Persianate Culture
10 Jul 2022 19:46
Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder
There was a long period when Persian was a language used for high culture across a very big stretch of Eurasia --- from the Ottoman empire in the west through Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, through much of India to Bengal in the east. Styles of art, dress, food, personal behavior, etc., came along with this. Having grown up with a grandfather who was raised a Persian speaker steeped in this tradition (his criterion for saying that his English was imperfect was that he couldn't compose original poetry in it, though he extemporized verse translations from the Persian poets all the time), I'm interested in studying it.
(And I have to study it, because I wasn't raised in it.)
See also: Islamicate Civilization, from the Beginning to European Colonialism
- To read:
- Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400--1800
- Hamid Dabashi, Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene
- Richard M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age, 1000--1765
- Nile Green (ed.), The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
- Rajeev Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary
- Ann E. Lucas, Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions
- Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry
- Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), Javanmardi: The Ethics and Practice of Persianate Perfection
- Eleanor Sims, Peerless Images: Persian Figural Painting and Its Sources
- Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court
- Riccardo Zipoli, Irreverent Persia: Invective, Satirical and Burlesque Poetry from the Origins to the Timurid Period (10th to 15th century)
