Download or read book Mughal Arcadia written by Sunil Sharma and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-27 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Lingua Persica -- Mughal Persian literary culture -- The Mughal discovery of India -- Celebrating imperial cities -- Mughal Arcadia -- Conclusion: Paradise lost

Download or read book Between Household and State written by Subah Dayal and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-12-24 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For decades, scholars have examined the Mughal Empire, South Asia's largest and most powerful pre-colonial empire, to measure the greatness of its political, ideological, and cultural institutions. Between Household and State departs from dynastic narrations of the Mughal past to highlight the role of elite households and familial networks in shaping imperial power, particularly in peninsular India, the only region of the subcontinent never fully incorporated into the imperial realm. Drawing upon rare documentary and literary materials in Persian and Urdu alongside the Dutch East India Company's archives, the book takes us on a journey from military forts and regional courts in the Deccan to the weaving villages of the Coromandel Coast to examine how regional elite alliances, feuds, and material exchanges intersected with imperial institutions to create new forms of affinity, belonging, and social exclusion. Between Household and State brings attention to the importance of ghar-or home-as an analytical framework for the creation of mobile forms of sovereignty that anchored the Mughal frontier across the variable geography of peninsular India in the seventeenth century"--

Download or read book The Mughals and the Sufis written by Muzaffar Alam and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-08-01 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a critical study of a large number of contemporary Persian texts, court chronicles, epistolary collections, and biographies of sufi mystics, The Mughals and the Sufis examines the complexities in the relationship between Mughal political culture and the two dominant strains of Islam's Sufi traditions in South Asia: one centered around orthodoxy, the other focusing on a more accommodating and mystical spirituality. Muzaffar Alam analyses the interplay of these elements, their negotiation and struggle for resolution via conflict and coordination, and their longer-term outcomes as the empire followed its own political and cultural trajectory as it shifted from the more liberal outlook of Emperor Akbar "The Great" (r. 1556–1605) to the more rigid attitudes of his great-grandson, Aurangzeb 'Alamgir (r. 1658–1701). Alam brings to light many new and underutilized sources relevant to the religious and cultural history of the Mughals and reinterprets well-known sources from a new perspective to provide one of the most detailed and nuanced portraits of Indian Islam under the Mughal Empire available today.

Download or read book Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India written by Katherine Butler Schofield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-23 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first history of Indian music and musicians during the transition from Mughal to British rule, c.1748-1858.

Download or read book Nature in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of pre-modern anthropology requires the close examination of the relationship between nature and human society, which has been both precarious and threatening as well as productive, soothing, inviting, and pleasurable. Much depends on the specific circumstances, as the works by philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and medical practitioners have regularly demonstrated. It would not be good enough, as previous scholarship has commonly done, to examine simply what the various writers or artists had to say about nature. While modern scientists consider just the hard-core data of the objective world, cultural historians and literary scholars endeavor to comprehend the deeper meaning of the concept of nature presented by countless writers and artists. Only when we have a good grasp of the interactions between people and their natural environment, are we in a position to identify and interpret mental structures, social and economic relationships, medical and scientific concepts of human health, and the messages about all existence as depicted in major art works. In light of the current conditions threatening to bring upon us a global crisis, it matters centrally to take into consideration pre-modern discourses on nature and its enormous powers to understand the topoi and tropes determining the concepts through which we perceive nature. Nature thus proves to be a force far beyond all human comprehensibility, being both material and spiritual depending on our critical approaches.

Download or read book The Syncretic Traditions of Islamic Religious Architecture of Kashmir Early 14th 18th Century written by Hakim Sameer Hamdani and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the historical identity of Kashmir within the context of Islamic religious architecture between early fourteenth and mid-eighteenth century. It presents a framework of syncretism within which the understanding of this architectural tradition acquires new dimensions and possibilities in the region. In a first, the volume provides a detailed overview of the origin and development of Islamic sacred architecture while contextualizing it within the history of Islam in Kashmir. Covering the entirety of Muslim rule in the region, the book throws light on Islamic religious architecture introduced with the establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in the early fourteenth century, and focuses on both monumental and vernacular architecture. It examines the establishment of new styles in architecture, including ideas, materials and crafts introduced by non-Kashmiri missionaries in the late-fourteenth to fifteenth century. Further, it discusses how the Mughals viewed Kashmir and embellished the land with their architectural undertakings, coupled with encounters between Kashmir’s native culture, with its identity and influences introduced by Sufis arriving from the medieval Persianate world. The book also highlights the transition of the traditional architecture to a pan-Islamic image in the post-Independence period. With its rich illustrations, photographs and drawings, this book will interest students, researchers, and professionals in architecture studies, cultural and heritage studies, visual and art history, religion, Islamic studies and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professional architecture institutes, public libraries, museums, cultural and heritage bodies as well as the general reader interested in the architectural and cultural history of South Asia.

Download or read book The World in Words written by Daniel Joseph Majchrowicz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary and historical analysis of Urdu travel writing during the nineteenth century.

Download or read book Water Histories of South Asia written by Sugata Ray and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures in early modern, colonial and contemporary South Asia. Bringing together contributions by eminent artists, architects, curators and scholars who explore the connections between the environmental and the cultural, the volume situates water in an expansive relational domain. It covers disciplines as diverse as literary studies, environmental humanities, sustainable design, urban planning and media studies. The chapters explore the ways in which material cultures of water generate technological and aesthetic acts of envisioning geographies, and make an intervention within political, social and cultural discourses. A critical interjection in the sociologies of water in the subcontinent, the book brings art history into conversation with current debates on climate change by examining water’s artistic, architectural, engineering, religious, scientific and environmental facets from the 16th century to the present. This is one of the first books on South Asia’s art, architecture and visual history to interweave the ecological with the aesthetic under the emerging field of eco art history. The volume will be of interest to scholars and general readers of art history, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, urban studies, architecture, geography, history and environmental studies. It will also appeal to activists, curators, art critics and those interested in water management.

Download or read book India and the Early Modern World written by Jagjeet Lally and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-20 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India and the Early Modern World provides an authoritative and wide-ranging survey of the Indian subcontinent over the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, set within a global context. This book explores questions critical to our understanding of early modern India. How, for instance, were Indians’ religious beliefs, their ways of life, and the horizons of their learning changing over this period? What was happening in the countryside and towns, to culture and the arts, and to the state and its power? Were such experiences comparable or linked to those in other parts of the world? Can we speak of a global early modernity, therefore, within which India played an important role? Organised thematically, each chapter engages with such key issues, debates, and concepts, covering wide ground as it connects, compares, and contrasts developments witnessed across early modern South Asia to those around the globe. Drawing on the fruits of research in numerous fields over the past fifty years and rich in detail, India and the Early Modern World is a pathbreaking volume written engagingly and accessibly with scholars, students, and non-specialists in mind.

Download or read book Urban Histories of Rajasthan written by Elizabeth M. Thelen and published by Gingko Library. This book was released on 2022-06-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of religious conflicts in premodern urban India. Diverse peoples intermingled in the streets and markets of premodern Indian cities. This book considers how these diverse residents lived together and negotiated their differences. Which differences mattered, when and to whom? How did state actions and policies affect urban society and the lives of various communities? How and why did conflict occur in urban spaces? Through these questions, this book explores the histories of urban communities in the three cities of Ajmer, Nagaur, and Pushkar in Rajasthan, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus of this study is on everyday life, contextualizing religious practices and conflicts by considering patterns of patronage and broader conflict patterns within society. The book examines various archival documents, from family and institutional records to state registers, and uses these documents to demonstrate the complex and sometimes contradictory ways religion intersected with politics, economics, and society. The author shows how many patronage patterns and processes persisted in altered forms, and how the robustness of these structures contributed to the resilience of urban spaces and society in precolonial Rajasthan.

Download or read book A Companion to the Global Renaissance written by Jyotsna G. Singh and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A COMPANION TO THE GLOBAL RENAISSANCE An innovative collection of original essays providing an expansive picture of globalization across the early modern world, now in its second edition A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition provides readers with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of both macro and micro perspectives on the commercial and cross-cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Covering a uniquely broad range of literary and cultural materials, historical contexts, and geographical regions, the Companion’s varied chapters offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the implications of early modern concepts of commerce, material and artistic culture, sexual and cross-racial encounters, conquest and enslavement, social, artistic, and religious cross-pollinations, geographical “discoveries,” and more. Building upon the success of its predecessor, this second edition of A Companion to the Global Renaissance radically extends its scope by moving beyond England and English culture. Newly-commissioned essays investigate intercultural and intra-cultural exchanges, transactions, and encounters involving England, European powers, Eastern kingdoms, Africa, Islamic empires, and the Americas, within cross-disciplinary frameworks. Offering a complex and multifaceted view of early modern globalization, this new edition: Demonstrates the continuing global “turn” in Early Modern Studies through original essays exploring interconnected exchanges, transactions, and encounters Provides significantly expanded coverage of global interactions involving England, European powers such as Portugal, Spain, and The Netherlands, Eastern empires such as Japan, and the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires Includes a Preface and Afterword, as well as a revised and expanded Introduction summarizing the evolving field of Global Early Modern Studies and describing the motifs and methodologies informing the essays within the volume Explores an array of new subjects, including an exceptional woman traveler in Eurasia, the Jesuit presence in Mughal India and sixteenth-century Japan, the influence of Mughal art on an Amsterdam painter-cum-poet, the cultural impact of Eastern trade on plays and entertainments in early modern London, Safavid cultural disseminations, English and Portuguese slaving practices, the global contexts of English pattern poetry, and global lyric transmissions across cultures A wide-ranging account of the global expansions and interactions of the period, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition remains essential reading for early modern scholars and students ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to more advanced scholars and specialists in the field.

Download or read book The Language of the Taj Mahal written by Michael D. Calabria and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666 CE) as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631 CE), is considered exceptional in the history of world architecture.This book provides a deeper understanding of the Taj Mahal and its builder by examining its inscriptions within their architectural, historical and biographical contexts. The texts adorning the Taj Mahal comprise verses from twenty-two different chapters of the Qur'an but their meaning and significance escapes most non-Muslim visitors or those unable to read them. This book will be the first dedicated solely to the inscriptions in the monument, providing translations, commentary and interpretation of the texts. As well as offering a unique approach to the study of the building, the book uses the inscriptions to expound the foundational elements of Islam, the faith of Shah Jahan and also what the Taj Mahal still means today.

Download or read book The Oxford World History of Empire written by Peter Fibiger Bang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 1449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.

Download or read book Writing Self Writing Empire written by Rajeev Kinra and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book England Re Oriented written by Humberto Garcia and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does the love between British imperialists and their Asian male partners reveal about orientalism's social origins? To answer this question, Humberto Garcia focuses on westward-bound Central and South Asian travel writers who have long been forgotten or dismissed by scholars. This bias has obscured how Joseph Emin, Sake Dean Mahomet, Shaykh I'tesamuddin, Abu Talib Khan, Abul Hassan Khan, Yusuf Khan Kambalposh, and Lutfullah Khan found in their conviviality with Englishwomen and men a strategy for inhabiting a critical agency that appropriated various media to make Europe commensurate with Asia. Drama, dance, masquerades, visual art, museum exhibits, music, postal letters, and newsprint inspired these genteel men to recalibrate Persianate ways of behaving and knowing. Their cosmopolitanisms offer a unique window on an enchanted third space between empires in which Europe was peripheral to Islamic Indo-Eurasia. Encrypted in their mediated homosocial intimacies is a queer history of orientalist mimic men under the spell of a powerful Persian manhood.

Download or read book Persianate Selves written by Mana Kia and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, Persian was the language of power and learning across Central, South, and West Asia, and Persians received a particular basic education through which they understood and engaged with the world. Not everyone who lived in the land of Iran was Persian, and Persians lived in many other lands as well. Thus to be Persian was to be embedded in a set of connections with people we today consider members of different groups. Persianate selfhood encompassed a broader range of possibilities than contemporary nationalist claims to place and origin allow. We cannot grasp these older connections without historicizing our conceptions of difference and affiliation. Mana Kia sketches the contours of a larger Persianate world, historicizing place, origin, and selfhood through its tradition of proper form: adab. In this shared culture, proximities and similarities constituted a logic that distinguished between people while simultaneously accommodating plurality. Adab was the basis of cohesion for self and community over the turbulent eighteenth century, as populations dispersed and centers of power shifted, disrupting the circulations that linked Persianate regions. Challenging the bases of protonationalist community, Persianate Selves seeks to make sense of an earlier transregional Persianate culture outside the anachronistic shadow of nationalisms.

Download or read book The City and the Wilderness written by Arash Khazeni and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.