HISTORIOGRAPHY i. INTRODUCTION

Historiography, literally, is the study not of history but of the writing of history. In modern usage, this term covers a wide range of related but distinct areas of inquiry. From a pedagogical point of view, it refers to basic training in the “nuts and bolts” of how history is written (such as the techniques of locating and evaluating sources, providing documentation, preparing a manuscript, and so on). It commonly applies to studies of significant historians or their writings, i.e., the identification and interpretation of major historical texts, especially with an eye to the cultural forces and other factors which shape the assumptions and methods of such works and their authors. Beyond that, it encompasses analysis of the nature and purposes of historical literature and its literary techniques—as a form of entertainment, as a “science” or intellectual discipline, as a means of commemorating great deeds, as an instrument of moral instruction, as a form of political propaganda, as a tool for the construction of national consciousness, etc. At yet another level, it refers to the so-called “philosophy of history,” i.e., theoretical and epistemological discussions of historical writing as an intellectual activity as well as grand schemes of the meaning of history as a universal process. In perhaps the most restrictive and technical sense, the concept of the historiography of a subject is also used to mean the classification of the modern academic literature on a particular topic, taking into account the relative importance of the works involved and the relationships among them in terms of the critical issues and debates they reflect, thereby suggesting lines of inquiry that might be followed in future studies.

All of these concepts of historiography could potentially and profitably be brought to bear on the case ofhistoriography as it applies to the Iranian world and in the Persian language, but for the most part such historiographical study remains at a very rudimentary stage of development. Relatively little work has been done, for example, on how traditional Persian historians collected their material and assembled their narratives, the biases and preconceptions which may have affected them, or even how (or whether) they conceived of “history” as a field of study or literature distinct from others. Such early work as was done on these topics tended to be superficial and unsatisfactory in both methodology and conclusions (e.g., studies by Gibb, Spuler; see critique in Meisami, pp. 1-3). Nonetheless, some progress has been made in understanding the problematic nature of historical writing in pre-Islamic Persia (Dentan; Yarshater) and in the Islamic period (although this has tended to concentrate mainly on the classical Arabic tradition: Khalidi, Rosenthal, Robinson). The most extensive body of work to date on specifically Persian historiography has been in the way of studies of individual historians and works (e.g., Waldman), especially for the early Islamic period; the compilation of catalogues of historical texts (e.g., Storey, Storey-Bregel, Monzavi) and, finally, at least one broad survey of Persian historical writing in the early Islamic period (Meisami).

Modern academic historical literature on the Iranian world, while certainly substantial and growing in quantity, is still relatively small when compared to that on Europe or the United States, where an awareness of the plethora of interpretations, revisionisms, and counter-revisions in the vast amount of scholarly literature is essential to the study of various topics. In the case of Persia and the Iranian world, there are now useful bibliographical guides to the academic literature (Afšār, Pearson) as well as some analytical surveys of general relevance (Elwell-Sutton, Humphreys, Sauvaget) and accounts of the historiography of particular events such as the Revolution of 1979-80 (Bādāmčiān). For the most part, however, historiographical studies of this type are still best done in the context of treatments of the specific topics in Persian history where enough academic work has been done to generate clear-cut issues and debates among professional historians.

HISTORIOGRAPHY ii. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

The idea of history as a science seeking the truth by investigating man’s action in a dated past based on evidence was first conceived by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C.E. (Callingwood, pp. 17-30) and later developed by Western thinkers from Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) to Arnold Toynbee and others (Callingwood, pp. 63-71, 159-65). Iranian historiography remained unaffected by the Herodotean school (Klima, pp. 218-20) and developed from oral traditions and the Mesopotamian-style “quasi-history,” which embellished historical narratives with theocentric conceptions, ideological preachings, and romantic lore (Klima, pp. 14-17). Hence, “applying the principles of Western historical criticism … will be of little help in achieving an appreciation of true purport of Iranian historiography” (Yarshater, p. 367). Western historiographical terminology can be adapted usefully only for defining the distinctive features of the Iranian idea of history.

Development. Ancient Iranians favored oral narration of history, which allowed successive transmitters to rework narratives of events and reattribute them to different heroes at different times (Boyce, 1954, 1955, 1957; Shahbazi, 1990; see also GŌSĀN). Their oldest historical traditions are the heroic material found in the Avestan Yašts (Christensen, 1917, 1928, 1931; Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, pp. 92-108; Yarshater, pp. 411-53), in which “historical facts and accurate genealogies” are interwoven with “poetic fiction and fable.” In these traditions “are seemingly preserved both secular and priestly traditions, transmitted by minstrel poets as well as by religious schools; and there are elements also of popular superstition and dread, in the tales of demons and witches and fearsome beasts. These intermingle with the stories of valour which show also the power of the gods to grant to men’s prayers and succor them in distress” (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 108).

With the conquest of the ancient Near East, the Iranians became familiar with cultures that had long established traditions of written history (Klima, pp. 214-17; Grayson, 1975a, pp. 1-7; G. Cameron, pp. 79-81). This led to a number of developments. Firstly, the Iranians began keeping records of historical events, of which Cyrus’s Chronicle from Babylonia (see CYRUS CYLINDER) and Darius’s Bisotun inscriptions and their Aramaic versions, which were dispatched to the empire’s provinces, are the best examples. They meant to convince the reader that “Persians were divinely appointed saviors whose mission was to bring justice, order, and tranquility to the people of the world” (G. Cameron, pp. 81-94, esp. p. 93). The Achaemenids also kept Babylonian-style “diaries” (on the genre see Grayson, 1975a, p. 1). Thus, during the battle of Salamis, Xerxes ordered a secretary to set down in writing the name of any captain who performed a worthy exploit “together with the names of his father and his city” (Herodotus, 8.90). When Prince Darius was charged with high treason against his father Artaxerxes II “the king ordered scribes to take down in writing the opinion of each judge” (Plutarch, Artoxerxes 29.4). Ctesias claimed that he used as the source of his Persika “the facts about each kings,” which he found in the “royal records"(basilikōn diphtherōn) “in which the Persians in accordance with a certain law of theirs kept their ancient affairs” (Diodorus Siculus, 2.32). The claim was false, as Ctesias merely recorded gossip (Photius, Epit. 1, apud Gilmore, in Ctesias, p. 122), but a “Book of Chronicle,” recording historical events and royal decrees, seems to have existed (Ezra 6.1-2; Esther 2.32.4: Sēfer dibrē hayyām īm ləmalkē Māday ū-Pāras; also 2.23 Sēfer dibrē hayyām īm; cf. 6.1; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 11.2). As Otakar Klima has pointed out (pp.214-17) the contents of such a book mainly dealt with the affairs of the court and bore little resemblance to a written history. Indeed, “history” remained “a royal art” to the early Islamic period (Klima, p. 220, citing Jāḥeẓ). All documents were dated, in the Babylonian scribal tradition, to the regnal years of the ruling monarch (cf. Parker and Dubberstein, pp. 14-19). In this way, Mesopotamian-style king lists and dynastic chronicles (Grayson, 1975a, pp. 8 ff., 193-95; idem, 1975b, pp. 9, 16-22) were developed. Since Babylonian scribes wrote in cuneiform well into the Seleucid and Parthian periods (Lewy, pp. 201-4; Parker and Dubberstein, pp. 20-24; Sacks and Wiseman; Debevoise, pp. xxxiv, 72, n. 7, 76, n. 22; Geller), their documents contained valuable data, which Berossus and other subsequent astronomers and chronographers used to arrange king lists and data charts. One such king list is provided by the Ptolemic Canon, which is “the general basis” for chronological calculations from the 7th century B.C.E. onwards (Prašek, p. 12; Parker and Dubberstein, p. 10; cf. Bickerman, p. 81). Exactly as Babylonian documents do, it counts Cyrus the Great’s regnal years from his Babylonian accession (in 539 B.C.E.) and gives him nine years of reign (for Babylonian evidence see Parker and Dubberstein, p. 14), whereas classical authors knew that Cyrus had reigned for thirty years (Dubberstein, 1938). The Canon’s Persian king list (Bickerman, p. 108) then gives Cambyses seven years, Darius [I] thirty six years, Xerxes twenty-one years, Artaxerxes [I] forty-one years, Darius [II] nineteen years, Artaxerxes [II] forty-six years, Artaxerxes [III] twenty-one years, Arses two years, and Darius [III] four years; in all 206 years. From about 300 B.C.E., the Seleucid Era (counted in Babylon from spring 311 B.C.E.) was used as a fixed chronological device, which remained in use till recent times. Māni calls it “the Era of Babylonian astronomers” (Biruni, Āṯār, pp. 118, 208); others designated it as “the Era of the Greek dominion” or “the Era of Alexander” or referred to it simply as “from Alexander”; see Taqizadeh, 1939a, pp. 125 ff.; Shahbazi, 2002, pp. 31-33). The Parthians established their own dynastic era (counted from 247 B.C.E.) but continued to use the Seleucid Era under the title “the Former Reckoning” (see ARSACID ERA). When the Seleucids published a (false) claim that Seleucus’s Iranian queen, Apama, has been a child of Alexander by a daughter of Darius, the Seleucid Era came to be associa-ted with Alexander’s accession (Shahbazi, 1977, p. 29). Hence the 228-year interval between the Babylonian accession of Cyrus (539) and the Seleucid Era (311) was reinterpreted as the duration of the Persian rule (Agathias, 2.25.7, probably based on Alexander Polyhistor; see Prašek, p. 12, n. 3; for more evidence, see Shahbazi, 2002, p. 33).

Despite written records, Iranian historiography really flourished only in oral form (Klima, p. 221). The Avestan history transmitted by the Yašts was known also among the Persians (Yarshater, p. 388). In addition, the Persians created a rich oral history of their own. Several times Herodotus refers to his “Persian informants” (Wells) and calls them logographoi “narrators of current events” (in contradistincion to historians, who “inquired”). They told him four different versions of the story of the rise of Cyrus, and he followed “those Persian authorities whose object it appeared to be not to magnify the exploit of Cyrus, but to relate the simple truth” (Herodotus, 1.95). On the death of Cyrus, too, he heard “many different accounts” and chose the one he deemed “most worthy of credit” (1.214). As classical authorities have emphasized, oral historiography was the domain of the Persian poet. Xenophon reports (Cyropaedia 1.2.1) that even in his day the Iranians “tell in story and song that Cyrus was most ambitious, so that he endured all sorts of labor and faced all sorts of danger for the sake of praise.” According to Strabo (Geography 15.3.18), the Persian youths learned “with song and without song the deeds both of the gods and the noblest men.” The escape of Cyrus from Astyages’ court was narrated in allegorical songs by singer-musicians of the Median court (Dinon, apud Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 14.663b ff.), and the exploits of Zopyrus (one of the six helpers of Darius the Great) were woven into romantic stories (Herodotus, 3.152-60; Polyaenus, Strategica 7.12, apud Shahbazi, 1990, p. 261). It was due to the favoring of oral historiography that with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire its records perished or were neglected, while incidents related in oral traditions survived in reworked versions reattributed to later heroes or adapted for incorporation into Kayanid history (see below).

Contact with Babylonians left profound influences upon the Iranians’ idea of history, however. Firstly, history came to be periodized through the concept “that three empires had previously divided human history between them, namely the Assyrian, Median, and Persian” (Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism, p. 374). When Alexander’s conquest ruined the expectation “that the Persian empire would endure until the end of time” (Boyce, loc. cit.), the hope of resurrecting it was expressed into poetic literature of the “dynastic prophecy” type. This was an Akkadian genre consisting of predictions after the event, arranged according to reigns characterized as good or bad and often started with “a prince will arise” or the like (Grayson, 1975b, pp. 13 f.). In fact one such text describes in prophetic form the rise and fall of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia and the rise of Macedonia (Grayson, 1975b, pp. 24-37). The section of Bahman Yašt concerning Alexander must have been based on similar pseudo-prophecies (Eddy, pp. 18-23; Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism, pp. 382-85). Later Iranian examples (Jāmāsp-nāma, prophecies of Rostam son of Farroḵzād Hormoz in the Šāh-nāma, etc., popularly known as Rostam Farroḵzād) all derive from this Babylonian genre.

Secondly, since some Babylonian scribes dated Alexander’s regnal years from his Macedonian accession in 336 B.C.E. (Parker and Dubberstein, p. 19, cf. p. 36), later Iranian authorities relying on this Babylonian practice gave the conqueror fourteen years of reign (336-322 B.C.E.), whereas he in fact ruled Iran no more than eight years.

Thirdly, Babylonian speculations on Time had created an idea of a “world age” with recurring great world-years of millennial duration. This led to the acceptance by the Iranians of the Zurvanite heresy with the consequence of belief, among other things, in a limited age of the world determined by the Time (Zurvān) and the movements of the planets, and divided, according to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, into twelve millenia or hazāras (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, pp. 276, n. 107, 285-86, 291-92; II, pp. 32-33, 234-37, 240; III, p. 538; see also BABYLONIAN INFLUENCE ON IRAN). Applying this scheme to their own idea of history, the Iranians placed the creation of the world at the beginning of this 12,000 year period, and at the end of it the coming of the Savior who will restore the cosmic order. Of the 12 millennia, the first 3 were taken up by Ahura Mazdā’s acts of creation, and the rest by the conflict between Ahura Mazdā, aided by man, and Ahriman and his emissaries (Yarshater, pp. 353 ff.). The Iranians assigned six of the hazāras to their “historical” figures: Gayōmart, Hōšang, Jamšēd, Bēvarasp, and Frēdōn (Biruni, al-Qānun al-masʿudi, cited by Taqizadeh, 1937, p. 79, n. 159). It was in this way that “Zoroastrian apocalyptic was born in Babylonia in the early Hellenistic period” (Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism, p. 386). A direct effect of this idea was the eventual domination of fatalism, as if the “stars” had preordained the course of history, the rise and fall of empires, and had destined great calamities for man prior to the advent of the Savior (Boyce, loc. cit.; for details, see Shahbazi, 2001, pp. 67 ff.).

Gradually, the memory of the Achaemenids became hazy, retained only in the oral historiography in the three main traditions: that the “Persian period” had lasted for 228 years (Agathias, 2.25.7), that the Persian kings (from Artaxerxes I) had assumed the throne name Artaxerxes (so Diodorus Siculus 4.93.1), and that Alexander had “killed” the last Persian king, a younger Darius (Dāra; Agathias 2.25.8; Ebn Maʿšar, cited by Taqizāda, 1937, p. 288, n. 419; Bundahišn 30.14, pp. 274-75; Šāh-nāma [Moscow], IX, p. 60, vv. 844-45). The memory of the Parthians did not fare better. They too favored oral historiography, which assured the corruption of their history once they had been vanquished. Minstrels (gōsāns) of Parthian magnates, flourished under the Sasanians, eventually transferred the Arsacid noble families and their achievements to the remoter antiquity, the Kayanid period (Boyce, 1954; idem, 1955, pp. 473-74; idem, 1957, pp. 17 ff.; Yarshater, pp. 457-61; Shahbazi, 1993, with reference to the earlier works of Markwart, Nöldeke, and others). Incidentally, the claim that the Arsacids kept a sort of national history which “contained the authentic account of the ancients and ancestors” and which had been translated from Chaldaen into Greek by the command of Alexander (Moses Khorenatsʿi, 1.9) is not substantiated (Moses Khorenatsʿi, Thomson’s intro., pp. 82-84). Later, when the origins of the Seleucid Era was forgotten, the Sasanians reinterpreted this universally used"Former Reckoning” as the era used by former Iranians, the “Era of Zoroaster” (Lewy, pp. 213-14; Taqizada, 1947; Henning, 1951, pp. 37-39; cf. the Christians’ reinterpretation of the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” on 25 December as Christmas). The 538-year interval between this era (311 B.C.E.) and the accession of Ardašir I (in Syriac reckoning) in 227 was apportioned as follows: (228 + 30) 258 years from the birth (30 years before the call) of Zoroaster to “Alexander,” 14 years for Alexander, and the remaining (538 minus 258+14=) 266 years for the Parthians. This last figure was rounded up by Agathias to “nearly 270 years” (Shahbazi, 1977, p. 27; idem, 1990a, pp. 219-23). This was the origin of the “faulty Persian chronology” that Masʿudi (Tanbih, pp. 97-98) and Abu Rayḥān Biruni (al-Qānun al-masʿudi, apud Taqizada, 1940, p. 128) tried to explain.

The Sasanians revived the Achaemenid practice of counting by regnal years or (since the accession to the throne was marked by the establishment of a royal fire) by “royal fire” (Henning, 1957, p. 117). They also revived the recording of royal achievements in multi-lingual inscriptions. Thus the trilingual inscription of Šāpur I (r. 239-70) on the walls of the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt near Persepolis bears strong stylistic and thematic resemblances to the Bisotun inscription of Darius I (Rostovzeff, p. 19; Sprengling, pp. 334, 335-36, 337, 338, 340; Skjærvø; Huyse). The thematic similarity is more pronounced in Narsē’s bilingual Paikuli inscription (Humbach and Skjærvø), which chronicles the events leading to his accession. Furthermore, following Babylonian, Christian, and Buddhist traditions, Māni and his disciples composed autobiographical and biographical literature, which came to form part of the Manicheans’ religious history. Kirdēr, the Zoroastrian chief priest of the early Sasanian period and the erstwhile enemy of Māni, countered by publishing his “autobiography” in rock-carved inscriptions in Middle Persian (Gignoux; MacKenzie).

These were isolated attempts at approaching written historiography, however. By the end of the 4th century, even the practice of carving rock reliefs and leaving short inscriptions was abandoned. Instead oral historiography flourished. Thus the Persian story of the rise of Cyrus that we know from Herodotus was adapted for Kay Ḵosrow, and the one narrated by Ctesias was transferred to Ardašir (Gutschmid, pp. 133 f.): The tale of the capture of Sardis by Cyrus through the betrayal of his enemy’s daughter was reworked for Šāpur I or II (Shahbazi, 1990a, p. 260); the imprisonment and subsequent marriage of the daughters of Cyrus by the False Smerdis was attributed to Żaḥḥāk and the sisters of Jamšēd (Markwart, pp. 132, 135 f.); and the wonderful building of a town with seven walls of different colors by Deioces was retold for Kay Kāvus/Kāōs and his palaces on the Alburz mountain (Bundahišn 32.11). Reflecting the age of Ḵosrow I Anōširavān, The Letter of Tansar laments (Nāma-ye Tansar, pp. 11-12) this trend and reproaches people: “You have also lost the science of genealogies and histories and biographies and have erased from memory. Some you write in books and some on rocks and walls, and a point has been reached when you do not remember what happened in the days of your own fathers let alone knowing the affairs of the ordinary people and history of kings …”

Anōšīravān, who was interested in history (see his testimony, in Grignaschi, pp. 27-28), and who “studied the history of Ardašīr I” to learn statesmanship better (Ṭabari, I, p. 898; Ṯaʿālebi, Ḡorar, p. 606), resolved to have the Iranian past recorded in a great national history. Scholars at his court compiled such a work and called it Xwadāy-nāmag “Book of Lords/Kings” (Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, pp. xiv-xviii; idem, 1920, pp. 13-15; Yarshater, pp. 359 ff.; Klima, p. 221; Shahbazi, 1990b, with further literature). True to the practice of oral historiography, however, the compilers neglected the use of documentary sources such as the Middle Persian inscriptions of Ardašīr I, Šāpur I, Šāpur II, and Narsē, and mingled the memory of recent history with remote past and hoary legends. They described the Iranian past, from the creation and the appearance of the first man, in four dynastic periods. The mythical figures of the Indo-Iranian antiquity were represented as “the first kings,” the Pišdāds (first appointed [to rule]; Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 104), and a coherent historical narrative (derived from various traditions and anachronistic historiography) was concocted for them. They were described as establishers of political institutions, promoters of urban and agricultural developments, inventors of skills and crafts, originators of laws and social classes, and defenders of Iranian people. They were followed by the Kayanid semi-legendary kings with a good deal of historical lore transferred to them from the Arsacid, even Sasanian, period. Zoroaster was placed in the middle of the Kayanid period, and his patron, Kay Vištāsp (see GOŠTĀSP), was linked tothe Persian king by becoming the grandfather and predecessor of Artaxerexes (Bahman-Ardašīr). The rest of the Kayanid history was divided among a queen (Homāy), Dārā son of Bahman, and Dārā son of Dārā. The last was killed by Alexander, who destroyed the empire and harmed the religion. But after fourteen years of rule,the Arsacids, descendants of the Kayanids, restored the empire and ruled for 266 years. Their history was not remembered beyond a mere king list (Šāh-nāma VII,p. 116, v. 65,) but incidents from their periods were re-interpreted as events of the earlier times. Finally, Ardašīr son of Pāpak and a descendant of Bahman-Ardašīr, restored the Persian empire and the Religion of Zoroaster (Agathias, 26.2; Nāma-ye Tansar, pp. 11, 42) and established the fourth Iranian empire, the Sasanian.

The Xw adāy-nāmag is lost, but Arab-Persian works derived from it show that it was heavily influenced by oral historiography and mingled all sorts of traditions. Nothing of the inscriptions of Šāpur I on the walls of Kaʿba-ye Zardošt or of Narsē at Paikuli entered this so-called national history. Contrary to historical documents Ardašīr I was called a son of Sāsān; Šāpur I’s wars with the Romans were either glossed over or reattributed to Šāpur II; Kirdēr was forgotten, and his place was given to the legendary Tansar; Narsē was represented as a son of Bahrām (II or III). Conversely, the war of Ḵosrow Anōširavān with the Hephthalites was reinterpreted as the great war of Kay Ḵosrow with Afrāsiāb (q.v.), the Turanian (Shahbazi, 1990b, pp. 210-13); the vanquishing of the Parthian dynasty of Sakastān by Ardašir I was Bahman-Ardašir’s destruction of the House of Rostam (Shahbazi, 1994); and the total defeat of Pērōz by the Hephthalites was retold as the annihilation of the Pišdādi king Nōḏar (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 3, n. 10).

In any event, by the end of the 6th century, a national history of Iran existed in the royal archive at Ctesiphon, from which Agathias indirectly derived his account of the Sasanian history (A. Cameron). Other historical works also came to be compiled. One was an autobiography of Ḵosrow Anōšīravān, of which excerpts are preserved in Moskuya’s Tajāreb al-omam (Grignaschi, pp. 16-28). Another was a short autobiography that Borzuya prefaced to his Middle Persian rendition of the Kalila and Demna (Nöldeke, 1912; de Blois). A slightly later work is about the trial of Ḵosrow II Parvēz, which details the charges brought against him as well as his responses (Ṭabari, I, pp. 1050-58; Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, pp. 363-79; Balʿami, ed. Bahār, pp. 1160-81; cf. above, the case of the Achaemenid prince Darius, son of Artaxerxes II). Following his triumph, Ḵosrow Parvēz ordered the writing of an account of his wars with Bahrām Čōbin (q.v.; Bayhaqi, p. 481); and others wrote the history of the fall of the Sasanians and gathered heroic sagas, romantic tales, and didactic fables, all purporting to be historical works, but these (including the Kār-nāmag ī Ardašir, Rostam and Esfandiār, Šarvin of Daštpay, Vis and Rāmin) belong to the field of Pahlavi literature in general and beyond the scope of this paper.

Characteristics. As evolved in the “national history,” Iranian historiography was moralistic, providential, apocalyptic, rather particularistic, and utilitarian (for these technical terms see Callingwood, pp. 14 ff. and passim). The concept of history was based on moral and intellectual foundations, which assigned man a significant place in the universe by making him a partner with the Creator Ahura Mazdā (q.v.) in the cosmic fight against Ahriman and his emissaries. Man’s actions were thus part of a cosmic plan, hence memorable. This memory was to serve future generations as a guide, a device for maintaining and promoting national and moral ideals of the state (Yarshater, p. 369). God had created man as His active partner for bringing about, within a limited time, the final annihilation of evil, when a Savior would restore the cosmic order on earth. The course of history exhibited a series of conflicts between the forces of good, usually Iranians, and the destructive powers, usually associated with non-Iranians. The particularism limited the scope of history: Iran was represented as the center of the world (see HAFT KEŠVAR), its people as the chosen ones possessed of a national glory (Airyanəm Xᵛarənō > Aryān Xurrah> Farr-e Ērān[šahr]; see Bailey, p. 22), and its kings as guardians of culture and law and promoters of civilization, whose legitimacy was assured through royal descent and Royal Fortune (Kaviyanəm Xᵛarənō > Kayān Xurrah > Farr-e Kayān, see Bailey, pp. 22 f.). History was the narrative of events: “No distinction was made between the factual, the legendary, and the mythical. All three blended in a unified whole, presented as a continuous narrative” of a national history from the creation to the fall of the Sasanian Empire (Yarshater, p. 366). The utilitarian aspect of history saw in it “an educational instrument of social stability and cohesion,” teaching virtues of loyalty, observance of law and order, natal love and patriotism by commemorating the exalted life of the Iranian heroes as paragons of success, by recalling the wisdom of sages, and by emphasizing the harm brought about by heretics and anarchists. “Thus the historiographer, far from being an impartial investigator of facts, was an upholder and promoter of the social, political, and moral values cherished by the Sasanian élite” (Yarshater, p. 366).

To make it readable and persuasive, rhetorical style and didactic form were blended with nationalistic spirit and vivid descriptions adorned with hyperbole and metaphor (Yarshater, pp. 393-401). The preface to the older Šāh-nāma (Qazvini; Minorsky) has preserved the subject matter, characteristics, and purport of the national history. A prose Šāh-nāma was compiled by the order of Abu Manṣur, son of ʿAbd al-Razzāq of Ṭus, “so that men of knowledge may look into it and find in it all about culture of kings, noblemen, and sages, the royal arrangements, their nature and behavior, good institutions, justice and judicial norms, decisions and administration, the military organization, the art of war, storming expeditions and punitive campaigns and taking the enemy by surprise as well as their match-making and ways of respecting honor” (Minorsky, p. 267). The aim of the work “is to offer utility to everyone.” The readers learn from it the art of statecraft and “will be able to get on with anyone in administration,” and they also get pleasure from its stories and matters “suitable to (their) strivings.” In short, this book “is a recreation for the world, comfort to the afflicted, and medicine to the weary” (Minorsky, p. 268).

HISTORIOGRAPHY iii. EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD

Introduction. It might well be questioned whether there is, strictly speaking, any “historiography of Persia in the early Islamic period” at all, since it is by no means clear that there was an Islamic “Persia” prior to the rise of the Safavids. As lamented in the Middle Persian apocalyptic literature (which could be regarded as an esoteric form of historiography that projects past events into the future; on this aspect of Islamic historiography, see now D. Cook; M. Cook), Persian history had effectively ended when “the nation of Iran” had fallen to its Arab enemies and “Anērān and Ērān will be [i.e., were] confounded so that the Iranian will not be distinguished from the foreigner” (Jāmāsp nāmag, 1.2-3; see Hoyland, pp. 321-30). Indeed, from the time of the Arab conquest of the Sasanian empire to that of the Mongol invasions, the geographical area usually implied by the term “Persia” or “Iran” (i.e., most of the territory once ruled by the Sasanians) had no distinct political existence: Either it was unified only as part of some larger entity, or it was fragmented into regional principalities, whose borders might well include areas not often regarded as part of Persia. Only sporadically, and even then only in a regional context, was any of this area under the rule of ethnically Persian dynasties, and the culture, like the demography, involved a mix of Arabic, Persian, and, later, Turkish elements. The tendency in both contemporary sources and modern histories is thus to treat the history of Persia during this period as part of some larger field (e.g., the history of the caliphate) or to focus on individual cities, regions, or dynasties. Texts important for the former purpose typically contain much material not relevant to Persia per se, while those dealing with the latter rarely relate provincial and regional material to the larger context of all Persia.

Ideally, a survey article would deal with both the historiography of a period and the historiography about a period, but that is not practical in this case. One would not only have to discuss virtually the entire vast corpus of medieval Islamic historical literature, but a wide range of non-Muslim sources and the growing body of modern historical studies on medieval Persian and Islamic history as well. Even dealing just with the historiography of the period is problematic, since, given the nature of the field as described above, there are no obvious political, geographical, or philological parameters which would serve to delimit the material to be studied, nor is it even all that clear what constitutes a work of “history” in this context. Information about the history of pre-Mongol Persia also turns up in many unexpected places that one would hardly classify as part of the “historiography of Persia” in any meaningful sense—e.g., a discussion of the caliph al-Mahdi’s Khurasan policy in a literary compendium by an Andalusian author (Ebn ʿAbd Rabbeh [d. 328/940], al-ʿEqd al-farid, ed. Moḥammad Saʿid ʿEryān, 8 vols, Cairo, 1953, I, pp. 191-212), a list of the qāżis of Marv in the fragmentary history of the early Syrian author Abu Zorʿa (d. 281/891; Taʾriḵ, ed. Šokr-Allāh Qujāni, 2 vols, Damascus, 1980, I, pp. 206-7), or the text of Hārun al-Rašid’s arrangements for the administration of the Persian provinces in the history of Mecca by Azraqi (d. 222/837; Ketāb aḵbār Makka, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld as Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka I, Leipzig, 1858, pp. 161-68). Moreover, many works essential to reconstructing the history of the period date from post-Mongol times; to give but one example of many, the chronicle of Ebn al-Aṯir (q.v.) is absolutely essential for the study of pre-Mongol Persia but was completed after 628/1231 and should be considered as part of the historiography of the Mongol period. Conversely, there are cases of works which were written during the pre-Mongol period and within the Persian world but which do not deal at all with Persia or with the period itself (e.g., the anonymous Qeṣaṣ al-anbiāʾ on the history of the prophets); although devoid of any significant value for the contemporary history of Persia, they were nonetheless technically part of its historiography. Finally, historical information, sometimes in very substantial and significant quantity, is preserved in a variety of works, ranging from poetry and literary anthologies to collections ofhistorical anecdotes and curious information to biographical dictionaries to geographies to hagiographies and heresiographies. For example, the famous biographical dictionary of the companions of the Prophet and their followers, the Ketāb al-ṭabaqāt by Ebn Saʿd (d. 230/844), would seem to have little to do with either the genre of history or the history of Persia but is in fact rather important for both, since it preserves much incidental information about Arabs in the areas of Persia where they settled, especially Khorasan. Moreover, many modern scholars argue that there is little real distinction between history and literature during this (or any) period; thus one authority readily includes epic poetry (Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma), didactical essays (Neẓām-al-Molk’s Siāsat-nāma), and prosopography (Bayhaqi’s Tāriḵ-e Bayhaq) as part of “Persian historiography” (Meisami, 1999; cf. idem, 2000, p. 15; Malti-Douglas; El-Hibri, 1999a). How then does one go about even defining “historiography"?

There is no entirely satisfactory solution to these epistemological problems, and this article will simply confine itself arbitrarily to consideration of works which mostly fall within the boundaries of the traditional genres of taʾriḵ and aḵbār (limited though this may be to conventional political and narrative history), were written in Arabic or Persian between 650 and 1220 C.E., and are either of importance in defining the nature of the historiography or have something significant to say about the history of the Persian-speaking lands during this chronological period. (For detailed descriptions of individual authors or works, readers should refer to the appropriate entry elsewhere in the EIr.)

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD

The historiography, like the history, of the first two centuries of the Islamic era is extremely difficult to assess because of both its obscurity and its contentiousness. Indeed, the first century A.H., despite the momentous events which occurred at that time, is virtually a historiographical void in terms of extant texts (except for some significant non-Muslim works; see Hoyland). When Islamic historical composition appeared, it was a mixed literary and oral historical tradition, and very little of it has survived except in the way of quotations or recensions by later authors that may or may not be all that faithful to the original sources. Beyond that, this historiography is rife with problems in terms of understanding its origins, methods of composition, motivations, purposes, credibility, interpretation, and usefulness. While recent decades have seen notable efforts by various scholars to come to grip with these problems, the results to date have been somewhat inconclusive and often contradictory (for general discussions of early Islamic historiography, see in particular Duri, 1983; Humphreys, 1991; Crone, 1980; Noth, 1994; Donner, 1998; Robinson, 2003).

From the lists of authors and titles preserved by contemporary bibliographers, notably Ebn al-Nadim (q.v.), it is at least possible to determine the identity and concerns of the most important figures among the earliest generation of Muslim historians (a list of authors and titles of works written prior to 200 A.H. has been compiled in Donner, 1998, pp. 299-306). These historians can mostly be described as Arabists interested in topics such as Arabian antiquities, comparative chronology, interpreting historical allusions in the Koran, the life of the Prophet Moḥammad (sira) and his military excursions (maḡāzi), and the genealogy of Arab tribes and stories of their heroic deeds—lines of investigation which reached their classical expression in the works of Moḥammad Ebn Esḥāq (d. 151/768) on the life of Moḥammad; Hešām b. Moḥammad Ebn Kalbi (d. 204/819 or 206/821), Hayṯam b. ʿAdi (d. 206/821?), and Abu ʿObayda Maʿmar b. Moṯannā (q.v.; d. 209/824) on ancient Arabia; and Moḥammad b. ʿOmar Wāqedi (d. 207/823) on the maḡāzi. Although much of this lore became incorporated into the subsequent mainstream of Islamic historiography, it is obvious that it had little or nothing to do with Persia or Persian affairs except in tangential ways, such as when the history of pre-Islamic Arabia intersected with Persian history in the Yemen and at Hira or in accounts of the Arab conquests. Ebn Kalbi, for example, was primarily an expert on Arab genealogy and Arabian paganism, but he is frequently cited by later historians as an authority on Sasanian history (e.g., Ṭabari, I, pp. 814, 821, 834, 846-47, 853, 872, 888, 899, 950, 984, 988, 991, 1009,1016, 1038, 1041, 1044). Abu ʿObayda was likewise used as an authority on the Battle of Ḏu Qār (q.v.), the history of the Sasanians, and the Arab conquest of Persia (e.g., Ḵalifa b. Ḵayyāṭ, pp. 50, 79, 93, 125, etc.). Some works were no doubt devoted specifically to the history of Khurasan and other parts of Persia, but these have either been lost or are of dubious authenticity (e.g., pseudo-Wāqedi, Ketāb fotuḥ al-eslām fi belād al-ʿajam wa Ḵorāsān, ed. ʿAziz Afandi Zand, Cairo 1309/1891).

This early historiography also had something of a Persian dimension to it in that a number of the authors involved were of Persian ancestry or came from Arab families that had spent some time in Persia. For example, Ḥammād Rāwia (d. 156/772-73), a celebrated authority on Arabian antiquities, was the son of a Persian captive from Deylam, Abu Laylā Sābur; ʿAwāna b. Ḥakam Kalbi (d. 147/764 or 153/770), a leading authority on the history of the early Omayyad caliphate, came from a military family which had served in Khurasan and Sind; and a certain Abu Mojāhed ʿAli b. Mojāhed b. Moslem Rāzi b. Kāboli (d. 182/798), who was born in Rayy but worked in Baghdad, reportedly wrote on the maḡāzi (Sezgin, GAS I, p. 312). Probably the most important writer in this regard was Wahb b. Monabbeh (d. 110/728 or 114/732), an expert on Yemenite and Arabian antiquities as well as the esrāʾiliāt (Biblical lore) and qeṣaṣ al-anbiāʾ (stories of the prophets). His family was reportedly of Persian or Persian-Jewish origin and had probably settled in Yemen during the time it was under Persian domination (see ABNĀʾ). Wahb’s works, though now mostly lost (but see Khoury), were well known to later historians and regarded highly by many Persian writers.

The interest of early Muslim historians in Jewish and Arabian antiquities and comparative chronology, which is already quite apparent in material attributed to Wahb or Ebn Kalbi, inevitably led to more direct consideration of ancient Persian history, either to integrate it into the Islamic narrative or as the source of object lessons in statecraft. This tendency was present even early in the Omayyad period, as it is reported by Ebn al-Nadim (tr. Dodge, I, p. 194) that the caliph Moʿāwia consulted ʿObayd (or ʿAbid) b. Šarya (d. before 86/705), who had written a book on “the kings and traditions of the peoples of the past,” about the history of the pre-Islamic Arab and Persian kings. This interest accelerated following the ʿAbbasid revolution and the consequent eastward shift in the politics and culture of the caliphate. The key figure in this regard was undoubtedly ʿAbd-Allāh Rōzbeh Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (q.v.; d. 139/757), the ill-fated secretary of the caliph al-Manṣur, who is credited with translating several Middle Persian “historical” works into Arabic, including the “book of kings” (Xwadāy-nāmag/Ḵodāy-nāma), a work on Mazdak, and a Ketāb al-tāj (about Anušervān). Although some of his essays have been preserved (and are important as historical sources), these works, unfortunately, have all been lost save for fragments cited by other authors (notably Ebn Qotayba, q.v.). Similarly, Abān Lāḥeqi (q.v.; fl. late 2nd/8th century), primarily another representative of Arabic belles lettres, supposedly wrote on Mazdak, Ardašir, and Anušervān. It should be noted, however, that the “historical” nature of these works, as well as the Persian prototypes on which they were based, is uncertain and cannot be determined in the absence of extant texts; they may have been only legendary epics and didactic literature (see Spuler, 1962).

During the early ʿAbbasid period, Islamic historiography matured into a fully literary genre and took on its classical forms. Its interests also expanded from antiquarianism to the events and controversies which had shaped the Muslim polity: the wars of expansion, the settlement of Arab tribes in the conquered territories,and above all the civil wars and religio-political disputes over the caliphate. The first generation of these historians were essentially selective compilers of oral traditions, and most—such as Abu Meḵnaf (d. 157/774), Sayf b. ʿOmar (d. after 170/786?), or Naṣr b. Mozāhem (d. 212/827)—were and are suspected of having had highly tendentious and hidden political agendas in their work. Their works are now largely lost, but they provided the raw material for subsequent histories, where they are quoted extensively and from which it is possible to reconstruct and study, albeit rather inconclusively, their historiographical significance (see survey in Humphreys, 1991, pp. 69-103; Landau-Tasseron; Duri, 1983).

Persia, of course, figures heavily in all this historiography since so many of the key events took place in the former territories of the Sasanian Empire, which became moreover the main arena for the warring tribes and factions of the early Islamic era and the home of the revolution which brought the ʿAbbasids to power, and Persians played a critical role in shaping ʿAbbasid politics and culture. All the historians of this period are thus of some significance to the historiography of Persia, but the single most important was probably ʿAli b. Moḥammad Madāʾeni (d. 228/843?). He was reputedly the author of more than two hundred books, only two of which have survived (apart from copious quotations and excerpts in other authors). They included histories of all the caliphs down to al-Moʿtaṣem; important political figures such as Moḡira b. Šoʿba, Ḥajjāj b. Yusof, Ebn Hobayra, and ʿAbd-al-Jabbār Azdi; and the wars of expansion. In the judgment of Aḥmad b. Ḥāreṯ Ḵazzāz (apud Ebn al-Nadim, tr. Dodge, p. 202), he excelled all his contemporaries in his knowledge of Persia and Khorasan, and the list of his monographs includes numerous works on the wars in Fārs, western Persia, Kordestān, Armenia, Rayy, Ṭabarestān, Kermān, Sistān, and Kābol and Zabolestān; the invasion and conquest of Khorasan; and the careers of Qotayba b. Moslem, Asad b. ʿAbd-Allāh, Naṣr b. Sayyār, and Rāfeʿ b. Layṯ (ibid., pp. 224-25). Madāʾeni was also notable for the method he brought to his historiography, which was much admired by many later Islamic historians: a straightforward account of events, without obvious bias, and going back to eyewitnesses as verified by a chain of transmitters (esnād).

Other historians of this period who may have had some tenuous connection to Persia, but whose work is lost and about whom little is known, included Abu Yazid Waṯima b. Musā Fāresi Waššāʾ (d. 237/851), who was born in Fasā, traveled extensively, and wrote on the redda wars (Sezgin, GAS, I, pp. 315-16; cf. Brockelmann, GAL, SII, p. 217, which gives the name of his son); Moḥammad b. Hayṯam Marwazi (d. 250/864), who wrote a Ketāb al-dawla and is cited by Masʿudi as a source (Sezgin, GAS, I, p. 316); ʿAbbād b. Yaʿqub Boḵāri (d. 250/864), a Shiʿite author sometimes cited in the maqātel literature (on the deaths of various ʿAlids); Moḥammad b. Ṣāleḥ b. Mehrān Ebn al-Naṭṭāḥ (d. 252/866), who has been suggested as a possible author of the anonymous, but very important, text known as the Aḵbār al-ʿAbbās, the most detailed account of the ʿAbbasid revolution in Khorasan (see Duri, 1957; cf. Sharon, pp. xxxix-xli; Daniel, 1982, p. 423); and Ebrāhim b. Moḥammad Ṯaqafi (d. 283/896 in Isfahan), another Shiʿite historian (Brockelmann, GAL, SI, p. 215)

THE HIGH CALIPHATE

Many examples of Islamic historiography written from the mid-3rd/late 9th century onwards have come down to us, so it is possible to get a much more reliable picture of its character and its relevance to Persia. For purposes of discussion, but at the risk of some over-simplification, this historiography can be divided into three basic sub-genres, each of which was written for fairly discrete audiences and tied to a rather characteristic worldview. One emphasized genealogy (nasab) or military exploits (fotuḥ) as its organizing principle; such works were reminiscent of the older tradition of Arabian antiquarianism and probably were intended to glorify various Arab leaders and tribes and, beyond that (presumably in response to the pro-Persian views of the Šoʿubis), the ideal of Arabism as the driving force in the golden age of pristine Islam. A second used strict chronology (taʾriḵ proper) in the form of year by year annals and the esnād methodology; such works were closely associated with the needs and interests of the Islamic religious establishment. A third relied on coherent narratives, usually arranged in accordance with a system of dynastic cycles, and tended to reflect the attitudes of the cosmopolitan, cultured bureaucracy of the ʿAbbasid court. All of these works contain much information essential to the history of Islamic Persia, but it is the third variety which could probably be regarded as most essentially part of the “historiography of Persia” in its nature and outlook.

The greatest and most important of the fotuḥ historians was Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā Balāḏori (q.v.; d. 279/892), author of the voluminous Ansāb al-ašrāf and the Fotuḥ al-boldān. Not much is known about his life (summarized in Yāqut, Eršād, II, pp. 127-32) other than that he lived in Baghdad, traveled in Syria and Egypt, and frequented the ʿAbbasid court in the days of al-Motawwakel and al-Mostaʿin; he is said to have studied with such illustrious historical scholars as Madāʾeni and Ebn Saʿd. According to Ebn al-Nadim (tr. Dodge, I, p. 248), Balāḏori participated in the project of translating Middle Persian literature and produced a versification of the ʿAhd Ardašir. There is, however, little reason to believe that he was thus of Persian ancestry, and his works, despite the wealth of information about Islamic Persia that they contain, are not those of someone with Persianist sympathies: To the contrary, written at a time when the ʿAbbasid caliphate was beginning its precipitous decline, they are redolent of nostalgia for the old days of Arab greatness and often exhibit a strong anti-Persian sentiment and resentment of the influence of non-Arabs in general. The Ansāb al-ašrāf, exactly as its title suggests, was an effort to delineate a purely Arab military and political aristocracy and to record the accomplishments of its great tribal lineages (a kind of secularized version of the aristocracy of piety immortalized in his teacher Ebn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt). The sharp divisions over the merits of ʿAlids, Omayyads, and ʿAbbasids that typify so much of the rest of early Islamic historiography (see, e.g., Petersen, 1964) virtually disappear in this framework; all the Qorayš are celebrated family by family, along with other tribes (Balāḏori apparently died before getting to the Rabiʿa and Yaman, however). Insofar as Persia figures into this, it is simply as an arena for the display of Arab prowess. That is equally apparent in Balāḏori’s Fotuḥ al-boldān, which records not only the triumph of Arab military power but the settlement of Arab population and the ascendancy of Arab culture in the conquered lands as well. Perhaps written with an eye on the practical and legal needs of the administrative class, it frequently discusses economic and social aspects of the early Islamic history of Persia not dealt with in other texts and is thus of great value to modern historians in that regard.

