The Timurid Century

Description

The century after the conquests of Timur witnessed the division of eastern and western Iran between his Turko-Mongol successors, and a flowering of Persian culture in the great cities of Herat, Samarqand and Tabriz, among others. In this, the ninth volume in The Idea of Iran series, leading scholars analyse the ways that Timurid contemporaries viewed their traditions and their environment, asking questions such as: what was the view of outsiders, and how does modern scholarship define the distinctive aspects of the period? Essential reading for scholars, students, and all those interested in the history of Iran, the book considers the political, religious and cultural history of this rich and highly productive interval that was the springboard for the formation of new imperial Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal and Ozbek orders of succeeding centuries. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction • Charles Melville Arbiters of Iran: Chroniclers and Patrons in an Age of Literary Bounty • Shahzad Bashir The Local and the Universal in Turko-Iranian Ideology • Beatrice Forbes Manz An Idea of Iran on Mongol Foundations: Territory, Dynasties and Tabriz as Royal City (Seventh/Thirteenth to Ninth/Fifteenth Century) • Daniel Zakrzewski Two Later Ninth/Fifteenth-Century Iranian Travellers • John E. Woods Imitational Poetry as Pious Hermeneutics? Jami and Nava’i/Fani’s Rewritings of Hafez’s Opening Ghazal • Marc Toutant A Man of Letters: Hoseyn Va‘ez Kashefi and his Persian Project • Maria Subtelny The Timurid Book: golshan-e naqsh-o tazhib – A Garden of Painting and Illumination • Eleanor Sims From Maragha to Samarqand and Beyond: Revisiting a Quartet of Scientific Traditions in Greater Persia (ca. 1300s–1500s) • Elaheh Kheirandish Index Color Plates