Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341332
S. Arjomand
{"title":"Review Essay: Persianate Political Thought and Islam","authors":"S. Arjomand","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341332","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"167-174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341332","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48566022","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}
Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341333
N. Askari
Drawing on evidence from the texts, illustrations, and contexts of production of two Persian manuscripts, the present paper points to the role of female élites as both audiences and protagonists of the two works, and argues that both works functioned as advisory literature for the female élites of medieval Persian royal courts. It also draws attention to the strong connection of both works to the two realms of élite and folk literature and calls for a designation and defining criteria for a body of works that occupies the zone between the high and low ends of the wide spectrum of Persian literature.
{"title":"Élite Folktales: Munes-nāma, Ketāb-e dāstān, and Their Audiences","authors":"N. Askari","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341333","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Drawing on evidence from the texts, illustrations, and contexts of production of two Persian manuscripts, the present paper points to the role of female élites as both audiences and protagonists of the two works, and argues that both works functioned as advisory literature for the female élites of medieval Persian royal courts. It also draws attention to the strong connection of both works to the two realms of élite and folk literature and calls for a designation and defining criteria for a body of works that occupies the zone between the high and low ends of the wide spectrum of Persian literature.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"32-61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341333","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44436263","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}
Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341331
L. Marlow
{"title":"Introduction: Advice Literature and Persianate Political Ethics","authors":"L. Marlow","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341331","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341331","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46896552","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}
Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341330
A. O'malley
This paper examines the formation and development of the Abu Saʿid Abuʾl-Kheyr hagiographic tradition. It shows how reports about the eleventh-century saint circulated within a shrine community of his descendants and disciples, both orally and in ad hoc notes, before being set down in writing. It argues that the Asrār al-towhid, the largest and best-known hagiography devoted to Abu Saʿid, is not a natural outgrowth of this oral material, but a reworking for a broad audience of outsiders in light of the shrine community’s destruction by the Ghuzz Turks in the 1150s. In the case of the Asrār, textualization involved substantial rhetorical and linguistic changes in order to open up the material to a literary public of non-initiates; it also implied a new understanding of how Abu Saʿid’s blessings would manifest themselves in the world.
{"title":"From Blessed Lips: the Textualization of Abu Saʿid’s Dicta and Deeds","authors":"A. O'malley","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341330","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines the formation and development of the Abu Saʿid Abuʾl-Kheyr hagiographic tradition. It shows how reports about the eleventh-century saint circulated within a shrine community of his descendants and disciples, both orally and in ad hoc notes, before being set down in writing. It argues that the Asrār al-towhid, the largest and best-known hagiography devoted to Abu Saʿid, is not a natural outgrowth of this oral material, but a reworking for a broad audience of outsiders in light of the shrine community’s destruction by the Ghuzz Turks in the 1150s. In the case of the Asrār, textualization involved substantial rhetorical and linguistic changes in order to open up the material to a literary public of non-initiates; it also implied a new understanding of how Abu Saʿid’s blessings would manifest themselves in the world.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"5-31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341330","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47763317","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341325
Matthew Melvin-Koushki
Imperial grimoires—that is, manuals on various forms of magic and divination written for or commissioned by royal readers—proliferated across the early modern Persianate world, more than paralleling the (decidedly non-imperial) grimoire boom in Renaissance Europe; but only the latter has been studied to date. This programmatic essay diagnoses the colonialist-Orientalist causes for this wild imbalance in comparative early modern Western intellectual and imperial historiography and outlines a philological way forward. Far from being evidence for “the superstition of the Moslem natives,” such manuals are an indispensable aperture onto precisely those processes—common to Islamdom and Christendom alike—by which we define Western early modernity: textualization, canonization, standardization, confessionalization, centralization, imperialization, bureaucratization, democratization, and mathematization. Yet they also record the religio-cultural and institutional divergences that so distinguish the Islamicate and especially Persianate experience of early modernity from the Latin Christianate.
