Mughal Administration c12.s1: § 1. The religious function of the Sovereign in a Muslim State.
Mughal Administration c12.s1
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§ 1. The religious function of the Sovereign in a Muslim State.
c12.s1.1
Examples are numerous in Oriental history of sovereigns claiming the position of the spiritual leader of their people. It may have been due to the natural vanity of man or to the astute political design of securing to one's self the supreme authority in Church and State alike, and thereby making the sovereign's position unassailable, or to a combination of both these motives. The lord of half a million swords does not feel happy unless he can flatter himself that he has won the unforced love and spontaneous obedience of his subjects. He has a natural weakness for thinking that he is not as other men are, that he is akin to the gods, and that he rules by a divine right as a semi-divine being. Flatterers had instilled the same idea into the minds of the Roman Emperors and the Stuart kings of England.
c12.s1.2
It found an easier lodgement in the Islamic State. That State is a theocracy, and its sovereign, in strict theory, is God's representative on earth. He is the commander of the faithful in the battlefield and the public prayer alike. He is the only Khalifa of the time, and if he is worthy of his position then the mantle of the Arabian Prophet has descended on him, and he ought to be not only the leader of the national army but also the highest living exponent of the faith (*mujtahid*) and leader in prayer (*Imam.*) Only the military type of the State and exigencies which made a rude unlettered soldier instead of a deeply-read theologian the only successful sovereign in most Islamic lands throughout the middle ages, prevented this claim from maturing. The actual experience of a long series of centuries gradually disabused the public mind of the idea that the Sultan was necessarily also the Mujtahid or Imam. But he might be so.