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The ‘Merits of Isfahan’ from Arabic into Persian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2019

LOUISE MARLOW
LOUISE MARLOW*
Affiliation:
Wellesley Collegelmarlow@wellesley.edu
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Abstract

Writing in Isfahan in 729/1328-9, Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Abī l-Riżā ʿAlavī Āvī produced a translation into Persian of the eleventh-century Arabic Risālat Maḥāsin Iṣfahān (‘Epistle on the Merits of Isfahan’) of Mufaḍḍal b. Saʿd b. al-Ḥusayn al-Māfarrukhī. This article explores the context for and purposes of Āvī’s translation-adaptation with particular reference to the extensive system of networks active in western Iran during the reign of the Ilkhan Abū Saʿīd (r. 716-36/1316-35). It is proposed that Āvī intended his translation to provide a means of entry into the urban élites and an affiliation with the administrative circles associated with the vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 736/1336), a son of Rashīd al-Dīn Fażl Allāh, who occupied a position at the apex of this system of networks.

Keywords

Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Abīl-RiżāʿAlavīĀvı11th C translation into PersianEpistle on the Merits of Isfahan'Mufaḍḍal b. Saʿd b. al-Ḥ usayn al-Maf̄ arrukhı
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 599 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2019

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Footnotes

I presented some of the ideas explored in this article at the Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in March 2018, and I should like to express my gratitude for the valuable comments that I received on that occasion from several colleagues, including Beatrice Manz, Judith Pfeiffer, Julia Rubanovich and Abolala Soudavar. I am also very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who read this article for JRAS and made several useful suggestions for revision.

References

1 References to RMI in this article are to Iṣfahānī, Mufaḍḍal b. Saʿd Māfarrukhī, Kitāb Maḥāsin Iṣfahān, (ed.) Ṭihrānī, Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥusaynī (Tehran, 1933)Google Scholar. Since the manuscript from which Ṭihrānī worked is dated 735/1334-5 (Editor's Introduction, [bāʾ]), I take the published edition of RMI to represent a reasonable facsimile of the text available to Āvī in 729/1328-9. The principal modern scholarly studies of RMI are Paul, Jürgen, ‘The Histories of Isfahan: Mafarrukhi's Kitāb Maḥāsin Iṣfahān’, Iranian Studies 33 (2000), pp. 117–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (hereafter EIr) (2016), online (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mahasen-esfahan), accessed 18 March 2018; idem, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Iṣfahān in the Saljūq Period (London, 2010), pp. 15, 130-135 and passim.

2 References to TMI apply to Tarjameh-yi Maḥāsin-i Iṣfahān az ʿarabī bi-fārsī, (ed.) ʿAbbās Iqbāl (Tehran, 1949), unless otherwise indicated (on the work's textual history, see below). The variant title appears in MSS Persian 180, Royal Asiatic Society; E. G. Browne Collection, I.2, Cambridge University Library.

3 TMI, pp. 7, 101, 131, 135, 145-146.

4 See Mustawfī, Ḥamd Allāh, Tārīkh-i guzīdeh, (ed.) Navāʾī, ʿA. (Tehran, 1983), pp. 620–623Google Scholar; Khvāndamīr, Dastūr al-vuzarāʾ, (ed.) Nafīsī, Saʿīd (Tehran, 1938), pp. 324–331Google Scholar; Jackson, Peter and Melville, Charles, ‘Ġīāt-al-Dīn Moḥammad’, EIr x (2001), pp. 598–599Google Scholar, updated 2012 (http://www.iranicaonline/articles/giat-al-din-mohammad), accessed 9 December 2017. A letter of Ghiyāth al-Dīn's is contained in the Safīneh-yi Tabrīz of Abū l-Majd Muḥammad b. Masʿūd Tabrīzī (Tehran, 2003), pp. 733-734.

5 Āveh was, in fact, the name of two locations. I take Āvī’s nisba to refer to Āveh (also Ābeh, Ar. Āba), a town and district of Sāveh, which lay some six farsangs to the west of Qumm (Mustawfī, Ḥamd Allāh, Nuzhat al-qulūb, (ed.) Le Strange, G. [Tehran, 1983], pp. 62–63, 184Google Scholar, The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulūb, Translation G. Le Strange with a New Preface by Charles Melville, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2017 [first published Leiden and London, 1919], pp. 68, 175). Another small town, also known as Āvā, lay roughly half-way between Qazvin and Hamadan (Mustawfī, Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 60, Geographical Part, p. 66). Yāqūt (574 or 575-626/1179-1229), writing in the early seventh/thirteenth century, noted the disagreement or confusion regarding the location of Āba; in addition to the Āba, known locally as Āveh, that lay close to Sāveh, he knew of an Āba located in Upper Egypt (Muʿjam al-buldān [Beirut, 1955], i, p. 51). See further Bosworth, C. E., ‘Āva’, EIr iii (1989), pp. 29–30Google Scholar, updated 2011 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ava), accessed 18 April 2019.

6 The most notable of the eleventh-century bearers of the nisba Āvī (Ar. al-Ābī) was Abū Saʿd Manṣūr b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ābī, author of the anthology Nathr al-durar.

7 On the ahl al-ʿilm who hailed from Sāveh and its library, see Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, iii, pp. 179-180.

8 Saʿd al-Dīn, a close associate of Rashīd al-Dīn, with whom for a period he shared the vizierate, was executed in 711/1312, some years before Rashīd al-Dīn's fall and execution (718/1318). Salmān, whose father held a post in the Ilkhanid financial administration, began his career under the patronage of Ghiyāth al-Dīn (see M. Glünz, ‘Salmān-i Sāwadjī’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (eds.) P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs (hereafter EI 2), viii (1995), pp. 997-998, online (http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.wellesley.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6558), accessed 18 April 2019.

9 On the insignia, symbolic of involvement in the literary and secretarial arts, that Āvī associates with his exodus from his home city, see below, at n. 39. As M. T. Dānishpazhūh has proposed, a certain Zayn al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Abī l-Riżā al-ʿAlavī al-Āvī, a contemporary of the translator and the author of a collection of masāʾil dealing with Arabic grammar, is almost certain to have been a relative (Ḥusayn ʿAlavī Āvī, Farmān-i Mālik-i Ashtar, ed. Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh [n. p., 1979], p. 50). Possible associates or acquaintances of Āvī include several individuals whose writings have been preserved in a single miscellany, the contents of which suggest a milieu sympathetic to Shīʿī sensibilities: Zayn al-Dīn Āvī (perhaps the grammarian), whose verses follow a copy of the Sīrat-i maʿṣūmān-i shīʿī of ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Niẓām ‘Vāʿiẓ-i Shāmī’; ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Riżā Ḥusaynī Ḥāfiẓ, who copied several of the pieces contained in the manuscript, including the Maqāla fī faḍāʾil Amīr al-Muʿminīn ʿAlī of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, and two pieces dated 738/1337, one of which he wrote for Shams al-Dīn Āvī; and Muḥammad b. Abī Ṭālib Āvī, who produced a copy, dated 735/1335, of the Uṣūl ʿilm al-balāgha of Kamāl al-Dīn Mītham b. ʿAlī b. Mītham Baḥrānī (d. 679/1280-1) (Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn, Akhlāq-i muḥtashamī, (ed.) Dānishpazhūh, M. T. [Tehran, 1960], xxx–xxxiiGoogle Scholar).

10 al-ʿĀmilī, Muḥsin al-Amīn al-Ḥusaynī (Aʿyān al-shīʿa, [Damascus, 1948], xxvii, p. 127, no. 5404)Google Scholar counted Āvī among the Shīʿa and included him in his collection of Shīʿī biographies, where he cited an Arabic verse that concludes with the poet's pride in his exaltation of the Prophet and love of the Prophet's family (TMI, p. 137). Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī likewise counted Āvī among the Shīʿa, (Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-shīʿa [Beirut, 2009], v, p. 58)Google Scholar; Mahdī Faqīh Īmānī lists Āvī, whom he describes as a sayyid, and Māfarrukhī among the Shīʿa, (Tārīkh-i tashayyuʿ-i Iṣfahān [Tehran, 1995], pp. 257–258, 318–319)Google Scholar; Durand-Guédy likewise considers it likely that Āvī was a Shīʿī (‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’).

11 Nuzhat al-qulūb, pp. 60, 62-63, Geographical Part, pp. 66, 68. Mustawfī, who found the inhabitants of almost all Sāveh's surrounding villages to be Ithnāʾ Ashʿarī Shīʿites, also notes the presence of the tomb (mashhad) of Isḥāq, son of the Imām Mūsā al-Kāẓim, just north of Sāveh (Nuzhat al-qulūb, pp. 62-63, Geographical Part, p. 68). Yāqūt, writing a century earlier than Mustawfī, already reported continual conflict between the population of Āba, who belonged to the Imāmī Shīʿa, and the inhabitants of Sāveh, who were Sunnī and Shāfiʿī (Muʿjam al-buldān, i, p. 50; iii, p. 179).

12 Pfeiffer, Judith, ‘Confessional Ambiguity vs. Confessional Polarization: Politics and the Negotiation of Religious Boundaries in the Ilkhanate’, in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th-15th Century Tabriz, (ed.) Pfeiffer, Judith (Leiden, 2014), pp. 129–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term ‘confessional ambiguity’ derives from Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, Revised and Expanded Edition (Salt Lake City, 1999), p. 4Google Scholar.

13 Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’.

14 TMI, pp. 69-72; RMI, pp. 23-25.

15 RMI, p. 6; TMI, p. 80.

16 TMI, pp. 11, 126; RMI, pp. 5, 35.

17 TMI, p. 145.

18 See, for example, two contemporaneous compositions, both dedicated to the Hazāraspid (Fażlavī) Atabeg Nuṣrat al-Dīn Aḥmad (r. 696-730 or 733/1296-1330 or 1333) of Greater Luristan: Nakhjavānī, Hindūshāh Ṣāḥibī, Tajārib al-salaf, (ed.) Iqbāl, ʿAbbās (Tehran, 1965), pp. 52–6Google Scholar; and Tuḥfeh (dar akhlāq va-siyāsat), (ed.) M. T. Dānishpazhūh (Tehran, 1962), pp. 133-134; cf. Marlow, L., ‘Teaching Wisdom: A Persian Work of Advice for Atabeg Aḥmad of Luristan’, in Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft, (ed.) Boroujerdi, Mehrzad (Syracuse, 2013), pp. 122–159Google Scholar.

19 TMI, pp. 119-122, 126.

20 Interestingly, Āvī associated ʿAlī’s ‘Letter’ with Mālik-i Ashtar's appointment as governor of ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam, rather than, as in Nahj al-balāgha, as governor of Egypt (Farmān-i Mālik-i Ashtar, p. 59; cf. Chittick, William C., A Shiʿite Anthology [Albany, 1981], p. 68)Google Scholar.

21 Farmān-i Mālik-i Ashtar, pp. 50-52, 100; A. J. Arberry, B. W. Robinson, the late E. Blochet and the late Wilkinson, J. V. S., The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures (Dublin, 1962), iii, pp. 72–73Google Scholar, no. 308.

22 This individual, apparently a highly placed administrator in the fiscal administration of Isfahan and its environs, is praised lavishly for his experience, knowledge and abilities in TMI, where Āvī invokes him as ṣāḥib-i aʿẓam dastūr-i aʿlam niẓām va-ṣalāḥ-i jahān mudabbir-i umūr-i Īrān iftikhār al-vuzarāʾ ikhtiyār al-varā Sharaf al-Dawla wa-l-Dīn ʿAlī al-Fāminīnī (TMI, p. 50). The reading of Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī’s nisba is somewhat uncertain. I have adopted the reading of ʿAbbās Iqbāl (TMI, p. 50; appearing in the index, however, as Fāmīnī [p. 154]). Dānishpazhūh also reads Fāminīnī (pp. 50, 59, where Āvī invokes him with similar epithets to those that appear in TMI). The nisba almost certainly derives from the name of a village lying in Azmāvīn, one of the five districts in Hamadan, for which various names are recorded (Hamadānnāmeh: Bīst maqāleh dar-bāreh-yi Mādistān, (ed.) Parvīz Adhkāʾī [Hamadan, 2001], pp. 15 [map], 77-78, 80, 140). In Le Strange's edition of Mustawfī’s Nuzhat al-qulūb, the name appears as Fāmītī, with variants supplied (Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 72 and n. 6; Geographical Part, p. 75; cf. Hamadānnāmeh, p. 132 and n. 2). Writing in 1901, without the benefit of Dānishpazhūh's edition of the Farmān-i Mālik-i Ashtar, E. G. Browne, following the Persian manuscript RAS 180, initially read the name as a reference to Nāyīn, which, according to Mustawfī, lay twenty-six farsangs from Isfahan (Mustawfī, Nuzhat al-qulūb, pp. 52, 74, 141; cf. Spuler, Bertold, Die Mongolen in Iran [Leiden, 1985], p. 290Google Scholar). Having consulted a second manuscript, Browne later emended his reading to Ghāmīnī, (‘of Ghámín’; ‘Account of a Rare Manuscript History of Iṣfahán, Presented to the Royal Asiatic Society on May 19, 1827’, JRAS [1901], pp. 433, 700)Google Scholar.

