Historical Convergences and Region Making in Sultanate Gujarat

Abstract

This article reflects upon the role of intra-, inter-, and trans-regional networks in the making of distinctive regional formations in the long fifteenth century. Through its focus on Gujarat, a region often seen as lying at the intersection of both maritime and overland trade routes, the article highlights the historical conjunctures that gave expressions to a distinctive regional identity in the fifteenth century. Using court-chronicles and texts produced by Sufi disciples and descendants in Gujarat, the article argues that by employing “convergence” as a conceptual tool, it becomes possible to explain how the processes of movement and circulation of people, goods, and ideas that had defined much of the Indian subcontinent resulted in creating distinct regional formations. Such distinctiveness was marked overtime through state-making, the use of specific vernaculars, the success of specific spiritual fraternities and other forms of cultural production. Locating historical convergences further allows us to break away from a linear understanding of the emergence of regional formations in the wake of the disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate, to instead focus on the simultaneity and continuity of larger political and socio-cultural processes.