Persian adventurer in India

istorian Jadunath Sarkar notes in his foreword to Life of Mir Jumla that Persia has given three noble gifts to India. He was referring to three persons who migrated from Persia to the Deccan and were very able administrators and military commanders. I have written in this space about two of these ‘gifts’ namely Khawaja Gawan of the Bahmani Kingdom and Malik Ambar of the Ahmadnagar State. This article is about the third, Muhammad Said, more commonly known as Mir Jumla.

Mir Jumla was the title of the Prime Minister of the 17th century Qutbi-Shahi Sultanate of Golconda. As is explained below, Muhammad Said became Mir Jumla of the Sultanate by virtue of his proven administrative and military skills. The title stuck and that is how posterity knows him now.

Mir Jumla's rise in international trade coincided with the decline of the Portuguese in India and the rise of the British and Dutch naval powers

Later, while serving the Mughals, he was promoted by Emperor Aurangzeb to Diwan-i-Kul - Minister of Everything - of the Empire. He thus earned the rare honour of gaining the highest administrative posts in two different realms, one of which supplanted the other! For his part, Mir Jumla extended the Mughal domains in the Deccan up to Karnataka in the south and to Cooch Behar and Assam in the North East. In the process, he annihilated the weakened Vijayanagar Empire and subdued the fiercely independent Assamese.

Luckily, his life history is well documented. Many Persian historians of the Deccan wrote about his career. The French merchant J.B. Tavernier, who came in contact with him in the Deccan and the imperial capital of Delhi, and Italian adventurer Niccolao Manucci, have left detailed notes on his career and wealth. Then during his conquest of Cooch Behar and Assam in 1660-63, he employed a historian Shihab-ud-din Talish, who wrote a detailed diary about his master and also an appraisal of the land and people of these two regions. Finally, Jagadish Narayan Sarkar used extensive sources in writing The Life of Mir Jumla for his PhD thesis in 1951. This article has mainly consulted and quoted Manucci and Sarkar.

By the seventeenth century, the springs of scholarship in Iran and Central Asia had, relatively, dried up. Very few remnants of its extensive great civilization had survived. The social and political structures in the region had been dismantled first by the Mongols and then by Emir Timur. The Safavid rule had imposed tyranny of another kind. In this environment of political and social uncertainty, many scholars and military men were forced to leave Persia and migrate to Mughal India or the Deccan Sultanates. With prosperous Mughal rule in the Indo-Gangetic plains and five stable - though mutually hostile - Shia states in the Deccan, the Indian Subcontinent offered prospects for a prosperous future to the adventurous Muslims of Iran and Central Asia. Muhammad Said, Mir Jumla, was one such Persian luminary who migrated to the Deccan in search of economic security.

Muhammad Said was born in or around 1591 to a poor oil merchant in a village near Esfahan in central Persia. Despite his poverty, he gained some education, an acquisition that was to serve him well during his career in India where there was much demand for such educated persons. In Esfahan, he became a clerk to a diamond merchant who had links with Golconda, the diamond capital of the world at the time. The knowledge about diamonds was invaluable for his future trading and political career in Golconda.

He left Persia for the Deccan sometime between 1625 and 1630, in his words, to make a secure livelihood, to help his relatives and to escape the torments of a local religious scholar. He was aged anywhere between 35 and 40 years. At this time, he was in the service of a horse trader in Esfahan – these creatures being a most profitable export from Persian ports to the Deccan. Initially on arrival in Golconda, according to Manucci, he went from house to house to sell shoes. He therefore made a struggling start in India. Golconda State, comprising parts of the modern Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, was then ruled by the Qutb Shahi dynasty from a fort that bore the name of the State and is located on the western edge of Hyderabad city.

Soon however, he was attracted towards the vast diamond trade of the city and joined a local merchant. He rose rapidly in wealth and fame. Employing his knowledge from his experience in Persia, he started his own trade in diamonds. He used the profits to buy rights to operate some of the most lucrative mines. It is reported that he ultimately owned a few sacks full of diamonds. His trade prospered in many other fields as his fame grew in the Qutb Shahi kingdom. He purchased a number of ships that he employed in the promotion of his trade. His rise in international trade coincided with the decline of the Portuguese in India (the Portuguese fleet was defeated by the British Navy in 1588) and the rise of the British and the Dutch naval powers. However, Muhammad Said soon realized that in the corruption and nepotism-ridden Golconda State, he needed the full backing of the court to protect his business interests. He therefore entered state service as a middle-level functionary.

Due to his diligence, he was noticed by the reigning Mir Jumla, i.e. the Prime Minister, who appointed him in the higher positions of the state bureaucracy. In 1635-6, he was elevated to havaldar -in charge- of Masulipatam port, the busiest and the most lucrative port of the Kingdom. It was the one of the production centres of the famed printed multicoloured cotton cloth called chintz. The port received ships from up and down country, Arabia and south east Asia as far as China. However, the affairs of the port were in a poor state, with local officials pocketing much of the revenue otherwise due to the state.

Muhammad Said brought the administration of the port under his control, thereby increasing state revenues. He was promoted to become havaldar of an inland fort also - and his ability was noted by the Sultan, who soon promoted him to one of the highest positions of Sar-i-Khai, or the ‘head of the horse’. His duties now included civil administration, revenue functions and military affairs for the whole of the Kingdom. He was then promoted to Mir Jumla, the highest office in Golconda State, a title that he is known by in history.

