1. Here it is useful to distinguish between the terms authority and power. Max Weber defined the latter as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.” By analyzing the articulation of culturally contextualized political symbols, the present chapter focuses on what Weber understood as the basis “on which this probability rests”—that is, political authority. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. and trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 152.

2. Marilyn Robinson Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-Islamicate Historiography (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988), 30.

3. Ann K. S. Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 106–29. See also Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 42–43.

4. Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), the Iranian prime minister to the Seljuq sultans, even counseled his Turkish patrons to establish an elaborate network of state spies. His great work, the Siyāsat-nāma (“Book of Government”), represents the efforts of an experienced Persian administrator to assimilate the new Turkish rulers into the autocratic tradition of pre-Muslim Persian kingship. See The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings: The Siyar al-Muluk or Siyasat-nama of Nizam al-Mulk, trans. Hubert Darke, 2d ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).

5. A good discussion of these ideas may be found in A. K. S. Lambton, “Justice in the Medieval Persian Theory of Kingship,” Studia Islamica 17 (1962): 91–119. See also Waldman, Toward a Theory, 99; A Mirror for Princes: “The Qābūs Nāma” by Kai Kā’ūs ibn Iskandr, Prince of Gurgān, trans. Reuben Levy (New York: Dutton, 1951), 213; and Cornell H. Fleischer, “Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and ‘Ibn Khaldūnism’ in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 18 (1983): 201–3.

6. Fakhr al-Din Razi, Jāmi‘ al-‘ulūm, ed. Muhammad Khan Malik al-Kuttab (Bombay, A.H. 1323 [A.D. 1905]), 207. In the “Mirror for Princes” literary genre so popular in Razi’s day, such maxims were often attributed to Alexander the Great.

7. See W. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 3d ed. (London: Luzac, 1968), 160, 255, 376; J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 51–54.

8. ‘Ali Hujwiri, The Kashf al-mahjub, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, 2d ed. (reprint, London: Luzac, 1970), 213.

9. Simon Digby, “The Sufi Shaikh as a Source of Authority in Mediaeval India,” in Puruṣārtha, vol. 9, Islam et société en Asie du sud, ed. Marc Gaborieau (Paris: Ecole des Hautes études en sciences sociales, 1986), 62.

10. The date of conquest, although not specified by Minhaj, can be inferred from numismatic evidence. In the year 601 A.H., corresponding to A.D. 1204–5, the conqueror himself issued a gold coin (fig. 1) bearing the legend Gauḍa vijaye, “On the conquest of Gaur” (i.e., Bengal). But the date A.H. 601 stamped on this coin evidently refers to the coin’s date of issue and not to the date of conquest. For, several years after the conquest, the governor of the province, ‘Ali Mardan, declared his independence from Delhi and began issuing coins in his own name, one of which was dated Ramazan 600 A.H., or May 1204 A.D. (fig. 2). Since ‘Ali Mardan did not declare his sovereignty until 1210, the date on the coin was evidently intended to refer to the date of conquest, and not to the coin’s issue date. This interpretation is further supported by the exactness of the coin’s date—Ramazan 600. As Indo-Muslim coins were normally stamped only with the year of issue and not the month, such precision would seem to refer to an extraodinary event, which the conquest of Bengal certainly was. See John Deyell, Living without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 364, coin no. 298.

11. Minhaj-ud-Din Abu’l-‘Umar-i-‘Usman, ṭabaḳāt-i-Nāṣirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, Including Hindustan (810–1260), trans. H. G. Raverty (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881; reprint, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp., 1970), 1: 559–60.

12. Bakhtiyar’s band of two hundred cavalrymen, with which he surprised Lakshmana Sena in Nudiya, was but an advance detachment from his main force of ten thousand.

13. Nicholas W. Lowick, “The Horseman Type of Bengal and the Question of Commemorative Issues,” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India 35 (1973): 196–208; P. L. Gupta, “Nagari Legend on Horseman Tankah of Muhammad bin Sam,” ibid.: 209–12. See too P. L. Gupta, “On the Date of the Horseman Type Coin of Muhammad bin Sam,” ibid. 38 (1976): 81–87.

