Shiʿi Theology and Polemics between Iran and India: The Case of Saiyed Nūrollāh Šūštarī (d. 1019/1610)

Connected intellectual history is one of the modes in which we can consider the ways in which ideas, theologies and even polemical exchanges travel between different geographical and political milieux. In this case study, I examine the theology and polemics of Saiyed Nūrollāh Šūštarī between his birth and intellectual formation in eastern Iran and his career and eventual death at the Mughal court. I indicate how his polemical works played a role in transmitting theological ideas and debates from the Iranian milieu to Indian scholarly circles, and how the fluctuating fortunes and reception of his work followed the political shifts and patronage at court.


Introduction
One of the distorting lenses of nationalist historiographies and the modern obsession with the [1] boundaries and limits of the state, its inhabitants and its cultural and intellectual history is that we forget that identities, cultures, linguistic and intellectual communities are not bound by such political limitations. The current trends towards more connected histories in the study of the early modern world-especially effected in the work of Sanjay Subrahmanyam and some of his interlocutors, such as Muzaffar Alam and Nile Green-is a mere reflection of a fact that ideas, practices, symbols and tokens move, transform, merge and overlap (Subrahmanyam 1997(Subrahmanyam , 735-62, 2005b(Subrahmanyam , 2005aSubrahmanyam and Alam 2007;Green 2019). 1 Even the trend of looking at bilateral intellectual and cultural relations-evinced in a number of conferences and cultural products in Iran in recent years celebrating the 'relations' between Iran and India (or perhaps one should say South Asia)-raises the problem of assuming that there is an essential entity 'Iran' and another that we call 'India' that are discrete and distinct. 2 This is 1 For studies of a different kind of connected intellectual history within the same milieu, see Nair (2020) and Truschke (2016 neither to deny facts of geography-there are locations identified as being 'in' India and 'in' Iran-nor the dynastic differences between Timurids, Mughals, Safavids and others. Learned elites in the Persianate world-as a number of studies have shown-were mobile by virtue of the fact that they had transferable cultural capital derived from their learning in the skills privileged in the Perso-Arabic cosmopolis in language, literature, philology, the rational disciplines and scriptural hermeneutics, they possessed sufficient material resources to be mobile, and because they were integrated into scholarly networks and the means to proceed through those networks through their connections, letters of introduction, lineage, confessional and spiritual connections (Subrahmanyam 1992, 340-63;El-Rouayheb 2015;Binbaş 2016;Atçil 2017;al-Musawi 2015;Ricci 2011;Kia 2020). Still too much on the literature on intellectual exchange and even polemics in this period is coloured by a political reductionism; as if meaning can only be inscribed in theological and intellectual discourse if and only if it expresses a political theology. The debates between Čištīs and Naqšbandīs or Catholics and Muslims do have a significant political context; however, one ought to pay attention to the texts themselves and not assume that argumentation stands merely for an unarticulated act of opposition and mode of conflict and little else. 3 I examine the role of one such intellectual and member of a learned and social elite, Saiyed [2] Nūrollāh Šūštarī-a scholar, a saiyed and a scion of a notable family from the borderlands of what are now Iran and Iraq as well as relative of the erstwhile Marʿašī rulers of Māzandarān on the cusp of Safavid rule-and his theological contribution in defending Twelver Shiʿi doctrine, which had become the dominant and officially recognised and promulgated religion of the Safavid realms through the mode of his composition of polemics. 4 In that sense, I propose a study in connected intellectual history that considers a figure between Safavid Iran and Mughal India whose polemics challenged, transgressed, and established theologically normative positions. Polemics are thus proposed as a ground for exchange and interaction across differing milieu and even networks but grounded in common idioms of learning and language; as mentioned above, it is all too common for polemics and debates (on tradition, on the nature of Sufism, Shiʿi-Sunni, Catholic-Muslim and so forth) to be reduced to political difference, conflict and positioning. I shall first locate his work within a wider context of the nature of polemics and their relationship to theology and philosophy in learned traditions. Then I will proceed to a narrower contextualisation of the person and his intellectual output. Finally, I will focus on the polemical texts themselves standing as witnesses to an intellectual exchange between Iran and India but whose work also stretched back to early cycles of polemical engagement and whose writing in Persian and Arabic then addresses audiences not just within the Perso-Arabic cosmopolis of South Asia but Arabia, the Ottoman realms and beyond.
