Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation (British Institute of Persian Studies)

A.C.S. Peacock is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews, and holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is the author of Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (2010), and is the co-editor of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2012) and Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia (I.B.Tauris, 2013).D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame, and holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of The Great Selkuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (forthcoming) and Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the 'Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (2007). "What do 'Abu Sindi', 'Timothy Sean McCormack', 'Saro', and 'Commander Avo' all have in common? They were all aliases for Monte Melkonian. But who was Monte Melkonian? In his native California he was once a kid on cut-off jeans, playing baseball and eating snow cones. Europe denounced him as an international terrrorist. His adopted homeland of Armenia decorated him as a national hero who led a force of 4000 men to victory in the Armenian enclave of Mountainous Karabagh in Azerbaijan. Why Armenia? Why adopt the cause of a remote corner of the Caucasus whose peoples had scattered throughout the world after the early twentieth century Ottoman genocides? Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother's road: a journey which began in his ancestors' town in Turkey and leading to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of Mountainous Karabagh. Monte's life embodied the agony and the follies bedevelling the end of the Cold War and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Yet, who really was this man? A terrorist or a hero? My Brother's Road' is not just the story of a long journey and a short life, it is an attempt to understand what happens when one man decides that terrible actions speak louder than words. A searing and unforgettable testimony of the revolt against justice denied. This is an excellent book, well-written, and driven by a sense of commitment which never overshoots into sentimentality or chauvinism. Christopher Walker; Markar Melkonian recounts in unflinching and fascinating detail the nearly unbelievable saga of his brother Monte's life and death, from an all-American childhood in California's Central Valley to his youth as an armed revolutionary in Beirut and his death as an Armenian hero in Artsakh. With a brother's memory and a philosopher's keen judgement, Melkonian reanimates a truly remarkable life. Nancy Kricorian, author of 'Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire' Monte Melkonian's death left us with a riddle. How could a boy from California's heartland become a terrorist in the eyes of the FBI and a saint in the soul of a faraway nation? Who better to take up that riddle than his older brother, Markar? From the fruit fields of the San Joaquin Valley to the killing fields of the Caucasus, he brings home an unforgettable memoir. Mark Arax, author of 'In My Father's Name', Staff Writer for the Los Angeles Times. 'My Brother's Road' is an astonishing book. Recounted by his older brother, it tells the dramatic story of the American-born Armenian Monte Melkonian. From the classrooms of California to the rubble of war-torn Beirut, from the Iranian revolution to the bloody years of the terrorist organisation ASALA, and the final chapter during the struggle in the mountains of Karabagh, Melkonian's adventures read like a modern odyssey. 'My Brother's Road' gives a little meaning to a life of political extremism. It sweeps aside the polarised views of this complicated figure, presenting him neither as complete hero nor complete villain. In the end we are left simply with a man who found it impossible to live impassively in the shadow of his people's calamity, the Armenian Genocide, and who sacrificed everything to try and correct the wrongs of the past. Philip Marsden, author of the award-winning 'The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians'"--Bloomsbury publishing. "With the ratification of a new constitution in December 1906, Iran embarked on a great movement of systemic and institutional change which, along with the introduction of new ideas, was to be one of the most abiding legacies of the first Iranian revolution - known as the Constitutional Revolution. This uprising was significant not only for introducing secular understandings of government, but also Islamic visions of what could constitute a national assembly. The events of the Constitutional Revolution in Tehran have been much discussed, but the provinces, despite their crucial role in the revolution, have received less attention. Here, Vanessa Martin seeks to redress this imbalance. She does so by firstly analysing the role of the Islamic debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its relationship with secular ideas, and secondly by examining the ramifications of this debate in the main cities of Tabriz, Shiraz, Isfahan and Bushehr. When Muzaffar al-Din Shah came to power in 1896, on the assassination of his father Nasr al-Din Shah, Iran was in the midst of social and political upheaval, which culminated in the creation for the first time in Iran's history of a constitution and a new majlis (consultative assembly). In this book, Martin looks in particular at the idea of modern Islamic government as it was conceptualized at the time; an idea