This panel explores understudied but important transregional connections between the Middle East and Asia during the 19th century, focusing on the themes of knowledge, friendship, travel, and circulation. Challenging the conceptual framework of the "Middle East" by considering it "West Asia," the panel highlights dynamic Persianate-Asian connections.
"Indo-Persian Views of the Buddhist Kingdom of Mrauk U," explores Muslim Indo-Persian encounters with the ruins of the Buddhist kingdom of Mrauk U in Arakan (Northern Burma) circa 1800. Mrauk U was a hub of Indian Ocean trade, and Persian was the language of mutual encounter. Consequently, the East India Company relied on Indo-Persian intermediaries, travelers, and scribes to gather knowledge about Mrauk U. Drawing upon rare Persian manuscripts and focusing on the works of Shah 'Azizallah Bukhari Qalandar, this paper explores Indo-Persian Muslim contacts with Theraveda Buddhism.
"Bridging Difference: Kinship, Friendship and the Creation of Social Bonds" explores formal and informal bonds created between Persians in Iran and India. Drawing on early 19th century travelogues and histories, this paper examines how circulating individuals formed connections through a variety of practices described in terms of friendship and kinship. What was the work of such practices, and how did they create connections (successfully or not) across social, political, and parochial differences? This paper considers the transregionally recognizable or local nature of such practices and analyzes how these distinctions mattered.
Continuing to explore the themes of mobility and communication, "A Transregional Persianate Library: Tazkirah Production and Circulation in the 19th Century," analyzes the interconnected textual economy of tazkirahs (biographical anthologies) of poets in West, Central, and South Asia. This paper maps geographic nodal points in tazkirah production and explores how tazkirahs circulated transregionally through their shared use of sources. This paper assesses the ways in which one prolific genre of texts indicates larger trends of connectivity and disruption across the Persianate world in the 19th century.
"Japanese Travels in Iran," examines a 1923-1924 Japanese delegation to the Middle East led by Eishiro Nuita, focusing on his travels through Iran. Analyzing Nuita's 1924 presentation to the Japanese House of Lords, this paper argues that Nuita's travels, which followed Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) and during a crescendo in Japanese imperialism, were guided by two major goals: to gauge the perception of Japan in the Middle East and to build a rapport with various constituencies in order to lay the groundwork for treaties and pacts.
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Dr. Arash Khazeni
This paper explores Indo-Persian encounters and reckonings with the ruins of the Buddhist kingdom of Mrauk U in Arakan (Burma). Based in the densely forested and tidal backwaters of the Bay of Bengal, the kingdom of Mrauk U (1430-1785) was once a hub of Indian Ocean trade and the monumental capital of a Buddhist dynasty steeped in the Indo-Persian and Islamic court culture of Bengal and the Mughal Empire. In the aftermath of the conquest of Mrauk U in 1785 by the Burmese Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885), Buddhist Arakanese influenced by centuries of contact with Mughal India – and known as the “Magh” – fled across the borderlands of Burma into colonial Bengal. Due to the persistence of Persian as a language of mutual encounter and exchange between Mughal India and Burma, the East India Company came to rely on Indo-Persian intermediaries, travelers, and munshis (scribes) tied to long-standing networks of exchange with Southeast Asia to survey and gather knowledge about the fallen “Magh” kingdom of Mrauk U, its forest environment, and Buddhist culture. Drawing upon a body of rare late eighteenth-century Persian manuscript accounts of Mrauk U produced by munshis for the Asiatic Society of Bengal – including ethnographic literature, Buddhist cosmographies, botanies, and variations of jataka tales translated from Pali into Persian – this paper explores Indo-Persian, Muslim contacts with Southeast Asia and the ends of the Indian Ocean world during times of transition to colonialism and orientalism. In particular, it traces the works of Shah ‘Azizallah Bukhari Qalandar, a munshi in the service of the East India Company orientalist John Murray MacGregor (1745-1822), and his translations of Theraveda Buddhist texts from Pali into Persian. Through the translation of Buddhist cosmographical texts, Shah ‘Azizallah recast the Buddhist Kingdom of Mrauk U within a Persianate and Sufi imaginary. The Persian “Magh Manuscripts” left behind by the East India Company munshi Shah ‘Azizallah, this paper claims, are debris of the Indo-Persian encounter with the ends of the Mughal world and knowledge of Indian Ocean kingdoms and environments.
