A TRANSREGIONAL PERSIANATE LIBRARY: THE PRODUCTION AND CIRCULATION OFTADHKIRAS OF PERSIAN POETS IN THE 18^THAND 19^THCENTURIES

Abstract

The tadhkira (biographical anthology) represents one of the most prolific and prevalent categories of texts produced in Islamicate societies, yet few studies have sought to understand the larger processes that governed their production and circulation on a transregional basis. This article examines and maps the production, circulation, and citation networks of tadhkiras of Persian poets in the 18th and 19th centuries. It understands tadhkiras of Persian poets as a transregional library that served as a repository of accessible and circulating texts meant to be incorporated, reworked, and repackaged by a cadre of authors separated by space and time. By relying on a macroanalytical approach, quantifiable data, and digital mapping, this article highlights the overall construction of the transregional library itself, the impact of state disintegration and formation on its constitution, and the different ways authors on opposite ends of the Persianate world came to view this library by the end of the 19th century.

A way with words: Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–1890) and the unexpected power of print

“…During the 1870s and 1880s a full half-dozen Persian tazkiras were published from Bhopal, outdoing Qajar Iran at the time and making Bhopal the last major centre to produce such texts in South Asia. 48 Siddiq Hasan's Sham`-i Anjuman (1875) was ambitious, a tribute in part to his success in assembling a team of scholars, including his sons, to make such work possible. It covered poets throughout history and across periods, and its alphabetical arrangement made it democratic, nestling a contemporary unknown poet from a small country town in Awadh alongside a great classical poet like Sa`di or Hafiz.…”