which had been emerging for some time before the revolution, having its origins in the vision of the reformist pan-Islamist, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. She therefore traces the evolution of the debate around whether Iran was to be a secular or an Islamic society, or a combination of the two, together with the implications of this discourse in terms of popular perception and public opinion. By looking at the revolution outside of Tehran, she highlights the intra-elite rivalries, and the Islamic response to the Constitutional Revolution, from the moderate views of Thiqat al-Islam to the emergence of Islamic organizations and militancy. It is through this examination of Iran's major provincial cities that Martin concludes that in each region, the Constitutional Revolution took on a character of its own. From an exploration of the elites of Shiraz, including the effective mayor, Qavam al-Mulk, to the power centre of the then governor of Isfahan, Prince Zill al-Sultan, and from the revolutionary fervor of Tabriz to the commercial centre of Bushehr, Martin sheds light on the historical, political, religious and geographical importance of these cities. By examining the interaction between Islam and secularism during this tumultuous time, Iran between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism offers a vital new approach to the understanding of a key moment in Iran's history."--Bloomsbury publishing. Abu Sa'id 'Abd al-Hayy Gardizi was a Persian author and historian living in the mid-eleventh century at the height of the Turkish Ghazvanid dynasty. His only known work, The Ornament of Histories ('Zayn al-akhbar'), is a hugely ambitious history of the Eastern Islamic lands AD 650-1041, spanning what is now Eastern Iran, Afghanistan and parts of the Central Asian Republics and Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Gardizi's text is an extremely rare source of primary information about the rise of Islamic faith, culture and military dominance in these regions, and represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the early Islamic world. Covering the four centuries from the first Arab conquests to his own time, Gardizi's work is a prime source, for some episodes the sole one, for the history of these lands at this time. Thus it is the sole source for events at the end of Sultan Mas'ud's reign, when the Sultan was killed in an army coup, having just lost the whole of the empire's Persian provinces to the incoming Seljuq Turks, and it was the Seljuqs who were now to dominate the central and eastern Islamic lands for a century and a half, almost till the invasion of the Mongols. Writing on the far-eastern fringes of what was then the Eastern Islamic world, in what is now Afghanistan, Gardizi also included important ethnological information on the Turkish tribes of Inner Eurasia and on the religions and philosophies of the Indians. But his prime interest was clearly the Islamic history of his own lands, the eastern Iranian world and its Central Asian and Indian fringes, and here he provides a detailed narrative. This book provides the first translation into a Western language of this history of the formative period of the Eastern Islamic world and gives an explanatory commentary, detailing the historical, geographical and cultural context, as well as the events and colourful characters mentioned in it. C. Edmund Bosworth is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was until retirement Professor of Arabic Studies at Manchester University and is now a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Exeter University. He was the British Editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and is the author of numerous books and articles on the history, culture and literature of the Arabic, Persian and Turkish lands of the Middle East and Central Asia in the premodern period. He was the recipient of the biennial Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award at the University of California, Los Angeles, in May 2010. --Book Jacket. "Despite his towering presence in premodern Persian letters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) remains an elusive and opaque character for many. In order to look behind the hyperbole that surrounds Hafiz's poetry and penetrate the quasi-hagiographical film that obscures the poet himself, this book attempts a contextualisation of Hafiz that is at once socio-political, historical, and literary. Here, Hafiz's ghazals (short, monorhyme, broadly amorous lyric poems) are read comparatively against similar texts composed by his less-studied rivals in the hyper competitive, imitative, and profoundly intertextual environment of fourteenth-century Shiraz. By bringing Hafiz's lyric poetry into productive, detailed dialogue with that of the counterhegemonic satirist, 'Ubayd Zakani (d. 1371), and the marginalised Jahan-Malik Khatun (d. after 1391; the most prolific female poet of premodern Iran), our received understanding of this most iconic of stages in the development of the Persian ghazal is disrupted, and new avenues for literary exploration open up. Looking beyond the particular milieu of Shiraz, this study re-assesses Hafiz's place in the Persian poetic canon through reading his poems alongside those produced by professional poets in other major centres of Persian literary activity who enjoyed comparable fame in the fourteenth century. Recognising the aesthetic achievements of his contemporaries does not diminish the splendour of Hafiz's, rather it forces us to accept that Hafiz was but one member of a band of poets who jostled for the limelight in competing, often intersecting, patronage and reception networks that facilitated intense cultural exchange between the cities of post-Mongol Iran and Iraq. Hafiz's ghazals, characterised as they are by conscious and deliberate hybridity, ambiguity, and polysemy, are products of a creative mind bent on experimenting with genre. While in no way seeking to deny the mystical stratum of the Persian ghazal in its fourteenth-century manifestation, this study emphasises the courtly and profane dimensions of the form, and regards Hafiz through a sober lens with keen attention to his dynamic role at the heart of a vibrant poetic community that was at once both fiercely local and boldly cosmopolitan."