54 A FOUNDATION FOR HISTORY
of his daughter Razia as the new sultan. Juzjani went on to a remark-
able thirty-year career with the sultans in Delhi. His life reflects the
intimacy between political power and knowledge in the Persianate
cosmopolis.^9 i
Similarly, Muhammad 'Awfi came to be in Uch in the early 1220s.
He had earlier worked as a jurist in Samarkand, Bukhara, and then he
went to Cambay in Gujarat. For Qabacha he worked as a jurist as well,
and then he moved on to work for Iltutmish in Delhi. We do not know
'Ali Kufi outside of what he wrote, and there is no indication of his
career after Qabacha. However, in the introduction to his text, he stated
that he spent the majority of his life in leisure and comfort but, due to
the "accidents of life and the passage of time," he migrated to Uch and
found favor with 'Ain-al Mulk Abu Bakr Ash'ari, the chief minister of
Qabacha, to whom he dedicated Chachnama. The availability of posi-
tions at courts for learned men attracted these intellectuals across the
Persianate cosmopolis (to indicate a co-location with Sheldon Pollock's
Sanskrit cosmopolis).10
The various polities centered at these city states mutated, ex-
panded, or disappeared, but the city states retained linguistic, sacral,
and cultural overlaps to the point that we can consider them a cohe-
sive cosmopolis. Those who lived, worked, and participated in the
social, political, or labor lives of these cities belonged to this 'A.jam-
o-Hind cosmopolis.^11
The intellectuals of this cosmopolis navigated from city state to
city state, performing functions of governance (jurists, teachers, diplo-
mats, courtiers, and historians). They married into the royal households
they served, forming a deep social link between the intellectual class
and the monarchical families. Theirs was a polyglot world. Generally,
Persian was the language of state apparatus and of elite cultural output
while Arabic was the language of scripture, everyday religiosity, and
the sacral sciences. The intellectuals were participants as well as pro-
ducers in a bureaucratic and prestige-based economy of Muslim poli-
ties in northwest India. Their'Support and textual output was of prime
importance to the governing elite. Such close ties among the political,
sacral, and knowledge elite meant that power and prestige infused their
textual productions.