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The East India Company, one of the earliest joint- stock enterprises, helped revolutionize English economic structures. Although recent years have seen a surge of interest in its early history, the native traders and translators who formed the front lines of the East India Company's operations--acquainting the English merchants with mercantile and social systems in Mughal India--often escape scholarly attention. Turning to Company court minutes, the letters of Sir Thomas Roe, and other public as well as private records, this paper explores the circuits of knowledge that were established between the English merchants and their Indian associates. As local informants, they aided in the Western construction of an Indian imaginary that often went beyond older epistemic stereotypes of Asians. Simultaneously, the Company became responsible for the well-being of these Indians. The complex relationships between Indian brokers, translators, and the Company suggest how gossip, trade, and translation became interrelated categories. In particular, this essay follows the East India Company's exchanges with Jadow, one of the very first Indian brokers to work with the Company. These Anglo-Mughal encounters allow us to better understand the circuits of collaboration and conflict that marked the inaugural years of the Company's activities in the Indian subcontinent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Azfar Moin's recent work on millennial sovereignty in Mughal India prompts a consideration of the evolution of sovereignty in modern South Asia more broadly. Although the sovereign principles of the Mughals differed from those of the British Indian empire, which ultimately succeeded it, these empires shared important similarities in their linking of sovereign authority to visions of a cosmos in immanent interaction with human affairs. This article explores these similarities and differences and speculatively considers their implications for both similarities and differences in Mughal and British principles of statecraft. These similarities and differences provide an important backdrop for thinking about the meanings attached to popular sovereignty in modern India as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article characterizes the political, cultural and socioeconomic conditions of Sindh, Pakistan under the Mughal Empire based on the writings of European travelers during the period of 16th-18th centuries. Topics discussed include the types of European travelers who visited Sindh during the period, the extent of the Mughals' authority over the region, as observed by early 1600s British traveler Nicholas Withington, and the religious practices in the region as observed by foreign missionaries.

Brahman Sanskrit intellectuals enjoyed a century of relations with the Mughal elite. Nonetheless, such cross-cultural connections feature only sporadically in Persian chronicles, and Brahmans rarely elaborated on their imperial links in Sanskrit texts. In this essay I analyze a major exception to the Brahmanical silence on their Mughal connections, the Kavīndracandrodaya ("Moonrise of Kavīndra"). More than seventy Brahmans penned the poetry and prose of this Sanskrit work that celebrates Kavīndrācārya's successful attempt to persuade Emperor Shah Jahan to rescind taxes on Hindu pilgrims to Benares and Prayag (Allahabad). I argue that the Kavīndracandrodaya constituted an act of selective remembrance in the Sanskrit tradition of cross-cultural encounters in Mughal India. This enshrined memory was, however, hardly a uniform vision. The work's many authors demonstrate the limits and points of contestation among early moderns regarding how to formulate social and historical commentaries in Sanskrit on imperial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Juliana Dias da Costa (d. 1734), an influential Portuguese woman at the court of the Mughal king Bahadur Shah I (d. 1712). Through an analysis of sources that traverse three centuries and several languages, this article demonstrates how visions of Juliana were shaped by the political aspirations of those writing about her. To Jesuits, Juliana was a proxy for their mission in India, and to the Portuguese, she was one of their own, strategically placed at court to serve their interests. And for her impoverished descendants in British India, she was emblematic of times when they held both power and prestige. Concluding with the author's encounter with a descendant of Juliana's in Pakistan, this article addresses questions of belonging that a figure such as Juliana raises today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the representation of Indian women by European travellers during the Mughal Empire in the 17th century. It highlights the meaning of Mughal harem which has been generally depicted by foreigners as a place of exotic curiosity. It emphasizes the deficiencies of European travellers in understanding Mughal harem.

This article analyzes three early Mughal auto/biographical texts written at the order of Akbar as forms of instructive memory, and contextualizes these texts within an existing body of writings about akhlāq literature and literary genres. In doing so, this article discusses how auto/biographical narratives in Mughal India were both collected and collective, and how the didactic undercurrents of these texts relied upon individuated notions of character and kingship presented through the figure of Humayun. By reading lived experience across genres that often contained elements of one another, this article places interconnected Mughal lives as central to textual renderings of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to trace the profile of the governors (mutasaddis) of the main port-cities (especially Surat and, to a lesser extent, Cambay) of the Mughal province of Gujarat in the first half of the seventeenth century. My research on the careers of individual mutasaddis – based mainly (but not exclusively) on existent Portuguese materials – allows us to better understand the social world of those occupying key positions in the ‘waterfront’ of the Mughal Empire and its dealings extensively with the European powers (Portuguese, Dutch and English). Hence, the analysis of the professional and personal trajectories of the Indian Muslim doctor Muqarrab Khan and the Persian Mir Musa Mu'izzul Mulk presented here demonstrate how far business, politics and cultural patronage were often entangled in the career of a Mughal mutasaddi of Gujarat. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the evolving profile of the class of scribes or munshīs who emerged during the phase of consolidation of Mughal rule in northern India, as Mughal power waned in the course of the eighteenth century. It argues that while the social and political base of this class was expanded by opportunities provided by the empire, these munshīs in turn sought to develop their own understanding of events both past and present. In the late seventeenth century, they began to generate their own templates of history writing together with other forms of belles-lettres. In the first half of the eighteenth century, their power seemed to be on the increase as many made the transition to becoming significant political actors themselves. However, they were unable to consolidate their position in the latter decades of the century, when they emerged instead as critics of the new forms that Mughal power was taking. The essay is based on a reading of texts produced by a number of these authors, largely in Persian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses European travelers' writings about India during the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author investigates how these writings, particularly their description of the Mughal emperors and their courts and of Mughal civilization, helped shape European perceptions of India and Orientalism from this time until the First World War. European journeys considered include a Christian mission by Portuguese Jesuits to the court of Mughal emperor Akbar from 1580-1583, a trade mission by British diplomat Thomas Roe to the court of Mughal emperor Jahangir from 1615-1619, and a sojourn by French physician François Bernier at the court of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb from 1656-1668.

