You’re right of course about the divided nature of deccani islam- but the greatest division wasn’t sectarian, it was between the native Deccanis and the Gharbians (westerners) from Iran. That was the conflict that tore apart the Bahmani empire and later infected its successor states- at various times these two groups of nobles were segregated in court, or one group or the other completely expelled and excluded from power.
Alamgirnama: A Mughal Timeline
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You’re right of course about the divided nature of deccani islam- but the greatest division wasn’t sectarian, it was between the native Deccanis and the Gharbians (westerners) from Iran. That was the conflict that tore apart the Bahmani empire and later infected its successor states- at various times these two groups of nobles were segregated in court, or one group or the other completely expelled and excluded from power.
Well, couldn't the opposite be deduced from the facts, since Kashmir was as integrated, if not more, than Nepal? Though the initial conversions did take place under a non-Indian muslim dynasty.
Anyways, in this TL, will we see alternate urban development across India? For example
Surat, Hooghly, Masulipatnam, Kochi, Goa etc. Retaining their status as premiere cities. Also, it is likely in this TL that the colonial system of urban planning does not emerge (if the EIC fails, which it most likely will, although it could still control factories, leading to rise of Mumbai as OTL), which obviously means no segregation, but also several differences in architecture and administration. Will parallels of the civil lines emerge?
Also, waiting desperately for your updates, and for the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
But of course- for now at least, the health of all those ports is secure apart from Kochi, which is still suffering from the destruction and decline that accompanied the original conquest and then the later rebellion in 1715 that saw many important southern ports being blockaded.
The colonial system of urban planning won’t emerge, but I do foresee the emergence of several European ghetto towns attached to major cities and ports, in a parallel to the chinatowns of otl in the west.
I’m really putting in as much effort as I can into working out good updates but at the moment I’m afraid I’m still mainly figuring out how the intellectual exchange would go down, and this will determine the nature of any future industrialisation.
Where in your Mughal Empire will you be planning to be core of industries?
I can imagined Delhi is one of them.
I can imagined Delhi is one of them.
Not necessarily. Being close to the imperial centre would be likely be more of a disadvantage than advantage, as laws would be less, should we say "flexible".
Perhaps Delhi will be like London, a city of Bazaars and offices and not factories.
The empire might even look at Western technologies as suspicious and at first attempt to implement those reforms on a small scale like the SEZ models in India and China and then implement those reforms across the empire after optimising as per the Indian Socio-economic conditions.
This is assuming that the industrial revolution still occurs in Europe before Asia.
This is assuming that the industrial revolution still occurs in Europe before Asia.
25. The Life of a Mansabdar
Developing Features of the Mansabdari System
- Mansabdars under 100 zat, comprising around 55,000 on the accession of Prithvi Narayan Shah. These are relatively high level provincial bureaucrats, or zamindars who might possess their own petty military base. This level can be readily attained by even the disadvantaged people who work hard enough. However, while its open nature allows people in, it also allows people out very easily- violating any of the regulations in the Ain was a quick way to lose mansab rank or even be ousted from the tables altogether. Further, mansabdars were put under watch if they hadn’t recently performed any commendable actions and were liable to be replaced by a more worthy applicant. It was this class that secured Mughal control of the vast agrarian wealth of the country- if a zamindar was hiding the extent of their wealth or attempted tax fraud, their place in this class was quickly replaced by the qanungos (accountant) that proved it. The maintenance of local temples, mosques, rest stops, roads and markets were all easy ways a local authority could apply for an increase in mansab. It was also this class that facilitated the explosion of state museums, expansion of farmed land and the introduction of new crops- as any male over 16 could apply for entry into this class given proof he had served the state as stipulated in the Ain and verified by an assessor, many Kayastha qanungos, who had the most detailed records on local productivity, monuments and land usage, were able to enter mansabdarship by bringing more land into cultivation, describing local sights and maintaining good provincial government. In this way, the agrarian revenue from Hindustan was a full 30% higher in 1760 than in 1700. As the direct investment by the imperial government into each mansabdar was relatively small in terms of guaranteed space on a ship or caravan, they didn’t really monitor how profitable their investments were and thus a mansabdar of this rank would have to pay an application fee to have their mansab looked at for increase.