{"title":"How to Rule the World: Occult-Scientific Manuals of the Early Modern Persian Cosmopolis","authors":"Matthew Melvin-Koushki","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341325","url":null,"abstract":"Imperial grimoires—that is, manuals on various forms of magic and divination written for or commissioned by royal readers—proliferated across the early modern Persianate world, more than paralleling the (decidedly non-imperial) grimoire boom in Renaissance Europe; but only the latter has been studied to date. This programmatic essay diagnoses the colonialist-Orientalist causes for this wild imbalance in comparative early modern Western intellectual and imperial historiography and outlines a philological way forward. Far from being evidence for “the superstition of the Moslem natives,” such manuals are an indispensable aperture onto precisely those processes—common to Islamdom and Christendom alike—by which we define Western early modernity: textualization, canonization, standardization, confessionalization, centralization, imperialization, bureaucratization, democratization, and mathematization. Yet they also record the religio-cultural and institutional divergences that so distinguish the Islamicate and especially Persianate experience of early modernity from the Latin Christianate.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341325","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46832810","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341322
James D. Clark
This essay looks at the national history of the Tajiks of Central Asia that was created in the twentieth century and has continued to develop into the twenty-first century. It traces the notion of Tajik nationalism, which arose in the 1920s under the Soviet Union, largely in response to Uzbek nationalism. Soviet intellectuals and scholars thereafter attempted to construct a new history for the Tajiks. The most important effort in that area was Bobojon Ghafurov’s study Tadzhiki (Tajiks, 1972), which gave them primacy among the Central Asian peoples. The essay examines the policies of independent Tajikistan’s government, such as its focus on the Samanid dynasty and the replacement Soviet monuments and names with nationalist ones. Finally, it looks at the challenges that contemporary Islamic movements in the country pose to the earlier secular interpretations.
{"title":"New Nation, New History: Promoting National History in Tajikistan","authors":"James D. Clark","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341322","url":null,"abstract":"This essay looks at the national history of the Tajiks of Central Asia that was created in the twentieth century and has continued to develop into the twenty-first century. It traces the notion of Tajik nationalism, which arose in the 1920s under the Soviet Union, largely in response to Uzbek nationalism. Soviet intellectuals and scholars thereafter attempted to construct a new history for the Tajiks. The most important effort in that area was Bobojon Ghafurov’s study Tadzhiki (Tajiks, 1972), which gave them primacy among the Central Asian peoples. The essay examines the policies of independent Tajikistan’s government, such as its focus on the Samanid dynasty and the replacement Soviet monuments and names with nationalist ones. Finally, it looks at the challenges that contemporary Islamic movements in the country pose to the earlier secular interpretations.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341322","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64838713","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341323
Elham Bakhtary
Recent scholarship on Afghan historiography has shed light on how Afghan historians, particularly from the early twentieth century onwards, have used events such as the First Anglo-Afghan War for the purpose of national narratives. This article deepens this analysis by paying particular attention to how two prominent Afghan historians, Fayz Mohammad Kāteb and Gholām Mohammad Ghobār, rendered the Afghan rebellion that ended the British occupation in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Although Kāteb and Ghobār agreed on the religious nature of the rebellion, they had opposite interpretations regarding its leadership. This study explores how these opposite interpretations reflect a common underlying attempt to use the First Anglo-Afghan War as an historical allegory. As a court historian, Kāteb’s account is a testimony to his patron dynasty’s ability to protect Afghanistan, while Ghobār’s account reflects the author’s conviction in Afghanistan’s readiness for democracy.
{"title":"Fayz Mohammad Kāteb and Gholām Mohammad Ghobār’s Divergent Allegories of an Afghan Rebellion","authors":"Elham Bakhtary","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341323","url":null,"abstract":"Recent scholarship on Afghan historiography has shed light on how Afghan historians, particularly from the early twentieth century onwards, have used events such as the First Anglo-Afghan War for the purpose of national narratives. This article deepens this analysis by paying particular attention to how two prominent Afghan historians, Fayz Mohammad Kāteb and Gholām Mohammad Ghobār, rendered the Afghan rebellion that ended the British occupation in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Although Kāteb and Ghobār agreed on the religious nature of the rebellion, they had opposite interpretations regarding its leadership. This study explores how these opposite interpretations reflect a common underlying attempt to use the First Anglo-Afghan War as an historical allegory. As a court historian, Kāteb’s account is a testimony to his patron dynasty’s ability to protect Afghanistan, while Ghobār’s account reflects the author’s conviction in Afghanistan’s readiness for democracy.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341323","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45585710","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341327
S. Shafieioun
Many scholars still firmly believe that the Safavid period was one of hostility towards poets and men of letters. Numerous learned men fled Iran to India, for both religious and ideological reasons, which in turn affected both the quality and quantity of Persian literature from this era. There is evidence that corroborates this line of argument, but there are other socio-political, religious and cultural factors that must also be addressed in relation to this historical phenomenon. Drawing on original sources, this paper aims to analyze this historical ambiguity.
