Focusing on a subject greatly neglected in scholarship, the paper discusses the relationship of Persian and Turkic in Safavid Iran, the respective role of these two literary languages in Safavid intellectual life, and how literary activities in Turkic can be connected to developments in Safavid religious politics in the first half of the sixteenth century. As a case study, it presents Muhammad al-Katib Nashati’s Turkic translation of Tavakkuli b. Ismail b. Bazzaz’s Safwat al-safa, the voluminous official hagiography of the Safavid dynasty written around 759/1358. Nashati produced his translation in 949/1542 in Shiraz under the patronage of Shahquli Khalifa of the prominent Qizilbash Turkic Dhu al-Qadarlu tribe, several members of which as governors of Shiraz sponsored book production and painting extensively for generations down to 1596. On the one hand, I will focus on how Nashati’s work ties in with the patronage policies of the Dhu al-Qadarlu and what it tells us about their position in the Safavid system. On the other hand, I will compare Nashati’s translation with Ibn Bazzaz’s Persian original, trying to shed light on how this translation reflects the shifts in Safavid religious politics. As is well known, Shah Tashmasp (r. 1524-1576) ordered Ibn Bazzaz’s hagiography reedited, in order to bolster the Safavid claim to descent from Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Imam in Twelver Shiism. Establishing the relationship of Nashati’s translation to the different versions of the Persian original, I will demonstrate that Nashati’s work fits Safavid endeavors under Shah Tahmasp to popularize Twelver Shiism in Iran, and that it also reflects the attitudes of such powerful Qizilbash governors as the Dhu al-Qadarlu to the dynasty and to its support of Twelver Shiism as opposed to the antinomian, messianic religiosity of the early days of Safavid rule in Iran.

Throughout history, monocratic rulers all over the world were offered written advice on rulership. However, this seemingly universal genre, often referred to as Mirrors for Princes, seldom receives a scholarly treatment that recognizes its transcultural nature. As recently as 2013 it was noted that when it comes to Christian and Islamic Mirrors the historiographical tradition “has taken two extremely similar phenomena and rendered them incommensurable”. This incommensurability is especially questionable in light of our growing awareness of the vivid traffic in thoughts and symbols between the societies that were legatees of the Antique cultural heritage. This paper seeks to address this conceptual problem through transcultural comparisons of Christian and Islamic Mirrors. The transcultural method considers all historiographical divisions of cultures and periods as a discursive reality, which it seeks to question through comparisons that transcend these divisions. This paper uses the discursive separation of Mirrors into a Christian and an Islamic tradition as its basis to select four Mirrors that represent different stages of the two traditions, as historiography has described them. It then goes on to challenge this separation by comparing the texts across the historiographically defined limits. The four Mirrors in question are the Ris?la to the crown prince by ?Abd al-?am?d al-K?tib (d. 750), De Institutione Regia by Jonas of Orléans (760-843), (pseudo-)al-Ghaz?l?'s Na???at al-mul?k (c. early 12th century) and the Castigos e documentos para bien vivir (c. 1293), attributed to Sancho IV (r. 1284-95). To obtain a certain degree of comparability I have chosen texts that were produced under comparable socio-historical circumstances, that is in times of dynastic crises. The four Mirrors are compared for their views on justice, the single-most important regal virtue to emerge from both Christian and Islamic Mirrors. The comparisons reveal not only perennial ideas on justice, but also shed light on the ways in which the authors' interpretations of justice reflect their specific historical context. They show multiple understandings of justice, ranging from the ruler's corrective role vis-à-vis his subjects, to visions of a social and/or cosmological equilibrium. Ultimately, the paper suggests that a consistent model of rulership existed among the societies that could draw on the Late Antique heritage and that the variations of its illustration can mostly be explained without recurrence to concepts like culture or religion.

This paper is concerned with intertwined issues of legitimacy and poetry during the Safavid period. I explore the ways poets imaged the kings through the works of masnav?s. Studying the venues of religio-political legitimacy in masnav?s suggests that unlike the popular belief which considers Shi‘ism as one of the main cause of Safavid revolt, Shi‘ism was only a means of power advertisement for the broader audience (the Iranian people and other empires) and a secondary thought for the kings themselves in practicing their daily lives. Safavid epic masnav?s of Shah Ism?‘?l, which narrates the story of the Safavid’s raise to power, introduced the king as descendants of the prophet in addition to assuming far for him, a right that was exclusive for rulers of Persia. The king’s Sufi background was also important as it portrayed the Safavid king with special power in doing unnatural in social and religious life. This right was specific to Imams and spiritual leaders. Distribution of Shi‘ism and other religious inspirations mentioned in these works briefly. Furthermore, I demonstrate after Shah Ism?‘?l new ways of political legitimacy were introduced in masnav?s which not necessarily were related to Shi‘ism. In s?q?n?mah and shahr?sh?b genres, legitimacy of kings was represented in the kings’ relation to palaces and courtly gardens but not the kings’ family lineage or inherited far. During the years which followed by the fall of Safavid dynasty the images of kings in masnav?s emphasized the material aspects of kingship rather than the previously emphasized spiritual features.

Unlike the Persian mystical works, most notably Rumi’s Mathnavi in which the stories are narrated in the service of conveying a spiritual message and are usually followed by some keys to their deeper meanings, the epical Shahnameh is silent for the most part on the possible symbolic readings of the stories therein. In preface to the Shahnameh, however, Ferdowsi invites the reader to understand symbolically the things that are not compatible with her wisdom, and thus leaves the task of contemplating the deeper meanings of the stories to the reader. In this study, we present a few medieval and pre-modern works that offer symbolic readings for the Shahnameh and examine their methods of interpretation and their motivations for offering mystical readings for an essentially epical work. The examined works are: the mystical readings of the stories of Jamshid, Bijan and Manijeh and occultation of Kaykhosrow in Elahi Nameh(EN) by Attar (13th century AD), the story of Rostam and Esfandiar in Kadu Matbakh-i Qalandari (KM) by Adham Khalkhali (died ca. 1642 AD) and the story of Siyavash and Afrasiyab in Latife-ye Gheybiyeh(LG) by Muhammad Darabi Shirazi (died ca. 1717 AD). Regarding the methods of interpretation, most of the accounts read the stories allegorically by projecting the conflicts in the original story onto internal conflicts among man’s various faculties, e.g., KM makes the following parallels: Esfandiar=the carnal soul, Rostam=mind of a disciple, Rostam’s arrows with no effect on Esfandiar=disciple’s thoughts and practices, etc. The conflict between Rostam and Esfandiar, therefore, represents the situation where the disciple is unable to save himself on his own; rather, he needs the help of a perfect master just as Rostam could only win with the help of Zal. In EN’s account of Jamshid and Kaykhosrow, the author uses the contrast between the rather different destinies of the two figures to convey the distinction between the literal meaning of the cup of Jamshid, i.e., mastering the world’s mysteries, and its real meaning, i.e., the heart of a realized mystic who can see the Truth. Finally, we argue that in spite of Ferdowsi’s silence on the symbolic interpretations of the Shahnameh, medieval authors who considered Ferdowsi as a sage, do offer symbolic meanings for the stories to the extent that for some of them, reading the stories otherwise is not worth it, even though ‘they are as sweet as sugar’.