Safavid Persia, Volume 4
Charles Melville
LB. Tauris & Co Ltd
Pembroke Persian Papers
Volume 4 Safavid Persia. The History and Politics of an Islamic Society
Edited by Charles Melville
The Safavids ruled Persia for nearly two and a half centuries, longer than any other dynasty since the pre-Islamic period. The family was descended from the sufi Shaikh Safi al-Din of Ardabil (d. 1335), and thus enjoyed spiritual authority over its disciples among the Turkish Qizilbash tribes of eastern Anatolia and north western Persia, who brought the young Isma'il to power in 1501. Shah Isma'il proclaimed Twelver (Imami) Shi'ism as the official faith of Persia, and a genealogy was forged to trace the dynasty back to the seventh Imam, Musa al-Kazim. There followed a slow process of adjustment, during which the orthodox Shi'i 'ulama increased their authority both at the expense of the Safavid Shahs and of the Qizilbash sufis. Despite the interest of the Safavid period, which in many ways marked the emergence of modern Iran, it has not received the scholarly attention it deserves, and many questions remain to be explored.
This book on Safavid Persia is divided into two sections, the first of which includes studies on the historiography and the religious politics of the period. Among the contributions to the second section are chapters on the silk industry, which brought European merchants into the country and at the same time exposed the Persian economy to the vagaries of world trade; on the capital city of Isfahan, beautified by successive Shahs; and on the Safavids' reluctance to adopt firearms and artillery, which was one of the factors in the collapse of the dynasty when the Afghans invaded Persia in 1722.
Charles Melville is a Fellow of Pembroke College and Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Cover illustration: Shaikh Abdal Pirzada presents the horse of Din Muhammad Khan the Uzbek to Shah Abbas, from the Silsilat al-nasab-i fafaviyya of Shaikh Husain b. Shaikh Abdal Zahidi, Browne Oriental ms. H. 12 (11), fol. 80 recto, reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
FOREWORD
All but one of the fifteen papers that make up this collection were first presented at the Second International Round Table on Safavid Persia, held in Pembroke College, Cambridge, under the auspices of the University's Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, in September 1993. The exception is provided by Willem Floor, who read a paper on "Carpet trade and production in Safavid Iran", already promised elsewhere, but has substituted an equally valuable alternative; one can only admire his own productivity, never mind that of the Safavid silk and textile industries.
In addition to the papers now published here, the following also made invited contributions to the conference: James Allan (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), "Aspects of steel working in the Safavid period"; John Emerson (Widener Library, Harvard University), "The population of Safavid cities and towns in the 11th/17th century according to European sources"; Paul Luft (University of Manchester), "The representation of the Prophets and Imams in late Timurid and Safavid painting"; Souren Melikian-Chirvani (C.N.R.S., Paris), "Poetry selections in 16th-century metalwork from Iran. The interplay of visual and literary images"; and Andrew Newman (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medecine, Oxford), "Fayz al-Kashani between mujtahid, muitahid/muhaddith, and akbari". That these studies are not included here is generally the authors' own choice, and some of them are scheduled to appear elsewhere. In addition, two participants were obliged to withdraw at the last moment, due to difficulties in obtaining visas, namely Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr (currently at Chicago) and Ahmad Tarnimdari (eAlama Tabataba'i University, Tehran). Unfortunately it has not been possible to publish their papers in this volume, which is already overlarge.
I would like to thank all the participants for an exceptionally good humoured and productive three days, which showed how rich are the possibilities for further progress in Safavid studies, and how conducive small focused meetings can be to the informal exchange of ideas and information. An amusing resume of the proceedings was delivered at the final dinner by Iraj Afshar, subsequently printed in Ayandeh 19/vii-ix (1372/1993), 793-6. The contributions of the session chairmen should also be acknowledged, namely Chahryar Adle, Peter Avery, John Cooper and Roger Savory, of those who did not also read papers themselves. I am grateful to all the authors for at least attempting to follow my somewhat idiosyncratic editorial instructions and for helping this book to achieve its first and most vital objective, of appearing in print.
The Cambridge Round Table was a sequel to the first one, held in Paris in March 1989 on the initiative of Jean Calmard. The proceedings of that first meeting finally appeared in Iran only earlier this year, despite the ostensible publication date of 1993, following numerous unfortunate and unforeseen delays (Jean Calmard [ed.], Etudes Safavides, IFRI Bibliotheque Iranienne no. 39, Tehran-Paris). One consequence of this is that two substantial volumes of Safavid studies will have appeared within a few months of each other, in addition to Francis Richard's fine edition of Raphael du Mans's Estats sur la Perse (Mayen Orient & Ocean Indien, XVIe - XIXe s. 9, 2 vols). This is a positive development and one that should give an impetus to an oddly neglected field; after all, that was the original purpose behind the first Round Table. The drawback is that the first volume was not available to the contributors to the second, so they were unable to take advantage of and build upon the research presented in Paris. I hope that the relatively rapid publication of this second volume will allow time for these papers to circulate and enter the literature on the Safavids before a third Round Table takes place, possibly in two or three years' time. The aim of such a sequence of meetings is to provide a regular forum for new research to be presented and followed up. I hope this will generate at least an impression of ponderous forward momentum, even if not a giddy sense of hurtling relentlessly through the current frontiers of knowledge.
