Genealogical History in the Persianate World

Scholarship on the Muslim world has recently begun to pay increased attention to non-literary genres of documentation as sources for historical research. Genealogical writings are one form of such documentation that has demonstrated significant potential for addressing a wide range of research concerns, particularly for topics that receive little attention in historical chronicles and other state-centered narrative sources. However, while genealogical documentation has received some attention in scholarship on the Arab world, it remains mostly unstudied in scholarship on Persianate societies. The chapters in this book offer reflections on theoretical and methodological issues concerning the study of genealogical documentation, combined with case studies based primarily on previously unpublished, unstudied source materials. The topics explored span the full breadth of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia to the Gujarat region of India, utilizing sources dating from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. The book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of Islamic history and the Persianate ecumene as well as readers in other fields interested in comparative research demonstrating the use of genealogical documentation as historical sources.

About the Author

Daniel Beben is Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He is the co-author with Daryoush Mohammad Poor of The First Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam: A Persian edition and English translation of the ' Ibrat-afza of Muhammad Hasan al-Husayni, also known as Hasan 'Ali Shah (I.B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2018). Jo-Ann Gross is Professor Emerita of Middle Eastern and Central Eurasian History at The College of New Jersey, USA. Her book publications include Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries, co-edited with Devin DeWeese (2018); The Letters of Khwaja 'Ubayd Allah Ahrar and his Associates , co-authored with Asom Urunbaev (2002), and the edited volume Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change (1992).