The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere is among the first books to explore the pre-modern and early modern historical ties among such diverse regions as Anatolia, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Western Xinjiang, the Indian subcontinent, and southeast Asia, as well as the circumstances that reoriented these regions and helped break up the Persianate ecumene in modern times. Essays explore the modalities of Persianate culture, the defining features of the Persianate cosmopolis, religious practice and networks, the diffusion of literature across space, subaltern social groups, and the impact of technological advances on language. Taken together, the essays reflect the current scholarship in Persianate studies, and offer pathways for future research.
Abbas Amanat is William Graham Sumner Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Iran: A Modern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Assef Ashraf (Ph.D., 2016, Yale University) is University Lecturer in the Eastern Islamic World and Persian-Speaking Lands at the University of Cambridge. Contributors: Joanna de Groot, Thibaut dâHubert, Richard M. Eaton, Nile Green, Hirotake Maeda, A. Azfar Moin, and Waleed Ziad.
Preface
Introduction: Pathways to the Persianate âAssef Ashraf
1 Remembering the Persianate âAbbas Amanat
2 The Persian Cosmopolis (900â1900) and the Sanskrit Cosmopolis (400â1400) âRichard M. Eaton
3 Living in Marvelous Lands: Persianate Vernacular Literatures and Cosmographical Imaginaires around the Bay of Bengal âThibaut dâHubert
4 The Politics of Saint Shrines in the Persianate Empires âA. Azfar Moin
5 From Yarkand to Sindh via Kabul: The Rise of Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi Networks in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries âWaleed Ziad
6 Lives of the Enikolopians: Multilingualism and the Religious-National Identity of a Caucasus Family in the Persianate World âHirotake Maeda
7 Inclusion and Exclusion in the âPersianate Worldâ: Views of Baluch People in the Nineteenth Century âJoanna de Groot
8 The Antipodes of âProgressâ: A Journey to the End of Indo-Persian âNile Green
Index
All interested in the history of the Iranian, Central Asian, and South Asian worlds, transnational cultural exchanges and commonalities and the intersection of Persianate literary, material and artistic cultures with Islamic civilizational legacies and Persian theories of government and modes of statecraft.