Patrimonial Bureaucracy versus Tribal Conquest

Could the Nishapuris become something other than mere foreign governors appointed over Awadh temporarily from the Mughal center? To do so would require them to establish their legitimacy among regional Sunni and Hindu elites, to build their own bureaucracy and military, and to meet the outside challenge of Maratha Hindu warriors, of pastoral invaders from Afghanistan, and of Bangash and Ruhilah Afghan tribespeople settled in the upper Doab.

Burhanu'l-Mulk paid Nadir Shah Rs. 20 million to assure the succession to Awadh's governorship for his nephew, Safdar Jang. That one family could retain control over a Mughal subah, or province, for two successive generations, rare during the zenith of the Mughals' agrarian bureaucracy, shows the decline of the central government. Earlier, Mughal emperors rotated provincial governors at will, preventing them from building up a regional power base, and although local bureaucracies and elites existed, the center retained control over decisions involving revenues· Hereditary Nishapuri rule in Awadh ultimately allowed the family to become independent of the Mughals altogether.

Safdar Jang established his power base by fighting and co-opting the Rajputs in Awadh from 1739 to 1741. He acquired an armed force loyal to himself by hiring six or seven thousand Shi‘i Qizilbash cavalrymen away from Nadir Shah's army before the latter withdrew from India.^[22] In Lucknow, he cultivated the local elite, so trusting the Farangi Mahall that he required even Shi‘is to present a diploma from it before he would hire them in the bureaucracy. He appointed members of the Farangi-Mahalli family to judicial posts.^[23] Leaders of the Shaykhzadahs in the capital, such as Muci zzu'd-Din Khan and Qutbu'd-Din Muhammad Khan, became Shi‘is in order to cement their relations with the nawab.

The Mughal emperor called Awadh's nawab to Delhi in 1743, promoting him the following year and adding to his responsibilities the governorship of Kashmir. Many Shi‘is from Kashmir joined his military, affecting Persian language and dress but receiving less pay than the Qizilbash horsemen. In February 1745 Safdar Jang showed his mettle when he and his forces accompanied Muhammad Shah against tile Ruhilah Afghan ‘Ali Muhammad Khan, whose growing power north of Awadh and east of Delhi posed a threat to both. The Ruhilahs, Sunni Puhktun tribespeople, emigrated from the mountain fastnesses around Peshawar down into the lush Gangetic plain

[22] Naqavi, ‘Imad , pp 30-32, Muhammad Fayzbakhsh, Memoirs of Delhi and Faizabad, Being a Translation of the Tank Farahbakhsh , trans. William Hoey, 2 vols. (Allahabad: North-West Provinces and Oudh Government Press, 1888-89), 2:246-47; Srivastava, First Two Nawabs , pp. 91-101

[23] B. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), p. 30; Rahman ‘Ali, Tazkirah-'i‘ulama-yiHind (Lucknow Naval Kishor, 1914), pp. 219-20.

throughout the medieval period. Safdar Jang's impressive show of force intimidated the Ruhilah, who came to terms with the emperor. His legitimacy as the emperor's standard-bearer also helped him: the ulama of North India gave legal rulings in favor of the emperor's cause, influencing some Ruhilahs to desert their leader.^[24]

The year 1748 gave India a new Mughal emperor, Ahmad Shah Timuri, and a new chief minister, Safdar Jang. In the first years of his ministry he struggled against the Afghani Bangash clans settled in the Doab, who, in the summer and fall of 1750, occupied Awadh.^[25] The martial Bangash, Pukhtuns like the Ruhilahs, had also emigrated into village North India from largely pastoral Afghanistan. Safdar Jang put together a new political confederation against the Bangash tribes, receiving unexpected support in this campaign from Awadh's urban Sunni Shaykhzadahs, who conducted a remarkable citizens' revolution against the invading tribesmen. The Bangash Afghans who occupied the important Awadh town of Bilgram treated its notables roughly and sacked the town when the locals retaliated by wounding some Afghans. In the streets and quarters, people prepared to defend themselves. In Lucknow, fearful Iranians stored their wealth with Shaykhzadah leader Mucizzu'd-Din Khan, and the haughtiness of the new conquerors and the harshness of their exactions provoked sanguinary riots between the Afghans and the Shaykhzadahs. After a night of rioting in one quarter of the city, seven hundred Afghans assembled against four hundred Shaykhzadahs, the citizens of Lucknow routing the Bangash men and suffering a third fewer casualties.

