Introduction
In 1974, John F. Richards noted, ‘Muslim expansion into South Asia is one of the most important and prolonged instances of cultural encounter to be found in world history’.Footnote 1 Considerably more is known today about the processes of Muslim expansion in the subcontinent than when these words were written, over thirty years ago. However, much of the scholarship on the spread of Islam is from the vantage point of Muslim courts and the Persian literature they produced; alternatively, it examines the process of Islamization only on a large scale. In this article I adopt a different approach, one that is microhistorical. Relying primarily on a single text, I explore how an Indian Muslim gentry community represented their past and articulated their present identity. The text is the Kyamkhan Rasa (henceforth KKR), composed between c. 1630 and 1655 at Fatehpur, a town in the Shekhavati region of northern Rajasthan.Footnote 2 Its author Nyamat Khan used the pseudonym Jan Kavi in writing this poem in Braj Bhasa, the literary language of Hindi that covers the history of his lineage, the Kyamkhanis, so named after the ancestor who is supposed to have converted to Islam in the fourteenth century.Footnote 3
By the late sixteenth century, the Kyamkhanis were a well-established community with two main branches. The senior branch was entrenched in the town of Fatehpur (in modern Sikar district, Rajasthan), founded c. 1450 by Fateh Khan, the senior grandson of Kyam Khan, the founder of the clan.Footnote 4 A junior branch had been established in the nearby town of Jhunjhunu (in modern Jhunjhunu district) by Kyam Khan's second son.Footnote 5 Other relatives were settled in various places in the vicinity.Footnote 6 The community presumably also included the descendants of Kyam Khan's brothers, two of whom are also said to have become Muslims.Footnote 7 Although there were frictions within the group at times, the KKR portrays the Kyamkhanis as generally cooperating with each other, especially when faced with an outside threat.
The Kyamkhanis were important enough in their corner of the Mughal empire to have their presence noted in Ain-i Akbari, the official report compiled by Abu'l Fazl in the 1590s. In his statistical survey of the territories under imperial control, Abu'l Fazl sometimes provided figures that related to military matters, along with information on revenue and the like. He listed the Kyamkhanis as the main gentry community of Fatehpur and Jhunjhunu, and one of three communities in Nahar (modern Jhunjhunu district, to the north-east of Jhunjhunu city). We also learn that Fatehpur and Nahar both had 500 horsemen and 2,000 foot soldiers apiece, whereas Jhunjhunu had 2,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry; all three towns had stone forts.Footnote 8 These numbers represent the militia troops under Kyamkhani command, demonstrating that they were a formidable power at the locality level.Footnote 9 Their military strength was a reflection of their dominant position as controllers of land and its income in this small section of northern Rajasthan.
The family history of the Kyamkhanis provides us with an unusual glimpse into the self-conceptions and memories of an Indian Muslim warrior group who were moderately successful, a strata of early modern South Asian society that we seldom have the opportunity to study first-hand. I begin my analysis by looking at two narratives that tell the story of how their forefather became a Turk—that is, a Muslim—and then proceed to consider the significance of political allegiance and patron-client ties in motivating conversion to Islam in the pre-Mughal era. I also explore the seventeenth-century political and literary contexts which the author of KKR inhabited and the reasons for his choice of Braj Bhasa as the medium of poetic expression. The final section of the article explores the numerous Rajput aspects of Kyamkhani identity and rhetoric in the KKR, focusing on their genealogy and alleged heroic actions. By revealing that Indian Muslims could be strongly embedded in their regional societies and cultures even while participating in the cosmopolitan world of the Mughal empire, this seventeenth-century text suggests that local affiliations were, by no means, eradicated or weakened by an allegiance to Islam, with its more global reach. By foregrounding other aspects of Kyamkhani identity more forcefully, it also reminds us that religion is but one of many attributes that comprise a sense of self.
How Karamcand Became a Turk: Narratives of Conversion
The change in faith and fortunes resulting from Kyam Khan's conversion was perceived as sufficiently significant that his descendants adopted his name and thereby created a new social identity for themselves. I, therefore, begin my analysis with a summary of the KKR's account of this momentous event.
One day the young Karamcand goes hunting in the forest with a large group of people. Engrossed in their search of animals, the others wander far off. The tired young boy sits down under the shade of a tree and promptly falls asleep. Meanwhile, the sultan of Delhi, Firuz Shah [Tughluq] is also hunting in that forest and comes upon the young boy sleeping. It is an astonishing sight—Karamcand is enveloped in a cool, deep shade, even though it is high noon and no other trees around cast any shadow. The Delhi sultan—usually called patsah or emperor in this text—summons his companion Saiyid Nasir, who agrees that the boy must be a great being. But when they awaken the boy, they are perplexed to discover that he is a Hindu. Since Hindus have no miraculous powers (karamat), how had the boy obtained such a boon? The Saiyid surmises that he would adopt the path of the Turk (i.e., become a Muslim) in the end.
Firuz Shah renames the boy Kyam Khan and takes him back to Hisar. When Karamcand's father arrives in Hisar, informed by messenger of his missing son's whereabouts, the sultan insists on keeping the boy. ‘Don't worry about him becoming a Turk’, the sultan reassures Karamcand's father, ‘I'll treat him like a son’. After receiving gifts from Firuz Shah, the father returns home.
The young Kyam Khan is entrusted to the care of Saiyid Nasir and, after many days of instruction, completes his studies. The Saiyid tells Kyam Khan he should now get circumcised, say the prayers (namaz) and embrace the Islamic faith (din). Kyam Khan hesitates, however, for his mind is troubled. His heart longs for the faith, he says, but he is worried that no one would subsequently trust (sak) him and his family—in other words, that their reputation or good name would be ruined. Kyam Khan's anxiety about his social standing after conversion concerned mainly the marriage alliances, for Saiyid Nasir promptly predicts that great kings of the future—including a Rathor Rajput king of Mandor and Bahlul Lodi, a Delhi sultan—will marry their daughters into his lineage. With his fear of being shunned by others alleviated, Kyam Khan takes the plunge and becomes a ‘pure, orthodox Musalman’.
Saiyid Nasir then takes Kyam Khan to Delhi, the capital city, and presents him to the sultan, who is mightily pleased. Some time later, Saiyid Nasir is taken ill and asks the sultan to regard Kyam Khan, more capable than his true sons, as his successor. Upon Saiyid's death, Kyam Khan receives his lands and goods and becomes a trusted noble at the Delhi court.Footnote 10
Several aspects of this description of Kyam Khan's conversion to Islam are noteworthy. The process begins with a miracle, a supernatural act that brings Karamcand to the attention of the Delhi sultan. Karamcand is no ordinary person, or he would not have possessed karamat, a word that can be translated not only as miraculous power but also as signs of nobility.Footnote 11 Both his future greatness and adoption of Islam are represented as predestined to happen, in other words. The initial stage of Karamcand's metamorphosis to a different persona is signified by the new name the sultan bestows on him, a name that is Turco-Mongol rather than Indic in origin. Kyam Khan is now nominally a Turk but he is not yet a Muslim. He must be educated first, presumably in the tenets of Islam, and he must also be circumcised. Unlike names, which had no legal standing and could thus potentially be altered frequently, circumcision was an irreversible sign of Muslim identity. It was a way of literally inscribing difference on the male body in a South Asian world where most men were not circumcised. Social markers of his new affiliation were not enough, however, for Kyam Khan also had to publicly profess the Islamic religion by reciting prayers. With that, Kyam Khan's transformation was complete, and he could be presented at the sultan's court in Delhi.
