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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2025
This article enquires into pseudonymous Persian texts in South Asia as devices to domesticate non-Muslim technical knowledge and to legitimate the status of a Muslim professional group that emerged from interaction with the Indian natural and social environment. In the Risāla-yi kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-garī—an illustrated text on the elephant and the elephant keeper, claimed to be authored by one of Noah’s grandsons—the aforementioned profession (acquired from Indian society) is Islamised by making it congruent with the Muslim view of scientific and technical professions as practices dating back to the prophets of Islam. The Kursī-nāma is examined from the perspective of the function of the pseudonymous text and of how its social context shaped the expected function. What does this form of writing tell us, whether deliberately or not, about its hidden authors and their environment? The fictional narrative of the Kursī-nāma is a stratagem that grants new canonicity to a critical subject. From being cursed in the Qur’an, mahout became a respectable occupation in Mughal India due to its close association with royal power. In the Kursī-nāma, the creation of a sacred genealogical tree (kursī-nāma) of the profession and an Islamic ritual associated with it were meant to control and claim authority within both the groups of mahouts and their social environment. From this point of view, the Kursī-nāma constitutes a unique source for investigating the ascension of a professional group and its search for social legitimation.
1 On this subject, see B. Osimo, ‘Meaning in translation: a model based on translation shifts’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series—Themes in Translation Studies 7 (2008), pp. 209–226.
2 Hereafter abbreviated as Kursī-nāma; the term kursī-nāma in the lower case refers to the ‘genealogical tree’ included in the last part of this text.
3 T. R. Trautmann, Elephants & Kings: An Environmental History (Chicago, 2015).
4 S. Digby, War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate: A Study of Military Supplies (Oxford, 1971), pp. 50, 57–58.
5 A. Anooshahr, ‘The elephant and the sovereign: India circa 1000 CE’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 28.4 (2018), pp. 615–644.
6 A. Anooshahr, ‘The elephant and imperial continuities in North India, 1200–1600 CE’, The Indian Economic & Social History Review 57.2 (2020), pp. 139–169.
7 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, (ed.) H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1872), vol. 1, pp. 135, 161.
8 S. Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (New York, 2001), p. 105.
9 Many studies analysed the history of caste and labour in India, including the book by S. Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics; S. Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Leiden, 2013); D. H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990); D. Cherian, Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (Oakland, 2023). On Muslim communities, see A. Lanzillo, Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India (Oakland, 2023); A. Koul, ‘Making New Muslim Arains: Reform, Law, and Politics in Colonial Punjab, 1890s–1940s’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 2017).
10 These texts have been studied by Lanzillo, Pious Labor, pp. 31, 51, 73, 158, 106–107, 149; on artisans’ Sufi forms of devotion, see ibid, pp. 51–52, 107.
11 Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 51, 68–69.
12 C. E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 115–118.
13 For Sanskrit works on this subject, see J. G. Meulenbeld, A History of Indian Medical Literature (Groningen, 2000), IIa, pp. 557–579; see also F. Edgerton, The Elephant Lore of the Hindus: The Elephant-Sport (Matanga-Lila) of Nilakantha (New Haven, 1931); Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 144–150.
14 The Arthaśāstra and the Mātaṅgalīlā do not include legendary accounts about the origin of the mahout; see Edgerton, Elephant Lore, pp. 105–112; Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 164–169.
15 N. Lainé, ‘Les éléphants sous la cour ahom (XIIIe–XIXe s.)’, Anthropozoologica 45.2 (2010), p. 10.
16 On the elephant in early Iranian and Muslim cultures, see J. Ruska, C. Pellat, C. E. Bosworth, and G. M. Meredith-Owens, ‘Fīl’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, (eds.) B. Lewis, C. Pellat, and J. Schacht (Leiden, 1991), pp. 892–895; F. De Blois, ‘Elephant i: in the Near East’, in Encylopaedia Iranica (1998), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/elephant (accessed 31 October 2023); M. B. Charles, ‘Elephant ii: In the Sasanian Army’, in Encylopaedia Iranica (1998), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/elephant-ii-sasanian-army (accessed 31 October 2023); W. P. Heinrichs, ‘Ṣafwān b. Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (eds.) P. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (2012), http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6454 (accessed 31 October 2023); M. A. Pomerantz, ‘Ibn Bābak’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds.) K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas, and R. Everett (2021), http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_30722 (accessed 31 October 2023). For elephants in Sumatra, see W. G. Clarence-Smith, ‘Elephants, horses, and the coming of Islam to Northern Sumatra’, Indonesia and the Malay World 32.93 (2004), pp. 271–284.
