The Arghūn State in Qandahar and the New World Economy, 1479–1522

Abstract

Traffic on overland routes connecting the Indian subcontinent to the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia increased from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries. This led to the formation of strong states in the Kabul-to-Delhi region—namely, the state ruled by the later Lodīs in north India, the embryonic Mughal state in Kabul, and the Arghūn state in Qandahar (1479–1522). This article will especially investigate the latter. Since there is no mercantile archive for this period, I will make use of narrative sources, especially the little-used “court history” of the Arghūns, the Nuṣratnāmā-i Tarkhān (completed circa 1565) in search of political and economic information.