A Chronicle of the Early Safavids and the Reign of Shah Ismāʿīl (907–930/1501–1524): (98 American Oriental Series)

In this volume, Kioumars Ghereghlou presents an edition, with preface and indexes, of a previously unpublished sixteenth-century Persian chronicle. Written by Qāsim Beg Ḥayātī, a court scribe to Shah Ṭahmāsp (r. 1524–76), it covers Safavid history beginning with the early part of the fourteenth century and closing with an account of Shah Ismāʿīl’s (r. 1501–24) rise to power and military campaigns in Iran. Dedicated to the Safavid princess Mihīn Begum (d. 1562), whom Ghereghlou credits as Ḥayātī’s coauthor, the chronicle is composed of two parts. Part one deals with the predynastic phase of Safavid history and ends with an account of Shaykh Ṣafī’s life and career. Part two tells the story of the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order, from the ascension of Shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn Mūsā b. Shaykh Ṣafi (d. 1377) to the early years of Shah Ismāʿīl’s reign. Punctuating this account are two “tailpieces” (tadhʾīl), one on the history of the Safavid shrine in Ardabīl in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the other on the shrine’s superintendents who held this post in the early part of the sixteenth century. This edition makes available for the first time a chronicle that had long been thought lost. Rich in new details about the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order (ṭarīqa) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is an important historical source for scholars interested in this period of Persian history. The text of the chronicle is presented in Persian, transcribed from the original manuscript. The editorial preface and bibliography are in English. The book includes four plates, in colour, showing sample sections of the original manuscript.

Table of Contents:
Editor’s Preface vii Bibliography xxvii Persian Text 1 General Index 373 Plates 381

About the Author :
Kioumars Ghereghlou is an independent scholar and the editor of A Chronicle of the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas, a critical edition of a major seventeenth-century Persian chronicle.

Review :
[T]he publication of Hayati's Tarikh invites researchers to revisit the fascinating history of the rise of [the Safavid] religious order and its transformation into a militant political movement at the beginning of the sixteenth century. [. . .] Any future scholarly work on the early phase of the period will definitely have to take Qasim Beg Hayati Tabrizi's Tarikh into consideration. We are grateful to Dr. Ghereghlou for making his text available. John E. Woods, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 79.2 (2020).