I just wanted to say I recently discovered your 'this bird my soul' verse and as a South Asian I loved it and appreciated it VERY very much. I was wondering how much of your worldbuilding was based on Tolkien's own opinions on Harad and how much was based on the Mughal Empire.
I’ve gotten several messages about ‘this bird my soul’ recently, which is wild since I haven’t touched it in at least a year (years?) However, I’m always happy to answer a good question.
Most of what Tolkien has to say about Harad is less about Harad and more about Gondor’s relationship to Umbar---a port city in Near Harad settled by the Númenóreans, and the colony that most strongly resisted Sauron’s influence. (Umbar and Pelargir, Gondor’s main harbor, are considered Middle Earth’s legacy from sea-faring Númenór.) After Númenór falls, though, the Haradrim are painted as following/having fallen to Sauron. They are labeled “Black Númenóreans” in opposition to the early Gondorian kings; Umbar is fought over, a conflict exacerbated by Gondor’s expansion into territory held by the Northmen, Easterlings, and Haradrim. Eventually---and by that I mean two pages later in Appendix A---the Wainriders also make alliances with “men of Khand and Near Harad.”
(That’s another thing: Tolkien doesn’t paint “Harad” as a nation-state on the level of Gondor or Rohan; Near Harad and Far Harad are simply geographic regions where the Haradrim live.)
Umbar doesn’t return to Gondorian control until the Fourth Age, when Aragorn marches through with the reunited armies of Gondor and Arnor and takes it back. Symbolically this is important, since it means Aragorn reunites the Númenórean Empire-in-Exile. You...can interpret that how you want.
Anyway, in terms of how the Haradrim are described: they’re “warlike” with brown skin and black hair, they wear red livery. They carry scimitars, though it’s archers and spearmen who ride into battle on oliphaunts/mûmakil. They dress ornately for battle: “Gold rings in their ears; yes, lots of beautiful gold,” to quote Gollum, and the Haradrim soldier who dies in front of Sam has gold plaited in his hair.
Aaaand......that’s it. Everything else I’ve described about Harad in “this bird my soul” is either borrowed from the Mughal Empire (red sandstone palaces and kathak dance, the zenana, the empire) or something I personally made up.
The closest analogue might not even be the Mughal Empire! Tolkien describes the Haradrim’s spears as being “red tipped”---he could definitely mean the Chinese qiang, with its red horsehair tassel. War elephants always evoke Hannibal of Carthage for me, so maybe the back and forth between Umbar and Gondor is Middle Earth’s equivalent of the Punic Wars. (I strongly suspect their influence, especially considering Númenór’s pseudo-Atlantean origins and Carthage as a Phoenician city turned empire.) The scimitar is of Middle Eastern extraction, but the curved sabre carried by the Hussars is similar---and they were known for their elaborate red uniforms.
But I ended up loving my Mughal-inspired Harad, just as gold as Tolkien made it out to be, but with a level of sophistication he didn’t necessarily imbue it with---and an eye to empire-building that rivals Gondor’s own.
