Approaching Diplomatic and

Courtly Gift-giving in Europe and

Mughal India: Shared Practices
and Cultural Diversity

.. ner*
Kim Siebenhu

This article deals with courtly gift-giving practices in Europe and

Mughal India from a comparative and interwoven perspective. Given
the historiographical lacunae on Mughal gift-giving, the article presents
preliminary observations for further research. Unlike most contributions
to this volume, this article understands the notion of diversity in terms of
an intercultural diversity that came to the fore in courtly contexts and in
diplomatic encounters. My arguments are bifold. On the one hand, European
and Mughal rulers and their envoys shared a common ground of diplomatic
gift-giving practices that were shaped by an understanding of what was
worthy of giving and of the symbolic power of the given objects. On the other
hand, courtly gift-giving practices were embedded in different social and
cultural environments in Europe and India. By looking at the notion of the
‘gift’ and the social organisation of the Mughal elite, it becomes clear that
pīshkash was an idiosyncratic concept in South and Central Asian contexts
and that offerings of mansabdārs to the Mughal emperor had a different
character than those of European courtiers to their rulers.

When in May 1498 Vasco da Gama landed near Calicut and sought out the
local ruler, he and his men were received in a friendly manner. The palace
gates opened quickly, and, according to the eyewitness-account of Álvaro
Velho, the Portuguese delegation was admitted to the Zamorin without
any obstacles. Vasco da Gama presented himself as an envoy of the king

*Historisches Institut, University of Bern, Switzerland.

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Sage Publications  Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0971945813515021
526  Kim Siebenhu..ner

of Portugal and was accorded a private audience in one of the Zamorin’s

chambers where friendly words were exchanged and Vasco announced
the presentation of a letter of Manuel I (r. 1495–1521). When the second
encounter occurred and the gifts intended for offering were inspected, the
Zamorin’s officials laughed at the selection:

saying that it was not a thing to offer to a king, that the poorest merchant from
Mecca, or any other part of India, gave more, and that if he wanted to make a
present it should be in gold, as the king would not accept such things.1

Locals of Calicut talked about the worthless goods that the captain desired
to be sent to the king: ‘twelve pieces of lambel [striped cloth], four scarlet
hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case containing six wash-hand
basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey’.2 Indignantly,
de Gama ordered the gifts to be restored on board and presented himself
with empty hands. This time, however, he waited in front of closed palace
gates for hours, scrutinized by officials, before finally meeting the Zamorin.
The absence of gifts did not go unnoticed by the Zamorin, and when the
royal letter was delivered and Vasco departed, no further courtesy was
shown to him.3
The Portuguese were not only disgraced by their presents, but also
jeopardised their reputation as royal delegates and explorers. Thus,
Vasco da Gama was treated as a merchant, not as an ambassador.4 To be
more precise, his status as an envoy of a powerful and rich monarch was
challenged because he lacked suitable gifts. While the Zamorin measured
his appreciation of the foreigner according to his presents, Vasco da Gama
was obviously ill-prepared for the cultural encounter with the rulers of
India. Not unlike in Europe, his status was represented and negotiated
by the gifts he offered. But despite their transcultural nature as media of
social relationships, intercultural gift-exchanges were a frequent source
of conflict in early modern European–Indian encounters. Poorly selected
gift baskets and the rejection of gifts point to culturally diverse habits and

1
Velho, Journal: 60; On the historical background of the Portuguese landing see Diffie
and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire or Disney and Booth (eds), Vasco da
Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia.
2
Velho, Journal: 60–61.
3
Ibid.: 61–63.
4
Ibid.: 60.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  527

expectations that had to be bridged in intercultural encounters. What is

commonly labelled as ‘cultural misunderstanding’ was often based upon
fundamental differences of perceptions, practices and semantics between
those who met. In what follows, then, the notion of diversity is understood
in terms of an intercultural diversity that came to the forefront in cultural
encounters between early modern Europeans and Japanese, Ottomans
and Indians. Most of the sections of this volume address diversity within
Europe and India, and investigate complex systems such as lordship,
religion and economy. Here, fields of comparison have yet to be carved
out. In this section, by contrast, we have chosen a narrower subject
matter from a field one could denote as ‘modes of exchange’. The focus
on gift-giving as one such mode of exchange—others could be trade or
booty-taking—allows approaching our topics from a comparative and
interwoven perspective at the same time. In analysing the Habsburg
mission to the Ottoman court in 1628, Peter Burschel illuminates diverging
ideas concerning gift obligations between the two parties. Wim de Winter
focuses on seventeenth-century encounters between Europeans and
Japanese and shows how shared gift-giving practices were developed on a
day-to-day basis. The present contribution examines European gift-giving
experiences at the Mughal court and argues that while on the one hand
European envoys and Mughal courtiers shared practices of gift-giving in
terms of diplomacy, the meaning of courtly gift-giving differed remarkably
on the other hand.
In the past, historians have used theories of the gift from sociology and
anthropology in order to explain historical gift-giving practices, favouring
the impression as Gadi Algazi puts it, ‘that some complete theory of the
gift lies ready for historians to apply’.5 Instead of essentialising ‘the gift’
by sociological and anthropological concepts, Algazi argued for an analysis
of contexts that brings out the specific historical and cultural practices,
and the semantics of gifts. Rather than lumping Mughal and European
courtly gifts under the umbrella of a single ‘medium of representing and
shaping social hierarchies’, then, I bring to the surface the underlying
logic of how Mughal courtly gifts differed from that of courtly gifts in
medieval and early modern Europe.
Gift-giving practices at Mughal courts have yet to be investigated
in a detailed manner. While European gift-giving practices have been

