Download PDF | Sholeh A. Quinn - Persian Historiography across Empires_ The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals-Cambridge University Press (2020).
271 Pages
Persian Historiography across Empires Persian served as one of the primary languages of historical writing over the period of the early modern Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Historians writing under these empires read and cited each other’s works, some moving from one empire to another, writing under different rival dynasties at various points in time. Emphasizing the importance of looking beyond the confines of political boundaries in studying this phenomenon, Sholeh A. Quinn employs a variety of historiographical approaches to draw attention to the importance of placing these histories within not only their historical context but also their historiographical context.
This comparative study of Persian historiography from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries presents in-depth case analyses alongside a wide array of primary sources written under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals to illustrate that Persian historiography during this era was part of an extensive universe of literary-historical writing.
sholeh a. quinn is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. She is the author of Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (2000) and Shah Abbas: The King Who Refashioned Iran (2015). She co-edited History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (2006).
Introduction
In 933/1527, after an eventful career as a diplomat, historian, administrator, and writer under multiple rulers – a career that included composing a variety of texts for multiple patrons – Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir (ca. 880–942/ca. 1475–1535/1536) left Herat, a town which had recently come under Safavid control, and made his way to Qandahar and Mughal territory. There, he authored his final composition: a short historical treatise for the Mughal emperor Humayun (r. 937–963/1530–1556). Khvandamir’s career represents movement in a number of ways. In addition to his physical journey from Khurasan to India, he moved effortlessly, it seems, from genre to genre in his writing, and from patron to patron, some of whom were distantly related to each other and others who ruled over rival empires. Khvandamir was not unique in terms of his movements. The early modern Persianate world was one connected by a common Persian language and a body of texts familiar to an elite that existed across empires. However, while we know what, where, and when Khvandamir wrote, we have only started to understand how and why.
This book is a study of Persian historiography during the period of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. Beginning in approximately 1500, three empires formed in Southwest Asia, South Asia, and North Africa out of the political fragmentation that followed the dissolution of the Timurid Empire. The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals became three of the most powerful empires of the seventeenth century. After their establishment, a series of dynastic kings built elaborate capital cities or expanded already established ones; surrounded themselves with a dizzying array of artists, architects, and intellectuals; developed bureaucracies that allowed their empires to continue expanding without losing administrative control over their provinces; and formed disciplined and effective armies. They engaged in diplomacy, ruled over multiethnic and multireligious communities, and created conditions through which new literary, artistic, philosophical, and social movements could thrive. At the same time, rulers of these empires also engaged in warfare, massacre, religious persecution, and the forced resettlement of peoples.
The Ottomans managed to accomplish what no Islamic dynasty or ruler had previously been able to do: capture Constantinople and transform it into Istanbul, which became the imperial seat of the Ottoman sultanate. From there, they launched a series of successful military campaigns that brought them into direct contact with the peoples of Europe and Iran. Eventually bringing Arabia and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina under their control, they came to see themselves as the champions and guardians of Sunni Islam while sharing an eastern border with their rival Shi‘i Safavid neighbors. The Safavids, whose origins trace back to a Sufi dynasty in the northern Iranian city of Ardabil, eventually ruled from Isfahan, a purpose-built capital city that they filled with mosques, bazaars, bathhouses, and more. Having established Twelver/Imami Shi‘ism as the official state religion, they proceeded to “convert” Iran, bringing together religious scholars and clerics and establishing religious institutions to help them carry out this project. Like the Ottomans, they engaged in international trade and international diplomacy.
Under the Safavids, a philosophical school flourished and so too, eventually, new styles of art and poetry. At nearly the same time that the Safavid state was founded, the Mughal dynasty established itself in India, and as Muslims, ruled over a Hindu majority population. A series of Mughal emperors situated Agra and then Delhi as their capitals where they used their tremendous wealth to build edifices such as the Taj Mahal. In addition, they attracted large numbers of poets, artists, and other intellectuals to their territory with the promise of financial reward and patronage. The Mughals engaged in unique religious experiments designed to reconcile the different religious communities over which they ruled.
They eventually managed, through their effective army, to extend their rule over the entire Indian subcontinent. Each of these empires cultivated their own unique identities, as rulers tried to ensure the strength of their political borders and boundaries. They squashed rebellions and attempts at defection, waged military and propaganda wars against each other, and competed with each other in terms of their kingship and their legitimacy. However, this was also a period of great movement, exchange, and synthesis. People traveled from one empire to another, living under different dynasties, and as people moved, so too did their religious beliefs, artistic styles, languages, poetry, and practices of historical writing, which in turn interacted with local traditions.
Historical Writing in Persian Given the magnitude of these empires, it should come as no surprise that their kings made certain that historians would record their accomplishments. The period thus witnessed a significant output of historical writing of many kinds, much of it in the same Persian language, although some of the earliest Ottoman chronicles and most of the later ones were written in Ottoman Turkish.1 During the Middle Periods of Islamicate history, “new Persian” had spread across the eastern portion of the Islamic heartlands and become the vehicle through which social norms of refined etiquette (adab) were communicated. By the early modern period, secretaries (munsh¯ıs), poets, courtiers, and other writers adhered to models that became familiar to a literate class who composed their own texts in light of these models.2 Mughal emperors, starting with Humayun, actively encouraged scholars in Iran to go to India, and Persian became the language associated with Mughal kingship and administration.3
This study focuses on histories written in Persian because this “lingua franca” served not only as the language of administration and culture across the empires but also the primary language of historical writing for nearly the entirety of the Safavid and Mughal periods and for the earliest phase of Ottoman rule. Persian histories were also composed under the Shaybani Uzbeks in Central Asia and for various other local rulers and patrons in the region. Since Persian histories form such an essential source of information for this period, scholars often make extensive use of this material, especially for the Safavid and Mughal dynasties.4 Knowing more about these indispensable texts, including the methods of their composition and how they relate to each other across political boundaries, remains a matter of paramount importance as we use them to understand the past.
The following chapters demonstrate that Persian historiography during this era was part of an extensive universe of literary-historical writing that drew on earlier established models and historiographical traditions, most immediately Timurid. As heirs to the Timurid historiographical legacy, historians of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals modified and further developed these traditions across all three empires. Furthermore, they also read and sometimes cited each other’s works, thereby connecting their histories not only to the earlier tradition but also to each other’s compositions. Some, like Khvandamir, even physically moved from one empire to another, writing under different and rival dynasties and patrons at various points in time. For these reasons, in studying Persian historical writing, it is important to look beyond the confines of political boundaries and instead focus on the Persianate world.
Connected Histories and the Persianate World The present volume complements research undertaken in the last few decades on connected histories and notions of the “Persianate world.” Such scholarship has suggested that the study of historiographical traditions should not be straightjacketed into the confines of modern nation-states or even the early modern dynastic empires where they were written.5 Instead, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam has noted, histories, while diverse in terms of genre and other elements, were part of a connected world in which their influence was felt across great distances.6 Subrahmanyam further outlines a circulation of legendary material, such as those associated with Alexander the Great, and ideas and concepts, such as the notion of the appearance of a mujaddid, or “renewer,” who according to Islamic tradition (_ had¯ıth) would appear at the beginning of each century to renew the faith.7 The chronicles under examination, as will be demonstrated, were used and traveled across empires, as Persian was the primary language of transmission in the early modern era. They thus form part of the circuit or circulation of historiographical traditions.
The primary purpose here is to demonstrate in a detailed manner what happened to such texts as they circulated. How exactly were they utilized and rewritten by later generations of chroniclers writing across empires? This is where taking a comparative approach becomes useful. In order to understand the relationship between the chronicles and what happened as they moved from, say, Safavid Iran to the Ottoman Empire or to the Mughal Empire, it is necessary to compare them to each other, not only to establish their dependency, but also to understand the transformations that they underwent. Such an approach does not “compartmentalize” the chronicles but rather allows us to understand them in a more nuanced manner. In addition to being “connected histories” in ways that subsequent chapters will demonstrate, the chronicles were produced in the “Persianate” world, a notion that, like connected histories, has also received considerable recent scholarly attention. While the renowned University of Chicago historian Marshall G. S. Hodgson was responsible for coining the term “Persianate,” a sibling term to his rather more popular “Islamicate,” this concept has been more recently revisited in an attempt to define it more consciously and explore its implications.8 These studies suggest that looking beyond and decentering Iran would be useful in helping us to understand the nature of the Persianate world and culture.9
This study contributes to such scholarship by examining Persian chronicles that were written beyond the borders of the Safavid Empire, across territory spanning from Western Anatolia to the Indian subcontinent, including Iran and Central Asia. Such an approach is particularly effective when applied to the early modern period, as this was a time when each of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal zones “earned a discrete personality of its own,” as Persianate culture interacted with Ottoman Turkish in the west and with Hindu and Sanskrit cultures in India.10 As these empires became “epicenters for a transregional Persianate experience,”11 the question remains as to how historical writing fits into this paradigm. Do chronicles written across the early modern empires possess something unique that distinguishes them by the dynasty under which they were written, or can we discern more homogenizing characteristics? How does historiography change over time?
The Historiographical Context The best way to address the questions that theoretical discussions on connected histories and notions of the Persianate world raise is by closely reading and analyzing the chronicles themselves. While historical chronicles form a body of what we might consider “traditional sources,” they certainly should not be dismissed for that reason but rather examined in a sophisticated manner.12 Throughout this work, I draw attention to the importance of placing these histories not only in historical but also in historiographical contexts. It is the latter of these contexts, the historiographical, that still has not received enough scholarly attention, which is emphasized in this study. Its importance lies in the fact that so many early modern writers employed a method of imitative writing in which they drew heavily on an earlier work or works, modifying the earlier model texts in significant ways. Without identifying these models, it is likely that scholars will read a particular history without realizing whose words they are actually reading. Imitative writing is one of the most important features of Persian historiography when chroniclers narrate their past. In other words, when historians could find earlier texts that covered a particular past period and place, they usually used one or more such sources as the basis upon which they wrote their own accounts.
Taking that earlier text, they would modify it by rewriting it in different ways, such as adding new language, changing the wording, removing certain passages, or reproducing the earlier text verbatim. If enough chroniclers chose to carry forward the same portions or sections of an earlier narrative, those sections became conventional elements. In my earlier study, Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles, I analyzed this process in Safavid chronicle prefaces and accounts of the early Safavid Sufi order, pointing to the highly conventional elements in the prefaces and noting how certain stories originating in the fourteenth-century hagiography of Shaykh Safi al-Din (650–735/ 1252–1334), founder of the Safaviyyah Sufi order, were reproduced and then significantly rewritten in order to make Shaykh Safi and his followers appear as practicing Twelver Shi‘i Muslims. Chroniclers from the period of Shah Isma‘il (r. 907–930/1501–1524) later engaged in this rewriting process. When comparing the passages in these various chronicles, it became very clear that the historians chose particular texts as models that they imitated.
In some cases, by skillfully adding a single word or a short phrase, they completely changed the meaning of the earlier narrative. In other instances, they added significant passages, thereby making their political agendas very clear.13 Through this creative process of interacting with an earlier text, the chronicler maintained an active engagement and dialog with the past. It is essential to keep this process in mind and read a historical work comparatively alongside its model. Failing to do so may be likened to listening to half of a conversation with the resulting dialog incomplete and difficult to understand. The phenomenon of imitation has been studied not only in relation to historiography but also to Persian poetry. Paul Losensky analyzed Safavid–Mughal poetry in light of various forms of imitation in which a poet pays tribute to earlier poems through, for example, reproducing the same meter or rhyme. The practice was popular with Safavid– Mughal poets such as Baba Fighani.14 In the case of both poetry and history, the practice that earlier modern writers engaged in cannot be labeled plagiarism, because to do so ignores the creative and innovative elements inherent in the process of composing a poem or writing and rewriting the past.
The State of the Field Despite the tremendous historiographical output spanning three empires and the significance that body of writing has for our understanding of early modern history, little research across empires has taken place thus far. This is not surprising for the study of Persian historiography within each of these three dynasties has only recently reached a point where such work can proceed. Nevertheless, a number of books have been recently published that provide the necessary background for the kind of “across empires” approach used in this study. In 2012, a volume entitled Persian Historiography, edited by Charles Melville as part of Ehsan Yarshater’s History of Persian Literature series, brought together numerous essays on Persian historiography from its origins to the Pahlavi period.15 The chapters in this volume provide general overviews of the main sources and main features of historical writing for each time period/dynasty. Persian Historiography includes separate chapters on Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal historiographies.
