Associate Professor (1974)

Medieval and Early Modern South Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan

On Leave: Fall 2008

Office Hours: Thursday 2:00-3:15 and by appointment

Office: 228 Randall Hall

Phone: (434) 924-6396

Fax: (434) 924-7891

Email: rbbvirginia.edu

Education

Recent Publications

South India between Empires: State, Culture and Identity in Hyderabad (In progress).

(Ed.) Rethinking Early Modern India (Delhi: Manohar, 2002)

"The Pre-colonial Indus Valley, Post-Mughal Politics, and the Variable Frontiers of the State," in Yvette Rosser, ed,. Voices of Sindh (OUP Karachi, forthcoming 2008).

"'Ripping Yarns and Rippling Dunes,' State Building in Early Modern Cholistan," in Saeed Shafqat, ed., New Perspectives on Pakistan (Karachi: OUP, 2007), pp. 66-85.

"Embattled Begams: Women as Power Brokers in Early Modern India," in Gavin Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety (New York: St. Martins, 1998) 521-36..

"Rethinking Early Modern India." The Historian, Fall 1997

North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720-1801. Berkeley: University of California, 1980. Indian edition Delhi: Manohar, 1987. Pakistani edition Lahore: Vanguard, 1988.

"Natural Resource and Water Conservation in 18th-century States," in Nazir Ahmad, ed., President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad Commemoration Volume Delhi: OUP, 1994

"The Greening of Bahawalpur: Ecological Pragmatism and State Formation in pre-British Western India, 1730-1870," Indo-British Review XV:2 (Dec. 1988), 5-15, reprinted in Nurul Zaman Ahmad Auj, ed., Bahawalpur ka Sadiq Dost (Bahawalpur: Urdu Academy, 1992)

Various Entries in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Encyclopaedia Iranica, New Dictionary of National Biography, Encyclopaedia of Asian History.

Recent Awards and Activities

University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Associateship, 2008

United States Department of Education Summer Grant, 2002

University of Virginia Summer Research Grant (USEMS), 2001

N.E.H. Fellowship for University Teachers, 1998-99

Thomas Jefferson Visiting Professorship, Downing College, Cambridge University, Spr. 1999.

Current Research

My first book concerns state formation and regional culture in North India during the eighteenth century, after the Mughal Empire fell apart and before British hegemony was extended to inland areas. My edited book assesses scholarship in 18th-century India, putting it into interdisciplinary perspectives. The book I am writing now is on Indo-Muslim civilization in Hyderabad during c. 1750-1850, the era of regional autonomy, increasing pressure from the British, and early inroads of the world economy.