HISTORIOGRAPHY viii. QAJAR PERIOD

 

HISTORIOGRAPHY

viii. QAJAR PERIOD

In the century and a half that constituted the Qajar period (1786-1925), writing of history evolved from production of annalistic court chronicles and other traditional genres into the earliest experimentations in modern historiography. Aiming to fashion a new historical identity, Qajar historiography fused the pre-Islamic memory with Iran’s dynastic history as well as with its Shiʿi past. With the rise of popular movements culminating in the Constitutional Revolution (q.v.), writing of history began to shift away from a narrative scripted by the powerful, into one about people and popular aspirations. The period in question also witnessed greater simplicity and innovation in style that was distinct from the ornate style of earlier generations. Remarkable traits of historical insight are not rare, especially among narratives of dissent from Rostam al-tawāriḵ to the Babi narratives of the mid-century and later reflections in the works of dissidents such as Āqā Khan Kermāni and Nāẓem-al-Eslām Kermāni.

Yet there were glaring shortcomings in Qajar historical scholarship, most notably due to the absence of organized and accessible archival sources. The Qajar period left behind copious documentation, larger than any earlier epoch, including official records and reports, commercial and informal correspondence, deeds, registers and legal opinions, memoirs, and other personal narratives. Yet the whole period suffered from an endemic disrespect for classifying and preserving documents, an irreparable loss hastened by the anti-Qajar sentiments of the Pahlavi era. Lack of an academic environment conducive to critical research further hindered the growth of historical studies as an independent discipline, an impediment that continued through the Pahlavi period, and allowed common abuses of history as an instrument of legitimization in the service of the state and other sources of authority.

Three prevailing genres of official historiography roughly correspond to the three turning points in political history of the Qajar period. The first is chronicles of conquest (or presumed conquest) produced from the beginning of the Qajar dynasty through the first decade of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s reign, between 1779 and 1857; the second is chronicles of the Nāṣeri period still framed in the annalistic format but influenced somewhat by European almanacs. They mostly appeared in print and continued through the end of Moẓaffar-al-Din Shah (1896-1906) largely to enhance in the eye of the public the status of the Qajar state and place it in a broader international context. The third is narratives of the Constitutional and post-Constitutional periods (1906-1925), an age of momentary vitality followed by fading hopes for national salvation. An overarching theme that we may observe in all these accounts were the Qajar historians’ gradual loss of confidence in the values and institutions of their own culture and society often in comparison to the West, leading in turn to elaborate strategies to dodge painful realities and hide behind a mask of self deception. Alternatively, there emerged a historical outlook infused with dual senses of decay in the affairs of the country and a yearning for an almost messianic renewal.

Early chronicles and official annals. The Qajar chroniclers active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries followed the Zand and the Afsharid accounts of conquest such as Mirzā Mehdi Astarābādi’s highly popular Jahān-gošā-ye nāderi (which reached at least fourteen editions in the Qajar period, see Mošār, Fehrest, I, p. 694), in turn modeled on Eskandar Beg Monši’s ʿĀlamārā-ye ʿabbāsi (q.v.). The conscious simulating of the earlier chronicles aimed at the portrayal of the Qajar rulers as legitimate heirs to the Safavid throne, first against the Zands and other domestic contenders, and later in the face of the ominous European threat. Moḥammad Fatḥ-Allāh Sāruʾi’s Tāriḵ-e moḥammadi (also known as Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ, ed. M. Ṭabāṭabāʾi Majd, Tehran, 1992) is the first important account in this group. Completed in 1212 /1797, it narrates the rise to power of the founder of the dynasty during its first eighteen years from a pro-Qajar perspective. A native of eastern Māzandarān and an assistant to Mirzā Mehdi Astarābādi, he served as chief officer of religious affairs (mollā bāši) to Āqā Moḥammad Shah (1786-97). Sāruʾi’s factual and minimalist account, mostly devoid of elaborate flatteries, follows Asta-rābādi’s style.

Sāruʾi anticipated the format and style of the court chronicles of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s era, foremost among them Maʾāṯer-e solṭāniya of ʿAbd-al-Razzāq Donboli (Maftun). Published in 1241/1825-26, it was the second Persian book to be printed in the new publishing house in Tabriz under the supervision of Manučehr Khan Gorji (later Moʿtamed-al-Dawla) and run by Moḥammad Bāqer Tabrizi. Maʾāṯer introduced the Zand-Safavid tradition to the nascent Qajar historical culture, as it emerged under the aegis of ʿAbbās Mirzā and his influential minister, Mirzā ʿĪsa (Bozorg) Farāhāni, the first Qāʾem-maqām. The author’s elaborate style glorified Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and his house, especially ʿAbbās Mirzā, aiming to present to its readership a stable dynasty and royal tradition at a time when Qajar Iran, and Azerbaijan in particular, were under threat of foreign invasion. It was published just before the start of the second round of wars with Russia in 1826. To its readership, which extended beyond the court circle, Maʾāṯer was a new experiment in style and appearance, if not in content. It was in nasḵ moveable type rather than the conventional nastaʿliq of the Persian manuscripts, with universal margins throughout and with clear headings and subheadings conveying coherence in format and substance. Covering the years between 1722 and 1825, Maʾāṯer’schronology implied continuity from the Safavid to the Qajar period, a pattern to be followed by later Qajar chronicles. The larger part of Donboli’s narrative, however, dealt with domestic conflicts at the outset of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s reign, followed by an account of the first round of the Russo-Persian wars (1805-13). In his account of the Fatḥ-Ali Shah’s victory over his contenders, ironically written by a former Zand official whose Donboli tribe was subdued by the Qajars, there are traces of a new historical consciousness marked by his praise for the new dynasty’s success in pacifying and centralizing the country. Donboli described the creation of the “New Army” (Neẓām-e jadid) and other Western-style reform measures introduced by ʿAbbās Mirzā as essential means for preserving Iran’s territorial integrity against domestic chaos and foreign aggression. He also devoted sections to historical descriptions of Iran’s new European neighbors, stressing their strengths and weaknesses. Maʾāṯer’s style is precious by today’s standards, despite the author’s desire to make his account accessible to ordinary reader. Yet he avoided tedious ornamentations and literary techniques such as rhymed prose (sajʿ), rampant in his semi-biographical Tajrabat al-aḥrār wa tasliat al-abrār (ed. Ḥ. Qāẓi Ṭabāṭabāʾi, 2. vols., Tabriz, 1971).

