Description
After the Mongol period, Persian was the official written language in Iran, Central Asia and India. A vast amount of documents relating to administration and social life were produced and yet, unlike Ottoman and Arabic documents, Persian historical resources have received very little critical attention. This book is the first to use Persian Documents as the sources of social history in Early Modern Iran and Central Asia. The contributors examine four distinct elements of the documents:
* the formal aspects of the sources are initially inspected
* the second part focuses on newly discovered sources
* the most abundant documents of the period - waqf deeds - are individually studied
In this way the reader is led to realize the importance of Persian documents in gaining an understanding of past urban and rural societies in the Middle East.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Formal Aspects 1. A Commentary on Closing Formula found in the Central Waqf Documents Isogai Ken'ichi 2. Formal Aspects of Qajar Deeds of Sale Christoph Werner Part 2: New Sources 3. About a Scroll of Documents Justifying Yasav Rituals Bakhtiyar Babajanov 4. Majmu ah-ha: An Important and Unknown Source of Histography of Iran During the Late Safavid Period: The Case of Majmu ah-i Mirza Mu ina Mansur Sefatgol Part 3: Waqfs 5. A Waqf of a Timurid Amir: The Examples of Chaqmaq Shami in Yazd Iwatake Akio 6. The Wadf of Ustad Abbas: The Rewrites of Deeds in Qajar Tehran Kondo Nobuaki Part 4: From Cities to Villages 7. Irrigation Examined through Documents of Qajar Iran Hashem Rajabzade 8. Urban-Rural Relations in Early Eighteenth-Century Iran: Settlement Patterns in the Province of Hamadan Yamaguchi Akihiko
