Manan Ahmed Asif
Biographic Data
| ID | 3768252 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Manan Ahmed Asif |
| GIVEN NAMES | Manan Ahmed |
| FAMILY NAME | Asif |
| SIGNATURE | ASIF M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4973-8711 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Decolonization Now
Post–World War II ushered in an era of rapid decolonization across the Global South; a period about which Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah exultantly wrote that European direct rule was “everywhere in retreat.” Still, those anticolonial victories were experienced unevenly across the decolonizing world, often undone by new forms of neocolonial exploitation, rising authoritarianism, and counterinsurgent violence. For many peoples, especially in…
R ichard M. E aton . India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765
On November 16, 1842, Edward Law Ellenborough, the Governor-General of British colonies in India, issued a proclamation concerning the British Army’s carrying back from Ghazna, Afghanistan, the gates to the tomb of Sultan Mahmud (d. 1030). The gates, Ellenborough imagined, initially belonged to the Temple of Somnath (located in Gujarat) and Mahmud had “despoiled” the temple and carried off the gates to Kabul in 1020. “The insult of 800 years is a…
Reading Across Firishta and Chimalpahin
In this essay, I reflect on the position of a postcolonized historian traversing space and time, thinking and linking to histories of European arrivals to Mexico and India. The essay is concerned with early seventeenth-century histories by Chimalpahin and Firishta, who documented their worlds before and after the arrival of Europeans. I argue for a transregional decolonial approach to thinking about historical violence and the formation of discip…
Christian Lee Novetzke. The Quotidian Revolution
Christian Lee Novetzke’s task in The Quotidian Revolution is to explain two intertwined aspects of the medieval western Indian past: first, how did Marathi rise as a language of expression—public, sacral, and political—and, second, how did the concerns of everyday life, and of the common person, permeate the literary and religious imagination? This emergence of a new language of everyday sacrality and everyday politics in the thirteenth century, …
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspectives. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspective. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study, and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
A Book of Conquest
How did Islam come to India? Why is this question of such great significance to formations of political thought in South Asia? This book examines the longue dureé history...from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first...of a particular text, Chachnama, written in Uch Sharif. The Book of Chach (Chachnama) was written in 1226 CE and provided an account, in Persian, of the 712 CE conquest of Sind by the armies of Muhammad bin Qasim. This ea…
Idols in the Archive
Is a circumcision, for example, an exterior mark? Is it an archive?Let me begin at the beginning.My left eyebrow has a scar. It is jagged, and usually the droop of the eyebrow hides it from view. I see it sometimes when I look in the mirror. When I see it, I am reminded instantly of my father. He was sitting, reading a newspaper, on the lawn of our Lahore house. It was near to 6:00 p.m.-late evening to dusk. I had recently conquered the art of bi…
A Demon with Ruby Eyes
This essay takes a longitudinal look at how different communities dealt with political and theological difference in the same space. It examines accounts of Uch Sharif, in contemporary Pakistan, from the thirteenth century to the present. It specifically traces a motif of ‘ruby eyes’ in Arabic and Persian historiography in an effort to delineate how difference was represented and assimilated. It argues that until the late colonial period, religio…
The long thirteenth century of the Chachnama
The multi-genre Persian text Chachnama, written in Uch in 1226, represents a unique formulation of a possible future for a Muslim polity at the frontier and under immense duress. In its explicit linkage of a Muslim with a local pre-Islamic past within the site and milieu of its production, the Chachnama presents the beginnings of a new political theology. Long understood as a translation of an earlier text, it is instead a specifically imagined t…
A Book of Conquest
How did Islam come to India? Why is this question of such great significance to formations of political thought in South Asia? This book examines the longue dureé history...from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first...of a particular text, Chachnama, written in Uch Sharif. The Book of Chach (Chachnama) was written in 1226 CE and provided an account, in Persian, of the 712 CE conquest of Sind by the armies of Muhammad bin Qasim. This ea…
The long thirteenth century of the Chachnama
The multi-genre Persian text Chachnama, written in Uch in 1226, represents a unique formulation of a possible future for a Muslim polity at the frontier and under immense duress. In its explicit linkage of a Muslim with a local pre-Islamic past within the site and milieu of its production, the Chachnama presents the beginnings of a new political theology. Long understood as a translation of an earlier text, it is instead a specifically imagined t…
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspectives. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspective. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study, and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