These essays build on several monographs and articles that had been recently published, such as Julie Meisami’s Persian Historiography, Ernest Tucker’s Nadir Shah’s Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran, numerous articles published by Charles Melville on Mongol and Timurid historiographies, and Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas. 16 Since the publication of Persian Historiography, and in one instance before, several monographs have been published that emphasize primarily dynastic and occasionally interdynastic history, making heavy use of historical narratives.17 Tilmann Trausch’s study on Safavid historiography, Formen höfischer Historiographie im 16. Jahrhundert, focuses on the rise of Safavid historiography.18 Kaya ¸Sahin’s Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World, a study that brings a much-needed focus on narrative sources for the reign of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman, emphasizes histories written in Ottoman Turkish rather than Persian texts.19 Ali Anooshahr’s The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam:
A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods examines three key historical figures: Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 388–421/998–1030), the Mughal founder Babur (r. 932–937/1526–1530), and the Ottoman sultan Murad II (r. 824–848/1421–1444; 850–855/1446–1451).20 The book makes use of a wide range of narrative sources from multiple dynasties. For the Mughals, A. Azfar Moin’s The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam similarly makes use of historical narratives, looking particularly at what they have to say about Mughal kingship.21 Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics contains many chapters that deal with Mughal historiography.22 Audrey Truschke’s Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court examines Persian texts, paying particular attention to understanding the impact of Sanskrit on texts written under the Mughals.23 Finally, Ali Anooshahr’s Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires examines the broad historiographical traditions surrounding the origin narratives of the Ottomans, Safavids, Uzbeks, Mongols, and Mughals.24 In addition to this body of scholarship, several recently published books focus on the historiography of the early and middle periods of Islamicate history, providing further context and background for later developments. These include Sarah Bowen Savant’s The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion, which examines Persian historiography immediately following the early Islamic conquests; Blain H. Auer’s Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion, and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate, which analyzes Persian sources written under the Delhi sultanate; and Mimi Hanoaka’s Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic History, which focuses on local Persian chronicles.25
Organization and Parameters This book is organized into six chapters, the first and sixth forming the introduction and conclusion. Chapters 2–5 should be viewed as separate “case studies” in the sense that each offers strategies for reading the chronicles to make them provide information that the chronicler may not have intended to reveal. While reading texts in light of their models lies at the heart of the analyses in all four of these chapters, I also explore themes such as historiographical conventions, the movement of the chroniclers themselves across empires, and genres of historical writing and other Islamicate literatures.
Each chapter, then, provides the reader with a set of tools to further explore the different forms of historical writing and the ways we might make use of this important body of source material. Due to the massive historiographical output of this period, it has been necessary to limit the number and types of sources that are analyzed in this study and to provide a rationale for those texts that have been excluded. In terms of genre, the texts that form the basis of this book are predominantly Persian prose historical chronicles that are historiographically related to each other and/or to earlier works. While entire categories of Persianate literature, such as epic poems, contain a great deal of valuable historical information, they require separate study in order to understand their relationships, sources, and the methods used to compose them. One important group of Ottoman histories, the ¸Sehnames, has not been included for the same reason.26 Other important genres, such as biographical compendia (tazkirah) and advice literature/mirrors for princes, while important in their own right, will be discussed in light of their serving as sources that informed the historical chronicles. In terms of time period, the following chapters focus on a series of related themes or historiographical features that are closely analyzed.
In some cases, the earliest chronicles to contain particular features do not appear until, for example, the seventeenth century. This is why, for example, Abu al-Fazl ‘Allami’s (958–1101/1551–1602) Akbarnamah (1011/1602) is discussed in Chapter 2, because it contains one of the earliest examples of a Mughal dream narrative associated with dynastic origins. Similarly, Iskandar Beg Munshi’s (968 or 969–ca. 1043/ 1560 or 1561–ca. 1633) famous history of Shah ‘Abbas (995–1038/ 1587–1629), the Tarikh-i ‘alam-ara-yi ‘Abbasi (1028/1628–1629), while not an early Safavid chronicle by any means, is nevertheless one of the earliest chronicles written after the Habib al-siyar to include a separate biographical section, one of the themes in Chapter 5. Turning now to the relative number of chronicles analyzed in light of the dynasties under which they were written, it is important to note first that while there was a truly massive amount of historical writing produced under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, the number of chronicles per dynasty chosen for analysis here varies overall and from chapter to chapter. This is partially due to the fact that, while Ottoman historiography is extensive and rich, the majority of these chronicles were composed in Ottoman Turkish.
