A Persian sufi in British India: The travels of Mirza Hasan'Ali Shah (1251/1835-1316/1899) (original) (raw)

The rise of Ni‘matullāhī Shi‘ite Sufism in early nineteenth-century Qājār Persia : Ḥusayn ‘Alī Shāh, Majdhūb ‘Alī Shāh, Mast ‘Alī Shāh and their battle with Islamic fundamentalism

The Iranian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship on various aspects of Iranian civilisation, covering both contemporary and classical cultures of the Persian cultural area. The contemporary Persian-speaking area includes Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia, while classical societies using Persian as a literary and cultural language were located in Anatolia, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. The objective of the series is to foster studies of the literary, historical, religious and linguistic products in Iranian languages. In addition to research monographs and reference works, the series publishes English-Persian critical text-editions of important texts. The series intends to publish resources and original research and make them accessible to a wide audience.

Nationalizing the religion: Sufism in the ‘Persianate World’

Asian Ethnicity, 2024

This article interrogates the sweeping notion of ‘Persianate Sufism’ and its intersection with language, religion, and ethnicity in the context of Iran. It begins by tracing the origin of the Persianate World, a term first coined by Marshall Hodgson, and demonstrates how Iranian scholars and historians have exploited this concept to forge a Persian-centric reading of religious texts across Iran and beyond. We argue that the Persianate World echoes a Eurocentric and Orientalist model of knowledge that produces a skewed and exoticized representation of non-Persian histories and memories, thus overlooking their distinctive cultural presence, heritages, and contributions. Our research underlines Sufism as a vibrant and diverse spiritual tradition that transcends linguistic and cultural boundaries, embodying a rich array of dynamic expressions. Finally, our study invites a critical revision of the broad generalizations and cultural domination that the concept of the Persianate World entails.

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.