Join us on Thursday, March 19 from 4:30 -- 6:00PM in Rm#427 of Waterman for an electric discussion with Dr. Balabanlilar on the Mughal rulers of South Asia and the environment that they had control over!

Description of event: The Mughal rulers of South Asia maintained a highly itinerant royal court. Rooted in their Central Asian semi-nomadic heritage and ideologically aligned with Vedic injunctions, mobility was central to Mughal political culture, physically manifesting sovereignty across a vast geography. In this talk, Dr. Balabanlilar explores the logistical scale of marches taken by South Asian Mughal rulers and their itinerant royal courts, as well as the complex socio-ecological formations they generated. These journeys produced significant environmental consequences, reshaping landscapes, expanding infrastructure, and profoundly impacting wildlife and local communities. 

Bio of the speaker: Dr. Balabanlilar is  the Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in the Humanities at Rice University, where she serves as Chair of the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies. Her research focuses on the Timurid-Mughal Empire of Central and South Asia, with interests encompass Islamic South and Central Asia, comparative imperial court culture, movement and procession, memory and identity, and early modern Islamic Empires (Ottoman, Mughal and Safavid). Her books include Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (2012) and, most recently, a biography of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, The Emperor Jahangir: Power and Kingship in Mughal India (2020). Her current book project is a comparative global study of imperial pleasure gardens, called The King’s Garden.