Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka Copyright informationMore Information
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no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Hanaoka, Mimi, author.
Title: Authority and identity in medieval Islamic historiography : Persian histories from the
peripheries / Mimi Hanaoka.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Series: Cambridge studies in
Islamic civilization | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013911 | ISBN 9781107127036 (Hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Iran–History–640-1256–Historiography. | Iran–History–1256-1500–
Historiography. | Turkey–History–To 1453–Historiography.
Classification: LCC DS288 .H36 2016 | DDC 955.0072–dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013911
ISBN 978-1-107-12703-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka Table of ContentsMore Information
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Contents
Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xi
Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities
and Imagined Histories 13
3 Contexts and Authorship 36
4 Dreaming of the Prophet 70
5 Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances,
and Taxonomies of Belonging 99
6 Living Virtues of the Land 138
7 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities 168
8 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces 204
9 The View from Anatolia 220
10 Lessons from the Peripheries 251
Bibliography 261
Index 297
vii
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Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography
Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect
etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts com-
posed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires
between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to
interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell
us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived?
In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary
method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate
world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text’s
creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule
and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian,
ideological, and professional communities. By reading these texts in
such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic
histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric,
authority, legitimacy, and centre–periphery relations.
Mimi Hanaoka is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the Uni-
versity of Richmond, where she is a scholar of history and religion. Her
publications include scholarly journal articles on Persian and Islamic
history and historiography. Her work as a social and cultural historian
focuses on Iran and the Persianate world from the tenth to fifteenth
centuries, concentrating on issues of authority and identity. In the field
of global history, she concentrates on interactions between the Middle
East and East Asia, focusing on the history of Iran–Japan relations.
Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka FrontmatterMore Information
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Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization
Editorial BoardChase F. Robinson, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York(general editor)David O. Morgan, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-MadisonShahab Ahmed, Harvard UniversityVirginia Aksan, McMaster UniversityMichael Cook, Princeton UniversityPeter Jackson, Keele University
Other titles in the series are listed at the back of the book.
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Authority and Identity in Medieval
Islamic Historiography
Persian Histories from the Peripheries
MIMI HANAOKA
University of Richmond
Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka FrontmatterMore Information
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32 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10013
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107127036
© Mimi Hanaoka 2016
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Hanaoka, Mimi, author.
Title: Authority and identity in medieval Islamic historiography : Persian histories from the
peripheries / Mimi Hanaoka.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Series: Cambridge studies in
Islamic civilization | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013911 | ISBN 9781107127036 (Hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Iran–History–640-1256–Historiography. | Iran–History–1256-1500–
Historiography. | Turkey–History–To 1453–Historiography.
Classification: LCC DS288 .H36 2016 | DDC 955.0072–dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013911
ISBN 978-1-107-12703-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka FrontmatterMore Information
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For my parents,
Shoichiro Hanaoka (1945–2014) and
Iola Price Hanaoka (1942–2014)
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Contents
Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xi
Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities
and Imagined Histories 13
3 Contexts and Authorship 36
4 Dreaming of the Prophet 70
5 Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances,
and Taxonomies of Belonging 99
6 Living Virtues of the Land 138
7 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities 168
8 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces 204
9 The View from Anatolia 220
10 Lessons from the Peripheries 251
Bibliography 261
Index 297
vii
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Preface
The primary sources used in this study are written in Arabic, Persian, and
are often bilingual to varying degrees. I follow the International Journal
of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) transliteration system for Arabic
transliterations, and consequently I do not indicate the final tāʾ marbu_ta,
nor do I distinguish between the alif mamdūda and alif maq_sūra. For
Persian terms, I use a modified IJMES transliteration system. In bilingual
Arabic-Persian sources, I generally prioritize the Arabic transliteration.
Due to the bilingual nature of the texts and the accompanying challenges
in transliteration, I hope I will be forgiven for any inconsistencies and
preferences.
Place names appear without transliteration (e.g., Tabaristan, Bukhara,
Qum). When technical terms and place names used in English are part of
a proper noun, such as the title of a work (e.g., Tārīkh-i Tabaristān),
I include diacritical marks. Therefore, the title of the work Tārīkh-i
Bukhārā includes diacritical marks, as does historical personage al-
Bukhārī, but Bukhara as a place does not. Proper names of people and
the names by which they are known, including titles, are supplied with
diacritical marks (e.g., Fā_tima, Fā
_tima al-Maʿ
_sūma, Mu
_hammad).
Commonly used technical terms appear without transliteration. With
the exception of Imam, Shiʿa, Shiʿi, Shiʿism, Sunni, and Sunnism, the
terms are italicized (e.g., Ahl al-Bayt, Allah, amir, Baraka, dinar, fatwa,
fiqh, fuqaha, hadith, imam, isnad, madrasa, Mahdi, matn, muhaddith,
qadi, sayyid, sharif, shaykh, Shuʿubiya, sunna, Sura, ulama, umma, waqf,
wazir). I have referenced the IJMES Word List for guidance on which
terms and names are Anglicized.
ix
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I do not transliterate technical terms and titles that are commonly used in
English, including Anglicized terms of Arabic origin (e.g., Abbasid, Alawi,
ʿAlid, Ashʿari, bazaar, Buyids, caliph, Daylami, Fatimid, Ghaznavid,
Ghurid, Hanafi, Imam, Ismaʿili, Jahiliya, Mamluk, Qurʾan, Safavid,
Saffarid, Sasanian, Seljuq, shah, Sufi, sultan, Tahirid, Talibi, Umayyad,
vizier, Zaydi, Ziyarid).
