Epigraphy and Islamic Culture

Inscriptions of the Early Muslim Rulers of Bengal (1205-1494)

Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138320208
• eBook ISBN: 9781317587453
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Architectural inscriptions are a fascinating aspect of Islamic cultural heritage because of their rich and diverse historical contents and artistic merits. These inscriptions help us understand the advent of Islam and its gradual diffusion in Bengal, which eventually resulted in a Muslim majority region, making the Bengali Muslims the second largest linguistic group in the Islamic world.

This book is an interpretive study of the Arabic and Persian epigraphic texts of Bengal in the wider context of a rich epigraphic tradition in the Islamic world. While focusing on previously untapped sources, it takes a fresh look into the Islamic inscriptions of Bengal and examines the inner dynamics of the social, intellectual and religious transformations of this eastern region of South Asia. It explores many new inscriptions including Persian epigraphs that appeared immediately after the Muslim conquest of Bengal indicating an early introduction of Persian language in the region through a cultural interaction with Khurasan and Central Asia. In addition to deciphering and editing the epigraphic texts, the information derived from them has been analyzed to construct the political, administrative, social, religious and cultural scenario of the period.

The first survey of the Muslim inscriptions in India ever to be attempted on this scale, the book reveals the significance of epigraphy as a source for Islamic history and culture. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Asian History and Islamic Studies.

1 Epigraphy as an important source for Islamic history and civilization

These are the remains that point out to our past

Therefore look for the traces after we are gone.¹

Epigraphy in Islamic tradition

One of the most interesting intellectual achievements of Islamic civilization and its contributions to the science of historiography is its rich legacy of historical texts. This historical output is not limited to chronicles and books on history (such as the Ṭabaqāt [Biographical Dictionaries] of various writers),² but has assumed other forms, including inscriptions. Like most other modes of expression in Islamic culture, these epigraphs also reflect in their own ways the Islamic faith. The extraordinary number of epigraphs also underscores the important role that inscriptions played in transmitting Islamic culture. Inscriptions can be found not only on buildings, but also on textiles and rugs, metal and glass objects, ceramics and ornaments, not to mention arms, coins and seals. In some regions, a rich tradition of inscribing on stone existed even before the advent of Islam. Ibn Isḥāq, for instance, mentions a number of Syriac inscriptions which were unearthed while Ka‘ba was demolished for reconstruction when the Prophet was about thirty-five years of age.³ During the Umayyad period, Muḥammad ibn al-Sā’ib al-Kalbī (father of the famous early Muslim historian ibn-Hishām) took great interest in the Lakhmid stelae and funerary inscriptions that he found preserved in the churches in and around Kufa.

The use of archaeological materials for scholarly investigation is encouraged in the Qur’ān. The word āthār, which can be found in several places in the Qur’ān, is used in modern Arabic to mean archaeology.⁴ Archaeological findings offer many clues to the past; epigraphic studies reveal evidence of rulers who might otherwise have remained unknown. Thus we read in the chapter ‘Believers’ in the Qur’ān:

Do they not travel through the earth and see the end of those who had lived before them? They were more numerous than these and superior in strength and [ancient] remains in the land [where they had once lived]. Yet all that they accomplished was of no profit to them.

(40:82)

Use of inscriptions in Islamic architecture

Inscriptions have been used in Islamic culture since the formative period of Islam. The earliest Islamic inscriptions date from the first/seventh century. They became more common as architectural projects expanded in the Islamic world. It is difficult to imagine a building of the early period without some kind of inscription, as if without one, the building would seem to be incomplete or unfinished. As a result, epigraphic records and inscriptions are plentiful in terms of both artistic merit and historical information. Until the fourth/eleventh century, most appeared on the inside of buildings. After that century, however, inscription began to be used to decorate also the outsides of buildings. During this period, the cursive naskh and thulth, started to gain in popularity while use of the angular style known as Kūfī (angular) declined.⁵

