Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts com- posed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text’s creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological, and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre–periphery relations.

Mimi Hanaoka is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the Uni- versity of Richmond, where she is a scholar of history and religion. Her publications include scholarly journal articles on Persian and Islamic history and historiography. Her work as a social and cultural historian focuses on Iran and the Persianate world from the tenth to fifteenth centuries, concentrating on issues of authority and identity. In the field of global history, she concentrates on interactions between the Middle East and East Asia, focusing on the history of Iran–Japan relations. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization

Editorial Board Chase F. Robinson, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (general editor) David O. Morgan, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison Shahab Ahmed, Harvard University Virginia Aksan, McMaster University Michael Cook, Princeton University Peter Jackson, Keele University

Other titles in the series are listed at the back of the book. Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Persian Histories from the Peripheries

MIMI HANAOKA University of Richmond 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10013

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107127036 © Mimi Hanaoka 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Names: Hanaoka, Mimi, author. Title: Authority and identity in medieval Islamic historiography : Persian histories from the peripheries / Mimi Hanaoka. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Series: Cambridge studies in Islamic civilization | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016013911 | ISBN 9781107127036 (Hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Iran–History–640-1256–Historiography. | Iran–History–1256-1500– Historiography. | Turkey–History–To 1453–Historiography. Classification: LCC DS288 .H36 2016 | DDC 955.0072–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013911 ISBN 978-1-107-12703-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For my parents, Shoichiro Hanaoka (1945–2014) and Iola Price Hanaoka (1942–2014)

Contents

Preface page ix Acknowledgments xi Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations xv

1 Introduction 1 2 Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and Imagined Histories 13 3 Contexts and Authorship 36 4 Dreaming of the Prophet 70 5 Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of Belonging 99 6 Living Virtues of the Land 138 7 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities 168 8 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces 204 9 The View from Anatolia 220 10 Lessons from the Peripheries 251

Bibliography 261 Index 297

vii

Preface

The primary sources used in this study are written in Arabic, Persian, and are often bilingual to varying degrees. I follow the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) transliteration system for Arabic transliterations, and consequently I do not indicate the final tāʾ marbuta, _ nor do I distinguish between the alif mamdūda and alif maqsūra. For _ Persian terms, I use a modified IJMES transliteration system. In bilingual Arabic-Persian sources, I generally prioritize the Arabic transliteration. Due to the bilingual nature of the texts and the accompanying challenges in transliteration, I hope I will be forgiven for any inconsistencies and preferences. Place names appear without transliteration (e.g., Tabaristan, Bukhara, Qum). When technical terms and place names used in English are part of a proper noun, such as the title of a work (e.g., Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān), I include diacritical marks. Therefore, the title of the work Tārīkh-i Bukhārā includes diacritical marks, as does historical personage al- Bukhārī, but Bukhara as a place does not. Proper names of people and the names by which they are known, including titles, are supplied with diacritical marks (e.g., Fātima, Fātima al-Maʿsūma, Muhammad). _ _ _ _ Commonly used technical terms appear without transliteration. With the exception of Imam, Shiʿa, Shiʿi, Shiʿism, Sunni, and Sunnism, the terms are italicized (e.g., Ahl al-Bayt, Allah, amir, Baraka, dinar, fatwa, fiqh, fuqaha, hadith, imam, isnad, madrasa, Mahdi, matn, muhaddith, qadi, sayyid, sharif, shaykh, Shuʿubiya, sunna, Sura, ulama, umma, waqf, wazir). I have referenced the IJMES Word List for guidance on which terms and names are Anglicized.

ix x Preface

I do not transliterate technical terms and titles that are commonly used in English, including Anglicized terms of Arabic origin (e.g., Abbasid, Alawi, ʿAlid, Ashʿari, bazaar, Buyids, caliph, Daylami, Fatimid, Ghaznavid, Ghurid, Hanafi, Imam, Ismaʿili, Jahiliya, Mamluk, Qurʾan, Safavid, Saffarid, Sasanian, Seljuq, shah, Sufi, sultan, Tahirid, Talibi, Umayyad, vizier, Zaydi, Ziyarid). I have included diacritical marks on less commonly used technical terms (e.g., abdāl, akhbār, awliyāʾ, awqāf, aʿyān, dāʿī,fadāʾil, ghulām, _ ijāza, khabar, khāngāh, khawārij, madhāhib, madhhab, mashhad, _ _ _ mawlā,mihna, mazār, miʿrāj, rāwī, riwāyah, Rūm, sahāba, Sạhīhayn, _ _ _ _ _ tabaqāt, tābiʿūn, tafsīr, tarīqa,ʿumarāʾ, ziyārat). _ For proper names, I retain the definite article “al-” at the beginning of a name only at the first mention of the proper name but exclude the definite article on subsequent mentions of the proper name (e.g., the name is rendered as al-Qummī on first mention and then subsequently as Qummī). I do not consider the “al-” for bibliographic purposes (e.g., Hasaṇ ibn Muhammad al-Qummī appears al-Qummī,Hasaṇ ibn _ Muhammad, under “Q”). _ I generally give the Common Era (CE) dates for events. Whenever relevant, I also give the hijrī dates in the form of hijrī/CE dates (e.g., 613/1217, third/ninth century). When there are disagreements or disputes about dates, I attempt to note the range of possible dates and generally follow the dates used in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition. For the Qurʾan, I principally reference the English translation by Ahmed Ali, final revised edition (Princeton University Press, 2001). Acknowledgments

This book has been supported and enriched by many people, and I am grateful and indebted for all of the help I have received. I owe much to the insights, support, and suggestions of my mentors, peers, friends, and colleagues, but all faults, deficiencies, and defects in scholarship are entirely my own. I bear full responsibility for this book’s shortcomings. At Columbia University, where I completed the dissertation out of which this book grew, I benefited from the mentorship and training of many exceptional faculty. Peter Awn and Richard Bulliet were ideal guides on this journey, and they saw the project through all its iterations, from the kernel of an idea to a completed dissertation. Hossein Kamaly at Barnard College, Mehdi Khorrami at NYU, and Masoud Jafari Jazi at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University expertly shared with me the nuances and rigors of classical Persian literature. In the field of Arabic language and literature, I benefited from the expertise of Taoufik Ben-Amor, George Saliba, and George El-Hage at Columbia University. At the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo, I enjoyed the superb training and unflagging patience of Zeinab Taha, Hebatalah Salem, Azza Hassanein, Raghda El-Essawi, Shereen El-Ezabi, Nevenka Korica, Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Abbas Al-Tonsi. Elizabeth Castelli and members of the Departments of Religion at Columbia University and Barnard College generously shared their expert- ise and advice on my research. Neguin Yavari at The New School pro- vided consistent encouragement during my graduate training. Members of Columbia University’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) work- shop offered thoughtful critiques, insights, and a space to share works in

xi xii Acknowledgments progress. The staff of the Columbia University Libraries enabled much of the research necessary for this project. The Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University supported my doctoral work at Colum- bia University. The CASA and the American Institute of Iranian Studies provided financial support for training in Arabic and Persian. Friends and colleagues have allowed me to present works in progress, and they have challenged me to refine and rethink my work. Kazuo Morimoto at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, generously invited me to present part of my research on dreams in 2012. Michael Pregill at Boston University was a thoughtful collo- quium interlocutor for an early version of Chapter 4. I explored part of my research on dreams in my 2013 article in Iranian Studies and a limited version of the ideas presented in Chapter 2 in my 2015 article in the Journal of Persianate Studies. The audience and panelists at the annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and American Academy of Religion (AAR) provided valuable feedback. I am grateful to fellow CASA alumna Kate Swearengen, who read through a manuscript draft in its entirety, efficiently and thoroughly, and offered thoughtful comments. At the University of Richmond, my colleagues both within and beyond the Department of Religious Studies encouraged this project. The Office of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty Research Council of the School of Arts and Sciences provided financial support for this project. The staff of Boatwright Memorial Library, and especially the Inter-Library Loan department, enabled me to access many materials necessary to develop and complete this work. At Cambridge University Press, William Masami Hammell gave me the opportunity to transform my manuscript into a book, an endeavor that Maria Marsh brings to fruition. The anonymous readers who read my manuscript and generously offered valuable comments and critiques greatly improved this work. In Tokyo, I received extraordinary support and kindness from Machiko Romaine and Kazuko Nishikawa, as well as Tim Thornton and the faculty and staff of the American School in Japan. At home, Shahan Mufti has been a well of kindness: loving, helpful, and supportive. Through challenges and in happiness, he has been there throughout. With their unlimited love, Totoro and Mochi bring joy to every day. Acknowledgments xiii

I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my parents, Shoichiro Hanaoka (1945–2014) and Iola Price Hanaoka (1942–2014). They supported every aspect of my life with unconditional love, boundless generosity, and tireless encouragement. There is a Japanese proverb (sode furi au mo tashō no en), which states that those whose sleeves so much as brush against each other in this life have been bound together in many previous lifetimes. I hope that I will have the good fortune to meet them in future lifetimes, too. I dedicate this book to them.

Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations

BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition EI3 Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition EIr Encyclopedia Iranica EQ Encyclopaedia of the Quran IJMES International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

xv

1

Introduction

Whosoever sees me in a dream sees me in waking life, because Satan does not take my appearance.1

Nearly 200 years after the Prophet Muhammad died, he reappeared in the _ city of Bukhara in present day Uzbekistan. Muhammad wore a white cap2 _ on his head as he rode his camel al-Qaswāʾ into the central bazaar of Kharqān.3 A large crowd gathered around Muhammad, overjoyed that _ the Prophet of Islam had come to their city located on what was then the far eastern fringe of the Islamic empire. Muhammad, the seal of the _ Prophets and the last of God’s messengers, to whom God transmitted the final revelation in the form of the Qurʾan through the Angel Gabriel, had come to their city. The Bukharans were delighted.

_ 1 Muhammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (810–870), Sạh_ īh al-Bukhārī; Jamʿ jawāmiʿ al-ahādīth _ wa-al-asānīd wa-makniz al-sihāh wa-al-sunan wa-al-masānīd, 3 vols. (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: _ _ _ Jamʿīyat al-Maknaz al-Islāmī, 2000), Kitāb 92 al-taʿbīr, Bāb 10, p. 1415, hadith 7079. 2 Narshakhī describes Muhammad_ as wearing a “kulāh-i safīd,” and kulāh is the general Persian term for a cap, though it could also more specifically mean a high or medium high soft cap. The kulāh and the qalansuwa – a cap worn either under a turban or by itself – were both part of a typical medieval Persian costume. Both items are distinct from the turban (ʿimāma or dulband). Y. K. Stillman, N. A. Stillmann, and T. Majda, “Libās,” EI2. See also W. Björkman, “Tulband,” EI2; W. Björkman, “Ḳalansuwa,” EI2. 3 The female camel is known as al-Qaswāʾ, al-Jadʿāʾ, or al-ʿAdbāʾ. Tabaṛ ī, The History of al-Tabaṛ ī, vol. IX; The Last Years of the Prophet: The Formation of the State A.D. 630–632/A.H. 8–11, translated by, Ismail K. Poonawala (Albany, NY: State Univer- sity of New York Press, 1990), 150–151.

