From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_studies East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, history and political institutions. East Asian studies is located within the broader field of Asian studies and is also interdisciplinary in character, incorporating elements of the social sciences (anthropology, economics, sociology, politics etc.) and humanities (literature, history, art, film, music,
etc.), among others. The field encourages scholars from diverse
disciplines to exchanges ideas on scholarship as it relates to the East
Asian experience and the experience of East Asia in the world. In
addition, the field encourages scholars to educate others to have a
deeper understanding of and appreciation and respect for, all that is
East Asia and, therefore, to promote peaceful human integration
worldwide.
At universities throughout North America and the Western world,
the study of East Asian humanities is traditionally housed in EALC (East Asian Languages and Civilizations or Cultures)
departments, which run majors in Chinese and Japanese language and
literature and sometimes Korean language and literature. East Asian
studies programs, on the other hand, are typically interdisciplinary
centers that bring together literary scholars, historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, etc. from their
various departments and schools to promote instructional programs,
conferences and lecture series of common interest. East Asian studies
centers also often run interdisciplinary undergraduate and master's
degree programs in East Asian studies.
In addition to the above, studies about the history of the Orient have mainly developed in Japan. Orient means areas in North Africa, Eurasia except Europe and islands around them because of chaos due to studies about the history of Greater China and Korea
under the Tokugawa shogunate before 1868 and those about the Eastern
world from the establishment of European-style high-educational
institutions after that year.
The notion about Oriental history that was made between 1868 and
1945 did not spread on other East Asian areas including Korea as the
colony of Japan. There have been some Japanese notable historians about
Oriental history but they are less famous in other countries.
In universities across the United States, as part of the opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, younger faculty and graduate students criticized the field for complicity in what they saw as American imperialism. In particular, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
debated and published alternative approaches not centered in the United
States or funded, as many American programs were, by the American
government or major foundations. They charged that Japan was held up as a
model of non-revolutionary modernization and the field focused on modernization theory in order to fend off revolution.
In the following decades, many critics were inspired by Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism,
while others, writing from the point of view of the quantitative or
theoretical social sciences, saw area studies in general and East Asian
studies in particular, as amorphous and lacking in rigor.
Critiques were also mounted from other points in the political
spectrum. Ramon H. Myers and Thomas A. Metzger, two scholars based at
the generally conservative Hoover Institution,
charged that "the 'revolution' paradigm increasingly overshadowed the
'modernization' paradigm" and "this fallacy has become integral to much
of the writing on modern Chinese history", discrediting or ignoring
other factors in the history of modern China.
In Europe, notable scholars of East Asian studies have long
occupied professorships at prominent universities in the United Kingdom,
Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, while recent publications
also suggest that the "Nordic countries offer some unique contributions
in the field of East Asian studies."
Journals
Some journals also cover other regions of Asia in addition to East Asia.
It is defined by having long been ruled by the dynasties of various Iranian empires,
under whom the local populaces gradually incorporated some degree of
Iranian influence into their cultural and/or linguistic traditions;
or alternatively as where a considerable number of Iranians settled to
still maintain communities who patronize their respective cultures, geographically corresponding to the areas surrounding the Iranian plateau. It is referred to as the "Iranian Cultural Continent" by Encyclopædia Iranica.
Throughout the 16th–19th centuries, Iran lost many of the territories that had been conquered under the Safavids and Qajars.
However, this is a Greek pronunciation of the name Haroyum/Haraiva (Herat), which the Greeks called 'Aria' (a land listed separately from the homeland of the Aryans).
While up until the end of the Parthian period
in the 3rd century CE, the idea of "Irān" had an ethnic, linguistic,
and religious value, it did not yet have a political import. The idea of
an "Iranian" empire or kingdom in a political sense is a purely Sasanian one. It was the result of a convergence of interests between the new dynasty and the Zoroastrianclergy, as we can deduce from the available evidence.
This convergence gave rise to the idea of an Ērān-šahr "Kingdom of the Iranians", which was "ēr" (Middle Persian equivalent of Old Persian "ariya" and Avestan "airya").
Definition
Richard Nelson Frye defines Greater Iran as including "much
of the Caucasus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, with
cultural influences extending to China and western India."
According to him, "Iran means all lands and peoples where
Iranian languages were and are spoken, and where in the past,
multi-faceted Iranian cultures existed."