17 For an analysis of these texts, see F. Speziale, Culture persane et médecine ayurvédique en Asie du Sud (Leiden, 2018), pp. 215–224.
18 The Bṛhatsaṁhitā of Varāhamihira (sixth century) is a Sanskrit encyclopaedia of astrology and other sciences. On the Persian translation, the Tarjuma-yi kitāb-i Bārāhī, see E. Orthmann, ‘Tarjuma-yi kitāb-i Bārāhī’, in Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, (eds.) F. Speziale and C. W. Ernst (2017), http://www.perso-indica.net/work/tarjuma-yi_kitab-i_barahi (accessed 31 October 2023).
19 Nujūm al-‘ulūm, Ms. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, In 02, ff. 334r–337r. Concerning this text, see E. Flatt, ‘The Authorship and Significance of the Nujūm al-‘ulūm: A Sixteenth-Century Astrological Encyclopedia from Bijapur’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.2 (2011). On the Persian chronicles of the Sultanate and Mughal period, see Anooshahr, ‘Elephant and imperial continuities’.
20 Jahāngīr, The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī or Memoirs of Jahāngīr, (trans.) A. Rogers and H. Beveridge (London, 1909), I, pp. 4, 38, 46–47, 103–104, 211, 226, 265, 287–289, 323, II (London, 1914), pp. 5, 12, 18, 41, 83.
21 Amīr Ḫusraw, Nuh sipihr, (ed.) M. W. Mirzā (Calcutta, 1368/1949), p. 190; Bābur, The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur), (trans.) A. S. Beveridge, (London, 1922), vol. II, pp. 488–489.
22 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, p. 161. The presence of 5,000 elephants at Akbar’s new capital Fatehpur Sikri is also mentioned in another contemporary chronicle: the Tabaqāt-i Akbarī of Niżām al-Dīn Aḥmad (d. 1030/1621); see Niżām al-Dīn Aḥmad, Tabaqāt-i Akbarī (Calcutta, 1931), vol. II, p. 316. According to Firišta, during his reign, Akbar came to possess more that 6,000 elephants and this number never dropped below 5,000. He remarks that none of the Sultans of Delhi had owned such a large number of elephants; see Muḥammad Qāsim Hindūšāh Astarābādī Firišta, Tārīḫ-i Firišta (Tehran, 1388/2010), vol. II, p. 226.
23 It does not seem that the rulers of Vijayanagara owned a larger number of elephants and this number was heavily downsized after the decisive battle of Talikota (1565) that Vijayanagara lost against a coalition of Deccan sultanates. Firišta writes that, in the fourteenth century, the Vijayanagara army had 3,000 war elephants, but, at the battle of Talikota, Rāma Rāya’s army included only 2,000 elephants; Firišta, Tārīḫ-i Firišta, vol. II, p. 281; Firišta, Tārīḫ-i Firišta (Tehran, 1393/2014), vol. III, p. 404. ‘Abd-al-Razzāq Samarqandī refers to the fact that, in the mid-fifteenth century, there were more than 1,000 elephants in the capital; see R. H. Major, India in the Fifteenth Century: Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India (London, 1857), pp. 22, 36. Sixteenth-century Portuguese travellers who visited Vijayanagara provide discordant figures. Duarte Barbosa (d. 1521), who was there during the reign of Kṛṣṇadevarāya (1509–1529), relates that the king has always more than 900 elephants. However, Fernão Nunes (d. 1550) refers to the fact that Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s army included 800 elephants in the war that he won against the king of Orissa, who had 1,300 elephants; while Castanheda, who was there at the end of Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s reign, states that 4,000 elephants were kept at the king’s cost; see D. Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their Inhabitants, (trans.) D. M. Longworth (London, 1918), p. 210; R. Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India (London, 1900), pp. 150, 281, 316–317.