The Shaykhzadah leader Mucizzu'd-Din Khan, a Shi‘i with strong ties to the Iranians and a man particularly close to Safdar Jang, called a conference of notables, raising an army of live to six thousand men and forcing the Afghans to withdraw. Mucizzu'd-Din Khan then wrote his clansmen in other large towns, detailing the incident and warning of possible Bangash reprisals. In Lucknow and Hardoi districts the "republican" influence of the many large towns historically diluted landed power, leading to a scarcity of very large landlords and a proliferation of small holdings.^[26] The urban-based Shaykhzadah middle landholders expelled the Afghans and formed an army to fight for Safdar Jang's restoration.

Once again, the ulama rallied to the imperial forces. Maliku'l-‘Ulama' gave a ruling in favor of the emperor at Safdar Jang's behest. In Sandilah the Shi‘i logician Mawlavi Hamdu'llah, although he did not join the militia,

[24] Tabataba'i, Siyar 2.16-23, Murtaza Husayn Bilgrami, Hadiqatal-aqalim (Lucknow: Naval Kishor, 1879), pp 140-41; Naqavi, ‘Imad , pp. 45-50, Srivastava, First Two Nawabs , pp. 102-25.

[25] Tabataba'i, Siyar 2:23-24, 30-34; M. H. Bilgrami, Hadiqatal-aqalim , pp. 135-36; Srivastava, First Two Nawabs , pp. 126-65.

[26] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh , 3 vols. (Lucknow: Oudh Government Press, 1877), 2:40. In the nineteenth century, five of Awadh's most populous towns were m Hardoi.

publicly espoused the nawab-vizier's cause, under the banner of which the town's newly militant citizenry gradually rid it of Afghans. The same pattern recurred in Bilgram and Kakori. Safdar Jang completed the task of expelling and overcoming the Bangash forces by forming an alliance with the Hindu Marathas and jointly subduing North India.^[27]

The conflict at one level centered on whether Awadh would be incorporated into a patriarchal state presided over by Bangash clansmen or would continue to evolve as a semiautonomous satrapy with a patrimonial-bureaucratic administration inherited from the Mughal Empire. The Sunni middle landholders based in small towns chose the Shi‘i Safdar Jang over the Sunni Bangash tribesmen because his rule offered more continuity of political culture and revenue structure than did that of the coarse new conquerors. However new and alien the development of nawabi Shi‘i rule in Lucknow may appear against the backdrop of Mughal traditions of tight Sunni rule from the center, the nawabs were perceived to participate in Mughal legitimacy as the appointees of the emperor. The first minister, though victorious, squandered his remaining years in office on a fruitless power struggle in Delhi, which he lost to the Turanian forces.

The second phase of Awadh state formation saw the further definition of state boundaries through conflict with outside forces. The Awadh state developed its own, distinctively Shi‘i-tinged military. Further political bonding of local Sunni political elites to the ruling Nishapuri house occurred through an independent social movement of Muslim townsmen to defend Nishapuri Awadh from extraregional military attackers. The struggles with the Ban-gash demonstrated to the Nishapuri family that they could successfully defend a regional, hereditary power base with the aid of their Qizilbash Shi‘i cavalry and Muslim and Hindu troops, and that a dependable coalition against outsiders could be built with local elites, such as the Shaykhzadahs. The destructive struggles in the Mughal capital, along with growing Durrani Afghan and Maratha challenges, cast doubt on the value of devoting so much time to the affairs of the center. Nishapuri. Awadh began to be born.