Richard Foltz notes that while "A
general assumption is often made that the various Iranian peoples of
'greater Iran'—a cultural area that stretched from Mesopotamia and the
Caucasus into Khwarizm, Transoxiana, Bactria, and the Pamirs and included Persians, Medes, Parthians and Sogdians
among others—were all 'Zoroastrians' in pre-Islamic times... This view,
even though common among serious scholars, is almost certainly
overstated." He argues that "While the various Iranian peoples did indeed share a common pantheon and pool of religious myths and symbols, in actuality a variety of deities were worshipped—particularly Mitra, the god of covenants, and Anahita, the goddess of the waters, but also many others—depending on the time, place, and particular group concerned".
According to J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams most of Western greater Iran
spoke Southwestern Iranian languages in the Achaemenid era while the
Eastern territory spoke Eastern Iranian languages related to Avestan.
George Lane also states that after the dissolution of the Mongol Empire, the Ilkhanids became rulers of greater Iran and Uljaytu, according to Judith G. Kolbas, was the ruler of this expanse between 1304 and 1317 A.D.
The Cambridge History of Iran
takes a geographical approach in referring to the "historical and
cultural" entity of "Greater Iran" as "areas of Iran, parts of
Afghanistan, Chinese and Soviet Central Asia".
Background
An Ashrafi Coin of Nader Shah (r. 1736–1747), reverse: "Coined on gold the word of kingdom in the world, Nader of Greater Iran and the world-conqueror king."
Greater Iran is called Iranzamin (ایرانزمین) which means "Iranland" or "The Land of Iran". Iranzamin was in the mythical times as opposed to the Turanzamin, "The Land of Turan", which was located in the upper part of Central Asia.
With Imperial Russia
continuously advancing south in the course of two wars against Persia,
and the treaties of Turkmenchay and Gulistan in the western frontiers,
plus the unexpected death of Abbas Mirza in 1833, and the murdering of Persia's Grand Vizier (Mirza AbolQasem Qa'im Maqām), many Central Asian khanates began losing hope for any support from Persia against the Tsarist armies. The Russian armies occupied the Aral coast in 1849, Tashkent in 1864, Bukhara in 1867, Samarkand in 1868, and Khiva and Amudarya in 1873.
"Many Iranians consider their natural sphere of influence to
extend beyond Iran's present borders. After all, Iran was once much
larger. Portuguese forces seized islands and ports in the 16th and 17th
centuries. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire wrested from Tehran's control what is today Armenia, Republic of Azerbaijan, and part of Georgia. Iranian elementary school texts teach about the Iranian roots not only of cities like Baku, but also cities further north like Derbent in southern Russia. The Shah lost much of his claim to western Afghanistan following the Anglo-Iranian war of 1856-1857. Only in 1970 did a UN sponsored consultation end Iranian claims to suzerainty over the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain.
In centuries past, Iranian rule once stretched westward into modern
Iraq and beyond. When the western world complains of Iranian
interference beyond its borders, the Iranian government often convinced
itself that it is merely exerting its influence in lands that were once
its own. Simultaneously, Iran's losses at the hands of outside powers
have contributed to a sense of grievance that continues to the present
day." -Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
"Iran today is just a rump of what it once was. At its
height, Iranian rulers controlled Iraq, Afghanistan, Western Pakistan,
much of Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Many Iranians today consider
these areas part of a greater Iranian sphere of influence." - Patrick Clawson
"Since the days of the Achaemenids,
the Iranians had the protection of geography. But high mountains and
the vast emptiness of the Iranian plateau were no longer enough to
shield Iran from the Russian army or British navy. Both literally, and
figuratively, Iran shrank. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Afghanistan were Iranian, but by the end of the
century, all this territory had been lost as a result of European
military action."
Regions
In the 8th century, Iran was conquered by the ArabAbbassids who ruled from Baghdad. The territory of Iran at that time was composed of two portions: Persian Iraq (western portion) and Khorasan (eastern portion). The dividing region was mostly the cities of Gurgan and Damaghan. The Ghaznavids, Seljuqs and Timurids divided their empires into Iraqi and Khorasani regions. This point can be observed in many books such as Abul Fazl Bayhqi's "Tārīkhi Baïhaqī", Al-Ghazali's Faza'ilul al-anam min rasa'ili hujjat al-Islam and other books. Transoxiana and Chorasmia were mostly included in the Khorasanian region.