- Mansabdars of 100-500 zat- comprising roughly 10,000 people, this group was made up of those born into local privilege and a classical education. The service they provided to the state was often military, and included putting down rebellions, serving as an officer in the official army etc. It was often the category that relatives of the highest mansabdars were first entered into. They could still advance in rank by maintaining local religious sites and bringing any new land into cultivation, but much more was expected from them in terms of quantity. A much more active role was also played by the bureaucracy in assessing how much money their investments were generating so as to see whether the imperial government benefitted by investing in their entrepreneurship (or whether the investment should be scaled down.
- Mansabdars of 500-1000 zat- comprising roughly 4,000 people, this group was made of hereditary servants of state and those who had specifically distinguished themselves. Any change in mansab among these people needed to be signed off on by the emperor or a close relative.
- Mansabdars of 1000 or above zat- comprising 863 people on Prithvi Narayan Shah’s accession, these mansabdars represented the elite of every province of the empire, and in fact were intended to be the elite of the whole world. Any change in mansab needed to be through the initiative of the emperor himself. In terms of percentages, this class was the most gender equal at 76% men to 24% women. Roughly speaking it was made up of: 12% Iranians, 9% Turks, Romans and Mongols, 12% Rajputs, 17% North Indian Muslims, 15% Deccani muslims, 16% Marathas, 10% Telugu speaking Nayaks, 3% Afghans, 2% Europeans, 1% Africans, with other ethnicities making up the rest. However, for the duration of Prithvi Narayan Shah’s reign, a remarkable institution allowed for considerable fluidity amongst this and all classes of mansabdars- if a general leading an army were to be defeated, his mansab rank would be reduced and the reduction given to whoever could round up a suitable mercenary force and deliver to the Mughal government its war aims or increase territory. If this person were merely to set up tribute from the defeated state, their increase in mansab is lower (and the decrease lower for the original losing general), but if this person established a bureaucracy trained in India and annexed the area, their increase would be much higher. It was this tier of mansabdars that the Imperial Harem focused its matchmaking attentions on, and one the reasons Prithvi Narayan Shah favoured Meenakshi Devi was the immense energy she devoted to organising chance meetings, changes in mansab, and navigating the vagaries of caste status, ethnicity and dynastic pride in order to craft acceptable marriages between different groups of the nobility in order to create a generation of nobles with more loyalty to a pan imperial identity than their own ethnicity or local area. Literally tens of thousands of letters survive from Meenakshi Devi to the empire’s nobles enquiring their marital preferences, what would get them to deviate from their historical marriage practices, and ordering gifts and punishments to mould them to her will, which are often exemplary models of epistolary literature, and were a massive area of ideological experimentation in the numerous tactics she used to formulate royal authority and the unity of the nobility. She perhaps was more successful than her husband or his predecessor in forming the modern Indian nation, or at least that is the view of her expounded in Kumkum Chatterjee’s recent biography.
All mansabdars are provided not only guaranteed free space in an imperially hired ship or caravan, they are assigned an accountant drawn from the local scribal classes,
This gomashta is drawn from the banking classes such as Goswamis, Marawaris, Jains and Parsis, and must have a certificate from a business school or be nominated by an established gomashta to get the certificate without the training. This basic team was available to even the lowest mansabs, but the team grew larger as the mansabdars investments and interests diversified. Mansabdars of over 100 employed hundreds of people directly, and provided community and public service to thousands more. In much of south india, the role that was expected in public service of a mansabdar was fulfilled by temples, and in Mughal bureaucracy many south Indian temples assume an independent legal personage in the manner of a modern corporation and were recorded as mansabdars themselves, complete with space in ships and ability to vote for a local representative in the rajsangh. Further, much direct investment was given in donations to temples in the expectation that the priests would legitimise Mughal rule and sponsor public works.
