Program

Chair: Dr. Yui Kanda (ILCAA)

Abstract

Dr. Ryo Mizukami (JSPS/ILCAA):
“A 14th-Century Faḍāʾil Work Rediscovered by the Safavids: An Analysis of Aḥsan al-Kibār and Its Oldest Manuscripts”
   In mid-14th century Iran, the Shiʿi scholar Muḥammad b. Abī Zayd Warāmīnī (fl. 1342–3) compiled a voluminous unpublished Persian faḍāʾil work on the Twelve Imams entitled Aḥsan al-Kibār fī Maʿrifat al-Aʾimma al-Aṭhār. Although few Shiʿi authors mentioned or quoted this work in the 14–15th centuries, it is known that the second Safavid ruler Shāh Ṭahmāsp I (r. 1524–76) requested the Shiʿi scholar Zawwārī (fl. 1554–5) to compile a revised edition of Aḥsan al-Kibār, entitled Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār. Despite its importance in the intellectual history of Shiʿi Islam and as an exemplar of Ṭahmāsp’s policies of Shiʿitization, these two works have received little attention.
   As a first step in detailing the transformation of this faḍāʾil work 200 years after its completion, this study will firstly examine the social background and characteristics of the Aḥsan al-Kibār. It will show that Warāmīnī, its author, visited the Ilkhanid ruler Öljaitü (r. 1304–16) and promoted the veneration of ʿAlī at his court, before settling down in Fīrūzān close to Iṣfahān, where he completed the work; while praising the Twelve Imams, he filled the work with criticism of Sunni beliefs, referring to Sunnis as “nawāṣib” (anti-ʿAlids). The second part of this study will analyze the relationship between its two oldest manuscripts. The Dorn catalog records that the St. Petersburg manuscript was copied in 1433, indicating that it is the only surviving manuscript copied before the Safavid period. However, this manuscript should be considered as having been copied in the early 16th century for Ṭahmāsp by the same hand that copied the Tehran manuscript in 1541.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Philip Bockholt (University of Münster/ILCAA):
“The Qābūsnāma as a Transregional Mirror for Princes between the Caspian Sea, Anatolia and Syria”
The Qābūsnāma is a well-known mirror for princes that goes back to ʿUnṣur al-Maʿālī Kay Kāvūs (or Kāʾūs) b. Iskandar b. Qābūs b. Vushmgīr, who ruled over the Ziyarid principality on the southeast coast of the Caspian Sea in the mid-11th century. Written for his son Gīlānshāh and dealing with matters of statesmanship, commercial transactions or family and friendly obligations, it became one of the first works of the Andarznāme, Pandnāme or Naṣīḥatnāme genre in Persian. In the 14th and 15th centuries, it was translated into Old Anatolian Turkish several times. With special attention to the reception of the work at the courts and among readers in the Eastern Mediterranean, the article examines the different forms the Qābūsnāma took and which actors were involved in the translation processes on its journey from the Ziyarid Empire to Anatolia during the Beylik period as well as to Mamluk Syria.