1 00:00:02,100 --> 00:00:07,170 To Roy's people, which is the third and last paper of our session, and then we have an open, 2 00:00:07,170 --> 00:00:17,490 open half hour or so at the end of the paper is titled Circulation, Patronage and Silence and the Practise of History. 3 00:00:17,490 --> 00:00:27,060 Writing in early modern Monash from Roy Fisher was less than. 4 00:00:27,060 --> 00:00:31,260 Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. 5 00:00:31,260 --> 00:00:38,190 And thank you also for the wonderful comments that you suggested on the way to this presentation. 6 00:00:38,190 --> 00:00:46,110 And thank you for the organiser for for this wonderful event and for giving me the opportunity to present my work. 7 00:00:46,110 --> 00:00:56,070 And I want to change somewhat of the perspective of the previous wonderful two papers, even though they interact very well. 8 00:00:56,070 --> 00:01:04,800 My perspective is quite different and I'm changing here from the vernacular to the cosmopolitan and sorry. 9 00:01:04,800 --> 00:01:18,540 And from a story of, let's say, interaction, circulation and an abundance of of materials to, in a way, a story of absence and silence. 10 00:01:18,540 --> 00:01:25,230 And this paper is a work in progress. It's quite an early stage of a new investigation that I'm oh, 11 00:01:25,230 --> 00:01:36,600 a new enquiry into the question of Persian in the decline and within the framework that defined our approach to it. 12 00:01:36,600 --> 00:01:45,480 The story of these two geography of the early modern Muslim world as a whole and its links to India have been going through some significant changes. 13 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:55,950 Previously, the analysis emphasised religion as the leading and defining a factor in four states and societies. 14 00:01:55,950 --> 00:02:00,450 This has shifted considerably and in particular in the in the recent decades. 15 00:02:00,450 --> 00:02:09,450 We see the promotion of other factors cultural, political, social, pushing religion to a more minor position. 16 00:02:09,450 --> 00:02:15,300 A useful concept that emerged in recent decades is that of the cosmopolitan or the 17 00:02:15,300 --> 00:02:23,580 Persian Cosmopolis building on the kind of interaction of two strands of enquiry. 18 00:02:23,580 --> 00:02:31,920 One is that of Marshall Hodgson about a cultural approach to Islam as world history in there, 19 00:02:31,920 --> 00:02:43,290 he wrote in the 60s and 70s and later Sheldon Pollock from the South Asian perspective and trying to model that into world history. 20 00:02:43,290 --> 00:02:49,830 The idea of the Persian Cosmopolis is now ubiquitous in the analysis of early modern Muslim world as a whole, 21 00:02:49,830 --> 00:02:59,070 and its it is also predominant in the investigation into the political language and institution of early modern India. 22 00:02:59,070 --> 00:03:07,200 The main idea behind the Persian Cosmopolis is cultural, and it's built around aesthetics, value and ideologies and, 23 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:14,010 of course, language the Persian language, which is spread with the circulation of people and text. 24 00:03:14,010 --> 00:03:21,900 Richard ITOM recently characterised the Cosmopolis in four eight terms vs. the quote 25 00:03:21,900 --> 00:03:28,800 shared investment in a preserving moral and social order in a trans region now, 26 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,550 or what he calls classless iframe. 27 00:03:32,550 --> 00:03:43,290 It is a what some defines grounded in a prestigious language and literature that conferred the elite status on their users. 28 00:03:43,290 --> 00:03:48,570 A third point is that it contains a discourse of universal dominion. 29 00:03:48,570 --> 00:03:54,390 And lastly, it transcends the claims of any and all religions. 30 00:03:54,390 --> 00:04:03,600 This turns Bergen into a prestigious language for historiography and literature and the medium of bureaucracy and inter-regional diplomacy. 31 00:04:03,600 --> 00:04:10,740 This definition defines or emphasises the role of Persian is a written language or to use Native Greene's term, 32 00:04:10,740 --> 00:04:14,820 it was Persia of Russia as opposed to it. 33 00:04:14,820 --> 00:04:19,950 So for me, a term that was promoted by a Brit, if Bradner. 34 00:04:19,950 --> 00:04:26,280 So it's not the people who speak Persian, it's those people who write Persian. 35 00:04:26,280 --> 00:04:33,690 The idealistic Cosmopolis offers it a narrative of diffusion and integration that explains how Persian became progressively 36 00:04:33,690 --> 00:04:42,570 central to both political and cultural life in India and to the subcontinent position vis a vis the Muslim world. 