The talk argues for combining insights and methodologies from two disciplines -- conventional archive-based history, and art history -- in order to come to a clearer understanding of state formation and interstate relations in early modern India. Specifically, building on Oleg Grabar's formulation of the `symbolic appropriation of the land,' this paper will identify various strategies by which governors or monarchs manipulated architecture to lay claim to possession of strategically important sites in the Deccan during the tumultuous sixteenth century. Principal sites include Bijapur and Vijayanagara, and the principal feature examined will be gateways. But the paper will also discuss other monuments and other sites, such as mosques or temples in Goa, Raichur, Mudgal, and Bankapur.

 

Trained in History at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Eaton is a Professor of History at the University of Arizona, specializing on the history of medieval and early modern South Asia. He has authored Sufis of Bijapur, 1300 1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, 1978), Islamic History as Global History (AHA,1990), Firuzabad: Palace City of the Deccan (co-authored with George Michell) (Oxford, 1992), The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204 1760 (Calfornia, 1993), Essays on Islam and Indian History (Oxford, 2000), India's Islamic Traditions, 711 1750 (edited, Oxford 2002), Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India (Hope, 2004), A Social History of the Deccan, 1300 1761: Eight Indian Lives (Cambridge, 2005), Slavery and South Asian History (co-edited with Indrani Chatterjee) (Indiana, 2006), and Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites in India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600 (co-authored with Phillip B. Wagoner) (Oxford, 2014),

 

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