BCAI 31 94 III. Histoire
Mitchell Colin P.
New Perspectives on Safavid Iran : Empire and Society,
London, New York : Routledge, 2011, Iranian Studies, Vol. 8. ISBN : 9781138789258.
Dedicated to Roger M. Savory, a doyen of Safavid studies, the festschrift under review is organized into introduction and two parts. The first part consists of six contributions that deal with a wide range of topics from letter decoration arts and political practices of möchlägä or “ binding pledge” and corporate sovereignty to the Safavid-Ottoman wars in the Caucasus, cultural currents in the early modern Turco-Persian world, and the issue of hijab at the Safavid royal harem. In her article entitled “ The binding pledge
(möchlägä) : A Chinggisid practice and its survival in Safavid Iran,” Maria E. Subtelny explores the origins of the möchlägä or unilateral pledge of allegiance made by influential statesmen and provincial elites to the Mongol and Ilkhanid rulers. Though it has almost nothing to do with the Safavids, Subtelny’s engaging and insightful study of the möchlägä in Ilkhanid Iran outlines the evolution of the practice as a form of imprecatory oath of loyalty by which the pledger “ called punishment or death upon himself if he did not carry out his promise or if the statements he made were not true.” She concludes that in its Central Asian context the practice of möchlägä was aimed to nip in the bud civil wars and inter-tribal conflicts, but so far as the post-Ilkhanid political order in Iran is concerned, such a unilateral pledge of political allegiance no longer had effectiveness in repressing the fissiparous dynamics of a ʿ yān-amīr
power relations in provinces (p. 20). Iraj Afshar’s contribution is a short research note on a scribal handbook entitled Majmū ʿ a nāmahā-yi ʿ ahd-i Ṣafavī (MS 5032, Majlis Library, Tehran) that dates from the latter part of the 17th century. The handbook in question contains transcripts of several royal letters (manshūrs) drafted and sent by Shah ʿ Abbās I and his immediate successors to the Mughal emperors of India and the Uzbek khans of Urganj. The letters included in this handbook are mostly reproduced partially and a number of them come with short notes specifying the format, size, and decorations of each letter in its original version. Afshar organizes these short notes into seven categories to shed new light on the “ taxonomy of the procedures and organizing principles involved in writing, ordering, and dispatching Safavid correspondence” (p. 31). The chapter contributed by Colin P. Mitchell contextualizes the way in which the Ottoman prince Bayezid’s flight to Safavid Iran and his subsequent murder at the hands of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent’s envoys outside Qazvin on 21 Dhū’l-Qa ʿ da 969/ 2 August 1562 shaped the Safavids’ perception of the Turko-Mongol practice of corporate sovereignty. Mitchell’s central contention is that the trends and events culminating in prince Bayezid’s escape and death had an invigorating impact on the Safavid discourse and practice of non-partible rule and primogeniture-based order of succession which were compatible with the “ older, pre-Islamic traditions which had been revived and articulated during the great Perso-Islamic renaissance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” He concludes that the “ Bayezid episode and the whole phenomenon of royal fratricide was a distasteful, if no repulsive, byproduct of a system which encouraged political decentralization. For the Safavids and their own centralizing ambitions, the ancient pre-Islamic model of divine kingship — suitably attired in Shi’ite Islamic grab — was deemed much more appealing” (p. 52). Carl M. Kortepeter’s contribution to the festschrift under review explores the history of territorial rivalries between the Safavids, the Ottoman Empire, and Muscovy in the Caucasus under Shāh ‘ Abbās (1587– 1629) and Shāh Ṣafī (1629– 42). Emphasis is given to the way in which the internal power struggles and economic interests of each of these three regional superpowers shaped their intervention in the Caucasus. Kortepeter draws our attention to the failure of the Safavids to enter a military alliance with the Russians against the Ottomans, ascribing it to Shāh ʿ Abbās’ concerns about Muscovy’s southward territorial expansionism and increasing meddling in the internal affairs of Dagestan. The Ottoman Empire and Muscovy Russians leveraged their Girayid and Cossack proxies in Crimea and the Black Sea basin preemptively to ease their strained relations and form an alliance that was centered on the Caucasus. It was under these circumstances that “ the Safavids, after the death of Shāh ‘ Abbās, look upon any Russian political activity in the Caucasus as contrary to their interests” (p. 77). John Perry’s article revolves around a selection of instances of West-to-East cultural transmission across the Turco-Persian zone. The linguistic interplay of Turkish and Persian in Safavid Iran as manifested in Shi ʿ ite traditions, performance culture, and popular literature is the underlying theme of Perry’s contribution. Perry emphasizes the ethnolinguistic hybridity of the Safavid dynasty and its sociopolitical structure, concluding that while the Safavids “ set the tone of