A second version of how Kyam Khan became involved with the Delhi court is provided by Mumhato Nainsi, the celebrated chronicler from western Rajasthan.Footnote 12 Nainsi, who long served the Rathor rulers of Jodhpur, included many genealogies and tales relating to the major warrior families of the region in his Khyat, compiled between 1637 and 1666.Footnote 13 Nainsi's account says nothing explicitly about Kyam Khan's conversion to Islam. Instead, he reports that Saiyid Nasir was a military governor of the Hisar region who, one day, raided the town of Daraira. In the aftermath of his attack, two baby boys were found abandoned, one a Cauhan and the other a Jat.Footnote 14 Given to Saiyid Nasir as an offering (nazar), the boys were first raised by his elephant driver, then by his wife, and finally by a Sufi teacher. Upon Saiyid Nasir's death, the now grown-up boys went to see the ruler of Delhi, Bahlul Lodi, who decided that the Cauhan was more capable than any of Saiyid Nasir's sons. The Cauhan was named Kyam Khan and inherited Saiyid Nasir's position at the court (mansab). After serving for some time as the military governor of Hisar, Kyam Khan decided it would be good to have a home base (thikana) of his own and he, therefore, founded the towns of Jhunjhunu and Fatehpur (in northern Rajasthan).
Although the two narratives correspond in a number of particulars, Nainsi is considerably less complimentary. Both texts identify Kyam Khan as a Cauhan from a place with a similar name (Dadreva/Daraira), whose political mentor was a man called Saiyid Nasir of Hisar (in Haryana, about 100 miles north-east of Fatehpur), a town created by Firuz Shah Tughluq. Because the Delhi sultan found Kyam Khan more capable than the actual sons, Kyam Khan eventually inherited Saiyid Nasir's position. Kyam Khan is, hence, similarly characterized as a talented young man whose merits were recognized by the Delhi political elite. But Nainsi imputes more dubious social origins to Kyam Khan, an orphan who would never have risen to prominence without the intervention of Saiyid Nasir. Nainsi's insinuation that Kyam Khan was an upstart is strengthened by two couplets (doha) appended to the prose narrative, which may have been drawn from a common pool of verses that circulated among Rajasthani bards. According to Nainsi's verses, Kyam Khan, who was first a Hindu and then became a Turk, lost stature as a consequence. He and his descendants were inferior, having been dependants (or slaves) of Saiyid Nasir from the outset.Footnote 15
The conflicting assessments of Kyam Khan's background found in KKR and Khyat, two chronicles compiled in almost exactly the same time period, reflect the different vantage points of their authors. Nyamat Khan, writing under the pseudonym Jan Kavi, was a member of the senior Kyamkhani lineage and thus had a vested interest in both portraying Kyam Khan as coming from a long-established noble lineage and in identifying his political patron as the Delhi sultan himself, rather than a mere governor. Nainsi was a Jain in the service of the Rajput ruler of Jodhpur, in western Rajasthan; both he and his father held the highest administrative post in the Jodhpur kingdom.Footnote 16 Nainsi's perspective is that of an outsider, whose allegiance was to a more powerful dynasty that sometimes came into conflict with the Kyamkhanis. The Kyamkhanis clearly were of some consequence in the region or their history would not have been included among the numerous narratives of ruling lineages in Nainsi's Khyat, which focused especially on western Rajasthan.Footnote 17 Given the incessant jockeying for position among warrior groups and the growing emphasis on aristocratic background in seventeenth-century Rajput culture, it is not surprising that Nainsi might denigrate the origins of a rival, if less powerful, family.Footnote 18 Although a lofty pedigree had always been an asset, it became increasingly important for Rajput lineages once they became incorporated into the Mughal empire, partly due to Mughal interest in their own ancestry but also because genealogy was a factor in the competing claims of the various branches of larger Rajput lineages and clans to political leadership under the Mughals.
The production of historical narratives like the KKR and Khyat in Rajasthan occurred in this context of growing insistence on noble descent and competition among rival groups in service to the Mughal empire. Although the writing of genealogies, martial tales and the like had been going on for some centuries, the seventeenth century witnessed an outpouring of historiographic literature.Footnote 19 Not only did the accounts of a single lineage or dynasty, such as the KKR, increase in number, but new genres of historical writing also emerged. One such genre was the khyat, a compilation of prose narratives and poems detailing the ancestry and accomplishments of one or more warrior lineages, of which Nainsi's text is the oldest surviving example.Footnote 20 The illustrious past of a particular group could be demonstrated in a chronicle or dynastic history, both in terms of its bloodline and its actions. That is, a lineage could assert the antiquity and seniority of its descent and also the exemplary conduct of its members by this means. Whereas the Mughal model of a flourishing historiographic milieu surely acted as a stimulus, Norman P. Ziegler has pointed out that the rise of historical writing in Rajasthan also resulted from the desire to establish the order of ranking between and among different warrior groups, in response to the new circumstances created by Mughal dominance. Consciousness of ranking, and the rivalry over it, were accentuated by the formality of the Mughal imperial system, in which the status of officers was hierarchically graded and enacted publicly at court.Footnote 21
The considerable effort that Jan Kavi expends on providing a lengthy and exalted genealogy for his family in the KKR suggests that Nainsi might not have been alone in disdaining their ancestry. I will discuss the Kyamkhani genealogy at greater length in another part of this article, but the salient point for the moment is that it forestalls any allegation of humble origins in respect to Kyam Khan. A long section of Kyam Khan's biography in the KKR can also be interpreted as a defence against the charge that he was a slave or dependant. Almost sixty verses are devoted to the conflict between Kyam Khan and an important figure at the Delhi court, Mallu Khan (also known as Iqbal Khan), a former slave/servant.Footnote 22 According to a recent history of the Delhi sultanate, Mallu Khan became influential in the 1390s, first as the power behind the Delhi throne and later in his own right. He had managed to achieve pre-eminence over his rivals only weeks before the Central Asian king Timur sacked Delhi in 1398 and continued to be a major contender for power after Timur's departure from India. Mallu died in battle in 1405, fighting against the forces of Khizr Khan (Khidar Khan in Braj Bhasa), who in 1414 would establish the Sayyid dynasty of the Delhi sultanate.Footnote 23
In the KKR, Kyam Khan rails against Mallu Khan's assumption of power on the grounds that a slave (cera) should never sit on the imperial throne. Intelligence (buddhi) varied according to heredity (literally, clan), he says, and no amount of effort could improve the baseborn (kul-hin). Moreover, no one could gain lustre through service (cakar) to a slave.Footnote 24 The ministers then offer the throne to Kyam Khan, since seven of his ancestors had previously been emperors of Delhi (alluding to Prithviraj Cauhan and others of the royal lineage based in Sambhar-Ajmer during the eleventh and twelfth centuries). But Kyam Khan declines, citing the fleeting nature of power and the sorrow that inevitably ensued from its loss. Jan Kavi thus seized the opportunity, when covering these events, to reiterate that the Kyamkhanis were of aristocratic stock in contrast to Mallu Khan's lowly origins. The poem's vehemence in denouncing slaves as unworthy of high political position appears somewhat excessive, since many of the most influential posts in the sultanate army were occupied by slaves and ex-slaves. Jan Kavi was writing during the Mughal period, when the employment of slaves in military service was no longer customary or approved; nonetheless, he seems unduly incensed over this issue unless we take into account Nainsi's accusation that Kyam Khan was not a free political agent but rather indebted or enslaved to Saiyid Nasir.Footnote 25
We have seen that the biographies of Kyam Khan presented in Jan Kavi's KKR, a poem in Braj Bhasa, and in Nainsi's Khyat, a work of prose composed in Middle Marwari, are broadly in agreement regarding his political career. Whereas they differ considerably on the question of Kyam Khan's social origins, both authors share in common a belief that family background and free/unfree status were major factors in shaping the quality of an individual. Much less concern for heredity is displayed by a third chronicler from the seventeenth century, who similarly covers events set in the fourteenth century. The Mirat-i Sikandari, a Persian history of the Gujarat region written in 1611, describes Saharan, the father of Zafar Khan and Shams Khan, who were the founders of the Gujarat sultanate and the smaller principality of Nagaur in Rajasthan, respectively.Footnote 26 Saharan was clearly no more than a well-off villager at best, coming from a community described as degraded ksatriyas whose ancestor had been outcasted due to his use of alcohol. Although the author Sikandar bin Muhammad denies that Saharan was himself a brewer of alcohol, an occupation regarded as extremely base, he does so in a perfunctory manner. Instead, he ends his discussion of Zafar Khan and Shams Khan by stating, ‘Whatever they were, they were men of high and noble spirit, whose charities and deeds of kindness to the people of God were beyond number.’Footnote 27 Perhaps because of the Islamic view that lordship was determined by God's will rather than being an attribute of certain bloodlines, Sikandar clearly does not regard birth as important as a person's character and actions. Jan Kavi's emphasis on aristocratic genealogy is thus more in line with other histories from Rajasthan composed in Indic languages than it is with a Persian chronicle such as the Mirat-i Sikandari.
