« Shared Affinities: ḥoseynīyes and emāmbāres », in : Michele Bernardini, Masashi Haneda and Maria Szuppe, eds., Eurasian Studies [Liber Amicorum : Études sur l’Iran médiéval et moderne offertes à Jean Calmard]. Vol. V/1-2, 2006, pp. 69-78.

This short article examines how popular Shi‘ite piety was practised in specific edifices and buildings in pre-modern Iran and India. Ḥusayn’s martyrdom at Karbalā in 680 has undoubtedly dominated popular Shi‘ite piety, and not surprisingly there has been an emergence of scripted and staged commemorations of this event in majority-Shi‘ite communities. In the Iranian context, Chelkowski focuses on the development of the “super dome” ‘Takiye-ye Dowlat’ built by Naṣīr al-Dīn Šāh in late 19th cent..

« Note sur l’iconographie shiite populaire », in : Michele Bernardini, Masashi Haneda and Maria Szuppe, eds., Eurasian Studies [Liber Amicorum : Études sur l’Iran médiéval et moderne offertes à Jean Calmard]. Vol. V/1-2, 2006, pp. 371-376.

In this short article, Vesel explores manifestations of popular Shi’ite belief through the phenomenon of bāzū band; these bāzū bands are armlets which profile a talismanic hand and are often worn by Shi’ites seeking favour from the Imams. One of the most recognizable icons of popular Shi’ism, the disembodied hand represents the narrative of Abū al-Faḍl al-‘Abbās, half-brother to Ḥusayn, who lost his arms and hands at Karbalā in 680 after trying to deliver water to the beleaguered Shi’ite camp..

« Further Thoughts on an Enigma: The Tortuous Life of Nicolò Manucci, 1638-c. 1720 ». The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2008, p. 35-76.

The four-volume travel account (Storia del Mogor) of Nicolò Manucci has long been considered a primary source of critical importance in 17th-century Mughal studies. Employed initially under the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh and other nobility, and then later interacting with the Portuguese and the English, the Venetian Manucci is profiled in this article by Sanjay Subrahmanyam as one of those rare, cultural “go-betweens”, or passeurs culturels, who are situated in the liminal spaces of early mode..

« The Vezir and the Mulla: A Late Safavid Period Debate on Friday Prayer », in : Michele Bernardini, Masashi Haneda and Maria Szuppe, eds., Eurasian Studies [Liber Amicorum. Études sur l’Iran médiéval et moderne offertes à Jean Calmard]. Vol. V/1-2, 2006, pp. 237-269.

This article contextualizes the debate among the Usuli and Akhbari schools of law regarding the validity of congregational prayer-leading in the Twelver Shi’ite community in the late Safavid era. Newman begins with the foundational Usuli arguments of ‘Alī al-Karakī (d. 1534) and his relatively controversial position that prayer was wujūb taḫyirī (obligatory) and that learned faqīhs could be appointed to lead congregational prayer sessions. Newman provides a systematic overview of the 16th and..

Richard Eaton. Shrines, Cultivators, and Muslim ‘Conversion’ in Punjab and Bengal, 1300-1700

This historiographical analysis of conversion in northern India suggests a much more nuanced approach to the introduction and adoption of Muslim culture during the 10th-16th centuries. Eaton challenges several established paradigms about how and why southern Asians adopted “Islam”. Following a long discussion about why we should reconsider our understanding of “conversions” on the southern Asian frontier, Eaton examines two zones with respect to Indo-Islamic interactions and conversion practi..

« À propos du vaṭan timuride », in : Michele Bernardini, Masashi Haneda and Maria Szuppe, eds., Eurasian Studies [Liber Amicorum : Études sur l’Iran médiéval et moderne offertes à Jean Calmard]. Vol. V/1-2, 2006, pp. 55-67.

Michele Bernardini provides here an insightful analysis of how Timurid historical sources present the emergence of Timur in the Ulus-i Chaghata’i in the 1360s, and the degree to which we can responsibly identify a Timurid “homeland” (vaṭan). The impetus for this inquiry is Bernardini’s ongoing work with the late 15th century epic poem Timūr-nāma by ‘Abd Allāh Hātifī and his discovery that Hātifī uses the term vaṭan on more than one occasion while narrating Timur’s rise to power under Tughluq ..

« Between Arabs, Turks and Iranians: The Town of Basra, 1600-1700 ». Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 69/1, 2006, pp. 53-78.

As the Persian Gulf became increasingly important in 17th century global trade dynamics, the city of Basra assumed a comparable geopolitical significance as an entrepôt linking the Persian Gulf with the Tigris-Euphrates river complex, the Hijaz, and the southern reaches of the Iranian Plateau. Moreover, this region was host to a number of local elite constituencies who vacillated between the two dominant, centralizing empires of west Asia: the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Rudi Matthee’s state..

Visions of Mughal India: An Anthology of European Travel Writing. London, I.B. Tauris, 2007, 256 p.

ed. Our understanding of Mughal India is to no small degree bolstered by a significant number of European travel accounts produced in the 16th-18th centuries. While we depend on court chronicles and religio-philosophical treatises to better understand the ‘elite’ narrative of Mughal India, the day-to-day, quotidian details of life in early modern South Asia are largely absent in such ‘indigenous’ documents. For this reason, historians of social, gender, urban and economic history are often dr..

Vahid Behmardi. Rhetorical Values in Buyid Persia According to Badi’ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani

Vaḥīd Behmardī examines herein the degree to which Iranian litterateurs influenced and shaped the nature of Arabic prose during the Buyid period. Focusing principally on the Maqāmat of Badī‘ al-Zamān al-Hamadānī, but also drawing on other Iranian authors writing in Arabic, Behmardī argues that rhetoric and epistolography made a florid use of literary techniques during the Buyid period. He makes the case that Iranian prose authors were attracted by the literary potential of the rhetorical scie..

« Les alentours du Palais du Gouvernement safavide à Qazvin dans les poèmes de ‘Abdī Beg Navīdī », in : Michele Bernardini, Masashi Haneda and Maria Szuppe, eds., Eurasian Studies [Liber Amicorum : Études sur l’Iran médiéval et moderne offertes à Jean Calmard]. Vol. V/1-2, 2006, pp. 79-92.

Intent on distancing the Safavid state from its Azarbaijani Turco-Mongol roots, Šāh Ṭahmāsp embarked on the sizeable project of landscaping and developing a new imperial capital at Qazvīn in the late 1540s. Relatively little information can be found in the normative Safavid chronicles about this urban program, and recently scholars have begun looking to more literary material in an effort to reconstruct the spatial arrangements in this new imperial milieu. Specifically, the poetic work of ‘Ab..