White Mughals (76 page)

Their deaths effectively brought to a conclusion three hundred years of fusion and hybridity, all memory of which was later delicately erased from embarrassed Victorian history books, though Khair’s posthumous elevation into ‘a Hindoo Princess’ gave the story of her affair with James an element of ‘Oriental Romance’ that allowed it to escape the informal censorship that erased so many other similar stories.
⁶³
It would take another seventy years, and the implosion of an empire, before the two races were again able to come into close and intimate contact.

Even today, despite all the progress that has been made, we still have rhetoric about ‘clashing civilisations’, and almost daily generalisations in the press about East and West, Islam and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two. The white Mughals—with their unexpected minglings and fusions, their hybridity and above all their efforts at promoting tolerance and understanding—attempted to bridge these two worlds, and to some extent they succeeded in doing so.

As the story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows, East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again.

Akhbar
✷ Indian court newsletter

Alam
✷ Standard used by Shi’as as a focus for their
Muharram
(qv) venerations. Usually tear-shaped or fashioned into the shape of a hand, they are stylised representations of the standards carried by Imam Hussain at the Battle of Kerbala in AD 680. Often highly ornate and beautiful objects, the best of them are among the greatest masterpieces of medieval Indian metalwork

Amir
✷ Nobleman

Angia
✷ A sensuous, halter-neck version of the
choli
(qv) bodice, usually transparent or semi-transparent, that became very fashionable in Muslim courts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Fyze Palmer is wearing one under her
peshwaz
(qv) in her famous portrait by Zoffany

Apsaras
✷ The courtesans and dancing girls of the Hindu gods; heavenly dispensers of erotic bliss

Arrack
✷ Indian absinthe

Arzee
✷ Persian petition

Aseels
✷ Key figures in a
zenana
(qv). Usually slave girls by origin, they performed a number of essential administrative and domestic tasks within the women’s quarters, including that of wetnurse. In the Nizam’s
zenana
the senior
aseels
were important figures of state

Ashur khana
✷ Mourning hall for use during
Muharram
(qv)

Avatar
✷ An incarnation

Baksheesh
✷ Tip for services rendered

Banka
✷ Mughal gallant

Baradari
✷ A Mughal-style open pavilion with three arches on each side (lit. ‘twelve doors’)

Begum
✷ Indian Muslim noblewoman. A title of rank and respect: ‘Madam’

Betel
✷ Nut used as a mild narcotic in India, and eaten as
paan

Bhand
✷ Buffoon, mummer or mimic

Bhisti
✷ Water carrier

Bibi
✷ An Indian wife or mistress

Bibi ghar
✷ ‘Women’s house’ or
zenana
(qv)

Bidri
✷ The adjectival form of the place-name Bidar, the capital city of the Islamic Deccan in the fifteenth century. It is normally used to designate metalwork produced in Bidar from an alloy in which zinc predominates, usually decorated with silver or brass inlays in floral patterns against a blackened metal background

Biryani
✷ The rice and meat dish which is the particular speciality of Hyderabadi cuisine

Brahmin
✷ The Hindu priestly caste and the top rung of the caste pyramid

Chamars
✷ Untouchables of the sweeper caste

Char bagh
✷ A formal Mughal garden, named after its division into four (char) squares by a cross of runnels and fountains

Chattri
✷ A domed kiosk supported on pillars, often used as a decorative feature to top turrets and minarets (lit. ‘umbrella’)

Choli
✷ Short (and at this period usually transparent) Indian bodice

Chunam
✷ Polished lime plaster

Coss
✷ Mughal measurement of distance amounting to just over two miles

Daftar
✷ Office, or in the Nizam’s palace, chancellery

Dak
✷ Post (sometimes spelt ‘
dawke
’ in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries)

Deorhi
✷ Courtyard house or
haveli

Derzi
✷ Tailor

Devadasi
✷ Temple dancers, prostitutes and courtesans who were given to the great Hindu temples, usually in infancy by their parents (lit. ‘slave girls of the gods’)