Mansabdars themselves had to undergo an extensive course of training and cultivation to turn themselves into ideal gentlemen, cultured aesthetes with knowledge of art from around the world. This included familiarisation with the great classics of self help literature, from the akhlaq-I Nasiri to the Mau’iza I Jahanzebi and the Risala-i Nuriyya Sultaniya. This provided a secular code of conduct that fostered a common culture across the empire. It mandated a common set of manly sports that they should participate in, most taken from the original Mongol manly sports, a common set of music treatises they should learn and art and architecture they should see.
For more cultured mansabdars (around twenty percent of all) was a tour throughout the Persianate ecumene, which included the previous pan Indian tour, but from Gujarat went through southern Persia, through Shiraz, Isfahan and the ruins of Persepolis before Baghdad and the nearby ruins of Babylon from 1759 onwards, and through the Levant to Constantinople- from there through Greece, to see where Aristu and Aflatun had worked their wonders, to see the Acropolis of Athens (with the Parthenon restored to its pre 1687 condition by 1700 owing to a grant from Rumi Khan, a mughal mansabdar from Athens). From there the standard tour moved south to see the pyramids of Egypt and then rounding Arabia with a potential stop in Mecca before heading back to India. Further, after Madurai in the standard Indian tour, they would diverge to South East Asia, with most going through Thai and Burmese lands before returning to Bengal, but enough going to Java and Cambodia to rediscover Angkor Wat (1745) and Candi Prambanan (1756) and causing more and more to come to these places. These places could sometimes be lawless and travel was dangerous, so those taking this tour often travelled with retinues of a few hundred bodyguards, architects and painters in training and teachers to continue their own education, as well as cooks and porters to keep such a large guard going.
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26. Seizing the Toro
History of Mughal Expansion Northwards
Excerpt from "The Mongol Inheritance" by Marissa di Castello
In 1700, the Mughals made a token attempt to restore Chagataid rule in the embattled Yarkand Khanate by sending an heir of Yolbars Khan with military aid just prior to its conquest by the Dzungars forced the last Yarkand Khan to flee to Delhi, although its fate never entered the chronicles, presumably due to its quick failure. A court in exile established itself in India hoping to gain support for a muslim reconquest of the Tarim basin and so we turn to the Mughal relations with the Dzungar Khanate.
In 1684, the Dzungar-Tibet-Mughal-Ladakh war had involved imperial forces in the dispute between Tibet and Ladakh and despite this, they lost due to the majority of their forces being tied up in pacifying and conquering peninsular India and the difficulty in conducting a traditional war in the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity for the Mughal court to become acquainted with the new power in the steppe and the first embassy to the Dzungar court was in 1692- at this point, the Mughal-Tibet war secured Ladakh its religious freedom, with the Mughal emperor designated the protector of the right of Bhutan, Ladakh and Nepal to continue patronage of the Drukpa school, as opposed to the Gelugpa of the Tibeto-Oirat aristocracy and regulated a trade agreement between the two powers. This original Mughal favouring of the Drukpa school was a result of the arrival of Drukpa emissaries at the court of Aurangzeb, who was of course disgusted by the schools denial of any foundationally important godhead but at the same time impressed by the manner in which Drukpa monks were much more focused on personal growth and meditation, living lives as simplistic and renunciatory as any fakir. Nevertheless, Tibetan suzerainty of Guge and Phurang were confirmed and the presence of Drukpa ascetics and teachers was decimated within the following decades.
The Dzungar Khanate was also now desperate for allies, following the alliance of Khalkha and Qing and while initial negotiations went well, they broke down once the Dzungars realised the price for Mughal aid would be the return of the Yarkand Khanate’s independence. Still, Tsewang Rabtan was impressed by the quality and size of the tents and presents he had been given by Aurangzeb and sent an envoy to Kashmir to see the Mughal court, and this was the moment that Mughal awareness of Buddhism exploded and the beginning of regular missions to Tibet, where Sanskrit texts were copied out and printing began in the 1710’s. The 5th Panchen Lama visited Jahangirabad-Dhaka in 1697 and was received with full splendour by the Subahdar of Bengal.
