After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India

Timur invaded northern India in 1398 but returned to Samarkand a year later. In 1555 the Timurid emperor Humayun came back to India after being forced into exile in Persia and re-established Mughal rule in northern India. Between these two significant dates stretches an era largely consigned to oblivion-the ‘long’ fifteenth century. The Mughal dynasty has long occupied a pre-eminent position in research on Indian history. It has also been credited with ushering in a radically new age of innovation in art, literature, and statecraft. But what of the period before the Mughals? With the empire-centred study of history privileging periods of political centralization, the multi-centred fifteenth century has remained relatively unexplored and undervalued. After Timur Left presents a path-breaking interdisciplinary set of writings on the politics, languages, religions, literatures, and arts of the fifteenth century. Together they reveal it to be a period of considerable political and social mobility, of cultural connectivity and consolidation, of innovation in literature and language choices, and of new forms of religious organization and expression.