Peacock A.C.S., McClary Richard Piran (eds.). Turkish History and Culture in India: Identity, Art and Transregional Connections

Brill, 2020. — 418 p. — (Brill's Indological Library 53).Turkish History and Culture in India examines the political, cultural and social role of Turks in medieval and early modern India, and their connections with Central Asia and Anatolia.
For most of the second millennium, India was dominated politically by dynastiesof Turkish origin – the Ghaznavids, the Delhi sultans, the Mughals, and inthe Deccan, the Bahmanis, Qutbshahis and Adilshahis, to name but a few.
They were supported by a Turkish military elite, comprised, at various times, of slave soldiers, émigré mercenaries from Anatolia and Central Asia, and steppe nomads. Yet detailed studies of Turks are strangely absent from the historiography of South Asia. Although a good number of books and articles allude in their titles to the “Turks” of India, they generally reflect the usage of many Indian languages that employ “Turk” (or its Sanskrit form, Turushka) mainly as a synonym for Muslim. Until recently, scholarship has widely assumed that any Turkish identity and language was lost with residence in India, and has depicted the Muslim ruling class as “Perso-Islamic”.