Apart from catalysing the emergence of new states, Timur’s invasion also gave rise to regional cultures in former Tughluq provinces. But in the case of Bengal, a former Tughluq governor, Shams al-Din Ilyas Shah, had established the delta’s first independent dynasty nearly sixty years before Timur sacked Delhi. During this prolonged period of autonomy, which covered the latter half of the fourteenth century, Bengal’s ancient class of Hindu aristocrats rose to prominence in the state’s government. By the end of that century, elements of the delta’s native ruling class had gained so much authority as to unsettle the Bengal sultanate’s elite Sufi shaikhs, champions of a reformed and purified Islam.4 The most important of these native nobles was Raja Ganesh, a powerful Bengali landholder whose family had enjoyed prominent status in the delta for four centuries. In 1410 the high-born patrician audaciously usurped power and for five years governed the kingdom through a succession of Muslim puppet-sultans. In 1415 he went so far as to enthrone his own son, a lad of only twelve years named Jadu, while continuing to govern as regent. But Ganesh never sought to revive the Brahmanically defined model of kingship of classical Indian tradition. Rather, a compromise formula was worked out between political brokers for the court’s Muslim and non-Muslim factions, whereby young Jadu was allowed to rule on condition that he convert to Islam, which he did, reigning as Sultan Jalal al-Din Muhammad (r. 1415–32). Soon after his enthronement, coins bearing his name were simultaneously issued from Bengal’s principal urban centres – Pandua, Chittagong, Sonargaon and Satgaon – suggesting a calculated attempt by Raja Ganesh to ensure the acceptance of his son’s accession throughout the delta.5
Yet this arrangement only infuriated elite Sufis attached to Bengal’s royal court. One of them, Shaikh Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, even wrote to the Sharqi sultan of neighbouring Jaunpur, imploring him to invade the kingdom and ‘liberate’ Bengal for ‘Islam’. Although the sultan did send an army towards Bengal, it seems to have turned back when placated with gold. Amidst the chaos in the sultanate’s capital at Pandua, meanwhile, things remained far from settled in Bengal’s hinterland, where remnants of pre-sultanate ruling houses on the eastern frontier seized the moment to assert their independence. For a single year, 1417–18, no sultanate coins appeared anywhere in the delta, while in the extreme eastern and south-eastern sectors two successive Hindu kings rose in rebellion. But in the following two years the sultanate, now firmly under seventeen-year-old Jalal al-Din’s rule, with his father still acting as regent, managed to suppress this rebellion and reassert its authority across the delta.6
The Raja Ganesh episode showed that, despite the vigorous objections of conservative sections of the Muslim elite, Bengali Hindus would henceforth be assimilated in the sultanate’s ruling structure. Raja Ganesh refused to support the restoration of an explicitly Hindu polity anywhere in the delta. Of course, he operated under severe restraints, being able to retain his considerable influence only by merging his interests with those of the existing state, and by conciliating powerful Muslim classes at the capital. In the following years, as Jalal al-Din Muhammad grew to maturity, the sultan became ever bolder in asserting his claims to a specifically Islamic ruling ideology. He became a devoted follower of Shaikh Nur Qutb al-‘Alam, Pandua’s leading Chishti shaikh and the same man who had so strenuously opposed Raja Ganesh’s coup. The sultan also rebuilt mosques demolished by his father, patronized a religious college in Mecca, obtained recognition from the Mamluk sultan of Egypt (the most prestigious ruler in the Middle East since the destruction of Baghdad in 1258), and stamped the Islamic confession of faith on his coins, a custom that had disappeared from Bengal several centuries earlier.7 In 1427, after ruling for a dozen years, he went so far as to proclaim himself the ‘caliph of Allah in the universe’.8 One can only marvel at the audacity of a convert to the religion claiming the loftiest title in the Sunni world, second only to that of the Prophet himself.
