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.

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.

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.

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.