Therefore, this study has not incorporated those sources. Despite, however, the comparatively fewer number of Ottoman Persian sources, it is still important to incorporate the Ottoman tradition, as it helps us understand how various elements in pre-Ottoman Persian historiography came to be used by Ottoman chroniclers who chose to write in Persian prose. While this book focuses on the historiography of Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, a number of Persian histories that were not written under these dynasties also appear in this study. These include two Central Asian histories, Muhammad Haydar Dughlat’s (905–958/ 1499–1551) Tarikh-i Rashidi (952/1546) and Mas‘udi b. ‘Usman Kuhistani’s Tarikh-i Abu al-Khayr Khani (sometime between 947–959/1540–1551), both of which include the specific elements and themes covered in Chapters 2 and 4, respectively. For the same reason, I have also incorporated in Chapter 2 a discussion of one section of Sharaf Khan Bidlisi’s (949–1012/1543–1603/1604) Sharafnamah (1005/1596), even though his chronicle may be characterized as a Kurdish history occupying space between the Safavid and Ottoman traditions, and Ziya al-Din Barani’s (684–758/1285–1357) Tarikh-i Firuzshahi (ca. 684–758/1285–1357), a history of the Delhi Sultanate. While inclusion of these histories cannot do justice to the entirety of Central Asian chronicles or the historiography of Persian narratives written in the Deccan, Gujarat, Malwa, and other sultanates of the Central Indian plateau, the histories discussed here allow us to understand better just how influential certain histories were across and between dynasties and states. Finally, because I primarily focus on historiographically connected chronicles, a number of historical works are not included in this study.
For example, I do not cover at least one Ottoman Persian chronicle, Muhammad b. Hajji Khalil Qunavi’s Tavarikh-i Al-i Osman, for this reason.27 This is also the case for other very well-known works, such as the Safavid chronicle by Fazli Isfahani, the Afzal al-tavarikh (1045/ 1635), and the Mughal Tarikh-i alfi (997/1588–1589). I have provided brief general overviews of the early modern histories utilized in this study when they first appear throughout the chapters, but they are all listed and described in chronological order in the Appendix. Some of them are very well known and others exist only in manuscript form and have hardly been used. Chapter Overviews Chapter 2, “Continuity and Transformation: The Timurid Historiographical Legacy,” explores how the Timurid historiographical tradition survived into the early modern period by examining some of the formal conventional elements in a number of Persian histories. By conventional element is meant certain themes or discussions that appear in similar structural positions, and sometimes articulated in similar language in the chronicles. The specific conventional elements that undergo analysis are (1) benefits of history, (2) bibliographies, (3) genealogies, and (4) dream narratives.28
The chapter demonstrates two important points. First, the survival of conventional elements depends to a very great extent on whether or not a chronicler modeled his history on an earlier work that contains a similar conventional element. In other words, certain information appears in our sources due to established conventions and because of the historiographical choices that the chroniclers made. Second, such conventional elements appear in Persian chronicles across empires. Early modern chroniclers, regardless of the dynasty under which they wrote or the patron who sponsored them, tapped into a common earlier tradition which they then modified and reshaped according to the political and dynastic expediencies of the time. The fact that these conventions were shared across imperial boundaries shows how widely histories were read and rewritten in different contexts. It also suggests a shared historiographical consciousness in the Persianate world at this time, reflecting a tradition that goes back to the tenth century, but that has as its immediate historiographical context the Timurid period.29 The chapter opens with a discussion of two conventional elements predating the Timurid dynasty that only sporadically or partially survived into the later period.
