Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700

UCSB Iranian Studies Initiative
November 12, 2020 9:30 AM (PST)

Free Registration: https://ucsb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_88MX48FuQPy_NHzRwptmdQ

In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the Deccan for many reasons, these poets, merchants, scholars, saints, and artists left a lasting mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the region until the late seventeenth century. In this talk, Overton will introduce some of the main themes, personalities, things, and routes of Iran-Deccan exchange while providing an overview of her recent edited volume Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700 (Indiana University Press, June 2020). Contributors to the book include Keelan Overton, Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Wheeler Thackston, Roy S. Fischel, Peyvand Firouzeh, Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Maryam Habibi, Arash Khazeni, Rachel Parikh, Kristine Rose-Beers, Bruce Wannell, Jake Benson, Hamidreza Ghelichkhani, Kimia Maleki, Sunil Sharma, and Subah Dayal.

This lecture has been made possible with the support of the Religious Studies Department, UCSB, Gramian-Emrani Foundation, Mellichamp Funds and Department of History of Art and Architecture.

The lecture will be followed by a Q & A session moderated by Samira Fathi (UCSB, Department of History of Art and Architecture).

Keelan Overton (PhD, UCLA, 2011) is a historian of Islamic art and architecture specializing in the eastern Islamic world. Her publications explore the early modern Deccan, the cultural heritage of Iran at home and abroad, and histories of collecting and display. Her 2011 dissertation on book arts and painting at the Bijapur court of Ibrahim Adil Shah II has been published as a series of journal articles and book chapters. Her current book project is a global history of Persian tilework, for which she has been awarded a Getty Scholar grant.

Samira Fathi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has a BA degree in architecture and an MA in Architectural History from Iran. She is interested in the history of cities and urban spaces in the 18th and 19th centuries and her research is geographically focused on Iranian and Middle Eastern cities. Currently, she is writing her dissertation on Isfahan titled “Representing Post-Safavid Isfahan: Urban Spaces and Architectural Patronage in the 18th and early 19th centuries.” 

Poster is designed by Shahab Tondar.