Peacock A.C.S. Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Bal'ami's Tarikhnamah

Routledge — 2007 — 224 pp. — ISBN-10: 041558311X / ISBN-13: 978-0415583114 Dr. Andrew Peacock was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and is a research associate at the University of Cambridge. He specialises in history of Anatolia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and is the author of several articles on aspects of mediaeval Islamic history and historiography. The Tarikhnamah is a history of the world and the oldest surviving work of Persian prose. This book examines it as a political and cultural document and why it became such an influential work in the Islamic world. "A.C.S. Peacock's book, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Bal'ami's Tarikhnama is the first research monograph on this major historical work and shows how its composition and reception were influenced by political circumstances. Commissioned by the ruler of one of the largest and most powerful Muslims states of the tenth century, the Samanid dynasty of Central Asia, and composed by his vizier, the Tarikhnama tells us much about the politics and ideology of the Samanid state, which remains comparatively unstudied despite its importance in Islamic history. Future generations continued to adapt the text in accordance with their own political concerns, meaning its manuscripts vary immensely from one another." "Using newly discovered manuscripts, this study sheds much new light, not just on mediaeval Islamic history and the development of Islamic historiography, but also on problems in manuscripts and the transmission of their texts."--Jacket