This next post will revolve around two of the great river-valleys of the world, both of which are under the thumb of Sri Lanka to varying degrees.
Watered by the Nile
Prosperity and population growth in Egypt were dependent on a well-organized central government capable of mobilizing the human resources of the land towards maintenance of the elaborate irrigation systems. This in turn allowed for the famously massive agricultural surplus with which Egypt had become associated throughout antiquity. However, most of the medieval rulers of Egypt prior to the Bakhtiyar failed to provide such a system. Accordingly, the population of Egypt and its material wealth remained vast relative to its neighbors, but in absolute terms declined dramatically.
Under the latter Heshanids, the government was largely corrupt and disorganized, and struggled to exert real authority over the landholders. Under the Khardi, the central government was perhaps well-organized enough, but it was devoted wholly to extracting value and had little interest in organizing the political order for the benefit of its subjects. This was exacerbated by the tendency of the large landholders to violently resist Khardi rule in a series of ineffectual rebellions that convinced the Khardi that only brutality would subdue the Nile valley.
Only the arrival of the Bakhtiyar reversed this trend. Although they came to Egypt as warlords, the coalition of Arabs, Eftal, and Tayzig who moved into Egypt had a strong interest in building up their new home as a base of power and wealth for themselves. Instead of ruling as absentee landlords, they had a direct stake, an investment, in the lands of the Nile. The government itself had similar interests - reviving the Canal of the Pharaohs, ensuring that customs taxes (for “protection”) were placed on pilgrims seeking to travel to Jerusalem, and ensuring that textile manufacture (far more lucrative than grain in this era) enjoyed state sponsorship. The subsequent conquest of the Bakhtiyar Mansarids by the Haruniya general Khayam ibn Mehrdata in 1288 led to its integration into a broader Near Eastern Empire in a form more prosperous than it had been in centuries.
Under the Haruniya, the population continued to increase dramatically, as elite investment in irrigation and trade continued to ensure general prosperity for the common, Coptic people. The Bakhtiyar, especially the Haruniya, were also exceedingly pluralistic - willing to patronize the Coptic Church and restore the Cathedral of St. Markos in Alexandria (with Hesanopolis disfavored and in terminal decline, there was little desire to return to the old Heshanid capital which had once been the seat of the Coptic Church). However, much to the dismay of the Coptic Church, the Bakhtiyar were equally willing to recognize and accept the Chalcedonian Church and the Nestorian Church, both of which had small minority communities within Egypt.
The population of Egypt was still majority Christian through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. That said, Buddhist temples and shrines enjoyed lavish government funding, and monastic communities were sacrosanct under the law. Shrines to Ohrmazd and Mihir were similarly given royal patronage, although the Bakhtiyar themselves were not deity-worshippers. This division might have seemed like a fault line which would lead to inevitable tensions, but by and large it did not. The reason for that, at least initially, can be traced to the enormous tolerance of the Bakhtiyar for Christianity, in sharp contrast to the Khardi persecutions and violence. After this memory faded, the economy was doing too well and prosperity was simply too general for rebellion to occur outside of periods of famine. And such rebellions were always easily put down due to the geography of Egypt, which made moving troops stationed along the Nile extremely easy. This contributed to a notion that the Bakhtiyar were essentially invincible, and given that they made no effort the harm Christians, rebellions gradually tapered off.
The Haruniya themselves, after securing Egypt from the Mansarids, based their ideology of state explicitly on Buddhism. To this end, they had gone to great lengths to cultivate a class of well-educated men and women versed in the Nowbahar and Theravada religious traditions within Egypt itself, who could form the backbone of the bureaucracy. To provide a basis for this school, they recruited widely from the Arabized Ifthal of Syria and the Tayzig monasteries. Yet these scholars, and the Haruniya themselves, were rightly regarded by the common Egyptians as foreigners.
For all this fair treatment, Egypt was never the center of the Haruniya dynasty. Although they had rebuilt the Lighthouse of Alexandria after its collapse in the early fourteenth century, and contributed to a number of major building projects since then, their attention seemed invariably drawn northward. Their heartland and their power was in Syria. Egypt was a colony for the three-to-four generations of Haruniya rule, before the Anarchy at Emesa. The various capitals of the Haruniya were not in Egypt. Iskandara was much too far from the military frontiers of Anatolia and the Caucasus. And yet over the centuries, a new class of educated Tayzig and Arab scholars and warriors had set up shop within Egypt, taking advantage of royal dispensation of land and the patronage of rural bahar (temples) to earn themselves a role as a new aristocracy within the region.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, it was impossible to remember an era when this aristocracy had not existed. And because of their tolerance, their relative competence, and their role in bringing wealth to Egypt, they were well liked even by the Coptic priests and common people. By the fourteenth century the major textile manufacturers and merchants of Egypt were also Buddhist. These professions were dominated by Arabs and Tayzig (who made up a disproportionate percentage of the urban population) and were linked to state patronage and thus to the Nowbahar sects. Thus when the anarchy at Emesa began, the economic and political power of Egypt was far more concentrated in the hands of the Tayzig and Arabs than the Coptic Egyptians.
The Anarchy at Emesa did not upend the fundamental political interests of the Haruniya state. The Ifthal and Arab nobles in Syria had interests that had not fundamentally changed since the collapse of the monarchy, and rallied quickly to Ildirim ibn Mansar, the Turko-Arab warlord who emerged as something between vizier and king after the anarchy. But the Egyptian Tayzig were not so quick to rally around the flag. They distrusted the Syrians and the Haruniya. The Syrians, after all, had been quick to agree to terms which left the Egyptians somewhat in the lurch after the Battle of Barim. It was a lot harder to collect tariffs when whole nations were exempt from taxation. And the Lankans always seemed to get corvee labor to ship their goods overland when the canal was dry, which rankled the Arabs who controlled the caravan trade.
So although Egypt accepted Ilidirm’s rule, it did so grudgingly. Few levies and little wealth was sent northeast when Ilidirm challenged the Iranians to war, and few were surprised when he was annihilated by Jihangir Sah. No sooner did news of the defeat at Kalak in 1353 reach Egypt than the Egyptians - the Tayzig specifically - rose up. They appointed one of their own - Khayam al-Iskandara - to the throne, beginning the Khayamid dynasty. A few of Ilidirm’s officials were assassinated, but by and large the transition of power was peaceful and easily accomplished.
The great problem facing Khayam was a military one. Egypt had no fleet in the Red Sea, not since the Barim. The Anarchy and the reign of Ildirim had not been conducive to shipbuilding to challenge the Sinhalese. The Mediterranean Fleet was strong enough[1] but it was not possible to transfer the Mediterranean Fleet to the Red Sea. Thus, despite whatever promises Khayam made to the merchants, it was simply impossible to face the Lankans. Thus, Khayam made little effort to change the longstanding subordination of Egypt to Lankan commercial interests.
Khayam’s ambitions in Syria were circumscribed. He seized southern Syria, moving as far north as Akka and Dimaskha before stopping his advance. His failure to advance into Northern Syria was perhaps the result of coordination with Jihangir, who by 1355 had strong control over most of the region, or perhaps a result of the Lankans brokering an arrangement that would define the shape of the Near East.
More than any previous ruler, Khayam depended upon the support of the Buddhist temples in Egypt for support. His reign was heavily influenced by the growing “Arab orthodoxy,” and the increasing influence of Sri Lanka on the Buddhist sangha. The monasteries had become involved in everything from textiles to brewing, and Khayam himself was raised in a monastic system. If there had ever been conflict between the bakhtiyar and the sangha or the Nowbahar and the Theravada - and indeed there had - such conflicts were dying with the end of the bakhtiyar era. Khayam and his court were not Nowbahar and the distinction between Nowbahar and Theravada simply had less relevance to him than it did to prior generations. The austere, puritanical world of the Nowbahar had given way to something more cosmopolitan, something which invited the connections of scholarship and trade between South Asia and Egypt.
[1] The Mediterranean Fleet has not been meaningfully challenged in a generation at this point. The Haruniya always had good relations with the Knights of the Sea, and the Xasar threat diminished over the course of the Fourteenth Century (as the Knights of the Sea proved an effective buffer). Still, the fleet based in Alexandria was strong and well-trained, and indicated that the Tayzig priority had always been the Mediterranean.
Ports and Caste in the Vanga
The Vanshi dynasty, founded in 1374 by Candana Vanshi, and best exemplified by his son, Buddhasimha Vanshi were successors to the Pala, more known for their cultural achievements and patronage of vernacular sandesa (messenger) literature[1] than any great military achievements (although they sometimes held their own in border wars with Assam and Magadha). However, Vanga changed markedly during their reign. The rise of the great port of Sonarga and its metropole, Gauda, represented a political and societal commitment to trade and the centralization of political power in the city - a shift from the diffuse centers of political power under Pala-era Vanga, where market-towns, temples, and courts all jockeyed for position in a sprawling heterarchy.
This movement of the center of political authority from the periphery (the distant royal court in Pataliputra) to Gauda had long-lasting repercussions. For one, it concentrated political power in a dense, cosmopolitan city, one where guilds and stock-companies and mobs would have outsized influence. Gauda was a polyglot city teeming with life, home to Syrian Christians, Egyptian Jews, Gujaratis and Tamils, Chinese, Burmese, Tai, Khmer, and countless others. Arabs from Yemen and the Ormuz sailed their fast trading ships in its harbor. It captured the massive flow of seaborne trade across the Bay of Vanga and functioned as an entrepot and shipbuilding hub.
The hinterlands were densely populated but agrarian, producing in addition to food products such unfinished goods as tin, gum, resins, and timber. The major religious and university complexes of Vanga were located in the rural hinterlands, but their students would often as not process back to the capital - the real seat of power and prestige and influence - after their studies were done.
