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Persian is one of the great lingua francas of world history. Yet despite its recognition as a shared language across the Islamic world and beyond, its scope, impact, and mechanisms remain underexplored. A world historical inquiry into pre-modern cosmopolitanism, The Persianate World traces the reach and limits of Persian as a Eurasian language in a comprehensive survey of its geographical, literary, and social frontiers. From Siberia to Southeast Asia, and between London and Beijing, this book shows how Persian gained, maintained, and finally surrendered its status to imperial and vernacular competitors. Fourteen essays trace Persian’s interactions with Bengali, Chinese, Turkic, Punjabi, and other languages to identify the forces that extended “Persographia,” the domain of written Persian. Spanning the ages of expansion and contraction, The Persianate World offers a critical survey of both the supports and constraints of one of history’s key languages of global exchange.
 

Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Sufism: A Global History and Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam and editor of Afghanistan’s Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban.


 

“This is the first volume to examine seriously the notion of a ‘Persianate world’ extending far beyond the traditional strongholds of Iran and India. By highlighting the uses of Persian across early modern Eurasia in places as diverse as China, Siberia, and even England, the volume represents an exceptionally important contribution to our understanding of what constituted this world.”—Andrew Peacock, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, University of St. Andrews

"With erudition and refinement, this book accomplishes something remarkable—it shows the importance of Persian as a language of exchange of specialized literate knowledge while also exploring the process by which it became constrained by the rise of vernacular cultures. It provides a timely corrective to an anachronistic understanding of the Persianate sphere as an empire of letters centred exclusively on Iran."—Paolo Sartori, author of Visions of Justice: Shari’a and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia

"This groundbreaking collection of essays illuminates the multifaceted and very complex history of the rise and decline of the Persian language as a lingua franca in a way that has never before been conceptualized."—Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, author of Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran

"The scholarly term 'Persianate' has been widely adopted with little critical analysis. This volume provides welcome reflection and case studies on the role of Persian in countries and domains beyond Iran and India, exploring its frontiers to find analytical utility in the concept."—Kevin van Bladel, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University