23 For leanings towards the former view, see Morgan, David, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), p. 173Google Scholar; Jackson, Peter, ‘Abū Saʿīd Bahādor Khan’, EIr I (1983), pp. 374–377Google Scholar, updated 2011 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abu-said-bahador-khan), accessed 8 February 2018; for the latter view, see Melville, Charles, The Fall of Amir Chupan and the Decline of the Ilkhanate, 1327–37: A Decade of Discord in Mongol Iran (Bloomington, 1999), p. 3Google Scholar and passim. See also Morgan, David, ‘The Mongols in Iran: A Reappraisal’, Iran 42 (2004), pp. 134–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Amitai, Reuven, ‘The Resolution of the Mongol-Mamluk War’, Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World, (eds.) Amitai, R. and Biran, M. (Leiden, 2005), pp. 359–390Google Scholar; Reuven Amitai, The Mongols in the Islamic Lands: Studies in the History of the Ilkhanate XVI (Aldershot and Burlington).

25 On the reforms of Ghazan, see Kolbas, Judith, The Mongols in Iran: Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu 1220–1309 (London, 2006), pp. 310–374Google Scholar.

26 Literally ‘gates of benevolence’; compare abwāb al-birr, literally ‘gates of piety’, a phrase referring to a piously founded complex, often including a tomb (Shahriyārī, Laylā, Sharḥ-i dushvārīhā-yi Vaqfnāmeh-yi Rabʿ-i Rashīdī [Tabriz, 2008], p. 66Google Scholar; Hoffmann, Birgitt, Waqf im mongolischen Iran: Rašīduddīns Sorge um Nachruhm und Seelenheil [Stuttgart, 2000], pp. 17Google Scholar, 38, 76, 166-167, 200, 206, 235-236, 243, 247, 255, 276, 348, 404; Blair, Sheila S., ‘Ilkhanid Architecture and Society: An Analysis of the Endowment Deed of the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī’, Iran 22, 1984, pp. 67, 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the dār al-siyāda, see Pfeiffer, ‘Confessional Ambiguity vs. Confessional Polarization’, p. 146.

27 Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 214.

28 Baṭṭūṭa, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār fī gharāʾib al-amṣār (Beirut, 1992), pp. 214–215Google Scholar.

29 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār, p. 214. See also Mustawfī, Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 49, where the author notes that the majority of the population were Sunnī and Shāfiʿī, and by and large utterly obedient (dar ṭāʿat darajeh-yi tamām dārand), other than their tendency to internal conflict (muḥārabeh va-nizāʿ). On the physical virtues and sociological problems of Isfahan, Mustawfī cites two poems, one by Kamāl al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (pp. 49-50). On this persistent conflict, see also Aigle, Denise, The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Leiden, 2015), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār, pp. 219-221; Pfeiffer, Judith, Twelver Shīʿism in Mongol Iran, (Istanbul, 1999), pp. 14–16Google Scholar.

31 Pfeiffer, Judith, ‘Conversion Versions: Sultan Öljeytü’s Conversion to Shiʿism (709/1309) in Muslim Narrative Sources’, Mongolian Studies 22 (1999), pp. 43Google Scholar; eadem, Twelver Shīʿism, p. 18.

32 Golombek, Lisa, ‘The Cult of Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Fourteenth Century’, in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Kouymjian, D. (Beirut, 1974), p. 423Google Scholar; cf. Hoffmann, Waqf im mongolischen Iran, 207. Several shrines of the period are characterised by Shīʿī versions of the profession of faith (Golombek, ‘Cult of Saints’, pp. 422, 425, 427), and Öljeytü’s attempt to establish Shīʿism in Isfahan remains visible in the miḥrāb added to the Friday mosque; see Melville, Charles, ‘The Mongols in Iran’, in The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353, (eds.) Komaroff, Linda and Carboni, Stefano (New Haven, 2002), p. 58Google Scholar.

33 On the extant manuscripts, see Munzavī, Aḥmad, Fihrist-i nuskheh-hā-yi khaṭṭī-yi fārsī [Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts] (Tehran, 1969), vi, p. 4295Google Scholar.

34 See above, n 2. Since its appearance in 1949, Iqbāl's edition has been reprinted as Āshtiyānī, ʿAbbās Iqbāl, Maḥāsin-i Iṣfahān (Isfahan, 2006)Google Scholar. The manuscript from which Iqbāl prepared his edition was perhaps identical to the old manuscript read by Muḥsin al-Amīn al-ʿĀmilī in the Maktabat Sharīʿatmadār in Rasht (Aʿyān al-shīʿa, xxvii, p. 127).

35 The copy held in the Chester Beatty Library, listed under the title Maḥāsin i Iṣfahān, is undated and unsigned; defective at both ends, it is described as ‘old’ and dated to the mid-fourteenth-century (The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts, iii, p. 74, no. 312). The manuscript that formed the subject for E. G. Browne's summary and discussion (‘Account of a Rare Manuscript’; see above, n. 22) is held in the Royal Asiatic Society (Persian 180), dated 884/1479 and completed in Isfahan at the Mosque of Amīr Ibrāhīm Shāh (f. 82b). A postscript to Browne's article contains additional materials and emendations, based on his late access to a second manuscript, transcribed in Isfahan at the request of Charles Schefer, and dated 1315/1897 (Blochet, E., Catalogue de la collection de manuscrits orientaux arabes, persans et turcs formée par M. Charles Schefer et acquise par l’état [Paris, 1900], p. 137, no. 1573Google Scholar; Blochet, E., Catalogue des manuscrits persans de la Bibliothèque nationale [Paris, 1905], i, pp. 308–9, no. 502Google Scholar). A further manuscript, Or. 10980 (British Library), lacks a title, doxology and colophon, but resembles RAS Persian 180 in several of its lacunae.

36 The two nineteenth-century copies are Browne I.2 (Cambridge University Library), dated 1278/1861-2, and the manuscript, dated 1315/1897, copied for Schefer and now held in the BnF (see previous note).

37 On this trope, see Marlow, L., ‘The Way of Viziers and the Lamp of Commanders (Minhāj al-wuzarāʾ wa-sirāj al-umarāʾ) of Aḥmad al-Iṣfahbadhī and the Literary and Political Culture of Early Fourteenth-Century Iran’, in Writers and Rulers: Perspectives on Their Relationship from Abbasid to Safavid Times, (eds.) Gruendler, Beatrice and Marlow, Louise (Wiesbaden, 2004), pp. 179–180Google Scholar.

38 TMI, p. 2.

39 TMI, pp. 2-3. Kashan lay on the route from Sāveh, via Āveh, to Isfahan; Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 184, Geographical Part, p. 175.

