The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran Power, Religion and Rhetoric

by Mitchell, Colin P.

• ISBN13: 9781845118907
• ISBN10: 1845118901
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-15
• Publisher: Tauris Academic Studies

Summary

The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here Colin Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse which reflected the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah 'Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. He focuses on the large corpus of epistles, letters and missives produced by a developed Safavid chancellery which show how the Safavids forged and negotiated their political and religious sovereignty in a diverse and complex environment. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning,The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iranis indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics as well as the wider world of Middle East studies.

Author Biography

Colin P. Mitchell is Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, he has has held both a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Fellowship and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

Introduction * Cycles of Persian Mytho-history and Abrahamic Prophecy: Locating “Formational” Safavid Iran * Working with Rhetoric and Letter-writing in Perso-Islamic History * Between Jamsh'd and 'Al: Structure and Scope * Imperializing the Apocalypse, 1501-1532 * The Parousia (Zuhur) of Isma'il, 1494-1514 * Heralding Noah's Flood: Messianic and Mystical Innovations in the Safavid Chancellery * Recovery of Persian Bureaucratic Culture and the Imperializing of Epistolary Rhetoric * Tahmasp’s Early Rule and the Persian-Turk Paradigm * Competing Cosmologies, 1532-1555 * Invective Rhetoric: al-Karaki and Models of Shi`ite Apologetic Discourse * Qazi-yi Jahan Qazvini and the Men of the Pen * Mystical Impulses and the Safavid Insha Tradition * The Second Repentance, 1555-1576 * Reorientation to Qazvin and the East * Solomonic Tropes * Polychromatic Impulses: 'Abd Beg Sh'razi and the Chancellery * Rex Redux, 1576-1598 * Shah Isma'il II’s Challenge to the Hierocrats * The Emergence of a New Esprit de Corps Under Khudabandah * Narrating and Mapping a New Safavid Dominion, 1588-1598 * References * Index