Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World
Ruby Lal
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Ruby Lal explores domestic life and the place of women in the Mughal court of the sixteenth century. Challenging traditional, orientalist interpretations of the haram that have portrayed a domestic world of seclusion and sexual exploitation, she reveals a complex society where noble men and women negotiated their everyday life and public-political affairs. Combining Ottoman and Safavid histories, she demonstrates the richness as well as ambiguity of the Mughal haram, which was pivotal in the transition to institutionalization and imperial excellence.
Product Details
Price
$61.59
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publish Date
October 31, 2005
Pages
260
Dimensions
6.12 X 8.96 X 0.65 inches | 0.98 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780521615341
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About the Author
Ruby Lal is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University. She has written extensively on women and gender relations in Islamic societies in the precolonial and colonial world. In addition to numerous academic articles and political commentaries, she is the author of Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005). She is currently finalizing a historical biography of the Mughal Empress Nur Jahan (forthcoming).
Reviews
"Ruby Lal [is a] young Indian historian whose study of the domestic life of the Mughals is likely to rewrite completely the social history of the period" - The New York Review of Books
"Lal's work is significant and achieves much that it sets out to do. Women who inhabited the world of the early Mughals are truly brought to life in the context of wider historical processes. Her argument against the public/private division is well etched out. The book is a vivid and well-written account spanning a few generations, and weaves in the momentous historical changes that occurred in that time-span. An attempt to write such a text has perhaps never been made, and it is worth reading simply for the alternative perspective that it presents." - Indian Journal of Gender Studies
"Lal's work is significant and achieves much that it sets out to do. Women who inhabited the world of the early Mughals are truly brought to life in the context of wider historical processes. Her argument against the public/private division is well etched out. The book is a vivid and well-written account spanning a few generations, and weaves in the momentous historical changes that occurred in that time-span. An attempt to write such a text has perhaps never been made, and it is worth reading simply for the alternative perspective that it presents." - Indian Journal of Gender Studies
