Muzaffar Alam


Muzaffar Alam is the George V. Bobrinskoy Professor in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Biography

Muzaffar Alam is a historian trained at Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal [Nehru University, Delhi|Jawaharlal Nehru University], where he obtained his doctorate in history in 1977. Before joining the SALC at the University of Chicago in 2001, he taught three decades at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has held visiting positions in the Collège de France, Leiden University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the EHESS.

Research

Alam's research focuses on Mughal political and institutional history and the history of Indo-Islamic culture. Alam has taught courses on the history of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. His working languages include English, Persian, French, and Urdu.
Alam also studies the history of religious and literary cultures in pre-colonial northern India, history of Indo-Persian travel accounts, and comparative history of the Islamic world.

Publications

Monographs

  • The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India
  • The Mughal State 1526-1750
  • A European Experience of the Mughal Orient
  • The Languages of Political Islam in India: c. 1200-1800
  • Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discovery: 1400-1800
  • Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics
  • ''The Mughals and the Sufis: Islam and Political Imagination in India, 1500-1750 ''

    Contributions

  • "Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society," in R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila thapar, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • "Shari`a and Governance in Indo-Islamic Context," in David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
  • "The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan," in Sheldon Pollock, Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
  • "The Afterlife of a Mughal Masnavi: The Tale of Nal and Daman in Urdu and Persian,", in Kathryn Hansen and David Lelyveld, A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 46-73.