Taming Wilderness: The Mughal Hunt and Cultural Landscapes of the Shikārgāh

Shaha Parpia, Ph.D. (2019), is Visiting Research Fellow at The University of Adelaide, Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA), Australia. She is an architecture historian whose work focuses on Islamic architecture and gardens, Mughal landscapes, and the hunt.

"Taming Wilderness is a fascinating account that sheds new light on the significance of the imperial hunt and the meanings of hunting landscape, presenting an insightfully original narrative that redefines the relationships between humans, animals, and nature in Mughal culture."— Prof. Samer Akkach, Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA), Adelaide University "In this volume, Parpia reconsiders and substantially develops her earlier research on Mughalhunting parks—first articulated in a series of articles derived from her doctoral dissertation—culminating in a comprehensive and authoritative account. The study marks a significantintervention in Mughal landscape scholarship. While the formal garden remains among the mostextensively examined subjects in the field, Parpia stands as the sole scholar to have undertaken asustained and rigorous investigation of the hunting park. She interprets these vast parklands aslandscapes of profound political and cultural significance—spaces that served the emperors andtheir retinues as stages for imperial performance, evocations of ancestral kingship, andaffirmations of dynastic sovereignty. Drawing on a rich corpus of textual, visual, and materialevidence, Parpia reconstructs the hunting park not merely as a site of recreation but as aninstrument of rule.Parpia demonstrates, moreover, that the hunting park was not solely an ideological projection buta working landscape—shaped by logistical, ecological, and administrative considerations thatgrounded imperial authority in tangible practice. She examines in detail the processes andpurposes of forest clearing; the relationship between hunting parks and irrigation projects; thetechnologies of the hunt and encampment; and the park’s economic and ecological impact onlocal agriculture and agrarian communities. She further explores the design and architecture ofthe hunting park itself and its close relationship to the Mughal formal garden—long recognizedas a potent emblem of imperial power. Among the volume’s most important contributions is itsintegration of landscape history with Mughal scientific and intellectual culture, situating theimperial engagement with land within a broader framework of knowledge production. Parpia’sanalysis deepens our understanding of how the Mughals transformed the natural world of SouthAsia into a medium of political expression, articulating authority through the deliberate designand management of landscape. This newly expanded study will be welcomed by scholars ofhistory and art history, landscape architecture, and environmental history alike. It is anexceptional work of scholarship."— Lisa Balabanlilar, Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in the HumanitiesChair, Department of Transnational Asian Studies, Rice University