The Sultan and Conversion in the Pre-Mughal Era
The figure of the Delhi sultan appears in both versions of Kyam Khan's conversion: although Nainsi identifies the ruler as Bahlul Lodi (r. 1451–1489), Jan Kavi asserts it was Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–1388). Scholars have uniformly accepted the KKR's chronology for Kyam Khan, placing his conversion in Firuz Shah Tughluq's reign rather than following Nainsi's time frame. The main reason for this consensus is the references to a Qawam Khan in Yahya ibn Ahmad Sirhindi's Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi. Footnote 28 This Indo-Persian chronicle completed in 1434 states that Qawam Khan was executed in 1419 for conspiring to overthrow Khizr Khan, the vanquisher of Mallu Khan and future founder of the Sayyid dynasty of Delhi sultans.Footnote 29 We are not given any information about Qawam Khan's early life; he first appears in the text in 1407, at which time he was commander of Hisar district, a locality Kyam Khan is associated with in both KKR and Khyat.Footnote 30 The identification of Qawam Khan with Kyam Khan is lent credence by the large number of verses KKR devotes to events of the 1390s and early 1400s, as well as its allusion to Khizr Khan's suspicions of Kyam Khan.Footnote 31 As during the period of Mallu Khan's ascendance, Kyam Khan is described in KKR as a strong, independent player who maintains his position at Hisar against the demands of Khizr Khan. Although the two are close for some time, Khizr Khan eventually comes to distrust Kyam Khan. One day Khizr Khan suddenly shoves him into a river, but Kyam Khan does not retaliate, believing that fighting with an emperor was a breach of righteous conduct (dharm ki hani). This ends the text's treatment of Kyam Khan's life, with the exact manner of his death left unexplained.
Whether Kyam Khan actually was converted at the instigation of Firuz Shah Tughluq is unclear, however. Even if we accept that the Qawam Khan of Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi was indeed Kyam Khan, the events covered in the Persian chronicle occurred several decades after Firuz Shah's death. KKR's chronology seems doubtful, moreover, as it states that Kyam Khan died when he was 95, an impossibly old age for a man described as actively engaged in politics and warfare up to the time of his death. What little is said about Firuz Shah's reign in KKR also appears to be inaccurate. The most likely scenario is that Kyam Khan rose to a position of some power during the turbulent decades after Firuz Shah Tughluq died, when the Delhi sultanate rapidly declined due to internal strife and external attack. If so, Firuz Shah may have been introduced into the KKR primarily because he could symbolically validate the political authority assumed by Kyam Khan.
Firuz Shah Tughluq was a logical choice for Kyamkhani historical memory to associate with their forefather, since he was the last legitimate ruler of the Delhi regime when it still held sway over much of North India. He was also well known to have encouraged conversion by offering ‘presents and honors’ to those who embraced Islam.Footnote 32 It was at the instigation of Firuz Shah, for instance, that the leader of the Khanazada ruling lineage of Mewat is said to have converted.Footnote 33 Additionally, there are several examples of recent converts or their offsprings who rose to high office at court while Firuz Shah was sultan. The pre-eminent position of vizier (wazir), for instance, was occupied by a brahmin convert from Telangana, formerly known as Kannu. He changed his religious allegiance along with his political loyalty, after the downfall of the Kakatiyas at the hands of Delhi's armies, and received his new name Maqbul from Firuz Shah's predecessor as sultan, Muhammad Tughluq.Footnote 34 Zafar Khan and Shams Khan, whose history was told in the previously mentioned Mirat-i Sikandari, were the sons of a Hindu convert who had attached himself to the young Firuz Shah. Once Firuz Shah ascended the throne, he promoted Zafar Khan and Shams Khan to the trusted post of cupbearer (sharabdari). Zafar Khan was later appointed as governor of Gujarat and eventually founded the sultanate of Gujarat, which lasted until 1573, whereas his younger brother, Shams Khan, established the smaller kingdom of Nagaur (fl. 1405–1536) in Rajasthan.Footnote 35
The patronage of Firuz Shah Tughluq had, in fact, elevated a number of young men to positions of authority, just as he was said to have done in KKR where Kyam Khan's encounter with the Delhi sultan radically altered the course of his life. Even in Nainsi's narrative, in which the governor Saiyid Nasir plays a major role, it is the sultan who gives Kyam Khan his new name and position—that is, his new identity. We cannot take these accounts at face value, of course, for more than two centuries had lapsed since the events that they ostensibly recorded. Yet it is significant that the pasts of certain Indo-Muslim elites—lineages that wielded military and political power—should be remembered as commencing with, or at least transformed by, their contact with royal authority. As described in KKR, Kyam Khan's conversion was motivated not by any conviction in Islam's superiority as a faith but by a political allegiance to a Muslim ruler. In return for the honour of Firuz Shah's favour, Kyam Khan demonstrated his commitment by adopting his patron's religion.