The other important work of this type, though much less appreciated than Balāḏori’s, is the Ketāb al-fotuḥ of Ebn Aʿṯam Kufi (d. 314/926). Long thought to have been lost, and published in its entirety relatively recently (Haydarabad, Deccan, 1968-75), this work has been neglected to a remarkable degree in modern scholarship (note the dismissive comments of Morony, p. 566; but cf. Togan, 1949; idem, 1970). This may be attributable partly to negative opinions of the text formed on the basis of the partial Persian translation made of it by one Moḥammad Mostawfi Haravi in 596/1199 (litho. ed., Bombay, 1305/1887-88; new ed. by Ḡolāmreżā Ṭabāṭabāʾi Majd, Tehran, 1993) and partly because it presents a version of the conquests quite different from the now established mainstream tradition deduced from Balāḏori and other works. There is also a conspicuous Shiʿite tenor to both the Persian translation (which concludes with a chapter on šahādat-e Emām Ḥosayn) and the Arabic original (see the comments of Crone, 1980, p. 107, n. 60). Nonetheless, the text is an extremely important source of information on events from the early conquests in Persia to the revolt of Bābak. It is particularly knowledgeable about Khorasan and Transoxiana; in the view of one recent historian, “as regards the Persian provinces, Ibn Aʿtham can be regarded as superior to Tabari” (Hasan, p. 20).

The earliest known example of a Muslim annalistic chronicle which has survived more or less intact (albeit in a later rāwia, or “transmission,” which may well have been substantially abridged, considering the difference between the extant text and excerpts preserved in other works) is the Taʾriḵ of Ḵalifa b. Ḵayyāṭ ʿOṣfori (d. 240/854; ed. Akram Ḋiāʾ ʿOmari, Baghdad, 1977). Ḵalifa had no interest in anything but Islamic history; his chronicle begins with the birth of Moḥammad and goes down to 232/846-47. He even explicitly described taʾriḵ, in its literal sense of records of lunations (the ahella of Koran 2.189), as simply a way of keeping track of the pilgrimage, the fast, and other religious obligations (Ḵalifa, p. 49). The entries in his chronicle typically describe each year’s main events, appointments to office (including who led the ḥajj), and deaths of important personalities, mostly religious scholars. The entries for the Omayyad period are relatively detailed and naturally contain some information pertinent to the history of Persia during that time, but those for the Abbasid period are so terse as to be of little use. The main significance of this work is that it anticipates the style and method that would be followed by later annalists such as Ṭabari.

Another early and somewhat similar work is the Ketāb al-maʿrefa wa’l-taʾriḵ by Yaʿqub b. Sofyān Fasawi (d. 277/890; ed. Akram Żiāʾ ʿOmari, 3 vols., Baghdad, n.d.), which has come down in the recension of Ebn Dorostawayh (q.v.; d. 346/957). Although Yaʿqub b. Sofyān’s nesba (Fasawi, not Nasawi as given by J.-C. Vadet in EI ² III, p. 758) indicates some connection with Fasā in Fārs, he apparently spent most of his life in Syria and Egypt and died in Basra. His work begins with very brief summaries of events year by year from 135/752 (any earlier portion of the chronicle has been lost) to 241/855-56 (I, pp. 115-212, the terminus apparently being used because it marked the death of Aḥmad b. Hanbal. This short chronographical section is of little significance for any topic, and virtually none at all for Persia. The real focus of the book is on obituary notices for moḥaddethun, which are grouped together after the chronographical section, completely dwarfing it in size, rather than listing them under the year of death.

Some other examples of early Arabic taʾriḵs have recently come to light, but they are either so fragmentary or in such highly condensed recensions as to be of little use, especially for Persian history (e.g., the Taʾriḵ of Hārun b. Ḥātem [d. 249/863-64]; see Šehābi). The Taʾriḵ al-ḵolafāʾ of Moḥammad b. Yazid Ebn Māja Qazvini (d. 273/887) is of some interest because of the author’s Persian background, but it, too, is little more than a list of caliphs and their dates (ed., Cairo, 2000; see also Motiʿ al-Ḥāfeẓ).

The greatest of the annalists was unquestionably Abu Jaʿfar Moḥammad b. Jarir Ṭabari (d. 310/923), author of the famous Taʾriḵ al-rosol wa’l-moluk (on the author and his work, see the comprehensive study by Rosenthal, 1989; Kennedy, ed., forthcoming). Although Ṭabari came from a propertied family in Āmol, it is not certain whether he was of Persian ancestry or descended from Arab colonists there; he spent most of his life in Baghdad, with trips to study in other cities in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. His historical work, no less than his celebrated commentary on the Koran, was thoroughly religious in conception and method. It begins with the story of the creation of the world and the ancient prophets and kings. Beginning with the ḥejra, the arrangement of material switches to a strict year by year chronology (down to 302/915 in the edited version of the extant text); entries for a typical year include multiple accounts of important events, each buttressed by a list of the authorities who transmitted a particular version, lists of appointees to office, and obituary notices. The dramatic change in historiographical style from narrative to annal reinforces the notion (comparable to that in Christian historiography) of the linearity of history, centered on one unique and never to be repeated event, as it proceeds to its inevitable (and, it seems in Ṭabari’s view, perhaps imminent) conclusion.

Owing to the wealth of information it contains, Ṭabari’s chronicle is the single most important source for the first three centuries of Islamic history, certainly insofar as it involves Persia. Historiographically, however, it is disappointing in many respects. The manuscript tradition is quite weak (probably because of the difficulty and expense of making copies of such a voluminous work), and it is likely that the received text, pieced together from scattered manuscripts, is a rather imperfect copy of the original. Although many modern scholars regard Ṭabari’s work as more “reliable” or “authoritative” than that of other historians because of his frequent citation of sources, it is an open question as to how accurately he has quoted those sources (see, e.g., Osman; Cameron) as well as what biases of his own shaped his narrative. His choice of sources is also at times highly questionable—he relies almost completely, for example, on the controversial Sayf b. ʿOmar for his account of the conquest of Persia. Beyond that, the text is hardly the “universal” history it has sometimes been called; in reality, Ṭabari was quite parochial in his worldview, being interested almost exclusively in subjects necessary to understanding the background of Islam and the story of the Muslim community (he devotes, for example, only three pages [I, pp. 741-43] to the “kings of Rome” and that simply because they were rulers over Palestine and Jerusalem). There is also nothing particularly “Persian” about his chronicle: If he dealt at some length with pre-Islamic Persian history, it was because he saw it as pertinent to the Middle Eastern matrix of the Islamic tradition; if he also had much more interest in Iraq and Persia than in North Africa or Egypt or even Syria, it was because of the relatively greater importance of events that took place there. Ironically, the very qualities that make Ṭabari’s history so important as a source of information—its precise chronology, explicit citation of multiple sources, and wealth of detail—undercut its appeal as historical literature. The annalistic arrangement fragments the accounts of many important events and leads to much repetition; the maze of conflicting accounts and detailed esnāds blurs whatever historical vision or interpretation the author may have had. Indeed, with its drastic variations in literary style (suggesting direct copying from various sources), Ṭabari’s text gives the distinct impression of being simply the transcription of an undigested mass of notes that was never shaped into anything resembling a text with a coherent point of view (although some recent critics think the author’s subtle perspective can be detected through the “studied ambiguity” of at least some episodes: Humphreys, 1989; idem, 1991; El-Hibri, 1999).

The path to a very different type of historical writing, and one with a stronger claim to being part of a “historiography of Persia” than any discussed thus far, was followed by the two Dinavaris, Ebn Qotayba (q.v.; d. 276/889) and Abu Ḥanifa (see DĪNAVARĪ; d. 281/894 or 290/903). Both were of Persian ancestry; neither was known primarily as a historian proper (Ebn Qotayba was a philologist and Abu Ḥanifa Dinavari a polymath with interests ranging from botany to mathematics), but their most important surviving works have a definite if unexpected historical dimension.

In the case of Ebn Qotayba, these include the ʿOyun al-aḵbār (ed. Aḥmad Zaki ʿAdawi, 4 vols., Cairo, 1925-30) and the Ketāb al-maʿāref (ed. Ṯarwat ʿOkāša, Cairo, 1960). (Another interesting example of historiography, the Ketāb al-emāma wa’l-siāsa, is now thought to have been wrongly attributed to Ebn Qotayba; see Margoliouth, p. 120.) The ʿOyun was a kind of literary anthology, but one which drew deeply on historical anecdotes to provide refined models of behavior (adab) “as a reminder to religious scholars, as a tutor to rulers and ruled, as a relaxation for kings” (see Khalidi, 1994, pp. 108-11). Somewhat surprisingly—considering that he was known as a staunch Hanbalite and anti-Šoʿubi thinker—Ebn Qotayba made extensive use for this purpose of the “books of the Persians,” i.e., the Arabic translations of Middle Persian texts such as those made by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (whom he frequently quotes and clearly admired). The Maʿāref is best described as a concise historical encyclopedia, arranged in loose topical and chronological fashion, of the basic historical information a well-educated member of the secretarial class (the kottāb) should be expected to know. Such manuals for instructing aspiring bureaucrats, or simply enlivening the conversation, would remain very popular in Persia and the Muslim world; later examples in Arabic include the Laṭāʾef al-maʿāref of Abu Manṣur Ṯaʿālebi (d. 429/1038) and in Persian the lengthy and unfortunately still largely unpublished, Jawāmeʿ al-ḥekāyat of Moḥammad ʿAwfi (d. 630/1232?). As with Ebn Qotayba’s works, they are of considerable importance in that they preserve passages and information from many otherwise lost historical texts.

The only extant work by Abu Ḥanifa Dinavari is the Aḵbār al-ṭewāl, a general history beginning with Adam and ending with the death of al-Moʿtaṣem in 227/842. Throughout, it eschews the annalistic style and the esnād method in favor of a structure that emphasizes fluency and readability, and it is more firmly in the genre of conventional narrative history than the works of Ebn Qotayba. Some modern scholars regard the Aḵbār al-ṭewāl as a history “written from a Persian point of view” (e.g., Pellat, in EIr. VII, p. 417); its perspective is certainly an unusual one, and its treatment of history highly selective and far from critical. It might better be described as a book whose chief theme is the inter-connectedness of Arab and Persian history: In its pre-Islamic section, the author is particularly concerned with the ethnogenesis of these peoples and juxtaposes stories about their various kings and prophets along with accounts of their relations with each other. The life of Moḥammad is barely mentioned, and controversial events such as the accession and murder of ʿOṯmān are glossed over, but the conquest of Persia is discussed at length and in an almost celebratory manner (ed. ʿĀmer and Šayyāl, pp. 113-40). The struggle of ʿAli and Moʿāwia is treated in epic fashion (ed. ʿĀmer and Šayyāl, pp. 140-214), and the history of the Omayyad period, though given at length (pp. 202-369), concentrates on the story of ʿAlid, Iraqi, and Persian opposition culminating in the ʿAbbasid revolution. The history contains much original and interesting information, but it is hard to evaluate from where it was taken or how reliable it might be; Dinavari does, however, mention a number of his authorities, chiefly Hayṯam b. ʿAdi but also Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, Kalbi, and Šaʿbi.

The Taʾriḵ of Aḥmad b. Abi Yaʿqub Yaʿqubi (d. 284/897) is of great interest for both the general development of early Islamic historiography and the contemporary history of Persia. Yaʿqubi noted in his geographic work, the Ketāb al-boldān (p. 1), that he had traveled widely and had always been interested in collecting information about distant countries. Unlike the parochial works discussed so far, Yaʿqubi’s history showed a broad knowledge of not only non-Muslim cultures but the history of regions as distant as Byzantium, India, Tibet, and China; it has rightly been called “the earliest surviving world history in the Arabic historical tradition” (Khalidi, 1994, p. 113). Moreover, Yaʿqubi had a well-developed critical spirit, dismissing in particular as historical material the Persian legends of things like a king “with snakes growing out of his shoulders and feeding on human brains” (Taʾriḵ, ed. Beirut, I, p. 158): There was no truth to them, he says, and learned Persians, even the princes and dehqāns, found them ridiculous. It also appears that Yaʿqubi spent some time in Armenia and in the employ of the Taherids in Khorasan, and his history is particularly rich in information about those areas.

THE ERA OF THE REGIONAL DYNASTIES

The occupation of Baghdad in 334/945 by the Buyid amir-al-omarāʾ Moʿezz-al-Dawla made all too apparent the eroded authority of the Abbasid caliphate, the supremacy of warlords over courtly bureaucrats, and the shifting of political, economic, and cultural life from the center to the periphery of the Islamic world. It should not be surprising that these changes would have important consequences for the writing of history; what is remarkable is the extent to which they actually expanded, enriched, and enlivened an increasingly sophisticated historiography. It is during this period that one can point more frequently to works which are genuine histories of at least part of Persia and, significantly, the beginning of a historiographical tradition in the Persian language.

Despite the collapse of caliphal power and the political fragmentation of the Muslim world, comprehensive, “universal” or general, histories and chronicles continued to be written, especially under Buyid patronage, but notso much in the Baghdad-centric and parochial-minded style of Ṭabari. Rather, the broader approach followed by Yaʿqubi flourished and reached its culmination in the works of historians such as Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. Ḥosayn Masʿudi (d. 345/956), and Abu ʿAli Meskawayh (d. 421/1030?).

Masʿudi’s much studied (see especially Shboul; Khalidi, 1975) and widely appreciated Moruj al-ḏahab was virtually a historical encyclopedia, dealing with geography and culture as well as events, dynasties, and chronology. Its emphasis on the philosophical and ethical aspects of the study of history, coupled with concern for the literary quality of its presentation, anticipated trends that would be of increasing importance in the development of Islamic historiography. At the outset of his work, Masʿudi gave a detailed list of the historical works known to him, the bulk of which are no longer extant, singling out their good or bad qualities (I, pp. 10-24). For Persian history, he praised in particular the history of Ebn Ḵorradaḏbeh and an Aḵbār al-fors wa ghayrehā by Dāwud b. Jarrāh (uncle of the vizier ʿAli b. ʿIsā); presumably some of the material from these lost works has been preserved in Masʿudi’s text. As for Persia itself, Masʿudi was one of the Muslim scholars who held that humanity was subdivided into major cultural groups on the basis of physical characteristics, laws, and languages, and each nation had its own special skill. The excellence of the Persians lay in statecraft, and therefore the study of their rulers, social structure, and administrative techniques was of particular importance (Khalidi, 1975, pp. 90-92).

The Buyid Period. At first glance, the chronicle of Abu ʿAli Aḥmad b. Moḥammad Meskawayh (d. 421/1030), a Persian and according to Yāqut (Eršād, II, p. 89) a recent convert to Islam, appears to be an appropriation and continuation of Ṭabari’s. It imitated Ṭabari in form, with year by year accounts of events down to 369/979-80, and relied heavily on it for material on the early Islamic period. For the original sections (covering in the edited text the years 295-369/907-80), however, it could not have been more different from Ṭabari’s in both style and substance. First of all, Meskawayh’s work is much more readable than Ṭabari’s in terms of prose composition, but it is not yet subject to the notion than rhetorical skill is a greater asset for historical writing than clarity and accuracy. Religion virtually disappears from his work; he dismisses legends (asmār wa ḵorāfāt), the stories of the prophets, and accounts of events before the Flood as unfit for historical discourse. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the rise and fall of dynasties, methods of government, and the examples of earlier rulers for good or bad. Whereas Ṭabari was an independent scholar, Meskawayh was very much a man of the world, actively involved for most of his long life in the Buyid bureaucracy and personally acquainted with its administrative and intellectual elite. He was able to inform his work not only from experience (frequently referring to events he himself had witnessed) but by his access to the library of the famous vizier Ebn al-ʿAmid (q.v.). The title of his work, Ketāb tajāreb al-omam wa taʿāqeb al-hemam (Experiences of the nations and the outcomes of endeavors), was as aptly chosen as Ṭabari’s own and made clear the author’s very different view of Islamic history and indeed history in general—it was no longer the story of the prophets and kings of one community but the competing polities of a commonwealth of nations, and its grand theme was not the struggle for piety and religio-political legitimacy while waiting for the end of the world but that of philosophy teaching by example (to borrow Bolingbroke’s famous phrase). Despite the annalistic form, it was not a linear history, but a cyclical one whose events, as Miskawayh explicitly noted, could be expected to recur, and thus one could profit from knowing which policies, stratagems, ruses, plots, and acts would yield a desired result—a surprisingly pragmatic, if not outright Machiavellian, attitude in a writer who was otherwise so interested in ethical philosophy. The history has been much admired by many modern scholars, who see it as an expression of the “humanism” of the “renaissance” that took place under Buyid auspices (Margoliouth, pp. 128-37; Rosenthal, 1968, pp. 141-42; Kraemer), but at least one (Khalidi, 1994, p. 176) has called it a “strange historical anthology” and pointed out the moral ambiguity of its approach.

Although Miskawayh’s chronicle is the most interesting and important surviving example of Buyid historiography, it may well have been rivaled by the no longer extant works of writers like Ṯābet b. Senān Ṣābi (d. 365/976?), a Buyid court physician who also took on the task of writing a continuation to Ṭabari’s chronicle, or the great vizier Ṣāheb b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995), who wrote at least four historical works (see Pellat, pp. 104-5). We also hear of now lost works such as the Ketāb al-ʿabbāsi by Aḥmad b. Esmaʿil b. Samaka, one of the teachers of Ebn al-ʿAmid, which was supposed to be a history of the caliphs in some ten thousand pages (Ṭusi, p. 55). The case of Ṯābet’s nephew, Abu Esḥāq Ebrāhim b. Helāl Ṣābi (d. 384/994), gives some idea of what might have been lost, as well as how seriously historical writing was taken in Buyid circles. Imprisoned after falling into disfavor with ʿAżod-al-Dawla, Abu Esḥāq was compelled to write a history of the Buyids, the Ketāb al-tāji fi aḵbār al-dawla al-daylamiya, as a condition for his release. ʿAżod-al-Dawla is supposed to have checked and edited it section by section as it was composed, and then to have had the final text read out to him over the course of a week. Long thought to have been lost, a fragment of the manuscript was discovered in a library in Yemen and proved to contain a rich and interesting account of the country and people of Deylam, the activities of the ʿAlids there, and the conversion of the area to Islam (ed. Moḥammad Ḥosayn Zobaydi, Baghdad, 1977; ed. and tr. Muhammad Sabir Khan, Karachi, 1995; on the author and text, see Madelung, 1967). The Ṣābi family, incidentally, continued to produce distinguished historians: Ebrāhim’s grandson, Helāl b. Moḥassen Ṣābi (d. 448/1056), authored a continuation of Ṯābet’s work, of which a small fragment covering the years 389-93/998-1003 survives (ed. H. F. Amedroz in The Historical Remains of Hilāl al-Ṣābi, Beirut and Leiden, 1904). Moḥammad b. Helāl (d. 480/1088), known as Ḡars al-Neʿma, wrote a Ḏayl carrying on the account to his own time; it has been lost but was used extensively by Ṣebṭ b. al-Jawzi (d. 654/1256) in his Merʾāt al-zamān.

It is debatable whether the works of Abu’l-Faraj Eṣfahāni (d. 356/969)—the Maqātel al-Ṭālebiyin, a martyrology of the ʿAlids, and the Ketāb al-aḡāni, an immense literary anthology and cultural history—should be included as historiography or not, but they are at least reflective of the historical tastes and interests of Buyid circles (on this work, see Günther). His contemporary, Ḥamza b. Ḥasan Eṣfahāni (d. 360/970), who had studied with Ṭabari and was undoubtedly a serious scholar, produced an unusual specimen of historiography known as the Tawāriḵ seni moluk al-arż wa’l-anbiāʾ. It might best be described as a comparative calendrical history of various nations; it scarcely has a narrative, being mostly strung-together lists of rulers, dates, and odd events. However, the author’s interest in Persian history and antiquities is abundantly clear: He professes to have read the Avesta, to have consulted eight books on the history of the Persian kings (which he lists, ed. Beirut, p. 14), and to have seen a book containing portraits of all the Sasanian rulers. He divides the sedentary (or civilized?) world (al-maskun men robʿ al-arż) into seven great nations—China, India, the Sudan, the Berbers, the “Romans,” the Turks, and the Aryans, with the Aryans being the central nation (and the Arabs conspicuously missing)—and distinguishes between peoples with solar and those with lunar calendars. Although he lists rulers of the Persians, Romans, Greeks, Copts, Israelites, Lakhmids, Ghassanids, Himyarites, Kinda, and Qorayš, the “Arab kings of Islam,” the Persian kings are given a disproportionate amount of space. In the Islamic section, too, much attention is devoted to topics of interest to Persia, such as a long list of the equivalent dates for Now Ruz in the Islamic lunar calendar and accounts of the governors of Khorasan and Ṭabarestān. This slant to his history probably explains the author’s later reputation as a fiercely partisan supporter of Persian culture over that of the Arabs.

Ḥamza is also supposed to have written a history of the city of Isfahan, which is unfortunately now lost. It served as the model for the work of Ḥasan b. Moḥammad Qomi (d. 406/1015), who also wanted to preserve the historical traditions of his home city, Qom, before they were lost. He was first encouraged in this endeavor by Ebn al-ʿAmid during his tenure as governor of Qom and then patronized by Ṣāḥeb b. ʿAbbād, to whom he dedicated his book (Lambton, 1948, p. 586; idem, 1990, p. 322). This Arabic Taʾriḵ Qom is no longer known to exist, but it must have been available as late as the 9th/15th century, at which time a certain Ḥasan b. ʿAli Qomi made a Persian recension of it (Storey, II, pp. 348-49; ed. Jalāl-al-Din Tehrāni, 1313 Š/1935). Only five out of twenty chapters of the Persian Tāriḵ-e Qom are extant, and it is impossible to judge how closely they have followed the Arabic original. Nonetheless, the text is full of interesting, highly original, and presumably authentic information about such matters as taxation, irrigation, and Arab colonization that are rarely mentioned in other historical sources of the period.

Samanid and Ghaznavid Period. Historiography was also a highly developed discipline in eastern Persia and Central Asia under the patronage of the Samanids, Ghaznavids, and other local dynasties. Some of this historical writing was in Arabic, with interests that closely paralleled those of the Buyid historians. This historiographical tradition was unique, however, in also sponsoring and developing the writing of history, as well as other types of scholarly prose, in the Persian language (something the Buyids, despite their Persianizing tendencies, never did). Moreover, a number of these works, in both Arabic and Persian, went well beyond the Buyid example in the breadth of their historical vision, taking an exceptional interest in the cultural, geographical, and material dimensions of history as well as affairs of non-Muslim peoples. This is doubtless due in part to the strategic location of the eastern dynasties at the hub of a regional network in contact with the Slavs, Turks, Indians, Tibetans, and Chinese as well as the Islamic lands. It is also tempting to see this trend as the result of the development of a true “school” of historiography, closely associated with the Samanid chancery and probably going back to the influence of the geographer-scholar Abu Zayd Balḵi (q.v.; d. 322/934). There was certainly systematic and philosophical thinking about the nature of history going on during this period; this attitude was evident in the place assigned to history in the Mafātiḥ al-ʿolum of Moḥammad b. Aḥmad Ḵᵛārazmi, a work dedicated to the Samanid vizier Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿOtbi. It was even more fully expressed in the Jawāmeʿ al-ʿolum, written about the same time or a little earlier by Ebn Fariḡun for a Muhtajid amir (see ĀL-E FARĪḠŪN; text in Rosenthal, 1968, pp. 539-40). Ebn Fariḡun, reportedly a student of Abu Zayd, emphasized that secretaries (kottāb) must be familiar with the chronologies of the “three nations” (Persians, Byzantines, and Muslims pace Rosenthal, 1968, p. 52), the books of the Persians on siar (biography) and ādāb (conduct) such as the ʿAhd Ardašir and Rasāʾel Anušervān, and the siar of the caliphs and the “kings” who followed them. He described history as a type of “wisdom” (ḥekma) derived from the study of famous and unusual events (including natural diasters such as earthquakes, floods, or plague), chronologies of dynasties of the various climes, cosmology and eschatology, certain aspects of the biography of Moḥammad (his birth and matters related to politics and warfare), the history of the caliphs (their conquests, affairs, and rebellions against them), the pre-Islamic history of the Arabs and Persians, reports about famous rulers, and biographies of notable personalities (religious scholars, secretaries, poets, and other exemplary individuals).

Unfortunately, a good many of the histories known to have been written in Arabic in eastern Persia during this period are no longer extant. These included several urban and regional histories, of which the most important was the Taʾriḵ Ḵorāsān or Taʾriḵ wolāt Ḵorāsān (it is not entirely clear whether these were separate works or alternative titles for the same work) by Abu ʿAli Ḥosayn Sallāmi (d. 350/961). Some vague impression of its character may be gleaned from its use by later historians, notably Gardizi and Ebn al-Aṯir (see Barthold, Turkestan, pp. 10-11). At roughly the same time Sallāmi was producing his history, Abu Bakr Moḥammad b. Jaʿfar Naršaḵi (d. 348/959) wrote a history of Bokhara in Arabic for the Samanid amir Nuḥ b. Naṣr. Although the Arabic text has been lost, it was abridged and translated into Persian by Abu Naṣr Aḥmad Qobāwi in 522/1128, with some added material to extend the chronological coverage. The Persian text itself then went through at least two further redactions (see Frye, p. xii; Smirnova). If the received Persian text is any indication of the Arabic original, it was a remarkable work that preserved a wealth of fascinating information about the development of Bokhara from pre-Islamic to Samanid times.

Among the extant historical works in Arabic of this period, the Ketāb al-badʾ wa’l-taʾriḵ is a very unusual book, perhaps a manual for religious disputation, which represents a conscious effort to integrate history, philosophy, theology, cosmology, and eschatology. Clement Huart, the modern editor and translator of the text, at first attributed it to Abu Zayd Balḵi (the name given on the manuscript), but he later recognized it as the work of Moṭahhar b. Ṭāher Maqdesi (cited in Ṯaʿālebi, Ḡorar, p. 501 as an authority on Manicheanism). Nothing is otherwise known about this author, although he apparently lived in Bōst and wrote the book in 355/966 (Sezgin, GAS, I, p. 337) for an unnamed Samanid official (which certainly fits with the pattern of texts being patronized by the Samanids during this period). It begins with an outline of its epistemology and then proceeds to describe arguments for the existence of God, His names and attributes, the necessity of prophecy, creation, natural phenomena from rainbows to earthquakes, portents which precede Judgment Day, stories of the prophets and the kings of Persia, the ideas of numerous non-Muslim religions (including those of China, the Turks, the Ḵorramiya, and others), and the climes of the world. The last volumes provide a more conventional historical narrative, with sections of the life of Moḥammad and the history of the Rašidun, Omayyad, and ʿAbbasid caliphs down to al-Motiʿ. The most striking feature of the text is its strong interest in what today would be called the comparative history of culture and religion, a characteristic it shares, along with its philosophical and scientific interests, with the slightly later and much better known works of Abu Rayḥān Biruni (q.v.; d. after 442/1050), most notably the Āṯār al-bāqia ʿan al-qorun al-ḵālia and the Taḥqiq mā le’l-Hend (see BĪRŪNĪ vi-viii).

The celebrated poet and philologist Abu Manṣur ʿAbd-al-Malek b. Moḥammad Ṯaʿālebi (d. 429/1038) also authored some historical works during this period. Some of his works straddle the boundary between adab and history proper. His Yatimat al-dahr, like its Buyid counterpart the Aḡāni, is strictly speaking an anthology of the Arabic poetry of its era (including examples from the poets of Syria, Iraq, and western Persia as well as the Samanid and Ghaznavid east), but one interspersed with a fair amount of significant historical information related to the production, court patronage, and explication of the poetry. The brief Laṭāʾef al-maʿāref is a compilation of historical anecdotes and miscellaneous information ranging from a list of firsts to nicknames of notables, celebrated secretaries, characteristics and products of various lands, and unusual happenings. As noted earlier, works such as this were probably intended to serve as cribs for courtiers wishing to enliven their conversation. This same Ṯaʿālebi is now also understood to be the author of the important narrative history known as the Ḡorar al-siar. Various manuscripts give the name of the author as Abu Manṣur Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad Marḡani (the nesba has also been read as Marʿaši or Marāḡi) Ṯaʿālebi, and Carl Brockelmann (GAL, SI, p. 581) considered him to be the actual author, even though Hermann Zotenberg, the modern editor and translator of the text, had rejected this attribution and argued it was also the work of ʿAbd-al-Malek Ṯaʿālebi. Zotenberg’s assessment was confirmed by Franz Rosenthal (1950), who noted the use of the same unusual Arabic phrases in the Ḡorar and other works by ʿAbd-al-Malek Ṯaʿālebi. Rosenthal’s instinct was certainly correct, although he missed two equally compelling arguments in favor of this attribution contained in the Oxford manuscript of the Ḡorar (noted by its recent editor, Sohayl Zakkār, who was nonetheless oblivious to the debate over the authorship of this work and continued to attribute it to Ḥosayn Marḡani): the author’s unusual interest in ʿAbd-al-Malek’s home city, Nišāpur (e.g., preserving details about Abu Moslem’s activities there; ed. Zakkār, pp. 154-55), and his statement that he was planning to write a book on unusual honorific titles (alqāb) with the patronage of “the Ṣāḥeb” (ed. Zakkār, pp. 54-55). The Laṭāʾef is also dedicated to “the Ṣāheb Abu’l-Qāsem,” i.e., Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Maymandi, which makes it virtually certain that the same person was the author of all these works. The title and subject of this history have also been subject to some confusion. The published text, based on the manuscripts known to Zotenberg, dealt only with the history of pre-Islamic Persia from Kayumarṯ to the death of Yazdejerd in 31/651-52 and was often known under the title Ḡorar aḵbār moluk al-fors wa siarehem. It closely follows the version of the Persian “national history” used by Ṯaʿālebi’s contemporary Ferdowsi (Ḡorar, pp. xviii-xix; Yarshater in Camb. Hist. Iran, p. 362), citing as a source a Šāh-nāma, probably one of the prose šāh-nāmas then extant. As an independent work, this would indeed be out of character with the other works written by the clearly Arabophile Ṯaʿālebi. The author’s introduction, however, makes clear that it was (or was intended to be) part of a much larger work which dealt also with the pre-Islamic Near East, the kings of “Rome, India, the Turks, and China,” and Islamic history down to the reign of Seboktekin. The Oxford manuscript entitled Ḡorar al-siar, which was edited only recently and has been almost totally ignored by modern historians, deals with the history of the caliphs from ʿAbd-al-Malek b. Marwān to al-Manṣur (preserving much significant and original material about the Persian provinces) and must be regarded as another surviving fragment of this work.

Among the last of the major historical works to be written in Arabic during this period was the Taʾriḵ al-yamini by Abu Naṣr Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Jabbār ʿOtbi (d. between 413/1022 and 431/1039-40). It is a source of fundamental importance not only for early Ghaznavid history, but for its information about the fall of the Samanids, the last Saffarids of Sistān, the early Ziyarids, the Kara-Khanids, the Simjurids, and other petty dynasts of the period. Unfortunately, it has never received a modern edition and must still be consulted in the version printed on the margins of a 19th-century commentary (Aḥmad Manini, al-Fatḥ al-wahbi, 2 vols., Cairo, 1869). As a specimen of historiography, it can be faulted in two respects. First, the author largely abandoned any pretense of objectivity and set out, inspired by the example of Ṣābi’s al-Tāji, to write a panegyric of the Ghaznavids in order to win the favor of Sultan Maḥmud and to serve as pro-Ghaznavid propaganda in Iraq. In this regard, it is difficult to accept Barthold’s view (Turkestan, p. 19) that ʿOtbi “does not conceal the dark sides of this brilliant reign, and the misery of the people ruined by taxes which it was beyond their power to pay” (see the more realistic interpretation by Treadwell, pp. 10-12). To the extent that this is true, it is surely unintentional since ʿOtbi does not bother to hide his disdain for the common people and goes out of his way to legitimize the usurpation of power by the Ghaznavids as well as their aggressive policies. He is equally suspect when it comes to the lavish praise he heaps on his own ancestors who served as government ministers. Second, ʿOtbi subordinated historical substance to rhetorical style, sometimes writing in verse or rhymed prose and constantly making use of metaphor and hyperbole more appropriate to poetry than historical prose. Although often admired by Arab critics (e.g., Jorji Zaydān), the resulting text is not only excruciatingly difficult to read but short on historical detail and precision. It has, however, also been suggested by some readers, including the commentator Sheikh Aḥmad Manini, that this excessive language, which certainly sounds ridiculous enough to modern ears, was sometimes used as a subtle ploy intended “to undermine what it appears to assert” (Meisami, 1999, p. 137 n. 9). A Persian translation of the Yamini was made by Abu’l-Šaraf Nāṣeḥ b. Ẓafar Jarbaḏaqāni (ca. 602/1205-6). In general, it is more faithful to the Arabic original—even, unfortunately, in its fondness for literary extravagance—than is usually the case with such Arabic to Persian translations, but Jarbaḏaqāni did make some emendations to the text (see Meisami, 1999, pp. 256-63).

The practice of writing history in the Persian language began, as far as we know, with the decision of the Samanid Amir Manṣur b. Nuḥ in 352/963 to commission a translation by Abu ʿAli Balʿami (see AMĪRAK BALʿAMĪ) of Ṭabari’s Taʾriḵ. Balʿami did not take this mandate literally and actually recast Ṭabari’s history in a very different form, dropping the citation of esnāds and abandoning the annalistic arrangment in favor of a fluid narrative which freely abridged, added, rearranged, or corrected material. This Persian version of Ṭabari became extremely popular in the Persian-speaking world, as attested by its complicated manuscript tradition and the various recensions through which it passed (see Griaznevich and Boldyrev; Daniel, 1990). It also set the model which would be followed by many subsequent Persian translations of Arabic histories and for Persian historiographical style in general, at least until the emphasis on rhetorical embellishment began to replace the remarkably clear and simple use of language preferred by Balʿami.

Despite the precedent set by Balʿami, it was still almost a century before original and independent examples of historiography in Persian began to appear. The earliest of these that is now extant (or known of) is the Zayn al-aḵbār by ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy Gardizi (q.v.). About all that can be said concerning the author and the background of his work is that the text bears a dedication to the ninth Ghaznavid sultan, ʿAbd-al-Rašid b. Maḥmud (q.v.; r. 440-43/1049-52?). It begins with a brief survey of the five “groups” (ṭabaqa) of pre-Islamic rulers of Persia; proceeds to three “chapters” (bāb) on Islamic rulers (a short account of Moḥammad, the caliphs, and the “amirs” of Khorasan), accompanied by chronological tables; and concludes with a longish section of twelve chapters on the comparative chronologies, holidays, and cultures of numerous foreign and non-Muslim peoples (obviously based on the work of Biruni, one of Gardizi’s contemporaries), with particularly significant accounts of Tibet, various Turkish tribes, the Slavs, etc. In terms of historical content, the most interesting section, undoubtedly drawing from the lost history by Sallāmi (see Barthold, Turkestan, p. 21), is that on the “amirs” of Khorasan, treating them as an unbroken line extending from the Arab conqueror ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿĀmer to the Ghaznavid sultan Mawdud b. Masʿud. Throughout the work, one finds subjects treated in ways that depart, sometimes dramatically, from the mainstream Islamic historical tradition—e.g., the emphasis on the destructive aspects of Alexander’s conquest, the distinction drawn between the moluk-e Sāsāniān and the akāsera, or the particularly dramatic account of the murder of Abu Moslem, emphasizing the treacherous and repellant behavior of the caliph al-Manṣur. The author also alludes to the age-old struggle of Īrān and Turān “that persists even today” (p. 11), in which context he seems to have been quite disturbed by the defeats inflicted on the Ghaznavids by the Saljuqs. As noted in a recent study by Julie Meisami, “several major concerns run through the work and link its otherwise often disjointed accounts” (1999, p. 69). Among other things, Gardizi makes the historical experience of what the author calls Irānšahr the center of his narrative, sees history as a cyclical process in which dynasties rise or decline according to the virtues or defects of individual rulers, and posits a view of the ideal ruler as one who is just, is valiant in warfare, rewards the loyalty of his retainers, defends religious orthodoxy, and encourages the acquisition of knowledge—all themes which resonate with those of what Ehsan Yarshater has called the “Iranian national history.” This remarkable work is thus not only the first general history in the Persian language to stand on its own, without the pretense of being a “translation” of an Arabic text, it is also one of the best examples of a work that can be regarded as “Persian historiography” in the sense of history written from a thoroughly Persocentric (or at least east Persian) point of view.

Abu’l-Fażl Moḥammad b. Ḥosayn Bayhaqi (q.v.; d. 470/1077), a former head of the Ghaznavid secretariat, composed a monumental history in some thirty volumes on the reigns of the early Ghaznavid sultans (the original title is uncertain but was perhaps Tāriḵ-e nāṣeri, Tāriḵ-e āl-e Seboktakin, or Tāriḵ-e āl-e Maḥmud; it is now generally referred to as either Tāriḵ-e Bayhaqi or Tāriḵ-e masʿudi). Only one volume and some fragments, covering the years 421-32/1030-41, survive today. Even in this sadly truncated state, however, it is clear this work is one of the true masterpieces of the world’s historical literature (for various appreciations of it, see in particular the essays in Matini, ed.). Bayhaqi set forth the philosophical principles underlying his work in a short “discourse” (ḵoṭba) on the purpose and methods of history. It is not found, as one might expect, in a prologue (dibāča) to the book (which has unfortunately been lost) but rather near the beginning of volume ten (ed. Fayyāż, pp. 903-6), appropriately enough in a section dealing with the history of Ḵᵛārazm taken from the now lost work on that subject by Abu Rayḥān Biruni, whose thought had obviously influenced Bayhaqi profoundly (as well as many of the other historians discussed here). In Bayhaqi’s view, history is the means by which humans satisfy their natural curiosity about the past and, in the process, increase their intellectual capacity to distinguish truly between good and bad, joy and sorrow. Such knowledge is useful, but it cannot be regarded as predictive since the future is known only to God. It is also commemorative, in that it keeps alive the story of past notables and remembrance of the historian himself. Historical knowledge can be acquired only by rigorous effort through traveling and making inquiries (exactly the meaning of the Greek historía) in order to obtain either oral reports from trustworthy informants or to consult appropriate written sources; in all cases, the historian must insist on the rationality and credibility of what is reported and reject the fabulous and foolish. In his own case, Bayhaqi emphasizes that everything he reports is based on either his own eyewitness knowledge or material taken from sources of impeccable reliability. As a high-ranking member of the Ghaznavid bureaucracy, Bayhaqi was of course well placed to have access to such information, and this is one of the qualities that makes his work so important. He apparently kept a kind of diary or journal of his experiences as well as copies of archival material and later used these as the raw material for his history, shaped by the reflections and perspectives he could bring to them with the advantage of hindsight. For subjects beyond this, such as the historical anecdotes he often cites as contextual information or as parallels to events he is discussing, and also in the case of topics of which he has little direct knowledge, he turns to sources he considers the best and most authoritative (as with Biruni’s history of Ḵᵛārazm); these sources are frequently named and their reliability assessed. It should also be noted that Bayhaqi constructed his prose with meticulous care and precision; he is remarkably effective at recreating the settings and sharply delineating the character of the personalities involved in the events he describes. His subtle and deceptively plain language suggests much more than it says explicitly, although the variety of interpretations given his accounts by modern scholars (cf. Luther, 1971; Poliakova; Waldman; Humphreys, 1991, pp. 141-45; Meisami, 1999, pp. 79-108) suggests that we are still far from knowing exactly how it should be read. In sum, the Tāriḵ-e Bayhaqi, with its combination of authoritativeness, richness of detail, literary polish, and methodological sophistication, has no peer among the works discussed here and precious few in any other historiographical tradition.

THE LATE ISLAMIC PERIOD

The semblance of unity imposed on Persia by the Saljuq defeat of the Ghaznavids at Dandanqān in 1040 and their subsequent ouster of the Buyids from Baghdad in 1055 was illusory: The political structure of Persia in the late Islamic period was really that of “a loose confederation of semi-independent kingdoms over which the sultan exercised nominal authority” (Lambton, CHI V, p. 218), with numerous maleks, amirs, and atābaks in control of various, mostly petty, territorial holdings. The awareness of the new Turkish warlords of their status in the eyes of the subject population as ethnic interlopers and political upstarts also accelerated the tendency to seek legitimacy by claiming to support šariʿa-based government and by co-opting members of the local ʿolemāʾ. These trends are clearly reflected in the historiography of the period, which was often produced either to curry favor with the new warlords or in the hope of persuading them to govern well. If historical writing did not as a result decline in quantity from that of earlier periods (an impression which may result purely from the fact that a greater percentage of it has survived), it was more constricted in both scope and quality.

General histories certainly continued to be written, but they have either been lost (most regrettably the later sections of Helāl b. Ṣābi’s chronicle, the work of Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Malek Hamaḏāni, and the Mašāreb al-tajāreb of Ẓahir-al-Din Bayhaqi; see Cahen, pp. 60-66), or are of rather inferior quality, or are connected with the “historiography of Persia” of this period in only the most tangential ways if at all. For example, Ẓahir-al-Din Ruḏravari (d. 488/1095), who came from a town in western Persia and served as a vizier to the Abbasid caliphs until forced from office by Malek-Šāh, wrote a continuation to Meskawayh’s chronicle, but the extant portion covers only a small part of the Buyid period (368-89/979-999). The anonymous Ketāb al-ʿoyun wa’l-ḥadāʾeq fi aḵbār al-ḥaqāʾeq also probably dates from this period; the surviving portion goes down to 350/961 (ed., Omar Saïdi, 2 vols, Damascus, 1972-73). While it is an impressive work in many ways, it is written from an Egyptian or North African perspective and is rarely interested in events east of Iraq. The celebrated Ḥanbali scholar Ebn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200) wrote a chronicle, al-Montaẓam fi’l-taʾriḵ, the published volumes of which cover the years 257-574/870-1179. His work imitated Ṭabari’s in its annalistic form but rarely deals with events outside Baghdad and consists of little more than masses of yearly obituary notices for members of the ʿolemāʾ. A concise history of the caliphs, al-Enbāʾ fi taʾriḵ al-ḵolafāʾ was written ca. 560/1164-65 by Moḥammad b. ʿAli ʿEmrāni, who may have belonged to a family from Saraḵs or Ḵᵛārazm (ed. Qasim al-Samarrai, Leiden, 1973, p. 7). Perhaps the most interesting general history produced during this period, at least in terms of relevance for the history of Persia, was written (revealingly enough) in Egypt by an Egyptian author, Ebn Ẓāfer Azdi (d. 613/1216 or 623/1226). His Ketāb al-dowal al-monqaṭeʿa was apparently intended to be, as its title suggests, a comprehensive history of the numerous dynasties which had sprung up around the Muslim world. As a result, it contains a good deal of unique information about Persia, from the Caucasian dynasties to the Samanids (Treadwell, 2000). Other meritorious works, such as the chronicles of Ebn al-Aṯir (q.v.; d. 630/1233) and Ṣebṭ b. al-Jawzi (d. 654/1256), fundamental to the study of the history of the period and drawing on now lost earlier works, straddle the late Islamic and Mongol periods and are outside the scope of this article.

