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CAW Meeting: Vernacular Conquest? A Persian Patron and his image in the 17th-century Deccan

A presentation by Subah Dayal

Thursday, October 29, 2015
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Bunche Hall 11372



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This article examines a literary circuit of poets and chroniclers in the Deccan (south India) region that formed around an Iranian émigré, Mustafa Khan Lari (d. 1648), using a largely neglected versified history in Dakkani Urdu. An earlier generation of historians used Persian sources, as well as Dutch and Portuguese archives, to illustrate the role of Iranians as statesmen and merchants. However, I turn to Indo-Persian chronicles and a masnavi or narrative poem written in the courtly vernacular to understand Mustafa Khan's role as a literary patron, especially of history writing across two languages in the seventeenth century Deccan. This literary circle of poets and chroniclers along with their patron circulated between Safavid Iran, Mughal Hindustan, and the Deccan; they forged new allegiances and affinities during a period of conquest and chose to observe the world around them in new tongues. The activities of this literary circuit challenge the notion of an ossified political identity based on ethnicity or language in early modern South Asia. Further, the circuit shows how itinerant literati used the technique of ethnography to apprehend enemies and friends while moving with armies in a period of volatile and unpredictable conquest.