Fathullah Shirazi

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Fathullah Shirazi died in Kashmir sometime in 1588 or 1589, and the emperor he served was so shaken by the news that he said he would have traded all his treasures to get him back. That emperor was Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal rulers. The man he mourned was a Persian Sufi who had traveled from Shiraz to the courts of the Deccan and finally to Agra, carrying with him a mind that ranged across theology, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, grammar, mechanics, and astrology. Shirazi was not simply a scholar. He redesigned how coins were measured, how land was taxed, how guns were built, and how students were taught. The questions worth asking about him are not just what he knew, but how one person came to hold so many different kinds of authority, and why an emperor counted his loss among the most grievous of his reign.

• 2. Roots in Shiraz

  ›

  Shiraz, in Safavid Iran, was where Shirazi was born and where he first took his education. He studied at the school of Azar Kayvan, learning philosophy and logic under Khwajah Jamaluddin Mahmud. That teacher was himself a disciple of Jalal al-Din Davani, a celebrated logician, which placed Shirazi within a well-regarded intellectual lineage. He then broadened into medicine, mathematics, and science under Mir Ghayasuddin Mansur. Once his formal training was complete, Shirazi stayed in Shiraz as a teacher rather than immediately seeking grander patronage. One of the students he taught there was Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, who would later serve as a close confidant of Akbar himself, suggesting that Shirazi's influence on Mughal affairs began before he ever set foot in India.

• 3. The Road to Agra

  ›

  Before Shirazi reached the Mughal court, he spent years serving the Safavid nobility as a religious dignitary. His path to India began with an invitation from Sultan Ali Adil Shah I, who even covered Shirazi's travel expenses. Shirazi settled in Bijapur, and it was there he stayed until 1580. Three years after leaving Bijapur, in 1583, a second invitation arrived, this time from Emperor Akbar himself, and Shirazi traveled to Agra to join the imperial court. He quickly earned the rank of Amir and a mansab of 3000, which was a formal position within Akbar's hierarchical system of military and administrative grading. The speed with which he was elevated signals that his reputation had preceded him well before he crossed the Mughal frontier.

• 4. Administrator and Diplomat

  ›

  Akbar's first assignment for Shirazi was one that demanded both precision and political tact: he was asked to reexamine and correct the entire transaction records of the Mughal Empire. Shirazi completed that task with what sources describe as diligence and success. In 1584, Akbar gave him the title Amin-ul-Mulk, meaning Trustee of the State. Alongside auditing records, Shirazi was put in charge of regulating the intrinsic and bullion values of coins, identifying inconsistencies in the currency and restoring its reliability. In 1585 and again in 1587, Akbar sent him as the head of diplomatic missions to the Deccan. Those missions earned him a new title, Azud-ud-Dawlah, meaning Arm of the Emperor. He was also given 5000 rupees, a horse, a robe of honor, and the office of Chief Sadr of Hindustan.

• 5. Machines and Inventions

  ›

  Shirazi's mechanical work is among the most striking parts of his record. He designed an anti-infantry volley gun fitted with multiple barrels, similar in concept to a hand cannon. He also built a seventeen-barrel cannon that was fired using a matchlock mechanism. Perhaps his most unusual machine was called the Yarghu, a device that could clean sixteen gun barrels at the same time and was powered by a cow. A carriage he designed was praised by the courtier and historian Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak for its comfort; the same carriage doubled as a grain grinder when it was not carrying passengers. Shirazi also tackled a problem in tax administration: land taxes in Bengal were being collected according to the Hijri calendar, which does not align with solar agricultural cycles. Akbar asked him to fix this, and Shirazi created a new calendar called the fosholi shon, meaning the harvest calendar.

• 6. Scholar and Teacher

  ›

  Shirazi's written work covered an equally broad range. One of his earliest texts was a commentary on the Quran. In philosophy and logic, he made contributions through a work called Takmilah-i-Hashiyah. He also played a central role in compiling the Tarikh-i Alfi, a thousand-year history of Islam. His influence on education was structural as well as literary. He designed a new curriculum for the madrasas that placed the rational sciences, or uloom-i-muqalat, at the center of learning and brought in subjects that had not previously been taught there, including geometry, medicine, philosophy, and mathematics. That curriculum, according to the sources, produced a generation of eminent scholars, engineers, and architects. Shirazi died during Akbar's stay in Kashmir in 1588-89 and was buried at the monastery of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani on the Koh-i-Sulaiman, a site whose association with a revered Sufi figure befitted a man who had always combined mystical and rational learning.