An earlier version of Maʾāṯer, as we know from the introduction to its masterful English translation by Harford Jones Brydges, The Dynasty of the Kajars (London, 1838), was put together just before 1811 from the “state record” by the Waqāyeʿ-nevis, the “writer of the daily public occurrences,” and was sent to Jones by Mirzā Bozorg Qāʾem-maqām at the request of the eager British envoy (Jones, Dynasty, p. iii). The discrepancies between the English translation and the published Persian edition reveal revisions in the printed version especially with respect to foreign affairs. Defeat in war with Russia on the one hand and spread of British colonial empire on the other, made the Persian historian revise his earlier jubilation for an altruistic friendship with the neighboring European powers.

Donboli’s history characterized the literary and historiographical movement, the so-called revival school, that thrived under the aegis of Qāʾem-maqām I and likeminded statesmen of the Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era in the royal society (anjoman-e ḵāqān). They employed classical Persian prose and poetry in part to popularize a new regal image of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and his dynasty. The state’s crafting of an official history, however, went beyond a literary style to involve a new interpretation of the past devoted to the Qajar dynasty’s just rule. Another court historian of the same circle, Faẓl-Allāh Širāzi, better known as Ḵāvari, covers at greater length the history of the Qajar rule up to the end of the Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era from the perspective of a Tehran-based official. The theme of his Tāriḵ-e ḏu’l-qarnayan (ed. N. Afšār-far, Tehran, 2001), is domestic pacification and recovery from the 18th century civil war, subtly bound up in his narrative with the felicitous growth of the Qajar royal progeny, an influential theme in the later Qajar chronicles that used as their source Ḵāvari’s extensive supplement to his history on the subject. Like Donboli, he too combined a sophisticated historical prose with accurate recording of the events in a strictly annalistic format, at times with professional honesty unflattering to his Qajar patrons. It opens with a description of Iran and its boundaries and provinces, to be followed, as in Maʾāṯer, with a history of the origins of the Qajar tribe, another set feature of the chronicles of Qajar period.

Also of some sensitivity to the historians of this age was the bloody transfer of power from the Zand to the Qajar house. The sense of moral ambivalence is evident in their brief treatment of the cruel end brought upon Loṭf-ʿAli Khan Zand and the rest of the Zand house by Āqā Moḥammad Shah. Defeat in the first round of wars with Russia was also downplayed, even though these accounts seldom resorted to the kind of exaggerations that Fatḥ-ʿAli Khan Ṣabā Kāšāni reserved for his royal patron in his semi-legendary epic Šāhanšāh-nāma (Malek-al-šoʿarāʾ Fatḥ-ʿAli Kan Ṣabā, Divān-e āṯār, ed. M. ʿA. Ne-jāti, Tehran, 1962). On the brink of a major military defeat in the hands of the Russians, Ṣabā, the poet laureate, still felt confident enough to profusely praise Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s chivalry and political savvy in the style of Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma (Āriyanpur, I, pp. 23-26). Neither Ḵā-vari’s history nor Ṣabā’s epic was published; and as a result their impact did not extend beyond the court circles, even though illustrated copies of Šahanšāh-nāma were bequeathed by the shah to foreign envoys.

Production of court chronicles went through a lacuna after Fath-ʿAli Shah, when royal patronage under Mo- ḥammad Shah (1834-48) and his minister Ḥāji Mirzā Āqāsi (q.v.) diverted to Sufi biographical dictionaries and other forms of historical scholarship (for a bibliography of the Qajar chronicles and related sources see Storey, Persian Literature, I [i], pp. 332-48). The Šamāʾel-e ḵāqān (profile of the emperor), a sycophantic biography designed to glorify Moḥammad Shah and his Qajar ancestry, remained incomplete, presumably because its author, the premier Mirzā Abu’l-Qāsem Farāhāni, Qāʾem-maqām II, was put to death, ironically by the secret order of the same shah whom he attempted to adulate. Āqāsi, who succeeded him in office, did not patronize the production of chronicles. His efforts to emasculate the old Qajar nobility shifted instead to patronage of Sufi writers with a view of the past distinctly different from that of Qajar officialdom. One exception is Tāriḵ-e now (also known as Tāriḵ-e Jahāngiri, ed. ʿA. Eqbāl, Tehran, 1948) by Jahān-gir Mirzā, an accomplished brother of Moḥammad Shah, who was blinded by the order of Mirzā Abu’l-Qāsem Qāʾem-maqām in the aftermath of the civil war that followed Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah’s death. His detailed account of the events between 1240 and 1267/1824-50, an addendum to Donboli’s Maʾāṯer, is a unique source for the second round of war with Russia, premiership of Āqāsi, early career of Mirzā Taqi Khan Farāhāni (see AMIR KABIR) and one of the earliest accounts on the rise of the Babi movement.

Court Chronicles under Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. The early years of Nāṣer al-Din Shah’s reign (1848-96) witnessed a revival in the production of chronicles under the royal aegis. Most significant of these were Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri (Tehran, 1271-74/1854-57) by the literary scholar and royal tutor, Reżāqoli Khan Hedāyat (q.v.) and Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya (1st ed., Tehran, 1274-76/1857-59) by the scholar and court official Moḥammad Taqi Sepehr Kāšāni, Lesān-al-Molk. Both chronicles followed the conventional annals format, beginning each year with a set piece on the celebration of Nowruz followed by reports of royal campaigns, frontier skirmishes and civil unrest, diplomatic exchanges and treaties, royal and official birth and death registers as well as popular uprisings, heresies, natural calamities, and oddities. In addition to the Persian solar festival as the beginning of the royal calendar, all timekeeping was in the Islamic lunar calendar, even though both chronicles also observed the Sino-Turkic twelve-year cyclical calendar customary in the Qajar court. Occasionally, they included background sections to important geographical locations, foreign lands, religious upheavals, regional insurrections, and noted personalities. Both histories relied on earlier chronicles, at times to the point of plagiarizing them, though for near contemporary and contemporary events, roughly from the late Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah era onwards, they used eyewitness accounts, official correspondence, and reports, as well as their own recollections.

