After Timur Left

Timur invaded northern India in 1398 but returned to Samarkand a year later. In 1555 the Timurid emperor Humayun came back to India after being forced into exile in Persia and re-established Mughal rule in northern India. Between these two significant dates stretches an era largely consigned to oblivion-the 'long' fifteenth century. <p/>The Mughal dynasty has long occupied a pre-eminent position in research on Indian history. It has also been credited with ushering in a radically new age of innovation in art literature and statecraft. But what of the period before the Mughals? <p/>With the empire-centred study of history privileging periods of political centralization the multi-centred fifteenth century has remained relatively unexplored and undervalued. <p/>After Timur Left presents a path-breaking interdisciplinary set of writings on the politics languages religions literatures and arts of the fifteenth century. Together they reveal it to be a period of considerable political and social mobility of cultural connectivity and consolidation of innovation in literature and language choices and of new forms of religious organization and expression.