with Elizabeth Thelen

British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) Seminar Series

Wednesday 18 Jaunary, 2023, 5:00pm (GMT)

Zoom Webinar

https://www.bips.ac.uk/event/urban-life-in-persianate-rajasthan-thelen/

How did diverse religious, occupational, and ethnic communities live side-by-side in precolonial Rajasthan’s cities? This talk presents several case studies from the city of Nagaur that show how people ranging from Sufi Shaikhs to cloth-dyers, and kings to cowherds understood and navigated social difference in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even outside the major capital cities, urban life was impacted by the wider political economy, especially the region’s evolving ties to the Mughal Empire. Persian and Rajasthani legal documents reveal how various groups created and reinforced community boundaries through everyday conflicts while they faced challenges such as changing patronage networks, new administrative systems, and war.