India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange [Paperback]

Gagan D. S. Sood recaptures a vanished and forgotten world that spanned India and the Islamic heartlands in the eighteenth century.Based on a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century. This world facilitates a better understanding of the region during a pivotal moment in its history, which shaped the later emergence of the Middle East and South Asia.Based on a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century. This world facilitates a better understanding of the region during a pivotal moment in its history, which shaped the later emergence of the Middle East and South Asia.Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. Gagan D. S. Sood focuses on ordinary people - traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, and scribes, among others - who were engaged in activities marked by large distances and long silences. By elucidating their everyday lives in a range of settings, from the family household to the polity at large, Sood pieces together the connective tissue of a world that lay beyond the sovereign purview. Recapturing this obscured and neglected world helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism.Prologue; Introduction; 1. Cognitive patterns: approaching the world; 2. A cosmic order: the meaning and end of life; 3. A familial order: ties of blood, duty and affect; 4. A relational order: intimates, strangers and plurality; 5. A communications order: language, writing and couriers; 6. A political order: temporal authority and governance; 7. Everyday practices: indispensable skills andl£ä