However, before commencing a few caveats are pertinent. First, although I shall primarily [3] be discussing Shiʿi polemics, polemical defences and critiques of Sunni theological positions, I do not intend to project a 'sectarian' or confessional framework onto the relationship between 3 Arguably, an example of this is Muzaffar Alam (2021), especially chapter three on Čištī and Naqšbandī debates on the validity of Sufism that are primarily located within the struggle for politics at the Mughal court. Theological polemics are not innocent of their political contexts but ought not to be reduced to them. Similarly, see Alam and Subrahmanyam (2012, 249-10)  Iran and North India in the early modern period, in which Mughal means Sunni and Safavid means Shiʿi. This does not mean that I ascribe to the notion popularised in recent times of 'confessional ambiguity' that is considered as a characterisation of the theological affiliation of the commonality and the learned elites which were then gradually eroded by the Ottoman-Safavid conflict. 5 While all too often religion has been neglected in analyses of Mughal politics and socio-intellectual history, one ought not over-compensate by seeing in every policy or activity a distinct confessional posture. Nevertheless, Šūštarī's own work distinctly makes a Shiʿi confessional case but within a context that he recognises is religiously plural and not unambiguously marked by Sunni supremacy, even while he does not necessarily see his role as a Safavid 'outlier' whose role is to defend a new Shiʿi space against the aggressive 'expansionism' of Sunni Ottomans, Uzbeks and Mughals. Second, as I just indicated, the effect of the dominance of nationalist, Marxist, Aligarhian [4] and then subalternist historiographies has been to play down and even neglect the cultural, political and intellectual role of religions and religious discourse in society. The question of the nature of Shiʿi confessionalism and politics in the middle Mughal period from Akbar (r. 963-1014Akbar (r. 963- /1556Akbar (r. 963- -1605 to Šāh Ǧahān (r. 1037-1068/1628-1658) requires careful consideration not just in terms of the effects of the migration of Shiʿi intellectuals-considered perhaps even as missionaries among the many other religious missionaries at the courts of Akbar and after-but in the context of the scholarly and elite dynamics within North India itself, between networks and factions at the centres of cultural and political capital.
Third, even within the parameters of polemical literature, there are clear periodic distinc-[5] tions in the wider West Asian context as well as South Asia and its environs. One cannot project the polemics of the Mongol period forward to 1600 nor backwardly project the heightened polemics of the later eighteenth century marked by the Toḥfa-ye Es̱ nāʿašarīya (Gift to the Twelver Shiʿa) of Šāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 1176/1762) and other Naqšbandī divines in the midst of the declining Mughal court and the rise of 'Iranian' and Shiʿi political actors in Delhi, Fyzabad and Lucknow (Rizvi 1982;Alvi 2012).
Finally, it would be unjust to consider Šūštarī merely as a clever polemicist outwitting his [6] interlocutors and then losing out in the political game in the long term with his fall from grace and death during the early reign of Ǧahāngīr. He was a wonderful linguistic stylist in both Arabic and Persian and a prolific scholar across a number of distinct scholarly disciplines. His own rationalist theology (kalām) and philosophy (ḥekma) and his interventions into the cycle of texts such as the Šarḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma of Mīr Ḥosain Maibodī (d. 909/1504), Taǧrīd al-iʿtiqād of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) and Šarḥ al-Mawāqif of al-Šarīf ʿAlī al-Ǧorǧānī (d. 816/1413), all layers of texts, super-texts and para-texts well known to the scholarly elites across the Perso-Arabic cosmopolis from the Balkans to the Malaccas, are worthy of analysis in their own right. Thus, what I present is an aspect of his intellectual biography as a contribution to a connected intellectual history, albeit one which is familiar to those who are familiar with this period of Mughal history.