1 2 Introduction

The assembled multitude decided to lodge the Prophet in the home of a certain Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs al-Bukhārī, a pious and praiseworthy _ man who was a prominent denizen of the city. Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs _ was a learned ascetic who had pursued his religious studies in Baghdad. After returning from Iraq to Bukhara, he had become one of the honored teachers in his home city. Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs hosted Muhammad _ _ in his home. In a fitting tribute to his illustrious guest, he recited the Qurʾan for Muhammad for three days and three nights. In fact, it is _ unknown if he did anything else during those three days when he hosted the Prophet. The Prophet listened in silence. Muhammad never once _ corrected Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs, since his recitation of the revelation _ was flawless. The events in the preceding story read like fantasy. But they are real, in so far as they occurred within someone’s dream, which was then recounted in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, a medieval Central Asian book of local history.4 Such dream narratives, which appear in various forms of histor- ical writing in the medieval Islamic world, are an overlooked thread in a gauzy gossamer web of references, one of myriad tensile cultural strands that reinforced and reflected one another in the once glistening and now dusty web of early Islamic historical writing. The fantastical nature of this encounter with the Prophet did not make it any less significant for the author, al-Narshakhī, who included this episode in his history about the city of Bukhara. Muhammad ibn Salām Baikandī, the man who is credited _ with dreaming the encounter, lived in a milieu in which pious dreams – especially those involving Muhammad – were as real and as significant as _ events that occurred during waking life. But what do we – as historians, scholars, and modern readers – do with such a history penned more than a millennium ago, which records events that may be imagined or may never have transpired? Positivist history has been the dominant trend over the past century in scholarship on the history of Islam. Scholarship on the political, military, economic, legal, and social history of the Islamicate world has tradition- ally placed a high premium on ascertaining the names, dates, facts, and figures that allow us to reconstruct history and what precisely happened.

4 Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar Al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, edited by, Mudarris _ Razavi (Tehran: Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān, 1972), 77–81; Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar _ Al-Narshakhī, The History of Bukhara; Translated From a Persian Abridgement of the Arabic Original by Narshakhī, edited and translated by Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1954)56–59. Introduction 3

This line of scholarship has been invaluable in providing a narrative history of the emergence and development of Islam as a social, military, political, legal, and religious phenomenon. It has allowed us to context- ualize the early Islamic community within its Late Antique milieu and to trace the expansion of Islam over vast expanses of land during the early centuries of Islamic rule. This traditional positivist approach forms the bedrock from which to further investigate the various and complex dimensions of the Islamicate world that have developed during the past 1400 years. As we move beyond the questions of “what happened, and why?” we are able to engage with the thorny, more open-ended questions of “how did these communities perceive themselves and the others around them, and how did they crystal- lize and express these understandings?” Following the latter, more open- ended line of research, this project pays close attention to the purpose and intention behind a text’s creation and what the texts reveal about how their authors perceived themselves and the world around them. These are insights that can be gleaned, in significant part, from the themes, claims, references, and strategies evident in the texts themselves. Over the past three decades, scholars have paid increasingly closer attention to the political and literary dimensions of Islamicate historical writing produced in the medieval Middle East. These scholars include Stephen Humphreys, Stefan Leder, Albrect Noth, Fred Donner, Jacob Lassner, Chase Robinson, John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Richard Bulliet, Tayeb El-Hibri, Julie Meisami, and Christopher Melchert, all of whom have pioneered fruitful methodo- logical approaches to Islamic history and place a premium on consider- ing why medieval authors presented themselves and their histories in that way that they did. In line with this turn in scholarship away from primarily positivist history, this project builds on existing scholarly assumptions and pro- poses an innovative method of approaching local histories of the Persia- nate world written in Arabic and Persian. This approach – freed from the reconstruction of events as the primary goal of scholarly endeavor – allows the sources to be read and used in new ways to understand how these Perso-Muslim individuals and communities understood and expressed their hybrid identities, perched on the fringes and peripheries of the Islamic empire. The intriguing dreams, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies are transformed from data-poor curiosities into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and center-periphery relations. 4 Introduction

peripheries and empires

Texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires during the tenth to early fifteenth centuries provide, along with the hard facts of history, richly imagined histories of their local towns and cities. Prophets, saints, Companions and descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and other devout Muslims populate these sprawling literary _ worlds. Local histories are interested in dynastic history and the events of successive dawla – or the reigns of dynasties and rulers – but they also describe the physical and spiritual contours of regional landscapes, including sacred sites and graves of the pious, while toponyms boast extraordinary and magical etymologies. These histories also record the human capital – teachers of religious sciences, holy men, and pious women – that the authors believed would place their city on the map of the Islamic world as a bona fide Muslim community of significance. Trimmed like frivolous fat off the real meat of history that historians so often crave – names, dates, facts, and figures – accounts of dreams, myths, improbable etymologies, and dubious stories have generally been disre- garded as fabulist embellishments created for literary effect. This historio- graphical study turns its attention to precisely such narratives that appear in local histories written about provinces and cities on the peripheries of Islamic empires that had their heartlands in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. On close examination, these events and myths, which may have been fabri- cated or occurred only in the dream world, express profound truths about the people who wrote the histories and the times in which they lived.

reading local histories as social history

Fantastical historical narratives are especially useful for elucidating how Muslims on the peripheries of Islamic empires positioned them- selves in relation to the central powers in the Middle East during critical periods between the tenth and early fifteenth centuries. Persian local histories composed during the tenth through early fifteenth centuries evidence a preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy as distinct religio-political communities. In so doing, these local histories participate in a discourse of authority and legitimacy.5 For example,

5 For a detailed discussion of early Muslim attitudes toward lands and homelands and the conceptual framework of a discourse of place, see Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Reading Local Histories as Social History 5

Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, the book written by Narshakhī in the tenth century and then translated into Persian, extended, and then abridged during the twelfth century, relates Muhammad’s pronouncement that on the _ Judgment Day angels and martyrs will adorn the city of Bukhara in Khurasan, which is located in present day Uzbekistan. It will be resplen- dent with rubies and coral and will be the most exalted of all cities. Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, composed about the city of Bayhaq and its environs in Khurasan in the mid-twelfth century, tells us that descendants of a particular Companion of the Prophet Muhammadlivedandtaught _ hadith in the city, despite evidence to the contrary in biographical sources. Other similar narratives of cities and regions, from Qum to Tabaristan (both located in modern-day Iran) bind specificcitiesto pivotal moments and characters in Islamic history. What literary strategies did Persian writers use to weave these narra- tives into their histories and legitimate themselves within structures of authority in medieval Islam that were predominantly Arab and based largely on genealogies into which they did not fit? Following the Arab conquests, these individuals and communities had to forge new Muslim identities. This was a multi-layered process, since “to change overt reli- gious identification was symbolically to die in one community and be reborn in another.”6 How did Persians balance their multiple identities as Persians, Muslims, and members of various regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological, and professional communities while writing these histories? Patterns within Islamo-Persciate writing from the peripheries of Islamic empires enable us to explore local structures of authority and legitimacy. The literary patterns that authors employed to bring the sanction and prestige of religious authority and importance to their respective cities and provinces are, in turn, vehicles through which to understand the more subtle societal conversations and anxieties that would have given rise to them in the first place.

For the local significance of topographical descriptions and an articulation of place and space in the massive twelfth century Syrian biographical dictionary and historical text, see Zayde Antrim, “Ibn ʿAsakir’s Representations of Syria and Damascus in the Introduction to the Taʾrikh Madinat Dimashq,” IJMES 38: 1 (2006): 109–129. 6 Richard Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands: Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by, Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 129; 131. Bulliet concludes that the initial decision to convert was driven more by the desire to improve or maintain one’s status in the shifting post- conquest dynamics than it was by faith and religious conviction. 6 Introduction

A privileged connection to Muhammad is important and occurs in _ various forms: Muhammad and other prophets visit the city in waking _ life or in dreams, hadith transmitters live and teach in the city as living virtues or merits (fadāʾil) and custodians of the faith, and Imams, Com- _ panions (sahāba), and descendants of the Prophet live and die in the _ _ region. These medieval authors also claim their territory as sanctified and hallowed ground in ways that are simultaneously localized and yet resonate with overarching notions of the Muslim umma. These texts evidence the dynamic of local histories making the global – the Muslim umma – locally and regionally differentiated. Local and regional histories are avenues that illustrate the formation of Muslim identity along the peripheries of medieval Islamic empires.

sources

The central project of this book is to examine these rich and mysterious portions of early Islamic historical writing that involve dreams, prophets, saints, tangled genealogies, and fabulous etymologies and offer a new framework for considering them. It focuses most closely on annalistic Persian city and regional histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centur- ies. It also considers histories produced in another notable periphery, Anatolia, as a heuristic device to flesh out a comparative perspective. The political and social situations in Persia and Anatolia were distinct, and the two regions were Islamized at different times, in some areas centuries apart. Comparing Persia and Anatolia allows us to consider the underlying issue of how early medieval local histories on the periph- eries framed and presented what constituted authority to rule, legitimacy as a Muslim, and legitimacy as political and religious communities with distinct practices and identities who nevertheless had an integral role in the broader umma. The Persian local histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries analyzed in this book are Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, and Tārīkh-i Tabaristān.7 This study extends to Anatolian sources the questions and methodologies applied to Persian

7 Persian sources that fall beyond the chronological or structural framework of this study or are excluded from analysis include, most notably, Tarjama-i Mahāsin-i Isfahān, Tārīkh-i Rūyān, and Shīrāz-nāmah from the fourteenth century; Tārīkh-i TabaristānvaRūyān va Māzandarān, Tārīkh-i Yazd, Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd, and Rawzāt al-jannāt fi awsāf-i madīnat-i Harāt from the fifteenth century; Tārīkh-i Khānī and Tārīkh-i Gīlān dar vaqāyiʿ-i sālhā-yi 923–1038 Hijrī Qamarī from the sixteenth century. Conceptual Frameworks 7 histories to explore al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya, Musā- marat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Ānātūlī, Saljūqnāma, and Abū Muslim-nāmah. These texts were written in Persian or Arabic or both. Some sources were originally written in Arabic and later translated into Persian, some only surviving in this later translation. The term author includes editors, authors, compilers, translators, and individuals who made any substantive change – in content, form, order, or language – to a text. In this sense, all of these texts have multiple authors and are the product of many hands over the centuries, only some of whom are known and identifiable. These texts are not simply histories but are also works of commemora- tive literature that evidence the dynamics, both rhetorical and physical, of the construction of authority to rule and legitimacy as a Muslim. Local histories are not only manifestations of “local pride,” as Rosenthal claims, but also express a deeply felt desire and need to embed a place into the global umma while simultaneously expressing a specifically local identity.8 This wealth of previously underutilized sources illustrates the ways in which authors bind cities and regions to key moments and figures in Islamic and cosmic history and to prophetic authority. They also provide an opportunity to compare and contrast iterations of Islam that varied along and across lines of ethnicity and language in the medieval Islamic world. Local and regional histories from Persian and Anatolian areas exhibit a tendency to articulate an identity that is simultaneously local yet enmeshed within the broader Muslim umma, with its perceived heartlands in the Arab realms of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia.

conceptual frameworks

This project draws on theories and methods in historiography, social history, rhetoric, material culture, and literary criticism to identify the ways in which the authors of Persian local histories employed diverse but interrelated themes, strategies, and literary devices to portray the virtues of their cities. This in turn bound the region or city in question to key moments and characters in Islamic history. By embedding the city deep into the fabric of Islamic history and its continued development, the authors of these local histories fostered a sense of regionally specific and locally differentiated Persian Islamic identity in ways that “centered”

8 Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd revised edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 150. 8 Introduction these histories written on the ostensible “peripheries” of empire. Chap- ter 2 establishes the conceptual framework that provides the intellectual scaffolding for this project.

