Persian Historiography across Empires

During the Islamic Middle Period emerged cadres of Timurid literati, deploying their abilities in the New Persian language in the pursuit of historical and literary writing that became the receptacle for the victories, lore, and virtues of various monarchies and their statesmen. These conventions were imitated by succeeding generations of Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal historians. In their chronicles lives a story of sorts, a narrative featuring conventional elements reiterated and refined according to regional tastes and imperial interests, passed from one historian to another. The theme of movement permeates Sholeh A. Quinn’s Persian Historiography across Empires, an absorbing book that tracks both the physical movement of Persianate chroniclers of history and the movement of ideas animated by the Persian language. Quinn’s work features six chapters, comprising four individual case studies of chronicles, bookended by an introduction and conclusion. Strictly historiographic boundaries prove porous among these cases. Many sources that fit under the broader canopy of historically relevant chronicles are admitted, including poetry, biographical compendia, and works in the style of mirrors for princes. In narrowing the massive field of literature, Quinn is focused on historical works composed in Persian. So, while Ottoman Turkish was the language of choice for most Ottoman works, the fewer Ottoman Persian sources are still illuminative of the use and transmission of Persian literary and cultural influences.Chapter 2, “Continuity and Transformation,” explores how the most salient conventions of this period of Persianate historical writing originated in Timurid texts, principally the Zafarnāma of Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (d. 1454) and Rawzat al-Safāʾ of Mīrkhvānd (d. 1433/4). Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal authors evince styles and techniques borrowed and adapted from the preceding Timurid epoch. These historians adjusted certain narratives and conventions, while at the same time circumventing or originating others. Quinn accents four such conventions, including the benefits of history, bibliographies, genealogies, and dream narratives. These conventions, however, turn out to be mostly semi-conventions that are either absent in one gunpowder paradigm, such as those of the benefits of history and bibliographies among Ottoman chronicles, or a marginal phenomenon, such as the former category among Mughal chronicles. Quinn nonetheless includes insightful observations about patterns of sixteenth-century Persianate historical writing. These authors ideate history as a form of ʿilm or, per Quinn, a “field of science” (26), whose advantages include preserving a vision of events and figures of the past that bear on the present. Knowing history not only provides empirical and practical advantages but also instills psychological benefits, including cheerfulness and patience vis-à-vis the divine will, exercised in and through time (29).Chapter 3, “Historiography and Historians on the Move,” depicts the “historiographical movement” (74) from the Safavid and Mughal empires, with Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad Khvāndamīr (d. 1535/6), grandson of Mīrkhvānd, as a central figure, roving with respect to both physical migration and sources of patronage. Khvāndamīr’s construction of history shifted from tribute to a Safavid functionary in Ḥabīb al-Siyar to tribute to the second Mughal leader Humāyūn in Qānūn-i Humāyūnī. The ten-year span between these two works marks an important passage in the history of Persian historiography, and Khvāndamīr sets a precedent as the first figure in official service of both dynasties (75). Others would follow, adding variance and complexity in the transmission of conventions inherited from Timurid historians who in turn drew on their Ilkhanid predecessors, such as Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (d.1318). Some conventions, such as bibliographies, would become obsolete in the early modern period. Others would have a longer shelf life, such as dream narratives foretelling a dynastic leader’s political-military ascension by some celestial sign or holy figure’s endorsement. The oneiric symbols of sword and light appearing in both Ottoman and Safavid chronicles proved indispensable for legitimizing rule, surviving the pivot recognized by Quinn from universal histories to dynastic ones (52-3).In Chapter 3, Quinn skillfully shows shifting fealties alongside shifting