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Dedicated to the renowned Safavid historian Roger Savory, this book brings together a collection of studies on the Safavid state of Iran (1501-1722) from the perspectives of political, social, literary, and artistic history. Savory, a doyen of Safavid studies in the 1960s and 1970s, was responsible for expanding and popularizing the study of Iran in the 16th and 17th century. To celebrate this legacy, well-established scholars of medieval and early modern Iran have contributed specific studies reflecting an array of research interests and specializations, which include critical re-examinations of issues of gender, literature, art and architecture, cultural and linguistic currents, illustrate...
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.
In A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century, Marinos Sariyannis offers a survey of Ottoman political texts, examined in a book-length study for the first time. From the last glimpses of gazi ideology and the first instances of Persian political philosophy in the fifteenth century until the apologists of Western-style military reform in the early nineteenth century, the author studies a multitude of theories and views, focusing on an identification of ideological trends rather than a simple enumeration of texts and authors. At the same time, the book offers analytical summaries of texts otherwise difficult to find in English.
Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.
The city of Herat in western Afghanistan long sat at the edge of empires and served as a hub for trade and a conduit for armies. Yet it has been much more than simply a staging post or plaything of political ambition. It has been an imperial capital, a city of extraordinary wealth, and has played host to a cultural renaissance to rival that of Florence. The Pearl of Khorasan tells the history of this storied oasis city, from the invasions of Chingiz Khan in 1221 to the present day. An epilogue assesses the challenges Herat faces in the wake of Afghanistan’s recent turmoil. Throughout Herat’s cycles of conquest and habitation, several patterns emerge: the primacy of geography; the city’...
Written from the point of view of the earth scientist, this book acts as an introduction to terrain evaluation. The emphasis throughout is on the physical rather than the economic, social or legal aspects of the subject, and topics covered include remote sensing and data processing technologies.
This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine. Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society against the state; the main objective of the first being to establish lawful government to make modernisation possible, and the second, to overthrow the absolute and arbitrary state, though this time mainly under the banner of religion and Marxism-Leninism and anti-Westernism. Neither of them succeeded in their lofty ideals for reasons that are explained and analysed within. The author also offers a...
The Ilkhanate: from Tegüder Aḥmad to Öljeitü -- Muslim Ilkhans, the Buddhists and the People of the Book -- Rashīd al-Dīn, Islam and the Mongols -- The Islam of Ghazan, his generals and his minister: the view from outside -- EPILOGUE -- Legitimation by Chinggisid descent -- Allegiance to Mongol norms and institutions -- Turkicization -- The exodus of Muslims from the Mongol world -- The spread of Islam across Eurasia -- The movement of peoples and the emergence of new ethnicities -- The integration of Eurasia within a single disease zone: the Black Death -- CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX 1 Glossary of Technical Terms -- APPENDIX 2 Genealogical Tables and Lists of Rulers -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX
Ottoman-Safavid relations after 1639 have been dismissed as marginal and assumed not to have produced sufficient documentation to facilitate a study, wherefore the subject matter has lacked even an introduction providing basic facts, let alone a comprehensive treatment. This book establishes for the first time the mission exchanges, correspondence, negotiations, and borderland encounters by drawing on scattered and hitherto-untapped archival documents, chronicle entries, and travelogues by the Ottomans, Safavids, and Europeans. Working up the information unearthed thereby, it reconstructs the groundwork of these dealings, highlights trends, and contextualizes the facts. The book refutes the assumption that mid-seventeenth-century interstate scene of the Middle East was eventless, and documents how the parties in question intensively bargained, displayed goodwill, made demands, delivered threats, presented displays of might, asked for privileges as well as concessions, and brought in third parties to their relations, all within an unequal relationship in strength, hierarchy, order of precedence, ranks, and protocol.
Audiences are among the dominant elements of courtly life and may be referred to as a central aspect of representation of power in many societies. Audiences also served as a stage for negotiation and political decision-making. Beyond that, the ceremonial of audience acted as an integrative factor, strengthening the connections between the ruler and his subjects, the élite and his dynastic background. It thus reflects the structure, or at least the intended structure of rule, and allows us to get insight into the perception of the ruler in the respective society. This volume offers an approach to forms and structures of audiences in different epochs and regions. Choosing a transcultural and ...