Shah Isma‘il’s Poetry in the Silsilat al-Nasab-i Safawiyya

This article examines the four poems attributed to Shah Isma‘il Safavi that are included in the seventeenth-century genealogy of the Safavid dynasty, the Silsilat al-Nasab-i Safawiyya. The article includes translations and commentary on the four poems, offering insight into the religiosity and concerns both of Shah Isma‘il and the Silsilat's author, Husayn ibn Shaykh Abdal-i Zahidi.     

Shiʻi Piety and Dynastic Legitimacy: Mashhad under the Early Safavid Shahs

Mashhad, the site in northeastern Iran of the shrine of the eighth Shi?i imam, is arguably one of the largest and wealthiest sacred shrines in the world. The gilded dome over the imam's mausoleum stands amidst an expansive complex of courts, monumental gateways, libraries, museums, guesthouses, and administrative offices that cater to thousands of pilgrims each year. This paper examines the period, under the aegis of the early Safavid shahs, when Mashhad was established as the preeminent Shi?i pilgrimage center in Iran. Appropriating the Timurid ecumenical vision for the shrine, the Safavid shahs refashioned the holy city into a site that celebrated the triumph of Twelver Shi?ism in the Safavid realm and reinforced Safavid claims of legitimacy. While highlighting Shah Tahmasb's personal devotion to Mashhad, and his privileging of the shrine within Safavid sacred topography, the paper focuses on Shah ?Abbas's urban reshaping of Mashhad and the architectural and institutional expansion of the shrine during his reign, thereby enhancing its status as the leading spiritual center in the Safavid empire.     

Studying Isma‘ili Texts in Eleventh-Century Shiraz: al-Mu'ayyad and the “Conversion” of the Buyid Amir Abu Kalijar

As a key primary source for the history of the eleventh-century Isma‘ili majlis, the Fatimid chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad fi al-Din al-Shirazi's autobiographical Sira offers a prime opportunity to consider the application of centralizing features of the Fatimid state in eleventh-century Buyid Shiraz. Previous studies on the Fatimid majlis have raised questions about an Isma‘ili core curriculum as well as the intended audience/s of Fatimid da‘wa teachings. This article situates al-Mu'ayyad's memoir in the broader context of the Persian and Arabic historiographical traditions in order to provide new insights into the transmission of Isma‘ili doctrines in different social settings outside of Fatimid Cairo. It concludes that Abu Kalijar's study sessions with al-Mu'ayyad suggest that Qadi al-Nu‘man's Kitab Da‘a'im al-Islam was used as a core text for introducing some of the main principles of Fatimid religio-political rule in addition to Isma‘ili doctrines to non-Isma‘ili audiences.     

Safavid Iran and the “Turkish Question” or How to Avoid a War on Multiple Fronts

This essay parts with the compartmentalized way in which scholarship tends to view Iran’s military predicament in the Safavid era by examining the perennial threat the Ottomans posed to the country largely in isolation from the recurring conflict between the Safavids and their other main adversaries, the Mughals and Uzbeks, respectively. The security dilemma facing Safavid Iran, it is argued here, was acute as well as multifaceted, and should be approached as such. All three of its direct neighbors were Sunni and two, the Ottomans and the Mughals, were capable of mobilizing far greater military resources than Iran. The main strategic concern of the Safavids was to prevent these neighbors from joining forces and engaging them in a two-front war. This study examines balancing the strategies employed by the three most consequential Safavid shahs, Esma‘il I (1501?24), Tahmasb (1524?76), and ‘Abbas I (1587?1629), to avoid becoming the target of a simultaneous or combined assault by their neighbors. This analysis provides the backdrop to the rational decision the Safavids made in 1639—to end the threat of a two-front war by concluding a lasting peace accord with their most formidable enemies, the Ottomans.     

The Army of Nader Shah

This article looks at the origins of the army of Nader Shah (reigned 1736–1747) and the nature of the Persian armies in the Safavid period before considering in more detail the composition and structure of the army at its peak in the early 1740s. It suggests, building on work by Rudi Matthee, that it was only under Nader's tutelage that Persia fully embraced gunpowder weapons and that this initiated a Military Revolution (not just a revolution in technology, but in drill, discipline, and army size as well as ethos) that, but for Nader's untimely death, could have brought about the wider social and economic changes that Geoffrey Parker and others have associated with the Military Revolution in Europe.     

Rituals of Commemoration,Rituals of Self-Invention: Safavid Religious Colleges and the Collective Memory of the Shi‘a

Shi‘ism, perhaps more than any other current of Islam, places emphasis on numerous forms of commemorative culture. Throughout the history of Shi‘ism, commemorative rituals have provided a comprehensive framework for interpreting a wide array of historical encounters between the Shi‘a and the dominant Sunni culture, thereby allowing Shi‘ism to construct itself as a community of learning and remembering. This self-construction required both a high degree of institutionalization as well as specialists to preserve the religious identity of the Shi‘a and to transmit religious knowledge to the next generation. Madrasas (Islamic institutions of higher learning) as well as the shrines of the Shi‘i Imams and their progeny served as the best institutions to achieve these goals. This paper argues that Safavid madrasas were not only centers for disseminating religious knowledge and preserving Shi'a intellectual heritage. They also rearticulated and contemporized the community's past through the active memorializing of pivotal events in the religious calendar of the Shi‘a. More specifically, the paper delineates the nature and scope of religious rituals and rites carried out in the Madrasa-ye Sultānī and a number of other madrasa-mosque complexes of Safavid Isfahan in order to explore the process by which the Shi‘i past was contextualized or contemporized as salient to suit the needs of Safavid power and society.     

Competing Political Theologies: Intra-Muslim Polemics on the Limits of Prophetic Intercession

Abstract

This essay revolves around an analysis of a polemical exchange between two highly prominent Indian Muslim thinkers in Delhi, Shah Isma'il Shahid (d. 1831) and Fazl-i Haqq Khayrabadi (d. 1862), over the limits of the capacity of Prophet Muhammad to intercede (shafa'at) on behalf of sinners on the day of judgment. While focusing on this polemical moment, it explores the question of how this ostensibly theological debate on the limits of prophetic intercession connected to a much broader political debate surrounding the sociology of sovereignty under conditions of political change and transition. It argues that the opposing arguments on the limits of prophetic authority made centrally visible in this debate were intimately connected to larger questions surrounding the normative status of social hierarchies, distinctions and monarchical modes of being in early nineteenth-century India.     

Vintages of the Sāqī-nāma: Fermenting and Blending the Cupbearer's Song in the Sixteenth Century

Drawing on a rich tradition of anacreontic poetry and taking inspiration from works by Nizāmī and Hāfiz, the sāqī-nāma or “cupbearer's song” emerged as an independent genre in the early sixteenth century and flourished throughout the Persian literary world for the next 250 years. Looking back on the development of the genre, the early seventeenth-century literary historians ‘Abd al-Nabī Qazvīnī and Awhadī Balyānī give contrasting accounts of its formation, but both agree on the significance of the work of Hakīm Partuvī Shīrāzī (d. 928/1520–21). An examination of his sāqī-nāma, together with two other early representatives of the genre by Sidqī Astarābādī (d. 952/1545) and Sharaf Jahān Qazvīnī (d. 968/1561), shows how closely this new genre was tied to the politics and ideology of the new Safavid state and reveals profound structural similarities to the preeminent panegyric genre of the Islamicate world, the qasīda. But once the basic components of the sāqī-nāmā were distilled and taken up by poets outside this socio-political environment, the genre proved to be as protean as the wine symbolism at its core. Cupbearer songs from the end of the century, particularly those of Muhammad Sūfī Māzandarānī (d. 1035/1625–26) and Sanjar Kāshānī (d. 1021/1612), show how the basic elements of the genre could be reconfigured to serve a variety of more personal interests.     

The Undiladze Feudal House in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth-Century Iran According to the Georgian Sources

In this article by one of the founders of the Georgian school of Oriental Studies, the role of the gholams in Safavid service is highlighted by focusing on the career of Allahverdi Khan and his children. First, it is shown that Allahverdi Khan was not an Armenian, but a Georgian of the noble Undiladze family. Second, the rise of the Georgian slave in the Safavid administration and that of his children is discussed, both their political and cultural roles within the Safavid kingdom as well as their continued relations with Georgia. Finally, the cause of the family's downfall, due to too much success, its continued involvement in the affairs of Georgia, and its rivalry with fellow-Georgian Rostam Khan, is analyzed with emphasis on the use of Georgian sources.     

Azerbaijan between Two Empires: A Contested Borderland in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth‒Eighteenth Centuries)

The first part of the paper examines the evolution and transformation of Safavid ideology in the context of confessional changes and the role of Turkoman tribes in the Safavid social movement in the Ottoman?Iranian borderland. The second part examines the impact of Ottoman?Safavid wars and religious rivalry on the society and economy of Azerbaijan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.     

Ladies who Lounge: Class,Religion and Social Interaction in Seventeenth‐Century Isfahan

Western society appears inordinately keen on outdated and stereotypical tropes of Islamic architecture, talking of a ‘hidden world’ of Islam in which women are seen and not heard as they live their lives incarcerated in the harem. This trope of Western Orientalism has become entrenched in our culture through travel accounts, the writings of historical voyeurs such as Sir Richard Burton and the romantic/erotic imagery of nineteenth‐century Orientalist painters. This paper aims to dispel many of the preconceptions that are held regarding the Iranian harem and the role of women in Safavid society by addressing the status of elite Iranian women, but also placing them in the wider context and considering the evidence for lower‐class women who could simply not afford to live a cloistered life. There is also the case of non‐Muslim women whose religions forbade polygamy and who were therefore immediately placed outside the harem and, although Safavid Iran included significant numbers of Zoroastrians and Jews as well a handful of Hindus, this paper will concentrate on one particular religious minority; the Caucasian Christians who were such an integral part of Abbas’ great project that they were awarded a particular status in the city of Isfahan.     

The Role of Azerbaijani Turkish in Safavid Iran

Turkic languages and dialects played a much more important role in Safavid Iran than is generally thought, while Azerbaijani Turkish in particular was widely spoken and written in Safavid Iran. It was not only the language of the court and the army, but it was also used in poetry, even by renowned poets who usually wrote in Persian. The Safavid shahs, many of whom wrote poetry in Turkish themselves, promoted its literary use. Also, Turkish was used in the court's official correspondence, for both internal and external affairs.     

Peasant Uprisings in Astarabad: the Siyāh Pūshān (wearers of black), the Sayyids,and the Safavid State

Rebellions bringing together peasant-pastoralists, local dignitaries, and a few Sayyids prevented the Safavid monarchs from effectively controlling the political and economic activities in the province of Astarabad until the late sixteenth century. This paper investigates the nature of these rebellions led by the siyāh pūshān (wearers of black), and the socio-economic background and religious leanings of these rebels and their diverse allies. It also pays special attention to Astarabad's Sayyids, their intellectual formation, and their distinct approaches to the Safavid state from the early sixteenth century until the late 1570s when the uprisings lost much of their vigor. While heterodoxy may have been part of Astarabad's religious landscape, there is no evidence that it had a significant manifestation in the Siyah Push movement. More importantly, urban Shi?i doctrinal and legal traditions had profound roots in Astarabad, nurtured by the Sayyids and promoted by the Betekchi dignitaries prior to the rise of the Safavids. This is significant given the fact that a group of Sayyids from Astarabad (especially the town of Fenderesk) were directly involved in the insurgency against the early Safavids.     

Şeref Xan's Sharafnama: Kurdish Ethno-Politics in the Early Modern World,Its Meaning and Its Legacy

This paper critically analyzes the Sharafnama, a history of the Kurds, written by the late sixteenth century ruler of Bitlis, ?eref Xan. Given the politically sensitive nature of the Middle East's “Kurdish Question,” the Sharafnama has become an extremely important resource through which Kurdish nationalists have sought to construct a coherent “national narrative.” This is due to the fact that ?eref Xan's book constitutes one of the few systematic histories of the Kurds written before the twentieth century. This paper moves away from nationalist inspired interpretations of the Sharafnama, which see the work as a “national(ist)” history. Instead, it posits that, although the piece can be regarded as a manifestation of Kurdish “ethno-politics,” it is necessary to look at it within the context of the relationship between the Kurdish tribal princes who ruled large areas of “Kurdistan,” on one hand, and the Ottoman and Safavid empires who competed for control of this region, on the other. In particular, it brings to the fore an often forgotten and/or ignored aspect of ?eref Xan's history, namely its pro-Ottoman bias. In this way, the article makes broader points relating to the nature of the Kurdish identity in the early modern period, and the influence of such conceptions on the later construction of the modern Kurdish identity.     

Identification of Green Pigment Used in Persian Wall Paintings (ad 1501–1736) Using PLM,FT–IR,SEM/EDX and GC–MS Techniques

The technique of oil painting was introduced to Iran via a cultural exchange with Europe in the Safavid period (ad 1501–1736). Since the first attempt at scientific conservation of wall paintings in Iran in the 1960s, the nature of green pigment used in Persian wall paintings has not been clear, although work on contemporary miniature paintings has identified malachite and verdigris. PLM, FT–IR, SEM/EDX, GC–MS and the study of contemporary historical treatises of the Safavid period were the main tools used in the present study to identify the green pigments in Persian (oil‐based) wall paintings. Eight samples taken from the two famous Safavid buildings, Chehel Sotoon Palace and the Sukias House in Isfahan, were analysed. Here, the identification of copper‐based pigment and of verdigris in oil as oleate amends the existing knowledge of the green pigment used in these paintings. It also suggests that oleate was introduced to Persian artists via the European influence on Persian painting as a result of cultural exchange in the Safavid period, when the technique of Persian painting changed from tempera to oil painting. However, as verdigris in oil and resin can appear as oleate over time, it is unknown whether the Persian artists did this deliberately or accidentally.     

‘Marriage’, ‘Massage', Metaphor and Gender in US–Iranian Relations During the 1960s

Abstract

Although they were allies, during the 1960s relations between the United States and Iran were fraught with tensions. For American policymakers, Iran was an important Cold War client and oil-supplier in a turbulent region. It was vital, therefore, to maintain a good relationship with the Shah of Iran. Indeed, United States policy was based in large part on American assessments of the Shah as an individual. This article seeks to assess how the language and metaphors used by American policymakers to describe and understand the Shah reflected and informed United States policy. Officials within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the Shah through a highly gendered lens that magnified perceptions of him as a weak, highly sensitive and irrational leader – characteristics deemed to be overly feminine. This article therefore contends that US policy towards Iran was influenced by gender stereotypes as policymakers lamented their reliance on the Shah, who they deemed to be insufficiently 'masculine'.