Literary Migrations: Arabic and Persian Poetry around the Arabian Sea, 1600-1700

‘Literary Migrations’ seeks to expand scholarly understanding of early modern poetry in Arabic and Persian and the interlinked nature of literary production during this period. Based on two biographical anthologies of contemporary poetry which were composed within years of one another (Sulāfat al-ʿaṣr by Ibn Maʿṣūm al-Madanī and Tazkira-yi Naṣrābādī by Muḥammad Ṭāhir Naṣrābādī), the project examines the circulation of Arabic and Persian verse between the Arabian Peninsula, Iran and India during the long seventeenth century. The project is cataloguing all of the poets and poetry featured in these anthologies and their paratexts, and so developing a map of migration, sociability and intertextuality. The project data allow a detailed assessment of how people from differing regions and social strata created their own literary communities, and of how poetic styles and aesthetic practices were disseminated around the Arabian Sea. 

Peer-reviewed articles

"On the Road: The Life and Verse of Mir Zeyn al-Din ʿEshq, a Forgotten Eighteenth-Century Poet", Iranian Studies Vol. 52 (2019), published online 12th August 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2019.1642738

“Reading In, Looking Out: Hermeneutics by Implication in an Early Fifteenth-Century Anthology", Iranian Studies Vol. 52 (2019), published online 9th June 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2019.1617033

“Mamluk Poetry, Ottoman Readers, and an Enlightenment Collector: An Appendix to the Nuzha of Ibn Sūdūn”, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, 9/2-3 (November 2018), pp. 272-307. https://doi.org/10.1163/1878464X-00902011

“Satire in the Paintings of Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam”, Iranian Studies Vol. 51/2 (Jan. 2018), pp. 213-243. https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2017.1374831

“A Sign of the End Time: ‘The Monastery’, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi H.2153 f.131b”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 27/1 (Jan., 2017), pp. 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186316000444

Reviews

Review of B. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī and His Yatīmat al-dahr. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 80/3 (Oct., 2017), pp. 599-601. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X17000982