Political letters of Shāh Walīullāh Dehlavī translated by Rohit Sahasrabudhe - Book Review

The Historylogy Podcast · Sep 4, 2026 · 9m

In the 1750s, as Mughal power crumbled and Maratha armies pushed deeper into Hindustan, a Delhi theologian named Shāh Walīullāh sat down to write letters — not to fight the coming storm, but to direct it. In this episode, we open a newly translated collection of his political correspondence, Political Letters of Shāh Walīullāh Dehlavī: "Most Systematic Theory of Jihād," translated by Rohit Sahasrabudhe, and ask what forty-two letters written to nobles, regional rulers, and the Afghan invader Ahmad Shāh Abdālī can tell us about the ideological currents beneath the collapse of Mughal India —…