{"title":"Some Critical Remarks on the Migration of Iranian Poets to India in the Safavid Era","authors":"S. Shafieioun","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341327","url":null,"abstract":"Many scholars still firmly believe that the Safavid period was one of hostility towards poets and men of letters. Numerous learned men fled Iran to India, for both religious and ideological reasons, which in turn affected both the quality and quantity of Persian literature from this era. There is evidence that corroborates this line of argument, but there are other socio-political, religious and cultural factors that must also be addressed in relation to this historical phenomenon. Drawing on original sources, this paper aims to analyze this historical ambiguity.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341327","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49056223","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341324
Michael Shenkar
The article discusses the venue and the nature of the coronation ceremony of the Sasanian kings in the third century. It is argued that the coronation of the early Sasanians was a continuation of a Hellenistic ceremony, which was essentially the act of binding a diadem around one’s head. It seems that the common practice was for the king to bind the diadem himself in the presence of a select circle of courtiers or only in the presence of the gods. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate that Ctesiphon was neither the “capital” nor even the most important residence of the early Sasanians and no ceremony of coronation took place there in the third century.
{"title":"The Coronation of the Early Sasanians, Ctesiphon, and the Great Diadem of Paikuli","authors":"Michael Shenkar","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341324","url":null,"abstract":"The article discusses the venue and the nature of the coronation ceremony of the Sasanian kings in the third century. It is argued that the coronation of the early Sasanians was a continuation of a Hellenistic ceremony, which was essentially the act of binding a diadem around one’s head. It seems that the common practice was for the king to bind the diadem himself in the presence of a select circle of courtiers or only in the presence of the gods. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate that Ctesiphon was neither the “capital” nor even the most important residence of the early Sasanians and no ceremony of coronation took place there in the third century.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341324","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41765155","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}
Pub Date : 2019-01-28DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341326
Matthew C. Smith
In the winter of 1778, an earthquake shattered the city of Kashan. Three poets, Āẕar, Hātef, and Sabāhi, responded to the disaster in verse. Although all three are commonly associated with the Bāzgasht-e adabi (Literary Return) school that championed the style of an earlier era, their poems display an affinity with more contemporary Safavid poetry, particularly that of Mohtasham Kāshāni. In their responses to the earthquake, the poets acted as agents of social order, helping their audience to cope with their loss by putting the calamity into more familiar religious and cultural contexts (such as comparisons to the death of Emām Hoseyn at Karbalāʾ) and enabling them to move forward into the future.
{"title":"Betrayed by Earth and Sky: Poetry of Disaster and Restoration in Eighteenth-Century Iran","authors":"Matthew C. Smith","doi":"10.1163/18747167-12341326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341326","url":null,"abstract":"In the winter of 1778, an earthquake shattered the city of Kashan. Three poets, Āẕar, Hātef, and Sabāhi, responded to the disaster in verse. Although all three are commonly associated with the Bāzgasht-e adabi (Literary Return) school that championed the style of an earlier era, their poems display an affinity with more contemporary Safavid poetry, particularly that of Mohtasham Kāshāni. In their responses to the earthquake, the poets acted as agents of social order, helping their audience to cope with their loss by putting the calamity into more familiar religious and cultural contexts (such as comparisons to the death of Emām Hoseyn at Karbalāʾ) and enabling them to move forward into the future.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18747167-12341326","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49050716","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}