Indo-Persian culture
Encyclopedia
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
, and in particular, into North India
North India
North India, known natively as Uttar Bhārat or Shumālī Hindustān , is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage...
and modern-day Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
.
Persian influence was first introduced to the subcontinent by Muslim rulers, especially with the Delhi Sultanate
Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate is a term used to cover five short-lived, Delhi based kingdoms or sultanates, of Turkic origin in medieval India. The sultanates ruled from Delhi between 1206 and 1526, when the last was replaced by the Mughal dynasty...
from the 13th century, and in the 16th to 19th century the Mughal Empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
.
Persian was the official language of the Delhi Sultanate
Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate is a term used to cover five short-lived, Delhi based kingdoms or sultanates, of Turkic origin in medieval India. The sultanates ruled from Delhi between 1206 and 1526, when the last was replaced by the Mughal dynasty...
, the Mughal Empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
s and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
who spoke Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
as their mother tongues. The Mughals
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
were also from Persianized Central Asia, but spoke Chagatai Turkic
Chagatai language
The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century...
as their first language at the beginning, before eventually adopting Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of north India. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The influence of these languages on Indian apabhramsha
Apabhramsha
Apabhraṃśa is a term used by Sanskrit grammarians since Patañjali to refer to dialects that deviate from the norm of Sanskrit grammar. The term in Sanskrit literally means "corrupt" or "non-grammatical language". It is used as a cover term for the dialects forming the transition between the late...
s led to a vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
that is the ancestor of today's Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, and Hindustani
Hindustani language
Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan. It is also known as Hindustani , and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta...
.
In contemporary India and Pakistan
Indo-Persian culture has helped produce certain composite traditions within the subcontinent that survive to this day, of which the Urdu language and literature is notable. The legacy of Indo-Persinate culture moreover can also be seen in much of the Mughal architecture within LahoreArchitecture of Lahore
The Architecture of Lahore reflects the history of Lahore and is remarkable for its variety and uniqueness. There are buildings left from the centuries ago rule of the Mughal Dynasty, the Sikh Empire, as well as from the era of the British Raj, whose style is a mixture of Victorian and Islamic...
, Delhi and Agra, latterly of which the Taj Mahal is world renowned. Indian classical music also owes much, including some ragas and instruments, to the Persian culture. In many ways, the absorption and assimilation of Persian or Persianate culture within India may be compared to the gradual (if sometimes problematic) absorption of English, British or Western culture generally of which the English language is perhaps the most notable and controversial within both India and Pakistan today. The influence of Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
moreover may be seen in the considerable proportion of loan words absorbed into the vernaculars of the north and north-west of the subcontinent including Punjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Marathi, Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, Kashmiri
Kashmiri language
Kashmiri is a language from the Dardic sub-group and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir...
and Pashto.
History
With the presence of MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
culture in the region in the Ghaznavid period, Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
and Uchh were established as centers of Persian literature
Persian literature
Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
. Abu al-Faraj Runi and Masud Sad Salman (d. 1121) were the two earliest major Indo-Persian poets based in Lahore. The earliest of the "great" Indo-Persian poets was Amir Khusrao (d. 1325) of Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, who has since attained iconic status within the subcontinent
Subcontinent
A subcontinent is a large, relatively self-contained landmass forming a subdivision of a continent. By dictionary entries, the term subcontinent signifies "having a certain geographical or political independence" from the rest of the continent, or "a vast and more or less self-contained subdivision...
as, among other things, the "father" of Urdu literature.
The Delhi sultanate and the Mughal era
Indo-Persian culture and to varying degrees also Turkic culture flourished side-by-side during the period of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The invasion of Babur in 1526, the end of the Delhi Sultanate, and the establishment of what would become the Mughal EmpireMughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
would usher the golden age of Indo-Persian culture with particular reference to the art and architecture of the Mughal era.
The Mughal Era to the British Raj
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
: Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
persisted as the language of the Mughal regime up to and including the year 1707 which marked the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb, generally considered the last of the "Great Mughals". Thereafter, with the decline of the Mughal empire, the 1739 invasion of Delhi by Nadir Shah and the gradual growth of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an power within the subcontinent, Persian or Persianate culture commenced a period of decline although it nevertheless enjoyed patronage and may even have flourished within the many regional "empires" or kingdoms of the subcontinent including that of the Sikh "Maharaja" Ranjit Singh (r. 1799-1837).
Persian as a language of governance and education was abolished in 1839 by the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the last Mughal emperor Bahadhur Shah Zafar, even if his was rule was purely symbolic or ceremonial, was overthrown in 1857 by the British.
Further, C.E. Bosworth wrote about the Central Asian's Persian (Tajiks->Ghurids
Ghurids
The Ghurids or Ghorids were a medieval Muslim dynasty of Iranian origin that ruled during the 12th and 13th centuries in Khorasan. At its zenith, their empire, centred at Ghōr , stretched over an area that included the whole of modern Afghanistan, the eastern parts of Iran and the northern section...
) influence on India:
"...The sultans were generous patrons of the Persian literary traditions of Khorasan, and latterly fulfilled a valuable role as transmitters of this heritage to the newly conquered lands of northern India, laying the foundations for the essentially Persian culture which was to prevail in Muslim India until the 19th century..."
After the British Raj
Given that the Mughals had historically symbolized Indo-Persian culture to one degree or another, the overthrow of Bahadhur Shah Zafar and the institution of the British Raj in 1858 may be considered as marking the end of the Indo-Persian era, even if, after 1857, Persian would still retain an audience and even produce commendable literature such as the philosophical poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938).See also
- Indo–Iranian relations
- Ancient India and Central Asia
- Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinentMuslim conquest in the Indian subcontinentMuslim conquest in South Asia mainly took place from the 13th to the 16th centuries, though earlier Muslim conquests made limited inroads into the region, beginning during the period of the ascendancy of the Rajput Kingdoms in North India, from the 7th century onwards.However, the Himalayan...
- Hindi-Urdu controversyHindi-Urdu controversyThe Hindi–Urdu controversy is an ongoing dispute—dating back to the 19th century—regarding the establishment of a single standard language in certain areas of north and northwestern India; while the debate was officially settled by government order in 1950, some resistance remains...
- Partition of IndiaPartition of IndiaThe Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...
- Iran–Pakistan relations
- Turko-Persian culture
- Greater Persia
- PersianizationPersianizationPersianization or Persianisation is a sociological process of cultural change in which something non-Persian becomes Persianate. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes linguistic assimilation...
- Persianate society
- Hinduism in IranHinduism in Iran-Hindu based Organisations in Iran prior to 1979:Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, some Hindu-based missions such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and Transcendental meditation, had locations in Iran. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada traveled to Tehran in March 1975...
- Hinduism and IslamHinduism and IslamHindu – Islamic relations began when Islamic influence first came to be felt in the Indian subcontinent during the early 7th century. Hinduism and Islam are two of the world’s three largest religions...
Further reading
- Cole, Juan R.I.Juan ColeJohn Ricardo I. "Juan" Cole is an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on...
"Iranian Culture and South Asia, 1500-1900". in: Keddie, Nikki; Matthee, Rudolph P. (ed.). (2002). Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295982063. pp.15-35. - Kirmani, Waris. Dreams Forgotten: An Anthology of Indo-Persian Poetry. (Aligarh, 1984)
- Nabi Hadi. Dictionary of Indo-Persian Literature. (New Delhi, 1995)
- Chopra, R.M. Indo-Iranian Cultural Relations Through The Ages. Iran Society, 2005.