The main thrust of both projects was to elevate Qajar rule, especially Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s reign during the premiership of Mirzā Āqā Khan Nuri, to the level of the great dynasties of the past. Reżāqoli Khan Hedāyat’s Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri was a “Nāṣerian” supplement in three volumes to Mirkᵛānd’s popular universal history which covered from the dawn of creation (and beginning of the Persian kingship) to the late Timurid period (1st ed., 10 vols., Tehran, 1270-74/1853-57). In the first of the supplemental volumes (volume eight) the author covered the Safavid, the Afsharid, and the Zand periods. Volume two (volume nine) covered the origins of the Qajars and their rise to power up to 1247/1831, corresponding to the birth of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, and volume three (volume ten) comes up to 1274/1857. The ten volumes of Rawżat al-ṣafā edited by Hedāyat appeared in an excellent lithographic edition (though oddly enough lacking page numbers). Hedāyat’s portrayal of the Qajar shahs, Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah in particular, as legitimate successor to the Safavid rule and true supporters of the Shiʿite faith, highlighted not only his valor and statesmanship but also religiosity and ties to the clerical establishment, values the author tended to nurture in his own patron, Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. Beyond factual narrative, Hedāyat’s account was almost entirely devoid of substantive analysis, a characteristic he shared with Sepehr and other chroniclers of the period. Mirzā Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzāda’s humor-ous critique of Rawżat al-ṣafā-ye nāṣeri,written in the format of a conversation between the author and his critics (perhaps the first modern book review in Persian), emphasized oddly enough Hedāyat’s elaborate style and overuse of literary techniques rather than questioning his worldview and objectivity (Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzāda, Āṯār, ed. H. Arasli, Baku, 1958, pp. 378-92, and Fereydun Āda-miyat, Andišahā-ye Mirzā Fatḥ-ʿAli Aḵundzādeh, Tehran, 1970, pp. 238-46).

Sepehr’s Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya is the second part of a larger historical project that came under the general title of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ (abrogation of [all] histories). Like Rawżat al-ṣafa, it is an official history on the Qajar period covering events up to 1274/1857. After completion of the first volume of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ, initially commissioned by Ḥāji Mirzā Āqāsi, offering an encyclopedic survey of world geography, cultures, and religions in addition to histories of ancient kings and prophets, the shah instructed Sepehr to devote the second part of his work to the Qajar period. He commissioned him to compose a history “that can not be matched by histories in any other era” by implementing “craft of history” (fann-e tāriḵ) through “proper research” and “critical” compilation (Sepehr, Nāseḵ-al-tawāriḵ, Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya, 4th ed., ed. J. Kiānfar, Tehran, 1998, p. 2). Postponing the writing of the remaining volumes of his universal history so as to fulfill the shah’s wishes, Sepehr produced a three-volume work better known as Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya. The first two volumes, dealing with the pre-Naṣeri period, relied on existing compilations, but the third volume covering Nāṣer-al-Din’s reign utilized state records, contemporary sources, and the author’s eyewitness accounts.

In addition to the usual coverage of political events, Sepehr (even more than Hedāyat) devoted ample room in the third volume to social events such as the rise of the Babi movement (1844-52) and its subsequent supression. His coverage included important details on the Bab’s interrogation, his chief disciples, and the state’s military operations against Babi resistance. Yet like Rawżat al-ṣāfa, Sepehr’s work suffered from extreme partisanship and calculated distortions, designed not only to smear the Babi heresy in the eye of the public, but to demonstrate especially to the ʿolamāʾ the indispensability of the Qajar state for sustaining social order. Sepehr’s coverage became a major source for numerous later accounts, both in Persian and European languages, including R. Grant Watson’s A History of Persia (London, 1866) and Comte de Gobineau’s Religions et philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris, 1865).

In addition to the hostile coverage of the Babi episode, another serious historical distortion in Sepher’s work concerns Mirzā Taqi Khan Amir Kabir. He misrepresented Amir Kabir’s political career and conduct in office, often in favor of Mirzā Āqā Khan Nuri, even though he seems to have remained relatively sincere in holding both the shah and Nuri responsible for Amir Kabir’s secret mur-der. To cover up the embarrassing revelation, the shah, even after Nuri’s dismissal, ordered that all printed copies of Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya be withdrawn and the section beyond 1867/1851 physically removed. In the “revised” version that came out as a supplement, covering 1268/1852 to 1274/1857 (ending just before Nuri’s dismissal), Sepehr was obliged to make Amir Kabir’s death the result of a medical complication (Nāseḵ, ed. Kiānfar, pp. xxxv-xxxvi). In dealing with other events, too, despite emphasis on proper research and critical approach, Sepehr rendered a decidedly pro-state version of events uncritical of his Qajar masters. Like Hedāyat he adopted a grandiose tone fit for portraying cowardliness, corruption, and brutality as heroism, righteousness, and expediency, an exercise primarily designed to disguise the Qajar state’s loss of credit in the eyes of its subjects.

As far as Amir Kabir’s premiership was concerned, one exception among official chronicles was Ḥaqāʾeq al-aḵbār-e nāṣeri (ed. Ḥ. Ḵadiv-Jam, Tehran, 1965) whose author, Moḥammad Jaʿfar Ḵurmuji, presented a realistic picture of Amir Kabir’s term of office and his execution by the order of the shah and conspiracy of his courtiers. Not amused by the account, the shah censured Ḵurmuji’s work and forced him into exile in Iraq. The open secret of Amir Kabir’s death, however, became part of the anti-Qajar narrative in the late Nāṣeri period.

