EV-OḠLĪ, ḤAYDAR BEG

 

EV-OḠLĪ (Īv-ōḡlī), ḤAYDAR BEG b. Abu’l-Qāsem, a court official of the later Safavid period. His father had done secretarial work in government service (Navāʾī, p. 24). Ḥaydar Beg was an ešīk-āqāsī (q.v.) under ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629), then doorkeeper (darbān ) of the royal harem under Ṣafī I (1038-52/1629-42), then was appointed ešīk-āqāsī-bāšī of the harem by the same ruler in 1046/1636-37 (Storey, I, p. 317). According to Waḥīd Qazvīnī (pp. 55-56) he lost his post in the reign of ʿAbbās II (1052-77/1642-66) as a result of a long-simmering dispute with Mīrzā Taqī Eʿtemād-al-Dawla and was put to death by ʿAbbās II in 1075/1664-65 (Storey, p. 317). Although his position at court was important enough to prompt his fellow tribesmen to seek his influence in important matters (Waḥīd Qazvīnī, p. 55; Taḏkerat al-molūk, tr. Minorsky, p. 194), he was less important as ešīk-āqāsī-bāšī of the dīvān. The job was for men of “older age and service” (Taḏkerat al-molūk, tr. Minorsky, p. 63), and it gave Ḥaydar Beg the leisure to compile the collection of state letters and documents for which he is known.

The collection, called Majmaʿ al-enšāʾ, Jāmeʿa-ye morāsalāt-e olu’l-albāb, or Majmūʿa-ye monšaʾāt-e Ev-oḡlī Ḥaydar, has 229 closely-written folios in Mahdī Bayānī’s private manuscript and is in two main sections. The first, some forty-five folios, contains letters from the Saljuqs to the beginning of the Safavids, and the rest of the work is devoted to the latter in seven sections by ruler (cf. Rieu, Persian Manuscripts I, pp. 389-91 for the contents of one of the British Library manuscripts). The work was dedicated to Shah Ṣafī but was apparently finished under ʿAbbās II (Navāʾī, p. 24).

ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Navāʾī regards the collection as the most valuable of the collections put together under the Safavids by virtue of its logical and chronological arrangement, and he has included many letters in his Asnād. Falsafī makes considerable use of the collection in his work on ʿAbbās I, where he has included several complete letters (IV, pp. 293-322). According to Horst (pp. 8 n. 2, 10) the genuineness of the Saljuq letters is not quite certain, due to the late compilation and a possible anachronism in the use of the term bahādor in one of them. He argues that the word may be possible for the period or that it is a later insertion in an otherwise valid document.

 

Bibliography (for cited sources not given in detail, see “Short References”):

N. Falsafī, Zendagānī-e Šāh ʿAbbās-e Awwal, 4 vols., Tehran, 1334-1341 Š./1955-61.

H. Horst, Die Staatsverwaltung der Grosselğuqen und Ḫorazmšāhs (1038-1231), Wiesbaden, 19640, pp. 103, 113, 140-41, 147-48 (letter paraphrases).

ʿA.-Ḥ. Navāʾī, Asnād wa mokātabāt-e tārīḵī-e Īrān az Teymūr tā Šāh Esmāʿīl, Tehran, 1341 Š./1962, pp. 23-24.

Waḥīd Qazvīnī ʿAbbās-nāma, ed. E. Dehqān, Arāk, 1329 Š./1950.

(K. Allin Luther)

Originally Published: December 15, 1998

Last Updated: January 20, 2012

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Vol. IX, Fasc. 1, pp. 85-86