India and the Islamic Heartlands Sood Paperback Cambridge University Press

India and the Islamic HeartlandsAn Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange\nAuthor(s): Gagan D. S. Sood\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781107551725, 978-1107551725\nSynopsis\nBased on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. Gagan D. S. Sood focuses on ordinary people - traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, and scribes, among others - who were engaged in activities marked by large distances and long silences. By elucidating their everyday lives in a range of settings, from the family household to the polity at large, Sood pieces together the connective tissue of a world that lay beyond the sovereign purview. Recapturing this obscured and neglected world helps us better understand the region during a pivota.