Polity, Economy and Society of Trans-Gangetic Valley is based on new and relatively marginalized sources of documents, and throws fresh light on the political developments and socio-cultural formations in north India, from the Sultans of Delhi to the early colonial period in Indian history. Several essays in this volume deal with Islam in India, and highlight its varied, indigenous character, examining both, its revivalist as well as reformist trends. This volume also extensively analyses the thought and activities of leaders like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the Urdu poet Akbar Illahabadi both of whom had very clear positions on Islam, English education and modernity. The regional political formations, in particular the rise of the Afghans in India, have been studied by the author. Based largely on extant Persian sources like Sharaif-e Usmani and Mirat-ul Auza, rare manuscripts of the eighteenth century, and rare collections of sixteenth-eighteenth century archival documents from small towns like Khairabad, Sambhal and Farrukhabad, the essays in this volume are of immense significance for historians of medieval and modern Indian history and form an important complement