Indeed, on a couple of occasions Jan Kavi implies that the main difference between Turks and Hindus is the former's greater reliability as political allies. It is surprising, given its lengthy treatment of Karamcand's transformation into Kyam Khan, that the KKR has so little to say about the binary sets of identities—Hindu/Muslim and Hindu/Turk—that it has laid out. The word ‘Muslim’ (in its Persian variant, Musalman) appears only twice in the entire text, ‘Turk’ six times, and ‘Hindu’ eight times in all.Footnote 36 For the most part, Jan Kavi ignores religious faith and affiliation, choosing to instead emphasize the warrior identity of the Kyamkhanis. In this context of warriors supporting the military and political agenda of Muslim rulers, however, we do find a couple of pejorative references to Hindus. The Kyamkhanis, for instance, are said to have ignored Bahlul Lodi until he complained about their leader, saying, ‘is he a Hindu that he doesn't come to meet me?’ This impelled the Kyamkhani chief Fateh Khan to join Bahlul Lodi in his expedition against the fortress of Ranthambhor in eastern Rajasthan. Some generations later, Jan Kavi informs us that the Mughal emperor Akbar gave Kyamkhani Fadan Khan supervisory responsibilities over some local chiefs whom he didn't trust because ‘Hindus tend to go astray (in their allegiance).’Footnote 37
That Islam was appealing because it was the religion of the politically dominant has long been recognized as an important factor in its expansion. Richard M. Eaton describes this as the ‘Religion of Patronage’ thesis, which asserts that ‘Indians of the premodern period converted to Islam in order to receive some non-religious favor from the ruling class—relief from taxes, promotion in the bureaucracy, and so forth’.Footnote 38 Aside from the economic benefits, opportunities for social mobility are also thought to have encouraged conversion to Islam in environments where power was in the hands of Muslims.Footnote 39 Because entry into the circles of imperial power was difficult for non-Muslims during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, conversion could potentially open up avenues for political advancement for those who were dependent in some fashion on a Muslim lord. Many of those who became Muslims in the sultanate era were of humble backgrounds, because the Delhi rulers routinely sought to amass followers who did not have conflicting allegiances to other lords. Large numbers of slaves who then became Muslims were purchased by the sultans—the chronicler Shams Siraj Afif reports, for instance, that Firuz Shah Tughluq had 180,000 slaves, more than any other Delhi sultan before him.Footnote 40 ‘Social menials’, as Sunil Kumar calls individuals from low-status groups, similarly lacked ties to the nobility and were recruited as royal servants or clients,Footnote 41 typically converting in the process. There may have been an element of coercion involved in becoming a Muslim in such instances, but Islam was also attractive in this setting due to its social and political ramifications.
However, the Kyamkhani example reminds us that converting may not always have had positive social consequences. We cannot, of course, be sure when Kyam Khan became a Muslim—the process of conversion is often more informal and drawn out than described by the KKR, sometimes taking place gradually over centuries.Footnote 42 In the retrospective understanding of Jan Kavi, Kyam Khan's conversion is presented as a necessary prerequisite to his induction into the sultanate military service; as it enabled him to prove himself as a warrior, becoming Muslim can be interpreted as a political asset. If not in the Delhi sultanate period, then at least during the Mughal era when Jan Kavi was writing, conversion clearly also involved a certain amount of social dislocation. The anxiety over the reaction of his social peers that Jan attributes to Kyam Khan is a telling indication that changing one's religion could lead to social rejection. Only after Saiyid Nasir's prophetic vision assures him that great kings would give their daughters to his family in the future does Kyam Khan finally profess the Islamic faith, in the KKR. By itself, the conversion did not, it would seem, elevate the social status of the Kyamkhanis.
Whatever other motivations may have led warriors and their families to adopt Islam in medieval India, we should recognize that conversion could also have a strong political resonance. For the Kyamkhanis, their forefather's ‘becoming a Turk’ signified his worthiness as a warrior as well as his loyalty to a political patron. Thus historical chronicles like KKR and Mirat-i Sikandari, which concern themselves primarily with warrior elites, present quite a different insight into the process of Islamic expansion than does the Sufi literature. Numerous hagiographies recount the fourteenth-century migrations of Sufi leaders to areas along the trade routes radiating from Delhi to the east and south.Footnote 43 Muslim settlers often accompanied these Sufis as they established themselves in new areas, forming small communities of faith in overwhelmingly non-Muslim environments. According to this immigration or transplantation model, the cultural frontier of Islam was extended through the colonization of the hinterland by urban residents who were already Muslim. Although modern scholarship often credits Sufi teachers for the propagation of Islam in the subcontinent, KKR reveals another means by which Islam gradually spread into the countryside, as rural warrior households were recruited or lured by the Indo-Muslim political elite entrenched in cities and induced to become Muslims.
Despite Kyam Khan's transformation into a Muslim subordinate of the Delhi sultanate, the KKR describes him as residing outside the capital throughout most of his career. Only for a short while does he stay in Delhi, looking after affairs for the sultan who is away pursuing a military campaign. Firuz Shah Tughluq dies soon thereafter and is succeeded in rapid succession by two other members of his dynasty. Once the former slave Mallu Khan becomes dominant, however, Kyam Khan retreats to Hisar where he remains based until his death; in the next generation his descendants make the permanent move from Hisar, in Haryana, to the Shekhavati area of northern Rajasthan. Settled at some distance from the main centres of Islamic power and culture, the Kyamkhanis maintain contact with Delhi but also establish links with neighbouring warrior groups.
The simultaneous participation of the Kyamkhanis in both the world of the metropole and that of the hinterland can be best illustrated by the marriage alliances mentioned in the KKR. The first offer of marriage comes from Raja Jodha (r. 1453–1489), the Rathor Rajput ruler of Mandor and Jodhpur, in fulfilment of Saiyid Nasir's prophesy to Kyam Khan immediately before his conversion. However, Fateh Khan, chief of the senior Kyamkhani lineage at this time, cannot forgive Jodha's family for previously attacking Fatehpur and, therefore, refuses. Instead, Shams Khan of the junior Kyamkhani lineage based at Jhunjhunu accepts Raja Jodha's daughter. Soon afterward, the Delhi sultan Bahlul Lodi (r. 1451–1489) proposes an exchange (adal-badal) of brides, but once again the alliance takes place with a member of the Jhunjhunu branch rather than with the Fatehpur Kyamkhanis (supposedly because the latter had no unmarried daughters available). This marriage proposal too had been foreseen by Saiyid Nasir. Raja Lunkaran (r. 1505–1526), a Rathor Rajput from Bikaner, also offered a daughter; this time the Fatehpur branch of the Kyamkhanis follows through with the marriage.Footnote 44
The web of marriage alliances established by the Kyamkhanis thus included lords from Delhi and Rajasthan, Hindu as well as Muslim. The Kyamkhanis were, by no means, unique in straddling the marital boundary between Hindu and Muslim in this era, as a number of powerful warrior lineages did so.Footnote 45 But intermarriage is but one instance of how the Kyamkhanis, as Indian Muslims who lived in a primarily non-Muslim rural environment, partook in multiple, overlapping, social and cultural spheres.
Jan Kavi's Mughal Present
The loyalty to the supreme Islamic ruler of North India that KKR advances as a central feature of Kyamkhani identity may reflect the conditions of Jan Kavi's present time more than the reality of the past. During Jan Kavi's lifetime, the Mughal empire attained its greatest strength and extent, and the Kyamkhanis had prospered due to their ties with this large, powerful Muslim dynasty, just as Kyam Khan had supposedly benefited from his affiliation with the Tughluq dynasty of Delhi sultans.
The Kyamkhanis had not always been clients of an imperial power. In the many decades from the fragmentation of the Delhi sultanate in the early fifteenth century to the consolidation of the Mughal empire by Akbar in the late sixteenth century, the Kyamkhanis had instead operated largely as an independent group. In Jan Kavi's account of the six Kyamkhani leaders who spanned this period, one finds occasional references to the major rulers of North India such as Bahlul Lodi, Babur and Sher Shah. For the most part, however, the activities of the Kyamkhanis took place in a geographically circumscribed world bounded by Hisar in the north, Nagaur in the south-west and Amber to the east. Within this sub-regional arena, the Kyamkhanis participated in the armed struggles between more powerful warrior lineages, including the Khans of Nagaur, the Ranas of Mewar and the Rathors of Jodhpur, but their alliances constantly shifted.
