The chapter argues for the importance of being familiar two literary traditions that made their way into Persianate histories. The first tradition is Mirrors for Princes. The chapter demonstrates that it is possible to view certain portions of Persian histories as “responses” to “mirrors for princes.” Several Persian histories contain a conventional element that describes the qualities of a particular king.This section demonstrates how narratives on the “qualities” of the Safavid king ‘Abbas and the Mughal king Akbar reflect the same ideal qualities that a king is supposed to possess, as indicated in the mirrors for princes literatures.The second tradition explored is the tazkirah, or biographical dictionary.Like the mirrors for princes literatures, the tazkirah is a genre in its own right that flourished during the Timurid era. Some Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal histories contain their own “mini-tazkirah” sections.The chapters trace the historiographical influences on the mini-tazkirahs, and show just how influential Mirkhvand and Khvandamir were for chroniclers writing under the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. The chapter also explains how the chroniclers’ political agendas were reflected in how they used tazkirah to highlight the royal courts where many of them wrote.

Chapter 4 examines one of the most prevalent genres of early modern Persian historical writing:the universal history, which was the most common type of history composed in the early stages of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal dynasties.The chapter focuses on accounts of Kayumars, considered the first human in the ancient Persian tradition. This chapter demonstrates how, while recording the unique aspects of whatever dynasty they were writing under at the end of their universal histories, the chroniclers were predominately narrating a shared past that predated the establishment of Islam. It also establishes that there is no single narrative version that is common to every history, as the chroniclers drew on a range of sources for their information. The choices they made in terms of their sources depended on factors such as regional loyalty and access or family ties.The chapter also demonstrates that many chroniclers looked to the Rawzat al-safa as a model source, and chroniclers writing under Akbar’s reign did not de-mythologize accounts of Kayumars like their Safavid counterparts. In many instances, chroniclers engaged in intertextual dialog as they updated, responded to, and modified their models.