structure and chapter summaries

This book traces and explains the emergence and use of themes and literary strategies that “centered” texts from “peripheral” regions from a variety of angles. The following chapters address ways in which authors of local histories composed in Persia during the tenth through early fifteenth centuries wove their lands and their communities into Islamic narratives rooted in the perceived Islamic heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. Authors “centered” their cities and regions by including narra- tives about descendants of the Prophet associated with the region; incorp- orating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associating sahāba _ _ with the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (baraka); and incorporating sacraliz- ing etymologies. Authors positioned their communities to better fit into the scope of Islamic history and claimed privileged connections to Muhammad and _ divine or prophetic authority in various ways. Consequently, local histor- ies from Persia both respond to and challenge assumptions about the centrality of Arabs, Arabic, Arabia, Iraq, Syria, sahāba, tābiʿūn, ʿAlids, _ _ sayyids,andsharifs while at the same claiming their own centeredness and importance within these same frameworks. These sources simultan- eously accommodate, challenge, and reconfigure notions of what consti- tutes “central” or “peripheral” in the medieval Islamicate world. Each chapter provides a prism through which to understand how authors “centered” their cities and regions by integrating specific themes and literary strategies into their works. Reading local histories with an eye to these literary strategies and how these local histories accommodated and challenged traditional structures of authority brings into the fore- ground the hybrid identities – globally Muslim and locally unique – of these communities on the peripheries of empire. Each chapter provides depth by exploring how the theme and literary strategy is reflected in local and regional histories. Each chapter also provides breadth by placing these specific claims to authority within their broader social and political contexts. Chapter 2, Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and Imagined Histories, situates this project within the literature and argues Structure and Chapter Summaries 9 that the methodology proposed here is a compelling new way of reading narrative local histories. The long trajectory and strong influence of positivist history in scholarship on Islam has yielded many valuable insights, but it has failed to fully make use of the ostensibly data-poor aspects of histories, such as etymologies and dream narratives. Building on existing scholarly assumptions and insights gained from positivist history, this project demonstrates how a shift away from positivist history that has gained traction in recent decades opens up new possibilities of how to understand identity, rhetoric, and center-periphery relations. The methodology applied to Islamicate history has strong implications for medieval history, particularly European history. This chapter also assesses the genre of local historical writing, which lies on a spectrum from biographical dictionaries at one end to narrative chronicles on the other, and explains why this project’s methodology is ideally suited for the narrative local histories examined here. Chapter 3, Contexts and Authorship, brings into one cohesive chapter the contexts of the production of the five main texts analyzed in this study: Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, and Tārīkh-i Tabaristān. There are three levels of context that are integral to any discussion of these texts: relevant events that occurred during the texts’ production at the level of the caliphate; events that occurred in the local area during the texts’ production; and what we know about the author or translator, including whether the text was commissioned or written for a patron. Chapter 4, Dreaming of the Prophet,examinesdreamsastoolsof legitimation and offers a typology of dreams that emerges in Persian local histories. It contextualizes dreams in the framework of Persian and Arabic historical writing as well the Qurʾan and hadith. Persian local and regional histories evidence a move to bypass genealogical affirm- ation and instead claim affirmation through dreams as an alternative investment of power. Claims of investments of power by pivotal charac- ters – including the Prophet Muhammad, pre-Islamic prophets, and holy _ men – create alternative avenues to genealogical legitimacy gained through descent from the ahl al-Bayt (family of the Prophet) and Companions of the Prophet and the subsequent generation (sahāba _ _ and tābiʿūn). Such connections to divine or prophetic authority occur through dreams or waking visions. The dreamscape of the city’sdeni- zens was a vibrant dimension of the medieval city, and dreams formed a liminal space where information about the sacred was transmitted. This chapter engages with the arguments, evidence, and theoretical 10 Introduction frameworks about sainthood and dreams proposed by scholars of mys- ticism, who have generally been more attuned to the literary significance of dream narratives than positivist historians. Chapter 5, Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of Belonging, moves from dreams about the Prophet to his descendants and utterances. It demonstrates how descendants of the Prophet functioned as legitimating devices in Persian local histories. Following Kazuo Morimoto and Theresa Bernheimer, this book defines as descendants the wide array of cross-sectarian individuals and families who claimed and were believed by their communities to enjoy kinship with the Prophet, a phenomenon that was both biological and socially constructed.9 ʿAlids (al-ʿAlawī), Hasanids, Husaynids, Talibids, sayyids, and sharifs are all ambiguous terms and phenomena, and the terms are used flexibly and with wide variation in the medieval sources themselves, especially in the medieval Islamic east of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.10 These descendants – including but not limited to sayyids and sharifs – constitute the living virtues, or fadāʾil, of the land and become integral to _ the discourse of legitimation that these local histories construct through their form and content. This section also analyzes how hadith attributed to the Prophet or his descendants function as legitimating devices. It explains the significance in local histories of legitimating hadith, some- times uttered by descendants of Muhammad. A discussion of Moroccan _ shurafāʾ adds a comparative dimension to the consideration of how the family of the Prophet is portrayed and integrated in Persianate histories. Chapter 6, Living Virtues of the Land, charts the roles of the Com- panions of Muhammad and the subsequent generation (sahāba and _ _ _ tābiʿūn) in local histories. Persian local histories claim connections with divine authority that tie the city or region to prophetic authority, which can occur in the form of sahāba and tābiʿūn living, teaching, or dying and _ _ being buried in the city. Companions and descendants of Muhammad _ appear in Persian local histories as living virtues of the city and custodians of the faith who are tied to a particular place. This chapter also argues

9 Kazuo Morimoto and Theresa Bernheimer and their work on ʿAlids (Bernheimer) and sayyido-sharifology (Morimoto) and genealogies of the Prophet’s family provide the basis for my definition of these terms. See Kazuo Morimoto, “Toward the Formation of Sayyido- Sharifology: Questioning Accepted Fact,” Journal of Sophia Asian Studies 22 (2004): 87–103; Morimoto, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); Teresa Bernheimer, The ʿAlids: The First Family of Islam, 750–1200 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). 10 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,2–4. Structure and Chapter Summaries 11 that while categories like ulama, sainthood/wilāya, sahāba,andtābiʿūn _ _ are useful, they can also misleadingly suggest that these categories are mutually exclusive or fixed when they are in fact fluid. Chapter 7, Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities, explores how local histories bind their cities to prophetic authority through sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (bar- aka). It assesses the impact of physical interment of sacred bodies as sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) or other manifestations of blessing or sacred power (baraka). Pious visitations take Muslims to the burial places of saints, the Prophet’s descendants, and other pious individuals whose tomb, home, or former prayer cells are sources of baraka. These types of visitation all tie the prophetic legacy to a specific place. This chapter analyzes the sacred in the urban landscape and places local histories and their claims to prophetic authority, piety, and sanctity in the context of broader scholarship on the urban environment in the Islamic world. This section also situates the discussion of pious visitation and sacred power within the framework of material culture in the medieval Islamicate world and in the context of scholarship in cognate fields, such as early Chris- tianity and medieval European Christianity. This chapter analyzes pious visitation and sacred power from the perspectives of material culture, memory, power, metanarrative, semiotics, and hybrid identities. If the body of a saint made a place sacred through his or her interment there, then etymologies also assert sacred and prophetic origins for the city. Chapter 8, Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces, examines how authors incorporate etymologies of their cities and regions as one way of claiming a privileged connection with the Prophet and sacred space. Some etymologies incorporate Muhammad and a paradigmatic event, such as _ the miʿrāj. This section argues that analysis of etymologies in local histor- ies and micro-historical accounts based on them is a fresh angle from which to approach local historical writing. This methodology builds on earlier generations of scholarship as well as recent developments in his- toriographical research. Chapter 9, The View from Anatolia, extends the historiographical study of Persian local and regional histories to sources produced in and about Anatolia. The purpose of this chapter is heuristic. It argues for the broader theoretical implications of a functionally skeptical reading of local history attuned to a metanarrative constructed by authors for audi- ences with hybrid Perso-Muslim identities. This fleshes out the compara- tive historiographical approach of the book, since the process of Islamization occurred in Anatolia roughly 500 years after it did in Iran. 12 Introduction

In order to test, in Anatolian sources, hypotheses about the distinctive features of Persian local histories, this chapter compares sources produced in and about Anatolia from the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries against earlier and contemporary Persian local histories. In contrast to the Persian texts, which use myriad literary strategies to bring legitimacy and authority to their lands and evidence highly localized hybrid Perso-Muslim identities, the few Anatolian examples of local history that exist from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries focus on the construction of dynastic and specifically Seljuq legitimacy and tend to couch claims to legitimacy in terms of military success, genealogy, and the virtues of kingly rule. This chapter not only challenges, stretches, and extends prevailing theoretical assumptions but also validates this book’s argument about the distinctive themes in local Persian historiography by testing it against Anatolian samples. Chapter 10, Lessons from the Peripheries, draws together the themes from the preceding chapters and presents the differences between Persi- cate local histories and their Anatolian counterparts. This chapter outlines the factors that may account for the notable differences in the literary strategies that Persian and Anatolian sources use to assert religious authority and legitimacy as a bona fide Muslim community and integral part of the umma. This chapter tackles the question of whether the literary tendencies and strategies for legitimation seen in Persian texts may be characteristic of writing on the peripheries of the contiguous Arab heartlands of the Islamic empire. This conclusion underscores how the findings and methodologies of this project are in conversation with scholars of the medieval Islamicate world and the sibling field of medieval Christianity in Europe. It empha- sizes the strides to be made in scholarship on Persian and Islamic histori- ography, local history, sainthood, sanctification of place, semiotics, and material culture by harnessing innovative ways of approaching local histories. There are immense gains to be made if we are attuned to the ways in which authors of local and regional histories in Persia embedded their communities into Islamic narratives rooted in the heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia through myriad literary strategies and themes that simultaneously challenged, accommodated, and reflected dominant struc- tures of authority and legitimacy. 2

Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and Imagined Histories

defining “local history”

Persianate local histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries are a disparate collection of texts that vary in form and content. They lie on a spectrum from biographical dictionaries at one end to narrative chron- icles on the other. If we graphically represent the diverse material included under the term “local history” by plotting form on the x-axis and content on the y-axis, then it is strikingly evident just how deeply varied local historical writing is. On the y-axis that represents content, historical writing ranges from city history (Tārīkh-i Qum) to provincial history (Tārīkh-i Tabaristān). Along the x-axis that represents form, the writing ranges from biographical dictionary to narrative chronicle. Most texts considered “local history” fall somewhere on this graph, and many are some combination of biographical dictionary and narrative chronicle and which focus to varying degrees on a town, city, or region. As a consequence of this diversity within the few extant medieval samples, local histories have resisted generalizations and have generally been considered inappropriate for assessment in broad strokes as a genre. Melville sagely cautioned that “the variety of these works defies uniform characterization and each should be approached on its own terms and in its own context.”1 Although their homogeneity has rendered then an underutilized resource, a handful of scholars have manipulated data from

1 Charles Melville, Persian Historiography (London; New York: I. B. Tauris; New York: Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 183.

