The Mughal Empire

Mughal Literature and Languages: The Written Heritage of the Empire

The literary and linguistic inheritance of the Mughal Empire is one of the most extensive of any early modern state. Composed in Persian, Turki, Arabic, Sanskrit, and a dozen major Indian vernaculars, and ranging from the formal court chronicle and the mystical lyric to the technical manual and the popular devotional poem, the written heritage of the period constitutes a major chapter in the literary history of the Islamic world, of South Asia, and of the early modern Persianate sphere as a whole. Persian, in particular, was the dominant language of the court, and the great official chronicles — the Akbarnama, the Ain-i-Akbari, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, the Padshahnama, the Babar-nama, the Humayun-nama, the Tuzuk-i-Baburi — are among the most important historical and literary documents of the period. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rise of Urdu as a literary language and the parallel development of the Deccani, Braj Bhasha, Hindi, and Punjabi literary traditions were transforming the linguistic map of the empire, and the great Urdu poets of the late Mughal period — Mir, Sauda, Momin, Ghalib, and the emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar himself — were the heirs to a tradition that the imperial court had done much to shape. The history of these languages, the principal literary monuments, the institutional setting of the imperial kitab khana, the major poets and scholars, and the translation movement of Akbar’s reign are treated in detail below.

The Languages of the Mughal Court

Persian and the Persianate Literary System

Persian, in its Indo-Persian or Farsi-ye-Hindi form, was the dominant language of the Mughal state. It served as the medium of imperial administration, the language of the firmans and diplomatic correspondence, the literary idiom of high poetry, the diplomatic lingua franca connecting the Mughal court to the Safavids, the Uzbeks, the Ottomans, and the various Central Asian and Iranian polities, and the principal language of historical, biographical, religious, and scientific writing throughout the imperial period. The Indo-Persian of the Mughals was heavily influenced by the literary conventions of late Timurid and Safavid Persia, by the Hindi vocabulary absorbed from the Indian vernaculars, and by the local literary traditions of the cities of the empire. The Indian Persianate literary system included Delhi, Agra, and Lahore in the north, Lucknow and Allahabad in the east, Ahmadabad and Burhanpur in the west, Bijapur and Golconda in the Deccan, and Dhaka and Murshidabad in Bengal, each with its own literary circles, its own mushairas, and its own kutub khana.

The principal genres of Indo-Persian literary production included the tarikh (history), the maqamat (rhetorical prose), the insha (formal correspondence and chancery prose), the ghazal (lyric poem), the qasida (ode), the masnavi (narrative poem), the rubai (quatrain), the safar-nama (travel account), the tazkira (biographical dictionary), the majalis and maqalat (accounts of scholarly and Sufi gatherings), and the various technical manuals of music, astronomy, medicine, and natural science. The Mughal court was the principal patron of these genres, and the great chronicles, the mushairas, and the kitab khanas of the imperial household and the great nobles sustained a literary culture of remarkable vitality.

Turki: The Mother Tongue of the Dynasty

Turki, the Chagatai literary language of Central Asia, was the mother tongue of the Timurid imperial family and remained a private language of the Mughal court throughout the imperial period. The Babar-nama, the memoirs of the founder of the dynasty, was originally composed in Turki and only later translated into Persian by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan; the original Turki text remains documents of Chagatai literary prose. Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan all had some knowledge of Turki, and Jahangir in particular was a fluent Turki poet and an active user of the language in his private correspondence. The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri contains many passages in Turki, and the Tuzuk-i-Baburi is the best-known literary work in the language. Turki continued to be used in the imperial household and in the mansabdari circles of Central Asian origin well into the eighteenth century, even as Persian remained the dominant language of official life.