One important general history was written in Persian during this period, the anonymous Mojmal al-tawāriḵ wa’l-qeṣaṣ. Some information about the author can be deduced from internal evidence in the text, where it is indicated that he was a grandson of a certain Mohallab b. Moḥammad b. Šādi (on this family, see Meisami, 1999, p. 207) and that he spent some time in Asadābād, where he got the idea of writing such a history in Persian from a conversation at a drinking party with one of its grandees (mehtari az jomla-ye mašāhir va bozorgān, p. 8). The author also indicates that he began writing the book in 520/1126 and was a contemporary of Sanjar and Maḥmud [b. Moḥammad] b. Malek-Šāh; his rather obvious partiality towards the latter, as well as his special interest in Hamadān and Isfahan, suggests that he may have been attached to Maḥmud’s court in some way. The author drew on a broad range of Persian and Arabic sources, which he had apparently found in his grandfather’s library (list in Bahār, ed., pp. lṭ-hb and 2-3), and records much interesting information from them that would not otherwise be known. He also covers a surprising range of topics, from Graeco-Roman and Byzantine rulers to the titulature of various kings to architectural monuments. He was not, however, very discriminating in his historical method, and the reliability of much of what he says is open to question: he accepts many clearly fabulous stories and is often imprecise and inconsistent in calculating dates. Some of the more thoughtful sections of his text, such as his critique of Sasanian chronology and description of the portraits of Sasanian kings, have merely been lifted from earlier texts, notably Ḥamza Eṣfahāni. Where he might be expected to have made a significant original contribution, e.g., on the history of the Saljuqs, he actually has little to say. For the most part, the text is written in an informal and chatty style, with frequent digressions and personal observations about whatever strikes the author’s fancy.

The dynastic histories of the Saljuqs present one problem after another in terms of authorship, textual transmission, reliability, and interpretation (the survey by Cahen in Lewis and Holt is still fundamental to the study of this historiography). Abu’l-ʿAlāʾ b. Ḥawl, vizier of Toḡrel Beg, is supposed to have written a Resāla fi tafżil al-atrāk (GAL SI, p. 553), but it is lost and may or may not have been an attempt at producing a dynastic history of the Saljuqs. It is not until much later that such works definitely began to appear, with the first apparently being the Fotur zamān al-ṣodur wa zamān al-fotur, written in Persian by the vizier Anušervān b. Ḵāled Kāšāni (q.v.; d. 533/1138-39). This, too, is lost, but it was used by ʿEmād-al-Din Kāteb Eṣfahāni (q.v.; d. 597/1201), a secretary in the service of the Zangids and later the Ayyubids (well known for his history of Saladin), as the basis for his history of the Saljuqs, Noṣrat al-fatra wa ʿoṣrat al-feṭra (still available only in a unique manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris). This Arabic version of the text is noted mostly for its florid style, which may exceed even that of ʿOtbi in its nebulous pomposity and pedantry. ʿEmād-al-Din’s work was in turn redacted by Faḵr-al-Din Fatḥ b. ʿAli Bondāri Eṣfahāni (fl. 623/1226) in the Zobdat al-noṣra, written for the Ayyubid prince al-Malek al-Moʿaẓẓam ʿĪsā. Since Bondāri’s work has been edited and published, it is the one most often cited in modern works. How much this third-hand history may resemble Anušervān’s original work is debatable; in any case, it deals mostly with the Saljuqs of Iraq and is of peripheral importance for the historiography of Persia. A manuscript entitled Zobdat al-tawāriḵ aḵbār al-omarāʾ wa’l-moluk al-saljuqiya [sic] bears an attribution to Ṣadr-al-Din Abu’l-Ḥasan b. ʿAli b. Nāṣer Ḥosayni and was edited by Moḥammad Eqbāl as such (Aḵbār al-dawla al-saljuqiya, Lahore, 1933). Although this Ḥosayni may have assembled the basic text ca. 560/1164, the extant version is clearly a composite and redacted work which includes material from both earlier sources, such as a lost Malek-nāma, and later additions and emendations (see Cahen in Lewis and Holt, pp. 69-72). Apart from the lost history of Anušervān b. Ḵāled, all the histories of the Great Saljuqs written in Persian basically derive from a Saljuq-nāma by Ẓahir-al-Din Nišāpuri (d. 580/1184?), tutor of the sultans Masʿud b. Moḥammad and Arslan b. Ṭoḡrel. Esmāʿil Khan Afšār published what he purported to be the text of this work (Tehran, 1332 Š./1953), but it was really just a reworking of the original by the Ilkhanid historian Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšāni (q.v.) that was incorporated into that author’s Zobdat al-tawāriḵ. Allin Luther (2001, pp. 18-19), following Ahmed Ateş, thought that another version, incorporated into Rašid-al-Din’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ, was closer to the original and used it as the basis for his English translation. More recently, it has been suggested that neither of these represents Ẓahir-al-Din’s original text, which may be preserved in a hitherto neglected manuscript (London, Royal Asiatic Society, MS Persian 22b; see Luther, tr., 2001, p. ix). In any event, this ur-text and the glowing, thoroughly uncritical, depiction it apparently gave of the virtues of Saljuq rule also formed the basis for the Rāḥat al-ṣodur wa āyat al-sorur by Moḥammad b. ʿAli Ravandi. Ravandi began writing the Rāḥat al-ṣodur in 599/1202; faced with the collapse of the Persian Saljuqs and the rise of the Khwārazm-šāhs, he moved to Konya, revised his panegyrics in favor of the Rum Saljuqs, and dedicated the work to Sultan Kay-Ḵosrow b. Qelej-Arslān. Except for events relating to the last years of Saljuq rule in Persia, the historical value of Ravandi’s work is very slight. The bulk of the text follows closely the version of Ẓahir-al-Din as found in the Ilkhanid historians, except for adding various rhetorical embellishments (they can hardly be called improvements), copious quotations of poetry, and a good deal of sermonizing.

A large number of works from this period fall into a category most often called “local history,” i. e., books devoted to individual regions or cities (a special issue of Iranian Studies 33 [2000] has been devoted to this topic). As a descriptive term, however, this rubric is both inadequate and misleading: Such works may be “local” in subject but not necessarily in perspective. Moreover, “local history” is not a uniform genre, and it includes many titles which properly should not be regarded as history at all. It should also be emphasized that such works are not unique to either this period or to the historiography of Persia.

In the case of provincial history, this had previously been focused on important areas of the caliphate such as Khorasan. With the rise of the eastern dynasties, Khorasan had become in effect the arena of mainstream history; now, areas peripheral to it became the subject of provincial history. The earliest extant example is the anonymous Tāriḵ-e Sistān, the main part of which was written ca. 448/1062 (with continuations down to 726/1326). It is unquestionably local in its point of view (the main author could almost be described as a Sistāni nationalist or patriot), but it is also quite interesting and far from unsophisticated as a specimen of historiography. The work begins with a foundation myth (crediting Garšāsp, q.v., with the founding of Sistān); describes the many “superiorities” (fażāʾel) of Sistān as well as its boundaries, districts, and resources; and gives an account of the life of Moḥammad which can definitely be described as unusual (apparently incorporating popular local legends). The bulk of the narrative is then given over to a history of Sistān after the Islamic conquest, notable for the attention it gives to the Kharijites in Sistān and its admiring treatment of the Saffarids as Sistāni heroes of epic proportions (this is the real centerpiece of the text). The coming of “the Turks,” first the Ghaznavids and then Ṭoḡrel “the accursed” (malʿun), is seen as an unparalled calamity for Sistān.

The Fārs-nāma of Ebn al-Balḵi (q.v.; fl. ca. 510/1116) is equally affectionate in its regard for its province but far more accepting of Turkish rule there. This is probably due to the fact that its author (whose family was not native to Fārs) was an accountant in the administration of the Atabaks and wrote his book at the request of Sultan Moḥammad b. Malek-Šāh, while the author of the Tāriḵ-e Sistān was apparently writing for a popular audience. Over half of the Fārs-nāma is given over to a fairly conventional account of the pre-Islamic Persian kings, with a few unique details (especially in connection with the history of Mazdak). The rest of the book is a mélange of geographical, historical, and ethnographical information, which is most interesting for what it has to say about the qāżis of Shiraz, the last phases of Buyid rule in Fārs, the advent of the Saljuqs, and the affairs of Amir Fażluya and the Šabānkāraʾi Kurds.

Afżal-al-Din Kermāni (q.v.; fl. 584/1188) wrote two works on the Kermān branch of the Saljuqids: a general history, the Badāʾi al-azmān fi waqāʾi Kermān or Tāriḵ-e Afżal (now lost) and the ʿEqd al-ʿolā, in part a history of the conquest of Kermān by the Ḡozz chieftain Malek Dinār in 581/1185 (ed. M. E. Bāstāni-Pārizi as Saljuqiān wa Ḡozz dar Kermān, Tehran 1343 Š./1964). Like several other works of this period, the ʿEqd al-ʿolā, written in what Julie Meisami (1999, p. 234) considers “an outstanding example of the ornate chancery style,” was also intended to praise and win the favor of the ruler (in this case Malek Dinār) and to give ethical instruction about how to govern; as such it is rather on the margins of what can be considered historiography per se.

Towards the very end of the period under consideration, around 606/1210, Bahāʾ-al-Din Ebn Esfandiār began working on a Tāriḵ-e Ṭabarestān, for which he carried out research in the libraries of Baghdad and Ḵᵛārazm. Rather like the author of the Mojmal al-tawāriḵ, he had been inspired to take on this task after being queried about the ancient history of Ṭabarestān by a Bavandid ruler. As Charles Melville has noted, his work is difficult to assess since it seems never to have been properly finished and has also probably been garbled in the complicated process of manuscript transmission (EBN ESFANDĪĀR; Melville, 2000b). The received text is certainly a composite one, with only sections one (ed. Eqbāl, I, pp. 1-302; on foundation myths, settlements and revenues, biographies of famous people of Ṭabarestān, and the history of the province down to the Buyid and Ziyarid period) and three (ed. Eqbāl, II, pp. 32-173; mostly on the Bavandids) attributable to Ebn Esfandiār himself (Melville, 2000b, pp. 56-58). The author, a native of the province and a Shiʿite, was keenly aware of the special character of Ṭabarestān as an area with a strong and separate sense of identity, but he was neither as chauvinistic as the author of the Tāriḵ-e Sistān nor as parochial as Ebn al-Balḵi or Afżal-al-Din: He goes to great length to put the history of the province in the context of larger affairs, and he draws on a variety of non-local written sources and documents as well as local traditions. In some respects, the book could be read as a meditation on the nature of just rule, a theme set at the outset by its inclusion of a translation of the Tansar-nāma (the best known feature of the text).

Urban history can be regarded as one of the oldest genres of Islamic historiography, with extant examples going all the way back to Aḵbār Makka, the first redaction of which was made by Aḥmad b. Moḥammad Azraqi (d. 222/837). Histories of individual Persian cities were written at least as early as the mid-3rd/9th century as evidenced by the (now lost) Taʾriḵ Marw of Aḥmad b. Sayyar Marwazi (d. 268/881; Sezgin, GAS, I, p. 351). Works of this type proliferated in the late Islamic period; examples from Persian cities include books on Astarābāḏ, Samarqand, Nasaf, Bokhara, Nišāpur, Balḵ, Jorjān, Esfahan, and Qazvin (see Paul, 2000a; idem, 2000b; lists in Brockelmann, GAL, SI, pp. 209-11, 571; Sezgin, GAS, I, pp. 351-54). They often have very complicated problems of textual transmission (see, e.g., Paul, 1993). Most also turn out to be not works of historiography at all, but primarily of prosopography, usually just of members of the ʿolamāʾ (for examples, the so-called Taʾriḵ Samarqand of Abu Saʿd Edrisi [d. 405/1015]; the Taʾriḵ Naysābur of Abu ʿAbd-Allāh b. al-Bayyeʿ [q.v.; d. 405/1015-16]; the Ḏekr aḵbār Eṣfahān by Abu Noʿaym Eṣfahāni [q.v.; d. 430/1038]; or the Taʾriḵ Jorjān by Abu’l-Qāsem Ḥamza b. Yusuf Sahmi Jorjāni [d. 427/1036]). Sahmi’s Taʾriḵ Jorjān is typical of the genre in form and in meagerness of historical information: It gives a short report on the Arab conquest of Jorjān (pp. 44-46); a list of the Companions of the Prophet and the tābeʿun who settled there (pp. 46-51); some comments on the Mohallabid family (pp. 51-54); the governors, the building of the congregational mosque, and famous visitors (pp. 54-57); and finally biographical notices for more than a thousand of the city’s noted religious scholars (pp. 59-509). It thus does not provide anything like an extended narrative history of a city in the manner of Naršaḵi’s Taʾriḵ Boḵārā discussed above (although the original Arabic text of that work may also have had a large prosopographical section; see Smirnova). Even as prosopography, these city histories appear pathetically small in size or sadly limited in variety of contents when compared to the great biographical compendia of the metropolitan cities of the Arab lands such as Ḵaṭib Baḡdādi’s Taʾriḵ Baḡdād (in 14 vols., with biographies of almost eight thousand scholars and over a hundred pages just on the topography of the city) or Ebn ʿAsāker’s Taʾriḵ Demašq (in 70 vols., with biographies of every notable known to have lived in or visited the city). That is not to say the Persian city “histories” are without historical value (they do contain varying amounts of incidental historical information) or that they cannot be put to use as sources for the history of the period (as has been demonstrated by Richard Bulliet); they are simply highly problematic as specimens of historical literature.

An exception to these comments might be made for the Maḥāsen Eṣfahān by Mofażżal b. Saʿd Māfarruḵi (fl. 465/1072; see Paul, 2000b), which does give a kind of historical portrait of the city, its people, and its culture, and particularly in the case of the Tāriḵ-e Bayhaq by Ẓahir-al-Din Bayhaqi (q.v.), also known as Ebn Fondoq (d. 565/1169). Ebn Fondoq was a prolific author who was both a historian (author of a now lost continuation of ʿOtbi, the Mašāreb al-tajāreb) and a biographer (who wrote the Taʾriḵ ḥokamāʾ al-eslām); his Tāriḵ-e Bayhaq combines both disciplines. It departs somewhat from the typical model of the city histories in several respects: It contains a longish discourse on the nature of history and the benefits of studying it (pp. 4-15); it describes in some detail the many sources on which the work was based (pp. 19-21); and it gives a fairly extensive survey of the history of the city and the dynasties which ruled there (pp. 25-73). The prosopographical section does not deal only with individuals, but also with the great families of the city (pp. 73-137); the number of individual biographies is relatively small as the author does not aim to be comprehensive but chooses his entries selectively. Moreover, the biographies deal with a broad spectrum of the social elite of Bayhaq, not just the ʿolamāʾ, and are often serve to provide information about events in the history of the city (see Pourshariati, pp. 156-64). On the other hand, the author is quite suspect as a critical historian; he makes much use of folklore and legend, boasts about his own abilities and virtues, and gives free reign to his prejudices (as in his contemptuous appraisal of the state of the sciences in his time and his frequent expressions of disdain for the “rabble” [ḡawgā] of the city).

Conclusion. In many cultures around the world, the production of historical literature is often closely linked to the phenomenon of ethnogenesis or the formation of a sense of social solidarity. For Muslims, too, as Claude Cahen perceptively noted, historiography was “one of the principal forms by means of which not only small regional or confessional groups, but even the Community, itself, acquired consciousness of identity as a whole” (Cahen, 1990, p. 191). If there is a theme linking the historiography of Persia in the Islamic period, it is the story of the shifting and conflicting allegiances involved in this process: triumphalist expressions of a conquering elite, melancholy reflections on a shattered past, awareness of being part of a great imperial civilization, or feelings of membership in a commonwealth of regional states. In that sense, the most striking feature of the historiography of Persia during the late Islamic era is the extent to which it reveals the fragmented and shrinking political horizon as well as the deep social cleavages of the time. That, coupled with its generally mediocre quality, hardly prepares one for the impressive creative outburst of historical writing that was about to take place in Mongol Persia.

HISTORIOGRAPHY iv. MONGOL PERIOD

Persian historiography reached its maturity during the period of the 13th-15th centuries, which might broadly be described as the Turko-Mongol era. Compared with earlier centuries, the bulk of the chronicles recording Persia’s history were now written in Persian; and although Arabic sources continue to be important (particularly in the early Mamluk period, to around 740/1340), they contribute only incidental and random information on the former lands of the eastern caliphate (Little; Melville, 1996).

General considerations. This transition, which is symptomatic of a more general reassertion of Iranian culture in the post-Abbasid world, is also signified by the translation of Arabic historical works into Persian during this period. Among these are Hendušāh Naḵjavāni’s (q.v.) Tajāreb al-salaf (comp. 1323), a translation of al-Faḵri by Ebn Ṭeqṭaqā (q.v.), which covers Islamic history to the fall of Baghdad, a backward look at a world that had departed. Its survey of Abbasid caliphs and their viziers, and of the regional dynasties that rose and fell under them, was by the time Hendušāh wrote perhaps sufficiently instructive for him to feel no need to include the opening sections of the Arabic original, a Mirror for Princes that was not without some positive things to say about the new Mongol regime (see Kritzeck). Other translations include an anonymous version of Nasavi Ḵorandezi’s life of the Ḵwārazmšāh Jalāl-al-Din Mingbarni (for the name see Jackson, 2000, p. 209, n. 9), probably made within a few decades of the original composition (639/1241-42), and various local histories, including Ḥosayn Āvi’s translation of Māfarruḵi’s Maḥāsen Eṣfahān (729/1329; see Paul, 2001b), Ḥasan b. ʿAli Qomi’s translation of the Tāriḵ-e Qom (805-6 /1403-4; see Lambton, 1948), and a history of Nišāpur (Frye, p. 12); the Persian Qandiya, the city chronicle of Samarqand, however, seems not to be based on Arabic models (cf. Paul, 1993). By means of these translations, the Persians re-appropriated their own past and perhaps drew instruction from it.

The distinctive nature of Persian historiography, already visible in such earlier dynastic histories as the Tāriḵ-e masʿudi of Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqi (q.v.) and Ẓahir-al-Din Nišāpuri’s Saljuq-nāma (Cahen, p. 73), and the tradition of local history writing as exemplified by 12th-century authors such as Ebn al-Balḵi (q.v.), Ẓahir-al-Din ʿAli Bayhaqi (q.v.; Pourshariati, 2001), Ebn Esfandiār (q.v.), and others (Lambton, 1991; Pourshariati, 1998; Meisami, 1999), is underlined by comparison with the chronicles in rigid annalistic format that continue to be the dominant form of historiography in the Arab lands (cf. Humphreys, p. 130). Existing tendencies in the arrangement, contents, and language of Persian historiography are consolidated, though not without further development.

The chronological structure of the works produced in this period is often very imprecise, notably in the verse histories discussed below, but also in the prose works, which for the most part are truly narrative in the sense of presenting connected sequences of events as discrete episodes, or dealing with separate topics in turn, such as ʿAṭā Malek Jovayni’s excursus on the yāsā of Čengiz Khan (I, pp. 16-25; tr. I, pp. 23-24). The focus is almost exclusively on the ruler and the actions and personalities of government; extraneous or trivial details tend to be excluded. The importance of the ruler, who often happened also to be the patron or dedicatee of the work, inevitably had an effect on the conceptual framework of the narrative, which is generally organized by reigns. The rulers’ deeds that contributed positively to the expected norms of behavior and prowess were recorded or exaggerated, while those that negated them were either omitted or concealed within elaborate literary contrivances, which required decoding to be understood (Poliakova, 1988). A more unusual, and explicit, assessment of a ruler’s character is found in tabular form in the second version of Moʿin-al-Din Naṭanzi’s Montaḵab al-tawāriḵ-e moʿini (Aigle).

One striking exception to the lack of concern for dates is Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšāni’s (q.v.) chronicle of Öljeitü’s reign (1304-16), which, in an annalistic format, contains, apart from a few extended passages, notices of numerous unconnected events, which are often given an exact, though often inaccurate, date. It is as though this material had been assembled as the basis for a more polished version to follow, perhaps on behalf of Rašid-al-Din (see Morgan, 1997, pp. 182-84). Another characteristic of Kāšāni’s work is his use of the animal calendar (Melville, 1994, pp. 92-93), the year being perceived as starting in spring and the main unit of time being the rhyth-mic alteration between winter and summer quarters. In the histories of Timur, the change of season is often the only indication of the passage of time in the narrative (Humphreys, p. 130).

The emphasis on the court and particularly the martial achievements of the ruler, in an era dominated by the Turko-Mongol military chiefs, leaves little space for glimpses into the life of the ordinary people, except as victims of the tax regime and the passage of armies. The authors of local histories are generally closer to the peo-ple of the regions they describe, but it is rather to hagiographical literature that one should turn to bring rural life into focus (see, e.g., Aubin, 1989).

That many outstanding historians flourished in Mongol and post-Mongol Persia could be regarded as paradoxical, given the barbaric character ascribed to the Mongols themselves and the bleakness of Mongol rule (see, e.g., Browne, Lit. Hist. Persia III, p. 15; Rypka, 1968a pp. 248-49). Apart from any sense in which the florescence of Persian letters generally was the response of a vigorous culture under threat from alien domination, the stimulus to historiographical production was due partly to the fact that the new regime was a truly imperial one, the first to be closely associated with the Iranian plateau since the Sasanians. It soon became aware of the value of promoting a record of its achievements, particularly in so far as this record could be made to fit into the literary mould of the subject population (in China as in Persia; Morgan, 1982, pp. 109-10; Rypka, 1968b, pp. 621-22). Indeed, as Shahrokh Meskoob points out (p. 86), the Mongols’ interest in history was partly also to preserve their own identity from being swamped by the cultures into which they had irrupted.

Considering the not negligible output of Persian historiography in preceding periods (see iii. above; Meisami, 1999), one would not wish to go so far as Bertold Spuler (pp. 127-28, 131) in locating the rise of Persian historiography in the Mongol period. He explains this rise partly as the result of the collapse of the old symbiosis of the traditional dehqān society and its Turkish rulers, who were not greatly interested in the role of history among the Islamic sciences. Nevertheless, it certainly seems that in Persian historiography as in painting, the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate and the advent of the Mongols dramatically liberated Persian creative talents. The exact timing of this apparent coincidence, however, has yet to be examined in detail, and it is clear that in neither case could such mature forms have appeared without a previous period of gestation.

In view of the above, it is no coincidence that Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma (pace Spuler, p. 131), was not merely appreciated for its poetical aspect; it is listed as a historical authority by writers throughout the Mongol period (as earlier), from Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfi (Tāriḵ-egozida, ed. Navāʾi, p. 7) and Aḥmad b. Ḥosayn Kāteb (p. 5) to Mirḵvānd (p. 17). Indeed, as well as providing the subject-matter for the majority of the earliest known Persian miniatures, imitation of the Šāh-nāma and by implication its world view gave a new impetus to the genre of the verse chronicle in the baḥr-e motaqāreb meter (see Ṣafā, pp. 337-54; Mortażawi, pp. 547-625). One of the earliest examples of these, a Saljuq-nāma by Aḥmad Qāneʿi Ṭusi (Ṣafā, Adabiyāt III, pp. 493 ff.; Köprülü, tr., pp. 15-17), was among the sources for the history of Ebn Bibi (q.v.). From the Mongol period, the most noteworthy are the Šāh-nāma-ye čengizi by Šams-al-Din Kāšāni, the Ẓafar-nāma of Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfi (a versified history of ca. 75,000 couplets), and the Šāhanšāh-nāma of Aḥmad Tabrizi (a poem of about 18,000 couplets dealing with the history of Čengiz Khan and his successors; see Browne, Lit. Hist. Persia III, pp. 95-98; Ṣafā, Adabiyāt III, pp. 325-26; Monzawi, Nosḵahā IV, pp. 2996-97; Boyle, 1974; Jahn).

Šams-al-Din’s chronicle (ms. Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, suppl. persan 1443), written at the request of Ḡāzān Khan (q.v.), may have started as a straightforward versification of Rašid-al-Din’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ, as the author maintains (fol. 6a); but this objective was evidently modified (perhaps following Ḡāzān’s death) by the interpolation of a sequence of sections of advice and exemplary tales, concluding with anecdotes about Alexander the Great, Bahrām Gōr, Anōširvān, and so on (see Blochet, pp. 101-6; Mortażawi, pp. 590-625).

Mostawfi’s Ẓafar-nāma (ms. London, British Library, Or. 2833), by contrast, is altogether a more sober work, again largely based on Rašid-al-Din for the early sections, but thereafter, particularly for the reign Abu Saʿid (q.v.), an original source of information that never loses sight of its primary objective: to report events, however much these are punctuated by the author’s observations on the working of fate and presented with Mostawfi’s running commentary on the inevitable consequences of the actions he records. A facsimile edition of the text has been produced recently by Rastgār and Purjawādi.

As for Tabrizi’s Šāhanšāh-nāma (ms. London, British Library, Or. 2780), it was commissioned by Sultan Abu Saʿid but completed after his death, in 1337, seemingly at the Jalayerid court, and dedicated to the vizier, Masʿud-šāh Enju. It is full of factual detail about the last years of the Ilkhanate, and a work of greater complexity, in both language and structure, than those mentioned above. So far, it has only received the attention of art historians (e.g., Robinson, pp. 40-41; see also Melville, 1999b). Both these works were used and quoted by Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (q.v.) in his continuation of Rašid-al-Din’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ (Melville, 1998).

Another product of the Jalayerid court is the Ḡāzān-nāma (q.v.) of Aždari, which loosely follows the sequence of events reported by Rašid-al-Din and shows something of the process whereby Ḡāzān Khan was given a legendary persona and portrayed as the founding figure of the post-conquest, Persianized phase of Turko-Mongol rule in Persia. Significantly, it was written for the Jalayerid Shaikh Oways (r. 1356-74), and the only known copy was made for the Āq Qoyunlu sultan, Uzun Ḥasan (r. 1457-78), both rulers from the same mold (Melville, 2003).

Also in this genre is the Daftar-e delgošā, written by Ṣāḥeb in 1320 about the Šabānkāra ruler, Mobārez-al-Din (r. 1226-60; see Takmil-Homāyun); a Timur-nāma by Šaraf-al-Din ʿAli Yazdi (Mortażawi, pp. 574-86), and, at the end of the period, the Timur-nāma of ʿAbd-Allāh Hātefi (q.v.), who also composed a Šāh-nāma for the first Safavid ruler, Esmāʿil I (see Blochet, pp. 108-13; Ṣafā, Adabiyāt IV, pp. 438-47; Mortażawi, pp. 562-74). Such compositions threw a long shadow, most immediately in the work of Qāsem Jonābādi, who wrote a Šāh-nāma-ye Šāhroḵ as well as epic poems for the Safavids Esmāʿil I and Shah Ṭahmāsb I (Mortażawi, p. 586; Bernardini).

These largely neglected verse chronicles are worth studying, quite apart from their “factual” contents. In their deliberate archaizing and backward-looking poetic language, they appear to be ennobling the deeds of the Mongol military class in the trappings of a long-lost age, rather as Jean Froissart’s Chroniques celebrated the dying of the chivalrous ideal in 14th-century France. They also illustrate, first, the development of a genre of popular historical romances that was to flourish in the Safavid period (see v. below), and second, the fact that historical writing is intimately bound up with literary creativity and should not be regarded as a distinct scientific genre.

While verse chronicles represent rather an extreme example of the literary character of historical writing, the pretensions of many authors are apparent in the highly ornate language of their work, including the frequent insertion of lines of poetry of their own or others’ composition (cf. the work of Rāvandi, in Meisami, 1994; idem, 1999, pp. 291-92; idem, 2000). Although this is commonly seen and lamented as a particular defect of mature (and later, overripe) Persian historiography (see, e.g., Rypka, 1968a, pp. 249, 314-15), it is a direct product of the Arabic language, which so lends itself to embellishment of expression: Arabic histories provided some immediate models at the outset of this development, as in the translation by Jorbāḏqāni (603/1206-7) of Abu Naṣr Moḥammad ʿOtbi’s al-Ketāb al-yamini, the highly-colored Arabic history of the Ghaznavids, and the anonymous translation of Šehāb-al-Din Moḥammad Nasavi’s Sira of the Ḵᵛārazmšāh Jalāl-al-Din, already referred to. Jovayni’s Tāriḵ-e Jahāngošā (comp. 1260) is very ornate in parts, both in formulaic descriptions of nature, such as the spring (e.g., I, pp. 109-10; tr., pp. 138-39) and in passages of panegyric or when treating sensitive subjects in a generalized manner (e.g., the destruction of Samarqand; see I, pp. 95-96; tr., I, pp. 122-23); but at other times he conveys information in a straightforward way (cf. Poliakova, 1984, pp. 244-47).

It is Šehāb-al-Din Waṣṣāf’s continuation of Jovayni (comp. in 1323, but covering events in Persia only to 1319) that infamously takes ornamentation to its extreme, and up to the limits of intelligibility, so that even substantive details are presented in a stylized way. Waṣṣāf is often said to have regarded the historical information that he recorded merely as a vehicle for a display of rhetorical artifice (see Quatremère, in Rašid-al-Din, ed. and tr. Quatremère, p. lxviii), though his preface (ed. Hammer-Purgstall, pp. 10-11) contains a standard disclaimer of any literary ability and inclination. His success (as indicated by the high number of surviving manuscripts: over one hundred listed in Storey, I/1, pp. 268-69, one-fifth of which date from before 1500; see also Monzawi, Nosḵahā VI, pp. 4280-86) nevertheless reveals the profound appreciation of such a tour de force on its own terms rather than as a work of historiography.

E. A. Poliakova (1984, pp. 252-53), considers this formal abstraction to be driven by the influence of a burgeoning Sufism that was indifferent to the concrete world. While the increased appeal of Sufism during the Mongol period is often attributed to peoples’ need for spiritual solace in the face of the brutal harshness of contemporary life, a more compelling reason for the historians’ use of excessive verbiage is that it obscures the horrors of the time without denying their existence. The fact that such works were incomprehensible to the rulers to whom they were presented ensured good opportunities for ambiguity, concealment, and double-entendres (cf. Kappler). It also explains why other authors state, disingenuously, that they were asked to write in clear and simple language by their patrons (e.g., Neẓām-al-Din Šāmi, I, pp. 10-11; Woods, 1987, p. 83).

Waṣṣāf’s example was certainly influential, for instance perhaps on Moʿin-al-Din Yazdi (Kotobi, editor’s introd., p. 16), whose scholarly but verbose history of the Muzaffarids, Mawāheb-e elāhi (events up to 767/1365), was regarded as excessive by the later author Maḥmud Kotobi, who saw his own work as a continuation of Mostawfi’s Tāriḵ-e gozida (Kotobi, p. 27) Moʿin-al-Din’s work was admired by Aḥmad b. Ḥosayn (p. 120) and apparently adapted by Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru for that section of his Majmuʿa (see Tauer, 1968; Woods, 1987, p. 97), but no analysis of this borrowing has yet been made. It is interesting that Fażl-Allāh Ḵonji Eṣfahāni, in his categories of historians, includes Jovayni, Waṣṣāf, Moʿin-al-Din, and the Arabic work of ʿOtbi in the same group, not only because of their focus on a particular dynasty or ruler, but also noting their “great felicity of expression” (Ḵonji, pp. 91-92, tr. pp. 10-11); such also, he says, is Yazdi’s history of Timur, the Ẓafar-nāma (comp. ca. 832/1424-25), more properly called Fatḥ-nāma-ye ṣāḥeb-qerāni (Ando), which also served as a stylistic model for later historians (cf. Rypka, 1968a, p. 318, n. 7). This trend, after the relative sobriety of the Timurid period, was taken further under the Safavids before collapsing under its own weight in the spectacular bombast of Mirzā Mahdi Khan Es-trābādi (see HISTORIOGRAPHY vi.).

The resort to this high literary style partly reflects the fact that many authors were secretaries (monši) by background and training (cf. Dabiri-nežād, pp. 28-29). Jovayni, a high official under the first three Il-khans, left a collection of enšāʾ (q.v.) documents (see Paul, 1999), as did ʿAli Yazdi and Moʿin-al-Din Esfezāri (q.v.), a secretary under the Timurid ruler Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (q.v.; Tauer, 1968 p. 434). Waṣṣāf was a revenue official in Fārs, as was Mostawfi in the Ṭārom district. This experience ensured that they were well-placed to witness and understand the events of their time (cf. Āqsarāʾi’s reference to his own experience in the divāns of Mongol Anatolia, pp. 34-35). Historians frequently intruded their own presence into their work (cf. Khalidi, pp. 200-204; Lowry), though this trend had been visible from the outset (Meisami, 1999, p. 289). They also had access to official documents, a particularly important element in the work of the Ilkhanid vizier Rašid-al-Din Fażl-Allāh, who wrote furthermore with unusual directness. His remarkable frankness in exposing the defects of early Mongol rule in Persia can partly be attributed to his personal influence and partly to the educational or instructive aspect of the work, with its emphasis on the need for justice and good deeds, which puts him in the same mould as his great predecessor, the Saljuq vizier Neẓām-al-Molk (d. 1092).

Thus, despite the transformation of the bases of arbitrary political power as enjoyed by the Turko-Mongol rulers, or perhaps in response to them, a common ethical purpose threads through the work of historians of the period, as expressed in their views on the values (fawāʾed) of history. As articulated at varying length by Rašid-al-Din (e.g., ed. Dabirsiāqi, pp. 1-2), Āqsarāʾi (pp. 4-5), Ša-bānkāraʾi (see Aubin, 1981, pp. 217-18), Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (1996-99, I, pp. 76-88; Tauer, 1963), Marʿaši (1954, pp. 4-7), Ḵonji (pp. 80-86; tr., pp. 7-8), Mirḵvānd (I, pp. 10-13), and others, these ideas show little sign of development from the views of ʿAli b. Zayd Bayhaqi (q.v., pp. 7-17; Meisami, 1999, pp. 211-13): the lessons of history have a value for rulers and their subjects, even people of low rank, who delighted in hearing readings from books on this form of knowledge (ʿelm; see Mirḵvānd, I, p. 15). As this last statement indicates, histories were intended to be recited as well as read (a well-known example of this being the case of Timur, reported by Ebn ʿArabšāh, q.v.; see Woods, 1987, p. 82). The oral nature of much “historical” information was thus, to some extent, preserved, despite the emphatically literary form of adab (q.v.) in which it was compiled and transmitted to later authors.

Survey of historical writing. Turning to a brief review of the main historical works of the period, it is useful to notice the links between them and the formation of a continuous literary tradition that extends from Jovayni (d. 1283) to Mirḵvānd (d. 1498), as well as the sources on which this tradition was based (see also Tauer, 1968, esp. pp. 438-45; Lambton in EI2).

Jovayni’s history, as noted above, derives its authority in large part from his own participation in events, to which he refers, basing his section on the Mongols on his own experiences and verified information provided by others (I, pp. 6-7; tr., I, pp. 9-10), though he does mention earlier works on the Kᵛārazmšāhs (cf. Barthold, pp. 31-32) and on the Ismaʿilis, salvaged from the sack of Alamut (see Daftary, pp. 94-95). Jovayni sought to rationalize the disasters that had befallen Islam in his time and explain them as a manifestation of God’s purpose (Boyle, 1962, p. 133); it is hardly surprising, given the circumstances in which he wrote, that he champions the legitimacy of the Toluids, who had seized control of the Mongol empire after the death of Güyük (see Jackson, 1978, esp. pp. 198-202). His work both inspired the continuation of Waṣṣāf and served as an important source for the work of Rašid-al-Din, conceived on a much larger scale but nevertheless indebted to his predecessor (see Boyle, 1962). Rašid-al-Din also relied very largely on oral information, partly provided by Ḡāzān Khan himself for Mongol history, partly from various native informants about the other peoples of the world with whom the Mongols came into contact (the Turks, Chinese, Indians, Franks, and Jews), which justifies the title of World History given to his Compendium of Chronicles (Boyle, 1971; cf. Arberry, p. 156). For the sections of the work in the second volume covering Islamic history, which are largely still unpublished, Rašid-al-Din tends not to mention his sources; the only parts for which the matter has been studied are those on the Ismaʿilis and China (Rašid-al-Din, ed. Dānešpažuh and Modarresi; idem, ed. Wang Yidan; Daftary).

Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfi in his Tāriḵ-e gozida (ed. Navāʾi, p. 7) lists both Jovayni and Rašid-al-Din among his eminent predecessors, particularly the latter, who inspired Mostawfi with his love of history and to whom his work was dedicated. His Ẓafar-nāma relies on, but does not follow closely, the Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ up to the reign of Öljeitü/Uljāytu; thereafter, as in his account of the wars in Gilān, Mostawfi makes use of reliable oral information (fols. 712b, 736a; Melville, 1999a). His own continuation of the Ẓafar-nāma is written in prose, more suitable for the dark days that it describes, in a confessedly autobiographical account of the last years of the Ilkhanate (Mostawfi, 1986, p. 435).

Both Mostawfi’s works and the continuation (to 1392) written by his son, Zayn-al-Din, were incorporated into the continuation of Rašid-al-Din’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ by Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru, which was carried out at the command of Šāhroḵ and brought down to the latter’s reign in successive recensions and reworkings. As noted by John Woods, who analyzes Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru’s use of earlier Timurid historiography, particularly his sanitization of the more Mongol elements in the interesting history by Mo ʿin-al-Din Naṭanzi (Montaḵab al-tawāriḵ), Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru set Timur’s career in the general context of Mongol and Islamic history and continued the western Iranian traditions of Rašid-al-Din, integrating the writings of his predecessors with his own recollections to form a uniform narrative (Woods, 1987, pp. 97, 99). Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru himself states that he was continuing the work of Balʿami (see AMIRAK BALʿAMI), Rašid-al-Din, and Neẓām-al-Din Šāmi (see Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru, 1938, pp. 62-63; idem, 1996-99, I, p. 71; Blochet, p. 58). Parviz Aḏkāʾi connects Rašid-al-Din and Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru by their common association with Hamadān (pp. 307-83).

ʿAbd-al-Razzāq Samarqandi (q.v.) came from the religious classes and was qāżi at court from 1437, from which position he witnessed events in Herat and Samarqand. In his Maṭlaʿ-e saʿdayn, he relies very heavily on Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru’s Zobdat al-tawāriḵ up to 1427, when the latter ends, but he also refers directly to Moʿin-al-Din Yazdi’s Mowāheb-e elāhi (see ed. Navāʾi, pp. 8, 166, 234) and evidently used ʿAli Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nāma; thereafter, his chronicle is based on official documents, personal observations, and oral reports. His work, continuing to 1469 or soon after, was much used by Mirḵvānd, although the latter does not mention him in his list of authorities (Mirḵvānd, I, pp. 17-18), and only brought his own chronicle, the Rawżat al-ṣafā, down to the same year, 1469. Mirḵvānd represents the culmination of this tradition of historical writings in the Turko-Mongol period, which, with the exception of Jovayni’s work, were essentially “universal” chronicles linked in a sort of literary chain of authorities (esnād) of authority. Recent work by Adam Jacobs has shown that the early portions of such works, dealing with the rise of Islam and the successors to Moḥammad, can provide useful clues as to the religious orientation of the author and his ideological milieu.

Other links in the chain of general histories, mentioned by Mirḵvānd and earlier by Mostawfi, were the Neẓām al-tawāriḵ of Bayżāwi (ca. 1275; see Melville, 2000) and Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšāni’s Zobdat al-tawāriḵ (to the fall of Baghdad), of which the section on the Ismaʿilis has been edited (for a comparison with the corresponding text of Rašid-al-Din, see Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšāni; Daftary), as well as the section on the Saljuqs, derived from the Saljuq-nāma of Ẓahir-al-Din Nišāpuri (cf. Cahen, pp. 73-76; for a parallel text from the Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ, see Rašid-al-Din, ed. Ateş; idem, tr. Luther; A. H. Morton is currently working on these relationships and on establishing the text of Nišāpuri). Other general works include Juzjāni’s Ṭabaqāt-e nāṣeri (see Morgan, 1982, pp. 110-13) and, very reliant on Rašid-al-Din, the history of Faḵr-al-Din Banākati (q.v.), which Mirḵvānd lists under Arabic sources, suggesting that he had not actually seen it. A briefer annalistic work, to 1441, was produced by Faṣiḥ Aḥmad Kvāfi.

Alongside this imperial tradition associated with the Ilkhanid and Timurid courts, but otherwise inspired by similar motives and written within a similar normative framework, were the histories of the Āq Qoyunlu (q.v.) Turkmans, namely Abu Bakr Ṭehrāni’s Ketāb-e Diār-bakriya (covering the period to 1478) and Fażl-Allāh Ḵonji’s ʿĀlamārā-ye amini, which provides a continuation to 1490 (Woods, 1999, pp. 219-20). Like Jovayni (I, p. 118; tr., I, p. 152), Ḵonji laments the peripatetic life following the court, which made composition difficult, as did the lack of books (p. 95; tr., p. 7). As in other cases, these histories are effectively based on personal experience and oral report, and despite protestations to the contrary, not free from partisanship (for recent studies of Ḵonji’s attitudes, see Haarmann; Jacobs).

Together with Ḥasan b. Šehāb’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ-e ḥasani (a history of Yazd and Kermān up to 1451), Ebn Bibi’s al-Awāmer al-ʿalāʾiya (ca. 1282, dedicated to Jovayni), and Maḥmud Āqsarāʾi’s Mosāmerat al-aḵbār (to 1323, concerning late Saljuq and early Mongol Anatolia; Köprülü, tr., pp. 10-12), as well as others already mentioned, such as Maḥmud Kotobi’s Tāriḵ-e Āl-e Moẓaffar, these works are primarily dynastic histories. Some other important works of the period emphasize the totality of local or regional history rather than the deeds of current rulers. As one would expect, local history productions in the Turko-Mongol period tend to issue from regions well-removed from imperial centers of power, at times of greater political independence, and in places with well-developed traditions of local historiography. Thus, from the south of Persia, we have Faḵr-al-Din Zarkub’s Širāz-nāma (1343), Nāṣer-al-Din Monši Kermāni’s Semṭ al-ʿolā (1320), and Aḥmad b. Ḥosayn’s Tāriḵ-e jadid-e Yazd (1458), based on a slightly earlier 15th-century work by Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad, and others which he lists (pp. 5-6; cf. Miller). For the Caspian provinces, Ebn Esfandiār is followed by Awliā-Allāh Āmoli’s (q.v.) Tāriḵ-e Ruyān (ca. 1362), and Ẓahir-al-Din Marʿaši’s histories of Ṭa-barestān (1476) and Gilān (1489), a tradition carried on well into the Safavid period (see Melville, 2000). Herat is served by the work of Sayf b. Moḥammad Heravi, Tāriḵ-nāma-ye Herāt (to 1321) and Moʿin-al-Din Esfezāri’s Rawżāt al-jannāt fi awṣāf madinat Herāt (ca. 1491; cf. Paul, 2001).

