This study explores the Mughal conquest of Kashmir (tasḵẖīr-i-kashmīr) through the region’s phased openings rather than a singular watershed event signalling either a climactic loss of independence or ushering in a golden age. Before 1585–89, there were two decades of patronage, diplomacy, and a steady breaching of the valley’s defences. When Mughal dominion was established, sections of the local aristocracy figured prominently as part of the new dispensation of power, while others continued to offer resistance. An analysis of imperial and local Perso-Sanskrit narratives of the conquest yields insight into how Kashmir was incorporated into the Mughal empire. This micro-historical process is the most valorised of historical transitions within the early Mughal literary discourse, it was highly represented as moment of glory and grand vehicle for rhetoric of diplomatic propaganda. This study largely demonstrates pre-modern power elites’ graded political loyalties, multi-laterality of socio-historical and ecological processes that facilitated the Mughal kingdom-seizing in Kashmir. Simultaneously moving beyond the traditional binary of ‘conquest’ vs ‘resistance’ conceptualisation and political abuse of the local narratives, it navigates the analytical efficacy and social logic of five primary narrative constructions of the Conquest produced by Mughal political elites and regional counter-elites in the terminal decade of sixteenth and early decades of the seventeenth century, namely, Akbarnāmā, Insha’ Abū’l Faẓl, Śukha-rājataraṅgiṇī, Bāhāristān-i-Sháhi and Taʼrīḵẖ-i-Kashmir.

Farhat Hasan, Paper, Performance, and the State: Social Change and Political Culture in Mughal India. Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 155. ISBN: 9781009025256.

Jyoti Gulati Balachandran, Narrative Pasts: The Making of a Muslim Community in Gujarat, c. 1400-1650. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 248. ISBN: 9780190123994 (Hardcover).

The historiography of the Mughal Empire has gone through many twists and turns since its inception. Significant shifts in terms of methodologies and arguments notwithstanding, a certain elitism has characterised this body of literature. This is manifested by the tendency of most historians to conceptualise the career of the empire primarily in terms of elite action. This elitism has kept the contributions of non-elite groups to the making of the empire fairly obscured. Problematising this lopsided historical understanding, the present article offers a people’s history of the empire by focusing on the domain of war as a case study. It explores the role of two non-elite groups in Mughal military campaigns. These are the common infantry and the logistical workforce. The article discusses their tactical importance, social basis, modes of recruitment, pay, and organisation. It argues that taking cognizance of the contributions of these groups to the processes of war-making and territorial expansion helps us challenge the view of the Mughal Empire being primarily an elite enterprise. It enables us see the broad-based, inclusive, and collaborative nature of Mughal state-formation and empire-building.

The dome, one of the most stable forms of roof coatings, has passed many of its evolution stages in the dome-chambers of Iranian mosques. From the Seljuk era, when the first dome-chambers were seen, to today, the extent of the openness of the dome-chamber space to the adjacent space—shabestans and the porches—has changed a lot. This research seeks to answer the questions of why and how openness has happened and what factors have influenced their intensity. Since there may be different answers to these questions at different periods, the physical properties of the domes were studied in terms of measurable variables, both in the general context and in each period. For this purpose, 51 dome-chamber mosques were selected from Seljuk to Qajar periods, with variation in physical characteristics. The research method is a combination of content analysis method, comparative study and logical reasoning based on the descriptive and correlational statistics. As a result, it has been shown that structural constraints related to the extent and magnitude of the dome-chamber, are considered the main reasons for deciding how much and how to open the dome-chamber’s walls in different periods and that as the ratio of the span to the wall thickness increases, the openness of the walls decreases to the same extent. Also, the architecture of seljuk and safavid mosques are more similar than the other periods, possibly due to the common religious characteristics that affected them both.

Alfredo González-Ruibal, An Archaeology of Resistance: Materiality and Time in an African Borderland. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014, pp. 381. ISBN: 978-1-4422-3090-3.