Sassanian fortress in Derbent, Dagestan. Now inscribed on Russia's UNESCO world heritage list since 2003.
Dagestan remains the bastion of Persian culture in the North Caucasus with fine examples of Iranian architecture like the Sassanid citadel in Derbent, the strong influence of Persian cuisine, and common Persian names amongst the ethnic peoples of Dagestan. The ethnic Persian population of the North Caucasus, the Tats,
remain, despite strong assimilation over the years, still visible in
several North Caucasian cities. Even today, after decades of partition,
some of these regions retain Iranian influences, as seen in their old
beliefs, traditions and customs (e.g. Norouz).
According to Tadeusz Swietochowski, the territories of Iran and the republic of Azerbaijan
usually shared the same history from the time of ancient Media (ninth
to seventh centuries b.c.) and the Persian Empire (sixth to fourth
centuries b.c.).
Intimately and inseparably intertwined histories for millennia,
Iran irrevocably lost the territory that is nowadays Azerbaijan in the
course of the 19th century. With the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813 following the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813) Iran had to cede eastern Georgia, its possessions in the North Caucasus and many of those in what is today the Azerbaijan Republic, which included the khanates of Baku, Shirvan, Karabakh, Ganja, Shaki, Quba, Derbent, and parts of Talysh. These Khanates comprise most of what is today the Republic of Azerbaijan and Dagestan in Southern Russia. In the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828 following the Russo-Persian War (1826–1828), the result was even more disastrous, and resulted in Iran being forced to cede the remainder of the Talysh Khanate, the khanates of Nakhichevan and Erivan,
and the Mughan region to Russia. All these territories together, lost
in 1813 and 1828 combined, constitute all of the modern-day Republic of
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and southern Dagestan. The area to the North of the river Aras,
among which the territory of the contemporary republic of Azerbaijan
were Iranian territory until they were occupied by Russia in the course
of the 19th century.
Many localities in this region bear Persian names or names
derived from Iranian languages and Azerbaijan remains by far Iran's
closest cultural, religious, ethnic, and historical neighbor. Azerbaijanis
are by far the second-largest ethnicity in Iran, and comprise the
largest community of ethnic Azerbaijanis in the world, vastly
outnumbering the number in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Both nations are
the only officially Shia majority in the world, with adherents of the
religion comprising an absolute majority in both nations. The people of
nowadays Iran and Azerbaijan were converted to Shiism during exactly the same time in history. Furthermore, the name of "Azerbaijan" is derived through the name of the Persian satrap which ruled the contemporary region of Iranian Azerbaijan and minor parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan in ancient times.
Khwarazm is one of the regions of Iran-zameen, and is the home of the ancient Iranians, Airyanem Vaejah, according to the ancient book of the Avesta. Modern scholars believe Khwarazm to be what ancient Avestic texts refer to as "Ariyaneh Waeje" or Iran vij. Iranovich These sources claim that Urgandj, which was the capital of ancient Khwarazm for many years, was actually "Ourva": the eighth land of Ahura Mazda mentioned in the Pahlavi text of Vendidad. Others such as University of Hawaii historian Elton L. Daniel believe Khwarazm to be the "most likely locale" corresponding to the original home of the Avestan people, while Dehkhoda calls Khwarazm "the cradle of the Aryan people" (مهد قوم آریا). Today Khwarazm is split between several central Asian republics.
Superimposed on and overlapping with Chorasmia was Khorasan which
roughly covered nearly the same geographical areas in Central Asia
(starting from Semnan eastward through northern Afghanistan roughly until the foothills of Pamir, ancient Mount Imeon). Current day provinces such as Sanjan in Turkmenia, Razavi Khorasan Province, North Khorasan Province, and Southern Khorasan Province
in Iran are all remnants of the old Khorasan. Until the 13th century
and the devastating Mongol invasion of the region, Khorasan was
considered the cultural capital of Greater Iran.
The Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County regions of China harbored a Tajik population and culture.
Chinese Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County was always counted as a part
of the Iranian cultural & linguistic continent with Kashgar, Yarkand, and Hotan bound to the Iranian history.
From the 6th century BC to the 3rd century BC, Bahrain was a prominent part of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty. It was referred to by the Greeks as "Tylos", the centre of pearl trading, when Nearchus discovered it while serving under Alexander the Great.
