Shaharyar Zia is a PhD candidate at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC). He got his Master’s from the Harvard Divinity School and has worked on the Partition Project with LMSAI. He works on the tradition of Arabo-Islamic intellectual history in the Persianate Hindustan particularly focusing on 17th-19th centuries.
A talk about Dastan-e Amir Hamza, a tale hailed as the Iliad and Odyssey of the Persianate world. Ostensibly based on the life and legendary exploits of Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Hamza ibn Abd-al Muttalib (566-625 C.E.), here is a fantastical world of talismans and jinn, war and jihad, treachery and trickery, and the mightiest force of them all: Fate. Spanning over 46-volumes, this Indo-Persian epic rivals The Arabian Nights. Famed the world over through the Hamzanamaminiature paintings (1562-1577), it speaks to art history, fairy-tale and fantasy studies, literary and critical theory, and translation studies.
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The Mittal Institute annually supports faculty research projects that unite scholars from different fields and regions whose research relates to South Asia. Interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as projects that catalyze connectivity between scholars at Harvard and those in South Asia, are a funding priority. We are pleased to announce this year’s grant recipients—earning the highest individual funding amounts in Mittal Institute history—and their research initiatives.
WHEN
Mon, Mar 6, 2023 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm, ET
Tsherin Sherpa, artist John Henry Rice, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Chaired and Moderated by Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University Tsherin Sherpa’s work is currently on […]
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Thu, Apr 27, 2023 at 12:30pm, ET
The Mittal Institute’s inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow, Nilima Sheikh, will be in residence at the Institute on the Harvard campus this April. Sheikh is one of South Asia’s most-renowned painters. Her work focuses on longing, loss, roots, displacement, violence, the perception of tradition and ideas of femininity.
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Our new Syed Babar Ali Fellow, Mariam Zia, joined us in Cambridge this spring, and has gotten right to work on translating the first volume of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s multivolume study of the 46-volume Dastan-e Amir Hamza titled Sahiri, Shahi, Sahibqirani: Dastan-e Amir Hamza ka Mutalea (Sorcery, Magic, Kingship: A Study of The Adventures of Amir Hamza). We spoke with Mariam about her fellowship and impressions of Harvard.
Komal Shahid Khan, based in Islamabad, Pakistan, was a Visiting Artist Fellow at the Mittal Institute in 2016. She received a master’s in fine arts from the Fatima Jinnah Women University in Rawalpindi, Pakistan with a specialization in miniature painting and was awarded a Gold Medal for her thesis show. After graduating, she started her career with a focus on group shows in art galleries in Islamabad/Rawalpindi and later moved to Lahore and Karachi. She also taught at the National College of Arts Rawalpindi, Pakistan, as a Lecturer. In 2016, she held her first solo exhibition titled “Imagined Immortals” in Karachi, Pakistan. We caught up with Komal to learn more about life after her LMSAI Fellowship.
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Tue, Jan 17, 2023
VENUE
Lecture Hall-2, India International Centre, New Delhi
Date and Time: January 17, 2023; 10.00am – 4.00pm Venue: Lecture Hall-2, India International Centre, New Delhi Register to attend in-person or Register to attend via Zoom Please note: Registration is mandatory to attend the event (either via zoom or in-person) Stream the event LIVE on Youtube The contemporary politics of Northeast India is dominated by […]
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