{"title":"A People of the Frontier: An Account of the Āyromlu Tribe between the Qajar, Ottoman, and Russian Empires","authors":"Caspar Hobhouse, Ali Aydin Karamustafa","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10042","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a translation of the unpublished short historical chronicle of the Āyromlu tribe, a ten-folio manuscript located in the British Library. Entitled <jats:italic>Ketābcha-ye tāyefa-ye Āyromlu</jats:italic> (The Booklet of the Āyromlu Tribe), it was composed in 1886/1304 in the northwestern borderlands of Qajar Iran by one Mohammad b. Bahrām Khān Āyromlu. Although principally motivated by the author’s desire to obtain salaries and lands that had been taken away from his family by its rivals, the text recounts the fascinating history of the Āyromlu over the course of the Safavid, Afshar, and Qajar eras. Drawing on oral and written sources, the author offers us a picture of tribal life and politics in the Caucasian imperial borderlands between the Ottoman, Iranian, and Russian states.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141165553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Chessboard Toghrās of Safavid Royal Decrees","authors":"András Barati","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10041","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most characteristic and resilient elements of state documents promulgated by the chancelleries of medieval and early modern Turkic Islamic empires is the <jats:italic>toghrā</jats:italic>, or calligraphic signature of rulers. In the administrative history of Iran, the chessboard <jats:italic>toghrā</jats:italic> constitutes a short and lesser-known variant. This royal emblem appeared during the Safavid period as the result of several administrative reforms. In this paper, I outline the development of the <jats:italic>toghrā</jats:italic> in medieval Iran on the basis of surviving documents and fragments and then offer a detailed portrait of the birth and brief life of the chessboard <jats:italic>toghrā</jats:italic>. Furthermore, the conspicuous similarity between this form and the <jats:italic>toghrā</jats:italic>s of Mughal emperors precipitates a comparison and close analysis of their different elements and characteristics. Drawing on both published and unpublished royal decrees, this article explores the possible dimension of interrelation and provides insights into their similarities and differences in use and content.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140580775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the Theosophical Paradigm: Ilme kṣnum and the Entangled History of Modern Parsis","authors":"Mariano Errichiello","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10039","url":null,"abstract":"In the early twentieth century, an esoteric interpretation of Zoroastrianism known as <jats:italic>Ilme kṣnum</jats:italic> became popular among the Parsis of India. Although research on the subject is scant, most scholars suggest that <jats:italic>Ilme kṣnum</jats:italic> draws largely upon the ideas promoted by the Theosophical Society in India. By examining primary sources in Gujarati, the present article illustrates the interpretation of the Zoroastrian cosmology proposed by <jats:italic>Ilme kṣnum</jats:italic>. Through a comparative analysis of its main concepts and terms, <jats:italic>Ilme kṣnum</jats:italic> is historicized in the context of the relations of the Parsi community with the Persianate and Western worlds. By framing <jats:italic>Ilme kṣnum</jats:italic> as a reconciliation between Persianate and Western forms of knowledge, the present article looks at historical entanglements as resources for the Parsi quest for religious authenticity, placing Zoroastrianism in global religious history.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140172945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Allegorical Readings of the Shāh-nāma in Comparison with the Allegoreses of Homer’s Epics","authors":"Narges Nematollahi","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10037","url":null,"abstract":"There is a consensus that the Greek epic does not present itself as “veiled expressions (<jats:italic>ainos</jats:italic>),” but in the Greek literary tradition, several episodes of Homer’s works have received allegorical readings by literary critics and philosophers. These readings are categorized according to the motivations of their authors into two groups: defensive or apologetic and appropriative or exegetical. Against this background, this paper examines the <jats:italic>Shāh-nāma</jats:italic> and its broader literary tradition, arguing that, first, the <jats:italic>Shāh-nāma</jats:italic>, too, does not present itself as a multi-layered text in need of interpretation. Second, we can identify the same two categories within the admittedly fewer allegorical readings offered for the <jats:italic>Shāh-nāma</jats:italic>; Ferdowsi’s prologues to some tragic stories of the <jats:italic>Shāh-nāma</jats:italic> resemble Homeric defensive allegoreses, whereas the allegorical readings by some Sufi poets and thinkers represent the appropriative group. Similarities and differences between the Greek and the Iranian traditions in each group will be also discussed.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140150692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fruits of the Gardens: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Textual Pleasures in Late Qajar Iran","authors":"Ali Gheissari","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10040","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces a miscellany notebook in Arabic and Persian, entitled <jats:italic>Favāka al-basātin</jats:italic> (Fruits of the Gardens), compiled around 1914 in Tehran by Hājj Mirzā Mohammad Tehrāni (d. 1914–21), a learned sugar merchant and bookseller. The notebook covers a broad range of topics on faith, philosophy, and ethics. It frequently draws on the Qurʾan and the Hadith, as well as Stoic proverbs, mostly from the <jats:italic>Meditationes</jats:italic> (Meditations) of Marcus Aurelius (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic>. 