Cooch Behar: Medieval Regional History in a Bengal Frontierland

2021 ◽  
pp. 097152312110355
Author(s):  
Chanchal Adhikary

For constructing the medieval political history of Cooch Behar, also known as Koch Bihar, the Persian manuscript of Bah rist n-i-Ghaybī, discovered in 1919 by Jadunath Sarkar in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, is very significant. This text facilitates our understanding of important historical events in eastern India during the time of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1601–27). The text also provides important details of peasants’ revolts during the Mughal occupation, with remarkable implications until recent times regarding border relations between India and Bangladesh. The article examines the historical facts presented in this important text and corroborates them with other sources to argue that this text should be read as a chronicle for the history of warfare, society and peasants’ life in the region throughout the seventeenth century, with significant implications for later historical developments in Cooch Behar.

2009 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Baki Tezcan

AbstractA short chronicle by a former janissary called Tûghî on the regicide of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II in 1622 had a definitive impact on seventeenth-century Ottoman historiography in terms of the way in which this regicide was recounted. This study examines the formation of Tûghî's chronicle and shows how within the course of the year following the regicide, Tûghî's initial attitude, which recognized the collective responsibility of the military caste (kul) in the murder of Osman, evolved into a claim of their innocence. The chronicle of Tûghî is extant in successive editions of his own. A careful examination of these editions makes it possible to follow the evolution of Tûghî's narrative on the regicide in response to the historical developments in its immediate aftermath and thus witness both the evolution of a “primary source” and the gradual political sophistication of a janissary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Thomas

Abstract This article reviews the major problems in the political history of Megiddo during the early Iron Age (Iron Age I–IIA), at the time of the early monarchic period in Israel (eleventh–ninth centuries BCE). Megiddo has been central to an ongoing debate over the nature of the early monarchic period in Israel and the exact chronology of the Iron Age I–IIA periods. This importance derives both from the extensive excavations of the relevant strata at Megiddo (VIA, VB and VA-IVB) as well as Megiddo’s appearance in relevant historical sources, namely the Hebrew Bible, which claims that Solomon “built” Megiddo, and its appearance in the campaign list of pharaoh Sheshonq I. Though the fragment of a stela of Sheshonq I was found at Megiddo, it was only found after having been discarded and so its stratigraphic attribution is unclear. Radiocarbon dating from these strata has assisted to some degree but still left dating and historical questions quite open. This article will demonstrate that the political history of Megiddo during the early Iron Age is beset with ambiguities in the evidence, which have been divided into seven ambiguities for the purpose of the discussion here. When these ambiguities are taken into account, it becomes clear that the interpreter has much latitude in making their reconstruction, specifically in how they date strata and associate them with putative historical developments. Different cases can be made for associating particular strata and their termination with Solomon, Sheshonq or even later kings, but none can claim to objectively be the correct or superior reconstruction.


Author(s):  
Hermann Kulke

The year A.D. 1230 is one of the most decisive dates in the religious and political history of Eastern India. King Anaṅgabhīma of the Imperial Gaṅgas ritually dedicated his kingdom to the god Puruṣottamma-Jagannātha of Puri and acknowledged the divinity of Puri both as the sole state deity of Orissa and as his divine overlord. Henceforward Anaṅgabhīma and his successors claimed to rule under divine order (ādeśa) and as son (putra) and vassal (rāuta) of the Lord of Puri. It was most probably during the same year that Anaṅgabhīma introduced the deity Balabhadra into the present Jagannātha trinity of Puri. Thus the year 1230 marks both the establishment of the ideology of the Gajapati kingship of Orissa, and the final formation of the Jagannatha cult of Puri.


Author(s):  
Tae Gyun Park

This chapter explains the flow of modern Korean political history by looking at events beginning with the 1948 election and ending with the 1987 democratization process. The historical events before 1987 can be largely divided into four periods: the period of the First Republic; the period of the Second Republic and the Park Chung-hee administration; the period of the Yusin regime; and the period of the Gwangju Uprising, new military leaders, and the Democratization Uprising in 1987. The purpose of this chapter is to show the macro-flow of modern Korean politics through historical events, focusing on the causal relationships explaining each regime change by describing the characteristics and tendencies of each regime. The events and changes explain how the structure of conflict in modern Korean politics changed from democratization versus authoritarian forces to progressive versus conservative forces and show where the pro-democratization tendency of Korean politics began.