14. G. S. Farid, “Hitherto Unknown Silver Tankah of Sultan Alauddin Ali Mardan Khilji, 607–610 A.H.,” Journal of the Asiatic Society 18, nos. 1–4 (1976): 104–6. According to Farid, this coin is dated 610 A.H. (1213–14 A.D.). But the coin published by him, depicted in figure 2, is worn on the place where the date is normally given. Another copy of the same coin reproduced by John Deyell clearly reveals the coin’s date as Ramazan 600 A.H., a date evidently referring to the date of the Turkish conquest of Bengal. See Deyell, Living without Silver, 364, coin no. 298.

15. Lowick, “Horseman Type,” 200.

16. Peter Hardy, “The Growth of Authority over a Conquered Political Elite: The Early Delhi Sultanate as a Possible Case Study,” in Kingship and Authority in South Asia, ed. J. F. Richards (Madison: South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1978), 207.

17. Examples include the mīnār of Bahram Shah in Ghazni (early twelfth century), the mīnār of Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad in Jam, located on Afghanistan’s Hari Rud River (late twelfth century), and, closest in time and place to Bengal, the Qutb Minar of Delhi (1200–1215), the stupendous and imposing tower that was the first monument built by the Turks on their establishment of permanent rule in North India.

18. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions of Bengal, vol. 4 (Rajshahi: Varendra Research Museum, 1960), 20.

19. Ibid., 19.

20. Catherine B. Asher, “Inventory of Key Monuments,” in The Islamic Heritage of Bengal, ed. George Michell (Paris: UNESCO, 1984), 136. The basalt pillars of Chhota Pandua’s Bari Mosque, most likely dating to the early fourteenth century, were simply reused from pre-Islamic structures; they still bear traces of Hindu or Buddhist images. Ibid., 52.

21. George Roerich, trans., Biography of Dharmasvamin (Chag lo-tsa-ba Chos-rje-dpal), a Tibetan Monk Pilgrim (Patna: K. P. Jawaswal Research Institute, 1959), 64–65.

22. Ibid., 98.

23. See Abdul Karim, Corpus of the Muslim Coins of Bengal, down to A.D. 1538, Asiatic Society of Pakistan Publication No. 6 (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1960), 18.

24. Minhaj-ud-Din ‘Usman, ṭabaḳāt-i-Nāṣirī, trans. Raverty, 1: 629–30.

25. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 7–8.

26. Ibid., 14–15, 17–18.

27. Zia al-Din Barani, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, in The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, trans. and ed. H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1964), 3: 141. This is the earliest record of the use of the word thug.

28. Shams-i Siraj ‘Afif, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, in The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, trans. and ed. H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1964), 3: 297, 303–12.

29. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. and ed. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, 3d ed. (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1975), 2: 115.

30. ‘Afif, Tārīkh, in Elliot and Dowson, History of India, 3:295, 296.

31. Karim, Corpus, 42.

32. Naseem Ahmed Banerji, “The Mihrabs in the Adina Mosque at Pandua, India: Evidence of the Reuse of Pala-Sena Remains” (paper read at the twenty-first conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, November 6–8, 1992).

33. Asher, “Inventory,” 109–10. See also Yolande Crowe, “Reflections on the Adina Mosque at Pandua,” in The Islamic Heritage of Bengal, ed. George Mitchell (Paris: UNESCO, 1984), 157. These figures compare with the Begumpur mosque’s outer measurements of 328 feet on a side, courtyard measurements of 284 by 273 feet, and a total of 105 domed bays. See Anthony Welch and Howard Crane, “The Tughluqs: Master Builders of the Delhi Sultanate,” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 130–31.

34. As Percy Brown notes, the monument resembled “the forum of some ancient classical city rather than a self-contained Muslim house of prayer, with the high vaulted sanctuary on the western side simulating an imperial approach in the form of a majestic triumphal archway.” Brown, Indian Architecture, Islamic Period, 5th ed. (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala, 1968), 36.

35. See Tsukinowa Tokifusa, “The Influence of Seljuq Architecture on the Earliest Mosques of the Delhi Sultanate Period in India,” Acta Asiatica 43 (1982): 37–60.

36. Just over fifty years before construction of the Adina mosque, the Ilkhanid prince ‘Ali Shah had built his Jami‘ mosque in Tabriz with a barrel vault that in width actually surpassed that of the Taq-i Kisra. Since contemporary observers compared the Tabriz mosque with the Taq-i Kisra, it is clear that the great Sasanian palace was on the minds of fourteenth-century Iranians. Donald N. Wilber, The Architecture of Islamic Iran: The Il Khanid Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 146–47.

37. A similar structure is found in the Jami‘ mosque of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1605–27) described as a caged-in stone platform used by the king and his intimates and courtiers “on account of the crowding of people.” Jahangir, Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, trans. Alexander Rodgers and Henry Beveridge, 2d ed., 2 vols in 1 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), 1: 425.

38. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 38.

39. Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Inbā’ al-ghumr bi-anbā al-‘umr (Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A‘lā li-l-Shu’ūn al-Islāmīyah, 1969), 2: 496; Muhammad Sakhavi, Al-Zau’ al-lāmi‘ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsi‘ (Beirut: Maktabat al-Hayat, 1966), 2: 313. See also Ziauddin Desai, “Some New Data Regarding the Pre-Mughal Muslim Rulers of Bengal,” Islamic Culture 32 (1958): 199–200.

40. W. W. Rockhill, “Notes on the Relations and Trade of China with the Eastern Archipelago and the Coast of the Indian Ocean during the Fourteenth Century,” T’oung Pao 16, pt. 2 (1915): 441–42. The first few decades of the fifteenth century witnessed China’s brief but significant maritime diaspora under the early Ming dynasty. During two of the seven great expeditions the Ming court sent into the Indian Ocean, Chinese officials, traveling via Chittagong and Sonargaon, reached the Bengali capitals of Pandua (1415) and Gaur (1432).

41. Ibid., 442.

42. M. I. Borah, “An Account of the Immigration of Persian Poets into Bengal,” Dacca University Studies 1 (November 1935): 144.

43. Muzaffar Shams Balkhi, Maktūbāt-i Muz̄affar Shams Balkhī (Persian MS., Acc. no. 1859, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna), letter 163, p. 509. See also S. H. Askari, “The Correspondence of Two Fourteenth-Century Sufi Saints of Bihar with the Contemporary Sovereigns of Delhi and Bengal,” Journal of the Bihar Research Society 42, no. 2 (1956): 187. Askari’s translation.

44. Shaikh Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, Maktūbāt-i Shaikh Nūr Quṭb-i ‘ālam (Persian MS., Subhan Allah no. 297671/18, Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh), letter 9, p. 68. See also Abdul Karim, “Nur Qutb ‘Alam’s Letter on the Ascendancy of Ganesa,” in Muhammad Enamul Haq, Abdul Karim Sahitya-Visarad Commemoration Volume (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1972), 338.

45. The best treatment of the revolution is found in the study of Ahmad Hasan Dani, “The House of Raja Ganesa of Bengal,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal: Letters 18, no. 2 (1952): 121–70.

46. Muhammad Qasim Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta (Lucknow: Nawal Kishore, 1864–65), 2: 297.

47. Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad, The ṭabaqāt-i-Akbarī, trans. Brajendranath De, ed. Baini Prasad (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1931–39), 3, pt. 1: 430–31; text, ed., B. De and M. Hidayat Hosein (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1931–35), 3: 265.

48. See Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Inbā’, 2: 496; 3: 532. See also Muhammad Sakhawi, Al-Zau’, 8: 280.

49. See Karim, Corpus, 70–73.

50. Ghulam Hussain Salim, Riyāzu-s-Salātīn: A History of Bengal, trans. Abdus Salam (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1903), 115.

51. This outcome is suggested by Firishta’s statement that after Raja Ganesh’s son had declared his intention to become Muslim, but before he assumed the throne, the kingdom’s nobles unanimously declared, “We follow the king in worldly affairs, but have nothing to do with religion” (“Jamī‘ ahl-i ḥall va ‘aqd muttafiq shuda, goftand: mā tābi‘-i pādshāh-īm dar umūr-i dunyawī, ba mażhab va dīn kārī nīst ”). Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta, 2: 297.

52. Shaikh Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, Maktūbāt, letter 9, p. 69. See also Abdul Karim, “Nur Qutb ‘Alam’s Letter,” 342–43. Karim’s translation.

53. Portions of this letter were reproduced in the correspondence of the contemporary shaikh, Ashraf Jahangir Simnani. See Ashraf Jahangir Simnani, Maktūbāt-i ashrafī (Persian MS. no. 27, Aligarh Muslim University History Department, Aligarh), letter 45, fol. 139a. See also S. H. Askari, “New Light on Rajah Ganesh and Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi of Jaunpur from Contemporary Correspondence of Two Muslim Saints,” Bengal Past and Present 57 (1948): 34. Askari’s translation.

54. P. C. Bagchi, “Political Relations between Bengal and China in the Pathan Period,” Visva-Bharati Annals 1 (1945): 103–4.

55. Around 1442 a diplomat in the service of Shah Rukh, the Timurid ruler of Herat (1405–47), wrote that his master had intervened in the Bengal-Jaunpur crisis at the request of the sultan of Bengal, “directing the ruler of Jaunpur to abstain from attacking the King of Bengal, or to take the consequences upon himself. To which intimation the ruler of Jaunpur was obedient, and desisted from his attacks upon Bengal.” ‘Abd al-Razzaq, Matla‘ al-sa‘dain, in The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, trans. and ed. H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1964), 4: 99. On the other hand, a contemporary Arakanese tradition recorded that the forces of Raja Ganesh, then firmly in control of Pandua, had defeated Sultan Ibrahim of Jaunpur in battle. According to this tradition, one of the kings of Arakan, who had been given refuge in Pandua after having been defeated by a Burman monarch in 1406, gave Raja Ganesh the military advice that enabled the Bengalis to defeat Sultan Ibrahim of Jaunpur. A. P. Phayre, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 13 (1844): 44–46, cited in Dani, “House,” 135–37. See also A. P. Phayre, History of Burma (London: Trubner, 1884), 78.

56. The coins were dated Saka Era 1339 and 1340, corresponding to April 1416 to April 1418. The most thorough examination of the identity and chronology of these two kings is found in Dani, “House,” 145–53. Dani links the two kings to the Deva dynasty of kings of Chandradwip in the Barisal area of the southeastern delta on the basis of the testimony of later oral and literary sources that identify Mahendra Deva as the son of Danuja Marddana Deva. As to the identification of “Pāndunagara,” since the Deva kings never controlled North Bengal, it is most likely that they attempted to recover from the sultanate only those lands previously under their control, in which case the “Pāndunagara” on their coins would refer not to Hazrat Pandua, the capital, located in northern Bengal, but to the provincial town Chhota Pandua, located in the southwestern delta near the site of modern Calcutta.

57. Dani, “House,” 152–53.

58. Ibid., 145.

59. Karim, Corpus, table 2, facing 163.

60. Ibid., 191–93.

61. See France Bhattacharya, “La Déesse et le royaume selon le KālaketuUpākhyāna du Caṇḍī Maṅgala,” in Puruṣārtha, vol. 5, Autour de la déesse hindoue, ed. Madeleine Biardeau (Paris: Ecole des Hautes études en sciences sociales, 1981), 17–53.

