Narrative Pasts

Book excerpt: This book explores the narrative power of texts in creating communities. Through an investigation of genealogical, historical, and biographical texts, it retrieves the social history of the Muslim community in Gujarat, a region with one of the earliest records of Muslim presence in the Indian subcontinent. By reconstructing the literary, social, and historical world of Sufi preceptors, disciples, and descendants from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, Jyoti Gulati Balachandran highlights the role of learned Muslim men in imparting a prominent regional and historical identity to Gujarat. The book reveals how distinct forms of community and association were created and shaped over time through architecture, shrine veneration, and most importantly, textual redefinition. Narrative Pasts demonstrates that Gujarat was not only an important hub of maritime Indian Ocean trade, but also an integral part of the historical and narrative processes that shaped medieval and early modern South Asia. Employing new and rarely used literary materials in Persian and Arabic, this book brings new life and vitality to the history of the region by integrating Gujarat’s sultanate and Mughal past with the larger socio-cultural histories of Islamic South Asia.