| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I examine the shifting forms and meanings of diplomatic practice among the courts of the Mughal state and Deccan sultanates in South Asia and the Safavid empire in Iran that communicated in Persian roughly between 1580 and 1630 and make five related claims. First, I argue that diplomacy was a performative exercise by the ambassador (īlchī), formulated through constantly evolving ethical principles and aesthetic sensibilities shaped by Persianate cultural ethos (adab). Ambassadorial performance was not governed by codified manuals but informed by practices of corporeality and norms of sociability that were transmitted textually and were continually reconfigured by temporal and spatial contingencies. Second, the envoy’s temperament, subjectivity, diverse skillsets, and overlapping identities shaped their perception and execution of the diplomatic mission (risālat) and affected its outcome. I unpack the intricate relationship between imperial service (khidmat) and diplomatic mediation (sifārat) that an envoy was supposed to perform. Third, diplomatic encounters were performed not only in the royal court but held in various kinds of courtly spaces that were rendered performative and competitive using tangible objects and ephemeral substances. I illustrate how their layouts modulated the nature of interactions between the participants and determined appropriate forms of etiquette and conduct. I extend this analysis to explicate the relation between ceremonial and diplomatic protocol and demonstrate the ways in which reception and departure ceremonies accorded to emissaries were innovatively used by contestants to alter existing power dynamics between themselves. Fourth, materiality in diplomacy was discernible beyond gift-giving practices such as extraction and presentation of tribute, transfer and sale of objects associated with a potentate’s sovereign status, and acquisition of rarities that had to be procured through special purchasing missions. Finally, epistolary compositions (inshā’) that constituted the bedrock of diplomatic correspondence form the bulk of primary sources of this dissertation besides other genres of courtly literature. I argue that rather than being formulaic and rhetorical in nature, inshā’ offers epistemological and conceptual frameworks to reconstruct the figure of the envoy, underscores the channels of diplomatic communications, and delineates the cultural flows that emissaries fostered. | |
