Safavids (Islamic History) Research Papers (original) (raw)

This essay examines the role and meaning of Shaykh Mushrif al-Dīn “Saʻdī” Shīrāzī’s Gulistān in late Mughal India. As the prose primer for a Persian education, the Gulistān encompassed the double meaning of adab, as exemplar both of literary form and of proper conduct. I explore instances in which the original text is cited in the work of Sirāj al-Din ʻAli Khān Ārzū (1689-1756 CE), a scholar and poet, who also wrote a commentary on the text. I then explore the larger context of Ārzū’s life and work in the context of mid- eighteenth-century Delhi, to situate the stakes of social and literary adab in a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval. Patronized by high-ranking Mughal officials, Ārzū was engaged in a larger project of recouping the cultural prestige of the imperial capital as political power devolved to regional centers in the face of factional politics and external invasion. Such an analysis seeks to historicize particular readings of classical texts of Persianate education.

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- Philology, Cultural History, Persian Literature, Iranian Studies

This chapter seeks to place Iran’s recent foreign policies in the Cold War and beyond in the broader context of the country’s experiences in international affairs. Modern Iran emerged around 1501, when Esma‘il I, a youthful prince descended from Muslim, Georgian, Turkish, and Byzantine royalty and nobility, proclaimed himself shah and re-established a Persian state after a hiatus of nine centuries. From that time onward, ensuring Iran’s security and at times its survival repeatedly impelled its leaders to seek support from imposing external allies or patrons who could help the new state to resist the threats, demands, and assaults of powerful and often threatening neighbors. From the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was by far the most dangerous international opponent of Iran. In response, Esma‘il and his successors turned to European powers and Russia for assistance. From the late eighteenth century, expansionist Russia represented the greatest threat to both Iran and the Ottoman Empire, prompting both states to seek the protection of the British Empire. In practice, for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this often meant that Britain and Russia effectively colluded in dividing Iran into spheres of influence. This pattern recurred when Britain and the Soviet Union were allied against Adolf Hitler’s Germany during World War II, a conflict that also brought the United States into direct involvement in Iran’s affairs. As British power in Iran declined, the United States stepped in, organizing a coup that cemented the hold on power of Shah Reza Mohammad Pahlavi and effectively replacing Britain as Iran’s foremost international ally and patron. Following the Shah’s overthrow in 1979 and the Islamic Revolution, which left the nation locked in bitter antagonism with the United States and vulnerable to attack by neighboring Iraq, Iran was initially somewhat friendless. From 1980 to 1988, it was locked in a bitter, stalemated war with Iraq, in which up to one million Iranians died or were seriously wounded. Facing continued hostility from the United States and also from Israel and Saudi Arabia, together with threats to its nuclear program, in the early twenty-first century Iran turned for security to post-Soviet Russia. As China’s reach expanded dramatically in these years, stretching well into Central Asia and beyond, Iran’s leaders also believed it profitable to align their country with the ambitious and increasingly influential new global superpower. The history of Iran’s involvement with major external powers nonetheless suggests that the purported new triple alliance will soon find itself navigating treacherous territory and troubled waters.

- by Priscilla Roberts
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- Iranian Studies, History of Iran, Safavids (Islamic History), Iranian History

In the early Renaissance, some illustrations appeared in medical manuscripts, depicting constellations of the Zodiac associated with the human body. Nowadays, these images are called the “Zodiac-Man” or the “Homo Signorum”. Later, similar images emerged in Persia, which had no counterpart in the Islamic world. Being very few in number, researches on the Persian zodiac-man have nothing much of interest, but a succinct and imperfect description. Thus, it is necessary to justify the abrupt emergence of the Persian one. For this purpose, social circumstances, court patronage, arts, and sciences should be investigated alongside an explanation for the theoretical and pictorial backgrounds of the zodiac-man. In addition to pointing out these theoretical origins from the ancient Greek to the Islamic period, this paper investigates the idea of zodiac-man during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Moreover, it indicates that despite the earlier background of the theory of zodiac-man in Persia, its visual representation was produced in imitation of the European version. Finally, by delving into the social, cultural, and political history of Persia, it is demonstrated that the portrayal of zodiac-man is likely to be a transitory experience, which took place in the 2nd century of the Safavid sovereignty.

