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Mughal rulers

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Mughal rules is (AD1557-1560) 106.222.164.36 (talk) 13:35, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Official Language

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For user:Malik-Al-Hind

The second official language of East India Company rule in India from 1773 to 1837 was Persian. Only in 1837 was the official language changed to Urdu, which was then called "Hindustani."[1][2][3][4][5] It is unlikely that Urdu was the official language of the Mughals. The British would not have waited 64 years. As for the Wikipedia page Hindustani, it is a POV-page, which perpetrates a view held mainly in post-colonial India, that by muddying the waters between Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi, and calling it Hindustani, they can keep alive the fiction that Urdu has not suffered a decline in the land of its birth. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:42, 18 February 2025 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:42, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At this point you ignored all the WP:RS backed up sources i quoted. Besides for that, I agree Persian was the official language too but Urdu too.
"During the Mogul rule, Persian replaced the position of Sanskrit as the official language in administration especially in conducting the court proceedings, etc. Persian continued as the official language till the time of Emperor Shajahan in the seventeen century, when Hindustani (Urdu) took the position of the official language in the Mughal courts, yet Sanskrit continued to be used as the intellectual language in teaching classical sciences, philosophy, religion, etc. That synergy of Persian, Urdu (Hindustani) and Sanskrit had continued as the administrative and intellectual languages during the Mughal period"[1]
As per this source, Persian remained the language used in administrative and other official purposes but Urdu too had become an official language and even started having more influence than Persian in some instances.

According to contemporary poet Mir Taqi Mir "Urdu was the language of Hindustan by the authority of the King"[6][7]

And not just these 3 sources, but also the 2 sources cited in the main page's infobox which clearly say Shah Jahan declared Urdu (Hindustani) to be the official language too. So don't remove it. If you have problems with Hindustani then take this discussion to the talk page of that article. Till then, we will replace Hindustani with Urdu. Malik-Al-Hind (talk) 03:33, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Those are just cherry picked sources, which you would be hard-pressed to find without Google. They have no thematic commonality. It is a matter of due weight. Please read WP:TERTIARY.
Examine the Mughal coinage. It is all in Persian. Examine the coinage—pictures of which I have added to WP from my personal collection—that the East India Company issued during its early rule in the name of Emperor Shah Alam: File:East India Company Silver Half Rupee 1787 Bengal Presidency Murshidabad Mint in the name of Shah Alam II Mughal Emperor.jpg It is all in Persian.
Examine the article in Britannica on Urdu written by C. M. Naim (see quote below).
Examine the book by Ruth Laila Schmidt on Urdu grammar, see quote below.
Urdu became standardized as a literary language during late Mughal times, see for example Karen Schwarz here, but there was no systematic Urdu prose writing until the British began to promote it at Fort William College during early Company rule. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:06, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to do an NPOV search among scholarly sources, then, "mughal" "official language" inpublisher:university is a much better way to do it, and you will see that scholar after scholar lines up to state that it was Persian. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:43, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See Naim's article on Urdu in Britannica, which states, "The first three centuries are dominated by poetry. Urdu prose truly began only in the 19th century, with translations of Persian dāstāns, books prepared at the Delhi College and the Fort William College at Calcutta, and later with the writers of the Aligarh movement.
Ruth Laila Schmidt's introduction to Chapter 14, "Persian Elements in Urdu," in Essentials of Urdu Grammar, Routledge, 1999, which states: "Urdu developed in close contact with Persian, which was the language of administration and education during the period of Muslim rule in India. Even after Urdu began to replace Persian as the language of poetry in the eighteenth century, Persian retained its official status for another century, and remained a rich source of literary vocabulary in Urdu."Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:54, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mir is not a historian; unlike Nazeer Akbarabadi, he did not even write Shahr Ashob. We acknowledge him in the lead of Delhi as a poet, one of two great ones in Urdu from Delhi, but not a historian. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:54, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Did you just call those quotes cherry-picked? The sources are WP:RS and they clearly say Hindustani was the official language of the Mughal Empire. All of your other quotes which you cited aren't contradicting my claim at all, they merely say Persian was the official language, which I agree with. My claim is Hindustani was the official language of the Empire, Which are backed up by reliable sources. There are several sources which states this.[8][9][2]

Mir is not a historian, yet he is a contemporary source. And the WP:RS source i cited says Hindustani was the official language of the Empire based on that.