This was the first direct contact between the Qing court of Beijing and the Mughal court of Delhi. In his letter, Azam Shah frames himself in primarily Turco-Mongol terms, naming himself as the descendant of Genghis Khan through Chagatai, the Just Khagan, the Caliph of Islam, and lastly the Badshah-e Hind. This is the first instance we see of the new design of the Sacred Seal of the Mughals- the previous design was modelled on the solar system, with the current emperor’s name in the middle, representing the sun, with circles containing the names of his ancestors up to Timur on the border. Directly above him was the name of Timur, and at eleven o clock was the name of his immediate predecessor, with each name apart from Timur preceded by an “ibn”. In the new design, while the current emperor is still representative of the sun in the middle, and the inner circle still traces the line back to Timur, at Babur’s circle the line branches into an outer circle which traces his descent from Genghis Khan, such that Genghis Khan is directly opposite to Timur at 6 o’ clock, the metaphorical base of the dynasty. The claim to the title of Khagan was not taken particularly well by the Manchu leadership, whose own dominance of the Khalkha mongols was only 14 years old- however, the extremely extravagant caravan of gifts given by the Mughal court was seen as tribute by the Han bureaucracy and the Manchus portrayed this as them having forced the rulers of India to submit to them.
In 1719, the 6th Dalai Lama died in mysterious circumstances, either because of an opium overdose or because he was poisoned (the Mughal family believed until at least 1736 that poison could be detected through the use of jade utensils, so on this occasion perhaps using jade utensils made them lax in security).
As well as his cultural refinement, Galdan Cering was an able ruler. He carried out many successful raids against the Kazakhs, in Ferghana and in Bukhara, and much of the Mughal mobilisation prior to the campaigns in Bukhara was explained by the need to defend Kabul from his forces. He was unsuccessful in his attempts at breaching the Hindu Kush (whether his invasion was a real invasion or a successful attempt to get the Mughal government to pay him to go away and equip his armies with guns is debated) , and was further unable to establish any authority amongst the Khalkha mongols, as they were protected by the Qing. His forces weakened Bukhara and eroded trust in its government such that the Bukharan emirs were much more willing to switch allegiances to the Kokhandi Khans and submit to the Mughal protectorate. By this time, the Dzungar armies comprised 90,000 standing cavalry equipped with firearms.
The Mughal court sent two grand embassies to the Qing under Jahanzeb Shah on the accession of the Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors, with eight more minor embassies and permanent ambassadors posted in Beijing as well. The embassies were meant to strike the imagination of the Chinese, impress the newly crowned emperors, and convince them of the warmth that Jahanzeb Shah had for them. Each grand embassy came with a thousand servants, 500 painters and famous writers. The second embassy had 10 elephants, 60 antelopes, 34 European hunting dogs, 100 pure white horses, and 10,000 precious articles of gold, silver, jade and ivory, much of which was used in the decoration of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness in Beijing.
The new subah of Eastern Moghulistan was in a precarious position however, as the Dzungars remained a powerful threat to the northwest, as was the Khanate of Kokand, not to mention the growing Qing interest in the region. The Qing court had previously sent a demand for the Mughal garrison in Lhasa to leave immediately following the Mughal-Tibet war, and a treaty had been signed at Lhasa in 1716 that said Mughal troops were not to enter U-Tsang as long as Qing troops didn’t. The other two regions of Tibet, Amdo and Kham were given over to the Qing government. Meanwhile the Qing had annexed and renamed Qinghai, much to the distress of the Khoshut Leadership, who appealed to the Subah court at Yarkand for help which was denied as Jahanzeb Shah had ordered that no Mughal troops were to go east of the Tarim Basin, as a full scale war with the Manchu empire looked unprofitable. Of course, reasons for investing so heavily into the Tarim basin were not purely dynastic- it had been the only source of jade for the empire since Jahangir and Moghulistan society was soon being transformed by the influx of Rajasthani mining castes, trained in the most modern European methods of mining by their Mansabdar employers, in order to increase the output of the jade mines of Kashgar.
