A History of Persian Literature Volume X Volumes of A History of Persian Literature I General Introduction to Persian Literature II Persian Poetry in the Classical Era, 800–1500 Panegyrics (qaside) , Short Lyrics (ghazal) ; Quatrains (robâ’i) III Persian Poetry in the Classical Era, 800–1500 Narrative Poems in Couplet Form ( mathnavi s); Strophic Poems; Occasional Poems (qat’e) ; Satirical and Invective Poetry; shahrâshub IV Heroic Epic The Shahnameh and its Legacy V Persian Prose VI Religious and Mystical Literature VII Persian Poetry, 1500–1900 From the Safavids to the Dawn of the Constitutional Movement VIII Persian Poetry from Outside Iran The Indian Subcontinent, Anatolia, Central Asia after Timur IX Persian Prose from Outside Iran The Indian Subcontinent, Anatolia, Central Asia after Timur X Persian Historiography XI Literature of the Early Twentieth Century From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah XII Modern Persian Poetry, 1940 to the Present Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan XIII Modern Fiction and Drama XIV Biographies of the Poets and Writers of the Classical Period XV Biographies of the Poets and Writers of the Modern Period; Literary Terms XVI General Index Companion Volumes to A History of Persian Literature : XVII Companion Volume I: The Literature of Pre-Islamic Iran XVIII Companion Volume II: Oral Literature of Iranian Languages Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic, Persian and Tajik Anthologies: XIX Anthology I: A Selection of Persian Poems in English Translation XX Anthology II: A Selection of Persian Prose in English Translation A HISTORy OF PERSIAN LITERATuRE General Editor—Ehsan yarshater Persian Historiography Sponsored by Persian Heritage Foundation (New york) & Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia university Volume X Edited by Charles Melville Published in 2012 by I. B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4Bu 175 Fifth Avenue, New york Ny 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the united States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New york Ny 10010 Copyright © 2012 The Persian Heritage Foundation The right of The Persian Heritage Foundation to be identified as the originators of this work has been asserted by The Persian Heritage Foundation in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. A History of Persian Literature: X ISBN: 978 1 84511 911 9 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by The Persian Heritage Foundation A History of Persian Literature Editorial Board Mohsen Ashtiany J. T. P. de Bruijn (Vice- Chairman) Dick Davis William Hanaway , Jr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak F ranklin Lewis Paul Losensky Heshmat Moayyad Ehsan Yarshater (Chairman) Late Member : Annemarie Schimmel To the memory of Iraj Afshar (1925–2011) vii ContEnts CONTRIBuTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix INTRODuCTION (Charles Melville) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv 1. Some Preliminary Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv 2. The Writing of Persian History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi 3. Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv 4. The Scope of the Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxviii Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xl 5. Themes in Persian Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii Mastery of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii The Historian and the Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . li Bibliographical Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lv CHAPTER 1: HISTORy AS LITERATuRE (Julie s. Meisami) 1 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. The Rise of Persian Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. The Triumph of Enshâ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 4. Texts and Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The Murder of Abu-Moslem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The Murder of a Vizier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 5. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORIAN AT WORK (Charles Melville) 56 1. Bureaucrats, Historians, and Littérateurs . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2. Aims and Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 3. Bureaucratic Crises and Military Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . 73 Civilian Casualties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Ruler at War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 4. The Measure of Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 viii PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy CHAPTER 3: THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy (Elton L. Daniel) . . . . . . 