Publications

Books (Monographs)

Books (Edited)

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “The Afghan Discovery of Buddha: Civilizational History & the Nationalizing of Afghan Antiquity”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, 4 (2016).
  • “The View from the Edge: The Indian Ocean’s Middle East”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, 3 (2016).
  • “Muslims, Europe, and the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: How Can Historiography Help Us?”, Perspectives on Europe (2016).
  • “Fordist Connections: The Automotive Integration of the United States and Iran”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, 2 (2016).
  • “A History of Afghan Historiography”, in Nile Green (ed.), Afghan History through Afghan Eyes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
  • “The Demographics of Dystopia: The Muslim City in Asia’s Future”, History and Anthropology 27, 3 (2016).
  • “The Hajj as its Own Undoing: Infrastructure & Integration on the Muslim Journey to Mecca”, Past & Present 226 (2015).
  • “Islam in the Early Modern World”, in Jerry Bentley & Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), The New Cambridge World History: The Early Modern Period, vol.6, pt.2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
  • “Buddhism, Islam and the Religious Economy of Colonial Burma”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 46, 2 (2015).
  • “The Global Occult: An Introduction”, History of Religions 54, 4 (2015).
  • “Re-Thinking the ‘Middle East’ After the Oceanic Turn”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, 3 (2014).
  • “From the Silk Road to the Railroad (and Back): The Means and Meanings of the Iranian Encounter with China”, Iranian Studies 48, 2 (2015) (download pdf).
  • “Breaking the Begging Bowl: Morals, Drugs & Madness in the Fate of the Muslim Faqir“, South Asian History & Culture 5, 2 (2014).
  • “Spacetime and the Muslim Journey West: Industrial Communications in the Making of the ‘Muslim World'”,
  • American Historical Review 118, 2 (2013).
  • “Shared Infrastructures, Informational Asymmetries: Persians and Indians in Japan, c. 1890-1930”, Journal of Global History 8, 3 (2013).
  • “Locating Afghan History”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, 1 (2013).
  • “Forgotten Futures: Indian Muslims in the Trans-Islamic Turn to Japan”, Journal of Asian Studies 72, 3 (2013).
  • “Maritime Worlds and Global History: Comparing the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean through Barcelona and Bombay”, History Compass 11, 7 2013).
  • “Anti-Colonial Japanophilia and the Constraints of an Islamic Japanology: Information and Affect in the Indian Encounter with Japan”, Journal of South Asian History and Culture 4, 3 (2013).
  • “The Afghan Afterlife of Phileas Fogg: Space and Time in the Literature of Afghan Travel”, in Nile Green & Nushin Arbabzadah (eds), Afghanistan in Ink: Literature between Diaspora and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
  • “The Rail Hajjis: The Trans-Siberian Railway and the Long Way to Mecca”, in Venetia Porter (ed.), Hajj: Collected Essays (London: British Museum, 2013).
  • “Africa in Indian Ink: Urdu Articulations of Indian Settlement in East Africa”, Journal of African History 53, 2 (2012).
  • “Urdu as an African Language: A Survey of a Source Literature”, Islamic Africa 3, 2 (2012).
  • “Parnassus of the Evangelical Empire: Orientalism in the English Universities, 1800-1850”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, 3 (2012).
  • “The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism: Afghanistan and the Indian ‘Urdusphere’”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, 3 (2011).
  • “Muslim Bodies and Urban Festivals: Sufis, Workers and Pleasures in Colonial Bombay”, in S.F. Alatas & T. Sevea (eds), Sufism since the Eighteenth Century: Learning, Debate and Reform in Islam (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, forthcoming).
  • “The Trans-Colonial Opportunities of Bible Translation: Iranian Language-Workers between the Russian and British Empires”, in Michael Dodson & Brian Hatcher (eds), Trans-Colonial Modernities in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2012).
  • “The Road to Kabul: Automobiles and Afghan Internationalism, 1900-1940”, in Magnus Marsden & Benjamin Hopkins (eds), Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
  • “The Madrasas of Oxford: Iranian Interactions with the English Universities in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Iranian Studies 44, 6 (2011).
  • “Kebabs and Port Wine: The Culinary Cosmopolitanism of Anglo-Persian Dining, 1800-1835”, in Derryl Maclean & Sikeena Karmali (eds), Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
  • “The Propriety of Poetry: Morality and Mysticism in the Nineteenth Century Urdu Religious Lyric”, Middle Eastern Literatures 13, 3 (2010).
  • “The Dilemmas of the Pious Biographer: Missionary Islam and the Oceanic Hagiography”, Journal of Religious History 34, 4 (2010).
  • “Stones from Bavaria: Iranian Lithography in its Global Contexts”, Iranian Studies 43, 3 (2010). [Persian translation published in Payam-e Baharestan tabestan 1391 (summer 2012)]
  • “Persian Print and the Stanhope Revolution: Industrialization, Evangelicalism & the Birth of Printing in Early Qajar Iran”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, 3 (2010). [Persian translation published in Iran Nameh: A Persian Quarterly of Iranian Studies 26, 3-4 (2011)]
  • “The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper”, Modern Asian Studies 44, 2 (2010).
