IMPERIAL POWER OF THE MUGHAL COURT IN CHRONICLES OF SEYDI ALI REIS AND MUTRIBI SAMARQANDI

Abstract

Most of the historical observations of the Mughal court during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were written by court historians, scribes, and literati. A few texts were composed by Muslim travelers who left important accounts of Mughal political, economic and social life. This article will examine two of those chronicles. The first, composed by Ottoman Admiral Seydi Ali Reis, Mir’âtü’l-Memâlik (The Mirror of Countries) describes the life of the Mughal court in mid-sixteenth century. The second, written by Mutribi al-Asamm alSamarqandi (also known as Mutribi Samarqandi), a subject of the Ashtarhanid Dynasty of Bukhara, describes the court of Jahangir in the early seventeenth century. Although both Seydi Ali Reis and Mutribi Samarqandi shared a similar background being elite Turkish-speakers with high levels of education who identified as Sunni Muslim they had strikingly different experiences. This article shows that a comparison of these two chronicles hints at how court rituals, manners, and administrative policy in Mughal India changed during over seventy years. However, in order to understand the transformation of the Mughal court, we must also look into the lives of the narrators: what brought them to the Mughal Empire, what effect they had at the court, and what ideas they carried back with them to their home countries.