Certain key themes, subjects and texts were considered to constitute a crucial educational foundation for an individual aspiring to achieve success in the court societies of the Persian Cosmopolis. This chapter argues that the character of this general education was deliberately ‘cosmopolitan’: based on a widely agreed canon of texts, both literary and scientific, whose importance was recognised across the Persian Cosmopolis. Rather than mere knowledge acquisition, the aim of this education was the formation of a specific type of disposition: a particular orientation towards the court society and towards the self. Underlying the external traits of this courtly disposition was a widely shared medico-philosophical understanding of the connections between mind, body and soul and the way in which the perfection of one, presupposed the engagement of the others. The implication of the body in the acquisition of knowledge and the perfection of the soul provides the rationale for directing attention to bodily practices and the influences of objects on bodies, a theme that recurs throughout this book.

One of the most crucial aspects of courtly life, in the Deccan, as elsewhere, was the ability to make friendships, enabling worldly success, movement to, employment at and escape from one court to another. This chapter examines the ways in which two individuals, Abd al-Karim b. Muhammad Nimdihi and Hajji Abarquhi managed to mobilise webs of interconnected networks that spanned the Persian Cosmopolis, in order to travel to, find employment at, and succeed at the courts of the Deccan sultanates. As well as networks, spaces and occasions for the demonstration and performance of friendship assumed a particular significance, and this chapter will examine one of these occasions: the majlis (courtly assembly).