Indo-Persian culture

The Mughal era Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh unites Persian and Indian cultural and architectural elements; it is among the most famous examples of Indo-Persian culture as well as a symbol of Indian culture in its own right.

Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present on the Indian subcontinent.[1] It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of modern-day republics of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the subcontinent was by various Muslim Turko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern Indian subcontinent, where Islamic influence was also firmly established. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century.[2] Various dynasties of Turkic, Iranian and local Indian origin patronized the Persian language and contributed to the development of a Persian culture in India.[3] The Delhi Sultanate developed their own cultural and political identity which built upon Persian and Indic languages, literature and arts, which formed the basis of an Indo-Muslim civilization.[4]

Persian was the official language of most Muslim dynasties in the Indian subcontinent, such as the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and their successor states, and the Sikh Empire. It was also the dominant cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic languages as their mother tongues. The Mughals were also culturally Persianised Central Asians (of Turko-Mongol origin on their paternal side), but spoke Chagatai Turkic as their first language at the beginning, before eventually adopting Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of northern India. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the official lingua franca of the Mughal Empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature.[5] The influence of these languages led to a vernacular called Hindustani that is the direct ancestor language of today's Hindi–Urdu varieties.

The Persianisation of the Indian subcontinent resulted in its incorporation into the cosmopolitan Persianate world of Ajam, known today academically as Greater Iran, which historically gave many inhabitants a secular, Persian identity.[6]

  1. ^ Alka Patel, Karen Isaksen Leonard (2012). Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition. p. 3. ISBN 978-9004212091.
  2. ^ Sigfried J. de Laet. History of Humanity: From the seventh to the sixteenth century UNESCO, 1994. ISBN 9231028138 p 734
  3. ^ Franklin D. Lewis (2014). Rumi - Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl Al-Din Rumi. ISBN 9781780747378.
  4. ^ Abd Allāh Aḥmad Naʻīm (2002). Islamic Family Law in a Changing World: A Global Resource Book. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 202. ISBN 9781842770931.
  5. ^ Alam, Muzaffar. "The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics." In Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 2. (May, 1998), pp. 317–349.
  6. ^ Muzaffar, Alam (2003). "The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan". In Pollock, Sheldon I. (ed.). Literary cultures in history : reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-92673-8. OCLC 835227498.