Alexander and the astrolabe in Persianate India
Imagining empire in the Delhi Sultanate
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8961982 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Owen Timothy Cornwall (Tufts University, corresponding author), Owen T A Cornwall (Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 229-259 |
| Publication date | 2020-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019464620912615 |
| OpenAlex | W3014505604 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article is about the historical memory of Alexander the Great in the Delhi Sultanate and how his figure was emblematic of a trans-regional Persianate culture. Amir Khusrau’s largely overlooked Persian epic Āyina’i sikandarī (The Mirror of Alexander) (1302) depicts Alexander the Great as an exemplary Persian emperor who reused material cultures from around the world to produce inventions such as his eponymous mirror and the astrolabe. Through Alexander, Khusrau envisions the Persian emperor as an agent of trans-cultural patronage, reuse and repurpose. Roughly 60 years after Khusrau’s death, the poet’s theory of Alexander’s Persianate material patronage was put into practice by the Delhi Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–88), who claimed to have discovered Alexander’s astrolabe and then used the instrument to adorn the Delhi-Topra pillar, the centrepiece of his new capital Firuzabad. Citations of Khusrau’s epic in a contemporary chronicle help us see how Khusrau’s imagination of ancient Persian Empire framed a practice of organising different styles of material culture into an imperial bricolage. The article concludes with some implications of this research for defining Persianate culture in general
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Astrolabe · Bricolage · Emperor · Empire · EPIC · Literature · New delhi · Persian · Theology · Classics · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
What Is Islam?
The Persianate World
The History of India, as Told by its Own Historians
Alexander the Great in the Persian Tradition
The Venture of Islam, Volume 1
The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran
A Decade of Persianate Studies
Amir Khusraw and the Genre of Historical Narratives in Verse
India in the Persianate Age
The Medieval Reception of the Shāhnāma as a Mirror for Princes
Connected Histories
Medieval Muslim Views of Indian Religions
The Past in Service of the Present
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |