To Roy's people, which is the third and last paper of our session, and then we have an open,
open half hour or so at the end of the paper is titled Circulation, Patronage and Silence and the Practise of History.
Writing in early modern Monash from Roy Fisher was less than.
Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you.
And thank you also for the wonderful comments that you suggested on the way to this presentation.
And thank you for the organiser for for this wonderful event and for giving me the opportunity to present my work.
And I want to change somewhat of the perspective of the previous wonderful two papers, even though they interact very well.
My perspective is quite different and I'm changing here from the vernacular to the cosmopolitan and sorry.
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.
And this paper is a work in progress. It's quite an early stage of a new investigation that I'm oh,
a new enquiry into the question of Persian in the decline and within the framework that defined our approach to it.
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.
Previously, the analysis emphasised religion as the leading and defining a factor in four states and societies.
This has shifted considerably and in particular in the in the recent decades.
We see the promotion of other factors cultural, political, social, pushing religion to a more minor position.
A useful concept that emerged in recent decades is that of the cosmopolitan or the
Persian Cosmopolis building on the kind of interaction of two strands of enquiry.
One is that of Marshall Hodgson about a cultural approach to Islam as world history in there,
he wrote in the 60s and 70s and later Sheldon Pollock from the South Asian perspective and trying to model that into world history.
The idea of the Persian Cosmopolis is now ubiquitous in the analysis of early modern Muslim world as a whole,
and its it is also predominant in the investigation into the political language and institution of early modern India.
The main idea behind the Persian Cosmopolis is cultural, and it's built around aesthetics, value and ideologies and,
of course, language the Persian language, which is spread with the circulation of people and text.
Richard ITOM recently characterised the Cosmopolis in four eight terms vs. the quote
shared investment in a preserving moral and social order in a trans region now,
or what he calls classless iframe.
It is a what some defines grounded in a prestigious language and literature that conferred the elite status on their users.
A third point is that it contains a discourse of universal dominion.
And lastly, it transcends the claims of any and all religions.
This turns Bergen into a prestigious language for historiography and literature and the medium of bureaucracy and inter-regional diplomacy.
This definition defines or emphasises the role of Persian is a written language or to use Native Greene's term,
it was Persia of Russia as opposed to it.
So for me, a term that was promoted by a Brit, if Bradner.
So it's not the people who speak Persian, it's those people who write Persian.
The idealistic Cosmopolis offers it a narrative of diffusion and integration that explains how Persian became progressively
central to both political and cultural life in India and to the subcontinent position vis a vis the Muslim world.
However, to what level can we assume this all encompassing impact on the subcontinent as a whole?
Was it unified in its forms? Or did it vary between times and places?
In this paper, examine the case that might complicate. A view of of this, a nice spread of the cosmopolis of the Persian Cosmopolis,
and I want to focus my accent in the first half of the 17th century is a case study,
and I argue that the margins of the cosmopolitan world introduces a complex and nuanced story of partial integration,
which remains patchy and precarious.
This, in turn, reflects the limitation of this otherwise youthful model to grasp realities beyond the imperial centres,
and I want to start with a story which is a very familiar one.
In March of 15 96,
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,
united many conflicting parties and secured the support of the neighbouring Saudi image of Egypt born Golconda Disunited.
The kindly front pushed the moguls to enter negotiations with the besiege Ahmednagar.
The negotiations were successful and ended with a peace agreement in which Ahmednagar ceded bearer to the girls and the Empire withdrew its forces.
This event was celebrated in are very important in the construction of the memory of Chan Bibi as a local heroine.
The historical significance remains, let's say, doubtful or at least limited,
because it was a very short period that the Mongols were not around and they stalled their progress for three or four years,
but by six hundred per cent more forces in these times, it did conquer Ahmednagar fought.
But this event is meaningful for another reason.
It is the last event reported in the local Persian Chronicle, closing in the appendix to say Elite Tabatabai is Hamamatsu.
It probably completed by his son, Abdul Kalam, in 1996.
With this chronicle, Maharashtra stopped serving as a hub for writing in Persian, and I'll define it a little bit better later.
For most of the 17th century now, this was a sharp break from the past.
In the 16th century, Ahmednagar was a thriving centre for the production in Persia from the very early decades of the century,
when luminaries such as discolour and diplomat Shahdara Hussain settled in.
Ahmednagar and the Sultanate was a centre of production from Chancery Document and entire collection to religious and scholarly texts.
Poets such as OfthO B is a Worry or Malik Coming enjoyed royal patronage.
The story of a Tobii whom I just mentioned a worked in the court and also Muhammad Cussons,
who is probably the most famous historian from the day consultants who is mostly associated with Ibrahim,
added each of the second Ouija board started his career in some unclear capacity.
In Ahmednagar, who been Shubman Gill Bilal Hussein. He served the needs of Maché Sultan as a diplomat to the Safavid Court.
Completing later, he established Eugenie's on a other than Farish,
the probably the history of the decline in Persian that enjoyed most attention by scholars outside the region.
The thriving scene vanished rapidly from the 60 nineties for most of the 17th century,
definitely the first half of seats and just changing a little bit too slowly in the second half of the 17th century.
There is no historiography written in Persian in most of Maharashtra.
Also, we don't have a courtly poetry or insure collection.
This led to the literary scholar endeavour to completely write Ahmednagar off in his survey of Persian literature in the dictum.
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.
So the abundance of writing in Persia Comienza Story, for example, completed their most important work in Egypt war,
whereas other ports enjoyed good trade patronage in Golconda, the first half of the 17th century.
So prolific historiography. Graphical writing with finished.
Of course, completing these monumental world is going to be Jaipur, where also we have roughly a democracy.
So who are his sons, the WHO and Futuna Istrabadi? In writing their stories in Golconda,
we similarly see a Mahmud Benabdallah Abdulaziz Shapoorji Andrew Rupee Cook suggests that he's
the famous anonymous chronicler of Golconda in in the first decades of the 17th century,
and in the following generation, Nizamuddin Ahmed Materazzi wrote his history in there as well.
So how can we explain the significant difference between master and the neighbours, a difference that persisted for almost a century?
At first blush, the answer sounds simple courtly military activity requires active courts and continuation of patronage.
The political weakness of this alternative Ahmednagar In the first half of the 17th century, it was possibly or probably a very important role.
But when we see other courts emerging and in particular Shivaji, we do not see patronage to courtly writing.
In Persian, we see other patronage and also the Nizam Chase Ultimate may have tried to do something,
and Malik Ambar definitely was very active in the first half of the century.
And still, we see no patronage.
This suggests that actually this relative weakness of Persian production was not only the result of weaker courtly circle,
but something about the nature of in practise of Persian in this period in the there.
And to understand this point, let us compare the Deccan with North India quickly.
From the 15th century, the position of Persian in the north began to change.
The language entered a new administrative and literary niches, and its impact penetrated deep into literary cultures.
Under Akbar, Persian became the sole language of the empire, and Muzaffar Allam suggests that this choice was made because of the nondenominational
character of Persian or its ability to present known religious ideas.
And we are returning here to items in definition from earlier.
Also, the rich literary legacy of Persia that promoted the ideas of justice and consume a kingship and its
position as a non a region specific language all really pushed it to two as an ideal in which of empire.
This attracted more and more people in five minutes.
OK? Well, we started five minutes later, so I right.
Yes, today's am I to condense things. OK. So the point is that the moment that the person became a language of empire,
it means that more people who are not part of the natural Persian speakers a entered the
production in this language and that included the historians Fossil and the up and down me,
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.
Now, just like North India Today, consulting its elite society was very heterogeneous.
Local Muslims or the colonies emerged as a politically unified group with strong affiliation with the region.
non-Muslims such as Brahmins and Morata's were integrated into state service to some degree.
But they definitely maintained spatial, social and linguistic identity.
A very strong in the locality. Transient communities, mostly of Iranian origin who called themselves foreigners or to be born in Belgium,
kept their mobility along trans regional networks while accepting positions in local courts for all groups.
Language served as an integral part of their identity that can mean was created by the country's administrative administration remain multilingual.
Unlike the Mughal case with Marathi Canada and Telugu in different parts of the Deccan.
Persian, of course, was an important courtly court, a courtly language as well as diplomatic and political cross linguistic influence.
