Bombay Cinema's Islamicate Histories is out now in the UK & Europe!
Bombay Cinema's Islamicate Histories comprises fourteen essays on the history and influence of cultural Islam on Bombay cinema. These essays are written by major scholars of both South Asian cultural history and Indian cinema working across several continents. Following Marshal Hodgson, the term ‘Islamicate’ is used to describe Muslim cultures in order to distinguish the cultural forms associated with Islam from the religion itself. Such a distinction is especially important to observe in South Asia where, over a thousand-year history, Muslim cultures have commingled with other local religious and cultural traditions to form a rich vein of syncretic aesthetic expression. This volume argues that the influence of Muslim cultures on Bombay cinema can only be grasped against the backdrop of this long history, an argument that informs the shape of the whole.
The book is divided into two sections. The first, ‘Islamicate Histories’, charts the historical roots of South Asian Muslim cultures and the precursors of Bombay cinema’s Islamicate idioms in the Urdu Parsi Theatre, the Courtesan cultures of Lucknow, the traditions of miniature painting, poetry, song and their performance, and the various modes of story-telling that derive from Perso-Arabic traditions. The second section, ‘Cinematic Forms’, discusses the way in which these Islamicate histories are partially constitutive of the traditions of representation, performance and story-telling that give Bombay cinema its distinctive character, traditions that have continued into Bollywood. It explores ‘Islamicate’ genres like the ‘Oriental’ film and the ‘Muslim Social’, as well as forms of poetry and performance like the ‘ghazal’ and ‘the qawwali’.
Out now in the UK and Europe. Coming soon to the US and ROW.
