Paper short abstract:

This paper considers a memoir and biographical dictionary of the Afghan and Hindustani scholars who had relocated themselves to Lucknow at the end of the eighteenth century. Through my reading of this work, I foreground the varied resources that scholars drew on as states subdivided in this period.

Paper long abstract:

In 1774 the Mughal successor state of Awadh annexed parts of Afghan-ruled Rohilkhand as the East India Company crafted a shrunken Rohilla Afghan state in Rāmpur under the Nawāb Faizullah Khān (d.1793). Historians have examined the annexation, disassembling and reorganization of states in late Mughal India through the lens of economic outcomes, administrative failures, militarization and growing colonial ascent. Keeping in view the social consequences of these restructured states, this paper shifts the focus towards a parallel reconfiguration of intellectual circles, scholarly relationships and the growing portfolios of mobile intellectuals in times of political upheaval.

ʿAbdul Qādir Khān was one such mobile scholar. He was the author of a Persian memoir and biographical dictionary of the Afghan and Hindustani literati who like him had relocated to Lucknow at the end of the eighteenth century. Tracing his own family's emigration from Āzerbāijān to Rāmpur, he outlines the wandering scholar-soldier's quest for appropriate social circles, familial support and intellectual guidance. Finding favor with the Nawāb's tutor, his family had been able to leverage its social standing and secure his intellectual and physical training at home and at school. The move to Lucknow subsequently wrought many changes in his life as well as in the careers of the Afghan scholars in his company. Through my reading of this account, I will shed light on the multiple social and intellectual resources that scholars relied on as states lost autonomy and subdivided in late eighteenth-century India.