The Coronation of Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar

Awadh entered a further stage in the continuing process of state making almost two decades into the nineteenth century. The elevation of Nawab Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar in 1819 from first minister of the Mughal Empire to autonomous .monarch in his own right posed questions about the role of the Shi‘i ulama in the independent Awadh state. This brief account of the incident, which has already been subjected to a free searching analysis by Michael H. Fisher, seeks to bring out its specifically religious implications.^[1] Awadh in 1819, militarily weak and surrounded on three sides by the British, nevertheless experienced stability and prosperity. Its rainfall-based cultivation of grains and foodstuffs rendered it the "garden of India." Governor-General Hastings wished to weaken the vestigial structures of the old Mughal Empire, as a means of dividing and ruling India, but his encouragement of princely states, such as the Nizamate of Hyderabad, to declare themselves independent monarchies met with rebuff everywhere except in Awadh. Perhaps because of the Nishapuri family's Shi‘ism, Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar followed up hints by Lord Hastings that the British would look favorably on an independent Awadh.

Just a few months after his assumption of the rank of the Mughal Empire's first minister, in the summer of 1814, he began showing a willingness to break away. The resident wrote to Calcutta later that year that in view of recent statements of the governor-general, the nawab-vizier wondered about the propriety of his sending gifts marking submission to the king of Delhi on Muslim holy days. He said he had suspended transmission of ceremonial offerings to the king until further notice. Lord Hastings wrote back that the vizier might transmit offerings to Delhi if he wished, but that he was certainly under no obligation to do so. He directed that the resident in Lucknow refrain from sending gifts to the Mughal monarch (whom the British had reduced, in any case, to a powerless figurehead subsisting under British rule).^[2]

Five years later Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar declared himself an independent Shi‘i king in a coronation ceremony that, as Fisher has shown, drew on many cultural traditions for its symbolism, including Shi‘i, Mughal, Hindu, and British elements. The ninth of October 1819, the day of the coronation, coincided with the Shi‘i festival commemorating the Prophet's alleged verbal

[1] Michael H. Fisher, "The Imperial Coronation of 1819; Awadh, the British and the Mughals," Modem Asian Studies 19 (1985): 239-277

[2] Resident to Sec Gov. Gen., 23 Nov. 1814, FDPC, 13 Dec. 1814, no. 14; Sec. Govt. India to Resident, 26 Nov. 1814, FDPC, 20 Dec. 1814, no. 13. For the political significance in the Mughal Empire of ceremonial offerings (nazr ) from vassals to suzerains and the bestowal by monarchs of robes of honor (khilcat ) on vassals, see F W. Buckler, Legitimacy and Symbols , ed. M. N. Pearson (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1985), pp. 176-87.

appointment of ‘Ali as his successor at Ghadir Khumm. In the morning Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar, his heir apparent, Nasiru'd-Din Haydar, and Chief Minister Agha Mir Mutamadu'd-Dawlah, seated on elephants with rich canopies of gold embroidery, led a huge procession of notables from all over Awadh, similarly mounted, to the Shrine of ‘Abbas, where they offered prayers of thanksgiving in private. The humble shrine to a crest founded by a faqir ended by being incorporated into the coronation festivities of a Shi‘i monarch.^[3]

The party proceeded to a nearby ceremonial building, the barahdari , where the coronation occurred. Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar, the chief minister, the British resident, and Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi (1785-1867), all played important parts in the ceremony. Sayyid Muhammad's old and weak father, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali, would pass away only a few months later. Sayyid Muhammad, age thirty-four, actually filled the offices of the capital's prayer leader and chief Shi‘i religious authority. Just before the ceremony the Awadh ruler retired to a private room for prayers with his close companions, emerging with Muctamadu'd-Dawlah, Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi, and an officer of the household bearing the sword of state.

After Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar ascended the throne, the chief minister passed the crown to the younger Nasirabadi, who placed it on the ruler's head. The new king embraced the British resident, guns were sounded, and Nasirabadi read out the monarch's throne names. The select audience was showered with jewels and money, and inferiors made offerings in hopes that the monarch would return them even more generously.^[4] The role of the chief mujtahid in the coronation harked back to the Safavid state in Iran. Originally the chief of the Sufis girded the monarch with the sword of state. Both Shah Safi (Sulayman) (1667-94) and Shah Sultan Husayn (1694-1722), however, had the Shaykhu'l-Islam perform this act instead. The Shaykhu'l-Islam girded Sulayman with sword and dagger and placed a crown on his head. In 1694 the renowned Shaykhu'l-Islam Muhammad Baqir Majlisi girded up the last effective Safavid monarch. Just as Awadh kings saw themselves as heirs to Safavid glory and traditions, Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi revived Majlisi's role.^[5]

