WILLEM FLOOR, Safavid Government Institutions (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2001). Pp. 321. $29.95 paper.

Extract

Research on the Safavid period has come a long way in the past ten years with the publication of several studies, conference proceedings, and printed editions of primary sources, including historical texts. Willem Floor has been at the forefront of this activity, with a number of monographs most notably on economic history. His new work, Safavid Government Institutions, is a detailed examination of the principal offices of the Safavid state, including the organization of central and provincial government and of the army. The book evolved out of a commentary on the administrative manual, Mirza Rafiעi's Dastur al-muluk, begun toward the end of the reign of Shah Sultan Husain (1694–1722). It is unfortunate that Floor has been unable to take advantage of the new and more complete text recently published by Iraj Afshar (Daftar-i Tarikh, vol. 1 [Tehran, 2001], 475–651). The newly discovered portion, for instance, contains details of the (minor) offices of daftardār and עazab-bāshī (pp. 618–19), discussed briefly by Floor (p. 59). Other elements of Safavid state organization, such as the judiciary and the religious establishment, are excluded but already largely dealt with in other studies by the same author (ZDMG 150 [2000]: 461–500; Studia Iranica 29 [2000]: 9–60). The material in the Dastur al-muluk (and, for that matter, in the comparable Tazkirat al-muluk) is entirely rearranged in a way that helpfully regroups most of the relevant offices according to their primary function in the administration or the army. The author pays fitting tribute to the pioneering work of earlier scholars, such as Röhrborn, Savory, and Aubin (whose work is oddly described as “less accessible”; p. x) but justly remarks that a great deal of new source material has become available since then.