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ḤIRA, a city on the desert fringes of southwestern Mesopotamia; known in pre-Islamic times as the capital of the Lakhmid Arab dynasty, clients of the Sasanians. It survived as an urban settlement into the early centuries of the Islamic period. Figure 1. The region of Ḥira in the late Sasanian…

HISTORIOGRAPHY. This entry is concerned with the historiography of the Iranian and Persephone world from the pre-Islamic period through the 20th century in Persian and other Iranian languages. Broadly speaking, this long time span can be divided into three major periods, each with its own particular range of explicit and…

HISTORIOGRAPHY i. INTRODUCTION Historiography, literally, is the study not of history but of the writing of history. In modern usage, this term covers a wide range of related but distinct areas of inquiry. From a pedagogical point of view, it refers to basic training in the “nuts and bolts” of…

HISTORIOGRAPHY ii. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD The idea of history as a science seeking the truth by investigating man’s action in a dated past based on evidence was first conceived by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C.E. (Callingwood, pp. 17-30) and later developed by Western thinkers from Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) to Arnold Toynbee…

HISTORIOGRAPHY iii. EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD Introduction. It might well be questioned whether there is, strictly speaking, any “historiography of Persia in the early Islamic period” at all, since it is by no means clear that there was an Islamic “Persia” prior to the rise of the Safavids. As lamented in…

HISTORIOGRAPHY iv. MONGOL PERIOD Persian historiography reached its maturity during the period of the 13th-15th centuries, which might broadly be described as the Turko-Mongol era. Compared with earlier centuries, the bulk of the chronicles recording Persia’s history were now written in Persian; and although Arabic sources continue to be important…

HISTORIOGRAPHY v. TIMURID PERIOD Timurid historiography is firmly rooted within the Persian literary tradition of official court histories of the post-Mongol period, such as the Jāmeʿ al-tawāriḵ of Rašid-al-Din, and the Tāriḵ-e jahān-gošā by ʿAṭā-Malek Jovayni, as well as being nourished by local traditions of regional history, notably Sayf Heravi’s…

HISTORIOGRAPHY vi. SAFAVID PERIOD Safavid historiography, although developing unique features of its own, had its origins in the eastern Timurid tradition that was centered in Herat (Aubin, p. 248). Many, if not most, Safavid historians praised earlier Timurid histories as works worthy of emulation. For example, Ebrā-him Amini, author of…

HISTORIOGRAPHY vii. AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIODS Persian historical writing in the 12th/18th century reflected the profound changes that occurred in Iran after the 1134/1722 Afghan conquest of Isfahan. The next few decades saw the swift rise and fall of numerous pretenders to the Safavid throne, the most important of whom…

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…

HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD Historiography of this period will be treated in two separate entries: (1) General survey of historical writings (2) Specific topics concerning historical works

HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD (1) GENERAL SURVEY The historical studies of this period are primarily about documenting Iran’s national identity. Histories of ancient, medieval, and modern Iran produced in the Pahlavi period, as well as a large volume of edited historical texts, contributed to a complex understanding of the past…

HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD (2) SPECIFIC TOPICS   This article has for its subject a survey of contributions in the fields of chronology, calendar systems and related topics, religious history, and cultural continuity from pre-Islamic to the Islamic period, and a survey of the ultra-nationalistic current in historical writings in…