The Making of the Awadh Culture

This book's strength lies in its profound deployment of evidence scattered in a variety of primary and secondary sources, especially in the Persian and Urdu languages. It discusses how under the fostering care of the nawâbs, Awadh came to epitomize all that was magnificent, refined, and cosmopolitan, and Lucknow emerged as a cultural node during the nineteenth century. It traces how the rulers of Awadh presided over the creation of the Shi'a heritage in northern India which had strong associations with Indian cultural traditions. Highlighting the literary milieu of the period, and the developments in the realm of music, painting, architecture, and the industrial arts, this volume also explores how some of the arts and crafts assumed considerable European colour due to the interaction between Europeans and the Awadh elite, and demonstrates how the ethos of the syncretic Indo-Persian culture that represented Persian aesthetics and Indian cultural values, remained intact.

Madhu Trivedi Dr Madhu Trivedi is Associate Professor in the Department of History, School of Open Learning, University of Delhi. She has published several papers on art and culture, especially on the history of musical arts, in medieval north India.