Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies

This volume brings together a collection of 10 papers on different aspects of medieval and modern Indo-Persian culture by French scholars working in a number of related disciplines. While the focus on Iran proper has had a considerable history in French academic circles, Indo-Persian studies have not been pursued in such a systematic or continuous fashion there until recently. A series of symposia on Indo-Persian culture, beginning in 1992, have however permitted the collection of the papers brought together here.The editor’s introduction briefly surveys the history of Persian and Indo-Persian studies in France from its origins in the seventeenth century to the present day and presents an overview of the papers. The papers themselves are extensively illustrated with plans and photographs. They range in their interest from an analysis of the Persian translation of an Arabic treatise on occult sciences of the thirteenth century, to the modern-day Indo-Persian cuisine of Hyderabad as viewed from a part-anthropological and part-historical perspective. Their strength lies in that they combine textual studies with the analysis of artefacts (such as metalwork objets d’art) or field studies. Several papers focus on religious and doctrinal themes, but music, art-history and architecture (monumental architecture and Mughal-style gardens) also receive due attention.

This volume thus represents the confluence of not two but three cultures, the Indian, the Persian, and the French.