Even while strenuously posturing as a correct Muslim, Sultan Jalal al-Din grounded himself and his regime in Bengali culture. He minted silver coins depicting the image of a lion, an animal possessing a wide symbolic range that included not only Persian imperial kingship, but also the cosmic vehicle of the goddess popularly manifested as Chandi, in whose name anti-sultanate rebellions had been waged in eastern Bengal shortly after Jalal al-Din came to power. A contemporary Chinese traveller reported that, although Persian was understood by some in the court, the language in universal use there was Bengali – an observation indicating the triumph of the local vernacular at the highest level of officialdom.9 And, as with the Adina mosque, architecture again suggests the state’s nativist orientation. Starting with Jalal al-Din’s reign, Bengali mosques adopted local structural elements and motifs: single-domed brick buildings with engaged corner towers, curved cornices and extensive terracotta ornamentation. The last feature was a throwback to Bengali Buddhist shrines dating to at least the eighth century, such as that seen at Somapura (Paharpur) in present-day northern Bangladesh. The curved cornice appeared in Bengali architecture for the first time in what is believed to be Jalal al-Din’s own tomb, the Eklakhi Mausoleum (1432), which was inspired by the familiar thatched bamboo hut found throughout rural Bengal. The curved roofs of these ordinary dwellings, formed by the natural bend of a bamboo structure under the weight of thatching, allow water to drain from their upper surfaces in a part of India notorious for its heavy rainfall. This Bengali folk motif was now translated from bamboo and thatching into brick, used for both temples and mosques.
This nativist trend became even more pronounced in the reigns of Sultan ‘Ala al-Din Husain Shah (1493–1519) and his son Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah (1519–32). Under the former monarch, Hindus pervaded the state’s government, serving in such important posts as chief minister, chief of bodyguards, master of the mint, private physician and private secretary to the sultan. State-sponsored brick and stone mosques built in native styles proliferated throughout the delta – more than 100 of them appearing between 1450 and 1550, far more than in any other period in Bengal’s premodern history. At the same time, the court lent vigorous support to literature written in vernacular Bengali. Sultan Rukn al-Din Barbak (r. 1459–74) patronized the writing of the Śri Krsna-Vijaya by Maladhara Basu, and the courts of ‘Ala al-Din Husain Shah and Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah patronized the writing of the Manasa-Vijaya by Vipra Das, the Padma-Purana by Vijaya Gupta, the Krsna-Mangala by Yasoraj Khan and translations (from Sanskrit) of portions of the great epic Mahabharata, made by Vijaya Pandita and Kavindra Parameśvara.10 The state’s patronage of local culture stemmed partly from strategic assessments made in the wake of the upheavals of the Raja Ganesh period, and partly from the delta’s protracted political and cultural isolation from north India.
Yet royal patronage was also selective. With the apparent aim of deepening the roots of their political authority, the sultans of Bengal patronized folk architecture as opposed to classical Indian styles, popular Bengali literature rather than Sanskrit treatises, and Vaishnava Bengali officials instead of Śakta Brahmins. This was doubtless due to the long association of Śiva worship with Hindu kingship, not just in Bengal but throughout India. Prior to the advent of Persianate sultanates in India, many Hindu kings had patronized one or another manifestation of Śiva, understood as the Cosmic Overlord protecting a maharaja’s sovereign domain. This prior association made Persianate courts in Bengal and elsewhere wary of Śaiva culture, which would explain why the above-mentioned Bengali works were mainly Vaishnava in orientation. At the same time, royal coinage dispensed with the bombast of earlier periods, when Bengali sultans associated themselves with Alexander the Great or Arab caliphs. As is clear from the writing on his coins, Sultan Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah was sultan simply because his father had been one; no further justification seemed necessary. Secure in their power, and with domination by far-off Delhi but a hazy memory, the sultans of Bengal confidently fashioned themselves as Bengali kings.
This sort of interaction between Persianate and Sanskritic cultures was in some ways unique to the delta. We find a very different variation on this same theme in the isolated valley of Kashmir.