Daily Dose of E. M. Forster

It has been quite some time since I have picked up and read some fiction, or rather, it's been ages since I've read a novel cover to cover. Since reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty there have been a few that I've started but abandoned halfway through, choosing instead a work of non-fiction (not all high brow history; Bossypants was devoured with relish). I'm not sure whether it's just me or maybe it's something historians experience, but the lives of imaginary characters doesn't captivate me the same way as the real life dead. There have been some interesting conversations that are coming to the forefront about the place of biography, narrative, and storytelling in history. I'm sure those who attended this year's American Historical Association are well aware of it and perhaps I shall be posting more on this in the coming weeks. But for now back E. M. Forster.

Given Smith's book was an ode to Howard's End, I figured I might as well read one of Forster's own books and I sure as hell wasn't going to read A Passage to India, and Maurice won over A Room with a View. As I began chapter two I came across a choice quote, which I feel speaks perfectly well for some quarters of academia, and one perhaps that Babur would have agreed with:

It was the land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for, and success was indistinguishable from failure.

Parental Guidance and Universal Truths

Sorry for having fallen under the stupor of negligence, but it has been a busy last month, what with eid, coming back from Pakistan, starting up school, and nervously typing away grant proposals. I was reading the Qabus-namah for my Persian advice literature course and in the very beginning of the introduction Kay-Ka'us b. Iskandar b. Qabus b. Washmgir states a truth as universal as one mentioned by Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy and one which I think transcends any cultural relativism: 

It is the nature of the time that no son desires the advice of his father because of the burning desire inside the young, which, due to their imprudent assumptions, [makes] them see their own knowledge as superior to that of their fathers. 

---  Qabus-namah, ed. Ruben Levy (London: Luzac & Co., 1951), p. 5.

Babur receives a courtier (often thought to be Babur advising his son Humayun) c. 1589

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian 

Research (1): Ghaznavids

I am currently in the midst of writing a term paper on the Ghaznavid ruler Sebüktegin (d. 387/997) and the epistle of counsel or pand-nāmah attributed to him. Compared to his son, Maḥmūd of Ghazna (d. 421/1030), Sebüktegin has never received much attention. As of now (2-Dec-11), he is yet to receive an entry in Encyclopaedia Iranica, as well as Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. Such is often the case with more famous sons, something Humāyūn* could probably attest to. Here is a working bibliography of some useful works for the Ghaznavids:

Bartol’d, V. V. Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion. 3rd ed. Translated by T. Minorsky and edited by C. E. Bosworth. London: Luzac, 1968.

Bayhaqī, Abū al-Faz̤l. The History of Beyhaqi (The History of Sultan Mas‘ud of Ghazna, 1030-1041) by Abu’l-Fażl Beyhaqi [Mujalladāt]. Translated by C. E. Bosworth and revised by Mohsen Ashtiany. Ilex Foundation Series no. 6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. 3 vols.

Bosworth C. E. “Early sources for the History of the first four Ghaznavid sultans (977-1041).” The Islamic Quarterly 7 no. 1-2 (1963): 3-22.

--------. “Mahmud of Ghazna in Contemporary Eyes and in Later Persian Literature.” Iran 4 (1966): 85-92.

--------. The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994-1040. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963. 

--------. The Later Ghaznavids: Splendour and Decay: The Dynasty in Afghanistan and Northern India, 1040-1186. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977.

Gardīzī, Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Ḥayy. The Ornament of Histories: A History of the Eastern Islamic Lands AD 650-1041 [Zayn al-akhbār]. BIPS Persian Studies Series no. 4. London: I. B. Taurus, 2011. 

Jūzjānī, Minhāj al-Dīn b. Sirāj al-Dīn. Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī. 2nd ed. Edited by ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī. 2 vols. Kabul: Kābul Puhani maṭbaʿah 1342/1963. English translation by H. G. Raverty. T̤abaḳāt-i Nāṣiri: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia. 2 vols. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp., 1970. 

Nāẓim, Muḥammad. The Life and Times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931. 

--------. “The Pand-Nāmah of Subuktigīn.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1933): 605-628.

 

*The second Mughal dynast Naṣīr al-Dīn Humāyūn, son of Bābur, father of Akbar. 

Maḥmūd receiving Abbasid robes of investiture, Illustration from Jāmiʻ al-tawārīkh c. 1315,
Edinburgh University Library, Or. Ms. 20, fol. 121r.

Scholarship (1)

Bābur remarked in his memoirs about his uncle Sulṭān-Maḥmūd Mīrzā something that I believe applies much too often to many academics, who perhaps under pressure from the Publish or Perish academic paradigm, produce articles and even books that would have benefited from deeper and broader research. Work that suffers, to use a metaphor, from having the teabag not steep long enough in the water.

He wrote that Sulṭān-Maḥmūd Mīrzā "had poetical ability and made a divan, but his poetry was weak and flat. He composed too much; he probably should have composed less” (Bābur-nāmah, tr. Thackston, Modern Library edition, p. 31). Annette Beveridge's translation is perhaps more brutal, but equally apt: "He had a taste for poetry and put a dīwān together but his verse is flat and insipid,--not to compose is better than to compose verse such as his" (AB trans, vol. I p. 46). 

Update: this article was brought to my attention by a Maghribist and I thought it germane to this post.

Lynn Worsham, "Fast Food Scholarship," The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2011; accessed online December 14, 2011. Available online: <http://chronicle.com/article/Fast-Food-Scholarship/130049/>

Muqaddimah

Welcome to all those who have randomly stumbled across this blog. It is intended to be a majmaʿ, or repository of sorts, of all things Mughal, or curious and delightful finds that may be of interest to a Mughalist, lay or trained. It's likely to reflect my random interests in Mughal history than necessarily more popular or pressing issues of Mughal historiography, and its likely not to be overly articulate as I tend not to be, but I promise to not adorn my prose like those I study. And so, as people often say, a picture is worth more than a thousand words I shall introduce a telling (and pertinent, considering the recent  and uneven spate of work on early Mughal India and women during this time period) one of Bābur seeking the advice of his grandmother, Esän Dawlat Begim, regarding the rebellious Ḥasan Yaʿqūb. Bābur said of her "Few amongst women will have been my grandmother's equals for judgment and counsel; she was very wise and far-sighted and most affairs of mine were carried through under her advice." (Annette Beveridge's translation of the Bābur-nāmah from Chagatay Turkish, vol. I p. 43). 

Morgan Museum MS M.458.18.
Artist: Sānvalah (fl. 1580s–1590s).

The image is from the Morgan Museum's website for their Islamic Manuscripts collection.