And yet the countryside was not immune to changes. The religious fervor of the countryside was increasingly devoted towards the Buddhas Avalokiteśvara and Manjusri, a devotional trend which had its origin in religious pilgrimages made by Vanga monks to Sri Lanka. Monks would frequently travel to Sri Lanka, many seeking re-ordination and “to be instructed in the correct practices by those with access to authoritative scriptures.”[2] The religious shift towards subordination to Sri Lanka mirrored a trend taking place across the Buddhist world, and one happily encouraged by the newly-powerful Lankan monarchy.
The cataclysmic collapse of the Pala dynasty had left the Vanshi acutely self-conscious of their limited role. It was difficult to claim without irony that they were defenders of the sangha outside of a small, limited region, and the tribute that they paid off and on to their more powerful neighbors emphasized this fact. This lack of prestige perhaps helps explain why they were pulled, more and more, into the political and religious orbit of South India, influenced by ideas coming from the south and tended to adopt traditions and cultural artifacts from outside even as they were in the midst of their own cultural vernacular renaissance.
Thus the Vangan conception of monarchy was particularly limited. The Vanshi family were somewhere between a guild and the larger kinship groups in character (but were explicitly not universal monarchs). They wished to be treated as a lineage who had come to power on their own merits and by virtue of their “perceptive and just administration.” It is also worth noting the near absence of references to the varna in land-grant documents dating to the Vanshi period.[3] Although references are made to “tradesmen” (Kulikas) and “merchants” (vanik) being assigned land (usually a collective allotment made to a guild) and both Hindu and Buddhist religious communities received assignments of land, caste and jati appears to have played little role in the Vangan state. Occupation (whether hereditary or recent) was the main driver of social status.
Instead of the old fourfold division, the term “Mahattaras” was of overriding significance. During the Pala era, this term meant something akin to “elder” or “prominent person” but over time, the term lost its original meaning and came to mean something akin to “petty aristocrat” - Mahattaras were those given local control over allotments of land in a system which ultimately gave the Vanshi monarchy its power. By controlling allocation of arable land, the Vanshi, despite their relative ideological humility, were able to maintain the loyalty of key factions in society. However, royal wealth came more and more from trade and linkages to the outside world, and the value of land grants, especially those made to religious orders, was difficult for the monarchy to extract. The taxation system the Vanshi inherited from the Pala gave sweeping exemptions to broad swathes of humanity, and fell hardest on the mercantile classes whose trade was ironically the lifeblood of the state.
Rural merchants formed a sort of outlier within this system. These merchants, in contrast to the flux of the city, were largely part of hereditary families of merchants who inherited their position. Generally speaking they owned land and either had hired workers or tenant farmers to work it. Their mercantile activity was small and almost comical compared to the vast sums being transferred in Gauda. They might trade bundles of fish or sacks of rice, crates of jackfruit or coconut. They did not enjoy the special exemptions given to Hindu/Brahmana groups or Buddhist religious organizations.
These rural merchants were closely aligned to a community of artisans known as the Silpigoshti, a wide-ranging meta-guild of local artisans whose political influence was reminiscent of the Pala-era heterarchy. In another world, these two collective groups were what might be called the petite bourgeoisie. They owned great swathes of land and substantial riches collectively, but individually they had relatively little, and their political influence was nearly nil. Not coincidentally, this politically alienated group of merchants and artisans were also the group most interested in vernacular religious literature patronized by the monarchy.
The ideology of these rural merchants and artisans was distinct from that of the ruling elites and their court philosophers. For one, the rural merchants and artisans were less concerned with lofty theories of governance and more with their own self-interest. They had, by the fourteenth century at least, become far wealthier than the brahmana, the ancient hereditary kinship groups that ruled the Vanga based on ancient rights and little else. But in doing so they had not been awarded the sweeping exemptions and rights that the brahmana were due. Of course, they did not occupy nearly the same place in Hindu religious ritual that the brahmana did.[4] But even still, these artisans and merchants felt the manifest unfairness of what they saw as an outmoded religious hierarchy, where certain kinship groups, due only to their role as Hindu religious leaders, were wholly exempt from taxes that weighed heavily on them.
[1] Theravada religious tracts.
[2] A quote attributed to a Sri Lankan missive to Buddhasimha Vanshi.
[3] This is universal throughout most of India throughout the period. Although current modern scholarship has questioned the role of Varna and Jati in medieval and ancient India, even to whatever extent those concepts are salient, the post-Chandratreya and Post-Pala era is one of overwhelming chaos and fluidity in terms of caste and even kinship. Titles and occupations can change with relative ease. The old certainties are breaking down in face of new monarchies built on shakier foundations and the mass migration of people fleeing war-torn regions.
[4] Of course, Hinduism is largely irrelevant in Vanga, an ancient seat of Theravada religion. So the fact that people whose claim to great lineage stems from Hindu priesthood still hold substantial landholdings is galling to the rural merchants and artisans.
