On a Space Odyssey in the Inner Landscape of the Travellers

By Kanakalatha Mukund, "Travel encounters" - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Persian travel narratives of a crucial period of transformation and contact

Travel writing constitutes a distinctive literary genre, combining subjective perceptions with objective description of distant peoples and places, which open a window to an alien world to the reader.

However, the abiding perception is that the medieval and early modern travel-account is the sole preserve of European travellers; along with this goes the implicit assumption that western travel writing is “factual” while the “other” (that is Asian) travel writing is “fictional”.

This persists in spite of the long tradition of travel writing in Asia, from China which has produced many travel accounts, like the works of Chinese Buddhist monks Fahien and Hsuan Tsang among others, combining “travel-description linked with xenology.”

From West Asia we have, in the medieval period, the accounts of India by al-Biruni and later, by Ibn Batuta.

The main contention of the authors is that there exists a large volume of non-western travel literature little publicised though it might be. They specifically concentrate on accounts produced in different social and historical contexts in an extended region from Iran to India which was “inhabited by ‘Indo-Persian’ culture.”

In this zone, Persian was the dominant language and had become the main language not only of migrants from Iran or central Asia, but also of the local Hindus. There was thus a shared language, culture and literary tradition forged by the extensive use of Persian.

After thus setting out the basic contours of the background of the book, the authors begin a leisurely exploration of various travel accounts (safar nama) to India. The main objective of the authors is not to interpret the travel accounts by breaking up the text into “bite-sized fragments” but to “consciously follow its grain.”

Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam take the reader on a space odyssey over four centuries of the changing political landscape of India. They begin with a Sufi saint who fled from Delhi before Timur’s invasion to reach Gulbarga in the Deccan. The other two early travellers, Abdur Razzak and Nikitin, are better known and visited Vijayanagara and the Bahmani kingdoms at the height of their power and glory.

After an account of two “courtly encounters” with the Mughals, two chapters are devoted to travellers from Iran who came to India to seek their fortunes in the service of the Mughals. These capture a gamut of complex perceptions on the part of the travellers. Mughal India was clearly the most prosperous state in the region and was the land of opportunity for Iranians. Yet they remained convinced of the superiority of their own culture, while India was the inferior “other” with its largely non-Muslim population.

The authors point out that the present-day vision of a magical third world of solidarity certainly did not exist in the early modern period, and that the bonds which did exist were based on a few common points of reference.

Exchanges
While these works represented travel from the west to the east, people also travelled from India to the west. We are referred to the work of Khwaja Abdul Karim who travelled to Mecca accompanying Nadir Shah after his conquest of Delhi.

The last chapter deals with exchanges between the Ottoman Empire and the Mughals who, though conscious of their own importance and power, also regarded the Ottomons with deference because they were the custodians of the important Islamic centres of worship. This was acknowledged as a reference point of higher authority, and Tipu Sultan, in fact, used his interactions with the Ottomons to legitimise his own standing as the ruler of Mysore.

The book has an easy flowing style with a lively commentary on the various travellers visited in the book though the authors at times seem too caught up in the inner landscape of the travellers, which renders some parts of the book a little tedious. It must also be said, that the bizarre descriptions in the travel accounts do lend themselves to the observation that these are travel fiction and not facts.

This is a book that needs to be read at a leisurely pace for its flavour to be fully absorbed and appreciated.

INDO-PERSIAN TRAVELS IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES 1400-1800: Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge House, 4381/4, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhli-110002. Rs. 695.