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Music's ability to stimulate the emotions has long been fundamental to the aesthetics and reception of India's elite rāga-based traditions. These emotions are generally studied aesthetically through the lens of 'rasa': the Sanskrit theory that proposes the musician's role is to stimulate one of nine distilled emotional essences (rasas) that is 'tasted' by the audience. But here I ask the inverse question: what emotions arose when historical listeners were threatened with the loss of that crucial source of emotional stimulus; and how were those negative emotions expressed through historical texts? In this paper, I consider the Hayy al-Arwāh, a music treatise and tazkira (biographical collection) written by an ex-Mughal official from Delhi living in exile in Patna c. 1785–88, Miyan Zia-ud-din 'Zia'. Zia-ud-din's work reveals much about the emotions felt by musicians and music lovers affected by the violent political upheaval centred on late Mughal Delhi c1740–80 – but not in obvious ways. For such an emotional subject, his writing is curiously dispassionate. Nevertheless, I argue that his writing was impelled by one very powerful emotion in particular: anxiety. In order to approach the question I examine some alternative ways we might get at the emotional resonances of texts like the Hayy al-Arwāh: through genre, in this case the tazkira; the etic observations of modern neuroscience; and a turn outwards to writings of more emotionally loquacious contemporaries, here the Urdu poet Mir Taqi 'Mir'. I argue it is precisely Zia-ud-din's detatched attention to detail, as he traced hundreds of lost and scattered musicians and listeners, that reveals the emotional driving force behind the writing of the Hayy al-Arwāh to be a deep and abiding anxiety engendered by the very real existential threat of war and exile to the music of late Mughal Delhi. In writing the Hayy al-Arwāh, Zia-ud-din acted as witness and record keeper for his community to insure against the potential loss of the music of his beloved homeland. At the same time, the work of gathering and reporting information acted to alleviate his anxiety over the threatened disappearance of what was to him a most important source of personal solace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the sixteenth century, along with the rise of the Mughal Empire, the social landscape of India changed drastically with the advent of the European colonial powers. In 1580 CE, following the First Jesuit Mission to the Court of Emperor Akbar, a new cross-cultural dialogue was initiated that not only impacted the socio-economic and political fabric but also the artistic productions of the time. The growing presence of the European traders, ambassadors, soldiers, and missionaries in the Mughal world also lead to several curious narratives that were widely circulated. These tales also gave birth to cultural misconceptions as the Europeans on several occasions were seen as social evils. They were often collectively addressed as Firang/Farang or 'Franks' and were perceived as 'strange and wonderful people' or 'ajaib-o-ghara'ib'. It was during the Mughal reign when for the first time in Indian visual culture, a conscious attempt was made to document the life and customs of the European people. This paper attempts to understand how the processes of cultural alienation and Occidentalism had influenced the representation of Europeans in Mughal miniatures. It also argues how Mughal artists innovate new iconographic schemes to represent and perpetuate a sense of the 'other'. How artists used these identity markers to establish notions of morality as well as of Islamic cultural superiority. The select illustrations also attempt to elucidate how these representations of Europeans were culturally appropriated and contributed to the Mughal 'fantasy excursions'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to reconstruct the prevailing concepts, images and principles that framed sovereign governance in the Mughal and Ottoman empires in the early seventeenth century. Little is known about the subject. To help fill the gap, two contemporaneous advice-to-kings treatises—one Mughal by ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlavī, one Ottoman by Koçi Bey—are analysed in juxtaposition. Such an analysis, never previously undertaken, is motivated and guided by a novel approach. In this approach, a model founded on near-universal conditions and problems is deployed within a regional perspective. The findings which result advance our understanding of the art of governance in the Mughal and Ottoman empires of the time. But they have a larger importance, too. They move us closer to achieving a break with the decline paradigm, whose logic still persists in mainstream interpretations. They also contribute to a more recent, and rapidly developing, interest in a region spanning much of South Asia and the Middle East that was formative for the global genesis of the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of Indo-Persian historiography tend to focus on the monumental compositions created at the behest of the Mughal court. This has unfortunately led to the neglect of texts from "regional" settings. The present article intends to expand the field of inquiry by studying Mir Muhammad Maʿsum's Tarikh-i Ma ʿsumi (completed c. 1600) which was the first Mughal-era Persian history of Sindh. I will argue that the author used the new the literary models developed by Mughal chroniclers in