Sanskrit, Arabic, and the Indian Vernaculars

Sanskrit retained a prestigious place as the language of the Brahmanical religious establishment, the shastras and the puranas, the traditional sciences, and the courts of the Rajput and other Hindu aristocrats who entered into alliances with the Mughals. The Sanskrit literary tradition of the period produced the great devotional poetry of the Bhakti movement, the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas in Awadhi, the Sur Sagar of Surdas in Braj Bhasha, the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi, and a substantial body of religious, philosophical, and grammatical writing. Arabic served as the principal language of the ulama and the madrassa tradition, and the ulama of the empire produced extensive commentaries, juridical manuals, biographical dictionaries, and devotional works in Arabic that circulated in the wider Islamic world.

The Indian vernaculars retained their importance as the languages of regional administration, local literature, popular religion, and ordinary social life. Braj Bhasha, the language of the Krishna devotional tradition, was patronised at the Mughal court and was the medium of the Braj poets, including Tulsidas, Surdas, and a substantial school of Vaishnava devotional writing. Avadhi, the language of eastern Uttar Pradesh, was the medium of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas and a substantial body of bhakti literature. Maithili, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and the Dravidian languages of the Deccan all retained their literary traditions and, in many cases, expanded them during the Mughal period. The Dravidian literary traditions in particular — the Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam — continued to develop their own distinctive literary forms and, especially in the Deccani sultanates, absorbed substantial Persian and Arabic vocabulary into the vernacular. The Marathi literary tradition expanded rapidly under the Maratha principalities, and the Bengali literary tradition underwent a major transformation during the Mughal and post-Mughal period with the rise of the Vaisnava and the baul devotional movements.

The Rise of Urdu

The development of Urdu as a distinct literary language is linguistic events of the Mughal period. Urdu, sometimes called Hindi, Hindustani, Rekhta, or Zaban-i-Urdu in the early modern period, emerged from the prolonged contact of Persian, Arabic, Turki, and the Indo-Aryan vernaculars of North India, particularly the Braj Bhasha, the Awadhi, the Khari Boli, and the Dehlavi spoken in the imperial capital. The earliest documented Urdu poetry is generally assigned to the Deccan courts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly to the literary circles of the Bahmani and Adil Shahi sultanates, where Persian, Arabic, and the Dravidian languages came into contact with each other and with the Indo-Aryan vernaculars brought to the South by the Northern settlers.

By the seventeenth century, the Urdu literary tradition had taken firm shape in the cities of the North, particularly Delhi and Lahore, and the mushairah, the formal poetry gathering in which Urdu and Persian ghazals were recited, had become a central institution of urban Muslim culture. The early Urdu poets, including Quli Qutb Shah of Golconda, the Deccani poets of Bijapur, the Persianate Urdu poets of Delhi and Lucknow, and the Sufi Urdu poets of the Chishti and other orders, established the principal genres of the tradition. The ghazal, the qasida, the masnavi, the marsia (Shia elegy), the noha and soz (lamentation), and the qawwali (Sufi devotional song) all developed during this period.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Urdu literary tradition had reached its mature form in the ghazal of the great Delhi and Lucknow schools. The principal Urdu poets of the late Mughal period, including Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda, Momin Khan Momin, Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Nazir Akbarabadi, Ibrahim Zauq, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and a substantial body of court and Sufi poets, all worked in a tradition that owed much to the cultural patronage of the Mughal aristocracy. The mushairah tradition continued under the nawabs of Awadh, the nizams of Hyderabad, and the later Mughal court at Delhi, and the gharana system of poetic and musical lineages took shape during this period. The principal themes of the late Mughal Urdu ghazal — the unrequited love of the ashik, the wine of the sufi, the rose and the nightingale of the lyric, the political grief of the post-Mughal era — remain central to the Urdu literary tradition. The history of Urdu literature, its development from the Deccani and the early Delhi traditions to the great shahr-i-ashob of the late Mughal poets, is treated in greater detail in the principal histories of Urdu literature.

The Official Chronicles of the Mughal Court

The Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari

The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, completed in the 1590s, is the most famous of the official Mughal chronicles, and its third volume, the Ain-i-Akbari (“Institutes of Akbar”), is single sources for the social, administrative, and economic history of the period. The Akbarnama is a detailed account of the reign of Akbar from his birth to the forty-sixth regnal year, written in a carefully crafted Persian prose that drew on the Shahnameh tradition, the Tarikh-i-Alfi of the Lodi period, and the Tarikh-i-Firishta of the Bahmani and Deccani histories. The Ain-i-Akbari, sometimes regarded as a separate work, is a detailed compendium of the institutions of the empire, including the mansabdari hierarchy, the revenue administration, the diwan-i-am and diwan-i-khas of the court, the imperial household, the kitab khana, the imperial kitchen, the zarb khana (mint), the fauj (military), the bahri (navy), the religious establishment, the madaris, the karkhanas, and the geography, climate, and produce of the provinces. The Akbarnama was translated into English by Henry Beveridge in the late nineteenth century, and the Ain-i-Akbari was translated by various scholars including H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett. Both works remain foundational sources for the social, economic, and administrative history of the Mughal period.

The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri and the Padshahnama

The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, the autobiographical memoirs of Jahangir, is a more personal document than the Akbarnama, full of observations on natural history, the misdemeanors of his nobles, the formalities of justice, and the personal tastes of the emperor. The Tuzuk begins with an account of Jahangir’s accession in 1605 and continues, with gaps, to the eighteenth regnal year (1624). The text is distinguished by its candour, its attention to the natural world (Jahangir was a noted naturalist), its interest in painting, its moral reflections, and its personal detail. The Tuzuk was translated into English by Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge in the early twentieth century.

The Padshahnama, the official history of the first decade of Shah Jahan’s reign, was produced in two celebrated illustrated versions. The Badshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori, the principal court historian, is the official text, and the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris is a parallel illustrated version commissioned by the emperor. The text covers Shah Jahan’s reign from 1628 to 1636/7, and the two illustrated manuscripts produced for the imperial kitab khana are among the most famous illustrated manuscripts of the Mughal period. The Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, contains some of the most accomplished paintings of the period, including works by Bichitr, Balchand, and others. The Ma’asir-i-Rahimi of Abdul Baqi Nihawandi, the Alamgirnama of Mirza Muhammad Kazim, and the Ma’asir-ul-Umara of Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami, a biographical dictionary of the Mughal nobility, are all important sources for the history of the later Mughals.

The Baburnama, the Humayunnama, and the Tuzuk-i-Baburi

The Babar-nama, the memoirs of the founder of the dynasty, was originally composed in Turki by Babur himself and only later translated into Persian by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan. The Babar-nama is one of the most vivid and self-revealing personal narratives of the early modern Islamic world, full of observations on the natural world, on the military campaigns of the dynasty, on the personal life of the emperor, and on the cultural inheritance of the Timurid tradition. The original Turki text, only recovered in the nineteenth century, is works of Chagatai literary prose. The Humayun-nama, the biography of Humayun, was written by Gulbadan Begum, a daughter of Babur, in the latter part of the sixteenth century; it remains documents of the early Mughal period and a remarkable example of the historical writing of a Mughal princess. The Tuzuk-i-Baburi is sometimes used to refer to the Babar-nama in its Persian translation, but the term is also used more generally to refer to the Babar-nama in its Turki original.

Other Important Chronicles and Historical Works

The Mughal period produced a vast body of historical writing beyond the official chronicles. The Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh of Abdul Qadir Badauni, completed in the 1590s, is a critical counterpoint to Abu’l Fazl, written by a religious scholar who was personally unsympathetic to many of Akbar’s religious policies; it remains an essential source for the cultural and religious history of the period. The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Nizam-ud-din Ahmad is a multi-volume universal history organised by dynasties, completed in the 1590s. The Tarikh-i-Firishta of Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi (Firishta), completed in the early seventeenth century, is a comprehensive history of the Muslim dynasties of India, including the Deccani sultanates; it remains a foundational source for the political history of the period. The Tarikh-i-Daudi, the Tarikh-i-Muhammadi of Muhammad Qasim, and the Tarikh-i-Alfi, a comprehensive history commissioned by Akbar, are all important sources for the period.

