Creating an Ecumene: Cultural, Economic, and Social Boundaries of the Deccan Sultanates

Abstract

A notional region was fashioned by the rulers of the sixteenth-century Deccan; they used cultural, economic, social, and urban organisations to define the region. In the choices they made about minting currency, marital alliances, or the distribution and scale of mosques, they defined their region. The sixteenth-century Deccan was known for geographical and social mobility, with people from several places around the Indian Ocean littoral. But they soon became part of this ecumene and found their own position within it. The kingdoms of the Deccan thus created their own world, fashioning a socio-cultural region that was not defined solely on the basis of politics. This paradigm of a region challenges the assumption that regions are defined only as parts of, or on the periphery of, larger imperial formations.