Iran to India: The Shansabānīs of Afghanistan, c. 1145-1190 CE

• Creates an architectural biography of this pivotal polity and its trans-regional empire
• Treats built remains as independent, primary sources – and juxtaposes them with the principal texts – to create a complex understanding of the historical processes the Shansabānīs initiated throughout the landscapes they re-conjoined
• Provides the first analysis of this important epigraphic corpus
• Serves as the starting point for future research on the medieval epigraphy of Afghanistan and Pakistan

This book charts the origins and rise of the Shansabānīs, a nomadic-pastoralist or transhumant group from modern central Afghanistan. As they adapted and mastered the mores of Perso-Islamic kingship, they created a transregional empire unseen in the region for almost a millennium, since the Kushanas of the early centuries CE.

The Shansabānīs’ imperialism of little more than a half-century belies their longue durée significance: they altered the geopolitical landscapes of eastern Khurasan through the Indo-Gangetic plains, reconnecting these regions in continuous flows of people, objects, and ideas that broadened the Persianate world and had consequences into the modern age of nation-states in Central and South Asia.