Author(s):  
Marissa Nicosia

This essay tracks the shift from Republic to Restoration through two play pamphlets, The Famous Tragedie (1649) and Cromwell’s Conspiracy (1660). As short plays retelling current events, these play pamphlets are like brief history plays that document the Stuart reign in an era of crisis. Moreover, these playbooks include typographically distinct couplets that encapsulate parliamentarian and royalist positions on history and governance. In particular, the royalist couplets in The Famous Tragedie mourn Charles I and gesture to future readers. These couplets are also marked as commonplaces, or sententious material intended for later use in other contexts. This chapter argues that these plays use couplets and commonplaces to create a royalist political history of the mid-seventeenth century.


1961 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Holt

The period of nearly three centuries which lies between Selīm I's overthrow of the Mamluk sultanate in 1517, and Bonaparte's landing at Alexandria in 1798 is one of the most obscure in the history of Muslim Egypt. For the latter part of the period, from the early twelfth/eighteenth century, there are ample materials for the reconstruction of the political history in the famous chronicle by Jabartī. The Ottoman invasion, and the years which immediately succeeded it have also received some attention, thanks to the detailed information provided by the chronicler Ibn Iyās. In contrast, there has been virtually no investigation of the last seventy-five years of the sixteenth century and the whole of the seventeenth.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faaeza Jasdanwalla

Abstract This paper discusses the political history of the Indian princely state of Janjira on the west coast of India. It was ruled by Sidis (Africans) from the early seventeenth century until the merger of princely states immediately after the independence of India in 1947. The Sidi rulers of Janjira were of African origin, having initially entered India as traders and serving in administrative capacities with the medieval Deccan kingdoms. The emphasis of this paper will be on the manner in which the rulers of Janjira were elected by a group of African Sidi chiefs or Sardars from amongst them for almost two centuries, as opposed to relying on hereditary primogeniture as a system of succession, and the implications that such a system had on the history of Janjira.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mahjoob Zweiri ◽  
Ismail Zahirovic

Using the longue durée approach to history, this paper reflects on the long history of Arab-Iranian interactions and identifies three key historical developments which had a defining role in shaping mutual Arab-Iranian perceptions – the fall of the Sassanian Empire at the hands of Arab Muslim army, replacing Pahlavi for Arabic script, and Safavid conversion to Shiʿa Islam, which correspond to three major relational themes – political, cultural and sectarian respectively. Such negative perceptions, loaded with rivalry, suspicion and at times animosity, have defined the trajectory of their relations over centuries, thus rendering their shared history a source of misunderstanding and conflict, rather than cooperation based on mutual understanding and common interests. By looking at each other primarily through the prism of political, cultural and sectarian rivalry as embodied in those three major historical events, Arabs and Iranians, due to the deep-rootedness of mutual perceptions, today fail to recognize their common interests and resolve their differences. Moreover, despite shared history and geography, Arabs and Iranians lack a proper understanding of each other and absent an open and honest dialogue, their relations cannot improve.


2000 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 85-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tal Shuval

Little is known even now of the history of Algeria under the Turks; it is a period which has not aroused much interest.- M. ColombeIn this study I propose to outline the political history of Cezayir-i Garp, the Ottoman province of Algeria, during the seventeenth century, while at the same time noting the correspondence between this history and the various developments at the center of the Ottoman Empire as well as in some of the provinces. This similarity suggests that Ottoman rule in Algeria was influenced by the same factors that affected the rest of the Empire. The pattern of development of the province's Ottoman elite, and the nature of this elite's behavior, reinforce its position within the imperial framework, even in periods when it was considered to be on a divergent path. My argument is that the history of the Ottoman province of Algeria was an integral part of an imperial pattern and structure forged by complex and dynamic relations between the imperial capital and its provinces.


2018 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Esther Yu

The “tender conscience” of seventeenth-century British discourse redirected the course of political history and the history of the emotions. In the 1640s, the unimpeachable repute of the tender conscience as a spiritual identity provided lay citizens with the authority needed to voice political dissent. The growing antiprelatical movement found in the tender conscience a ready-made resistance theory. For John Milton, the work of defining this conscience is so closely tied to arguments for the legitimacy of revolutionary action that his oeuvre can be read as a protracted struggle to establish its boundaries.


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