24 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, pp. 127–140, 161–162, 206. Abū al-Fażl provides a definition of gajaśāstra (science of elephants), glossed as daniš-i fīl (knowledge of elephants) in the section on the sciences of the Hindus; Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, (ed.) H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1869), vol. 2, p. 144. On the Ā’īn-i Akbarī, see S. Ogura and F. Speziale (eds.), Imperial Historiography and the Creation of Persian Scholarship on India: The Ā’īn-i Akbarī of Abū al-Fażl (d.1602), special issue of the Journal of Asian and African Studies 3 (2024).
25 See A. Khazeni, ‘Indo-Persian travel writing at the ends of the Mughal world’, Past & Present 243.1 (2019), pp. 141–174.
26 See G. C. Calza (ed.), Akbar il Grande Imperatore dell’India (Milano–Roma, 2012), pp. 24, 80, 91, 97, 123, 155, 156, 157; J. P. Losty and M. Roy (eds.), Mughal India. Art, Culture, Empire. Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library (London, 2012), pp. 16, 61, 64, 138; see also A. Okada, Miniatures de l’Inde impériale: les peintres de la cour d’Akbar (1556–1605) (Paris, 1989), p. 123.
27 A treatise on the elephant and its breeds, also called Gajalakṣaṇa; see Meulenbeld, History of Indian Medical Literature, IIa, p. 559, IIb, pp. 572–573.
28 See Speziale, Culture persane, pp. 221–222.
29 See C. Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1881), vol. II, pp. 703–704, for a poem of Rahī on a hunting expedition of the Mughal prince Šāh Jahāndār (r. 1712–1713); see also A. Munzawī, Fihristwāra-i kitābhā-yi fārsī (Tehran, 1382 š./2003), p. 3897.
30 See Digby, War-Horse and Elephant, p. 50; Anooshahr, ‘Elephant and imperial continuities’, p. 164.
31 See Speziale, Culture persane, pp. 64, 187, 219.
32 Šayḫ Nyāz ‘Alī Ṣiddīqī, ‘Ilāg šutur wa fīlān, Ms. New Delhi, Zakir Husain Library, C464/2.
33 J. Skinner, Tašrīḥ al-aqwām, Ms. London, British Library, add. 27, 255, f. 119a.
34 The author would like to thank one of the reviewers of the article for this insightful comment.
35 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, p. 133.
36 Wājid ‘Alī Ḫān, Maṭla‘al-‘ulūm wa Majma‘al-funūn (Patiala 1289/1873), p. 389. The chapter is divided into four parts. The first three provide a standard account of the field and deal with elephants, their taming, and the treatment of diseases; ibid, pp. 389–292.
37 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, pp. 138–139; see also Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 103, 172. See P. Naisupap, ‘The composite elephant. an unseen history of connected Asia and beyond’, IIAS Newsletter 94 (2023), pp. 10–11, for a seventeenth-century miniature of Dawlat Ḫān, in which the mahout represents the king.
38 T. W. Haig, ‘Malik Sarwar’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition, (eds.) M. Th. Houtsma, T. W. Arnold, R. Basset, and R. Hartmann (2012), http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/2214-871X_ei1_SIM_4504, (accessed 31 October 2023).
39 On Fatḥ Ḫān Fīlbān, see Blochmann’s notice in Abū al-Fażl, The Aín i Akbari by Abul Fazl Allámi, Translated from the Original Persian, (trans.) H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1873), vol. 1, p. 523.
40 Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 141–142.
41 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, p. 134.
42 Forty dām were equivalent to one rupee, although the value of a dām fluctuated during Akbar’s reign; ibid, pp. 26–27.
43 The monthly salary of a bhūʼī in charge of one of the 101 elephants for the personal use of the emperor could increase to 400 dām; ibid, p. 139.
44 They received three and a half dām every day and four when the elephant had to march. Their monthly salary was more or less equivalent to that of the bhūʼī. The job of the ground assistant was risky, as they could easily be squashed under the animal’s feet, especially when the elephant was moving at speed; ibid, pp. 134–135.
45 If a female elephant died due to lack of care, the attendant would have to pay the price of the elephant. During Akbar’s reign, the average price of an elephant ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 rupees, although it could go up to as much as 100,000 rupees; ibid, pp. 128, 139–140.
