Mughal insha literature: Rhetoric strategies and development

Insha, the art of writing letters and essays, served a double purpose in setting the norms for both Persian letters and Persian non-fiction prose in general. It was seen as an art and its style as part of the information, which means that historians of the early modern Persianate world must deal with rhymes and a plethora of rhetoric devices just to understand their sources.
This lecture presents the results of four years of study on the development of insha literature (epistolography and essays) in the Mughal Empire from its Timurid antecedents till the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. It will give a summary of the rhetoric strategies used, and their change over the 250 years from the seminal 'Timurid literary renaisance' through the transformations Mughal culture in the next two centuries. We will stop with the end of the heyday of the Mughal age, as the situation afterwards with its interplay of Persian and native Indian languages (Urdu, Marathi, Panjabi, Bengali, Telugu) needs several lectures of its own.
The lecture also summarizes my upcoming book on the topic, 'A Field Guide of Floridity, The development of insha literature in the Mughal Empire', which should be out by 2023.