Reassessing the World of Sher Shah Suri

In the opening line of his new history of the Indo-Afghans, Raziuddin Aquil complains that ‘the study of medieval Indian history suffers from what is characterized as Mughal centrism’ (p. 1). He is right at a number of levels, for the problem is not only that the imperial Mughal behemoth has captured the lion’s share of modern historians’ attention, but also that most of the Persian histories of the Indo-Afghans were written during the reign of the Mughals. Then as now, the Afghan Sur rulers were dwarfed by the shadows of their successors. In setting out to re-describe, and re-assess, the political and religious world of Sher Shah Suri (1472–1545), Raziuddin Aquil has to fight a war on two fronts, wary of the ‘Mughal-centric’ prejudices of his primary as well as his secondary sources. But his campaign is a thorough and systematic one, built on scrupulous readings of the Persian histories of the Indo-Afghans and comparing their evidence with older interpretations drawn from what must be every essay or conference paper on the Afghans penned by an Indian historian in the past century.

If the task sounds exhausting—and the scale of Aquil’s labours is transparent—it is carried surprisingly lightly: for a book that is first and foremost a work of comparative historiography, Sufism, Culture and Politics makes for surprisingly easy reading. The author has an admirably discrete style that enables him to guide even a novice to the field through the issues with which he is concerned, chiefly the characterization of the Afghan polity as ‘tribal’ and the relationship between the Afghan rulers and the sufis of their North Indian domains.