Demonic Descents: Contests in Afghan, Baluchi and Kurdish Etiology

About the lecture 

Throughout Islamic history, various marginalized and largely rural communities have been accused of being descended from demons(jinn, dēwān, periyān). Such ascriptions of nonhuman beginnings, largely advanced by Muslim scholars and courtiers, fashioned spatial and social borderlands across which the exercise of imperial violence was deemed legitimate. Mirroring this process, demonized groups took up history as a key battleground in their struggles, drawing upon tales of prophets and heroes to demonstrate that they were always woven into the warp-and-weft of the Islamic past with dignity. We will explore this historiographical contest here through Afghan, Baluchi, and Kurdish etiologies from early modern and colonial settings (c. 1600–1900). The aim in doing so is to begin sketching anew connected history of Muslim societies: one which asks how our own narratological practices might change through attention to social imaginaries on the so-called periphery.

About the speaker

Tanvir Ahmed is a postdoctoral research scholar at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His work focuses on Islamic social movements, imaginaries and philosophies of history between premodern Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East.