5
Algazi, ‘Doing Things with Gifts’: 9.

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studied intensively,6 similar works on Mughal India are still missing.

Important observations have been made by Harbans Mukhia and others,
and, in the wider contexts of Islamic courts, in the exhibition volume Gifts
of the Sultan.7 In a transcultural perspective on late Antique, Byzantine
and early Islamic societies, Anthony Cutler has analysed the economic
dimensions of gift-giving and the significance of diplomatic gifts as
redistributed and circulating objects.8 For the European–Ottoman and
North African contexts the problem of gift-giving and tribute, relevant for
the Mughal context, has been addressed by Christian Windler and others.9
By and large, however, the history of gift-giving in Mughal India has yet
to gather momentum.
The present contribution cannot and does not intend to cover these
historiographical lacunae. On the basis of various European travel accounts
and Jahangir’s autobiographical chronicle, as one example of Mughal
chronicles that report extensively on courtly gifts, it presents preliminary
observations for a project that has yet to be launched. In this sense, it
mirrors the original purpose of the conference to sound the ground for
comparative perspectives.

Cultural Encounters and Diplomatic Gift-giving

Unlike Vasco da Gama who apparently failed naïvely to meet the gift
expectations of the Zamorin, many travellers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century were well-prepared for the encounter with the
Grands of India. François Bernier (1625–1688) began his famous letter
to Jean-Baptiste Colbert with the words: ‘In Asia, the great are never
approached empty-handed.’10 After having spent most of his nine-year
stay in India at the court of Aurangzeb (c. 1659–1667), Bernier knew
the customs of the court well. Likewise, his contemporary Jean-Baptiste

6
Kettering, ‘Gift-giving and Patronage in Early Modern France’; Davis, Die schenkende
Gesellschaft; Groebner, Gefährliche Geschenke; Algazi, Groebner and Jussen (eds),
Negotiating the Gift; Schröder, Macht und Gabe; Ben-Amos, The Culture of Giving.
7
Mukhia, The Mughals of India: 100–104; Jaffer, ‘Diplomatic Encounters’; Komaroff
(ed.), Gifts of the Sultan.
8
Cutler, ‘Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related
Economies’; Cutler, ‘Significant Gifts’.
9
Windler‚ ‘Tribut und Gabe’; Windler, La diplomatie comme expérience; Burschel, ‘Der
Sultan und das Hündchen’; Petrisch, ‘Tribut oder Ehrengeschenk?’
10
Letter to Monseigneur Colbert, in Bernier, Travels: 200.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  529

Tavernier (1605–1689) was familiar with the necessities of gift-gifting.

As a merchant of jewels he had managed to be admitted to the pādishāh
and to acquire his uncle Shāista Khān (d. 1694) as a customer.11 Reporting
on the negotiations at court, he informed his readers:

For it should be stated that if any one desires to have audience of the Emperor,
they ask, before everything else, where the present is that he has to offer to
him, and they examine it to see if it is worthy of being offered to His Majesty.
No one ever ventures to show himself with empty hands, and it is an honour
obtained at no little cost.12

Tavernier himself invested considerable amounts of money in presents.

By offering valuable things like emeralds from the West Indies, watches,
crystal vessels and precious textiles from Europe, he proved to be well
aware of the demand for ‘exotic’ rarities among Mughal emperors and
nobles.13
Almost 200 years separated Vasco da Gama and Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, and although European knowledge of India became
increasingly accurate during this period, the time span between the
first explorers and the experienced merchant travellers of the late
seventeenth century should not be interpreted prematurely as a learning
process. To be sure, recommendations for suitable presents for Indian
rulers and nobles had circulated since the beginning of the seventeenth
century in Europe. Both, Francisco Pelsaert (c. 1595–1630), an agent
of the Dutch factory in Agra, and Sir Thomas Roe, a British diplomat at
Jahangir’s court, compiled lists of appropriate gifts that were available
through various travel reports and travelogue collections.14 Given the
proliferation of travel literature and the coexistence of old customary

11
On Mirzā Abu Ta lib entitelt Shāista Khān, brother of Shah Jahan’s wife Mumtāz Mahal
and one of the grand amirs of the empire, see Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: 98–322.
12
Tavernier, Travels, vol. 1: 113–14.
13
Ibid., vol. 1: 106, 113–15. On the interest in luxury goods see also Jaffer, ‘Diplomatic
Encounters’: 80–81.
14
Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India: 27. Pelsaert’s Chronik on the Mughal Empire was translated
by Joannes De Laet into Latin and encroached on his De imperio Magni Mogolis (Leiden,
1631). This text was used again by Fra Sebastian Manrique who quoted some passages
literally. For Roe’s gift recommendations see Roe, The Embassy. Roe’s Journal was partially
reprinted in Samuel Purchas’ (1577–1626) travelogue collection Hakluytus Posthumus or
Purchas His Pilgrims that widely circulated in Europe.

