Education
Aligarh Muslim University. Jamia Millia Islamia. Jawaharlal Nehru University.
(The collapse of the Mughal empire has often been characte...)
The collapse of the Mughal empire has often been characterized as a period of political fragmentation, social unrest, and economic decay. Contrasting two regions in north India--Awadh and the Punjab--Muzaffar Alam contends that even as the empire declined, there emerged a new, regionally-based political order, maintained and controlled by former Mughal rulers. From agrarian uprisings to the jagiardari system, the Sikhs to the Zamindars, this book presents a bold new interpretation of an important transition in Indian government.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195630009/?tag=2022091-20
(A study of Persian travel accounts, dealing with India, I...)
A study of Persian travel accounts, dealing with India, Iran and Central Asia between 1400 and 1800.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FDVW4AK/?tag=2022091-20
(The Mughal state has, since the time of its existence, ex...)
The Mughal state has, since the time of its existence, exercised a compelling effect on observers. A rich historiography in Indian and European languages has long existed, and in the present century debates have raged concerning its character, and the implications for the longer-term trajectory of the subcontinent. This book brings together some of the key interventions in that debate, while its detailed introduction surveys the main positions, and outlines possibilities for future research. It is the outcome of the collaboration of two scholars, one a leading specialist on Mughal studies, the other a social and economic historian of the early modern Indian Ocean world and southern India.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195652258/?tag=2022091-20
(Originally published in 2007, this fascinating work is ba...)
Originally published in 2007, this fascinating work is based on detailed and sensitive readings of travel accounts in Persian, dealing with India, Iran and Central Asia between around 1400 and 1800. The first comprehensive treatment of this neglected genre of literature (safar nama), it links the Mughals, Safavids and Central Asia in a crucial period of transformation and cultural contact. The authors' close reading of these travel accounts help us enter the mental and moral worlds of the Muslim and non-Muslim literati who produced these valuable narratives. These accounts are presented in a comparative framework, which sets them side by side with other Asian accounts, as well as early modern European travel narratives, and opens up a rich and unsuspected vista of cultural and material history. This book can be read for a better understanding of the nature of early modern encounters, but also for the sheer pleasure of entering a new world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521129559/?tag=2022091-20
(Language: English Pages: 260 About the Book This book s...)
Language: English Pages: 260 About the Book This book shows the ways in which political Islam, from its establishment in medieval north India, adapted itself to a variety of Indian contexts and became deeply Indianized. Pre-existent Arabo-Persian traditions were moulded to new Indian contexts, involving changes in the manner in which Islamic rule was conceived and conducted in the subcontinent. Muslim sultans (and later the Mughals) and medieval writers on Islamic morality, theology, and political doctrine, created major shifts in Islam's conceptual and institutional vocabulary. In this process of acculturation, political Islam in India was forced to reinvent itself as a doctrine of rule. A second change was the shift in the meanings of key Islamic terms, especially those pertaining to statehood, and relations between rulers and subject populations. Through close readings, Muzaffar Alam shows that the vocabularies in use went through changes so fundamental that the language of Indian Islam became quite different from what was in vogue in contexts outside. With its profound deployment of primary and secondary sources, this book provides major insights into the changing nature of political Islam in India. About the Author Muzaffar Alam is Professor in the departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and History, at the University of Chicago. Preface This book has germinated out of the S.G. Deuskar Memorial Lectures which I delivered at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, 111 December 1996. When invited by the Centre's Director, Professor Amiya Bagchi, to deliver those lectures, I was engaged in research concerning the nature of a putative 'composite culture' in medi
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005VDN4I6/?tag=2022091-20
(The period following the death of Aurangzeb has been view...)
The period following the death of Aurangzeb has been viewed as the beginning of the decline and decay of the Mughal empire. Examining two contrasting regions of north India-Awadh and Punjab-this pioneering work shows how the period 1707-48 saw the emergence of a new order with local and regional idioms. Muzaffar Alam focuses on the interplay of imperial collapse with regional restructuring. He contends that even as the empire declined, there emerged a new, regionally-based political order, maintained and controlled by former Mughal rulers. From agrarian uprisings to the jagirdari system, the Sikhs to the Zamindars, this book presents a bold new interpretation of an important transition in this period. This edition comes with a new introduction. This book is an important reading for students, scholars, and teachers of Mughal history and early modern India.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198077416/?tag=2022091-20
(This book offers a much-needed alternative perspective (c...)
This book offers a much-needed alternative perspective (coming from Persian sources) on European constructions of India. It throws significant light on Indo-Persian culture and on the complex interaction between Europeans and Indians in the eighteenth century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195691873/?tag=2022091-20
(This book shows the ways in which political Islam, from i...)
This book shows the ways in which political Islam, from its establishment in medieval north India, adapted itself to a variety of Indian contexts and became deeply Indianized. This process, by which pre-existent Arabo-Persian traditions were moulded to new Indian contexts, involved changes in the manner in which Islamic rule was conceived and conducted in the subcontinent. It became gradually apparent to the conquering Muslim sultans (and later to their successors, the Mughals), as well as to medieval thinkers and writers of treatises on Islamic morality, theology and political doctrine, that the conduct of Islamic statecraft in a country comprising mostly Hindus entailed shifts in Islam’s conceptual and institutional vocabulary. Islamic rulers could not command a vast country without accepting certain cultural limitations to the exercise of their power. In this process of acculturation, political Islam in India was forced to reinvent itself as a doctrine of rule. From this stemmed a second change: a shift in the meanings of key Islamic terms, especially those pertaining to statehood, and relations between rulers and subject populations. Through a close reading of a variety of texts—ranging from normative treatises and Sufi biographies to Persian court poetry—Muzaffar Alam shows that the vocabularies in use went through certain changes so fundamental that the language of Indian Islam became quite different from what was in vogue in contexts outside. With its profound deployment of primary and secondary sources to study Indo-Muslim statecraft vis-à-vis Islamic theocratic languages over an eight-hundred-year stretch, this book provides major insights into the changing nature of political Islam in India. It will interest scholars of the Islamic world, as well as all serious readers of Indian history and comparative politics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BPW3NHY/?tag=2022091-20
Aligarh Muslim University. Jamia Millia Islamia. Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Muzaffar Alam is a historian trained at Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi), Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), where he obtained his doctorate in history in 1977. Before joining the SALC at the University of Chicago in 2001, he taught at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has held visiting positions in the Collège de France (Paris), Leiden University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris).
(Language: English Pages: 260 About the Book This book s...)
(Originally published in 2007, this fascinating work is ba...)
(This book shows the ways in which political Islam, from i...)
(The collapse of the Mughal empire has often been characte...)
(The period following the death of Aurangzeb has been view...)
(This book offers a much-needed alternative perspective (c...)
(A study of Persian travel accounts, dealing with India, I...)
(The Mughal state has, since the time of its existence, ex...)