101 1. Abu-Ali Bal’ami and the Genesis of Persian Historiography 103 2. Other Arabic to Persian Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 3. Gardizi and the Zeyn-al-akhbâr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 4. Abu’l-Fazl Beyhaqi and his Târikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 5. The Mojmal-al-tavârikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 6. Provincial and City Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 7. Saljuq Dynastic Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 CHAPTER 4: THE MONGOL AND TIMuRID PERIODS, 1250–1500 (Charles Melville) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 1. A Sense of Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 A World on the Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 A Sacred Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Small is Beautiful: Local Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 2. History as Propaganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 3. An Epic Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 4. Past and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Morals and Memorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Patronage and Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 CHAPTER 5: SAFAVID HISTORIOGRAPHy (sholeh Quinn and Charles Melville) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 2. The Safavid Chroniclers: A Brief Overview . . . . . . . . . . 211 The First Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 The Second Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 The Era of Shah Abbâs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Late Safavid Chronicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 3. Patronage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 4. universal and Dynastic Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 5. Organization and Dating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 6. Content and Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 The Safavid Genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 Safavid Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 The Coronation of Shah Esmâ’il . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 7. Methods of Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Safavid Prologues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 ix CONTENTS Imitative Writing: Late Safavid Chronicles . . . . . . . . . 248 Narrating the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 8. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 CHAPTER 6: PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy IN THE 18 TH AND EARLy 19 TH CENTuRy (Ernest tucker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 2. The Main Chronicles of the Afsharid Era . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Mirzâ Mahdi Khan Astarâbâdi’s Târikh-e Nâderi . . . . . 261 The Târikh-e Nâderi in the Safavid Historiographical Tradition . . . . . . . . . 262 Astarâbâdi’s Works as Epitomes of the Ornate Style . 265 The Last Section of Astarâbâdi’s Work and uncertainties in its Patronage . . . . . . 266 Mohammad Kâzem Marvi’s Portrait of Nâder’s Errors . . 267 The Long Twilight of Safavid Historiography . . . . . . . 269 3. Chronicles of the Zand Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 4. Non-Chronicle Genres of Historiography during the 18 th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 5. Qajar Historiography after the Turn of the 19 th Century . . 274 The Târikh-e Mohammadi of Mohammad-Taqi Sâru’i . . 274 The Târikh-e Mohammadi in its Historiographical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Sâru’i, the Afsharid Legacy, and Questions of Royal Legitimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 6. Historiographical Trends during the Early Qajar Period (1797–1848) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 7. Nâser-al-Din Shah and the Twilight of the Court Chronicle Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 8. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 CHAPTER 7: LEGEND, LEGITIMACy AND MAKING A NATIONAL NARRATIVE IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHy OF QAJAR IRAN (1785–1925) (Abbas Amanat) . . . . . . . . . . 292 1. Reshaping Court Chronicles and universal Histories . . . . 296 2. Towards Greater National Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 3. The Publication of State-Sponsored Histories . . . . . . . . 314 4. The Decline of Chronicles and New Approaches to History 324 5. In Search of Ancient Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 6. Translations and the Rediscovery of the Past . . . . . . . . . 333 x PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy 7. Discourse of Decline and Renewal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 8. History as Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 9. Shaping a Nationalist Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 10. Forgotten Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 11. Local Histories and a National Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . 357 12. Popular Histories and Memoirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 13. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 CHAPTER 8: HISTORIOGRAPHy IN THE PAHLAVI ERA (Fakhreddin Azimi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 2. Hasan Pirniyâ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 3. Abbâs Eqbâl-Âshtiyâni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 4. Ahmad Kasravi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 5. Fereydun Âdamiyat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 6. Men of Letters and “Iranologists” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 7. Institutional, Political and Cultural Context . . . . . . . . . 423 8. The Constraints of Conventional History . . . . . . . . . . . 429 CHAPTER 9: OTTOMAN HISTORICAL WRITING IN PERSIAN, 1400–1600 ( Sara Nur Yıldız) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 1. Introduction: Ottomans and the Persian Tradition . . . . . . 436 2. Ideological Experimentation in Early Ottoman Historical Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 Shokr-Allâh’s Persian Bahjat-al-tavârikh (1459): universal Islamic History and the Cosmological underpinnings of Ottoman Ghâzi Ideology . . . 443 3. Versified Persian Historical Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 Mo’âli’s Khonkâr-nâme (1474): A Defense of Mehmed II’s Imperial Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 Malek Ommi (T. Melik Ümmi)’s Shâhnâme , or the Bâyazid-nâme (1486) . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 Versifying Selim I’s Conquests: Adâ’i’s Shâhnâme-ye mohârebe-ye Soltân Salim (ca. 1520–21) . . . . . 462 4. Ottoman Court Shahname -composers under Süleyman and his Successors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 5. Persian Epistolary Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 Ottoman Dynastic History and Epistolary Composition 480 Edris-e Bedlisi’s Hasht Behesht (ca. 1506) . . . . . . . . . . 483 xi CONTENTS Prose and Epistolary Historiography in the Süleyman and Post-Süleyman Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 CHAPTER 10: HISTORIOGRAPHy IN CENTRAL ASIA SINCE THE 16 TH CENTuRy (R. D. McChesney) . . . . . . . . . 503 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 2. Hâfez-e Tanish b. Mir-Mohammad of Bukhara . . . . . . . . 508 3. Soltân-Mohammad Motrebi of Samarqand . . . . . . . . . . 514 Motrebi’s Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 4. Mahmud b. Amir Vali of Balkh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524 5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 CHAPTER 11: HISTORIOGRAPHy IN AFGHANISTAN (R. D. McChesney) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532 1. Mohammad yusof ‘Riyâzi’: The Making of an Historian . . 534 2. Feyz-Mohammad Hazâra ‘Kâteb’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 The Making of the Serâj-al-tavârikh . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 The Publication Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 The Sources of the Serâj-al-tavârikh . . . . . . . . . . 553 The Style and Contents of the Serâj-al-tavârikh . . . 554 3. Hâjj Mirzâ Abd-al-Mohammad Khan Pur Alizâde Esfahâni Irâni ‘Mo’addeb-al-Soltân’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557 4. The Beginning of a New Historiographic Tradition . . . . . 562 CHAPTER 12: INDO-PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy (stephen F. Dale) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 2. Early Persian Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 3. The Delhi Sultanate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570 4. The Afghan Interregnum: 1451–1526 and 1540–55 . . . . . . 576 5. The Mughals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579 Mughal Autobiographical Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 Histories of the Mughals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586 Bâbor and Homâyun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586 Akbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588 Jahângir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593 Shâh Jahân . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594 Owrangzib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 Bahâdor Shâh and the Later Mughals . . . . . . . . . 598 xii PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy 6. The British and Indo-Persian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 7. Provincial Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605 8. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 Bibliographical Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610 BIBLIOGRAPHy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611 1. Persian and Arabic Texts (manuscripts and printed editions) and Translations . . . . . . . . . 611 2. Turkish Works (manuscripts, editions, translations) . . . . . 630 3. Secondary Studies, Modern Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669 xiii ContRiButoRs Abbas Amanat is Professor of History and International Studies at yale. Among his publications are Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca, N.y., 1989; 2 nd ed. Los Angeles, 2005); Pivot of the Universe: Na- sir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997; 2 nd ed. London, 2008); and Apocalyptic Is- lam and Iranian Shi’ism (London, 2009). He is the editor of Cit- ies and Trade: Consul Abbot on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847–1866 (London, 1984) and co-editor of Imaging the End: Vi- sions of Apocalypse from Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London and New york, 2002); Shari’a in the Contemporary Con- text (Stanford, 2007); and US-Middle East: Historical Encounters (Gainesville, Fla., 2007). He has two forthcoming publications: Facing Others: Iranian Identity Boundaries and Political Cul- ture (New york, 2011), and In Search of Modern Iran: Authority, Memory and Nationhood (New Haven, Conn., 2011). He was the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Iranian Studies (1992–98) and is a Consulting Editor and contributor to Encyclopedia Iranica since 1984. He chaired the Council on Middle East Studies at yale (1992–2005) and was a Carnegie Scholar (2006–2008). He is cur- rently working on skepticism, nonconformity and toleration in the Persianate world. Fakhreddin Azimi is Professor of History at the university of Connecticut. His research interests include the history, politics and culture of modern Iran; as well as the epistemological un- derpinnings of historical enquiry and the conceptual and theo- retical contribution of the social sciences to historiography. He is the author of The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), xiv PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy which won the Mossadegh Prize of the Mossadegh Foundation, and the Saidi-Sirjani Award, International Society for Iranian Studies; Iran: The Crisis of Democracy, 1941–53 (New york and London, 1989), Persian translation (rev., with a new introduction, Tehran 1994, 3 rd ed., 2008); Hâkemiyat-e melli va doshmanân-e ân ( National Sovereignty and its Enemies: Probing the Record of Mosaddeq’s Opponents , Tehran 2004, 2010); and Ta’ammoli dar negâresh-e siyâsi-ye Mosaddeq (Reflections on Mosaddeq’s Politi - cal Thinking ; in press). Azimi’s article on Fereydun Adamiyat’s political and intellectual odyssey entitled “Âfâq-e Âdamiyat: seyri dar soluk-e fekri-siyâsi-ye Fereydun Âdamiyat,” Negâh-e Nou 78 (July–August 2008), won the Mahtâb Mirzâie Prize in 2009. stephen F. Dale is Professor of South Asian and Islamic History at Ohio State university. He has published a variety of books and articles directly or indirectly connected to Indo-Muslim history. These include: Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Māppilas of Malabar 1498–1922 (Oxford, 1980); Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade 1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1994); The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India 1483–1530 (Leiden, 2004); and The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Cam- bridge, 2010). He is currently writing a study of the philosophical Arab Muslim historian, Ebn-Khaldun. Elton L. Daniel is Professor of History (Islamic and Middle East- ern) at the university of Hawaii at Manoa. He is also a member of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, the Inter- national Society of Iranian Studies, and Middle East Medievalists, as well as a member of the Board of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and Associate Editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica (1997–2001). His primary research interests are focused on Iran in the early Islamic (pre-Saljuqid) period. Major publications include Qajar Society and Culture (editor, 2002); The History of Iran (2000); Al-Ghazzali’s Alchemy of Happiness (1991); A Shi’ite Pilgrimage to Mecca (1990, with Hafez Farmayan); and The Po- litical and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule (1979). xv CONTRIBuTORS He is the author of numerous journal articles and contributions to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam (third edition). R. D. McChesney is Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Is- lamic Studies and History at New york university. His area of re- search is the early modern Persianate world including Safavid Iran, Chengisid Central Asia, and Afghanistan. He is the founder and director of the Afghanistan Digital Library (http://afghanistandl. nyu.edu) and author of Waqf in Central Asia (1991); Central Asia: Foundations of Change (1996); Kabul Under Siege (1999); and nu- merous articles and book chapters, most recently chapters in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia and The New Cambridge His- tory of Islam . He is editor, annotator and co-translator (with M. Mehdi Khorrami) of The History of Afghanistan: Fayz Muham- mad’s Sirāj al-tawārīkh (forthcoming). Julie scott Meisami taught English Literature and Comparative Literature (1971–1980) in Tehran, chiefly at the University of Teh - ran, where she was instrumental in forming the MA program in comparative literature. From 1980 to 1985, she taught courses in comparative literature in California, while continuing with her in- dependent research. From 1985 until her retirement in 2002, she was the university Lecturer in Persian at the university of Ox- ford. In 2002–2003 she held an Aga Khan Fellowship in Islamic Architecture at Harvard university, where she pursued her art his- tory research. She is the author of Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, 1987); Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh, 1999), and Structure and Meaning in Medi- eval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (London, 2003). She co-edited (with Paul Starkey) the Encyclopedia of Arabic Litera- ture (2 vols., London, 1998); and has translated the (anonymous) Sea of Precious Virtues (Baḥr al-Favā’id ) , a 12 th -century mirror for princes (Salt Lake City, 1991); and Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Paykar (Oxford, 1995). Her most recent research involves several ma- jor projects: a verse translation of Nizami’s Khosrow and Shirin ; depictions of Majnun in illustrated Persian manuscripts (a paper xvi PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHy on which was presented to the Cordoba symposium on colors in Islamic art, and will be published in the Proceedings); a reevalua- tion of the so-called “Gazelle Mosaic” at Khirbat al-Mafjar; and an exploration of