40 TMI, p. 3. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa likewise lodged in the city, where he received a fortnight's generous hospitality in a khānaqāh that dispensed food to travellers (al-wārid wa-l-ṣādir); Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār, pp. 214-215.

41 TMI, p. 3.

42 TMI, pp. 3-4. Āvī dates Māfarrukhī’s composition, incorrectly, to the year 421/1030, a date that appears in the text of RMI (RMI, p. 107; TMI, p. 4). M. Minovi pointed out the erroneous nature of this dating and proposed c. 480/1087 as the likely time of Māfarrukhī’s composition (M. Minovi, ‘Notes on Māfarrukhī’s The Beauties of Iṣfahān’, Bulletin of the American Institute for Art and Archaeology v, i [1937], p. 28).

43 TMI, p. 4.

44 TMI, pp. 4-5. Āvī’s table of contents outlines the subjects treated in the source and target texts: the qualities of Isfahan and its superiority to other locations; description of Isfahan and its surroundings; Gāvkhvānī and the distinguishing qualities of the environs of Isfahan; the beautiful features of the city's interior and exterior; Isfahan's rulers and would-be rulers, from Pharaoh onwards; contemporary notables; the qualities of the Isfahani population; description of the seasons; novelties; description of the Muṣallā, and the roads and remarkable personages of Isfahan in the past and present (see the useful summaries of the contents of RMI and TMI in Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’, and of TMI in Browne, ‘Account of a Rare Manuscript’).

45 TMI, pp. 5-7.

46 TMI, p. 135.

47 TMI, pp. 145-146.

48 TMI, p. 49 and passim.

49 The bestowal and exchange of gifts constituted a critical element in the disposition of the affairs of the court; on the economy of gift-giving in the reigns of Ghazan and Öljeytü, see Kolbas, Mongols in Iran, pp. 310-313.

50 See below, n. 103.

51 Marlow, ‘The Way of Viziers’, pp. 179-180.

52 Birgitt Hoffmann proposes that Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad owed his naming to the Muslim names of his royal namesake, Öljeytü (Waqf im mongolischen Iran, pp. 77, 92).

53 His appointment, at first briefly held jointly with ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad Faryūmardī, followed the fall of Dimashq Khvāja b. Chūpān (see Melville, The Fall of Amir Chupan, pp. 10-18, 29).

54 Al-Ṣafadī, , Kitāb al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt,(ed.) al-Arnaʾūṭ, Aḥmad and Muṣṭafā, Turkī (Beirut, 2000), iv, p. 234Google Scholar. At one point, Abū Saʿīd commanded Ghiyāth al-Dīn to take control of the army, reportedly during a period of illness that preceded the Ilkhan's death in 736/1335 (Melville, Fall of Amir Chupan, p. 60). On the scope of Rashīd al-Dīn's power, see Hoffmann, Waqf im mongolischen Iran, pp. 77-89.

55 Ghiyāth al-Dīn took an active part in the struggle for power that followed the death of Abū Saʿīd. Charles Melville observes that the attachment to the vizier of the title ‘Amīr’ reveals the ambiguities in the evolving collaboration between viziers and noyans, likely to have contributed significantly to the alienation against him (Fall of Amir Chupan, p. 44).

56 Melville, ‘The Mongols in Iran’, p. 46; cf. Aubin, Jean, ‘Le patronage culturel en Iran sous les Ilkhans: une grande famille de Yazd’, Le monde iranien et l'Islam 3 (1975), pp. 107–118Google Scholar.

57 The preface to Vaṣṣāf's Tajziyat al-amṣār va-tazjiyat al-aʿṣār, commonly referred to as Tārīkh-i Vaṣṣāf, a five-volume history of the Ilkhans from 658/1260, is dated 699/1300. Vaṣṣāf had completed four volumes by 712/1312, the fifth reaching completion in 727/1326-7 or 728/1327-8.

58 Aubin, Jean, Émirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l'acculturation (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar; Jackson, Peter, The Mongols and the Islamic World from Conquest to Conversion (New Haven, 2017), pp. 282–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Lambton, A. K. S., ‘The Āthār wa Aḥyāʾ of Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist’, in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, (eds.) Amitai-Preiss, Reuven and Morgan, David O. (Leiden, 1999), p. 128Google Scholar.

60 Album, Stephen, ‘Studies in Ilkhanid History and Numismatics: I: A Late Ilkhanid Hoard (743/1342)’, Studia Iranica 13 (1984), pp. 52–53Google Scholar (examples struck in Isfahan passim); Blair, Sheila S., ‘The Coins of the Later Ilkhānids: Mint Organization, Regionalization, and Urbanism’, American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 27 (1982), pp. 217–218Google Scholar; Kolbas, Mongols in Iran, pp. 327- 336, 342-344.

61 Melville, Charles, ‘The Itineraries of Sultan Öljeitü, 1304–16’, Iran 28 (1990), pp. 55–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Persian Historiography, (ed.) Charles Melville (A History of Persian Literature, Volume X) (London, 2012), pp. 176-179.

62 Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 51. On Īdhaj, also known as Māl al-Amīr, see Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār, pp. 209-13; Karīmī, Bahman, Jughrāfī-yi mufaṣṣal-i tārīkhī-yi gharb-i Īrān (Tehran, 1937), pp. 310–13Google Scholar (Īdheh). The phrase ‘mediated sovereignty’ is adopted from Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World, pp. 242-268.

63 Shabānkāraʾī, for example, produced three versions of his Majmaʿ al-ansāb. He dedicated the initial version, composed in 733/1332-3, to Abū Saʿīd; he entrusted this work to Ghiyāth al-Dīn, but before the vizier had been able to convey it to the Ilkhan, Abū Saʿīd died, and the book was subsequently lost, reportedly when the vizier's house was pillaged in 736/1336. Shabānkāraʾī completed a second redaction in 738/1337; and a further version bears the date 743/1342-3 (Shabānkāraʾī, , Majmaʿ al-ansāb [Tehran, 1984], pp. 272–273, 279–280Google Scholar; Aubin, Jean, ‘Un chroniqueur méconnu, Šabānkāraʾī’, Studia Iranica 10 [1981], pp. 213–224Google Scholar). Nāṣir al-Dīn Munshī similarly dedicated various works to the potential patrons of the time (Melville, Persian Historiography, 203), and Khvājū Kirmānī, who was perpetually on the move, appears to have made a practice of invoking certain patrons in the prefaces to his mathnavīs and different figures in his conclusions (Teresa Fitzherbert, ‘Khwājū Kirmānī (689-753/1290-52): An Éminence Grise of Fourteenth Century Persian Painting’, Iran 29 [1991], pp. 138-139, 145-146).

64 Golombek, ‘Cult of Saints’; Blair, Sheila S., ‘Sufi Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Muqarnas 7 (1990), pp. 35–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 al-Fuwaṭī, Ibn, Majmaʿ al-ādāb fī muʿjam al-alqāb, (ed.) al-Kāẓim, Muḥammad (Tehran, 1995), ii, pp. 456–457, no. 1803Google Scholar. Birgitt Hoffmann suggests that Ghiyāth al-Dīn, whose father and brother suffered execution on the command of the Ilkhan who appointed him to the vizierate, preferred intellectual and spiritual pursuits to the political career into which he nevertheless stepped (Waqf im mongolischen Iran, p. 93). Al-Ṣafadī describes Ghiyāth al-Dīn, after the execution of his father and before Abū Saʿīd called him to the vizierate, as devoting himself to study and associating with worthy and benevolent persons (ishtaghala muddatan wa-ṣaḥiba ahl al-khayr, al-Ṣafadī, Kitāb al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, iv, p. 234).

66 For a partial list, see Marlow, ‘The Way of Viziers’, p. 176.

67 Grabar, Oleg and Blair, Sheila, Epic Images and Contemporary History: The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama (Chicago, 1980), p. 48Google Scholar; Blair, Sheila, ‘Patterns of Patronage and Production in Ilkhanid Iran: The Case of Rashīd al-Dīn’, in The Court of the Ilkhans, 1290–1340, eds. Raby, Julian and Fitzherbert, Teresa (Oxford, 1996), p. 56Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Coins of the Later Ilkhānids’, pp. 224-225; eadem, ‘Rewriting the History of the Great Mongol Shahnama’, in Shahnama: The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings, (ed.) Robert Hillenbrand (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 40, 47-48.

68 Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i guzīdeh, pp. 675-676. See Martini, Giovanni Maria, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī between Spiritual Authority and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of the Ilkhanate (Leiden, 2018), pp. 1–97Google Scholar; Elias, Jamal J., The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ ad-Dawla as-Simnānī (Albany, 1995Google Scholar); van Ess, J., ‘ʿAlāʾ-al-Dawla Semnānī’, EIr i (1984), pp. 774–7Google Scholar, updated 2011 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ala-al-dawla-semnani), accessed 20 June 2018; Amitai, ‘Sufis and Shamans’, p. 32; Potter, Lawrence G., ‘Sufis and Sultans in Post-Mongol Iran’, Iranian Studies 27 (1994), pp. 92–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chūpān, furthermore, held discussions with al-Simnānī, and shortly before his fall he required his amīrs to swear an oath of loyalty both in Mashhad-i Tus and at the khānaqāh of Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn in Simnan (Melville, Fall of Amir Chupan, pp. 20-22; Martini, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī, pp. 86-87).

69 On Khvājū Kirmānī’s encounter with Simnāni, see Dawlatshāh, , Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ, (ed.) ʿAlāqeh, Fāṭimeh (Tehran, 2007), pp. 435–443Google Scholar; Fitzherbert, ‘Khwājū Kirmānī’, p. 142, n. 77. Elsewhere, it is Amīn al-Dīn Balyānī (d. 745/1345) who is reported to have guided the initiation (J. T. P de Bruijn, ‘Kvājū Kermāni’, EIr [2009], online [http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kvaju-kermani], accessed 28 August 2018).

70 Golombek, ‘Cult of Saints’, pp. 419-430.

71 Potter, ‘Sufis and Sultans’; Martini, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī between Spiritual Authority and Political Power; Melville, ‘The Mongols in Iran’, pp. 57-58.

72 Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’; Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’; idem, ‘The Political Agenda of an Iranian Adīb at the Time of the Great Saljuqs: Māfarrukhī’s K. Maḥāsin Iṣfahān Put into Context’, Nouvelle Revue des Études Iraniennes 1 (2008), p. 68.

73 Minovi dated RMI to c. 480/1087 (‘Notes on Māfarrukhī’s The Beauties of Iṣfahān’, p. 28); Durand-Guédy likewise dates RMI to the earlier part of Malikshāh's reign, and almost certainly earlier than 479-80/1086-7 (‘Political Agenda’, p. 70; idem, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’).

74 Durand-Guédy, ‘Political Agenda’, pp. 69-70; idem, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, p. 15.

75 RMI, pp. 25-26, 99-100; Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’; idem, ‘Political Agenda’, p. 70. It is perhaps worth noting that an earlier littérateur from Āveh, Manṣūr b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ābī, author of Nathr al-durar, had enjoyed the patronage of al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (Bosworth, ‘Āva’).

76 RMI, p. 117; the author's panegyric is anticipated in his mentions of Fakhr al-Mulk earlier in the section (pp. 105, 109). Cf. TMI, ‘Muqaddimeh-yi nāshir’, dāl; Durand-Guédy, ‘Political Agenda’, p. 72; idem, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’. On Fakhr al-Mulk, see Khvāndamīr, Dastūr al-vuzarāʾ, p. 188.

77 Durand-Guédy, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, pp. 78-83, 83-101. Māfarrukhī explicitly states that Malikshāh grew up not in the city but fī nawāḥīhā (RMI, p. 105; noted in Durand-Guédy, David, ‘Ruling from the Outside: A New Perspective on Early Turkish Kingship in Iran’, in Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies in Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, (eds.) Mitchell, Lynette and Melville, Charles [Boston, 2013], p. 331)Google Scholar.

78 Durand-Guédy, , ‘New Trends in the Political History of Iran under the Great Saljuqs (11th-12th Centuries)’, History Compass 13 (2015), pp. 327–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fig. 3.

79 Durand-Guédy, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, pp. 256-297; idem, ‘Political Agenda’, pp. 71-2.

80 On the use of the term ‘capital’ in referring to Isfahan's status during the reign of Malikshāh, see the comments of Durand-Guédy (Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, p. 75) and Paul, Jürgen (‘Review Article: Recent Publications on the History of Iran under the Seljuqs’, Eurasian Studies 9 [2010], p. 267)Google Scholar.

81 Durand-Guédy, ‘Political Agenda’, pp. 73-89; idem, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, pp. 15, 115-129, 131-135; idem, ‘Iranians at War under Turkish Domination: The Example of Pre-Mongol Isfahan’, Iranian Studies 38 (2005), pp. 589-590.

82 For a fuller consideration of the context and motivations underlying Māfarrukhī’s composition, see Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’, pp. 117-132; idem, ‘Isfahan V: Local Historiography’, EIr xiii (2006), pp. 638-641, updated 2012 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-v-local-historiography), accessed 3 March 2018; Durand-Guédy, Iranian Élites and Turkish Rulers, p. 131.

