A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761

Eaton, Richard M.

doi:10.1017/chol9780521254847

Cited by 136 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…60 Richard Eaton's short study of 'Ambar remains one of the most useful in recent times, and carefully sifts plausible versions of his history from less plausible ones. 61 It would seem that 'Ambar was born with the name of "Chapu" in the Horn of Africa around 1548, then sold in the slave-market of Mokha, before being owned for a time in Baghdad by a certain Khwaja Mir Qasim. From Iraq, he was then sold to an important Ahmadnagar amir Khwaja Mirak Dabir, titled Chingiz Khan, who was wakil and peshwa of the kingdom in the early 1570s.…”

Section: T H E R I S E O F T H E M a L I K Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Eastern Africa and Western India, 1500–1650: Slavery, Commerce, and Elite Formation

Subrahmanyam¹

2019

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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This essay examines relations between eastern Africa and western India in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in respect to two related sets of problems: the changing regimes of commercial circulation, and more particularly the evolution of patterns of human movement, notably via the slave trade from Ethiopia and the Swahili coast to Gujarat and the Deccan. It argues that over the course of the sixteenth century, commercial relations between Deccan ports such as Goa and Chaul, and the Swahili coast, came to be strengthened through the intervention of the Portuguese and their military-commercial system. At the same time, large numbers of African slaves reached the Muslim states in India, especially in the period after 1530, where they played a significant role as military specialists, and eventually as elite political and cultural actors. The shifting geographical dimensions of the African presence in India are emphasized, beginning in western Gujarat and winding up in the Deccan Sultanates. This contrasts markedly with the African experience elsewhere, where the meaning and institutional context of slavery were quite different.

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Section: T H E R I S E O F T H E M a L I K Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Eastern Africa and Western India, 1500–1650: Slavery, Commerce, and Elite Formation

Subrahmanyam¹

2019

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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“…Meanwhile, the peninsular Bahmani Sultanate voluntarily submitted to the non-contiguous Eurasian empire of Timur after 1398 due to their common rivalry with Delhi (Balabanlilar, 2012: 40). Many Deccani polities also recruited East African Abyssinian “slaves” from across the Indian Ocean as soldier-administrators, who rose to positions of politico-military power (Eaton, 2005: 105–128). Even the Hindu-led polities like the Vijayanagara Empire (1336–1646) consciously participated in the Islamicate system through symbols, the emulation of fiscal-administrative structures, and the recruiting of Muslim-Turkic soldiers (Asher and Talbot, 2006: 53–83).…”

Section: South Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Mughal hegemony and the emergence of South Asia as a “region” for regional order-building

Pardesi

2018

European Journal of International Relations

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The region known as South Asia today emerged as the locus for order-building only in the early modern period (~1500–1750) as a “region” of Islamicate Asia. I demonstrate this through a cognitive-strategic process based on the interactions between polities and resources within and outside of South Asia. While the practices associated with the primary institutions of warfare, great power management, diplomacy, and political economy did not meaningfully differentiate South Asia from Eurasia in the pre-Mughal millennium, the deep rules associated with them marked South Asia off from Islamicate Asia after the rise of the Mughals. The practices of these four primary institutions were co-constituted with Mughal hegemony. Unlike recent scholarship, I show that the regional level existed before the emergence of a global-scale international system. My analysis has two major theoretical implications. First, I clarify the distinction between hegemonic and imperial orders, and argue that coercive hegemony must be understood as a primary institution of an international/regional society. Since all hegemonies are not alike, I explain why some hegemonic orders are based on coercion while others mix coercion with legitimacy/acquiescence by elucidating the structural differences between Mughal and Ming/Qing hegemonies. Second, I advance the debate on balance of power versus hegemony by providing a historically grounded explanation that demonstrates why the injection of extra-regional resources into early modern South Asia produced hegemony while fostering systemic balancing behavior in Europe (post-1500). My findings raise questions related to regionalization (order-building) without regionalism (shared identities/threat perceptions), while showing that region (trans)formation effects order.

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“…"Indian style [of Persian writing]"), 66 this work was concerned with demonstrating the usage of complex figures of speech, as it displayed several times in a single hypothetical document, and it is unlikely that it served as a functional formulary. 67 Working almost a century later, Mahmud Gawan (1411-1481), the Persian courtier of the Bahmani sultans of Bidar in north Karnataka, 68 compiled his own munshat, the Riyaz al-insha, which has been accorded greater recognition than Khusrau's work as marking the beginning of the munshat form of writing in India. Despite Gawan's role as the chief minister (wakil-i sultanat) of the Bahmanis, Riyaz al-insha included no legal forms.…”

Section: J U R I S P R U D E N C E O R B E L L E S -L E T T R E S ? Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires: The Uses of an Indo-Islamic Legal Form

Chatterjee

2016

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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This paper looks at a Persian-language documentary form called the mahzar-nama that was widely used in India between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to narrate, represent, and record antecedents, entitlements, and injuries with a view to securing legal rights and redressing legal wrongs. Mahzars were a known documentary form in Islamic law and used by qazis (Islamic judges) in many other parts of the world, but in India they took a number of distinctive forms. The specific form of Indian mahzar-namas that I focus on here was, broadly speaking, a legal document of testimony, narrated in the first person, in a form standardized by predominantly non-Muslim scribes, endorsed in writing by the author's fellow community members and/or professional or social contacts, and notarized by a qazi's seal. This specific legal form was part of a much broader genre of declarative texts that were also known as mahzars in India. I examine the legal mahzar-namas together with the other kinds of mahzars, and situate them in relation to Indo-Islamic jurisprudential texts and Persian-language formularies. What emerges is a distinctive Indo-Islamic legal culture in contact with the wider Islamic and Persianate worlds of jurisprudence and documentary culture, but responsive to the unique socio-political formations of early modern India. I also reflect on the meanings of law, including Islamic law, for South Asians and trace the evolution of that understanding across the historical transition to colonialism.

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A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761

Cited by 136 publications

References 18 publications

Between Eastern Africa and Western India, 1500–1650: Slavery, Commerce, and Elite Formation

Between Eastern Africa and Western India, 1500–1650: Slavery, Commerce, and Elite Formation

Mughal hegemony and the emergence of South Asia as a “region” for regional order-building

Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires: The Uses of an Indo-Islamic Legal Form

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