Persianate selves : memories of place andorigin before nationalism / Mana Kia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kia, Mana, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nationalism--Iran--History--18th century.

Nationalism.

Iran--History--16th-18th centuries.

Iran.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (338 pages)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

For centuries, Persian was the language of power and learning across Central, South, and West Asia, and Persians received a particular basic education through which they understood and engaged with the world. Not everyone who lived in the land of Iran was Persian, and Persians lived in many other lands as well. Thus to be Persian was to be embedded in a set of connections with people we today consider members of different groups. Persianate selfhood encompassed a broader range of possibilities than contemporary nationalist claims to place and origin allow. We cannot grasp these older connections without historicizing our conceptions of difference and affiliation. Mana Kia sketches the contours of a larger Persianate world, historicizing place, origin, and selfhood through its tradition of proper form: adab. In this shared culture, proximities and similarities constituted a logic that distinguished between people while simultaneously accommodating plurality. Adab was the basis of cohesion for self and community over the turbulent eighteenth century, as populations dispersed and centers of power shifted, disrupting the circulations that linked Persianate regions. Challenging the bases of protonationalist community, Persianate Selves seeks to make sense of an earlier transregional Persianate culture outside the anachronistic shadow of nationalisms.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on dates and transliteration

Dramatis personae

Map

Introduction. The shadow of nationalism

Chapter 1. Landscapes

Chapter 2. Remembering, lamenting

Chapter 3. Place-making and proximity

Chapter 4. Lineages and their places

Chapter 5. Kinship without ethnicity

Chapter 6. Naming and its affiliations

Chapter 7. Commemorating persianate collectives, selves

Coda. Memories and multiplicity (lost and lingering)

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781503611962

1503611965

OCLC:

1198929301