62. Karim, Corpus, 191–93 and plates 1–6.

63. Firishta explicitly mentions Ganesh’s conciliatory policies toward the Indo-Turkish classes in Pandua. “Although Raja Ganesh was not a Muslim,” he wrote, “he mixed freely with them and had so much love for them that some Muslims, witnessing to his faith in Islam, wanted to bury him in the Islamic manner.” Fi-rishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta, 2: 297.

64. Mirāt al-asrār (Persian MS. no. 204, Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna; compiled in 1654 by ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, copied in 1806), fol. 517a-b. This interpretation is corroborated by the historian Nizam al-Din Ahmad (d. 1594), who records that Raja Ganesh’s son, “owing to his love of rule, became a Muslim, naming himself Sultan Jalal al-Din” (“Pisar-i ū ba-wāsiṭa-yi ḥubb-i riyāsat Musalmān shuda, Sulṭān Jalāl al-Dīn nām-i khūd nihād ”). Nizamuddin Ahmad, ṭabiqāt-i Akbarī, text, 3: 266.

65. Mirāt al-asrār, fol. 517a. See also Askari, “New Light,” 37; Karim, “Nur Qutb ‘Alam’s Letter,” 336–37.

66. Not only did Jalal al-Din and his son and successor Ahmad become disciples of Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, but, the Mirāt al-asrār informs us, from then until 1532, twelve more sultans of various ethnic backgrounds ascended the Bengali throne, all of whom were disciples of the line of Chishti shaikhs established in Pandua by Shaikh ‘Ala al-Haq (ibid., fol. 517b).

67. Some later historians understood his efforts in this direction as outright bigotry. But there is no contempoary evidence to support the contention—first voiced in the late eighteenth century by Ghulam Hussain Salim and repeated in the late nineteenth century by influential British authorities like James Wise—that Jalal al-Din pursued a policy of forcibly converting his fellow Bengalis to Islam. See Salim, Riyāzu-s-Salātīn, 118; Wise, “Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal,” 29.

68. Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Inbā’, 2: 497; 3: 532; and Muhammad Sakhawi, Al-Zau’, 8: 280. See also Ziauddin Desai, “Some New Data Regarding the Pre-Mughal Muslim Rulers of Bengal,” Islamic Culture 32 (1958): 204.

69. Karim, Corpus, 77.

70. “al-Sultān al-a‘z̄am al-mu‘az̄z̄amīn khalīfat Allah ‘alī al-makūnīn Jalāl al-Dunyā w’al-Dīn.” Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 45. This appeared on the mosque of Mandra, in Dhaka District.

71. Karim, Corpus, 170. Abdul Karim has argued that Jalal al-Din’s use of the inflated title Khalīfat al-Allah was “a political stunt to unite the people against his rival Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi of Jaunpur” (ibid., 176). But this hypothesis is untenable, since the Bengal king did not introduce the formula until 1427, and Sultan Ibrahim does not appear to have threatened Bengal after 1420.

72. When the Ilyas Shahi dynasty was restored to power in 1433, its kings, who were Muslims by birth, went further still and styled themselves “the caliph of Allah by proof and testimony” (khalīfat Allah bi’l-ḥujjat wa’l-burhān). By the fifteenth century the symbolism of the caliphate had been exploited so wildly that its potential for conferring legitimacy on its users seems to have diminished nearly to the vanishing point. Almost anybody could now claim not only association with the caliph, but identity as the caliph, and even to have “proof and testimony” of the fact. It had become a hollow claim. See Abdul Karim, “ ‘Khalifat Allah’ Titlein the Coins of Bengal Sultans,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 8, no. 1 (January 1960): 29.

73. Karim, Corpus, 78, 80, pl. 7, no. 1. Another copy of this coin is in the possession of G. S. Farid of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta; see Farid, “Rare Lion-Coins of Jalaluddin Mohammad Shah of Bengal Including a Unique Hexagonal Variety,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 16, nos. 1–4 (1974): 151–54.