Further, any reinforcements would have to come from across the Karakorum and so the garrison at Kashgar knew it would have to hold out a long time before help arrived. Sanjeev Khan as his first task as Nawab attempted to intervene in the Dzungar succession crisis after the death of Tsewang Rabtan and managed to draw the Torguts under Mughal leadership in 1726, with their leadership being granted audience with Jahanzeb Shah in Kabul where he honoured them with Mughal titles such as Khan-I Khanan and Khan Jahan, as well as Sanskrit titles owing to the importance of Sanskrit for the Buddhist torguts such as Dharmapala Khan and Jagat Khan. With the establishment of Mughal protectorate over western Moghulistan in 1742, the years of Dzungar raiding and border skirmishes finally ended as the four Dzungar
The preamble considered the common history of the states involved and their commitment to certain values- chief among these was “tarbiyat” or the potential for training to improve the quality of any man or woman more than good breeding. The Mughal state had been founded on this principle, owing to Babur’s dynastic illegitimacy among the amirs who came to India, and so had the Oirat state, owing to their non-Chingissid status. Importantly, while in some ways the Mughal-Oirat union was a union into a single larger state, it was a headless state with a collective executive made up of the hereditary leaders of the three states.
The first article in the code forces all signatories into collective action against any who destroys the Union (Toro was the Mongolian term used here, normally used for the government and it was noted how the Manchus had seized the toro of the White Jurchen, then the Forty Mongols and then the Chinese Empire). The cayaga enshrines the right of each of the constituents to maintain their own laws and submits disputes to a leader elected by all the signatory parties on a ten year basis. The Great Code created a universal legal framework that regulated the territorial authority of units of administration stretching from the borders of Siberia down to the islands of Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, the Qing army that had arrived received instructions that it was not to engage with the Mughal forces, and the border was set between the Manchu and Mughal territories between the Altai and Tian Shan mountain ranges, with the Qing receiving the city of Hami, while the Mughal received the city of Turfan.
Prithvi Narayan Shah now personally directed the investment of millions of rupees into the road and sarai network of the area, viewing it as a matter of both economic and strategic importance, and hundreds of thousands of labourers were employed at any one time from 1750 to 1770 in the very centre of asia to improve the connectivity of these lands to the heartlands of Panjab.
Since the Qing campaigns to establish Qinghai, the Khoshut Khanate had attempted to reclaim this ancestral territory through raids and campaigns that severely weakened Qing control over the area and yet they could always just retreat to U-Tsang, where the Qing could not follow them as per the Treaty of Lhasa. Further, the Khoshuts made extensive use of Indian mercenaries, who were trained in a number of different styles, and yet the Qing appeals to the Mughals did nothing as the mercenaries weren’t directly acting on Mughal instruction (though of course all mercenaries were encouraged to display their talents away from India)
Nevertheless, he sent an envoy bedecked with silks, muslins and calicoes to Qianlong, congratulating him on his acquisition of U-Tsang. He hoped that Qianlong would continue to allow the trade and free movement of people and books between Nepal and Tibet as it was continuing and asked him to convey his best wishes to his brother. He ended the letter on a less positive note, informing Qianlong that the Khoshut leadership and Gyurme Namgyal (Darya Bahadur), the brother of the new prince of Tibet, Gyurme Yeshe Tseten had taken refuge in the court of the Refuge of the World (Alampanah), and that the Chagatai Khanate, and anything south of the Himalayas was under the protection of the world seizing emperor, Prithvi Narayan Shah, Khagan of the Oirat, Badshah of Hind.
