Tetsuro SUMIDA (JSPS/ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)

This paper examines Mahdī-nāma (MS. Bursa İnebey Library, Genel 1493, 105b–54a), an anonymous fifteenth-century Persian treatise that refutes the messianic claim of Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh (d. 1464). Through close textual and doctrinal analysis, it argues that the author was implicitly aligned with the teachings of Faḍlullāh Astarābādī (d. 1394), founder of the Ḥurūfiyya. As previous studies have pointed out, Nūrbakhsh grounds his own claim to be the awaited Mahdī in the authority of Kubrawī shaykhs and ḥadīths concerning the Mahdī’s traits. Against his arguments, Mahdī-nāma systematically dismantles Nūrbakhsh’s arguments and reinterprets the same materials through a Ḥurūfī framework. It challenges Nūrbakhsh’s speculation on the date of the awaited Mahdī’s manifestation, redefines the conditions derived from prophetic traditions, and emphasizes qualities such as the Mahdī’s self-sufficiency and mastery of dream interpretation, which closely parallel the image of Faḍlullāh in Ḥurūfī thought. By situating these arguments within the broader context of post-Mongol messianism, this study demonstrates how rival claimants engaged with shared doctrinal resources to contest religious authority. It thus highlights the role of polemical texts in mediating competition among messianic figures in the late medieval Persianate world.

Sacha ALSANCAKLI (The Hakubi Center/Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University)

In this talk, I investigate the connection between Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 625), the paternal uncle and companion of the Prophet Muḥammad, and the origins of various ruling dynasties of Daghestan. This connection is underscored in several chronicles of the Caucasus produced in different languages, as well as in writings on the peoples of Daghestan by soldiers and travellers. These include sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts such as the anonymous Derbendnāme, an untitled work by Mullā Muḥammad Rafīʿ, the so-called Tārīḫ-i ʿOsmān Paşa by Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh, and others.

All these works present a figure named Ḥamza as the ancestor of some of the rulers of Daghestan, notably the Usmī leaders of the Kaitags, but they differ in the details of the narratives and in Ḥamza’s identity. I present these stories and place them within a vision of history marked by frontier ethics of struggle for the defence and spread of Islam, as well as within the sociopolitical context of the early modern contest for autonomy by Caucasian polities in the face of Ottoman and Safavid advances in the region.

Werner GABOREAU (École française de Rome)

Within the field of historiography, the study of Persian manuscripts and the presence of European printed works in Safavid Iran are often treated as separate issues. This approach enables us to consider the interconnected practices surrounding the appropriation and circulation of these works. Nevertheless, European and Persian books circulate and are consulted within networks that are not completely isolated from one another. On the contrary, travellers in Iran carried with them both Persian manuscripts (collected locally) and printed works, in addition to their personal papers. In 1618, whilst staying at the Safavid court in the city of Faraḥ-ābād, the Roman Pietro Della Valle (1586–1657) compiled a retrospective list of all the books he had read since 1590. He then kept this list up to date until 1651, six years before his death. Thanks to this handwritten archive, it is possible to ascertain everything that the learned nobleman claims to have read during his sojourn through the Safavid Empire (1616–1623).

In this paper, I will examine European literary practices within Safavid society, in relation to Pietro Della Valle’s intellectual development in Iran. Using his ‘reading list’, I will quantify the number of books he read (each month and each year), their nature, their subject matter and their languages, whilst also mapping the locations in Iran where he accessed these books and the Roman nobleman’s links with Safavid scholar circles.