Contributions to the History of Concepts Volume 12, Issue 2, Winter 2017: 76–110 doi:10.3167/choc.2017.120205 © Berghahn Books FEATURED ARTICLE Appropriations and Contestations of the Islamic Nomenclature in Muslim North India Elitism, Lexicography, and the Meaning of The Political JAN-PETER HARTUNG University of Goettingen ABSTRACT Tis article comprises a twofold attempt: the frst is to establish a semantic feld that revolves around the concept of siyāsat—roughly equivalent to the political—in Muslim South Asia; the second is to trace semantic shifs in this feld and to identify circumstances that may have prompted those shifs. It is argued here that the terms that constitute the semantic feld of the political oscillate between two sociolinguistic traditions: a strongly Islamicate Arabic one, and a more imperially oriented Persian one. Another linguistic shif is indicated with the replacement of Persian by Urdu as the dominant literary idiom in and beyond North India since the eighteenth century. Te aim is to serve only as a starting point for a more intensive discussion that brings in other materials and perspectives, thus helping to elucidate the tension be- tween normative aspirations by ruling elites and actual political praxes by variant socioeconomic groups. KEYWORDS ādāb, Arabic, farhang, Hindustani, lexicography, mawsūʿāt, Persian, siyāsat Tis article has evolved from a working paper presented frst to the “History of Concepts in South Asia—Initiative” at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, 28 September 2012, and to the “Symposium on Literature and History in Persianate South Asia” held at the University of Oxford, 15 May 2015. I am most grateful to all the input I have received from those present on either occasion, as well as to the referees of Contributions to the History of Concepts. Te Romanization of the various relevant languages in non-Latin scripts follows largely the ALA-LC conventions for each respective language; an “h” struck out (ħ) indicates aspiration of the preceding consonant. Life dates of Muslim authors are given according to the Islamic lunar calendar, also known as the Hijri calendar, and in some places labeled with “sh” (shamsī), as well as the solar Common Era.