Author: Richard M Eaton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 275
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195651146
Description
A result of twenty-five years of research and writing, this work dwells on historiography and
Indo-Islamic civilization, and explores the place of Islam in world history..
Spanning some twenty-five years of research and writing, the essays in this volume broadly fall into two categories – historiography and Indo-Islamic civilization. The first three essays explore the place of Islam in world history, religious conversion as a world historical theme, and Calicut in world historical theme, and Calicut in world history. The fourth essay, following current concerns with the political status of religious monuments, examines the history and historiography of temple desecration in pre-colonial India. The fifth essay traces the evolution of India’s Subaltern Studies movements as it encountered post-modernism and ‘cultural studies’ in the 1980s and ‘90s, suggesting why this is relevant to India’s pre-colonial history.
The remaining essays are case studies that investigate how, between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, Islamic culture took root and flourished in three South Asian regions – the Deccan, Punjab and Bengal. Historically, the long encounter between Islamic and Indic civilizations stirred remarkably creative energies among peoples of the subcontinent, producing once of the most vital centers of Islamic culture in the world. How did this happen? And why did the number of Muslims come to dominate in some parts of South Asia but not in others? These essays propose answers to these important questions.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
SECTION I: HISTORIOGRAPHY
1. Islamic History as World History
2. Comparative History as World History: Religious Conversion in Modern India
3. Multiple Lenses: Differing Perspectives of Fifteenth Century Calicut
4. Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States
5. (Re)imag (ing) Other2ness: A Postmortem for the Postmodern in India
SECTION 2; THE DECCAN
6. The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan
7. Historical Introduction to Firuzabad, Palace City of the Deccan
8. Sufi Folk Literature and the Expansion of Indian Islam
SECTION 3: PUNJAB
9. The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid
10. Court of Man, Court of God: Local Perceptions of the Shrine of Baba Farid,
Pakpattan, Punjab
SECTION 4: BENGAL
11. Who are the Bengal Muslims? Conversion and Islamization in Bengal