Dharamasala
✷ Rest house

Dhobi
✷ Laundryman

Dhoolie
✷ Covered litter

Dhoti
✷ Loincloth

Divan
✷ Book of collected poetry

Diwan
✷ Prime minister, or the vizier in charge of administrative finance

Dragoman
✷ Interpreter or guide in the Ottoman or Persian Empires

Dubash
✷ Interpreter

Dupatta
✷ Shawl or scarf, usually worn with a
salvar kemise
(lit. ‘two leaves or widths’). Also known as a
chunni

Durbar
✷ Court

Fakir
✷ Sufi holy man, dervish or wandering Muslim ascetic (lit. ‘poor’)

Fatiha
✷ The short opening chapter of the Koran, read at ceremonial occasions as an invocation

Firangi
✷ Foreigner

Firman
✷ An order of the emperor or sultan in a written document

Ghazal
✷ Urdu or Persian love lyric

Hakim
✷ Physician

Halwa
✷ Carrot pudding

Hamam
✷ Turkish-style steam bath

Haram
✷ Forbidden

Harkarra
✷ Runner, messenger, newswriter or spy (lit: ‘all-do-er’). In eighteenth-century sources the word is sometimes spelt
hircarrah

Havildar
✷ A sepoy (qv) non-commissioned officer, corresponding to a sergeant

Holi
✷ The Hindu spring festival in which participants sprinkle red and yellow powder on one another

Hookah
✷ Waterpipe or hubble bubble

Id
✷ The two greatest Muslim festivals: Id ul-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, and Id ul-Zuha commemorates the delivery of Isaac. To celebrate the latter a ram or goat is slaughtered, as on the original occasion recorded in both the Old Testament and the Koran

Iftar
✷ The evening meal to break the Ramadan fast

Jagir
✷ Landed estate, granted for service rendered to the state and whose revenues could be treated as income by the
jagirdar

Jali
✷ A latticed stone or wooden screen

Jashn
✷ Party or marriage feast

Karkhana
✷ Workshop or factory

Khanazad
✷ Palace-born princes

Khansaman
✷ In the eighteenth century the word meant butler. Today it more usually means cook

Khanum
✷ A junior wife or concubine

Kharita
✷ Sealed Mughal brocade bag used to send letters as an alternative to an envelope

Khilat
✷ Symbolic court dress

Kotwal
✷ The police chief, chief magistrate or city administrator in a Mughal town

Lakh
✷ One hundred thousand

Langar
✷ Free distribution of food during a religious festival

Lathi
✷ Truncheon or stick

Lota
✷ Water pot

Lungi
✷ Indian-type sarong, longer version of the
dhoti
(qv)

Mahal
✷ Lit. ‘palace’, but often used to refer to sleeping apartments or the
zenana
wing of a palace or residence

Maistry
✷ (modern Hindi:
mistri
) A highly skilled foreman or master craftsman. According to
Hobson Jobson
the word, ‘a corruption of of the Portuguese mestre has spread into the vernaculars all over India and is in constant Anglo-Indian use’

Majlis
✷ Assembly, especially the gatherings during
Muharram
(qv)

Mansabdar
✷ A Mughal nobleman and office-holder, whose rank was decided by the number of cavalry he would supply for battle—for example, a
mansabdar
of 2500 would be expected to provide 2500 horsemen when the Nizam went to war

Marqana
✷ Stalactite-type decoration over a mosque or palace gateway

Marsiya
✷ Urdu or Persian lament or dirge for the martyrdom of Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet, sung in the
ashur khana
(qv) mourning halls during the festival of
Muharram
(qv)

Masnavi
✷ Persian or Urdu love lyric

Maula
✷ ‘My Lord’

Mehfil
✷ An evening of courtly Mughal entertainment, normally including dancing, the recitation of poetry and the singing of
ghazals
(qv)