By then, he commanded the complete respect of the ruler and enjoyed authority over most affairs of state. Nizamuddin Ahmad Shirazi writes in his Hadiqat us Salatin that in every task Muhammad Said himself proved to be a well-wisher of the Sultan and became his favourite. Waris remarks in his Padshahnama that Mir Jumla came to have the power of all the affairs of Qutb Shah under his control. Nothing could be done without his knowledge and approval. He became the intermediary between the Sultan and the European factions. Tavernier, wishing to sell some pearls and jewels to Sultan Abdullah Qutb Shah at Golconda, had first of all to go from Masulipatam to Mir Jumla at Golconda because “the King would buy nothing rare nor of high price which Mir Jumla had not first seen’’. As he was “all in all in the Golconda State” and had widespread commercial activities, foreign nations came to feel the weight of his influence. Thus, in the English factory records of December 1639, he is spoken of as “the Chief Governor under the King,” who “governed the whole kingdom.” Andrew Cogan, an envoy of the English East India Company to Golconda, observed that Mir Jumla “indeed commanded the whole Kingdom”. The British officials at the port of Swally -near Surat - put the whole thing succinctly, when in 1643-44, they described him as the “all ruling Sar-i-khail or Vizier” who governed “the king and consequently the country.”

Having observed his mettle in civil administration, Qutb Shah appointed him the general for the difficult invasion of Karnataka in the south, in 1646. Mir Jumla was 55 years of age. In a mere 15 to 20 years of his arrival from Persia, he had become the Prime Minister as well as the military commander of the Kingdom.

The lands south of the Golconda and Bijapur states, as the map shows, were part of the Vijayanagar Empire. As this empire receded to the south east, the Karnataka realm expanded south of the river Krishna, from the Indian Ocean to the Bay of Bengal and included Mysore, parts of Telangana and Northern Madras. This was a large region ruled by the Nayak dynasty, who fought with the Rayas of Vijayanagar for territory and influence.

Karanataka was a rich country with fertile soil, productive mines and abundant elephants. A chronicler Zahur ibn Zahuri wrote that its rulers had large treasures accumulated over many decades. He also wrote that its climate was delightful, its air refreshing and the rains sufficient for a plentiful harvest, surpassing the produce of Egypt and Syria. The French traveller Thevenot noted that the region was exceedingly fruitful and provisions were cheap. Its diamond mines, fertile valleys and buried treasures invited many a greedy glances from its northern neighbours, especially when the region was prone to internal strife.

The Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur, located on the western side of Deccan was the first to invade Karnataka and occupied, in years 1638-1644, lands up to Sagar on the Western Ghats and Bangalore in the middle of the plateau. The Qutb Shahi rulers of Golconda, too, ran a victorious romp in 1642 up to Pulicat, near modern Chennai. Both these invasions were born of opportunity and avarice but were proclaimed under the convenient banner of raids against ‘Dar-ul-Harb’ against infidels – even though the Qutb Shahi ruler had aligned himself with the Hindu Rajas of Kalahasti, a state 100 km north east of Chennai. The Eastern Vijayanagar state, with the assistance of the Dutch, was able to reclaim the lands taken over by Golconda and by 1644 the forces of the latter were on the run.

At this juncture, Mir Jumla was entrusted with the military command of Golconda forces. He took advantage of the bitter war between Vijayanagar and southern Madurai states and won over the Vijayanagar commander-in-chief Mallaiya to switch sides. He was instrumental in creating an alliance between Bijapur and Golconda for joint operations in Karnataka. This deal in early 1646 specified that the territory occupied, spoils of war, goods, jewels and cash of Vijayanagar would be divided in the proportion of 2/3 for Bijapur and 1/3 for Golconda. However, the two Kingdoms would soon become hostile to each other over the division of the spoils from their victory.

The immediate result of this joint operation was that Vijayanagar was quickly run over by the two Muslim Kingdoms. Mir Jumla received submission and tribute of the Dutch in Pulicat and appointed his own ‘thanedar’ (governor) of the region. He also confirmed the rights of the British at Madras in lieu of annual payments. During this time, Mir Jumla usefully employed some British, French and Dutch gunners for his artillery; something that he would do on a larger scale while serving Emperor Aurangzeb. Hostilities continued until 1647 when most of the Vijayanagar empire was carved up by the two Muslim Kingdoms. Mir Jumla now occupied a rich swath of land 500 km long with a breadth varying between 60 and 300 km. His possessions yielded annual revenue of 4.3 million rupees. He also started acting independently of Golconda control. He had accumulated a vast fortune that he made by confiscating the wealth in captured forts. He took the hoarded treasures from many old temples where he seized all the precious stones implanted in the idols. He compelled the inhabitants of his captured territories to surrender whatever they possessed in shape of gold and diamonds. He is thus reported to have in his possession 20 maunds in weight of diamonds, all from his Karnataka plunder. In addition, his mines in the region produced iron and saltpetre, both profitable trading products.

In the second part of this series, the administrative and trading skills of Mir Jumla will be discussed along with his rift with the Qutb Shah dynasty and his attachment to Prince Aurangzeb.

Parvez Mahmood retired as a Group Captain from PAF and is now a software engineer. He lives in Islamabad and writes on historical and social issues. He can be reached at parvezmahmood53@gmail.com