[ERC] The Huns in Central and South Asia. How Two Centuries of War against Nomadic Invaders from the Steps are Concluded by a Game of Chess between the Kings of India and Iran

Last Hindu Empire of India- Gupta And Their Interactions with Kushan, Kidara, and Alchon Huns and Aftermath.

In the past, I have written about the eastern steppe nomads who invaded India and Iran based on available research materials. Since then, new Research, DNA studies, and archeological discoveries have provided new insights into the incomplete history of eastern steppe nomads. The main reason is the material is scarce and fragmentary. The nomads never wrote their history. New information will update some of the earlier findings. This short handbook prepared on “Huns” that ravaged India and Iran will amend my preliminary publications while incorporating new information that was missed.

So Close and Yet Often so Far Away: the History of India as Told by Historians in Iran around 1500

Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 2021

Khvandamir's general history Habib al-Siyar (Beloved of Careers), one of the major historiographical narratives of the Persianate world, was composed for the founder of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Shah Ismaʿil, in the 1520s. Some years later, the author ideologically reshaped his work at Babur's Timurid-Mughal court in Agra. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the book was widely copied across the Islamic lands and, judging by the number of extant manuscripts (c. 600), the Habib al-Siyar might be called a premodern bestseller. Interestingly, several chapters dealing with the history of India (Hindustan) were apparently added by the author later on and have not been included in the printed editions. Based on the examination of widely scattered manuscripts, this article examines the textual transmission of these chapters. Furthermore, it explores the question of how Khvandamir integrated information about India into the main narrative and which sources he relied on in order to situate the region within an overarching narrative of Islamic history. This approach gives further insights into the precise quality and quantity of knowledge about the Indian subcontinent available in Iran around 1500, as well as into copying processes of texts in premodern times.

Iranian Culture and South Asia, 1500-1900

Iran and the Surrounding Wolrd, eds. Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, 2002

This chapter treats the Persian cultural influences on India and interactions between India and Iran in the centuries from 1500 to 1900. It surveys the place of the Persian languag e in Indian government, chancery practice, and imperial decrees, and the manner in which state adoption of it created a very large class of Persian-speaking bureaucrats, scribes, translators, and other intellectuals in the subcontinent. It is argued that in theM ughal period perhaps seven times as many readers of Persian lived in India as in Iran. The chapter looks at Indo-Persian travel writing, works on comparative religion, and the impact of religious groups with strong ties to Persian-speaking Iran, whether Twelver Shi 'is or the much smaller Isma ' iii and Zoroastrian communities. It pays special attention to the Shi 'i-ruled kingdoms that were , common in India in the early modern period.

The Ghūrid Empire: Warfare, Kingship, and Political Legitimacy in Eastern Iran and Northern India

2013

The Shansabānid dynasty of Ghūr (ca. 545–612/1150–1216) emerged from the mountains of Afghanistan to become a world power stretching from the Oxus River in Central Asia to the Ganges delta in Bengal. This study seeks to answer a central question in the Ghūrid expansion: How did the Ghūrid sultans seek to legitimate their rule and thus mobilize military support in the creation of their empire? It is commonly assumed that the ideology of ghazā played a central role in this process, but this thesis has not yet been systematically analyzed. The Ghūrids’ claims about their actions are reconstructed through an analysis of epigraphy, numismatics, historical chronicles, and other literary works. A special emphasis is placed on those works produced under Ghūrid patronage or by authors living under Ghūrid rule. The analysis suggests that the promotion of ghazā was a late development incidental to the ongoing wars of conquest. On the contrary, situated within the highly fractured religious and political milieu of the eastern Iranian world and becoming in time rulers of all of northern India, the Ghūrids required multiple strategies of political legitimation that varied in time and place: besides the image of the Muslim warrior-king, the Ghūrid rulers also projected themselves and appeared to their followers as Ghūrī chieftains, as traditional Perso-Arabic Islamic rulers, and as Indian rājas. This thesis contributes both to the debate over the meaning and importance of ghazā in Islamic history and to a growing body of recent research on the Ghūrids which is enriching our knowledge of the various forms of political legitimacy in the medieval Muslim world.