83 Manuscripts of TMI reveal variations in the arrangement and contents; see above, n. 35, and Browne, ‘Account of a Rare Manuscript’, pp. 690-704.

84 TMI, p. 47. It is in this chapter that Āvī states the date of his writing (TMI, p. 49).

85 TMI, pp. 6, 9, 16, 24, 28, 44, 49, 51, 54, 94, 99, 115, 119, 123.

86 For a discussion of this report in Māfarrukhī’s text, see Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’, pp. 120-121.

87 RMI, p. 20; Paul, ‘Histories’, p. 121.

88 RMI, p. 21.

89 TMI, p. 38. Following Māfarrukhī, who terms the account a ḥikāya and uses the phrase ḥukiya lī, Āvī classifies the report as a ḥikāyat (RMI, p. 17; TMI, p. 38).

90 RMI, p. 19; TMI, p. 41. In another modification, Āvī expands on his source's story concerning the medicinal remedy of the people of Narsābād.

91 RMI, p. 20; TMI, p. 41.

92 TMI, pp. 42-3; Shabānkāraʾī, Majmaʿ al-ansāb, p. 214; Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i guzīdeh, pp. 622-623; Ḥasan Jaʿfarī, Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b., Tārīkh-i Yazd, (ed.) Afshār, Īraj (Tehran, 1960), pp. 106–107, 111Google Scholar; Aubin, ‘Le patronage culturel’, pp. 113-114, 116; Binbaş, Ilker Evrim, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 26–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 TMI, pp. 43-44.

94 TMI, p. 57, and ‘Ḥavāshī va-mulāḥaẓāt’, pp. 164-5. On Muẓaffar al-Dīn's father, Amīr Muḥammad Īdājī (also Īdāchī), governor (ḥākim) and bāsqāq of Isfahan from the accession of Geikhatu Khan, see Kirmānī, Nāṣir al-Dīn Munshī, Simṭ al-ʿulā li-l-ḥażrat al-ʿulyā, (ed.) Shamsī, Maryam Mīr (Tehran, 2016), p. 109Google Scholar. Lunbān is a village near Isfahan.

95 TMI, p. 59, and ‘Ḥavāshī va-mulāḥaẓāt’, p. 165. Qāḍī l-quḍāt of Isfahan and associated with the Juvaynī family, Niẓām al-Dīn was renowned for his Arabic and Persian compositions, including his mulammaʿ (mixed Arabic and Persian, interlingual) poetry (Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i guzīdeh, pp. 754-755).

96 TMI, p. 23.

97 TMI, p. 50, and see above, n. 22.

98 TMI, p. 68, and ‘Ḥavāshī va-mulāḥaẓāt’, p. 166. See also Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, Majmaʿ al-ādāb, iii, p. 178, no. 2431; Aubin, Émirs mongols et vizirs persans, pp. 77, 84. For other examples of contemporary and near-contemporary notables whom Āvī mentions with praise in TMI, see pp. 57, 42-43, 49.

99 Cf. Aubin, ‘Le patronage culturel’.

100 On the appropriate forms of address for individuals at different levels in the political hierarchy in this period, see Āmulī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd (d. 753/1352-3), Nafāʾis al-funūn fī ʿarāʾis al-ʿuyūn, (ed.) Shaʿrānī, Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan (Tehran, 1998), i, pp. 280–292Google Scholar.

101 RMI, pp. 5, 13, 26, 27, 84, 85-86, 90, 98, 99, 111; 103-104; TMI, p. 14 (citing a verse of al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād that does not appear in RMI), pp. 45, 46, 54, 73, 92, 95; 140-143.

102 TMI, pp. 131-135, 145-146.

103 Al-Ṣafadī, Kitāb al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, iv, p. 234.

104 Melville, Persian Historiography, pp. 155-208, particularly pp. 157-160; Aigle, Denise, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole. Politique et fiscalité (XIIIe-XIVe s.) (Paris, 2005), pp. 87–88Google Scholar; Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World, p. 22.

105 On the power exercised by Rashīd al-Dīn and Ghiyāth al-Dīn, see respectively Hope, Michael, Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate of Iran (Oxford, 2016), pp. 9, 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Melville, Fall of Amir Chupan, pp. 29, 35, 41, 60-68 and passim; Hoffmann, Waqf im mongolischen Iran, pp. 91-99.

106 Aigle, Le Fārs, pp. 88-99, notes the varied vocabulary used of the office, as well as the tendency – by no means without exception – to restrict the vizier's areas of responsibility to taxation and financial administration.

107 For the various shifts in appointments and their titles (and their proverbially perilous nature) in the reign of Öljeytü, see Hoffmann, Waqf im mongolischen Iran, pp. 83-89.

108 Yavari, Neguin, The Future of Iran's Past: Niẓām al-Mulk Remembered (New York, 2018), xiiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also pp. 61-104, 127-148.

109 Hindūshāh Ṣāḥibi Nakhjavānī, for example, asserted his unparallelled stature in a long portrayal of the vizier (Tajārib al-salaf, pp. 266–281). See also al-Ḥusayn al-Iṣfahānī, Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b., Dastūr al-vizāra, (ed.) Anzābī-Nizhād, Riżā (Tehran, 1985), pp. 67–74Google Scholar, and 37. On Ilkhanid uses of sources from the Seljuk period and portrayals of the Seljuks, see Morton, Alexander H., ‘Qashani and Rashid al-Din on the Seljuks of Iran’, in Living Islamic History: Studies in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand, (ed.) Suleiman, Yasir (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 166–177Google Scholar.

110 Nasāʾim al-asḥār min laṭāʾim al-akhbār, (ed.) Mīr Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥusaynī Urmavī Muḥaddith (Tehran, 1959), pp. 48-93, 100-119. The same approach is evident in Khvāndamīr, Dastūr al-vuzarāʾ, pp. 149-189, 206-207.

111 See Stefan T. Kamola, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn and the Making of History in Mongol Iran’, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2013; see also Kamola's forthcoming monograph on the subject.

112 Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i guzīdeh, pp. 620-623; al-Ṣafadī, Kitāb al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, iv, p. 234 (see above, n. 103).

113 Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’.

114 Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’.

115 Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’, p. 128; idem, ‘Local Historiography’; Durand-Guédy, ‘Maḥāsen Eṣfahān’.

116 Hanaway, William L., ‘Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language’, in Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, (eds.) Spooner, Brian and Hanaway, William L. (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 97, 120Google Scholar.

117 TMI, p. 5; Marlow, ‘The Way of Viziers’, p. 178.

118 Among the poets with whom Āvī dispensed in his translation-adaptation are Abū l-Fatḥ Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Māfarrukhī, Abū ʿAlī al-Baṣīr, ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad al-Khāzin, Abū l-Faraj ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Yūnus, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn, Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Abū l-Faraj Ibn Hindū, Abū Tammām, Abū Saʿīd al-Ābī, and several poets of Zoroastrian background, including Abū Manṣūr b. Buzurg-Umīd b. Ādharjashnāsh and his father Buzurg-Umīd.

119 TMI, pp. 10, 13. See Beelaert, Anna Livia, ‘Kāqāni Šervāni’, EIr xv (2010), pp. 521–529Google Scholar, updated 2012 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kaqani-servani), accessed 23 August 2018; Nafīsī, Saʿīd, Tārīkh-i naẓm va-nathr dar Īrān (Tehran, 1984), i, pp. 103–104Google Scholar.

120 TMI, p. 102. See Beelaert, Anna Livia, ‘Mojir-al-Dīn Baylaqāni’, EIr (2014)Google Scholar, online (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mojir-al-din-baylaqani), accessed 23 August 2018; Nafīsī, Tārīkh-i naẓm va-nathr, i, pp. 74, 107; Blois, F. C. de, ‘Mudjīr al-Dīn Baylaḳānī’, EI 2 Supplement, XII (2004), pp. 630–631Google Scholar, and online (http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.wellesley.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_8830), accessed 18 April 2019. Isfahan figured prominently in the poetic disputes of Baylaqānī and Khāqānī, who composed a poem in praise of the city.

121 TMI, pp. 31, 103, 107. See Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, Majmaʿ al-ādāb, iv, p. 129, no. 3508; Durand-Guédy, David, ‘Kamāl-al-Dīn Eṣfahāni’, EIr xv (2010), pp. 415–417Google Scholar, updated 2012 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kamal-al-din-esfahani), accessed 24 August 2018; Nafīsī, Tārīkh-i naẓm va-nathr, i, pp. 74, 100-101.

122 TMI, pp. 29, 30, 57, 58. Nafīsī, Tārīkh-i naẓm va-nathr, i, p. 175. Haravī was an eminent poet who wrote panegyrics for Atabeg Aḥmad of Greater Luristan as well as for Ghazan Khan and Öljeitü (r. 703-17/1304-17); a few of his poems survive, although his dīvān has been lost (Nafīsī, Tārīkh-i naẓm va-nathr, i, p. 175).

123 RMI, pp. 42, 92.

124 See, for example, the poem of Khujandī in which Mānī appears twice in contexts that refer to his aesthetic brilliance (TMI, pp. 102, 107); cf. TMI, p. 36.

125 TMI, pp. 29-30.

126 Mustawfī, Nuzhat al-qulūb, p. 48.

127 TMI, p. 7; for further references to Jam(shīd), see TMI, pp. 16, 131.

128 See above, n. 67.

129 Soudavar, Abolala, ‘The Han-Lin Academy and the Persian Royal Library-Atelier’, in History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods, (eds.) Pfeiffer, Judith and Quinn, Sholeh A. in Collaboration with Tucker, Ernest (Wiesbaden, 2006), pp. 474–475Google Scholar; Fragner, Bert G., ‘Ilkhanid Rule and Its Contributions to Iranian Political Culture’, in Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan, (ed.) Komaroff, Linda (Leiden, 2006), p. 74Google Scholar; Kamola, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn and the Making of History’, p. 261.

130 Melville, Charles, ‘Between Firdausī and Rashīd al-Dīn: Persian Verse Chronicles of the Mongol Period’, Studia Islamica 104–105 (2007), pp. 45–65Google Scholar; Kamola, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn and the Making of History’, pp. 260-268.

131 TMI, pp. 59-61.

132 TMI, pp. 43-44, 99, 115. It is likely that some of the unattributed verses in TMI are also the work of Āvī.

133 TMI, pp. 12-13.

134 RMI, p. 47, l. 3 = TMI, p. 113, ll. 9-10.

135 RMI, p. 45, ll. 3-4 = TMI, p. 111, ll. 2-3, retaining after the Persian paraphrase the Arabic inna l-madād khulūq thawb al-kātib, introduced with the phrase chunānkeh ʿarab gūyand, ‘As the Arabs say …’

136 RMI, p. 47, l. 16; TMI, p. 114, l. 7. The three examples are listed in Browne, ‘Account of a Rare Manuscript’, ii, p. 673.

137 Marlow, ‘The Way of Viziers’.

138 Taḥrīr-i Tārīkh-i Vaṣṣāf, (ed.) ʿAbd al-Muḥammad Āyatī (Tehran, 1967), p. 151. On Vaṣṣāf's writings, see further Pfeiffer, Judith, ‘“A Turgid History of the Mongol Empire in Persia”: Epistemological Reflections concerning a Critical Edition of Vaṣṣāf's Tajziyat al-amṣār va tajziyat al-aʿṣār’, in Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts: Proceedings of a Symposium Held in Istanbul, March 28–30, 2001 (Beirut-Würzburg, 2007), pp. 110–111Google Scholar. As Pfeiffer points out, Vaṣṣāf's text preserves much larger quantities of poetry than that included in Āyatī’s simplified published version (Pfeiffer, ‘“Turgid History”’, p. 121).

139 Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World, p. 26, n. 79.

140 Hanaway, ‘Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language’, pp. 107-108, 110; Paul, Jürgen, ‘Enšāʾ’, EIr viii (1998), pp. 455–457Google Scholar, updated 2011 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ensa), accessed 10 March 2018.

141 On the surviving recensions of the Mongols’ diplomatic correspondence and other documents, see Aigle, Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality, pp. 199-218, 255-282; Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, ‘An Exchange of Letters in Arabic between Abaγa Īlkhān and Sultan Baybars (A. H. 667/A. D. 1268-69)’, Central Asiatic Journal 38 (1994), pp. 11–33Google Scholar ( Reuven Amitai, The Mongols in the Islamic Lands, X); Pfeiffer, ‘“Turgid History”’, pp. 110 and n. 30, 121-122 and n. 28.

142 In his biographical dictionary, Ibn al-Fuwaṭī lists a Muẓaffar al-Dīn Qutlugh Beg b. Ibrāhīm, a translator in the dīvān; describing him as al-turkī al-amīr al-tarjumān, Ibn al-Fuwaṭī reports that he rendered ‘Turkic, Uighur and Persian speech into eloquent Arabic, and accurately translated phrases’ (yutarjimu l-kalām al-turkī wa-l-ayghūrī wa-l-fārsī bi-l-ʿarabiyya al-faṣīḥa wa-l-ʿibārāt al-mutarjama al-ṣaḥīḥa) (Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, Majmaʿ al-ādāb, v, pp. 287-8, no. 5106; cited in DeWeese, Devin, ‘Cultural Transmission and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: Notes from the Biographical Dictionary of Ibn al-Fuwaṭī’, in Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan, ed. Komaroff, Linda [Leiden, 2006], pp. 23–25 and n. 30)Google Scholar. Another translator, Sayf al-Dīn Saʿīd Tarjumān, accompanied a Mongol officer sent by Abaqa Khan by way of Armenia to Sultan Baybars in 667/1228 (Amitai-Preiss, ‘Exchange of Letters in Arabic’, pp. 13-14).