I have included diacritical marks on less commonly used technical
terms (e.g., abdāl, akhbār, awliyāʾ, awqāf, aʿyān, dāʿī, fa_dāʾil, ghulām,
ijāza, khabar, khāngāh, khawārij, ma_dhāhib, madh
_hab, mash
_had,
mawlā, mi_hna, mazār, miʿrāj, rāwī, riwāyah, Rūm,
_sa_hāba, Sa
_hī_hayn,
_tabaqāt, tābiʿūn, tafsīr, tarīqa,ʿumarāʾ, ziyārat).
For proper names, I retain the definite article “al-” at the beginning of a
name only at the first mention of the proper name but exclude the definite
article on subsequent mentions of the proper name (e.g., the name is
rendered as al-Qummī on first mention and then subsequently as
Qummī). I do not consider the “al-” for bibliographic purposes (e.g.,
Hasan ibn Mu_hammad al-Qummī appears al-Qummī, Hasan ibn
Mu_hammad, under “Q”).
I generally give the Common Era (CE) dates for events. Whenever
relevant, I also give the hijrī dates in the form of hijrī/CE dates (e.g.,
613/1217, third/ninth century). When there are disagreements or disputes
about dates, I attempt to note the range of possible dates and generally
follow the dates used in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition.
For the Qurʾan, I principally reference the English translation by
Ahmed Ali, final revised edition (Princeton University Press, 2001).
x Preface
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Acknowledgments
This book has been supported and enriched by many people, and I am
grateful and indebted for all of the help I have received. I owe much to the
insights, support, and suggestions of my mentors, peers, friends, and
colleagues, but all faults, deficiencies, and defects in scholarship are
entirely my own. I bear full responsibility for this book’s shortcomings.
At Columbia University, where I completed the dissertation out of
which this book grew, I benefited from the mentorship and training of
many exceptional faculty. Peter Awn and Richard Bulliet were ideal
guides on this journey, and they saw the project through all its iterations,
from the kernel of an idea to a completed dissertation. Hossein Kamaly at
Barnard College, Mehdi Khorrami at NYU, and Masoud Jafari Jazi at the
Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University expertly shared
with me the nuances and rigors of classical Persian literature.
In the field of Arabic language and literature, I benefited from the
expertise of Taoufik Ben-Amor, George Saliba, and George El-Hage at
Columbia University. At the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) at
the American University in Cairo, I enjoyed the superb training and
unflagging patience of Zeinab Taha, Hebatalah Salem, Azza Hassanein,
Raghda El-Essawi, Shereen El-Ezabi, Nevenka Korica, Mahmoud
Al-Batal, and Abbas Al-Tonsi.
Elizabeth Castelli and members of the Departments of Religion at
Columbia University and Barnard College generously shared their expert-
ise and advice on my research. Neguin Yavari at The New School pro-
vided consistent encouragement during my graduate training. Members
of Columbia University’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) work-
shop offered thoughtful critiques, insights, and a space to share works in
xi
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progress. The staff of the Columbia University Libraries enabled much of
the research necessary for this project.
The Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences of Columbia University supported my doctoral work at Colum-
bia University. The CASA and the American Institute of Iranian Studies
provided financial support for training in Arabic and Persian.
Friends and colleagues have allowed me to present works in progress,
and they have challenged me to refine and rethink my work. Kazuo
Morimoto at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University
of Tokyo, generously invited me to present part of my research on dreams
in 2012. Michael Pregill at Boston University was a thoughtful collo-
quium interlocutor for an early version of Chapter 4. I explored part of
my research on dreams in my 2013 article in Iranian Studies and a limited
version of the ideas presented in Chapter 2 in my 2015 article in the
Journal of Persianate Studies. The audience and panelists at the annual
meetings of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and American
Academy of Religion (AAR) provided valuable feedback. I am grateful to
fellow CASA alumna Kate Swearengen, who read through a manuscript
draft in its entirety, efficiently and thoroughly, and offered thoughtful
comments.
At the University of Richmond, my colleagues both within and beyond
the Department of Religious Studies encouraged this project. The Office
of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty Research
Council of the School of Arts and Sciences provided financial support for
this project. The staff of Boatwright Memorial Library, and especially the
Inter-Library Loan department, enabled me to access many materials
necessary to develop and complete this work.
At Cambridge University Press, WilliamMasami Hammell gave me the
opportunity to transform my manuscript into a book, an endeavor that
Maria Marsh brings to fruition. The anonymous readers who read my
manuscript and generously offered valuable comments and critiques
greatly improved this work.
In Tokyo, I received extraordinary support and kindness from
Machiko Romaine and Kazuko Nishikawa, as well as Tim Thornton
and the faculty and staff of the American School in Japan.
At home, Shahan Mufti has been a well of kindness: loving, helpful,
and supportive. Through challenges and in happiness, he has been there
throughout. With their unlimited love, Totoro and Mochi bring joy to
every day.
xii Acknowledgments
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I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my parents, Shoichiro Hanaoka
(1945–2014) and Iola Price Hanaoka (1942–2014). They supported
every aspect of my life with unconditional love, boundless generosity,
and tireless encouragement. There is a Japanese proverb (sode furi au mo
tashō no en), which states that those whose sleeves so much as brush
against each other in this life have been bound together in many previous
lifetimes. I hope that I will have the good fortune to meet them in future
lifetimes, too. I dedicate this book to them.
Acknowledgments xiii
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Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition
EI3 Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition
EIr Encyclopedia Iranica
EQ Encyclopaedia of the Quran
IJMES International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
xv
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1
Introduction
Whosoever sees me in a dream sees me in waking life, because Satan doesnot take my appearance.1
Nearly 200 years after the Prophet Mu_hammad died, he reappeared in the
city of Bukhara in present day Uzbekistan. Mu_hammad wore a white cap2
on his head as he rode his camel al-Qaswāʾ into the central bazaar of
Kharqān.3 A large crowd gathered around Mu_hammad, overjoyed that
the Prophet of Islam had come to their city located on what was then the
far eastern fringe of the Islamic empire. Mu_hammad, the seal of the
Prophets and the last of God’s messengers, to whom God transmitted
the final revelation in the form of the Qurʾan through the Angel Gabriel,
had come to their city. The Bukharans were delighted.
