Acknowledgments

Dadlani, Chanchal B.

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Acknowledgments

Chanchal B. Dadlani

From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire

~This book would have been impossible without the vital support and unflagging generosity of many individuals and institutions, and it is a pleasure to thank them here. Gülru Necipoğlu and David Roxburgh were outstanding advisers throughout graduate school, and have remained steadfast supporters since then. My personal and intellectual debts to them are...

Author

Chanchal B. Dadlani

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00054.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-19064

Acknowledgments

This book would have been impossible without the vital support and unflagging generosity of many individuals and institutions, and it is a pleasure to thank them here. Gülru Necipoğlu and David Roxburgh were outstanding advisers throughout graduate school, and have remained steadfast supporters since then. My personal and intellectual debts to them are immeasurable. Ebba Koch shared her expertise on Mughal architectural history and facilitated my research in the field. Robert Travers was generous with his insights on eighteenth-century India, and understood what I was trying to do with this book before I did. Sunil Sharma offered his knowledge of Indo-Persian literature and cultural history, helped me translate texts, and encouraged me to think about artistic culture across disciplines. Tom Cummins, Emine Fetvacı, Alina Payne, Nasser Rabbat, and Jim Wescoat also made important suggestions in the early stages of my research and writing, shaping my thinking in fundamental ways. It was my privilege to study Persian with Wheeler Thackston, and he laid a solid foundation for my subsequent study of the language. I never would have pursued academia without the support of my undergraduate mentors at Columbia, and I sincerely thank Ritu Birla, Jerri Dodds, David Eng, and Stephen Murray. For sparking my love of art history, I am indebted to Jose Rodriguez and the late Beau Siegel.

I am also grateful to those who read and commented on all or part of the manuscript. Shiben Banerji, Sylvia Houghteling, Aaron Hyman, Subhashini Kaligotla, Dipti Khera, David Lubin, Megan Luke, Morna O’Neill, Yael Rice, Ünver Rüstem, Jeffrey Saletnik, Sunil Sharma, and Nancy Um read various chapters in development, and Ana Botchkareva graciously read the entire book. Gülru Necipoğlu brought incisive insights, Ebba Koch made critical suggestions, and David Roxburgh went above the call of duty, reading the manuscript under immense time pressure, his trademark green pen in hand, with crucial interventions at the ready. Nebahat Avcioğlu, Barry Flood, and Kishwar Rizvi edited and improved earlier versions of chapters 2 and 4. I would also like to thank lecture and seminar audiences at Columbia, Cornell, the Forum Transregionale Studien, the Getty Research Institute, Harvard, the Kunsthistorisches Institut, the Triangle Consortium for South Asian Studies, UC–Berkeley, UNC–Chapel Hill, UNC–Greensboro, Wake Forest University, and Yale, and audiences at the meetings of the American Council for Southern Asian Art and the Historians of Islamic Art Association. On these occasions, feedback from Glaire Anderson, Cathy Asher, Hannah Baader, Sussan Babaie, Tim Barringer, Iftikhar Dadi, Vidya Dehejia, Vittoria DiPalma, Barry Flood, Anne Higonnet, Padma Kaimal, Holger Klein, Alka Patel, Kishwar Rizvi, Tamara Sears, Avinoam Shalem, and Nancy Um was especially vital. In addition, I benefited greatly from conversations with other Mughal scholars and Delhi enthusiasts, including Narayani Gupta, the late Yunus Jaffrey, Jerry Losty, Lucy Peck, Malini Roy, Yuthika Sharma, and Susan Stronge. It has been a privilege and pleasure to work beside my colleagues at Wake Forest University, and I would like to thank those who have discussed matters both intellectual and logistical regarding this book: Bernadine Barnes, Jay Curley, Page Laughlin, David Lubin, Morna O’Neill, John Pickel, and Laura Veneskey. Finally, thanks are certainly due to the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions for its improvement. All errors and shortcomings are, of course, my own.

I would also like to thank the archivists, curators, and librarians at the institutions where I conducted research, including Helen George and the staff at the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections at the British Library, London; Nick Barnard and Susan Stronge in the Asian Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Marie-Paule Blasini at the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence; the staff at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Claus-Peter Haase and the staff at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin; Raffael Gadebusch at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin; Veena Bhasin at the Delhi State Archives; and the staff at the National Archives of India, New Delhi.

I received substantial institutional support for this project from Wake Forest University as well as from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, where I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. The research for this book was supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and, at Wake Forest University, the William C. Archie Fund for Faculty Excellence and the Charlotte C. Weber Faculty Award in Art. The Society of Architectural Historians’ SAH/Mellon Author Award funded the image program. An earlier and shorter version of Chapter 2 was published in Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture in 2017, and has been partially reproduced here with the permission of Brill.

I am grateful to my editor at Yale University Press, Katherine Boller, whose enthusiasm and professionalism made this book possible. Thanks are due also to the rest of the team at YUP, including Sarah Henry, Heidi Downey, Laura Hensley, and Raychel Rapazza. The heroic Kendra Battle, Visual Resources Technician in the Department of Art at Wake Forest, provided invaluable assistance with the images. It was also a pleasure to work with Grae Prickett and Dylan Stein, who produced many of the maps and plans in the book.

My research and writing were made infinitely easier by the hospitality and friendship of many. In India, my research trips began and ended at the Kohli residence in Delhi, and I am forever indebted to this warm, generous, and affectionate family, especially to my lovely friends Gauri and Vidur Kohli. In London, Yani Sinanoglou and Stella Chapman have always provided me with a home away from home and a gin and tonic in the garden. Numerous friends also made the completion of this book a pleasure rather than a task. I am especially grateful to Sana Aiyar, Amna Akbar, Ladan Akbarnia, Natasha Aswani, Shiben Banerji, Sayu Bhojwani, Ana Botchkareva, Jessica Callaway, Ramsey Chamie, Nikhil Chandra, Riana Dadlani, Merih Danali, Sarika Doshi, Emine Fetvacı, Bobbi Gajwani, Yun-Yi Goh, Sarah Guerin, Sylvia Houghteling, Leah Kalm-Freeman, David Kim, Seema Rattan Kinra, Michelle Kuo, Anneka Lensen, Megan Luke, Meredith Martin, Nadia Marx, Prita Meier, Vipin Narang, Eleanor Newbigin, Zeynep Oğuz, Prue Peiffer, Jennifer Pruitt, Mina Rajagopalan, Cole Roskam, Ünver Rüstem, Rahul Sachde, Jeffrey Saletnik, Jonathan Smolin, and Suzan Yalman.

I am deeply indebted to my parents, Banu and Preeti Dadlani, my sisters, Mamta Dadlani and Gitanjali Dadlani Morris, my brother-in-law, Seth Dadlani Morris, and my niece and nephew, Sana and Shaan Dadlani Morris, who have provided constant support, much-needed perspective, and much comic relief. I am also grateful to the extended family who have always taken an interest in my work and been a source of moral support: Iman Ahmed, Stella Chapman, Wendy Darby, Andrew Sinanoglou, and Yani Sinanoglou. But my most significant debt is to my wife, Penny, a brilliant thinker, fearless travel partner, and honest critic. Her insights and unstinting support have made all the difference. And finally, I thank our beloved son, Sanjay. I will be forever grateful that he delayed the arrival of this book.

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