After Tāriḵ-e Qājāriya, Sepehr resumed his initial project, part of an ambitious universal history that took the remaining years of his life, but was never completed. The multi-volume Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ on the history of early Islam aimed to substantiate the Shiʿi claim to sacred authority without entirely ignoring the Sunni sources. In effect, it offered a highbrow alternative to popular Shiʿi mourning narratives (marāṯi)of the Qajar period.Loyal to the traditional approach of its classical sources such as Ṭabari and Ebn Aṯir (q.v.), the three books (in ten volumes) of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ published between 1273 and 1307/1856-89 covered the era from Adam’s Fall to the birth of Jesus and therefrom to the Ḥejra of Moḥammad (book one in two volumes) and from the Ḥejra to Imam Ḥosayn’s martyrdom in the year 61/680 (book two in six volumes). Sepehr’s accessible style and systematic coverage made these volumes of Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ one of the most frequently published and widely read books in Qajar Iran. Later volumes on the lives of fourth, fifth, and sixth Shiʿi Imams were authored and published by his son ʿAbbāsqoli Khan Sepehr.

Lithographic publication of Rawżat al-ṣafā and Nāseḵ al-tawāriḵ helped enhance the image of the Qajar dynasty, though they cultivated little historiographical innovation. Sepehr’s Persian style, avoiding the Arabic-laden, ornate style of earlier chroniclers, may have served as a model a generation later for Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā’s “pure Persian” in Nāma-ye ḵosravān. Despite the relative success of these grand projects, however, the production of official chronicles subsided in the following decades primarily because they were replaced by the state’s official gazette, the Ruz-nāma-ye waqāyeʿ-e ette-fāqiya (to be continued as Ruz-nāma-ye dawlat-e ʿalliya-ye Irān) and other periodic publications. They in effect chronicled the court and government events as well as provincial and international news. By the third quarter of the 19th century, such works as Monṭaẓam-e nāṣeri (3 vols., Tehran, 1298-1300/1880-82) compiled by Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-salṭana (q.v.) was little more than revamping of the official gazettes.

As minister of publication (enṭebāʿāt), the newsreader to the Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, and the official historian, the author of Montaẓam was bound to follow the familiar format of annals with greater attention to the outside world. Every year the events were divided into domestic and international (beginning with the dawn of Islam) and more elaborately toward contemporary times ending in 1300/1882. European and American political history received some attention, even though they were blended with entries on mundane curiosities evidently taken from European tabloids. Domestic affairs were reduced to the most formal and trivial, including royal trips and excursions, state appointments, and administrative reorganizations. The author’s hurried brevity added to the tedium of his work. Compared even to earlier chronicles, Monta-ẓam registered a new low point in the writing of history, even though it matched its predecessors in terms of flattery and misrepresentation. Yet even up to the end of the Qajar period annalistic histories were not entirely extinct. Mehdiqoli Hedāyat’s Gozāreš-e Irān (4 vols., Tehran, 1925), covering Persian history from the rise of Islam to the present and published just after the demise of the Qajar dynasty, eventually abandoned the old dynastic format of his own grandfather, Reżāqoli Hedāyat, in favor of a more critical, yet overtly succinct, format.

Eʿtemād-al-salṭana also contributed to the myth of Qajar ancestry. Reinforcing an earlier theme in Qajar chronicles, he recognizes three successive generations of the Qovānlu Qajar Khan before Āqā Moḥammad Shah, as legitimate successors to the Safavid rule with the title of shah. This is especially evident in his al-Maʾāṯer wal-āṯār (Tehran, 1306/1888), an almanac commemorating the history and achievements of four decades of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s rule (1264-1304/1848-86). There his royal patron is ranked as the seventh ruler of the dynasty instead of the conventional fourth. Praiseful of the Nāṣeri age, al-Maʾāṯer applauded among other achievements of the period “improvement in the science of history.” Incorporating ancient and modern European accounts with numismatic and archeological evidence and utilizing histories of other civilizations on a comparative bases, the author claimed that he had produced historical compilations that corrected past errors and mended the omissions of the traditional pre-Islamic histories, accounts that the author believed were tainted with exaggerations and superstitions (E ʿtemād-al-Salaṭana, Maʾāṯer, p. 95). Written by a sophisticated court historian, such a remark may seem cynical given E ʿtemād-al-salṭana’s almost confessional counter-narrative in his own secret memoirs, Ruz-nāma-yekāṭerāt (Tehran, 1966), in defiance of the official historiography of the period. Yet al-Maʾāṯer contained a wealth of detail about the material and cultural history of the late 19th century, complemented with a valuable who’s who of the Qajar cultural and political elite compiled by a group of scholars whose contributions remained unacknowledged.

Eʿtemād-al-salṭana’s search for deeper historical roots for the Qajar dynasty took him beyond Timurid and Mongolian ancestry, a source of pride for presumed qualities of valor and conquest. In his Dorar al-tijān fi tāriḵ bani-Aškān (Tehran, 1308-11/1890-93), he stretched the origins of the Qajar back to Parthian times—a connection no doubt reflective of a desire to trace the ruling dynasty back to Iran’s pre-Islamic past rather than to ferocious hordes who destroyed Iran. Eʿtemād-al- salṭana’s dabbling in the Persian ancient past, compiled with the help of his literary aide Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi, lacked originality; but it nevertheless foreshadowed the prominence of the pre-Islamic paradigm in Iran’s national consciousness. In his geographical works, including the incomplete geographical encyclopedia Merʾāt al-boldān-e nāṣeri (4 vols., Tehran, 1294-97 /1877-80), he offered ample historical detail about locales, individuals, and events. Among historical projects under his supervision was Ṣadr al-tawāriḵ (ed. M. Moširi, Tehran, 1970), a history of eleven Qajar premiers written by Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi and Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Adib, promoting the crucial service rendered by successive premiers to the Qajar throne. The book’s laudatory tone toward the ṣadr aʿẓam in office, ʿAli-Aṣḡar Khan Amin-al-solṭān, is colored by Eʿtemād-al-salṭana’s secret envy toward his perennial rival, which in turn may explain the overcritical assessment of this premier’s career in a semi-fictional history, Ḵalsa mašhur be ḵᵛāb-nāma (ed. M. Katirāʾi, Tehran, 1969). Presumably penned by Eʿtemād-al-salṭana in the old genre of “dream-books,” it aimed to reveal the true achievements as well as abject failures of the Qajar premiers through a series of imaginary interrogations by the great rulers of Iran’s past (for further details on his historical works see EʿTEMĀD-AL- SALṬANA).

