From Persianate Cosmopolis to Persianate Modernity: Translating from Urdu to Persian in Twentieth-Century Iran and Afghanistan

Abstract This article examines twentieth-century Persian translations of Urdu-language works about literature, focusing on two different an influential work literary history, Shiʿr al-ʿAjam ( Poetry the Persians ), by Shibli Nuʿmani. The offers a close, comparative reading Afghan and Iranian in order to understand why this voluminous text were published within such short time period. These reveal how Indians, Afghans, Iranians invested same Persianate heritage, yet emergence “Persianate modernity” undergirded cultural logic nationalism rather than cosmopolitanism, along with Iran’s Afghanistan’s differing relationships India Urdu, produced distinct approaches translation.