Antiquités dépaysées. Histoire globale de la culture matérielle antique au siècle des Lumières, 2022
Comme de nombreux princes de la première modernité, plusieurs empereurs de la dynastie moghole fu... more Comme de nombreux princes de la première modernité, plusieurs empereurs de la dynastie moghole furent d’avides collectionneurs, dont les Kunst- und Wunderkammern ont récemment été l’objet d’une attention historiographique renouvelée. Contrairement à leurs équivalents européens ou chinois, ces collections semblent n’avoir fait qu’une place très limitée aux antiques: doit-on en conclure que les cultures textuelles et matérielles des temps anciens ne jouèrent qu’un rôle marginal dans la définition et les projections de l’identité impériale moghole? Pour commencer de répondre à cette question, l’article s’attache a cerner et à explorer les horizons ‘antiquaires’ de la dynastie en questionnant successivement ses rapports a l’Antiquité gréco-romaine ainsi qu’à l’Inde et à la Perse pré-islamiques, d’un triple point de vue épistémique, archéo-muséologique (dans le cas des antiques indiens) et politique.
Consolidating Empire. Power and Elites in Jahangir's India (1605-1627), 2022
What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mat... more What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mattered – according to received wisdom. Through a complete re-examination of the reign of the fourth Mughal emperor Jahangir, this book upends that traditional view.
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explo... more Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explores some of the discussions the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) conducted with a wide range of scholars, from Brahmans and ʿulama to Jesuit padres and Jewish savants. By far the most numerous, the debates bearing on Islam and involving Muslim intellectuals are especially significant on several accounts. First, because they illuminate how, following in the steps of his father Akbar (r. 1556–605), Jahangir was able to conciliate his messianic claims with a strong engagement with reason and to turn this combination into a formidable instrument for confession and state building. These conversations also provide promising avenues to think afresh the socio-intellectual history of the Mughal ʿulama inasmuch as they capture the challenges and adjustments attendant on imperial patronage, depict the jockeying for influence and positions among intellectuals (particularly between Indo-Muslim and Iranian lettrés), and shed light on relatively little known figures or on unexplored facets of more prominent individuals. In addition, the prominent role played by scholars hailing from Iran—and, to a lesser extent, from Central Asia—in the juridical religious disputes of the Indian court shows how crucial inter-Asian connections and networks were in the fashioning of Mughal ideology but also the ways in which the ongoing flow of émigré ʿulama was disciplined before being incorporated into the empire.
Antiquités dépaysées. Histoire globale de la culture matérielle antique au siècle des Lumières, 2022
Comme de nombreux princes de la première modernité, plusieurs empereurs de la dynastie moghole fu... more Comme de nombreux princes de la première modernité, plusieurs empereurs de la dynastie moghole furent d’avides collectionneurs, dont les Kunst- und Wunderkammern ont récemment été l’objet d’une attention historiographique renouvelée. Contrairement à leurs équivalents européens ou chinois, ces collections semblent n’avoir fait qu’une place très limitée aux antiques: doit-on en conclure que les cultures textuelles et matérielles des temps anciens ne jouèrent qu’un rôle marginal dans la définition et les projections de l’identité impériale moghole? Pour commencer de répondre à cette question, l’article s’attache a cerner et à explorer les horizons ‘antiquaires’ de la dynastie en questionnant successivement ses rapports a l’Antiquité gréco-romaine ainsi qu’à l’Inde et à la Perse pré-islamiques, d’un triple point de vue épistémique, archéo-muséologique (dans le cas des antiques indiens) et politique.
Consolidating Empire. Power and Elites in Jahangir's India (1605-1627), 2022
What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mat... more What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mattered – according to received wisdom. Through a complete re-examination of the reign of the fourth Mughal emperor Jahangir, this book upends that traditional view.
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explo... more Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explores some of the discussions the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) conducted with a wide range of scholars, from Brahmans and ʿulama to Jesuit padres and Jewish savants. By far the most numerous, the debates bearing on Islam and involving Muslim intellectuals are especially significant on several accounts. First, because they illuminate how, following in the steps of his father Akbar (r. 1556–605), Jahangir was able to conciliate his messianic claims with a strong engagement with reason and to turn this combination into a formidable instrument for confession and state building. These conversations also provide promising avenues to think afresh the socio-intellectual history of the Mughal ʿulama inasmuch as they capture the challenges and adjustments attendant on imperial patronage, depict the jockeying for influence and positions among intellectuals (particularly between Indo-Muslim and Iranian lettrés), and shed light on relatively little known figures or on unexplored facets of more prominent individuals. In addition, the prominent role played by scholars hailing from Iran—and, to a lesser extent, from Central Asia—in the juridical religious disputes of the Indian court shows how crucial inter-Asian connections and networks were in the fashioning of Mughal ideology but also the ways in which the ongoing flow of émigré ʿulama was disciplined before being incorporated into the empire.