Poetry, Poets, and the Poet-Laureate Tradition

The Mughal court patronised a number of distinguished poets, and the office of malka-shu’ara, or poet-laureate, was a recognised position in the imperial household. The Persian poetry of the court drew on the inherited conventions of the Timurid and Safavid traditions, including the ghazal, the qasida, the masnavi, the rubai, and the tarji-band, and the principal themes of love, mystical experience, wine, the natural world, and the moral reflections of the poet.

Faizi, Abu’l Fazl, and the Poets of Akbar’s Court

Faizi (1547–1595), the brother of Abu’l Fazl, served as the poet-laureate of Akbar’s court and was Persian and Arabic poets of the period. His Nal-o-Daman, a Persian masnavi based on a Sanskrit source, and his Mahabharata translations, prepared in collaboration with the imperial maktab khana, are among the most important works of the literary tradition of the reign. Abu’l Fazl himself, in addition to his historical and administrative writings, was a poet of considerable accomplishment, and the Akbarnama contains a number of his verses.

Bedil and the Late Mughal Poets

Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil (1644–1720), a Chagatai-Timurid poet of great originality, is generally considered the most distinguished Persian poet of the late Mughal period. He was associated with the court of Muhammad Shah, although he was famously indifferent to imperial patronage. His Chahar Unsur, his Muhit-i-Azam, his various ghazal and qasida collections, and his philosophical prose works constitute one of the major achievements of late Indo-Persian poetry. The sabk-i-Hindi or “Indian style” of Persian poetry, of which Bedil is the most famous representative, was characterised by a complex and sometimes obscure vocabulary, a heavy use of Indian imagery, and a distinctive philosophical and mystical bent.

The Urdu Poets of the Late Mughal Period

The Urdu literary tradition of the late Mughal period produced some of the greatest poets of the language. Mir Taqi Mir (c. 1724–1810), the leading poet of the Delhi school, is famous for his ghazals on the themes of love, loss, and the pain of separation. Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713–1781), a contemporary of Mir, is known for his satirical qasidas and his sabk of formal Urdu insha. Momin Khan Momin (1800–1852) and Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869) are the two most distinguished Urdu poets of the nineteenth century; Ghalib’s ghazals, qasidas, and Urdu and Persian letters remain foundational texts of the Urdu literary tradition. Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775–1862), the last Mughal emperor, was himself an accomplished Urdu poet, and the bahadur-shah-zafar tradition of Urdu poetry represents the final flowering of the Mughal literary inheritance. The history of the Urdu ghazal, the sabk-i-Hindi and the sabk-i-Lakhnavi of the late Mughal poets, and the mushairah tradition of the period are treated in greater detail in the histories of Urdu literature.

The Imperial Kitab Khana and the Translation Movement

The Library-Atelier of the Mughals

The imperial kitab khana, the “book house” or library-atelier, was cultural institutions of the Mughal court. The library was established by Humayun, who brought back from his exile in Iran the Persian painters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd us-Samad, and it was expanded by Akbar into a substantial workshop employing more than a hundred painters, calligraphers, illuminators, binders, and mashq practitioners. The library held thousands of manuscripts, many of them in the celebrated nasta’liq script, including religious works, literary works, historical works, scientific and medical treatises, illustrated manuscripts, and muraqqa (albums) of single-page paintings. The darogha-i-kitab khana, the librarian of the imperial library, was an important office, and the production of manuscripts, the binding of books in lacquered covers (dafati), and the illumination of texts with gold (tazhib) were all important functions of the imperial atelier.

The Translation Movement of Akbar’s Reign

The translation projects of the imperial maktab khana (sometimes distinguished from the kitab khana as the office of translation) were among the most ambitious cultural enterprises of the period. Akbar established a translation bureau staffed by scholars and literati of different religious traditions, and the bureau produced a substantial body of translations from Sanskrit, Arabic, Turkish, and European languages into Persian. The Razmnama, the Persian translation of the Mahabharata commissioned by Akbar, was produced in collaboration with a committee of Sanskrit scholars; the translation was completed under the supervision of Naqib Khan, and the text was eventually illustrated in a celebrated illustrated manuscript produced by the imperial atelier. The Ramayana of Valmiki, the Atharva Veda, the Lilavati of Bhaskara (a mathematical text), the Rajatarangini of Kalhana (a chronicle of Kashmir), the Singhasan Battisi (a collection of thirty-two stories of the throne), the Panchatantra, and a number of other Sanskrit works were translated into Persian under imperial patronage. The Ain-i-Akbari lists a substantial number of translations prepared under Akbar’s orders. The translation movement was closely associated with the religious and cultural policies of Akbar, and it represented a sustained effort to bring the literary heritage of India into the Persianate literary system of the Mughal court.

Religious, Scientific, and Vernacular Literature

The Mughal period produced an extensive body of religious literature in Persian, Arabic, and the Indian vernaculars. The ulama of the period produced extensive commentaries, juridical manuals, biographical dictionaries, and devotional works in Persian and Arabic. The Sufi orders maintained a substantial body of hagiographical and mystical writing, including the Malfuzat of the Chishti, Naqshbandi, and other Sufi masters, the Tazkirat al-Awliya of the Persian Sufi tradition, and the various manqabat and qawwali texts of the Sufi devotional tradition. The Shia religious literature of the period, including the maqtal and marsiya traditions, was substantial, particularly under the Shia-sympathising courts of the later Mughals.

The Hindu religious establishment produced the great devotional poetry of the Bhakti period, including the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas in Awadhi, the Sur Sagar of Surdas in Braj Bhasha, the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi, the Padmavati of the Braj tradition, the Ramayana adaptations in the various Indian vernaculars, and a substantial body of bhakti poetry in the various South Indian languages. The Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth (later Guru Granth Sahib), was compiled in 1604 by Guru Arjan and includes compositions in Punjabi, Braj, and several other North Indian languages; it is one of the foundational texts of the Sikh religious tradition. The Gatha Saptasati and the Gatha Saptashati of the Buddhist and Jain traditions were also translated and circulated.

The scientific and technical literature of the period included the medical, astronomical, mathematical, and natural history works produced under imperial patronage. The Firanghi (European) physicians at the Mughal court, including the Jesuit and Armenian doctors in the service of the emperors, translated European works into Persian, and the dar-at-tibb (hospital) of the imperial household produced a substantial body of medical writing. The astronomical tables of the period, including the Zij-i-Jadid-i-Muhammadi of Ulugh Beg, the Zij-i-Shah Jahani of Shah Jahan’s reign, and various regional zij, were important for the practical and intellectual work of the period. The botanical and zoological work of the period, including the Hadiqat al-Hashish of the Mughal herbals, the natural history manuscripts produced for Jahangir, and the various pharmacopoeias of the imperial court, constitute a major body of Mughal scientific literature.

Sources

  • Muzaffar Alam, The Mughals and the Sufis (2012), chs. on literary culture.
  • Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (University of California Press, 2003), chs. on Persian and Urdu.

For the broader context of Mughal cultural life, see the Mughal culture overview. The painting tradition of the imperial atelier is treated in greater detail on the Mughal art and miniature painting page, and the religious environment in which the literary culture developed is examined in the Hindu-Muslim relations in Mughal India article. The court culture that patronised the literary life is treated in the entries on Akbar, under whose reign the Akbarnama and the translation movement were produced, and on the later Mughals, who presided over the final flowering of the Urdu literary tradition. The food and cuisine of the imperial household, which also depended on the multilingual skills of the kitchen and provisioning offices, is treated on the Mughal cuisine page, and the ceremonial settings of literary gatherings on the Mughal festivals and entertainment page. The administrative and bureaucratic context of the kitab khana, the maktab khana, and the daftar khana is treated in greater detail on the Mughal administration overview.