Iran to India: The Shansabānīs of Afghanistan, c. 1145

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Iran to India: The Shansabānīs of Afghanistan, c. 1145–1190 CE

Author:

Alka Patel

ISBN:

9789395474887

Binding:

Hardcover

Year:

2026

Pages:

424 with 184 colour & numerous b/w illustrations

Size:

18 x 26 x 3 cm

Weight:

1 kg 465 grams

Price:

INR~~7995~~7196.00

eBook available at:

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About the Book

Brings together all the architectural patronage attributed to the Shansabānīs in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Swat and lower Indus region).

• Creates an architectural biography of this pivotal polity and its trans-regional empire.
• Treats built remains as independent, primary sources – and juxtaposes them with the principal texts – to create a complex understanding of the historical processes the Shansabānīs initiated throughout the landscapes they re-conjoined.
• Provides the first analysis of this important epigraphic corpus.
• Serves as the starting point for future research on the medieval epigraphy of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This book charts the origins and rise of the Shansabānīs, a nomadic-pastoralist or transhumant group from modern central Afghanistan. As they adapted and mastered the mores of Perso-Islamic kingship, they created a transregional empire unseen in the region for almost a millennium, since the Kushanas of the early centuries CE.

The Shansabānīs’ imperialism of little more than a half-century belies their longue durée significance: they altered the geopolitical landscapes of eastern Khurasan through the Indo-Gangetic plains, reconnecting these regions in continuous flows of people, objects, and ideas that broadened the Persianate world and had consequences into the modern age of nation-states in Central and South Asia.

About the Author

Alka Patel

Alka Patel is Professor in the Department of Art History and in the PhD Program for Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Patel’s research has focused on South Asia and its connections with Iran and Central Asia, including overland and Indian Ocean maritime networks. Her works include Building Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries (Brill 2004), and special issues of Ars Orientalis XXXIV (2004) and Archives of Asian Art LIX (2007). Patel’s interests have expanded to include mercantile networks and architectural patronage in 18th-19th-century South Asia, as evidenced in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (co-ed. K. Leonard, Brill 2012). Her recent volume India and Iran in the Longue Durée (Jordan Center for Persian Studies, 2017), co-edited with ancient Iranist Touraj Daryaee, analyzes Indo-Iranian connections over two millennia.

Editorial Reviews

“Professor Patel provides an exciting, thought-provoking critical analysis of the origins of the first Muslim dynasty to successfully establish itself as a political power in late-12th century north India.”
—Catherine B. Asher, Professor of Islamic Art, University of Minnesota

Customer Reviews