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Despite his towering presence in premodern Persian letters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) remains an elusive and opaque character for many. In order to look behind the hyperbole that surrounds Hafiz's poetry and penetrate the quasi-hagiographical film that obscures the poet himself, this book attempts a contextualisation of Hafiz that is at once socio-political, historical, and literary. Here, Hafiz's ghazal s (short, monorhyme, broadly amorous lyric poems) are read comparatively against similar texts composed by his less-studied rivals in the hyper competitive, imitative, and profoundly intertextual environment of fourteenth-century Shiraz. By bringing Hafiz's lyric poetry into productive, detailed dialogue with that of the counterhegemonic satirist, 'Ubayd Zakani (d. 1371), and the marginalised Jahan-Malik Khatun (d. after 1391; the most prolific female poet of premodern Iran), our received understanding of this most iconic of stages in the development of the Persian ghazal is disrupted, and new avenues for literary exploration open up. Looking beyond the particular milieu of Shiraz, this study re-assesses Hafiz's place in the Persian poetic canon through reading his poems alongside those produced by professional poets in other major centres of Persian literary activity who enjoyed comparable fame in the fourteenth century. Recognising the aesthetic achievements of his contemporaries does not diminish the splendour of Hafiz's, rather it forces us to accept that Hafiz was but one member of a band of poets who jostled for the limelight in competing, often intersecting, patronage and reception networks that facilitated intense cultural exchange between the cities of post-Mongol Iran and Iraq. Hafiz's ghazal s, characterised as they are by conscious and deliberate hybridity, ambiguity, and polysemy, are products of a creative mind bent on experimenting with genre. While in no way seeking to deny the mystical stratum of the Persian ghazal in its fourteenth-century manifestation, this study emphasises the courtly and profane dimensions of the form, and regards Hafiz through a sober lens with keen attention to his dynamic role at the heart of a vibrant poetic community that was at once both fiercely local and boldly cosmopolitan. Abu Sa'id'Abd al-Hayy Gardizi was a Persian author and historian living in the mid-eleventh century at the height of the Turkish Ghazvanid dynasty. His only known work, The Ornament of Histories ('Zayn al-akhbar'), is a hugely ambitious history of the Eastern Islamic lands 650-1041 AD, spanning what is now Eastern Iran, Afghanistan and parts of the Central Asian Republics and Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Gardizi's text is an extremely rare source of primary information about the rise of Islamic faith, culture and military dominance in these regions, and represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the early Islamic world.Covering the four centuries from the first Arab conquests to his own time, Gardizi's work is a prime source, for some episodes the sole one, for the history of these lands at this time. Thus it is the sole source for events at the end of Sultan Mas'ud's reign, when the Sultan was killed in an army coup, having just lost the whole of the empire's Persian provinces to the incoming Seljuq Turks, and it was the Seljuqs who were now to dominate the central and eastern Islamic lands for a century and a half, almost till the invasion of the Mongols. Writing on the far-eastern fringes of what was then the Eastern Islamic world, in what is now Afghanistan, Gardizi also included important ethnological information on the Turkish tribes of Inner Eurasia and on the religions and philosophies of the Indians. But his prime interest was clearly the Islamic history of his own lands, the eastern Iranian world and its Central Asian and Indian fringes, and here he provides a detailed narrative.This book provides the first translation into a Western language of this history of the formative period of the Eastern Islamic world and gives an explanatory commentary, detailing the historical, geographical and cultural context, and well as the events and colourful characters mentioned in it. "The Safavid period is in immensely rich chapter in the history of Iranian architecture. Kishwar Rizvi examines the intersection of popular piety and imperial ideology through an in-depth look at the production and patronage of the shrine of Shaykh Safi. As the former political base of the ruling dynasty, the shrine is a reservoir of insight into the cultural and religions interaction between the regional Muslim empires of the early Modern period. From its inception as a modest Sufi lodge to its