127 – “Transforming India: Economics, Infrastructure, and Urban Development Across Time”

October 1, 2025
1:45 pm
H03
When the Mughals conquered Bengal in the 1570s, north Indian elites tended to look upon the region with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. During the reign of Shāh Jahān, one Mīrzā Ṣafī Sayf Khān was appointed governor of Bengal, and among his retinue was a rising star of the Persian literary scene, Abū al-Barakāt “Munīr” Lāhorī, who wrote a 1000-line poem about Bengal, titled Manifestation of the Rose [maẓhar-i gul]. Through a close reading of the poem, this paper examines the role of ‘wonder’ as a modality of sensory perception for Munīr. Written over a period of just two-weeks, Manifestation of the Rose documents Munīr’s river-faring journey from Agra to Bengal in 1639/40. With smatterings of humor, psychological realism, and multilingual puns, the poem describes in vivid technicolor the array of flora, fauna, and natural phenomena Munīr perceived in Bengal, rendering the peripheral province legible and fantastical to Persian readers of the imperial center (and beyond). Reading sections in description of the mosquito, the rhinoceros, the myna, and the Bengali climate, I interpret the poem as a literary “catalogue of wonders”, evoking the same structures of feeling and genre with which readers of popular Islamicate cosmographical texts would be familiar. In doing so, I consider the significance of wonder to both Munīr’s poetics and modalities of the Mughal sensorium more broadly.

Convenor

Nora Warmer

Presentations

“Modinomics” in speech – Narendra Modi’s portrayal of India in a politico-economic context
Warmer Nora - Abteilung für Südasienstudien, Rheinische Friedrichs Wilhelm Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany
The changing role of food in South Asia’s economies
Zingel Wolfgang-Peter - South Asia Institute, Heidelberg Univesrty, Heidelberg, Germany
Between Hostile Temporalities and Threatened Corporeality: New Urban Landscapes in Delhi
Parciack Dr. Ronie Parciack - Dept. of East Asian Stusiea, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel