In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad.

Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.

About the Author

Muzaffar Alam is George V. Bobrinskoy Professor in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Jake Bensonis a Research Associate for Persian Collections at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, and also a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) completing his dissertation on early modern paper marbling.

Sheila Blair retired as the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and the Hamid bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, positions she shared with her husband and colleague, Jonathan Bloom.

Jonathan Bloomretired as the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and the Hamid bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, positions he shared with his wife and colleague, Sheila Blair.

Subah Dayal is Assistant Professor of Pre-Modern Indian Ocean Studies at New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Peyvand Firouzeh is lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Sydney.

Roy S. Fischel is a Lecturer (assistant professor) in the History of South Asia at SOAS University of London.

Hamidreza Ghelichkhani (PhD, University of Delhi) began practicing calligraphy in 1983, and in 1988, he received a certificate of high distinction from the Iran Calligraphers Association in nasta'liq and thuluth. He is a member of the Iran Academy of Arts, and also a scholar of Persian calligraphy.

Maryam Habibi is a curator at Astan-i Quds-i Razavi (Shrine of Imam Riza, Mashhad), where she focuses on manuscripts and calligraphy.

Arash Khazeni is Associate Professor of History at Pomona College.

Kimia Maleki (MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; BA, University of the Arts, Tehran) is interested in historiography, archiving, and curatorial practice, especially as it pertains to Iran.

Keelan Overton (PhD, UCLA) is an independent scholar and historian of Islamic art and architecture specializing in the eastern Islamic world from Iran to South Asia.

Rachel Parikhis the Assistant Curator of Asian Art at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. She specializes in South Asian and Islamic art.

Kristine Rose-Beers is the Head of Conservation at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.

Sunil Sharma is Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literatures at Boston University.

Sanjay Subrahmanyamis Distinguished Professor of History and Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Wheeler Thackston is a retired scholar of Persian whose works include translations of Babur's and Jahangir's memoirs and Abu'l-Fazl's Akbarnama.

Bruce Wannell was a graduate of Oriel College Oxford and an independent scholar, linguist, and traveler based in York. He lectured and traveled extensively, including leading cultural tours to the Middle East, Central Asia, and India.

Reviews

"Presents meticulously documented and painstaking analysis of materials that traveled between Iran and the Deccan. This kind of work has been done for the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire, but not yet for the Deccan and it will have a significant and lasting impact."-Deborah Hutton, author of Art of the Court of Bijapur

"Demonstrates the significance of the Deccan for the formation of Indo-Persian culture in a thoroughly interdisciplinary manner."-Ali Anooshahr, author of Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires

Book Information
ISBN 9780253048912
Author Keelan Overton
Format Paperback
Page Count 468
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press