India and the Islamic heartlands : an eighteenth-century world of circulation and exchange /
Gagan D. S. Sood.
- Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, (c)2016.
- 1 online resource (xvii, 338 pages ): illustrations, maps.
Includes bibliographies and index.
Prologue -- Introduction -- Cognitive patterns : accessing and making sense of the world -- A cosmic order: the meaning and end of life -- A familial order : ties of blood, duty and affect -- A relational order : intimates, strangers and plurality -- A communications order : language, writing and couriers -- A political order : temporal authority and governance -- Everyday practices : indispensable skills and techniques -- Flows and interactions : the connective tissue of the arena -- Conclusion -- Glossary.
"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 Sood focuses on ordinary people--traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, 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"--