Feedback
Vasileos Syros: The Bridge to Hindu Kush: The Cross-Pollination of Greek Political Ideas in Medieval Persia and Early Modern India
January 11, 2010
This lecture was presented by the Department of Hellenic Studies (SFU) and co-sponsored by the CCSMSC. This presentation reviewed the reception of the Greek legacy of political thought in the medieval Persian and early modern Indian context. Syros addressed the main channels through which classical political thought, and Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas in particular, passed into akhlaq literature (Nasirean Ethics, etc.) and the ways they shaped and were incorporated into Mughal political culture, through the work of Abul Fazl and others. His talk served to foreground the political aspects of medieval akhlaq literature and to establish the Indo-Islamic tradition of political theorizing as a distinct strain in the history of Islamic political writing.