Fat’h al-Mubin

Title: Fat’h al-Mubin

Author: Qadi Muhammad

Publisher: Other Books, 2015 (First published 1576)

ISBN: 9789380081175

Pages: 106

 

With the forceful Portuguese entry into the spice trade along Malabar coast in the sixteenth century, the age-old traditions and business relationships underwent a sea change. The newcomers were not content to be one among the players. Aiming to dominate the spice trade and navigation in the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese displaced the Arabs by military means. This set in motion a long series of attacks between Muslims and the Portuguese. Muslim intellectuals in Kerala recorded the events as a historical narrative. Notable among these was Sheikh Zainuddin Makhdum’s Tuhfat al-Mujahideen (Gift to the holy warriors) which was reviewed earlier. The next in line is Fat’h al-Mubin (A clear victory). Both these texts were originally written in Arabic. They present the Muslim side of the story in contrast to what we have from Portuguese archives. This narrative centres on the siege and eventual destruction of the Portuguese fort at Chaliyam in 1569. The attack on the fort was a part of the war effort that was orchestrated with help and coordination from Deccan sultanates of Bijapur and Berar. However, as the battleground heated up, the Deccan sultans slunk away from the accord and withdrew. Finally, the Zamorin – the traditional king of Calicut – accepted the responsibility on his shoulders. The Zamorin is the real hero of this history because of his support for the Muslim cause. This book effectively conveys the outrage which Malayali Muslims felt about the aggression of the Portuguese. The author Muhammad ibn Qadi Abdul Aziz was the Muslim civil judge of Calicut and the book was written around the year 1576.

 

Since the Zamorin is the hero of the tale, the author narrates legends about his dynasty that is extolled as without parallel. A story about the first Zamorin who had converted to Islam is also given. This is obviously the result of confusion with the legend of Cheraman Perumal, the last hereditary emperor of Kerala who distributed all land to his vassals. The first Zamorin got only a broken sword from him as he was very much delayed in appearing before his overlord. However, that Zamorin rose to the pinnacle with his military prowess. Islamic lore suggests that Perumal then accepted Islam, abdicated and went to Mecca. Another interesting tale on the origin of Zamorin’s clan links them to Moses or Prophet Musa, as the Muslims call him. The anglicized name Zamorin is rendered from the Malayalam title Samoothiri or Samoori. In the Quran, Sameri was the follower of Moses who misguided people exhorting them to worship the idol of the calf he made. Zamorin’s worship of the cow as a sacred symbol of Hinduism and the resemblance of his similarly sounding name prompted some people to connect his ancestry to Egypt and Moses.

 

The poetic tradition of medieval Kerala Muslims becomes quite evident in the author’s remark that he intends to stick to it and that rendition of prose into poetry is like changing silver to gold. It should be remembered that this comes at a time when alchemy was still a mysterious but respectable profession. Besides, Qadi Muhammad is also the author of Muhyuddin Mala, a garland of poetic honorifics being sung in Malabar in praise of Sufi saint Sheikh Muhyuddin Abdul Qadeer Jilani. The author was a polyglot and trained in many areas of learning. The book narrates the events right from the arrival of the Portuguese and till the capture of Chaliyam fort. The earlier part of the story is told without reference to any dates and serves only as background information to the events that led to the siege of the fort.

 

The book glorifies the Zamorin to the hilt because he sided with the Muslims. His ships are said to be sailing on the seas like the Persian horses do over vast plains. The hyperbole extends to his rule, of which justice and moderation were the significant features. He never confiscated anybody’s property except in case of crime nor does he teases anybody with injustice. He did not capture countries of those beneath him, even if they disobeyed. He was so kind-hearted that in such cases, he was satisfied by extracting tribute from such vassals. He was also said to be wise, statesmanlike, brave, patient, tolerant and spent all that he received as taxes and penalties on charities and feeding the poor. Since the Zamorin was fighting against infidels in spite of his own disbelief, the author reminds Muslims that it was incumbent on them that such a one should be prayed for like a Muslim sultan. The Zamorin was also shrewd in making appeals to Muslim communal sensibilities. He appointed a Quran reciter to encourage people besieging the fort. The author argues that death of a single Muslim soldier was a greater affliction to the Zamorin than the death of ten infidels. The author’s intolerance to non-Muslims is typical of Islamic thinkers anywhere, anytime. After the Chaliyam fort was demolished, he gave some portions of it as building material to reconstruct the Mishkal Masjid which was earlier destroyed by the Portuguese. The demolition of the fort was a long drawn-out process that lasted a year. In the end, it was leveled to the ground and the fort was said to have become a dream. At that instant, Adil Shah and Nizam Shah of Deccan switched sides and made peace with the Portuguese without any obvious justification palatable to his co-religionists in Kerala.

 

The author also provides relevant details on the political rivalries between the major powers of the era. To counter the Portuguese might, Muslim kings entered into a naval alliance that included the Ottoman sultan of Turkey, Mameluke sultan of Egypt and the sultan of Cambay (Gujarat). Even with this alliance in place to bolster their effort, they could not reach Calicut. The author claims poor strategy and bribery as the real reasons for this failure. In Kerala, the Zamorin treated other native rulers with contempt. They were repeatedly humiliated by forcing to seek permission even for such mundane tasks such as re-tiling the roof of their residences. Thus, they were looking for an opportunity to ditch their suzerain by making treaties with the Portuguese who was the enemy of the Zamorin. The rulers of Kochi and Kannur welcomed them with open arms. Another neighbour of the Zamorin, the Vettath Raja of Tanur, is reported to have converted to Christianity out of his enmity to the Zamorin. We can also have a glimpse on the total monopoly of the Portuguese on the spice trade of Malabar. Pepper and ginger were the staple commodities that were entirely handled by them. They left only such unwanted items such as coconuts for other traders. The author laments that whoever wanted a corn of pepper for making soup obtained it only in powdered form and packed in a piece of cloth. The Portuguese seems to have controlled retail trade too.

 

The book is a very short one, in 70 pages, containing 537 couplets in all. The translation has wiped away all poetic worth. The Arabic original is also given in the book. There are clarificatory notes at the bottom of most pages. The dates and years are rarely mentioned in the work and when it is disclosed, it is in Hejira calendar system. The book contains a foreword by Stephen Dale, an eminent historian known for his studies on eastern Islamic world and Kerala Muslims.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star