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Dr. Mana Kia
This paper examines the ways in which Persian-educated people from different regions between Iran and India forged formal and informal bonds at the very end of the early modern period. The circulation of people between West and South Asia did not cease in the aftermath of 18th-century imperial collapse. But we know little about the way rapidly changing circumstances in the respective regions, which saw much political chaos and economic upheavals, affected social relations and perceptions of difference. This paper examines instances of marriage, adoption and other socially recognized forms of kin-making in a number of well known Persian commemorative texts of the 18th century through the early 19th century. What was the work of such practices, and how did they create connections (successfully or not) across social, political, and parochial differences? What does this tell us about the changes or continuities of categories of difference? The language of kinship, while rooted in formally recognized and regulated family relationships or broader idea of social collectivity, could be used to render other kinds of relationships into a socially recognized form of connection, defined by particular kinds of obligations and privileges. This is significant since it extends the meaning of kinship to other forms of companionship and broadens it to include those not linked by birth or law. Both formal and informal kinship practices could create socially and politically beneficial connections between people at moments of dislocation or rupture, seeking to mitigate the effects of broader instabilities of the time. Major sources include Sayyid Ghulam Husayn Tabataba’i’s late 18th-century, Siyar al-Mut’akhkhirin (1786) and Aqa Ahmad Bibahani’s early 19th century travel account to India (1810), read against the background of similar contemporaneous texts. A main consideration of this analysis is to think through which practices are transregionally recognizable Persians, which are of a local nature, and how these distinctions mattered.
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Mr. Kevin Schwartz
The tazkirah (biographical anthology) of Persian poets represents one of the most widely produced and circulated genres in the early modern and modern Persianate world. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how critical engagement with these texts can elucidate transregional interconnectivity and dissonance on topics regarding social identity, cultural norms, literary stylistics, and collective memory, among others. Fewer studies have sought to understand the production and circulation of tazkirahs across the Persianate world in a broader fashion by exploring the general characteristics that defined this vast textual domain across space and time. This paper focuses on tazkirahs of Persian poets produced in the nineteenth century across West, Central, and South Asia and assesses the ways in which this prolific genre of texts may indicate larger trends of connectivity and disruption. In providing a visual topography of the tazkirah’s vast proliferation, it will attempt to answer general questions regarding the genre’s transregional characteristics. Where and when were tazkirahs of Persian poets most voluminously produced in the nineteenth century Persianate world? How did political developments affect the emergence, migration, and disappearance of centers of production? What tazkirahs were cited and circulated most widely? In analyzing this interconnected textual domain of the nineteenth century, I will explore the idea that tazkirah production and circulation constituted an ever morphing Persianate transregional library, one that was built upon shared information, sources, and networks of texts, while being constantly updated, amended, and refined, as more sources emerged and circulated. This paper will also highlight several crucial geographic nodal points in tazkirah production, from Iran to South Asia, to understand some of the local dimensions impacting the changing constitution of this textual enterprise. Finally, this paper seeks to demonstrate the general benefits and challenges of utilizing digital maps for exploring and expressing trends in Persian literary history.
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Distinctive in its use of Arabic, Persian, Japanese, and English language primary sources, this paper explores late 19th century and early 20th century relationships forged between the Middle East (or West Asia) and East Asia by focusing on Iran-Japan relations. Specifically, “Japanese Travels in Iran,” examines a 1923-1924 Japanese delegation to the Middle East led by Eishiro Nuita, focusing on the extended time that Nuita and his delegation spent in Iran, the contacts he made there, and ways in the Japanese delegation was received and perceived in Iran. Relations between Iran and Japan during 19th and early 20th centuries had profoundly important repercussions, yet they have been neglected and understudied, largely due to the niche combination of languages required to adequately assess these phenomena.
The diplomat Eishiro Nuita and his delegation departed Tokyo for their nine-month exploratory mission from Japan to the Middle East in late summer, one day before the cataclysmic Great Kanto Earthquake devastated the region on September 1st, 1923. The 37-year old Nuita’s journey took him through the Middle East, with extended ventures in Iran and Turkey. Nuita was particularly struck by Iranians’ great fascination with Japan as a small modernizing Asian nation that defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
Analyzing Nuita’s 1924 presentation to the Japanese House of Lords, this paper argues that Nuita’s journey, which followed Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War and during a crescendo in Japanese imperialism, were guided by two major goals: to gauge the perception of Japan in the Middle East and to build a rapport with various constituencies in order to lay the groundwork for treaties and pacts that would secure economic and political advantages for imperial Japan.
Japan reopened to the West during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and instituted major overhauls as part of Meiji reforms, which endured during the Taisho period (1912-1926). Muslim reformers in the Middle East and South Asia paid close attention to the ways in which Meiji leaders enacted modernizing reforms. At the same time, Japanese imperialism in China and Southeast Asia meant that the Japanese government wished to learn more about the Muslim peoples now under its control. As fellow non-Western peoples, the Japanese government and military wished to foster relationships with empires within the Middle East as a safeguard against Anglo-American power, Soviet Communism, and European dominated networks of global trade.
