NILE GREEN

PROFESSOR

Office: DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UCLA
Phone: 310 825 9498
Fax: 310-206-9630
E-mail: green@history.ucla.edu

Mailing Address:

Class Websites

Field

South Asia

Research Interests

Islam in South Asia, Afghanistan and Iran; Sufism; Indo-Muslim reform movements; Christian missionary encounters with Islam; the Indian Ocean; Persian & Urdu travel writing; Islamic printing and book history.

Notes

Primarily a historian of the Muslim communities of South Asia (India, Pakistan) from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, I also specialize in the wider 'Persian' world, including Afghanistan, Iran, and the Indian Ocean region. By training a historian of religion, I have worked extensively on the history of Sufism and other traditional modes of Islamic learning and collective organization. Analyzing 'religion' in its social and political contexts, my work has ranged from the forms of Islam which evolved among the tribal societies of early modern Afghans to the intersection of religion and colonial service among Muslim soldiers of the British Empire. My more recent work has expanded into nineteenth century intellectual interchange between Asia and Europe, Muslim travelers in Britain, Indian Ocean studies, and the history of the 'Islamic' book.

Through an earlier background in Middle Eastern Studies and a strong interest in Islam in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, I also regard myself as a historian of Muslim societies more generally. Given the fact that South Asia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, my work seeks to position South Asia within a global and comparative perspective.

Selected Publications

BOOKS

Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (London: Routledge, 2006; paperback 2009).

Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the Service of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Religion, Language and Power, edited by Nile Green & Mary Searle-Chatterjee (New York: Routledge, 2008).

Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the Western Indian Ocean, 1840-1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

The Madrasas of Oxford: An Iranian Student in Regency England (in progress).


ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

"Parnassus of the Evangelical Empire: Oriental Learning in the English Universities, 1800-1850" (under review).

"Stones from Bavaria: Iranian Lithography in its Global Contexts", Iranian Studies (forthcoming).

"The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper", Modern Asian Studies (forthcoming).

"Kebabs and Port Wine: The Culinary Cosmopolitanism of Anglo-Persian Dining, 1800-1835", in Derryl Maclean & Sikeena Karmali (eds), Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).

"The Dilemmas of the Pious Biographer: Missionary Islam and the Oceanic Hagiography", Journal of Religious History (forthcoming).

"The Propriety of Poetry: Morality and Mysticism in the Nineteenth Century Urdu Religious Lyric", Middle Eastern Literatures (forthcoming).

"Persian Printing and the Stanhope Revolution", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, 2 (2010, forthcoming).

"Among the Dissenters: Reciprocal Ethnography in Nineteenth Century Inglistan", Journal of Global History 4, 2 (2009).

"Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Trans-Culture and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing", International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, 2 (2009).

"Defending the Sufis in Nineteenth Century Hyderabad”, Islamic Studies 47, 3 (2009).

"The Development of Arabic-Script Printing in Georgian Britain", Printing History n.s. 5 (2009).

"The Maharaja and the Madman: Patterns of Cosmopolitanism in 'Colonial' Hyderabad", in Samira Sheikh (ed.), Devotional Expressions of South Asian Muslims (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

"In the Universe of Mirrors: An Urdu Mystical Poet of Nineteenth Century Hyderabad", Journal of Deccan Studies 7, 2 (2009).

"Islam for the Indentured Indian: A Muslim Missionary in Colonial South Africa", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71, 3 (2008).

"Tribe, Diaspora and Sainthood in Afghan History", Journal of Asian Studies 67, 1 (2008).

"Jack Sepoy and the Dervishes: Islam and the Indian Soldier in Princely Hyderabad", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, 1 (2008). [Winner of the Sir George Staunton Prize, Royal Asiatic Society]

"Breathing in India, c.1890", Modern Asian Studies 42, 2-3 (2008).

"Moral Competition and the Thrill of the Spectacular: Recounting Catastrophe in Colonial Bombay", South Asia Research 28, 3 (2008).