1 Mu_hammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (810–870), Sa
_hī_h al-Bukhārī; Jamʿ jawāmiʿ al-ahādīth
wa-al-asānīd wa-makniz al-_si_hā
_h wa-al-sunan wa-al-masānīd, 3 vols. (Vaduz, Liechtenstein:
Jamʿīyat al-Maknaz al-Islāmī, 2000), Kitāb 92 al-taʿbīr, Bāb 10, p. 1415, hadith 7079.2 Narshakhī describes Mu
_hammad as wearing a “kulāh-i safīd,” and kulāh is the general
Persian term for a cap, though it could also more specifically mean a high or medium high
soft cap. The kulāh and the qalansuwa – a cap worn either under a turban or by itself –
were both part of a typical medieval Persian costume. Both items are distinct from the
turban (ʿimāma or dulband). Y. K. Stillman, N. A. Stillmann, and T. Majda, “Libās,” EI2.See also W. Björkman, “Tulband,” EI2; W. Björkman, “Ḳalansuwa,” EI2.
3 The female camel is known as al-Qaswāʾ, al-Jadʿāʾ, or al-ʿAdbāʾ. Tabarī, The History of
al-Tabarī, vol. IX; The Last Years of the Prophet: The Formation of the StateA.D. 630–632/A.H. 8–11, translated by, Ismail K. Poonawala (Albany, NY: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1990), 150–151.
1
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The assembled multitude decided to lodge the Prophet in the home of
a certain Khwāja Imām Abū H af_s al-Bukhārī, a pious and praiseworthy
man who was a prominent denizen of the city. Khwāja Imām Abū H af_s
was a learned ascetic who had pursued his religious studies in Baghdad.
After returning from Iraq to Bukhara, he had become one of the honored
teachers in his home city. Khwāja Imām Abū H af_s hosted Mu
_hammad
in his home. In a fitting tribute to his illustrious guest, he recited the
Qurʾan for Mu_hammad for three days and three nights. In fact, it is
unknown if he did anything else during those three days when he hosted
the Prophet. The Prophet listened in silence. Mu_hammad never once
corrected Khwāja Imām Abū H af_s, since his recitation of the revelation
was flawless.
The events in the preceding story read like fantasy. But they are real, in
so far as they occurred within someone’s dream, which was then
recounted in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, a medieval Central Asian book of local
history.4 Such dream narratives, which appear in various forms of histor-
ical writing in the medieval Islamic world, are an overlooked thread in a
gauzy gossamer web of references, one of myriad tensile cultural strands
that reinforced and reflected one another in the once glistening and now
dusty web of early Islamic historical writing. The fantastical nature of this
encounter with the Prophet did not make it any less significant for the
author, al-Narshakhī, who included this episode in his history about the
city of Bukhara. Mu_hammad ibn Salām Baikandī, the man who is credited
with dreaming the encounter, lived in a milieu in which pious dreams –
especially those involving Mu_hammad – were as real and as significant as
events that occurred during waking life. But what do we – as historians,
scholars, and modern readers – do with such a history penned more than
a millennium ago, which records events that may be imagined or may
never have transpired?
Positivist history has been the dominant trend over the past century in
scholarship on the history of Islam. Scholarship on the political, military,
economic, legal, and social history of the Islamicate world has tradition-
ally placed a high premium on ascertaining the names, dates, facts, and
figures that allow us to reconstruct history and what precisely happened.
4 Abū Bakr Mu_hammad ibn Jaʿfar Al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, edited by, Mudarris
Razavi (Tehran: Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān, 1972), 77–81; Abū Bakr Mu_hammad ibn Jaʿfar
Al-Narshakhī, The History of Bukhara; Translated From a Persian Abridgement of theArabic Original by Narshakhī, edited and translated by Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA:
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1954) 56–59.
2 Introduction
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This line of scholarship has been invaluable in providing a narrative
history of the emergence and development of Islam as a social, military,
political, legal, and religious phenomenon. It has allowed us to context-
ualize the early Islamic community within its Late Antique milieu and to
trace the expansion of Islam over vast expanses of land during the early
centuries of Islamic rule.
This traditional positivist approach forms the bedrock from which to
further investigate the various and complex dimensions of the Islamicate
world that have developed during the past 1400 years. As we move beyond
the questions of “what happened, and why?” we are able to engage with
the thorny, more open-ended questions of “how did these communities
perceive themselves and the others around them, and how did they crystal-
lize and express these understandings?” Following the latter, more open-
ended line of research, this project pays close attention to the purpose and
intention behind a text’s creation and what the texts reveal about how their
authors perceived themselves and the world around them. These are
insights that can be gleaned, in significant part, from the themes, claims,
references, and strategies evident in the texts themselves.
Over the past three decades, scholars have paid increasingly
closer attention to the political and literary dimensions of Islamicate
historical writing produced in the medieval Middle East. These scholars
include Stephen Humphreys, Stefan Leder, Albrect Noth, Fred Donner,
Jacob Lassner, Chase Robinson, John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone,
Michael Cook, Richard Bulliet, Tayeb El-Hibri, Julie Meisami, and
Christopher Melchert, all of whom have pioneered fruitful methodo-
logical approaches to Islamic history and place a premium on consider-
ing why medieval authors presented themselves and their histories in that
way that they did.
In line with this turn in scholarship away from primarily positivist
history, this project builds on existing scholarly assumptions and pro-
poses an innovative method of approaching local histories of the Persia-
nate world written in Arabic and Persian. This approach – freed from the
reconstruction of events as the primary goal of scholarly endeavor –
allows the sources to be read and used in new ways to understand how
these Perso-Muslim individuals and communities understood and
expressed their hybrid identities, perched on the fringes and peripheries
of the Islamic empire. The intriguing dreams, fanciful genealogies, and
suspect etymologies are transformed from data-poor curiosities into rich
sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and
center-periphery relations.
