Nile Green
After beginning my career as a historian of Islamic India and Pakistan, I have traced networks of Muslim activity that connect Afghanistan, Iran, the Indian Ocean, Islamic Africa and Central Asia, as well as Muslim diasporas as far apart as Europe, America and Japan.
My writings span the domains of global, social, religious, cultural and literary history. My books have ranged over the forms of Islam which evolved among the tribal societies of early modern Afghans to the intersection of religion and colonial service among the Muslim soldiers of the British Empire and the emergence of industrialized religious economies in the nineteenth century Indian Ocean, Atlantic and Pacific arenas. My latest book, "The Love of Strangers," reconstructs the beginnings of modern Middle Eastern and European intellectual exchange by following the first Iranian students to study in Europe between 1812 and 1819. It was selected as an Editors' Choice in the New York Times.
In recent years, I have focused on positioning Islam and Muslims in global history through such topics as intellectual and technological interchange between Asia and Europe; Muslim global travel writings; the transnational genealogy of Afghan modernism; and the world history of 'Islamic' printing. I have also used the networks forged by Sufi brotherhoods to understand pre-modern and early modern mechanisms of Muslim expansion from the Middle East to China and beyond. One hallmark of my writing has been to join together the study of the early modern and modern periods, not least with regard to the question of multiple globalisms and globalizations.
In methodological terms, much of my work has drawn on the insights of anthropology, an interest that developed as I lived, researched and traveled among the Muslims of India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Chinese Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Myanmar, Malaysia and Japan.
Given the fact that South Asia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, my work seeks to position the region in a global and comparative perspective. To this end, I serve as director of the UCLA Program on Central Asia; on the Association of Asian Studies' South Asia Council ; on the Executive Committee of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies; and on the editorial boards of the South Asia Across the Disciplines book series and, formerly, the International Journal of Middle East Studies.
Through my initial training in South Asian and Middle East Studies and my abiding interests in Muslims in Asia, Africa and Europe, I endeavor to bring global history into conversation with Islamic history.
Address: UCLA Department of History
6265 Bunche Hall
Box 951473
Los Angeles
CA 90095-1473
USA
My writings span the domains of global, social, religious, cultural and literary history. My books have ranged over the forms of Islam which evolved among the tribal societies of early modern Afghans to the intersection of religion and colonial service among the Muslim soldiers of the British Empire and the emergence of industrialized religious economies in the nineteenth century Indian Ocean, Atlantic and Pacific arenas. My latest book, "The Love of Strangers," reconstructs the beginnings of modern Middle Eastern and European intellectual exchange by following the first Iranian students to study in Europe between 1812 and 1819. It was selected as an Editors' Choice in the New York Times.
In recent years, I have focused on positioning Islam and Muslims in global history through such topics as intellectual and technological interchange between Asia and Europe; Muslim global travel writings; the transnational genealogy of Afghan modernism; and the world history of 'Islamic' printing. I have also used the networks forged by Sufi brotherhoods to understand pre-modern and early modern mechanisms of Muslim expansion from the Middle East to China and beyond. One hallmark of my writing has been to join together the study of the early modern and modern periods, not least with regard to the question of multiple globalisms and globalizations.
In methodological terms, much of my work has drawn on the insights of anthropology, an interest that developed as I lived, researched and traveled among the Muslims of India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Chinese Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Myanmar, Malaysia and Japan.
Given the fact that South Asia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, my work seeks to position the region in a global and comparative perspective. To this end, I serve as director of the UCLA Program on Central Asia; on the Association of Asian Studies' South Asia Council ; on the Executive Committee of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies; and on the editorial boards of the South Asia Across the Disciplines book series and, formerly, the International Journal of Middle East Studies.
Through my initial training in South Asian and Middle East Studies and my abiding interests in Muslims in Asia, Africa and Europe, I endeavor to bring global history into conversation with Islamic history.
Address: UCLA Department of History
6265 Bunche Hall
Box 951473
Los Angeles
CA 90095-1473
USA
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Books by Nile Green
Drawing on Urdu as well as European sources, the book uses the biographies of Muslim holy men and their military followers to recreate the extraordinary encounter between a barracks culture of miracle stories, carnivals, drug-use and madness with a colonial culture of mutiny memoirs, Evangelicalism, magistrates and the asylum. It explores the ways in which the colonial army helped promote this sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it.
The book brings to light the existence of a distinct 'barracks Islam' and shows its importance to the cultural no less than the military history of colonial India.
Historian Nile Green covers not only the familiar venues of Islam in the Middle East and the West, but also Asia and Africa, explaining the doctrines of a wide variety of political and non-political versions of Islam across the spectrum from Salafism to Sufism. This Very Short Introduction will help readers recognize and compare the various organizations competing to claim the authenticity and authority of representing the true version of Islam.