The Nature of Polemics
One did not have to wait until modern Oxford ordinary language philosophy to recognise [7] that language, both in its spoken and written tokens, contains both affirmative and rhetorical aspects, and in fact the latter is a critical element in the successful communication of ideas 5 See Rizvi (2019, 227-55); on confessional ambiguity, see Pfeiffer (2013, 129-68). and sentiments (Austin 1962;Searle 1969). Polemical writing is often associated with the rhetorical flourishes of language, not because it is devoid of reasoning or dialectical method but because it utilises strategies of othering and affirming the self. Philosophical argumentation without polemics is practically unheard of precisely because of the need to differentiate one's argument from the other. The ancient Greek tradition often considered philosophy to constitute a cacophony of quarrelling sectarian positions, with Stoics opposed to Epicureans arguing with Platonists disputing with Aristotelians. Skeptics drew upon this discord to argue for relativism and the indeterminacy of knowledge, while the new religious groups such as Christians saw in the polemics among philosophers proof not only of their distance from truth but a vindication of the simplicity of their own scriptural belief. Lactantius in his Divine Institutes wrote: Philosophy has split into a multiplicity of sects, and they all think differently.
[8] Which one do we go to for truth? Any one sect dismisses all others in order to confirm itself and its own ideas, and it admits wisdom in no other sect in case it concedes error of its own; but its process of dismissing other sects is the same process by which they dismiss it, for those who condemn a sect for its folly are philosophers none the less: praise any sect and call it true, and philosophers condemn it as false. They will all perish together. (Lactantius 2003, 3.4.3-10;cited in Weisser and Thaler 2016, 2) He conceded that philosophers used rational methods and argumentation and that their [9] polemics were continuous with their method, but that polemical reasoning could not fail to contain within itself the seeds of its own critique. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of the process of institutionalisation of school positions and the need to defend them. But what constitutes the features that characterise polemic? We assume that they are aggressive and triumphant (they constitute a 'war of words'), argumentative and not above resorting to ad hominem and also activating in their recipients feelings of value, and they are directed to a goal of vindicating a position and defeating an opponent. 6 This raises some important questions: At what point does legitimate critique become polemic? When can one resort to personalisation in argument without detracting from its validity? Do polemics assume an absent arbiter who might adjudicate between the two warring parties? Is our Kantian disdain for polemic while praise for critique itself a sort of rhetorical posture? Do polemics not contain argumentation and hermeneutics insofar as they gloss an opponent's position and reflect upon one's own position with respect to texts? We tend to distinguish between polemic and reason in the same way as the ancients tried to differentiate philosophy from sophistry. But both contain argumentation, conceptualization, and the deployment of concepts and categories to make sense of reality. 7 At the same time, polemic is not quite the same as rhetoric-it does not seek to persuade but rather is already persuaded and seeks to confirm with others already persuaded in their position. Does critique entail mutual respect while polemic is strikingly disrespectful? Can polemic be gentle and respectful? Harsh criticism and polemic are still better than neglect-and most thinkers often do not take criticism well and read it as a polemical attack.
Just as polemic is continuous with philosophy, so too is it in a religious context continuous [10] 6 Modifying and drawing upon the excellent Straub (2004). For a useful discussion of polemic and philosophy, see Laks (2016). For a diachronic study of the role of polemic and rhetoric in reasoning, see Albert/Nicolas (2010). 7 While our contemporary intellectual culture tends to disdain polemics, it is difficult not to notice its prevalence. For one recent defence of polemics as a critical aspect of public reason, see Amossy (2014).