I will put the quote again: Persian replaced the position of Sanskrit as the official language in administration especially in conducting the court proceedings, etc. Persian continued as the official language till the time of Emperor Shajahan in the seventeen century, when Hindustani (Urdu) took the position of the official language in the Mughal courts, yet Sanskrit continued to be used as the intellectual language in teaching classical sciences, philosophy, religion, etc. That synergy of Persian, Urdu (Hindustani) and Sanskrit had continued as the administrative and intellectual languages during the Mughal period"

The source clearly says Persian remained to be used in administrative purposes, So it was official. But Urdu or Hindustani too had become the official language of the empire.

As Mir Taqi Mir says: "Urdu was the language of Hindustan by the authority of the King" [10][11]

It was the official language of Hindustan by the Authority of the King, so it was official.

Malik-Al-Hind (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't dish out third-rate sources to competent longstanding editors of Wikipedia's South Asia-related content. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:21, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Especially such examples as "Persian replaced the position of Sanskrit as the official language in administration." Sanskrit had died long before that. Please read the lead of Sanskrit (esp. the end of the second paragraph), an admin-supervised lead I wrote some time ago, just as I wrote the admin-supervised lead of this (Mughal Empire) page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:30, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PS Please go to WP:RS/N and as them if "English Bilingual Project: Exploring the Pedagogical Function of Mentalese By Mathew Varghese" is a reliable source for the Urdu being the Official Language of the Mughal Empire. Otherwise, if you persist to push this, I will not reply and consider you to lack consensus for your edit. If you edit war, I will post on the user talk pages of administrators. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:37, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please inform me if and when you post at RS/N. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was having exams,
"Sanskrit had died long before that"
Not necessarily, it was still spoken in many hindu kingdoms and lands in northern India and Southern India. Empires like ,Vijaynagar Empire patronized Sanskrit a lot. So did the Gajapati dynasty and various other Rajput clans. Sanskrit's influence was declining but to say it completely died would be wrong. However under the Mughal rule when much of the subcontinent came under its rule, Persian replaced Sanskrit in numerous places.
Regardless Fowler, Ram Sharan Sharma and Arthur Dudney are very reliable sources. But if you are insisting that they are not, I will definitely take this to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Reliable sources by them mention that Hindustani-Urdu was one of the officially recognized language. There are several other sources i cited too. Malik-Al-Hind (talk) 08:08, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you are unable to post on RS/N right now about the reliability of "English Bilingual Project: Exploring the Pedagogical Function of Mentalese By Mathew Varghese" in the matter of Urdu being the official language of the Mughal Empire (for that is what I have written above), please do so when you are able. Please immediately inform me on my user talk page when you have posted there. But in the interim, please do not raise walls of text here. Please also don't change the goalposts of a talk page discussion, especially with longstanding, competent, editors of 18 years. I'm well aware of the tactics of WP:Civil POV pushing as are admins. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:33, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know this was back in February, but that source mentions the advent of "Latin dialects, such as [...] English". I am not so sure it is an RS...
Himaldrmann (talk) 11:00, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Garcia, Humberto (2020), England Re-Oriented: How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857, Cambridge University Press, p. 128, ISBN 978-1-108-49564-6, "Hindoostanee" was instrumental for Company rule in that Gilchrist's grammar books, dictionaries, and translations helped to standardize Urdu as an official language for lower level judicial courts and revenue administration in 1837, replacing Persian.
  2. ^ Schiffman, Harold (2011), Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice, BRILL, p. 11, ISBN 978-90-04-20145-3, In 1837 Urdu was formally adopted by the British, in place of Persian, as the language of interaction between the Government (which from then on conducted its affairs in English) and the local population.
  3. ^ Everaert, Christine (2009), Tracing the Boundaries between Hindi and Urdu: Lost and Added in Translation between 20th Century Short Stories, BRILL, pp. 253–, ISBN 978-90-04-18223-3, It was only in 1837 that Persian lost its position as official language of India to Urdu and to English in the higher levels of administration.
  4. ^ Bayly, Christopher Alan (1999), Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge University Press, p. 286, ISBN 978-0-521-66360-1, Paradoxically, many British also clung to Persian. Indeed, the so-called Urdu that replaced Persian as the court language after 1837 was recognisably Persian as far as its nouns were concerned. The courtly heritage of Persian was also to exercise a constraint on the British cultivation of Hindustani/Urdu.
  5. ^ Lelyveld, David (1993). "Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 35 (4). Cambridge University Press: 665–682, 674. The earlier grammars and dictionaries made it possible for the British government to replace Persian with vernacular languages at the lower levels of judicial and revenue administration in 1837, that is, to standardize and index terminology for official use and provide for its translation to the language of the ultimate ruling authority, English. For such purposes Hindustani was equated with Urdu, as opposed to any geographically defined dialect of Hindi and was given official status through large parts of north India. Written in the Persian script with a largely Persian and, via Persian, an Arabic vocabulary, Urdu stood at the shortest distance from the previous situation and was easily attainable by the same personnel.
  6. ^ Arthur Dudney (2015). Delhi:Pages From a Forgotten History. Hay House. ISBN 978-93-84544-31-7. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  7. ^ S. R. Sharma · (2014). Life, Times and Poetry of Mir. Partridge Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-4828-1478-1. Archived from the original on 16 July 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  8. ^ Arthur Dudney (2015). Delhi:Pages From a Forgotten History. Hay House. ISBN 978-93-84544-31-7. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  9. ^ S. R. Sharma · (2014). Life, Times and Poetry of Mir. Partridge Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-4828-1478-1. Archived from the original on 16 July 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  10. ^ Arthur Dudney (2015). Delhi:Pages From a Forgotten History. Hay House. ISBN 978-93-84544-31-7. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  11. ^ S. R. Sharma · (2014). Life, Times and Poetry of Mir. Partridge Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-4828-1478-1. Archived from the original on 16 July 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023.

