Aurangzeb: The Mughal Emperor Who Taught His Former Tutor How to Teach
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They say a good pen can stab a king. An efficient medieval ruler knew the pen was mightier than the sword and so, he employed a number of pen wielders at his court to record events of his reign and elevate his status to a larger-than-life image. He would also ensure that his scions too develop skills and gain knowledge under the guidance of very proficient pen wielders. And therefore, the role of private tutors in the lives of royal princes was very crucial. This blogpost is about the relationship between the sixth Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707 CE) and his tutor. Aurangzeb was undoubtedly a very shrewd statesman who knew how to bend the rules to achieve one's goal and on top of that, he was an extremely skilled military general. As a prince and an emperor, he won many battles and helped in the territorial expansion of the Mughal Empire. However, when it comes to administration and governance, he was not like his great grandfather Akbar and therefore, despite the fact that he expanded the territorial extent of the empire exponentially, yet he failed to consolidate the empire. It is generally accepted among the common people that he was a fanatic Muslim. However, if we read primary sources, we discover that this belief is far from reality. He only worshipped power and religion was only a medium to achieve and sustain his political authority. Religion was for him a means to an end, not an end in itself. This can be explained a little by examining the emperor's long speech addressed to his tutor who taught him when he was a prince. After Prince Aurangzeb emerged victorious in the war of succession and successfully usurped his father's throne, and became Mughal Emperor Alamgir, his teacher Mullah Sale who was now living in retirement near Kabul, hoped to secure the prestigious rank of an amir (noble) at his former pupil's royal court and therefore, he travelled to Shahjahanabad (now Old Delhi). After three months elapsed, Aurangzeb met him in a secluded apartment, accompanied by only four or five grandees. On meeting him and learning his tutor's purpose of visit, the Emperor admonished him for wasting his precious years in teaching him to learn Arabic (the language in which Allah revealed the final revelation and the language in which the holy Quran is written) and grammar, instead of providing him the correct information about the sovereigns in different parts of the world, forms of government, their characteristics, methods of warfare, statecraft, revolutions and their causes and outcomes and such substantial political concerns and their knowledge that were genuinely instrumental in governing a territory. No where he eulogizes him for teaching him Arabic for years. In fact, he thought that his precious years of princehood were spent on learning something which was nothing but a sheer waste of time. Aurangzeb was more likely to admire Niccolao Machiavelli, a Florentine writer, diplomat, and historian best known for his famed 16th-century political treatise The Prince. Machiavelli's book teaches monarchs, princes and leaders how to acquire, wield, and sustain political power, emphasizing pragmatism over idealism.
Below is an excerpt extracted from French traveller Francois Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668. It records Aurangzeb's reply to his tutor who was seeking imperial favour.
'Pray what is your pleasure with me, Mullah-gy--[Mulla-Ji] Monsieur the Doctor?--Do you pretend that I ought to exalt you to the first honours of the State? Let us then examine your title to any mark of distinction. I do not deny you would possess such a title if you had filled my young mind with suitable instruction. Show me a well-educated youth, and I will say that it is doubtful who has the stronger claim to his gratitude, his father or his tutor. But what was the knowledge I derived under your tuition? You taught me that the whole of Franguistan was no more than some inconsiderable island, of which the most powerful Monarch was formerly the King of Portugal, then he of Holland and afterward the King of England. In regard to the other sovereigns of Franguistan, such as the King of France and him of Andalusia, you told me they resembled our petty Rajas, and that the potentates of Hindoustan eclipsed the glory of all other kings ; that they alone were Humayons, Ekbars, Jehan-Guyres, or Chah-Jehans ; the Happy, the Great, the Conquerors of the World, and the Kings of the World ; and that Persia, Usbec, Kachguer, Tartary, and Catay, Pegu, Siam, China and Matchine, trembled the name of the Kings of the Indies. Admirable geographer! deeply read historian! Was it not incumbent upon my preceptor to make me acquainted with the distinguishing features of every nation of the earth ; its resources and strength ; its mode of warfare, its manners, religion, form of government, and wherein its interests principally consist ; and, by a regular course of historical reading, to render me familiar with the origin of States, their progress and decline ; the events, accidents, or errors, owing to which such great changes and mighty revolutions, have been effected? Far from having imparted to me a profound and comprehensive knowledge of the history of mankind, scarcely did I learn from you the names of my ancestors, the renowned founders of this empire. You kept me in total ignorance of their lives, of the events which preceded, and the extraordinary talents that enabled them to achieve, their extensive conquests. A familiarity with the languages of surrounding nations may be indispensable in a King ; but you would teach me to read and write Arabic ; doubtless conceiving that you placed me under an everlasting obligation for sacrificing so large a portion of time to the study of a language wherein no one can hope to become proficient without ten or twelve years of close application. Forgetting how many important subjects ought to be embraced in the education of a Prince, you acted as if it were chiefly necessary that he should possess great skill in grammar, and such knowledge as belongs to a Doctor of law ; and thus did you waste the precious hours of my youth in the dry, unprofitable, and never-ending task of learning words !'
