Royal Passions: Emotions, Bodies, and Sovereignty in the Qutb Shahi Deccan

This paper considers the political meanings of royal passion, pleasure and devotion in an early modern peninsular South Asian Muslim-ruled state. It suggests that narratives about the king’s emotions and sensuality reveal emerging visions of sovereignty, chart configurations of political alliance, and provide templates for courtly and popular ethical comportment. The kings of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, whose capital was Golkonda in the eastern Deccan, led an expansive imperial project that integrated a variety of Hindu and Muslim groups as subjects and nobles, maintained widespread diplomatic and commercial relations, and hosted mercantile and ecclesiastical elites from Europe and elsewhere in Asia. These sovereigns were also known for their voluminous composition of vernacular poetry. The Deccani Urdu poems of Qutb Shah kings Muhammad Quli (r.c. 1580-1612) and Abdullah (r.c. 1626-1672) provide elaborate accounts of amorous relations with women corresponding to different groups among the subject population, enjoyment of public festivals, marvelous material commodities, and impassioned devotion to sacred figures or images. The paper examines the corpus of royal poetry and other contemporaneous sources (diplomatic correspondence, accounts of visitors to the state) that represent the emotions of feelings of the Qutb Shahi sovereigns. Writings about diverse ritual performance and devotion (often Shia Muslim, but frequently interspersed with popular Hindu elements), or passion for women (including Muhammad Quli’s love for a local courtesan and foundation of the new capital of Hyderabad in dedication to her) situate kings in relation to diverse subjects and sources of authority. The paper reflects on the political work performed by writings about kings, and particularly royal poetry, identifying a move to situate subjects within, following Rosenwein, an “emotional community” mediated by, following Kantorowicz, the coextensive material/natural and mystical/political bodies of the King.