No collection of papers, even on a closely-defined subject, can provide the balanced survey of a single-author monograph. The present set of studies is far from giving a synthetic view of the whole Safavid period. Nevertheless, considering that the authors had a free hand in their choice of subject, several topics of parallel or convergent interest emerged during the conference, and this is largely reflected in the published papers. Although all of them are concerned in one way or another with Safavid history, broadly defined, I have grouped them into two more or less coherent sections, in the first of which, in particular, there are several areas of overlap.
Emphasis is given to historiography in the heading of this first section, because many of the papers are concerned as much with the nature and outlook of the sources as with the information they convey. Apart from the way in which the Safavid chroniclers introduced their own work, which reveals important continuities with the Timurid past (Quinn), there is the question of the treatment of Isma-il's early years in sources written with hindsight, after the establishment of the Safavid state, yet drawing in very different ways on a variety of well developed narratives, partly oral and generally associated with Ardabil, certainly in circulation by the mid-16th century (Morton). The ideological programme behind the illustrations in the great Shith-nama of Shah Tahmasb is also in a sense a historiographical topic, for it invites us to view this masterpiece not just as a work of art but also as a historical document (Hillenbrand). Two very different contemporary accounts of Shah Abbas's pilgrimage to Mashhad leave us rather sceptical of the objectivity of the celebrated chronicler, Iskandar Beg Munshi, and underline the inadequacies of the printed edition of his chronicle (Melville), while a Central Asian anthology of poets reveals an unexpected broadmindedness of outlook, quite apart from evidence of the flourishing state of poetry in the late Safavid period (McChesney).
A second persistent theme is the complex interaction between politics and religion in the Safavid period, affecting not only Iran's domestic affairs but also relations with her neighbours. The gradual establishment of state-sponsored Imami Shivism is addressed in several paprs, whether in the context of Shah Tahmasb's new capital at Qazvin (Echraqi) or in the promotion of the Rizavi shrine at Mashhad (Melville). Even with state support, the orthodox establishment did not enjoy a monopoly of spiritual loyalty, for popular religious sentiment played a large part in shaping the characteristic rituals of Iranian Shi-ism (Calmard), while the struggle for political influence and religious authority involved the 'sufis' of various hues and most importantly the Qizilbash, on the strength of whose extreme messianic fervour the Safavid Shahs had swept to power (Babayan). The Qizilbash themselves, however, had conflicting loyalties, and the gradual erosion of their position doubtless owed as much to their proven capacity for selfinterested political action as to the unacceptability of their religious beliefs to the orthodox Shi-i culama (Szuppe). If, at the beginning of the period, Shi-ism went hand in hand with hostility to the Ottoman Turks (Hillenbrand), by the late 17th century the sectarian barrier in the east, at least, was more theoretical than real (McChesney).
Authors of papers on social and economic history often suffer the indignity of seeing their work being lumped into compartments of miscellaneous odds and ends that don't fit together and don't fit anywhere else either. Partly, this happens because in the field of mediaeval Middle Eastern studies these subjects don't attract anything like the same level of scholarly attention as they deserve or as they receive in the European context. This is not entirely the case here, for the Safavid period is fortunate in the range of sources available (perhaps greater than for any previous period of Persian history), and in the calibre of recent work in these areas. Several European travel narratives carry more or less useful accounts of Persian 'society', while the archives of the European trading companies offer the first systematic collections of hard economic data. Much of this material has still to be fully exploited.
In the second section, various aspects of life and economic activity in Safavid Persia are explored. Sir Thomas Herbert's interest in the Persian language and its observable similarities with English, together with the efforts of other European visitors, can yield some evidence of the state of spoken Persian in the 17th century and of the competition between Turkish and Persian in the everyday language of the Safavid court (Perry). Some insights into the composition of society, and the various means of gaining a livelihood, are preserved in the more fossilised language of royal decrees, engraved in stone on the walls of mosques, where notices of tax exemptions were posted with a wealth technical detail about offices, institutions and guilds (Afshar).
