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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

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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

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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka Table of ContentsMore Information


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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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka FrontmatterMore Information


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.


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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


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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.


www.cambridge.org



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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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka ExcerptMore Information


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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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-12703-6 — Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic HistoriographyMimi Hanaoka IndexMore Information


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


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