The first is a list of “the benefits of history.” This numerated list includes a short- to medium-length discussion under each “benefit.” The convention appears, in modified form, in a variety of Persian chronicles written across the Persianate world. Secondly, following the discussion of the benefits of history, or occasionally preceding it, we sometimes see a “bibliography,” or an actual list of works, consisting of specific title and in some cases authors’ names, that the chronicler claimed to have consulted in fashioning his narrative or that he considered to be important texts. Historians did not simply replicate in a word-for-word manner this list of benefits or bibliography of books, however. Rather, they modified these sections for a variety of reasons. The chapter then examines genealogies and dream narratives, two conventional elements that appear in many chronicles across the empires. Dynastic genealogies trace the current monarch back to an important religious/legendary figure, and dream narratives focus on the dream or dreams of a dynastic founder or ancestor foretelling the future greatness of a particular dynastic king or the entire dynasty. Drawing on my previous research on Safavid genealogies and dream narratives, I compare the Safavid tradition with the Mughal and Ottoman, analyzing these conventions not only in light of historiographical models but also through competing notions of kingship. Chapter 3, “Historiography and Historians on the Move:
The Significance of the Number Twelve,” continues our exploration of texts moving across time and place, but in a much more detailed manner, as the focus shifts from a macro to a micro view in order to examine what happens when one historian physically moved across political borders, writing for different dynasties. While Chapter 2 shows how movement across dynasties took place intellectually, as the chroniclers looked beyond dynastic borders to read and cite texts being produced in other parts of the Islamicate world, the movement analyzed in Chapter 3 has less to do with time, as it took place within the lifetime of one specific historian, and more to do with place and space, as he traveled from Khurasan to India. The chapter shows that, in addition to drawing on earlier models, the chroniclers also looked to each other’s works or, in this case, their own earlier works as they composed their narratives. This chapter provides two specific examples of movement across empires. The first, and its centerpiece, consists of a case study of the historian Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir. Khvandamir wrote one of the earliest Safavid histories, the Habib al-siyar, and then moved to India, where he wrote one of the earliest Mughal narratives, the Qanun-i Humayuni (941/1534). I show precisely how Khvandamir used a portion of his Habib al-siyar dealing with the significance of the number twelve relative to the Shi‘i Imams, and carefully transformed it into a “cosmological” text, incorporating it into his Mughal history written for the emperor Humayun. This analysis also shows how later Mughal writers such as Abu al-Fazl used Khvandamir’s Qanun-i Humayuni in their own chronicles, thus providing another example of the fluidity of historiographical borders. This chapter employs a method of close textual analysis in order to provide a unique insight into one historian “at work” in the early modern era.
Interdynastic movement did not begin and end with Khvandamir. Rather, the next generation of Safavid intellectuals found a welcome home under the Mughals. To demonstrate this point, the chapter concludes by tracing how the descendants of a Safavid chronicler, Mir Yahya Sayfi Qazvini (d. 962/1555), left Iran for India and came to occupy prominent positions under the Mughals. Chapter 4, “The First King of the World: Kayumars in Universal Histories,” continues to test the strength of imperial boundaries such as those that Khvandamir crossed, but this time the focus is on a group of historians writing across empire and across time. How did the chroniclers of the Ottomans, Safavids, Uzbeks, and Mughals narrate one particular story that appears in a large number of universal histories? The universal history was one of the most prevalent genres of early modern Persian historical writing and the most common type of history composed in the early stages of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal dynasties. Are narratives of a Persian heroic figure from the book of kings, the Shahnamah, similar in chronicles written under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, as their authors continued to look to their Timurid or in some cases pre-Timurid models, or did the imperial ideologies of their patrons affect the contents of their accounts?
The chapter addresses such questions by examining the legendary past in universal histories and focusing on accounts of Kayumars, considered the first human or first king in the ancient Persian tradition, in a series of universal histories written under the Ottomans, Safavids, Uzbeks, and Mughals. This chapter makes the point that, while at the end of their universal histories the chroniclers narrated the unique aspects of whatever dynasty they were writing under, they were predominately narrating a shared past that predates the establishment of Islam. The legend of Kayumars serves as a useful lens through which to test the historiographical boundaries between the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. Because of the prevalence of universal history writing in the early stages of the three empires, we have a great deal of source material to use for comparative purposes. The chapter thus devotes some time to establishing the models and the textual relationships between the many chronicles narrating Kayumars. Furthermore, because Kayumars was regarded as a Persian and a king, our chroniclers, particularly those writing under the Ottomans and Mughals, may have had reason to treat his story differently than those historians writing under the Safavids. Chapter 4 demonstrates that our chroniclers did not feel the need to recast the legendary past in a hyperpolitical manner. According to historians writing under the Ottomans, Safavids, Uzbeks, and Mughals, Kayumars was, generally, the first king of the world. That he was a Persian king did not particularly matter to Ottoman, Uzbek, or Mughal writers. In general, it seems the chroniclers did the best they could, using the libraries and source materials to which they had access. Universal histories demonstrate a historiographical openness and subtlety in narrating the legendary past that leads us to the main questions that are raised in Chapter 5, “Mirrors, Memorials, and Blended Genres.” Did this openness also apply to genre? In other words, what was the nature of movement between genres? How did historians “move” material from another category of text into their own histories? Chapter 5 explores this form of movement by examining how different types of Islamicate literature became incorporated into Persian historiography. Early modern historians drew on a rich variety of Islamicate literatures to compose their narratives, but modern scholarship has not explored this phenomenon. The chapter explores two literary traditions that, while they exist as important stand-alone genres, made their way into Persian histories: mirrors for princes and biographical compendia (tazkirah). We may view certain portions of Persian histories as responses to the genre of literature known as “mirrors for princes.”
