Empire, Sultanate, and the Boundaries of the Persianate World in South Asia

with Roy Fischel

This is an in-person only event, which will take place at the British Academy. Registrations for the event are currently closed: people booked on the lecture by Prof Frankopan have been contacted to confirm their attendance. Should there be available places, these will be open for booking early next week. 

For more than half a millennium, the Persianate world developed a shared cosmopolitan realm of culture, aesthetics, and political language, expressed in a literary canon that relied on Iranian pre-Islamic stories and Islamic teachings. This lecture explores the ways in which transregional Persianate tropes and identities travelled to India. Focusing on the rich heritage of Persianate courts in the subcontinent, it will consider the complex relations between various cultural systems and demonstrate the often-conflicted nature of the interaction between the Persianate and the immensely diverse Indian environment.

About the speaker:

Roy S. Fischel is a Senior Lecturer in the History of South Asia at SOAS University of London. His work focuses on state formation, society, ideology, and identity in early modern South Asia and the Muslim world.