A.C.S. Peacock - Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World

A.C.S. Peacock is Reader in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews, and holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Great Seljuk Empire (2015) and Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (2010), and is the co-editor of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2012) and Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia (2013).

D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame, and holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of The Great Seljuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (forthcoming) and Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (2007), and the editor of The Abbsid and Carolingian Empires: Comparative Studies in Civilisational Formation (forthcoming, 2016) and a co-editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: The Medieval Period (2018).

I.B.Tauris & BIPS Persian Studies Series

Series ISBN 978 1 84885 203 7

Series Editor

Vanessa Martin

Editorial Board

C. Edmund Bosworth, Robert Gleave, Vanessa Martin

The I.B.Tauris / BIPS Persian Studies Series publishes scholarly works in the social sciences and humanities on Iran. Such works include: original research monographs, including biographies and suitably revised theses, specially planned books deriving from conferences, specially commissioned multi-authored research books, academic readers and translations.

1 The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion, Rhetoric
Colin P. Mitchell
978 1 84511 890 7

2 The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Prayer Manual
Christiane Gruber
978 1 84511 499 2

3 Hafiz and his Contemporaries: A Study of Fourteenth-Century Persian Love Poetry
Dominic Brookshaw
978 1 84885 144 3

4 The Ornament of Histories: A History of the Eastern Islamic Lands AD 6501041 The Original Text of Ab Sad Abd al-Hayy Gardz
Tranlsated and Edited by C. Edmund Bosworth
978 1 84885 353 9

5 The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran
Kishwar Rizvi
978 1 84885 354 6

6 Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906
Vanessa Martin
978 1 78076 663 8

7. Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation
Edited by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor
978 1 78453 239 0

Published in 2015 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright editorial selection 2015 A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor

Copyright individual chapters 2015 C. Edmund Bosworth, Minoru Inaba, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Hillenbrand, Louise Marlow, Christopher Melchert, Roy Mottahedeh, Jrgen Paul and A. C. S. Peacock

The right of A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

British Institute of Persian Studies 7

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78453 239 0
eISBN: 978 0 85772 946 0

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon

In Memoriam C. Edmund Bosworth and Berenike Walburg

CONTENTS

D.G. TOR

CHRISTOPHER MELCHERT

LOUISE MARLOW

ROBERT HILLENBRAND

MINORU INABA

ROY MOTTAHEDEH

A.C.S. PEACOCK

CAROLE HILLENBRAND

JRGEN PAUL

C. EDMUND BOSWORTH

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

Plates

Table

In Memoriam: Clifford Edmund Bosworth (19282015) and Berenike Walburg (19842012)

This volume is dedicated to the memory of two individuals, of very different ages and life stages, but who were both an integral part of the original conference and, in Edmund Bosworths case, this volume:

Clifford Edmund Bosworth was one of the most distinguished and prolific scholars of his time. After taking a 1st class degree in Modern History at St. Johns, Oxford, he completed an M.A. in Middle Eastern Languages (1956) and a PhD (1961) at the University of Edinburgh. Following a stint as a lecturer in Arabic at the University of St. Andrews (19561965), he joined the University of Manchester, in which he served as Professor of Arabic Studies from 19671990. During this time, he also joined the editorial board of, and composed an astonishing number of entries for, the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, overseeing the completion of the project. In many of the fields he researched, ranging from the Saffarids and Ghaznavids to the Ghurids, he was the trailblazer, whose work opened up that area of research to subsequent scholarly exploration. Characteristically, Edmund was the only contributor to this volume who had published research on every single dynastic period that falls within its purview. His work was invariably meticulous, comprehensively researched, and judicious, and will surely be read for many years to come. He was also a generous and courteous colleague, a good friend and correspondent, and a supportive mentor to younger scholars, whom he treated as full equals of his very eminent self. For the editors, he was an integral and essential participant in any conference, and his death is a blow to us personally. He is deeply missed, but we are grateful for the privilege of having known him.

Berenike Walburg was a graduate student of the University of St Andrews who was killed in a road traffic accident in Aberdeenshire on Saturday 1 December 2012.

At the time of her death, Berenike was a matter of months away from submitting her doctoral thesis, which was focused on the nature and development of international trade across Central Asia, the Near East and the Caucasus between 600 and 900 CE. Berenike was a very talented young scholar. Her research was characterised by great clarity of thought, a mastery of detail and a willingness to challenge long-held assumptions. While still a doctoral student, she had come to the attention of the wider scholarly community and impressed all who encountered her. Anyone prepared to undertake both a month of archaeological investigation at Merv in Turkmenistan and a week of intensive advanced Classical Armenian at the Welcome Library in London must have great resilience and total dedication to their field. In recognition of her scholarship and high standing in the academic world, the University of St Andrews awarded Berenike a posthumous doctorate in June 2013.

Berenike was known personally to many of those who attended the conference convened at the University of St Andrews in March 2013 under the title Eastern Iran and Transoxiana, 7501150 from which this volume of essays stems. She contributed to its organisation and had been invited to deliver a paper. It is therefore appropriate that this volume should be co-dedicated to her memory.