Tuesday 7 February 2012

The Unknown Story of Armenians in the Mughal Court

By Jennifer Gnana

How many of us would have known or even imagined that the guns used by the Mughals against the Marathas were made by an Armenian?
Or the fact that one an Armenian wife formed part of Mughal Emperor Akbar's harem?
That the Mughal Court once had an accomplished Urdu and Hindi scholar Mirza Zulqarnain, who was Armenian?
How about the fact that the Scindhias of Gwalior once employed an Armenian as the commander-in-chief of their army?
These startling revelations and interesting history are some of the many gems that Shahzad Z Najmuddin's book, 'Armenia: a Resume with Notes on Seth's Armenians in India' reveals.
Posthumously published, the book begins with a tribute to Najmuddin from his friends who says that he died, not of a heart attack but “of a broken heart".
The book which is a collection of Najmuddin's recounting of the Armenian history as well as the early settlements in India, seems like a love song in itself.
Najmuddin was perhaps one of the few Pakistani Armenians and he preserves in his book family anecdotes and the struggles of his family who emigrated to Lahore from Afghanistan where Armenians were employed as gunmakers by the invading Afghan armies.
Curiosity made me wonder why someone with a Muslim name would seek to investigate and research on Armenians in India.
The name shouldn't come as a surprise as readers will discover that Armenians in India used surnames such as khoja, khan, aga and bey which are normally vested on Persian and Turkish nobility.
In an interestingly titled chapter, 'Shah Nazar Khan- He Who Came before Bofors', Najmuddin talks about Lahore's famous gun, the Zamzamah, meaning 'the lion's roar'.
Cast by the Armenian Shah Nazar Khan, the gun was used by the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Durrani in the famous Battle of Panipat in 1761 against the Marathas.
So impressive was the gun, that Rudyard Kipling would later sing its praises as the "fire-breathing dragon" and the weapon would later take the writer's name and be simply called 'Kim's gun'.
Najmuddin then takes us to the 'Armenian Princess' Palace' which was once home to Emperor Akbar's Christian wife, in the now ruined city of Fatehpur Sikri.
Her tomb, built by Akbar's son and succesor Jehangir, is situated close to the emperor's own and Najmuddin notes with irony, "In the city of Lahore, even today, there is a mosque named after Mariam Zamani the Queen of Akbar. In today's bigoted Pakistan any suggestion that the masjid has any connection whatsoever with Akbar's Christian wife would be tantamount to blasphemy."
He also recounts how Jacob Petrus, son of an Armenian merchant, rose through the ranks to gain command of Scindhias' army in 1843.
Other notables among Emperor Akbar's diverse court, were Abdul Hai, who served as chief justice of the empire, Juliana who served as a doctor in charge of the royal 'seraglio' as well as Mirza Zulqarnain who served a a grandee (amir) of the Mughal Court.
More colourful than the Mughal history, is the account of author's family.
Najmuddin's great-great-grandfather was a 'Kabuli Armenian' and was part of the small Armenian community that lived in Afghanistan in the 1800s.
The influential Armenian diaspora maintained close links with the ruling Afghan kings and at one point, the author's great-great-aunt was queen of Afghanistan for a year!
As gunmakers for Ahmad Shah Abdali, the great Afghan invader, the author's family along with other Armenians was asked to accompany him to Kabul from Lahore where they had settled before.
With only 18 Armenians in Kabul, it became very difficult for Armenians to find a wife and observe their Christian traditions but they persevered to maintain their Armenian heritage.
The author's great-grandfather Lucas A Joseph married a Pathan Christian woman who died during childbirth.
In order to raise the five children she had borne him, Lucas needed a wife to look after them.
Trouble is, there was no Armenian woman in Afghanistan to marry.
Anxious to marry only a Christian, Joseph sought recourse from the highest authority he knew- the king.
In elegant Persian, the king of Afghanistan issued a royal firman to the Armenians settled in the nearest colony of Calcutta to help find a bride for Lucas.
With a wedding gift of ten thousand rupees, an exorbitant sum in those days, the king appealed on behalf Afghanistan's Armenians to urge their brothers to come and "relieve the loneliness" of living in such a distant land by sending a few families to Kabul.
The Calcutta Armenians were not keen to relocate to a distant country they perceived to be barbaric but wrote a flowery reply nevertheless, thanking the Afghan king for bestowing his kindness on their brethren.
Lucas did marry later, to an Armenian of course and the family would later move to Pakistan as the Sultan of Turkey had requested that Armenians be banished from Afghanistan.
The book ends with Najmuddin's notes on the most seminal work ever written on Armenians in India, 'History of the Armenians in India' by Mesrovb J Seth.
Diaspora nationalism and Seth's appeal to the British to help them gain recognition and greater political involvement form part of Najmuddin's discussion of his work.
When you close Najmuddin's book, a delightful and eye-opening read, you realise that the entire book was made from fragments of his notes and had he been alive to publish and edit, he would have contributed to a valuable and forgotten part of Indian history.
The present day Indian-Armenian relations are strengthened by history.
There is an Armenian College in Kolkata to educate Armenian children and there are Armenian Apostolic Churches scattered all over the country.
It is a pity that India is not among the nations that recognise the Armenian genocide, given the fact that it has always given home to Armenia's scattered diaspora.
One of the greatest poets of the Mughal Court, Sarmad, an Armenian summed up the sentiments of Armenians who lived here and still live here, when he wrote:

"There was an uproar and we opened our eyes from the eternal sleep,
Saw that the night of wickedness endured, so we slept again."

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