Ameen M. Perumannil Sidhick

My dissertation project explores the socio-economic history of Muslim and Christian communities in pre-modern Malabar. Specifically, I study how these religious communities acquired and transacted agricultural land and gained varied social status as they became entrenched in Malabar’s agrarian hinterlands between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In doing that, I aim to understand the formation of patronage networks in Malabar as well as how the discursive-jurisprudential practices of Muslim and Christian communities mimicked and differed from other temple communities of the region. As a scholar of history, my focus is on the social and cultural history of South India and the Indian Ocean World. I am also particularly fascinated by the literary and intellectual history of the religious vernaculars used by Muslim religious groups in this region. Parallelly, I also work on the history of Adivasi communities and colonialism in Wayanad, which is the region I hail from. I started my PhD program at UPenn in 2022.