Iran Colloquium: The Materiality of Prophet Piety in Mughal India

Usman Hamid is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. A historian of Islam, he specializes in the study of early modern South Asia and its connections with Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean world. His current research project charts how the circulation of texts, objects, and people across the Indian Ocean starting from the late-sixteenth century shaped the aesthetics of Muslim devotion to the Prophet Muhammad in South Asia. He has previously published on Prophetic relics in Mughal India; politics and gender in Timurid Iran; and co-edited a collection of essays on early modern circulation between the Iranian plateau and South Asia. He received his MA from the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, and PhD from the University of Toronto.