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Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t2: II. Amir Khusrau

Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t2

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English

Contents

II. Amir Khusrau

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Before we take leave of historical literature, we wish to digres for a moment on the historical value of the books of Amir Khusrau and his estimate as a historian. We have derived a large part of our information from his work alone. He has composed at least three poems and one book of prose—the Qiran-us-Sa'dain, the Miftah-ul-futuh (or Fath-ul-futuh), the Nuh Sipahr, and the Khaza'in-ul-futuh respectively, of a professedly historical character, besides numerous other poems. If we add to these books his poem called Dewalrani Khizr Khan which, though a romantic story, is intermixed with contemporary historical events, and the Tughluq-nama which deals with the rise and fall of Khusrau Khan the usurper and the accession of Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq, the number of his historical books amounts to six, which give us a more or less connected account of an interesting period of about forty years (1285—1325) in which the author lived and personally witnessed most of the events related.¹

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¹ My friend Maulvi Hashmi of Hyderabad (Deccan) has recently brought to light a copy of the Tughluq-nama of Amir Khusrau which was originally discovered by the late Maulana Rashid Ahmad of the M.A.O. College (and later of the Jami'a Millia Islamia) Aligarh who helped the publication of Khusrau's works by the M.A.O. College authorities and made a long tour of India in search of original MSS. This manuscript, which I have examined only in part, bears the impress of being genuine. Its contents are further supported by occasional quotations in the Firishta and other histories.

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As to the nature of his treatment : Amir Khusrau tries to conceal nothing from his readers. For example, he tells us frankly that he undertook to write the Qiran-us-Sa'dain in obedience to a royal command. The Sultan flattered him by calling him 'the seal of authors' and promised to give him a big reward which would free him from all worldly cares ever afterwards. The plan of the book and the scope of its treatment was defined by the royal patron.² Under the next patron, Sultan Jalal-ud-din Khalji, when the author was asked to compose a book, he felt morally stronger. He frankly told the Sultan that whenever he was inclined to drift away from historical truth in accordance with the demands of poetical conventions and the accepted standards of eulogies, he was stung by the inward reproaches of conscience. So that, he told him, he had made up his mind to adhere to truthfulness, whatever his position demanded.³ However, Amir Khusrau served a continuous succession of monarchs, Sultan Muizz-ud-din Kaiqubad, Jalal-ud-din Khalji, Ala-ud-din Khalji, and Mubarak Shah Khalji respectively, and when any honest man lives too long in courtly environments, his standards of ethical judgment usually undergo a change.

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It was perhaps due to such a reflection that poet warned his son, some time later, against following in the footsteps of his father who, as he told him, had spent the whole of his life in ‘spinning a yarn.’¹ Thus it should be remembered that Amir Khusrau often plays a double character in his writings. He is a historian without completely renouncing the office of a court poet and a courtier; and amazing as it may appear, he meets the demands of all three positions in his writngs. The Kaza'in-ul-Futuh, in particular, has a value of its own. Here the author gives a systematic account of the first fifteen years of Sultan ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji and it appears from its topographical and other details that the author was a personal witness of some at least of the scenes, even of those in the distant South. It is the only contemporary history of the period and the facts are narrated with admirable accuracy and wealth of detail.² On the whole, we can agree in our estimate of Amir Khusrau with Professor Cowell, that although his style is full of exaggeration and metaphorical description, the facts of history are given with tolerable fidelity.³ I may add here in passing that many historians of a later date have followed his version of contemporary events, without however, always acknowledging the source of their information.⁴ I am, however, concerned with Amir Khusrau in an even wider sense. I consider him pre-eminently as a historian of contemporary social life.

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This has led me to examine not only his history and historical poems but also his complete Diwan, his Kulliyat (collected poems) particularly his Matl'a-ul-anwar exposing the manners and the morals of his day, and even his voluminous and rather abstruse book on epistolography, the I'jaz-i-Khusravi. As a 'high-brow' artist or chronicler, Khusrau could have confined himself to courtly environment and association with a few cultured men of letters ; even as a social historian he could have written with the detachment of an academician like Abu'l Fazl. But Khusrau came from the people and feels at his best only when he moves among the crowd. When behaving as a courtier or as a man of letters, he is conscious of playing a part : his ascetic and puritan moods are decidedly morbid and only temporary, and he avails himself of the first opportunity to throw away these masks and morbid gloom and to start laughing and pleasing himself like other people. Nay, to assure the crowd that no amount of intellectual attainments and secular elevation can stop him from being congenial to them, he even borrows sometimes the vulgarity of the undeveloped mind, and the unrefined taste of the illiterate. When he is among common people he takes a detached view of his previous stately environments and spiritual heights and gives an honest and frank opinion about men and things, not excluding himself.