13 14 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories them successfully, including A. K. S. Lambton, C. E. Bosworth, C. Melville, J. Meisami, J. Paul, and B. Manz. Some, including E. Daniel, K. A. Luther, and A. C. S. Peacock have focused on court historiography and chronicles, including dynastic histories, within local histories. Acknowledging the potential use of these sources, the journal Iranian Studies created a special issue in 2000 dedicated to local histories to highlight the uses of these “underused reservoirs,” by exploring the aims, methods, and contexts of the Persian local histories and their authors.2 These histories were produced in different peripheries over several centuries that were formative in the development of local historical writing. Despite the varying circumstances of their creation and author- ship, their shared vocabulary evidences an overlapping subset of con- cerns, themes, and literary strategies. These dominant themes cluster around pious dreams; links with prophets, saints, and spiritual exemplars and sources of baraka; descent from the Prophet; connections with early Companions of Muhammad and the subsequent generation; sacred ety- _ mologies; and other physical and human virtues of the land. This is not to suggest some sort of conspiratorial agreement between the authors of these texts.3 Neither does framing the recurring literary methods as “strategies” denigrate the genuine religious feelings that fostered the climate of piety in the early Islamic world. These texts attest to the universalist appeal of “central” Islamic narratives and themes and dem- onstrate how authors simultaneously responded to and challenged these “central” themes by applying them in specific locally and geographically bounded contexts on the “peripheries” of empire.

defining“iran”and“persia”

Historically, the terms “Iran,”“Iranian,”“Persia,” and “Persians” inter- mittently refer to overlapping concepts and geographic locations, but they are not synonymous. A rich host of scholars, including but extending well

2 Charles Melville, “Persian Local Histories: Views from the Wings,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring, 2000): 7–14. 3 Jacob Lassner has made some fascinating arguments about the propagandist nature of early Abbasid historical writing, but that genre is far removed from the texts I examine here. Moreover, the intriguing idea of propagandist writing becomes more troubling when we examine the logistics of such an enterprise. Jacob Lassner, Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory: An Inquiry into the Art of ʻAbbāsid Apologetics (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1986). Defining “Iran” and “Persia” 15 beyond Gherardo Gnoli, Sarah Bowen Savant, Touraj Daryaee, Patricia Crone, Afshin Marashi, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Abbas Amanat, Farzin Vejdani, Sarah Stewart, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, and Shaul Shaked have analyzed the concepts and terms Iran and Persia in the Sasanian and early Islamic periods.4 In his essay on the idea of Iran (Er ān in Middle Persian; Īrān in Arabic and New Persian), Gnoli argues that the idea of Iran with political implications (Er ān-shahr as the “domain of the Iran- ians”) cannot pre-date the Sasanian king Arshashir I (?–242 A.D.), but the notion of Iran (Er ān) as an ethnic and religious entity existed much earlier.5 In early Arabic sources, Fārs/Fāris refers to “Persia”–both to the specific province and territories beyond it – and correspondingly ahl Fārs/ahl Fāris/Fāris may refer both to the people of the specific province and people of the territories beyond it, while ahl Furs generally refers to people as “Persians” not limited to being from a specific province.6 Following Savant, for the purposes of this book, Iran (Arabic and New Persian, Īrān, Īrān-shahr; Middle Persian, Er ān, Er ān-shahr)referstothe geographic formation of the Iranian plateau, and Iranians as the people who inhabit that region. Persia (Fārs/Fāris) and Persians (ahl Fārs, ahl Fāris, al-Furs) refer to the broader concept and wider geographic region of the vast lands inhabited by a loose Persian ethnic group and held under Achaemenid and Sasanian imperial control, not the narrower definition that also existed alongside it in early Arabic sources, which referred to the province and the people of that province.7 As the local histories

4 For a condensed bibliography and discussion of the secondary literature about the concept of “Iran,” especially regarding “Iran” as a “national” identity, see Sarah Bowen Savant, The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), chap. 1, esp. 8–12. See also Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 161–162; 376. 5 On the concept of Iran and Iranian identity, especially in the Sasanian period, see Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran: An Essay on Its Origin (Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente; Leiden: E. J. Brill [distributor]), 1989. Gnoli concludes, “the political, religious, and ethnic concept of Iran is a typical elaboration of the firsthalfofthethird century A.D. It seems to have come into being all of a sudden, as the backbone of a Sasanian propaganda, probably in the twenties of that century. It is, nevertheless, also the outcome of a long historical process” (Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran: An Essay on Its Origin (Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente; Leiden: E. J. Brill [distributor]), 1989, 175). Gnoli argues that the idea of Iran with political implications cannot pre-date Arshashir I, but the notion of Iran as an ethnic and religious entity existed much earlier. See also Joseph Wiesehöfer, “ARDAŠĪRI,i.History,” EIr; H. Luschey, “ARDAŠĪR I, ii. Rock reliefs,” EIr. 6 Savant, The New Muslims,9. 7 For these definitions of Iran/Iranians and Persia/Persians, see Savant, The New Muslims, 8–12. 16 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories demonstrate, during the tenth to early fifteenth centuries, as in the ninth to eleventh centuries that Savant analyzes, regional identities were stronger than pan-Iranian ones.8 Moreover, this book considers local histories from the Islamic east, including Khurasan. Consequently, this book more often uses the shifting, amorphous, and broader terms “Persia” and “Persian” as more appropriate to the broader questions addressed in this book than the terms “Iran” and “Iranians” (Er ān, Er ān-shahr), which are less relevant for the tenth- to early fifteenth-century local histories under consideration here.

distinguishing narrative local histories from biographical dictionaries

Extant examples of local historical writing from the tenth to early fif- teenth centuries generally lie somewhere on the continuum between a biographical dictionary, which is primarily a compilation of biographical entries about notables associated with the area, to a narrative history that records the political, military, economic, and otherwise significant events of the area in a chronicle-like fashion. The local history as primarily narrative chronicle is exemplified by the sources examined here. This book considers only one specific genre of local histories – the primarily narrative local history – to the exclusion of other related forms of historical writing, especially biographical diction- aries, for two primary reasons. Firstly, there has been robust scholarship on biographical dictionaries by Tarif Khalidi, Richard Bulliet, and Ann K. S. Lambton, amongst others. Secondly, biographical dictionaries war- rant a different methodological approach from this book’s approach to narrative local histories. It is certainly true that the content of biograph- ical dictionaries resonates with themes similar and at times identical to those addressed in tārīkh works and bears witness to the negotiation of identities that are simultaneously local and global. However, the data biographical dictionaries provide is suited to quantitative analysis of the type pioneered by Bulliet (1972) and pursued most recently by M. Romanov (2012 and 2014).9 It is true that a biographical dictionary such as Sulami’s Tabaq̣ āt al-sūfīyya demonstrates a hybrid identity that is _

8 Savant, The New Muslims,11–12. 9 Richard Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Maxim Romanov, “Digital Analysis of Arabic Biographic Collections,” in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter 4 (July 2012): 9–11; Romanov, “Dreaming Ḥanbalites: Dream-Tales in Prosopographical Dictionaries,” in Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies, edited by, Alexander Knysh Hybrid Identities and Gestures 17

Khurasani (local) and broadly Islamic (global) in a similar way to how that dynamic is negotiated in the local histories analyzed here. However, the formulaic quality of biographical dictionaries, such as Sulami’s Taba-̣ qāt al-sūfīyya, make them particularly well suited to quantitative _ approaches to social history and require different methodological approaches to assess this type of big data. Consequently, while there is thematic overlap between narrative local histories and biographical dic- tionaries, the significant differences in their form mean that biographical dictionaries are better suited to a quantitative approach that is not appro- priate to primarily narrative material. This book approaches the narratives, form, and rhetorical devices employed in the Persian local histories from a functionally skeptical perspective. While Bulliet brilliantly applied quantitative methods to social history in his work with biographical dictionaries and conversion, this project focuses on the broader narrative content of local histories. While these genres are blurred – local histories contain biographical entries – and information about local patricians and notables are an integral part of local and regional histories, I have specifically chosen local histories that are not primarily biographical dictionaries. The patri- cians, Sufis, and religious exemplars form only one part of the fadāʾil of a _ city. Consequently, this project is ill suited to applying the rigors of quantitative methodologies to the onomastic data that biographical entries can yield because this project focuses on the narrative (not ono- mastic) content of local histories.

hybrid identities and gestures to “center” the “peripheries”

Simultaneously challenging and complementing the dominant historical narrative based on universal histories and chronicles, local histories shed light on the ways their authors and communities conceptualized religion, identity, and community. Despite the heterogeneity within the relatively

and Ozgen Felek (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), 31–50; Romanov, “Toward the Digital History of the Pre-Modern Muslim World: Developing Text-Mining Techniques for the Study of Arabic Biographical Collections,” in Methods and Means for Digital Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, Proceedings of the Conference. Leuven: Brepols Publishers, 2012. doi: 10.1484/M.LECTIO-EB.5.102573; Romanov, Working Paper, “[Toward] Abstract Models for Islamic History,” presented at the Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University, October 24–25, 2013, revised September 2014. 18 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories small sample set of extant histories, shared thematic concerns and literary strategies link Persianate local histories composed during the tenth through early fifteenth centuries. These histories exert both centripetal and centrifugal forces that mark their spheres of influence as simultan- eously local and specific and expansive and global. On one hand, these local histories insert their regions into paradigmatic events in Islamic history and the perceived Arab heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. On the other hand, these texts also ground their narratives in highly local contexts that celebrate and articulate the uniquely local dimensions of their cities and regions. These histories participate in a discourse of authority, legitimacy, and center-periphery dynamics through their shared thematic concerns. The cities and regions are located at far removes from one another, and yet they share related notions of identity and community and what constitutes a bona fide Muslim community of importance.10 Persian-Muslim or local-Muslim hybrid identity is itself a fluid phe- nomenon. What it meant to have a Persian-Muslim identity differed greatly over time and place. Many different identities – tribal, ethnic, and within the broadly religious, those affiliations by madhhab, tarīqa, _ _ and various Shiʿi proto- Shiʿi, and pro-ʿAlid groups – are aggregated under this broad umbrella of Muslim. Persian local histories elucidate some regional iterations of this Perso-Muslim identity. In the cognate field of medieval Arabic historiography, Zayde Antrim persuasively argued for a discourse of place as a conceptual framework through which to approach an array of works – geographies, work of literature, travelogues, poetry, and religious tracts – that articulate early Muslim attitudes towards lands and homelands.11 This project engages with the sibling field of Persianate historiography and texts composed in or translated into Persian, Arabic, and often some combination of both. This book argues that Persianate local histories respond to and challenge