Embedded within several of these works are sections of biographical and topographical information, which should certainly be seen as complementary, if not integral, to historical writing. The interconnectedness of these forms, which cannot be elaborated here, is clearly demonstrated by Mostawfi’s Tāriḵ-e gozida, which concludes with chapters containing biographies of prominent scholars and poets and an account of his home town, Qazvin, and its leading families, thus combining in one work elements of “universal” chronicle, local history, and biographical dictionary. This argues against a rigid categor-ization of the historical literature of the Turko-Mongol period, and for the treatment of each work on its own terms, a task that has still to be accomplished before the richness of this tradition can be fully appreciated.

HISTORIOGRAPHY v. TIMURID PERIOD

Timurid historiography is firmly rooted within the Persian literary tradition of official court histories of the post-Mongol period, such as the Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ of Rašid-al-Din, and the Tāriḵ-e jahān-gošā by ʿAṭā-Malek Jovayni, as well as being nourished by local traditions of regional history, notably Sayf Heravi’s chronicle of the Karts (Kurts) of Herat (see Sayf b. Muḥammad b. Yaʿqub al-Heravi). During the Timurid period the historiographical school of Khorasan bloomed and developed into a canon that was adopted and followed beyond the Timurid period in Iran and Transoxiana. The Khorasan school set a model of creative historical writing in different historical genres, such as universal and dynastic chronicles, local histories, biographies, memoirs, etc. Although nearly all of these existed in previous times (perhaps with the exception of autobiographical writings), the Timurid period witnessed their development to an unprecedented level. Several major chronicles date from the Timurid period, and the works of authors such as Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru, Mirḵᵛānd, or Ḵᵛāndamir spread all over the Muslim world and became standards for the centuries to come. In addition to a pronounced interest in local histories (Herat, Samarkand, Bukhara, Balkh, etc.), Timurid writers developed a specific genre of local historiography: topographical descriptions, and pilgrimage guides to local shrines coupled with biographical information on the saintly people buried there. Timurid historiography re-invented the literary taḏkera (biographical dictionary) and opened the class of historiography to non-official writings such as personal memoirs and autobiographies. In all respects, the achievements of Timurid historiography can be viewed as a part of the general efflorescence of literary and scientific life in this period. The universal patronage of arts and sciences by the Timurid rulers, members of the dynastic family, and court and provincial dignitaries became an important factor in securing the bases of intellectual and creative activities (Yakubovskiĭ, 1946; Aubin, 1957a; Subtelny, 1984; Thackston, 1989). At the beginning of the Timurid period, court historians were often linked to the cultural centers of central Iran, such as Shiraz or Yazd, formerly part of the Il-khanid state. By the second half of the 15th century, Samarkand and Herat entered the scene as the main centers of Timurid intellectual life. It can certainly be stated (see Woods, 1987, p. 82) that the Timurid school of historiography was brought to maturity by native scholars from eastern Iranian regions and Transoxiana.

Languageof the works. The predominant language of Timurid historiography is Persian. However, the Timurid intellectual milieu witnessed, and encouraged, a rapid development of the Chaghatay (Čaḡatāy, or Turki) language. Use of Chaghatay spread in literature, especially poetry, at Timurid courts throughout the 15th century (Borovkov, pp. 99-120; Eckman, pp. 304-61; Bombaci, pp. 133-83; Kleinmichel). There are indications that already during the reign of Timur (771-807/1370-1405) historiographical works were written in Chaghatay as well as in other Turkic languages. Unfortunately, these chronicles are not extant today but are known only through quotations in other sources (Woods, 1987, p. 83). At the very end of the 15th century in Herat, Mir ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi wrote several works in Chaghatay: two short chronicles and a collection of biographies, the Majāles al-nafāyes (see below). From the early 16th century onwards many other works were composed in Chaghatay. They were all rooted in the Persian Khorasani historiographical tradition, even if they already belonged to post-Timurid historiographies: for example, in Transoxiana, a history of the Shaybanids, the Tawāriḵ-e gozida-ye noṣrat-nāma (ed. A. M. Akramov, Tashkent, 1967) was written about 908-10/1502-5 probably by Moḥammad-Ṣāleḥ Boḵāri (but see Akhmedov, 1985, pp. 12-13); and in Mughal India, the Bābor-nāma by Ẓahir-al-Din Moḥammad Bābor (see below).

Ideology of Timurid chronicles. The ideological role of official Timurid historiography focused on two main issues. From the start, it was concerned with establishing the legitimacy and constructing an ideological frame of rulership for Timur, and through him for his son Šāhroḵ, whose personality dominated the first half of the 15th century. The genealogies and other writings of the early period insist on the tribal (Barlās) origin and Chingizid link of the Timurids. With the coming to the throne of Solṭān-Abu Saʿid in Herat (r. 863-73/1459-69), the historiographers had to face a major difficulty created by this switch of power inside the dynasty. They had to resolve how, without discrediting Šāhroḵ, whose status as the rightful ruler was unquestionable by then, they were to legitimize the loss of power by his descendants in favor of a prince descending from Mirānšāh, another son of Timur. These two questions were recurrent in Timurid historiography until the second half of the 15th century, when a historiographical canon was finally adopted (Lambton, 1978; Woods, 1987; Manz; Bernardini, 2003, n. 18).

CHRONICLES AND GENEALOGIES

Timur’s reign. One of the rare contemporary sources known today that concerns itself with the life and deeds of Timur is the Ẓafar-nāma (ed. F. Tauer, Prague, 1937, 1956) written in 806/1404 by Neẓām-al-Din ʿAli Šāmi (d. before 814/1411-12) by commission of the ruler (Storey-Bregel, pp. 787-91). Šāmi’s narrative is mostly based on oral sources, eyewitness accounts, and, presumably, some vanished written sources from Timur’s reign. The text was revised by the author after the death of Timur, and the second version was dedicated to Timur’s grandson, ʿOmar b. Mirānšāh. Šāmi’s chronicle was extensively studied by Felix Tauer (1932 and 1934), and more recently by John Woods (1987, pp. 85-87). It was used and extended by later historiographers, notably Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (see below). Not later than 805/1403, Ḡiāṯ-al-Din ʿAli Yazdi, secretary at the court of Timur, wrote the Ruz-nāma-ye ḡazawāt-e Hendustān (ed. L. A. Zimin and V. V. Bartol’d, St. Petersburg, 1915; Russian tr. A. A. Semyonov, Moscow, 1958), the earliest account of the Indian campaign of Timur (Storey-Bregel, p. 787). This text has undoubtedly influenced later historiographers, but at the same time it offered some variant early versions (Bartol’d, VIII, pp. 328-35; Woods, 1987, pp. 94-95). Here should be mentioned a rare and short chronicle entitled Ferdows al-tawāriḵ, written in 808/1405-6 in Fārs by Ḵosrow b. ʿĀbed Abarkuhi known as Ebn Moʿin (autograph in St. Petersburg National Library, Dorn 267; Bartol’d, I, p. 103; for a detailed bibliography of the historiography of Timur’s reign, see Bernardini, 2003).

First half of the 15th century. Several important chronicles were written by court historians during the reign of Šāhroḵ (811-50/1409-47). Tāj-al-Din Salmāni of Isfa-han is the author of the Šams al-ḥosn (ed. and German tr. H. R. Roemer, Wiesbaden, 1956; Turkish tr. İsmail Aka, Ankara, 1988), written originally on Timur’s commission but completed under Šāhroḵ (after 813/1410) as a continuation of Šāmi’s Ẓafar-nāma (Storey-Bregel, pp. 815-17). The book is devoted to the end of Timur’s life, the reign of Ḵalil-Solṭān in Samarkand (811/1409), and the early years of Šāhroḵ; it was extensively used by Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (Woods, 1987, pp. 88-89; Aka 1994). Moʿin-al-Din Naṭanzi’s first version of his world history (known as “Eskandar Anonymous”), written ca. 816/1413-14, was dedicated to his Timurid patron Eskandar b. ʿOmar-Šayḵ, governor of Shiraz (812-16 /1409-14). Later, the revised and edited version of it was presented to Šāhroḵ under the title Montaḵab al-tawāriḵ-e moʿini (ed. J. Aubin, Tehran, 1957, with extensive commentaries). The narrative, proceeding from Rašid-al-Din’s Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ, extends until the reign of Timur and contains important material on the ethnogenesis of the Timurids (Storey-Bregel, p. 339; Woods, 1987, p. 90). Graphic dynastic tables included in the book are an original feature of Naṭanzi’s representation of history (Aigle, 1992). Ḥasan b. Šehāb Yazdi (d. after 855/1451), also formerly in the service of Eskandar b. ʿOmar-Šayḵ at Shiraz, wrote the Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ-e ḥasani (ed. Ḥ. Modarressi Ṭabāṭabāʾi and Iraj Afšār, Karachi, 1987) and dedicated it to Mo-ḥammad b. Mirzā Bāysonḡor. Too easily dismissed in Storey-Bregel (p. 358) as not interesting, the chronicle adds quite independent and therefore valuable information on the early Timurid period in central Iran (Soucek). An untitled text on Timurid genealogy, also written for Eskandar b. ʿOmar-Šayḵ in 816/1413 (ms. Istanbul, Topkapı Saray, B.411), is sometimes referred to as “A Synoptic Account of the House of Timur” (Thackston, 1989, pp. 237-46). The author’s name is not quoted but it could be a work by Naṭanzi (Soucek, p. 76). The Foṣul al-solṭāniya fi oṣul al-ensāniya is another anonymous genealogical work written probably in Fārs and dedicated to its Timurid governor Ebrāhim-Solṭān b. Šāhroḵ (818-38/1415-35; Storey-Bregel, pp. 354-55). It is concerned with genealogies of tribes and dynasties, including Timur’s, with special attention to ʿAlid lines.

Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (d. 833/1430; q.v.) started his career at Timur’s court and flourished under Šāhroḵ (Storey-Bregel, pp. 341-49, 818; Tauer, 1963). He is the author of several chronicles of the early Timurid dynasty, based on Šāmi and Naṭanzi, and on other sources which are lost today (Woods, 1987, p. 99; Bernardini, 2003, n. 13). He is the author of the Ḏayl (Continuation) of the Ẓafar-nāma-ye Šāmi, written in 814/1412 (ed. F. Tauer, Prague, 1934), and the Tāriḵ-e Šāhroḵ (three versions are known, the narrative carried down to 816/1413, 819/1416, and 830/1426-27 respectively). The Ḏayl and the second revision of the Tāriḵ-e Šāhroḵ were included in his compilation known as Majmuʿa-ye Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru, while its third version forms the last section of his Zubdat al-tawāriḵ (ed. K. Javādi, Tehran, 1993), included in Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru’s world history titled Majmaʿ al-tawāriḵ. The Zubdat al-tawāriḵ is dedicated to Mirzā Bāysonḡor, son of Šāhroḵ (Tauer, 1932; 1934; 1963). In 832/1427-28, Šaraf-al-Din ʿAli Yazdi (d. 858/1454) completed his Ẓafar-nāma (ed. M. ʿAbbāsi, Tehran, 1957; ed. A. Urinboev, Tashkent, 1972) at the court of Ebrāhim-Solṭān b. Šāhroḵ, governor of Fārs (Storey-Bregel, pp. 797-807). Yazdi’s work, containing the history of Timur and Ḵalil-Solṭān in Samarkand (r. 807-11/1405-9), achieved great popularity and was extensively drawn upon by later historiographers for its data on early Timurid chronology, genealogy, etc. The text generated several abridgements in Timurid and later periods, especially in Iran and India (list in Storey-Bregel, pp. 806-7). The importance of Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nāma has recently been confirmed by modern scholarship (Woods, 1987, p. 100; Ando, 1995).

The anonymous Moʿezz al-ansāb fi šajarat al-ansāb (ms. Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Persan 67) is a genealogical work dedicated to the houses of Čengiz Khan and Timur, commissioned by Šāhroḵ and composed in 830/1426 (Storey-Bregel, pp. 818-19; Woods, 1987, p. 93; Ando, 1992; Quinn). Faṣiḥ Ḵᵛāfi (Faṣiḥ Aḥmad b. Jalāl-al-Din Moḥammad, d. after 845/1442), a court official first in the service of Šāhroḵ, then of Mirzā Bāysonḡor, is the author of an important historical and biographical compilation titled Mojmal-e faṣiḥi (ed. M. Farroḵ, Ma-šhad, 1960-62; Russian tr. D. Yu. Yusupova, Tashkent, 1980). The narrative extends until the year 845/1441-42. The epilogue (ḵātema) is entirely devoted to the description of Herat (Bartol’d, I, p. 104; ed. Yusupova, Introd.). In the latter part of the century, this special attention to Herat would become characteristic of Timurid historiography (see below). Around 831/1428, Moḥammad b. Fażl-Allāh Musawi, originally of Khorasan, wrote Tāriḵ-e ḵayrāt or Aṣaḥḥ al-tawāriḵ, a world history up to the death of Timur (807/1405), later extended by himself or another author up to the death of Šāhroḵ (850/1447) (Storey-Bregel, pp. 352-53; Bartol’d, VIII, pp. 105, 323-27). Between 838/1434 and 850/1447, Moḥammad b. Maḥmud Fušanji “Masiḥi” produced for Šāhroḵ the ʿEbrat al-nāẓerin, an abridged history of the world up to the death of Timur, a close compilation of earlier authors, with an opening chapter on Herat city (Storey-Bregel, pp. 353-54; Bartol’d, VIII, p. 406).

Second half of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. Kamāl-al-Din Razzāq Samarqandi (d. 887/1482), court official in the service of Šāhroḵ, wrote a chronicle of the Timurid dynasty titled Maṭlaʿ al-saʿdayn wa maj-maʿ al-baḥrayn (ed. M. Šafiʿ, Lahore, 1360-68/1941-49; ed. A. Urunboev, Tashkent, 1969; ed. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Navāʾi, Tehran, 1974), for which the Zobdat al-tawāriḵ of Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru was the main source (Storey-Bregel, pp. 820 ff.; Urinboev; Bernardini, 2003, n. 17). The narrative goes from 704/1304-5 (birth of the last Il-khanid ruler Abu Saʿid-Solṭān) until 875/1470 (second accession of Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā). Mir ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi (d. 906/1501), court dignitary and intimate of Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā, wrote two short chronicles of ancient prophets, sages, and Iranian kings of pre-Islamic times under the titles Tāriḵ-e anbiyā wa ḥokamā and Tāriḵ-e moluk-e ʿAjam (ed. in Alisher Navoi, Sochineniya XIV, Tashkent, 1967). Both works, in the Chaghatay language, were composed between 890/1485 and 904/1498-99 (Volin, pp. 205, 207; Ḵalilov; Storey-Bregel, pp. 718-19).

The historiography of the later Timurid period can certainly be viewed as dominated by a line of historiographers: Mirḵvand,Ḵᵛāndamir, and—in the early post-Timurid period in Herat—Amir Maḥmud (Szuppe, 1992, pp. 49-60). Moḥammad b. Borhān-al-Din Ḵᵛānd-šāh known as Mirkᵛānd (d. 903/1498), from a Bukharan sayyed family established in Balkh, is probably the best known Persian historiographer, together with his grandson Ḵᵛāndamir. Mirḵᵛānd spend his adult life in the service of the Timurid court at Herat under the patronage of Mir ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi. He wrote a world history in seven volumes and an epilogue (ḵātema), titled Rawżat al-ṣafā fi sirat al-anbiyā wa’l-moluk wa’l-ḵolafā (ed. ʿA. Parviz, Tehran, 1960-72), extending until the reign of Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (875-912/1470-1506) and his descendants in Herat (Storey-Bregel, pp. 361-78). The last volume of this work, as well as the epilogue—devoted to geography—were obviously written by Ḵᵛāndamir after the death of Mirḵᵛānd. Ḡiāṯ-al-Din b. Homām-al-Din Moḥammad known as Ḵᵛāndamir (d. 941/1534-35), Mirkᵛānd’s grandson by a daughter, spent his life at the Herat court before leaving for India in 934/1528 and joining the service of Ẓahir-al-Din Bābor (r. 932-37 /1526-30) (Storey-Bregel, pp. 379-93). In Herat, he had been introduced into the literary circles by his own grandfather, and he worked under the patronage of the Timurid royal court, and then of the Safavid provincial court (Subtelny; Szuppe, 1992, pp. 55-57). Ḵᵛāndamir is the author of the Ḵolāṣat al-aḵbār fi bayān aḥwāl al-aḵyār (partial ed. G. Eʿtemādi, Kabul, 1966), an abridgement of the Rawżat al-ṣafā compiled in or before 905/1499-1500 and dedicated to Mir ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi (on the autograph of the Ḵolāṣat al-aḵbār, see Piemontese). The chronicle contains a large part devoted to the description of Herat and its famous inhabitants. His main historical work is the Ḥabib al-siar fi aḵbār afrād al-bašar (ed. J. Homāʾi, Tehran, 1954; 1972; 1983; partial English tr. W. M. Thackston, Cambridge, Mass., 1994), a world history in four volumes, dedicated to the Safavid governor of Herat Ḵᵛāja Ḥabib-Allāh Sāvaji (d. 932/1526). The narrative extends until 930/1524. The second edition of this work was completed in 935/1529 in India by the author himself (Miklukho-Maklaĭ; Szuppe 1992, pp. 55-56). Mirḵᵛānd’s Rawżat al-ṣafā and Kᵛāndamir’s Ḥabib al-siar are monuments of late Timurid prose historiography for their flowery and highly intricate style as well as for the careful historical approach to the sources the authors used and collated, both written and oral. Mirḵᵛānd’s and Ḵᵛāndamir’s works subsequently enjoyed a widespread and continuous popularity, as can be seen from hundreds of manuscripts still extant that have been copied over the centuries in all parts of the Muslim world.

Post-Timurid chronicles. Historiographers of Transoxiana and Khorasan of the early 16th century were directly formed by the Timurid tradition and depended on it heavily, regardless of whether they exercised their activity under the Safavid, Uzbek, or Mughal political regimes. Many of them had started their career in the Timurid period, and they continued it under the patronage of new rulers. In 937/1531 in Safavid Herat, Amir Ṣadr-al-Din Solṭān-Ebrāhim “Amini” (d. 941/1535) completed his Fotuḥāt-e šāhi, a history of Šāh Esmāʿil Ṣafawi commissioned by the shah ten years earlier (Storey-Bregel, pp. 850-52). This book had two versions: one in prose and the other in verse (Szuppe, 1992, pp. 54-55; Aubin, 1995). Amir Maḥmud, son of Ḵᵛāndamir (d. after 957/1550) is the author of the Tāriḵ-e Šāh Esmāʿil-e awwal wa Šāh Ṭahmāsb (ed. Ḡ.-R. Ṭabāṭabāʾi, Tehran, 1991; ed. M.-ʿA. Jarrāḥi, Tehran, 1991), also known as the Ḏayl-e tāriḵ-e ḥabib al-siar since it was conceived as a continuation of Ḵᵛāndamir’s chronicle (Storey-Bregel, pp. 854-55). Although Amir Maḥmud drew heavily on the Ḥabib al-siar in the first part of the book, the second part is entirely original and extends to 957/1550 (Szuppe, 1992, pp. 57-59). In the Uzbek realm, Kamāl-al-Din Šir-ʿAli “Banāʾi” (d. 918/1512) wrote a history of the Shaybanid ruler Moḥammad Khan, the first version of which was titled Šaybāni-nāma (ed. K. Kubo, in A Synthetical Study on Central Asian Culture in the Turco-Islamic Period, directed by Eiji Mano. Research Report, Kyoto, March 1997, pp. 26-68) and the enlarged version, the Fotuḥāt-e ḵāni (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1116-19; Mirzoev). This chronicle was among Ḵᵛāndamir’s sources for the history of the Uzbek khans in his Ḥabib al-siar.

Historical poetry. In addition to chronicles in prose, which usually contain many poetic quotations, historical epic poems can be included, under some conditions, among the historiographical writings (Fragner, p. 61). Their specific value as historical sources has recently been convincingly argued for as illustrated by the Teymur-nāma-ye / Ẓafar-nāma-ye Hātefi, a maṯnavi by ʿAbd-Allāh Hātefi (ed. A. H. S. Yušaʿ, Madras, 1958), dedicated to Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (Bernardini, 1996; Bernardini, 2003). Hātefi used the Ẓafar-nāma of Yazdi as his main source. This genre became extremely popular in the late Timurid period. Even after the fall of the Timurids (913/1507), it produced several important texts which, although chronologically part of Safavid or Uzbek literatures, clearly belong to the Timurid tradition; such is Hātefi’s Esmāʿil-nāma, written in Herat in 917/1511-12 by commission of the Safavid shah (Storey-Bregel, p. 852). The genre continued in the Safavid period, as can be seen from the example of Mirzā Moḥammad-Qāsem Qāsemi Jonābādi’s (d. 982/1574-75) maṯnavi poems of šāh-nāma type, written over the years 930-967/1524-60, and devoted to the histories of Šāhroḵ, Shah Esmāʿil Ṣafawi, and Shah Ṭahmāsb Ṣafawi (Storey-Bregel, pp. 839-40; Bernardini, 1996). In Transoxiana, Moḥammad-Ṣāleḥ (d. 941/1534-35) composed a versified history of the Shaybanids in Chaghatay, titled Šaybāni-nāma (ed. P. M. Melioranskiĭ, St. Petersburg, 1908; ed. N. Dawrān, Tashkent, 1961; ed. E. Shadiev, Tashkent, 1989).

BIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

Collections of biographies(taḏkera). Biographical writings until the later Timurid period were traditionally concerned with the lives of saints and religious scholars and were sometimes translations or developments of Arabic originals, e.g., ʿAbd-Allāh Anṣāri Heravi’s Ṭabaqāt-e ṣufiya (early 11th cent.) and Farid-al-Din ʿAṭṭār Nišāpuri’s Taḏkerat al-awliāʾ (early 13th cent.). Quite exceptionally, in about 618/1221-22, Moḥammad ʿAwfi, of Bukharan origin but having lived in Samarkand and trav-eled all over Ḵᵛārazm and Khorasan before going to Sind in about 617/1220, wrote the Lobāb al-albāb (ed. E. G. Browne, London and Leiden, 1903-6), which is considered to be the first Persian collection of literary biographies (Storey, no. 1088). It was only at the end of the 15th century that the literary taḏkera was revived and renewed. ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmi’s (d. 898/1492) collection of saintly biographies, the Nafaḥāt al-ons (ed. M. Taw-ḥidipur, Tehran, 1957; ed. al-Azhar al-Šarif, Cairo, 1989; ed. Maḥmud ʿAbedi, Tehran, 1992), compiled in 881/1476, prefigured the imminent evolution of the hagiographical taḏkera by including some entries on Sufi poets. But it was the celebrated Taḏkera-ye šoʿarā (ed. M. ʿAbbāsi, Tehran, 1958; ed. M. Ramażāni, Tehran, 1987), written in 892/1487 in Herat by Dawlatšāh b. ʿAlāʾ-al-Dawla Baḵtišāh Samarqandi (d. ca. 900/1494), that marked an important stage in the development of the Persian taḏkera (J. T. P. de Bruijn, “Tadhkira, 2, In Persian literature,” in EI2). It created a new canon for modern collections of biographies by enlarging it to include biographies of non-religious personalities and poets of all social classes, and systematically opening it to biographies of an author’s contemporaries. This approach led to the further development of Timurid historiography in the direction of personal memoirs and autobiographical writings (see below).

In 896/1490-91, Mir ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi composed the Ma-jāles al-nafāyes in Chaghatay (Storey, no. 1094; Browne, Lit. Hist. Persia III, pp. 437-39), which was translated into Persian for the first time by Faḵri Heravi in 928/1522-23 as Laṭāyef-nāma (other Persian translations are listed under Storey, no. 1094, pp. 792-95). Faḵri Heravi added some data on his own contemporaries and dedicated the book to the Safavid governor of Herat, Ḵᵛāja Ḥabib-Allāh Sāvaji (ed. ʿA.-A. Ḥekmat, Tehran, 1945; repr. Tehran, 1974). Navāʾi includes biographies of celebrities of his time and professional and amateur poets (e.g., the historiographer Mirkvānd). Other collections of biographies of the late Timurid period are: Majāles al-ʿoššāq, compiled in 908-909/1502-3 by the Timurid dignitary Kamāl-al-Din Ḥosayn Gāzorgāhi Ṭabasi (author identified by F. Richard, p. 197) for the ruler Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (mentioning poets of his time, including Jāmi); Rawżat al-šohadā (ed. A.-Ḥ. Šeʿrāni, Tehran, 1979; ed. ʿA. Baḵšāyeši, Qom, 2000) by Ḥosayn b. ʿAli Kāšefi Herāti “Wāʿeẓ” (d. 910/1504-5), consisting of biographies of imams and martyrs, which is of less interest from the historical point of view, though it was capital for Shiʿite milieus and conditioned many later authors of epic literature; and the Rašaḥāt-e ʿayn al-ḥayāt (ed. ʿAli-Aṣḡar Moʿiniān, Tehran, 2536=1356 Š./1977), composed in 909/1503-4 by Faḵr-al-Din ʿAli Kāšefi (d. 939/1532-33), son of Wāʿeẓ Kāšefi, which should be mentioned here for its contemporary material on the Naqš-bandi Sufi order. In the following decades, many taḏ-keras were written by authors emerging directly from the Timurid tradition. Among them, Ḵvāndamir wrote a rare collection of biographies of dignitaries and high state officials, the Dastur al-wozarāʾ, in 915/1509-10 (ed. Saʿid Nafisi, Tehran, 2535=1355 Š./1976; see Lambton; Tauer, 1968, pp. 449, 454). Solṭān-Moḥammad “Faḵri” of Herat (d. after 963/1555-56), a prolific author and the translator of Navāʾi’s Majāles al-nafāyes (see above), around 958/1551 composed the Rawżat al-salāṭin (ed. A. Ḵay-yāmpur, Tabriz, 1966; ed. S. H. Rashdi, Hyderabad, 1968). Another of Faḵri Heravi’s works is the first known Persian taḏkera exclusively describing famous women poets, called Jawāher al-ʿajāyeb (lith. Lakhnaw, 1873; ed. S. H. Rashdi, Hyderabad, 1968, pp. 111-42, in one volume with Faḵri’s Rawżat al-salāṭin and Divān) and written in 963/1555-56 at the court of the Arḡuns in Sind (Szuppe, 1996b). Faḵri’s two taḏkeras include prominent people of the Timurid cultural sphere of the 15th and early 16th centuries who wrote verse both in Persian and in Chaghatay (Szuppe, 1996a, pp. 160-161; Szuppe, 1996b). The Timurid and later taḏkeras must be treated with great caution when exploited for historical research, because they contain many inaccuracies. However, they cannot be overlooked, being first-hand sources for literary and intellectual history that have been brought into existence by the literary tradition itself (de Bruijn).

Individual biographies, and memoirs. Traditionally, medieval Muslim historical literature was rarely concerned with individual biographies. These were mostly hagiographical accounts of the lives of saints and mystics of Islam (see, e.g., Storey, no. 1251 for biographies of ʿAbd-al-Qāder Gilāni, or Storey, no. 1253 for Jalāl-al-Din Rumi). In the late Timurid period, a particular type of historico-biographical writing developed in parallel to the literary taḏkera genre (see above): individual biographies and—what appears as a complete novelty—memoirs, providing a different approach to historical events. The memorialists express direct personal views; they include anecdotes of everyday life, and, generally speaking, much data that is lacking in official historiography. In 906/1501, Ḵᵛāndamir wrote Makārem al-aḵlāq (ed. T. Gandjeï, Gibb Memorial Series, London, 1979; ed. M. A. ʿAšiq, Tehran, 1999), a glorified history of the life and good deeds of his patron, Mir-ʿAli Šir Navāʾi. This book offers contemporary historical information such as data on building activities in Herat and Khorasan (Storey, no. 1096; Szuppe, 1992, p. 50). In Transoxiana, an émigré from Timurid Herat, Zayn-al-Din Maḥmud b. ʿAbd-al-Jalil “Wāṣefi” (b. 890/1485), wrote a book of personal memoirs, the Badāyeʿ al-waqāyeʿ (ed. A. N. Boldyrev, Stalinabad, 1957; Moscow, 1961; repr., Tehran, 1971; Storey-Bregel, pp. 1123-27). Wāṣefi’s memoirs describe the end of the Timurid period in Khorasan. They offer a unique and fascinating eyewitness view of Herat society (Boldyrev, 1957; Subtelny; Szuppe, 1992, pp. 51-53; Pistoso; Rota; Szuppe, 1996a, pp. 156-58).

The most famous of all Timurid memoirs is certainly the Bābor-nāma (ed. E. Mano, Kyoto, 1995), also called Wāqeʿāt-e Bābori or Tozuk-e Bābori, written in Chaghatay during the years 926-37/1520-30 by Ẓahir-al-Din Moḥammad Bābor (r. 932-37/1526-30), founder of the Mughal dynasty (Storey-Bregel, pp. 828-38). Bābor gives an account of his intricate genealogical and kinship links and narrates his life and struggle for political power in Transoxiana, Khorasan, and India (all manuscripts contain a lacuna for the years 915-24/1509-18) (Dale, 1990). The book includes important geographical descriptions, and especially data on the topography of Samarkand and Herat. The Bābor-nāma has been translated into Persian many times since the early 16th century (list given in Storey-Bregel, pp. 835-38), as well as several European languages (tr. A. S. Beveridge, New Delhi, 1922; repr., 1979; for others, see the list in Storey-Bregel, pp. 833-34, to which must be added: tr. Wheeler M. Thackston, New York and Oxford, 1996, and tr. into French, J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, Paris, 1985). The memoir genre was continued in India by Bābor’s own daughter, Golbadan Begom (q.v.), who wrote the Homāyun-nāma (ed. and tr. A. S. Beveridge, London, 1902; Delhi, 1974; Lahore, 1972; recent French tr., P. Piffaretti and J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, Paris, 1996; and many others), a historico-biographical work of the imperial family dedicated to Homāyun b. Bābor (r. 937-47/1530-40 and 962-63/1555-56). In the Chaghatay realm, the second volume of the work by Bābor’s cousin, Mirzā Moḥammad-Ḥaydar Duḡlāt (d. 958/1551), completed in 953/1546 under the title Tāriḵ-e Rašidi (ed. and tr. W. M. Thackston, Cambridge, Mass., 1996; tr. E. Denison Ross, London, 1895, 1898, and multiple reprints; Russian tr. A. Urunbaev, R. P. Dzhalilova, and L. M. Epifanova, Tashkent, 1996), falls into the same category of historical memoirs that are related to the Timurid tradition (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1202-6). Finally, in 1047/1637-38 the post-Timurid milieu of the Mughal court produced a Persian translation of a supposed autobiographical account written or dictated in Chaghatay by Timur, the Malfuẓāt-e Teymuri and Tozuk-e Teymuri (list of European translations in Storey-Bregel, pp. 791; lith. ed., Bombay, 1880; ed. M. Minovi, Tehran, 1963; ed. and tr., Tashkent, 1996). This translation, by Moḥammad Afżal Boḵāri on Šāh-Jahān’s order, was a heavily revised version of an earlier translation by Abu Ṭāleb Ḥosayni also commissioned by Šāh-Jahān but dismissed as too different from the standard history based on the Ẓafar-nāma of Šaraf-al-Din ʿAli Yazdi. The modern discussion of the genuineness of the Malfuẓāt and Tozuk-e Teymuri has been complicated by the existence of two Persian versions (their manuscripts are not differentiated in Storey-Bregel, pp. 791 ff.), as well as of numerous secondary translations from Persian back into Chaghatay. Although today it is generally considered a fake, recent research has produced new arguments in favor of the originality of Abu Ṭāleb Ḥosayni’s translation, based on internal evidence of the comparison of manuscripts of the two Persian versions (Habib, pp. 305-9). Whichever way the controversy may be settled, the text will remain an important source for ideological developments of the Mughal state in relation to their Timurid origin.

LOCAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Chronicles. Regional histories and descriptions of towns and localities seem to have been particularly frequent in Khorasan since the Samanid period (Rosenthal, 1968, pp. 160-66; Lambton, 1991; Meisami, pp. 9-10; Paul, 2000). In the Timurid period, local historiography achieved a great popularity and flourished to an unparalleled degree. Though the following centuries saw occasional works such as the Jāmeʿ-e Mofidi of Moḥammad-Mofid Mostawfi Yazdi (1090/1679), it is only from the 19th century onward that interest in local historiography became manifest again. In the 15th century, some universal chronicles included chapters on the topography of towns or regions (e.g., Faṣiḥ Aḥmad Ḵᵛāfi’s Mojmal-e fa-ṣiḥi, or Ḵᵛāndamir’s Ḵolāṣat al-aḵbār, see above). The Tāriḵ-e Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (or Joḡrāfiā) is an important contribution to the topography of Khorasan in the early Timurid period (ed. Māyel Heravi, Tehran, 1970; ed. D. Krawulsky, Wiesbaden, 1982-84; ed. Ṣ. Sajjādi, Tehran, 1996-99). In the later Timurid period, Moʿin-al-Din Mo-ḥammad Zamči Esfezāri, a court official in the service of the vizier Qawām-al-Din Neẓām-al-Molk (d. 903/1498), dedicated to his patron a chronicle of Herat written in 899/1493-94, the Rawżat al-jannāt fi awṣāf madinat Herāt (ed. S. M. K. Emām, Tehran, 1959-60; Storey-Bregel, pp. 1045-48). Five initial chapters are devoted to the geography of Khorasan; others contain important information on the topography and the urban setting of Herat (Barbier de Meynard, 1860-62). An important history of Yazd was written ca. 845-50/1441-47 by Jaʿfar b. Mo-ḥammad al-Ḥosayni “Jaʿfari” with the title Tāriḵ-e Yazd (ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1960; 2nd ed. 1964-65), extending from the earliest times to the reign of Šāhroḵ (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1021-22). Jaʿfari’s history was followed by the Tāriḵ-e jadid-e Yazd (ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1966) of Aḥmad b. Ḥosayn b. ʿAli Kāteb, whose work, dated between 862/1458 and 872/1467 in Yazd, was entirely based on his predecessor’s, although it was composed under the new political regime of the Qarā Qoyunlu sultans (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1022-23).

Bio-geographical writings; pilgrimage guides. Timurid learned literature developed an original type of local historiographical writing, namely the pilgrimage guides describing the topography of the shrines (mazār) in one given geographical area, together with biographies of the saints buried there. Their origin could certainly be found in earlier traditional taḏkeras of pre-Mongol times that were partly devoted to recounting the lives of noble and saintly men, in Arabic (Paul, 2000, pp. 102-3), such as al-Qand fi maʿrefat ʿolamāʾ Samarqand by ʿOmar b. Moḥammad al-Nasafi (12th cent.) (ed. Y. al-Hādi, Tehran, 1999). The rare Fażāyel-e Balḵ (ed. ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy Ḥa-bibi, Tehran, 1971), describing the history, topography, and lives of important religious personalities of Balkh, is a Persian translation of an Arabic original of the early 13th century written by ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿOmar Balḵi. Although the Persian translation was apparently made by ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad b. Moḥammad Balḵi at the end of the 13th century, the only extant manuscript of this text dates to the end of the Timurid period (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1053-54; for the histories of Balkh, see the unpublished thesis by Ulrike Berndt cited by Paul, 2000, n. 46). Under the Timurids, this type of literature appeared on a larger scale and directly in Persian. It also frequently included guidelines and rules for performing local pilgrimage rites. Its popularity could be linked with the growing social influence of Sufi structures in Central Asia and Khorasan. For the first time, this literature is represented by Aḥmad b. Maḥmud “Moʿin-al-foqarā,” author of the Ketāb-e Mollā-zāda (lith. Bukhara-Kagan, 1322/1904-5; ed. A. Golčin Maʿāni, Tehran, 1960), written in Bukhara in the first half of the 15th century and describing the topography and history of mazārs of Bukhara and its surrounding area (Storey-Bregel, p. 1115). For Samarkand, the Qandiya-ye ḵurd or Kitāb al-Qand fi taʾriḵ Samarqand (ed. Mollā ʿAbd-al-Ḥakim Tājer, Samarkand 1327/1909; re-ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1955; partial Russian tr. V. L. Vyatkin in Spravochnaya knizhka samarkandskoĭ oblasti VIII, Samarkand, 1906, pp. 235-90) was most probably compiled during the later Timurid period (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1113-15; two versions are known). It is not, as previously thought, a simple translation into Persian of the above-mentioned Arabic al-Qand fi maʿrefat ʿolamāʾ Samarqand of al-Nasafi, although it is partly based on it. It contains original material dating back to the 10th century and including traditions referring to the pre-Islamic history of Samarkand, as well as data on the city’s topography and early Islamic history, and biographies of its saintly men extending up to the 15th and early 16th centuries (Weinberger; Paul, 1993).

For Herat, Aṣil-al-Din ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Ḥosayni “Wāʿeẓ” (d. 883/1478) compiled the Maqṣad al-eqbāl al-solṭāniya wa marṣad al-aʿmāl al-ḵāqāniya, also known as Mazārāt-e Herāt (ed. ʿAbd al-Karim Aḥ-rāri, Herat, 1931-32; ed. Fekri Saljuqi, Kabul, 1967; ed. Māyel Heravi, Tehran, 1972). The text was commissioned by the Timurid ruler Solṭān-Abu Saʿid (r. 855-73/1451-69; Storey-Bregel, pp. 1048-49; the Tashkent Biruni Institute ms. no. 9946 should be added to the list of mss.). Incorporating oral traditions for the contemporary or near-contemporary period, the work describes the celebrated shrines of Herat and its surroundings, and includes biographies of people buried there until 864/1459-60. A continuation of the Maqṣad al-eqbāl was written in the late 18th century by ʿObayd-Allāh b. Abu Saʿid Heravi (ed. Fekri Saljuqi, Kabul, 1967; ed. Māyel Heravi, Tehran, 1972, together with the original Maqṣad al-eqbāl). In Balkh, the rare Tāriḵ-e mazārāt-e Balḵ was written by Moḥammad-Ṣāleḥ b. Amir ʿAbd-Allāh b. Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān in about 990/1582. The text, although very late, clearly belongs to the Timurid tradition; possibly the author is related to the author of the Maqṣad al-eqbāl (see above), though not necessarily his son (Storey-Bregel, p. 1053). In Samarkand, the 19th-century Samariya by Abu Ṭāher Ḵᵛāja (ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1955, based on S. Veselovskiĭ’s edition, St. Petersburg, 1904) is the best known among late pilgrimage guides describing the shrines of the city and rooted in the Timurid tradition (Paul, 1993, pp. 75-76, 80-81 and n. 32 for late Bukharan and Herat pilgrimage guides).

HISTORIOGRAPHY vi. SAFAVID PERIOD

Safavid historiography, although developing unique features of its own, had its origins in the eastern Timurid tradition that was centered in Herat (Aubin, p. 248). Many, if not most, Safavid historians praised earlier Timurid histories as works worthy of emulation. For example, Ebrā-him Amini, author of Foṭuḥāt-e šāhi, the earliest Safavid history (comp. 1531), mentions Šaraf-al-Din ʿAli Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nāma (comp. 831/1427-28) in his preface, as does Eskandar Beg Torkamān, author of the ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿab-bāsi (q.v.). Other Safavid writers use Timurid histories as models, both in terms of content and structure. A secondary influence on Safavid historians is the western Turkman historiographical tradition. Safavid writers narrated earlier events in western Persia, based on sources such as Abu Bakr Ṭehrāni’s Ketāb-e Diārbakriya and Fażl-Allāh Ḵonji Eṣfahāni’s ʿĀlamārā-ye amini on the history of the Āq Qoyunlu (Woods, p. 223). In this way, the two historiographical strands of the Timurids in the east and the Turkmans in the west came together in the hands of Safavid historians. Despite these antecedents, as the dynasty solidified its rule, Safavid historiography developed its own distinctive features.

In 1519-20, Ṣadr-al-Din Ebrāhim Amini started writing the first history after the establishment of the Safavid state. His book, Fotuḥāt-e šāhi, is a general history with sections on the Imams, the Safavid Sufi order, and the career of Shah Esmāʿil I (q.v.). Amini, who lived in Herat, first served as ṣadr under the Timurids Sultan Ḥosayn Bayqarā and Moẓaffar Ḥosayn Mirzˊā. Subsequent to a period of imprisonment following the Uzbek takeover of Khorasan, Amini met Shah Esmāʿil, who commissioned the Fotuḥāt-e šāhi. Although a detailed study of this text and its sources has not yet been undertaken, Amini appears to have relied on the hagiographical Ṣafwat al-ṣafā (comp. 1334) by Ebn Bazzāz (q.v.) for his section on the Safavid shaikhs.

At approximately the same time that Amini was writing his chronicle, his colleague Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Ḵvāndamir composed the Ḥabib al-siar, which he completed a few months after the death of Shah Esmāʿil in 1524. The book is dedicated to Karim-al-Din Ḵᵛāja Ḥabib-Allāh Sāvaji, whom Shah Esmāʿil had appointed vizier of Herat after capturing the city from the Uzbeks. Ḵvāndamir was the maternal grandson of Mirḵᵛānd (1433-98), the celebrated late Timurid historian who enjoyed the patronage of the Timurid vizier, ʿAli-Šir Navāʾi. Ḵvāndamir modeled his Ḥabib al-siar largely on his grandfather’s Rawżat al-ṣafā, the last volume of which he himself had written, thereby historiographically bridging the Timurid and Safavid dynasties. For his section on the Safavids, Ḵvānd-amir, like Amini, relied mostly on the Ṣafwat al-ṣafā. Together, Amini and Ḵvāndamir form the first generation of Safavid historians.

It was not until after Shah Esmāʿil’s death, however, that Safavid historiography truly began to flourish. No fewer than six major histories, including Qāżi Aḥmad Ḡaffāri’s Nosaḵ-e jahānārā (972/1564-5) and ʿAbdi Beg Shirāzi’s (1525-80) Takmelat al-akbār (comp. 1570) were composed during the combined reigns of Ṭahmāsb (1524-76) and Esmāʿil II (1576-77). This second generation of historians continued to develop the historiographical patterns and styles which were established by Amini and Ḵvāndamir and which later came to characterize Safavid historiography. Among this group was Amir Maḥmud, son of Ḵvāndamir, who considered his work, completed in 1550, a continuation (ḏayl) of his father’s Ḥabib al-siar. At the end of Esmāʿil II’s reign, in 1577, a Qezelbāš qorči, Ḥasan Beg Rumlu (b. 938/1531-32), completed his Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ (qq.v.), an important 12-volume history, of which only two volumes have survived, which became a source that later Safavid historians often cite. With the exception of Amir Maḥmud, who wrote in Herat, all of the second-generation Safavid historians composed their works in the capital city of Qazvin. Shah Ṭahmāsb himself wrote his memoirs in about 1561-62; unlike his Mughal counterparts, he was the only Safavid monarch to do so.

