An Uyghur History of China and the World: The Tarikh-i Hamidi as a Colonial, Transcultural Text

May 19, 1:00–2:30 PM EDT, 2021

Speaker: Eric Schluessel, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History, George Washington University

Moderator: Manan Ahmed, Associate Professor of History, Columbia University

The Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī (1836–1917) is celebrated as a monument of Uyghur literature and the preeminent Muslim history of nineteenth-century Xinjiang (East Turkestan). Yet it is more than a chronicle–it is a history of the world as seen from the heart of Eurasia and an argument about the nature of politics and faith. Sayrāmī’s work is also multilayered, polyvocal text, and one that bears recontextualization and rereading through different analytical approaches. This talk explores the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī in terms of its interaction with other Muslim and Chinese sources and as a colonial, transcultural text that advances insightful observations of Chinese power and new ideas about its workings.

Register for the Zoom link: https://reurl.cc/OXZWXy

This event is a part of the lecture series “China, Inner Asia, and the World:Mongol and Qing Empires in Comparative Perspectives” sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Event Contact Information: Ling-Wei Kung lk2627@columbia.edu