The border between historical fact and fiction was already crossed earlier in the Qajar period by an obscure writer of Širāzi ancestry, Moḥammad Hāšem, with the self-assumed titles of Rostam-al-ḥokamāʾ and penname Āṣaf. His Rostam-al-tawāriḵ (ed. M. Moširi, Tehran, 1969) saw its last revision in the hand of the author apparently in 1251/1835, rendering a somewhat personal narrative of the events of the preceding century. The narrative was based on the author’s father’s and grandfather’s accounts stretching back to the end of the Sa-favid period, continued by his own recollections up to the time of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah. A curious mix of fact and fiction, the work was an example of popular histories in the genre of books of marvels (ajāʿeb) narrated in the engaging style and humorous tone of the storytellers (naqqāls). Despite its fictional dimension, Rostam-al-tawāriḵ contains a fair amount of detail useful for the socio-economic history of the period. What make it unique, however, is a sense of indigenous modernity pronounced in a messianic yearning for change. Witnessing the state’s vulnerability and inner decay since the late 18th century, the author is concerned with European powers’ encroachment on a country weakened by corruption and misrule. Even though in the rise of the Qajar dynasty he hopes for the revival of prosperity and security of the Safavid and Zand eras, he is nonetheless concerned with increasing loss of territory and political prestige, the influence of the conservative mojtaheds, economic decline, and insecurity. Like other works by the author, a few manuscript copies of Rostam-al-tawāriḵ languished in libraries with virtually no visible influence on his contemporaries. (See also A. K. S. Lambton, “Some New Trends in Islamic Political Thought in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Persia,” Studia Islamica 39, 1974, pp. 95-128, and Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: the Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850, Ithaca, 1989, pp. 89-93.)

A new departure. More than two decades later, Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā’s Nāma-ye ḵosravān (3 vols., Tehran 1285/1868, 1287/1870, 1288/1871) marked a new departure in Persian historiography. Being the first history textbook, presumably for Dār al-Fonun (q.v.) students of elementary level, it was written in simple Persian distilled of Arabic words. Published in clear nastʿaliq with many illustrations of the ancient Persian kings and presumably inspired by European publications of Parthian and Sasanian numismatics, Nāma-ye ḵosravān traced Persian dynastic history from the origin of man to contemporary times (only the first two volumes, however, were published by the author himself). His sources included the neo-Zoroastrian mythologized histories, such as Dasātir (q.v.) and Dabestān-e maḏāheb, as well as the Šah-nāma, the Persian universal histories, and modern European studies of the Parthian and Sasanian periods. The author’s objective was to offer a brief dynastic history aimed at highlighting the glories of pre-Islamic Iran in contrast to successive Arab and Turkish invasions that brought about its decline. Nāma-ye ḵosravān thus should be seen as one of the first concrete examples of a nationalist narrative, even though it still negotiated between myth and historical reality. Contrary to Islamic universal histories with dual lines of Abrahamic prophets and Iranian kings, here the biblical/Quraʾnic narrative is substituted with mythical pre-Zoroastrian king-prophets of Dasātir origin and then continued with the Šāh-nāma mythical dynasties. Likewise, at the outset of the second volume Jalāl-al-Din portrays the Arab invasion as an aberration in Iran’s religious and dynastic continuity. As might be expected, the Francophile prince underscored his nationalist message, not only by the use of pure Persian, but by envisioning an Iranian cultural renaissance (as evident in his correspondence with likeminded intellectuals such as Āḵundzādeh). Only by discarding the alien Islamic past and embracing the civilization of Europe, the prince believed, could Iran escape degradation and once more rise to prominence. Despite Jalāl-al-Din’s novel style and message, however, his work followed the old dynastic narrative, serving as a model for school history texts around the time of the Constitutional Revolution and later. The illustrations in Nāma-ye ḵosravān were a source of inspiration for Šāh-nāma scenes in popular paintings of the Qajar era (see Amanat, “Pur-e ḵāqān wa andiša-ye bāzyābi-e tāriḵ-e melli-e Irān,” Iran Nameh, 17, 1999, pp. 5-54).

Translations of Western histories and historical novels also had an impact on the historical thinking of the period. Earlier in the century Mirzā Reżā Mohandes-bāši rendered an incomplete translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as Tāriḵ-e tanazzol wa ḵarābi-e dawlat-e Rum commissioned by ʿAbbās Mirzā. Among the earliest published were Voltaire’s Peter the Great and Charles XII, translated by Musā Jebreʾil as Tāriḵ-e Petr-e Kabir and Šārl-e Davāzdahom (Tehran, 1263/1847). John Malcom’s History of Persia (2 vols., London, 1815)also was translated by Moḥammad Esmā-ʿil Ḥayrat (Bombay, 1303/1886). The government bureau of translation and publication under Eʿteżād-al-Salṭana (q.v.) and then E ʿtemād-al-Salṭana also produced a number of historical translations from Arabic, Turkish, and European languages. Ḵayrāt al-ḥesān, a biographical dictionary of celebrated women (3 vols., Tehran, 1304-07/1886-89), was an adaptation from a Turkish original by Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s team. As with most other translations, however, histories of Western Europe, Russia, and America primarily served Nāṣer-al-Din Shah and were confined to the royal library. Among them was Voltaire’s LouisXIV, translated by Mirzā ʿAliqoli Żarrābi Kāšāni as Luʾi-e Čahārdahom (Tehran, 1289/1872). Several biographies of Napoleon were also rendered into Persian, including one by Jol Richard. Altogether very few serious historical works were translated into Persian, and little of modern methodology was adopted.

A rare flicker of critical insight, however, appeared in Āvānes Khan Mosāʿed-al-Salṭana’s succinct introduction to his translation of the Sherley brothers’ travel account (published as Safar-nāma-e barādarān-e Šerli, Tehran, 1330/1910; repr., Tehran, 1978, pp. 1-8). An enlightened Armenian member of Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s translation team, Āvānes Khan defined the function of history not as a search for moral lessons or idealizing the past, but as an objective search for unfolding historical facts and differentiating them from fiction with the aim of observing the long-term progress or decline of a nation through successive epochs. During his years of education in Europe, Āvānes not only had become familiar with Voltaire, Thierry, Michelet, Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, but sought new sources, including close to fifty travel accounts in Paris and London libraries, with the aim of writing a new history of Iran in the style of the European historians and based on eyewitness accounts and historical documentation. No trace of such a work has yet been found.

