Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India

Abstract

This essay explores some of the ways in which gender identity and norms for manhood were important in the political and religious discourses of Mughal north India. A concern with the meanings of manhood ran through these discourses and their antecedents in the wider world of medieval Perso-Islamic political culture, constructing important and enduring links between kingship, norms for statecraft, imperial service and ideal manhood. The essay examines in detail the ways in which one high imperial servant in the early seventeenth century inherited, developed and reflected on these themes, and related them to his own personal experience. These definitions of elite manliness began to change in the later seventeenth century, and their connection with imperial service began to fracture, with the emergence of more complexly stratified urban societies in north India, and the development of an increasingly ebullient and cosmopolitan ethos of gentlemanly connoisseurship and consumption. The essay examines some of the normative literature associated with these shifts, and suggests that one of their consequences may have been to intensify the strains in Mughal service morale associated with the last decades of the seventeenth century.

Jahangir's Wine Cups: A Study of the Artistic Styles and Symbolism

“…Abd Elnabi Fakhr Alzamani was one of the most important poets; he visited India in 1017 and joined the court of Jahangir [7]. Generally, wine spread in India in the Mughal era because it was advisable to drink wine in cold weather [8]. Drinking wine also spread in the Mughal court before Jahangir.…”

“…Tastes were carefully graded. For example, quince and pomegranate provided the best relish with wine [8]. Other strong types of wine were also known, including those made of grapes and sugar cane [19].…”

Heirs and Spares: Elite Fathers and Their Sons in the Literary Sources of Umayyad Iberia

“…Researching masculinity means looking at the aspects of a man's social being that define him as a man: what Rosalind O'Hanlon, in her work on Mughal manhood, has called the "psychic and social investment" that sustains a man's sense of his gender. 43 This means considering issues such as what links a man to other men as similarly gendered beings, how masculine identity is expressed, and what roles and qualities are associated with it. It also means examining how patriarchal social structures and expectations both privileged and confined boys and men.…”

Debating Revolution: Early eighteenth century Sikh public philosophy on the formation of the Khalsa

“…25-46. adab (civility) has been well documented, 79 but as O'Hanlon points out, in late seventeenth century Delhi and other North Indian centres there was 'a complexly stratified urban elite, of greater and lesser amirs, lower ranking mansabdars and merchant households'. 80 The great households of Delhi were the main consumers of luxury commodities and building projects in the area and therefore they would have had personal relationships with merchant houses and bought goods directly from them. Merchant houses consequently would have competed fiercely for clients from Delhi's upper echelons and would have offered a wide spectrum of professional services to elite clients, from the sale of goods to banking and asset management.…”