Sufis and Sultans in Eighteenth-Century Delhi: Re-evaluating the Political Letters of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi (d. 1762)

Abstract While Shāh Walī Allāh’s political letters have been the subject of much scholarly discussion, they are still deeply misunderstood. These misunderstandings are due, primarily, to erroneous attributions of recipients, misidentified individuals in the letters, and the failure to read these “political letters” alongside Walī Allāh’s broader epistolographic corpus, contemporary biographical texts and political chronicles of the period. This article argues that far from being a critic of the Mughal Empire per se , Walī Allāh was closely associated with leading members of ʿĀlamgīr II ’s court. Moreover, his famous “invitation” to the Afghan ruler Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī, ostensibly asking him to invade Hindustan, should properly be understood as an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to attract the favorable attention of a military leader in order to mitigate the danger posed by his troops.