CAI | Whose Ghaznavids? Afghan Nationalists and the Medieval Past with Nile Green
The middle decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of nationalist history writing in Afghanistan. The primary focus of these state-sponsored historians lay on the ancient past whose dazzling treasures were excavated by French archaeologists; their secondary focus lay on the Pashtun dynasties who ‘fathered the nation’ in the previous two centuries. The medieval past was of little concern, despite Indian and European fascination with the Ghaznavid founders of the first Islamic empire based in Afghanistan. But when modern Afghan interest in the Ghaznavids developed, it was substantially inspired by poets and scholars from India and Europe. This illustrated talk traces the transnational routes by which, from neglect in the 1900s to celebration in the 1960s, the medieval Ghaznavids were eventually incorporated into Afghanistan’s national history.
Reception to follow.
This event is sponsored by the Central Asia Initiative and The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund.
Please note the revised title and topic for this event.
Speakers
Nile Green is Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA, where he holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History. He has BA, MPhil, and PhD degrees from Kings College London, Cambridge University, and SOAS.
His ten monographs include Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah (Norton, 2024); How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding (Yale, 2022, which won the Bentley Prize in World History from the World History Association and was a Foreign Affairs Book of the Year); The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s London (Princeton, 2015); Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean (Cambridge, 2012, which won the Albert Hourani Prize from the Middle East Studies Association and the Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Prize from the Association for Asian Studies); and Global Islam: A Very Short Introduction.
Green has edited or co-edited eight books and five journal special issues, including (as sole editor) The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca (University of California Press, 2019); Afghan History through Afghan Eyes (Oxford University Press, 2016); ‘Big Asia’: Rethinking a Region, guest edited section of American Historical Review (June 2025); and Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka and the Islamic Indian Ocean (University of Texas Press, 2026). He has also published around a hundred peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
Green has been awarded numerous fellowships and visiting positions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His writing is informed by more than thirty years of travel and research in India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Japan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, Syria, Yemen, and many other regions of Asia and Africa. To improve public understanding of the Muslim world, he hosts the podcast Akbar’s Chamber: Experts Talk Islam.