74. See G. S. Farid, “A New and Unique Ten Tankah Commemorative Coin of Jalaluddin Mohammad Shah of Bengal (818–837 A.H.),” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India 38 (1976): 88–95. The coin itself is in Farid’s personal collection, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta.

75. See Fei Hsin, Hsing ch’a shéng lan (“Description of the Stary Raft”), in W. W. Rockhill, “Notes on the Relations,” T’oung Pao, 16, pt. 2, sec. 4 (1915): 442.

76. On Tripura, see D. C. Sircar, Some Epigraphical Records of the Medieval Period from Eastern India (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1979), 95–96.

77. The only coins of this type so far discovered were found in Dhaka District, which is adjacent to Tripura. Dani, “House,” 164.

78. A. N. Lahiri, “Tripura Coins of Iconographic Interest,” Journal of the Numismatic Society 29 (1967): 73–75. Somewhat later, beginning with the coinage of Vijayamānika (ca. 1532–ca. 1563), they minted coins bearing a trident (triśūla), unambiguously associated with the god śiva, depicted at the back of the lion. Later, in 1600, King Yaśodharamānikya began issuing coins with an image of the flute-playing Krishna, with a gopi girl on either side of him, depicted above the image of the lion and trident. This shift toward Vaishnava sentiment in Tripura followed a similar evolution among non-Muslims in Bengal proper. See pp. 109–12.

79. On the smaller coins, he used the Persianized form, bin Kans Shāh, or “son of Ganesh Shah.” See Karim, Corpus, 78. These inscriptional legends also point to Raja Ganesh’s renown and even public acceptance, for no sovereign would have linked himself in this way with a hated tyrant.

80. For example, he bestowed six titles on Brhaspati, a deeply learned man of the time, and sponsored a special ceremony when conferring on him the title of “Rāyamukuta.” Chintaharan Chakravarti, “Muslim Patronage to Sanskrit Learning,” in B. C. Law Volume, ed. D. R. Bhandarkar et al., pt. 2 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1946), 177.

81. Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan: “The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores,” trans. J. V.G. Mills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 161.

82. Hitesranjan Sanyal, “Religious Architecture in Bengal (15th–17th Centuries): A Study of the Major Trends,” Indian History Congress, Proceedings, 32d session (1970), 1: 416. Ahmad Hasan Dani, Muslim Architecture in Bengal, Asiatic Society of Pakistan Publication No. 7 (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1961), 22.

83. Dani, Muslim Architecture, 26. Perween Hasan, “Sultanate Mosques and Continuity in Bengal Architecture,” Muqarnas 6 (1989): 62.

84. “Although no mosque ever adopted the typical Hindu rekhā or pirha towers of the Pāla period, nor any temple adopt [sic] the exterior form of the Islamic dome, both drew freely on local architectural tradition, so that in spite of widely differing functions, temple and mosque achieve a certain affinity of design,” writes David McCutchion, who pioneered the study of vernacular architecture in premodern Bengal. McCutchion, “Hindu-Muslim Continuities in Bengal,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan 13, no. 3 (December 1968): 241.

85. See Hasan, “Sultanate Mosques,” 63–66, 69.

86. Ziauddin Desai, “Some New Data Regarding the Pre-Mughal Muslim Rulers of Bengal,” Islamic Culture 32 (1958): 204.

87. Firishta, Tārīkh, 2: 298.

88. The last ruler of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty, Sultan Jalal al-Din Fath Shah (1481–1486), “applied the whip of justice to palace eunuchs and Abyssinian slaves who had been gathering in numbers during the reigns of Barbak Shah and Yusuf Shah, and who had achieved the zenith of self-confidence and committed unimaginable [acts of] immoderation,” Firishta notes. Ibid., 2: 299.

