ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Risālah-yi Banī Quṣṣá, a 1924 Urdu-language history aimed at Muslim butchers in Delhi, alongside archival records produced for the colonial state and municipality in the same period. The Risālah-yi Banī Quṣṣá asserted regional and local Islamic pasts for butchers, in an effort to improve their social standing within Delhi’s Muslim communities. On the other hand, when Delhi’s Muslim butchers appeared in the colonial archive, they were portrayed as sources of communal violence and unsanitary urban practices. This article analyses the distance and gaps between these two archives, asking how we should approach vernacular histories and the colonial record when they address the same communities but position them within divergent social contexts. It argues that reading the two archival forms together, and analysing the gaps between them, allows us to ask how urban working-class communities understood their own histories and social positionalities within the colonial city.

摘要

本文分析了Risālah-yi Banī Quṣṣá，这是一部 1924 年针对德里穆斯林屠夫的乌尔都语历史，以及同期为殖民地国家和自治市制作的档案记录。该Risālah义巴尼Quṣṣá断言屠夫的区域和地方伊斯兰历史，以努力提高他们在德里穆斯林社区中的社会地位。另一方面，当德里的穆斯林屠夫出现在殖民档案中时，他们被描绘成社区暴力和不卫生的城市行为的根源。本文分析了这两个档案之间的距离和差距，询问我们应该如何处理本土历史和殖民记录，当它们针对相同的社区但将它们置于不同的社会背景中时。它认为，将这两种档案形式一起阅读，并分析它们之间的差距，让我们能够询问城市工人阶级社区如何理解他们自己在殖民城市中的历史和社会地位。