The essay sets out to re-examine the relations between Catholics and Muslims in the Mughal court in the early seventeenth century, during the reign of Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-27). It does so by confronting two sets of source—materials, namely the letters of the Jesuit Jerónimo Xavier and Persian—language texts from the Mughal court. In particular it focuses on the important and neglected figure of Maulana Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, an intellectual who worked with and also studied the Europeans. The recent publication of a hitherto unknown text by him, under the title of Majālis-i Jahāngīrī is in part the occasion for us to return to this classic theme in the historiography of cross-cultural encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores bilateral relations of the Mughal Empire with the most powerful Muslim contemporary state of the time: the Ottoman Empire. Bilateral relations between the two empires have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Actually, scholars while narrating Mughal relations with Persia and Central Asia in detail have almost totally ignored Mughal- Ottoman relations. The present study is a pioneering effort. It seeks to fill a gap in Indian and Ottoman historical literature by exploring Mughal India's political and diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the beginning of the Mughal Empire a great number of men of the sword and the pen, people of excellence, quality, and learning, men of letters, poets and writers, skilled artisans and eminent persons from the cities of Persia came to this splendid empire with great hopes and anticipations. They entered the service of this bountiful kingdom, which was perhaps a sort of asylum for the people of the world. Indeed, Persians with their multifarious capabilities could handle different assignments, professions, and creative hobbies with ease and dexterity. Many Persian families attached themselves to the Mughal court and exhibited their talents in various forms and in different capacities. They outshone and exceeded their contemporaries in administration and politics, literary activities, and artistic bequests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the political relationship between the Mughal tribe and the Indian Chishti and Central Asian Naqshbandi sufi orders during the sixteenth century. It offers an examination of the growth of Mughal power in India as supported or hindered by the Chishtis under Ubaid Allah Ahrar and the Naqshbandis under Khwaja Baqi Billah. The politics of the Islamic scholar Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, who died in 1624, are also considered.

The article reflects on whether Aurangzeb, the last Great Mughal emperor of India, ban music during his time. The section explores the story of Aurangzeb's relationship with music from the most commonly used primary sources. It demonstrates how the testimony of previously unheard voices in the literature alongside a more critical interpretation of the canonical sources sheds a different light on these events. It concludes with an examination of how music history can be used to illuminate the nature of Aurangzeb's political regime.

The article reflects on the first part of the memoirs of a late eighteenth-century Mugbal prince. Mirza 'Ali Bakht Azfari, who was held prisoner in Shahjahanabad-Delhi until well into his adult years. Later, after he had made his escape from there and gone on after long travels to settle in the territories of the Nawwab of Arcot, Azfari had occasion to look back on his days as an imprisoned prince in a sort of gilded cage. His backward glance takes in such questions as astrology, the thaumaturgical character of members of the Mughal lineage, and other issues--some of which are peculiar to him, while others seem to have been shared in the milieu from which he came. The work thus allows us to reflect on the mental world and categories of political reflection of a would-be Mughal statesman, who never quite managed to seize the reins of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the situation in the Deccan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, at a time when the Mughal empire was expanding over the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and beginning to threaten both Bijapur and Goa. It does so through a close reading of two sources, the reports of the Mughal court-poet Abu'l Faiz 'Faizi,' who was sent there as a Mughal envoy in the early 1590s; and the autobiographical text of Asad Beg Qazwini, who followed Faizi some ten years later. It seeks to demonstrate the role of the Deccan as frontier zone in this period, not only between northern and southern India, but equally between Safavid Iran and Mughal India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is only recently that the study of Indian history since the Muslim conquest, especially the Mughal period (1526-1857), has seen a fundamental change. No longer is this period viewed in the static terms of 'oriental society,' the perennial 'village community' and the unchangeable rigidities of caste and community. Instead full attention is now given to the dynamics of Indian society. Dirk Kolff's work has significantly contributed to this change of perspective. Focussing attention on India's 'armed peasantry' in its various guises of both sedentary 'ryots' and itinerant warriors, Kolff brings out the flexibility and dynamics of the Mughal world that was known to its European contemporaries as the 'flourishing Indies.' Even though traces may still be found in modern India, the price of modernity has been the loss of the flexible dynamics of the ancien régime . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the problem of imposture in the Mughal empire, through the case of Sultan Dawar Bakhsh, or Bulaqi, who ruled briefly in the late 1620s. Though official Mughal histories had it that he was executed in January 1628 along with several other princes, various persons claiming his identity surfaced, first in India and then in Iran. We examine the views of Mughal, Portuguese, Iranian and other sources on these claimants, and also explore what forms of proof were sought by different early modern agents in order to satisfy themselves of the identity of a returning prince. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]