89. Ibid., 299, 301.

90. This characterization began with the historian Nizam al-Din Ahmad, who in 1594 wrote glowingly of ‘Ala al-Din Husain Shah as “an intelligent and able man,” who “summoned learned, great and pious men from different parts of the kingdom, and showed kindness to them. He made very great efforts and exertions for enriching and improving the condition of the country. Owing to the auspiciousness of his laudable morals, and pleasing virtues he performed the duties of sovereignty for long years; and all his life was passed in pleasure and enjoyment.” Nizamuddin Ahmad, ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī, text, 3: 270; trans., B. De, 3, pt. 1: 443.

91. Jadunath Sarkar, ed., The History of Bengal, vol. 2, Muslim Period, 1200–1757 (1947; Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1977), 151–2. There is no record of how sixteenth-century Sufis, whose predecessors had decried the appointment of Hindus to high office, felt about these developments.

92. Simon Digby, “The Fate of Daniyal, Prince of Bengal, in the Light of an Unpublished Inscription,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 36, no. 3 (1973): 593–601.

93. Tome Pires, Suma Oriental of Tome Pires, trans. A. Cortesão, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944), 1: 89.

94. “The rich things there are in Bengal,” continues Pires, “are made in these kingdoms, and because they cannot live without the sea, they obey [the Bengal sultan], because he allows them an outlet for their merchandise.” Ibid., 89–90.

95. Nusrat Shah not only endowed these Afghan refugees with lands and towns; he also married the daughter of Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, recently defeated by Babur. Firishta, Tārīkh, 2: 302.

96. Voyage dans les deltas du Gange et de l’Irraouaddy: Relation portugaise anonyme (1521), trans. and ed. Genevieve Bouchon and Luis Filipe Thomaz (Paris: Centre culturel portugais, 1988), 321–22.

97. The Husain Shahi sultans also patronized Persian miniature painting traditions. Twenty-six miniature paintings illustrating a copy of Jami’s Yūsuf and Zulaykhā were apparently produced under the patronage of Sultan ‘Ala al-din Husain Shah in 1507—8. There is also an illustrated copy of part of Nizami’s Sikandar-nāma, dated 1531–32 and dedicated to Sultan Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah. See Norah M. Titley, Persian Miniature Painting and Its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India (London: British Library, 1983), 179, 182–83; Robert Skelton, “The Iskandar Nama of Nusrat Shah,” in Indian Painting: Mughal and Rajput and a Sultanate Manuscript, ed. Toby Falk, Ellen Smart, and Robert Skelton (London: P. and D. Colnaghi, 1978), 144. Although the subject matter of these works is purely Persian, certain architectural details depicted in the illustrations appear to be identical with the distinctive features of the Bengali mosque as discussed above—namely, cusped arches, brickwork alternating with polychrome tiles, terra-cotta tiles, and pro-jecting eaves with brackets. See Jeremiah P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London: British Library, 1982), 68.

98. Voyage dans les deltas du Gange, 327.

99. Rockhill, “Notes on the Relations,” 437.

100. Niharranjan Ray, “Mediaeval Bengali Culture,” Visva-Bharati Quarterly 11, no. 2 (August-October 1945): 54; Md. Enamul Haq, Muslim Bengali Literature (Karachi: Pakistan Publications, 1957), 38–39.

101. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 236–37.

102. Karim, Corpus, 118. From the accession of Nasir al-Din’s son to the end of Bengal’s independent monarchy, the inscriptions on both coins and mosques consist of the simple formula “the sultan, son of the sultan.” See Ibid., 238, 244, 249.

103. Vijaya Gupta, Padma-Purāṇa, ed. Jayanta Kumar Dasgupta (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1962), 8.

104. J. T. O’Connell, “Vaisnava Perceptions of Muslims in Sixteenth-Century Bengal,” in Islamic Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad, ed. Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle (New Delhi: Manohar, 1983), 298–302.

105. Sebastião Manrique, Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique, 1629–1643, trans. E. Luard and H. Hosten (Oxford: Hakluyt Society, 1927), 1: 77.

106. Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 3: 25–27.

107. Percy Brown, Indian Architecture, Islamic Period, 5th ed. (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala, 1968), 38.