#new studies in ottoman safavid and mughal art and culture

[lux--nova]

I encountered the funniest phrase I've ever read in a scholarly article yesterday and I had to share it with yall. I will now quote scholarly sources when assessing whether something is tiny, teeny, or teeny-weeny, thank you.

#the article was about micro signatures by artists in safavid islamic manuscript illumination btw #which is a really fascinating subject #and i can tell the author had a lot of fun with it too #bc they threw this in there lmao #the article is called 'who's hiding here? artists and their signatures in timurid and safavid manuscripts' #by marianna shreve simpson #art history #islamic studies #history #dark academia #silly academia #wait correction its a chapter from the book affect emotion and subjectivity in early modern muslim empires: #new studies in ottoman safavid and mughal art and culture #the title of their book is too long for just one tag #not teeny-weeny status

[ibnsiqillioccident-blog]

In the early modern world, the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires sprawled across a vast swath of the earth, from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean. These three polities each encompassed a wide range of cultural and religious diversity, and interactions among the varied communities both within and across the empires contributed greatly to their flourishing. Yet present-day Anglophone scholarship and teaching with emphasis on the earlier periods of Islamic civilization tends to examine the empires in isolation and overlook their connected histories. This volume is a comprehensive sourcebook of newly translated texts from the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, accompanied by scholarly essays, that aims to provide a new model for the study and teaching of the early modern history of the Near East and India. In thematically organized sections, it presents texts that represent particular voices and experiences from each of the three empires. With a wide range of source material spanning literature, philosophy, religion, politics, and visual art, the volume sheds light on the many dimensions of the intertwined histories of these interconnected literate communities engaged in the religious, political, and cultural debates of their time. Texts investigate such varied topics as conversion in Safavid Iran; the politics of Ottoman imperial conquests; mystical piety at the Mughal court of India; occult sciences such as letter divination and astrology; and struggles for succession to the imperial throne. The readings include translator’s notes, and each translation is preceded by a short essay providing the historiographical context for the source.

#Books #History #Islam #Islamic Studies #Islamic History #Primary Sources #World History #India #Middle East #Middle East History

[ibnsiqillioccident-blog]

his beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501–1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi‘i practice of kingship.

An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi‘i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi‘ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie’s study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.

Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi‘i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier—in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals—Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.

#Books #Iran #Safavid Empire #Islamic History #Islam #Islamic Art & Architecture #Shi'ism #Islamic Studies

[ibnsiqillioccident-blog]

Affect, Emotion and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires presents new approaches to Ottoman Safavid and Mughal art and culture. Taking artistic agency as a starting point, the authors consider the rise in status of architects, the self-fashioning of artists, the development of public spaces, as well as new literary genres that focus on the individual subject and his or her place in the world. They consider the issue of affect as performative and responsive to certain emotions and actions, thus allowing insights into the motivations behind the making and, in some cases, the destruction of works of art. The interconnected histories of Iran,Turkey and India thus highlight the urban and intellectual changes that defined the early modern period.

#Books #Islamic History #Mughal Empire #Safavid Empire #Ottoman Empire #Middle East #South Asia #World History