The Persian Jesuit

About the Book

India like the rest of the world has always found lovers drawn passionately to each other in spite of society's customs, preferences, and barriers. Marriage in sixteenth century India was customarily regarded as one of family arrangement, not of lovers' choice or exciting romance. By the 1500's, when Muslims had conquered large areas of the country, love across the lines of the major religions was considered an even greater threat to traditional marriage, Hindu or Muslim. Portugal's colony of Goa and its Christian religion, arriving between 1500 and 1520, raised the obstacles to romance even higher. A young adventurer from a Muslim state, for example from Bijapur on India's broad southern plateau, might find his curiosity aroused by militant Christianity's “Jesuit” missionaries and dare to study under them in Goa. If that young Muslim were to meet a destitute Portuguese Christian girl and fall in love with her – indeed, find himself drawn into an astonishing romance – what would be the risks and penalties? Would the lovers be doomed to ostracism, or worse, by both their religious communities? The author has given the fated pair of lovers the names Aziz Ahmad Khan and Miralindo Bartolomeo, “Aziz” and “Mira”. The Persian Jesuit: A Romance of India in the Age of Akbar is their story.

About the Author

Ray Thomas Smith is a career specialist in the history and culture of India. He holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. He first visited India on a Fulbright grant and later returned under an American Institute of Indian Studies grant. During these two research trips and a third, private visit he was able to travel widely by second and third class rail, with indelible experiences of India's passing scene. Besides research in the libraries and universities of New Delhi, Allahabad, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras he crisscrossed almost the entire subcontinent from the temple-towns of Uttar Pradesh to those of Tamilnadu, and from Buddhist sites in and around Banaras (Varanasi) to the rock-cut caves of Ajanta and Ellora, and south to Calicut and Cochin fronting the Arabian Sea. Intermixed with it all he experienced the Monsoon, “the Rains” which year after year, century after century have shaped India's internal travel, trade, religion, war, literature, architecture, and all the arts. Meanwhile the red sandstone and white marble of Mughal palace and tomb became a lifelong fascination – along with lives of emperor after emperor, but especially the great Akbar, the Muslim philosopher-king so bold that he would welcome even the Jesuits of Goa into his court. After more research on the Mughal empire, its neighboring Muslim states in the Deccan, and the Portuguese colony of Goa, he began sketches for a novel, which has become The Persian Jesuit: A Romance of India in the Age of Akbar.