While these inscriptions conveyed messages as text, their calligraphic expression and aesthetic elements quite often constituted a vibrant decorative appeal in an Islamic building. The use of written messages for architectural decoration may be described as a typical Islamic cultural phenomenon. In some buildings, the calligraphic panels are placed too high to be deciphered,⁶ suggesting that their aesthetic impact was more important than the textual message. In fact many early Kūfī inscriptions and some Bengali ṭughrā’ (a highly intricate and stylized form of calligraphy) inscriptions from the Sultanate period in Bengal are almost indecipherable, again suggesting that aesthetics were more important than content. For those regions influenced by Shi‘ism, this development may to some extent have been inspired by its mystical tendency, especially the belief that a hierarchy of knowledge and spiritual development obtains among people so that not all inscriptions may or should be read by ordinary viewers. In a number of Islamic inscriptions, letters are easily confused and uncertainties are created where the logic of the pattern of ornamentation takes precedence over legibility.⁷

However, it is also probable that with many inscriptions, some kind of historical intent was there from the very beginning. Indeed, some inscriptions were intended to be read in the future, perhaps by scholars, or, more particularly, by historians. It is also possible that, being accustomed to the Kūfī style, educated Muslims were quite comfortable with the intricacies of Kūfī patterns, more so than with the cursive styles (like naskh) that we today consider easier. Kūfī script enjoyed a higher status than cursive writing in those days. The selection of an appropriate place for an inscription on a monument was also important, since those parts of the monuments that were most easily seen best served the purpose.

In spite of the great importance that Islam attached to reading, writing and learning, the majority of the rural population in much of the Muslim world remained illiterate. However, the viewing of religious inscriptions, especially Qur’ānic ones, was still a source of baraka (blessings). For the ordinary literate person, being able to recognize a text, e.g. the Throne Verse from the Qur’ān (2:255) or sayings of the Prophet on the virtues of building a masjid, was the important thing, rather than being able to decipher the text accurately and completely. Quite a few inscriptions therefore served an iconographic function, in place of the figurative imagery used in other traditions. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Islamic inscriptions can be called informative in that they provide some simple information such as the date of construction, the kind of structure, the name of the personage by and for whom it was built, etc. Another common feature is certain reiterated formulas that recur in many Islamic inscriptions, in some cases repeated interminably. Since most of these formulas are phrases of religious import, they consciously reflect the dominant ‘meaning’ or ‘message’ with which the monument is intended to be associated.

Emergence of Islamic epigraphy

Inscriptions are found everywhere in the Muslim world from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indonesian archipelago. They were of sufficient interest to draw occasional notices by Muslim historians and writers from quite an early period. Al-Jahshiyāri (d. 331/942), for instance, records a number of Arabic inscriptions on the gates of Acre and Sidon as well as on a treasury building in Azarbayjan.⁸ Ibn al-’Athīr tells us that in 630 (1232–1233), he saw in the court of the congregational mosque of Mosul a stone slab with an inscription which contained useful information about the extension of the mosque during the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Mahdī.

Later, fourteenth and fifteenth century Arab scholars, such as Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1441) and Taqī al-Dīn al-Fāsī (775–832/1374–1428; taught at the famous Bengali seminary in Makkah, al-Madrasa al-Sulṭāniyyah al-Ghiyāthiyyah al-Bangāliyyah) studied inscriptions as an important source for regional history. Al-Fāsī’s work was more methodical in dealing with the epigraphs of Makkah as he surveyed the architectural remains of this ancient city and deciphered their inscriptions. He crosschecked the dates appearing in the epigraphic texts with other historical sources to substantiate in a remarkably accurate way his findings about the history of Makkah.⁹ Still, the credit for making the study of inscriptions as a distinct discipline goes to Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī al-Shībī¹⁰ (779–837/1378–1433). His meticulous study of Makkan tombstones and stelae established for the first time a remarkably and unprecedentedly high standard for scholarly epigraphic study. He can truly be considered the father of epigraphy (

). Al-Fāsī used epigraphic evidence to fill the gaps in historical narratives while compiling his monumental work on the history of Makkah; al-Shībī looked at the inscriptions for their own sake, a strictly epigraphic approach. Not only did he painstakingly decipher a great number of tombstones in the graveyard of al-Ma‘lā (popularly also known as al-Mu‘allā), he also recorded such basic information as style of script, date, etc., exactly as a modern epigraphist would do.