Introduction 3
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peripheries and empires
Texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic
empires during the tenth to early fifteenth centuries provide, along with
the hard facts of history, richly imagined histories of their local towns and
cities. Prophets, saints, Companions and descendants of the Prophet
Mu_hammad, and other devout Muslims populate these sprawling literary
worlds. Local histories are interested in dynastic history and the events of
successive dawla – or the reigns of dynasties and rulers – but they also
describe the physical and spiritual contours of regional landscapes,
including sacred sites and graves of the pious, while toponyms boast
extraordinary and magical etymologies. These histories also record the
human capital – teachers of religious sciences, holy men, and pious
women – that the authors believed would place their city on the map of
the Islamic world as a bona fide Muslim community of significance.
Trimmed like frivolous fat off the real meat of history that historians so
often crave – names, dates, facts, and figures – accounts of dreams, myths,
improbable etymologies, and dubious stories have generally been disre-
garded as fabulist embellishments created for literary effect. This historio-
graphical study turns its attention to precisely such narratives that appear
in local histories written about provinces and cities on the peripheries of
Islamic empires that had their heartlands in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. On
close examination, these events and myths, which may have been fabri-
cated or occurred only in the dream world, express profound truths about
the people who wrote the histories and the times in which they lived.
reading local histories as social history
Fantastical historical narratives are especially useful for elucidating
how Muslims on the peripheries of Islamic empires positioned them-
selves in relation to the central powers in the Middle East during critical
periods between the tenth and early fifteenth centuries. Persian local
histories composed during the tenth through early fifteenth centuries
evidence a preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy as
distinct religio-political communities. In so doing, these local histories
participate in a discourse of authority and legitimacy.5 For example,
5 For a detailed discussion of early Muslim attitudes toward lands and homelands and the
conceptual framework of a discourse of place, see Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The
Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
4 Introduction
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Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, the book written by Narshakhī in the tenth century
and then translated into Persian, extended, and then abridged during
the twelfth century, relates Mu_hammad’s pronouncement that on the
Judgment Day angels and martyrs will adorn the city of Bukhara in
Khurasan, which is located in present day Uzbekistan. It will be resplen-
dent with rubies and coral and will be the most exalted of all cities.
Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, composed about the city of Bayhaq and its environs in
Khurasan in the mid-twelfth century, tells us that descendants of a
particular Companion of the Prophet Mu_hammad lived and taught
hadith in the city, despite evidence to the contrary in biographical
sources. Other similar narratives of cities and regions, from Qum to
Tabaristan (both located in modern-day Iran) bind specific cities to
pivotal moments and characters in Islamic history.
What literary strategies did Persian writers use to weave these narra-
tives into their histories and legitimate themselves within structures of
authority in medieval Islam that were predominantly Arab and based
largely on genealogies into which they did not fit? Following the Arab
conquests, these individuals and communities had to forge new Muslim
identities. This was a multi-layered process, since “to change overt reli-
gious identification was symbolically to die in one community and be
reborn in another.”6 How did Persians balance their multiple identities as
Persians, Muslims, and members of various regional, provincial, ethnic,
sectarian, ideological, and professional communities while writing these
histories? Patterns within Islamo-Persciate writing from the peripheries of
Islamic empires enable us to explore local structures of authority and
legitimacy. The literary patterns that authors employed to bring the
sanction and prestige of religious authority and importance to their
respective cities and provinces are, in turn, vehicles through which to
understand the more subtle societal conversations and anxieties that
would have given rise to them in the first place.
For the local significance of topographical descriptions and an articulation of place and
space in the massive twelfth century Syrian biographical dictionary and historical text, see
Zayde Antrim, “Ibn ʿAsakir’s Representations of Syria and Damascus in the Introduction
to the Taʾrikh Madinat Dimashq,” IJMES 38: 1 (2006): 109–129.6 Richard Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Conversion and Continuity:Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands: Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries,
edited by, Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 129; 131. Bulliet concludes that the initial decision to convert
was driven more by the desire to improve or maintain one’s status in the shifting post-
conquest dynamics than it was by faith and religious conviction.
Reading Local Histories as Social History 5
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A privileged connection to Mu_hammad is important and occurs in
various forms: Mu_hammad and other prophets visit the city in waking
life or in dreams, hadith transmitters live and teach in the city as living
virtues or merits (fa_dāʾil) and custodians of the faith, and Imams, Com-
panions (_sa_hāba), and descendants of the Prophet live and die in the
region. These medieval authors also claim their territory as sanctified
and hallowed ground in ways that are simultaneously localized and yet
resonate with overarching notions of the Muslim umma. These texts
evidence the dynamic of local histories making the global – the Muslim
umma – locally and regionally differentiated. Local and regional histories
are avenues that illustrate the formation of Muslim identity along the
peripheries of medieval Islamic empires.
sources
The central project of this book is to examine these rich and mysterious
portions of early Islamic historical writing that involve dreams, prophets,
saints, tangled genealogies, and fabulous etymologies and offer a new
framework for considering them. It focuses most closely on annalistic
Persian city and regional histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centur-
ies. It also considers histories produced in another notable periphery,
Anatolia, as a heuristic device to flesh out a comparative perspective.
The political and social situations in Persia and Anatolia were distinct,
and the two regions were Islamized at different times, in some areas
centuries apart. Comparing Persia and Anatolia allows us to consider
the underlying issue of how early medieval local histories on the periph-
eries framed and presented what constituted authority to rule, legitimacy
as a Muslim, and legitimacy as political and religious communities with
distinct practices and identities who nevertheless had an integral role in
the broader umma.