Semi-protected edit request on 30 March 2025

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Status Empire

Capital Agra (1526–1530; 1560–1571; 1598–1648) Delhi (1530–1540; 1639–1857) Fatehpur Sikri (1571–1585) Lahore (1586–1598)

Official languages Persian

Religion State religion Islam[a] Din-i Ilahi (1582–1605) Others Hinduism (majority)

Government

Monarchy

Emperor • 1526–1530 (first) Babur • 1837–1857 (last) Bahadur Shah II

Vicegerent • 1526–1540 (first) Mia Khalifa • 1794–1818 (last) Daulat Rao Sindhia

Grand Vizier • 1526–1540 (first) Nizam-ud-din Khalifa • 1775–1797 (last) Asaf-ud-Daula

Historical era Early modern • First Battle of Panipat 21 April 1526 • Mughal Interregnum 17 May 1540–22 June 1555 • Second Battle of Panipat 5 November 1556 • Mughal–Afghan Wars 21 April 1526–3 April 1752 • Deccan wars 1680–1707 • Nader Shah's invasion of India 1738–1740 • Siege of Delhi 21 September 1857 • Mughal Emperor exiled to British Burma 7 October 1858

Area 1690[2][3][4] 4,000,000 km2 (1,500,000 sq mi)

Population

• 1595 125,000,000[5] • 1700 158,000,000[6]

Currency Rupee, Taka, dam[7]

Preceded by Delhi Sultanate Sur Empire Succeeded by 

   British Raj

Today part of India Pakistan Bangladesh Afghanistan Sugunapan (talk) 06:09, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. This appears to be the same as the current infobox. What changes are you proposing? LizardJr8 (talk) 15:58, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 26 April 2025

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the flag is completely false Histoireknowledgeable (talk) 11:24, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Not done Please describe the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source reflecting due weight, if appropriate.

Background Colours in Emperors List

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In diff, user Mydust changed the background colours of some of the rows in the list of Mughal emperors. That user is now blocked, so I can't ask them directly about their reason for this edit. Is it obvious to anyone what this means? It seems to me that we should either have a key or should remove the colours. Pathawi (talk) 18:19, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. RegentsPark (comment) 19:30, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Aurangzeb built more temples than he destroyed" : dubious?

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This seemed unlikely to me, so I tracked down its origin. The citation is a book about secularism in India, and mentions this in passing, in a single sentence; it, itself, provides a citation for the claim that leads to a (transcribed & cleaned-up) presidential address by Professor Barbara Metcalf. In a brief footnote, the good professor tells an anecdote about a "lively debate" in a 1994 meeting on South Asian studies, wherein one "Lloyd Rudolph" made this claim.

The trail there goes cold. Lloyd Rudolph was a political scientist & economist, with no expertise as a historian or upon Aurangzeb. This enterprising author contacted Dr. Metcalf about the claim, and she responded with:

I don’t know why I would have cited Lloyd — maybe a plug for the liveliness of AHA meetings! The late Lloyd Rudolph was a wonderful scholar but did not work on this topic himself to the best of my knowledge. And reading this fn now, I’m not even sure about “built.” Maybe patronized? Certainly, there was a lot of patronage.

        (emphasis mine)

I have attempted to find other papers wherein this claim might be evidenced, but so far all instances of this particular assertion—i.e., built rather than the softer patronized or protected claims—have led back to the anecdote about Dr. Rudolph at the "lively" debate.

What do we think? Ought this line be kept? Footnoted with a short explanation of the above, or otherwise indicated as of uncertain provenance (unless someone here knows where Dr. Rudolph got it)? Left as-is?