However, approaching Islamic inscriptions in a systematic way with an academic interest began in earnest in the late nineteenth century, when Islamic epigraphy saw some of its rules codified as a result of the dedicated efforts of the famous Swiss orientalist Max Van Berchem (1863–1923), who can be regarded as the pioneer of the science of modern Islamic epigraphy in this age. He established research methodology for the study of Arabic inscriptions, not only as an art form, but also as a scholarly field of considerable importance for Oriental studies in the fields of language, history, art and architecture. Instead of just deciphering, reading and translating inscriptions, a work of considerable skill by itself, he established the methodology of analysing each inscription in its cultural and historical context, often culminating in a whole essay covering its particular time and space as well as the biographical details of the names appearing in the epigraphic text. His pioneering works, such as Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum,¹¹ certainly paved the way for establishing Islamic epigraphy as a science. Soon after his work, the monumental task of cataloguing the Islamic inscriptions began with the publication of the Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe in 1931. More than 8,000 inscriptions were edited in the first sixteen successive volumes of Répertoire (Cairo, 1931–1964) alone, which covered the first eight centuries, and the effort continues to this day. In spite of the fact that Répertoire remains incomplete in a number of ways, partly because of the discoveries of a number of new inscriptions that came into light after its publication, it can still be considered one of the most useful inventories and the only existing attempt at a systematic grouping of Islamic inscriptions by year and in an approximately geographical order. Scholars such as Tychsen, Reinaud, J. J. Marcel, George C. Miles, S. Flury, Gaston Wiet, E. Herzfeld, A. Grohmann, Jean Sauvaget, Moritz Sobernheim, E. Lévi-Provençal, and J. Sourdel-Thomine have contributed greatly in the field in Western languages. On the other hand, Ḥasan Mohammed al-Hawary, Ibrahim Jum‘a, Hasan al-Basha, Zaki Muhammad Hasan and Abder Rahman Fahmy and many others have contributed much in the Arabic language. A number of valuable works have also been rendered in other languages of the Islamic world, particularly in Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Bengali, Pushtoo, Bahasa Malay and Bahasa Indonesia.

Importance of Islamic epigraphy

Almost every inscription, whether on a milestone, frieze or tombstone, contains useful information. The inclusion of inscribed panels was and remains so common that it is difficult to imagine a building in an Islamic culture without one. In miniature painting, buildings are often shown decorated with inscribed panels. Architectural inscriptions are often large enough to catch the viewer’s attention; in this way they interact directly with the aesthetics of their surroundings. The horizontal inscriptional band on the kiswa (the decorated black cloth used to veil the Ka‘ba) as well as ṭirāz (a highly stylized form of embroidered writing on early Islamic textiles) may well have influenced and been influenced by architectural epigraphy.¹²

In many cases when a region came under Islamic rule or influence, for everyday use the local language was often retained, but Arabic was the official, religious, educational and literary medium. In Central and South Asia, Persian was used in the royal courts, but Arabic remained the language of religion and therefore the lingua franca among Muslims. Islamic inscriptions across this vast land used both Arabic and Persian. Rulers used Persian, even though many came from a Turko-Afghan background and some spoke Turkic dialects. In South Asia, inscriptions in Turkish are rare since the conquerors hardly ever used that language for writing. Out of the Indian languages, Sanskrit was used in rare cases both for numismatic and epigraphic purposes. The first coin issued by Ikhtiyār al-Dīn M...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Sigla
• Note on transliteration
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: epigraphy of Muslim Bengal
• 1 Epigraphy as an important source for Islamic history and civilization
• 2 The diffusion of Islam in Bengal and the articulation of a new order
• 3 Nature, aesthetic perception and mysticism: spiritual dimensions of the Islamic inscriptions of Bengal
• 4 Worldly authority and paradisiacal ambition: diversity of titles in the Islamic inscriptions of Bengal
• 5 Early Islamic inscriptions
• 6 Inscriptions of the Sultanate period
• Bibliography
• Index