WI: Din-I-Ilahi survives after the death of Akbar

[Viking25]

The Mughal Emperor Akbar in an attempt to create one unifying faith for his empire established the faith of Din-I-Ilahi(Literally the Religion of God. Akbar would have been definitely better of letting somebody else choose the name), using elements from Hinduism, Islam and Zoroastrianism along with aspects from Jainism, Christianity and Buddhism. Din-I-Ilahi while promoted by Akbar wasn't actively enforced by him, and so never really spread outside of his immediate inner circle. His son Jahangir whose religious ideology was pretty hard to pin down(I.E he hung out with a Hindu Astetic one week, and demolished images of Hindu Gods the next) doesn't seem to have taken much of an interest in it, and it sort of just faded away over time.

Lets say that the religion survives, Akbar is more successful at propagating his new religion and it manages to survive as a notable force after his death, his successor is over all more amenable to it(Instead of Jahangir perhaps he's succeeded instead by his favourite grandson Khusrau?), and its established as the Mughal State religion. How does this change religious dynamics in the Mughal Court? Is it likely to spread down to the rest of the population? What are the reactions of the rest of the Islamic World to the fact that the second largest Muslim State just converted to another religion?

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

The religion utilized by Akbar e-Azam was not to be a religion for the majority or even of most of the court; an esoteric religion that upheld the firmament of universal empire. There is no chance of the religion spread beyond the court elite who held the religion as part of the program of world rule and world unification of not just India but in theory, the entirety of humanity under the divine monarch who is the living sun etc...

 

[herkles]

Something other scholars could correct me on, but was din-i-ilhai an actual religion in its own right? Which would mean he would be considered an apostate according to most other traditions of Islam if that was true, yes? But I don't recall him being denounced as an apostate but I could be wrong.

 

[Viking25]

Something other scholars could correct me on, but was din-i-ilhai an actual religion in its own right? Which would mean he would be considered an apostate according to most other traditions of Islam if that was true, yes? But I don't recall him being denounced as an apostate but I could be wrong.

IIRC anyway the reason that Abdul Faz was sent to the Deccan from the Imperial Court was in part because of his continuing treatment of the Quran as a divine text so Akbar definitely didn't consider himself a Muslim if nothing else.

The religion utilized by Akbar e-Azam was not to be a religion for the majority or even of most of the court; an esoteric religion that upheld the firmament of universal empire. There is no chance of the religion spread beyond the court elite who held the religion as part of the program of world rule and world unification of not just India but in theory, the entirety of humanity under the divine monarch who is the living sun etc...

Yeah I could see it developing as more of a guiding state philosophy than anything else

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

Something other scholars could correct me on, but was din-i-ilhai an actual religion in its own right? Which would mean he would be considered an apostate according to most other traditions of Islam if that was true, yes? But I don't recall him being denounced as an apostate but I could be wrong.

No it was not- it was essentially a Sufi order that happened to be open to non Muslims (or really one non Muslim) and all its tenets were pretty much directly taken from earlier Sufi thought based on the Qur'an.

It was akbars attempt at imitating the safavid cult of Shah Ismail that saw that king proclaimed as the Messiah of the new age, and jahangir and later Shah jahan and even to an extent Aurangzeb continued this culture of the emperor being the most sacred being in existence/current incarnation of the essence of Muhammad/Jesus.

This culture declined during Aurangzebs era, not just in India but in Safavid Iran and the ottoman empire and central Asia as well, as the focus shifted from the personal sacred nature of the ruler, which made anything they did or said an omen or prophecy into a focus on a more scriptural legalistic Islam. For example in central Asia, the 18th century saw the shift from dynasties of khans (a non islamic title highlighting personal universal authority) to dynasties of emirs (an islamic title much more provincial in nature)

 

[Viking25]

No it was not- it was essentially a Sufi order that happened to be open to non Muslims (or really one non Muslim) and all its tenets were pretty much directly taken from earlier Sufi thought based on the Qur'an.

It was akbars attempt at imitating the safavid cult of Shah Ismail that saw that king proclaimed as the Messiah of the new age, and jahangir and later Shah jahan and even to an extent Aurangzeb continued this culture of the emperor being the most sacred being in existence/current incarnation of the essence of Muhammad/Jesus.

This culture declined during Aurangzebs era, not just in India but in Safavid Iran and the ottoman empire and central Asia as well, as the focus shifted from the personal sacred nature of the ruler, which made anything they did or said an omen or prophecy into a focus on a more scriptural legalistic Islam. For example in central Asia, the 18th century saw the shift from dynasties of khans (a non islamic title highlighting personal universal authority) to dynasties of emirs (an islamic title much more provincial in nature)

Ah I apologise for my misunderstanding. If I may ask but what were the reasons for this shift in focus?

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

If I may ask but what were the reasons for this shift in focus?

It's difficult to pin it down completely- partly of course because the islamic millennium had passed, there was less reason to imminently be expecting the messiah, and i suppose after so many people making these claims people just got skeptical. As far as I'm aware it's a fruitful area for new research though.

 

[prani]

It's difficult to pin it down completely- partly of course because the islamic millennium had passed, there was less reason to imminently be expecting the messiah, and i suppose after so many people making these claims people just got skeptical. As far as I'm aware it's a fruitful area for new research though.

Do we know of any events that surround this? Or was the shift ho gradual and peaceful that nobody noticed.
Events such as purge of scholars or rise of a new school of thought or a new spiritual movements?
Maybe if we trace the events we would come to know the reasons perhaps?

 

[Kaushlendra pratap singh]

It was the era of defeat for muslim , they started to feel that there is problem in King for the worldly problem . Pleasures life of king is no in line of prophet Muhammad .
So they start the motion of follow the book .

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

Do we know of any events that surround this? Or was the shift ho gradual and peaceful that nobody noticed.
Events such as purge of scholars or rise of a new school of thought or a new spiritual movements?
Maybe if we trace the events we would come to know the reasons perhaps?

This would get into territory I honestly don't think I'm well equipped to speculate on- for example you could look at the decline of the qizilbash as part of it given they're the ones that practiced ritual cannibalism out of devotion to the shah, but given that they were replaced by the ghulam armies who were also super personally loyal to the Shah that's not super helpful either. It's definitely noteworthy that the last safavid Shahs were dominated by Shia clerics.

In India it's difficult to disentangle post Aurangzeb developments in this culture of sacred kingship with the collapse of mughal authority- perhaps it became less important because it was intimately tied in to the mughal dynasties universal sovereignty, and no other islamic post mughal rulers claimed sovereignty, they claimed authority through appointment by the mughals. Aurangzebs own actions are very difficult to interpret- he wrote spells to help his armies, and clearly believed in the power of his dreams to tell the future, but ended the jharoka darshans and weighing the emperor against gold traditions of his predecessors. These are seen today as Hindu influences, but at the time would have just been part of the imperial propaganda machine that made the emperor the focus of divine energy/power on earth. Stories about his excessive humility might be linked to a desire to step away from the sacred role, but even jahangir made certain to act the part of ordinary man in his autobiography, leaving the mythologising to courtiers and painters- Aurangzeb cancelling official chronicles could have been a recognition that everyone knew courtiers would flatter and if his cult was to grow it would need to be free of any sort of patronage.


In short, it's not just a matter of pointing to any given event and saying oh that's the shift- understanding these intellectual currents requires a very deep understanding of the context of the time and ability to interpret how different concrete proclamations and actions were presented by courts and interpreted by the public, for which I wouldn't trust much scholarship before 2000.