Saïd Amir Arjomand's Kings and Dervishes is a pioneering study of the emergence and development of Sufism during the formation of the Persianate world. Whereas Sufi doctrine was expressed in the New Persian language, its social organization was detached from the civic movement among the urban craftsmen and artisans known as the fotovva(t) and was politically shaped by multiple forces—first by the revival of Persian kingship, and then by the emergence of the Turko-Mongolian empires.The intermingling of Sufism’s developmental path with the transformation of the Persianate political regimes resulted in the progressive appropriation of royal symbols by the Sufi shaykhs. The original Sufi world renunciation gave way first to world accommodation and the medieval love mysticism of Jalāl al-Din Rumi and Hāfez of Shiraz, and then to world domination. This comprehensive work of historical sociology traces these spiritual and political evolutions over the course of some six centuries, showing how the Sufi saints’ symbolic sovereignty was eventually made real in the imperial kingship of the Persianate world’s early modern empires.
Sofia Bemposta-Rivas
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and Yolanda Fernández-Pena are research assistants and doctoral students in English Linguistics at the University of Vigo.
Carla Bouzada-Jabois
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and Yolanda Fernández-Pena are research assistants and doctoral students in English Linguistics at the University of Vigo.
Yolanda Fernandez-Pena
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and Yolanda Fernández-Pena are research assistants and doctoral students in English Linguistics at the University of Vigo.
Tamara Bouso
Tamara Bouso and Iván Tamaredo are research assistants and doctoral students in English Linguistics at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
Yolanda J. Calvo-B
Yolanda J. Calvo Benzies has recently obtained a position as assistant lecturer at the University of the Balearic Islands.
Editorial Reviews
 | “Parting Gifts of Empire brilliantly brings to light anti-imperialist forms of knowledge produced by Middle Eastern and Indian intellectuals preceding and following decolonization. Instead of engaging in a customary examination of the bilateral colonizer-colonized relations, it turns its eye on South-South interactions to show that Palestine figured prominently in a range of spheres—in philosophical writings and translations, academic meetings, and political, diplomatic, and women activists’ conferences. This is a timely and much-needed reminder that the question of the colonial oppression of Palestine is not new but has long been an expression of anticolonial thought and politics.”
—Gyan Prakash, author of Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point
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| “This remarkable intellectual history uncovers the writings of unjustly forgotten Arab and South Asian writers, academics, and activists who produced a counternarrative opposing colonial and imperial discourse on the non-European world. This book reminds us of the roots of that discourse in inequality and hegemony, and of early attempts to challenge it during the era of decolonization.”
—Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
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| “A pathbreaking account of intellectual worlds of anticolonial thought that spanned the Middle East and South Asia. Esmat Elhalaby marshals a vast array of ideas about anticolonialism and decolonization produced by scholars, polyglot writers, poets, and feminist intellectuals who imagined new liberatory futures across geographies. Parting Gifts of Empire is a stunning history of ideas and a passionate account of a lost network of thinkers, a book that simultaneously reclaims a shared history of knowledge and challenges us to articulate new visions of justice for our present.”
—Durba Mitra, author of Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought
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| “Parting Gifts of Empire is beautifully written, brilliantly conceived, and replete with exciting ideas and innovative invitations. This is the kind of book that you start and can’t put down.”
—Sherene Seikaly, author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine
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| “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of imperialist propaganda passing as universal knowledge. Esmat Elhalaby’s elegant study proves that anticolonial thought ushered in an intellectual revolution as cataclysmic as the Enlightenment. Arab and Asian thinkers, facing neocolonial reaction, partition, and layers of European condescension, plotted together to create new ideas dedicated to creating a new world. The work remains unfinished, but the gift of this book and its author offers a portal for us to continue our struggle.”
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
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| “Starting from the twin partitions of India and Palestine, memorably called ‘a parting gift of empire’ by Edward Said, Esmat Elhalaby narrates a riveting social history of intellectuals in the colonized world. This brilliant book should be essential reading for all historians of anticolonialism and decolonization.”
—Omnia El Shakry, author of The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt
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