order to both facilitate and contest imperial domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the devastation of Delhi in the eighteenth century, a new genre of Urdu poetry (shahrashob, 'the disturbed city') emerged, lamenting the fallen city and simultaneously marking the displacement of Persian as the language of court poetry. This paper considers two visual laments from this period, focusing on artistic representations that merge structures modelled after the Qila-i Mualla (the Red Fort of Delhi) with narratives of suffering and longing drawn from classical Persian poetry. These responses to Delhi's endangered existence also register the symbolic importance of a history of sovereign Mughal power associated with the Qila and the now imperiled Persianate cosmopolitan culture from which it developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life of people in a halo is glorified in the pages of history. But still there are some who were born, lived, marked their footprints in the short span of human life and died without coming to the forefront, withouta mention of theirnames in golden letters, with out referring their life's story any where -but leads a life to give a worthy message to the coming generation. They are given life and blood and fictionalizedin literary forms torepresent a group of hidden personalities of a bygoneera. This paper tries to explore one of those personalities in the Mughal history - a woman who was under the glaze of patriarchy and screen edunder the illuminating royalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Enchantress of Florence is the embodiment of Rushdie's brilliant research work. It is the tenth novel of Rushdie published in the year 200H, The text is the blend of every minute historical happening and dates occurred during 16th century. Rushdie did a lot of research work to incorporate exact historical dates, names, places and characters in the text He himself admitted this during his tour of the publication of the text. Rushdie presents eight pages of bibliography at the end of the lext, which speaks about his meticulous reading and research. Rushdie, being a historian, and having lot of research knowledge on the present subject, portrays the history of Mogul empire on one side and Renaissance history of Europe on the other side brilliantly Fatehpur andFlorence are the two historical and cultural cities, one represents the Fast and the other the West. But both the cities stand as an embodiment for rich culture, art and architecture. And stand as an icon for cultural, religious, art and architectural shift. He blends historical and cultural aspects so brilliantly in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the many beautiful works of art and architecture produced under the patronage of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58 CE), including the incomparable Taj Mahal, historians have not generally been kind to him. In scholarship both past and present, he is often compared unfavourably with his grandfather, Akbar, and his father, Jahangir, described pejoratively as an ‘orthodox’ Muslim whose reign was characterised by a stricter adherence to shari‘a and religious intolerance of Hindus and Christians. This article re-examines recurrent issues in the historiography of Shah Jahan's life and rule, his religious views and his attitudes towards Hindus, Jains, Christians and Sufis. Based on a diversity of historical and art historical sources, it concludes that the so-called evidence for his ‘orthodoxy’ has been largely misconstrued. This is perhaps due in part to the inflated rhetoric of royal chronicles and colonial critics, as well as to post-Partition prejudice against Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mughul-Yusufzai conflict is deep rooted in history which in the seventeenth century turned into a resistance movement by the latter. According to some writers the resistance movement started by the Yusufzais was genuine; while to others it was nothing more than a looting and plundering spree. Apart from it there exists difference of opinions regarding the other details of the movement as different causes responsible for the movement have been cited along with wrongly mentioning the names of a few generals who took part in the operation against the Pukhtuns. Here an attempt has been made to investigate the facts on the basis of objective research and to reach an understandable conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a larger effort to broaden the source-base for understanding Mughal-period India by engaging with the Hindi literary archive. I analyze the vignettes of Aurangzeb and other Mughal figures that are available in Lāl Kavi's Chatraprakāś (Light of Chatrasal, c. 1710), a Brajbhasha (classical Hindi) historical poem commissioned by the Bundela ruler Chatrasal (1649–1731). Written shortly after Aurangzeb's death, the Chatraprakāś is in part a retrospective on Aurangzeb's reign. It is also a valuable source of regional history that gives voice to how the Mughal Empire was perceived from a local court that went in and out of political favour. In places, Lāl Kavi engages in trenchant political critique, expressing the court's strong disillusionment with the Mughal manṣabdārī system as well as more local grievances. While by no means the dominant tone of the work, there are occasional hints of the court's outrage at Mughal offenses against what Lal Kavi explicitly terms “Hindu dharma.” Parsing the Chatraprakāś as both poetry and history, I probe the text's