The Kyamkhanis were one of many martial gentry communities recruited by the Mughal empire, enabling it to expand the size of the army and extend the boundaries of the empire. The incorporation of rural gentry also prevented unrest in the countryside, by aligning the main possessors of armed force with the imperial state. Among the warriors inducted into the Mughal imperial service during Akbar's reign was Taj Khan, of the senior Kyamkhani branch from Fatehpur.Footnote 46 The fact that the Kyamkhanis were Muslims of Indian origin is acknowledged in the suffix Khatria (from the Sanskrit word ksatriya or warrior) appended to Taj Khan's name in the Ain-i Akbari, probably to differentiate him from another Taj Khan of Central Asian origin. Taj Khan was by no means eminent—when the Ain was compiled: he held the rank (mansab) of 200, the lowest level of officer whom Abu'l Fazl named.Footnote 47 Even so, Taj Khan must have had some acquaintance with the cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic culture of Akbar's court, if only through contact with its major nobles.Footnote 48
Alaf or Alif Khan, Taj Khan's grandson and successor, achieved sufficient success that he attained noble status. Starting out at the rank of 700 at the outset of emperor Jahangir's reign in 1607, Alaf Khan rose steadily and by 1623 had reached the rank of 2,000.Footnote 49 This placed Alaf Khan well within the circles of the nobility (umara), defined as rankholders (mansabdar) at the level of 1,000 or above. There were approximately 350 such nobles in 1628.Footnote 50 According to the KKR, Alaf Khan fought in the campaigns against the Sisodiya ruler of Mewar led by Jahangir while he was still a prince, and in the Deccan expedition against Malik Amber. Alaf Khan was sent repeatedly to Mewat and to the Kangra hills to quell minor rebellions; additionally, he served in the Lakhi jungle area of the Panjab. He died in battle in 1626. Roughly a quarter of KKR is devoted to the exploits of Alaf Khan, the father of the text's composer, Jan Kavi or Nyamat Khan.
Daulat Khan II, Alaf Khan's successor, was never to rise as high at court as his father; he ended his career at the 1,500 rank.Footnote 51 Like his father, at one point, he held the position of warden (qiledar) of Kangra fortress. In the 1640s, he and his son Tahar Khan were involved in pacifying the city of Nagaur, after its lord Amar Singh Rathor was killed in Agra. The two Kyamkhanis also participated in the disastrous Mughal campaign of 1646–1647 against the Uzbeks in Balkh; the young Tahar Khan tragically died during it. Daulat Khan died of fever a few years later in Kandahar, which Mughal forces were attempting for the third time to recover from Shah Abbas II of Safavid Iran.Footnote 52 Tahar Khan's son Sardar Khan became the next head of the Kyamkhanis, and with this detail the text ends. Although Jan Kavi informs us that the main portion of the text, culminating in Alaf Khan's death, was completed in 1634,Footnote 53 the last section on Daulat Khan was evidently added after he died in 1653.
The geographical horizons of the Kyamkhanis had expanded enormously by the time Jan Kavi completed his history of the lineage. Rather than being confined to a small section of Haryana and Rajasthan, warriors from this community had fought as far afield as modern Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, as well as in the Deccan and in numerous localities bordering the imperial heartland. The social horizons of the Kyamkhanis had similarly grown larger, for Alaf Khan and Daulat Khan were part of the ethnically diverse Mughal noble class, along with Central Asians, Iranis, Afghans, Indian Muslims from other regions and Hindu Rajputs. A cosmopolitan artistic culture that drew from the elements of both Indic and Persian traditions flourished in the cities of seventeenth-century India, at least among the most elite circles. The extent to which this cosmopolitan culture penetrated smaller towns like Fatehpur and Jhunjhunu is unclear. Although scholars have studied the Mughal noble class as a whole, and select high-ranking lineages within it, little work has been done on individual gentry communities. Even if the more rustic gentry did not participate in many aspects of Mughal courtly culture, their leaders who held rank at the noble level had to attend court on occasion and must have had some familiarity with its artistic patronage.
In that context, it is significant that Alaf Khan's son, Jan Kavi or Nyamat Khan, composed poems in Braj Bhasa rather than Persian, the prestigious language of the Mughal court. The Persian language had been introduced into North India along with the Delhi sultanate, in the thirteenth century, and spread even more widely after Akbar made it the language of administration for the Mughal empire in the late sixteenth century. Even non-Muslims who worked as scribes or accountants had a working knowledge of Persian in seventeenth-century North India.Footnote 54 In Jan Kavi's day, Persian was without doubt the literary language employed by most educated Muslims in India. If Jan was not himself conversant in Persian, someone in his household or entourage certainly was, as he wrote a Braj Bhasa version of a Persian text (Amir Khusrau's Divalrani Khizr Khan).Footnote 55 It is quite possible, therefore, that Jan deliberately opted for Braj Bhasa despite knowing Persian.
