India and the Islamic heartlands: an eighteenth-century world of circulation and exchange

Author
Sood, Gagan D. S.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2016
Language
English
Call Number
DS35.74.I56 S66 2016
ISBN
9781107121270
Reference Only
Off
Number of Pages
338
Library of Congress Subject Heading
India -- Relations -- Islamic countries
Library of Congress Subject Heading 2
Intercultural communication -- India -- History -- 18th century
Abstract

Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. Gagan D. S. Sood focuses on ordinary people - traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, and scribes, among others - who were engaged in activities marked by large distances and long silences. By elucidating their everyday lives in a range of settings, from the family household to the polity at large, Sood pieces together the connective tissue of a world that lay beyond the sovereign purview. Recapturing this obscured and neglected world helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism.