Mughal-Ottoman relations collapsed over courtesies and forms of address.

Evidence

In 1638, Naima reports the arrival of an ambassador, Mir Zarif, sent by Shah Jehan to Murad IV. He travelled via the Red Sea, landed at Jedda and eventually reached the Sultan at Mosul. The ambassador brought sumptuous gifts, including a girdle worth 15,000 piastres, and a shield of elephant’s ear and rhinoceros’ hide. The letter he brought was less gratifying. Shah Jehan urged on Murad the need for a close alliance between the two Sunni emperors against the Shi‘a heretics in Iran but in such terms as to reproach the Ottoman Sultan for dila­ toriness and lack of zeal. Murad’s reply is not extant, but its tone may be inferred from the next Indian letter, which complains of a lack of courtesy on the Ottoman side. This Ottoman reply was taken to India by an ambassador called Arslan Agha. In 1642 he returned to Istanbul, bringing unmistakable indications of Shah Jehan’s displeasure. No presents were sent by the Emperor, and only a few of slight value by his vizier. No letter was sent by Shah Jehan to Sultan Ibrahim (1640–48), who had meanwhile succeeded Murad IV on the Ottoman throne. Instead, there was a letter from the Indian to the Ottoman Grand Vizier, com­ plaining at the insufficiently respectful forms of address used in the Ottoman letter, and describing the power and extent of the Mughal Empire. A dignified and restrained reply from the Ottoman Grand Vizier failed to appease Shah Jehan’s anger, and a period of silence followed, during which even the customary Turkish letter announcing the accession of Sultan Mehmet IV in 1649 appears to have remained for a while unanswered. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 605

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how small ceremonial gestures carry enormous political weight, echoing the earlier silence/noise chapter’s theme that courteous ‘forms’ function like a distinct language between states.
• ADDENDUM: The way offended dignity over ‘forms of address’ sundered two empires parallels the cross-cultural moral-panic analysis in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — prestige signaled through tiny formal markers.