From the 3rd century BC to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD,
the island was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties, the Parthians and the Sassanids.
In the 3rd century AD, the Sassanids succeeded the Parthians and controlled the area for four centuries until the Arab conquest. Ardashir, the first ruler of the Iranian Sassanid dynasty marched to Oman and Bahrain and defeated Sanatruq (or Satiran), probably the Parthian governor of Bahrain. He appointed his son Shapur I as governor. Shapur constructed a new city there and named it Batan Ardashir after his father.
At this time, it incorporated the southern Sassanid province covering
the Persian Gulf's southern shore plus the archipelago of Bahrain.
The southern province of the Sassanids was subdivided into three
districts; Haggar (now al-Hafuf province, Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir
(now al-Qatif province, Saudi Arabia), and Mishmahig (now Bahrain Island) (In Middle-Persian/Pahlavi it means "ewe-fish").
By about 130 BC, the Parthian dynasty brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman.
Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route, the
Parthians established garrisons along the southern coast of the Persian
Gulf.
through warfare and economic distress, been reduced to only 60.
The influence of Iran was further undermined at the end of the 18th
century when the ideological power struggle between the Akhbari-Usuli
strands culminated in victory for the Usulis in Bahrain.
An Afghan uprising led by Hotakis of Kandahar at the beginning of
the 18th century resulted in the near-collapse of the Safavid state. In the resultant power vacuum, Oman invaded Bahrain in 1717,
ending over one hundred years of Persian hegemony in Bahrain. The Omani
invasion began a period of political instability and a quick succession
of outside rulers took power with consequent destruction. According to a
contemporary account by theologian, Sheikh Yusuf Al Bahrani, in an
unsuccessful attempt by the Persians and their Bedouin allies to take
back Bahrain from the Kharijite Omanis, much of the country was burnt to the ground. Bahrain was eventually sold back to the Persians by the Omanis, but the weakness of the Safavid empire saw Huwala tribes seize control.
In 1730, the new Shah of Persia, Nadir Shah,
sought to re-assert Persian sovereignty in Bahrain. He ordered Latif
Khan, the admiral of the Persian navy in the Persian Gulf, to prepare an
invasion fleet in Bushehr.[citation needed] The Persians invaded in March or early April 1736 when the ruler of Bahrain, Shaikh Jubayr, was away on hajj.
The invasion brought the island back under central rule and to
challenge Oman in the Persian Gulf. He sought help from the British and
Dutch, and he eventually recaptured Bahrain in 1736. During the Qajar era, Persian control over Bahrain waned and in 1753, Bahrain was occupied by the Sunni Persians of the Bushire-based Al Madhkur family, who ruled Bahrain in the name of Persia and paid allegiance to Karim Khan Zand.
During most of the second half of the eighteenth century, Bahrain was ruled by Nasr Al-Madhkur, the ruler of Bushehr.
The Bani Utibah tribe from Zubarah exceeded in taking over Bahrain
after war broke out in 1782. Persian attempts to reconquer the island in
1783 and in 1785 failed; the 1783 expedition was a joint Persian-Qawasim invasion force that never left Bushehr. The 1785 invasion fleet, composed of forces from Bushehr, Rig, and Shiraz was called off after the death of the ruler of Shiraz, Ali Murad Khan. Due to internal difficulties, the Persians could not attempt another invasion. In 1799, Bahrain came under threat from the expansionist policies of Sayyid Sultan, the Sultan of Oman, when he invaded the island under the pretext that Bahrain did not pay taxes owed. The Bani Utbah solicited the aid of Bushire to expel the Omanis on the condition that Bahrain would become a tributary state of Persia. In 1800, Sayyid Sultan invaded Bahrain again in retaliation and deployed a garrison at Arad Fort, in Muharraq island and had appointed his twelve-year-old son Salim, as Governor of the island.
Many names of villages in Bahrain are derived from the Persian language. These names were thought to have been as a result influences during the Safavid rule of Bahrain (1501–1722) and previous Persian rule. Village names such as Karbabad, Salmabad, Karzakan, Duraz, Barbar were originally derived from the Persian language, suggesting that Persians had a substantial effect on the island's history. The local Bahrani Arabic dialect has also borrowed many words from the Persian language. Bahrain's capital city, Manama is derived from two Persian words meaning 'I' and 'speech'.
