Intimacies of Global Sufism: Ne'matullahi Shrines and Material Culture Between Iran and India

From the fifteenth century onwards, followers of the Sufi poet Shah Nematullah Vali navigated land and sea routes through Central Asia, Iran, and India. Along the way, they built shrines whose poetry, spatial configuration, and materiality created intimate religious spaces that engaged local audiences, invoked distant places, and brought together pilgrims, itinerant artists, merchants, and courtiers from many regions.

Countering global art history approaches that have privileged east-west co...