Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia
Categories: Books, Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government

Polymaths of Islam analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a shared culture that integrated Central Asia, Iran, and India from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth. James Pickett demonstrates that Islamic scholars were simultaneously mystics and administrators, judges and occultists, physicians and poets. This integrated understanding of the world of Islamic scholarship unlocks a different way of thinking about transregional exchange networks. Pickett reveals a Persian-language cultural sphere that transcended state boundaries and integrated a spectacularly vibrant Eurasia that is invisible from published sources alone. Through a high cultural complex that he terms the "Persian cosmopolis" or "Persianate sphere," Pickett argues that an intersection of diverse disciplines shaped geographical trajectories across and between political states. In Polymaths of Islam he paints a comprehensive, colorful, and often contradictory portrait of mosque and state in the age of empire.


Sticky notes: On Kindle Scribe
Reading age: 18 years and up
Page Flip: Enabled
Language: English
File size: 1572 KB
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Print length: 447 pages
Publication date: September 15, 2020
Enhanced typesetting: Enabled
Word Wise: Not Enabled
subtitle: Kindle Edition
author: Visit Amazon's James Pickett Page search results James Pickett