Esmāʿil II’s successor, Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda (r. 1578-87), does not seem to have officially commissioned any historical works, so the historians of Shah ʿAbbās (r. 1588-1629) started writing following a ten-year historiographical lapse. This point was noted by Qāżi Aḥmad Qomi (b. 1546) who, lacking a patron, took it upon himself to write the Ḵolāṣatal-tawāriḵ (comp. 1591), one of the first works produced during ʿAbbās’s reign. When ʿAbbās I took over the Safavid throne, he faced a chaotic and unstable situation, where his greatest challenge was recovering his own empire from the various Qezelbāš factions that had enjoyed increasing power during the preceding decade. As he gradually consolidated his rule, historical writing diversified further. Towards the end of Shah ʿAbbās’s life, Qāzi Aḥmad’s student, Eskandar Beg Torkamān (1560-1632), completed one of the best known works of the Safavid era, the ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi (comp. 1629). Both the Ḵolāṣat al-tawāriḵ and the ʿĀlamārā contain many elements that had by then become standard in Safavid chronicles, including the Safavid genealogy, tracing the dynasty back to Imam Musā al-Kāẓem (745-99), the seventh Imam of the Twelver Shiʿites, and accounts of the dynasties origins as a Sufi order in Ardabil. At the same time, poets such as Qadri wrote the versified works Jang-nāma-ye Kešm and the Jarun-nāma about the expulsion of the Portuguese from Qešm and Hormoz islands (Storey, I, p. 309; Ṣafā, Adabiyāt V, pp. 579-81); and historians composed narratives devoted to individual battles, such as Siāqi Neẓām’s (1551-1602) Fotuḥāt-e homāyun, which is devoted to the 1598 campaign of Shah ʿAbbās in Khorasan. Finally, Jalāl al-Din Monajjem Yazdi, the first Safavid court astrologer to write a history, completed his Tāriḵ-e ʿabbāsi in about 1611.

Safavid historiography continued to develop after Shah ʿAbbās. The impact of ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi cannot be overemphasized here, for many later historians such as Waliqoli Šāmlu, author of Qeṣaṣ al-ḵāqāni, used this work as a model. Under Shah Ṣafi, Eskandar Beg himself started a continuation (ḏayl) of his ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi, which was finished by another author, while Mirzā Beg Jonābadi’s Rawżat al-Ṣafawiya continued the older and ornate style of the early Herat histories. At the same time, other chroniclers chose simpler writing styles. Moḥammad-Maʿsum b. Ḵᵛājagi Eṣfahāni, for instance, appears to have deliberately rejected Eskandar Beg’s mode of writing, as he mentions in the preface to his ḴolāsÂat al-siar (comp. 1642; Moḥammad-Maʿṣum, p. 29). Jalāl al-Din Monajjem Yazdi’s son, Mollā Kamāl, continued in his father’s historiographical footsteps and wrote his Zobdat al-tawāriḵ in 1652 (Monzawi, Nosḵahā VI, p. 4173).

Following the comparatively sparse historical output during the time of ʿAbbās II (r. 1642-66)—during which time, nevertheless, Moḥammad-Ṭāher Waḥid Qazvini composed his florid ʿAbbās-nāma—Safavid historiography particularly flourished under the rule of Shah Solaymān (r. 1666-94). Interestingly, none of these works narrates the reign of Solaymān himself. A brief sampling of historical works reflects the diversity of this era: the anonymous Šāhanšāh-nāma, a maṯnawi about Safavid history (Monzawi, Nosḵahā, VI, p. 4341); three “historical romances,” narrating in partly fictionalized form the heroic exploits of Shah Esmāʿil; Shaikh Ḥosayn Pirzāda Zāhedi’s Selselat al-nasab, a detailed genealogical work devoted to the early Safavid Sufi order (Monzawi, Nosḵahā, VI, p. 4328); and Waliqoli Šāmlu’s Qeṣaṣ al-ḵāqāni, an ornate history similar to the ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿab-bāsi. During the reign of Sultan Ḥosayn (r. 1694-1722), however, historical writing again decreased in volume. Among the histories written at that time were Moḥammad-Ebrāhim b. Zayn-al-ʿĀbedin Naṣiri’s Dastur-e Šahriā-rān, Mir Moḥammad-Saʿid Moširi Bardasiri’s Taḏkera-ye Ṣafawiya-ye Kermān, and Ḥosayn b. Mortażā Ḥosayn Estrābādi’s Tāriḵ-e solṭāni (1115/1703-4).

Throughout the Safavid period, historians used a number of different organizational frameworks in their narratives. Generally the formats of these works were either annalistic, thematic, or a combination of the two. Often, chroniclers narrated the reign of earlier Safavid kings according to theme, and then commenced with the annalistic divisions for the contemporary period. The chroniclers employed a number of dating systems to mark time. For instance, they used ḥejri years, regnal years (sāl-e jolus or sāl-e salṭanat), and Turkish animal years, and in a few cases tried to combine these, with less than perfect results (McChesney, 1980). Often, historians further broke down events by theme within the annalistic format (e.g., Qāẓi Aḥmad Qomi, Eskandar Beg).

Most of the histories written during the reigns of Es-māʿil I and Ṭahmāsb I were general histories. They include Ḵᵛāndamir’s Ḥabib al-siar, Yaḥyā Qazvini’s (1481-1555) Lobb al-tawāriḵ (comp. 1542), and Qāżi Aḥmad Ḡaffāri’s Nosaḵ-e jahānārā (comp. 1564). The initially large number of general histories probably reflects the fact that, in its earliest stages, the dynasty had not yet been in power for long; it was thus easier for chroniclers to append a section on Safavid history to the end of a general history, and at the same time politically legitimize the Safavids as the latest in a succession of dynasties to rule Persia.

By the time of Shah ʿAbbās, however, most Safavid historians were writing dynastic histories, either in the form of partial dynastic histories, such as Maḥmud b. Hedāyat-Allāh Afuštaʾi’s (b. 938/1531-2) Noqāwat al-āṯār (comp. 1598), covering the period of the end of Tahmāsb’s reign to ʿAbbās I, or full-fledged dynastic histories, such as Eskandar Beg’s ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi and Fażli Eṣfāhāni’s Afżal al-tawāriḵ (comp. 1639; Melville, forthcoming). This is not a clearly defined rule, however. During the later Safavid period, a number of general histories were written, including Qāżi Aḥmad’s Ḵolāṣat al-tawāriḵ. The unknown author of another work also entitled Ḵolāṣat al-tawāriḵ flourished during Shah ʿAbbās II’s reign and modeled his universal history on Yaḥyā Qazvini’s Lobb al-tawāriḵ, which dates to the time of Shah Ṭahmāsb (Dehqān, p. dāl).

Safavid historians largely utilized a technique of imitative writing when narrating the past. This practice consists of choosing an earlier text as a model, which the historian would “update,” making changes to reflect the stylistic, political, and legitimizing trends of his own time. The fact that the Safavids used this methodology allows us to trace relationships between various histories and discover which sources Safavid historians favored the most. When reading texts in light of their models, it becomes immediately apparent that the most popular tradition was late Timurid and Herat-based, as most chron-iclers used Miḵvānd’s Rawżat al-ṣafā and Ḵvāndamir’s Ḥabib al-siar. For example, several chroniclers writing during the reign of ʿAbbās I and later used these works as models for their prefaces, thereby perpetuating conventional elements in these early histories.

Aside from those histories imitating the early Herat narratives, other types of historical writing also enjoyed popularity in the Safavid period. For example, the reign of Shah Solaymān (1666-94) witnessed the composition of a number of histories focusing on the reigns of Shah Esmāʿil I and Shah Ṭahmāsb I. Relatively little is known about these narratives or the reasons they were written, but scholars have suggested that they seem to point to an “alternative” tradition of Safavid history, one that perhaps was intended for audiences of palace ḡolāms (Morton, 1990, p. 202). Nearly all anonymous, these histories are rich in dialogue and short on embellished phrases, although they draw on earlier texts, in particular Ḥasan Beg Rumlu’s Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ. The authors of these works rewrote the early Safavid past in order to cast certain individuals in a heroic light (Morton, 1990, pp. 203-4; Rota, pp. 166-67; Quinn, 1999). Although written down in the late Safavid period, it has been suggested that the origins of this type of history go back as early as the reign of Shah ʿAbbās (Rota; Morton, 1996; Melville, forthcoming).

Although Safavid historians continued many practices of Timurid historiography, they also expressed new concerns in their works. The most important of these was the establishment of Twelver Shiʿism as the new state religion by Shah Esmāʿil in Tabriz in 1501. This radical change in Persia’s state orientation reflects itself in historical writing. For instance, Safavid prefaces routinely contain praise of the twelve Imams, following the opening tribute to God and the Prophet Moḥammad. Various Safavid monarchs are referred to by phrases such as kalb-e āstān-e ʿAli (dog of the threshold of ʿAli), as seen in Yazdi’s Tāriḵ-e ʿabbāsi. Also, nearly every Safavid history contains a genealogy tracing the Safavid family back to Imam Musā al-Kāẓem, the seventh Imam of the Twelver Shiʿites. The most significant new structural elements in Safavid histories is a biography section. Drawing, perhaps, on the example of Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfi’s Tāriḵ-e gozida, Ḵvāndamir was the first Safavid historian to fuse biography type material with the historical chronicle at the end of each section of his Ḥabib al-siar; and later Safavid historians, such as Ḥasan Beg Rumlu, Qāżi Aḥmad Qomi, and Eskandar Beg continued the tradition (Beveridge and De Bruijn). Consequently, in addition to chronological narrative, many Safavid histories contain sections providing biographical information about significant military leaders, bureaucrats, artists, clerics, scholars, and other important high-ranking individuals.

Safavid historians seldom elaborated on their philosophical views of history or stated their purpose in writing, although they occasionally included such information in their prefaces, particularly if they were following Timurid models. It nevertheless is possible to obtain some sense of authors’ historical consciousness from the chronicles themselves. The king remains the point of focus in Safavid narratives, and the historians placed him at the core of all discussions. They were most keen to record all of his actions, including his military campaigns, his domestic policies, his treatment of adversaries, and his charitable activities. In various ways, Safavid historians promoted the king’s legitimate right to rule; and, as notions of legitimacy shifted and evolved over the generations of the Safavid dynasty, they rewrote earlier Safavid history in order to reflect those changes. In the case of the anony-mous histories, one of the reasons for composing them was to entertain. A. H. Morton has suggested that such texts might have been written for the sake of being read aloud in public. He cites the account of Michele Membre, an Italian traveler who visited Persia at the time of Shah Ṭahmāsb and described how individuals stood in the squares of Tabriz, reading about the battles of Shah Esmāʿil (Morton, 1996, pp. 44-45).

Individuals from diverse backgrounds such as government officials, secretaries, astrologers, religious figures, and ḡolāms engaged in historical writing. Some writers, such as Ḵvāndamir, were also poets and were attached to a particular literary court or circle. For instance, in addition to his Ḥabib al-siar, Ḵvāndamir wrote a number of poetic works, which he lists in the preface to his history. Although best known as “men of the sword,” Qezelbāš officers and individuals of Turkic background also participated in historical writing. The best known was Ḥa-san Beg Rumlu, a qorči in the service of Shah Ṭahmāsb, who, in addition to his military responsibilities, completed his Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ during the reign of Esmāʿil II (1576-77). After the original Qezelbāš tribes lost their power and were replaced by new ḡolām forces, some of the ḡolāms became involved in historical writing. The best-known example from this group is Bižan the “Qeṣṣa-ye Ṣa-fawiḵvān” (reciter of the Safavid story) and author of the Tāriḵ-e Rostam Ḵān and the Tāriḵ-e jahāngošāʾi-e ḵāqān (Morton, 1990). However, throughout the Safavid period, administrators, bureaucrats, and court officials such as secretaries and astrologers form the largest category of historians. Individuals such as Fażli Eṣfahāni were able to write histories based both on court records and eyewitness accounts (Melville, forthcoming). Often, several generations of administrators or members of a single family would engage in historical writing. For example, three generations of astrologers/astronomers (monajjem) wrote historical works (Mossadegh). Jalāl al-Din Monajjem Yazdi, author of the Tāriḵ-e ʿabbāsi, started the family tradition. As the official astrologer of Shah ʿAbbās, Jalāl-al-Din constantly accompanied the king and could observe his actions, which he most likely recorded in order to make his astrological predictions. He uses technical language in his history, indicating that he was most probably involved in the production of royal court missives and documents, and incorporated such material into his narrative. His son and grandson also wrote historical works mostly hagiographical in nature, thus indicating a connection between astrologers and historical writing in the Safavid era.

Historical works were produced throughout the Safavid period, with the exception of Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda’s reign. The chroniclers of Shah ʿAbbās, however, did cover the events of this earlier period in their narratives. As far as regional coverage is concerned, official court chroniclers had more of an interest in events associated with the king and what took place at the capital. Although the tradition of regional or local historical writing was somewhat reduced in the Safavid period, it did continue to some extent, particularly in places which already had long established traditions of local historiography. For instance, Šams-al-Din ʿAli Lāhiji composed the earliest regional history in 1516. His Tāriḵ-e ḵāni is a history of Gilān from 1475 until 1514, before the region was conquered by the Safavids. A little over 100 years later, Gilān again became the focus of a local history, the Tāriḵ-e Gilān of ʿAbd-al-Fattāḥ Fumani. Others regions to receive specific attention include Yazd, about which Moḥammad Mofid Yazdi wrote his Jāmeʿ-e mofidi (comp. 1679), and Kerman, where Moḥammad b. Ebrāhim wrote his Tāriḵ-e Saljuqiān-e Kermān. Moḥammad Mirak b. Masʿud Ḥosayni wrote his Riāż al-ferdows (comp. 1671) about Fārs; and Shah Ḥosayn b. Malek Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Maḥ-mud’s Eḥyāʾ al-moluk (comp. 1619) focuses on events in Sistān.

Much research still needs to be done on many aspects of Safavid historiography. None of the major Safavid historians have been the subject of full-length biographical studies. Comparative research, placing Safavid Persian writing in the context of contemporary Mughal, Uzbek, and Ottoman traditions of historical writing, has barely started. Finally, and most importantly, a number of major Safavid texts are at various incomplete stages of edition and publication.

Unedited histories include, but are not limited to: Fotuḥāt-e šāhi and Afżal al-tawāriḵ; published histories that need critical editions include: Tāriḵ-e ʿālamārā-ye ʿabbāsi, Lobb al-tawāriḵ, and Tāriḵ-e ʿabbāsi; histories that need complete critical editions include: Takmelat al-aḵbār, Zobdat al-tawāriḵ, and Tāriḵ-e solṭāni; edited histories, still in dissertation form, that need to be published include Fotuḥāt-e homāyun and Tāriḵ-e Rostam Ḵān.

HISTORIOGRAPHY vii. AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIODS

Persian historical writing in the 12th/18th century reflected the profound changes that occurred in Iran after the 1134/1722 Afghan conquest of Isfahan. The next few decades saw the swift rise and fall of numerous pretenders to the Safavid throne, the most important of whom were the Afsharid (q.v.) and Zand dynasties. Afsharid and Zand court histories largely followed Safavid models in their structure and language, but departed from long-established historiographical conventions in small but meaningful ways.

Mirzā Moḥammad Mahdi Khan Astarābādi (q.v.), Nāder Shah’s official historiographer, wrote the most famous Afsharid chronicle, the Tāriḵ-e jahāngošā-ye nāderi. Astarābādi’s work began as Nāder’s court history but was put into final form sometime in the 1160s/1750s after Nāder’s death. This history found wide circulation due to Nāder’s broad, if brief, impact across the Middle East and India. It was one of the first contemporary Persian chronicles translated into French and English by Sir William Jones in the 1770s. Astarābādi, an antiquarian versed in Timurid era Persian and Chaghatay literature, imitated Ḵᵛāndmir, Šaraf-al-Din Yazdi, and Neẓām-al-Din Šāmi with his flowery style (see v. above).

His work also employed an annalistic structure developed by Safavid historians that featured elaborate descriptions of each new spring and its nowruz festivities. In his nowruz sections, though, Astarābādi’s baroque descriptions of natural phenomena went beyond decorative embellishment. He used these accounts of spring as complex metaphors for events described in prose in each year’s narrative section. (For an example, see Astarābādi, Tāriḵ, p. 87.) This technique blurred an aesthetic boundary that Safavid chronicles had preserved between poetry and historical narrative text. The use of vivid images of nature permitted Astarābādi to convey feelings associated with events more directly than in prose (see Astarābādi, Tāriḵ, p. 178; also v. above).

Astarābādi carried this descriptive style even further in his Dorra-ye nādera, a completely poetic rendering of events discussed in the Tāriḵ-e jahāngošā. He asserted in the Dorra-ye nādera that he was trying to revive the aesthetic world of Waṣṣāf, a 14th-century historian famous for his bombastic, prolix style. Following this model, the Dorra offered an account of Nāder’s life in which aesthetic and decorative language totally subsumed the work’s ostensible content (see, e.g., Astarābādi, Dorra, pp. 368-85).

Another Afsharid era chronicle that was completed following Nāder’s death, Moḥammad Kāẓem Marvi’s Tāriḵ-e ʿalamārā-ye nāderi, provides a clear contrast to the works of Astarābādi. Marvi employed many familiar devices of the Persian chronicle form such as his use of dreams to foreshadow events. Like Astarābādi, who departed from traditional chronicle form by privileging poetic descriptions over prose narratives of events, Marvi recast chronicle tradition in yet another way by redefining royal legitimacy. His work did not ultimately defend Nāder’s right to rule. Although Marvi praised Nāder for saving Iran from foreign domination, he believed that the execution of the last Safavid ruler, Shah Ṭahmāsb II, along with his family, sealed Nāder’s fate (see Marvi, Tāriḵ, pp. 851, 1196).

Marvi portrayed Nāder’s complicity in this crime as an offense against Safavid legitimacy, marking the point at which his reign became doomed. His work cast blame on Nāder for his role in getting rid of the Safavids, a disaster only resolved by the accession of Nāder’s grandson Šāh-roḵ to the throne. As depicted in the Tāriḵ-e ʿālamārā, because Šāhroḵ’s lineage united Nāder’s charisma with the ancestral legitimacy of the Safavids, his accession held the promise that balance might be restored to the Iranian throne (Marvi, Tāriḵ, p. 238).

In general, most literary structures and techniques used by Astarābādi and Marvi cannot be considered innovative or novel. The minor, but meaningful alterations made by both authors to long-established patterns of Persian chronicle writing reveal how social and political change in post-Safavid Iran affected historical consciousness. The upheavals of the Afsharid era increased the importance of literary genres beyond court chronicles such as diaries and memoirs. Two such works in particular, the Ruz-nāma of Mirzā Moḥammad, kalāntar of Fārs, and Moḥammad ʿAli Ḥazin’s autobiography, were used by later historians to fill in gaps created by the lack of continuity in dynastic histories. Ḥazin’s account reflects how his own life was affected by instability in Iran, since he was only able to finish it after he had taken refuge in India. Contemporary Indian chroniclers, who shared literary models with their Safavid and Afsharid counterparts, provide additional context for Iranian history in this period, particularly regarding Nāder’s activities in India and Central Asia. The most important of these was ʿAbd-al-Karim Kašmiri, who accompanied Nāder throughout his campaigns in India (see Kašmiri, Memoirs).

Following the Afsharid rulers’ failure to become established as the Safavids’ successors, the Zand dynasty established a period of relative stability in Fārs province during the last half of the 12th/18th century. Like Astar-ābādi, the main Zand historians followed a royal chronicle form that had already become archetypal by the late 11th/17th century. Among them, Moḥammad Ṣādeq Nāmi and Mirzā Moḥammad Abu’l-Ḥasan Ḡaffāri Kāšāni both depicted Karim Khan and other Zand rulers as exemplars of classic Persian kingly virtues. The most significant novel aspect of these chronicles was how they subtly promoted Zand legitimacy while still honoring Safavid tradition. Nāmi, for example, avoided ever calling any Zand ruler “shah,” although he did use other titles indicating authority such as wakil or “deputy.” His Tāriḵ-e gitigošā portrayed Karim Khan as the de facto, not de jure monarch of his realm. He was only following Zand rulers themselves, who chose not to be known as “shahs.” Karim Khan retained a shadow Safavid shah, Ebrāhim, until Ebrāhim’s death in 1783. Later Zand rulers continued to honor the Safavid claim of ancestral connection to the Imams. The Zand chroniclers were restrained from depicting their rulers in traditional terms, since Karim’s successors did not employ even the modest title of wakil (Nāmi, Tāriḵ, p. 253).

Zand works included very little discussion of jolus (coronation) ceremonies: an important feature of Safavid and Afsharid chronicles. Although Ḡaffāri’s Golšan-e morād (q.v.)did record one jolus, that of Jaʿfar Khan, it noted that his enthronement occurred only several years after he had already taken power. Zand chroniclers did not seem to care much about maintaining even the appearance of a lineal royal succession, offering further evidence of the upheaval in concepts of royal legitimacy at this time. Developments in Persian historiography during the Zand period occurred just as new poetic styles were coming into fashion with the rise of the bāzgašt movement. However, any historiographical equivalent of the bāzgašt transformation of poetry would have to wait until well into the Qajar era (see, e.g., Sepehr, Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ).

The 18th century marked the end of the primacy of traditional chronicles as legitimating devices for Iran’s ruling dynasties. This can be seen in the imbalanced excess of poetic imagery in nowruz depictions seen in Astar-ābādi, the changes in perspective and agenda witnessed in the works of Marvi and the Zand chroniclers, and the growing importance of alternative styles of historical writing such as diaries. The changing styles of 18th-century chronicles signaled the beginning of a systemic transformation in the writing of history in Iran that extended well into the 19th century.

HISTORIOGRAPHY viii. QAJAR PERIOD

In the century and a half that constituted the Qajar period (1786-1925), writing of history evolved from production of annalistic court chronicles and other traditional genres into the earliest experimentations in modern historiography. Aiming to fashion a new historical identity, Qajar historiography fused the pre-Islamic memory with Iran’s dynastic history as well as with its Shiʿi past. With the rise of popular movements culminating in the Constitutional Revolution (q.v.), writing of history began to shift away from a narrative scripted by the powerful, into one about people and popular aspirations. The period in question also witnessed greater simplicity and innovation in style that was distinct from the ornate style of earlier generations. Remarkable traits of historical insight are not rare, especially among narratives of dissent from Rostam al-tawāriḵ to the Babi narratives of the mid-century and later reflections in the works of dissidents such as Āqā Khan Kermāni and Nāẓem-al-Eslām Kermāni.

Yet there were glaring shortcomings in Qajar historical scholarship, most notably due to the absence of organized and accessible archival sources. The Qajar period left behind copious documentation, larger than any earlier epoch, including official records and reports, commercial and informal correspondence, deeds, registers and legal opinions, memoirs, and other personal narratives. Yet the whole period suffered from an endemic disrespect for classifying and preserving documents, an irreparable loss hastened by the anti-Qajar sentiments of the Pahlavi era. Lack of an academic environment conducive to critical research further hindered the growth of historical studies as an independent discipline, an impediment that continued through the Pahlavi period, and allowed common abuses of history as an instrument of legitimization in the service of the state and other sources of authority.

Three prevailing genres of official historiography roughly correspond to the three turning points in political history of the Qajar period. The first is chronicles of conquest (or presumed conquest) produced from the beginning of the Qajar dynasty through the first decade of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s reign, between 1779 and 1857; the second is chronicles of the Nāṣeri period still framed in the annalistic format but influenced somewhat by European almanacs. They mostly appeared in print and continued through the end of Moẓaffar-al-Din Shah (1896-1906) largely to enhance in the eye of the public the status of the Qajar state and place it in a broader international context. The third is narratives of the Constitutional and post-Constitutional periods (1906-1925), an age of momentary vitality followed by fading hopes for national salvation. An overarching theme that we may observe in all these accounts were the Qajar historians’ gradual loss of confidence in the values and institutions of their own culture and society often in comparison to the West, leading in turn to elaborate strategies to dodge painful realities and hide behind a mask of self deception. Alternatively, there emerged a historical outlook infused with dual senses of decay in the affairs of the country and a yearning for an almost messianic renewal.

Early chronicles and official annals. The Qajar chroniclers active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries followed the Zand and the Afsharid accounts of conquest such as Mirzā Mehdi Astarābādi’s highly popular Jahān-gošā-ye nāderi (which reached at least fourteen editions in the Qajar period, see Mošār, Fehrest, I, p. 694), in turn modeled on Eskandar Beg Monši’s ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi (q.v.). The conscious simulating of the earlier chronicles aimed at the portrayal of the Qajar rulers as legitimate heirs to the Safavid throne, first against the Zands and other domestic contenders, and later in the face of the ominous European threat. Moḥammad Fatḥ-Allāh Sāruʾi’s Tāriḵ-e moḥammadi (also known as Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ, ed. M. Ṭabāṭabāʾi Majd, Tehran, 1992) is the first important account in this group. Completed in 1212 /1797, it narrates the rise to power of the founder of the dynasty during its first eighteen years from a pro-Qajar perspective. A native of eastern Māzandarān and an assistant to Mirzā Mehdi Astarābādi, he served as chief officer of religious affairs (mollā bāši) to Āqā Moḥammad Shah (1786-97). Sāruʾi’s factual and minimalist account, mostly devoid of elaborate flatteries, follows Asta-rābādi’s style.

Sāruʾi anticipated the format and style of the court chronicles of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s era, foremost among them Maʾāṯer-e solṭāniya of ʿAbd-al-Razzāq Donboli (Maftun). Published in 1241/1825-26, it was the second Persian book to be printed in the new publishing house in Tabriz under the supervision of Manučehr Khan Gorji (later Moʿtamed-al-Dawla) and run by Moḥammad Bāqer Tabrizi. Maʾāṯer introduced the Zand-Safavid tradition to the nascent Qajar historical culture, as it emerged under the aegis of ʿAbbās Mirzā and his influential minister, Mirzā ʿĪsa (Bozorg) Farāhāni, the first Qāʾem-maqām. The author’s elaborate style glorified Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and his house, especially ʿAbbās Mirzā, aiming to present to its readership a stable dynasty and royal tradition at a time when Qajar Iran, and Azerbaijan in particular, were under threat of foreign invasion. It was published just before the start of the second round of wars with Russia in 1826. To its readership, which extended beyond the court circle, Maʾāṯer was a new experiment in style and appearance, if not in content. It was in nasḵ moveable type rather than the conventional nastaʿliq of the Persian manuscripts, with universal margins throughout and with clear headings and subheadings conveying coherence in format and substance. Covering the years between 1722 and 1825, Maʾāṯer’schronology implied continuity from the Safavid to the Qajar period, a pattern to be followed by later Qajar chronicles. The larger part of Donboli’s narrative, however, dealt with domestic conflicts at the outset of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s reign, followed by an account of the first round of the Russo-Persian wars (1805-13). In his account of the Fatḥ-Ali Shah’s victory over his contenders, ironically written by a former Zand official whose Donboli tribe was subdued by the Qajars, there are traces of a new historical consciousness marked by his praise for the new dynasty’s success in pacifying and centralizing the country. Donboli described the creation of the “New Army” (Neẓām-e jadid) and other Western-style reform measures introduced by ʿAbbās Mirzā as essential means for preserving Iran’s territorial integrity against domestic chaos and foreign aggression. He also devoted sections to historical descriptions of Iran’s new European neighbors, stressing their strengths and weaknesses. Maʾāṯer’s style is precious by today’s standards, despite the author’s desire to make his account accessible to ordinary reader. Yet he avoided tedious ornamentations and literary techniques such as rhymed prose (sajʿ), rampant in his semi-biographical Tajrabat al-aḥrār wa tasliat al-abrār (ed. Ḥ. Qāẓi Ṭabāṭabāʾi, 2. vols., Tabriz, 1971).

An earlier version of Maʾāṯer, as we know from the introduction to its masterful English translation by Harford Jones Brydges, The Dynasty of the Kajars (London, 1838), was put together just before 1811 from the “state record” by the Waqāyeʿ-nevis, the “writer of the daily public occurrences,” and was sent to Jones by Mirzā Bozorg Qāʾem-maqām at the request of the eager British envoy (Jones, Dynasty, p. iii). The discrepancies between the English translation and the published Persian edition reveal revisions in the printed version especially with respect to foreign affairs. Defeat in war with Russia on the one hand and spread of British colonial empire on the other, made the Persian historian revise his earlier jubilation for an altruistic friendship with the neighboring European powers.

Donboli’s history characterized the literary and historiographical movement, the so-called revival school, that thrived under the aegis of Qāʾem-maqām I and likeminded statesmen of the Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era in the royal society (anjoman-e ḵāqān). They employed classical Persian prose and poetry in part to popularize a new regal image of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and his dynasty. The state’s crafting of an official history, however, went beyond a literary style to involve a new interpretation of the past devoted to the Qajar dynasty’s just rule. Another court historian of the same circle, Faẓl-Allāh Širāzi, better known as Ḵāvari, covers at greater length the history of the Qajar rule up to the end of the Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era from the perspective of a Tehran-based official. The theme of his Tāriḵ-e ḏu’l-qarnayan (ed. N. Afšār-far, Tehran, 2001), is domestic pacification and recovery from the 18th century civil war, subtly bound up in his narrative with the felicitous growth of the Qajar royal progeny, an influential theme in the later Qajar chronicles that used as their source Ḵāvari’s extensive supplement to his history on the subject. Like Donboli, he too combined a sophisticated historical prose with accurate recording of the events in a strictly annalistic format, at times with professional honesty unflattering to his Qajar patrons. It opens with a description of Iran and its boundaries and provinces, to be followed, as in Maʾāṯer, with a history of the origins of the Qajar tribe, another set feature of the chronicles of Qajar period.

Also of some sensitivity to the historians of this age was the bloody transfer of power from the Zand to the Qajar house. The sense of moral ambivalence is evident in their brief treatment of the cruel end brought upon Loṭf-ʿAli Khan Zand and the rest of the Zand house by Āqā Moḥammad Shah. Defeat in the first round of wars with Russia was also downplayed, even though these accounts seldom resorted to the kind of exaggerations that Fatḥ-ʿAli Khan Ṣabā Kāšāni reserved for his royal patron in his semi-legendary epic Šāhanšāh-nāma (Malek-al-šoʿarāʾ Fatḥ-ʿAli Kan Ṣabā, Divān-e āṯār, ed. M. ʿA. Ne-jāti, Tehran, 1962). On the brink of a major military defeat in the hands of the Russians, Ṣabā, the poet laureate, still felt confident enough to profusely praise Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s chivalry and political savvy in the style of Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma (Āriyanpur, I, pp. 23-26). Neither Ḵā-vari’s history nor Ṣabā’s epic was published; and as a result their impact did not extend beyond the court circles, even though illustrated copies of Šahanšāh-nāma were bequeathed by the shah to foreign envoys.

Production of court chronicles went through a lacuna after Fath-ʿAli Shah, when royal patronage under Mo- ḥammad Shah (1834-48) and his minister Ḥāji Mirzā Āqāsi (q.v.) diverted to Sufi biographical dictionaries and other forms of historical scholarship (for a bibliography of the Qajar chronicles and related sources see Storey, Persian Literature, I [i], pp. 332-48). The Šamāʾel-e ḵāqān (profile of the emperor), a sycophantic biography designed to glorify Moḥammad Shah and his Qajar ancestry, remained incomplete, presumably because its author, the premier Mirzā Abu’l-Qāsem Farāhāni, Qāʾem-maqām II, was put to death, ironically by the secret order of the same shah whom he attempted to adulate. Āqāsi, who succeeded him in office, did not patronize the production of chronicles. His efforts to emasculate the old Qajar nobility shifted instead to patronage of Sufi writers with a view of the past distinctly different from that of Qajar officialdom. One exception is Tāriḵ-e now (also known as Tāriḵ-e Jahāngiri, ed. ʿA. Eqbāl, Tehran, 1948) by Jahān-gir Mirzā, an accomplished brother of Moḥammad Shah, who was blinded by the order of Mirzā Abu’l-Qāsem Qāʾem-maqām in the aftermath of the civil war that followed Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s death. His detailed account of the events between 1240 and 1267/1824-50, an addendum to Donboli’s Maʾāṯer, is a unique source for the second round of war with Russia, premiership of Āqāsi, early career of Mirzā Taqi Khan Farāhāni (see AMIR KABIR) and one of the earliest accounts on the rise of the Babi movement.

Court Chronicles under Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. The early years of Nāṣer al-Din Shah’s reign (1848-96) witnessed a revival in the production of chronicles under the royal aegis. Most significant of these were Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri (Tehran, 1271-74/1854-57) by the literary scholar and royal tutor, Reżāqoli Khan Hedāyat (q.v.) and Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya (1st ed., Tehran, 1274-76/1857-59) by the scholar and court official Moḥammad Taqi Sepehr Kāšāni, Lesān-al-Molk. Both chronicles followed the conventional annals format, beginning each year with a set piece on the celebration of Nowruz followed by reports of royal campaigns, frontier skirmishes and civil unrest, diplomatic exchanges and treaties, royal and official birth and death registers as well as popular uprisings, heresies, natural calamities, and oddities. In addition to the Persian solar festival as the beginning of the royal calendar, all timekeeping was in the Islamic lunar calendar, even though both chronicles also observed the Sino-Turkic twelve-year cyclical calendar customary in the Qajar court. Occasionally, they included background sections to important geographical locations, foreign lands, religious upheavals, regional insurrections, and noted personalities. Both histories relied on earlier chronicles, at times to the point of plagiarizing them, though for near contemporary and contemporary events, roughly from the late Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era onwards, they used eyewitness accounts, official correspondence, and reports, as well as their own recollections.

The main thrust of both projects was to elevate Qajar rule, especially Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s reign during the premiership of Mirzā Āqā Khan Nuri, to the level of the great dynasties of the past. Reżāqoli Khan Hedāyat’s Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri was a “Nāṣerian” supplement in three volumes to Mirkᵛānd’s popular universal history which covered from the dawn of creation (and beginning of the Persian kingship) to the late Timurid period (1st ed., 10 vols., Tehran, 1270-74/1853-57). In the first of the supplemental volumes (volume eight) the author covered the Safavid, the Afsharid, and the Zand periods. Volume two (volume nine) covered the origins of the Qajars and their rise to power up to 1247/1831, corresponding to the birth of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, and volume three (volume ten) comes up to 1274/1857. The ten volumes of Rawżat al-ṣafā edited by Hedāyat appeared in an excellent lithographic edition (though oddly enough lacking page numbers). Hedāyat’s portrayal of the Qajar shahs, Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah in particular, as legitimate successor to the Safavid rule and true supporters of the Shiʿite faith, highlighted not only his valor and statesmanship but also religiosity and ties to the clerical establishment, values the author tended to nurture in his own patron, Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. Beyond factual narrative, Hedāyat’s account was almost entirely devoid of substantive analysis, a characteristic he shared with Sepehr and other chroniclers of the period. Mirzā Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzāda’s humor-ous critique of Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri,written in the format of a conversation between the author and his critics (perhaps the first modern book review in Persian), emphasized oddly enough Hedāyat’s elaborate style and overuse of literary techniques rather than questioning his worldview and objectivity (Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzāda, Āṯār, ed. H. Arasli, Baku, 1958, pp. 378-92, and Fereydun Āda-miyat, Andišahā-ye Mirzā Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzādeh, Tehran, 1970, pp. 238-46).

Sepehr’s Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya is the second part of a larger historical project that came under the general title of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ (abrogation of [all] histories). Like Rawżat al-ṣafa, it is an official history on the Qajar period covering events up to 1274/1857. After completion of the first volume of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ, initially commissioned by Ḥāji Mirzā Āqāsi, offering an encyclopedic survey of world geography, cultures, and religions in addition to histories of ancient kings and prophets, the shah instructed Sepehr to devote the second part of his work to the Qajar period. He commissioned him to compose a history “that can not be matched by histories in any other era” by implementing “craft of history” (fann-e tāriḵ) through “proper research” and “critical” compilation (Sepehr, Nāseḵ-al-tawāriḵ, Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya, 4th ed., ed. J. Kiānfar, Tehran, 1998, p. 2). Postponing the writing of the remaining volumes of his universal history so as to fulfill the shah’s wishes, Sepehr produced a three-volume work better known as Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya. The first two volumes, dealing with the pre-Naṣeri period, relied on existing compilations, but the third volume covering Nāṣer-al-Din’s reign utilized state records, contemporary sources, and the author’s eyewitness accounts.

In addition to the usual coverage of political events, Sepehr (even more than Hedāyat) devoted ample room in the third volume to social events such as the rise of the Babi movement (1844-52) and its subsequent supression. His coverage included important details on the Bab’s interrogation, his chief disciples, and the state’s military operations against Babi resistance. Yet like Rawżat al-ṣāfa, Sepehr’s work suffered from extreme partisanship and calculated distortions, designed not only to smear the Babi heresy in the eye of the public, but to demonstrate especially to the ʿolamāʾ the indispensability of the Qajar state for sustaining social order. Sepehr’s coverage became a major source for numerous later accounts, both in Persian and European languages, including R. Grant Watson’s A History of Persia (London, 1866) and Comte de Gobineau’s Religions et philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris, 1865).

In addition to the hostile coverage of the Babi episode, another serious historical distortion in Sepher’s work concerns Mirzā Taqi Khan Amir Kabir. He misrepresented Amir Kabir’s political career and conduct in office, often in favor of Mirzā Āqā Khan Nuri, even though he seems to have remained relatively sincere in holding both the shah and Nuri responsible for Amir Kabir’s secret mur-der. To cover up the embarrassing revelation, the shah, even after Nuri’s dismissal, ordered that all printed copies of Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya be withdrawn and the section beyond 1867/1851 physically removed. In the “revised” version that came out as a supplement, covering 1268/1852 to 1274/1857 (ending just before Nuri’s dismissal), Sepehr was obliged to make Amir Kabir’s death the result of a medical complication (Nāseḵ, ed. Kiānfar, pp. xxxv-xxxvi). In dealing with other events, too, despite emphasis on proper research and critical approach, Sepehr rendered a decidedly pro-state version of events uncritical of his Qajar masters. Like Hedāyat he adopted a grandiose tone fit for portraying cowardliness, corruption, and brutality as heroism, righteousness, and expediency, an exercise primarily designed to disguise the Qajar state’s loss of credit in the eyes of its subjects.

As far as Amir Kabir’s premiership was concerned, one exception among official chronicles was Ḥaqāʾeq al-aḵbār-e nāṣeri (ed. Ḥ. Ḵadiv-Jam, Tehran, 1965) whose author, Moḥammad Jaʿfar Ḵurmuji, presented a realistic picture of Amir Kabir’s term of office and his execution by the order of the shah and conspiracy of his courtiers. Not amused by the account, the shah censured Ḵurmuji’s work and forced him into exile in Iraq. The open secret of Amir Kabir’s death, however, became part of the anti-Qajar narrative in the late Nāṣeri period.

After Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya, Sepehr resumed his initial project, part of an ambitious universal history that took the remaining years of his life, but was never completed. The multi-volume Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ on the history of early Islam aimed to substantiate the Shiʿi claim to sacred authority without entirely ignoring the Sunni sources. In effect, it offered a highbrow alternative to popular Shiʿi mourning narratives (marāṯi)of the Qajar period.Loyal to the traditional approach of its classical sources such as Ṭabari and Ebn Aṯir (q.v.), the three books (in ten volumes) of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ published between 1273 and 1307/1856-89 covered the era from Adam’s Fall to the birth of Jesus and therefrom to the Ḥejra of Moḥammad (book one in two volumes) and from the Ḥejra to Imam Ḥosayn’s martyrdom in the year 61/680 (book two in six volumes). Sepehr’s accessible style and systematic coverage made these volumes of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ one of the most frequently published and widely read books in Qajar Iran. Later volumes on the lives of fourth, fifth, and sixth Shiʿi Imams were authored and published by his son ʿAbbāsqoli Khan Sepehr.

Lithographic publication of Rawżat al-ṣafā and Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ helped enhance the image of the Qajar dynasty, though they cultivated little historiographical innovation. Sepehr’s Persian style, avoiding the Arabic-laden, ornate style of earlier chroniclers, may have served as a model a generation later for Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā’s “pure Persian” in Nāma-ye ḵosravān. Despite the relative success of these grand projects, however, the production of official chronicles subsided in the following decades primarily because they were replaced by the state’s official gazette, the Ruz-nāma-ye waqāyeʿ-e ette-fāqiya (to be continued as Ruz-nāma-ye dawlat-e ʿalliya-ye Irān) and other periodic publications. They in effect chronicled the court and government events as well as provincial and international news. By the third quarter of the 19th century, such works as Monṭaẓam-e nāṣeri (3 vols., Tehran, 1298-1300/1880-82) compiled by Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-salṭana (q.v.) was little more than revamping of the official gazettes.

As minister of publication (enṭebāʿāt), the newsreader to the Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, and the official historian, the author of Montaẓam was bound to follow the familiar format of annals with greater attention to the outside world. Every year the events were divided into domestic and international (beginning with the dawn of Islam) and more elaborately toward contemporary times ending in 1300/1882. European and American political history received some attention, even though they were blended with entries on mundane curiosities evidently taken from European tabloids. Domestic affairs were reduced to the most formal and trivial, including royal trips and excursions, state appointments, and administrative reorganizations. The author’s hurried brevity added to the tedium of his work. Compared even to earlier chronicles, Monta-ẓam registered a new low point in the writing of history, even though it matched its predecessors in terms of flattery and misrepresentation. Yet even up to the end of the Qajar period annalistic histories were not entirely extinct. Mehdiqoli Hedāyat’s Gozāreš-e Irān (4 vols., Tehran, 1925), covering Persian history from the rise of Islam to the present and published just after the demise of the Qajar dynasty, eventually abandoned the old dynastic format of his own grandfather, Reżāqoli Hedāyat, in favor of a more critical, yet overtly succinct, format.

Eʿtemād-al-salṭana also contributed to the myth of Qajar ancestry. Reinforcing an earlier theme in Qajar chronicles, he recognizes three successive generations of the Qovānlu Qajar Khan before Āqā Moḥammad Shah, as legitimate successors to the Safavid rule with the title of shah. This is especially evident in his al-Maʾāṯer wa’l-āṯār (Tehran, 1306/1888), an almanac commemorating the history and achievements of four decades of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s rule (1264-1304/1848-86). There his royal patron is ranked as the seventh ruler of the dynasty instead of the conventional fourth. Praiseful of the Nāṣeri age, al-Maʾāṯer applauded among other achievements of the period “improvement in the science of history.” Incorporating ancient and modern European accounts with numismatic and archeological evidence and utilizing histories of other civilizations on a comparative bases, the author claimed that he had produced historical compilations that corrected past errors and mended the omissions of the traditional pre-Islamic histories, accounts that the author believed were tainted with exaggerations and superstitions (E ʿtemād-al-Salaṭana, Maʾāṯer, p. 95). Written by a sophisticated court historian, such a remark may seem cynical given E ʿtemād-al-salṭana’s almost confessional counter-narrative in his own secret memoirs, Ruz-nāma-yekāṭerāt (Tehran, 1966), in defiance of the official historiography of the period. Yet al-Maʾāṯer contained a wealth of detail about the material and cultural history of the late 19th century, complemented with a valuable who’s who of the Qajar cultural and political elite compiled by a group of scholars whose contributions remained unacknowledged.