10 For an overview of this methodology and its benefits, see Mimi Hanaoka, “Perspectives from the Peripheries: Strategies for ‘Centering’ Persian Histories from the ‘Peripheries,’” Journal of Persianate Studies 8: 1 (2015): 1–22. doi: 10.1163/18747167–12341276. 11 Zayde Antrim, “Ibn ʿAsakir’s Representations,” 109–129; Antrim, Routes and Realms, esp. 1–8. On an assessment of how the term watan shifted in meaning from Arabic texts _ in the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, when it referred to an emotional or physical attachment to land or homeland, to later become a more expansive term that referred to political and religious categories of belonging demarcated by territory in Arabic texts describing Syria from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, see Antrim, “Watan before Wataniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria,” Al-Masaq _ _ 22: 2 (2010): 173–190. doi: 10.1080/09503110.2010.488890. Hybrid Identities and Gestures 19 a normative understanding of centers and peripheries. Put another way, these texts evidence attempts to “center” these cities and regions located on the ostensible “peripheries” of the Islamic empire and early Muslim heartlands that Antrim discusses, with their centers of gravity in Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. These texts continuously turn, shift, and reorient themselves in mul- tiple directions at different points in the text to simultaneously challenge, accommodate, and respond to dominant notions of what constitutes the center or centers of the Islamic empire and Muslim umma. Like gyro- scopes designed to maintain their orientation, these texts spin and rotate, at once attesting to local centers of gravity and bending to normative understandings of the Arab Muslim central narratives. The authors of these histories were cognizant of their local spheres of influence, perceived marginality, and their geographic distance from the ostensible centers of the empire. This dialogue within the sources – what Antrim termed “a discourse of place”–reveals the contours of the negotiation of what constituted centrality and periphery across the expansive and increasingly multi-ethnic and multilingual Islamic empire. Perched on the peripheries of the vast empire into which the Islamic conquests radiated outwards during the first decades of Islamic rule, the authors of these local histories wrote at multiple registers for both per- ceived and real audiences. On one level, these histories represent the authors’ claims about the specialness and worthiness of their communities for a local audience that might include their patrons and the local court. On another level, these texts speak to an imagined wider audience in which these local perspectives respond to and challenge assumptions about the marginality of the Persian hinterlands in contrast to the Arab- Islamic regions of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. Physical distance marks only one impermanent dimension of the ostensible marginality of these areas. Mapping Bayhaq, Qum, and Bukhara in terms of their distance from Mecca, Cairo, and Baghdad would only capture one dimension of the ostensible peripheral status of these cities. For one thing, the rise of local dynasties such as the Buyids during the tenth century meant that decentralized power from Abbasid capital in Baghdad stretched across vast areas with multiple regional foci across Persianate lands. As the Abbasids lost control over their vast caliphate, the very notion of what constituted a center of power was contested and problematized by the very real emergence of com- peting foci of administrative, fiscal, military, religious, and intellectual influence. 20 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories

Local histories also have a degree of solipsism to them in that they are not particularly concerned with the centrality or marginality of other cities or regions along the peripheries. Unlike universal histories, such as Tabaṛ ī’s encyclopedic chronicles, local histories are attuned to one location. Other places factor into the local history in so far as they enter into its orbit. In other words, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā is unconcerned with the perceived centrality or marginality of Qum or Tabaristan. Instead, each history focuses on the importance of its own area as a central and vital location. Other regions and cities veer into focus in so far as they intersect with the city in question. This is determined, in part, by the text’s intended audience and whether the work was written for and dedicated to a patron, as was the case with the original Arabic Tārīkh-i Qum, which was written under the patronage of the wazīr to the Buyid Fakhr ud-Dawla b. Rukn al-Dawla (r. 366–387/976–997) and dedicated to him. Tārīkh-i Qum was a local history written about the local area for a local patron. Rivalry with other cities or regions is implicit, since the local pride and focus evidenced in local histories is ultimately one that is directed inwards towards one’s home region. Instead, it is the rivalries within the city or region that can rise to the fore, such as the qualities of the different rulers of Tabaristan, or the different sayyids in the area. The conceptual framework of literary strategies and a discourse of place is applicable to both Persianate and Arab local histories. In Arabic local histories that take the form of biographical dictionaries studded with hadith about the area or hadith transmitted by local teachers, there is a heavy recurrence of sahāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, and sharifs and other des- _ _ cendants of the Prophet and emphasis on the virtues and merits of the region. Persianate local histories contain these elements and evidence a wide variety of literary strategies that collapse time and compress dis- tance. These include pious dream narratives and fantastic etymologies that bring these Persian peripheries into the orbit of the most central Islamic narratives that revolve in large part around Arabs and Arab lands. Expectations of genre condition some of the strategies and themes in local histories. Despite the heterogeneity within the genre of local histor- ies, these sources consistently address the noteworthy merits of the area’s human capital and physical landscape. Documenting the descendants of the Prophet and his Companions associated with the region, pious dream narratives, sites of ziyārat and baraka, and sacralizing etymologies con- form to the expectations that local historical writing identify the laudable human and material virtues of the region. These themes and literary Theoretical Considerations 21 strategies are all specific iterations of the broader expectations of the genre that it valorize a specific place within the umma.

theoretical considerations

Scholars of early Islamic Arabic historical writing have taken pioneering approaches towards the literary dimensions of early Islamic texts in ways that challenge traditional accounts of the early Islamic polity.12 T. El-Hibri has consistently approached Tabaṛ ī’s Abbasid-era chronicles as a unified whole and argued for reading them, in significant part, as commentary framed within a religio-ethicalframework.El-Hibritreats Tabaṛ ī’s encyclopedic chronicles as unified narratives and focuses on the patterns and themes within them.13 S. Leder, A. Noth, and L. Conrad have been highly attuned to the literary dimensions of Arabic historical writing in their skeptical approaches to them, and they have paid close attention to how topoi and motifs function.14 Chase Robinson takes a

12 Hoyland provides an overview of recent approaches to early Arabic historiography and some characteristics of ninth and tenth century author-compilers, including ʿUmar al- Wāqidī (d. 207/823), Muhammad b. Jarīr al-Tabaṛ ī (d. 310/923), al-Jāhiz (d. 255/868), _ Hamza al-Isfahānī (d. c. 350/960), Abū ʿAlī al-Muhassin al-Tanūkhī (d. 384/994), Ahmad _ _ b. Abī Yaʿqūb al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 284/897), and Ahmad ibn Yahyā al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892), _ as well as Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d. c. 400/1010), Abū ʿAlī Ahmad Miskawayh (d. 420/ _ 1030), and Ibn Jawzī (d.597/1201). Hoyland also articulates the idiosyncrasies of authors, the differences, and the historiographical questions at stake in the different genres of hadith, khabar, adab, and qissa within medieval Islamicate writing. Robert Hoyland, “History, Fiction and Authorship in the First Centuries of Islam,” in Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim Horizons, edited by, Julia Bray (London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 16–46. 13 Tayeb El-Hibri, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); “The Unity of Tabari’s Chronicle,” Al-’Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists 11 (1999): 1–3; “The Regicide of the Caliph al- Amīn and the Challenge of Representation in Medieval Islamic Historiography,” Arabica 42: 3 (Nov. 1995): 334–364; “The Redemption of Umayyad Memory by the ʿAbbāsids,” JNES 61: 4 (Oct. 2002): 241–265. 14 Representative works include Stefan Leder, “The Literary Use of Khabar: A Basic Form of Historical Writing,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, vol. 1: Problems in the Literary Source Material, edited by Averil Cameron and Lawrence. I. Conrad (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1992), 277–315; Leder, “Conventions of Fictional Narration in Learned Litera- ture,” in Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature, edited by Stefan Leder (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 34–60; Albrecht Noth, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1994); Law- rence I. Conrad, “Abraha and Muhammad: Some Observations Apropos of Chronology 22 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories less skeptical line on medieval historical writing and emphasizes its social and political functions.15 Most recently and related in methodo- logical approach to this book is Nicola Clarke, who has taken a similar historiograhical approach towards the conquest narratives of Iberia.16 In the narrower field of medieval Persian historiography, Julie Meisami has broken significant ground by arguing for the literary nature of medi- eval Persian historical sources in addition to her work on classical Arabic historiography.17 Meisami highlights the expectations of genre that forms an “unspoken contract” of mutual expectations between the writer and the ruler, who promoted or commissioned the writing of history and sought the legitimation that patronage brought.18 A. K. S. Lambton’s notable scholarship on Persian historical writing, particularly political and economic history, incorporated local histories.19

and Literary Topoi in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition,” BSOAS 50 (1987): 225–240; Conrad, “The Conquest of Arwād: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiog- raphy of the Early Medieval Near East,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 317–401. In a methodology that will be familiar to readers of Patricia Crone’s early work, Conrad compares several eastern Christian and Islamic accounts of the siege and surren- der of Arwād to trace the transmission of narratives about the event. In Christian sources, multiple reports are similar not because they are independently confirmed, but because they share a common source: the chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa. The Arab-Islamic sources have the pattern of later sources adding detail not extant in the earlier material, which is a result of the patchwork nature of compilation and composition. 15 Chase Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2003); Robinson, “The Conquest of Khuzistan: A Historiographical Reassessment,” BSOAS 67 (2004): 30–37. 16 Nicola Clarke, The Muslim Conquests of Iberia (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2012). 17 Julie Scott Meisami, “History as Literature,” Iranian Studies, 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring, 2000): 15–30; Meisami, “The Past in Service of the Present: Two Views of History in Medieval Persia,” Poetics Today 14:2 (Summer 1993): 247–275; Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999); Meisami, “Masʿūdī and the Reign of al-Amīn: Narrative and Meaning in Medieval Muslim Historiography,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Litera- ture, edited by P. Kennedy (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2005), 149–176. 18 Meisami, “Rulers and the Writing of History,” in Writers and Rulers: Perspectives on Their Relationship from Abbasid to Safavid Times, edited by B. Gruendler and L. Marlow (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2004), 73–95. 19 For example, see Ann K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic, and Social History, 11th–14th century (Albany, NY: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988); Lambton, Local Particularism and the Common People in Pre-Modern Iran, Working Paper (Durham, U.K.: University of Durham, Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2001); Lambton, “Persian Local Histories: The Tradition behind Them and the Assumptions of Their Authors,” in Yad-nama in Mem- oria di Alessandro Bausani, University of Rome, Studi orientali, vol. 10, edited by B. Scarcia Amoretti and L. Rostagno (Roma: Bardi editore, 1991), 227–38. Theoretical Considerations 23

More recently, Parvaneh Pourshariati has fruitfully employed local histories to reconsider patterns of Arab settlement in Khurasan and used several of the local histories examined in this book, although her driving questions differ significantly from mine.20 Arezou Azad focuses exclu- sively on Fadāʾil-i Balkh, a thirteenth-century local history about the city _ located in the eastern Persianate world, in modern-day nothern Afghani- stan, and the oldest extant text on the history of Balkh that was produced in and about that city.21 Azad convincingly argues that the text narrates and produces a sacred landscape for Balkh. Focusing on the eighth to twelfth centuries CE, Azad tracks how the text evidences a community that retained and re-posited the sacredness of its landscape even as the religious communities to which it belonged transitioned primarily from Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and those worshipping local deities, to Islam. Shrines from Balkh’s Islamic era were placed in physical sites that were already sacred to the community before the arrival of Islam.22

20 Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurasan and the Pattern of Arab Settle- ment,” Studia Iranica 27 (1998): 48–81; Pourshariati, “Local Historiography in Early Medieval Iran and the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 2000): 133–164. Elton Daniel is a notable earlier scholar of the Arab conquests and settlement in Khurasan, with The Political and Social History of Khurasan Under ‘Abbasid Rule, 747– 820 (Minneapolis: Iran-American Foundaiton, 1979). 21 Arezou Azad, Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Fadāʾil-i Balkh _ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Fadāʾil-i Balkh was first composed in Arabic by _ Shaykh al-IslāmAbū Bakr ʿAbd Allāhb.ʿUmar b. Muhammad b. Dāwūd al-Wāʿiz al- _ _ Balkhī and transcribed in 610/1214. The text was translated and adapted into Persian, likely with additions and changes, in 676/1278 by an individual identified as ʿAbd Allāh [b. Muhammad] b. al-Qāsim al-Husayṇ ī, about whom very little is known. There appears _ to be a gap between the original Arabic author’s composition of the text, probably sometime between 584/1188–1189 and 610/1214, and its transcription in 610/1214. Azad, Sacred Landscape, 11; 25–28. The Arabic text predates the Mongol invasion of the area; Gengis Khan occupied Balkh in 618/1221. Azad, Sacred Landscape, 7, 26. 22 Azad, Sacred Landscape. Azad summarizes one of the major components of her argument on the sacred landscape as follows: “The space in which pre-Islamic saints lay were ‘Islamized’ once the spirits of Balkh’s dead scholars began to occupy them through their shrines. The memory of the pre-Islamic history of Balkh was not obliterated; in fact, it added to Balkh’s sanctity. How does this add up, when Balkh had an idolatrous past in which ‘the devil’ was worshipped? The technique was simple: to acknowledge that it had existed, then appropriate it, and then tame it. The story would be kept alive and used to Balkh’sadvantage:to emphasize its antiquity and hence its authenticity, but also to argue, based on the example of conversion, that the people of Balkh could pacify the most evil of spirits ...The result is a canvas of sacred landscape that bears brush-strokes of a pre-Islamic past – mainly Buddhist, but such details did not matter – combined with those of Islam. All that has changed are the cultural and linguistic codings attached to Balkh’s landscape through the Muslim narratives” (Azad, Sacred Landscape, 168). As I argue over the course of this book, a similar phenom- enon is exemplified by the local histories under consideration here. 24 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories

Melville, who convincingly and thoroughly researched the histories of Mazandaran, argued that the production of local historical writing in the Caspian region is qualitatively different from that produced else- where.23 The histories of Mazandaran (of which Tabaristan is a part) are primarily occupied with dynastic history, and there is a paucity of pre-eighteenth-century works about the region.24 Though the boundar- ies of historical Mazandaran differ from its present-day ones, medieval Mazandaran would have included Tabaristan, Ruyan, and Astarabad (formerly known as Gurgan), and was bounded on the north by the Caspian Sea.25 Among other scholars of Persian historiography, Kenneth A. Luther notes that facts cannot be simply “extracted” from historical texts, since their very composition and rhetorical style is both laden with meaning and constrained by the norms of the genre.26 Marilyn Waldman explored what she called “speech act theory” in the extant sections of Abū al-Fadl _ Muhammad ibn Husayṇ Bayhaqī’s (ca. 996–1077) Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī and _ proposed a literary theory that focused on the text’s organization, narra- tive structure, and rhetorical devices. In doing so she framed Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī in the context of eleventh century expectations of its genre. She also foregrounded the tensions between akhbar and other secondary material embedded within the text and Bayhaqī’s first-hand account of the events of the court in which he was employed as a secretary and

23 Charles Melville, “The Caspian Provinces: A World Apart – Three Local Histories of Mazandaran,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 2000): 45–91. On Caspian historiog- raphy and histories, Melville writes: “the emphasis on dynastic history, which becomes even more exclusive with later authors such as Shams al-Din Lahiji, exemplifies the long-term political independence of the Caspian region, and the multiplicity of its rulers. Furthermore, all these works are histories of a province; there are no town chronicles. This explains the absence of real interest in urban topography and pious endowments such as are found in other works of ‘local’ history, associated with centres such as Yazd, Isfahan, or Qum,” (Charles Melville, “The Caspian Provinces: A World Apart - Three Local Histories of Mazandaran,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 2000): 88). 24 Christoph Werner, “The Amazon, the Sources of the Nile, and Tabriz: Nadir Mirza’s Tārīkh va jughrāfī-yi dār al-saltana-yi Tabrīz and the Local Historiography of Tabriz and _ Azerbaijan,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 2000): 165–184. Melville, “The Caspian Provinces,” 45–91. 25 V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. 26 On the rhetoric and what he terms the “figured style” of Persian chancery prose of the later sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, see Kenneth Allin Luther, “Islamic Rhetoric and the Persian Historians 1000–1300 A.D.” in Studies in Near Eastern Culture and History in Memory of Ernest T. Abdel-Massih, edited by, J. A. Bellamy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1990), 90–98. Remembering and Forgetting, Writing and Rewriting 25 historian.27 Waldman’s untimely death meant that her early work stopped at a somewhat murky place, but her conclusion that the expect- ations of genre constrain and shape the reportage and commentary is beyond doubt. For Pratt, the distinctions between fact and fiction as well as between text and context are often indistinct, and moreover, not of primary importance,28 a point that Waldman extends to assert that “the state of affairs that any text displays must be viewed in terms of the context and conditions in which the text is produced and the principles by which readers ‘read,’ or cooperate with the author in receiving his message.”29 When speech and writing is understood in this way, as a context-dependent performance meant to convey meaning – not necessar- ily facts – that can only occur with the cooperation of the author and the reader who consumes the text, genre and context rise to the forefront of importance while possible fictitiousness recedes in significance.

remembering and forgetting, writing, and rewriting

Mapping patterns of remembering and forgetting, Sarah Bowen Savant has with detail and nuance traced the ways in which Perso-Muslim identity emerged among the converted population during the ninth to

27 Marilyn Robinson Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-Islamicate Historiography (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980). The extant portions of Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī covers the reign of Sultan Masʿūd I of Ghazna, who reigned from 1030 to 1041 CE. Waldman’sworkisinfluenced by Mary Louise Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1977). Waldman discusses the applicability of Pratt’sideason“display texts” to Islamicate historiography and literary analysis in Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative,18–21, 133–141. A foundational work in the theory of language and discourse, particularly in the sense of “performative” sentences, in which “the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action” (Austin, How to do Things with Words,6)isJohn Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). In his exploration of later Indo-Persian literature, Ali Anooshahr has focused on issues of “becoming” and “modeling”–as an alternative to reading sources for their emphasis on legitimation – to examine how three ghazi kings presented themselves. Ali Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). 28 “As I have already suggested, the fiction/nonfiction distinction is neither as clear-cut nor as important as we might think, at least not in the realm of the tellable. Our capacity for verbally displaying and evaluating experience and for finding pleasure in such displays applies equally to experience which is claimed to be real as to what which is not.” Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory, 143. 29 Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative, 19. 26 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories eleventh centuries using as evidence architecture, historical writing, poetry, belles-lettres (adab), the writing produced within the religious sciences, geographies, iconography, inscriptions, sculpture, numismatics, and monuments. Savant focuses on the imperial, religious, and historio- graphical traditions to identify the manifestations of the new culture of ethnically Persian Muslims. Savant approaches this hybrid Perso-Muslim identity from the “twin angles of tradition and memory,”30 which are mirrored through processes of remembering and forgetting, reclaiming and discarding, storytelling and editing. Conceptual flexibility and expansiveness is a strength in Savant’s work. Savant uses “tradition” as an encompassing term to include “reports handed down about the past in whatever form,” while “transmission” is “evidence of the fostering of shared memories,” which builds upon itself, so that “as a tradition accumulates weight and authority, it shapes collective agreements about the past, thereby creating memories.”31 By hinging the issues of conversion and identity formation on the processes of remembering and forgetting, Savant astutely highlights the ways in which no identity is static, fixed, or permanent. Rather, events are transmitted, elided, elabor- ated, and reassembled to create what we later identify as memory. Savant documents the conflicting appropriations of mythical pasts that were remembered or forgotten in ways that layered Persians into an Arab-Islamic framework of history while delicately retaining and balancing Persian and local understandings of ancestry, heritage, and genealogy. Similar processes existed for attaching meaning and significance to Persian sites, cities, and monuments, the effect of which was “the gradual conversion of Iranian sites of great antiquity into ones with Muslim associations.”32 The human brain consolidates memory and actively redistributes repre- sentations from sort-term storage spaces into long-term memory during sleep, reordering a person’s waking life in the soft, quiet hours of sleep.33 Recent insights into neuroscience underscore the impermanence and

30 Savant, The New Muslims, 3. Savant’s discussion of the difference between “Persia” (Fārs/Fāris) versus “Iran” (Er ān; Er ān-shahr)inChapter 1 is illuminating; for the ninth– eleventh centuries, “Persia” (Fārs/Fāris) – albeit in its multiple, overlapping, and some- times confusing meanings – is dominant. Another example of the construction of memory in early Islam is Antoine Borrut’s study of the ways in which the knowledge and memory of Karbalāʾ and the death of al-Husayṇ was forgotten, remembered, constructed, and promulgated. Antoine Borrut, “Remembering Karbalāʾ: The Construction of an Early Islamic Site of Memory,” JSAI 42 (2015): 249–282. 31 Savant, The New Muslims,4. 32 Savant, The New Muslims, 57. 33 B. Rasch and J. Born, “About Sleep’s Role in Memory,” Physiological Reviews 93: 2 (April 1, 2013): 681–766. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00032.2012. Remembering and Forgetting, Writing and Rewriting 27 contingency of memory representations that the brain sifts through, reorgan- izes, reorders, and stores while the body rests in sleep and the brain whirrs into different dimensions of activity. This neuroscientific research dovetails with the historiographical premise of this project that categories of centrality, belonging, and identity are entities in flux, written, overwritten, rewritten, and reordered to suit the needs and contingencies of present circumstance. Old beliefs persist, even as new systems emerge to overshadow them.34 Memory – and with it history – is always fallible, creative, and in flux. Writing a great many centuries after the texts in this study were composed, Hayden White claimed that the modes of historiography and philosophy of history – for White the two are the same – are “in reality formalizations of poetic insights that analytically precede them and that sanction the particular theories used to give historical accounts the aspect of an ‘explanation’.”35 Though placed at a great distance in both place and time from the texts under consideration here, White’s conclusion offers theoretical insights applicable to Persian historiography. The composers and compilers of the local histories have understandings of historical writing that underpin their enterprise.

34 Crone, The Nativist Prophets. 35 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), xi–xii, 3–4. White argues that historical writing and philosophy of history are the same in content; the difference between the two is not in their content but in their emphases. White claims that metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony are the “four principal modes of historical conscious- ness” in nineteenth century historical writing in Europe, and these modes are prefigured in and identified through the tropological strategies and language the historian employs. In addition to these four broader tropological strategies there are also three kinds of strategies of explanation and, within those explanatory strategies, four modes of articu- lation. The explanatory strategies are explanation by formal argument, explanation by emplotment, and explanation by ideological implication. Therefore, for explanation by formal argument, the possible modes of articulation are Formism, Organicism, Mechan- ism, and Contextualism. For explanatory effect, there is explanation by emplotment, and the possible modes of articulation are the Archetypes of Romance, Comedy, Tragedy, and Satire. For explanation by ideological implication, there are the tactics of Anarchism, Conservatism, Radicalism, and Liberalism as the four possible modes of articulation. White adopts a formalist methodology and places himself in the historiographical trad- ition as writing in the ironic mode. In White’s words, “Each of these modes of conscious- ness provides the basis for a distinctive linguistic protocol by which to prefigure the historical field and on the basis of which specific strategies of historical interpretation can be employed for ‘explaining’ it” (Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagin- ation in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), xi). Thus, through these modes of historical consciousness, the “historian per- forms an essentially poetic act, in which he prefigures the historical field and constitutes it as a domain upon which to bring to bear the specific theories he will use to explain ‘what was really happening’ in it” (Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), x). 28 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories

Persian historical writing contains what White would call explan- ations, both oblique and explicit, of what White would consider the poetic insights that city histories embody. These are explanations of how a city is simultaneously Muslim and Persian; how these qualities are manifested in the land and through its inhabitants; and why the city is historically and cosmically significant. This book is concerned with the literary processes by which a city was imbued with religious significance and prophetic authority. This study does not intend to define the “aver- age” local or regional history. Rather, the aim is to discern patterns in the literature that the authors employed to bring the sanction and prestige of religious authority and importance to their respective cities and center their cities and regions on the ostensible peripheries of empire. The narrative process is an integral part of the construction and articulation of identity. What Somers called “narrative identity” is the process by which individuals and groups make sense of their place in the world by locating themselves within broader social narratives, by way of “numerous crosscutting relational story-lines in which social actors find or locate themselves.”36 In Somers’ aim, it is an approach that emphasizes “the embeddedness of identity in overlapping networks of relations that shift over time and space.”37 In this case, the authors of local histories place their regions and fellow denizens firmly within the scope of Islamic history, while retaining multiple other identities – ʿAlid, Persian, Tabar- istani – firmly on the horizon as one of the guiding compasses of identity, belonging, and boundaries between self and other. Without reducing the multifaceted Perso-Muslim identities into any- thing that is static or essentialist, the benefit of integrating the concept of “narrative identity” into an assessment of early Islamic local histories is to pay close attention to how narrating the self – and in turn, one’s commu- nity, city, and region – is a vital part of understanding the self. In explaining his city’s history to others, the authors of these texts are

36 Margaret R. Somers, “The Narrative Construction of Identity: A Relationship and Network Approach,” Theory and Society 23: 5 (1994): 606–607. Somers’ concept of “narrative identity” emerged out of the intersection between politicized “identity polit- ics” and the academic approach to “the social construction of identity,” and instead argues that “social life is itself storied and that narrative is an ontological condition of social life.” With emplotment, selection, relationships, and spatio-temporal sequences, discrete events become part of a larger interconnected series of events that constitutes the narrative. Somers, “The Narrative Construction of Identity,” 613–614, 616–617. 37 Somers, “The Narrative Construction of Identity,” 607. Remembering and Forgetting, Writing and Rewriting 29 simultaneously forming, reconfiguring, and bounding the city’s history and complex identity. In proclaiming, documenting, asserting, or otherwise charting the specialness and significance of cities and regions on the peripheries of empire, the authors and compilers of these local histories wrote, at least in part, to both cement and elicit patterns of behavior and belief about the location. Reading these local histories is somewhat like listening to one half of a conversation, since it is in many instances unclear what practices endure or began, what pieces of monumental or other commemorative architecture were produced, or what policies were enacted (the other side of the conversation) as a result of these texts. This is because complex events – the construction of mausolea, changes in taxation practices – seldom have a single cause. It is rare that the multitude of reasons are identified and recorded for posterity. On the levels of the actions of nameless individuals over the centuries, we can only deduce general patterns of behavior from disparate pieces of evidence – that, for example, the large number of tombs built for imām-zādes in Qum and extant during the Safavid period are testament to the continued importance of imams and their descendants in the city, even as Qum’s role in Imami Shiʿism fluctuated over the centuries. A text describing Fātima of Qum’s sanctuary as blessed does not _ inherently make it so, much in the way that Tārīkh-i Bayhaq’s claims that a certain sahāba lived in the city does not constitute that reality if it _ _ did not actually happen. Tārīkh-i Bayhaq cannot, in other words, will the importance of its city into being by claiming it to be so. What these texts do evidence, however, is that the authors, patrons, and those who main- tained and disseminated these texts were engaged in a process and a discourse that both challenged and responded to notions of centrality and periphery at various places and times in medieval Persia between the tenth and early fifteenth centuries. Whether in the form of composing new works, compiling extant traditions, or some combination of those factors, authorship was neces- sarily a creative and purposeful enterprise that betrays the authors’ understandings of historical writing.38 Factors such as patronage, intel- lectual climate, and extant sources imposed various constraints on histor- ical writing, but authors nevertheless engaged in an original process that

38 On “strategies of compilation” within Arabic anthologies from the ninth–eleventh cen- turies, which articulate a “discourse of place,” about home, cities, and regions, see Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms, 15. 30 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories included creatively arranging and ordering a work. This creative process includes the use of titles, discrete sections, embedded motifs, the insertion or exclusion of certain narratives and their selective presentation, the incorporation of hadith and akhbār reports or poetry, biographical notices, mythical, semi-mythical, or legendary elements, and a narrative thread that holds a piece together as one created text.39 Through pro- cesses of intentional self-representation, authors of local histories pre- sented their hybrid Perso-Muslim identities and sanctified their lands in ways framed by their multiform understandings of legitimacy and authority.

center-periphery relations

Finbarr Barry Flood’s theoretical framework in his study of pre-modern cultural geography is a useful heuristic device when we consider local historical writing, because Flood’s framework brings into focus the com- plex web of forces and relationships that constitutes center-periphery relations on the early Islamic peripheries. Flood focuses on material culture from the eighth to thirteenth centuries and modes of Hindu- Muslim engagement during the conquest of Sind by Arab armies during the Ghurid and Delhi sultanates.40 By focusing on the transportation and translation of objects – and their shifting meaning and values through their reception – Flood documents the various ways in which geograph- ical and political peripheries interacted and negotiated power with the center. Objects moved from place to place through both willing transfer and coersion. Flood reconceptualizes how objects were circulated, and through this physical movement of objects “specific classes of artifacts constructed and mediated cultural boundaries, and the ways in which meaning and value were translated and transfigured through mobility of

39 In his micro-study that focuses on texts situated in Syria and Egypt by Abū Shāma (d. 665/ 1268) and Ibn Wāsil (d. 697/1298), Hirschler examines narrative structures in Arabic _ historiography and argues for an author’s agency despite external factors and their constraints. Konrad Hirschler, Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 40 These objects of material culture include “coins, frescoes, modes of dress, texts, manu- scripts, monumental architecture, and the more abstract but no less revealing realm of onomastics, royal titulature, and ritual practice.” Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Trans- lation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 9–11. Center-Periphery Relations 31 both people and things.”41 Writing also circulated, and though its trans- mission was less dramatic than the movement of objects through looting, gifting, and trade, the style of its composition similarly indicated patterns and rituals of reception and exchange.42 Although the precise readership of any one text is notoriously difficult to trace, we can nevertheless discern in local histories the dynamics of power between a perceived center and peripheral areas vying for legitimacy as a Muslim community and claiming political and religious authority. The decentralization of Abbasid power along the eastern frontier of the empire entailed new modes of negotiating the shifting dynamics of power beyond explicitly political or financial ones. Gifts of Indian booty – documented as early as the late seventh century but intensifying immensely under the Saffarids and Arab amirs of Sind, who sent gifts of various Indian exotica to the Abbasids in Baghdad – included looted Buddhist and Hindu icons.43 ʿAmr ibn al-Laith, the Saffarid, sent as gifts the plunder he took in his battles against the ʿAlids of Tabaristan and the pagans of eastern Afghanistan.44 This was a gesture of “Making imma- nent at the center distant (and sometimes notional) victories at the periphery.”45 The ties between the center and the peripheries were dynamic and multidirectional, and the transportation and translation of material cul- ture documents this plasticity. This dynamic of exchange and circulation

41 Flood, Objects of Translation, 12. 42 In a short article about Persian historiography, Luther focuses on rhetoric and what he called the “figured style” in chancery prose and histories, which is often criticized as opaque, long-winded, and full of digressions, citations, and a lot of poetry. Luther asserts that some Persian historical writing was influenced by the ornate style that was preferred in Persian chanceries, including Tārīkh al-Vuzarāʾ by Najm al-Dīn Qummī (548/ 1188–1189), Rāhat al-Sudūr by Rāvandī (ca. 599/1202), Nafsat al-Masdūr of Nasavī (ca. 632/1234–1235), and Tārīkh-i Jahān Gushā by Juvaynī (ca. 650/1252–1253 to 658/ 1259–1260). In language similar to Flood’s conceptualization of the physical transfer of objects, Luther argues that “All of these works, whether they were token in some particular social or economic chance or not, seem to have been thought of as ornate objects, to be presented and, if the authors’ ambitions were realized, admired by the members of the elite and the literary men of the age” (Luther, “Islamic Rhetoric,” 96). Luther, “Islamic Rhetoric,” 90–98. 43 Flood, Objects of Translation,20 44 C. E. Bosworth, “The Armies of the Saff̣ ārids,” BSOAS 31: 3 (1968): 535. 45 Flood, Objects of Translation, 20. “Making immanent at the center distant (and some- times notional) victories at the periphery, these gifts of exotic animals, precious raw materials, rare commodities, and looted curiosities linked the ideal political center of the medieval Sunni world, Baghdad, with regional centers of authority in the east (Sistan, Sind, Kabul, Ghazni) and the inchoate world of the dār al-harb that lay beyond.” 32 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories was replicated in a variety of locations and mediums both within and beyond the frontiers of the Muslim empire. Exchange could involve humans, not only as slaves but also in the form of royal bride exchanges with Buddhist Tibet as ways of cementing diplomatic alliances.46 Geneal- ogies, lore, hadith, and etymologies in Persian local histories that attempt to make local the notional idea of the global Muslim umma should likewise be understood as part of these broader patterns of exchange of power and of objects between the center and the peripheries.

imagined histories and their uses

The physical world is a product of imagined histories. Imagined histories operate with the full force of social and physical reality: these stories have the power to build cities, rediscover shrines, transcend boundaries of race, ethnicity, and language, and forge new identities. Mittermaier persua- sively argues for the importance of the “imaginary” in the context of shrines and sacred space, and contends that “‘imaginary’ here does not equal ‘unreal.’...imagination is not the same as fantasy; it is both a mode of perception and an order of reality.”47 Consequently, “both the social and the material aspects of that production [of space] may take place in the imaginary realm, and thus that the imaginary realm is itself not entirely divorced from either the social or the material.”48 Imagined histories sculpt and define an individual and a community identity as much as tangible realities and documented events. This book untangles the ways in which the imagined histories recorded and expressed in local histories reveal real concerns that occupied the communities in which and for which they were produced. Eminent scholars of Islamic history, such as Bosworth and Hodgson, have pro- ductively mined textual sources for facts and figures about the conquests, much in the way that scholars of hadith, such as Juynboll, Schacht, and Cook have sifted painstakingly through isnads to establish the veracity of hadiths and isnads. Scholars with a skeptical methodology who have

46 Georgios T. Halkias, “The Muslim Queens of the Himalayas: Princess Exchanges in Baltistan and Ladakh,” in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, edited by, Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, (Farnham, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 261–279. 47 Amira Mittermaier, “(Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt,” in Dimensions of Locality: Muslim Saints, Their Place and Space (Yearbook of the Soci- ology of Islam No. 8), 48. 48 Mittermaier, “(Re)Imagining Space,” 50–51. Imagined Histories and their Uses 33 worked on political theory and the earliest years of the nascent umma, such as Crone and Hinds, have developed a revisionist view that counters the traditional account of Islamic history.49 This book does not intend to establish “what really happened” or provide a historical narrative. Rather, it will elucidate patterns in local histories over time and place and ground these patterns in a historical framework that incorporates functionally skeptical methodologies from Islamic studies. Local and city histories will not be strip-mined here for their hard data. The academic debate continues about how these works, ossified and calcified with time, can best be massaged into yielding hard data: conver- sion rates, tax figures, and accurate geographies. However, scholars of Persian historiography are increasingly examining the intentions of medi- eval authors, which can shed light on the intellectual scaffoldings that shaped and governed historical writing. Digging exclusively for raw data in Persian histories fails to utilize the rich if less obvious potential of these sources, since the “Persian chronicles on which we rely for our narrative accounts of mediaeval history are not only (and sometimes not even) simple repositories of facts.”50 Authors present data within the frame- work of their motivations and purpose. Praising a patron, patrician, or ruler was one potential motive for an author’s particular configuration of history, along with concerns about educating and entertaining the reader, presenting an understanding of events that promotes or validates a person or concept, and placing a particular event or person in the broader sweep of history.51 In line with these newer scholarly trends that move away from purely positivist history, this study extracts from medieval works a subtler and therefore more contentious body of information. This book explores how

