This book offers the first comparative study of the historical role of writing in three languages, including two in non-Roman scripts, over a period of two and a half millennia, which provides an opportunity for reassessment of the work on literacy in English that has accumulated over the past half century.

Literacy in the Persianate World
Writing and the Social Order

Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway, Editors

2012 | 456 pages | Cloth $59.95
Archaeology | History
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Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Contributors
Note on Transliteration and Referencing

Introduction: Persian as Koine: Written Persian in World-historical Perspective
—Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway

PART I. FOUNDATIONS
1 New Persian: Expansion, Standardization, and Inclusivity
—John R. Perry
2 Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language
—William L. Hanaway
3 The Transmission of Persian Texts Compared to the Case of Classical Latin
—A.H. Morton

PART II. SPREAD
4 Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire
—David Morgan
5 Ottoman Turkish: Written Language and Scribal Practice, 13th to 20th Centuries
—Linda T. Darling
6 Persian Rhetoric in the Safavid Context: A 16th Century Nurbakhshiyya Treatise on Inshā
—Colin P. Mitchell

PART III. VERNACULARIZATION AND NATIONALISM
7 Historiography in the Sadduzai Era: Language and Narration
—Senzil Nawid
8 How Could Urdu Be the Envy of Persian (rashk-i-Fārsi)! The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature
—Muhammad Aslam Syed
9 Urdu Inshā: The Hyderābād Experiment, 1860-1948
—Anwar Moazzam
10 Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries
—Michael H. Fisher

PART FOUR. THE LARGER CONTEXT

11 The Latinate Tradition as a Point of Reference
—Joseph Farrell
12 Persian Scribes (munshi) and Chinese Literati (ru). The Power and Prestige of Fine Writing (adab/wenzhang)
—Victor H. Mair

Afterword
Glossary
Index