Sufis, Slaves and Soldiers: Premodern Mobility in South and Central Asia

This freshman seminar will take students on a journey across the historically interconnected regions of pre-modern Central Asia, Iran and India to discover a world where people, goods and ideas traveled, where spaces were shared and where fluid identities adapted to changing spatial contexts. An engaging mix of textual, visual and material sources with methods of cartography will enable students to learn about diverse historical experiences that include the Sogdian-Turkic commercial symbiosis in Pre-Islamic Central Asia, gendered spaces in peripatetic Mughal courts, and forced relocations caused by slavery in the Turco-Persian world.