writings on love in Persian literature. Charles Melville is Professor of Persian History at the university of Cambridge. He has been a long-serving member of the Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies and has also served on the Board of the Societas Iranologica Europaea (1995–2003). Since 1999, he has been Director of the Shahnama Project, and since 2006 he has been President of The Islamic Manuscript Associa- tion (TIMA), both based in Cambridge. His main research inter- ests are in the history and culture of Iran in the Mongol to Safavid periods and the illustration of Persian manuscripts. In addition to numerous articles on Il-Khanid history and Persian historiogra- phy, recent publications include edited volumes of Safavid Persia (1996); Shahnama Studies (2006); and “Millennium of the Shah- nama of Firdausi” ( Iranian Studies , 2010, with Firuza Abdullaeva); The Persian Book of Kings. Ibrahim Sultan’s Shahnama (2008, also with Firuza Abdullaeva) and Epic of the Kings. The Art of Fer- dowsi’s Shahnameh (2010, with Barbara Brend). sholeh A. Quinn is Associate Professor of History at the univer- sity of California, Merced. Her scholarly interests include the his- tory of Safavid Iran and Persianate historical writing in the early modern period. She is the author of Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safa- vid Chronicles (2000). She co-edited, with Judith Pfeiffer, History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (2006). She has also pub- lished several articles on aspects of Safavid and Persian historiog- raphy. She has served as Council member for the International So- ciety for Iranian Studies (2005–2007), and is currently a member of its Committee for Intellectual and Academic Freedom. Dr. Ernest tucker has taught in the history department at the u.S. Naval Academy since 1990. His dissertation at the university xvii CONTRIBuTORS of Chicago studied the impact of Nâder Shah on Middle Eastern and South Asian history. He published a monograph on this top- ic in 2006. He is also co-author of a volume on the 19 th -century Russian-Muslim conflict in the Caucasus region, published in 2004. His textbook, The Middle East in Modern World History , will be published next year by Pearson/Prentice-Hall. Tucker has led sev- eral groups to the Middle East. He was twice a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, most recently in 2005–2006 to investigate the history of the Ottoman Red Crescent Society. The latter topic remains his current research focus, and he is writing a subsequent monograph on the Society, as a window on the period of transition between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. Sara Nur Yıldız wrote this chapter during her post-doctoral fel- lowship at the Orient-Institut Istanbul while on research leave from the history department of Istanbul Bilgi university. A historian of medieval and early Ottoman Anatolia, with interests in empire- building and frontier politics, political culture and historical writ- ing, she received her Ph.D from the Department of Near Eastern Languages at the university of Chicago in 2006. She is complet- ing a monograph based on her doctoral dissertation, Mongol Rule in Seljuk Anatolia: The Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243–1282 , as well as working on a general study of Seljuk Anato- lia, The Seljuks of Anatolia: A Muslim Empire on the Frontier xix FoREwoRD In the 1990s, I gradually became convinced that the time had come for a new, comprehensive, and detailed history of Persian literature, given its stature and significance as the single most important ac - complishment of the Iranian peoples. Hermann Ethé’s pioneering survey of the subject, “Neupersische Litteratur” in Grundriss der iranischen Philologie II, was published in 1904, and E. G. Browne’s far more extensive A Literary History of Persia , with ample dis- cussion of the political and cultural background of each period, appeared in four successive volumes between 1902 and 1924. The English translation of Jan Rypka’s History of Iranian Literature , written in collaboration with a number of other scholars, came out in 1968 under his own supervision. Iranian scholars have also made a number of significant contri - butions throughout the 20 th century to different aspects of Persian literary history. These include B. Foruzânfar’s Sokhan va sokhan- varân (On Poetry and Poets, 1929–33); M.-T. Bahâr’s Sabk-shenâsi (Varieties of Style in Prose) in three volumes (1942); and a number of monographs on individual poets and writers. The truly monu- mental achievement of the century in this context was Dh. Safâ’s wide-ranging and meticulously researched Târikh-e adabiyyât dar Irân (History of Literature in Iran) in five volumes and eight parts (1953–79). It studies Persian poetry and prose in the context of their political, social, religious, and cultural background, from the rise of Islam to almost the middle of the 18 th century. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that Persian literature has received the attention it merits, bearing in mind that it has been the jewel in the crown of Persian culture in its widest sense and the stan- dard bearer for aesthetic and cultural norms of the literature of the eastern regions of the Islamic world from about the 12 th century; and that it has profoundly influenced the literatures of Ottoman