- by Zackery M Heern
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- Iranian Studies, Shi'ism, Safavids (Islamic History)

Religious sects were affected upon the political system changes in many countries as a historical factor, on the earth, time to time. Some sects failed, but some of them were successful. In fact, some of their leaders came to power or established a dynasty. Historically, there were two prominent religious and syncretic sects on the earth, which lead a revolt and established their dynasties: First, White Lotus and Red Turban Movement in the fourteenth century in China; second, the Shi'ite Safavids in the sixteenth century in Iran. In this article, shortly, both will be compared as historical factors, and inquired that their ways of coming to power, taking their lead of the revolts and establishing their dynasties 1.Religious Sects and "Syncretism" Religious sects had not symbolized a character of a whole religious system as a historical point of view, because mainstream religious institutions had been converted into a political tool by the ruling class or the monarch. Thus, it was emerged two (or more) separated belief approachment within a religion which each one was able to eclectic. Also, religious sects became popular and independently faith-based organizations which mixed with old local beliefs and spread to different places in a country. On the other hand, there had been some sects with a mixed character of various belief systems in a religion, as historically. This was called "syncretism".

- by Levent Elpen
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- Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Religious Syncretism, Safavids (Islamic History)

«مسجد حکیم اصفهان، مسجدی چهارایوانی است که در زمان صفویان بر روی بقایای مسجدی قدیمی از دورۀ دیلمیان ساخته شده و مانند سایر بناهای مذهبی این دوره، از تزئینات زیبا و چشم‌نوازی برخوردار است. عمده تزیینات این بنا شامل کاشی‌کاری‌های معرق است که با رنگ‌های مرسوم در این دوره، زینت‌بخش فضای خارجی مانند صحن و فضای داخلی مانند گنبدخانه مسجد شده‌اند. چنانچه بگوییم مسجد حکیم، بزرگترین گنجینۀ کتیبه‌های "کوفی بنایی" یا همان "مُعَقلی" معماری ایران را به‌لحاظ تعدد و تنوع در خود جای داده است، سخن به گزافه نگفته‌ایم. کمتر بنایی را در تاریخ معماری ایران در دورۀ اسلامی می‌توان یافت که با این میزان از کتیبه‌های متنوع به خط کوفی بنایی آراسته شده باشد. تنوع در کتیبه‌ها، رنگ‌بندی کاشی‌ها، بهره‌گیری از ترفندهای فنی، هندسی و چیدمانی متفاوت در اجرای عبارات کوفی بنایی از جمله نکات شاخص کتیبه‌نگاری‌های این بناست.»

- by Amir Rajaei Baghsorkhi
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- Art History, Iranian Archaeology, Iranian Studies, History of Iran

Сборник статей по актуальным проблемам историографии и источниковедения средневекового Востока посвящен памяти выдающегося историка-востоковеда, Героя Советского Союза, академика
З.М. Буниятова (1923-1997), который внес весомый вклад в развитие советской и азербайджанской медиевистики. В сборнике принимают участие ученые из Азербайджана, России (Москвы, Дагестана), Грузии, Таджикистана, а также Канады и США.

- by Sonja Brentjes
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- History, European History, Cultural History, Early Modern History

کاروانسرا از جمله یادگارهای پرارزش معماری ایران است که از روزگاران کهن به دلایل گوناگونی چون جریان¬های اقتصادی، نظامی، جغرافیایی و مذهبی بنیان گردیده و در ادوار مختلف به¬تدریج توسعه و گسترش یافته است. هر چند در مورد کاروانسراهای موجود در ایران تحقیقاتی انجام گرفته؛ اما با توجه به گستردگی این سرزمین هنوز کاروانسراهایی در گوشه و کنار کشور هستند که تا به حال کمتر به آن پرداخته شده است. کاروانسرای شهر سرایان، واقع در استان خراسان جنوبی از جمله همین نمونه¬هاست که در این نوشتار مورد بررسی و تحلیل قرار گرفته است. به¬همین دلیل، با رجوع به منابع تاریخی و داده¬های موجود تلاش شده تا به معرفی معماری، گونه¬شناسی و مقایسه اثر با سایر بناهای همسان پرداخته شود. برآیند مطالعات و پژوهش¬های صورت¬گرفته نشان می¬دهد که این کاروانسرا احتمالا در دوره صفویه و به سبک دو ایوانی ساخته شده است. و سوال اصلی تحقیق این است که آیا کاروانسرای سرایان با سایر کاروانسراهای هم عصر و بعد از آن از لحاظ پلان با هم هم قابل قیاس هستند؟ هر چند کاروانسرای سرایان در فلسفه ساخت همانند سایر بناهای ایران با توجه به اقلیم موجود ساخته شده است؛ اما پلان بنا با هیچ¬یک از کاروانسراهای ایران مشابهت دقیق نداشته و دارای پلانی منحصر بفرد است. در نگاه کلان نیز می¬توان به اهمیت شهر سرایان در شبکه راه¬های ارتباطی کشور در دوره صفویه اشاره نمود که سبب شکل¬گیری و ساخت این کاروانسرا گردیده است.

