After Timur Left

Most people imagine the period between Timur's sack of Delhi and the arrival of the Mughals to be one of unrelenting darkness and disorder. The first major compendium of essays on the "long" fifteenth century, After Timur Left presents a very different picture: one of intense cultural ferment, innovations in literature and language choice, and new forms of religious organisation and expression. These cultural developments are set against a backdrop of political transformation. Once Timur returned to Samarkand in 1399, new kings and chieftains jostled for power, making new alliances and calling upon far-flung networks that stretched from Afghanistan to Bengal. Alongside the old capitals rose new towns inhabited by merchants and professionals, where long-standing local cultural and political forms were offset by transregional conversations wrought by increasingly mobile poets, preachers and warriors who travelled widely in search of employment and adventure. A generation ago, the eighteenth century was revealed to be a period of innovation and entrepreneurship. In a similar vein, After Timur Left rehabilitates the fifteenth century through the interdisciplinary research of leading scholars of premodern South Asia, revealing foundational political and literary currents that have hitherto been obscured by empire-centred narratives of history.