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Persian is one of the great lingua francas of world history. Yet
despite its recognition as a shared language across the Islamic
world and beyond, its scope, impact, and mechanisms remain
underexplored. A world historical inquiry into pre-modern
cosmopolitanism,
The Persianate World traces the
reach and limits of Persian as a Eurasian language in a
comprehensive survey of its geographical, literary, and social
frontiers. From Siberia to Southeast Asia, and between London and
Beijing, this book shows how Persian gained, maintained, and
finally surrendered its status to imperial and vernacular
competitors. Fourteen essays trace Persian’s interactions
with Bengali, Chinese, Turkic, Punjabi, and other languages
to identify the forces that extended
“Persographia,” the domain of written Persian. Spanning
the ages of expansion and contraction,
The Persianate
World offers a critical survey of both the supports and
constraints of one of history’s key languages of global
exchange.