Eʿtemād-al-salṭana’s search for deeper historical roots for the Qajar dynasty took him beyond Timurid and Mongolian ancestry, a source of pride for presumed qualities of valor and conquest. In his Dorar al-tijān fi tāriḵ bani-Aškān (Tehran, 1308-11/1890-93), he stretched the origins of the Qajar back to Parthian times—a connection no doubt reflective of a desire to trace the ruling dynasty back to Iran’s pre-Islamic past rather than to ferocious hordes who destroyed Iran. Eʿtemād-al- salṭana’s dabbling in the Persian ancient past, compiled with the help of his literary aide Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi, lacked originality; but it nevertheless foreshadowed the prominence of the pre-Islamic paradigm in Iran’s national consciousness. In his geographical works, including the incomplete geographical encyclopedia Merʾāt al-boldān-e nāṣeri (4 vols., Tehran, 1294-97 /1877-80), he offered ample historical detail about locales, individuals, and events. Among historical projects under his supervision was Ṣadr al-tawāriḵ (ed. M. Moširi, Tehran, 1970), a history of eleven Qajar premiers written by Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi and Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Adib, promoting the crucial service rendered by successive premiers to the Qajar throne. The book’s laudatory tone toward the ṣadr aʿẓam in office, ʿAli-Aṣḡar Khan Amin-al-solṭān, is colored by Eʿtemād-al-salṭana’s secret envy toward his perennial rival, which in turn may explain the overcritical assessment of this premier’s career in a semi-fictional history, Ḵalsa mašhur be ḵᵛāb-nāma (ed. M. Katirāʾi, Tehran, 1969). Presumably penned by Eʿtemād-al-salṭana in the old genre of “dream-books,” it aimed to reveal the true achievements as well as abject failures of the Qajar premiers through a series of imaginary interrogations by the great rulers of Iran’s past (for further details on his historical works see EʿTEMĀD-AL- SALṬANA).

The border between historical fact and fiction was already crossed earlier in the Qajar period by an obscure writer of Širāzi ancestry, Moḥammad Hāšem, with the self-assumed titles of Rostam-al-ḥokamāʾ and penname Āṣaf. His Rostam-al-tawāriḵ (ed. M. Moširi, Tehran, 1969) saw its last revision in the hand of the author apparently in 1251/1835, rendering a somewhat personal narrative of the events of the preceding century. The narrative was based on the author’s father’s and grandfather’s accounts stretching back to the end of the Sa-favid period, continued by his own recollections up to the time of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah. A curious mix of fact and fiction, the work was an example of popular histories in the genre of books of marvels (ajāʿeb) narrated in the engaging style and humorous tone of the storytellers (naqqāls). Despite its fictional dimension, Rostam-al-tawāriḵ contains a fair amount of detail useful for the socio-economic history of the period. What make it unique, however, is a sense of indigenous modernity pronounced in a messianic yearning for change. Witnessing the state’s vulnerability and inner decay since the late 18th century, the author is concerned with European powers’ encroachment on a country weakened by corruption and misrule. Even though in the rise of the Qajar dynasty he hopes for the revival of prosperity and security of the Safavid and Zand eras, he is nonetheless concerned with increasing loss of territory and political prestige, the influence of the conservative mojtaheds, economic decline, and insecurity. Like other works by the author, a few manuscript copies of Rostam-al-tawāriḵ languished in libraries with virtually no visible influence on his contemporaries. (See also A. K. S. Lambton, “Some New Trends in Islamic Political Thought in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Persia,” Studia Islamica 39, 1974, pp. 95-128, and Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: the Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850, Ithaca, 1989, pp. 89-93.)

A new departure. More than two decades later, Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā’s Nāma-ye ḵosravān (3 vols., Tehran 1285/1868, 1287/1870, 1288/1871) marked a new departure in Persian historiography. Being the first history textbook, presumably for Dār al-Fonun (q.v.) students of elementary level, it was written in simple Persian distilled of Arabic words. Published in clear nastʿaliq with many illustrations of the ancient Persian kings and presumably inspired by European publications of Parthian and Sasanian numismatics, Nāma-ye ḵosravān traced Persian dynastic history from the origin of man to contemporary times (only the first two volumes, however, were published by the author himself). His sources included the neo-Zoroastrian mythologized histories, such as Dasātir (q.v.) and Dabestān-e maḏāheb, as well as the Šah-nāma, the Persian universal histories, and modern European studies of the Parthian and Sasanian periods. The author’s objective was to offer a brief dynastic history aimed at highlighting the glories of pre-Islamic Iran in contrast to successive Arab and Turkish invasions that brought about its decline. Nāma-ye ḵosravān thus should be seen as one of the first concrete examples of a nationalist narrative, even though it still negotiated between myth and historical reality. Contrary to Islamic universal histories with dual lines of Abrahamic prophets and Iranian kings, here the biblical/Quraʾnic narrative is substituted with mythical pre-Zoroastrian king-prophets of Dasātir origin and then continued with the Šāh-nāma mythical dynasties. Likewise, at the outset of the second volume Jalāl-al-Din portrays the Arab invasion as an aberration in Iran’s religious and dynastic continuity. As might be expected, the Francophile prince underscored his nationalist message, not only by the use of pure Persian, but by envisioning an Iranian cultural renaissance (as evident in his correspondence with likeminded intellectuals such as Āḵundzādeh). Only by discarding the alien Islamic past and embracing the civilization of Europe, the prince believed, could Iran escape degradation and once more rise to prominence. Despite Jalāl-al-Din’s novel style and message, however, his work followed the old dynastic narrative, serving as a model for school history texts around the time of the Constitutional Revolution and later. The illustrations in Nāma-ye ḵosravān were a source of inspiration for Šāh-nāma scenes in popular paintings of the Qajar era (see Amanat, “Pur-e ḵāqān wa andiša-ye bāzyābi-e tāriḵ-e melli-e Irān,” Iran Nameh, 17, 1999, pp. 5-54).

Translations of Western histories and historical novels also had an impact on the historical thinking of the period. Earlier in the century Mirzā Reżā Mohandes-bāši rendered an incomplete translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as Tāriḵ-e tanazzol wa ḵarābi-e dawlat-e Rum commissioned by ʿAbbās Mirzā. Among the earliest published were Voltaire’s Peter the Great and Charles XII, translated by Musā Jebreʾil as Tāriḵ-e Petr-e Kabir and Šārl-e Davāzdahom (Tehran, 1263/1847). John Malcom’s History of Persia (2 vols., London, 1815)also was translated by Moḥammad Esmā-ʿil Ḥayrat (Bombay, 1303/1886). The government bureau of translation and publication under Eʿteżād-al-Salṭana (q.v.) and then E ʿtemād-al-Salṭana also produced a number of historical translations from Arabic, Turkish, and European languages. Ḵayrāt al-ḥesān, a biographical dictionary of celebrated women (3 vols., Tehran, 1304-7/1886-89), was an adaptation from a Turkish original by Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s team. As with most other translations, however, histories of Western Europe, Russia, and America primarily served Nāṣer-al-Din Shah and were confined to the royal library. Among them was Voltaire’s LouisXIV, translated by Mirzā ʿAliqoli Żarrābi Kāšāni as Luʾi-e Čahārdahom (Tehran, 1289/1872). Several biographies of Napoleon were also rendered into Persian, including one by Jol Richard. Altogether very few serious historical works were translated into Persian, and little of modern methodology was adopted.

A rare flicker of critical insight, however, appeared in Āvānes Khan Mosāʿed-al-Salṭana’s succinct introduction to his translation of the Sherley brothers’ travel account (published as Safar-nāma-e barādarān-e Šerli, Tehran, 1330/1910; repr., Tehran, 1978, pp. 1-8). An enlightened Armenian member of Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s translation team, Āvānes Khan defined the function of history not as a search for moral lessons or idealizing the past, but as an objective search for unfolding historical facts and differentiating them from fiction with the aim of observing the long-term progress or decline of a nation through successive epochs. During his years of education in Europe, Āvānes not only had become familiar with Voltaire, Thierry, Michelet, Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, but sought new sources, including close to fifty travel accounts in Paris and London libraries, with the aim of writing a new history of Iran in the style of the European historians and based on eyewitness accounts and historical documentation. No trace of such a work has yet been found.

A generation later, Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni’s Āʾina-ye sekandari was an attempt to produce such a modern general history of Iran so as to demonstrate its glorious past and its present plight, a typical preoccupation of the non-Western writers of the period. Completed circa 1311/1894 in Istanbul in three volumes, consisting of twelve parts, it covered Iran’s history from mythological past to the Qajar period (more specifically, as the author states, the rise of the Babi movement) with a conclusion on the causes of Iran’s present waning. Yet only volume one (parts one to four) on the pre-Islamic period was published in Tehran in 1326/1909. Kermāni relied on Persian sources as well as on French translations of Greek and Latin classics and a few works of modern scholarship. Like Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā, whose Nāma-ye ḵosravān was a predecessor, Kermāni strived to reconcile European sources on ancient Iran with the Persian mythological past. In the introduction, Kermāni classified his pre-Islamic sources into four groups and addressed the difficulties of reconciling archeological evidence and Greek sources (such as Xenophon and Ctesias) with Persian historical and literary accounts as in Šāh-nāma and Da-sātir. He cited John Richardson on the unfeasibility of such an undertaking (presumably in his 1778 A Dissertation on the Languages of Eastern Nations, Oxford, 1778), but claimed that he had overcome the obstacle. In the manner of Ferdowsi, he “revived Persians with such factual accuracy” (ʿajam zende kardam bedin rāsti, p. 35).

The result of Kermāni’s endeavor was a fair degree of confusion in names, chronology, and the very historical narrative he had set to correct. Yet beyond its limited value as a reliable history, Āʾina demonstrates a new nationalist awareness, passionate, idealistic and politically charged, a prototype for the shaping of the 20th century Iranian identity. This is evident in Kermāni’s glorification of the ancient past, his distaste for the Arab conquest (which may be the reason for the rest of his work to remain unpublished), his rampant usage of fictitious etymology to prove Iranian originality, and a touch of chauvinism. Yet in his introduction, Kermāni is not short of criticism of traditional Persian chroniclers for their obsequiousness and reversal of historical truth, for subservience to tyrannical powers, and for their sheer ignorance.

Kermāni’s other works also reflect his preoccupation with the philosophy of history. In Seh maktub he views history not merely as a narrative of conflict and conquest but as a means of reflecting and learning (ʿebrat), an idea rooted in Persian historical thinking. He is anxious to distinguish “true” history from myth, to discard flattery and adulation of the powerful, and to discover the causes behind the rise and fall of nations. Most of all, he is in search of the root causes for the decline of his country and the means to remedy it. As in other nationalist histories, he holds the corrupt and incompetent political elite and the conservative clerical establishment responsible (see Fereydun Ādamiyat, Andišahā-ye Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni, Tehran, 1978, pp. 149-211). It is not therefore accidental that during the Constitutional Revolution (1906-11) Āʾina attracted the attention of such revolutionaries as Jahāngir Khan Širāzi, Ṣur-e Esrāfil, who published it just after the collapse of the Qajar royalist coup of 1908-9. He shared with Kermāni not only his Babi background of dissent but a desire for national reawakening.

Constitutional Revolution. The discourse of decline and renewal is well apparent in the portrayal of the Constitutional Revolution as a turning point away from the decadence of Qajar despotism to a new era of national rebirth. Among other historical publications, the chronicle of the revolution, Tāriḵ-e bidāri-e Irāniān by another dissident of the Šayḵi-Babi leaning, Moḥammad Nāẓem-al-Eslām Kermāni, conveyed the same message. Starting as a journal of the “rebellion” (šureš), as it first appeared in serial form in the newspaper Kawākeb-e dorri in 1907, Nāẓem-al-Eslām’s history portrayed a national reawakening with a messianic undertone. Later, having been informed of The Persian Revolution (London, 1910) by E. G. Browne—who himself relied on Nāẓem-al-Eslām’s account—in the reprint of his journal as a series of pamphlets between 1910-11, Nā ẓem-al-Eslām articulated a coherent narrative, important not only for its remarkable details and documentation, but for tracing the origins of the Constitutional Revolution back to the political dissent of the Nāṣeri era. Highlighting such figures as Jamāl-al-Din Asadābādi (better known as Afḡāni, q.v.) and his disciple, Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni, as pioneers of the revolution, the early printing of Tāriḵ-e bidāri helped define the Constitutional Revolution for its growing readership and later generations. Other journals of the revolutionary period such as Moḥammad Šarif Kāšāni’s, Tāriḵ-e Šarif (published as Wāqeʿāt-e ettefāqiya dar ruzgār, ed. M. Etteḥādiya and S. Saʿdvandiān, 3 vols., Tehran, 1983) or the memoirs of constitutional activists such as Ḥayāt-e Yaḥyā (4 vols., Tehran, 1957) by Yaḥyā Dawlatābādi (q.v.), were of no immediate impact.

Beyond accounts of contemporary events, the Constitutional period seldom produced historical scholarship of any significance; and most publications, whether newspapers, journals, or pamphlets, were concerned only with the current issues of the time. Before Ḥasan Pirniā’s Irān-e bāstāni (Tehran, 1927), the first version of his history of ancient Iran, relatively few systematic works of Iranian history were produced. Instead, a large number of translations in print, as early as the Moẓaffar-al-Din Shah era (1896-1907), broadened cultural horizons. Among historical translations of this period were a history of the ancient Near East (Tāriḵ-e melal-e qadim-e šarq, tr. Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi, Ḏakāʾ-al-Molk, Tehran, 1318/1900) and a history of ancient Greece (Tāriḵ-e Yunān, tr. Sayyed ʿAli Khan [Naṣr], Tehran, 1328/1910). From English there was a translation of James Fraser’s The History of Nadir Shah (London, 1742) as Tāriḵ-e Nāder Šāh-e Afšār (tr. Abu’l-Qāsem Qaragozlu, Tehran, 1321/1903), and from Arabic a history of Islamic civilization by Georgi Zaydan as Tāriḵ-e tamaddon-e eslāmi (Meṣr, 1906; tr. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Mirzā Qājār, Tehran, 1329/1911). Two other translations contributed to a new understanding of the pre-Islamic past: George Rawlinson’s The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy (London, 1906) as Tāriḵ-e salāṭin-e Sāsāni (tr. Moḥammad Ḥosayn and Moḥammad ʿAli Fo-ruḡi, 2 vols., Tehran, 1314-16/1897-99) and Xenophon’s Cyropaedia as Tāriḵ-e sargozašt-e bozorgtarin salāṭin-e haḵāmaneši-e Irān, Sirus-e kabir ya Kuroš-e kabir (tr. Żiāʾ-al-Din Monši and commissioned by Sardār Asʿad Baḵtiāri, Tehran, 1333/1914]). As a history dilettante, Sardār Asʿad also commissioned, translated, and authored a number of histories and historical novels. Major international upheavals drew attention, often as points of comparison and contrast with ongoing events in Iran. The 1905 Russo-Japanese war became available to Persian reader in Tāriḵ-e aqṣā-ye šarq ya moḥāraba-ye Rus o Žāpon (tr. Moḥammad Bāqer Manṭeqi, 2 vols., Tabrizi, 1323-24/1905-6) and later as Tāriḵ-e Moḥārebāt-e Rus o Žāpon (3 vols., Kabul, 1324-25/1906-7). Similarly Ḵalil Sa-ʿāda’s account of 1905 Russian revolution appeared as Tāriḵ-e šureš-e Rusiya (tr. from Arabic by ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Rāvari Kermāni, Tehran, 1327/1909).

Shiʿi and Sufi biographical dictionaries. Independent of the above trends, the Qajar period also produced a substantial body of Shiʿi biographical dictionaries, sectarian histories, local histories, and works in other genres covering areas ignored or underrepresented in the dominant historical narrative. Keeping up with the long tradition of producing works of rejāl, imperative for the study of Hadith, Shiʿi scholars of the Qajar period composed biographical dictionaries. Typical entries in these dictionaries included lineage and birthplace, teachers, permits (ejāzāt), works of scholarship and significant fatwās, notable students, and, occasionally, extraordinary feats (karāmāt). Increasingly in the Qajar period these works also highlighted the Oṣuli mojtaheds’ influential standing in the community and their dealings with government authorities. Among the most comprehensive in this category is Sayyed Moḥamamd Bāqer Ḵᵛānsāri’s Arabic Rawżāt al-jannāt fi aḥwāl al-ʿolamāʾ wa’l-sādāt (Tehran, 1306/1888) containing a vast number of entries on mostly Shiʿi figures from the early Islamic period to the time of the author. Rawżāt continued to be a model for several generations of Shiʿi authors, as is seen in Modarres Ḵiābāni’s Rayḥānat al-adab, Moʿallem Ḥabibābādi’s Makārem al-aṯār,and Āqā Bozorg Tehrāni’s fourteen-volume Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Šiʿa. From the historical perspective, the most remarkable work in this genre is Moḥammad Tonokā-boni’s Qeṣaṣ al-ʿolamāʾ on the lives of mostly contemporary ʿolamāʾ of Iran and Iraq. Writing at a critical juncture when the mojtahedswere at the height of their power, Tonokāboni was essentially faithful to the rejāl format, yet he offered remarkable details on the public and private lives of several generations of the ʿolamāʾ with a predictable pro-Oṣuli bias but unhindered by usual formalities of such accounts. Apart from Qeṣaṣ, no change of any note is evident in these dictionaries almost up to the end of the 20th century.

A parallel genre to the ʿolamāʾ’s biographical dictionaries was produced by Sufi scholars of the period. The Neʿmat-Allāhi scholar, Zayn-al-ʿĀbedin Širvāni’s three geographical dictionaries, products of his extensive travels in the tradition of wandering dervishes, identified in each town and region of Iran and the neighboring lands the notable Sufis and like-minded scholars and other luminaries of the middle decades of the 19th century. His most well-known Bostān al-siāḥa (Tehran, 1315/1897) is a refreshing shift from the dry format of the stationary jurists. Similarly, Ṭarāʾeq al- ḥaqāʾeq,a three volume biographical dictionary by the Sufi scholar Moḥammad Maʿṣum Širāzi (Tehran, 1317-19/1899-1901) offers, especially in volume three, biographies of Sufis and Sufi sympathizers of the Neʿmat-Allāhi, Ḏahabi (q.v.), and other orders as well as literary and cultural figures. Even works of Neʿmat-Allāhi missionaries in the earlier part of the century, such as Moẓaffar-ʿAli-Šāh Kermāni’s Divān-e moštāqiya in verse (Tehran, 1968), are useful for detecting personalities and tracing historical events, as are the Oṣuli’s anti-Sufi refutations such as Abu’l-Qāsem Qommi’s Jāmeʿ al-šetāt (Tehran, 1234/1818) and Moḥammad-ʿAli Behbahāni’s Ḵayrātiya, which remained unpublished (al-Ḏariʿa VII, p. 286).

Babi and Bahai works. A different class of narratives were produced by the Babi and later Bahai writers, often eyewitnesses to the unfolding of the new religion. Most well-known and one of the earliest in this category is Noqṭat al-kāf, an apologia in support of the Bab’s mission, covering the early history of the movement. Written by the Babi merchant and martyr, Ḥāji Mirzā Jāni Kā-šāni, this work has been the subject of much scrutiny, first by Edward Browne who published a translation of some of its excerpts and later the entire Persian text, and then by Bahai apologists who tried, largely unsuccessfully, to challenge the authenticity of the text and prove later extrapolations (see, e.g., Abu’l-Fażl Golpāyagāni and Mehdi Golpāyagāni, Kašf al-ḡetāʾ ʿan ḥial al-aʿdā, Tashkent, n.d. [1919?]). The core of the controversy concerned the question of the Bab’s succession, which according to Noq-ṭat al-kāf, was arrogated to Mirzā Yaḥyā Nuri, Ṣobḥ-e Azal. Yet beyond the question of succession, Noqṭat al-kāf offered an insight into the early Babi community and motivations for conversion. Of special value are descriptions of the Badašt gathering, the Babi resistance in Ṭa-barsi in Māzandarān during 1848-49, and the crisis in leadership after the Bab’s execution in 1850. A group of early Babi narratives also provide unique insight into the lives of ordinary believers and their involvement in the movement, a departure from the formalities of elite-dominant narrative of the Qajar period. They present a movement with a diverse social base and a complex apocalyptic message of renewal. Among them are the yet unpublished Mahjur Zavāraʾi’s Tāriḵ-e mimiya and the incomplete journal of Mirzā Loṭf-ʿAli Širāzi on the events of Ṭabarsi, recollections of Mirzā Ḥosayn Zanjāni of the Babi resistance in Zanjān (tr. E. G. Browne as “Personal Reminiscences of the Babi Insurrection,” in JRAS 29, 1897, pp. 761-827). Later, the Babi-Bahai narrative of Moḥammad Nabil Zarandi (published only in abridged tr. by Shoghi Effendi as The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahai Revelation, Wilmette, Ill. 1932) is of historiographical significance. The author, a steadfast supporter of Bahāʾ-Allāh, composed a narrative that incorporated a number of early oral and written accounts as well as the author’s own recollections. The implicit theme of Nabil’s narrative was to magnify Bahāʾ-Allāh’s place in the early history of the movement and hence give historical weight to his communal leadership and prophetic claim at a time when both were contested by Babi loyalists. In this process Zarandi made historical errors and mystifications and injected evident elements of the supernatural. His narrative, only available so far in an incomplete English translation that omits the events after 1852, is viewed as the official version of the birth of the Bahai Faith. Curiously devoid of an element of modernity embedded in the message of the Bahai Faith, Nabil’s outlook and methods are comparable with those of the official chroniclers of the period. In the early decades of the 20th century Bahai scholars also produced new historical compilations, of which the most well-known is Moḥammad Ḥasan Āvāreh’s (Āyati Tafti) al-Kawākeb al-dorriya fi maʾāṯer al-Bahāʾiya (2 vols., Cairo, 1342/1923), which was an attempt to fuse the Babi movement to the emergence of the Bahai faith (for assessment of the early Babi sources see Abbas Amanat, “Note on the Sources,” in Resurrection and Renewal, pp. 422-40).

Local histories. The Qajar period also produced a range of local histories, especially after the 1870s, offering a refreshing view from the periphery. They often accompanied geographical, ethnographical, urban, and other valuable details in the form of monographs commissioned by the central or local governments or written at the initiative of the authors. Mostly focused on individual cities and surrounding provinces and produced by informed urban notables and local officials, they were different in focus and tone, reflecting the outlook of urban and provincial groups. Chief in this group are two monographs on Fārs province—Ḥasan Fasāʾi, Fārs-nāma-ye Nāṣeri (2 vols. Tehran, 1312-13/1894-95; q.v.) and Moḥammad Naṣir Ḥosayni Širāzi (Forṣat-al-Dawla; q.v.) Aṯār al-ʿAjam (1314/1897); others include ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Kalāntar Żar-rābi, Merʾāt al-qāsān ([Tāriḵ-e Kāšān]; ed. I. Afšār, Tehran, 1962);Nāder Mirzā Qājār, Tāriḵ o joḡrāfi-e dār-al-salṭana-ye Tabriz (Tehran, 1323/1905);Ahmad-ʿAli Waziri Kermāni, Tāriḵ-e Kermān (Sālāriyā), and ʿAliqoli Baḵtiāri (Sardār Asʿad), Tāriḵ-e Baḵtiāri (Tehran, 1333/1914).

A few of the above accounts were part of a greater project on historical geography of Iran under Nāṣer-al-Din Shah mostly composed during the 1880s and generally known as Majmuʿa-ye nāṣeri. They were undertaken with a possible collaboration of the celebrated Pārsi representative in Tehran, Manakji Limji Huchang Hateria, and the minister of publication Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana (q.v.). Most monographs in this collection remain unpublished (for an account see A. K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia, London, 1953, pp. xvii-xviii; Abbas Amanat, ed., Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847-1866, Oxford Oriental Monograph Series, no. 5, London, 1983, Introduction, pp. iii-v, xxvi-xxvii; Appendix II, pp. xxxvii-xxxix). Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s comprehensive but incomplete historical geography, Merʿāt al-boldān-e nāṣeri, is largely based on this collection and presumably modeled on traditional Persian geographical encyclopedias as well as European works of the author’s time.

Also of significance for the historiography of the period are a large number of memoirs, diaries, journals, travelogues, and other personal accounts produced predominantly by the Qajar elite and their associates. Though they are mostly concerned with contemporary events, domestic and foreign travel, and everyday activities, they are of some value in assessing the historiography of the period; for they make references to near-contemporary and biographical details essential for understanding of the Qajar period. As personal accounts they reveal the historical outlook of men of privilege and their perception of the past and the present. Important among them are the extensive secret diaries of Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana as Ruz-nāma-ye ḵāṭerāt (ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1966) with valuable details on the Qajar past and the background of the elite of his time. Masʿud Mirzˊa Ẓell-al-Solṭān’s Tāriḵ-e sargozašt-e Masʿudi (Tehran, 1325/1907) containing an account on the origins of his tribe and royal family, and occasional historical details in the extensive diaries of Qaharamān Mirzā ʿAyn-al-Salṭana, a grandson of Moḥammad Shah, that covers the period between 1882 and 1945 (Ruz-nāma-ye ḵāṭerāt-e ʿAyn-al-Salṭana, ed. Iraj Afšār and Masʿud Sālur, 10 vols., Tehran, 1995-2001).

HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD

Historiography of this period will be treated in two separate entries:

(1) General survey of historical writings

(2) Specific topics concerning historical works

HISTORIOGRAPHY x. ISLAMIC REPUBLIC.

HISTORIOGRAPHY xi. AFGHANISTAN

The rise of the Dorrāni dynasty under Aḥmad Shah Sa-dōzay in 1160/1747 marked the beginning of an independent Afghan statehood, the political center of which was located in Qandahār and shifted to Kabul in 1775. Initially based on a loosely defined tribal polity, the Dorrāni empire was gradually transformed into the modern state of Afghanistan, suffering territorial losses and upheaval along the way (see AFGHANISTAN X. POLITICAL HISTORY). These political developments are mirrored by the historiography of the day, which not only bears witness to the perceptions current at the time but also was subject to reinterpretation as new historical predilections arose. The available historical accounts may thus be read on several levels. Apart from providing (sometimes contradictory) information about the “hard” facts and dates of the period in question, they have a story to tell about stylistic conventions as well as conceptions of royal authority and its manifestations. Certain key events described have yielded the raw material for the 20th century endeavor to mould the notion of a modern nation-state and to fix its beginnings at an early point in time. The Communist period and the resistance unfolding after the Soviet invasion in December 1979 offered the opportunity for a number of minorities to reclaim and redefine their part in the national narrative. This entry will be treated in the following sections: (1) the Sadōzay period, 1747-1818; (2) the Moḥammadzay rulers, 1826-1929; (3) the Moṣāḥebān period, 1930-78; and (4) developments after 1978.

1. The Sadōzay period, 1747-1818. The works of the 17th century poet Ḵošḥāl Khan Ḵaṭak and the 19th century author Moḥammad-Ḥayāt Khan point to the existence of a body of Paṧtō literature produced locally. Per-sian, by contrast, served as the main medium for the historiography concerning concepts of state and administration. Having risen in the ranks of Nāder Shah’s army, Aḥmad Shah Sadōzay modeled the administration of his state according to Iranian standards. With the intent to create a reservoir of personnel for his administrative and military needs, he actively promoted the settle-ment of Qezelbāš groups in his realm. The continuity of Iranian traditions is also reflected in Aḥmad Shah’s effort to give proper representation and commemoration to his bid at state building. Impressed by Moḥammad-Mahdi Kawkabi Astarābādi’s (q.v.; Estarābādi) recently completed Jahāngošā-ye nāderi, he ordered the employment of a historiographer of equal ability to chronicle the events of his reign. Maḥmud al-Ḥosayni, who entered Aḥmad Shah’s service upon the conquest of Mašhad in 1167/1753-54, was personally acquainted with Astarā-bādi. He dedicated the main body of his Tāriḵ-e aḥmad-šāhi to a year-by-year account of Aḥmad Shah’s entire reign up to the king’s death in 1186/1772-73, recording his own observations, news communicated to him by court officials and written documents. Written in 1213/1798, the Tāriḵ-e ḥosaynšāhi was originally intended as a history of Shah Zamān’s reign (1793-1800). Its author Emām-al-Din Ḥosayni joined Shah Zamān in Lahore in 1211/1796-97 and accompanied him to Peshawar, where he produced a history of the Dorrāni ruler. Upon his return to Lucknow he enlarged his work to include the reigns of Aḥmad Shah and his successor Timur Shah (r. 1772-93) on the basis of material he received from his pir Ḵᵛāja Ḥosayn Ḥosayni Češti, after whom this history is named. Completed in 1213/1798, the Tāriḵ-e ḥosaynšāhi traces Aḥmad Shah’s tribal background to the apical ancestor of all Pashtuns, Qays ʿAbd-al-Rašid, and covers the events in the Dorrāni empire up to 1212/1797. Of particular interest to the present-day historian is the section detailing the administrative arrangements in Shah Zamān’s empire and the composition of his army. The Tāriḵ-e aḥmadšāhi and the Tariḵ-e ḥosaynšāhi contain a number of important elements that entered all subsequent accounts of the 18th century and came to form the cornerstones of Afghan historical identity. Apart from Aḥmad Shah’s tribal pedigree and his unique qualifications as a ruler, his impromptu coronation with a few blades of grass on the impulse of the Sufi Shaikh Mo-ḥammad Ṣāber Shah came to form a key theme in the historiography of Afghanistan and was emulated by the founder of the Moḥammadzay dynasty, Dōst-Moḥammad Khan (Kohzād, Men and Events, pp. 93-96). Another noteworthy phenomenon is the contrast between the authors’ projection of the kings’ absolute authority and the ongoing need to suppress instances of rebellion (fesād, fetna, ṭoḡyān) in his realm. The constant military campaigns depicted reflect the underlying problem of maintaining an empire on the basis of a tribally organized and highly segmented followership. This tension became increasingly hard to resolve towards the close of the 18th century.

Two important histories were produced in India. Abu’l-Ḥasan b. Moḥammad-Amin Golestāna, the author of Moj-mal al-tawāriḵ pas az Nāder, suffered imprisonment by Karim Khan Zand in 1164/1750-51 and subsequently fled to Moršedābād in Bengal, where he composed his work in 1195-96/1780-82. As the title suggests, Mojmal al-tawāriḵ covers the events after Nāder Shah’s death, the rise of Aḥmad Shah and his campaigns to Khorasan and India, as well as events in the western parts of Persia during this period. While the early part of the book borrows heavily from the final chapters of Astarābādi’s Jahāngošā-ye nāderi, the author seems not to have been acquainted with the Tāriḵ-e aḥmadšāhi but recounts the events he witnessed himself until his flight between 1166/1752-53 and 1169/1755-56. Yet this work is of little reliability for the developments which occurred subsequent to the author’s departure for India (Mann, 1898, p. 107). The Majmaʿ al-tawāriḵ was also written in Moršedābād by a refugee from Persia. Its author, Moḥammad-Ḵalil Marʿaši, was the grandson of Mirzā Sayyed Moḥammad, the motawalli of Imam Reżā’s shrine at Mašhad, who assumed the royal title of Shah Solay-mān II for forty days in 1163/1750. While his father Solṭān Dāʾud Mirzā had left Mašhad as early as 1165/1751-52, Moḥammad-Ḵalil arrived in Moršidābād in 1192/1778. The Majmaʿ al-tawāriḵ covers the period from the Ḡilzay rebellion in 1120/1708-9 to the year 1207/1792. As Moḥammad-Ḵalil based his account on notes left by Solṭān Dāʾud Mirzā, this book is relevant for the affairs of Khorasan only up to the year 1750, that is four years prior to its incorporation into the realm of Aḥmad Shah (Lockhart, pp. 510-12, Mann, 1898, pp. 163, 351).

While not fitting into the framework of official historiography, the memoirs of Moḥammad-Reżā Barnābādi (1751-1815) provide interesting information on the political situation in Herat in the late 18th century. Born into a wealthy family of court officials based in Barnā-bād near Ḡoryān in present-day Afghanistan, Moḥammad-Reżā suffered complete impoverishment when his family fell from grace after 1793. In order to preserve the memory of the Barnābādis’ past grandeur, he compiled his Taḏkera in 1806-11 and included copies of documents attesting his ancestors’ close relationship with the Safavid and Sadōzay rulers. In 1233/1818 Mir ʿAbd-al-Karim b. Mir Esmāʿil Boḵāri, the head scribe of a Bukharan mission to Istanbul, produced a work concerning the developments in Central Asia subsequent to the death of Nāder Shah in 1160/1747. The first part of this book is devoted to the Sadōzay sphere of influence and discusses the fate of the various members of the royal family up to the final years of Shah Maḥmud’s second reign (1809-18) with particular reference to the events in Herat. Translated into French in 1876, it became known as Histoire de l’Asie Centrale.

2. The Moḥammadzay rulers 1826-1929. The historiography of the 19th century bears witness to the emergence of Afghanistan as a territorial entity. Loosely de-fined as comprising “Iran,” “Turkestān,” and “Hendustān” in the Tāriḵ-e aḥmadšāhi (ed. Homāyun p. 8; edition Saidmuradov fol. 11a), the Sadōzay state derived its identity not so much from a clearly delimited territorial space but was rather conceived of as a web of personal allegiances between the ruling family and the local leadership. Writing in the early 19th century, Mir ʿAbd al-Karim Boḵāri described the shrinking Sadōzay state as consisting of “Khorasan” and “Hendustan” (Schefer, Persian text, p. 4). As late as 1855, Mirzā ʿAṭā-Moḥammad’s Nawā-ye maʿārek consistently refers to the territory of present-day Afghanistan as “Khorasan.” Originally a resident of Šekārpur in Sind, Mirzā ʿAṭā-Moḥammad entered the service of the Moḥammadzay Sardārs of Qandahār and accompanied them on their military campaigns. Upon his return to his native town, he produced a first-hand account of the transition of power from the Sadōzays to the Moḥammadzays after 1818. Describing the changing status of Sind from a tributary to the Sa-dōzay empire to its forceful incorporation into the British empire in 1843, Nawā-ye maʿārek also documents the local effects of the vast change the region underwent in the early 19th century.

The earliest mention of “Afghanistan” as a political entity is to be found in the Tāriḵ-e solṭāni, which Solṭān Moḥammad Ḵāleṣ b. Musā Dorrāni Bārakzay began to write in 1280/1865 and published as late as 1298/1880. In the introduction Solṭān Moḥammad identifies Afghanistan as a territory located between Hendustān, Iran, and Turkestān and subject to Russian, British, and Iranian imperial ambitions. At the same time, he distinguishes different uses of the term “Afghanistan,” firstly its conno-tation as the area the Afghans/Pashtuns call their home and, secondly, as the territory controlled by the Afghan kings during various phases of history. In his attempt to tell the history of the Afghans from their genealogical beginnings to the incorporation of Herat into the Mo-ḥammadzay state in 1279/1863, Solṭān Moḥammad relies on a number of written sources, including Moḥammad-Qāsem Ferešta’s Tāriḵ-e ferešta, Neʿmat-Allāh’s Maḵzan-e afḡāni, the works of Sir John Malcolm, Astarābādi’s Jahāngošā-ye nāderi, and Shah Šojāʿ’s diary (Wāqeʿāt-e Šāh Šojāʿ, see below), as well as Farhād Mirzā Moʿtamed-al-Dawla’s translation of William Pinnock’s Modern Geography and History entitled Jām-e Jam. For the events of the 19th century, he also draws on oral information furnished by prominent Bārakzay elders, including his father.

Statements by or about the principal political actors form another important source for the events of the 19th century. Shah Šojāʿ commissioned a chronicle entitled Wāqeʿāt-e Šāh Šojāʿ, which was published subsequent to his death in 1842. The events of the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-42 (see ANGLO-AFGHAN WARS) are commemorated in two poetical works. In 1259/1843 Mo-ḥammad-Ḡolām b. Mollā Timur Shah composed an epic concerning the fate of Amir Dōst-Moḥammad Khan and his family until 1841. Written in the Kōhestān of Kabul, this work mentions a number of local leaders who spearheaded the resistance to the British in autumn 1840. Completed in 1260/1844, Ḥamid Kašmiri’s Akbar-nāma depicts the period from 1809 to 1843, focusing on the accomplishments of Amir Dōst-Moḥammad Khan’s son Moḥammad-Akbar (1816-47). Nur-Moḥammad Nuri’s Golšan-e emārat is devoted to the career of Amir Šēr-ʿAli Khan (r. 1863-66, 1868-78) from his birth in 1823 up to 1870. Originally from Qandahār, the author was closely connected with the royal court and sprinkles his eulogistic account with purported quotes from the Amir’s diary (tozok/tozuk). In 1303/1886 Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan (r. 1880-1901; see BĀRAKZAY DYNASTY) published an autobiography entitled Pand-nāma-ye donyā wa din, in which he described his role in the administration of Afghan Turkestān under Amir Dōst-Moḥammad Khan, his power struggle with Amir Šēr-ʿAli Khan, 1864-69, and his exile in Samarkand between 1870 and 1880. In 1896, the Amir commissioned Solṭān Moḥammad, a Punjabi secretary at his court, to enlarge on this work and to include the events of his entire reign. Bearing the title The Life of Abdur Rahman, this work was completed after Solṭān Moḥammad’s departure from Afghanistan and was published in London in 1900. The second volume, concerning ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan’s effort at state building, the nature of his administration, and the delineation of the borders of Afghanistan between the Russian and British spheres of influence was clearly written without any input or control on the part of the Amir. This book was, in turn, translated into Persian by Ḡolām-Mortażā Qandahāri in Mašhad and was subsequently published in Mašhad and Bombay under the title of Tāj al-tawāriḵ (Fayż-Moḥammad, p. 656; Farhang, I, pp. 435-36; Ḡobār, 1999, pp. 135-39).

The formation of the Moḥammadzay state and the cumbersome transition from a tribally organized polity to a centralized state is best reflected by a number of histories that were produced in the early 20th century. At the same time, the biographies of some of the authors in question bear witness to the fact that Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan’s endeavor to impose order created a thin line between “obedience” and “rebellion” and entailed imprisonment and/or exile for many individuals not fitting into the narrowly defined base of state. Located in a region of overlapping Iranian and Afghan interests, Moḥammad-Yusof Riāżi (1290-1330/1873-1911) is a case in point. Linked by ancestry both to the old Sadōzay elite and the Shiʿite community of Herat, Riāżi was doubly suspect to Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan. He was forced to leave the country for the first time at the beginning of the war against the Hazāras (q.v.) in 1309/1891 and suffered imprisonment on his return. Riāżi eventually settled in Mašhad, where he published his voluminous work, Kolliyāt-e riāżi (Baḥr al-fawāyed) in 1906. In keeping with his allegiance to the twelve Imams, Riāżi divided his work into twelve manuscripts (nosḵa) of varying length, each of which is subdivided in twelve plus two sections. ʿAyn al-waqāyeʿ, the third and by far the longest part in the volume, begins with a brief history of the Sadōzay rulers and continues with a chronology of the events of 1217-1326/1802-1906. This work not only contains news concerning the region of Herat but also covers events in Iran and other parts of the world and displays a clear orientation towards the contemporaneous Iranian historiography. An abridged version of ʿAyn al-waqāyeʿ was published by Āṣaf Fekrat in 1990. In 1331/1913, a history of the Moḥammadzay dynasty was produced in Samarkand by Mirzā Yaʿqub-ʿAli b. Aḥmad-ʿAli Ḵᵛāfi (b. 1267/1850-51). Originally from Kabul, both the author and his father were closely linked to the early Moḥammadzay administration and personally witnessed the power struggle unfolding during Amir Šēr-ʿAli Khan’s reign. Later on, Yaʿqub-ʿAli Ḵᵛāfi joined the service of Sardār Moḥammad-Esḥāq Khan (governor of Turkestān 1880-88) and fled to Samarkand after his employer’s unsuccessful rebellion. Entitled Pādšāhān-e motaʾaḵḵer-e Afḡānestān, Ḵᵛāfi’s his-tory covers the period from Amir Dōst-Moḥammad to ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan.

Fayż-Moḥammad’s (q.v.) Serāj al-tawāriḵ, the most comprehensive work concerning 18th and 19th century Afghanistan, by contrast, was written in Kabul under close supervision by Amir Ḥabib-Allāh Khan (q.v.; r. 1901-19). Printed in 1331/1912, the first two volumes of this work are devoted to the history of Afghanistan from 1747 to the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-80 and make up one third of the entire work. The publication of the third volume was stopped abruptly by Amir Amān-Allāh Khan (q.v.; r. 1919-29) in the early 1920s, and 416 pages of the original manuscript were not included. Even so, the remaining 860 pages represent one of the most valuable sources concerning the reign of Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Khan (McChesney, p. 19). For the first two volumes, Fayż-Moḥammad relied on Astarābādi’s Jahāngošā-ye nāderi as well as Iranian chronicles from the middle of the 19th century, such as Rawẓat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri by Reżāqoli Khan Hedāyat (q.v.), Tāriḵ-e waqāyeʿ wa sawāneḥ-e Afḡānestān by Eʿteżād al-Salṭana (q.v.), Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ by Lesān al-Molk, and Jām-e Jam by Farhād Mirzā. Among the Afghan sources Fayż-Moḥammad lists the works of Shah Šojāʿ, Ḥamid Kašmiri, Solṭān Moḥammad-Ḵāleṣ, and Sayyed Jamāl-al-Din Afḡāni (q.v.) as well as a number of informants. The second volume reproduces portions of Amir ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān’s Pand-nāma (Fayż-Moḥammad, Serāj al-tawāriḵ, pp. 3, 656). In keeping with these sources, the first two volumes of Serāj al-tawāriḵ display a continuity of older conventions of historiography. While adopting a simpler language than the chronicles of the 18th century, this part of Fayż-Moḥammad’s work reflects a similar preoccupation with shifts of power rather than routine aspects of government. Though arranged according to lunar years, the narrative remains vague in terms of time and space, the various battlefields merely serving as a backdrop for the unfolding drama of the ongoing struggles among various elite factions (Noelle-Karimi, 2001). The third volume, by contrast, provides a fine grid of data on the basis of government documents, decrees, and letters (Tarzi, “Note on the sources”). Another important work of Fayż-Moḥammad is his diary covering the first seven months of the interregnum by Bačča-ye Saqqā in Kabul from January to October 1929 (ed. McChesney and Shkirando).

