Charles Melville (editor) - Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires

Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires

This volume is dedicated to

Michael Axworthy (1962-2019)

David Morgan (1945-2019)

David Stronach (1931-2020)

Already available in The Idea of Iran series

Birth of the Persian Empire, Vol. 1

Edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-84511-062-5

The Age of the Parthians, Vol. 2

Edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-84511-406-0

The Sasanian Era, Vol. 3

Edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-84511-690-3

The Rise of Islam, Vol. 4

Edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-84511-691-0

Early Islamic Iran, Vol. 5

Edited by Edmund Herzig (University of Oxford) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-78076-061-2

The Age of the Seljuqs, Vol. 6

Edited by Edmund Herzig (University of Oxford) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978-1-78076-947-9

The Coming of Mongols, Vol. 7

Edited by David O. Morgan (University Wisconsin-Madison) and Sarah Stewart (SOAS, London).

ISBN: 978 1 78831 285 1

Iran After the Mongols, Vol. 8

Edited by Sussan Babaie (The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London).

ISBN: 978-1-7883-1528-9

The Timurid Century, Vol. 9

Edited by Charles Melville (University of Cambridge).

ISBN: 978-1-8386-0613-8

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BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. TAURIS logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright The Soudavar Memorial Trust, 2021

Charles Melville has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover image: The Ardabil Carpet, by Maqsud of Kashan.

Iran mid-16th century Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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ISBN: HB: 978-0-7556-3377-7

PB: 978-0-7556-3378-4

ePDF: 978-0-7556-3379-1

eBook: 978-0-7556-3380-7

Series: The Idea of Iran, volume 10

Typeset by P. Fozooni

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Contents

Charles Melville

Ali Anooshahr

Gregory Aldous

Colin Mitchell

Rudi Matthee

Sussan Babaie

Aurlie Salesse-Chabrier

Andrew J. Newman

Sajjad Rizvi

Ferenc Csirks

Benedek Pri

Willem Floor

Maryam Ala Amjadi

Sunil Sharma

Roy S. Fischel

Florian Schwarz

George Sanikidze

Sheila R. Canby

Negar Habibi

(Colour Plates inserted between pp. 374-375)

This tenth volume in the Idea of Iran series could not have been achieved without the patient and sustained work of many people, starting most notably with the generous support of the Trustees of the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, particularly Mrs Fatema Soudavar-Farmanfarmaian and Dr Layla Diba, both of whom are constantly ready with advice and encouragement, not only in the framing of the academic programme but also in discussions with the publishers and negotiating the future of the series at its home base in SOAS.

This has been a difficult year, not least with the closure of The London Middle East Institute (LMEI) and change of personnel; the management of the symposia is now coming under the wing of the Regional Centres and Institutes Africa, Asia & Middle East at SOAS. This is a good moment to acknowledge the efficient and helpful support of Vincenzo Paci and Louise Hosking over many years, and to thank Angelica Baschiera for taking up the practicalities of the organisation from now on.

I acknowledge and thank my colleague, Dr Sarah Stewart, for her support and assistance in overseeing the arrangements of the symposia on which this volume was based, in October 2018 and May 2019, and I continue to rely on her experience and good sense. As before and always, Parvis Fozooni has typeset and formatted the chapters as a labour of love, with great skill and dedication and attention to detail, a contribution to the series that must never be taken for granted. A great enhancement of this volume is the introduction of an attractive nastaliq font for the Persian poetic quotations. Andy Platts has been a pleasure to work with on the copy-editing, bringing rigour and humour to the task and greatly enhancing the text of all contributions, despite my efforts to give her as little to do as possible.

This volume is dedicated to the memory and scholarship of Michael Axworthy, David Morgan and David Stronach, whose work in different fields did so much to bring knowledge of Iran and Persian culture to a wider audience and who passed away while this volume was in preparation.

Thanks also to Rory Gormley and Yasmin Garcha at I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury for their care over the production of this volume and breathing fresh life into the series as we introduce new features. I am grateful to all those institutions that have willingly provided images for reproduction and granted permission for their publication, detailed in the list of illustrations.

Maryam Ala Amjadi earned her Erasmus Mundus joint doctorate degree in July 2017 from University of Kent (UK) and Universidade do Porto (Portugal). Her research focuses on the complex relationship between mobility and identity in Persian Safavid travel narratives. She has previously worked as a writer for the Tehran Times Daily, where she founded and wrote a weekly page dedicated to Iranian culture and society. Ala Amjadi is a published poet and translator of poetry. Her book chapter on poetry in Irans contemporary theo-political culture will appear in the Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society.

Gregory Aldous earned a PhD in medieval Middle Eastern history from the University of WisconsinMadison and an MS in Urban Planning from Florida State University. His PhD thesis was on the relationship between Shah Tahmasp and the Qezelbash at the beginning of Tahmasps reign. He has taught Middle Eastern and world history at Concordia University Wisconsin and the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. His main research interests are the political history and urban history of the early Safavid period.