In 1910, the Persian community funded and opened a private school, Al-Ittihad school, that taught Farsi amongst other subjects.
According to the 1905 census, there were 1650 Bahraini citizens of Persian origin.
Historian Nasser Hussain says that many Iranians fled their native country in the early 20th century due to a law king Reza Shah issued which banned women from wearing the hijab,
or because they feared for their lives after fighting the English or to
find jobs. They were coming to Bahrain from Bushehr and the Fars province
between 1920 and 1940. In the 1920s, local Persian merchants were
prominently involved in the consolidation of Bahrain's first powerful
lobby with connections to the municipality in an effort to contest the
municipal legislation of British control.
Bahrain's local Persian community has heavily influenced the
country's local food dishes. One of the most notable local delicacies of
the people in Bahrain is mahyawa,
which is consumed in Southern Iran as well. It is a watery,
earth-brick-coloured sauce made from sardines, and consumed with bread
or other food. Bahrain's Persians are also famous in Bahrain for
bread-making. Another local delicacy is pishoo made from rose water (golab) and agar agar. Other food items consumed are similar to Persian cuisine.
Throughout history, Iran always had strong cultural ties with the region of present-day Iraq. Mesopotamia
is considered the cradle of civilization and the place where the first
empires in history were established. These empires, namely the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian,
dominated the ancient middle east for millennia, which explains the
great influence of Mesopotamia on the Iranian culture and history, and
it is also the reason why the later Iranian and Greek dynasties chose
Mesopotamia to be the political center of their rule. For a period of
around 500 years, what is now Iraq formed the core of Iran, with the
Iranian Parthian and Sasanian empire having their capital in what is modern-day Iraq for the same centuries-long time span. (Ctesiphon)
Of the four residences of the Achaemenids named by Herodotus—Ecbatana, Pasargadae or Persepolis, Susa and Babylon—the
last [situated in Iraq] was maintained as their most important capital,
the fixed winter quarters, the central office of bureaucracy, exchanged
only in the heat of summer for some cool spot in the highlands.
Under the Seleucids and the Parthians the site of the Mesopotamian capital moved a little to the north on the Tigris—to Seleucia and Ctesiphon. It is indeed symbolic that these new foundations were built from the bricks of ancient Babylon, just as later Baghdad, a little further upstream, was built out of the ruins of the Sassanian double city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
— Iranologist Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran,
Throughout Iran's history the western part of the land has been frequently more closely connected with the lowlands of Mesopotamia (Iraq) than with the rest of the plateau to the east of the central deserts [the Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut].
— Richard N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East
Between
the coming of the Abbasids [in 750] and the Mongol onslaught [in 1258],
Iraq and western Iran shared a closer history than did eastern Iran and
its western counterpart.
— Neguin Yavari, Iranian Perspectives on the Iran–Iraq War
Testimony to the close relationship shared by Iraq and western Iran during the Abbasid era and later centuries, is the fact that the two regions came to share the same name. The western region of Iran (ancient Media) was called 'Irāq-e 'Ajamī ("Persian Iraq"), while central-southern Iraq (Babylonia) was called 'Irāq al-'Arabī ("Arabic Iraq") or Bābil ("Babylon").
For centuries the two neighbouring regions were known as "The Two Iraqs" ("al-'Iraqain"). The 12th century Persian poet Khāqāni wrote a famous poem Tohfat-ul Iraqein ("The Gift of the Two Iraqs"). The city of Arāk in western Iran still bears the region's old name, and Iranians still traditionally call the region between Tehran, Isfahan and Īlām "ʿErāq".
During the medieval ages, Mesopotamian and Iranian peoples knew
each other's languages because of trade, and because Arabic was the
language of religion and science at that time. The Timurid historian Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (d. 1430) wrote of Iraq:
Kurds speak a Northwestern Iranian language known as Kurdish. Some historians and linguists, such as Vladimir Minorsky, have suggested that the Medes,
an Iranian people who inhabited much of western Iran, including
Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, might have been forefathers of modern Kurds.
The Mughal era Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh unites Persian and Indian cultural
and architectural elements; it is among the most famous examples of
Indo-Persian culture as well as a symbol of Indian culture in its own
right.
Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present on the Indian subcontinent. It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of modern-day republics of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the subcontinent was by various MuslimTurko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern Indian subcontinent, where Islamic influence was also firmly established. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century.