What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mat... more What happened in Mughal India in the quarter century after Akbar’s death? Nothing that really mattered – according to received wisdom. Through a complete re-examination of the reign of the fourth Mughal emperor Jahangir, this book upends that traditional view.
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Pourquoi la vague révolutionnaire qu'ont connue les pays d'Islam depuis 1979 en Iran jusqu'aux an... more Pourquoi la vague révolutionnaire qu'ont connue les pays d'Islam depuis 1979 en Iran jusqu'aux années 2010 dans les pays arabes ne débouche-t-elle pas sur des démocraties "à l'occidentale", mais voit plutôt le pouvoir revenir soit à des partis islamistes, soit à des militaires, soit aux élites des régimes renversés? Comment expliquer l'éphémère califat de Syrie et d'Irak? Pour répondre à ces questions et comprendre les processus complexes à l'œuvre dans les pays d'Islam, il faut sortir du "présentisme" qu'affectionnent les politistes pour plonger dans l'histoire: l'histoire politiques des Empires modernes, ottoman, safavide et moghol à partir du XVe siècle, l'histoire économique des territoires, qui se sont ouverts au monde dans un cadre islamique et plus récemment à la globalisation, l'histoire sociale de populations diverses, pluri-ethniques et multi-confessionnelles, l'histoire intellectuelle de savants et de penseurs qui analysent leur monde en vue de le réformer. Des grands empires de l'époque moderne à la crise contemporaine des États-nations, cet ouvrage donne les clés pour comprendre l'histoire récente des pays d'Islam.
Is cosmopolitanism a child of Western modernity or can it be found in other times and other place... more Is cosmopolitanism a child of Western modernity or can it be found in other times and other places? The aim of this book is to provide an answer to this question—which is hotly debated today—by retracing the contours of cosmopolitanism as a practice and a Weltanschauung in a region of the world—South Asia—that is a major hub within the circulation space of Muslim Asia and a crossroads of human, material and immaterial currents that connect the West and East during the 16th to 19th centuries.
A land of welcome for many elites in search of patronage, an anchoring point for others, or a simple way-station on a transoceanic journey driven by an appetite for riches or knowledge, early modern South Asia is a particularly fertile ground for the construction of cosmopolitan identities and visions, both at the level of the individual and of the polis.
Equally heterogeneous as an idea and as a habitus, cosmopolitanism is broached here from a resolutely plural angle, which encourages the multiplication of approaches (actors, languages, places, activities that are cosmopolitan in “vocation”) and the intersection of these different manifestations—Mughal, Maratha, European, etc.—so as to better highlight constants, variations, limits and interactions.
From this perspective, the studies collected in this issue do indeed illustrate what the Enlightenment “citizen of the world” owes to the “Oriental Indies.”
Table of Contents
Ines G. Županov & Corinne Lefèvre — Introduction
Sources/resources
Giuseppe Marcocci — Renaissance Italy Meets South Asia: Florentines and Venetians in a Cosmopolitan World
Roy Fischel — Origin Narratives, Legitimacy and the Practice of Cosmopolitan Language in the Early Modern Deccan
Jos Gommans — Cosmopolitisme sud-asiatique et microcosme néerlandais à Cochin au xviie siècle
Blake Smith — Un cosmopolitisme sans islam : Dārā Shikōh, Kant, et les limites de la philosophie comparative dans l’Oupenekhat d’Anquetil-Duperron
Itineraries/practices
István Perczel — Cosmopolitisme de la Mer d’Arabie. Les chrétiens de Saint Thomas face à l’expansion portugaise en Inde
Paul Wormser — L’expérience paradoxale de Nuruddin ar-Raniri dans l’océan Indien du xviie siècle
Vikas Rathee — Cosmopolitan Particularism: Mahamati Pran-nath’s Dawa in the Laldas Bitak
Claude Markovits — Armed Cosmopolitans? Indian Sepoys and their Travels in the Service of the East India Company (1762-1815)
Languages/translations
Jorge Flores — Le Língua cosmopolite. Le monde social des interprètes hindous de Goa au xviie siècle
Audrey Truschke — Regional Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal Court in Sanskrit
Sumit Guha — Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism: Recognition and Representation of “East” and “West” in Peninsular India c. 1600-1800
Kumkum Chatterjee — The English East India Company and Cultural Cosmopolitanism in Late Mughal Bengal
Dhruv Raina — Circulation and Cosmopolitanism in 18th Century Jaipur: The Workshop of Jyotishis, Nujumi and Jesuit Astronomers
Paolo Aranha — Vulgaris seu Universalis: Early Modern Missionary Representations of an Indian Cosmopolitan Space
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Articles and book chapters by Corinne Lefèvre
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Rather than provide a linear history of this relatively neglected monarch, Lefèvre analyses a wide range of imperial and non-imperial texts, as well as vestiges of material culture, to reveal major transformations involving imperial authority, ethno-religious diversity, and state centralism.
