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Tales Bent Backward: Early Modern Local History in Persianate Transregional Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2017

DEREK J. MANCINI-LANDER
DEREK J. MANCINI-LANDER*
Affiliation:
SOAS, University of Londondm40@soas.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on immigrants from Safavid Iran who travelled back and forth between their home cities and Hind during the early modern period. Intending to better comprehend some of the key mentalities and social practices of these cosmopolitan Persianate communities, I explore the literary strategies by which migrants worked to negotiate their place in rapidly transforming and highly competitive political environments in both Hind and Iran. Focusing on migration narratives that were commonly embedded in Persian historical works, I examine a cluster of local and dynastic histories that were composed in dialogue with one another and that emerged around a particular corridor of migration linking the Iranian city of Yazd with various cities in the Deccan. Previous scholarship has argued that immigrants could acquire social capital in their new environments by commemorating ties to Iranian cities through narratives of migration. I demonstrate that migrants also brought migration stories they had found in the Deccan back to their hometowns in Iran, where they redeployed them for similar political ends in new works of history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 23 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2017 

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References

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Mufīd Bāfqī, Muḥammad, Majālis al-Mulūk, BnF Suppl. Pers 194Google Scholar
Nīshāpūrī, Maḥmūd ibn ʿAbd Allāh, Tārīkh-i Turkmanīyah, British Library, India Office Isl. 3022Google Scholar
Nīshāpūrī, Maḥmūd ibn ʿAbd Allāh Khulāṣah-i ʿAbbāsī, Salar Jung Pers Ms. 237Google Scholar
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ibn ʿAlī Kātib, Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn. Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd. Tehran: Intisharat-i Iran Zamin, 1978.Google Scholar
Ferishta, Mahomed Kasim. History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India Till the Year 1612, Edited and translated by Briggs, John. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1981.Google Scholar
ibn Muḥammad, Jaʿfarī, Jaʿfar. Tārīkh-i Yazd. Tehran: B.T.N.K., 1960.Google Scholar
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Naʿīnī, Muḥammad Jaʿfar Munshī. Jāmiʿ-i Jaʿfarī. Tehran, 1974.Google Scholar
Sīstānī, Mālik Shāh Ḥusayn ibn Mālik. Iḥyāʾ al-Mulūk, edited by Sutūdah, Manūchihr. Tihrān: Bungāh-i Tarjamah va Nashr-i Kitāb, 1966.Google Scholar
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Aslanian, Sebouh David. From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa/ (London, 2011).Google Scholar
Arjomand, Said Amir. The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shiʿite Iran from the Beginning to 1890. (London, 1984).Google Scholar
Aubin, Jean and Lombard, Denys. Asian merchants and businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. (Delhi, 2000).Google Scholar
Babayan, Kathryn. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran. (Cambridge, MA, 2002).Google Scholar
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Eaton, Richard. A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives. (New York, 2005).Google Scholar
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Graham, Terry. “The Niʿmatu'llāhī Order Under Safavid Suppression and in Indian Exile”. In Heritage of Sufism, Volume III: Late classical Persianate Sufism (1501-1750): The Safavid & Mughal Period, (ed.) Lewisohn, Leonard. (Oxford, 1999), pp. 165–200.Google Scholar
Green, Nile. Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India. (Delhi, 2012).Google Scholar
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Ho, Engseng. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. (Berkeley, 2006).Google Scholar
Kia, Mana. “Accounting for Difference: A Comparative Look at the Autobiographical Travel Narratives of Hazin Lāhiji and ʿabd-Al-Karim Kashmiri”. Journal of Persianate Studies 2 (2009), pp. 210–236.Google Scholar
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Mancini-Lander, Derek J. “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire: Narrating Place in the Early Modern Local Historiography of Yazd”. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2012.Google Scholar
Meisami, Julie Scott. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. (Princeton, 1987).Google Scholar
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Moin, Ahmed Azfar. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kinship and Sainthood in Islam. (New York, 2012).Google Scholar
Naqvi, Sadiq. Muslim Religious Institutions and Their Role under the Qutb Shahs. (Hyderabad, 1993).Google Scholar
Newman, Andrew. Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire. (New York, 2006).Google Scholar
Quinn, Sholeh. “Rewriting Niʿmatu'llāhī History in Safavid Chronicles”. In Heritage of Sufism: Volume III: Late classical Persianate Sufism (1501-1750): The Safavid & Mughal Period, (ed.) Lewisohn, Leonard. (Oxford, 1999), pp. 201–222.Google Scholar
Sheriff, Abdul and Ho, Engseng (eds)., The Indian Ocean: Oceanic Connections and the Creation of New Societies. (London, 2015).Google Scholar
Sherwani, Haroon Khan. The Bahmanis of the Deccan. (New Delhi, 1985).Google Scholar
Sherwani, Haroon Khan. History of Medieval Deccan, 1295–1724, 2 vols. (Hyderabad, 1974).Google Scholar
Sherwani, Haroon Khan. History of the Quṭb Shāhī Dynasty. (New Delhi, 1974).Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation”. The Journal of Asian Studies 51 (1992), pp. 340–363.Google Scholar