A generation later, Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni’s Āʾina-ye sekandari was an attempt to produce such a modern general history of Iran so as to demonstrate its glorious past and its present plight, a typical preoccupation of the non-Western writers of the period. Completed circa 1311/1894 in Istanbul in three volumes, consisting of twelve parts, it covered Iran’s history from mythological past to the Qajar period (more specifically, as the author states, the rise of the Babi movement) with a conclusion on the causes of Iran’s present waning. Yet only volume one (parts one to four) on the pre-Islamic period was published in Tehran in 1326/1909. Kermāni relied on Persian sources as well as on French translations of Greek and Latin classics and a few works of modern scholarship. Like Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā, whose Nāma-ye ḵosravān was a predecessor, Kermāni strived to reconcile European sources on ancient Iran with the Persian mythological past. In the introduction, Kermāni classified his pre-Islamic sources into four groups and addressed the difficulties of reconciling archeological evidence and Greek sources (such as Xenophon and Ctesias) with Persian historical and literary accounts as in Šāh-nāma and Da-sātir. He cited John Richardson on the unfeasibility of such an undertaking (presumably in his 1778 A Dissertation on the Languages of Eastern Nations, Oxford, 1778), but claimed that he had overcome the obstacle. In the manner of Ferdowsi, he “revived Persians with such factual accuracy” (ʿajam zende kardam bedin rāsti, p. 35).

The result of Kermāni’s endeavor was a fair degree of confusion in names, chronology, and the very historical narrative he had set to correct. Yet beyond its limited value as a reliable history, Āʾina demonstrates a new nationalist awareness, passionate, idealistic and politically charged, a prototype for the shaping of the 20th century Iranian identity. This is evident in Kermāni’s glorification of the ancient past, his distaste for the Arab conquest (which may be the reason for the rest of his work to remain unpublished), his rampant usage of fictitious etymology to prove Iranian originality, and a touch of chauvinism. Yet in his introduction, Kermāni is not short of criticism of traditional Persian chroniclers for their obsequiousness and reversal of historical truth, for subservience to tyrannical powers, and for their sheer ignorance.

Kermāni’s other works also reflect his preoccupation with the philosophy of history. In Seh maktub he views history not merely as a narrative of conflict and conquest but as a means of reflecting and learning (ʿebrat), an idea rooted in Persian historical thinking. He is anxious to distinguish “true” history from myth, to discard flattery and adulation of the powerful, and to discover the causes behind the rise and fall of nations. Most of all, he is in search of the root causes for the decline of his country and the means to remedy it. As in other nationalist histories, he holds the corrupt and incompetent political elite and the conservative clerical establishment responsible (see Fereydun Ādamiyat, Andišahā-ye Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni, Tehran, 1978, pp. 149-211). It is not therefore accidental that during the Constitutional Revolution (1906-11) Āʾina attracted the attention of such revolutionaries as Jahāngir Khan Širāzi, Ṣur-e Esrāfil, who published it just after the collapse of the Qajar royalist coup of 1908-09. He shared with Kermāni not only his Babi background of dissent but a desire for national reawakening.

Constitutional Revolution. The discourse of decline and renewal is well apparent in the portrayal of the Constitutional Revolution as a turning point away from the decadence of Qajar despotism to a new era of national rebirth. Among other historical publications, the chronicle of the revolution, Tāriḵ-e bidāri-e Irāniān by another dissident of the Šayḵi-Babi leaning, Moḥammad Nāẓem-al-Eslām Kermāni, conveyed the same message. Starting as a journal of the “rebellion” (šureš), as it first appeared in serial form in the newspaper Kawākeb-e dorri in 1907, Nāẓem-al-Eslām’s history portrayed a national reawakening with a messianic undertone. Later, having been informed of The Persian Revolution (London, 1910) by E. G. Browne—who himself relied on Nāẓem-al-Eslām’s account—in the reprint of his journal as a series of pamphlets between 1910-11, Nā ẓem-al-Eslām articulated a coherent narrative, important not only for its remarkable details and documentation, but for tracing the origins of the Constitutional Revolution back to the political dissent of the Nāṣeri era. Highlighting such figures as Jamāl-al-Din Asadābādi (better known as Afḡāni, q.v.) and his disciple, Mirzā Āqā Khan Kermāni, as pioneers of the revolution, the early printing of Tāriḵ-e bidāri helped define the Constitutional Revolution for its growing readership and later generations. Other journals of the revolutionary period such as Moḥammad Šarif Kāšāni’s, Tāriḵ-e Šarif (published as Wāqeʿāt-e ettefāqiya dar ruzgār, ed. M. Etteḥādiya and S. Saʿdvandiān, 3 vols., Tehran, 1983) or the memoirs of constitutional activists such as Ḥayāt-e Yaḥyā (4 vols., Tehran, 1957) by Yaḥyā Dawlatābādi (q.v.), were of no immediate impact.

