Scholarship on Sikh–Muslim relations in eighteenth-century Mughal India has often centered on narratives of military conflict and political rivalry. This presentation suggests an alternative intellectual account by examining the ways in which Sikh scholars engaged Islamic and classical Sufi philosophy as objects of study, translation, circulation, and interpretation. Through these scholarly engagements, the Sikh tradition emerged as an active participant in a wider Persianate cosmopolis of mystical and ethical ideas.

The Sikh community appears to have been the first in history to translate Rumi’s Masnavi-e Manavi (the spiritual couplets) and Imam Ghazali’s Kimiya-yi Sa’adat (the alchemy of happiness) into a ‘non-Muslim’ vernacular. Sikh scholarly engagements with Islamic and Sufi ideas unfolded over several centuries and took multiple forms. These include critical theological commentary within the Guru Granth Sahib (the central Sikh scripture), poetical ‘dialogue’ between leading intellectuals from each tradition, and arduous translations of ancient classics such as Rumi’s Masnavi-e Manavi and Imam Ghazali’s Kimiya-yi Sa’adat.

Alongside elite textual production, popular retellings of the lives and teachings of prophets and Sufi mystics circulated widely through manuscript transmission and oral performance. Indeed, it can be argued that engagements with Sufi-, Quranic, and Biblical figures such as Maulana Rumi, Imam Al-Ghazali, Hafez Shirazi, Hallaj-al Mansour, Imam Ali, Rabia al-Basri, Junayd al-Baghdadi, Abdullah Ansari, Hassan al-Basri, Ibrahim Adham al-Balkhi, as well as Mithra, Adam, Moses, and Jesus appear to have been central to certain branches of the early Sikh intellectual tradition. Scholars such as Nand Lal Goya, Adhan Shah, Seva Ram, Garhu, and others appear at the center of this trajectory and redefine how we understand early Sikh intellectual history and its place in the Persianate world.

Biography
Satnam Singh is an intellectual historian and the author of The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Khalsa Sikhs in the Late 1600s (University of California Press, 2024). Satnam’s research explores early modern intellectual history and the construction of knowledge and authority within Sikh ranks. The research presented in this presentation forms part of his forthcoming monograph on precolonial Sikh intellectual traditions, scheduled for publication in 2028. More information on his publications can be found on www.satnam-singh.com