37 00:04:42,570 --> 00:04:49,410 However, to what level can we assume this all encompassing impact on the subcontinent as a whole? 38 00:04:49,410 --> 00:04:56,580 Was it unified in its forms? Or did it vary between times and places? 39 00:04:56,580 --> 00:05:07,210 In this paper, examine the case that might complicate. A view of of this, a nice spread of the cosmopolis of the Persian Cosmopolis, 40 00:05:07,210 --> 00:05:12,730 and I want to focus my accent in the first half of the 17th century is a case study, 41 00:05:12,730 --> 00:05:20,140 and I argue that the margins of the cosmopolitan world introduces a complex and nuanced story of partial integration, 42 00:05:20,140 --> 00:05:23,440 which remains patchy and precarious. 43 00:05:23,440 --> 00:05:31,750 This, in turn, reflects the limitation of this otherwise youthful model to grasp realities beyond the imperial centres, 44 00:05:31,750 --> 00:05:36,490 and I want to start with a story which is a very familiar one. 45 00:05:36,490 --> 00:05:39,730 In March of 15 96, 46 00:05:39,730 --> 00:05:50,260 the Sultan of Ahmednagar celebrated a great achievement there a Queen Deutscher trying to be the most powerful person in its ultimate at the time, 47 00:05:50,260 --> 00:05:58,720 united many conflicting parties and secured the support of the neighbouring Saudi image of Egypt born Golconda Disunited. 48 00:05:58,720 --> 00:06:04,360 The kindly front pushed the moguls to enter negotiations with the besiege Ahmednagar. 49 00:06:04,360 --> 00:06:15,250 The negotiations were successful and ended with a peace agreement in which Ahmednagar ceded bearer to the girls and the Empire withdrew its forces. 50 00:06:15,250 --> 00:06:23,470 This event was celebrated in are very important in the construction of the memory of Chan Bibi as a local heroine. 51 00:06:23,470 --> 00:06:28,900 The historical significance remains, let's say, doubtful or at least limited, 52 00:06:28,900 --> 00:06:39,400 because it was a very short period that the Mongols were not around and they stalled their progress for three or four years, 53 00:06:39,400 --> 00:06:47,350 but by six hundred per cent more forces in these times, it did conquer Ahmednagar fought. 54 00:06:47,350 --> 00:06:50,170 But this event is meaningful for another reason. 55 00:06:50,170 --> 00:06:59,440 It is the last event reported in the local Persian Chronicle, closing in the appendix to say Elite Tabatabai is Hamamatsu. 56 00:06:59,440 --> 00:07:05,170 It probably completed by his son, Abdul Kalam, in 1996. 57 00:07:05,170 --> 00:07:15,460 With this chronicle, Maharashtra stopped serving as a hub for writing in Persian, and I'll define it a little bit better later. 58 00:07:15,460 --> 00:07:21,160 For most of the 17th century now, this was a sharp break from the past. 59 00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:29,440 In the 16th century, Ahmednagar was a thriving centre for the production in Persia from the very early decades of the century, 60 00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:33,670 when luminaries such as discolour and diplomat Shahdara Hussain settled in. 61 00:07:33,670 --> 00:07:42,550 Ahmednagar and the Sultanate was a centre of production from Chancery Document and entire collection to religious and scholarly texts. 62 00:07:42,550 --> 00:07:49,540 Poets such as OfthO B is a Worry or Malik Coming enjoyed royal patronage. 63 00:07:49,540 --> 00:07:56,320 The story of a Tobii whom I just mentioned a worked in the court and also Muhammad Cussons, 64 00:07:56,320 --> 00:08:02,650 who is probably the most famous historian from the day consultants who is mostly associated with Ibrahim, 65 00:08:02,650 --> 00:08:07,570 added each of the second Ouija board started his career in some unclear capacity. 66 00:08:07,570 --> 00:08:14,680 In Ahmednagar, who been Shubman Gill Bilal Hussein. He served the needs of Maché Sultan as a diplomat to the Safavid Court. 67 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:19,990 Completing later, he established Eugenie's on a other than Farish, 68 00:08:19,990 --> 00:08:30,040 the probably the history of the decline in Persian that enjoyed most attention by scholars outside the region. 69 00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:35,480 The thriving scene vanished rapidly from the 60 nineties for most of the 17th century, 70 00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:42,610 definitely the first half of seats and just changing a little bit too slowly in the second half of the 17th century. 