complex perspectives on Mughal rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Escorial and Humayun’s Tomb in comparison. Shaping the dynastic past of the Mughals and the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century Royal tombs and monuments, such as the imperial tombs of India and the Escorial of Spain, are among the best-known monuments of the early modern period. This article compares the Escorial, which served as the dynastic vault for the Spanish Habsburgs but particularly glorified Emperor Charles V, and the tomb built for the Mughal emperor Humayun. Both were built by their sons, Philip II (r. 1556-1598) and Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1603). By tracing the building history and the commemorative practices that emerged around these two buildings we can analyse and compare how these two rulers – who were only the third of their line in a new territory – shaped the memory of their fathers and used it to legitimize their own power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explores some of the discussions the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) conducted with a wide range of scholars, from Brahmans and ʿulama to Jesuit padres and Jewish savants. By far the most numerous, the debates bearing on Islam and involving Muslim intellectuals are especially significant on several accounts. First, because they illuminate how, following in the steps of his father Akbar (r. 1556–605), Jahangir was able to conciliate his messianic claims with a strong engagement with reason and to turn this combination into a formidable instrument for confession and state building. These conversations also provide promising avenues to think afresh the socio-intellectual history of the Mughal ʿulama inasmuch as they capture the challenges and adjustments attendant on imperial patronage, depict the jockeying for influence and positions among intellectuals (particularly between Indo-Muslim and Iranian lettrés), and shed light on relatively little known figures or on unexplored facets of more prominent individuals. In addition, the specific role played by scholars hailing from Iran—and, to a lesser extent, from Central Asia—in the juridical-religious disputes of the Indian court shows how crucial inter-Asian connections and networks were in the fashioning of Mughal ideology but also the ways in which the ongoing flow of émigré ʿulama was disciplined before being incorporated into the empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article studies a number of texts produced at the court of the Mughal Emperor Humayun in order to argue that there was a rise in prestige for various fields of knowledge such as mathematics, geography and astronomy. While these texts certainly fulfilled a political function (elucidating the cosmos for Mughal universalist claims), they also reflected aspects of the intellectual climate and practices of the sixteenth century that were undergoing a realignment with the expansion of royal authority throughout much of the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert is the property of Wallstein Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article introduces early modern Islamicate Asia (∼1500–1750) as an international system. Three theoretical insights emerge from an analysis of the international relations of the Mughal Empire, the system's largest polity/economy. First, hierarchies are not necessarily peaceful because the system's structural attributes—polarity, the presence/absence of regions, and the pattern of interunit relations—remain important causal factors. Second, asymmetric material capabilities do not imply unequal relationships because the initiation of state-making policies that others emulate enhances the structural power of the initiator. Finally, systemic stability is reinforced when the interaction of trade, finance, and military power affirm the system's economic and security orders. These findings have implications for the expansion of Europe, for the study of world history, and for the emerging world order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Traditional explanations of the “rise of the West” have located the sources of Western supremacy in structural or long-term developmental factors internal to Europe. By contrast, revisionist accounts have emphasized the conjunctural and contingent aspects of Europe's ascendancy, while highlighting intersocietal conditions that shaped this trajectory to global dominance. While sharing the revisionist focus on the non-Western sources of European development, we challenge their conjunctural explanation, which denies differences between “West” and “East” and within Europe. We do so by deploying the idea of uneven and combined development (UCD), which redresses the shortcomings found on both sides of the debate: the traditional Eurocentric focus on the structural and immanent characteristics of European development and the revisionists’ emphasis on contingency and the homogeneity of Eurasian societies. UCD resolves these problems by integrating structural and contingent factors into a unified explanation: unevenness makes sense of the sociological differences that revisionists miss, while combination captures the aleatory processes of interactive and multilinear development overlooked by Eurocentric approaches. From this perspective, the article examines the sociologically generative interactions between European and Asian societies’ development over the longue durée and traces how the breakdown of feudalism and the rise of capitalism in Europe were fundamentally rooted in and conditioned by extra-European structures and agents. This then sets up our conjunctural analysis of a central yet underappreciated factor explaining Europe rise to global dominance: the disintegration of the Mughal Empire and Britain's colonization of India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Mughal Empire did not feed itself only on its agrarian surpluses. While extraction from its vast agrarian hinterland was a crucial source of revenue, realizing those surpluses was critically dependent on the Mughal horse-borne cavalry, which comprised its main fighting arm and was a defining feature of its military strength. However, supporting this equine-based resource depended on enabling a constant and voluminous supply of fodder. The Mughal Empire, in other words, sought to sustain an ecological hoofprint, so to speak, that involved the cultivation and systematic transport of a range of nutritious grasses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Ceremonial de que uzão os VReys [Vice-Reys] quando escrevem aos Reys da Azia. The Ceremonial was a manual of etiquette that aimed to help the Viceroy in his contacts with local rulers such as the Persian and Mughal emperors, the princedoms of Kanara, Sonda, Tannor, and the Sardessais of Sawantvandi. It will be argued that by selecting specific words to address local rulers, inspired by Indo-Persian ideas of kingship and diplomacy, the Portuguese authorities used some elements of the local political culture to facilitate the negotiations between Goa and the Indian courts and develop a comprehensible image of the Portuguese Crown to most South Asian rulers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Jain leaders faced a series of religious questions at the royal Mughal court. At the request of their imperial Muslim hosts, Jain representatives discussed aspects of both Islam and Jainism on separate occasions, including the veracity of Islam, whether Jains are monotheists, and the validity of Jain asceticism. The Mughals sometimes initiated these conversations of their own accord and at other times acted on the prompting of Brahmans, who had political and religious interests at stake in encouraging imperial clashes with Jain leaders. Jain authors recorded these exchanges in numerous Sanskrit texts, which generally remain unknown to Mughal historians and Sanskrit scholars alike. I examine the Jain accounts of these cross-cultural debates and expound their political, religious, and intellectual implications. These engagements showcase how the Mughals negotiated religious differences with diverse communities in their kingdom. Furthermore, the Sanskrit narratives of these dialogues outline complex theological visions of how Jain beliefs and practices could thrive within a potentially hazardous Islamicate imperial order. More broadly Jain and Mughal discussions provide rich insight into key developments in religious precepts and local identities in early modern India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International Relations theories generally hold that increased interaction between units in an international system produces convergence in their forms through military competition, institutional emulation, or normative socialization. In contrast, we argue that diverse international systems can endure despite increasing interaction. The early modern Indian Ocean international system hosted a variety of statist, corporate, and imperial polities. Diversity endured for three reasons. First, powerful foreign and local actors held differing maritime and land-oriented preferences for conquest, which created the potential for coexistence between unlike polities. Second, congruent European and Asian ideas of heteronomy facilitated durable polity diversity. Third, strategies of localization enhanced enmeshment. Convergence on common polity forms failed to occur despite the presence of a statist model during this period. Subsequently, a reconfigured form of diversity under colonial empires succeeded this order. Greater attention to past diverse systems coheres with recent calls to study history to better understand not only contemporary instances of international hierarchy, but also unbundled and shared sovereignty regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the violence surrounding a war that the Danish East India Company declared against the Mughal Empire during the mid-seventeenth century. To explain why such a small chartered company would declare war against such a formidable foe, the relationship between trade, violence and statecraft in both societies is discussed at length. The article further describes how the war was waged, including the complex legal situation surrounding it and the various ways in which the opponents tried to hold each other responsible for losses. Using the Danish-Mughal war as a vehicle for exploring relations between European and Asian merchants, the article argues that violence was the contingency plan of even the weakest European companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of the seventeenth-century Mughal Prince Dārā Shukøh in translating the ancient Vedic scriptures and practices for the empire. It is argued that the prince became a commentator of ancient Hindu Sanskrit philosophy and the first to propose to the Ulema of the imperial court that the Vedic Upanisads are works of a monotheistic God. The convergence between the Sanskrit philosophy and Islam is considered.

The literature on South Asian kingship has typically explored the idioms in which kingship-a king's assertion of his right to rule-was articulated, while assuming ready consent to such assertions of royal authority among a king's subjects, vassals, peers, and overlords. This paper re-examines the nature and limits of South Asian kingship by investigating the modes in which Man Singh Kachhwaha, a prominent regional chief in the Mughal Empire, claimed royal status. I examine how target audiences-consisting of literati, peers, rivals, and the Mughal overlord-may have received an ambitious chief's claims to kingly status in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This essay reinterprets the abundant evidence from Man Singh's reign to reveal the character of kingship in South Asia as much more circumscribed and contingent than has often been assumed, and as continually open to challenge and contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of Sikhism it has been firmly established that the Khatri caste played a significant role in the development of the medieval Sikh community. Moreover, the Khatris in the Mughal period grew into a prominent commercial and scribal caste. However it has never been considered why Sikhism, in the context of the Khatri’s medieval commercial expansion, attracted a large Khatri following. In this article I endeavour to explore the appeal of Sikhism to the medieval Khatri community by examining early Sikh thought on trade and commerce. In addition, I attempt to embed the influence of Sikhism within the development of the medieval Khatri merchant family. And consider how the growth of the Khatri merchant network resulted in the spread of Sikhism across Mughal north India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the career of Fath Allah Shirazi who matriculated in Shiraz with some of the most prominent scholars of the age, and subsequently moved to India as his specific network lost political power in Safavid Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasp. Fath Allah found employment at the Bijapur Sultanate and finally went to Mughal India and contributed to a number of administrative, intellectual and ‘ideological’ movements at the Mughal court. Shirazi’s career is significant as it sheds light on the significance (and dangers) of personal networks that facilitated the political prospects of the elites in the Indo-Persian world. It also demonstrates the importance of the Deccan in elite circulations between Iran and Mughal India in this period. Finally, it shows how such individuals had to constantly modify their learning in order to meet the varying needs of the centres of patronage in which they served. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the public debate that happened among Delhi's Sikh community following the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh. The detail of this debate was expressed in the early eighteenth century Sikh text, Sri Gur Sobha. The Sri Gur Sobha explains how Delhi's Sikhs became divided into pro-Khalsa and anti-Khalsa factions, and how this conflict resulted in a campaign of persecution against Delhi's Khalsa Sikhs. In this paper I endeavour to analyse exactly why this dispute occurred and how it reflects wider political and socio-economic processes in early modern India and Sikh society. In addition, the paper will explore how the elite Khatri community consequently became an object of hatred in eighteenth century Khalsa Sikh literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The old Nurpur state provides examples of fortification in the provinces of the Mughal Empire which exhibit genuine differences from imperial practice. This paper discusses the remains of three large forts which were built when Nurpur’s rulers were at the height of their powers in the 16th and 17th centuries. At Nurpur town, their capital, they built themselves a fine residential castle with impressive-looking defences. At Maukot they built a less elaborate, and primarily military, complex as a barrier against invasion from the Plains. At Taragarh, in order to provide a remote refuge, they fortified a large, steep hill, utilising natural features for most of its defensive capability. The history of the state is summarised with emphasis on the military events which inspired the building of fortifications; and the defensive works at the three sites are described and discussed on the basis of the author’s fieldwork. The foregoing provide materials for an attempt to reconstruct a relative chronology of construction and an attempted dating of all three, particularly Nurpur. The paper concludes with a discussion of the performance of these fortifications in war as revealed in the contemporary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the rise of the East India Company in the contested political world of eighteenth century India, with reference to the manner in which economic power was deployed to enhance military power. It is shown that there was only one successful model of military-fiscal strategy during this time, and that the Company's success was due to interactions between three factors—taxable resources, the strategies of its rivals, and institutional choices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Image of communities in medieval India as a self-sufficient and autonomous entity has come under scrutiny in the recent past. Studies have successfully challenged these stereotypes and have argued that communities have regularly seen changes and transformations have been an integral part. Another dominant corollary has been the argument that these communities were averse to centralised polity as any negotiation with the state would have diluted their autonomy and dominance over various components. Meos of Mewat have also been portrayed as practitioner and believer of ‘Pal polity’/ autonomous community. It is in this respect, the present article makes an attempt to challenge the oft-repeated idiom of ‘autonomy of communities’ in the medieval India. During Sultanate period Meos were broadly identified as tribes inhabiting the Aravalli hills, valleys and dense forest of the Mewat region and were known for cattle-lifting, loot and plunder. However, one witnesses a major transformation in their identity with the passage of time. Soon Meos were not only peasantised but they were also able to establish their zamindaris. One also notices gradual and very slow but continuous Islamisation of this community. During Mughal era we follow them engaged in several other important occupations. They became trusted post carriers for the Mughal Empire and came to be known as dak Meoras. Similarly, they were also employed as personal bodyguards and as security guards in the royal palace and came to be known as khidmatiyyas. Interestingly and contrary to traditional portrayal, Meos approached Mugahl state administration for the redressal of their grievances, even intra-community. Rajasthan State Archives has a good repository of numerous Arzdashts, Chithis, Vakil reports, Khatut-ahalkarn, Arsattas, etc., depicting the processes of negotiations and contestation among Meos and between Meos and Mughals. Thus, it is necessary to challenge the established scholarship on these counts and the present article argues, on the basis of contemporary Turko-Persian literature and archival records, that there is a need to examine the inherent dynamism of any community, in this case Meos of Mewat region between thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the manuscript copy entitled "Humayun nama" by Mughal Princess Gulbadan (1523-1603) which details the early years of the Mughal dynasty in India under the rule of her father emperor Babur and her half-brother emperor Humayun. Topics considered include women of the Mughal court, kinship of the Islamic rulers and aristocracy of India, and women's early modern travel writing.