The mirrors for princes literary tradition predates the early modern period, and consists of formal and informal advice literature written to educate a prince or a king on how to conduct himself. The texts are highly normative and draw on the ancient Persian notion of the “circle of justice.”30 Several Persian histories contain a conventional element that describes the qualities of a particular king. Narratives listing the attributes of the Safavid king ‘Abbas I and the Mughal king Akbar (r. 963–1014/1556–1605) reflect the same ideal virtues that a king is supposed to possess, as indicated in the mirrors for princes literatures.
This convention differs from narratives consisting of more general praise of the king or assertions of the king’s virtuousness. Rather, in the chronicles analyzed in this chapter, we see lists of kingly virtues, where the chronicler names specific virtues and adds a sentence or paragraph elaborating on that particular attribute. While it is not possible to trace direct borrowing or influence, we do find historiographical precedence in, for example, a prominent Mongol-era history, Rashid al-Din Fazl Allah’s (ca. 645–718/1247–1318) Jami‘ al-tavarikh (“Compendium of Histories,” approx. 699–709/1300–1310) and mirrors for princes works such as Nizam al-Mulk’s (ca. 408–485/ 1018–1092) Siyasatnamah. The chapter then examines the tazkirah and its role in Persian histories. Like the mirrors for princes literatures, the biographical compendium forms a genre in its own right that flourished during the Timurid era. Certain Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal histories contain their own “mini-tazkirah” sections. Here I trace the historiographical influences on the mini-tazkirahs and show that the Persian historians were not only looking to earlier Timurid histories, which reflected the political situation at the court of Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara (r. 875–912/1470–1506), but also writing in response to fellow historians across empires.
Terminology In this study, I will be using the phrases “Persian historical writing,” “Persian historiography,” “historical writing in Persian,” and “Persian history” interchangeably to refer to historical texts written in the Persian language, regardless of their place of composition or the background of the author. For the historical works themselves, I am using the words and phrases narrative, chronicle, and history interchangeably throughout. There was a tremendous variety of historical output during this period, and I will differentiate between various genres of histories such as universal and dynastic as necessary.
The various historiographical trends and developments discussed in this study do not necessarily fall into neat periodization categories. In other words, the passing of a particular year, decade, or even century does not always correspond with overall changes in the characteristics of historical writing. Periodization does, however, allow us to organize larger blocks of time. In that spirit, I will use the phrase “middle periods” as defined by Marshall Hodgson in his magisterial Venture of Islam series to refer to the period of 950–1501. Whereas Hodgson uses the phrase “gunpowder empires” to describe the next period in Islamic history from 1501 to 1800, I will instead use “early modern” in order to acknowledge the fact that this rich period had much more to offer the world than gunpowder alone.31
Transliteration Note This book employs a modified Library of Congress transliteration system in which, except for the bibliography, only technical terms and passages are fully transliterated with diacritical marks. The bibliography contains full transliteration. One further modification is that the Persian letter “zad” will be indicated with a superscript dot above the letter “z” (z). Other words, such as names and places, will _ follow the Library of Congress system without diacritical marks. The ayn (‘) and hamza (’) will always be indicated. Premodern dates will include the hijr¯ı date (AH) followed by the common era (CE) date. Final Notes As noted above, I have placed information about the chronicles and chroniclers in the Appendix at the end of this book, so that readers may conveniently refer to the main sources used throughout this study in one place.
I have carefully checked and retranslated, revised, or modified, as necessary, all translations of primary sources when such translations are available. In all instances, the first page reference refers to the original text, while the second, marked by “trans.,” refers to the translation. Finally, Philip Bockholt’s important and groundbreaking scholarship on Khvandamir’s Habib al-siyar was regretfully unavailable to me when this manuscript was being prepared for submission.
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