The Persian local histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries
analyzed in this book are Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i
Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, and Tārīkh-i Tabaristān.7 This study extends to
Anatolian sources the questions and methodologies applied to Persian
7 Persian sources that fall beyond the chronological or structural framework of this study or
are excluded from analysis include, most notably, Tarjama-i Mahāsin-i Isfahān, Tārīkh-i
Rūyān, and Shīrāz-nāmah from the fourteenth century; Tārīkh-i Tabaristān va Rūyān
va Māzandarān, Tārīkh-i Yazd, Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd, and Rawzāt al-jannāt fi awsāf-imadīnat-i Harāt from the fifteenth century; Tārīkh-i Khānī and Tārīkh-i Gīlān dar
vaqāyiʿ-i sālhā-yi 923–1038 Hijrī Qamarī from the sixteenth century.
6 Introduction
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histories to explore al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya, Musā-
marat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Ānātūlī,
Saljūqnāma, and Abū Muslim-nāmah. These texts were written in Persian
or Arabic or both. Some sources were originally written in Arabic and
later translated into Persian, some only surviving in this later translation.
The term author includes editors, authors, compilers, translators, and
individuals who made any substantive change – in content, form, order,
or language – to a text. In this sense, all of these texts have multiple
authors and are the product of many hands over the centuries, only some
of whom are known and identifiable.
These texts are not simply histories but are also works of commemora-
tive literature that evidence the dynamics, both rhetorical and physical, of
the construction of authority to rule and legitimacy as a Muslim. Local
histories are not only manifestations of “local pride,” as Rosenthal
claims, but also express a deeply felt desire and need to embed a place
into the global umma while simultaneously expressing a specifically local
identity.8 This wealth of previously underutilized sources illustrates the
ways in which authors bind cities and regions to key moments and figures
in Islamic and cosmic history and to prophetic authority. They also
provide an opportunity to compare and contrast iterations of Islam that
varied along and across lines of ethnicity and language in the medieval
Islamic world. Local and regional histories from Persian and Anatolian
areas exhibit a tendency to articulate an identity that is simultaneously
local yet enmeshed within the broader Muslim umma, with its perceived
heartlands in the Arab realms of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia.
conceptual frameworks
This project draws on theories and methods in historiography, social
history, rhetoric, material culture, and literary criticism to identify the
ways in which the authors of Persian local histories employed diverse but
interrelated themes, strategies, and literary devices to portray the virtues
of their cities. This in turn bound the region or city in question to key
moments and characters in Islamic history. By embedding the city deep
into the fabric of Islamic history and its continued development, the
authors of these local histories fostered a sense of regionally specific and
locally differentiated Persian Islamic identity in ways that “centered”
8 Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd revised edition (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1968), 150.
Conceptual Frameworks 7
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these histories written on the ostensible “peripheries” of empire. Chap-
ter 2 establishes the conceptual framework that provides the intellectual
scaffolding for this project.
structure and chapter summaries
This book traces and explains the emergence and use of themes and
literary strategies that “centered” texts from “peripheral” regions from
a variety of angles. The following chapters address ways in which authors
of local histories composed in Persia during the tenth through early
fifteenth centuries wove their lands and their communities into Islamic
narratives rooted in the perceived Islamic heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and
Arabia. Authors “centered” their cities and regions by including narra-
tives about descendants of the Prophet associated with the region; incorp-
orating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associating_sa_hāba
with the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) and other
sources of blessing or sacred power (baraka); and incorporating sacraliz-
ing etymologies.
Authors positioned their communities to better fit into the scope of
Islamic history and claimed privileged connections to Mu_hammad and
divine or prophetic authority in various ways. Consequently, local histor-
ies from Persia both respond to and challenge assumptions about the
centrality of Arabs, Arabic, Arabia, Iraq, Syria,_sa_hāba, tābiʿūn, ʿAlids,
sayyids, and sharifs while at the same claiming their own centeredness
and importance within these same frameworks. These sources simultan-
eously accommodate, challenge, and reconfigure notions of what consti-
tutes “central” or “peripheral” in the medieval Islamicate world.
Each chapter provides a prism through which to understand how
authors “centered” their cities and regions by integrating specific themes
and literary strategies into their works. Reading local histories with an eye
to these literary strategies and how these local histories accommodated
and challenged traditional structures of authority brings into the fore-
ground the hybrid identities – globally Muslim and locally unique – of
these communities on the peripheries of empire. Each chapter provides
depth by exploring how the theme and literary strategy is reflected in local
and regional histories. Each chapter also provides breadth by placing
these specific claims to authority within their broader social and political
contexts.
Chapter 2, Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and
Imagined Histories, situates this project within the literature and argues
8 Introduction
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that the methodology proposed here is a compelling new way of reading
narrative local histories. The long trajectory and strong influence of
positivist history in scholarship on Islam has yielded many valuable
insights, but it has failed to fully make use of the ostensibly data-poor
aspects of histories, such as etymologies and dream narratives. Building
on existing scholarly assumptions and insights gained from positivist
history, this project demonstrates how a shift away from positivist history
that has gained traction in recent decades opens up new possibilities of
how to understand identity, rhetoric, and center-periphery relations. The
methodology applied to Islamicate history has strong implications for
medieval history, particularly European history. This chapter also
assesses the genre of local historical writing, which lies on a spectrum
from biographical dictionaries at one end to narrative chronicles on the
other, and explains why this project’s methodology is ideally suited for
the narrative local histories examined here.
Chapter 3, Contexts and Authorship, brings into one cohesive chapter
the contexts of the production of the five main texts analyzed in this
study: Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān,
and Tārīkh-i Tabaristān. There are three levels of context that are integral
to any discussion of these texts: relevant events that occurred during the
texts’ production at the level of the caliphate; events that occurred in the
local area during the texts’ production; and what we know about the
author or translator, including whether the text was commissioned or
written for a patron.
Chapter 4, Dreaming of the Prophet, examines dreams as tools of
legitimation and offers a typology of dreams that emerges in Persian
local histories. It contextualizes dreams in the framework of Persian and
Arabic historical writing as well the Qurʾan and hadith. Persian local
and regional histories evidence a move to bypass genealogical affirm-
ation and instead claim affirmation through dreams as an alternative
investment of power. Claims of investments of power by pivotal charac-
ters – including the Prophet Mu_hammad, pre-Islamic prophets, and holy
men – create alternative avenues to genealogical legitimacy gained
through descent from the ahl al-Bayt (family of the Prophet) and
Companions of the Prophet and the subsequent generation (_sa_hāba
and tābiʿūn). Such connections to divine or prophetic authority occur
through dreams or waking visions. The dreamscape of the city’s deni-
zens was a vibrant dimension of the medieval city, and dreams formed
a liminal space where information about the sacred was transmitted.
This chapter engages with the arguments, evidence, and theoretical
Structure and Chapter Summaries 9
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frameworks about sainthood and dreams proposed by scholars of mys-
ticism, who have generally been more attuned to the literary significance
of dream narratives than positivist historians.
Chapter 5,Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of
Belonging, moves from dreams about the Prophet to his descendants and
utterances. It demonstrates how descendants of the Prophet functioned as
legitimating devices in Persian local histories. Following KazuoMorimoto
and Theresa Bernheimer, this book defines as descendants the wide array
of cross-sectarian individuals and families who claimed and were believed
by their communities to enjoy kinship with the Prophet, a phenomenon
that was both biological and socially constructed.9 ʿAlids (al-ʿAlawī),
Hasanids, Husaynids, Talibids, sayyids, and sharifs are all ambiguous
terms and phenomena, and the terms are used flexibly and with wide
variation in the medieval sources themselves, especially in the medieval
Islamic east of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.10
These descendants – including but not limited to sayyids and sharifs –
constitute the living virtues, or fa_dāʾil, of the land and become integral to
the discourse of legitimation that these local histories construct through
their form and content. This section also analyzes how hadith attributed
to the Prophet or his descendants function as legitimating devices. It
explains the significance in local histories of legitimating hadith, some-
times uttered by descendants of Mu_hammad. A discussion of Moroccan
shurafāʾ adds a comparative dimension to the consideration of how the
family of the Prophet is portrayed and integrated in Persianate histories.
Chapter 6, Living Virtues of the Land, charts the roles of the Com-
panions of Mu_hammad and the subsequent generation (
_sa_hāba and
tābiʿūn) in local histories. Persian local histories claim connections with
divine authority that tie the city or region to prophetic authority, which
can occur in the form of_sa_hāba and tābiʿūn living, teaching, or dying and
being buried in the city. Companions and descendants of Mu_hammad
appear in Persian local histories as living virtues of the city and custodians
of the faith who are tied to a particular place. This chapter also argues
9 Kazuo Morimoto and Theresa Bernheimer and their work on ʿAlids (Bernheimer) and
sayyido-sharifology (Morimoto) and genealogies of the Prophet’s family provide the basis
for my definition of these terms. See KazuoMorimoto, “Toward the Formation of Sayyido-
Sharifology: Questioning Accepted Fact,” Journal of Sophia Asian Studies 22 (2004):
87–103; Morimoto, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the
Prophet (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); Teresa Bernheimer, The ʿAlids: TheFirst Family of Islam, 750–1200 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).
10 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids, 2–4.
10 Introduction
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Index
ʿAbbās I, Shah (Safavid Shah) (978–1038/
1571–1629, r. 995–1037/1587–1629),
192, 194–196
Abbasids, 91, 134, 160, 162
abdāl, 84–85
ʿAbd al-Rahman [b. Samora], 152–153
Abū Muslim, 91
Abū Muslim-nāma, 7, 244
ʿA_dud al-Dawla Fana-Khusraw b. Rukn
al-Dawla Hasan [b.] Buwayh (324–372/
936–983), Buyid ruler, 134
Ahl al-Bayt, 103, 114
A_hmad ibn Hanbal, 162
akhbār, 149, 178
Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya by Husaynī
(1180–1225), 234
al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya
by Ibn Bībī (d. ca. after 1285 or 1288
CE), 7, 243–244
Āl-i Bāvand family, 44
ʿAlī b. Abī Tālib, 91, 102, 107, 113, 117,
130–131, 207
ʿAlī b. al-Husayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tālib (Zayn
al-ʿĀbidīn). 131
ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ri_dā, 8th Shiʿi Imam, 118,
169, 181, 183–184
ʿAlids, 50, 53, 102–103, 108, 129, 136, 184
of Qum, 192
ʿAlid loyalism, 128–129
ʿAlids of Qum, 56–57, 110
ʿAlids of Tabaristan, 88–90, 158–159,
161, 214
Alp Arslan, 227–228, 234
al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī, 141–148,
151
ʿAmr b. Layth, 31, 58
Āmu Daryā, 45
Amul, 216
Āmulī, Awliyāʾ Allāh, author of Tārīkh-i
Rūyān (completed ca. 764/1362), 44
Anatolia, 6, 221, 224–225, 231, 249
Islamization of, 229–230
Antrim, Zayde, 4, 18–19, 171
Ashʿarī Arabs, 53–55, 110, 113–114,
175–176, 183, 187–188, 192
Ashʿarī, Abū Mūsā, al-, 117
Authorship, 7, 29, 60
Azad, Arezou, 23
Baikandī, Mu_hammad ibn Salām, 2
Balkh, 23, 179, 216
Balʿamī, Abū ʿAlī (active ca. 946–973),
author of Tārīkhnāma, 40
Banū Hāshim, 103
Basra, 144, 174
Bāwāndid family of Tabaristan and Gīlān,
157–158, 165
Bayhaq, 5, 49, 52, 142, 144, 147–148, 151
Bayhaq-Sabzavār, 49–50
Bayhaqī, Abū al-Fa_dl Mu
_hammad ibn
Husayn, 24
Bernheimer, Theresa, 102, 104
biographical dictionaries, 13, 16, 20
Bosworth, C. E., 61
Bukhara, 1–2, 5, 44–46, 48, 75, 92, 94,
96–97, 211–213
297
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Bukhārī, 1
Bukhārī, Khwāja Imām Abū Haf_s, al-, 2,
92–96
Bulliet, Richard, 3, 139
Buyids, 19, 37, 54, 127
Caspian, 42, 158–159
Christianity, 180
medieval European, 258
saints, 196
Christians
in Anatolia, 230
Orthodox Church, 230
cities, 177
foundation narratives of, 174–176
conversion to Islam, 37, 42
rates of, 36
Crone, Patricia, 3
Damascus, 62
Daylam
Daylami dynasties, 40, 43
Dhahabī, Mu_hammad ibn A
_hmad,
al- (1274–1348), 149
dreams, 70–71, 76, 92, 97
dream interpretation manuals, 82
dream narratives, 2, 72
dreams and hadith, 77, 79–81
dreams and legitimation, 83, 97
dreams and mysticism, 73
dreams and sacred space, 71
dreams and the Qurʾan, 79
dreams as social history, 84
dreams of Mu_hammad, 94
dreams that result in the establishment of
a shrine, 71
dynasties
local dynasties in Persia, 37, 40
El-Hibri, Tayeb, 3, 21, 255
etymologies, 176, 204–206, 210,
213–214
fa_dāʾil, 67, 115, 160, 184
living fa_dāʾil, 164–165, 184
Fa_dāʾil-i Balkh, 23
Fakhr ud-Dawla b. Rukn al-Dawla, 20, 55
Fat_h ʿAlī Shāh (1185–1250 /1771–1834), 198
Fā_tima bt. Mu
_hammad, 102, 107, 113
Fā_tima of Qum, 99, 169, 177, 181, 183–
187, 194, 196, 198, 202
Flood, Finbarr Barry, 30, 121
furta sacra, 255, 257
Gabriel, 1, 206, 212
garrison cities, 174
Gāvbāra, 158
Geary, Patrick, 255, 258
genealogies, 64, 104–105, 108, 121, 125–
126, 146
Ghazālī, Abū Hamīd, al- (d. 1111), 154
Ghaznavids, 37, 233
Ghurid sultanate, 126–127
hadith, 5, 34, 97, 100–101, 115, 118, 120,
142, 144–145, 147, 150–151, 153, 212
hadith transmission, 154, 207
local hadith, 118–119
Qum and, 115–118, 207
Shiʿi hadith, 115, 185, 188–192
Hākim al-Nīsābūrī, Mu_hammad ibn ʿAbd
Allāh, al- (933–1014), 147
Harūn al-Rashīd, Abbasid caliph, 162
Hasan al-Ba_srī, al-, 151–155
Hasan b. ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī, al- (230 or
232– 260/844 or 847–873), 11th Shiʿi
Imam, 133–134
Hasanids, 102
histories, 247
Anatolian, 247–248, 253
dynastic histories, 4, 237
historical writing as a genre, 20
imagined histories, 32
Local histories, 4, 6–7, 13–14, 16, 18, 20,
29, 39, 67, 180, 251–252
universal histories, 40
Historiography 27
methodologies, 7–8, 251, 254
positivist approach to history, 2
quantitative history, 16
skeptical methodologies, 17, 34
Husaynids, 102
hybrid identities, 3, 18, 30, 62,
66, 68
Iblīs, 206
Ibn ʿAbbād, 56–57
Ibn ʿAsākir, 62
Ibn Bābūya (or Bābawayhī), 190
Ibn Bībī, 243
Ibn Funduq, 49, 51–52, 151
Ibn Hishām, 143
298 Index
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Ibn Isfandiyār, 43–44, 86, 129, 133, 162,
164, 199, 201
Ibn Saʿd, 144, 153
Iran, 14–15
Iranian identity, 68
Iraq, 2
Isfahan, 195
Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbbād,
55, 57
istikhāra, 71
Jaʿfar al-Sādiq, 6th Shiʿa Imam, 99–100,
118, 182, 185–186
Kay Kāwūs I, 228
Kay Qubādh I, 228
Kharijites, 58
Khosrojird, 49, 143
Khurasan, 5, 37, 44, 49–50, 212
Khwarazm, 85, 90
Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, 231
Kufa, 186
Kulaynī, Mu_hammad b. Yaʿqub, al- (d. 329/
940–1), 190
Kurdish dynasties, 40, 245
Local dynasties, 127, 157
Maliknāma, 234
Malikshāh b. Alp Arslan, 227, 234, 241–
242
Marwān b. Mu_hammad b. Marwān b.
