The eastward expansion of the Shansabanid sultanate of Ghur in the late twelfth century has usually been depicted as a confrontation between a unitary Muslim self and its Hindu ‘other’. The reification of heterogeneous and protean categories of belief implicit in this paradigm is particularly ill suited to represent the dynamic religious life of mediaeval Ghur. This was characterised by shifting patterns of royal patronage that reflect intense competition between the Karramiya, a popular pietistic sect, and the orthodox Sunni madhhabs. Drawing on Ghurid architectural and numismatic inscriptions, this article examines the ways in which contemporary doctrinal disputes inflected elite cultural production during the period. Based on the content and context of Qur™anic citations, it suggests that a rhetorical emphasis on idolatryand unbelief in Ghurid epigraphy was part of a contemporary intra-Sunni polemic, and notprimarily an address to those who were literally outside the fold of Islam. The deploymentof scripture in the service of sectarian rivalry has significant implications for the inter-pretation of Qur™anic epigraphy in Indo-Ghurid mosques such as the Quwwat al-Islam
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Birch, Cyril (Trans.), The Peony Pavilion ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press , 1980).
2.
Chang, Kang-i Sun , ‘Ming-Qing Women Poets and the Notions of “Talent” and “Morality”’ in Bin Wong , Ted Huters and Pauline Yu (Eds.), Culture and State in Chinese History: Conventions, Conflicts, and Accommodations ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1997), pp. 248–50.
3.
A Concordance to the Analects of Confucius (1966), Taipei , in Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series.
4.
A Concordance to the Shih Ching (1962), Tokyo , in Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series.
5.
Hawkes, Donald (Trans.), The Story of the Stone ( Harmondsworth: Penguin , 1973–86).
6.
Hu Pin-ching , Li Ch'ing-chao ( Boston: G.K. Hall , 1966).
7.
Hu Wenkai , Lidai funü zhuzuo kao ( Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe , 1957).
8.
Hummel, Arthur W. , Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period ( Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company , 1970).
9.
Idema, Wilt and Beata Grant , The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China ( Harvard: Harvard University Press , 2004).
10.
Ko, Dorothy , Teachers of the Inner Chambers ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1994).
11.
Ko, Dorothy , ‘The Written Record and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan's Aura’, in Widmer Ellen and Kang-i Sun Chang (Eds), Writing Women in Late Imperial China ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1997), pp. 74–100.
12.
Larsen, Jeanne (Trans.), Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao ( Princeton: Princeton University Press , 1987).
Li Ruzhen , Lin Tai-yi (Trans.), Flowers in the Mirror ( Berkeley: University of California Press , 1965).
15.
Li, Wai-yee (1997), ‘The Late Ming Courtesan, Invention of a Cultural Ideal’, in Widmer Ellen and Kang-i Sun Chang (Eds), Writing Women in Late Imperial China ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1997), pp. 46–73.
16.
Li Yufu , (Ed.), Wang Yuyang shiwen xuanzhu ( Jinan: Qilu Shushe , 1982).
17.
Li Zhi , Fenshu ( Beijing: Zhonghua Shiju , 1975).
18.
Liu Yongcong , ‘ Quyuan bushi Suiyuansou, mo wu jinchai zuo zhiren ’, Lingnan xuebao, Vol. 1, October 1999, pp. 436–38 .
19.
Luo Qilan , Tingqiuxuan guizhong tongren ji, in the collection of the Shanghai Library, 1795.
20.
Mann, Susan , ‘“Fuxue” (Women's Learning) by Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801): China's First History of Women's Culture’, Late Imperial China 13.1, June 1992, pp. 40–62.
21.
Meng, Liuxi, ‘Qu Bingyun (1767–1810): One Member of Yuan Mei's Female Disciple Group’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of British Columbia, 2003).
22.
Min Erchang , ‘Beizhuan ji bu’, in Zhou Junfu (Ed.), Qingdai zhuanji congkan ( Taipei: Mingwen shuju , 1985).
Nienhauser, William H. Jr. (Ed.), The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press , 1986).
25.
Nivison, David S. , The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng (1733–1801) ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1966).
26.
Qu Bingyun , Yunyulou ji, Jifurong shi (1811).
27.
Rexroth, Kenneth and Ling Chung , Li Ch'ing-chao: Complete Poems ( New York: New Directions , 1979).
28.
Ropp, Paul S. , ‘Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China’, in Widmer Ellen and Kang-i Sun Chang (Eds), Writing Women in Late Imperial China ( Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1997), pp. 17–45.
29.
Schmidt, J.D. , Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian (1848–1905) ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1994).
30.
Schmidt, J.D. , Harmony Garden: The Life, Literary Criticism, and Poetry of Yuan Mei (1716–1798) ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2003).