apogee as the dynastic mausoleum of the Safavid Shahs, Rizvi recounts the pivotal moments in the shrine's development as a manifestation of political authority and a centre of religious worship. The Safavid Dynastic Shrine offers a pointed analysis of the structural representation of imperial power throughout the shrine's numerous renovations. Rizvi reveals how architecture, as both symbol and artefact, was instrumental in the formation of the empire's cult of kingship that prevailed throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. Through a detailed survey of blueprints, pilgrimage manuals and property transactions. Rizvi argues that the transformation of the Sufi institution into a regal dominion was not a simple transfer of power, but a constant negotiation between the diverse bases of clientele who paid homage to the shrine. The vast network of pilgrims and patrons, which transcended both geographical and religious divisions, demonstrates the fluid nature of the borders between neighbouring empires and challenges the traditional assumptions about the centres of power and their periphery in the early modern period. The Safavid Dynastic Shrine explores Iranian architecture not only as a monument of imperial legacy, but also as an expression of cultural diversity and aesthetic significance. --Book jacket."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Machine Generated Contents Note: 1. Importance Of Khurasan And Transoxiana In The Persianate Dynastic Period (850 -- 1220) / D.g. Tor -- 2. Spread Of Hanafism To Khurasan And Transoxiana / Christopher Melchert -- 3. Khassa And The 'amma: Intermediaries In The Samanid Polity / Louise Marlow -- 4. Content Versus Context In Samanid Epigraphic Pottery / Robert Hillenbrand -- 5. Venture On The Frontier: Alptegin's Conquest Of Ghazna And Its Sequel / Minoru Inaba -- 6. Finding Iran In The Panegyrics Of The Ghaznavid Court / Roy Mottahedeh -- 7. Khurasani Historiography And Identity In The Light Of The Fragments Of The Akhbar Wulat Khurasan And The Tarikh-i Harat / A.c.s. Peacock -- 8. Life And Times Of 'amid Al-mulk Al-kunduri / Carole Hillenbrand -- 9. Local Lords Or Rural Notables? Some Remarks On The Ra'is In Twelfth Century Eastern Iran / Jurgen Paul -- 10. Ghurids In Khurasan / C. Edmund Bosworth. Edited By A.c.s. Peacock And D.g. Tor. This Volume Is Based On Discussions At A Conference Convened By The Institute Of Iranian Studies At The University Of St. Andrews In March 2013 Under The Title Eastern Iran And Transoxiana, 750-1150.--title Page Verso. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here Colin Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse which reflected the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. He focuses on the large corpus of epistles, letters and missives produced by a developed Safavid chancellery which show how the Safavids forged and negotiated their political and religious sovereignty in a diverse and complex environment. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, "The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran" is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics as well as the wider world of Middle East studies."--Bloomsbury publishing. The traditional account of the Prophet Muhammad's ascension has inspired generations of writers and storytellers from the beginnings of Islam until today. By the tenth century, narratives describing Muhammad's encounter with prophets and angels, his colloquy with God, and his visits of heaven and hell lead to the formation of the'Book of Ascension', a novelizing and engaging literary genre most commonly written in Arabic and Turkic dialects. This is the study of an extremely rare Persian'Book of Ascension', which was written in Persian by an anonymous author and dates from the Ilkhanid Period (1256-1353). Christiane Gruber presents an English translation alongside the original manuscript text, together with critical commentary on the text as well as a series of Ilkhanid ascension paintings. The text appears to promote adherence, as well as to encourage conversion, to Sunni Islam - providing a fascinating insight into the interplay between artistic practices and missionary efforts aimed at promoting Sunni Islam in Persian lands during Ilkhanid rule. The traditional account of the Prophet Muhammads ascension has inspired generations of writers and storytellers from the beginnings of Islam until today. By the tenth century, narratives describing Muhammads encounter with prophets and angels, his colloquy with God, and his visits of heaven and hell lead to the formation of the ""Book of Ascension,"" a novelizing and engaging literary genre most commonly written in Arabic and Seljuk Turkic. This is the study of an extremely rare Persian ""Book of Ascension,"" which was written in Persian by an anonymous author and dates from the Ilkhanid Period (1256-1353). Christiane Gruber presents an English translation alongside the original manuscript text, together with critical commentary. The text appears to promote adherence, as well as to encourage conversion, to Sunni Islam -- providing a fascinating insight into the interplay between artistic practices and missionary efforts aimed at promoting Sunni Islam in Persian lands during Ilkhanid rule. The Safavid Dynasty Originated As A Fledgling Apocalyptic Mystical Movement Based In North-west Iran, And Grew Into A Large, Cosmopolitan Perso-islamic Empire Stretching From Baghdad To Heart. During This Golden Era In Iran's History, From The Sixteenth To The Eighteenth Centuries, Fucntionaries Of The Safavid 'state' Introduced And Moulded A Unique And Vibrant Political Discourse Which Reflected The Social And Religious Heterogeneity Of The Sixteenth-century Iranian Landscape. Beginning With The Millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il And Concluding With The Autocrat Par Excellence, Shah Abbas, Colin P. Mitchell Elucidates The Phenomenon Of State-sponsored Rhetoric, And Helps Us Understand How This Dynasty Articulated Their Political And Religious Sovereignty During A Crucial Phase Of Iranian History.--jacket. Colin P. Mitchell. A Joint Publication With The British Institute Of Persian Studies Includes Bibliographical References (p. [203]-286) And Index. Front Cover 1 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 List of Illustrations 9 In Memoriam 11 Acknowledgements 13 Abbreviations 14 Contributors 15 Maps 17 Preface, by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G.Tor 20 1 The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in the Persianate Dynastic Period (850–1220) 28 2 The Spread of Ḥanafism to Khurasan and Transoxiana 40 3 The khāṣṣa and the ‘āmma: Intermediaries in the Samanid Polity 58 4 Content versus Context in Samanid Epigraphic Pottery 83 5 A Venture on the Frontier: Alptegin’s Conquest of Ghazna and its Sequel 135 6 Finding Iran in the Panegyrics of the Ghaznavid Court 156 7 Khurasani Historiography and Identity in the Light of the Fragments of the Akhbār Wulāt Khurāsān and the Tārīkh-i Harāt 170 8 The Life and Times of ‘Amīd al-Mulk al-Kundurī 188 9 Local Lords or Rural Notables? Some Remarks on the ra’īs in Twelfth Century Eastern Iran 201 10 The Ghurids in Khurasan 237 Index 249 The Safavid period represents an immensely rich chapter in the history of Iranian architecture. In this discussion of Safavid architecture in the context of its political, social and religious milieu, Kishwar Rizvi gives special consideration to the shrine of Shaykh Safi, built in AD 1334, as an important template for an emergent Safavid taste. Of both regal and religious significance, the shrine's direct relationship to imperial power is unique in Islamic architecture and provides valuable information about the methods of architectural benefaction prevalent in early modern Iran. Rizvi examines the ways in which the transition from a devotional aesthetic to an imperial one represented the young dynasty's imperial aspirations, and affected a wide range of public buildings from mosques to palaces during the early Safavid period and beyond. With the ratification of a new constitution in December 1906, Iran embarked on a movement of systemic and institutional change which, along with the introduction of new ideas, was to be one of the most abiding legacies of the first Iranian revolution - known as the Constitutional Revolution. This uprising not only introduced secular understandings of government, but also Islamic visions of what could constitute a national assembly. The author looks at the role of the provinces in the revolution. She analyzes the role of the Islamic debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its relationship with secular ideas, and also examines the ramifications of this debate in the main cities of Tabriz, Shiraz, Isfahan and Bushehr. She concludes that in each region, the Constitutional Revolution took on a character of its own Abu Sa'id 'Abd al-Hayy Gardizi was an author and historian living in the mid-eleventh century at the height of the Turkish Ghazvanid dynasty. His only known work, "The Ornament of Histories" ("Zayn al-akhbir"), is a hugely ambitious history of the Eastern Islamic lands AD 650-1041, spanning what is now Eastern Iran, Afghanistan and parts of the Central Asian Republics and Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Gardizi's text is an extremely rare source of primary information about the rise of Islamic faith, culture and military dominance in these regions, and represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the early Islamic world. This is the first English translation of the original Persian text, and is accompanied by an introduction and commentary which details the historical, geographical and cultural context. The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here, Colin P. Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse, reflecting the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics and Middle East studies. "The High Middle Ages were remarkable for their coherent sense of 'Christendom': of people who belonged to a homogeneous Christian society marked by uniform rituals of birth and death and worship. That uniformity, which came under increasing strain as national European characteristics became more pronounced, achieved perhaps its most perfect intellectual expression in the thought of the western Christian thinkers who are sometimes called 'scholastic theologians'. This book offers the first focused introduction to these thinkers based on the individuals themselves and their central preoccupations."--Bloomsbury Publishing. This study will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative Arabic-Persian literature, and the ghazal in related Islamic literatures such as Urdu and Ottoman Turkish. It is also of value to the field of comparative literature more widely - Hafiz was a key influence on notable nineteenth-century literary figures such as Goethe and Byron. Christiane Gruber. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [178]-184) And Index. Parallel Persian Text With English Translation.