In early modern Islamic history, women are often excluded from the historical record, leaving gaps in our understanding of gendered experiences. Professor Babayan explores gendered literacy and female friendship through a seventeenth-century anthology preserved in the library of the Urdubadi family, a household of poets and bureaucrats in Safavid, Iran. She argues that this anthology functions as a family archive, making visible the social world of the household in which it was compiled. Central to this archive is the role of a female family member, a widow of the Urdubadi, household whose pilgrimage to Mecca is documented alongside expressions of love for a female companion who was forced to leave Isfahan due to circulating rumors about their relationship. Through this case, Professor Babayan highlights how a ritual of sisterhood reveals an empathetic community and expands our understanding of premodern female friendships.

Kathryn Babayan specializes in the social history and culture of the early-modern Persianate world, gender studies, and the history of sexuality. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2024-25. Babayan is the author of two award-winning books, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), and The City as Anthology: Eroticism & Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021). Babayan has also co-authored Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran, with Sussan Babaie, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), and co-edited two books: Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire with Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), and An Armenian Mediterranean: Words and Worlds in Motion with Michael Pifer (Cham, Switzerland: Palgarve Macmillan, 2018).

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