Braj Bhasa was a newer language, used for literary purposes in North India primarily since the sixteenth century. Because it was derived from the vernacular, it had less cachet and less circulation than either Persian or Sanskrit, the subcontinent's two cosmopolitan languages. This was particularly true in the beginning of Braj Bhasa literary production, when most compositions were devotional poems about the god Krishna. During the seventeenth century, the language was also increasingly used for non-religious topics such as poetic theory or royal eulogies, in texts that were produced from a courtly context.Footnote 56 Among the biggest patrons of Braj Bhasa poets were the rulers of local Rajput kingdoms such as Orcha, where the poet Kesavdas flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and Amber, where Biharilal composed his famous Satsai at about the same time as Jan Kavi wrote KKR.Footnote 57 Another contemporary of Jan Kavi was Raja Jasvant Singh of Jodhpur, a powerful Rajput lord who produced works on rhetoric, the Bhagavad Gita, and metaphysics.Footnote 58
Kyamkhani patronage of Braj Bhasa literature thus followed the overall pattern of Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan and Central India. However, literary production at Fatehpur was quite limited, as it seems to have been restricted solely to Braj Bhasa, in contrast to most sub-imperial court settings where Sanskrit and other Indic languages also flourished. Jan Kavi himself composed about 80 poems in it between c. 1613 and 1644, many on romantic themes.Footnote 59 Two other Braj Bhasa poets from Fatehpur mention Kyamkhani Alif Khan and his successor, and likely received patronage from them.Footnote 60 Braj Bhasa compositions on religious themes were also produced in Fatehpur during the mid seventeenth century by Sundardas, a major poet of the Dadu sect whose printed works comprise over a thousand pages. Dadu (d. 1604) was a Rajasthani saint belonging to the sant tradition, which rejected formal religion and worshipped a god without attributes. Like the most famous sant leader, Kabir, Dadu probably came from a Muslim family of humble origins; his sect was soon taken over by high-caste Hindus, however. Although Dadu's teachings were to eventually spread to other parts of North India, the majority of his followers remained concentrated in Rajasthan.Footnote 61 Dadu's disciple Sundardas and the Muslim lord (nawab) of Fatehpur reputedly had a number of conversations, and we can assume that Sundardas received support from some Fatehpur notables if not the Kyamkhanis themselves.Footnote 62
Regardless of their leaders' status as Mughal nobles, the Kyamkhanis of the seventeenth century behaved like local lords in their cultural activities, patronizing a literature that was, at least originally, primarily regional and Hindu in character. The regional and Hindu nuances lessened over time, however, as Braj Bhasa literature increasingly found favour in a variety of courts, including those of the Marathas and Mughals. Despite the continuing prestige of Persian and Sanskrit, the seventeenth century was a time of growing popularity for Braj Bhasa and other literary languages based on Indic vernaculars. One reason for this phenomenon was the flexibility of Braj Bhasa, which could accommodate a range of linguistic registers from the highly Persianized to the highly Sanskritized, thus offering a common ground that could not be found in the radically different classical languages. The many translations of texts from Persian and Sanskrit into the north Indian vernaculars from the late sixteenth century onwards attest a gradual shift in literary preferences towards the Indic vernaculars, among which Braj Bhasa in particular came to assume a transregional role.Footnote 63
Nor was it unknown for Muslims like Jan Kavi to compose poetry in Braj Bhasa, although they were generally also accomplished in other languages. A prominent example is Abd Al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (1556–1624), one of the most powerful nobles at Akbar's court, who composed works in several different languages. The linguistic versatility of educated Indo-Muslims is displayed in Muhammad Afzal's Bikat Kahani, written in 1636 in a combination of both Persian and dialects of western Hindi, as well as in Mirza Khan's Tuhfatu'l Hind (c. 1675–1700), which contains a bilingual Persian–Braj Bhasa dictionary.Footnote 64 A few Muslims had written exclusively in Indic languages, like the early sixteenth-century Jayisi and others who composed Avadhi works that wove Sufi themes into Indian folk romances. These Sufi poets had lived in an era between empires, when regional states sometimes employed regional languages, not in Jan Kavi's expanding Mughal world where Persian was resurgent. Another well-known Braj Bhasa poet, Raskhan, was a former Muslim who had become a devotee of Krishna.Footnote 65
Even in a milieu where Muslims chose more and more to communicate poetically in an Indic language, Jan Kavi was somewhat unusual, however. Few other Muslim authors wrote only in an Indic language during the Mughal period, especially if they were not Sufis or converts to Krishna worship. Furthermore, his adoption of a pseudonym with both Sanskrit and Persian roots was a conscious act that effectively masked his religious affiliation, whatever its intended purpose. (Nyamat Khan constantly referred to himself as Jan in KKR, a name that was poetically useful because it rhymed with so many Braj Bhasa words.) Although the world of Indian Muslim elites was suffused by Persianate culture, as a poet Jan dwelt in a literary sphere that was distinctly Indic and much less cosmopolitan than Persian. The various Hindi languages were indeed utilized by the Muslim literati precisely because they evoked the feminine, the domestic and the rustic.Footnote 66 Jan Kavi/Nyamat Khan did so, I believe, because he wished to participate in the literary universe inhabited by his warrior neighbours, the Rajput lords of Rajasthan and its vicinity.
Accepting the Global/Affirming the Local
Jan Kavi, as best we can tell from the evidence of his literary products, was a man with a foot in two worlds. One was the universe of Islam, which stretched as far west as Morocco and as far east as island Southeast Asia during the seventeenth century. The other was a more localized realm within South Asia, where Braj Bhasa literature flourished and Hindus were in the majority. Jan acknowledged the reality that he was living in a society with two major religious faiths at the outset of his poem, when, as appropriate in a historical narrative, he begins with the origins of humanity. In two verses, he tells us:
This is a firm declaration of the fundamental unity of all mankind, divided though it is into two groups. Whereas Hindus and Muslims do not differ in origin or in essence, in Jan Kavi's view, they have become differentiated through their separate deeds (karni)—probably referring to religious activities or ritual acts.
The story of Karamcand becoming a Turk was a crucial moment for Jan Kavi's folk, the point at which they diverged from the mass of Hindus around them. In the remainder of KKR, however, little is made of this religious difference. The word ‘Muslim’ does not occur again, nor is there any mention of mosques or the sharia. Only three features in the bulk of the text give any indication that its author was a Muslim: the occasional reference to a supreme being (karta, paramatma), the assertion that a saint called Qutb protected Kyam Khan, and the glorification of Alaf Khan's tomb-shrine (dargah). Jan's disinterest in religion extends, by and large, to Hinduism as well. The elision of religion and religious affiliations may be partly due to the genre chosen by Jan Kavi, the rasa or raso, typically a tale of martial exploits. In the idealized portrayal of warriors found in martial narratives, it was their heroic actions that mattered and not their religious faith. Additionally, we should not discount the possibility that Jan Kavi deliberately downplayed religious differences because his main objective, as we shall see, was to present the Kyamkhanis as exemplary within a regional warrior culture shared with many Hindus.
Why then did Jan spend so much time in his narrative on the episode of Karamcand/Kyam Khan? From Jan's vantage point in the seventeenth century, this was the series of events that led to the formation of his unique community, the Kyamkhanis. Kyam Khan had set himself apart from others not only by adopting Islam but also by establishing himself as a trustworthy political subordinate to the Delhi sultan. Two of his three brothers also converted, we are told, and presumably supported Kyam Khan in his political career and military activities. Even in successive generations, the various lineages that branched off from the senior line settled near each other and often suppressed their conflicting interests for a common political good. Kyam Khan was the progenitor from whom they were all descended and he had defined them, not only as Muslims, but as capable and loyal warriors who were worthy of lordship, even if only as the subordinates of others. The KKR's extensive coverage of Karamcand/Kyam Khan was probably not meant to emphasize the Kyamkhani's Muslim affiliation so much as their distinctiveness as a community.
The Kyamkhanis were but a small clan, however, and Jan Kavi foregrounds their affiliation with a larger social category in the KKR. The identity that is most insistently proclaimed for the Kyamkhanis is that of Cauhan, a term that figures at least 136 times.Footnote 68 We learn that the Kyamkhanis are Cauhans as early as the fifth verse of this poem of 1,046 verses; and it is as a Cauhan that Karamcand identifies himself when Firuz Shah Tughluq asks who he is. Cauhan often figures as part of the name of a Kyamkhani ancestor, as when we are told that Daulat Khan Cauhan crushed the pride of the Nagauri Khan. Or Cauhan may be used in place of a personal name, for example, ‘after this victory the Cauhan attacked Chopala village’.Footnote 69 Although Cauhan is also a label applied to an exogamous lineage or other social unit within many communities, the primary reference is to one of the 36 royal clans of the Rajput class of Hindu warriors. Jan Kavi makes it clear that this is the meaning he has in mind when he states that the Cauhan clan (got) is the best among all kinds (jat) of Rajputs.Footnote 70 He also applies to the Kyamkhani leader Alaf Khan the epithet ‘lord of Sambhar’, harkening back to the twelfth-century Cauhan kings of the Ajmer region.Footnote 71 Whatever other allegiances and identities the Kyamkhanis possessed, in Jan Kavi's mind they were Cauhans first and foremost.