Various dynasties of Turkic, Iranian and local Indian origin patronized
the Persian language and contributed to the development of a Persian
culture in India.
The Delhi Sultanate developed their own cultural and political identity
which built upon Persian and Indic languages, literature and arts,
which formed the basis of an Indo-Muslim civilization.
Persian was the official language of most Muslim dynasties in the Indian subcontinent, such as the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and their successor states, and the Sikh Empire. It was also the dominant cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic languages as their mother tongues. The Mughals were also culturally Persianised Central Asians (of Turko-Mongol origin on their paternal side), but spoke Chagatai Turkic
as their first language at the beginning, before eventually adopting
Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of
northern India. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the official lingua franca of the Mughal Empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The influence of these languages led to a vernacular called Hindustani that is the direct ancestor language of today's Hindi–Urdu varieties.
The Persianisation of the Indian subcontinent resulted in its incorporation into the cosmopolitan Persianate world of Ajam, known today academically as Greater Iran, which historically gave many inhabitants a secular, Persian identity.
With the presence of Islamic culture in the region in the Ghaznavid period, Lahore and Uch were established as centres of Persian literature. Abu-al-Faraj Runi and Masud Sa'd Salman (d. 1121) were the two earliest major Persian poets based in Lahore. The earliest of the "great" Indo-Persian poets was Amir Khusrow (d. 1325) of Delhi,
who has since attained iconic status within the Urdu speakers of the
Indian subcontinent as, among other things, the "father" of Urdu
literature.
Indo-Persian culture flourished in North India during the period of
the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526). The invasion of Babur in 1526, the end
of the Delhi Sultanate and the establishment of what would become the Mughal Empire would usher the golden age of Indo-Persian culture with particular reference to the art and architecture of the Mughal era.
During the Mughal era, Persian persisted as the language of the Mughals up to and including the year 1707 which marked the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb,
generally considered the last of the "Great Mughals". Thereafter, with
the decline of the Mughal empire, the 1739 invasion of Delhi by Nader Shah and the gradual growth initially of the Hindu Marathas and later the European
power within the Indian subcontinent, Persian or Persian culture
commenced a period of decline although it nevertheless enjoyed patronage
and may even have flourished within the many regional empires or
kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent including that of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1799–1837).
Persian as a language of governance and education was abolished in 1839 by the British East India Company and the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, even if his rule was purely symbolic or ceremonial, was dethroned in 1857 by the British.
Further, C.E. Bosworth writes about the significance of Persian
culture that developed a mark within Muslim sultans in this era that:
"The sultans were generous patrons of the Persian literary traditions of
Khorasan, and latterly fulfilled a valuable role as transmitters of
this heritage to the newly conquered lands of northern India, laying the
foundations for the essentially Persian culture which was to prevail in
Muslim India until the 19th century."
The Deccan region's integration into the Indo-Persian culture of the
north began in the early 14th century, when the Delhi Sultanate made
political movements towards the south, and the Deccan was brought into
the Sultanate under the conquests of the Tughluq dynasty. Due to the Sultan Muhammad Shah
policy of ordering a migration of the North Indian Muslim population of
Delhi to the Deccan city of Daulatabad in 1327, in order to build a
large Muslim urban centre in the Deccan. This led to a formal
introduction of Indo-Persian culture in the Deccan, extending beyond the
realm of the court.
Gol Gumbaz, the mausoleum of Mohammed Adil Shah, Sultan of Bijapur.
In the middle of the 14th century, the Urdu-speaking
immigrant population of Daulatabad staged a revolt breaking off from
the Delhi Sultanate, but Indo-Persian culture lived on in the region. The breakaway Bahmani Sultanate was established in 1347, by Hasan Gangu.
Its rulers were greatly influenced by Persian culture, they were
well-versed in the language and its literature, and promoted Persian
language education throughout their empire. The Persianised nature of
the court is reflected in the fact that the Bahmanis celebrated
festivals like Nowruz. The architecture cultivated by them had significant Iranian influences, even more than that of the Muslims in the north.
The Bahmani Sultans actively recruited Persian or Persianised men
in their administration, and such foreigners were in fact favoured over
Indians who were known as the Dakhani. Sultan Firuz Shah (1397–1422) sent ships from his ports in Goa and Chaul to the Persian Gulf to bring back talented men of letters, administrators, jurists, soldiers and artisans. This included the high-born Iranian Mahmud Gawan (1411–1481) who rose to become a powerful minister of that state during the reign of another Bahmani Sultan.
Bahmani Tombs
This led to factional strife between the Dakhanis, the ruling indigenous Muslim elite of the Bahmanid dynasty, being descendants of Sunni immigrants from Northern India, and the foreign newcomers like Mahmud Gawan who were called the Afaqis(Cosmopolitans or Travellers).
According to Richard Eaton, Dakhanis believed that the privileges,
patronage and positions of power in the Sultanate should have been
reserved solely for them, based on their ethnic origin and their sense
of pride of having launched the Bahmanid dynasty. Eaton also cites a linguistic divide where the Dakhanis spoke the Dakhni dialect of the Urdu language while the Afaqis favored the Persian language. In 1481, the Dakhanis poisoned the ears of the Sultan, leading to the execution of Mahmud Gawan.
What followed was a wholescale massacre of the Iranian Georgian and
Turkmen population in the urban centres by Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri, who lead
the Deccani faction.
Factional strife between the Afaqis and Dakhanis resulted in pitched
battles with the Afaqis usually being victims of violence due to the
Deccanis' greater ties to local military networks.
This frequently resulted in indiscriminate violence towards people of
Iranian origin including learned men, pilgrims, petty merchants, nobles
and servants, such the massacres of foreigners of Chakan in 1450, Bidar
in 1481, and Ahmadnagar in 1591 by the Deccan Muslims.
According to Eaton, the Dakhanis and Afaqis represented more than just
two competing factions jostling for influence in the court; they stood
for differing conceptions of state and society. If the Dakhanis
manifested a colonial idea, namely, a society composed of transplanted
settler-founders and their descendants, the Afaqis or Cosmopolitans
represented a cultural idea, a refined style of comportment, an eminent
tradition of statescraft, a prestigious language. Since each class was
legitimate in its own way, neither could be fully disloged from the
Bahmanid political system or the Deccan Sultanates.
However, the activity of the Afaqis, unlike the Dakhani Muslim nobles,
were solely dependent on the patronization of their host Dakhani
Sultans, so that whenever there was a change or instability in the
court, the Afaqis would leave altogether. Sebouh Aslanian described this mobile community as a "circulation society".
According to Roy Fischel, more than any other group, the Dakhani
Muslims were the social group that were most associated with the Deccan
Sultanates, and the most dominant political group when it comes to
determining the direction of the Sultanates.
According to Richard Eaton, even the Hindu Vijayanagara
empire from the same period was highly Persianised in its culture. The
royal quarters of the capital had many Persian architectural elements
such as domes and vaulted arches.
The Bahmani Sultanate disintegrated into five Deccan Sultanates, similar in culture. Hyderabad, built by the Golconda Sultanate in the 16th century, was inspired by Isfahan. The use of Persian as a court language in Hyderabad continued under the Nizams of Hyderabad, and was only replaced by Urdu in 1886.
The court language during the Deccan sultanate period was Persian or Arabic, however, Marathi was widely used during the period especially by the Adil Shahis of Bijapur and the Ahmadnagar Sultanate.
Although the rulers were Muslims, the local feudal landlords and the
revenue collectors were Hindus and so was the majority of the
population. Political expediency made it important for the sultans to
make use of Marathi. Nevertheless, Marathi in official documents from
the era is totally Persianised in its vocabulary.
The Persian influence continues to this day with many Persian derived
words used in everyday speech such as bāg (Garden), kārkhānā (factory),
shahar (city), bāzār (market), dukān (shop), hushār (clever), kāgad
(paper), khurchi (chair), zamīn (land), zāhirāt (advertisement), and
hazār (thousand).
Bengal was the easternmost frontier of the Persian cultural sphere.
For over 600 years (1204–1837), the Persian language was an official
language in Bengal, including during the provincial period of the Delhi
Sultanate; the independent period of the Bengal Sultanate; the dominion period of the Bengal Subah in the Mughal Empire; and the quasi-independent Nawabi period. Bengal was the subcontinent's wealthiest region for centuries, where Persian people, as well as Persianate Turks, settled in the Ganges delta to work as teachers, lawyers, poets, administrators, soldiers and aristocrats. The Bengali language continues to have a significant number of Persian loanwords. A popular literary dialect called Dobhashi
emerged which mixed Persian and Bengali words as a writing format.
