ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been written without the help of many friends and advisers. As a doctoral dissertation submitted in 1984 at the University of California, Los Angeles, it benefited from the direction of Amin Banani and the comments of Nikki Keddie. Virendra Deo Pandey codirected the original dissertation while I was in India. I have been helped in extensively rewriting it by the comments of David Bien, Michael H. Fisher, Jacob Lassner, Victor Lieberman, Francis Robinson, Kaveh Safa-Isfahani, and Thomas Trautmann.

My debts to private libraries and public institutions are large indeed. The director of the Nasiriyyah Library, Mawlana Tahir Jarvali, and his staff showed me endless kindness and helpfulness. The Raja and Maharajkumar of Mahmudabad munificently gave me access to their manuscripts. Naiyir Masoud and Mawlana Kalb-i Sadiq shared with me rare printed works. Shabihu'l-Hasan Naunahravi arranged a guided tour of Shi‘i endowment libraries in Lucknow. I am grateful to the directors and staffs of the Uttar Pradesh State Archives; Lucknow University Library, Amiru'd-Dawlah Public Library, and the Nadwa Academy Library, Lucknow; Mawlana Azad Library, Aligarh; the Regional Archives, Allahabad; the Khudabakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna; National Library and the Asiatic Society Library, Calcutta; Raza Library, Rampur; the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Punjab University Library and Punjab Public Library, Lahore; the British Library and the India Office Library and Records, London; the University Research Library, UCLA; and Hatcher Research Library at the University of Michigan. Mawlanas Kalb-i `Abid and `Ali Naqi Naqvi kindly allowed me to interview them.

All opinions expressed in this book are mine alone. Having absolved them from responsibility for the final product, I can note with gratitude that my research was funded in 1981-83 by sequential grants from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Program and from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. The latter grant helped fund intensive language training at the University of California Berkeley Urdu Program in Lahore. I am especially beholden to the people at Fulbright House, New Delhi. Ursula Sims-Williams of the India Office kindly helped with the illustrations.

I want to thank Barbara Daly Metcalf; Phyllis Killen, Gladys Castor,

Susan Stone, and other members of the staff at the University of California Press for their hard work anti helpfulness.

Consonants and vowels are transliterated according to the Library of Congress romanization for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, with slight modifications to avoid confusion. Transliteration thus depends on the language of the source being discussed. I have joined personal names in construct state (Burhanu'l-Mulk, not Burhan al-Mulk). In Arabic phrases sun letters are shown. Most names are transliterated as if Persian, but nisbahs deriving from Indian place names are in Urdu. Arabic titles, and phrases within titles, of Persian and Urdu books are transliterated according to the rules for Arabic. Place-names are not given diacriticals.

I am grateful to the editors of Iranian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies for permission to use material in this book previously published in a different form. This manuscript was completed for press in May 1986, and works on Awadh or Shi‘ism arriving after that date could not be integrated into the text.

My  debt is to my wife, Sheena, for her support, help, and patience, while this book was being researched and written on three continents.

25 August 1987
Ann Arbor, Michigan