Fisher has shown that the East India Company officials took issue with the mujtahid's prominent part in the coronation, which the court ceremonially reenacted every year, feeling that they, rather than the Shi‘i ulama, provided legitimation to the rule of the Nishapuri dynasty. In 1822 the acting resident reported that the king put on his own crown (also the practice in

[3] Resident to Sec. Govt. India, 12 Oct 1819, FDPC, 20 Nov. 1819, no. 58.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ann K. S Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford Univ Press, 1981 ), pp 278-79, Laurence Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958), p 38

Qajar Iran). The next year Mordaunt Ricketts, the new resident, placed the crown and the robe of state on Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar at the commemorative coronation, and the resident played this role thereafter. The chief mujtahid was not altogether displaced from the ceremony, however. It became the custom for the monarch to perform a ritual prayer of thanks with Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi before receiving the crown from the hands of the resident.^[6] The transformation of the nawabs of Awadh into monarchs involved more form than substance. As Sharar drily remarked, when the Awadh rulers had real power they lacked the status of monarchs, but when they were enfeebled they suddenly became royalty. The other ruling houses in India, particularly the Delhi Mughals, reacted angrily at the new pretensions of the Nishapuris, whose own officials and subjects in the countryside continued to refer to them as nawab-vizier.^[7]

The change, of symbolic and cultural import for the ruling Shi‘i elite, posed problems of reinterpretation for the Imami ulama in their relations to the state. Along with other paraphernalia of independent rule, such as striking coins, the Awadh monarchs began having the Friday congregational prayers read in their own names.^[8] Classical Shi‘i thinkers, such as Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli, forbade the reading of the Friday sermon (khutbah ) in the name of the secular ruler as a heretical innovation of the Sunnis. During over two centuries of Safavid rule in Iran, however, the Shi‘i ulama always read the Friday sermon in the name of Shi‘i kings, whom they referred to as the Shadow of God.^[9] Awadh's prayer leaders stepped into the role of even more strongly legitimating Nishapuri rule, at least in their outward actions. The establishment of Shi‘i Friday prayers in 1786 had symbolized the growing autonomy of Awadh, and in 1819 the insertion of the name of the Nishapuri ruler in its closing sermon formally announced the independence of the country.

The original symbols of nawabi legitimacy deriving from Mughal

[6] Fisher, "The Imperial Coronation"; Act. Resident to Sec Govt. India, 5 Sept. 1822, FDPC, 27 Sept 1822, no 44; Resident to See. Govt. India, 26 Aug. 1823, FDPC, 12 Sept. 1823, no. 21, Lalji, "Sultan al-hikayat i shahan-i Avadh," Persian MS 3902, fol. 77b, India Office Lib. and Records, London. For coronations in Qajar Iron, see Muhammad Taqi Lisan al-Mulk Siphir, Nasikh at-tawarikh . dawrah-ikamil-itarikh-iQajariyyah , ed. Jahangir Qa'im-maqami, 3 vols. (Tehran Amir Kabir, 1337 s/1959), 1.52.

[7] ‘Abdu'l-Halim Sharar, GuzashtahLakhna'u: mashriqi tamaddun kaakhirinamunah (Lucknow: Nasim Book Depot, 1974), pp 53-54, Eng. trans, pp 54-55; Muhammad Muhtashim Khan, "Tarikh-i Muhtashim Khani," Persian MS H L. 156, foll. 158b-159b, Khudabaksh Oriental Public Lib., Patna; Major Edward C. Archer, Tours in Upper India , etc., 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 1:21, Reginald Heber, Narratwe of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824 to 1825 , 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey, 1828), 2 45.

[8] Zaynu'l-‘Abidin Shirvani, Riyadas-siyahah , 3 vols. (Moscow: Shucbah-'i Adabiyyat-i Khavar, 1974), 3.1051-52; cf. ‘Abdu'l-Ahad Rabit Ametavi, TarikhPadshah Begam [Vaqa'ic-idilpazir ], trans. Muhammad Taqi Ahmad (Delhi Idarah-'i Adabiyyat, repr. 1977), p. 86.

[9] See Henri Laoust, "La critique du sunnisme dans la doctrine d'al-Hilli," Revue des études islamiques 34 (1966): 51-52, Lamhton, State and Government , pp. 279-80.

appointment had emphasized both the power and the authority of the Mughal emperor. Both had long since waned, and these elements of rule became symbolically divided in the new ceremony. The British resident, who insisted on placing the crown on the monarch's head, represented the only real power in North India, and the prayers with the mujtahid bestowed the only sort of authority a Shi‘i ruling class could ultimately recognize, the cachet of the Hidden Imam.