"Paper Modernity? Notes on an Iranian Industrial Tour, 1818", Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 46 (2008).

"Transgressions of a Holy Fool: A Majzub in Colonial India [Introduction & Translations from the Urdu]", in Barbara D. Metcalf (ed.), Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

"Making Sense of ‘Sufism’ in the Indian Subcontinent: A Survey of Trends", Religion Compass (Blackwell Online, 2008).

"Between Heidegger and the Hidden Imam: Reflections on Henry Corbin's Approaches to Mystical Islam", in Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Alessandro Monsutti & Anna Neubauer (eds), Le Monde turco-iranien en question (Paris: Karthala, 2008).

"Idiom, Genre and the Politics of Self-Description on the Peripheries of Persian", in Nile Green & Mary Searle-Chatterjee (eds), Religion, Language and Power (New York: Routledge, 2008).

"Religion, Language and Power: An Introductory Essay" (with Mary Searle-Chatterjee), in Nile Green & Mary Searle-Chatterjee (eds), Religion, Language and Power (New York: Routledge, 2008).

"Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean, c.1850-1920", in Kai Kresse & Edward Simpson (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean(London/New York: Hurst/Columbia UP, 2007).

"The Faqir and the Subalterns: Mapping the Holy Man in Colonial South Asia", Journal of Asian History 41, 1 (2007).

"Shi'ism, Sufism and Sacred Space in the Deccan: Counter-Narratives of Saintly Identity in the Cult of Shah Nur", in Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef & Farian Sabahi (eds), The Other Shi'ites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, Frankfurt & New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

"Blessed Men and Tribal Politics: Notes on Political Culture in the Indo-Afghan World", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49, 3 (2006).

"Ostrich Eggs and Peacock Feathers: Sacred Objects as Cultural Exchange Between Christianity and Islam", Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18, 1 (2006), pp.27-66.

"Making a 'Muslim' Saint: Writing Customary Religion in an Indian Princely State", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, 3 (2005), pp.617-633.

"Mirza Hasan Safi 'Ali Shah: A Persian Sufi in the Age of Printing [Introduction and Selected Translations]", in L. Ridgeon (ed.), Religion and Politics in Modern Iran (London/New York: I.B Tauris, 2005), pp.99-112.

"Mystical Missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu'in Allah Shah and his Sufi Reform Movement", Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, 2 (2005), pp.45-70.

"Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Awrangabad", in Lynne Long (ed.), Religion and Translation: Holy Untranslatable? (Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 2005), pp.141-150.

"Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad", Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004), pp.419-446.

"Geography, Empire and Sainthood in the Eighteenth Century Muslim Deccan", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67, 2 (2004), pp.207-225.

"Oral Competition Narratives of Muslim and Hindu Saints in the Deccan", Asian Folklore Studies 63, 2 (2004), pp.221-242.

"A Persian Sufi in British India: The Travels of Mirza Hasan Safi 'Ali Shah (1251/1835-1316/1899)", Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 42 (2004), pp.201-218.

"Emerging Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of South Asia: Between Texts, Territories and the Transcendent", South Asia Research 24, 2 (2004), pp.123-148. [reprinted in L. Ridgeon (ed.), Sufism: Critical Concepts (London & New York: Routledge, 2008.)]

"Who's the King of the Castle? Brahmins, Sufis and the Narrative Landscape of Daulatabad", Contemporary South Asia 13, 3 (2004), pp.21-37.

"Auspicious Foundations: The Patronage of Sufi Institutions in the Late Mughal and Early Asaf Jah Deccan", South Asian Studies 20 (2004), pp.71-98.

"The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, 3 (2003), pp.287-313.

"Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space in South Asian Islam", Contemporary South Asia 12, 4 (2003), pp.493-509.

"The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd", Iran: Journal of Persian Studies 38 (2000), pp.115-122.

"A New Translation of Suhrawardi's The Crimson Archangel ('Aql-e-Surkh)", Sufi: Journal of Sufi Studies 36 (1998), pp.34-39.

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