71 00:08:42,610 --> 00:08:49,630 There is no historiography written in Persian in most of Maharashtra. 72 00:08:49,630 --> 00:08:55,210 Also, we don't have a courtly poetry or insure collection. 73 00:08:55,210 --> 00:09:05,480 This led to the literary scholar endeavour to completely write Ahmednagar off in his survey of Persian literature in the dictum. 74 00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:16,130 The lacuna was not in all the communist fare, but unique to master elsewhere in the deck on the 17th century in the first half of this 18th century. 75 00:09:16,130 --> 00:09:23,930 So the abundance of writing in Persia Comienza Story, for example, completed their most important work in Egypt war, 76 00:09:23,930 --> 00:09:30,590 whereas other ports enjoyed good trade patronage in Golconda, the first half of the 17th century. 77 00:09:30,590 --> 00:09:33,690 So prolific historiography. Graphical writing with finished. 78 00:09:33,690 --> 00:09:40,310 Of course, completing these monumental world is going to be Jaipur, where also we have roughly a democracy. 79 00:09:40,310 --> 00:09:46,610 So who are his sons, the WHO and Futuna Istrabadi? In writing their stories in Golconda, 80 00:09:46,610 --> 00:09:51,800 we similarly see a Mahmud Benabdallah Abdulaziz Shapoorji Andrew Rupee Cook suggests that he's 81 00:09:51,800 --> 00:09:57,890 the famous anonymous chronicler of Golconda in in the first decades of the 17th century, 82 00:09:57,890 --> 00:10:06,230 and in the following generation, Nizamuddin Ahmed Materazzi wrote his history in there as well. 83 00:10:06,230 --> 00:10:14,360 So how can we explain the significant difference between master and the neighbours, a difference that persisted for almost a century? 84 00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:23,090 At first blush, the answer sounds simple courtly military activity requires active courts and continuation of patronage. 85 00:10:23,090 --> 00:10:34,700 The political weakness of this alternative Ahmednagar In the first half of the 17th century, it was possibly or probably a very important role. 86 00:10:34,700 --> 00:10:42,350 But when we see other courts emerging and in particular Shivaji, we do not see patronage to courtly writing. 87 00:10:42,350 --> 00:10:49,250 In Persian, we see other patronage and also the Nizam Chase Ultimate may have tried to do something, 88 00:10:49,250 --> 00:10:53,690 and Malik Ambar definitely was very active in the first half of the century. 89 00:10:53,690 --> 00:10:55,610 And still, we see no patronage. 90 00:10:55,610 --> 00:11:02,510 This suggests that actually this relative weakness of Persian production was not only the result of weaker courtly circle, 91 00:11:02,510 --> 00:11:10,790 but something about the nature of in practise of Persian in this period in the there. 92 00:11:10,790 --> 00:11:15,920 And to understand this point, let us compare the Deccan with North India quickly. 93 00:11:15,920 --> 00:11:19,850 From the 15th century, the position of Persian in the north began to change. 94 00:11:19,850 --> 00:11:27,500 The language entered a new administrative and literary niches, and its impact penetrated deep into literary cultures. 95 00:11:27,500 --> 00:11:36,560 Under Akbar, Persian became the sole language of the empire, and Muzaffar Allam suggests that this choice was made because of the nondenominational 96 00:11:36,560 --> 00:11:40,970 character of Persian or its ability to present known religious ideas. 97 00:11:40,970 --> 00:11:47,120 And we are returning here to items in definition from earlier. 98 00:11:47,120 --> 00:11:53,570 Also, the rich literary legacy of Persia that promoted the ideas of justice and consume a kingship and its 99 00:11:53,570 --> 00:12:03,860 position as a non a region specific language all really pushed it to two as an ideal in which of empire. 100 00:12:03,860 --> 00:12:08,990 This attracted more and more people in five minutes. 101 00:12:08,990 --> 00:12:17,970 OK? Well, we started five minutes later, so I right. 102 00:12:17,970 --> 00:12:28,350 Yes, today's am I to condense things. OK. So the point is that the moment that the person became a language of empire, 103 00:12:28,350 --> 00:12:36,960 it means that more people who are not part of the natural Persian speakers a entered the 104 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:43,860 production in this language and that included the historians Fossil and the up and down me, 105 00:12:43,860 --> 00:12:57,000 the poet Faizi, all of them ehm Indian Muslims and also Chanda about a Brahmin a whose name suggests that he was not much of a Muslim at all. 106 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:03,120 Now, just like North India Today, consulting its elite society was very heterogeneous. 