46 Abū al-Fażl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, p. 135. In Mughal state administration, the term fawjdār was also used to designate an officer at the head of one or more subdistricts. On this topic, see N. A. Siddiqi, ‘The Faujdar and Faujdari under the Mughals’, Medieval India Quarterly 4 (1961), pp. 22–35.
47 L. Hart and Sundar, ‘Family traditions for mahouts of Asian elephants’, Anthrozoös 13.1 (2000), pp. 34–42; Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, p. 140.
48 Mu‘ālajāt-i afyāl, Ms. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 14, pp. 56, 71.
49 The term ‘pseudonymous’ appears to be more appropriate for the Kursī-nāma than the somewhat equivalent term ‘pseudograph’, which is heavily imbued with categories of Biblical studies.
50 Risāla-yi kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-garī az Sayyid Aḥmad Kabīr ast.
51 For recent studies and perspectives on this topic, see P. Piovanelli, Apocryphités: Études sur les textes et les traditions scripturaires du judaïsme et du christianisme anciens (Turnhout, 2016); E. O. Cueva and J. Martínez (eds.), Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Literature (Groningen, 2016); B. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford, 2013).
52 See F. Speziale, ‘À propos du renouveau ni‘matullāhī: Le centre de Hyderabad au cours de la première modernité’, Studia Iranica 42 (2013), pp. 91–118; F. Speziale, ‘The mujaddid and the majdhūb: Shāh ‘Alī Riḍā (d. 1215/1801) and the different narratives of the Ni‘mat Allāhī renewal’, in Shi‘i Sufism in Modern Times, (eds.) D. Hermann and M. Terrier (London, 2020), pp. 157–174.
53 I rely on the analysis of these texts by C. Muller, ‘East Asian apocryphal scriptures: their origin and role in the development of Sinitic Buddhism’, Bulletin of Toyo Gakuen University 6 (1998), pp. 63–76; see also R. E. Jr. Buswell (ed.), Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu, 1990); P. Skilling, ‘Scriptural authenticity and the Śrāvaka schools: an essay towards an Indian perspective’, The Eastern Buddhist 41.2 (2010), pp. 1–47.
54 Various terms to convey the meaning of ‘apocryphal’ exist in Persian, such as murīb (doubtful, apocryphal) and saqīm (infirm, apocryphal), which are derived from Arabic; see F. J. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, Including the Arabic Words and Phrases to Be Met with in Persian Literature (London, 1892), pp. 364, 687, 1220; S. Hayyim, New Persian-English Dictionary (Teheran, 1934–1936), vol. I, p. 548, vol. II, p. 94. The author has not come across studies on how these terms were used in Persian textual tradition.
55 See P. Pavlovitch, ‘Ḥadīth’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds.) Fleet et al., http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_30163 (accessed 1 November 2023); P. Pavlovitch, ‘Forgery in ḥadīth’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds.) Fleet et al., http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27169 (accessed 1 November 2023); S. Ahmed, A. Kazemi-Moussavi, I. K. Poonawala, H. Algar, and S. Shaked, ‘Hadith’, in Encyclopædia Iranica, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/hadith-index (accessed 1 November 2023).
56 See F. Speziale, ‘Introduzione’, in Il trattato aureo della medicina attribuito a l’imām ‘Alī al-Riḍā, (trans.) F. Speziale and G. Giurini (Palermo, 2009), p. 30.
57 See A. Newman, ‘Bāqir al-Majlisī and Islamicate medicine: Safavid medical theory and practice re-examined’, in Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, (ed.) A. Newman (Leiden, 2003), pp. 371–396.
58 On this issue and its relevance for archival studies in the Muslim world, see J. Pickett and P. Sartori, ‘From the archetypical archive to cultures of documentation’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 62.5/6, Islamic Cultures of Documentation (2019), pp. 778–779.
59 See Cueva and Martínez, Splendide Mendax; Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery; R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913).
60 See C. A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey (London, 1977), vol. II/3, p. 394.
61 Speziale and Giurini, Il trattato aureo.
62 C. W. Ernst, ‘Risāla-yi wujūdiyya’, in Perso-Indica, (eds.) Speziale and Ernst, http://www.perso-indica.net/work/risala-yi_wujudiyya (accessed 1 November 2023).
