This paper discusses the idea of the “local” as it applies to Persian history writing across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and produced in South Asia. Geographers ordered land and space with the concepts of climes (s. iqlīm) and regions (kishvar) which reflected different peoples and climates. Historians more generally related geography to power, and kingdoms (s. mamlakat) served as the primary geographical framework. How did imperial ideologies formulated in thirteenth and fourteenth-century Islamic courts define India through geographical and historical concepts? Does the idea of the “local” exist as a conceptual idea in history writing? This paper is concerned to understand how historical knowledge was used in this political context to define the localities and regions of India in relation to Delhi and other Islamic courts of India.