CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - William Sherman THE GLOBAL APOCALYPTIC IN EARLY MODERN AFGHANISTAN
When the Jesuit Monserrate sat on the banks of the Indus with the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1581 and looked upon the Afghan highlands, they discussed the end of the world. Taking a cue from their conversation but focusing upon apocalyptic imaginaries among the non-elite, this project explores how ideas of the apocalypse circulated in Afghanistan and shaped emergent, early modern notions of belonging, language, and religion among Muslims, Jesuits, Sikhs, and Hindus. This project explores the apocalyptic encounters of early modern Afghanistan as a way to understand transformations of global importance. Some of the exchanges that lie at the heart of this project include: a Muslim heresiographer's reports on the would-be messiahs in the frontier who were influenced by yogis; Jesuit accounts of strange “legends” they heard while traveling among Afghans; the hagiographies of Mahdawi teachers active in Mughal and Sikh courts; the swapped eschatological folk tales of the Sulayman Mountains; and “epistles of the end” penned by itinerant scholars in Kabul and beyond. This project seeks to uncover the global dimensions of the 'everyday apocalypse' of Afghan communities outside the centers of political power whose religious imaginations did not stay within the confines of a particular religion, sect, or cultural sphere.