Mihrab
✷ The niche in a mosque pointing in the direction of Mecca

Mir
✷ Title given before a name usually signifying that the holder is a
sayyed
(qv)

Mirza
✷ Prince or gentleman

Mohalla
✷ A distinct quarter of a Mughal city—i.e. a group of residential lanes, usually entered through a single gate

Muharram
✷ The great Shi’a Muslim festival commemorating the defeat and death of Imam Hussain, the Prophet’s grandson. Celebrated with particular gusto in Hyderabad and Lucknow

Mujtahid
✷ A cleric; one who does
ijtehad
, the interpretation of religious texts

Munshi
✷ Indian private secretary or language teacher

Mushaira
✷ Poetic symposium

Musnud
✷ The low arrangement of cushions and bolsters which formed the throne of Indian rulers at this period

Nabob
✷ English corruption of the Hindustani
nawab
, literally ‘deputy’, which was the title given by the Mughal emperors to their regional governors and viceroys. In England it became a term of abuse directed at returned ‘old India hands’, especially after Samuel Foote’s 1779 play
The Nabob
brought the term into general circulation

Naqqar khana
✷ Ceremonial drum house

Nautch
✷ Indian dance display

Nazr
✷ Symbolic gift given in Indian courts to a feudal superior

Nizam
✷ Part of the title of the first Subedar of the Deccan, Asaf Jah, Nizam ul-Mulk. In the fashion of the time, Asaf Jah became effectively independent of the Mughal government in Delhi, and at his death in 1748 his title was claimed as hereditary by his dynastic successors, starting with his illegitimate younger son and eventual successor, Nizam Ali Khan

Omrah
✷ Nobleman

Palanquin
✷ Indian litter

Peshkash
✷ An offering or present given by a subordinate to a superior. The term was used more specifically by the Marathas as the money paid to them by ‘subordinate’ powers such as the Nizam

Peshwaz
✷ Long, high-waisted gown

Pikdan
✷ Spittoon

Pir
✷ Sufi holy man

Pirzada
✷ Official at a Sufi shrine, often a descendant of the founding saint

Prasad
✷ Temple sweets given to devotees in exchange for offerings—a tradition transferred from Hindu to Islamic practice at the Sufi shrines of the Deccan

Pukka
✷ Proper, correct

Purdah
✷ Lit. ‘a curtain’; used to signify the concealment of women within the
zenana
(qv)

Qawal
✷ A singer of
qawalis
(qv)

Qawalis
✷ Rousing hymns sung at Sufi shrines

Qiladar
✷ Fort keeper

Qizilbash
✷ Lit. ‘redheads’. Name given to Saffavid soldiers (and later traders) due to the tall red cap worn under their turbans

Rakhi
✷ Band worn around the wrist as a sign of brotherhood, solidarity or protection

Salatin
✷ Palace-born princes

Sanyasi
✷ Hindu ascetic

Sarpeche
✷ Turban jewel or ornament

Sati
✷ The practice of widow-burning, or the burned widow herself

Sawaree
✷ Elephant stables (and the whole establishment and paraphernalia related to the keeping of elephants)

Sayyed
(or f.
Sayyida
) ✷ A lineal descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. Sayyeds often have the title ‘Mir’

Sepoy
✷ Indian soldier in the service of the East India Company

Shadi
✷ Marriage feast or party

Shamiana
✷ Indian marquee, or the screen formed around the perimeter of a tented area

Shi’a
✷ One of the two principal divisions of Islam, dating back to a split immediately after the death of the Prophet, between those who recognised the authority of the Medinian caliphs and those who followed the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali (
Shi’at Ali
means ‘the party of Ali’ in Arabic). Though most Shi’ites live in Iran, there have always been a large number in the Indian Deccan, and Hyderabad was for much of its history a centre of Shi’ite culture

Shikar
✷ Hunting

Sirdar
✷ Nobleman

Surahi
✷ Traditional tall, elegant north Indian water and wine cooler/flask