3. The Moṣāḥebān period, 1930-78. The beginnings of modern historiography of Afghanistan can be traced to the early 1930s, when Nāder Shah founded the Literary Society (Anjoman-e adabi) in Kabul and the Pashto Society (Paṧtō anjoman) in Qandahār on the model of the scientific institutes of France. The Anjoman-e adabi, which also included a historical department,made its first public appearance with the publication of the monthly journal Kābol in 1931, the language of which was switched to Paṧtō with the creation of the Pashto Academy (Paṧtō ṭolana; See ANJOMAN-E TĀRIḴ-E AFGĀNESTĀN) in Kabul in 1937. The Kabul Yearbook compiled by the Anjoman-e adabi appeared from 1932 until 1981 under a variety of names: Sāl-nāma-ye majalla-ye Kā-bol (1932-34), Sāl-nāma-yeKābol (1935-39), Da Kābol kālanay (1940-50), Da Afḡānestān kālanay (1951-81). In 1942 the Historical Society of Afghanistan (see ANJOMAN-E TĀRIḴ-E AFḠĀNESTĀN) developed into a full-fledged research and translation institute, first within the framework of the Department of Press and later the Ministry of Information and Culture. Under its first president Aḥmad-ʿAli Kohzād the Anjoman-e tāriḵ made a name for itself by editing manuscript sources and government documents and publishing the monthly Persian journal Āryānā (see ĀRYĀNĀ BULLETIN) from 1942 and the quarterly Afghanistan in French and English from 1946 (Adamec, pp. 14, 23, 35-36, 111; Ḥabibi, 1968, pp. 10-19; Reštiā, 1997, p. 25). The production of numerous secondary works concerning the history of Afghanistan followed. Kohzād (1907-83) developed an interest in archeology during the first French explorations in Afghanistan from 1922 on and published numerous works on the pre-Islamic dynasties and the history of early settlements, such as Laškargāh, Bagrām, and Kabul (Grevemeyer, 1981, pp. 31-33). He served as curator of the Museum of Kabul and headed the Historical Society from its inception under the auspices of the Anjoman-e adabi until 1961. Punctuated by a prison term in 1933-36, exile in Farāh until 1938, and another prison term in 1952-60, the varied career of Mir Ḡolām Ḡobār (1897-1978) included the publication of two journals (Setāra-ye afḡān, 1919-29, Waṭan from 1951) and two major historical works, Aḥ-mad Šah Bābā (1939) and Afḡānestān dar masir-e tāriḵ (1967; Ḥabibi, 1984, pp. 136-39).

A native of Qandahār, ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy Ḥabibi (1910-84) served as president of the Pashto Academy in 1940 and dean of the faculty of letters from 1941-42. After exile in Pakistan from 1951-62 he was appointed president of the Anjoman-e tāriḵ in 1966. In keeping with his Pashtun nationalist leanings, ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy Ḥabibi devoted his research to the role of Pashtun elites and traced their existence in the territory of present-day Afghanistan to 1400 B.C.E. His account of Afghanistan’s history after the Timurid period relied on a purported early record of Paṧtō poetry, the Pəṭaḵazāna (Ḥabibi, 1970, Adamec, p. 98, Ḵpel, pp. 13-40). Despite their different specializations the historians active in the Anjoman-e tāriḵ arrived at strikingly similar conclusions concerning the historical roots of present-day Afghanistan, tracing its origin to the pre-Islamic period and affixing the Oxus, the Indus, and the Arabian Sea as its natural boundaries. Given the fact that this region was divided up between the Uzbek, Safavid, and Mughal spheres of influence in the early 18th century, Mir Ways Hotak’s rebellion in 1709 and Aḥmad Shah’s quest for power in 1747 are cast as an emancipation from the yoke of foreign oppression. In the accounts of the 19th century, the successful defenses of Afghanistan’s sovereignty against colonial encroachments form central themes. Another common characteristic is the focus on “great men” epitomizing national virtues of independence and integrity that enabled them to unify their country and to transcend ethnic divisions for a common good, thus essentially tackling challenges confronting the 20th century agenda of nation building (Greve-meyer, 1990, pp. 140-57). The idea of the splendor of the Dorrāni empire as a reflection of Aḥmad Shah “Bābā’s” flawless personality engenders the conclusion that times of political instability necessarily attest to some personal weakness on the part of the rulers. With the exception of ʿAziz-al-Din Wakili Fofalzay’s view of continuing Dor-rāni grandness in the late 18th century, most historians attribute the decline of the Dorrāni empire to personal shortcomings of Aḥmad Shah’s successors. The 19th century is likewise depicted as a dark age of fratricidal wars, in the course of which the Moḥammadzay elite put selfish interests above the unity of the Afghan nation. Both Ḡobār and Reštiā assign a vital role to the Afghan “masses” as the driving force towards sovereignty and national progress, which is thwarted because the leadership fails to appreciate and tap its potential (Noelle, pp. 45-47).

4. Developments after 1978. The advent of the communists occasioned a new approach towards the multiethnic composition of Afghanistan. The previous government endeavor to promote a national Afghan identity under the umbrella of Pashtun dominance was substituted by a nationalities policy on the model of the Soviet Union. In 1980 the range of official languages was expanded to include Baluči, Ōzbēki/Torkmani, Pašai, and Nurestāni in addition to Paṧtō and Dari (see AFGHANISTAN V. LANGUAGE). The constitution of 1987 declared Afghanistan a multinational state guaranteeing the equality and welfare of all constituent groups. As part of this policy, the bi-monthly journal Ḡarjestān with a specific focus on topics concerning Hazāra history, culture, and economy began to appear in 1988. Simultaneously, there was a sustained endeavor by exiled Hazāra intellectuals based in Pakistan and Iran to reclaim the past, noteworthy among them Moḥammad-ʿIsā Ḡarjestāni and Ḥaydar-ʿAli Jāḡori in Pakistan and Ḥosayn-ʿAli Yazdāni in Iran. While written from different perspectives, the works of the pro- and anti-government activists revolve around a set of common themes concerning the Hazāras’ deep roots within the country, their heroic contributions to its integrity, and the oppressions suffered in the course of history. This effort at redefining Hazāra identity resorts to similar means as the earlier nationalist discourse, linking notions of ethnicity with concepts of historical depth and a territorially defined space, in this case the historic region of Ḡarjestān (Bindemann, pp. 77-85; Schetter, p. 89). The process of redefining the historical past from a local perspective coincided with attempts at finding a more inclusive frame of reference and a new denomination for the Afghan state (Mousavi, pp. 1-18). During the final phase of communist authority Moḥammad-Ṣeddiq Farhang (1915-90), a former member of the Moṣāḥebān government, reintroduced the concept of “Khorasan” as basis of historical analysis (Farhang, pp. 17-26). Departing from Ḡobār’s concept of the inherent unity of the Afghan nation, his Afḡānestān dar panj qarn-e aḵir depicts a number of ethnic and territorial lines of conflict. The discussion this work sparked among the other Afghan intellectuals in exile bears witness to the deep cleavages brought about by the political conflict in Afghanistan and shows that the “proper” role of historiography, the assessment of the position of various political protagonists as well as the relationship between the state and the different segments of its society, still is a highly contentious issue. The fall of the communist regime in 1992 encouraged a number of Afghans in exile to analyze the constitutional movements under Amirs Ḥabib-Allāh and Amān-Allāh Khan as well as the oppressive nature of the early Moṣāḥebān period without exposing themselves to the accusation of being pro-communist (e.g., Mobārez, Pohanyār, Zamāni). Due to the unsettled situation in Afghanistan, the work of many contemporary historians has largely remained untapped so far, Reštiā’s memoirs and Kākar’s account of the communist period only forming the tip of an iceberg (see also COMMUNISM iv. IN AFGHANISTAN).

HISTORIOGRAPHY xii. CENTRAL ASIA

The first Persian historical work produced in Central Asia (Transoxiana, Ḵᵛārazm, Farḡāna, and Eastern Turkestan) was the 4th/10th century translation of the history of Ṭabari by the vizier of the Samanids, Abu ʿAli Moḥammad Balʿami. While no works on the history of the Samanids themselves were written for them as far as we know, the historians of the Ghaznavids wrote both general histories and histories of Khorasan; events in Transoxiana and other parts of Central Asia would sometimes occupy a prominent place in these works, but their general approach to Central Asia was from an outsider’s perspective, and they cannot be considered a part of regional historiography. The historiography of the Qarakhanids (or “the Khans of Turkestan,” as they were called in Islamic literature), the first Islamic Turkic rulers in Central Asia, was extremely meager; and only one work, which is merely of secondary importance, has come down to us (see Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 17-18). Although titles of works on the history of the Ḵwārazmšāhs, some of which were probably in Persian, are known (see ibid., pp. 31-32), none has survived. Under the Samanids and the Qarakhanids several works were written on the history of such major cities as Bukhara (by Moḥammad b. Jaʿfar Naršaḵi, 10th century) and Samarqand (originally by ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Edrisi, 11th century, continued by ʿOmar Nasafi, 12th century). Both of the aforementioned works, however, were written originally in Arabic (and the latter was more a theological than historical work, as was the case with many early Islamic “city chronicles”), though they were later translated into Persian: the work by Nar-šaḵi in the 11th century (see text ed. Schefer, Description topographique; text ed. Rażawi, Tāriḵ-e Boḵārā; English tr. Frye as The History of Bukhara) and that of Edrisi/Nasafi much later (see Qandiya). They became very popular in Central Asia, circulating in numerous copies and being further amended by later editors. There was a kind of continuation of this genre of “historical” literature in post-Mongol Central Asia, in the form of works like the Ketāb-e (or Tāriḵ-e) Mollā-zāda by Mo ʿin-al-Foqarāʾ (15th century), which is a description of mausoleums, mainly of holy men buried in Bukhara, with brief biographical data (see Moʿin-al-Foqarāʾ). Such works, however, belong more to hagiography (q.v.) than to histori-ography. No original historical works were written in Central Asia during nearly three centuries following the Mongol conquest. Even the histories of Timur and the Timurids were written outside of Central Asia, sometimes in Herat, but often elsewhere in Persia, which is remarkable given the fact that the center of Timur’s own power was in Samarqand. Moreover, after the final break-up of the Timurid empire in 1469, no historical works seem to have been written for and about the Timurids of Transoxiana.

Thus, a genuine Persian historiographical tradition in Central Asia, as it is known to us from surviving texts, began in the early 10th/16th century with the Uzbek conquest of the region. Initially, there were attempts, supported by some members of the Shïbanid–Abulkhayrid dynasty, beginning with Šïbāni Khan himself, to have their history recorded in Turkic, the language of the conquerors. Šïbāni Khan’s cousin, Keldi-Moḥammad b. Söyünč-Ḵᵛāja Khan, who in the 930s/1520s ordered ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moḥammad Naṣr-Allāhi to write a Turkic (Ča-ḡatay) history of his dynasty, is said to have explained the need for this in the following words: “The descendants of Čengiz Khan who ruled the countries, as well as the descendants of Timur Bek, were all Turks. Why are all the historical works about them written in Persian? Since they were all Turks, it is necessary that their histories be also written in Turkic language” (Zobdat al-āṯār, ms. now belonging to Mr. Simon Digby, England, fol. 53b). However, Turkic historical literature under the Uzbeks emerged only in Ḵwārazm, whose population seemed to be the most Turkicized among the inhabitants of the sedentary regions of Central Asia, while the historiography of the Abulkhayrids and their successors in Transoxiana, with the exception of the three early Čaḡatay works written in the first quarter of the 10th/16th century, was in Persian. The development of historical literature in Persian under the Abulkhayrids was prompted by the influx of Sunnite refugee writers from Safavid Persia after the rise of Shah Esmaʿil. Already the histories of Šïbāni Khan were written in Persian, both in prose and verses (see below), and the authors of four out of five historical and biographical works written in Persian under the first Abulkhayrids were émigrés from Khorasan. Further growth of Persian historical literature in Transoxiana was facilitated by the tradition of court patronage adopted by the Uzbek rulers from their Timurid predecessors (see Subtelny). There seemed to be no official post of a historiographer under the Abulkhayrids and their successors similar to the wāqeʿa-navis in Persia, but almost all historians, with very few exceptions in the 13th/19th century, enjoyed at least the royal patronage as well as, sometimes, the patronage of high officials, and their works were usually commissioned. Sometimes histories were written by royal secretaries (monši) and court poets; in the latter case they were usually versified and imitated the Šāh-nāma following the tradition well established by the time of the Timurids (see Mortażawi). Prose works usually included poems, sometimes in large numbers, written by the historians themselves, but occasionally quoted from the works of other authors.

All known historical works written in Central Asia since the 10th/16th century fall within the categories of either general (or “universal”) history or dynastic history. In the first case they would usually begin with creation followed by a brief account of the prophets culmi-nating in Moḥammad, whose biography is followed by those of the first four caliphs (the Rāšedun); and the rest would typically be divided into chapters for each Islamic dynasty, in more or less chronological order. Pride of place was usually reserved for the history of the particular dynasty (the Abulkhayrids, the Janids, etc.) to whose representative the work was dedicated. General histories were strongly influenced by and dependent upon the Rawżat al-ṣafā of Mirḵᵛānd (but not the Ḥabib al-siar of Ḵᵛāndamir), which enjoyed great popularity in Central Asia. It is also interesting that, out of the seven general histories written in Persian by Central Asian authors from the 16th century through the first half of the 19th century, four were written in India or by authors who lived in India, some of them for a long time; it remains to be studied whether this was a result of their greater acquaintance with Persian historical literature in India, where general histories proliferated during the same period (cf. Storey–Bregel, pp. 416-72). The importance of all these works for modern scholarship lies usually in the sections dealing with their contemporary dynasties, so that in this respect they do not differ from the dynastic histories. One genre of historiography that was prominent in Persia was absent in post-Timurid Central Asia: local and city histories (with the exception of the late redactions of Nar-šaḵi and the Qandiya).

Dynastic histories either took the form of the history of a particular dynasty, beginning with its origin (or genealogy), or the history of the reign of a single ruler, beginning with his genealogy or birth. These works were, as a rule, highly partisan, having as their main purpose the glorification of the ruler and vilification of his enemies; at the same time they had to teach political wisdom through historical examples and to provide an entertaining reading. Florid language, which helped to achieve all these goals, was a common feature of almost all Persian historical works written in Central Asia since the 16th century (on the very few exceptions see below); in this regard later Central Asian historiography faithfully continued the Timurid tradition. The sources utilized by the historian were sometimes mentioned in his introduction (especially in general histories), much less commonly in connection with specific information; quite often the existence of a written source was hinted at, but the source itself not named. Oral tradition and oral information were used sometimes extensively, which, however, was not always explicitly acknowledged. On relatively rare occasions documentary sources were quoted; exceptional in this respect was the early 18th century work by Moḥammad Salim (see below).

The following survey will discuss the Persian historical literature in Central Asia by main regions and dynasties. It includes selective references to the available text editions and translations, and, in the absence of such pub-lications, to the manuscript catalogs, in which the works are described. Complete lists of the existing manuscripts, text editions and translations, as well as studies of individual historical works, can be found in Storey–Bregel, II, pp. 1108-1201 (the English edition, Storey, I, pp. 369-93, is outdated in its Central Asian section and should not be used); some additions (works published since 1974) are given in the Bibliography below.

BUKHARA (TRANSOXIANA)

Abulkhayrids. Šïbāni Khan, the Uzbek conqueror of Transoxiana and Khorasan, showed much interest in having his deeds immortalized in historical works, and had a Turkic chronicle of his victories compiled entitled Tawāriḵ-e gozida-ye noṣrat-nāma (according to some modern scholars, he wrote it himself, at least partially; cf. MIKKh, pp. 9-16). The first two Persian histories of the reign of Šïbāni Khan were based on this work, namely, the versified Fatḥ-nāma by a certain “Šādi,” a poet at the court of Maḥmud Sultan, brother of Šïbāni Khan (see SVR VIII, No. 5630; MIKKh, pp. 44-90, 504-6), and the Šaybāni-nāma by Kamāl-al-Din Benāʾi Heravi (and its expanded version, Fotuḥāt-e ḵāni) (see SVR I, No. 139; MIKKh, pp. 91-127, 507-11; Samoĭlovich; Mirzoev, Bi-noī, pp. 154-56, 357-75). Another work dedicated to Šï-bāni Khan was written by a Persian émigré, Fażl-Allāh b. Ruzbehān Ḵonji, under the title Mehmān-nāma-ye Bo-ḵārā, but it was not so much a history of the khan, as an eyewitness account of his military campaign against the Kazakhs (facsimile edition of a Tashkent manuscript, an autograph, with a Russian tr. Fazlallakh ibn Ruzbikhan Isfakhani; printed edition, Mehmān-nāma-ye Boḵārā; German tr. Ott).

Between the death of Šïbāni Khan (916/1510) and the reign of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan (from 991/1583) no historical works seem to have been written in Transoxiana, with the single exception of the Tāriḵ-e Abu’l-Ḵayr-ḵāni by Masʿud b. ʿOṯmān Kuhestāni (finished under ʿAbd-al-Laṭif Khan ca. 947/1540); this was not a history of the author’s patron, but a florid general history (the first one written under the Uzbeks) with a special attention to Abu’l-Ḵayr Khan (q.v.), the founder of the dynasty (see Miklukho-Maklaĭ, Nos. 303-5; MIKKh, pp. 135-40; Akh-medov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 37-39). The largest, as well as the most ornate, historical work written under the Abulkhayrids was Šaraf-nāma-ye šāhi (commonly known as ʿAbd-Allāh-nāma) by Ḥāfeẓ-e Tanïš, a history of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan b. Eskandar (q.v.) from his birth to 997/1588-89 (see SVR I, Nos. 149-51; Miklukho-Maklaĭ, Nos. 426-27; Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 47-54; facs. ed. and Russian tr. Khafiz-i Tanysh). Two more works were written on the history of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan, of which one, a poem entitled Jahān-nomā, or Tāriḵ-e ʿAbd-Allāh Ḵān, by the well-known court poet, ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān “Moš-feqi” Boḵāri, has been lost; the second, by a certain “Moqimi,” entitled Ẓafar-nāma-ye Moqimi, is the history of the 10 years of reign of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan, from 986/1578 to 996/1588, in prose and verse (mss. in Tashkent: see SVR IX, No. 6014, and Dushanbe, see Katalog vostochnykh rukopiseĭ I, No. 60). The last historical work written during this period was a versified general history Rosol-nāma by Badr-al-Din Kašmiri (on this author cf. Mirzāyef [Mirzoev]), of which the fourth part, under a separate title Ẓafar-nāma, was finished in 1001/1593 and contained the history of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan (the only known ms. in Dushanbe: see Katalog vostochnykh rukopiseĭ I, No. 61). Badr-al-Din was one of very few Central Asian historians who did not write for royal patrons. He served the Juybāri shaikhs of Bukhara, to whose biographies he devoted a large work Rawżat al-reżwān wa ḥadiqat al-ḡelmān (see on it Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 182-88). The latest work dedicated to the history of the Abulkhayrids was the Mosaḵḵer al-belād by Moḥammad Yār b. ʿArab Qataḡān, who wrote under the patronage of the Janid Khan of Bukhara, Bāqi-Moḥammad, and finished his work probably between 1015/1605 and 1019/1610 (see Abuseitova; Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 57-62). This work gives the history of the Abulkhayrids from Abu’l-Ḵayr Khan to ʿAbd-al-Moʾmen Khan (son of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan) and contains valuable material not found in earlier Abulkhayrid works.

Janids. The only known historical work dedicated to the most powerful ruler of this dynasty, Emāmqoli Khan (r. 1020-51/1611-42), is Emāmqoli-nāma, a versified history by a certain “Sohaylā,” which is mentioned in the catalog of the Tashkent manuscript collection (see SVR V, No. 3507) but has not been studied yet. The successor of Emāmqoli, Naḏr Moḥammad Khan, when he was still the ruler of Balkh, commissioned the largest work ever written by the historians of Central Asia, the Baḥr al-asrār fi manāqeb al-aḵyār by Maḥmud b. Amir Vali. The author, who lived in Balkh, had spent seven years in India before becoming a ketābdār of Naḏr Moḥammad Khan. His work is a general history in seven volumes, of which only the first volume (cosmographical and geographical introduction) and the sixth volume (history of the Mongols, Čengiz Khan and his successors, up to the Janids, brought down to 1050/1641-42) have been preserved (see Ethé, Catalogue, No. 575; SVR V, Nos. 3563-65; V. Bartol’d, “Otchet o komandirovke v Turkestan [1902],” pp. 170-96; Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 65-71; publication of facsimile of fragments from the geographical part of vol. I, with Russian tr., see Makhmud ibn Vali). This work is one of the most important sources for the study of the 17th century Central Asia (including Eastern Turkestan), but it remained apparently unknown to later authors and did not influence Central Asian historical writing. Several historical works were written for the last Janids, or at least during the time of their rule, at the end of the 11th/17th and early 12th/18th centuries, including Sobḥānqoli-nāma (a versified history of Sobḥānqoli Khan by Moḥammad-Ṣalāḥ Balḵi; see Bartol’d, “Otchet o komandirovke v Turkestan [1920],” pp. 380-83), Moḥiṭ al-tawāriḵ (a short general history by Moḥammad-Amin Kirāk-Yarāqči, finished in 1119/1699, in which the last chapter, on the history of Sobḥānqoli Khan, occupies the main place; see SVR I, No. 87; Sobranie vostochnykh rukopiseĭ, Nos. 248-51), “ʿObayd-Allāh-nāma” (original title unknown; a history of ʿObayd-Allāh Khan, 1114-23/1702-11, by Moḥammad-Amin Boḵāri, finished ca. 1128/1716; see Teufel; Russian tr. by A. A. Semenov: Mir Mukhammed Amin-i Bukhari), Taḏkera-ye moqim-ḵāni (a history of the Abulkhayrids and the Janids, but mainly of Balkh under the Janids, by Moḥammad-Yusof Monši, finished ca. 1116/1704; see Senkowski; Russian tr. A. A. Semenov: Mukhammed Yusuf Munshi); a history of the first ten years of reign of Abu’l-Fayż Khan (1123-34/1711-21; original title unknown) by ʿAbd-al- Raḥmān Ṭāleʿ (see SVR I, No. 194, IX, No. 6016; Russian tr. by A. A. Semenov: Abdurrakhman-i Taliʿ); Tāriḵ-e Qepčāq-ḵāni, a general history with a valuable last section on the Abulkhayrids and the Janids, written by Ḵᵛājamqoli Bek Balḵi known as Qepčāq Khan, a high official of the Janids in Balkh, who lived in India (Lahore) from 1107/1695-96, where he finished his work in 1138/1726 (see Blochet, I, 348; Bodleian, 117; Khurshut, “Tarikh-i Kipchak-khani”). The latest historical work that may be considered a part of the Janid historiography was “Selselat al-salāṭin” (the original title unknown) written in 1143/1730-31 in India and dedicated to the Mughal emperor Moḥammad Shah by a Janid prince Moḥammad-Salim, who left Central Asia in 1123/1711; this is a general history, two-thirds of which deals with the Abulkhayrids and the Janids (see Bodleian, 169; Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 101-10). The work of Moḥammad-Salim is distinguished by its relative objectivity, great attention to chronology, and the inclusion of many pieces of diplomatic correspondence between Central Asian, Persian, and Indian rulers. However, it remained totally unknown in Central Asia, and the only known (and defective) copy of it, in the Bodleian Library, comes from India. Ironically, it was the Taḏkera-ye Moqim-ḵāni, the most biased and the least reliable of all works of the Janid historiography, that enjoyed the greatest popularity in Central Asia and has been preserved in numerous copies.

Manḡïts. The historiography of the Manḡïts is the subject of a very detailed and thorough study by Anke von Kügelgen, Die Legitimierung. The earliest work on the history of the Manḡïts was Toḥfat al-ḵāni (also called Tāriḵ-e Raḥim-ḵāni), a history of the first Manḡïts from 1134/1722, but mainly of the first khan of this dynasty, Moḥammad-Raḥim Khan (actual ruler of Bukhara from 1160/1747, khan in 1170-72/1756-58), by Moḥammad-Wafāʾ Karminagi. By the order of Moḥammad-Raḥim Khan’s successor, Dāniāl Biy Atalïq, this work was continued until 1182/1768-69 by ʿĀlem Bek b. Neyāzqoli Bek Išān (see Miklukho-Maklay, Nos. 443-48; Akhmedov, Istoriko-geograficheskaya literatura, pp. 114-20; Von Kügelgen, pp. 106-11). The third Manḡït ruler, Amir Šāh-Morād (r. 1200-15/1785-1800), had no historian of his own. His son, Amir Ḥaydar (1215-42 /1800-26), soon after his accession, ordered Moḥammad-Šarif b. Moḥammad-Naqi to write a history of the Janids and the Manḡïts; this work, entitled Tāj al-tawāriḵ, was written in 1215/1800 in an extremely florid style and, apparently, included important information concerning the time of Dāniāl Biy and Šāh-Morād; but this section is missing in all available manuscripts of this work (see Bregel, The administration, pp. 31-33; on the work in general see Von Kügelgen, pp. 111-20). Among the works written in the following several decades we see a substantial departure from the uniformly ornate style that had dominated the Bukharan historiography until then. The first such work was written, however, outside of Central Asia, although by a Bukharan author: it was an untitled history of Central Asia (Bukhara, Ḵiva, and Ḵoqand) and Afghanistan by ʿAbd-al-Karim Boḵāri, who served with Bukharan embassies to Russia and Turkey. He wrote his work in 1233/1818 for an Ottoman official, whom he was serving at that time as secretary (a text edition, by Ch. Schefer, with a French tr.: see Mir Abdoul Kerim). The structure of this work has no parallels in Central Asian historiography, and it seemed to have remained unknown in Central Asia (see Von Kügelgen, pp. 127-35). However, several works devoted entirely, or primarily, to the history of Amir Ḥaydar and written soon after his death are also distinguished by their simple style and impartiality. Two of them were written by his uncle, Mo ḥammad-Yaʿqub b. Dāniāl Biy: Golšan al-moluk, a general history, with the main emphasis on the Janids and the Manḡïts, completed in 1242/1827 or soon after, and Resāla, a history of the Manḡïts, finished in around 1246/1830-31 (see Ivanov, pp. 44-46; Miklukho-Maklaĭ, Nos. 449-52; Von Kügelgen, pp. 150-57). Another contemporary of Amir Ḥaydar, who possibly had a pen name “Moʿin,” or “Moʿini,” wrote at about the same time Tāriḵ-e awāʾel wa awāḵer, a history of the Abulkhayrids, Janids, and Manḡïts, but mainly of Amir Ḥaydar, in a similarly simple style of prose (see Katalog vostochnykh rukopiseĭ, I, No. 100; also SVR IX, No. 6020, under the title Ḏikr-e taʿdād-e pādishāhān-e Uzbek; see Von Kügelgen, pp. 143-50). In the 1240s/1830s, another member of the royal family, Moḥammad-Ḥosayn “Miri” b. Šāh Morād, who was an enemy of Ḥaydar, wrote Ma-ḵāzen al-taqwā fi tāriḵ Boḵārā; it is a versified but unsophisticated work, mostly autobiographical and highly partisan, but it contains some interesting details about the history of the Manḡïts (see Bartol’d, “Zanyatiya,” pp. 456-59; Von Kügelgen, pp. 135-43). The history of Amir Ḥaydar was also the subject of an anonymous work Tāriḵ-e Amir Ḥaydar (around 1242/1826), which, however, is more a popular romance (dāstān) than an historical work, since it combines historical facts with numer-ous legendary and fantastic stories (cf. SVR I, No. 216; Ivanov, pp. 49-50, 95-119). The long reign of Ḥaydar’s successor, Amir Naṣr-Allāh (r. 1242-77 /1827-60), was the subject of only two known historical works. The first of them, Fatḥ-nāma-ye solṭāni by Mir ʿĀlem Boḵāri, a secretary to a provincial governor, covers only the first years of Naṣr-Allāh’s reign (see SVR I, No. 218; Ivanov, pp. 47-48, 120-23; Von Kügelgen, pp. 393-96) and is marked by almost total lack of dates. The second, Ẓafar-nāma-ye ḵosravi, finished in 1279/1862-63 by an anonymous author who, probably, occupied a high position at the court, contains the history of the entire reign of Naṣr-Allāh, and is distinguished by its attention to exact chronology (facsimile edition: see Ẓafar-nama-ĭi Khusravi). The last court historian of the Manḡïts was ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓim “Sāmi” Bustāni, a monši of Amir Moẓaffar-al-Din (r. 1277-1302/1860-85). In 1319/1901 he wrote Toḥfa-ye šāhi, a history of Bukhara from the early 12th/18th century to the time of compilation, in which only the second half (the reign of Moẓaffar-al-Din, but not of his successor ʿAbd-al-Aḥad) contains original material (see SVR I, No. 235). Later, in 1324/1906-7, when the author was in disgrace, he wrote an “unofficial” version of the same history, this time including ʿAbd-al-Aḥad, entitled Tāriḵ-e salāṭin-e manḡiṭiya; it is highly critical of the last three amirs (facsimile edition, with Russian tr.: Mirza ʿAbdʿaẓim Sami). The last historian of Bukhara before the revolution was Moḥammad-Salim Bek “Salimi,” who held various high posts in the Bukharan administration and was the author of a number of works of prose and poetry; his Tāriḵ-e Salimi, finished in 1339/1920, is a history of Bukhara from Čengiz Khan to the time of compilation, in which the last three-quarters, beginning with his account of the reign of Moẓaffar-al-Din, from 1277/1860, is a valuable eyewitness account of his time (see Norkulov; Vil’danova).

ḴOQAND(FARḠĀNA).

The oldest Central Asian historical work that includes a special short section on the history of the Khanate of Ḵoqand (until 1233/1818) was the above-mentioned work by ʿAbd-al-Karim Boḵāri. But an independent historiography of Ḵoqand begins with the time of Moḥammad-ʿOmar Khan (1225-37/1810-22), the second khan of the Ming dynasty, who was himself a poet and patronized poets and artists (see Nettleton). The two historical works written in Ḵoqand under ʿOmar Khan were commissioned by him to his court poets. The first of them, ʿOmar-nāma (also called Šāh-nāma and Ẓafar-nāma) by ʿAbd-al-Karim “Fażli” Namangāni, is a versified chronicle of the reign of ʿOmar Khan finished in 1237/1822 (the only known manuscript is in St. Petersburg), which the author considered a continuation of the Timur-nāma by ʿAbd-Allāh Hātefi” (this is connected with the official genealogical legend, according to which the Ming dynasty traced its origin, through Bābor, back to Timur). The same year ʿOmar Khan ordered another court poet, Qalandar “Moš-ref” Esfaragi, to write a prose account of his reign. It was finished the same year, but already after the death of ʿOmar Khan. Entitled Šāh-nāma-ye ʿOmar-ḵāni or Šāh-nāma-ye noṣrat-payām, and written in a highly ornate style, it was based largely on the aforementioned ʿOmar-nāma of “Fażli” (see Miklukho-Maklaĭ, No. 456). The next and arguably the most interesting work of Ḵoqandian historiography was written by Moḥammad-Ḥakim Khan b. Maʿṣum Khan, a relative of the Mings, who was Šayḵ-al-Eslām under ʿOmar Khan and the governor of several provinces under ʿOmar Khan’s successor, Mo-ḥammad-ʿAli Khan, before falling from grace. He spent almost seven years in exile, traveling through Russia (where he was received by Tsar Alexander I) to Turkey and Mecca; and, after his return, he lived in the semi-independent Uzbek principality of Šahresabz, where he finished his work entitled Montaḵab al-tawāriḵ in 1259/1843. This is a general history which includes detailed accounts of the Manḡïts of Bukhara and, in particular, the Mings of Ḵoqand (the latter occupies one half of the entire work), combined with descriptions of travels and adventures of the author (see Miklukho-Maklaĭ, No. 457; Khurshut, “ ‘Muntakhab at-tavarikh’ i ego istochniki”; idem, “ ‘Muntakhab at-tavarikh’ kak istochnik”; facsimile edition: see Mukhammed Khakimkhan). Although the work is marred by some factual errors, especially in chronology, it stands out for the independent judgements of the author, who was not a court historian, its fairly simple style and its wealth of factual information making it comparable with the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi of Moḥammad-Ḥaidar (see below). Two works of Ḵoqandian court historians written in the 1280s/1860s, namely the Merʾāt al-fotuḥ of Tura Ḵᵛāja Andejāni and the Tāriḵ-e ʿAzizi of ʿAziz b. Moḥammad-Reżā Marḡilāni, manuscripts of which were described by Bartol’d (see his “Otchet o komandirovke v Turkestan [1902],” p. 207), Zimin (see his “Zertsalo pobed”), and Validov (A. Z. V. Togan; see his “Vostochnye rukopisi,” p. 309), are apparently lost. In 1275/1859, a certain ʿAbd-al-Ḡafur wrote Ẓafar-nāma-ye Ḵodāyār-ḵāni, a versified history of the first reign of Ḵodāyār Khan (r. 1261-75/1845-58; see Bartol’d, “Otchet o komandirovke v Turkestan [Avgust-dekabr, 1920 g.],” pp. 372-73). About a decade later, in 1286/1869 or 1289/1872, ʿAvaż-Moḥammad ʿAṭṭār (a grocer from Ḵoqand), another author unconnected with the court, completed a lengthy, two-volume historical work. The first volume, entitled Tāriḵ-e jahān-nomāy, is a general history entirely based on earlier works; and the second, entitled Toḥfat al-tawāriḵ-e ḵāni, is a history of the Khanate of Ḵoqand up to the time of writing, in which the parts dealing with the 1250s/1840s and beyond have some value (see Bartol’d, “Otchet o komandirovke v Turkestan [1902],” pp. 206-7; Nabiev; Miklukho-Maklaĭ, No. 458). At about the same time Niāz-Moḥammad b. ʿAšur-Moḥammad Ḵoqandi, a military officer, by order of Ḵodāyār Khan wrote his Tāriḵ-e Šāhroḵi, or Tawāriḵ-e Šahroḵiya, an ornate history of the Khanate of Ḵoqand under the Mings; it was finished in 1288/1871-72, and it is an important source particularly for the reign of Ḵodāyār Khan (1261-92/1845-75, with interruptions), while it also contains some original information about the earlier periods (see Beĭsembiev; Bartol’d, “Izvlechenie”; idem, “Tuzemets”; text edition (uncritical), Taarikh Shakhrokhi). The last major work on the history of the Khanate of Ḵoqand was written in 1279-1304/1862-86 (thus, finished already after the Russian conquest) by a native of Tashkent, Mo-ḥammad-Ṣāleḥ Ḵᵛāja Tāškandi, a teacher in a traditional school. It is entitled Tāriḵ-e jadida-ye Tāškand and divided into two volumes, the first of which (less than one-third of the entire work) is a general history based on earlier works, while the second contains a very valuable history of Tashkent, Farḡāna, and the Khanate of Ḵoqand, with a detailed account of the Russian conquest (a Russian tr. of an extract: Chekhovich).

EASTERNTURKESTAN

One of the most important 16th century works of the Central Asian historiography in Persian is the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi. Its author, Moḥammad-Ḥaydar of the Moḡul tribe Duḡlāt (often called Mirzā Ḥaydar or Ḥaydar Mirzā), was, on his maternal side, a grandson of the khan of Moḡulestān, Yunos, and a cousin of Ẓahir-al-Din Bābor (q.v.). By both his upbringing and literary tastes he was close to the Timurids, and his work is in many ways similar to Bābor’s memoirs. He wrote his work in Kashmir (which he conquered in the service of the Mughal emperor Homāyun [q.v.] in 948/1541) in 948-53/1541-46. It is divided into two books (daftar), the first of which contains a systematic history of the Chaḡatayids of Mo-ḡulestān from 748/1347-48 until the time of the author, based on oral tradition, while the second (written before the first) is the author’s memoirs containing a wealth of material on political and cultural history and historical geography. The Tāriḵ-e Rašidi enjoyed a great popularity in Central Asia and India, and it was used extensively by Amin b. Aḥmad Rāzi in his Haft eqlim (see Storey, I/2, pp. 1169-71), by Ḥāfeẓ-e Tanïš in his Šaraf-nāma-ye šāhi, and by Maḥmud b. Vali in his Baḥr al-asrār (see above). It has also been translated several times into Turkic languages (text edition, with an English tr. W. M. Thackston: Mirza Haydar Dughlat’s Tarikh-i-Rashidi; English tr., with some omissions: Muhammad Haidar; Russian tr.: Mirza Mukhammad Khaĭdar; see also Sultanov, “‘Tarikh-i Rashidi,’” and Tumanovich). More than a century later, in 1083-87/1673-76, Šāh-Maḥmud b. Amir Fāżel, from the Moḡul tribe Čorās, wrote his historical work, which is usually referred to simply as Tāriḵ (it does not have a title) and which may be considered as a continuation of the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi. The first half of this work is a summary of the contents of the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi, while the second half, containing a continuation of the history of Moḡulestān up to the time of compilation, is based on oral tradition and the author’s own observations. The work is written in simple Persian, apparently close to the vernacular Tajik of Eastern Turkestan, although that was not the author’s mother tongue (see text ed. of the original part, with Russian tr.: Shaikh-Makhmud ibn Mirza Fazil Churas). With the end of Chaghatayid rule in Eastern Turkestan, the Persian historiographical tradition in the region came to an end, although Persian was still the language used for a number of subsequent hagiographical works. Historical works written in Eastern Turkestan in the 19th century, mainly during the Muslim rebellions against the Manchu and at the time of Yaʿqub Bek, were all in Turkic, with the exception of two poems on the rebellion of Rašid-al-Din (Ḵān Ḵᵛāja) in 1281/1864-65 and an anonymous history of Yaʿqub Bek, entitled Tāriḵ-e ṣeḡāri, written in 1291/1874, the first quarter of which is a history of Farḡāna and Ḵoqand until the reign of ʿĀlem Khan (r. 1213-25/1798-1810; see Bartol’d, “Otchet o komandirovke [1923],” pp. 407-8).

On the whole, the Persian historiography of Central Asia after the Timurids was a well-developed branch of literature showing, not only the continuity of historiographical tradition in a variety of styles, but also its ability to adjust, within certain limits, to the changing times. However, its development was brought to an end by the Russian conquest of Western Turkestan, and especially the revolution, while in Eastern Turkestan this tradition, which had never been very strong in the first place, died out with the end of royal patronage.

The relationship between the post-Timurid historiography of Central Asia and that of Persia was mostly one-way: the works of Persian historians would be brought to Central Asia, used and quoted in Central Asian works, and they can be found now in Central Asian manuscript collections; in contrast, Persian historians, from the time of the Safavids onwards, seem not to have used works by their Central Asian counterparts, and no manuscripts of Central Asian historical works are registered in the catalogs of Persian collections (one manuscript of the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi in Tehran is probably the sole known exception). Among the post-Timurid historical works written in Persia the most frequently referred to by Central Asian authors are Ḥasan Rumlu’s Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ, Eskandar Monši’s Tāriḵ-e ʿālamārā-ye ʿAbbāsi, and Mahdi Khan’s Tāriḵ-e jahāngošā-ye Nāderi (there seem to be no traces of acquaintance in Central Asia with Qajar historiography).

The state of scholarship in Persian historiography of Central Asia is nothing but deplorable. Out of about 40 extant historical works, only 8 are available in text editions: the Mehmān-nāma-ye Boḵārā by Ruzbehān Ḵonji, ʿAbd-al-Karim Boḵāri’s aforementioned untitled work (a poor edition, without scholarly apparatus), the Tāriḵ-e salāṭin-e manḡitiya by ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓim “Sāmi” (a facsimile edition, with Russian tr.), the Montaḵab al-tawāriḵ by Moḥammad-Ḥakim Khan (a facsimile edition), the Tāriḵ-e Šāhroḵi by Niāz-Moḥammad (a very poor edition, without scholarly apparatus), the Ẓafar-nāma-ye ḵosravi (a facsimile edition), the Tāriḵ-e Rašidi (a modern, but not a critical edition), the Tāriḵ by Šāh-Maḥmud Čorās. In addition, the first half of the Šaraf-nāma-ye šāhi by Ḥāfeẓ-e Tanïš is published in facsimile with a Russian tr. and three works, ʿObayd-Allāh-nāma, Taḏkera-ye Moqim-ḵāni, and the history of Abu’l-Fayż Khan, are published in Russian translation only. Among the most important works still to be edited are Tāriḵ-e Abu’l-ḵayr-ḵāni, Šaraf-nāma-ye šāhi, Baḥr al-asrār, Selselat al-salāṭin, Toḥfat al-ḵāni, Golšān al-moluk, and Tāriḵ-e jadida-ye Tāškand. Unfortunately, various circumstances, mainly the difficulty of access to the manuscripts of these works and the lack of qualified scholars willing to devote their time to this demanding task, make such a goal hardly achievable in the foreseeable future.

HISTORIOGRAPHY xiii. THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

HISTORIOGRAPHY xiv. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Ottoman historical works composed in Persian occupy an important place in the corpus of court-oriented Ottoman historical writing of the early and classical periods. Although the predominant literary language of the Ottoman realm was Turkish, Persian, as a language of prestige and the preferred vehicle for the projection of an imperial image, provided an alternative linguistic medium for historical composition. Despite the smaller volume of historical works produced in Persian—approximately one-sixth of the total number of Ottoman histories from the beginning of the 9th/15th to the end of the 10th/16th century—the esteem accorded Persian compositions, as well as the influence of Persian works on subsequent Ottoman historical writing, is immeasurable. Persian histories for the most part were written by Iranian émigrés seeking Ottoman patronage. These émigrés, primarily scholars, men of letters, and/or former officials employed at the Āq Qoyunlu and Safavid courts, were important in transmitting Persian literary traditions to the Ottoman domains as well as valuable reservoirs of first-hand information on the eastern Islamic lands. Since displaying one’s learning and rhetorical skills through the composition of historical works was a common way of earning the patro-nage of the grand vizier or sultan, historical works were often written and presented to the court with the hope of receiving a high-ranking official appointment. Throughout the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, literary expertise and talent in Persian was highly sought after, yet not easily found among primarily Turcophone Ottomans, hence the special position and status accorded to Iranian men of letters, often to such an extent that it aroused the jealousy of other courtiers. After reaching its peak in the mid-960s/late 1550s to the 990s/early 1590s, however, Ottoman patronage of Persian historical writing came to a sudden halt and from the beginning of the 17th century onwards we know of no Persian historical work produced for the Ottoman court.

The influence of Persian models on early Ottoman historiography. The assumption that Persian was the first literary language of the Ottoman Turks, together with its corollary that the earliest Ottoman historical works were composed in Persian (Lewis and Holt, p. 10), are misconceptions contradicted by textual evidence. Turkish appears to have preceded Persian in the writing of histories among the Ottomans as indicated by the earliest surviving Ottoman historical texts which were written in Old Anatolian Turkish, a newly developing literary language since the early 8th/14th century. It would be more accurate to state that Ottoman historiography composed in Persian was a development which began in the mid-9th/15th century during Meḥmed II’s reign in conjunction with rising imperial aspirations, and which paralleled, stylistically, thematically and content-wise, Turkish works. It has also been erroneously claimed that early Ottoman historiography developed as a distinct tradition from that of the Arabo-Persian model (Humphreys, p. 251). This commonly-held notion is a generalization derived from a slim base of scholarship which has narrowly focused much of its energies on the major vernacular Turkish dynastic chronicles of the late 9th/15th century characterized by folk-style narrative and stylistic elements. This notion does not hold up, however, when the entire corpus of Ottoman historical works produced between the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries is taken into consideration. Not only was Persian patronized as a medium of historical production up until the end of the 10th/16th century, but Persian histories were widely read, studied, copied, and translated by Ottoman scholars and litterateurs. Persian histories, especially those dating from the Mongol, Il-Khanid, and Timurid periods, served as important stylistic, thematic, and structural models for Ottoman Turkish works. It would be more accurate to characterize Ottoman historiography of the early and classical periods as an amalgamation of both Perso-Islamic forms and stylistic elements with Turkish narrative and epic elements.

