Polity, society and culture in the age of shift: Indo-Persian sources

.This paper examines the political, social and cultural transformations of late Mughal India
through the lens of Indo-Persian sources. Moving beyond the binary of “decline” versus “cultural
efflorescence,” it argues that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are better understood as an age of
shift, in which authority moved from the imperial centre to regional powers, courtly nobility, and
eventually to European trading companies. Drawing on chronicles, akhbarat, malfuz literature, lexicons,
travelogues and poetry in Persian and Urdu, the paper traces changing hierarchies of birth and status
(Ashraf, Kam-aseel, Razil), the rise of powerful courtiers and eunuchs, the migration of culture from
court to regional centres, the emergence of commissioned Persian writings under the East India Company,
and the linguistic absorption of European words and idioms into Indo-Persian usage. The paper also
considers non-literary and technical Persian sources and the later impact of print and lithography,
situating these developments within a broader reassessment of eighteenth-century Indo-Persian
historiography.

Indo-Persian sources; Late Mughal history; Eighteenth century decline; Persian historiography; Regional courts; Akhbarat; Malfuz literature