|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
The Savafid dynasty represented, in political, cultural and
economic terms the pinnacle of Iran's power and influence in its
early modern history. The evidence for this -the creation of a
nation state, military expansion and success, economic dynamism and
the exquisite art and architecture of the period - is well-known.
What is less understood is the extent to which the Safavid success
depended on - and was a product of - a class of elite originating
from outside Iran: the slaves of Caucasian descent and the Armenian
merchants of New Julfa in the city of Isfahan. It was these groups,
bolstered by Shah Abbas the Great (1589 - 1629) and his successors,
who became the pillars of Safavid political, economic and cultural
life. This book describes how these elites, following their
conversion to Islam, helped to form a new language of Savafid
absolutism. It documents their contributions, financed by the
Armenian trade in Safavid silk, to the transformation of Isfahan's
urban, artistic and social landscape. The insights provided here
into the multi-faceted roles of the Safavid royal household offer
an original and comprehensive study of slave elites in imperial
systems common to the political economies of the Malmuk, Ottoman
and Safavid courts as well as contributing to the earlier Abbasid,
Ghaznavid and Saljuq eras. As such this book makes an original and
important contribution to our understanding of the history of the
Islamic world from the 16th to the 18th centuries and will prove
invaluable for students and scholars of the period.
The first and only book on one of the finest private collections of
contemporary Iranian art This sumptuous volume features almost 250
contemporary artworks and a selection of medieval and early modern
Islamic art - the heralded collection of Mohammed Afkhami, a
prominent player at the cultural and regional front line of Middle
Eastern art. Honar (meaning 'art' in Farsi, the language of Iran),
includes works ranging from the disturbingly subversive to
exquisitely inclusive, exhibiting the pain of exile, the querying
of ideology, and the artistic insistence on personal independence.
Following the devastating Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, the
domination of the Abbasids declined leading to successor polities,
chiefly among them the Ilkhanate in Greater Iran, Iraq and the
Caucasus. Iranian cultural identities were reinstated within the
lands that make up today's Iran, including the area of greater
Khorasan. The Persian language gained unprecedented currency over
Arabic and new buildings and manuscripts were produced for princely
patrons with aspirations to don the Iranian crown of kingship. This
new volume in "The Idea of Iran" series follows the complexities
surrounding the cultural reinvention of Iran after the Mongol
invasions, but the book is unique capturing not only the effects of
Mongol rule but also the period following the collapse of
Mongol-based Ilkhanid rule. By the mid-1330s the Ilkhanate in Iran
was succeeded by alternative models of authority and local Iranian
dynasties. This led to the proliferation of diverse and competing
cultural, religious and political practices but so far scholarship
has neglected to produce an analysis of this multifaceted history
in any depth. Iran After the Mongols offers new and cutting-edge
perspectives on what happened. Analysing the fourteenth century in
its own right, Sussan Babaie and her fellow contributors capture
the cultural complexity of an era that produced some of the most
luminous masterpieces in Persian literature and the most
significant new building work in Tabriz, Yazd, Herat and Shiraz.
Featuring contributions by leading scholars, this is a wide-ranging
treatment of an under-researched period and the volume will be
essential reading for scholars of Iranian Studies and Middle
Eastern History.
This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501-1722)
explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of
socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and
Perso-Shi'i practice of kingship. An immense building campaign,
initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial,
medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered
representation of the first Imami Shi'i empire in the history of
Islam. The historical process of Shi'ification of Safavid Iran and
the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the
politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan
Babaie's study of palatial architecture and urban environments of
Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin. Babaie
argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both
of the charisma of the Shi'i Imams and of the aura of royal
splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a
ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and
proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized
form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial
designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity
are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the
comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere
and earlier--in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as
in the early modern European capitals--Safavid Isfahan emerges as
the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early
modern age.
The Safavid dynasty represented the pinnacle of Iran’s power and
influence in its early modern history. The evidence of this – the
creation of a nation state, military expansion and success,
economic dynamism and the exquisite art and architecture of the
period is well-known. What is less understood is the extent to
which the Safavid success depended on an elite originating from
outside Iran: the slaves of Caucasian descent and the Armenian
merchants of Isfahan. This book describes how these elites,
following their conversion to Islam, helped to transform
Isfahan’s urban, artistic and social landscape.
|
|