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images on the one hand, and up-to-date knowledge on the other, the
reception of new information was not self-evident. Just a few years before
Bernier’s warning, for example, the Compagnie des Indes Orientales
despatched a mission to Aurangzeb without furnishing the envoys with
any presents.15 In the second half of the seventeenth century, European
missions to the Mughal court still failed due to lack of suitable gifts. In
contrast to this, the Jesuits had been successful in making contact with
the pādishāh by the late sixteenth century. When they first approached
Akbar’s court in 1580, they offered a multilingual bible richly furnished
with copper engravings and many European paintings, among them some
from Albrecht Dürer, that were appreciated as European rarities and high
quality works of art at the Mughal court.16
The success or failure of intercultural diplomatic gift-exchange, then,
did not primarily depend on the chronology of European–Indian encounters
and the growing repertoire of experiences. Rather, it was a question
of intercultural competences, financial resources, and attitudes of the
European diplomats and their employers whether an encounter succeeded
or not. The diary of Sir Thomas Roe is a telling example.
Roe was an appointed ambassador of the English crown and merchant
agent of the East India Company in 1614.17 Although he was able to
partially realise the aims of his mission—obtaining a trade contract
and granting protection against arbitrary customs duties—his four-year
stay at Jahangir’s court was a significant diplomatic disaster in which
his permanent lack of costly gifts played a major role. From the very

15
According to the English agents the envoys could not even procure an audience. Foster,
The English Factories, cited in Jaffer, ‘Diplomatic Encounters’: 76.
16
On the three Jesuit missions to the Mughal court, see Maclagan, The Jesuits and the
Great Mogul: 23–65. On the reception of European art works, see Juneja, ‘On the Margins
of Utopia’; Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology; Musée des arts décoratives, La Route
des Indes.
17
For biographical details see Strachan, ‘Roe’; Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe; Foster,
‘Introduction’: xxi–xxiii. Research on the Mughal Empire, European–Indian encounters
and post colonialism have dealt repeatedly with Thomas Roe. For a less critical approach,
see Gascoigne, Die Grossmoguln: 137–54. In contrast, see Cohn, ‘The Command of
Language and the Language of Command’: 278–79; Teltscher, India Inscribed: 20–28,
109–110; Singh, Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: 19–51; Barbour, ‘Power and
Distant Display’; Mitchell, Sir Thomas Roe and the Mughal Empire; Flüchter, ‘Sir Thomas
Roe vor dem indischen Mogul’. On Roe at the court of Istanbul, see MacLean, Looking
East: 117, 123, 217.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  531

beginning, Roe was confronted with a demand for presents that he could
not meet because neither King James nor the East India Company had
fitted him with suitable gifts for the Great Mughal and his entourage.18
Roe was well aware of the dilemma he found himself in. William
Edwards, Roe’s precursor at the Mughal court, had enlightened him that
no business could be conducted without presents and Roe’s journal is full
of reflections on his lack of presents and his poor equipment.19 But Roe’s
journal was not only an intimate diary; it was also an official report for
his employers. While he kept asking for more and for more suitable gifts,
Roe did not—or could not—openly blame King James or the company for
the daily failures he endured. Instead, he transformed his frustrations into
a stereotypical narrative. To convey his experiences to European readers,
he reduced Jahangir’s request for jewels, rarities and other luxuries to the
European stereotype of the cupidity of oriental rulers.20 This narrative
strategy, however, was not consistent with his acquaintance of international
diplomatic practices and the expectations of the Mughal court. Roe’s
journal has often been read as a document of his incomprehension and
ignorance towards Mughal court society. But Roe, as I shall argue, did
not misunderstand the importance of diplomatic gift-giving.
He was an ingenious, subtle person with a courtly socialisation and
profound diplomatic experience. Before his stay at the Mughal court he
had accompanied various diplomatic missions in Europe. In 1604, he had
travelled to Spain in order to bear witness to King Philip’s signature to a
peace treaty between Spain and England. In order to impress the Spanish,
King James spared neither expenses nor troubles. A delegation of more
than 600 men was sent to Valladolid, consisting of trumpeters, porters of
banners, servants and gentlemen, all dressed in costly textiles. The size of
this delegation overwhelmed the Spanish capacities so much that part of the
delegation had to be sent home.21 Among the presents exchanged during
this stay were horses with costly trappings, jewels, golden chains and a
diamond ring worth 3000 pounds. In other words, the kinds of presents
the Great Mughal would later ask for. Roe took part in the negotiations
and gift exchanges, and he was familiar with the protocol of diplomatic
gift-giving.