Placing the mystical traditions of Indian Islam within their cultural contexts, this interesting study focuses on the shrines of four Sufi saints in the neglected Deccan region and their changing roles under the rule of the Mughals, the Nizams of Haydarabad and, after 1948, the Indian nation. In particular Green studies the city of Awrangabad, examining the vibrant intellectual and cultural history of this city as part of the independent state of Haydarabad. He employs a combination of historical texts and anthropological fieldwork, which provide a fresh perspective on developments of devotional Islam in South Asia over the past three centuries, giving a fuller understanding of Sufism and Muslim saints in South Asia.
Table of Contents
1. Muslim Mystics in an Age of Empire: The Sufis of Awrangabad
2. The Poetry and Politics of Sainthood in a Mughal Successor State
3. The Sufis in the Shadow of a New Empire
4. Saints, Rebels and Revivalists
5. The Awrangabad Saints in the New India.
Conclusions
Historian Nile Green surveys not only the familiar venues of Islam in the Middle East and the West, but also Asia and Africa, explaining the doctrines of a wide variety of political and non-political versions of Islam across the spectrum from Salafism to Sufism. This Very Short Introduction will help readers to recognize and compare the various organizations competing to claim the authenticity and authority of representing the one true Islam.
Papers by Nile Green
religious transformations within then between different empires
led to the development of new religious geographies and the
alteration of existing religious centres. Combining examples from
Asian, African, European and American empires, the article points
to common patterns across four categories of religious space:
steam ports (such as Bombay), railway towns (such as Harbin),
preexisting pilgrimage places (such as Bodhgaya), and imperial
borderlands (such as Hawaii). These transimperial sites spaces
enabled doctrinal, ritual, linguistic, and organizational changes to
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, enabling the propagation of
such new religions as Theosophy and Baha’ism. Further attention
is paid to architectural and organizational change, as well as the
use of printing and translation in promoting new versions of
these religions to different population groups. In this way,
transimperial tranformation paved the way for more familiar
globalized forms of religiosity in the later 20th century
Drawing on Urdu as well as European sources, the book uses the biographies of Muslim holy men and their military followers to recreate the extraordinary encounter between a barracks culture of miracle stories, carnivals, drug-use and madness with a colonial culture of mutiny memoirs, Evangelicalism, magistrates and the asylum. It explores the ways in which the colonial army helped promote this sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it.
The book brings to light the existence of a distinct 'barracks Islam' and shows its importance to the cultural no less than the military history of colonial India.
Historian Nile Green covers not only the familiar venues of Islam in the Middle East and the West, but also Asia and Africa, explaining the doctrines of a wide variety of political and non-political versions of Islam across the spectrum from Salafism to Sufism. This Very Short Introduction will help readers recognize and compare the various organizations competing to claim the authenticity and authority of representing the true version of Islam.
Placing the mystical traditions of Indian Islam within their cultural contexts, this interesting study focuses on the shrines of four Sufi saints in the neglected Deccan region and their changing roles under the rule of the Mughals, the Nizams of Haydarabad and, after 1948, the Indian nation. In particular Green studies the city of Awrangabad, examining the vibrant intellectual and cultural history of this city as part of the independent state of Haydarabad. He employs a combination of historical texts and anthropological fieldwork, which provide a fresh perspective on developments of devotional Islam in South Asia over the past three centuries, giving a fuller understanding of Sufism and Muslim saints in South Asia.
Table of Contents
1. Muslim Mystics in an Age of Empire: The Sufis of Awrangabad
2. The Poetry and Politics of Sainthood in a Mughal Successor State
3. The Sufis in the Shadow of a New Empire
4. Saints, Rebels and Revivalists
5. The Awrangabad Saints in the New India.
Conclusions
Historian Nile Green surveys not only the familiar venues of Islam in the Middle East and the West, but also Asia and Africa, explaining the doctrines of a wide variety of political and non-political versions of Islam across the spectrum from Salafism to Sufism. This Very Short Introduction will help readers to recognize and compare the various organizations competing to claim the authenticity and authority of representing the one true Islam.
religious transformations within then between different empires
led to the development of new religious geographies and the
alteration of existing religious centres. Combining examples from
Asian, African, European and American empires, the article points
to common patterns across four categories of religious space:
steam ports (such as Bombay), railway towns (such as Harbin),
preexisting pilgrimage places (such as Bodhgaya), and imperial
borderlands (such as Hawaii). These transimperial sites spaces
enabled doctrinal, ritual, linguistic, and organizational changes to
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, enabling the propagation of
such new religions as Theosophy and Baha’ism. Further attention
is paid to architectural and organizational change, as well as the
use of printing and translation in promoting new versions of
these religions to different population groups. In this way,
transimperial tranformation paved the way for more familiar
globalized forms of religiosity in the later 20th century
corpus.