In the Mirror of Persian Kings

Blain Auer is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Lausanne. He is the author of Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate (2012), co-editor of Encountering Buddhism and Islam in Medieval Central and South Asia (2019) and serves as Editor for the journals Marginalia, Études asiatiques, and the book series Perspectives on Islamicate South Asia.

• Preface; 1. The History of Persian Kingship and Persianization in South Asia; 2. Kings in History: Persian Royal Genealogies and Muslim Rulers; 3. Warrior King: Slaying Demons, Hunting Beasts, and War; 4. Theory and Application of Persianate Political Ethics in India; 5. The Pen, the Sword, and the Vizier; Conclusion.

'If James Mill dismissed the Delhi Sultanate as “a government, moulded and conducted agreeably to the properties of Persian civilization, instead of a government moulded and conducted agreeably to the properties of Hindu civilization” Blain Auer shows the opposite. He argues that Muslim chroniclers of India self-consciously connected their reigning patrons to pre-Islamic Iranian kings precisely because this model provided a more universal ideal of governance that was far more suited to the diverse subject population of the subcontinent. Auer should be commended for elucidating this theme in a monograph-length study.' Ali Anooshahr, University of California, Davis