18
Roe, Embassy: 475–79, 127–29, 380,
19
Ibid.: 76–77, 282–87.
20
Ibid.: 458, 466.
21
Strachan, Thomas Roe: 7–10, 285, note 22.

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Throughout Europe lavish gift-giving was generally an accepted

practice in diplomatic contexts. Many ceremonial and diplomatic manuals
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to the importance of
gift-giving. Presents were indispensable elements of every diplomatic
mission and served to create, preserve and strengthen political bonds.
They also gained the favour of the gift-receiver, expressed esteem for the
diplomatic counterpart, and cleared the way for negotiations.22 Diplomatic
gifts were carefully chosen from a wide range of objects, characterised
by costly materials, skilful manufacture, aesthetic value, rarity and a
high monetary value. Being part of the symbolic communication, they
transported political messages. Thus, on the occasion of the 20 year jubilee
of the emperor’s coronation in 1678, the Elector Frederik William of
Brandenburg (1620–1688) offered Leopold I (r. 1658–1705) a pompous
armchair made of amber with an iconographic programme fit to the jubilee.
Worth 10,000 Polish florins, the chair was a unique item characterised by
its precious material and exceptional artistic design. Gems and jewels,
too, were common diplomatic gifts for high-ranking princes. In 1679, for
example, the French King Louis XIV offered a set of diamond jewels to
the Great Elector’s first wife Louise Henriette (1627–1667) worth some
60,000–70,000 talers.23
The importance of lavish gift-giving was well-known in intercultural
contexts, too. European diplomatic manuals underlined the benefit of
presenting costly gifts at oriental courts,24 and diplomatic missions to the
Ottoman or the Safavid court testify to the effort and expenses that went into
the selection of gifts.25 The mission of Philip III (r. 1598–1621) to the Safavid
court in 1618 indicates that the Spanish king and his advisers were well
aware of the necessity to equip their envoy Don Garcia de Silvia y Figueroa
with an opulent gift for Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629). Apart from smoothing
out previous disgruntlements, Philip hoped to curtail Ottoman territorial
expansion, to foster Spanish commercial interests in the Persian Gulf, and,
last but not least, to work towards the Shah’s conversion to Christianity.26
The selection of gifts had been discussed over a period of two years and
compiled with utmost care. It contained a variety of valuable objects from

22
Falcke, Studien zum diplomatischen Geschenkwesen: 13, 65, 278–79, 283–84.
23
Ibid.: 108–13, 135.
24
Ibid.: 65.
25
Simpson, ‘Gifts for the Shah’.
26
Ibid.: 126.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  533

Philip’s own property such as silver boxes, precious goblets and vessels, arms
and trappings, luxurious textiles, pieces of jewellery, as well as Indian spices
and ‘exotic’ pieces of art. All in all, the value of gifts was said to amount to
100,000 ducats. If this sum was noteworthy, the variety within the context
of early modern, international gift-giving was not unusual.27
Sir Thomas Roe’s problem, then, was not that he was not familiar with
the codes of international diplomatic gift-giving, but that his employer,
the East India Company, was an economic enterprise that invested too
little in symbolic communication with the Mughal court.
Similarities of diplomatic gift-giving practices between Europe and
Mughal India are reflected in various missions from the Persian Shah to
the Mughal court. In 1616, Muhammad Riza Beg arrived at Jahangir’s
court. The Iranian envoy was one of the most important foreign envoys
at the Mughal court, representing a sovereign power that claimed to be
as magnificent as the Mughals. Accordingly, Jahangir welcomed him
with much pomp, sending out 100 elephants in order to accompany the
ambassador and his huge baggage to Ajmer. The gifts that Muhammad Riza
Beg later presented at court consisted of 30 Arabian and Persian horses,
watches, carpets, candied fruit, precious stones, and 50 camels loaded with
velvet, hangings, wine, rosewater and perfumes.28 The matter-of-fact tone
in which Jahangir noted in his autobiographic chronicle that the Persian
ambassador had paid his respects, illustrates that the amplitude of the gift
was anything but unusual.
Mughal chronicles document many more such instances. In 1611,
an earlier Persian ambassador visited Jahangir’s court with a similarly
lavish gift, accompanied by a letter from Shah Abbas that confirmed
and strengthened the friendly relations between the Mughal and
the Safavid Empire.29 Giving and re-giving was a mutual practice
of princely self-fashioning, political representation, and affirming
existing relationships. When the Persian ambassador, Budaq Beg,
visited Aurangzeb in 1661 his gifts comprised a total value of more
than 400,000 rupees as the chronicle meticulously records.30 When

27
Ibid.: 125. If the mission nevertheless failed, it was not because of the gifts but because
Shah Abbas had lost interest in good relations with the Spanish Habsburgs. As far as Hormuz
was concerned, he had made concessions to the British in the meantime.
28
Roe, Embassy: 258–63; Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 199.
29
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 121–23.
30
Stronge, ‘Imperial Gifts at the Court to Hindustan’: 171–75.

