Medieval India

Description

Medieval India was not simply a sequence of dynasties. It was a contest over land and revenue, a negotiation between conquerors and regional elites, a marketplace linking Gujarat to the Persian Gulf, and a devotional ferment that spoke in the languages of the street.

This book approaches the period through the questions historians actually argue about. It begins where the discipline begins – with the sources themselves: court chronicles and their silences, epigraphs, travellers’ accounts, and archival records, and what each can and cannot be made to say. From there it moves through the making and unmaking of imperial power: Ghori’s campaigns, the administrative experiments of the Tughluqs, the mansab-and-jagir machinery of the Mughal state, Akbar’s Rajput and religious policies, the Maratha challenge under Shivaji, and the fiscal crisis that hollowed out the empire from within.