jesuits as global diplomats .................................................................... 41 2.1.4 An Empire or a Network: Understanding the nature ............................ 43 2.2 The Mughal Empire ................................................................................ 45 2.2.1 At the Mughal Door: The origins and the neighbours .......................... 45 2.2.2 Tracing Mughal Legitimacy and Authority ............................................ 49 2.2.3 The Mughal State Leviathan: The nature of State ................................ 50 2.2.4 Religion in the Mughal Empire .............................................................. 52 2.2.4.1 The beginning of religious disputations in the medieval and early modern period ....................................................................................... 52 2.2.4.2 Mughal Religious Innovation ................................................................. 53 2.3 Communicating with the ‘Other’: Diplomacy in Mughal-Portuguese exchanges ............................................................................................. 55 2.4 From ‘Comparative to Connected’: An Outlook ...................................... 58 II. RELIGION AND RHETORIC: DISSECTING POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE COURT .. 60 3 READING THE ‘POLITICAL’ IN THE JESUIT MISSIONS AT THE MUGHAL COURT ............. 61 3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 61 3.2 Disentangling religion and politics: The First and Second missions at Akbar’s court ......................................................................................... 64 3.2.1 First negotiation and the First Mission ................................................. 64 3.2.2 Portuguese outlook on the First mission .............................................. 66 3.2.3 Political dimensions of a religious mission ............................................ 67 3.2.4 Another Disillusionment: The Second Mission ..................................... 70 3.3 An almost political entanglement: Third Jesuit mission .......................... 73 3.4 Friends or Foes: Jesuits, Mughals and Portuguese in the times of Mughal expansion ................................................................................. 76 3.5 Politics of conversion in Jahangir’s court ................................................ 78 3.5.1 Muqarrab Khan: A curious case of Mughal Christian convert .............. 82 3.5.2 Jesuit mission amidst political strife ..................................................... 83 3.6 The triangular dynamics of the English-Mughal-Jesuit relations .............. 84 3.7 Jesuits, the Mughals and the cultural (mis)understandings ..................... 87 3.8 Concluding Remarks .............................................................................. 89 4 CROSSING THE HOLY SEA LANES: MUGHAL-PORTUGUESE DYNAMICS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN ......................................................................................................... 91 4.1 Religious and Commercial breach: Complexities of Hajj in the early modern period ...................................................................................... 91 4.2 Cartazes: Securing or sabotaging? .......................................................... 93 4.2.1 Nature of the system ............................................................................. 93 4.2.2 Viability of the Cartaz system in the Indian Ocean ............................... 94 4.2.3 Pass without Cartaz: Mughal diplomacy on Daman ............................. 96 4.3 Hajj: Beyond religion ............................................................................. 97 4.3.1 Setting before the Mughals ................................................................... 97 4.3.2 Magnitude and importance of Hajj in early modern Hindustan ......... 100 4.4 Mughal elites and Hajj: Three cases of Mughal-Portuguese confrontation ...................................................................................... 102 4.4.1 Gulbadan Banu Begum ........................................................................ 103 4.4.2 Bayazid Beg .......................................................................................... 104 4.4.3 Maryam us-Zamani .............................................................................. 105 4.5 Dynamics of the Mughal and Portuguese in the Islamic World: Intertwined interests ........................................................................... 107 4.5.1 Courtly diplomacy on Hajj ................................................................... 108 4.5.2 Employing rhetoric: Mughals and the foreign players ........................ 110 4.6 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................ 114 III. MARITIME FRONTIERS OF THE MUGHAL-PORTUGUESE INTERACTIONS ........ 115 5 SCRAMBLE FOR THE WESTERN COAST: GUJARAT AND KONKAN ................... 116 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 116 5.2 General observations on Pre-Mughal Gujarat ....................................... 119 5.3 The foundation of Surat as reflected in Mughal sources ....................... 122 5.4 Change in trade dynamics after the Mughal conquest of Gujarat .......... 124 5.4.1 Gujarati ports and confluence of commercial interests ..................... 124 5.5 Trading Silver: Bullion influx and the Mughal-Portuguese commercial relationship ......................................................................................... 126 5.5.1 Bullions and monetary unification in the Mughal Empire .................. 127 5.5.2 Empirical Data on Silver Influx in the Mughal Empire via the Portuguese .......................................................................................... 128 5.5.3 Nature of Mughal-Portuguese trade ................................................... 131 5.6 Konkan ................................................................................................ 132 5.6.1 Dabhol ................................................................................................