On the 4th December 1890, Prussian King and German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II gave a speech in Berlin that bears striking resemblance to what Aurganzeb mentioned to his former tutor. The only difference was Aurangzeb chastised his private tutor for not educating him correctly about the worldly matters and especially about politics, governance and administration while Kaiser Wilhelm II expressed admiration for his tutor for providing him all the necessary information concerning modern history and the major developments that shaped the world. Here is another excerpt from the report in The Times published on the 5th of December 1890.
To-day a special conference on educational reform in the higher schools and gymnasia of Prussia was opened, under the presidency of the Emperor himself in the Ministry of Public Worship. Herr von Gossler, the Minister, began by thanking the Emperor for the warm personal interest he displayed in such matters. The time had now come, he said, to consider whether Prussian schools were to continue on the same old classical path, or whether they should not now rather endeavour to adapt themselves to the spirit and practice and needs of modern life. All the learned professions were now filled to excess, and Germany was producing too many University men, for whom there seemed to be but scanty prospects in the growing struggle for existence.
The Emperor then followed with a long and well-thought-out address. He tabled a series of queries on the subject under discussion, and proceeded to argue at elaborate length that the gymnasia or higher public schools no longer answered the requirements of the nation and the necessities of the time. They produced crammed youths, but not men, wasting on Latin and classical lore the time which should was of infinitely more value to a German than all the chronicles of antiquity, ... He had himself sat on the various forms of a Gymnasium at Cassel, and knew all about their ways and methods, and the sooner these were mended the better it would be for every one... Since 1870, the philologists, as beati possidentes, had been sitting enthroned in the gymnasia, devoting their attention more to increasing the book-learning of their pupils than to forming their characters and training them for the needs of practical life. This evil had gone so far that it could go no further. Much more stress was laid on cramming young men's heads with knowledge than on teaching them how to apply it.
He had frequently been described as a fanatical for of the gymnasial system, but that was not so. He had an open eye to its crying defects, and of these perhaps the chief was its preposterous partiality for classical education. The basis of instruction in all such schools ought to be German, and their principal aim should be to turn out young Germans instead of youthful Greeks and Romans. They must courageously break with the medieval and monkish habit of mumbling away at much Latin and a little Greek, and take to the German languages as the basis of all their scholastic studies. The same remark applied to history as to language. Preference should be given in all schools to German history, geographical and legendary. It was only when they knew all the ins and outs of their own house that they could afford to moon about in a museum. When he was at school the Great Elector was to him but a nebulous personage. As for the Seven Years' War, it lay outside the region of study altogether, and history ended with the French Revolution at the close of the last century. The Liberation wars, however, which were extremely important for the young, were not included, and it was only, thank God, by means of supplementary and very interesting lectures which he received from his private tutor, Dr. Hinzpeter, whom he was now glad to see before him, that he got to know anything at all about modern history... His Majesty then proceeded to discuss what ought to be the relations between the classical and commercial education, even in remarks being listened to with the keenest interest, and regarded as a masterpiece of practical wisdom.
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