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Column
History
History of Ladakh in the Mughal Historical Sources PROF. JIGAR MOHAMMAD
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adakh's cultural relations with Central Asia and parts of India can be traced from the ancient period. During the medieval period the process of Ladakh's interaction with the different parts of Asia was intensified. It is known that Mir Sayyid Ali Hamdani, a sufi of Persia, visited Ladakh in 1383 en route to Turkestan. It was medieval period when the people of the neighbouring states of Ladakh came closer to the Ladakhis through commercial, literary and religious activities. It is an established fact that some of the Central Asians were well versed to the routes to Ladakh during the medieval period. It is substantiated from that the Central Asians invaded Ladakh frequently from the first half of the 16th century onwards. Though it was Mirza Haidar Dughlat invasion in 1532 which influenced the political life of Ladakh very much, there are references to the Central Asian invasions on Ladakh prior to it. Mirza Haidar Dughlat himself admits that his predecessors invaded Ladakh. When Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur established the Mughal empire in the north India, Mughals' cultural contacts with Kashmir and Ladakh were further strengthened and expanded. The Mughals themselves came to India from Central Asia. Consequently, they retained their contacts with Ladakh. Since the Mughals planned to make their Indian empire strongest and largest in the world in terms of territorial expansion and economic
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prosperity, they made Ladakh a part of Mughal India. More importantly, the Mughals made a policy to acquire the knowledge of cultural life of the conquered areas. The acquisition of the knowledge of the cultural life of the conquered and neighbouring areas of the Mughal empire was not only the part of the intellectual activities of the contemporary historians and professional writers, but the Mughal emperors themselves were very much interested in collecting the information pertaining to the various cultures. In his autobiography the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1605-27) not only mentions the events of his own empire, but he also incorporates some information of the non-Mughal empire areas such as Tibet and Ladakh. He mentions that with the exceptions of shawls other woollen materials were manufactured of better quality in Tibet. The wool for good quality of shawls was imported to Kashmir from Tibet and Ladakh. The goat which produced the wool for the Kashmiri shawls was peculiar to Tibet. Similarly the historians of the Mughal period make mention of the known historical facts pertaining to Ladakh in their own account. The Mughals' curiosity to have information of the socio-economic and political aspects of the different neighbouring areas of their empire inspired the contemporary historians to widen the scope of their literary works. Consequently Ladakh found important
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space in the historical sources of the Mughal empire. During the 17th century A.D. the Mughal emperors' particularly Shihabuddin Muhammad Shahjahan (1628-58), extended the boundary of India upto the Transoxiana region. Ladakh was well connected with Central Asian countries. Both the commercial and diplomatic contacts of Ladakh was intensified with the Central Asian Countries because of Ladakh being situated on one of the route between the Central Asia and North India. The historical works of the Mughal empire during Shahjahan's period made Ladakh one of new themes of their regional studies. Some aspects of the history and culture of the seventeenth century are very well depicted in the Shahjahan Nama, a famous Mughal source dedicated to the Mughal emperor Shahjahan (1628-58). It was written by Inayat Khan. The latter belonged to an aristocratic background. His father Zafar Khan was the governor of Kashmir and was assigned the work of the conquest of Ladak and Tibet by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan in 1637. Inayat Khan held the post of superintendent of the Royal library (Darogha-i-Kutub Khana) under Shahjahan. Thus Inayat Khan had both the opportunity and capability of gathering information from different quarters about the events of Ladakh. Being the superintendent of the Royal Library he enjoyed large facilities in
Epilogue, October 2010