63 On the Haft aḥbāb, see F. Speziale, ‘De zeven vrienden: Een Indo-Perzische verhandeling over alchemie’, in Bronnen van kennis: Wetenschap, kunst en cultuur in de collecties van de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek, (eds.) P. Hoftijzer, K. van Ommen, G. Warnar, and J. J. Witkam (Leiden, 2006), pp. 23–31; F. Speziale, ‘Rasāyana and Rasaśāstra in the Persian medical culture of South Asia’, History of Science in South Asia 7 (2019), pp. 4, 14, 26.
64 See Speziale, ‘Rasāyana and Rasaśāstra’.
65 See D. De Smet, ‘Ja‘far al-Ṣādeq. iv. Esoteric sciences’, Encyclopaedia Iranica XIV.4 (2008), pp. 362–363.
66 Tufang-nāma, Ms. Calcutta, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Persian 1148.
67 On the pseudo-Avicennian texts, see D. C. Reisman, ‘The pseudo-Avicennan corpus, I: Methodological considerations’, in Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, (ed.) J. McGinnis (Leiden, 2004), pp. 3–21; D. C. Reisman, ‘The Ps.-Avicenna corpus II: The Sufistic turn’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 21 (2010), pp. 243–258.
68 On invented and borrowed pseudonyms, see Reisman, ‘Pseudo-Avicennan corpus, I’, p. 7, footnote 7.
69 For this article, I have consulted the following copies of the Kursī-nāma: MS Hyderabad, Salar Jung Museum and Library, pers. bayṭārī 20/1; Ms. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 3/1; Ms. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 55/3; Ms. Aligarh, Mawlana Azad Library, Subḥ. 616/4; Ms. Manchester, The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Persian 882/1; Ms. Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, A. G. 2159/2; Ms. Tonk, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Arabic and Persian Research Institute, 2272/2.
70 The copy kept in Jaipur is included in a codex copied in 1271/1854–1855; see G. N. Bahura, Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Maharaja of Jaipur Museum (Jaipur, 1971), pp. 72–73, 125.
71 Ms. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 55/3; Ms. Tonk, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Arabic and Persian Research Institute, 2272/2.
72 See the three undated copies kept at Hyderabad: Mu‘ālajāt-i afyāl, Mss. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 11, ḥaywānāt 14, ḥaywānāt 19. The copy kept at the Wellcome Institute is dated 1223/1808; see F. Keshavarz, A Descriptive and Analytical Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London, 1986), pp. 363–364.
73 Mu‘ālajāt-i afyāl, Mss. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 14, pp. 3, 4, 8.
74 Bābur’s army employed firearms and won this decisive battle for the supremacy over north India in March 1527; see Bābur, Bābur-nāma in English, II, pp. 563–564.
75 According to modern scholars, the fact that Abraha launched his attack in the same year as Muḥammad’s birth is contradicted by several pieces of evidence; see L. Conrad, ‘Abraha and Muḥammad: some observations apropos of chronology and literary Topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 50.2 (1987), pp. 225–240; see also A. F. L. Beeston, ‘al-Fīl’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (eds.) Bearman et al., http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_2368 (accessed 1 November 2023).
76 See Major, India in the Fifteenth Century, p. 22. On the ambivalent views about elephants in pre-Islamic Iran, see A. Tafazzoli, ‘Elephant: a demonic creature and a symbol of sovereignty’, Acta Iranica 5 (1975), pp. 395–398.
77 See Okada, Miniatures de l’Inde impériale, pp. 122–123; D. Ehnbom, Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfield Collection (New York, 1985), pp. 38–39. See also J. Seyller, ‘Deccani elements in early Pahari painting’, in Sultans of the South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323-1687, (eds.) N. N. Haidar and M. Sardar (New York, 2011), pp. 64–65. On the iconography of the composite elephant, see Naisupap, ‘Composite elephant’.
78 See Clarence-Smith, ‘Elephants, horses’, p. 277.
79 T. A. G. Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography (Madras, 1916), vol. II/1, pp. 150–156. Another theme in Indian art portrays Durga slaying the elephant demon Karindrasura; see the nineteenth-century painting housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/88462 (accessed 30 September 2024).
80 Trautmann, Elephants & Kings, pp. 148–150.
81 Ibid, p. 147.
82 The dialogic style was used in particular by Mu‘tazilite theologians. Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr ‘Zarrīndast’ used it in the Nūr al-‘uyūn—a Persian treatise on ophthalmology written in 480/1087; see A. Karimi-Hakkak, ‘Persian tradition’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, (ed.) M. Baker (London, 2001), p. 156.
83 See S. Gandhi, ‘The prince and the Muvaḥḥid: Dārā Shikoh and Mughal engagements with Vedānta’, in Religious Interactions in Mughal India, (eds.) V. Dalmia and M. D. Faruqui (New Delhi, 2014), pp. 65–101. On Persian texts on Ayurvedic medicine, see Speziale, Culture persane, pp. 64–65.
84 See B. Heller, ‘Nūḥ’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (eds.) Bearman et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5966 (accessed 1 November 2023).
85 K. von Folsach, For the Privileged Few: Islamic Miniature Painting from the David Collection (Esbjerg, 2007), pp. 50–51. The couple of elephants are also portrayed in the Catholic iconography of the ark, as shown by one of the intarsia in the wooden choir stalls of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo; the intarsia were based on the drawings made by Lorenzo Lotto (d. 1556/57); see N. Fernando, The Tarsias by Lorenzo Lotto: A Route Between Bible and Alchemy (Bergamo, 1987), p. 22.
86 This miniature is kept at the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, accession number F1948.8; it is accessible online at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1948.8/ (accessed 1 November 2023).
87 See S. Gandhi, ‘Locating race in Mughal India’, Renaissance Quarterly 75 (2022), pp. 1180–1220.
88 Muḥammad Qāsim Hindūšāh Astarābādī Firišta, Tārīḫ-i Firišta (Tehran, 1387/2009), vol. I, pp. 30–31.
89 See C. Syfox, ‘Israel’s first physician and apothecary: Noah and the origins of medicine in the Book of Jubilees’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 28.1 (2018), pp. 3–23.
90 See I. Perho, ‘The prophet’s medicine: a creation of the Muslim traditionalist scholars’, Studia Orientalia 74 (1995), pp. 5–158.
91 Speziale, Culture persane, pp. 104–108.
92 A tentative explanation comes from the Hindi words ban and manuṣ, which would mean a human kind of creature (manuṣ) from the forest (ban); I thank Rima Hooja and the curators of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum for this suggestion.
93 See R. Tottoli, ‘Flood’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds.) Fleet et al., http://dx.doi.org.prext.num.bulac.fr/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27158 (accessed 1 November 2023); Gandhi, ‘Locating race in Mughal India’.
94 According to recent studies, elephants can respond to up to 30 commands given by mahouts; see Hart and Sundar, ‘Family traditions’, p. 36.
95 See Edgerton, Elephant Lore, p. 107; Meulenbeld, History of Indian Medical Literature, IIa, p. 570.
96 Some mantras are meant to be recited while making ropes to be used around the animal, in order to make the ropes stronger; see Lainé, ‘Les éléphants’, pp. 18–19.
97 ‘Istud animal nihil facit nisi cum verbo; itaque magister suus non habet aliud facere nisi quod dicat semel sibi: fac hoc et facit’, Jordanus of Catalonia, Mirabilia Descripta, in Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, publié par la Société de Geographie. Tome quatrième (Paris, 1839), p. 48. Šūštarī writes that the fīl-bān speaks to the animals in a special language that they understand and obey; Khazeni, ‘Indo-Persian travel’, p. 26.
98 Different kinds of Persian texts written in India provided Sanskrit mantras and talismans for various purposes. On mantras and talismans for healing the diseases, see Speziale, Culture persane, pp. 111–116.
99 Gajrāj-nāma, Ms. Jerusalem, The National Library of Israel, Ms. Yah. Ar. 87, f. 34a.
100 Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy, p. 72; see also pp. 37, 102, 110, 124. On genealogies in South Asia, see S. Brodbeck and J. Hegarty (eds.), Genealogy in South Asia, special issue of Religions of South Asia 5.1–2 (2011); see also R. G. Fox, Kin, Clan, Raja, and Rule: State-Hinterland Relations in Preindustrial India (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London,1971), pp. 22, 25, 76, 159.