histories. She positions Khvāndamīr’s Shīʿi influences as an analytical axis for an editorial process involving changes in context and political priorities. For example, the chapter contains a lengthy section on the significance of the number 12, comparing the influence of Khvāndamīr’s main Shīʿi source, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Irbilī’s (d. 1293/4) Kashf al-Ghumma fī Maʿrifat al-Aʾimma, with his two chronological works, Ḥabīb al-Siyar and Qānūn-i Humāyūnī, in three parallel columns. With certain exceptions, Khvāndamīr removes all references to the Redeemer (al-qāʾim) and minimizes the influence of the twelve Imāms in Irbilī’s Kashf al-Ghumma, incorporating subtle allusions to the just and auspicious rule of Shāh Ismāʿīl in the Ḥabīb al-Siyar. Whereas the overall goal in Ḥabīb al-Siyar would be to maintain the centrality of the Imāms—while preserving the Redeemer as Shāh Ismāʿīl and not Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī “al-Mahdī”—all references to the Imāms and messianic foretokens of the qāʾim are removed in the Qānūn. This feature of the number 12’s special attention, however, is inconsistent across Persianate chronicles. Quinn includes a single example among Ottoman works containing its significance: Muṣṭafā ʿAlī’s (d. 1600) Cami’ül-kemalat, which contains Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī’s mention as the twelfth Imam yet appears only loosely connected with Khvāndamīr (101).Chapter 4, “The First King of the World,” is the most impressive section of the book. Here, Quinn finds a novel angle for pursuing the elusive questions raised by universal histories. Through surveying the Kayumars narrative in Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal universal histories composed in Persian, Quinn discovers a mutually shared means of connecting authors’ circumstances with the mythic past. Quinn’s analysis leans on Maria E. Subtelny’s claim that Kayumars was used in works supported by the Samanids, such as Balʿamī’s Tarīkh-i Balʿamī (alternatively, Tārīkhnāma), as part of an overarching project for propagating Hanafi Sunnism once Zoroastrianism no longer posed any real challenge to rulers’ sociopolitical designs in the eastern Persian regions.The mythological king, Kayumars, produces a wide spectrum of narratives over his origins, shifting under the sands of various dynastic grounds, allowing universal history writers to introduce politically inflected novelty regarding how Kayumars attains kingship and who confers this authority. In the narrative offered by Balʿamī, Kayumars is nominated by God to be the world’s king. Kayumars promotes this nomination by giving the first sermon (khuṭba) and appeals to the Biblical patriarch Kenan (Qinan) to recognize his authority, distinguished from the latter by divine designation versus Kenan’s own designation of a successor. Balʿamī reconciles the Iranian and Islamic notions of kingship, establishing not only a link but also boundaries where kingship has priority over patriarchal vicegerency. In the first Persian universal history of Ottoman provenance, the Bahjat al-Tavārīkh, author Mawlānā Shukr Allāh Rūmī (d. 1488/1489) excludes Kayumars’ sermon but preserves the Kenan entreaty contained in Balʿamī’s Tarīkh. Rūmī also modifies Kayumars’ monarchical mandate as granted by Kenan through the latter’s authority as vicegerent, inherited from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve (123). Quinn assimilates these differences to political developments. Whereas Balʿamī preserves the Sasanian emphasis on the natural brotherhood between kingship and religion, while joining the narrative to the Samanids’ propagation of Sunni Islam, Rūmī elevates religious authority over the temporal variety, a view cohering with the Seljuq position. Their respective views mark differences in time and perspective.So too does the Safavid appropriation of the Kayumars narrative undergo modification, such as in Khvāndamīr’s Ḥabīb al-Siyar that is modeled after Mīrkhānd’s Rawzat al-Safāʾ but contains revision and some omission. In accounting for these editorial decisions, Quinn embraces speculation: Perhaps Shāh Ismāʿīl wanted to preserve good relations with the Zoroastrians after capturing Yazd in 1504/1505; hence, Khvāndamīr omitted his grandfather’s slight against their intelligence inserted in the latter’s Kayumars account (130–31). Perhaps Khvāndamīr, a fresh arrival within the Mughal court, did not want to make waves, hence leaving out details contained in Rawzat al-Safāʾ about Kayumars’ origins as the first Persian king (132). Perhaps Khvāndamīr left out the description of Kayumars’ justice, equated with Jahāngīr’s version, as symbolized by peace between lion and lamb, because of the “eschatological connotations” of the description’s original source in Isaiah 11:6 (132–33). However helpful this conjecture, the brief commentary on Masʿūd b. ʿUsman Kūhistānī’s Tarikh-i Abu al-Khayr Khānī adds little to the role of Kayumars in Persian universal histories other than to suggest that Kūhistānī reproduces elements of Khvāndamīr’s Ḥabīb al-Siyar while injecting a poetic flair. These obscurities do not depreciate Quinn’s main point about narrative modulation, where the intertextual elements of a story and patterns of imitation oscillate between spiritual and temporal poles.Chapter 5, “Mirrors, Memorials, and Blended Genres,” is the most uneven chapter, skipping from the subject of various virtues of Safavid and Mughal monarchs, with little analysis of their importance other than a common post-Timurid Persian heritage and agenda, to fragmentary information about tazkirah literature. A section on the seventeenth year of Shāhs Akbar and ʿAbbās’ rule appears particularly puzzling. Sure, Akbar was involved in the conquest of Gujarat, and ʿAbbās was engaged in the recapture of Tabriz during this year of their respective reigns, but are there no similar coincidences among other years, whether regarding conquest or other imperial activity? Why exactly is this particular year privileged by chroniclers? How is it elucidative of the co-dependability among monarchs, their soldiers, and subjects, known as the “circle of justice”? Such questions linger over the section by its conclusion.In the more cogent sections of Chapter 5 surveying tazkirah components of history writing, we find that more biographical entries equal more prestige and political legitimacy. For Quinn, this reveals the reciprocal relationship between the talents of the ruler and those in his inner orbit, where the tazkirah exhibits the influence of wise counselors, administrators, and artists. In this way, Iskandar Beg Munshī (d. 1633/4), a trusted secretary of the Safavid court, includes tazkirah information in his Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī that parallels that of Khvāndamīr’s Ḥabīb al-Siyar. Munshī’s biographical catalog includes, inter alia, amirs, khans, sultans, and viziers, magnifying the credentials and accolades of the leaders whose encomium such authors offered in their writing. The company rulers kept and the things they witnessed, however apocryphal or embellished, and the sources that were imitated, modified, or omitted, served new political purposes and leaders. To take one example, biographical anthologies allow Muṣliḥ al-Dīn al-Lārī (d. 1572) in his universal history, Mirʾāt al-Adwār wa Mirqāt al-Khbār, written under the patronage of the Ottoman grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Paşa, to promulgate criticism of Safavid persecution of Sunni scholars.A spate of Persian historiographies have recently been published, many of which are referenced in Sholeh A. Quinn’s Persian Historiography across Empires. The main features of Quinn’s work, including the patterns of accommodation and revision under authorial pressures that she records with detailed precision, set it apart from others. Especially useful is the appendix of chroniclers and their works, supplemented by the bibliography’s information, that might serve as a valuable reference on its own, particularly with regard to lesser-known figures such as the Mughal historian Muḥammad Sharīf Vuqūʿī Nayshāpūrī (d. 1593/94). The most conspicuous problem with Quinn’s book is the dearth of Ottoman examples. Because of this, Persian Historiography across Empires would be better formulated as a comparative study exclusive to Safavid and Mughal histories. Readers nevertheless get a good glimpse of how the imaginative and the mythic color the chronicles of an ethnically and religiously diffuse people whose lingua franca becomes a vehicle for their self-identity and collective memory. Each of the six chapters casts fresh light on the compositional constituents and thematic connections germane to the historiographic nexus of the three Islamic empires originating in the beginning of the early modern period. The foregoing criticism and minor typographical blemishes do not detract from a reliable and penetrating analysis of Persian historiography that will prove beneficial for specialists of Persianate histories seeking a comparative approach, carefully attuned to political impulses and literary styles.