This article examines the intertwined literary and political processes that moulded the texts of Mughal sovereignty and shaped the lives of Mughal sovereigns. In historical terms it considers the lives of Babur (d. 1530) and his grandson Akbar (d. 1605) and the ‘books’ associated with them, the Baburnama and Akbarnama. However, in order to connect the two pairs, this article follows an unconventional and less trodden path through Safavid political history, Iranian Sufism and the Persian epic and storytelling tradition. By doing so, it reveals new, less intuitive perspectives on the cultures that produced these texts and their protagonists. Specifically, it shows how Babur’s work and others like it were not only products of new literary tastes and reading practices but also participated in the making of new institutions of kingship and sainthood that evolved together in Mughal India and Safavid Iran over the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the economic conditions and political context of Bengal, India in the early modern era, focusing on the period from its takeover by the Mughal Empire in 1590 to the confirmation of the rule of the British East India Company in 1765. It addresses regional differences and analyzes ballads from Eastern Bengal, specifically from the regions of Mymensingh, Rangpur, and the Noakhali–Chittagong coast, to address material life. Themes of statelessness, oppression, anarchy, and globalization are considered.

Mughal India in the 17th century had a vast area of land cultivated by peasants residing in this geographical territory. The accounts given by European travelers tell us that Indian peasants followed similar methods in agricultural production as their counterparts in Europe. Though the Indian peasant was illiterate, the technology employed by him was similar or even superior to the one used by his counterpart in Europe. His knowledge was based on tradition and it got transmitted from generation to generation. This paper attempts to analyze the production of medicinal and aromatic plants in Mughal India keeping in view the information contained in contemporary sources namely, Babur-Nama, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, Vishvavallabha, and Nuskha Dar Fanni-Falahat. It attempts to look into the description given about the plant and its usage in the medieval era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the reigns of the Safavid Shah 'Abbās I and the Mughal Emperor Akbar, two chroniclers, one from each dynasty, included in their texts lists of 'kingly virtues.' This paper explores the possible historiographical precedents for this section in the chronicles, and places particular emphasis on the 'mirrors for princes' literature. The paper concludes with a suggestion that reading the narrative portions of the chronicles in light of the mirrors for princes literature helps us understand why chroniclers may have included certain information in those sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the Moghul Emperor Shah Alam II and the relevance of his blindness with respect to ghazal creation. It is suggested that all his ghazals reveal his sufferings and the book by author Syed Altaf Ali Barelvi presents the act of Shah's former minister Ghulam Qadir Rohilla. Also included are ghazals by Shah, its translations, and his involvement in literature.

From the beginning of the Mughal Empire a great number of men of the sword and the pen, people of excellence, quality, and learning, men of letters, poets and writers, skilled artisans and eminent persons from the cities of Persia came to this splendid empire with great hopes and anticipations. They entered the service of this bountiful kingdom, which was perhaps a sort of asylum for the people of the world. Indeed, Persians with their multifarious capabilities could handle different assignments, professions, and creative hobbies with ease and dexterity. Many Persian families attached themselves to the Mughal court and exhibited their talents in various forms and in different capacities. They outshone and exceeded their contemporaries in administration and politics, literary activities, and artistic bequests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the political relationship between the Mughal tribe and the Indian Chishti and Central Asian Naqshbandi sufi orders during the sixteenth century. It offers an examination of the growth of Mughal power in India as supported or hindered by the Chishtis under Ubaid Allah Ahrar and the Naqshbandis under Khwaja Baqi Billah. The politics of the Islamic scholar Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, who died in 1624, are also considered.

An essay is presented on the establishment of the state of Hyderabad in India during the post-Mughal era in 1724. It offers an examination of what spurred founder Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah to divert the state from the Mughal imperial system. The author focuses on a discussion of how various Nizams dealt with the political, military, and financial crises that marked the early history of the state.

This study is about philosophical view of Soltan Ali Khorasani Gonabadi, the writer of Dastur al-Alag manuscript, dating back to 1524 AD, on physicians. The original manuscript, kept at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences Museum, was studied thoroughly. In the preface of the book, Soltan Ali Khorasani Gonabadi explained his holistic view on medicine and considered ethical and philosophical bases important for physicians [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]