Further, the Summer Palace in Beijing features a complex known as the Indian Palaces of 1747- a hybrid of the Blessed Fort of Delhi and Dara Shikoh’s palace in Agra, interpreted through the lens of Qing architecture. Its gardens, however, remain wholly Chinese in design and execution and the overall effect is breathtaking.
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Just seen this thread so I've not read any of it yet (I will do), but I certainly appreciate the attempt to rehabilitate Aurangzeb.
I am very interested in what this leads to.
Sometimes I get excited about alternate history and try to google it, forgetting that it's, you know, alternate history. This was one of those times.
Sometimes I get excited about alternate history and try to google it, forgetting that it's, you know, alternate history. This was one of those times.
Do you know how hard it is to dream up architectural synthesis? I’ve spent so long rifling through common features of gothic architecture and the Chaturbhuj temple of Orcha so I can make a synthesis of that but it’s so hard to imagine as someone with no prior architectural knowledge. But Mughal architecture is such a big part of their legacy, I don’t think any timeline on them would be complete without it.
Helpfully though, the concept of answering the old masters was prevalent in poetry and Mughal training in poetry involved learning the techniques and poems of Saadi and hafez, before crafting modern versions of them. On the whole, thé Mughals never really wrote much about architecture but we can tell that the same concept arose, so when I put up the update specifically on architecture it will include a lot of pictures of the old masters they’re responding to with a written explanation of how they’ve modernised it. I hope this will help to envisage what I have in mind.
And that’s not even to mention things like poetry and painting, which honestly haven’t really been investigated by art historians and literary historians the way they should have been, especially the former. Colonial historians dismissed it all as decadence and later historians were more focused on Marxist and structuralist interpretations of taxation, law, and the structure of government, largely ignoring the lives human experience and the trends in the arts. As such I’m really just skirting round the edges of poetry and painting, as there’s not much to speculate around that’s not tainted by colonialist interpretations.
Ok, rant over. But yes, as for the Choros mongols, I have big plans.
Are there any attempts made to expand Buddhism in India?
Is there any attempt made by Tibetans to restore Mahabodhi temple or Nalanda?
Is there any attempt made by Tibetans to restore Mahabodhi temple or Nalanda?
Was going to message asking if this tl is alive and we got 2 updates!
Really enjoyed the the fact wing didn't just role over but pushed the mughals back. Qing is a mughal match.
Really enjoyed the the fact wing didn't just role over but pushed the mughals back. Qing is a mughal match.
Now that probably has alot of stories, how do mughal princesses act outside the empire? As they are mughal princesses and muslim.
I'd imagine that a more modern Mughals would also mean, ultimately, a more powerful Qing. Though I'd imagine the Mughals ultimately win, I'm eager to see the implications of a stronger China.
As the Mansabdari system is slowly becoming a sort of state run business promotion system remotely like business incubators and accelerators. Will this system slowly evolve into a state run investment organisation with separete land revenue and administration bureaucracy?
The mansabdars are encouraged to actively take part in foreign trade but is it leading to a stagnation of internal trade or lead to a recession because of some event elsewhere in the world. Many generations only remember growth by this point.
What is the geopolitics in the Indian Ocean Region? And why are the Mughals so interested in the remote central Asia across mountains rather than going south into the Indian Ocean afterall it seems that Prithvi Narayan Shah is almost fully Indian.
Your timeline is almost becoming real history. Congrats for the great work.
The mansabdars are encouraged to actively take part in foreign trade but is it leading to a stagnation of internal trade or lead to a recession because of some event elsewhere in the world. Many generations only remember growth by this point.
What is the geopolitics in the Indian Ocean Region? And why are the Mughals so interested in the remote central Asia across mountains rather than going south into the Indian Ocean afterall it seems that Prithvi Narayan Shah is almost fully Indian.
Your timeline is almost becoming real history. Congrats for the great work.
I think I mentioned this in the religious developments update- in short yes, and they’re... modestly successful at best at the moment, it’s primarily just an interesting philosophy that educated people know enough about to argue against.
And restoration is difficult but bodh Gaya at least has a new Tibetan monastery.
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