Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib’s 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

The collection of poems Fughān-i Dihlī (The Lament for Delhi) was compiled in 1863 by Tafazzul Husain Kaukab. Its poems reference the turbulent events of 1857 and their aftermath in Delhi. The shahr-āshob genre of poetry, which began as a catalogue of ravishing male youths in Persian, took on a different meaning in later Urdu literature. Ge…[Read more]

This article considers the reception and genre of the Shāhnāmah in India. It takes as its starting-point comments made by the poet Mirza Asad Allah Khan Ghalib in 1866, moving on to look at a Mughal Shāhnāmah adaptation, the Tarikh-i dil-gusha-i Shamsher-Khani, and its Urdu translations, as well as other Persian, Urdu and Arabic texts. It inv…[Read more]