Annemarie Schimmel has written extensively on India, Islam and poetry. In this comprehensive study she presents an overview of the cultural, economic, militaristic and artistic attributes of the great Mughal Empire from 1526 to 1857.

This book argues that the changing character of Muslim community and their living space in Delhi is a product of historical processes. The discourse of homeland and the realities of Partition established the notion of 'Muslim-dominated areas' as 'exclusionary' and 'contested' zones. These localities turned out to be those pockets where the dominant ideas of nation had to be engineered, materialized and practiced. The book makes an attempt to revisit these complexities by investigating community-space relationship in colonial and postcolonial Delhi. It raises two fundamental questions: · How did community and space relation come to be defined on religious lines? · In what ways were 'Muslim-dominated' areas perceived as contested zones? Invoking the ideas of homeland as a useful vantage point to enter into the wider discourse around the conceptualization of space, the book suggests that the relation between Muslim communities and their living spaces has evolved out of a long process of politicization and communalization of space in Delhi.

Two distinguished historians, Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, come together to write a new and accessible account of modern India. The narrative, which charts the history of India from the Mughals, through the colonial encounter and independence, to the present day, challenges imperialist notions of an unchanging and monolithic India bounded by tradition and religious hierarchies. Instead the book reveals a complex society which is constantly transforming and reinventing itself in response to political and social challenges. The book is beautifully composed and richly illustrated. It will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand India, her turbulent past and her present uncertainties.

AN INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS ON RELIGION 2014 PICK Few things provoke controversy in the modern world like the religion brought by Prophet Muhammad. Modern media are replete with alarm over jihad, underage marriage and the threat of amputation or stoning under Shariah law. Sometimes rumor, sometimes based on fact and often misunderstood, the tenets of Islamic law and dogma were not set in the religion’s founding moments. They were developed, like in other world religions, over centuries by the clerical class of Muslim scholars. Misquoting Muhammad takes the reader back in time through Islamic civilization and traces how and why such controversies developed, offering an inside view into how key and controversial aspects of Islam took shape. From the protests of the Arab Spring to Istanbul at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and from the ochre red walls of Delhi’s great mosques to the trade routes of the Indian Ocean world, Misquoting Muhammad lays out how Muslim intellectuals have sought to balance reason and revelation, weigh science and religion, and negotiate the eternal truths of scripture amid shifting values.