Jan Kavi faced something of a predicament in situating the Indic Cauhan identity of the Kyamkhanis within the larger framework of universal history with which he felt obliged to begin his text. Some Indian texts of the purana genre also begin with the creation of the cosmos, but Jan was here following a widespread convention in Islamic historiography. Akbarnama, the official biography of emperor Akbar composed by Abu'l Fazl, for instance, contains a similar account of mankind's origins that starts with Adam, the first human.Footnote 72 In the ninth generation after Adam, according to Jan Kavi's version of early human history, came Nuh, better known to the Western world as Noah. Just as in the Jewish and Christian traditions from which it borrowed, in the Islamic view of human beginnings, all existing races could be traced back to one of the three sons of Nuh/Noah. This conception has been labelled ‘Mosaic ethnology’ by Thomas R. Trautmann, who has shown how it inspired Sir William Jones and other Orientalist scholars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to classify the multiple varieties of people in the world into three categories with a shared origin.Footnote 73
In standard Indo-Muslim historical texts, we are told that Nuh's oldest son Sam (Shem) was the progenitor of the Arabs and Persians, among others. The middle son, Ham, was ancestor of Hind (Indians) and others including, in our text, the Uzbeks and Habshis (Abyssinians). From the youngest son, Yaphas (Japhet), were descended the Turks, the Mughals (Mongols) and the Chinese.Footnote 74 The KKR makes an unusual addition to this scheme, however. Classified under the offspring of Nuh's oldest son, Sam, are not only the Arabs and Persians, but also the Pathans and Cauhans.Footnote 75 In Jan Kavi's text, in other words, the Cauhans are represented as a category of people who go back to the same stock as the Arabs and Persians—the most prestigious of all ethnic groups in the diverse Indo-Muslim world. By this means, Jan Kavi deftly inserts an undeniably Indic social identity into an Islamic classificatory scheme, and links his regional society to the larger universe of Islamic civilization.
Jan Kavi does not stop there. Having grafted the Cauhans onto this Judeao-Christian–Islamic family tree, Jan Kavi continues on with a detailed line of descent. He enumerates 23 generations stemming from Nuh's son Sam—all men with Indian names, including some well-known figures from classical Sanskrit mythology like the sage Jamadagni and Parasurama, an incarnation of Vishnu. We finally arrive at the figure of Cauhan, the eponymous founder of the clan, followed by a few verses praising the Cauhan clan. Just as the (Hindu) god Indra is the most eminent among all deities, the moon among all stars, the rose among flowers, etc., so too is the clan of the imperial Cauhans superior among all kings. The Cauhans are compared to the wish-fulfilling tree of Indian myth, with its many branches. After a catalogue of these branches (sakh) of the Cauhan clan (bams) comes a list of the seven Cauhan emperors who ruled from Delhi, ending with Prithviraj (of the late twelfth century). Jan Kavi then returns to the ancestor Cauhan, first of the line, and names the 21 forefathers from him to Karamcand, who became a Turk and took the name Kyam Khan.
One of these last 21 progenitors is Guga, a folk deity whom both Hindus and Muslims used to revere.Footnote 76 Guga (or Goga) Cauhan is still widely worshipped today in the villages of Rajasthan, Haryana, Panjab and western Uttar Pradesh for his ability to control snakes. His supernatural powers are commemorated in a folk epic with many variants, in some of which he is described as fighting Mahmud of Ghazni, the famous Turkic king who made numerous raids into the subcontinent c. 1000.Footnote 77 Guga Cauhan is also called Guga Pir or Zahir Pir, and some devotees claim he became a Muslim.Footnote 78 Although the KKR does not highlight Guga's presence in the Kyamkhani genealogy, it later specifies the hometown of Mote Ray, Kyam Khan's father, as Dadreva. Since this is the place in Curu district (Rajasthan) where Guga allegedly lived, the connection between the Kyamkhanis and Guga Cauhan is pointed out a second time.Footnote 79 Guga is an appropriate heroic predecessor for the Kyamkhanis, for he too traversed religious boundaries but did not stray outside the regional culture of North-western India.
Despite a view of the human past that in its broad outlines was derived from Islamic tradition, we have seen that Jan Kavi chose to stress a more localized Indic ancestry for his community. To be sure, the elaborate Cauhan genealogy in KKR was embedded within a larger Islamic narrative of human origin that is expansive in character, encompassing the known races of the world. Jan Kavi demonstrated not only his awareness of the large-scale perspective of Islamic civilization, but also his acceptance of its basic premises. He was part of the global culture of Islam, yet at the same time he was most interested in affirming an identity that was meaningful only within a specific region of India, just as he had selected a language of expression that could only be comprehended within more or less the same area. In this regional culture, declaring that the Kyamkhanis were Cauhans of exalted lineage was simultaneously an assertion of their local origins and their high status as warriors. Jan Kavi's intent in KKR was clearly to establish the Kyamkhanis as equivalent in prestige and prowess to the leading warrior lineages of Rajasthan, Haryana and western U.P.
It was not only their descent from an ancient, distinguished clan that made the Kyamkhanis comparable to other Rajput warriors, but also the warrior spirit they reportedly exhibited. In its martial ethos and rhetoric, the KKR is virtually indistinguishable from the literature produced at Hindu Rajput courts during this era. Jan Kavi's text abounds with formulaic vignettes of warrior bravado. A Kyamkhani hero will issue a sharp warning to a troublemaker to mend his ways, and the scoundrel will refuse with great bluster. Once our hero marches out with his army, his adversary seldom stays to fight but instead runs away—no distinction is drawn in the text between cowardly flight and strategic retreat. This scenario is repeated dozens of times in a mechanical and predictable fashion. Similarly, if urged to withdraw when faced with severe odds in a battle situation, our Kyamkhani heroes never agree. ‘How can I shame Hammir and flee?’, are the words the poet puts in Alaf Khan's mouth, alluding to the celebrated Cauhan warrior Hammir of Ranthambor, who gave up his life in a valiant struggle against the Delhi sultan Ala al-Din Khalji around 1300.Footnote 80 Much is made of the ‘sense of shame’ (laj) or honour possessed by Kyamkhani warriors.Footnote 81
Dying in battle is the greatest virtue of all in the KKR, as in many Rajput works. This is one reason Alaf Khan receives so much attention in the KKR, for he lost his life in the Panjab hills while fighting for the Mughal emperor.Footnote 82 The fifty verses narrating his last battle highlight Alaf Khan's fearless and resolute nature: most of his army has been dispatched elsewhere yet Alaf Khan has no misgivings about confronting the enemy, even after his two wing commanders abandoned the battlefield. Over and over, the poet stresses that a warrior should be prepared to give up his life; he adds that the Supreme Being gives victory to the one who dies on the battlefield.Footnote 83 As might be said about a heroic Hindu warrior, Alaf Khan is described as ascending to the god Vishnu's heaven, Vaikuntha, upon his death. As a Muslim, however, Alaf Khan was buried in a tomb, which is extolled as a shrine (dargah) that could cure all one's ills.Footnote 84
By Jan Kavi's lifetime, there had been prolonged contact between warriors from the Rajasthani countryside and others whose origins were in regions to the west of India. In terms of dress, military equipment, or style of warfare, there was little to differentiate the Hindus and Muslims who occupied high posts in the imperial service.Footnote 85 An important value held in common was loyalty to the overlord, what Jan Kavi calls svam-dharma or service to the master.Footnote 86 Jan Kavi's employment of an Indic idiom in this, as in many other instances, is noteworthy. Although his immediate family certainly participated in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural courtly society, Jan Kavi consistently remains within the bounds of a cultural discourse that is distinctly Rajput in the KKR. Alaf Khan's last battle is a case in point. It is compared to the great war of the Kauravas and Pandavas described in the Mahabharata epic. So many warriors lay dead on the ground, it is said, that the fierce female deities (yoginis) gathering their skulls were bowed down with the weight—another frequent allusion in Rajput literature. Only one thing is missing that might be found in a Hindu Rajput warrior narrative: any mention of sati, the voluntary suicide of a widow on her warrior husband's funeral pyre.
This analysis of the KKR—the only ‘history’ of the family, produced by its sole author—leads us to characterize them as Rajputs whose Muslim religion led to slight deviances in culture from their non-Muslim brethren. Seventeenth-century literature from Rajasthan on occasion includes Muslims under the rubric of Rajput, although not the Kyamkhanis specifically.Footnote 87 Indian ethnographers working for the colonial census in 1891 also classified the Kyamkhanis in this way, stating that ‘It is difficult to distinguish them from the Rajputs of eastern Marwar because there is only a very slight difference in their looks, dress, and speech’.Footnote 88 The Kyamkhanis of 1891 would not share food or drink with ‘foreign’ Muslims, but Rajputs in some places in Marwar and Shekhavati would share a hookah and food with them. In other words, the Kyamkhanis not only acted much like Hindu Rajputs, but were regarded as akin to themselves by local Rajputs. A more recent ethnographic account notes that the Kyamkhanis have long-standing patron–client relations with the Bhats, a caste of genealogists who traditionally served the (Hindu) Rajputs, in another clear indication of their Rajput-like status in local society.Footnote 89
Like their Hindu Rajput counterparts, the Kyamkhanis were a community of warriors with considerable control over, and income from, agricultural land. The ruling lineages whose history was narrated in the KKR lost their lordship over Fatehpur and Jhunjhunu in the 1730s to the Shekhavat Rajputs, a branch of the Kachwaha clan.Footnote 90 However, Kyamkhanis continued to reside in the Shekhavat region, as well as in adjacent kingdoms such as Jodhpur—they numbered 28,340 individuals according to the 1911 census. Since Rajputana Agency (that is, much of modern Rajasthan with the exception of the Ajmer–Merwara territory) had a population of over 10 million, the Kyamkhanis were but a small, localized community.Footnote 91 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Kyamkhanis maintained their martial traditions by seeking employment in the army, police and as guards.Footnote 92 This differentiated them from other Muslim communities in Rajasthan like the Meos or Desawalis, who claimed Rajput ancestry but were engaged almost exclusively in cultivation.Footnote 93 Today, it appears that many, if not most, Kyamkhanis have left Rajasthan for Karachi and other places in Pakistan.
Conclusion
The KKR narrates the martial past of a warrior lineage. In common with many warrior tales worldwide, it sought to publicize the heroic deeds of members of the lineage, as well as their exemplary service to the ruler. A third feature of the KKR, its emphasis on an extensive and illustrious bloodline, reflected the genealogical concerns of its immediate milieu—the Rajput society of the Mughal era. More than any other social label, the Cauhan clan affiliation was accorded the most prominence in the KKR for it signalled the high status that the Kyamkhanis claimed within the local social order. Despite the embedding of the Cauhans within a larger Islamic understanding of humanity's evolution and the inclusion of a lengthy account of the founding father's conversion to Islam, the KKR manifests little interest in religious faith and only a muted sense of religious difference. The conversion episode, I have argued, was necessary to the narrative in order to explain the ethnogenesis of the Kyamkhani community—how they came to be differentiated from other warrior groups in their locality. It had the secondary purpose of demonstrating the depth of Kyamkhani commitment to the Muslim overlords who dominated much of north India.
The Kyamkhanis inhabited multiple social, cultural and political spheres concurrently, as mid-level gentry with entry into aristocratic imperial circles, as rural residents in a cosmopolitan culture centred on cities and as Muslims whose local peers were mainly Hindus, to give but a few examples. At times their many intersecting allegiances could come into conflict, as when the Kyamkhani leader Alaf Khan was dispatched by Jahangir, the Mughal emperor, to subdue Dalpat, the Rathor Rajput lord of Bikaner. Dalpat was on the verge of defeat when he sent Alaf Khan a request through an intermediary to cease his attack, reminding him of the numerous daughters the Rathors of Bikaner and Jodhpur had given to the Kyamkhanis in marriage. Thinking of these relationships, Alaf Khan should now protect him, Dalpat says, for who else could defend the honour of local landholders (bhomiya)? Alaf Khan heeds Dalpat's words and stops his assault, thereby rescuing Dalpat from harm.Footnote 94 This apparent disregard of imperial orders is glossed over by the text, which informs us that Alaf Khan later sent Dalpat to Jahangir, who received him happily; a surprising outcome in view of Dalpat's earlier transgressions. What this episode makes clear is that their local warrior loyalties were paramount for the Kyamkhanis, when push came to shove.
The Kyamkhanis differed from most elite Muslims in early modern South Asia in celebrating their Indian roots. Foreign immigrants, rather than Indian converts, were alleged to be the forefathers of most elite South Asian Muslims, an improbable scenario given their large number. The desire to link oneself genealogically to Arabia and other parts of the Middle East reflects the prestige of Islam's heartland, one of the side effects of the process of Islamization. That is, as the Islamic religion spread to various areas of the world, the culture of core Islamic territories such as Arabia and, in the case of the eastern Islamic world, Persia was increasingly held in high esteem and emulated where possible. Aspects of Arabic or Persian material culture that had nothing to do with religion—certain kinds of dress, cooking styles and architecture, for example—were disseminated widely, and adopted by many who did not accept the faith.
The expansion of Islam can, therefore, be analysed in much the same way as the more modern phenomenon of globalization, the accelerating movement of people, ideas and technologies, which is such a prominent feature of our current times. It too involved the migration of people, but more important was the transmission of values and practices that started out from a specific locale but came to be acclaimed as universal. The transmission was not always complete, of course, in the sense that some Muslim communities in South Asia and elsewhere maintained many local customs and beliefs. Lack of education in Islamic doctrine and norms is typically regarded, at least by modern reformist Islamist movements, as the reason why Indic social patterns and religious observances persist among some South Asian Muslims even today.
Yet the example of Jan Kavi suggests that the resilience of local, Indic identities may not have resulted solely from ignorance of the global culture of Islam. Although some members of the Kyamkhani community, comprised of numerous lineages, may have been uneducated and untravelled, that cannot have been the case for its senior lineage, whose leaders were part of the Mughal court circles. Moreover, Jan Kavi discloses his knowledge of Islamic traditions in his recounting of the descent of human races from the sons of Noah. In the past decade, social scientists have moved away from the view that globalization inevitably results in greater uniformity and instead begun considering the ways in which it can also reinforce local identities.Footnote 95 In a similar vein, scholars of South Asia might dedicate more attention to the diversity of local formulations that arose in earlier phases of the expansion of Islam, a diversity that is rapidly being erased today in the move to counter the globalization of Western culture with a monolithic Islamic alternative.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Rupert Snell for explicating several difficult verses in Braj Bhasa, and to the anonymous reviewer of this journal for his/her thoughtful critique. I am also grateful for the comments made by participants at the conference on ‘Expanding Frontiers in South Asian and World History’ held at Duke University in September 2006, and by my Austin colleagues, Susan Deans-Smith and Julie Hardwick.
