The Alireza Ahmadian Lecture in Iranian and Persianate Studies presents: Iranians before Iran: Identity and the Safavid Diaspora in Mughal India on May 21, 2026.
What did it mean to be “Iranian” before the rise of the modern nation of Iran? Critics of Iranian nationalism have long shown how the political and social purchase of the term “Iran” and the demonym “Iranian” has varied drastically throughout history. Far from possessing a fixed and timeless meaning, the idea of Iran (and being “Iranian”) fluctuated within various political, literary, and social imaginaries over the last millennium, most often being invoked in elite historical chronicles and literary epics in the Shāhnāma tradition rather than at the level of personal identity. As such, to even talk of “Iranians”, “Iran” and the “Iranian diaspora” in premodern contexts requires considerable qualification.
In this presentation, Dr. Shaahin Pishbin will argue that the great migration of hundreds of Persian-speaking poets and intellectuals from Safavid territories to Mughal India over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a new and consequential chapter in the history of Iranian identity. Drawing on lexicons, life writing, occult literature and poems of exile and homesickness, he will show how the Safavid diaspora produced an innovative and consequential discourse about “Iran” and what it meant to be Iranian.
This talk will be presented in English. It is free and open to the public; registration is required.
This event is co-sponsored by the Centre for India and South Asia Research.
Date & Time:
Thursday, May 21, 2026 | 6:30pm – 8:00pm PT
Location:
Gallery 1.150, UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 3B7
Speaker
Shaahin Pishbin is the Laming Junior Research Fellow in Living Modern Languages at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. He received his Ph.D from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago and works at the intersection of Persian literature, Persianate studies, and Islamicate cultural and intellectual history. His current projects explore the concepts of wonder and astonishment in early modern Persian literature and the idea of Iran in Persianate thought.
Discussant
Hasan Siddiqui is a historian of South Asia specializing in early-modern intellectual history. His research interests include the history of encyclopedias, the history of political thought, and the history of the book. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.
