Conference
A conference will be held on the historical and cultural connections between Iran, India and Central Asia, at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on15-17 December 2014, under the auspices of the programme “Empire and Authority” that makes up one of the three research themes currently sponsored by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS). It is organised in collaboration with the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies and the Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies at the University of Cambridge. The conference has several interlocking aims, with the overall purpose of stimulating research in an area that is unduly neglected in the UK and in doing so, to bring together scholars working in different fields that are usually studied in isolation.
The remarkable richness of Persian culture and its spread well beyond the current boundaries of Iran – into Anatolia, the Caucasus, Transoxania and India – is commonly acknowledged. That the courts of a succession of rulers of essentially Turkic origin, across a vast region of southwest Asia, corresponded in Persian, patronised Persian poets and artists, and adhered to concepts of sovereignty that largely conformed to Perso-Islamic models of kingship needs no particular emphasis; the evidence for it is as widespread as the phenomenon itself. The very scale of the interactions between these polities, however, and their cultural coherence, has made efforts to view them as a whole rather infrequent. Furthermore, while comparisons between the three ‘great’ Muslim empires of the ‘gunpowder’ age – the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals – are relatively commonplace, comparisons and connections across the triangular and very ancient contact zone between the Iranian plateau, Transoxania and India are scattered and often relate to broad or indeterminate topics or periods.
One aim of the conference is therefore to bridge these gaps and bring together scholars working on different aspects of Persian, Indian and Central Asian history at a particular time. While some subjects, such as Indian miniature illustrations of Persian texts, have continually attracted attention, many areas of contact between these regions remain to be explored in more detail. The programme aims particularly to stimulate research on some of the concepts of authority expressed at the time: not only royal authority but also the – sometimes competing – religious authority of sufi shaikhs and the ‘ulama. Rather than the political history of the period, it will explore the reflection of imperial structures and a self-consciously imperial mindset in historiography, court poetry and the arts of the book, that is, often the product of patronage – but also, in the sufi context, the hagiographical literature surrounding individual saints or shrine centres. Underlying all these strands is the phenomenon of movement and physical interaction across the region, with the passage of armies and embassies, bureaucrats and scholars, merchants, pilgrims and seekers of learning.
The programme consists of 22 presentations, spread over two and a half days. The following speakers and titles are confirmed: you can read their abstracts and biographies below. Alternatively, you can download these direct from the following links: abstracts and biographies. For further information, please contact Charles Melville (cpm1000@cam.ac.uk)