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* BIPS Persian Studies Series published by IB Tauris
* The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran
Power, Religion and Rhetoric The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Perso-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. During this golden era in Iran’s history, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, functionaries of the Safavid ‘state’ introduced and mould a unique and vibrant political discourse which reflected the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iranian landscape. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma`il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah `Abbas, here Colin Mitchell elucidates the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric, and helps us understand how this key Iranian dynasty articulated their political and religious sovereignty during a crucial phase of Iranian history. Safavid ideological pretensions were remarkably diverse and varied, and reflected the unsurpassed religious, political, and cultural heterogeneity of the Iranian Plateau in the medieval era. The crucible of early Safavid identity – Azarbaijan and eastern Anatolia – was shaped by a pastiche of millenarianism, antinomian tendencies, and proto-Shi`ite popular beliefs circulating in the fifteenth century. As the Safavid shahs and their coterie of Qizilbash amirs made the transition from parochial mystical movement to imperial entity, they initiated a series of relationships with networks of urban and rural notables which played no small role in how Safavid ideology was shaped and articulated. The sixteenth-century saw the concurrent emergence of a vibrant and well-staffed chancellery which produced a sizeable corpus of epistles, letters, and missives which were circulated domestically and internationally. These texts functioned as legitimizing texts for a nascent dynasty which stood at a formidable nexus of medieval religious, political and cultural traditions. Mitchell examines Safavid chancellery litterateurs and scribes (munshis and katibs) and their drafting and dispatching of imperial correspondence (munsha’at) both within the empire and abroad. He analyses the shifting spectrum of legitimacies which defined the Safavid state, showing how these texts employed a range of symbols from Iran’s pre-Islamic and Islamic heritage and ranged from didactic manuals to sophisticated analyses. Arguing that this evidence questions the general view of the Safavid state as strictly committed to Shi'ite ideology, Mitchell addresses debates on the religious and political nature of the Safavid state, authority and political philosophy in the Islamic world, state control of language and rhetoric, and Safavid studies. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics and Middle East studies.
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 held both a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Fellowship and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University.
Front image: An illustrated manuscript folio from the Safavid period depicting the court of King Faridun. From the Shahnameh-yi Shah Tahmasp (c. 1525). Fol. 38b, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.