Sholeh A. Quinn. Persian historiography across Empires: the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (2021)

Sholeh A. Quinn. Persian historiography across Empires: the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, X+252 p. ISBN 9781108842211

Persian served as one of the primary languages of historical writing over the period of the early modern Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Historians writing under these empires read and cited each other’s works, some moving from one empire to another, writing under different rival dynasties at various points in time. Emphasizing the importance of looking beyond the confines of political boundaries in studying this phenomenon, Sholeh A. Quinn employs a variety of historiographical approaches to draw attention to the importance of placing these histories within not only their historical context but also their historiographical context.

This comparative study of Persian historiography from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries presents in-depth case analyses alongside a wide array of primary sources written under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals to illustrate that Persian historiography during this era was part of an extensive universe of literary-historical writing.

Sholeh A. Quinn is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. She is the author of Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (2000) and Shah Abbas: The King Who Refashioned Iran (2015). She co-edited History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (2006).

Contents

List of Tables page … VIII
Acknowledgments … IX
1. Introduction … 1
2. Continuity and Transformation: The Timurid Historiographical Legacy … 20
3. Historiography and Historians on the Move: The Significance of the Number Twelve … 73
4. The First King of the World: Kayumars in Universal Histories … 107
5. Mirrors, Memorials, and Blended Genres … 155
6. Conclusion … 202
Appendix … 208
Bibliography … 222
Index … 239

Tables

2.1. Ibn Funduq’s list of “famous” histories page … 43
2.2. Bibliography in Khunji-Isfahani’s Tarikh-i ‘alam-ara-yi Amini … 45
2.3. Mirkhvand and Muslih al-Din Lari’s bibliographies (cross-listed) … 48
2.4. Bibliography in Nizam al-Din’s Tabaqat-i Akbari … 51
3.1. Khvandamir’s compositions … 76
4.1. The earliest chronicles written under the Safavids … 109
4.2. Chapter 4 chronicles … 111
4.3. General organizational scheme of Shukr Allah’s Bahjat al-tavarikh … 118
4.4. General organizational scheme of the Rawzat al-safa and the Habib al-siyar … 127
4.5. General organizational scheme of the Lubb altavarikh … 137
5.1. Biographies in the Habib al-siyar … 176
5.2. Named sources in the biographical sections of the Habib al-siyar … 178
5.3. Number of biographies by ruler in Khvandamir’s Habib al-siyar … 181