In this book, I present and analyse a hitherto overlooked group of histories on Indo-Persian political events, namely, a few dozen Sanskrit...
In this book, I present and analyse a hitherto overlooked group of histories on Indo-Persian political events, namely, a few dozen Sanskrit texts that date from the 1190s until 1721. As soon as Muslim political figures established themselves in northern India in the 1190s – when the Ghurids overthrew the Chauhans and ruled part of northern India from Delhi – Indian intellectuals wrote about this political development in Sanskrit. Indian men (and at least one woman) produced dozens of Sanskrit texts on Indo- Persian political events.
These works span Delhi Sultanate and Mughal rule, including works that deal with Deccan sultanates and Muslim-led polities in the subcontinent’s deep south. India’s premodern learned elite only ceased to write on Indo-Muslim powers in Sanskrit when the Mughal Empire began to fracture beyond repair in the early eighteenth century.
In other words, Sanskrit writers produced histories of Indo-Muslim rule – meaning political power wielded over parts of the Indian subcontinent by people who happened to be Muslim – throughout nearly the entire time span of that political experience. This book seeks, for the first time, to collect, analyse and theorise Sanskrit histories of Muslim-led rule and, later, as Muslims became an integral part of the...
