The First Firangis
Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans & Other Foreigners Who Became Indian
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Narrated by:
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Fajer Al-Kaisi
About this listen
The Indian subcontinent has been a land of immigrants for thousands of years: waves of migration from Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, the Middle East and Greece have helped create India's exceptionally diverse cultural mix. In the centuries before the British Raj, when the Mughals were the preeminent power in the subcontinent, a wide array of migrants known as 'firangis' made India their home. In this book, Jonathan Gil Harris, a 21st-century firangi, tells their stories.
These gripping accounts are of healers, soldiers, artists, ascetics, thieves, pirates and courtesans who were not powerful or privileged. Often they were escaping poverty or religious persecution; many were brought here as slaves; others simply followed their spirit of adventure. Some of these migrants were absorbed into the military. Others fell in with religious communities - the Catholics of Rachol, the underground Jews of Goa, the fakirs of Ajmer, the Sufis of Delhi. Healers from Portugal and Italy adapted their medical practice in accordance with local traditions. Gifted artisans from Europe joined Akbar's and Jahangir's royal ateliers and helped create enduring works of art. And though almost invisible within the archival record, some migrant women, such as the Armenian Bibi Juliana and the Portuguese Juliana Dias da Costa, found a home in royal Mughal harems.
Jonathan Gil Harris uses his own experience of becoming Indian through the process of acclimatizing to the country's culture, customs, weather, food, clothes and customs to bring the stories of these shadowy figures to vivid life.
©2015 Jonathan Gil Harris (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Tracing Yiddish civilization from its roots in the Diaspora to the present, Paul Kriwaczek combines intimate family anecdote, travelogue, historical research, and interviews with scholars to give us a rich portrait of a nearly extinguished culture as it survived across the centuries. He begins his chronicle in Jerusalem, with the destruction of the Jewish temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, moving outward and northward throughout the following centuries, making their mark in more far flung cities under Roman rule.
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Disorganized, inconclusive and disappointing
- By Alex on 12-15-20
By: Paul Kriwaczek
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The Renaissance
- A Captivating Guide to a Remarkable Period in European History, Including Stories of People Such as Galileo Galilei, Michelangelo, Copernicus, Shakespeare, and Leonardo da Vinci
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L. Walton
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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If you want to discover the captivating history of the Renaissance, then pay attention.
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Monotone reader
- By Harry R. Martin on 08-07-19
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Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
- By: Matthew Restall
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Using a wide array of sources, historian Matthew Restall highlights seven key myths, uncovering the source of the inaccuracies and exploding the fallacies and misconceptions behind each myth. This vividly written and authoritative book shows, for instance, that native Americans did not take the conquistadors for gods and that small numbers of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. We discover that Columbus was correctly seen in his lifetime - and for decades after - as a briefly fortunate but unexceptional participant in efforts.
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A good book marred by awful narration
- By Dr. Philip Fowler on 02-23-24
By: Matthew Restall
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The Ornament of the World
- How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
- By: Maria Rosa Menocal, Harold Bloom - foreword
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.
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Excellent Book
- By Zahid Ahmad on 08-14-18
By: Maria Rosa Menocal, and others
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In Search of the Dark Ages
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: Marston York
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians. Now, on the book's 40th anniversary, this fully revised and expanded edition illuminates further the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest.
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Brilliant!
- By Dee Goulet on 08-31-22
By: Michael Wood
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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The Age of the Vikings
- By: Anders Winroth
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The Vikings maintain their grip on our imagination, but their image is too often distorted by medieval and modern myth. It is true that they pillaged, looted, and enslaved. But they also settled peacefully and developed a vast trading network. They traveled far from their homelands in swift and sturdy ships, not only to raid, but also to explore. Despite their fearsome reputation, the Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets, and even the infamous berserkers were far from invincible.
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Interesting history. Narrator could be better
- By Castle51 on 07-09-15
By: Anders Winroth
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Black Tudors
- The Untold Story
- By: Miranda Kaufmann
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A Black porter publicly whips a White English gentleman in a Gloucestershire manor house. A heavily pregnant African woman is abandoned on an Indonesian island by Sir Francis Drake. A Mauritanian diver is dispatched to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose.... Miranda Kaufmann reveals the absorbing stories of some of the Africans who lived free in Tudor England.
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I thought I knew it all...
- By Sylvia Schmidt on 08-01-19
By: Miranda Kaufmann
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SPQR
- A History of Ancient Rome
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.
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Shallow and unsatisfying
- By Joe on 02-19-17
By: Mary Beard
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton