"The Safavid phenomenon : an introductory essay / Michel Mazzaoui -- Naqshbandis and Safavids : a contribution to the religious history of Iran and her neighbors / Hamid Algar -- The imagined embrace : gender, identity, and Iranian ethnicity in Jahangiri paintings / Juan R.I. Cole -- A Safavid poet in the heart of darkness : the Indian poems of Ashraf Mazandarani / Stephen Frederic Dale -- Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, family values, and the Safavids / Shireen Mahdavi -- Anti-Ottoman concerns and Caucasian interests : diplomatic relations between Iran and Russia, 1587-1639 / Rudi Matthee -- The Central Asian hajj-pilgrimage in the time of the early modern empires / R.D. McChesney -- A seventeenth-century Iranian Rabbi's polemical remarks on Jews, Christians, and Muslims / Vera B. Moreen -- The genesis of the Akhbārī revival / Devin Stewart"-- OhioLink Library Catalog.

Dedicated to the renowned Safavid historian Roger Savory, this book brings together a collection of studies on the Safavid state of Iran (1501-1722) from the perspectives of political, social, literary, and artistic history. Savory, a doyen of Safavid studies in the 1960s and 1970s, was responsible for expanding and popularizing the study of Iran in the 16th and 17th century. To celebrate this legacy, well-established scholars of medieval and early modern Iran have contributed specific studies reflecting an array of research interests and specializations, which include critical re-examinations of issues of gender, literature, art and architecture, cultural and linguistic currents, illustrated historical chronicles, and courtly and administrative practices under the Safavid dynasty. This unique compilation is indicative of a growing interest in Iran and Iranian studies in both the academic and public spheres, and as such contains a number of new perspectives which will serve to supplement and re-interpret the existing corpus of Safavid scholarly literature to date. It will be an important text for scholars of world history and Middle East studies, as well as to historians in general.

The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here, Colin P. Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and moulded a unique and vibrant political discourse, reflecting the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics and Middle East studies.

The Safavid dynasty, which reigned from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century, links medieval with modern Iran. The Safavids witnessed wide-ranging developments in politics, warfare, science, philosophy, religion, art and architecture. But how did this dynasty manage to produce the longest lasting and most glorious of Iran's Islamic-period eras?Andrew Newman offers a complete re-evaluation of the Safavid place in history as they presided over these extraordinary developments and the wondrous flowering of Iranian culture. In the process, he dissects the Safavid story, from before the 1501 capture of Tabriz by Shah Ismail (1488-1524), the point at which Shiism became the realm's established faith; on to the sixteenth and early seventeenth century dominated by Shah Abbas (1587-1629), whose patronage of art and architecture from his capital of Isfahan embodied the Safavid spirit; and culminating with the reign of Sultan Husayn (reg. 1694-1722).Based on meticulous scholarship, Newman offers a valuable new interpretation of the rise of the Safavids and their eventual demise in the eighteenth century. "Safavid Iran," with its fresh insights and new research, is the definitive single volume work on the subject.

Focused on the work of the renegade missionary 'Ali Quli Jadid al-Islam (d. 1734), this book contributes to ongoing debates on the nature of confessionalism, interreligious encounters, and cultural translation in early modern Muslim empires.

I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies The exceptional intellectual richness of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran is epitomised by the philosophical school of Isfahan, and in particular by its ostensible founder, Mir Damad (d. 1631), and his great student Mulla Sadra (aka Sadr al-Din Shirazi, d. 1636). Equally important to the school is the apophatic wisdom of Rajab 'Ali Tabrizi that followed later (d. 1669/70). However, despite these philosophers' renown, the identification of the 'philosophical school of Isfahan' was only proposed in 1956, by the celebrated French Iranologist Henry Corbin, who noted the unifying Islamic Neoplatonist character of some 20 thinkers and spiritual figures; this grouping has subsequently remained unchallenged for some fifty years. In this highly original work, Janis Esots investigates the legitimacy of the term 'school', delving into the complex philosophies of these three major Shi'i figures and drawing comparisons between them. The author makes the case that Mulla Sadra's thought is independent and actually incompatible with the thoughts of Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi. This not only presents a new way of thinking about how we understand the 'school of Isfahan', it also identifies Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi as pioneers in their own right.

John M. Flannery describes the establishment and activities of the Portuguese Augustinian mission in Persia.

Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd Al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World is the first attempt to present in a comprehensive manner how ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), a most influential figure in the Persian-speaking world, reshaped the canons of Islamic mysticism, literature and poetry and how, in turn, this new canon prompted the formation of regional traditions. As a result, a renewed geography of intellectual practices emerges as well as questions surrounding authorship and authority in the making of vernacular cultures. Specialists of Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Georgian, Malay, Pashto, Sanskrit, Urdu, Turkish, and Bengali thus provide a unique connected account of the conception and reception of Jāmī’s works throughout the Eurasian continent and maritime Southeast Asia.

In December 1572 the Mughal emperor Akbar arrived in the port city of Khambayat. Having been raised in distant Kabul, Akbar, in his thirty years, had never been to the ocean. Presumably anxious with the news about the Mughal military campaign in Gujarat, several Portuguese merchants in Khambayat rushed to Akbar’s presence. This encounter marked the beginning of a long, complex, and unequal relationship between a continental Muslim empire that was expanding into south India, often looking back to Central Asia, and a European Christian maritime empire whose rulers considered themselves ‘kings of the sea’. By the middle of the seventeenth century, these two empires faced each other across thousands of kilometres from Sind to Bijapur, with a supplementary eastern arm in faraway Bengal. Focusing on borderland management, imperial projects, and cross-cultural circulation, this volume delves into the ways in which, between c. 1570 and c. 1640, the Portuguese understood and dealt with their undesirably close neighbours—the Mughals.

How the collapse of empires helps explain the efforts of China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey to challenge the international order "This is a must read to understand the backstory of conflicts from Crimea to Xinjiang."--Fiona Hill, author of There Is Nothing for You Here Eurasia's major powers--China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey--increasingly intervene across their borders while seeking to pull their smaller neighbors more firmly into their respective orbits. While analysts have focused on the role of leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in explaining this drive to dominate neighbors and pull away from the Western-dominated international system, they have paid less attention to the role of imperial legacies. Jeffrey Mankoff argues that what unites these contemporary Eurasian powers is their status as heirs to vast terrestrial empires, whose collapse left all four states deeply entangled with the lands and peoples along their peripheries but outside their formal borders. Today, they have all found new opportunities to project power within and beyond their borders in patterns shaped by their respective imperial pasts.