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he left the court some weeks later, more than 500,000 rupees had
been spent on re-gifts in the form of money, robes of honour, gem
studded daggers, jewels, a horse and an elephant with a costly saddle
and trappings.31 Giving and re-giving were carefully choreographed
by the respect the giver wanted to express to the receiver and by the
magnificence he wanted to claim for himself.
European and Mughal rulers and their envoys, thus, shared a common
ground of diplomatic gift-giving practices that were shaped by a series
of similar habits, rites and expectations. In both contexts, diplomatic
gifts were indispensable elements of an embassy. Presented in a public
ceremony, diplomatic gifts were part of the symbolic communication by
which political messages could be conveyed and by which honour and
prestige could be expressed or withheld. The type of object that had a
cross-cultural valence was characterised by a high monetary value, rarity,
costly material and aesthetic value. It was significant in this sense, that
Jahangir appreciated a small, gem studded casket that Roe offered from
his own belongings, but despised the cheap paintings, ordinary jars and
small knives that Roe brought from England.32 The worthiness of these
things would not have been acknowledged in a European diplomatic
context either.

Courtly Gift-giving—Shared Practices

and Diverse Meanings
In a recent compendium on courts and residencies in the Holy Roman
Empire, gifts within the courtly society are understood as media of
asymmetric relationships of dependency. Only in exceptional cases like
diplomatic dealings or contacts with close family members were gift
exchanges at court characterised by a balanced reciprocity. Mostly, gift-
giving responded to a differentiated hierarchy with the prince at the top.
Through gift-giving he assigned honour, prestige and rank to individual
members of the court. For anybody outside the court, a costly gift was
crucial to add authority to his request or to garner interest at all.33

Ibid.: 175.
31

32
Roe, Embassy: 76–77.
33
Scheller, ‘Schenken und Stiften’: 531–32. See also Scheller, ‘Rituelles Schenken an
Höfen der Ottonenzeit’.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  535

Made in the context of medieval and early modern European courts, at

first sight, these observations seem to align with practices at the Mughal
court to an astonishing degree. Gift exchanges between the Mughal elite and
the pādishāh both reflected and constituted their asymmetric relationship.
Presents among the nobility and the royal family corresponded to a subtly
graded hierarchy, and by the end of the sixteenth century every visitor and
mansabdār had to make an offering in order to bring forward his request
or to preserve and enhance his status.
Niccolao Manucci (1639–1717) who spent several years in the service
of Shah Jahan’s son Dārā Shukōh and Aurangzeb’s son Mu‘azzam,
stated:

It is a custom established throughout India that without friends and without

interest nothing can be done. Even princes of the blood royal, if they want to
carry out any purpose, cannot do so without paying. It is such a usual thing
to give and to receive that when any eunuch or any princess asks the king for
something as a favour to some general or officer, be it an appointment or some
other favour of any consequence, the king never omits to ask how much has
been received.34

Many careers of Mughal mansabdārs testify to these observations. The

history of Shaikh Hasan, titled Muqarrab Khān (d. 1646), a physician, serves
as a case in point. Jahangir saw him as a close intimate and during his reign
he rose to be one of the highest mansabdārs of the empire, holding various
offices as provincial governor.35 Even though Muqarrab Khān was held in
high esteem, his career underwent a serious setback when, shortly after
1610, the death of a young woman, who had been seduced and restrained
by Muqarrab Khān in his house, became known. As a consequence, his
social status was seriously damaged, and his income reduced.36 Two years
later, by carrying out a special task, he managed to regain the pādishāh’s
favour. Shortly after returning successfully from his mission, his rank was

34
Manucci, Storia do Mogor: 321–22.
35
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 34, 133; Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: 42–86 (J43–J1436).
On Muqarrab Khān, see also Rezavi, ‘Aristrocratic Surgeon’.
36
Muqarrab Khān’s rank was reduced to half. On the importance of rank, see below.
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 111. William Hawkins, who fought out his own quarrels with
Muqarrab Khān when he was mutāsaddī of Surat, also reports on the incident and the
following mission to Goa. See Foster, Early Travels: 83–89.

