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The Ghurids have their origins in the mountainous region of modern central Afghanistan, from where they established the first Islamic state in India. Some of their ghulams, primarily nomadic Turks from Central Asia, were to become independent rulers, leading to the foundation of the Delhi Sultanate. At its height, in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries, their domain extended from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and from the Straits of Hormuz to the River Oxus. Mamluks, Conquest and Culture covers both the military and political history of the dynasty and the Persianate cultural world they inhabited and propagated on the subcontinent. The collapse of the Great Seljuk Empire allowed them to expand westwards into Iran. Extensive use of ghulams played a crucial role in their success, and this cavalry was to prove decisive in the campaigns against the Indian dynasties. Their conquests reunited territories to create a transregional empire for the first time in a millennium.

What does it mean to obsess about clothes and appearances? For some of us, deciding what to wear can involve tension and torment as well as delight. What do we mean by ‘looking classy’ or ‘power dressing’? What are the connections – or contradictions – between dress and desire, glamour and feminism? Do our choices reflect or challenge social values and constraints in women’s live? ppearances is both memoir and cultural history. It considers attitudes to personal appearance through four generations of women in the author’s family, weaving memory through a wide-ranging exploration of fashion, femininity and feminism in the recent past.