143 TMI, pp. 8, 14.

144 TMI, pp. 15 (cf. Browne, ‘Account of a Rare Manuscript’, i, p. 417), 33-4 (RMI, pp. 54, 57, 58).

145 TMI, p. 46; RMI, p. 14.

146 TMI, pp. 99, 114.

147 TMI, p. 115.

148 TMI, p. 146.

149 TMI, pp. 33-34, 45; RMI, pp. 13, 54, 57, 58.

150 TMI, pp. 145-146.

151 TMI, pp. 126-127. Cf. Monzawī, ʿA. N., ‘Adīb Naṭanzī’, EIr i (1985), pp. 459–460Google Scholar, updated 2011 (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/adib-natanzi), accessed 10 April 2018. Hailing from Natanz, near Isfahan, Naṭanzī has also been credited with an Arabic-Persian dictionary, al-Mirqāt.

152 TMI, pp. 103, 145-146.

153 Mujīr al-Dīn Baylaqānī, like Saʿdī (d. 691/1292) and several other contemporary poets, includes mulammaʿāt in his dīvān. Kamāl al-Dīn Iṣfahānī, who styled himself an ʿālim, faqīh and adīb as well as a poet, wrote at least one prose work in Arabic, a treatise on archery (Risālat al-qaws, al-risāla al-qawsiyya).

154 Melville, Persian Historiography, p. 207; see also Paul, ‘Histories of Isfahan’.

155 In keeping with the period's bilingualism, Muḥammad b. Hindūshāh includes a considerable number of Arabic quotations in his preface; Ṣaḥāḥ al-furs, (ed.) ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Ṭāʿatī (Tehran, 1962), pp. 20-21. The author, who states that he first conceived of the project at the Dār al-mulk, Tabriz, in 718/1318-19 (p. 8), refers in his preface to two of his predecessors in the compilation of Persian dictionaries, Ḥakīm Qaṭrān Urmavī and, especially, Asadī Ṭūsī, compiler of the late eleventh-century Lughat-i furs. Muḥammad b. Hindūshāh also provides a list of the poets whom Asadī cites most frequently, and states explicitly that he will add to this corpus the poetry of contemporary poets, including his late father Fakhr al-Dīn Hindūshāh (Ṣaḥāḥ al-furs, pp. 8-11).

156 Morgan, David, ‘Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire’, in Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, (eds.) Spooner, Brian and Hanaway, William L. (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 160–170Google Scholar. See also Khanbaghi, Aptin, ‘Champions of the Persian Language: The Mongols or the Turks?’, in The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran, eds. Nicola, Bruno De and Melville, Charles (Leiden, 2016), pp. 195–215Google Scholar.

157 Fragner, ‘Ilkhanid Rule’, p. 79; Morgan, ‘Persian as a Lingua Franca’.

158 Melville, Charles, ‘Pādshāh-i Islām: The Conversion of Sultan Maḥmūd Ghāzān Khān’, History and Literature in Iran: Persian and Islamic Studies in Honour of P. W. Avery, (ed.) Melville, Charles (London, 1990), p. 162Google Scholar. Nawrūz engaged in a protracted rebellion against the future Ilkhan Ghazan until their reconciliation, and Ghazan's accession, in 694/1294; see Hope, Michael, ‘The ‘Nawrūz King’: The Rebellion of Amir Nawrūz in Khurasan (688-694/1289-94) and Its Implications for the Ilkhan Polity at the End of the Thirteenth Century’, BSOAS 78 (2015), pp. 451–473CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

159 The abbreviated list reflects the reports of al-Ṣafadī and Ibn Ḥajar; according to Rashīd al-Dīn, Ghazan knew, in addition to Mongolian, some Arabic, Persian, Hindī, Kashmiri, Tibetan, Khiṭāʾī, ‘Frankish’ and other languages; Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, ‘New Material from the Mamluk Sources for the Biography of Rashīd al-Dīn’, in The Court of the Ilkhans, (eds.) Rabi, J. and Fitzherbert, T. (Oxford, 1996), pp. 23–37Google Scholar (= Amitai, The Mongols in the Islamic Lands, III), p. 27 and n. 23; Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, ‘Ghazan, Islam and Mongol Tradition: A View from the Mamlūk Sultanate’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 99 (1996), pp. 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar ( Amitai, The Mongols in the Islamic Lands, VI), pp. 3, 4 and n. 22. Reuven Amitai-Preiss has suggested that Ghazan may have had a circle of Persian-speaking intimates with whom he held conversations in Persian, perhaps on topics related to the rational sciences, the Islamic religion, Mongolian history and tradition, and that they perhaps contributed to the vibrant artistic, cultural and intellectual activity of the late Ilkhanid period (Amitai-Preiss, ‘New Material’, pp. 28, 34).

160 Shabānkāraʾī, Majmaʿ al-ansāb, p. 286.

161 Lane, George, ‘Persian Notables and the Families Who Underpinned the Ilkhanate’, in Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors, eds. Amitai, Reuven and Biran, Michal (Honolulu, 2015), pp. 182–213Google Scholar; Fragner, ‘Ilkhanid Rule’; Gilli-Elewy, Hend, ‘Women, Power, and Politics in the Last Phase of the Ilkhanate’, Arabica 59 (2012), pp. 709–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, p. 16.

162 Morgan, ‘Persian as Lingua Franca’.

163 On the renewed use of the concept of ‘Iran’ in the Ilkhanid period, see Krawulsky, Dorothea, ‘Zur Wiederbelebung des Begriffes “Irân” zur Ilkhânzeit’, in Mongolen und Ilkhâne: Ideologie und Geschichte (Beirut, 1989), pp. 113–30Google Scholar; eadem, The Mongol Īlkhāns and Their Vizier Rashīd al-Dīn (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), pp. 43-51; Melville, Persian Historiography, pp. 156, 162-76; Melville, ‘The Mongols in Iran’; Fragner, ‘Ilkhanid Rule’, pp. 72-3; idem, ‘The Concept of Regionalism in Historical Research on Central Asia and Iran (A Macro-Historical Interpretation)’, in Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel, ed. Devin DeWeese (Bloomington, 2001), pp. 349-50; Jackson, Mongols and the Islamic World, pp. 239, 325-7.