The Ignored Elites
Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the Early Delhi Sultanate
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3668845 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sunil Kumar (0000-0002-8442-2272, University of Delhi, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 45-77 |
| Publication date | 2009-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x07003319 |
| OpenAlex | W2054335987 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 13 |
The consolidation of the Delhi Sultanate coincided with the Mongol devastation of Transoxiana, Iran and Afghanistan. This paper studies the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the 'sanctuary of Islam', where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols. The binaries on which the qualities of the accursed Mongols and the monolithic Muslim community were framed ignored the fact that a large number of Sultanate elites and monarchs were of Turkish/Mongol ethnicity or had a history of prior service in their armed contingents. While drawing attention to the narrative strategies deployed by Sultanate chroniclers to obscure the humble frontier origins of its lords and masters, my paper also elaborates on steppe traditions and rituals prevalent in early-fourteenth-century Delhi. All of these underlined the heterogeneity of Muslim Sultanate society and politics in the capital, a complexity that the Persian litterateurs were loath to acknowledge in their records
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Ethnic group · Islam · Literature · Metropolitan area · Narrative · New delhi · Persian · Political science · Politics · Theology · Turkish · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law
Kumani-Kipčaci između Azije i Europe u razvijenome i kasnome srednjem vijeku
A Princess at Work
Caste
In the Shadow of the Mongol Empire
The Tomars’ new emotional regime
Remembering Saladin
State-building and the Management of Diversity in India (Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)
Forbidden Privileges and History-Writing in Medieval India
Hafez’s “Shirāzi Turk”
Mongol, Muslim, Rajput
The many lives of a medieval Muslim scholar
Warlord Colonialism
Studies in Frontier History
The Delhi Sultanate
The Socio-Economic Condition of Iran Under the Īl-Khāns
Slavery and South Asian History
The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia
The Ideal of World Domination among the Medieval Turks
Iletmish or Iltutmish? A Reconsideration of the Name of the Dehli Sultan
Mongol and Nomadic Taxation
Nomads in the Sedentary World
Historians of Medieval India. Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing
The Position and Power of the Mamlūk Sultan
The Kipchak connection
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,92 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2022 (10) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |