Debating Caliphs and Kings in the Twentieth Century: ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm Sharar’s Essays on Empire and Governance
In: Journal of Urdu StudiesSearch for other papers by Maryam Fatima in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
The following is an English translation of three essays by the late nineteenth-century Urdu novelist, historian, and essayist ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm Sharar (1860–1926). In the essays translated here, Sharar offers commentary on contemporaneous world-historical events such as the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (which had garnered huge public uproar in British India, later culminating in the Khilafat movement) and the “Great Game” in Iran that resulted in its bifurcation into Russian and British spheres of influence. These polemical pieces concerning major imperial changes of the early twentieth century oscillate between impassioned pleas to the colonial government to save Islamic empires from total ruin and rousing calls to action to the Muslim community to band together and save themselves. The first essay, “The Fall of the Persians” (Zavāl-e ʿAjam), reflects on the twilight years of Qajar Iran and presents “Islamic” Persia as the civilizational fountainhead of large swathes of Asia from “the Bosphorus to China.” The second essay, “The End of Ottoman Power” (ʿUṡmānī Sat̤vat kā Ḳhātimah), responds to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1912 by analyzing the material reasons for the triumph of Europe. The third piece, “The Democratic Spirit of the Arabs” (ʿAraboñ kī Jamhūriyat-pasandī), captures the style for which Sharar was primarily known: narrating history through entertaining stories for moral edification. Here, a short vignette about the Andalusian ruler ʿAbd ul-ʿAzīz and his gradual decline towards conceit, at the behest of his Gothic wife, is framed by a historical review of the many ways in which Islamic rulers avoided inadvertent polytheism by not using grand titles like sult̤ān and bādshāh for themselves. This is held up as representing the intrinsic democratic ethos of the Arabs which was forfeited by later Islamic rulers under the influence of Persian culture. These essays will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of twentieth-century India interested in imperial transitions. They preserve trends in Urdu historiography that were central to the fashioning of national publics, providing a window into negotiations of the place of Urdu and Indian Muslims in the world.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Alavi, Seema. “Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–1890) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1, no. 38 (2011): 1–38.
-
Bayly, Christopher. “Indian and Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.” In Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda, edited by Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, 325–350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
-
Datla, Kavita. The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial Hyderabad. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.
-
Di-Capua, Yoav. Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
-
Ganjvī, Nizāmī̤. Sikandar-nāmāh. Translated by H. Wilberforce Clarke. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1881.
-
Minault, Gail. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
-
Perkins, Christopher Ryan. “From the Meḥfil to the Printed Word: Public Debate and Discourse in Late Colonial India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 50, no. 1 (2013): 49–50.
-
Robb, Megan Eaton. Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
-
Roebuck, Thomas. A Collection of Proverbs, and Proverbial Phrases in the Persian and Hindoostanee Languages, vol. 1. Calcutta: The Hindoostanee Press, 1824.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “ʿArabī se Fārsī o Urdū ke Taʿalluqāt.” In Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 4: Adab o Taḥqīq-e Masāʾil, 16–20. Lucknow: Maktabah Kaliyāñ, 1961.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “ʿAraboñ kī Jamhūriyat-pasandī.” In Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 6: Tārīḳhī Vāqiʿāt par Ḳhayāl Ārāʾī, 246–251. Lucknow: Maktabah Kaliyāñ, 1961.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “Nāvil.” In Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 4: Adab o Taḥqīq-e Masāʾil, 228–233. Lucknow: Maktabah Kaliyāñ, 1961.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “ʿUṡmānī Sat̤vat kā Ḳhātimah.” In Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 5: Iṣlāḥ-e Qaum o Millat, 80–86. Lahore: Mubarak ʿAlī Shāh Gilānī, n.d.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “Zavāl-e ʿAjam.” In Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 5: Iṣlāḥ-e Qaum o Millat, 56–62. Lahore: Mubarak ʿAlī Shāh Gilānī, n.d.
-
Sharar, ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm. “Zamānah.” Maẓāmīn-e Sharar vol. 1 part 2: Shāʿirānah o ʿĀshiqānah, 425–431. Lahore: Geelani Electric Press, n.d.
-
Shukla, R. L. “Some Aspects of Indian Muslim Response to Balkan War.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 35 (1974): 417–424.
-
Zaman, Faridah. “Beyond Nostalgia: Time and Place in Indian Muslim Politics.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 27, no. 4 (2017): 627–647.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 80 | 80 | 17 |
| Full Text Views | 177 | 177 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 160 | 160 | 0 |
Debating Caliphs and Kings in the Twentieth Century: ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm Sharar’s Essays on Empire and Governance
In: Journal of Urdu StudiesSearch for other papers by Maryam Fatima in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
The following is an English translation of three essays by the late nineteenth-century Urdu novelist, historian, and essayist ʿAbd ul-Ḥalīm Sharar (1860–1926). In the essays translated here, Sharar offers commentary on contemporaneous world-historical events such as the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (which had garnered huge public uproar in British India, later culminating in the Khilafat movement) and the “Great Game” in Iran that resulted in its bifurcation into Russian and British spheres of influence. These polemical pieces concerning major imperial changes of the early twentieth century oscillate between impassioned pleas to the colonial government to save Islamic empires from total ruin and rousing calls to action to the Muslim community to band together and save themselves. The first essay, “The Fall of the Persians” (Zavāl-e ʿAjam), reflects on the twilight years of Qajar Iran and presents “Islamic” Persia as the civilizational fountainhead of large swathes of Asia from “the Bosphorus to China.” The second essay, “The End of Ottoman Power” (ʿUṡmānī Sat̤vat kā Ḳhātimah), responds to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1912 by analyzing the material reasons for the triumph of Europe. The third piece, “The Democratic Spirit of the Arabs” (ʿAraboñ kī Jamhūriyat-pasandī), captures the style for which Sharar was primarily known: narrating history through entertaining stories for moral edification. Here, a short vignette about the Andalusian ruler ʿAbd ul-ʿAzīz and his gradual decline towards conceit, at the behest of his Gothic wife, is framed by a historical review of the many ways in which Islamic rulers avoided inadvertent polytheism by not using grand titles like sult̤ān and bādshāh for themselves. This is held up as representing the intrinsic democratic ethos of the Arabs which was forfeited by later Islamic rulers under the influence of Persian culture. These essays will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of twentieth-century India interested in imperial transitions. They preserve trends in Urdu historiography that were central to the fashioning of national publics, providing a window into negotiations of the place of Urdu and Indian Muslims in the world.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 80 | 80 | 17 |
| Full Text Views | 177 | 177 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 160 | 160 | 0 |