Royal Asiatic Society: A Hybrid Book Launch Iran to India: The Shansabanis of Afghanistan, c. 1145-1190 CE

Department: Art History

Date and Time: December 3, 2021 | 6:30 PM-8:30 PM

Event Location: Register with Matty Bradley by email

Event Details

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This book charts the origins and rise of the Shansabanis, 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 Shansabanis’ 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.

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.

If you would like to attend, whether in person or over Zoom, please register with Matty Bradley by e-mail: mb@royalasiaticsociety.org.