al-Hakam, known as Marwān II
(r. 127–132/744–750), 201
Mashhad, 194, 196
Mazandaran, 24, 215
Mecca, 186
Medina, 186
Melville, Charles, 24
memory, 26, 210
collective memory, 210
theories of memory, 27
metanarratives, 209
Mittermaier, Amira, 32
miʿrāj, 205, 209
Morimoto, Kazuo, 104
Morocco, 135–136
Mu_hammad, 1–2, 5–6, 8, 92, 94, 96, 98,
107, 205, 207, 209, 212
Mu_hammad b. ʿAlī, 5th Shiʿa Imam, 131
Mukhtar b. Abī ʿUbayd Thaqafī, 53
Mūlay Idrīs I, 136
Mūlay Ismaʿil (r. 1672–1727), Sultan of
Morocco, 135
Muqaddasī, Mu_hammad ibn A
_hmad,
al- (b. ca. 946, also vocalized as al-
Maqdisī), 55, 156, 169, 193, 211–212
Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat
al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and
keeping up wit the good”) by Karīm
al-Dīn Ma_hmūd b. Mu
_hammad
Āqsarā’ī (14th century, d. ca. between
1323–33 CE), 7, 232, 239
Mutawakkil, al-Abbasid caliph, 134
myths, 209
role in culture-making, 169
naqīb al-ashrāf, 108
Narshakhī, Abū Bakr Mu_hammad ibn Jaʿfar
ibn Zakarīyā ibn Kha_t_tāb ibn Sharīk,
al-, 2, 46, 92
Nidhām al-Dīn Samʿānī, 85, 90
niqāba, 108–109
Nishapur, 52, 139, 147
Noah, 206
Nū_h ibn Na
_sr, 46, 48, 92
Ottomans, 239
Oxus River, 45
patricians, 139
peripheries, 4, 8, 19, 68, 172
center-periphery dynamics, 31
Persia, 14
Persians
Persian identity, 38
piety, 202
Pourshariati, Parvaneh, 23, 140, 148
Pratt, Mary Louise, 25
Prophet Mu_hammad, 1
prophets, 67
Qādiriyya Sufi order
Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Morocco, 136
Qilij Arslan, 242
Qilij Arslan II (ibn Masʿūd), 242
Qubavī, Abū Na_sr A
_hmad, al-, 47
Qum, 53–54,99,110,112,115,169,175–176,
181, 183–187, 194, 196, 198, 204–207
Arab conquest of, 175–177
Qummī, Hasan b. Mu_hammad b. Hasan,
al- (d. 1015 or 16), 55, 101, 110, 176
Index 299
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Qummī, Hasan b. ʿAlī b. Hasan b. ʿAbd
al-Malik, al-, 56
Qurʾan, 2, 96, 118
Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan, 95
Qutayba b. Muslim, 45, 63
Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl, 228
Rabīʿ al-Hārethī, 152
Rā_hat al-Sudūr wa āyat al-surūr, 232
Relics, 173, 201, 256, 258
revolts, 54
rustāq, 45, 49
Ruyan, 216
sacred space, 172
Saffarids, 37, 58–59
_sa_hāba, 53, 138–139, 142, 148, 157, 180,
257
Sa_hnūn b. Saʿīd (d. 854), 154
saints, 136, 155, 180–181, 197, 199–200
burial near, 197
sainthood, 155, 182
Saljūqnāma, 7
Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī
(d. ca. 1184 or 1185), 232, 235–236
Salmān al-Fārisī, 123–125, 212–213
Samanids, 37, 46–47, 127
Samarqand, 45, 95
Samāʾ reading certificates, 61
Savant, Sarah Bowen, 15, 25–26, 39, 104,
122–123
sayyido-sharifology, 50, 104, 106, 108–109
sayyids, 101–103, 107, 113, 129, 132, 135,
157, 161, 183
Seljuqs, 222, 248, 253
Great Seljuqs of Iran and Iraq, 226–227,
232, 234, 238
Oghuzz Turkmen, 231–232
origins of, 225–226
Seljuq historiography, 230–232, 237
Seljuqs of Rūm, 224, 227–229, 236–238,
241, 244, 249
semiotics, 257
Shāhnāma, 126
Sharafnāma, 245
sharifs, 101, 103, 107, 135
Shiʿa, 99
Shiʿism, 50, 66, 115, 129–130, 181
in Qum, 187–193
in Tabaristan, 90
shrines, 183, 194
Shuʿūbiyya movement, 38–39
Sistan, 57–58, 152, 154
Sogdia, 45
Sogdian, 211
Sufis, 199
Sufism, 136
Sulaymān b. Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl,
229
symbols, 179
as signifiers, 179
Syr Daryā, 45
Syria, 62
Tabarī, Mu_hammad Jarīr, al- (d. 310/923),
40, 125, 166, 255
Tabaristan, 43, 129, 131–132, 157–158,
160, 162, 164, 166, 200–201, 214–
216, 218
conquest of, 158–160
Tabaristan and sayyids, 132–135
tābiʿūn, 53, 138, 142, 157
Tahirids, 37, 45, 127
Talibids, 103
Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk, 40
Tārīkh Baghdād, 96
Tārīkh-Bayhaq, 51–52
Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Ānatūlī, 7, 232, 240–
241
Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 5–6, 42, 50, 140–141,
143, 145, 147–148, 150–151
Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī, 24
Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 2, 5–6, 42, 46, 63, 92–
93, 96, 98, 211, 213
Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, 202, 248
Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī by Bayhaqī, 233
Tārīkh-i Qum, 6, 13, 20, 42, 54–56, 63, 99,
101, 109–115, 118, 137, 176, 183, 202,
204–206
Tārīkh-i Rūyān, 44
Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 59, 61, 151
Tārīkh-i Tabaristān, 6, 13, 42–44, 84, 87,
90, 92, 130, 156–157, 159, 161, 172,
199, 214, 217
Tārīkhnāma, 40
Tārīkh-Sīstān, 6, 42
taxes, 65, 162
topoi
culturally recognizable symbols, 178
Translators and translations, 47, 57
transmission of knowledge, 57
Transoxania, 95
300 Index
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Tughril Beg, 227, 234
Turks, 220, 247, 254
Oghuzz Turkmen, 50, 225–226, 253
Turkification, 249
ulama, 139, 155, 166
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Umayyad caliph
(ʿUmar II, r. 99–101/717–720, d. 101/
720), 85–86, 92, 129, 131
ʿUmar b. al-Kha_t_tāb, (Umar I, r. 13–23/
634–644, 85, 87, 89, 92
urban environment, 170–171
Uzbekistan, 1, 5
visions, 71
Waldman, Marilyn, 24–25
Wandād-Hurmuzd, Qārinid prince, 162
White, Hayden, 27–28, 207
Yazdigird III, 158
Yaʿqūb b. Layth, 58
Za_h_hāk, 61, 126
Zarang, 58
Zaydis
Zaydi state in Tabaristan, 43
Zaydi ʿAlids, 43, 50
ziyārat, 181, 183, 196–197
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrian fire-temples, 114, 184
Index 301