Alexander and the astrolabe in Persianate India: Imagining empire in the Delhi Sultanate

Abstract

This article is about the historical memory of Alexander the Great in the Delhi Sultanate and how his figure was emblematic of a trans-regional Persianate culture. Amir Khusrau’s largely overlooked Persian epic Āyina’i sikandarī (The Mirror of Alexander) (1302) depicts Alexander the Great as an exemplary Persian emperor who reused material cultures from around the world to produce inventions such as his eponymous mirror and the astrolabe. Through Alexander, Khusrau envisions the Persian emperor as an agent of trans-cultural patronage, reuse and repurpose. Roughly 60 years after Khusrau’s death, the poet’s theory of Alexander’s Persianate material patronage was put into practice by the Delhi Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–88), who claimed to have discovered Alexander’s astrolabe and then used the instrument to adorn the Delhi-Topra pillar, the centrepiece of his new capital Firuzabad. Citations of Khusrau’s epic in a contemporary chronicle help us see how Khusrau’s imagination of ancient Persian Empire framed a practice of organising different styles of material culture into an imperial bricolage. The article concludes with some implications of this research for defining Persianate culture in general.