Author(s): Colin P. Mitchell
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 304
Contents......Page 8
Note on Transliteration......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Cycles of Persian Mytho-history and Abrahamic Prophecy: Locating "Formational" Safavid Iran......Page 14
Working with Rhetoric and Letter-writing in Perso-Islamic History......Page 19
Inshā and Munshīs: A Discursive Forum......Page 24
The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Structure and Scope......Page 29
1. IMPERIALIZING THE APOCALYPSE 1501-32......Page 32
The Parousia (zuhūr) of Ismā ̀īl,1494-1514......Page 33
Heralding Noah's Flood: Messianic and Mystical Innovations in the Safavid Chancellery......Page 43
Recovery of Persian Bureaucratic Culture and the Imperializing of Epistolary Rhetoric, 1515-24......Page 59
Early Years of Shāh Tahmāsp and the Persian-Turk Paradigm, 1524-32......Page 71
2. COMPETING COSMOLOGIES, 1532-55......Page 81
Invective Rhetoric: al-Karakī and Models of Shi'ite Apologetic Discourse......Page 84
Qādī-yi Jahān Qazvīnī and the "Men of the Pen"......Page 101
Mystical Impulses and the Safavid Inshā Tradition......Page 108
Reorientation to Qazvīn and the East......Page 117
Solomonic Tropes......Page 133
Polychromatic Impulses: Abdī beg Shīrāzī and the Chancellery......Page 150
Shāh Ismā'īl II's Challenge to the Hierocrats......Page 158
The Emergence of a New Esprit de Corps under Khudādandah......Page 171
Narrating and Mapping a New Safavid Dominion, 1588-98......Page 189
Conclusion......Page 211
Notes......Page 216
Bibliography......Page 277
Index......Page 300