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increased again and he was appointed governor of Delhi.37 Additionally,

he carried out a therapeutic bleeding on Jahangir and was awarded a gem-
studded dagger for his services.38 After he regained his status, Muqarrab
Khān made sumptuous offerings. In 1613, he paid his respects to Jahangir,
offering a gem studded flask, a European hat, a bejewelled object in the form
of a bird, a costly European saddle, twelve Arabian horses and numerous
other precious things.39 The same year he was appointed hākim of Surat.40
In August 1615 he offered a sarpēch (a turban ornament), a ruby and an
extraordinary gem studded throne. Several months later, his personal rank
was increased to 5000, making him one of the highest amirs and another 10
months later he was appointed governor of Gujarat.41 Although there was no
automatism between costly offerings, the rising of rank and the appointment
to offices, the history of Muqarrab Khān indicates that political and social
advancement was impossible without an adequate offering to the ruler.
Within the courtly society gift-giving was determined by a strict
hierarchy.42 Again, Manucci made some telling observations. He reports,
for example, how in 1679 Aurangzeb complained about a birthday present
from his mother—amounting after all to 50,000 rupees—arguing that she
had offered a more valuable one in precedent years.43 In 1691, Asad Khān,
too, criticised one of the princesses for offering him a box for betel leaves
of enamelled silver while his son had received a box and a spittoon of gold,
covered with precious stones. ‘Asad Khān, seeing a present of such small
value, complained, and said that at the least he deserved a present equal to
that of his son, for he was the father, and held higher rank, being, moreover,
chief minister of the empire.’ The princess answered that he was only in
their service while his son was her relative.44 Similar to medieval and early
37
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 133, 134, 137; Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: 53–54 (J391,
J401, J417); Rezavi, ‘Aristocratic Surgeon’: 159. In the context of negotiations with the
Portuguese Viceroy in Goa, Muqarrab Khān was asked to purchase European rarities for
Jahangir. When he returned from this mission in March 1612 he brought with him several
exotic birds, which highly pleased Jahangir.
38
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 138.
39
Ibid.: 141, 143.
40
Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: 55.
41
Ibid.: 59–66; Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 180, 182, 198; Rezavi, ‘Aristocratic Surgeon’:
161.
42
Mukhia, Mughals of India: 102.
43
Manucci, Storia do Mogor: vol. 2: 324–25.
44
Ibid., vol. 2: 330. According to Manucci Zulfiqār Khān had married a princess’ relative.
On Asad Khān and his son Zulfiqār Khān, see Ali, Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb: 108–10,
178, 217, 219.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  537

modern European courts, gifts were supposed to be commensurate with

rank, office, age and family relations, not only between the giver and the
receiver but also among different receivers.45
On an abstract level, therefore, gifts at the Mughal court can certainly
be described as a medium by which unequal relationships, power and
social status within the Mughal elite could be modulated, controlled and
reproduced. The power of gifts to reflect and shape social relationships was
a transcultural one that worked both in early modern Europe and Mughal
India. But what do we gain from such an analysis? The characterisation of
courtly gifts as a medium obscures more than it reveals in a comparative
context. As similar as some gift-giving practices at European and Mughal
courts may seem, their logic and meaning was not identical, but rooted
in different historical and cultural contexts.46
The differences began with the meaning of rank and ultimately with
the organisation of the Mughal elite. Because the Mughal nobility was
organised in a system of rank that was foreign to Europeans, gifts to the
ruler assumed a different meaning. It is well-known that every official of
the bureaucracy and every officer of the army, from the princes of blood
to the lowest clerk, were assigned a mansab, a numerical military rank
that indicated the social status of that person and the number of horses and
troopers that he was obliged to keep.47 The assignment of a mansab was a
prerogative of the pādishāh, even though high officials could and did make
recommendations. Promotions and degradations of rank were important
tools of governance. Every misfortune or merit, every deed that aroused the
ruler’s favour or disfavour could result in an increase or decrease of rank, as
the biographies of many mansabdārs show. Some mansabdārs ended with
the same rank they held at the beginning of their career, others successfully
climbed the ladder.48 A career depended on merits and mistakes, offices,

45
For further examples, see Mukhia, Mughals of India: 100–04.
46
The subsequent spelling of Persian expressions and names follows the Encyclopaedia of
Islam (EI2), except for words that are known and commonly in use in a simplified form like
the term ‘Mughal’ and the names of rulers like Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, etc.
In these cases I follow the spelling suggested by the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.
47
On the rank-system, see Moreland, ‘Rank (mansab) in the Mogul State Service’;
Habib, ‘The Mansab System, 1595–1637’; Habib, ‘Mansab Salary Scales under Jahangir
and Shahjahan’; Spear, ‘The Mughal “Mansabdari” System’; Moosvi, ‘Evolution of the
Mansab System under Akbar until 1596–1597’; Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: xi–xxiv; Ali,
Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb: 38–73.
48
Ali, Apparatus of the Empire: xvi–xxi.

