MESA Banner
Princesses, Patronage, and the Production of Knowledge in Safavid Iran
Abstract
This paper examines works dedicated to princesses of the Safavid dynasty, finding that the authors and translators of these works regularly portrayed the princesses as religious and temporal authorities, supplementing their being cast—those who were unmarried, in any case—as brides of the Twelfth Imam in other contexts, connecting their own authority with that of the Imam of the Age while also allowing them to maintain an autonomy, being free of obligations to an ordinary husband, that their peers could enjoy. The writers repeatedly styled the princesses as modern incarnations of Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and furthermore granted them titles such as murawwij al-madhhab, “propagator of the sect,” which ordinarily were reserved for the Safavid kings. These perhaps surprising titles and epithets, which cannot be dismissed as frivolous hyperbole, indicate an acceptance of female members of the Safavid dynasty as participants in the divinely sanctioned sovereignty accorded to the Shahs.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries