Dr Gagan Sood

This course is available on the BA in History, BSc in Government and History and BSc in International Relations and History. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course is capped at 15 students.

Course content: Following the Mongol incursions into the heartlands of the Islamic world, the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal dynasties arose to establish novel forms of hegemony that eventually spanned much of Afro-Eurasia. Supported by an array of provincial and local elites, these empires were at the height of their powers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, presiding over territories that extended from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Bengal, from Yemen to the Crimea. Their subjects were producers, consumers, importers and exporters of goods critical for global trade; their location accorded them a vital role in the flow of ideas and information; there was a remarkable flowering of the arts in the period; and conversion to the region’s dominant religious tradition, Islam, continued apace, forging new frontiers. By the eighteenth century, however, the empires were shadows of their former selves, with sovereignty devolved to a variety of successor regimes vying with each other for supremacy. It is this struggle that paved the way for the region’s later incorporation into Europe’s global empires of modern times. This course will examine the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, and the larger world of which they were part, from their origins in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to their ‘decline’ in the eighteenth century. We will study how temporal authority was expressed symbolically and through governance; the patterns of daily life found in urban and rural settings, and on the frontier; Islam in theory and in reality, and its relationship to the region’s other major religious traditions; diplomacy within and without the Islamic world, and the ways in which it intersected with the new techniques and technologies of warfare; inherited and collective knowledge of other lands, near and far, and the everyday movement of people, goods and news; the signal achievements in the literary, visual and architectural realms; secular changes to the region’s societies and economies; early modern millenarianism, fundamentalism and reformism; and the reasons for the eighteenth-century demise of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires as world powers.

10 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the MT. 10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT. 2 hours of classes in the ST.

Please indicate the formative work students are asked to complete (please do not include any summative work that counts towards the assessment of the course). Two 2000 word essays, one in Michaelmas term and one in Lent term. Ten minute presentation given in class. One hour mock exam in Summer term. Paragraph 2.8 of the Undergraduate and Taught Masters Codes of Practice, sets out the School’s requirements in this area: Formative coursework is an essential part of the teaching and learning experience at the School. It should be introduced at an early stage of a course and normally before the submission of assessed coursework. Students will normally be given the opportunity to produce essays, problem sets or other forms of written work. The number of these pieces of work for each course will be detailed in the on-line Course Guide.

Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004)
Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Cambridge, 2010)
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 (London, 2007)
Joseph F. Fletcher, 'Integrative history: Parallels and interconnections in the early modern period, 1500-1800', Journal of Turkish Studies 9 (1985), 37-57
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power (New York, 2002)
Ira M. Lapidus, 'State and religion in Islamic societies', Past & Present 151 (1996), 3-27
Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London, 2006)
John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge, 1993)
Francis Robinson, 'Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared knowledge and connective systems', Journal of Islamic Studies 8:2 (1997), 151-184

Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours) in the main exam period.