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538  Kim Siebenhu..ner

political factions at court, ethnicity and, ultimately, the ability to gain the
pādishāh’s favour. Mansabdārs, then, were dependent on the ruler much
more than European nobles. Although ‘sons of the household’ enjoyed the
privilege of receiving a rank in any case,49 a mansab was not hereditary. In
order to preserve a mansab, nobles had to strive for the ruler’s grace. The
same was true for land assignments. Mansabdārs did not hold a fief, but
a jāgīr, a piece of land that granted financial income but not the right of
ownership or the power to dispose of the inhabitants. Like the mansab, a
jāgīr was not assigned for a lifetime, but only for a couple of years. Apart
from some hereditary territories of the Rajputs, these lands reverted back
to the ruler after the holder’s death.50
This political, social, economic and military organisation of the Mughal
elite had a crucial impact on the meaning of gifts. If the assignment of rank
and land was easily at stake and favourable relations to the Great Mughal
of major importance, gifts assumed an existential role in the preservation
and improvement of a mansab. Even though the social status of European
nobles, too, was negotiated through courtly gifts to the ruler or high-
ranking courtiers, their belonging to the nobility and their possession of
land was not generally in jeopardy.
In a fundamental way the differences between European and Mughal
gifts to the ruler were reflected in the notion of ‘gift’ itself. The Persian
language disposes of a nuanced repertoire of words to denote various types
of gifts. A present offered to superiors or an animal offered in sacrifice at
Mecca could be termed hadiya. Likewise an excellent, rare thing worthy
of being presented was termed tuhfa and a wedding gift: ‘sachuq’. Finally,
the present or reward given to the bringer of good news: mushtuluq.51 With
regard to gifts from the Mughal elite, to the ruler the notion of pīshkash
was of particular importance. As Ann Lambton has shown for the Persian
context, the term pīshkash developed into a poly-semantic technical term
from about the ninth- to fifteenth-centuries covering ‘a broad range of regular
and occasional payments, from taxes and tributes to levies and gifts, which
made an important if uncertain contribution to the expenses of the monarchy
while emphasising both the loyalty and subordination of the giver’.52 Under

Richards, Mughal Empire: 148–50.

49

Habib, Agrarian System: 216, 224, 298–300.

50

51
Lambton, ‘Pīshkash: Present or Tribute?’: 145, 147; see also Steingass, Comprehensive
Persian–English Dictionary: 1492, 285.
52
Lambton, ‘Pīshkash’: 150.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  539

the Safavids, pīshkash could denote a personal tax or a tax attached to the
land; at the same time, provincial governors were expected to make regular
payments in the form of pīshkash at nawrūz, the traditional New Year’s
festival, when they were appointed to an office or on special occasions.
Likewise, vanquished enemies or rebels often had to present a pīshkash
to the victor.53
Although these results refer to the Safavids and the concept of pīshkash
has yet to be investigated more closely within the Mughal context, there
is much evidence in favour of the assumption that the term had a similar
complex meaning under the Mughals. Leaving aside the fact that Persian
was the administrative language in the Mughal Empire and that the
court society was strongly influenced by Persian culture, administrative
documents from the province of Khandesh from the late seventeenth
century show, for example, that pīshkash was one of the terms that could
denote the revenue collected and paid in cash by the zamīndārs to the
imperial treasury.54 Second, pīshkash could denote a payment to the court
made by aspirants for an office or in occasion of their appointment.55
Literally, pīshkash means both, a tribute or a gift to a person with
higher social standing, often a ruler or a patron.56 Originally, it had a
fairly neutral meaning, but by the fifteenth (ninth) century it implied a
hierarchical relationship between the giver and the receiver.57 And unlike
the distinguished concepts of ‘gift’ and ‘tribute’ in European languages,
pīshkash blurred the lines between the two.
Offerings presented by a mansabdār to the ruler at nawrūz or at any
other occasion were not gifts, but pīshkash. Not only were they more
or less obligatory, but also highly institutionalised. Since Akbar’s time,

53
Lambton, ‘Pīshkash’: 148–150.
54
Nayeem, ‘Mughal Documents Relating to the Peshkash’. It is clear, however, that a
variety of terms was used according to the complex administration of land. Revenues that
had to be paid annually to the holders of jāgīrs (or to the imperial treasury when land was
part of the ‘crown domain’) were termed jama and different from pīshkash which was paid
into the imperial treasury alone, and, so far as our knowledge goes, was never assigned in
jāgīr. It was, indeed, possible to require a chief to pay both, one amount as jama ‘and an
additional amount as peshkash’. Habib, Agrarian System, 225. On the topic, see also Moosvi,
Economy of the Mughal Empire; Moosvi, People, Taxation, and Trade.
55
Habib, Agrarian System: 221, 332–33; Schimmel, Im Reich der Großmoguln: 67, 69.
56
Steingass, Dictionary: 267: ‘pesh-kash: a magnificent present, such as is only presented
to princes, great men, superiors, or sometimes to equals; tribute, quit-rent’.
57
Lambton, ‘Pīshkash’: 145.

