43 – Layered Dynamics, Enmeshed Connections: Courtly Spaces in Islamicate South Asia, c. 1000-1800

October 3, 2025

3:45 pm

H10

Recent scholarship on Islamicate South Asia has increasingly understood courts as fundamentally social spaces of both self-assertion and negotiation. This panel builds on this prior work to explore the different layers and forms of connection characterizing courts and courtly spaces in Sultanate and Mughal South Asia. Panelists will explore the creation and reconfiguration of connections between courts with contested and rival claims to vested resources, between imperial and sub-imperial courts, and between courts and a range of political, social, intellectual, and mercantile networks. In tracking these diverse entanglements, the panel will seek to reflect the dynamic and complex enmeshment of courtly spaces with their larger contexts. This will entail considering the many forms courtly connections could take, from mutual exchange and reciprocity to contestation and negotiation to the exertion of force. This panel particularly invites contributions that consider definitions of the court beyond the conventional static locations within the royal palace or camp, through incorporating examination of a variety of settings and practices which could form courtly spaces. It also encourages reevaluating the epistemologies and conceptual frameworks brought to bear in studies of the dynamics of courtly relations, cultural production, and patronage networks. Contributions will in the process reflect on how the specific languages, archives, authorship, intended audience, and genre of the sources both help and hinder modern scholars in reconstructing these linkages.

Convenors

Anna Kollatz
Shounak Ghosh
Emma Kalb

Presentations

Women and the World: The Dynamic Infrastructure of Gender Segregation in the Mughal Empire

Rajani Shayan - History Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States

Courtesans and Courtly Spaces: Māh Laqā and the Intersection of Gender, Authority, and Creativity

Naseer Maham - Religious Studies, Georg August University Göttingen, Goettingen, Germany

The Unexpected Twist, or: Why does Jahangir break Rules?

Kollatz Anna - Dept. of MIddle East Studies, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Violations of Courtly Space and Courtly Protocol in the Reign of Ahmad Shāh

Kalb Emma - Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Diplomatic Sociability in Persianate Contexts: Conceptualizing Early Modern Courts as Performative Spaces

Ghosh Shounak - Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Poetry, Propaganda, and Public Diplomacy at the Ghaznavid Court

Auer Blain - Department of South Asian Studies, Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Rethinking Authority: Negotiating Jurisprudence Inside and Outside Aurangzeb’s Court

Abdul Razzak Ilsa - University of Washington, University of Washington, Seattle, United States