Iran to India

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.

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.

• AcknowledgementsNotes on TransliterationIntroduction: The Elephant and Its PartsKingly TrajectoriesBeginningsThe Early Shansabanis: Firuzkuh, Bamiyan, and Tiginabad/Old Qandahar (c.1140s-1170s)One and Several: Gharjistan, Chisht, and Imperial FiruzkuhThe "Ports of India": Ghazna and Bust-Lashkari BazarEncountering the Many "Indias"Epilogue: Iran to IndiaAppendix: Shansabānī Religious and Historical Inscriptions in Afghanistan and PakistanWorks Cited and BibliographyIndex