Topic: Epistolary Spaces and Sacred Networks: A Reappraisal of the Ahrari Naqshbandi Tariqa
Speaker: Gibran Siddiqui, Princeton University
Respondent: Scott Levi, Ohio State University
Ali Gibran Siddiqui is the Leon B. Poullada Postdoctoral Research Associate in Central Asian Studies at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. As a historian of Islamic Central Asia, he is interested in the economic, political, and social lives of Naqshbandi Sufis in the Timurid and Mughal Empires. His current projects include a book on the letters of Abdullah Khan Firoz Jang and articles on the reframing of poetic narrative to justify commerce in Sufi tariqas, the Juybari Naqshbandi use of walrus ivory in diplomacy, and the role of miraculous dreams and spiritual monopolies in jade production in sixteenth-century Kashghar. He is also collaborating with art historians at The Louvre to develop a typography of Mughal chilanum daggers.
Monday, September 27, 2021