161–80), which was well received in nineteenth-century Persian advice literature. The text also includes passages from the <jats:italic>Thousand and One Nights</jats:italic> and sections on modern sciences, such as electricity, gas laws, and liquid dynamics, and a theory of colors explaining the rainbow. The article’s introductory section provides brief biographical background of the compiler of this notebook, the second section presents an overview of its contents, and the final section explores the question of authorial subjectivity and the author-text relationship by putting in perspective the volume’s gradual compilation, its eclectic range of topics, and its fluid structure. Through its diverse reading and writing strategies, this notebook represents an informative and heuristic venue that opens new analytical angles on Iran’s cosmopolitan, multifaceted, and heterogenous intellectual milieu in the late Qajar period.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140150716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ugly Yet Popular: the Remarkably Long Life of the Safavid Coins of Hoveyza","authors":"Alexander V. Akopyan","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10038","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of the work is to identify explanations for the lengthy circulation of Safavid coins bearing the central inscription, “ʿAli is the friend of God (<jats:italic>ʿAli vali Allāh</jats:italic>),” from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Studying the coins from the period and the hoards in which they were found, alongside historical narratives, ethnographic information, and religious texts, sheds light on their meaning and reception in their Shiʿi environment. The special attitude towards these coins accounts for the widespread imitation of these coins, which came to dominate Iranian markets during this period, as predicted by Gresham’s law of “bad money.”","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140150695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Second Decade of Persianate Studies","authors":"S. Arjomand","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138600310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fashioning Persian Identity: Asadi’s Staged Dispute between a Zoroastrian and a Muslim","authors":"Asghar Seyed-Gohrab","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10035","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on the earliest surviving specimens of Persian debate poetry (<jats:italic>monāzara</jats:italic>), a genre which deals with controversial topics such as the Persians’ supremacy over the Arabs or the superiority of Islam over Zoroastrianism. Focusing on one panegyric by the poet Asadi Tusi (1010–70), this paper contextualizes such debates in a cultural <jats:italic>milieu</jats:italic> of eleventh-century Persia. It shows how poets, as an indispensable part of the court hierarchy, participated in constructing a new identity for Persians by formulating a Persian standpoint on controversies of the day.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138531410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Howz-e Shamsi and the Making of an Islamic Sacred Site in the Urban Space of Delhi","authors":"Ayako Ninomiya","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10034","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sacred sites are loci with a special relationship with a particular religion and are indicators of religious indigenization. The Howz-e Shamsi (“Reservoir of Shams”) is one such structure considered sacred during the Delhi Sultanate period. Built around 1230 by Shams al-Din Eltotmesh b. Elam Khān (<em>r.</em> 1211–36), the reservoir served as an important element of urban infrastructure. The process of its sacralization can be traced in various Persian sources, mostly discourses (<em>malfuzāt</em>) of famous Cheshti Sufi masters. Although some works consulted in this study, such as <em>Favāʾed al-sālekin</em> (Benefits of the Seekers) and <em>Meftāh al-tālebin</em> (The Key of the Seekers), are considered fabricated and have been ignored in prior research, these texts are based on the rich local oral tradition of Delhi and can help us understand the cultural ethos of the time. This article presents a micro-history of an urban structure, showing how local narratives of sacredness were shared and how new contexts were provided for architecture to create the sacred Islamic geographies of the Indian Subcontinent.</p>","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138531412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Puzzles and Patronage in the Persian Cosmopolis: Moʿin al-Din Esfezāri’s Acrostic Letter to Mahmud Gāvān","authors":"Meia Walravens","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article studies a literary puzzle, a maktub-e movashshah or acrostic letter, that is among the Persian monshaʾāt (stylized literary letters) of the Herat-based historian and secretary Moʿin al-Din Mohammad Zamji Esfezāri (fl. 1468–94/873–99). Created in praise of the Bahmani vizier Mahmud Gāvān (d. 1481/886), Esfezāri’s composition fits within a corpus of letters that testifies to the existence of epistolary contacts between Gāvān and the élites of the court of Soltān-Hosayn Bāyqarā (r. 1469–1506/873–911). Esfezāri’s letter is especially valuable because it elucidates Timurid intellectuals’ interests in such relations in the second half of the fifteenth/ninth century. An analysis of its message shows that Timurid literati could pursue long-distance patronage in the Deccan, without necessarily migrating to the region. The letter’s acrostic form, moreover, is an interesting case of how authors of Persian texts could strike a balance between local expectations and transregional aspirations in the Persian cosmopolis.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42652900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}