with theology. In fact, theology is similarly unthinkable with polemics. Polemics have been a major feature of Muslim theologies from the classical period, drawing upon the polemics that were already present in the scripture. Much of the negative critique of Christians and other religious positions in the Qurʾan is characterised as polemical, especially by progressives and modernists embarrassed by its language, not taking into consideration the rather standard nature of such polemical configurations in late Antiquity. 8 These scriptural polemical constructions about the non-Muslim other were carried over into creedal works (ʿaqāʾid) and heresiographies that polemicized against other Muslims. 9 Such works had a dual purpose: to differentiate the thought and practice of the community that was being defended in distinction to its others, and to speak to one's own community, bolster, cajole and console them in their beliefs. In this paper, as an intellectual historian, I want to show how Šūštarī represents two types [11] of contact and encounter between Safavid Iran and Mughal India. 10 The first is his role in Shiʿi-Sunni polemics and his prolific work in that area that stemmed from the current round of Timurid and post-Timurid texts. These works had a major impact and reflected the ethos of the new resurgent and dominant Shiʿism of the Safavid court. The second was his role in transmitting the ideas of the philosophers and theologians of Shiraz through his works in kalām, especially his commentaries and glosses on the Taǧrīd al-iʿtiqād cycle of texts. In the course of these two contributions, one might even suggest, as biographers have, that he was the first to disseminate seriously Shiʿi theology in North India, although some teachings had been available through the works of Šāh Ṭāher (d. c. 956/1549), an Esmāʿīlī Imam and Safavid envoy, and Šāh Fatḥ Allāh Šīrāzī (d. 998/1589), eminent thinker from Shiraz before him (Ahmed and Pourjavady 2016, 606-10). As such, what I present is a study that contrasts but stands alongside two important recent works: Ali Anooshahr's study of Fatḥ Allāh Šīrāzī and his networks arising from the Shiraz intellectual milieu that contributed to the promotion of the rational sciences and learning at the court of Akbar, and Corinne Lefevre's study of ʿAbd al-Sattār Lāhorī and his disputation to the court of Ǧahāngīr providing evidence for ideology and rhetoric in the writing of thought and history (Anooshahr 2014;Lefèvre 2017). While their times and networks intersected, Šūštarī's polemics were more marked and scholarly in his corpus and intellectual contribution than Šīrāzī's. My concern, however, is less with networks and ideological formation and more with the transmission and exchange of ideas within a connected but also fractured context. My use of Šūštarī is to show how his composition of polemics constituted a rhetorical expression of his theological and philosophical learning and effected a critical episode in the transmission of learning from the Iranian milieux of the school of Shiraz and Mashhad to North India.

Šūštarī's Life
Saiyed Nūrollāh was a significant figure of the time, featuring prominently in many biograph- [12] 8 Two classical works on the polemics against Christians are McAuliffe (1991) and Sirry (2014). See also, Ridgeon (2001). 9 For a short version of this, see van Ess (2006); for the longer consideration of the heresiography in this context, see van Ess (2011 Bashir 2003, 29-75, 163-97). Later he gained the favour of the Mošaʿšaʿid rulers of his region and was offered the position of ṣadr, which he declined. Sources claim he had a role in spreading the Shiʿi faith in the borderlands. Šūštarī's role in defending the Shiʿi faith and going to India is perhaps an indication of walking in the footsteps of his grandfather-his namesake. Šūštarī moved to Mashhad to continue his studies, arriving in Ramażān 979/January 1572; [13] there he studied the rational disciplines and exegesis with ʿAbd al-Vāḥed Šūštarī who was linked to the philosophers of Shiraz especially through Abo-l-Ḥasan Kāšānī (d. 966/1559), the author of a popular work on proving the existence of God (Šūštarī [1378(Šūštarī [ Š] 1999(Šūštarī [ , 25, 53-63, "Moqaddema", to 2014. 14 This older Šūštarī is credited in various biographical works -including in the account of ʿAlāʾ al-Molk-of prolific sets on glosses on theological works such as al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafīya and the Taǧrīd (Hansvī 1962); Rizvi (Rizvi 1986, I/342-88); Husted (Husted 1992); Naqvī (Naqvī, n.d.).  (Badāyūnī and ʿAlī et al. [1379] 2000, III/173). He quickly gained the patronage of the Mughal emperor such that, within a year of arriving at court, he was appointed a judge in Lahore and the judge for the military (qāżī-ye ʿaskar) according to the Sunni legal rites-Rizvi is adamant that the evidence suggests that Akbar knew he was Shiʿi (Rizvi 1986). 15 This might have been partly because after the campaigns in Punjab, engaging with Kabul and the pacification of Sind, Akbar had sent the ʿolamāʾ of Lahore into these regions and there was a need to replenish personnel in this major city; he may also have needed more compliant and loyal ʿolamāʾ following the revolt of the Shiʿi qāżī of Jaunpur Mollā Moḥammad Yazdī, and who better to fill that role than another 'foreigner' (Streusand 1989, 155;Abo-l-Fażl 2000, III/415-22;Badāyūnī and ʿAlī et al. [1379] 2000, II/266-76)?
