The Muhammad Avatra

The Muhammad Avatara examines the under-studied seventeenth-century Nabivamsa of Saiyad Sultan, revealing the role of vernacular translation in the spread of Islam to Bengal. The Nabivamsa retells the life of the Prophet Muhammad for the first time to Bengalis in their mother-tongue. In this book, Ayesha Irani delineates the challenges Saiyad Sultan faced in articulating the pre-eminence of Islam in a land where multiple religious affiliations were common. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.