Idols in the Archive
Is a circumcision, for example, an exterior mark? Is it an archive?Let me begin at the beginning.My left eyebrow has a scar. It is jagged, and usually the droop of the eyebrow hides it from view. I see it sometimes when I look in the mirror. When I see it, I am reminded instantly of my father. He was sitting, reading a newspaper, on the lawn of our Lahore house. It was near to 6:00 p.m.-late evening to dusk. I had recently conquered the art of bi…
A Demon with Ruby Eyes
This essay takes a longitudinal look at how different communities dealt with political and theological difference in the same space. It examines accounts of Uch Sharif, in contemporary Pakistan, from the thirteenth century to the present. It specifically traces a motif of ‘ruby eyes’ in Arabic and Persian historiography in an effort to delineate how difference was represented and assimilated. It argues that until the late colonial period, religio…
The long thirteenth century of the Chachnama
The multi-genre Persian text Chachnama, written in Uch in 1226, represents a unique formulation of a possible future for a Muslim polity at the frontier and under immense duress. In its explicit linkage of a Muslim with a local pre-Islamic past within the site and milieu of its production, the Chachnama presents the beginnings of a new political theology. Long understood as a translation of an earlier text, it is instead a specifically imagined t…
A Demon with Ruby Eyes
This essay takes a longitudinal look at how different communities dealt with political and theological difference in the same space. It examines accounts of Uch Sharif, in contemporary Pakistan, from the thirteenth century to the present. It specifically traces a motif of ‘ruby eyes’ in Arabic and Persian historiography in an effort to delineate how difference was represented and assimilated. It argues that until the late colonial period, religio…
Idols in the Archive
Is a circumcision, for example, an exterior mark? Is it an archive?Let me begin at the beginning.My left eyebrow has a scar. It is jagged, and usually the droop of the eyebrow hides it from view. I see it sometimes when I look in the mirror. When I see it, I am reminded instantly of my father. He was sitting, reading a newspaper, on the lawn of our Lahore house. It was near to 6:00 p.m.-late evening to dusk. I had recently conquered the art of bi…
A Book of Conquest
How did Islam come to India? Why is this question of such great significance to formations of political thought in South Asia? This book examines the longue dureé history...from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first...of a particular text, Chachnama, written in Uch Sharif. The Book of Chach (Chachnama) was written in 1226 CE and provided an account, in Persian, of the 712 CE conquest of Sind by the armies of Muhammad bin Qasim. This ea…
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspectives. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
Quarantined histories
This essay examines histories of colonial British India and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 from two perspective. The first is the colonial historiographic project that frames the history of Islam in India, creates an archive for its study, and produces the political and military dominance of Sindh. Fundamentally, it argues that Muslims in India cannot produce their own histories for they lack the language and archives for scientific objectivity.…
Christian Lee Novetzke. The Quotidian Revolution
Christian Lee Novetzke’s task in The Quotidian Revolution is to explain two intertwined aspects of the medieval western Indian past: first, how did Marathi rise as a language of expression—public, sacral, and political—and, second, how did the concerns of everyday life, and of the common person, permeate the literary and religious imagination? This emergence of a new language of everyday sacrality and everyday politics in the thirteenth century, …
R ichard M. E aton . India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765
On November 16, 1842, Edward Law Ellenborough, the Governor-General of British colonies in India, issued a proclamation concerning the British Army’s carrying back from Ghazna, Afghanistan, the gates to the tomb of Sultan Mahmud (d. 1030). The gates, Ellenborough imagined, initially belonged to the Temple of Somnath (located in Gujarat) and Mahmud had “despoiled” the temple and carried off the gates to Kabul in 1020. “The insult of 800 years is a…
Reading Across Firishta and Chimalpahin
In this essay, I reflect on the position of a postcolonized historian traversing space and time, thinking and linking to histories of European arrivals to Mexico and India. The essay is concerned with early seventeenth-century histories by Chimalpahin and Firishta, who documented their worlds before and after the arrival of Europeans. I argue for a transregional decolonial approach to thinking about historical violence and the formation of discip…
Decolonization Now
Post–World War II ushered in an era of rapid decolonization across the Global South; a period about which Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah exultantly wrote that European direct rule was “everywhere in retreat.” Still, those anticolonial victories were experienced unevenly across the decolonizing world, often undone by new forms of neocolonial exploitation, rising authoritarianism, and counterinsurgent violence. For many peoples, especially in…
History (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Art (6 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Ancient history (4 works)