101 Kursī-nāma, Ms. Hyderabad, Salar Jung Museum and Library, pers. bayṭārī 20/1, p. 13; Ms. Tonk, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Arabic and Persian Research Institute, 2272/2, f. 3b.
102 Forms of devotion for Muslim pīrs are still practised nowadays. Parbati Barua, a female mahout from Assam, explains: ‘There are many rituals in our work […] These have been handed down for generations. Every journey begins with a puja to Goddess Kali, Ganesh, Saatshikari—the patron goddess of forests and Muslim saint Mahout Pir’; I. Raimedhi, My Half of the Sky: 12 Life Stories of Courage (New Delhi, 2014), p. 64.
103 See E. Orthmann and F. Speziale, ‘Tarjuma-yi Sālōtar’, in Perso-Indica, (eds.) Speziale and Ernst (2020), http://www.perso-indica.net/work/tarjuma-yi_salotar (accessed 1 November 2023)
104 Gajrāj-nāma, Ms. Varanasi, Hindu University Library, Persian 295/1. I could only access the first few folios of this manuscript. Internal evidence shows that this Gajrāj-nāma was written sometime during the Mughal or late Mughal period, seeing that the text mentions the Smilax china (čūb-i činī)—a drug that was introduced in India by the Portuguese in the 1530s (ibid, f. 3a). The illustrated Gajrāj-nāma in Jerusalem, the beginning of which is missing, is different from the manuscript in Varanasi, although both mention Ibrāhim Quṭb Šāh (Ms. Jerusalem, The National Library of Israel, Ms. Yah. Ar. 87). The Jerusalem manuscript (ibid, ff. 100b, 104a, 107a, 100b, 114b) includes talismanic diagrams and falītas (talismans to be burnt) that are drawn in a style that recalls those used in Ja‘far Sharif’s Qānūn-i islām. See J. Sharif and G. A. Herklots, Islam in India or the Qānūn-i islām, (ed.) W. Crooke (New Delhi, 1832), pp. 330–339. I thank wholeheartedly Ali Gibran Siddiqui, currently working on this text, for drawing my attention to the Jerusalem manuscript while I was revising this article.
105 See W. L. Hanaway, ‘Eskandar-nāma’, Encyclopaedia Iranica VIII.6 (1998), pp. 609–612.
106 K. Nossov, War Elephants (Oxford 2008), p. 19.
107 Kursī-nāma, Ms. Hyderabad, Salar Jung Library, pers. bayṭārī 20.
108 Kursī-nāma, Ms. Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, A. G. 2159/2, ff. 1b, 2a, 3a.
109 Kursī-nāma, Ms. Manchester, The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, f. 4b. This and another five coloured drawings from this manuscript (probably a late eighteenth-century copy) are reproduced in F. Speziale, ‘Elephants and mahouts in the Persianate society of India’, Rylands Special Collections Blog, 12 August 2023, https://rylandscollections.com/2023/08/12/elephants-and-mahouts-in-persianate-south-asia/ (accessed 1 November 2023).
110 Kursī-nāma, Ms. Hyderabad, Telangana Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, ḥaywānāt 55/3, ff. 2a–4a.
111 Gajrāj-nāma, Ms. Jerusalem, The National Library of Israel, Ms. Yah. Ar. 87, see f. 34a, for Ḫwāja Aḥmad on the white elephant; and f. 61a for Ḫwāja Aḥmad with Ḫiżr.
112 Wājid ‘Alī Ḫān, Maṭla‘al-‘ulūm, p. 292.
113 See B. Utas, ‘“Genres” in Persian literature 900–1900ʹ, in Literary Genres: An Intercultural Approach, Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, (ed.) G. Lindberg-Wada (New York, 2006), vol. 2, p. 209.
114 This novel was allegedly based on the loose translation of a Marathi text; the protagonist recounts that his preceptor was a mahout with whom he learnt to read and write; W. B. Hockley, Pandurang Hàrì, Or, Memoirs of a Hindoo (London, 1826), 1, pp. ix, x, 6. As pointed out by Lanzillo, ‘Reading artisan archives requires abandoning an underlying assumption of much of the scholarship on Indian artisans, namely, that because many artisans were illiterate, their communities did not read, produce, or engage with text’; Lanzillo, Pious Labor, p. 11.