The Making of Persianate Modernity
Language and Literary History between Iran and India

Traces the emergence of literary history, showing how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared heritage to produce a 'Persianate modernity'.

Alexander Jabbari (Author)

9781009320863, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 March 2023

260 pages
23.6 x 15.5 x 2.1 cm, 0.554 kg

'Written with depth and precision, Alexander Jabbari demonstrates how engagements between Persian and Urdu were crucial to the creation of a new habitus of literary modernity in twentieth-century Iran and South Asia, making the case that the story of literary culture in the era of nations may best be told from a transregional and multilingual perspective.' Kevin L. Schwartz, Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences

From the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, Persian was the pre-eminent language of learning far beyond Iran, stretching from the Balkans to China. In this book, Alexander Jabbari explores what became of this vast Persian literary heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Iran and South Asia, as nationalism took hold and the Persianate world fractured into nation-states. He shows how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared past to produce a 'Persianate modernity', and create a modern genre, literary history. Drawing from both Persian and Urdu sources, Jabbari reveals the important role that South Asian Muslims played in developing Iranian intellectual and literary trends. Highlighting cultural exchange in the region, and the agency of Asian modernizers, Jabbari charts a new way forward for area studies and opens exciting possibilities for thinking about language and literature.

Introduction
Connections
1. Histories: from Tazkirah to literary history
2. Erotics: from bawdy to bashfulness
3. Origin myths: indigeneity and hybridity in national narratives
4. Print: typography, orthography, punctuation
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Islamic studies [JFSR2], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]