Meta-Religion by Laine James W

Author:Laine, James W.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520281363
Publisher: University of California Press

MAP 6. The “gunpowder empires”: Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal, ca. 1500–1700.

While assuming the preeminence of Muslim civilization, some powerful Muslims nonetheless adopted an inclusivist view of religion in ways reminiscent of the pluralistic policies of ancient pagan kings. The Turks, who saw themselves as heirs to a classical Greek and Christian civilization, now governed a large Christian population in the Balkans as well as in Anatolia. In India, inclusivism had particular salience, since the majority of Indian subjects never embraced the Islamic faith of their emperors. In such religiously complex contexts, perhaps the last court of appeal, the apex of power and authority, needed an intellectually and spiritually legitimate way to adjudicate between, and stand above, the several particular traditions of the realm. In the reign of the great Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), we see the clearest example of just such an experiment, one not altogether successful, but fascinating in its scope and lasting in its effects.

Often portrayed anachronistically by modern Indian patriots as the wise and tolerant ruler who put nation before religion, in his own time, Akbar pursued his policies not so much out of a high-minded tolerance or a nationalistic patriotism but out of a desire to buttress his authority as emperor. The one constant factor in his imperial policies is his quest to extend his power, out on the frontiers and within the palace. Akbar came to the throne as a boy but did not long remain the courtiers’ pawn, as he forcefully took the reins of government at the age of eighteen. He was heir to at least two traditions of kingship, one Persian and one Mongol, both of which were articulated by his courtier Abul Fazl. In Abul Fazl’s great work, the Akbar Nama, we find a detailed account of his reign, everything from the emperor’s interest in weaponry and perfumes and architecture to his religious and dietary concerns. It is a portrait of a hands-on ruler. Akbar allowed the office of vizier (chief minister) to lapse, and energetically immersed himself in every detail of his empire’s governance.

Abul Fazl attributes Akbar’s greatness to bloodlines that have carried a halo of royalty from the first man, Adam, to the biblical prophets Enoch and Joseph, seen as the heroic ancestors of the Turkish and Mongol (Mughal) peoples. Taking Firdawsi’s notion of a sacred kingship preceding Muhammad, but rooted in God’s plan for human history, he relates this heritage both to the stories of the great pre-Islamic Persian kings and to the Mongol myth of Genghis Khan’s ancestress Alanquwa. In Abul Fazl’s telling, Alanquwa conceived a child immaculately by divine illumination: “One night this divinely radiant one [Alanquwa = ‘immaculate woman’] was reposing on her bed when suddenly a glorious light cast a ray into the tent and entered the mouth and throat of that fount of spiritual knowledge and chastity. The cupola of chastity became pregnant by that light in the same way as did Hazrat Miryam [the Virgin Mary], the daughter of ‘Imran [Joachim].’”5

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