You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This unique work explores the administration of Iran under Mongol rule through taxation and monetary policy. It looks at history from a different angle and shows how monetary policy brought about changes to the state.
This book explores the administration of Iran under Mongol rule through taxation and monetary policy. A consistent development is evident only from abundant numismatic material, from the conquest of Samarqand by Chingiz Khan to the reign of the penultimate ruler, Uljaytu. In many cases, the individuals responsible for initiating and conducting the policies can be identified from the histories or remarks of the mint master. The structure of the empire is clearly demarcated by mint production, coin styles and type of metal. This illuminates many controversial historical points such as the meaning and function of an Il-khan and the establishment of the Toluid dynasty under Hulagu. The Mongols broke the crust of an inflexible and archaic Islamic monetary tradition that had hampered economic development by encouraging extensive trade and the sciences (especially astronomy and higher mathematics) through determined and always pragmatic programmes.
This book is the first rigorous attempt to explain the cross-fertilization of scientific and religious thought in Islamic civilization. Winner of the Iranian World Prize for Book of the Year in Islamics Studies 2009
The five Diez albums in Berlin, acquired by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez in Constantinople around 1789, contain more than 400 figurative paintings, drawings, fragments, and calligraphic works originating for the most part from Ilkhanid, Jalayirid, and Timurid workshops. Gonnella, Weis and Rauch unite in this volume 21 essays that analyse their relation to their “parent” albums at the Topkapı Palace or examine specific works by reflecting upon their role in the larger history of book art in Iran. Other essays cover aspects such as the European and Chinese influence on Persianate art, aspects related to material and social culture, and the Ottoman interest in Persianate albums. This book m...
A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced over millennia. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.
As a leading scientist of the 13th century C. E. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī wrote three substantial works on hay’a (or the configuration of the celestial orbs): Nihāyat al-idrāk fī dirāyat al-aflāk (“The Limits of Attainment in the Understanding of the Heavens”), al-Tuḥfa al-shāhīya fī ‘ilm al-hay’a (“The Royal Offering Regarding the Knowledge of the Configuration of the Heavens”), and Ikhtīyārāt-i Muẓaffarī (“The Muẓaffarī Elections”). Completed in less than four years and written in two of the classical languages of the Islamic world, Arabic and Persian, these works provide a fascinating window to the astronomical research carried out in Ilkhanid Persia....
In Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th – 15th Century Tabriz, an international group of specialists from different disciplines investigate the role of Tabriz as one of the foremost centres of learning, cultural productivity, and politics in post-Mongol Iran and the Middle East. While standard accounts of Islamicate history have long presented the 13th to 15th centuries as the bottom of the decline paradigm of old, the present volume demonstrates the vibrancy and originality of the intellectual and cultural production of this period by focusing on Tabriz among other capitals of the region. The volume particularly explores the transmission of knowledge and institutional and cultural patronage in the post-Mongol period. Contributors include Reuven Amitai, Nourane Ben Azzouna, Sheila Blair, Devin DeWeese, Joachim Gierlichs, Birgitt Hoffmann, Domenico Ingenito, Robert Morrison, Ertuğrul Ökten, Judith Pfeiffer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, F. Jamil Ragep, and Patrick Wing.
The interdisciplinary volume Transfer of Buddhism across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), edited by Carmen Meinert, offers a new transregional and transcultural vision for religious transfer processes in Central Asian history. It looks at the region as an integrated (religious) whole rather than from the perspective of fragmented sub-disciplines and analyses the spread of Buddhism as a driving force in a societal and cultural change of pan-Asian importance. One particular dimension of this ‘Buddhist globalisation’ was the rise of local forms of Buddhism. This volume explores Buddhist localisations through manuscripts and material culture in the multiethnic oases of the Tarim basin, the Transhimalyan region of Zangskar, Ladakh and Kashmir and the Western Tibetan Kingdom of Purang-Guge. Contributors are: Kazuo Kano, Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Rob Linrothe, Linda Lojda, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, Monica Strinu, Gertraud Taenzer, Sam van Schaik, and Jens Wilkens.