Tuesday, September 17 @ 4:15 p.m. 101 Hahn Hall
Early modern Persianate empires, the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, relied on the rhetorical power of court literature to chronicle and justify their expansionist campaigns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Poetic narratives of conquest drew on classical literary models such as the Persian national epic, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, and employed motifs of travel, both actual and metaphoric, and marvels, resulting in the creation of new hybrid texts. A close reading and analysis of some poetic texts of conquests composed by the Mughal court poet Faizi during the reign of the emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) shows how effectively poetry could be used to describe imperial expansion as an outcome of inevitable and divinely natural events.