107 00:13:03,120 --> 00:13:09,510 Local Muslims or the colonies emerged as a politically unified group with strong affiliation with the region. 108 00:13:09,510 --> 00:13:17,100 non-Muslims such as Brahmins and Morata's were integrated into state service to some degree. 109 00:13:17,100 --> 00:13:21,750 But they definitely maintained spatial, social and linguistic identity. 110 00:13:21,750 --> 00:13:31,500 A very strong in the locality. Transient communities, mostly of Iranian origin who called themselves foreigners or to be born in Belgium, 111 00:13:31,500 --> 00:13:39,600 kept their mobility along trans regional networks while accepting positions in local courts for all groups. 112 00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:48,630 Language served as an integral part of their identity that can mean was created by the country's administrative administration remain multilingual. 113 00:13:48,630 --> 00:13:53,940 Unlike the Mughal case with Marathi Canada and Telugu in different parts of the Deccan. 114 00:13:53,940 --> 00:14:03,300 Persian, of course, was an important courtly court, a courtly language as well as diplomatic and political cross linguistic influence. 115 00:14:03,300 --> 00:14:05,790 And the impact continued and even intensified. 116 00:14:05,790 --> 00:14:16,470 For example, Persian terminology in Marathi in administrative documents and Persian genre's tropes and modes of duck and in literature. 117 00:14:16,470 --> 00:14:19,410 Yet Persian remained the language of a certain clique. 118 00:14:19,410 --> 00:14:28,350 It never became a state language, and in that sense, it was not exclusive inclusive as in the case, but remained exclusive. 119 00:14:28,350 --> 00:14:35,550 As a result, almost all Persian works written in the course of the Deccan were composed by members of the mobile elite. 120 00:14:35,550 --> 00:14:40,020 I have a few examples for that which I can skip it. 121 00:14:40,020 --> 00:14:44,970 We do know that in both before and Golconda, 122 00:14:44,970 --> 00:14:52,800 almost all writers of Persian maids beat poetry or to recite history where Iranians 123 00:14:52,800 --> 00:14:58,920 either migrants from Iran or associating themselves with networks of Iranians. 124 00:14:58,920 --> 00:15:04,770 We do not have people identifying themselves as the country is writing in Persian, with very few exceptions. 125 00:15:04,770 --> 00:15:11,190 For example, the poet was he who left also had given information. 126 00:15:11,190 --> 00:15:21,390 As a result, the Persian historiography in the Deccan necessitated continuous links to the itinerant itinerant migrant or even networks of foreigners. 127 00:15:21,390 --> 00:15:28,410 This marks a major shift or difference from Mughal historiography and its propagated. 128 00:15:28,410 --> 00:15:37,380 The conditions to sustain this community in Maharashtra collapsed towards the end of the 16th century due to political instability under Mortaza, 129 00:15:37,380 --> 00:15:44,370 and he's also the first accompanied by what the Maccabi terms general massacre of foreigners 130 00:15:44,370 --> 00:15:52,290 leading exactly the migration of two Missouri furies and others to in a BJP work. 131 00:15:52,290 --> 00:15:59,250 Interestingly, we see a similar case in BJP or in the last two decades before the Mughal conquest of sixty and eighty six 132 00:15:59,250 --> 00:16:07,110 when the zero Ahmed argues that we find no Persian poet or scholar of repute end quote in this period. 133 00:16:07,110 --> 00:16:10,320 Of course, Persian influence did not disappear from master. 134 00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:16,590 Sufi sides of the day can be made centres of the production of texts, in particular genres. 135 00:16:16,590 --> 00:16:20,820 Jyoti Balachandran recently demonstrated how it worked in Gujarat. 136 00:16:20,820 --> 00:16:28,750 We know about continuation of production in in Bjorkgren Golconda and probably also in other sites like Holda. 