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In trying to express himself with this attitude of mind, however, he finds sometimes that plain and easily intelligible language is not altogether discreet and may involve him in trouble. This shrewdness drives him to subterfuge. He now deliberately takes to grandiloquent style, to florid and bombastic language, and to puns and puzzles ; but he must speak out his mind, as it were, to relieve his agitated and indignant soul. Thus, he takes good care to conceal his meaning in a mass of words, but is still as clear as possible if one knows his feelings and his surroundings. This is my reading of the I'jaz-i-khusravi, professedly written to demonstrate his powers of rhetoric (Balaghat), and his skill in the use of words, and to add to the existing nine styles of epistolography a tenth of his own.¹ Superficially read, ‘the documents it contains are, as usual, written in the most grandiloquent style, a very small amount of information being wrapped up in a bewildering maze of words’. But if these documents are carefully examined they yield interesting and instructive information of a varied character, besides many graphic descriptions of various social phenomena and references to manners and morals. It might be said that it is hardly proper to read into apparently disjointed phrases and uncertain epigrams meanings of social import, in any case, it does not appear scientific to draw historical references from them.

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It is true that the author is reluctant to admit anyone into his secrets but the reluctance is only apparent. The I’jaz-i-khusravi was not written at the command of a monarch, or for the benefit of a noble or those in power. It is a private document in which the spirit of the author has a free and unfettered play. The only fetters he has put upon himself are those of style, and these self-imposed restrictions are justified by the political conditions of the age. To appreciate the I’jaz-i-khusravi of Amir Khusrau, the reader will be well advised to make a detailed study of comparative literature.²

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² Q.S., 169-70.

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³ K.K., 890.

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¹ Compare K.K., 245 and 674.

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² Professor Muhammad Habib of Aligarh has recently published an English version of this history in the Journal of Indian History.

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³ J.A.S.B., 1860, p. 227.

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⁴ Compare among others the Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi for the events leading to the succession of Mu'izu-ddin Kaiqubad : the attempt of his father Bughra Khan to dispute the succession, so that it was only after his renouncing a claim to the throne of Delhi that a potential battle was turned into a happy meeting between the father and the son. This is borrowed from the Qiran-us-Sa‘dain. Similarly, the version of the Dewalrani Khizr Khani is followed for the events of the closing years of Sultan ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji. The famous elegy of Amir Khusrau on the death of Prince Muhammad the ‘Khan-i-Shahid’ is extensively quoted by men of letters and historians, for instance, Buda'uni and Nizam-ud-din. (Vide T.M.S., 359-60 and 374-375).

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¹ Compare I.K., 53.

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² Compare E.D., III, 566. Curiously enough the only extract of the book made for Sir H.M. Elliot by ‘a munshi’ and incorporated by him in his work (Volume III, 566-7) is the one which least deserved to be incorporated. It purports to be a despatch from a State official designated as Badr Hajib and addressed to the Crown Prince, announcing a victory over the Mongols and the occupation of Ghazni by the royal armies. This relates, as the editor remarks, to ‘a matter upon which the historians are silent’. The original passage occurs in Vol. IV, pp. 144—156 (Lucknow text). Sir H.M. Elliot and his munshi both overlooked the fact that it was never meant to be treated as a genuine royal document but only a model for epistolography. On page 18 of Vol. IV, Amir Khusrau makes it plain that he has ‘coined’ the letter herein inserted and again repeats, on page 22 of the same volume, that he made ample use of his own fruitful imagination in writing fictitious letters and that of others who had done the same before him and thus had given shape to a book of charm and originality by skilfully editing these ‘single and compound words, short and long phrases and brief and lengthy documents purporting to be official’. The mention of this paricular fact—the occupation of Ghazni and the defeat of the Mongols as well as the style of the letter may have been borrowed from an earlier date when Sher Khan occupied Ghazni on behalf of Sultan Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, to which a reference has been made in an earlier footnote.

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