An Iranian Shāh-nāma Writer at the Court of Bāyezid II: Malekzāda Āhi

Abstract

Malekzāda Āhi was an Iranian-born Shāh-nāma writer (shāh-nāmaji, Ott. şehnameci) who served at the court of the Ottoman sultan Bāyezid II (r. 1481–1512) and composed the first Ottoman dynastic history to bear the title of “Shāh-nāma.” Accompanying the sultan since his years as a prince, Malekzāda wrote his Shāh-nāma after the tradition of Ferdowsi (d. 1019–20) and Nezāmi (d. 1209), in addition to many odes (qasidas) in praise of his patron. Despite his contemporary reputation as the “master of the verse (malek al-kalam)” in the sultan’s palace, a series of unfortunate accidents led to his relative obscurity in modern historiography. Malekzāda Āhi’s experience as a Shāh-nāma writer is representative of the position held by Iranian artists and scholars in the early sixteenth-century Ottoman palace. His Shāh-nāma also should be regarded as one of the earliest transmissions of the Shāh-nāma style of history-writing to the Ottoman realm. In this article, I attempt to uncover Malekzāda Āhi’s real identity and shed light on his activities in the palace circle, based on archival documents that are studied here for the first time.