137 00:16:28,750 --> 00:16:38,810 But in Persia, it more implicitly we see other mechanisms in. 138 00:16:38,810 --> 00:16:50,040 But let's say institutions terminology continuing to to be practised throughout the 17th century from the land reforms and taxation, 139 00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:55,400 the practises under Malcolm Barr into the sixteen twenties and of course, 140 00:16:55,400 --> 00:17:06,140 we know about all the continuation of those tropes and language into the reign of an even even today Murdoch empire to Shivaji, 141 00:17:06,140 --> 00:17:11,930 as days when there was an attempt to read the language of Persian terminology, 142 00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:19,360 which shows how much it needs and suggests that it shows how much Persian was important in this in. 143 00:17:19,360 --> 00:17:23,610 And yet we see that the upper layer of disintegration, 144 00:17:23,610 --> 00:17:31,580 the things so much related to the concept of the press of Russia were completely absent in the 17th century and the first half, 145 00:17:31,580 --> 00:17:40,280 at least of the 17th century. Now, this unique character of the production of his Persian had a significant impact on the knowledge of the period, 146 00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:44,960 with the lack of any internal Maharashtrian. 147 00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:49,310 Perspective in Persian, of course, is in the works of Sumit Goyal. 148 00:17:49,310 --> 00:17:55,730 Prachi Deshpande in the past have shown we have other sources from Maharashtra 149 00:17:55,730 --> 00:18:00,650 to talk about historian to help us to to understand the history of the place. 150 00:18:00,650 --> 00:18:07,700 But we have no tariff works from Maharashtra until the Mughal arrived and introduced 151 00:18:07,700 --> 00:18:15,620 their own practise of surgeon writing in the last decades of the end of the century. 152 00:18:15,620 --> 00:18:22,430 It raises, though, a very important question about the present Cosmopolis itself and how we understanding 153 00:18:22,430 --> 00:18:28,790 the how we can use it to understand to analyse this kind of meetings of of cultural, 154 00:18:28,790 --> 00:18:37,790 literary and graphical traditions. We have seen that more technical aspects persisted and throughout the period, 155 00:18:37,790 --> 00:18:44,780 either in direct influence can be traced in places like Vijay Nagar is discussed, whether there, for example. 156 00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:52,670 Yet the heart of the definition of the cosmopolitan is suggested by it and centres around concepts of moral and social order. 157 00:18:52,670 --> 00:18:57,320 Language of prestige and literature. Or discourse of universal dominion. 158 00:18:57,320 --> 00:19:01,160 And we cannot see any of this in Maharashtra at the time. 159 00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:09,740 This important aspect of the Persian Cosmopolis was closely associated with this certain political city in the Mughal Empire. 160 00:19:09,740 --> 00:19:13,310 It became part of what defines the Empire as such, 161 00:19:13,310 --> 00:19:25,070 going beyond any kind of Iranian direction to create other centres of production in Persian Gulf or of Brazil, Russia in the case of Maharashtra. 162 00:19:25,070 --> 00:19:32,210 We see that it's not always the case in the Deccan as a whole until the very late 20th century. 163 00:19:32,210 --> 00:19:42,440 This is not a sign of rejection of Muslim rule together or this kind of antipathy towards a interaction with Muslim, 164 00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:47,690 a religious philosophical concept, as we have heard in the earlier papers today. 165 00:19:47,690 --> 00:19:54,980 And I have also shown elsewhere that even the Emiratis themselves kept and even promoted the memory of 166 00:19:54,980 --> 00:20:03,290 their close association with the Nizam Shah rulers as part of defining their a political justification. 167 00:20:03,290 --> 00:20:08,630 Yet this did not translate into association with the Persian, a Persian world. 168 00:20:08,630 --> 00:20:17,180 The way that we see in North India, Persian persisted to be linked to trends, regional networks, not least that notwithstanding its impact, 169 00:20:17,180 --> 00:20:24,080 it did not become a language of great communication or inclusion on the margins of the imperial world. 170 00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:32,570 Then the integration and influence of the Cosmopolis seems to have been remained intermittent, precarious, incomplete in a way. 171 00:20:32,570 --> 00:20:38,900 In the case of Maharashtra in the first half of the 17th century suggests that we should consider breaking 172 00:20:38,900 --> 00:20:48,480 the category of Cosmopolis when coming to examine its actual working in a particular niche in it, 173 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:56,930 let's say in particular landscape, which is quite different from the imperial one so dominant in this historiography. 174 00:20:56,930 --> 00:20:59,349 Thank you. Thank you. Thank.