The book begins by questioning the historiography that categorises the monarch as a political lightweight. By contrast, Lefèvre shows us an intellectually complex, astute, and multi-faceted Jahangir who managed a tightrope act between self-indulgence and the serious business of kingship. More important than looking at the king, she says, is examining the nature of the empire under his reign. To that end, she moves the focus onto the Mughal military, administrative, and religious elites, and highlights how they readjusted to the changing imperial ethos.
The book closes with an exploration of relations between the Mughal empire and two other major polities of early modern Muslim Asia – Safavid Iran and the Chingizid khanate of Central Asia.
Pour répondre à ces questions et comprendre les processus complexes à l'œuvre dans les pays d'Islam, il faut sortir du "présentisme" qu'affectionnent les politistes pour plonger dans l'histoire: l'histoire politiques des Empires modernes, ottoman, safavide et moghol à partir du XVe siècle, l'histoire économique des territoires, qui se sont ouverts au monde dans un cadre islamique et plus récemment à la globalisation, l'histoire sociale de populations diverses, pluri-ethniques et multi-confessionnelles, l'histoire intellectuelle de savants et de penseurs qui analysent leur monde en vue de le réformer.
Des grands empires de l'époque moderne à la crise contemporaine des États-nations, cet ouvrage donne les clés pour comprendre l'histoire récente des pays d'Islam.
A land of welcome for many elites in search of patronage, an anchoring point for others, or a simple way-station on a transoceanic journey driven by an appetite for riches or knowledge, early modern South Asia is a particularly fertile ground for the construction of cosmopolitan identities and visions, both at the level of the individual and of the polis.
Equally heterogeneous as an idea and as a habitus, cosmopolitanism is broached here from a resolutely plural angle, which encourages the multiplication of approaches (actors, languages, places, activities that are cosmopolitan in “vocation”) and the intersection of these different manifestations—Mughal, Maratha, European, etc.—so as to better highlight constants, variations, limits and interactions.
From this perspective, the studies collected in this issue do indeed illustrate what the Enlightenment “citizen of the world” owes to the “Oriental Indies.”
Table of Contents
Ines G. Županov & Corinne Lefèvre — Introduction
Sources/resources
Giuseppe Marcocci — Renaissance Italy Meets South Asia: Florentines and Venetians in a Cosmopolitan World
Roy Fischel — Origin Narratives, Legitimacy and the Practice of Cosmopolitan Language in the Early Modern Deccan
Jos Gommans — Cosmopolitisme sud-asiatique et microcosme néerlandais à Cochin au xviie siècle
Blake Smith — Un cosmopolitisme sans islam : Dārā Shikōh, Kant, et les limites de la philosophie comparative dans l’Oupenekhat d’Anquetil-Duperron
Itineraries/practices
István Perczel — Cosmopolitisme de la Mer d’Arabie. Les chrétiens de Saint Thomas face à l’expansion portugaise en Inde
Paul Wormser — L’expérience paradoxale de Nuruddin ar-Raniri dans l’océan Indien du xviie siècle
Vikas Rathee — Cosmopolitan Particularism: Mahamati Pran-nath’s Dawa in the Laldas Bitak
Claude Markovits — Armed Cosmopolitans? Indian Sepoys and their Travels in the Service of the East India Company (1762-1815)
Languages/translations
Jorge Flores — Le Língua cosmopolite. Le monde social des interprètes hindous de Goa au xviie siècle
Audrey Truschke — Regional Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal Court in Sanskrit
Sumit Guha — Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism: Recognition and Representation of “East” and “West” in Peninsular India c. 1600-1800
Kumkum Chatterjee — The English East India Company and Cultural Cosmopolitanism in Late Mughal Bengal
Dhruv Raina — Circulation and Cosmopolitanism in 18th Century Jaipur: The Workshop of Jyotishis, Nujumi and Jesuit Astronomers
Paolo Aranha — Vulgaris seu Universalis: Early Modern Missionary Representations of an Indian Cosmopolitan Space