Beyond accounts of contemporary events, the Constitutional period seldom produced historical scholarship of any significance; and most publications, whether newspapers, journals, or pamphlets, were concerned only with the current issues of the time. Before Ḥasan Pirniā’s Irān-e bāstāni (Tehran, 1927), the first version of his history of ancient Iran, relatively few systematic works of Iranian history were produced. Instead, a large number of translations in print, as early as the Moẓaffar-al-Din Shah era (1896-1907), broadened cultural horizons. Among historical translations of this period were a history of the ancient Near East (Tāriḵ-e melal-e qadim-e šarq, tr. Moḥammad Ḥosayn Foruḡi, Ḏakāʾ-al-Molk, Tehran, 1318/1900) and a history of ancient Greece (Tāriḵ-e Yunān, tr. Sayyed ʿAli Khan [Naṣr], Tehran, 1328/1910). From English there was a translation of James Fraser’s The History of Nadir Shah (London, 1742) as Tāriḵ-e Nāder Šāh-e Afšār (tr. Abu’l-Qāsem Qaragozlu, Tehran, 1321/1903), and from Arabic a history of Islamic civilization by Georgi Zaydan as Tāriḵ-e tamaddon-e eslāmi (Meṣr, 1906; tr. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Mirzā Qājār, Tehran, 1329/1911). Two other translations contributed to a new understanding of the pre-Islamic past: George Rawlinson’s The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy (London, 1906) as Tāriḵ-e salāṭin-e Sāsāni (tr. Moḥammad Ḥosayn and Moḥammad ʿAli Fo-ruḡi, 2 vols., Tehran, 1314-16/1897-99) and Xenophon’s Cyropaedia as Tāriḵ-e sargozašt-e bozorgtarin salāṭin-e haḵāmaneši-e Irān, Sirus-e kabir ya Kuroš-e kabir (tr. Żiāʾ-al-Din Monši and commissioned by Sardār Asʿad Baḵtiāri, Tehran, 1333/1914]). As a history dilettante, Sardār Asʿad also commissioned, translated, and authored a number of histories and historical novels. Major international upheavals drew attention, often as points of comparison and contrast with ongoing events in Iran. The 1905 Russo-Japanese war became available to Persian reader in Tāriḵ-e aqṣā-ye šarq ya moḥāraba-ye Rus o Žāpon (tr. Moḥammad Bāqer Manṭeqi, 2 vols., Tabrizi, 1323-24/1905-06) and later as Tāriḵ-e Moḥārebāt-e Rus o Žāpon (3 vols., Kabul, 1324-25/1906-07). Similarly Ḵalil Sa-ʿāda’s account of 1905 Russian revolution appeared as Tāriḵ-e šureš-e Rusiya (tr. from Arabic by ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Rāvari Kermāni, Tehran, 1327/1909).

Shiʿi and Sufi biographical dictionaries. Independent of the above trends, the Qajar period also produced a substantial body of Shiʿi biographical dictionaries, sectarian histories, local histories, and works in other genres covering areas ignored or underrepresented in the dominant historical narrative. Keeping up with the long tradition of producing works of rejāl, imperative for the study of Hadith, Shiʿi scholars of the Qajar period composed biographical dictionaries. Typical entries in these dictionaries included lineage and birthplace, teachers, permits (ejāzāt), works of scholarship and significant fatwās, notable students, and, occasionally, extraordinary feats (karāmāt). Increasingly in the Qajar period these works also highlighted the Oṣuli mojtaheds’ influential standing in the community and their dealings with government authorities. Among the most comprehensive in this category is Sayyed Moḥamamd Bāqer Ḵᵛānsāri’s Arabic Rawżāt al-jannāt fi aḥwāl al-ʿolamāʾ wa’l-sādāt (Tehran, 1306/1888) containing a vast number of entries on mostly Shiʿi figures from the early Islamic period to the time of the author. Rawżāt continued to be a model for several generations of Shiʿi authors, as is seen in Modarres Ḵiābāni’s Rayḥānat al-adab, Moʿallem Ḥabibābādi’s Makārem al-aṯār,and Āqā Bozorg Tehrāni’s fourteen-volume Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Šiʿa. From the historical perspective, the most remarkable work in this genre is Moḥammad Tonokā-boni’s Qeṣaṣ al-ʿolamāʾ on the lives of mostly contemporary ʿolamāʾ of Iran and Iraq. Writing at a critical juncture when the mojtahedswere at the height of their power, Tonokāboni was essentially faithful to the rejāl format, yet he offered remarkable details on the public and private lives of several generations of the ʿolamāʾ with a predictable pro-Oṣuli bias but unhindered by usual formalities of such accounts. Apart from Qeṣaṣ, no change of any note is evident in these dictionaries almost up to the end of the 20th century.

A parallel genre to the ʿolamāʾ’s biographical dictionaries was produced by Sufi scholars of the period. The Neʿmat-Allāhi scholar, Zayn-al-ʿĀbedin Širvāni’s three geographical dictionaries, products of his extensive travels in the tradition of wandering dervishes, identified in each town and region of Iran and the neighboring lands the notable Sufis and like-minded scholars and other luminaries of the middle decades of the 19th century. His most well-known Bostān al-siāḥa (Tehran, 1315/1897) is a refreshing shift from the dry format of the stationary jurists. Similarly, Ṭarāʾeq al- ḥaqāʾeq,a three volume biographical dictionary by the Sufi scholar Moḥammad Maʿṣum Širāzi (Tehran, 1317-19/1899-1901) offers, especially in volume three, biographies of Sufis and Sufi sympathizers of the Neʿmat-Allāhi, Ḏahabi (q.v.), and other orders as well as literary and cultural figures. Even works of Neʿmat-Allāhi missionaries in the earlier part of the century, such as Moẓaffar-ʿAli-Šāh Kermāni’s Divān-e moštāqiya in verse (Tehran, 1968), are useful for detecting personalities and tracing historical events, as are the Oṣuli’s anti-Sufi refutations such as Abu’l-Qāsem Qommi’s Jāmeʿ al-šetāt (Tehran, 1234/1818) and Moḥammad-ʿAli Behbahāni’s Ḵayrātiya, which remained unpublished (al-Ḏariʿa VII, p. 286).

Babi and Bahai works. A different class of narratives were produced by the Babi and later Bahai writers, often eyewitnesses to the unfolding of the new religion. Most well-known and one of the earliest in this category is Noqṭat al-kāf, an apologia in support of the Bab’s mission, covering the early history of the movement. Written by the Babi merchant and martyr, Ḥāji Mirzā Jāni Kā-šāni, this work has been the subject of much scrutiny, first by Edward Browne who published a translation of some of its excerpts and later the entire Persian text, and then by Bahai apologists who tried, largely unsuccessfully, to challenge the authenticity of the text and prove later extrapolations (see, e.g., Abu’l-Fażl Golpāyagāni and Mehdi Golpāyagāni, Kašf al-ḡetāʾ ʿan ḥial al-aʿdā, Tashkent, n.d. [1919?]). The core of the controversy concerned the question of the Bab’s succession, which according to Noq-ṭat al-kāf, was arrogated to Mirzā Yaḥyā Nuri, Ṣobḥ-e Azal. Yet beyond the question of succession, Noqṭat al-kāf offered an insight into the early Babi community and motivations for conversion. Of special value are descriptions of the Badašt gathering, the Babi resistance in Ṭa-barsi in Māzandarān during 1848-49, and the crisis in leadership after the Bab’s execution in 1850. A group of early Babi narratives also provide unique insight into the lives of ordinary believers and their involvement in the movement, a departure from the formalities of elite-dominant narrative of the Qajar period. They present a movement with a diverse social base and a complex apocalyptic message of renewal. Among them are the yet unpublished Mahjur Zavāraʾi’s Tāriḵ-e mimiya and the incomplete journal of Mirzā Loṭf-ʿAli Širāzi on the events of Ṭabarsi, recollections of Mirzā Ḥosayn Zanjāni of the Babi resistance in Zanjān (tr. E. G. Browne as “Personal Reminiscences of the Babi Insurrection,” in JRAS 29, 1897, pp. 761-827). Later, the Babi-Bahai narrative of Moḥammad Nabil Zarandi (published only in abridged tr. by Shoghi Effendi as The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahai Revelation, Wilmette, Ill. 1932) is of historiographical significance. The author, a steadfast supporter of Bahāʾ-Allāh, composed a narrative that incorporated a number of early oral and written accounts as well as the author’s own recollections. The implicit theme of Nabil’s narrative was to magnify Bahāʾ-Allāh’s place in the early history of the movement and hence give historical weight to his communal leadership and prophetic claim at a time when both were contested by Babi loyalists. In this process Zarandi made historical errors and mystifications and injected evident elements of the supernatural. His narrative, only available so far in an incomplete English translation that omits the events after 1852, is viewed as the official version of the birth of the Bahai Faith. Curiously devoid of an element of modernity embedded in the message of the Bahai Faith, Nabil’s outlook and methods are comparable with those of the official chroniclers of the period. In the early decades of the 20th century Bahai scholars also produced new historical compilations, of which the most well-known is Moḥammad Ḥasan Āvāreh’s (Āyati Tafti) al-Kawākeb al-dorriya fi maʾāṯer al-Bahāʾiya (2 vols., Cairo, 1342/1923), which was an attempt to fuse the Babi movement to the emergence of the Bahai faith (for assessment of the early Babi sources see Abbas Amanat, “Note on the Sources,” in Resurrection and Renewal, pp. 422-40).

Local histories. The Qajar period also produced a range of local histories, especially after the 1870s, offering a refreshing view from the periphery. They often accompanied geographical, ethnographical, urban, and other valuable details in the form of monographs commissioned by the central or local governments or written at the initiative of the authors. Mostly focused on individual cities and surrounding provinces and produced by informed urban notables and local officials, they were different in focus and tone, reflecting the outlook of urban and provincial groups. Chief in this group are two monographs on Fārs province—Ḥasan Fasāʾi, Fārs-nāma-ye Nāṣeri (2 vols. Tehran, 1312-13/1894-95; q.v.) and Moḥammad Naṣir Ḥosayni Širāzi (Forṣat-al-Dawla; q.v.) Aṯār al-ʿAjam (1314/1897); others include ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Kalāntar Żar-rābi, Merʾāt al-qāsān ([Tāriḵ-e Kāšān]; ed. I. Afšār, Tehran, 1962);Nāder Mirzā Qājār, Tāriḵ o joḡrāfi-e dār-al-salṭana-ye Tabriz (Tehran, 1323/1905);Ahmad-ʿAli Waziri Kermāni, Tāriḵ-e Kermān (Sālāriyā), and ʿAliqoli Baḵtiāri (Sardār Asʿad), Tāriḵ-e Baḵtiāri (Tehran, 1333/1914).

A few of the above accounts were part of a greater project on historical geography of Iran under Nāṣer-al-Din Shah mostly composed during the 1880s and generally known as Majmuʿa-ye nāṣeri. They were undertaken with a possible collaboration of the celebrated Pārsi representative in Tehran, Manakji Limji Huchang Hateria, and the minister of publication Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana (q.v.). Most monographs in this collection remain unpublished (for an account see A. K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia, London, 1953, pp. xvii-xviii; Abbas Amanat, ed., Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847-1866, Oxford Oriental Monograph Series, no. 5, London, 1983, Introduction, pp. iii-v, xxvi-xxvii; Appendix II, pp. xxxvii-xxxix). Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana’s comprehensive but incomplete historical geography, Merʿāt al-boldān-e nāṣeri, is largely based on this collection and presumably modeled on traditional Persian geographical encyclopedias as well as European works of the author’s time.

Also of significance for the historiography of the period are a large number of memoirs, diaries, journals, travelogues, and other personal accounts produced predominantly by the Qajar elite and their associates. Though they are mostly concerned with contemporary events, domestic and foreign travel, and everyday activities, they are of some value in assessing the historiography of the period; for they make references to near-contemporary and biographical details essential for understanding of the Qajar period. As personal accounts they reveal the historical outlook of men of privilege and their perception of the past and the present. Important among them are the extensive secret diaries of Moḥammad Ḥasan Khan Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana as Ruz-nāma-ye ḵāṭerāt (ed. Iraj Afšār, Tehran, 1966) with valuable details on the Qajar past and the background of the elite of his time. Masʿud Mirzˊa Ẓell-al-Solṭān’s Tāriḵ-e sargozašt-e Masʿudi (Tehran, 1325/1907) containing an account on the origins of his tribe and royal family, and occasional historical details in the extensive diaries of Qaharamān Mirzā ʿAyn-al-Salṭana, a grandson of Moḥammad Shah, that covers the period between 1882 and 1945 (Ruz-nāma-ye ḵāṭerāt-e ʿAyn-al-Salṭana, ed. Iraj Afšār and Masʿud Sālur, 10 vols., Tehran, 1995-2001).

 

Bibliography: Given in the text.

(Abbas Amanat)

Originally Published: December 15, 2004

Last Updated: March 22, 2012

This article is available in print.
Vol. XII, Fasc. 4, pp. 369-377