The famous ʿAbd al-Qāder Badāyūnī (d. 1014/1605), despite his antipathy to the Shiʿa, [15] could not help praising the good character, wit, intellect, and the scholarly achievements of Šūštarī. He even said of him that his endorsement of the Qurʾanic exegesis of Abo-l-Fayż Fayżī (d. 1004/1595), despite the text itself not being worthy of any praise, made the work worth perusing. In particular, he praised his role as chief judge in Lahore for providing structure and due process to the procedures and for eradicating corruption that was rife (Badāyūnī andʿAlī et al. [1379] 2000, III/137-38;Hansvī 1962, 40-41). So being a recipient of imperial favour was certainly Saiyed Nūrollāh's lot. In a letter that was probably penned in the 1590s to Šaiḫ Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmelī (d. 1030/1621), the Šaiḫ al-Eslām of Isfahan and a friend of his father's, he wrote: After traversing long distances and undergoing considerable pains and agony, I [16] reached the Indian capital. There, luck favoured me and I obtained an opportunity 15 Šaiḫ Farīd Bhakkarī (1961Bhakkarī ( -1970, writing in 1060/1649, is clear that his Shi'ism was well known and yet he was still appointed qāżī-ye ʿaskar; Rizvi (1986, 2:349). See also Hansvī (1962, 37-38). Corinne Lefèvre also cites an anecdote to the point that Akbar was not so worried about which particular Muslim legal confession his judges professed as long as they ruled according to what he deemed most appropriate; see Lefèvre (2017, 116-19). The post of judge for the military was from the royal prerogative and demonstrates his closeness to Akbar.
to benefit from the luminous sun and found repose under the shadow of the great Sultan, Akbar … Through divine grace and blessings, I obtained a lofty position and the honour [17] of the companionship of the emperor…[whose] patronage and favours increase daily. In fact, my success is due to divine munificence and the benevolence of the Prophet and the friend of God, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. The high position and nearness to the Emperor did not, however, make me forgetful of myself. I was always conscious of the hereafter and of the ultimate end of mortal beings. In refuting the arguments and the rationale of the Nawāṣib [anti-Shiʿi Sunnis], I was guided by the holy traditions of my ancestors. In these circumstances, I came to the conclusion that in India, taqīya was a great calamity. It would expel out children from the Imāmīya faith and make them embrace the false Ašʿarī or Mātorīdi faiths. Reinforced by the kindness and the bounty of the Sultan, I threw away the scarf of taqīya from my shoulders and, taking with me an army of arguments, I plunged myself into jihad against the Sunni ʿolamāʾ of this country. I was convinced that active religious polemics and discussions against the Sunni ʿolamāʾ was the jihad which would make the best provision for the world hereafter. First of all, I wrote Maṣāʾib al-nawāṣib which refutes the Nawāqiḍ al-rawāfiḍ. My arguments in that book smeared the beard of the author of the Nawāqiḍ with filth. Then I wrote al-Ṣawārim al-muhriqa. Because of my book the bitter attacks by the author of the Sawāʾiq on the Shiʿa rebounded upon him and reduced the Sawāʾiq, which claimed to be lightening to ashes. God also gave me the strength to perform other deeds. 16 In such a correspondence with a major figure of the Safavid court-a space that was rife [18] with polemics and in which the Shiʿa need not worry about the consequence of enunciating their version of sacred history and theology-it would perhaps be self-serving for Saiyed Nūrollāh to claim such a courageous position of defending the faith. It also assumes that the court would have a strong religious hue (as one assumed it did in Iran and at the Ottoman and Uzbek courts). One also sees how his own portrayal of his life as a heroic figure is fashioning himself as a major scholar and a leading divine of his age, furthering the Safavid Shiʿi causedespite being in India. By rehearsing elements of his biography, one presents a construction of the life of scholar and his many networks located within the cosmopolitanism of his learning within the Persianate world.

His Works
Saiyed Nūrollāh was an extremely prolific author with over a hundred works enumerated [19] in various bibliographies. 17 Arguably there were few contemporaries whose work in the Persianate context is even close to being comparable-and the breadth of learning was appreciated by his contemporaries and even opponents, as we saw above, because they recognised its value even if deployed in polemical mode. The range of issues demonstrates his wide training: He wrote glosses on the legal and legal theoretical works of al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 725/1325), 16 Bayāz of ʿEnāyat Ḫān Rāseḫ, MS Aligarh Habib Ganj Collection 50/335 (Persian), fols. 94r-95r, based on a translation by Rizvi (1986, I/357-58

Šūštarī's Polemics
Saiyed Nūrollāh was known for the polemics that he wrote, most of which were penned [20] in India. While some of his biographers refer to Maǧāles al-moʾmenīn as a polemical work, it was more a vindication of Shiʿi Islam through an appropriation of previous Sufis and a whole range of cultural, religious and intellectual figures as Shiʿi. The text was an attempt to demonstrate the primordiality and contribution of the Shiʿa to Islamic history and civilization and is indirectly polemical insofar as it is triumphalist. In the preface, Šūštarī explicitly says that the work sets aside taqīya and seeks, perhaps for the first time, to write a full history of the Shiʿa from the beginning to his time and name all the famous figures in that narrative (Šūštarī [1392 Š]  On this point, see Bdaiwi (2014). 27 There is still a dearth of serious academic literature on polemics. These are good starting points that are relevant for this study: Rizvi (1982), and Ǧaʿfarīyān ([1388 Š] 2009, I/11-124).
took the form of (at least) four cycles of texts. The first was the Risāla ʿUs̱ mānīya of al-Ǧāḥiẓ Uzbek, the Shiʿi ʿolamāʾ of Mashhad requested a fatwa to protect their lives and properties in the event of an Uzbek takeover. The response of the Central Asian Sunni Ḥanafī jurists was not exactly comforting; while they accepted that the lives and properties of all those who professed to believe in God and the Prophet were sacrosanct at the same time, they warned that if those people also violated the norms of behaviour towards the way of the Sunnis and excoriated them then the original freedom was curtailed. This influenced the polemics of Šaiḫ Aḥmad Serhendī and demonstrated that the polemics in India were affected not just by the Ottoman-Safavid conflict but also by developments in Central Asia (and arguably the Uzbek-28 Al-Ḥasan al-Nawbaḫtī was a member of a famous family of theologians and court officials, on whom see Āšteyānī ([1345] 1966). He was the author of a famous work on heresiography Firaq al-Šīʿa (Al-Nawbaḫtī 2007) and also a commentary on Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione, al-Nawbaḫtī (2015); but the authorship of this latter text has been disputed-see Anṣārī ([1395Anṣārī ([ ] 2016. The original text of the later author is Ibn Ṭāwūs ([1411] 1991), and the classic study is Afsaruddin (1995). 29 For a discussion, see al- Jamil (2010, 229-46); but see also the polemical Michot (2014, 104, 109-49). 30 On this cycle and attestations of some manuscripts in Najaf and Mashhad, see Ṭabāṭabāʾī ([1407] 1986, 32-96). This is generally a very scholarly consideration of the manuscripts in polemics and considers much that fed into the ʿAbaqāt al-anwār of Mīr Ḥāmed Ḥosain Mūsavī Kentūrī (d. 1306/1888). 31 The most  Safavid conflict which, to an extent, became the Tūrānī-Īrānī division at the Mughal court; Ǧaʿfarīyān [1388 Š] 2009, I/53-72). Šūštarī took the role of writing polemics very seriously. Not only did he see it as a way [22] of demonstrating his learning and his ability to transmit and critically evaluate ideas, but also as an obligation to defend the faith and indeed to promote it in different contexts. In the introduction to his gloss on the imamate section of the Šarḥ al-Taǧrīd of Qūšǧī, he wrote that he prayed that God made him a lion championing the Emāmī cause so that he could vanquish his enemies, and he described the war of words and the polemical struggles with his opponents as 'the greatest jihad' of his time, one in which he deployed rational techniques of argumentation, in this case drawing upon the twin concepts of the rational discernment of good and evil and the principle of divine facilitating grace that was incumbent upon the divine to provide guidance in the form of the Imam. 33 While he is credited with more than a hundred works, it was his three voluminous polemics that became famous.  (r. 982-1003/1574-1599). The vehemence of the polemic might result from the fact that the descendants of Ǧorǧānī had become Shiʿi-for Šūštarī, even Ǧorǧānī was Shiʿi (Šūštarī [1392(Šūštarī [ Š] 2014. The text itself is divided into eight preliminaries (muqaddemāt) and six sections entitled [23] ǧund (the warlike language indicates the polemical intent) critiquing the use of the Qurʾanic verses, hadith and rational arguments adduced by Šarīfī on the legitimacy of the first three Sunni caliphs, on the confused nature of his ascription of doctrine to the Shiʿa and on the refutation of these false accusations against Shiʿi theologians; in the final one, he goes on the attack by accusing Sunnis of unbelief in a number of their legal and theological positions. The preliminaries cover important areas too: The first is on the biography of Šarīfī, the second on the distinction between eslām and īmān, the third on the nature of the 'saved sect' (al-firqa al-nāǧiya), the fourth and fifth on a critique of the notion of the probity of all the 'companions' of the Prophet and a consideration of relevant hadith, the sixth on the proofs of the imamate of ʿAlī and the calumnies of his opponents, the seventh on the doctrine of the Shiʿa being identical to the doctrine of the family of the Prophet and the eighth on the permissibility of cursing those who deserve to be cursed. In the general introduction, he lays down the polemical nature of the text by describing it as a series of gifts for the Shiʿa and a set of accusations and trials for their opponents. He begins by praising and thanking God for being chosen as one of the 'saved sect' (al-firqa al-nāǧiya) and for rejecting the false traditions of the Umayyads and the enemies of God and his prophet that spawned the false doctrine of the Ašāʿira and Muʿtazila (Šūštarī [1426] 2005, I/59). He also accuses Šarīfī of writing the work in the service of the Sultan to ingratiate himself, and of engaging in futile disputation  35 It again shows Šūštarī engaging with the polemics of his time, as Ibn Ḥaǧar was an old contemporary. It engages with Ibn Ḥaǧar's use of hadith and, in particular, those that pit the authority of the companions against that of the Imams. One sees again the polemical strategy of discrediting the scholarly credentials of the opponent by showing that Šūštarī's command of the Sunni tradition is more sound by citing hadith authorities as well as theological ones like Taftāzānī.
The third, completed late in 1014/1605 in Lahore-which was certainly the cause of much [25] grumbling at court-was Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq wa-izhāq al-bāṭil. 36 His works were well known but the Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq and Maǧāles al-moʾmenīn were not so-and it was the latter that came to the attention of the Sunni ʿolamāʾ and led to them bringing a case before Ǧahāngīr. A number of other polemical works are attributed to him: a refutation of Ibn Ḥaǧar (which may be the same as al-Ṣawārim), al-Radd ʿalā šobahāt al-šaiṭān in Persian, on seven positions of Sunnis, Baḥr al-ġadīr fī is̱ bāt tavātur ḥadīs̱ al-Ġadīr responding to early Sunni critiques of this key proof text for the imamate of ʿAlī, Dalāʾil al-Šīʿa fī l-imāma, a treatise on the nature of impeccability (ʿiṣma) of prophets, and a refutation of Sunnis on their denial of the impeccability of the prophets. 37 What changed later in the reign of Akbar for Saiyed Nūrollāh was the loss of the support [26] of his influential friends dying one after another: Fatḥollāh Šīrāzī in 997/1589, the Gīlānīs and Abo-l-Fażl in 1111/1602. 38 From a position of prominence at court and as chief judge of Lahore, a major Mughal city for sure, he seemed to be slowly sidelined. 39 By the time he completed Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq in 1014/1605, he was already complaining of the loss of patronage. Two years before that he had lamented to Šaiḫ Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmelī: This is a huge work and has been published with the glosses of his kinsman Saiyed Šehāb al-Dīn Marʿašī (d. 1990)-see Šūštarī ([1362 Š] 1983). 37 The refutation of the Satanic objections is extant in MS Marʿašī (Qom) 15254, fols. 124v-136v. 38 On the Gīlānīs in India, see Āzmūda ([1394] 2015). 39 One cannot be too prescriptive about the Mughal court's presence in a 'capital city', but Lahore throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was probably as much the capital as were Agra and Fatehpur Sikri-see Richards (1993, 49-52).
For some time, luck has deprived me of its favours. The mean and wretched In-[27] dia has caused me unbearable pain and shock. Not only has the Sultan ended his patronage and benevolence towards me, but he has closed the doors of my departure to Khurasan and Iraq. When the tyranny and oppressions against me began to mount and the sufferings and anguish stepped up, I began to imagine India (Hend) was the same Hend (bint ʿOtba) who ate the liver of my great uncle Ḥamza (b. Muṭṭalib). 40 Saiyed Nūrollāh's final supporter at court-by this time of Ǧahāngīr-Ḥakīm ʿAlī Gīlānī [28] died in 1018/1609 (Rizvi 1986, I/377). The context had turn against him, and the time was not so favourable for a courageous polemicist.

Conclusion
The case study of Šūštarī sheds light upon a certain type of cultural and intellectual exchange [29] between Iran and India that focuses on polemic and contestation -and indeed the war of words. There is also a sense of Šūštarī feeling the weight of expectation as an eminent Saiyed from a scholarly family who had to address the need to defend the Shi'I faith wherever necessary. Suffice it to say he was not a nationalist, and we should be careful about projecting modern nationalist projects of Iran and India onto the early modern empires. Theological and philosophical learning could be deployed wherever needed and Šūštarī used the genre of polemics to demonstrate his learning and skill.
While he may have moved to India in search of patronage and to flee the Uzbeks and the [30] political turmoil in Safavid Iran, he and those writing about it saw in the move a desire to propagate the faith and defend it. There are a number of reasons for thinking so, including the polemics against the Ašāʿira and Mātorīdīya, who did not really pose any challenge in Iran, and any move to the Ottoman lands or Central Asia would not have been conducive. India was ripe for proselytism and polemics. India presented material and intellectual opportunities not least for an intellectual with his skills in a courtly setting that did not necessarily favour one confession over another. But the way in which he exploited that opportunity was unlike Šīrāzī and other Persian intellectuals at court who had preferred to bolster imperial (messianic) ideology and the facilitation of ecumenical courtly exchange of ideas. While Šūštarī's language had the elegance of courtly discourse, he did not compromise on his beliefs.
Further, one might consider whether that proselytism was the main desire or just the simple [31] need to find a free space to write and teach. Was India open to a Shiʿi political theology? Did Šūštarī consider Akbar to be philo-Shiʿi and see in the 'millennial sovereign' model, of which Azfar Moin has made much in recent years, a Shiʿi political theology whereby he could win the court for the Shiʿi cause-much in the same way as Portuguese missionaries may have seen it? Did he see himself as ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī at the court of Öljaitü Ḫān? As a rational theologian carrying the mainstream Shiʿi rational theological tradition (established by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī) to India, a tradition that was founded upon the principle of the ability of humans to rationally discern good and evil independent of revelation (al-ḥosn wa-l-qubḥ ʿaqlīyān), he saw the embrace of reason by Akbar as an inducement.
But the example of Šūštarī demonstrates foremost the vagaries of Mughal patronage and [32] 40 Bayāz of ʿEnāyat Ḫān Rāseḫ, MS Aligarh Habib Ganj Collection 50/335 (Fārsī), fols. 97r-97r, translated by Rizvi (1986, I/370). support -such that the attractive land of opportunity became a devourer for him, ending with his own demise. Theological treatises of a polemical mode were not just a means for attracting attention and raising awareness of theological concerns; they were also a possible means for testing boundaries and negotiating positions within a courtly, intellectual milieu. Šūštarī exemplifies the fluctuating fortunes within the negotiation of ideas and power politics.