Several Bengali cities were once centres of Persian prose and poetry. Hafez, one of the masters of Persian poetry, kept a notable correspondence with Sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah and they composed a poem together. The Mughal period saw the zenith of Persian cultural expression in Bengal.
During the Bengali Renaissance, Persian was studied by not only Bengali Muslims but even Hindu scholars, including Raja Ram Mohan Roy. From the mid-eighteenth century towards the 19th century, five to six daily magazines were published in Calcutta, most notably the Durbin and the Sultan al-Akhbar.
The use of Persian as an official language was prohibited by Act no. XXIX of 1837 passed by the President of the Council of India in Council on 20 November 1837.
During the British colonial era
Image of the Punjabi Khaksar Movement's poster for the freedom of British India, written in Persian
Given that the Mughals had historically symbolised Indo-Persian
culture to one degree or another, the dethroning of Bahadur Shah Zafar
and the institution of the direct control of the British Crown in 1858 may be considered as marking the end of the Indo-Persian era, even if, after the Indian Rebellion, Persian would still retain an audience and even produce commendable literature such as the philosophical poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938). The British would absorb elements of the culture's architectural style into the buildings of the Raj, producing Indo-Saracenic architecture.
For 20th century Indian Muslims, and Urdu poets in particular, learning
the Persian language was viewed as necessary for a full understanding
of Urdu and central to the comportment of an educated North Indian
Muslim man.
Adab
In
Indo-Persian cultures in North India, Adab, which could be understood as
a form of virtue ethics, is a code of values determining social
behavior that forms the defining characteristic in Indo-Muslim culture.
The Indo-Persian synthesis led to the development of cuisine that
combined indigenous foods and ingredients with the tastes and methods of
the Turko-Persians. This was especially under the Mughals, who invited
cooks (bawarchis) from various parts of the Islamic world. This resultant cuisine is referred to as Mughlai cuisine,
and has left a great impact on the regional eating habits of South
Asia. It was further developed in the kitchens of regional Islamic
powers, leading to distinctive styles such as the Awadhi and Hyderabadi cuisines.
Due to this synthesis, the Indian subcontinent shares Central and West Asian food, such as naan and kebab, and is home to unique dishes such as biryani.
The Indian subcontinent's Islamic period produced architecture that
drew stylistically from Persianate culture, using features such as
domes, iwans, minars, and baghs. Early Islamic rulers tended to use spolia from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain
buildings, resulting in an Indianised style which would be refined by
later kingdoms. Hence monuments came to feature uniquely Indian
architectural elements, such as corbelled arches and jali.
The main buildings produced were mosques, forts, and tombs. These still
stand today and are well-represented in the architecture of cities such
as Lahore, Delhi, and Hyderabad, to name a few.
Indo-Persian architecture was not exclusive to Islamic power, as
the members and rulers of other religions incorporated it in their
monuments. Sikh architecture is a notable example of this. The Hindu Vijayanagara Empire used Indo-Persian architecture in courtly monuments.
Golkonda 1660–1670. Musician plays a form of rubab. Related instruments include the medieval Iranian rubab, the rubab of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India, the Indian sarod, sursingar and kamaica, the Nepali-Tibetan-Bhutanese tungana, the Pamiri rubab and the Uyghur rawap. The family of instruments blended Persian and Indian cultures, and has been played by Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.
Prior to Islamic conquest, the Indian subcontinent had a history of
musical practice that drew from Sanskritic culture. The subsequent
Indo-Persian synthesis resulted in an influx of Iranian musical
elements, leading to further developments in the region's musical
culture through the patronage of new Persianate rulers. This appears to
have been the impetus for divergence in indigenous music, leading to the
divergence of Hindustani classical music from Carnatic Music. Some of the main instruments used in this style, such as the sitar, santoor and sarod, are thought to have close historical ties with Persian instruments (for an example, see setar). Musical genres such as khyal and tarana, and the musical performance of ghazals, are examples of the Indo-Persian musical confluence. Notably, the Sufi devotional music of qawwali bears evident impact from Persian influence, such as the frequent usage of Persian poems.
The creation of many of these practices is credited to 13th-century poet, scholar, and musician Amir Khusrau.
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