Author: Rajeev Kinra
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520286464
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan “Brahman” (d. c.1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four different emperors, Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627), Shah Jahan (1628-1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658-1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. As a high-caste Hindu who worked for a series of Muslim monarchs and other officials, forming powerful friendships along the way, Chandar Bhan’s experience bears vivid testimony to the pluralistic atmosphere of the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of Shah Jahan, the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. But his widely circulated and emulated works also touch on a range of topics central to our understanding of the court’s literary, mystical, administrative, and ethical cultures, while his letters and autobiographical writings provide tantalizing examples of early modern Indo-Persian modes of self-fashioning. Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre is a valuable window onto a crucial, though surprisingly neglected, period of Mughal cultural and political history.
Writing Self, Writing Empire
Author: Rajeev Kinra
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520286464
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan “Brahman” (d. c.1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four different emperors, Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627), Shah Jahan (1628-1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658-1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. As a high-caste Hindu who worked for a series of Muslim monarchs and other officials, forming powerful friendships along the way, Chandar Bhan’s experience bears vivid testimony to the pluralistic atmosphere of the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of Shah Jahan, the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. But his widely circulated and emulated works also touch on a range of topics central to our understanding of the court’s literary, mystical, administrative, and ethical cultures, while his letters and autobiographical writings provide tantalizing examples of early modern Indo-Persian modes of self-fashioning. Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre is a valuable window onto a crucial, though surprisingly neglected, period of Mughal cultural and political history.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520286464
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan “Brahman” (d. c.1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four different emperors, Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627), Shah Jahan (1628-1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658-1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. As a high-caste Hindu who worked for a series of Muslim monarchs and other officials, forming powerful friendships along the way, Chandar Bhan’s experience bears vivid testimony to the pluralistic atmosphere of the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of Shah Jahan, the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. But his widely circulated and emulated works also touch on a range of topics central to our understanding of the court’s literary, mystical, administrative, and ethical cultures, while his letters and autobiographical writings provide tantalizing examples of early modern Indo-Persian modes of self-fashioning. Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre is a valuable window onto a crucial, though surprisingly neglected, period of Mughal cultural and political history.
The King and the People
Author: Abhishek Kaicker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190070676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
An original exploration of the relationship between the Mughal emperor and his subjects in the space of the Mughal empire's capital, The King and the People overturns an axiomatic assumption in the history of premodern South Asia: that the urban masses were merely passive objects of rule and remained unable to express collective political aspirations until the coming of colonialism. Set in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (Delhi) from its founding to Nadir Shah's devastating invasion of 1739, this book instead shows how the trends and events in the second half of the seventeenth century inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of the people as actors in a regime which saw them only as the ruled. Drawing on a wealth of sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book is the first comprehensive account of the dynamic relationship between ruling authority and its urban subjects in an era that until recently was seen as one of only decline. By placing ordinary people at the centre of its narrative, this wide-ranging work offers fresh perspectives on imperial sovereignty, on the rise of an urban culture of political satire, and on the place of the practices of faith in the work of everyday politics. It unveils a formerly invisible urban panorama of soldiers and poets, merchants and shoemakers, who lived and died in the shadow of the Red Fort during an era of both dizzying turmoil and heady possibilities. As much an account of politics and ideas as a history of the city and its people, this lively and lucid book will be equally of value for specialists, students, and lay readers interested in the lives and ambitions of the mass of ordinary inhabitants of India's historic capital three hundred years ago.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190070676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
An original exploration of the relationship between the Mughal emperor and his subjects in the space of the Mughal empire's capital, The King and the People overturns an axiomatic assumption in the history of premodern South Asia: that the urban masses were merely passive objects of rule and remained unable to express collective political aspirations until the coming of colonialism. Set in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (Delhi) from its founding to Nadir Shah's devastating invasion of 1739, this book instead shows how the trends and events in the second half of the seventeenth century inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of the people as actors in a regime which saw them only as the ruled. Drawing on a wealth of sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book is the first comprehensive account of the dynamic relationship between ruling authority and its urban subjects in an era that until recently was seen as one of only decline. By placing ordinary people at the centre of its narrative, this wide-ranging work offers fresh perspectives on imperial sovereignty, on the rise of an urban culture of political satire, and on the place of the practices of faith in the work of everyday politics. It unveils a formerly invisible urban panorama of soldiers and poets, merchants and shoemakers, who lived and died in the shadow of the Red Fort during an era of both dizzying turmoil and heady possibilities. As much an account of politics and ideas as a history of the city and its people, this lively and lucid book will be equally of value for specialists, students, and lay readers interested in the lives and ambitions of the mass of ordinary inhabitants of India's historic capital three hundred years ago.
The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates
Author: Emma J. Flatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481930
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Illuminates the centrality of courtliness in the political and cultural life of the Deccan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481930
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Illuminates the centrality of courtliness in the political and cultural life of the Deccan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Crafting History
Author: Rachel Goshgarian
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 164469848X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533
Book Description
It would not be an overstatement to say that Cemal Kafadar has transformed the field of Ottoman history. As a result of his pathbreaking books and articles, the field is experiencing a turn within itself as well as recasting its relationship with world history. This volume acts as a tribute to Kafadar and the important interdisciplinary work he has both done and inspired in the field. In line with the intellectual pluralism that Kafadar has cultivated over his career, readers will find a number of articles engaging with a wide range of questions, approaches, perspectives, and sources across Ottoman history. Kafadar's students and friends, individually or in pairs, researched and crafted contributions to this volume with a variety of conceptual premises, theoretical approaches, and interpretive tools to celebrate his thirty years of teaching, research, and mentorship, in addition to the overwhelming generosity of his intellectual and personal engagement.
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 164469848X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533
Book Description
It would not be an overstatement to say that Cemal Kafadar has transformed the field of Ottoman history. As a result of his pathbreaking books and articles, the field is experiencing a turn within itself as well as recasting its relationship with world history. This volume acts as a tribute to Kafadar and the important interdisciplinary work he has both done and inspired in the field. In line with the intellectual pluralism that Kafadar has cultivated over his career, readers will find a number of articles engaging with a wide range of questions, approaches, perspectives, and sources across Ottoman history. Kafadar's students and friends, individually or in pairs, researched and crafted contributions to this volume with a variety of conceptual premises, theoretical approaches, and interpretive tools to celebrate his thirty years of teaching, research, and mentorship, in addition to the overwhelming generosity of his intellectual and personal engagement.
The City and the Wilderness
Author: Arash Khazeni
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520964268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The City and the Wilderness recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the nineteenth century. As Mughal sovereignty waned under British colonial rule, Indo-Persian travelers and intermediaries linked to the East India Company explored and surveyed the Burmese Empire, inscribing it as a forest landscape and Buddhist kingdom at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. Based on colonial Persian travel books and narratives in which Indo-Persian knowledge and perceptions of the wondrous edges of the Indian Ocean merged with Orientalist pursuits, The City and the Wilderness uncovers fading histories of inter-Asian crossings and exchanges at the ends of the Mughal world.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520964268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The City and the Wilderness recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the nineteenth century. As Mughal sovereignty waned under British colonial rule, Indo-Persian travelers and intermediaries linked to the East India Company explored and surveyed the Burmese Empire, inscribing it as a forest landscape and Buddhist kingdom at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. Based on colonial Persian travel books and narratives in which Indo-Persian knowledge and perceptions of the wondrous edges of the Indian Ocean merged with Orientalist pursuits, The City and the Wilderness uncovers fading histories of inter-Asian crossings and exchanges at the ends of the Mughal world.
India before Europe
Author: Catherine B. Asher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Second edition of the leading textbook on India's art, architecture, literature, religions, political and economic history, c. 1200 to 1750.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Second edition of the leading textbook on India's art, architecture, literature, religions, political and economic history, c. 1200 to 1750.
Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900
Author: Schwartz Kevin L. Schwartz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474450873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Integrating forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia - at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging - this book offers a more global understanding of Persian literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infilitrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. Focusing on 3 case studies (18th-century Isfahan, a small court in South India and the literary climate of the Anglo-Afghan war), it reveals the literary and cultural ties that bound this world together as well as some of the trends that broke it apart.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474450873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Integrating forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia - at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging - this book offers a more global understanding of Persian literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infilitrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. Focusing on 3 case studies (18th-century Isfahan, a small court in South India and the literary climate of the Anglo-Afghan war), it reveals the literary and cultural ties that bound this world together as well as some of the trends that broke it apart.
South Asian Borderlands
Author: Farhana Ibrahim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108967574
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
This is an interdisciplinary volume exploring a range of historical, anthropological and literary ideas and issues in South Asian Borderlands. Going beyond the territorial and geo-political imaginaries of contemporary borderlands in South Asia, chapters in this book engage with the questions of sovereignty, control, policing as well as continuing affections across politically divided borderlands. Modern conceptions of nationhood have created categories of legality and illegality among historically, socially, economically and emotionally connected residents of South Asian borderlands. This volume provides unique insights into the interconnected lives and histories of these borderland spaces and communities.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108967574
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
This is an interdisciplinary volume exploring a range of historical, anthropological and literary ideas and issues in South Asian Borderlands. Going beyond the territorial and geo-political imaginaries of contemporary borderlands in South Asia, chapters in this book engage with the questions of sovereignty, control, policing as well as continuing affections across politically divided borderlands. Modern conceptions of nationhood have created categories of legality and illegality among historically, socially, economically and emotionally connected residents of South Asian borderlands. This volume provides unique insights into the interconnected lives and histories of these borderland spaces and communities.
The Muslim World in Modern South Asia
Author: Francis Robinson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438483031
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453
Book Description
Over the past two hundred years, two great processes have shaped Muslim societies: Western domination and the industrial capitalism that came with it, and the Islamic revival that preceded the Western presence but came to interact significantly with it. In this book, Francis Robinson considers the challenges Western dominance has offered key aspects of Muslim civilization, particularly in the context of South Asia, which in the nineteenth century moved from being a receiver of influences from the rest of the Muslim world to being a transmitter of influences to it. Robinson also considers aspects of the Muslim revival and how they have come to shape, in various ways, Muslim responses to Western dominance. The role of the transmission of knowledge, both formal and spiritual, in forming Muslim societies is explored, and also the particular role of the transmitters in sustaining the Islamic dimensions of Muslim societies under Western dominance. Attention, too, is paid to the imposition of the modern state and the restriction of cosmopolitan spaces.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438483031
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453
Book Description
Over the past two hundred years, two great processes have shaped Muslim societies: Western domination and the industrial capitalism that came with it, and the Islamic revival that preceded the Western presence but came to interact significantly with it. In this book, Francis Robinson considers the challenges Western dominance has offered key aspects of Muslim civilization, particularly in the context of South Asia, which in the nineteenth century moved from being a receiver of influences from the rest of the Muslim world to being a transmitter of influences to it. Robinson also considers aspects of the Muslim revival and how they have come to shape, in various ways, Muslim responses to Western dominance. The role of the transmission of knowledge, both formal and spiritual, in forming Muslim societies is explored, and also the particular role of the transmitters in sustaining the Islamic dimensions of Muslim societies under Western dominance. Attention, too, is paid to the imposition of the modern state and the restriction of cosmopolitan spaces.
Jesuit and English Experiences at the Mughal Court, c. 1580–1615
Author: João Vicente Melo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030965880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
This open access book reconstructs and examines a crucial episode of Anglo-Iberian diplomatic rivalry: the clash between the Portuguese-sponsored Jesuit missionaries and the English East India Company (EIC) at the Mughal court between 1580 and 1615. This 35-year period includes the launch of the first Jesuit mission to Akbar’s court in 1580 and the preparation of the royal embassy led by Sir Thomas Roe to negotiate the concession of trading privileges to the EIC, and encompasses not only the extension of the conflict between the Iberian crowns and England into Asia, but also the consolidation of the Mughal Empire. The book examines the proselytizing and diplomatic activities of the Jesuit missionaries, the evolution of English diplomatic strategies concerning the Mughal Empire, and how the Mughal authorities instigated and exploited Anglo-Iberian rivalry in the pursuit of specific commercial, geopolitical, and ideological agendas.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030965880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
This open access book reconstructs and examines a crucial episode of Anglo-Iberian diplomatic rivalry: the clash between the Portuguese-sponsored Jesuit missionaries and the English East India Company (EIC) at the Mughal court between 1580 and 1615. This 35-year period includes the launch of the first Jesuit mission to Akbar’s court in 1580 and the preparation of the royal embassy led by Sir Thomas Roe to negotiate the concession of trading privileges to the EIC, and encompasses not only the extension of the conflict between the Iberian crowns and England into Asia, but also the consolidation of the Mughal Empire. The book examines the proselytizing and diplomatic activities of the Jesuit missionaries, the evolution of English diplomatic strategies concerning the Mughal Empire, and how the Mughal authorities instigated and exploited Anglo-Iberian rivalry in the pursuit of specific commercial, geopolitical, and ideological agendas.