And the impact continued and even intensified.
For example, Persian terminology in Marathi in administrative documents and Persian genre's tropes and modes of duck and in literature.
Yet Persian remained the language of a certain clique.
It never became a state language, and in that sense, it was not exclusive inclusive as in the case, but remained exclusive.
As a result, almost all Persian works written in the course of the Deccan were composed by members of the mobile elite.
I have a few examples for that which I can skip it.
We do know that in both before and Golconda,
almost all writers of Persian maids beat poetry or to recite history where Iranians
either migrants from Iran or associating themselves with networks of Iranians.
We do not have people identifying themselves as the country is writing in Persian, with very few exceptions.
For example, the poet was he who left also had given information.
As a result, the Persian historiography in the Deccan necessitated continuous links to the itinerant itinerant migrant or even networks of foreigners.
This marks a major shift or difference from Mughal historiography and its propagated.
The conditions to sustain this community in Maharashtra collapsed towards the end of the 16th century due to political instability under Mortaza,
and he's also the first accompanied by what the Maccabi terms general massacre of foreigners
leading exactly the migration of two Missouri furies and others to in a BJP work.
Interestingly, we see a similar case in BJP or in the last two decades before the Mughal conquest of sixty and eighty six
when the zero Ahmed argues that we find no Persian poet or scholar of repute end quote in this period.
Of course, Persian influence did not disappear from master.
Sufi sides of the day can be made centres of the production of texts, in particular genres.
Jyoti Balachandran recently demonstrated how it worked in Gujarat.
We know about continuation of production in in Bjorkgren Golconda and probably also in other sites like Holda.
But in Persia, it more implicitly we see other mechanisms in.
But let's say institutions terminology continuing to to be practised throughout the 17th century from the land reforms and taxation,
the practises under Malcolm Barr into the sixteen twenties and of course,
we know about all the continuation of those tropes and language into the reign of an even even today Murdoch empire to Shivaji,
as days when there was an attempt to read the language of Persian terminology,
which shows how much it needs and suggests that it shows how much Persian was important in this in.
And yet we see that the upper layer of disintegration,
the things so much related to the concept of the press of Russia were completely absent in the 17th century and the first half,
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,
with the lack of any internal Maharashtrian.
Perspective in Persian, of course, is in the works of Sumit Goyal.
Prachi Deshpande in the past have shown we have other sources from Maharashtra
to talk about historian to help us to to understand the history of the place.
But we have no tariff works from Maharashtra until the Mughal arrived and introduced
their own practise of surgeon writing in the last decades of the end of the century.
It raises, though, a very important question about the present Cosmopolis itself and how we understanding
the how we can use it to understand to analyse this kind of meetings of of cultural,
literary and graphical traditions. We have seen that more technical aspects persisted and throughout the period,
either in direct influence can be traced in places like Vijay Nagar is discussed, whether there, for example.
Yet the heart of the definition of the cosmopolitan is suggested by it and centres around concepts of moral and social order.
Language of prestige and literature. Or discourse of universal dominion.
And we cannot see any of this in Maharashtra at the time.
This important aspect of the Persian Cosmopolis was closely associated with this certain political city in the Mughal Empire.
It became part of what defines the Empire as such,
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.
We see that it's not always the case in the Deccan as a whole until the very late 20th century.
This is not a sign of rejection of Muslim rule together or this kind of antipathy towards a interaction with Muslim,
a religious philosophical concept, as we have heard in the earlier papers today.
And I have also shown elsewhere that even the Emiratis themselves kept and even promoted the memory of
their close association with the Nizam Shah rulers as part of defining their a political justification.
Yet this did not translate into association with the Persian, a Persian world.
The way that we see in North India, Persian persisted to be linked to trends, regional networks, not least that notwithstanding its impact,
it did not become a language of great communication or inclusion on the margins of the imperial world.
Then the integration and influence of the Cosmopolis seems to have been remained intermittent, precarious, incomplete in a way.
In the case of Maharashtra in the first half of the 17th century suggests that we should consider breaking
the category of Cosmopolis when coming to examine its actual working in a particular niche in it,
let's say in particular landscape, which is quite different from the imperial one so dominant in this historiography.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank.