Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–1611)
Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–1611)
This chapter discusses the early modern encounter between the Jesuits of the Society of Jesus and the Mughal empire, as it returns to the Jesuit materials, which are read together and contrasted Rashomon-like with a recently discovered text of prime significance, the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī of the Mughal intellectual 'Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri. This exercise can reveal a better sense of the courtly intellectual milieu as well as the inter-religious debates (munāzara) that characterized a good part of this period, and which were important precursors to those of the colonial period. Once such debate is the meeting between the Jesuits and 'Ali 'Adil Shah, in which the latter engages the former on relative trivia rather than on major doctrinal matters. What is of consequence is not the usual Jesuit capacity to make sense of, and translate, the world at large, but their manifest incomprehension.
Keywords: Jesuits, Mughal empire, Society of Jesus, munāzara, 'Ali 'Adil Shah, inter-religious debates
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