I, personally, lean toward "probably ought be altogether deleted": it seems, prima facie, unlikely that Aurangzeb—a devout Muslim who on multiple occasions expressed his antipathy toward the temples or aspects thereof, unquestionably destroyed somewhere between ~40-300 (depending on whom you believe), and ordered that no construction of new temples be allowed at least twice (IIRC)—would himself have (caused to be) built an even greater number of new temples.

I feel—I mean, were it my encyclopedia—such a surprising claim must surely require a correspondingly larger amount of academic weight behind it. (But perhaps Wikipedia has different criteria.)

But!: if someone else here with relevant expertise, or better academic-paper–hunting skills, can find a good source on Aurangzeb's temple-building proclivities, I'll (of course) be fine with keeping the line.

(I don't really care, one way or t'other—no dog in the fight, I mean: just curious. Too, I think that in this case, Wiki may be perpetuating false—or at least dubious—information; we'll see, I suppose! I fear some of this may fall under WP:OR, too—so I'm by no means sure of the outcome... exciting! heh.)


Cheers,

Himaldrmann (talk) 09:53, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Eh. I think the Truschke book, written by another academic, might be adduced as another reliable source on this. (I haven’t read it, so I won’t.) Meanwhile, the story from Prāgyāta sounds like something that could happen in academia, & it would be worthwhile to pursue this further, but I don’t think the site itself—a Hindu nationalist essay site with a pretty anti-Muslim, anti-secularism, occasionally anti-science tenor—is a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes. To be clear: I think that it’s likely that this story about unreliable Lloyd’s words getting mangled on their way from talk to publication is true. I just think sourcing is an issue. Did you check Google Scholar for academic reviews of Truschke’s biography? Pathawi (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph were major political scientists of postcolonial South Asia, whose work also borders on modern Indian history. Susanne, moreover, was also once the President of the Association of Asian Studies. True, they were not trained as historians per se, but they attended South Asia seminars pretty much every week at the University of Chicago for over 40 years. They had a pretty good idea of the historiography of Mughal, British, and modern India. The problem here is that the book History of State and Religion in India, written by Ian Copland, Ian Mabbett, Asim Roy, Kate Brittlebank, Adam Bowles, all historians, has not been quoted comprehensively. This discussion is too unfocused for me to join it, but I will improve the phrasing and sourcing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pathawi: Yeah, I had the same thought—the quote certainly rings true to me, and sounds like Metcalf... but it's not beyond the imagination to picture the author of the blog inventing it, either. I'll try to verify it two different ways (asking the blog-author to provide proof, and asking Metcalf herself—though, as she's now 83, I don't exactly want to come at her with strident demands, heh; this is more for our own personal edification than anything else, though, as I'm uncertain whether any personal correspondence with Metcalf, my own or the blog author's—even if evidenced with screenshots or the like—can serve as a source for the article).
Your suggestion re: Truschke's book is a good one also, and I'll do that as well. I've got two promising candidates already: Zia (Reading Religion, 2020), Banerjee (Sehepunkte, 2018). From a quick skim, they seem to think there's both good & bad in the book... which, I suppose, is to be expected! (They do appear particularly critical of her portrayal of the man in re the matter of Hindu temples, though.)
@Fowler&fowler: I think you've certainly improved the page—thanks!
I'm not convinced the issue is entirely one of missing context from the cited text, though. It does make the claim that other Mughal emperors financed (the construction of? what does "sponsored" mean?) temples, but—IIRC—for Aurangzeb himself, it's only addressed in that single line I mentioned (I checked chap. 5 too to make sure); and, just to be thorough, I looked up the other source cited (in the book's citation #65 from chap. 6), Brown's "Did Aurangzeb ban music?", which again goes back to Metcalf's "address-paper".
It's something of a moot point, now, with your improvement of the article, since the issue mostly hung on the wording "built many more [...] than he destroyed"... but, well, like I said earlier: now I'm curious! [cough] Ahem. —it's a perennial failing of mine, I'm afraid–
Cheers,
Himaldrmann (talk) 21:01, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies. I meant to write "financed or patronized the building of Hindu temples." Very unlikely that he built Hindu temples like Shah Jahan did the Taj. Have now corrected. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:14, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, no: Personal correspondence wouldn't count as a reliable source for Wikipedia. If you haven't yet, at some point you might want to take a look at WP:RS: It's a great starting point for thinking thru sourcing policy. Pathawi (talk) 04:35, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have also removed the nonsensical "Despite this ..." sentence at the end, cited to poor sources that do not make even a half-hearted effort at summarize due weight. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:23, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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