- by Javad Khodadoost
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- Islamic Art, Islamic Studies, Safavids (Islamic History), Iranian Architecture
- by Oktay Efendiyev
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- Iranian Studies, Safavids (Islamic History), Travel Literature, Azerbaijan

El presente ensayo tiene como propósito fundamental reconstruir el contexto histórico-cultural en el que tiene lugar la formación de la dinastía safaví. Para ello, en un primer momento, se repara en los elementos políticos, sociales y religiosos que desempeñaron un papel decisivo en la instauración de la dinastía. A continuación se refieren las dinámicas artísticas, generadas en Tabriz, primera capital del imperio.

- by Amir Rajaei Baghsorkhi
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- Iranian Archaeology, Iranian Studies, Mongolian Studies, History of Iran

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.

- by Ayfer KarakayaStump
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- Cultural History, Ottoman History, Anatolian Studies, Iraqi History

3 Fellowships are available for 2019-20
Deadline: 3 June 2019
Starting date: 1 October 2019
Grant value: 1.350 Euro/month

- by Judith Pfeiffer
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- Ottoman History, Islamic Philosophy, Kalam (Islamic Theology), Mongolian Studies
- by Sacha Alsancakli
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- Ottoman History, Kurdish Studies, Ottoman Studies, Ottoman Empire
- by Barry Wood
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- Iranian Studies, History of Iran, Safavids (Islamic History), Islamic Manuscripts
- by Isa Blumi
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- Ottoman History, Mughal History, Ottoman Empire, Safavids (Islamic History)

"Pearls on a String" presents the arts of historical Islamic cultures by focusing on specific people and relationships among cultural tastemakers, especially painters, calligraphers, poets, and their patrons. Through a series of chapters, the book spotlights certain historical moments from across the Islamic world. Each chapter pivots around patrons and their social networks. These independent sections allow different voices and perspectives to emerge, enabling the reader to see that Islamic societies are not monolithic but made up of a tapestry of individuals with distinct and varying views.

- by Amy S Landau
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- Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Art History, Museum Studies

Article devoted to the copper Persian coins of eighteenth century, countermarked by "shamshir(s)", and found in Syuniq, Southern Armenia. Basing on numismatic analysis they attributed to sparapet Davit Bek. During 1725/6-1728 Davit Bek was head of the Sghnax of Kapan ("a kind of republic," as J. Hanway noted), and achieved from Tahmasp II Safavi right to struck the coin - "išxanowt‘iwn hatanel zdram," that is the same as right of haqq al-zarb.

- by Alexander Akopyan
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- Armenian Studies, Armenian History, Islamic Numismatics, Armenian Culture

Book Description The Safavid World brings together thirty chapters on many aspects of the complex Safavid state, 1501-1722. With the latest insights and arguments, some offer overviews of the period or topic at hand, and others present new interpretations of old questions based on newly found sources. In addition to political history and religious life, the chapters in this volume cover economic conditions, commercial links and activities, social relations, and artistic expressions. They do so in ways that stretch both the temporal and geographical perimeters of the subject, and contributors also examine Safavid Iran with an eye to both its Mongol and Timurid antecedents and its long afterlife following the fall of the dynasty. Unlike traditional scholarship which tended to view the country as unique, sui generis, and barely affected by the outside world, The Safavid World situates Iran in a wider, regional or global context. Examining the Safavids from their foundations in the fourteenth century to their relations with the rest of the world in the eighteenth century, this study is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of the Safavid world and the history and culture of Iran and the Middle East.

Paolo Piromalli (1591-1667) came from Siderno in Calabria. He joined the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) in around 1610, and spent the following two decades in Soriano Calabro, Naples, and Rome. In 1631, he was sent by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to the mission in Persia and Greater Armenia, for the purpose of bringing the Armenian Orthodox population into union with Rome. As a missionary he was heavily engaged in religious debates with clergymen of the Armenian Apostolic Church. (...)

- by Dennis Halft OP
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- Armenian Studies, Catholic Missionary History, Armenian History, Armenian Culture
- by Riza YILDIRIM
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- Military History, Early Modern History, Middle East Studies, State Formation

Shah Ismail I and the Conversion

- by Behzad Karimi
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- Safavids (Islamic History), Safavid Persia
- by Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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- Cultural Studies, Ottoman History, Iranian Studies, History of Iran

A History of the Islamic World, 600–1800 supplies a fresh survey of the formation of the Islamic world and the key developments that characterize this broad region’s history from late antiquity up to the beginning of the modern era.
Containing two chronological parts and fourteen chapters, this overview explains how different tides in Islamic history washed ashore diverse sets of leadership groups, multiple practices of power and authority, and dynamic imperial and dynastic discourses in a theocratic age. A text that transcends many of today’s popular stereotypes of the premodern Islamic past, the volume takes a holistically and theoretically informed approach for understanding, interpreting, and teaching premodern history of Islamic West-Asia. A History of the Islamic World identifies the Asian connectedness of the sociocultural landscapes between the Nile in the southwest to the Bosporus in the northwest, and the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in the northeast to the Indus in the southeast. This abundantly illustrated book also offers maps and dynastic tables, enabling students to gain an informed understanding of this broad region of the world.

- by Jo Van Steenbergen
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- History, Asian Studies, Ottoman History, Medieval History

This article investigates the opinions of three senior Ottoman jurists, Sarıgörez (d. 1522),
Kemalpaşazade (d. 1534), and Ebussuud (d. 1574), on the subject of the Safavids and their supporters. Historians have treated these opinions as part of the vast polemical literature uniformly intended to justify an impending Ottoman attack against their Safavid rivals. Questioning the notion that all authors shared an undifferentiated attitude, this article underlines that, unlike most polemical literature, the opinions of these three jurists focused on the religiolegal aspects of the Safavid issue and varied and evolved in line with changing historical realities, the jurists’ divergent assessments of the Safavid threat, and their preference for different jurisprudential doctrines. Based on an analysis of the opinions, I argue that these jurists assumed a high degree of autonomy as producers and interpreters of the law and thus did not necessarily feel obliged to legitimate or excuse every imperial action.

- by Abdurrahman Atçıl
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- Islamic Law, Ottoman History, Islamic Studies, Islamic History

Bu məqalə Çaldıran savaşının 500 illiyi ilə əlaqədar Azadlıq Radiosunun təşkil etdiyi müzakirələr çərçivəsində Dr. Abbas Cavadinin yazdığı “Çaldıran dərsləri və Şah İsmayılın İran qarşısında xidmətləri” adlı məqaləyə etiraz olaraq qələmə... more

Filiz ÇAğman Zeren Tanındı

- by Rohan D'Souza
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- Military History, Ottoman History, Comparative History, Ottoman Studies

Examining 16th-century Kurdish politics, particularly in the frontier districts between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, aptly serves as a starting point for understanding Kurdish regional semi-autonomy. This paper, dedicated to the activities of Kurdish individuals involved in information-gathering on behalf of both the Ottoman and the Safavid Empires, is the first of its kind. The findings presented here are the result of close exploration in the Ottoman archives as well as detailed reading of a number of materials from Ottoman and Safavid chronicles. The paper discusses three main subjects. The introductory section briefly explains the methods and potentials of Kurdish spying as well as some of the particulars of Ottoman– Safavid espionage. The second section provides an overview of two famous Kurdish intellectual historians and the role each played in information-gathering. The third section discusses cases of espionage throughout the political careers of several Kurdish frontier emirs.

DEPICTING THE OTHER: QIZILBASH IMAGE IN THE 16th CENTURY OTTOMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

- by Deniz Düzgün
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- Ottoman History, Anatolian Studies, Ottoman Studies, Safavids (Islamic History)
- by D.T. Potts
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- Ancient History, Near Eastern Archaeology, Iranian Archaeology, Iranian Studies

Imperial grimoires—that is, manuals on various forms of magic and divination written for or commissioned by royal readers—proliferated across the early modern Persianate world, more than paralleling the grimoire boom in Renaissance Europe. In extreme contrast to their contemporary Latin or English cognates, however, far less imperial in tenor, these Persian occult-scientific manuals have been left almost wholly unstudied. This programmatic article diagnoses the colonialist-orientalist causes for this wild imbalance in comparative early modern Western intellectual and imperial historiography and outlines a philological way forward. Far from being evidence for “the superstition of the Moslem natives,” such manuals are an indispensable aperture onto precisely those processes—common to Islamdom and Christendom alike—by which we define Western early modernity: textualization, canonization, standardization, confessionalization, centralization, imperialization, bureaucratization, democratization and mathematization. Yet they also record the religiocultural and institutional divergences that so distinguish the Islamicate and especially Persianate experience of early modernity from the Latin Christianate. Historians of books, of science and of empire must therefore finally overcome the eurocentrism and occultophobia still endemic in these fields, and cease judging Islamicate imperial occultism by Christianate standards, or simply writing it out of history altogether.

- by Matthew Melvin-Koushki
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- Early Modern History, Book History, History of Science, Iranian Studies

At the beginning of the 15th century, the rich tradition of manuscript production, which was a legacy of the Jalayirids and Iskandar Sultan, continued to develop under the Timurid bibliophile Prince Baysunghur (1397-1433). During this period the newly formed Persian calligraphic script, nastaʿlīq, became very popular and evolved under calligraphy masters, such as Jaʿfar Tabrīzī, the head of Prince Baysunghur’s library and atelier. His students Aẓhar Tabrīzī, and Shaykh Maḥmūd were his most prominent descendants in the tutelage lineage.
Among the most significant figures in the development of nastaʿlīq, Aẓhar Tabrīzī was one of the most prolific scribes in the 15th century. He started his training in Bāysunghur’s atelier at the beginning of the 830s, and by his final years in the 880s he had copied numerous manuscripts under various patrons, including a copy of the Khusrau u Shirin, now housed in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, Persian MS. 6.
This introduction investigates Aẓhar’s career and professional life in a period of around 50 years. After a survey of his works through decades and at different courts, it concentrates on the aesthetic and textual features of the illustrated copy of Khusrau u Shirin, which Azhar copied in his mature years in an elegant nastaʿlīq.

- by daglar mehmet
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- Ottoman History, Persian Literature, Iranian Studies, Safavids (Islamic History)

This chapter focuses on the Mughal Empire as the most important, representative, and influential exemplar of South Asian imperial traditions during the early modern period. The longevity of the Timurid dynasty founded by Bābur poses the questions as how the dynastic line of a Central Asian warlord had gained such a wide acceptance in South Asian society, and why did it remain a powerful source of legitimacy well after the decline of its military might in the eighteenth century? In order to analyse these problems, this chapter begins by providing a brief narrative outline of the rise and decline of the Mughal Empire along with its structure and institutions. It will then turn to an examination of the broader context for South Asian notions of kingship and sovereignty and Mughal imperial ideology as it developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapter further elaborates the most important Mughal imperial practices, their antecedents and innovations. Finally, it dis...

- by Murari Jha
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- Legitimacy and Authority, Ottoman History, South Asian Studies, South Asia

The Kitab Bilawhar va Budasf of Majlisi II (1627-1699), is the Persian version of the original Arabic by Ibn Babuya (c. 923-991). Daniel Gimaret studied the Arabic versions in the 1960s and 1970s. And this translation from Persian to Spanish gathers some interesting stories that had not been translated until now. The Kitab Bilawhar is a good example of wisdom literature of Manichean origin and other sources, and is the first complete Spanish translation.

- by José CUTILLAS
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- Persian Literature, Safavids (Islamic History)

Caravanserais or ‘road inns’ were a central aspect of medieval and early modern sociality in Central Asia, as infrastructural investments made by centralized polities to promote long distance exchange, and as locales for providing charitable hospitality. This paper presents data on early modern (16-17th c) caravan networks in Afghanistan, discovered and mapped using satellite imagery and historical data by the Afghan Heritage Mapping Partnership (AHMP) at the University of Chicago. By recording networks of standardized roadside architecture from the Safavid-Mughal period, we generate new information on previously understudied routes of the early modern “Silk Roads.”

- by Kate Franklin and +1
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- Archaeology, Anthropology, Remote Sensing, Cultural Heritage