Of all the magnets drawing Europeans into 17th-century Persia, the desire to control and divert the trade in silk was perhaps the most deepseated and the most persistent. The nature of the trade and the difficulties encountered were such that by the end the English and the Dutch were only too happy to be quit of it. In the long-unfolding process, the influence of events elsewhere on internal economic conditions in Persia can clearly be seen (Floor). It is also necessary to look outside local and even 'national' factors to seek an explanation for the sudden rise of the town of Julfa on the Aras in the late 16th century, whose Armenian merchants were so particularly associated with the Persian silk trade (Herzig).
If Persia's size and terrain added to the problems of transporting silk and to the merchants' costs, it was also a reason for the limited use of field artillery, others being an unwillingness by the Qizilbash and ghulams to take the new weaponry to heart, and the lack of the natural resources necessary to maintain a weapons and gunpowder industry. Safavid Persia was defended (or otherwise) at its borders, and by the end of the period few towns or cities could boast walls capable of resisting serious attack. The Afghans were as backward as the. Persians in this respect: Isfahan succumbed to starvation, not to assault and battery (Matthee). The Safavid military elite seem to have been indifferent not only to exterior walls but to what lay within; apart from Shah Such studies open up many new lines of thought. Other whole areas of investigation remain untouched. It will take more than seven maids with seven mops, but meanwhile some of the obscuring sand has been swept aside.
Every attempt has been made to impose a reasonable consistency on the presentation of these papers. On the question of dates, I have zealously given a single A.D. equivalent for hijri years, normally the longer of the two Christian years concerned. Otherwise, a house style for Pembroke Papers is still evolving, with an increasingly minimalist tendency as regards transliteration. No doubt the perfect compromise exists; for the moment, I am aware that I have not yet hit upon it. I hope no-one will be too disturbed by the present state of play.
I would like to thank Jean Calmard for several services in connection with the arrangement of the Round Table and the present volume, and particularly for proof-reading Ehsan Echraqi's paper. The Round Table was supported by generous grants from the British Institute of Persian Studies and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That it was possible to contemplate holding the meeting in Cambridge in the first place, let alone publishing the results, is thanks to the continuing help of the Friends of Persian at Cambridge, which it is my great pleasure to acknowledge. This book is dedicated to all our Friends in the name of their tireless chairman, with grateful thanks.
Finally, E. & E. Plumridge Ltd. have surpassed their efforts on volume one of this series and met all my unreasonable demands; I am very grateful for their care and trouble.
Charles Melville
Pembroke College
Cambridge, December 1995
The Historiography of Safavid PrefacesSholeh A. Quinn*
One of the most understudied sections of Persian historical chronicles is the preface. In the case of the Safavids, nearly every narrative written during the reign of Shah 'Abbas (r.995-1038/1587-1629) has an introduction. Although these dibachas or muqaddimas vary to some extent in terms of style, language, emphasis and length, they also share similar characteristics, mainly in structure and content matter. Until now, most scholars have used the introduction primarily as a source of biographical information about the author and occasionally for examples of his writing style. Thus far, no study has attempted to establish the historiography of the prefaces, to place them in their proper historical context, or to analyse them critically.
When we compare Safavid introductions and trace their historiography, two broad categories of issues become manifest. The first consists of structural conventions: by the time of Shah 'Abbas, a genre of composing introductions had become established, and the chronicles studied here conform to this genre by containing a number of elements, to be outlined below, typical of the conventions of the dibacha.1
The conventional elements of the introductions, at their stage of development by the time of Shah 'Abbas, were generally three: (i) a religious prologue, (ii) information about the author, and (iii) information about the work. We may identify several specific subsections within these broad categories. For instance, the second section usually includes the author's "statement of intent" in which he described why he wrote his work. Sometimes the historian singled out a particular event that ...
* An expanded version of this article appears in the author's dissertation, Historical writing during the reign of Shih 'Abbas I (University of Chicago 1993). I would like to thank Professors John E. Woods, Paul E. Losensky, and Kathryn Babayan, and Mr. Hamid Samandari for valuable comments and suggestions. I take full responsibility, of course, for all errors.
Safavid Persia
Charles Melville
LB. Tauris & Co Ltd
LB. Tauris & Co Ltd
Safavid Persia
Charles Melville
Pembroke Persian Papers
Series Editor: Charles Melville
Volume I:
History and Literature in Iran
edited by Charles Melville
ISBN O 9516443 0 0
Volume 2:
Rituals in Babism and Baha'ism
by Denis MacEoin
ISBN 1 85043 654 1
Volume 3
Studies in Persian Painting
edited by Robert Hillenbrand
ISBN 1 85043 659 2
Volume 4:
Safavid Persia:
The History and Politics of an Islamic Society
edited by Charles Melville
ISBN 1 86064 023 0 - hardback
ISBN 1 86064 086 9 - paperback
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