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540  Kim Siebenhu..ner

mansabdārs who did not stay at court permanently were obliged to

present an offering when they visited the court.58 In addition to that, many
courtly festivities such as the weighing ceremony of the pādishāh, the
accession to the throne, the birth of a prince or princess, a military victory,
and, first and foremost, the New Year festival nawrūz were connected to
rich offerings from the mansabdārs to the ruler.59 Jahangir, for example,
usually spoke in all these instances of pīshkash. Thus, nawrūz offerings
of the amirs are denoted as pīshkash, offerings from his son Khurram
in occasion of a party in his house are termed pīshkash, and when
Muqurrab Khān came from Ahmedabad and paid homage in December
1618, he also offered a pīshkash in the form of a costly pearl.60 However,
Jahangir also uses the term pīshkash when he speaks of subjected local
or regional rulers who, obliged by partly written contracts, had to offer
a fixed pīshkash that was understood as a sign of their subjection. This
pīshkash resembled a tribute. When in 1617, in the light of the victorious
Mughal campaigns in Mewar and the southern advances of the Mughal
troops, the Sultan of Bijapur, Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh II (r. 1580–1626),
was forced to announce recognition of Jahangir’s supreme power, he
delivered a pīshkash consisting of gems, jewelled utensils, elephants, and
horses.61 Offered in the context of direct military threat, this pīshkash
may be understood as a payment for being spared military ravages to
both land and populace, a pīshkash that Finbarr Flood has referred to
as ‘institutionalized plunder’ —the regulated handover of precious
things in which ‘the victim plunders himself while saving his pride by
representing such payments as gifts’.62 This pīshkash differed yet again
from the annual tributes the Deccan sultans were later obliged to pay by
treaty. After renewed military pressure a formal treaty was arranged in

58
Mukhia, Mughals of India: 100.
59
Ali, Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb: 143.
60
See for these examples Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 297–99, 137, 240; for the Persian
version, Muhammad Hāshim, Ğahāngīrnāma. Tūzuk-i-ğahāngīrī; Bunyād Farhang Irān,
Teheran 1980: 301–02, 128, 237 (fols. 212b–13b, 88b, 165a). I am grateful to Andreas
Bolleter who has cross-checked these and several other passages in which the English
translation uses the term ‘offering’ with the Persian version of Muhammad Hāshim.
61
Jahangir, Jahangirnama: 231 (‘tribute’) and Ğahāngīrnāma: 228 (fols. 158a/b)
(‘pīshkash’). On the Deccan campaigns, see Subrahmanyam and Alam, ‘The Deccan Frontier
and Mughal Expansion’.
62
Flood, Objects of Translation: 127.

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 Diplomatic and Courtly Gift-giving  541

1635, with the sultans of Bijapur and Golconda agreeing to an annual

tribute of 2,000,000 and 600,000 rupees, respectively.63
These are only a few examples, but they point to the importance
of pīshkash and its ambiguous meaning in the context of Mughal
administration and relationships between the ruler and the political elite.
The notion comprised a variety of transfers ranging from land revenues
and payments to tributes and offerings with different social, political and
juridical meanings.
Although travellers like Thomas Roe, François Bernier and Niccolao
Manucci obtained detailed insight into the courtly society, their knowledge
seems not to have penetrated the logic of gift-giving and the meaning of
pīshkash in particular, or at least their travel reports do not hint at such
an understanding. But after all, these reports were written for a European
audience. Pīshkash was an alien concept for European observers and
readers who clearly distinguished between gift and tribute, and were easily
ready to denounce Mughal courtly gift-giving practices as bribing and
corruption. However, the diversity between Mughal and European courtly
gift exchanges was not due to oriental avarice as Thomas Roe suggested to
his readers, but to fundamental differences in the notion of the gift and the
organisation of the nobility. The rank-system and the jāgīrs provided for
a high fluidity among the mansabdārs. Offerings to the ruler were crucial
in order to preserve and to improve rank and land holding. Even though
there was a considerable degree of social mobility within the European
feudal society, estate belongings, fiefs and lordship did not existentially
depend on gifts to the ruler, since they were hereditary.
In stressing the diversity of gift exchanges—albeit for the wrong
reasons—travel writers satisfied European reading expectations about
the immense riches and the despotic rulership of the Great Mughal.64 In
reality, European and Mughal courts shared more gift-giving practices
than Thomas Roe and others were ready to admit. Especially in terms of
diplomatic gift exchanges European, Persian and Mughal envoys had a
shared understanding of the importance of gifts as a means of conveying
political messages, acknowledging and honouring the counterpart, and
smoothing the way for negotiations. Other shared practices remain to

63
Elliot and Dowson, History of India as Told by its Own Historians, vol. 7: 51, 57 (‘Abd
al-Hamīd Lāhūrī, Pādshāhnāma); Burn (ed.), Cambridge History of India, vol. IV, 196–99;
Richards, Mughal Empire: 138.
64
On this see Siebenhüner, Die Spur der Diamanten: chap. 2, ‘Schätze des Orients’.

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542  Kim Siebenhu..ner

be investigated. New Year’s gifts that were exchanged at early modern

European, Persian and Mughal courts alike are particularly interesting
in this respect. Rooted in a common heritage of antiquity, they became
an established institution that spread from the Sassanides to the caliphs,
from the Safawids to the Mughals and from the Romans to the courts of
Burgundy, France, England and others.65 Further research in a comparative
and transcultural perspective will shed light on these shared and yet
diverse practices.

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