A01=Nathan L. M. Tabor
Author_Nathan L. M. Tabor
Category=DS
Category=DSBD
Category=DSC
Category=QRP
Category=QRV
criticism
cultural history
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
history
humor
intellectual history
Islamic studies
linguistics
Persian literature and language
popular literature in Muslim South Asia
satire
social networks and the early modern world
South Asia
the Mughals
urban culture
Urdu literature and language
Product details
- ISBN 9781469690216
- Dimensions: 25 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 07 Oct 2025
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mushāʿirahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse. Today the mushāʿirah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan L. M. Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mushāʿirah in eighteenth-century Delhi. Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ġhazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mushāʿirahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words like an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight.
Via poets' verse exchanges and the histories they wrote about Dehli’s literary scene, City of Lyrics reconstructs the social networks the mushāʿirahs produced. By understanding the roots of this uniquely Islamic literary practice, readers will also gain insight into global popular culture today, which increasingly takes shape according to tastes and values from the Muslim world yet is enjoyed by wide audiences comprised of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Via poets' verse exchanges and the histories they wrote about Dehli’s literary scene, City of Lyrics reconstructs the social networks the mushāʿirahs produced. By understanding the roots of this uniquely Islamic literary practice, readers will also gain insight into global popular culture today, which increasingly takes shape according to tastes and values from the Muslim world yet is enjoyed by wide audiences comprised of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Nathan L. M. Tabor is assistant professor of history at Western Michigan University.