Persian historiographical traditions deeply influenced the writing of Ottoman Turkish histories. Many early Ottoman Turkish historical works derived structural and stylistic models as well as content from Persian histories. Two such examples are the histories of Yazıcıoğlu ʿAli and Enveri (Anwari). Yazıcıoğlu ʿAli’s historical work, composed in Turkish for Murād (Morād) II (r. 824-55/1421-51) in 840/1436-37 (Wittek, 1964, p. 265), and known variously as the Oğuz-nāma, the Saljuq-nāma, and the Taʾriẖ-i āl-i Seljuq (Tāriḵ-e āl-e Saljuq), consists of various accounts of the Oğuz, the Great Seljuqs (Saljuqs), and their various branches in Anatolia, Iraq, Ker-mān, and Kurdistan, as well as the Mongol period up to the Il-Khanid ruler Ḡāzān Khan (r. 694-703/1295-1304). Aside from 65 lines extracted from an unidentified Oğuz-nāma and contemporary authorial interpolations, the content of the work is taken almost entirely from Persian histories dating from the Il-Khanid period. The Anatolian Seljuq section is a loose translation of Ebn Bibi’s history (composed ca. 680/1281), prefaced by a briefer section on the Great Seljuqs from Rāvandi’s earlier work (composed ca. 601/1204-5). The section on the Mongols is based for the most part on Rašid-al-Din’s (d. 718/1318) Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ, a work which is not only the most comprehensive written source of Mongol and Il-Khanid history, but also the oldest surviving written text of Oğuz lore(Wittek, 1952, pp. 642-43; Melikoff, p. 163). While it does not treat the history of the Ottoman dynasty per se, the concerns of Yazıcıoğlu ʿAli’s work are still very much Ottoman. The ideological impetus behind treating the Turkish and Turco-Iranian dynasties preceding the Ottomans was to demonstrate that the Otto-mans, as the supreme representatives of the Oğuz Turks, were the legitimate successors to leadership in the Turco-Iranian world, where nomad legitimizing principles continued to influence notions of political sovereignty following the disintegration of the Chingizid order. The work articulated a direct political challenge to the Qara Qo-yunlus, Āq Qoyunlus, and Timurids as well as Anatolian Turkmen dynasties such as the Karamanids by claiming that the Ottoman sultan Murād (Morād) II was superior in origin and genealogy (süngük) to all the khan families of the other Oğuz Turks as well as to the various branches of the Chingizids, an ideological stance referred to as the Oğuzian theme (Wittek, 1952, pp. 645-47; Woods, p. 5; Fleming, 1988, p. 123). Rivalry with Turco-Iranian polities continued to be an important impetus behind much of subsequent Ottoman historiography of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries.

Enveri’s Düstur-nāme (Dastur-nāma), a Turkish maṯ-nawi written in 869/1465 for the Ottoman grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha, is an eclectic Islamic universal history of three general sections. The first part goes from Adam to the Mongols and concludes in 806/1403-4 with the death of Sultan Aḥmad, the Jalayerid ruler in Iran. This section is based primarily on the Persian history Neẓām al-tawāriḵ of Qāżi Nāṣer-al-Din Beyḏāwi (Beyżāwi) dating from ca. 674/1275 (Melville, passim), as well as later compilations not mentioned by the author. The second part, by far the longest with some 1,250 couplets, consists of a dāstān characterized by a Turkish folk narrative style in its praising of the exploits of Umur Beg (r. 734-48/1334-48) of the Aydınid principality of central western Anatolia, and appears to have been derived entirely from oral sources. The final section of around 850 couplets dealing with the Ottoman period up to 868/1464 has a more formal style pointing to the fusion of written sources with the author’s own personal experiences, especially his participation in some of Meḥmed II’s campaigns in the 860s/1460s (Menage, I, pp. 134-36). Enveri’s eclectic composition thus exemplifies the coexistence and co-mingling of oral or folk Turkish narrative style along with more formal narrative and Persian structural models.

The role of Persian in the development of Ottoman historical writing. Ottoman historical writing emerged in the early 9th/15th century as a manifestation of a newly emerging political consciousness in the face of political rivals from both Anatolia and the Turco-Iranian east. Historical works were patronized by the Ottomans with the intention of articulating justification for territorial claims as well as creating an ideology of Ottoman political legitimacy. Timur’s establishment of political hegemony in Anatolia following his defeat of Sultan Bayezid (Bāyazid) I (r. 791-805/1389-1402) in 804/1402 at the Battle of Ankara, referred to by Cemal Kafadar as the “Timurid shock,” was the historical juncture which jolted the Ottomans into consciousness of their precarious political position vis-à-vis their predominantly Turkish political rivals (Kafadar, p. 93). It was in the immediate aftermath of this devastating defeat and the Ottoman civil war among the sons of Bayezid I that the “Dāsitān-i tevāriẖ-i müluk-i āl-i ʿOsòmān” (“Dāstān-e tawāriḵ-e moluk-e āl-e ʿOṯmān”) was written by Tāceddin Ibrāhim Aḥmedi (Tāj-al-Din Ebrāhim Aḥmadi; d. 815/1412-13), an eminent Anatolian poet and scholar of the late 8th/14th and early 9th/15th century. Completed in around 807-12/1405-10 in Anatolian Turkish, this relatively small chapter of 340 couplets is appended to the universal history section of Aḥmedi’s İskender-nāme (Eskandar-nāma), an encyclopedic, didactic work of more than 8,000 couplets framed around the Alexander legend (Aḥmedi, İskender-nāme, Ünver, ed., passim; Köprülu, p. 216; Menage, I, p. 52 and pp. 59-60). This early pseudo-history briefly traces the rise of the Ottoman dynasty up to the short reign of Süleyman Chelebi (Solaymān Čalabi) (r. 806-14/1403-11) without the benefit of dates or detail, and is more notable for its ideological claims of the Ottomans as the supreme ğāzis, or wagers of jehād, than for its historical information. Ottoman historical writing throughout the rest of the 9th/15th and 10th/16th centuries con-tinued to refer to the theme of the Ottomans as the leading ğāzis of the Islamic world as a defense of Ottoman political legitimacy.

The use of Persian as a medium for historical composition under Ottoman patronage first began under Meḥmed II (r. 855-86/1451-81), whose reign, following the conquest of Constantinople in 857/1453, ushered in the imperial phase of the Ottoman polity. With a significant increase of patronage of literary and historical works, this period witnessed the true beginnings of an Ottoman court historiography, the main function of which was to glorify the exploits of Meḥmed II and to enhance the image of the Ottoman dynasty. Meḥmed II’s grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha (d. 879/1474) was the major patron of the period. He gathered at his court a brilliant circle of poets and litterateurs, giving special importance to Persian letters and patronizing Iranian talent. (Tekindağ, 1957, p. 188; Ünver, p. 192).

Şükrullāh’s (Šokr-Allāh) Bahjat al-tawāriḵ (composed 864/1459), Muʿāli’s Ḵonkār-nāma (880/1475), and Kā-şifi (Kāšefi)’s Ğazā-nāma-ye Rum (882/1478) are three representatives of the Ottoman Persian historiographical tradition as it rose during Meḥmed II’s reign under the patronage of the Ottoman grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha. While Šükrullāh appears to have been of Turkish origins and entered Ottoman service while quite young (Atsız, p. 39), the other two authors were both émigrés from Iranian lands: Muʿāli was originally from Ṭus and Kāşifi (Kāšefi) from outside of Širvān. The production of Şükrullāh’s and Muʿali’s works must be put into the context of political rivalry with competing Iranian polities: Şükrullāh’s work appears to have been stimulated by the long-standing political rivalry between the Ottomans and the Timurid ruler Šāhroḵ Mirzā (d. 850/1444), set within the immediate background of Ottoman attempts to form an alliance with the Qara Qoyunlu Turkmen against their mutual enemies, the Timurids. Muʿali, on the other hand, began composing his work in the midst of the Ottoman-Āq Qoyunlu military conflict during the mid-870s/early 1470s. These works focus on events and rulers in the Persian east and in one way or another address Ottoman claims of political legitimacy in face of their Timurid and Āq Qoyunlu rivals.

Šukrullāh served as Murād II’s envoy to several Turkish principalities in Anatolia and Iran in the 850s/1440s. One of his missions was to forge an Ottoman alliance with the Qara Qoyunlu ruler Jahānšāh (r. 843-72/1439-67) against the growing power of the Āq Qoyunlu. In 864/1459 during his retirement from official service, he composed in Persian the Bahjat al-tawāriḵ, a work which was dedicated to the grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha and the sultan. The history of thirteen chapters is an Islamic universal history beginning with creation, geographical and cosmographical information, and covering the Prophets, Moḥammad and his Companions, great religious figures and the ancient philosophers, pre-Islamic Iranian rulers, the Umayyads (referred to as Yazidis), and the Abbasids. The account continues with historical topics of great concern to the Ottoman Turks such as their purported ancestors, the Oğuz Turks, their predecessors, the Seljuqs, as well as the rise of their own dynasty up to the accession of Meḥmed II in 855/1451 (Rieu, Supplement of Persian Manuscripts, p. 884; Storey, Persian Literature, I, pp. 91-92; Demiroğlu, p. 349). The author apparently incorporated material from an Oğuz-nāme or similar work of Oğuz lore, most likely having come upon a copy while at the Qara Qoyunlu court in 852/1448-49 (Atsız, p. 39) While Şükrullāh’s work was based on Aḥmedi’s narrative or at least a common source used by Aḥmedi, among other unknown sources for the earlier Ottoman period up until Bayezid I, it also includes much original material for subsequent periods. A contemporary witness to events in the 9th/15th century, Şükrullāh also includes accounts from his diplomatic missions as well as from the reign of Murād II and Meḥmed II, making this work valuable for these periods of Ottoman history (Atsız, p. 41; Menage, II, p. 318, pp. 324-28). Şükrullāh’s history was translated into Turkısh in 937/1530-31 for Sultan Sülayman, and served as the major source for a subsequent Ottoman history, Meḥmed Zaʿim’s Turkish history Cāmiʿ al-tavāriẖ (Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ), commissioned by Murād III’s grand vizier Soḳollu Meḥmed (Soqollu Moḥammad) Pasha in 985/1578. Meḥmed Zaʿim’s made such extensive use of Şükrullāh that parts of it could be considered a word-for-word translation (Babinger, pp. 98-99).

Mir ʿAli b. Moẓaffar, known by his maẖlaṣ (taḵalloṣ) of Muʿāli, was a sayyed originally from Ṭus. He arrived at the Ottoman court after years of traveling through Islamic lands, approximately from 850-57/1446-53. Muʿāli’s history, the Ḵonkār-nāma, composed in Persian verse of around 5,000 couplets mostly in the motaqāreb meter, is difficult to describe generically, for it does not adhere to any particular historical format. Menage describes its composition as a “patchwork “ of events stitched together with little concern for chronological sequence, composed in a “bombastic language.” It consists of four sections, beginning with a brief overview of Meḥmed II’s reign and his defeat of two Turkmen rulers in Anatolia, the Āq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥasan and Ismāʿil (Esmāʿil), the Isfendiyarid prince of the region of Kastamonu near the Black Sea, before launching into a more detailed expose of the circumstances leading up to and following the Ottoman defeat of Uzun Ḥasan in 878/1473. The second section deals with the history of Timur and his successors as well as the Qara Qoyunlu and Āq Qoyunlu Turkmen confederations. Here Muʿali’s describes the recep-tion of an embassy sent by Murād II after the Battle of Varna in 848/1444 to the Timurid court, a common diplomatic strategy meant to promote one’s victories as a form of political intimidation. The work concludes with an autobiographical account of the author’s extensive travels, appendixed with a few significant events in 879/1474-75 as the author was concluding the work’s composition. Of notice were the traumatic death of the Ottoman prince Muṣṭafā (Mosṭafā) that year at the hands of the rebellious Karamanid Turkmen of south central Anatolia, as well as the execution of the grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha and the arrival in Istanbul of a Mamluk embassy (Anhegger, p. 147; Menage, I, pp. 147-49).

Muʿali’s Ḵonkār-nāma comprises an important source for Ottoman relations with the few remaining rival Turkish Anatolian regional principalities as well as the neighboring powers to the east, the Timurids, Āq Qoyunlu, and Qara Qoyunlu. Composed while the Ottomans were in the midst of military conflict with the Āq Qoyunlu, its completion in 879/1474-75 coincided with the Ottoman defeat of Uzun Ḥasan, bringing an end to the Āq Qo-yunlu ruler’s territorial ambitions in Anatolia (Menage, I, p. 151). As a result of his Iranian origins as well as his extensive travels to various eastern courts where he had personal contacts and of whom he had first-hand knowledge, Muʿali was uniquely able to provide the Ottoman court with accurate and detailed information regarding eastern enemies.

Like Muʿali, Kāšifi (Kāšefi) was an émigré from Iranian lands. Originally from Baku, which at the time was in the domains of the Shah of Shirvān, Kāšifi arrived at the Ottoman court towards the end of the reign of Meḥ-med II after having spent many years traveling throughout the Islamic world and having lived for some time at Aleppo and Urfa (Ruḥā, Edessa). He approached the Ottoman Grand Vizier Ḳaramāni Meḥmed (Qaramāni Moḥammad) Pasha in 882/1478 with a partial Persian maṯnawi of the military exploits of Meḥmed II, the Ğazā-nāma-ye Rum, the completed portion of which consists of 1,139 couplets in the motaqāreb meter and exists in a unique manuscript in Istanbul (Istanbul University Library, ms. FY no. 1388, ff. 43). Victor Menage speculates that the work, which resembles an earlier anon-ymous Turkish §āzā-nāma composed over thirty years earlier for the sultan’s father Murād II, was an attempt to bring the author, new to the Ottoman capital and seeking court patronage, to the attention of the sultan. The text may represent a first draft of the beginning of a proposed longer work which would have been undertaken upon the approval and financial support of the sultan. After describing the sultan’s birth and his father’s brief abdication to him when he was a mere youth in 848/1444, Kāšifi launches into a detailed account of the 848/1444 Varna campaign against the European Crusaders. It describes other campaigns such as the expedition into Albania in 851/1447 and the campaign at Kosova in 852/1448. The text ends with an unfinished section consisting of only the heading announcing the marriage of Meḥ-med II with the Ḏu’l-Qadr princess in 853/1449. We have no information on whether or not the text was ever completed (Erzi, pp. 596-97; Menage, I, pp. 153-55). Halil Inalcık points out that the text contains original information regarding Murād II’s reign and Meḥmed II’s youth (Inalcık, p. 11).

By the time Bayezid II (r. 886-918/1481-1512) came to the throne, the Ottomans appear to have been conscious of their lack of a detailed and cohesive dynastic historical tradition. Up to this point Ottoman historical works consisted of either universal histories containing relatively brief appendixes of the Ottoman period, covering the reign or part of a reign of a particular sultan, or the more limited accounts of particular campaigns, in addition to the miscellaneous works discussed above focusing on the rule of previous powers such as the Seljuqs or Ottoman relations with political rivals to the east. Bayezid II’s reign represents a watershed period for the development of Ottoman historiography, both in Turkish and Persian, for this period marks the development of a detailed Ottoman dynastic tradition compiled in the form of dynastic chronicles written in simple and straightforward Turkish, geared to a less educated audience. Later during Bayezid II’s reign, this relatively unsophisticated dynastic chronicle tradition was recast into enšāʾ-style rhetorical prose histories, both in Turkish and Persian, with the intention of projecting an imperial image for the dynasty with a more elite audience in mind.

The first major Ottoman dynastic chronicles produced in Turkish drew upon various sources such as early 9th/15th-century taqwims “retrospective historical calendars,” narratives such as manāqeb-nāmas, works of semi-legendary tales of the exploits and deeds of important individuals, and Ğazawāt-nāmas, accounts focusing on battles waged by the sultan or his amirs, in addition to oral traditions and personal recollections (Inalcık, pp. 11-12; Woodhead, 1998, p. 291). This initial flurry of dynastic historical composition, written in an unpretentious and straightforward Turkish vernacular, was mainly concerned with selectively creating an official Ottoman dynastic narrative out of an array of often contradictory sources and oral accounts. Victor Menage and Halil Inalcik have pointed out that the many works produced during this sudden increased activity of historical writing during Bayezid II’s reign conclude with events of 891/1484-85. This date is not coincidental in being the end-point of these series of narratives, but indicates a political imperative in the production of image-enhancing accounts of the sultan whose ascension to the throne in 886/1481 was marked by both dynastic succession struggle as well as general unrest and widespread discontent throughout his realm. Added to the disaffection resulting from the unpopular drastic fiscal measures introduced by his father and the grand vizier Ḳaramāni Meḥmed Pasha as well as the general internal unrest in different parts of the empire, was the Cem (Jam) problem. The ongoing succession struggle with his brother Cem (d. 900/1495), as well as the eagerness of the European powers to exploit this internal conflict with the hopes of a civil war breaking out in the Ottoman empire, made Bayezid II’s less than secure. In order to solidify his precarious hold of the throne and enhance his stature within and outside the empire, he took to military campaigning as well as initiated a new wave of historical production bent on putting his reign in the best possible light (Menage, I, p. 35; Inalcik, p. 12). Anxious to placate his restless Janisary corps who were responsible for bringing him to the throne, yet extremely unhappy with the execution in 887/1482 of their idol the grand vizier Gedik Aḥmed Pasha, Bayezid undertook his first military campaign in 889/1484 in the region of Moldavia. There he successfully seized the important fortresses of Aḳḳırman (Āq-Qermān) at the mouth of the Dniester and Kilia on the Danube estuary, something his father the great conqueror had failed to accomplish. The first set of dynastic chronicles composed during the reign of Bayezid all invariably conclude in 889/1484 emphasizing Bayezid’s military successes (Inalcik, p. 12) in the context of Bayezid as the legitimate successor to the glorious Ottoman legacy as the premier ğāzis (warriors for a holy cause) of the Islamic world as well as the legitimate successors to the Anatolian Seljuqs.

Part of establishing a canonical dynastic narrative was the creation of an ideological fiction upon which Ottoman political and territorial claims could be founded. The political ideology of the Ottomans as the legitimate and sole successors to the Seljuqs of Anatolia underlies the Ottoman myth of their origins which appear in the dynastic chronicles composed in this period. Ḳaramāni Meḥmed Pasha prefaced his Arabic Ottoman dynastic history, the earliest surviving Ottoman dynastic history, completed in 885/1480, one year shy of Bayezid’s succession, with an overview of the Anatolian Seljuqs as the background to the rise of the Ottoman dynasty (Menage, I, pp. 129-30). This narrative strategy as first seen in Ḳaramāni Meḥmed Pasha’s work, which places the Ottomans as the legitimate successors of the Seljuqs and completely bypasses the Mongols, was repeated throughout subsequent chronicles of the period, including the Anonymous Chronicles, and the histories of Ruḥi, ʿĀşıḳpāşazāde (ʿĀšeq-Pāšāzāda), ʿUruc (ʿOruj), and Neşri (Našri). The concern to show the Ottomans as the rightful and legitimate successors to the Seljuqs must have become especially pressing considering the great difficulty the Ottomans were faced in their attempts to take control of Karamanid territory in south-central Anatolia beginning with Meḥ-med II’s conquest of Konya in 873/1468. It was not until early on in Bayezid’s reign, in 888/1483, that the Ottomans were able to bring an end to the Karamanid dynasty, the Ottoman’s greatest Anatolian Turkmen rival, who likewise viewed themselves as the sole and legitimate successors to the Seljuqs. Even with the end of Karamanid rule in the region, outbreaks of rebellion in the name of the Karamanids continued as late as 906/1500-1501. Stability in the region was likewise threatened with a border war with the Mamluks beginning in 809/1485 over control of the southeastern Anatolian frontier.

Two Persian histories were produced during the earlier part of Bayezid II’s reign: the prose dynastic history Ketāb-e tawāriḵ-e āl-e ʿOṯmān of Meḥmed Emin b. Ḥacci Ḫalil El-Ḳonyevi (Moḥammad Amin b. Ḥajji Ḵalil Qonyavi), of which two known unpublished manuscripts exist (Biblio. Nat. ms. Schefer supp. pers. no. 1394, foll. 87 and Kayseri Reşid Efendi Library no. muvakkat 68, foll. 47), and an anonymous verse history entitled Bāyazidnāma, a unique unpublished manuscript illustrated with 13 amateurish miniatures at the Cambridge University library (ms. Or. no. 196, foll. 2a-105b). Like the set of Turkish Ottoman histories produced for Bayezid II during this period, these two Persian works conclude with events of the year 889/1484.

El-Ḳonyevi states that he began writing his history at the command of Meḥmed II, and continued to work on it throughout the early part of Bayezid II’s reign, concluding it with the conquests of Kilia and Akkırman in 889/1484. Much of el-Ḳonyevi’s work, as Menage has shown, consists primarily of Şükrullāh’s history recast in a more elegant and ornate Persian with an update of events. The work is prefaced with an abridged history of the Anatolian Seljuqs, demonstrating that the Ottomans, as the true successors of the Seljuqs, owed their claims to sovereignty when the Seljuq Sultan Kayḵosrow III (663-82/1264-84) granted ʿOsmān, the eponymous founder of the Ottomans, the insignia of royalty. The author claims that his section on the Anatolian Seljuqs is superior to previous works, incuding that written by Şükrullāh. A šariʿa court clerk from Konya, el-Ḳonyevi added additional information to this section from inscriptions of buildings in his native Konya as well as information found in waqfiyāt, previously unused historical calendars (taqwims), and other miscellaneous histories. Whether or not this section presents original and reliable information on the Anatolian Seljuqs is a question that awaits further investigation. The section on the Ottomans was taken directly from Şükrullāh going up until Meḥmed II’s accession to the throne in 855/1451. The account subsequent to 855/1451, the period up to 889/1484, consists of original material presented in a sparse narrative recounting events year by year, most likely based on contemporary historical calendars (Menage, I, pp. 102-4; Blochet, p. 87).

The value of the Bāyazid-nāma, an anonymous Persian verse history dealing solely with the reign of Bayezid II, has been overlooked as a contemporary source of the period, perhaps due to the inaccurate description as a non-contemporary history of Bayezid I (r. 791-805/1389-1402; Storey, II, p. 411, based on Browne’s description). Written in 891/1486, the historical narrative of the work begins with a chapter on Bayezid II’s role, while still a prince, in the military efforts to pacify the Karamanids. A third of the work details Bayezid’s succession struggle with his brother Cem (Jam), who had formed an alliance with the Karamanid prince Ḳāṣım (Qāṣem) Beg, and continuing until Cem’s flight to Rhodes in 887/1482. The rest of the work is devoted to various Ottoman princes, grand viziers, and other officials of the realm, and concludes with Bayezid’s military activity in Moldavia along the Danube and the Dniester region, and the arrival of a Mamluk embassy just as the Ottoman-Mamluk border conflict was to erupt. In order to emphasize both Bayezid II’s military successes and his imperial grandeur and majesty, the sultan is referred to as Abu’l-Nāṣer throughout the work, or alternatively, as Ḵosrow, the “imperial one.” This Persian verse history appears to be the only known work solely dealing with Bayezid II’s reign. It also marks an early attempt to cast the sultan in a truly imperial light, with its highly rhetorical Persian and mystical tone, as especially seen in the exordium of the work.

Towards the latter half of Bayezid II’s reign, at the beginning of the 10th/16th century, we see a significant shift in Ottoman historiographical concerns, in which Persian plays a significant role. With the semi-official establishment of the content of the Ottoman historical narrative in the 880s-90s/1480s-90s through the series of vernacular Turkish chronicles, the concern turned towards the creation of historical works which adequately exerted an imperial image of the Ottoman sovereign. Thus at the beginning of the 10th/16th century, efforts were made to recast the established narrative into a rhetorically embellished style, both in Ottoman Turkish and in Persian. Bayezid II thus commissioned what were to become two of the most important and influential Ottoman dynastic histories ever to have been composed. Idris-i Bidlisi (Edris-e Bedlisi)’s Persian Hašt behešt and Ibn-i Kemāl (Ebn Kamāl)’s Turkish Tevāriẖ-i āl-i ʿOsòmān (Tawāriḵ-e āl-e ʿOṯmān) mark the development of an imperial ornate enšāʿ style in dynastic historical composition. These texts in Persian and Turkish respectively can be considered parallel efforts in both languages to lay down the groundwork for an imperial tradition of dynastic historical composition.

Originally from an important ulema family of the Kurdish region of Bidlis in eastern Anatolia, Ḥakim-al-Din Edris b. Ḥosām-al-Din ʿAli Bedlisi (d. 926/1520), known simply by his maḵlaṣ (taḵalloṣ) Idris (Edris), accompanied his father Ḥosām-al-Din, a well-respected Sufi shaikh, to Tabriz when the Āq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥa-san moved his court from Diārbakr (Amid) to Tabriz. Under the Āq Qoyunlus, Tabriz became a major gathering place for scholars and shaikhs of the time. Edris Bedlisi completed his education at Tabriz and served the Āq Qoyunlu rulers as divān secretary and chancellor (ne-šānji). Edris stayed in Āq Qoyunlu service until the Safavid conquest of Tabriz in 907/1501-2, and upon the invitation of Bayezid II, who had been impressed by his finely composed correspondence written in highly embellished Persian, established himself in Istanbul. Immediately afterwards, in 908/1502, the sultan commissioned Edris to compose a high-style Persian history of the Ottoman dynasty. Edris presented his massive work for the sultan in 912/1506. Despite the sultan’s initial praise, Edris did not receive his due reward for his literary labors, due to the emnity of the grand vizier Ḵādem-ʿAli Pasha (d. 917/1511) and jealous ministers who accused him of praising the Persians too highly and thus cast doubt on his loyalty to the House of Osman. Edris had to wait until Selim I (r. 918-926/1512-20) took the throne for his history to receive the recognition that it deserved. Not only was his work well-received, but he also entered the highest ranks of Ottoman service in close association with the sultan and accompanied him on his campaign against the Safavids in 920/1514. Edris remained east following the campaign, having been granted the task of winning over to Ottoman loyalty the Kurdish tribal borderlands of his ancestral home and organizing the region into a semi-autonomous Ottoman province (Uğur, pp. 7-9; Menage, II, p. 254 and p. 591; Fleischer, 1990, pp. 75-76).

Edris’ massive history consisted of eight chapters, each chapter devoted to a single sultan and briefly prefaced with a treatment of the Seljuq period. Taking Jovayni’s (d. 681/1238), Waṣṣāf’s (fl. ca. 728/1328), and Šaraf-al-Din Yazdi’s (d. 858/1454) highly embellished histories as stylistic models, the work was composed along the lines of the Ottoman dynastic narrative tradition established by Aḥmedi, Şükrullāh, the Bodleian (Oxford) Anonymous chronicle, and Ruḥi, ending with Selim I’s struggle to take the throne in 918/1512. Idris Bidlisi’s son Ebu’l-Fażl Meḥmed el-Defterdāri (Abu’l-Fażl Moḥammad al-Daftardāri; d. 982/1574), defterdār (daftardār) “financial minister” and later, başdefterdār (bāšdaftardār) “chief treasurer” under Süleyman, wrote a ḏayl, or appendix, to his father’s work, simply known as the Ḏayl-e Hašt be-hešt, carrying the narrative up to 920/1514. The longevity and popularity of Edris’ monumental history is attested to by the numerous extant copies in Turkish and European libraries, yet the text still remains unpublished. Not only did the Hašt behešt, highly praised by his contemporaries, provide a stylistic model for Ottoman Turkish histories, but it was also an important repository of historical information that was later drawn upon by subsequent historians such as Ḫoca Saʿdeddin (Ḵᵛāja Saʿd-al-Din), who used it as his main source for his masterful Tac al-Tavāriẖ (Tāj al-tawāriḵ; Fleischer, 1990, p. 76; Inalcık, p. 14; Eyice, pp. 356-57; Babinger, pp. 45-46).

Ottoman historiography blossomed during the long reign of Süleyman (926-74/1520-66) after a period of little historical production during the reign of one of the more militarily active sultans, Selim I (r. 918-26/1512-20). Cor-nell Fleischer attributes the explosion in Ottoman historical writing during the second half of the 10th/16th century to the growth and systematization of the Ottoman bureaucracy, which necessitated an increase in bureaucratic appointments (Fleischer, 1994, p. 59), for which one had to prove one’s worthiness through literary skill as demonstrated via the composition of historical and other literary endeavors. Not only was there an increase in short episodic Ğazawāt-nāma works detailing battles and the heroic acts of those participating in them, reflecting the increased military activity of the Ottoman state, but also a variety of historical forms. Historians of the early Süleymanic period of the late 920s-30s/1520s and the early to mid-940s/1530s were particularly concerned with bringing up to date existing general and dynastic histories by appending the events of Süleyman’s reign and with producing accounts dealing with the sultan’s father Selim (Salim)’s undocumented reign. The latter works, composed in both Persian and Turkish, were generally known as Selim-nāme. A central theme of these works is Selim I’s controversial ascension to the throne after supposedly deposing his father and defeating the armies of his brothers. Thus the main concern underlying these works was the restoration of the tarnished reputation of the sultan accused of rebelling against his father. Considering the great energy that went into composing these works throughout the sultan’s reign, it would appear that Süleyman’s sultanic image was in some ways affected by the legitimacy and reputation of his father. Yet not all Selim-nāmes (Salim-nāmas) focus on Selim I’s difficult road to sovereignty. Some works concentrated on the controversial sultan’s military successes by recounting the battles which brought Egypt, Syria, and eastern Anatolia under Ottoman rule as well as Selim’s containment of the Safavid threat. Kešfi Meḥmed Čelebi’s (Kašfi Moḥammad Čalabi; d. 931/1524) Selim-nāme, officially entitled Tāriḵ-e Solṭān Salim-e-Kašfi, a trilingual work of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, composed predominantly in verse interspersed with prose around 926-27/1520-21 upon the occasion of Süleyman’s enthronement (Istanbul Süleymaniye Library, ms. Esad Efendi no. 2147, foll. 134; Tekindağ, 1970, p. 202) is one such example. Passing over in silence his battle with his father, the work extols Selim’s campaigns in Iran and conquests in Syria and Egypt, events which the author eyewitnessed as part of the sultan’s entourage as secretary to the imperial council. Other such Persian examples of Selim-nāmes is that by Kabir Qāżizāda (Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, ms. Selim Ağa no. 825) and an anonymous Persian prose Salim-nāma of the Istanbul Yapı Kredi Library (ms. no. 517, foll. 62).

Selim-nāmes continued to be in demand even in the post-Süleymanic period. Towards the end of his reign Süleyman commissioned Ebu’l-Fażl (Abu’l-Fażl) to complete the draft of a Persian Salim-nāma left unfinished by his father’s untimely death. This reworked version of his father’s original work composed in Persian mixed prose and verse was renamed the Salim šāh-nāma. It begins with the Qezelbāš rebellion led by Şāhḳulu (Šāhqoli) in 917/1511 and concludes in 925/1518 towards the end of Selim’s reign. Completing the work in 974/1567, Ebu’l-Fażl presented it to Selim II (974-82/1566-76) following his enthronement, possibly as a way to ensure the renewal of his post of chief financial minister (başdefterdār) (Tekindağ, 1970, pp. 204-6; Fleischer, 1990, pp. 75-76; Eyice, pp. 357-358; Özcan, pp. 356-357).

A particularly important Persian history presented to Selim II upon his enthronement in 974/1566 was the Merʾāt al-adwār wa merqāt al-aḵbār, a universal history composed by Muḥammed Muṣliḥiddin al-Lāri al-Anṣāri (Moḥammad Moṣleḥ-al-Din Lāri Anṣāri; d. 979/1571-72). An Iranian émigré originally from Lārestān, Lāri was educated in Shiraz by, among others, a disciple of Jalāl-al--Din Davāni. Before coming into Ottoman service, the itinerant scholar spent many years in India serving as tutor to the household of the Mughal ruler Homāyun Shah (q.v.). Following the ruler’s death in 963/1556, Lāri spent some time in Aleppo before making his way to the Ottoman court. His stay in Istanbul did not last long due to a serious misunderstanding with his powerful would-be patron, the Ottoman Şeyẖülislām (Šayḵ-al-Eslām) Ebu’s-süʿud (Abu’l-Soʿud). Lāri settled in Diārbakr far from the Ottoman court, where he tutored the children of the Ottoman governor and taught at a local madrasa and undertook the composition of his massive work, which according to the author was based on around fifty Arabic and Persian sources, including the Tāriḵ-e Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru (q.v.) and the Rawżat al-ṣafā, in addition to several Turkish works. It consists of ten books or chapters (bābs). The universal history concludes with a very brief section on the Ottomans, stopping at the death of Süleyman in 974/1566. Books one to six cover the pre-Islamic Iranian kings, the early Islamic period, the Iranian dynasties of the Saffarids, Samanids, Daylamites, Ghaznavids, Ghurids (qq.v.), and Kurts (Karts), as well as the Great Seljuqs and their branches in Kermān and Anatolia, the Atabegs, Ḵwārazmšāhs, and the Ismāʿilis. Book seven narrates the history of Chingiz Khan and his successors and the Mongol successor states of the Chopanids and the Muzaf-farids. Book eight is dedicated solely to Timur and his de-scendants, and book nine treats the Āq Qoyunlu, ending with a brief mention of Shah Esmāʿil and Shah Ṭahmāsb. Embedded in this section is the lamentation of the author, himself a Shāfiʿi who later converted to Hanbalism, that all the great minds of Iran had been driven out of the realm due to the fanaticism of Shah Ṭahmāsb. Book ten concludes the work with a rather brief synopsis of the Ottoman period within a mere sixteen folios and an appendix of a biographical section on statesmen, scholars, and poets (Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian manuscripts I, p. 116; Sohrweide, 1979a, p. 682, Riāḥi, p. 185).

Lāri’s Persian history, a work which awaits further detailed study, represents the quintessential general or universal history popular in the eastern Islamic world at the time. Ḫoca Saʿdeddin (Ḵᵛājā Saʿd-al-Din; d. 1008/1599) translated the work into Turkish and dedicated it to his pupil prince Murād, who took the throne as Murād III (982-1003/1574-95). In addition to translating Lāri’s universal history into Turkish, Saʿdeddin (Saʿd-al-Din) produced a masterful Ottoman dynastic history, a work which originally developed as a continuation and elaboration of Lāri’s sparse chapter on the Ottomans, which he found inadequate and not worthy of merely translating. Basing his narrative on Idris Bidlisi’s dynastic history (Inalcık, p. 14), Saʿdeddin took the work up to the end of Selim’s reign, composing it in the high rhetorical style that had become de rigeur for literary renderings of Ottoman dynastic history. Saʿdeddin (Saʿd-al-Din)’s choice of title for his masterpiece, the Tācü’t-tevāriẖ (Tāj al-tawāriḵ) (Crown of Histories) points to the conceptualization of the Ottoman dynasty as the zenith of Islamic history, as well as possibly carrying a double meaning of praise for his own work. Considered a discrete work on its own right, the Tācü’t-tevāriẖ superseded previous Ottoman chronicles and remains one of the Ottoman histories most consulted by both Ottomans and modern historians (Fleming, 1979, p. 27; Sohrweide, 1979a, p. 682).

The production of Persian historical works under Ottoman patronage reached its peak with Sultan Süleyman’s establishment in the late 950s/early 1550s of the institution of the composer of sāh-nāmas, the šāh-nāma-ji or šāh-nāma-guy, who, like any other Ottoman official, received a regular salary. The roots of the position of the šāh-nāma-guy may be found in Süleyman’s commissioning of a šāh-nāma style Ottoman history by ʿAbdurrah-mān b. ʿAbdullāh Ğubāri (ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān ʿAbd-Allāh Ḡobāri; q.v.) a Naqšbandi shaikh, calligrapher, scholar, and tutor to the royal princes of Süleyman’s son Bayezid at his court in Kütahya. Ğubāri completed his task in 958/1551 with his partial dynastic history covering Selim I’s campaigns and the early years of Süleyman’s reign. While the reception of Ğubāri’s šāh-nāma is impossible to trace, one can speculate that it was not very successful and received little further attention. Ğubāri’s career in Ottoman service likewise took an unexpected turn of bad luck. As the tutor to prince Bayezid’s household, he found himself on the losing side of the succession struggle between Süleyman’s latter son and prince Selim in 966/1559. Following imprisonment for a few years, Ğubāri resettled at the Naqšbandi dervish lodge in Mecca, where he remained until his death (Parmaksızo-ğlu, p. 349; Alpaslan, p. 168).

Five successive official šāh-nāma-guys were officially appointed during the second half the 10th/16th century. The chief function of the šāh-nāma-guy was to compose Persian verse in the format of universal history up to the current Ottoman sultan in the style of Ferdowsi using the motaqāreb meter. The texts in turn were lavishly illustrated by a team of miniaturists at the palace workshop. The aim of the production of these works, both the written text as well as the accompanying illustrations, was glorification of the Ottoman dynasty. Christine Woodhead places the development of the post as a response to the waning political authority and legitimacy of the sultan during the troubled decade of the late 950s and 960s/1550s (Woodhead, 1983, pp. 172-73). The establishment of the post may also have been related to the ongoing rivalry between the Ottomans and the Safavids.

The post of the šāh-nāma-guy, with its requirement of composing verse in Persian, was, not surprisingly, dominated by Iranian émigrés: with the exception of the last holder of this position, all šāh-nāma-guys were of Persian origins or émigrés from Iranian lands. The first šāh-nāma-guy ʿĀrifi (ʿĀrefi; d. 969/1561-62) was the grandson of the celebrated Iranian mystic Ebrāhim Golšāni (q.v.), the founder of the Golšāniya branch of the Ḵalwatiya Sufi order (Yazıcı, 1982, pp. 245-47; idem, 1992, pp. 121-22; Atıl, p. 55). The second brief holder of the post, Eflāṭun (Aflāṭun), had been, as the prince’s court poet, part of the renegade Safavid prince Alqās Mirzā’s entourage from Iran. The post was brought to its height under the third šāh-nāma-guy, Sayyid Loḳmān Urmavi (Sayyed Loqmān Ormavi), who held the post for twenty-seven years. Originally from the region of Lake Urmiya in southwestern Iranian Azerbaijan near the Ottoman-Persian border, Loḳmān came to Istanbul in the late 960s/early 1560s and found employment as a divān secretary under Feridun (Faridun) Bey, the head of the Ottoman chancellery. Precedence was broken, however, when the sultan Meḥmed III (1003-11/1595-1603) appointed Taʿlīḳī-zāde (Taʿliqizāda) in Loḳmān’s place. Not only was he not of Iranian origins—as a member of the influential Istanbul Fenāri family, he was from a thoroughly elite Ottoman Turkish background—but also, during his four years as šāh-nāma-guy,he wrote entirely in Turkish (Kütükoğlu, p. 9; Fodor, p. 165).

The project of composing a continuous Persian šāh-nāma style verse universal history in which the Ottoman dynasty took center stage was initiated by ʿArifi, the first of the official Ottoman šāh-nāma-guys. ʿArifi’s literary labors resulted in laying the ground for the universal history with the set of works collectively known as the Šāh-nāma-ye āl-e ʿOṯmān or the Šāh-nāma-ye homāyun, which supposedly consisted of five volumes. Only three volumes have survived or were actually completed: the first, fourth, and fifth volumes. The first volume, the Anbiāʾ-nāma, completed in 959/1552, begins with creation and goes up to the early prophets. The fourth volume covers all of the Ottoman sultans up to the reign of Selim I. The fifth volume, the Solaymān-nāma, completed in 965/1558, goes up to 962/1555 with the death of prince Mustafa (Moṣṭafā) and the rebellion of an impersonator of him, the false Mustafa (Atıl, p. 60).

Loḳmān (d. 1010/1601-2) completed ten major works during his tenure as šāh-nāma-guy, five of which were Persian verse, four in Turkish prose, and one in Turkish verse. Loḳmān completed his first work in 986/1578, the Tatamma-ye aḥwāl-e Solṭān Solaymān, which brought the reign of Süleyman to a close, continuing chronologically from where ʿĀrifi’s’s fifth volume stopped (Sohreweide, 1979b, pp. 813-14; Nyitrai, p. 110). In this work covering Süleyman (Solaymān)’s later campaigns, Loḳ-mān emphasizes Süleyman’s strict adherence to the šariʿa such as his ban on wine-drinking and other attempts to control public morality. Loḳmān continued the imperial šāh-nāma project with the completion of his Šāh-nāma-ye Salim Ḵān, a two-volume work on Selim II’s (974-82/1566-74) reign, in 991/1581. At the same time that he was working on the Persian Šāh-nāmas, Loḳmān busied himself with other works for Murād III, all in Turkish. The Ottoman Persian šāh-nāma project concluded with Loḳmān’s two-volume šāhinšāh-nāma, which covered Murād III’s rule until 996/1588, stopping nine years short of the sultan’s entire reign. Although Loḳmān completed the narrative in 1001/1592, the work was not ready for presentation until 1007/1597 upon the completion of its miniatures at the royal workshop (Mahir, p. 318; Çağman and Tanındı p. 60; Atasoy and Çağman, p. 50).

Loḳmān’s final šāh-nāma on Murād III’s reign marks the last Ottoman attempt to employ Persian in historical composition. We see no further production of historical works in Persian, with the exception of Šaraf-al-Din Bidlisi’s Šaraf-nāma, composed sometime between 1005/1597 and 1012/1603, a Persian history of the Kurds and Kurdish tribes as well as material on the Ottomans, Safavids, and Central Asian rulers (Glassen, pp. 76-77). This work, however, lies outside the Ottoman tradition. Thus Loḳmān’s work represents both the peak and the end of the production of Persian historical writing under Ottoman patronage. By the end of the 10th/16th century there appears to have been a major shift in the cultural orientation of the Ottoman court. Suddenly there was a notable lack of interest in Persian, the prestige language of the court since the 9th/15th century. Only until the complex changes in the political, military, cultural, and economic structures of the Ottoman empire at the end of the 10th/16th century are better understood, including the changing role of the sultan within a vast and rapidly developing bureaucratic system, can we find a satisfactory expla-nation for this cultural reorientation. Woodhead points to the less active role of the sultan in patronizing historical works, which led to a more general “state” focus of subsequent Ottoman historiography, as opposed to the heavily dynastic and imperial interests of earlier and classical historiography (Woodhead, 1998, p. 292). For whatever reasons, Persian historiography, especially in the form of šāh-nāma versified imperial dynastic accounts, no longer found resonance in the Ottoman court or among elite or educated elements of Ottoman society.