All Courses

Fifty years ago, the scholar Marshall Hodgson coined the term "gunpowder empires" to describe the introduction of new military technology by early modern Islamic kingdoms across Eurasia, specifically in Turkey, Iran, and India. Using this cultural framework to study the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires, this course will focus on issues of imperial power and expansion, social and religious authority, protest and dissent, language and literature, law and ethics, paintings and architecture, as well as gender and sexuality. We will explore the historiography of these Islamic polities along with reading primary sources including court chronicles, local histories, political treatises, religious texts, and poetry in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindavi and other languages.