Muzaffar Alam

Muzaffar Alam is the George V. Bobrinsky Professor at the University of Chicago's South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC), within the Division of the Arts & Humanities. He has taught at UChicago since 2001, following a three-decade tenure at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). His expertise spans Mughal political history, Indo-Islamic culture, and pre-colonial South Asian religious and literary traditions. He is fluent in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi, and actively supervises students in medieval South Asian studies.

Education:

• Ph.D. in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University (1976)
• Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University

Research focuses on Mughal governance, Indo-Persian cultural exchange, and textual studies. He has held visiting positions at the Collège de France, Leiden University, and the EHESS (Paris). Courses taught include Mughal India, South Asian Islam, and advanced Urdu/Persian seminars.

Publications include seminal works like The Mughal State 1526-1750 and Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discovery. His scholarship bridges history, philology, and comparative Islamic studies from an Indian perspective.

Labs/Teams: Actively involved with SALC's research initiatives and textual analysis projects. Supervises advanced language studies and historical manuscript work.