  • “Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Trans-Culture and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, 2 (2009).
  • “Among the Dissenters: Reciprocal Ethnography in Nineteenth Century Inglistan”, Journal of Global History 4, 2 (2009).
  • “Defending the Sufis in Nineteenth Century Hyderabad”, Islamic Studies 47, 3 (2009).
  • “The Development of Arabic-Script Printing in Georgian Britain”, Printing History n.s. 5 (2009).
  • “In the Universe of Mirrors: An Urdu Mystical Poet of Nineteenth Century Hyderabad”, Journal of Deccan Studies 7, 2 (2009).
  • “Islam for the Indentured Indian: A Muslim Missionary in Colonial South Africa”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71, 3 (2008).
  • “Tribe, Diaspora and Sainthood in Afghan History”, Journal of Asian Studies 67, 1 (2008).
  • “Jack Sepoy and the Dervishes: Islam and the Indian Soldier in Princely Hyderabad”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, 1 (2008). [Winner of the Sir George Staunton Prize, Royal Asiatic Society]
  • “Breathing in India, c.1890”, Modern Asian Studies 42, 2-3 (2008).
  • “Moral Competition and the Thrill of the Spectacular: Recounting Catastrophe in Colonial Bombay”, South Asia Research 28, 3 (2008).
  • “Paper Modernity? Notes on an Iranian Industrial Tour, 1818”, Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 46 (2008).
  • “Transgressions of a Holy Fool: A Majzub in Colonial India [Introduction & Translations from the Urdu]”, in Barbara D. Metcalf (ed.), Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
  • “Making Sense of ‘Sufism’ in the Indian Subcontinent: A Survey of Trends”, Religion Compass (Blackwell Online, 2008).
  • “Between Heidegger and the Hidden Imam: Reflections on Henry Corbin’s Approaches to Mystical Islam”, in Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Alessandro Monsutti & Anna Neubauer (eds), Le Monde turco-iranien en question (Paris: Karthala, 2008).
  • “Idiom, Genre and the Politics of Self-Description on the Peripheries of Persian”, in Nile Green & Mary Searle-Chatterjee (eds), Religion, Language and Power (New York: Routledge, 2008).
  • “Religion, Language and Power: An Introductory Essay” (with Mary Searle-Chatterjee), in Nile Green & Mary Searle-Chatterjee (eds), Religion, Language and Power (New York: Routledge, 2008).
  • “Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean, c.1850-1920”, in Kai Kresse & Edward Simpson (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia UP, 2007).
  • “The Faqir and the Subalterns: Mapping the Holy Man in Colonial South Asia”, Journal of Asian History 41, 1 (2007).
  • “Shi’ism, Sufism and Sacred Space in the Deccan: Counter-Narratives of Saintly Identity in the Cult of Shah Nur”, in Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef & Farian Sabahi (eds), The Other Shi’ites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, Frankfurt & New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
  • “Blessed Men and Tribal Politics: Notes on Political Culture in the Indo-Afghan World”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49, 3 (2006).
  • “Ostrich Eggs and Peacock Feathers: Sacred Objects as Cultural Exchange Between Christianity and Islam”, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18, 1 (2006), pp.27-66.
  • “Making a ‘Muslim’ Saint: Writing Customary Religion in an Indian Princely State”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, 3 (2005).
  • “Mirza Hasan Safi ‘Ali Shah: A Persian Sufi in the Age of Printing [Introduction and Selected Translations]”, in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), Religion and Politics in Modern Iran (London: I.B Tauris, 2005).
  • “Mystical Missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu’in Allah Shah and his Sufi Reform Movement”, Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, 2 (2005).
  • “Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Awrangabad”, in Lynne Long (ed.), Religion and Translation: Holy Untranslatable? (Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 2005).
  • “Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad”, Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004).
  • “Geography, Empire and Sainthood in the Eighteenth Century Muslim Deccan”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67, 2 (2004).
  • “Oral Competition Narratives of Muslim and Hindu Saints in the Deccan”, Asian Folklore Studies 63, 2 (2004).
  • “A Persian Sufi in British India: The Travels of Mirza Hasan Safi ‘Ali Shah (1835-1899)”, Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 42 (2004).
  • “Emerging Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of South Asia: Between Texts, Territories and the Transcendent”, South Asia Research 24, 2 (2004) [reprinted in L. Ridgeon (ed.), Sufism: Critical Concepts (London & New York: Routledge, 2008.)]
  • “Who’s the King of the Castle? Brahmins, Sufis and the Narrative Landscape of Daulatabad”, Contemporary South Asia 13, 3 (2004).
  • “Auspicious Foundations: The Patronage of Sufi Institutions in the Late Mughal and Early Asaf Jah Deccan”, South Asian Studies 20 (2004).
  • “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, 3 (2003).
  • “Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space in South Asian Islam”, Contemporary South Asia 12, 4 (2003).
  • “The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd”, Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 38 (2000).
  • “A New Translation of Suhrawardi’s The Crimson Archangel (‘Aql-e-Surkh)”, Sufi: Journal of Sufi Studies 36 (1998).