49 Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centur- ies of Islam (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), see esp. 1, 3, 19–20. Crone and Hinds’ God’s Caliph is about Umayyad political theory, and they claim that the title “khalīfat allāh” was used to mean “God’s caliph” as opposed to the “deputy or viceroy of the prophet of God” (khalīfat rasūl allāh) and that there was a ceasaro-papist tendency in Umayyad Islam wherein the caliph was both a political and a religious authority. The traditional view is that the ulama understood that the term was initially “khalīfat rasūl allāh,” but that this meaning of khalīfat changed sometime during the twelve years from 632 to 644 during Umayyad rule from “khalīfat rasūl allāh,” to “khalīfat allāh”. Crone argues the opposite. 50 Charles Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” in History and His- toriography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods, edited by, Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh A. Quinn (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 161. 51 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 161. 34 Methodologies for Reading Identities and Histories the authors of local histories created or fostered a sense of local identity and the means by which they articulated this identity. This functionally skeptical methodology applies to both hadith study and historical writing. Many scholars of hadith have been concerned with establishing or dis- puting the authenticity of traditions attributed to the Prophet or in determining the veracity of isnads and examining the isnad as a legitimat- ing tool. Neither line of questioning is relevant for this study.52 Thus, whether the etymology of the city of Bukhara actually stems from the Prophet’s description of that city as a splendid city and one of the finest in Khurasan is irrelevant. What is important is that the author chose to include this explanation – and to supply a prophetic hadith to bolster this claim – as a noteworthy aspect central to the formation of the city’s history and identity. This, in turn, provides a window into the distant mind of the twelfth-century author and how he conceived of complex identities in a culturally evolving milieu and the literary strategies he used to advocate for the legitimacy and importance of these identities. The discrepancy between canonical traditions and their practical appli- cation becomes apparent in cases of dreams and traditions about dreams. Despite the hadith about good dreams being a part of prophecy and Satan not being able to take Muhammad’s form, in at least a few examples in _ local histories, the Prophet takes on a much smaller role as a signifier. As the Prophet recedes into the background, local characters rise to the fore. The Prophet appears as little more than as a marker of importance and indisputable truth. In at least some instances in local iterations, dreams take on a strong local tenor and focus more on a local character and the region rather than on Muhammad. The Prophet becomes a minor char- _ acter, and his role is not to convey prophecy through the dream but instead to signal the unimpeachable legitimacy of the dream.

52 Wael Hallaq aptly stated: “...I argue that the scholarly output concerned with authenti- city since Weil raised the issue a century and a half ago is largely, if not totally, pointless.” Wael B. Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Haḍ īth: A Pseudo-Problem” Studia Islamica 89 (1999): 77, 90. Hallaq’s argument is that all this discussion about authenti- city of hadith – an issue to which scholars such as Goldziher and Schacht devoted extraordinary energy – rests on the assumption that early and medieval Muslim scholars were convinced that the corpus of Prophetic hadith is largely genuine. Rather, Hallaq argues that since the medieval Muslim scholars did not necessary believe in the genuine- ness of Prophetic hadith – and Hallaq argues that previous scholars have not examined this – then the question of authenticity is a non-issue. If the medieval Muslim scholars were not convinced of the authenticity of Prophetic hadith, modern scholarly attempts to determine their authenticity is irrelevant. The Real Contexts of Imagined Histories 35

the real contexts of imagined histories

The historical contexts and circumstances in which an author, writer, editor, or translator composed a text are the bedrock on which the historian must build. The following chapter will trace the contours of events that were significant for the production of the texts on which this study focuses on three levels: local events and phenomena that occurred during the text’s creation; events that transpired in the wider caliphate during the text’s creation; as well as what is known about the author, editor, or translator and his milieu and the specific circumstances under which the text was produced, commissioned, or translated. Fundamental to this discussion is the development of historical writing and the genre of local histories, their patronage by local dynasts, and the flourishing of Persian as a written Muslim language of learning alongside Arabic. The arguments in subsequent chapters about how the authors of local histor- ies created or fostered a sense of local identity are firmly grounded in an analysis of the contexts in which these authors lived and wrote. 3

Contexts and Authorship

historical background

During the tenth to early fifteenth centuries, extensive demographic and cultural shifts took place in Persia. The country became majority Muslim by around 390/1000,1 the center of intellectual and political gravity within Islam moved eastward into Persia from its former basis in Arab territories in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq, and a major revival occurred in Persian cultural and literary production. The progeny of mixed Arab and non-Arab parentage were increasing as early as the 120s/740s, despite the general prejudice among Arabs against non-Arabs, a pattern that only increased significantly after the Abbasid revolution, particularly amongst

1 For this rate of conversion and the argument that Persia had become majority Muslim by around the year 1000 CE, see: Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur; Bulliet, “A Quantitative Approach to Medieval Muslim Biographical Dictionaries,” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient XIII, Part II (April 1970): 195–211. Bulliet creates timetables and conversion charts for six areas – Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia, Syria, and Spain – and using Iran as his departure point, charts them against historical developments, such as the formation of independent dynasties and the establishment of religious institutions. Bulliet proposes this dating for majority conversion, at least for Iran, with the evaluation that the majority of the popula- tion had converted to Islam and that conversion had tapered off around the year 1000 CE. In revisiting his earlier studies, Bulliet notes that issues concerning onomastic data can be tricky, in that there are Christians and Jews with Arabic names and Muslims with non- Arabic names; however, most of these occur after 900 CE. Around this time Iranian Muslims again begin to have Persian names. See also Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” 123–133. For a critical assessment of Bulliet’s work on the rate of conversion to Islam in medieval Iran, see Michael Morony, “The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment,” in Conversion and Continuity, 135–150.

36 Historical Background 37 the Arab populations in the far eastern Persian realms of Tukharistan, Transoxania, and Khurasan.2 In these regions, separated by the massive Persian plateau from the Arab domains of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, a hybrid Perso-Muslim identity – one that had many distinct local iterations – developed during the following centuries. By around 390/1000, Persians reached a critical point of conversion. Islam extended past the cities and permeated into the rural areas in most places by the mid-fourth to tenth centuries. Rapidly growing cities were focal points of intellectual, religious, and cultural activity. Local dynasties rose to prominence and power in Khurasan.3 These local dynasties on the peripheries of the Islamic empire were separated by hundreds or thou- sands of miles from Arab “centers” in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. Conse- quently, the central authorities were forced to rely to varying degrees on collaboration and cooperation with local administrators.4 The Persian local histories examined in this book were written at the time of the rise of local dynasties in Khurasan. These dynasties included the Sunni Tahirids (fl. third/ninth century), Saffarids (fl. third/ninth cen- tury), Shiʿi Buyids (334–447/945–1055), Samanids (204–395/819–1005), and Ghaznavids (367–583/977–978—1187) during an era of significant assertion of local autonomy. Ethnic Persians did not necessarily champion writing in Persian. This was the case with the Tahirids, who preferred Arabic and were accused of outright hostility to Persian culture.5 During this era, “local chronography, biography, and prosopography would serve to anchor dynasties and institutions within the cultural and legal commonwealth of late Abbasid rule.”6 Local dynasts and governors, who ruled as amirs on behalf of the Abbasid caliphate, used these literary

2 Crone, The Nativist Prophets,10–15. 3 The province of Khurasan in modern-day northeastern Iran is a significantly smaller region than what the term meant in the early medieval period, when it included vast and ill- defined swathes of Central Asia and Afghanistan in addition to the massive region of eastern Iran. Bosworth, “Khurāsān,” EI2. 4 For a summary of the Iranian world during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see C. E. Bosworth, “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217),” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, edited by J. A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 1–202. 5 C. E. Bosworth, “The Tạ̄hirids and Persian Literature,” Iran 7(1969): 103–106. On the relative affinities for Arab culture, Persian language, and styles of rulership of the Persian dynasties, in which the Daymali Buyids most enthusiastically supported a revivification of the Persian empire, see Wilferd Madelung, “The Assumption of the Title Shāhānshāhby the Būyids and ‘The Reign of the Daylam (Dawlat Al-Daylam),’” JNES 28: 2 (April 1969): 84–108. 6 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 139. 38 Contexts and Authorship forms in order to maintain the fine balance of local authority and legitim- acy that was simultaneously nominally or actually subordinate to Abbasid power and was situated within the religio-political framework of the broader Muslim umma. Nevertheless, what was locally important was not necessarily globally significant. No ethnic, racial, political, territorial, or religious identity is static. A massive if gradual shift occurred in Persian identity in the centuries after the initial Arab conquests of Fars in the mid-seventh century. Persians changed their names to Muslim names, social and religious institutions such as the madrasa developed and spread, and Sufis, ascetics, qalandars, and other mystical groups proliferated.7 Persians – Saʿdī and Ferdowsī amongst others – could write in the blossoming New Persian language without their Muslim identity necessarily being called into question. The Shuʿūbiyya movement of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, which was largely but not exclusively a Persian affair, agitated against granting Arabs a privileged position in early Islamic society and left a heavy imprint on the Arabic and Persian literature of these centuries.8 Persian local and regional histories may evidence local pride, but they cannot be explained as a product of the Shuʿūbiyya movment for several reasons. Firstly, some texts celebrate the Arabs. Tārīkh-i Qum,for example, lauds the Arabs who settled early in the region and underscores the importance of these early Arabs for the identity of Qum and its inhabitants. Similarly, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq and Tārīkh-i Sīstān both claim Companions of Muhammad as integral members of the city’s history, _ writing them into its very foundation. Secondly, these Persian texts do not belittle the Arab preoccupation with genealogy but instead incorporate themselves into such Arab genealogies. Finally, the texts are pro-local, not anti-Arab. These sources are pro-local in that they agitate for the

7 A no longer extant mystical dervish group, the qalandars rose to prominence in the seventh/thirteenth century from Turkestan to Morocco. They were notable for their conspicuous appearance and antinomian behavior. They are depicted as shaving their head and eyebrows, wearing coarse garments, sometimes with numerous piercings, and carrying a drum or other objects. Tahsin Yazici, “Ḳalandar,” EI2. 8 For a summary of the Shuʿūbiyya movement, see S. Enderwitz, “Shuʿūbiyya,” EI2. For a more expansive discussion of the issue, see H. A. R. Gibb, “The Social Significance of the Shuʿūbiyya,” in Studies on the Civilization of Islam, edited by, Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 62–73; Roy Mottahe- deh, “The Shuʿūbīyah Controversy and the Social History of early Islamic Iran,” IJMES, 7: 2, (April, 1976): 161–182; H. T. Norris, “The Shuʿūbiyya,” in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ʿAbbāsid Belles-lettres, edited by, Julia Ashtiany et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), 31–47. Development of Perso-Islamic Historiography 39 legitimacy of local dynasts and elites to rule and for fiscal and political autonomy. The desire for such autonomy had concrete social and military consequences, as the tax-related revolts in Tārīkh-i Tabaristān demonstrate. On the basis of the documentary sources themselves, Savant also dismisses the possibility that the Shuʿūbiyya movement is responsible for formulations of the new Perso-Muslim identities, which harken to pre-Islamic histories that intersect with Islam and offer a religio-ethnic pedigree for the Persians that is at least as good as that of the Arabs. Firstly, there appear to be no self-professed Shuʿūbis, only their oppon- ents. Secondly, the basis of these august Perso-Muslim identities appears not only in sources that reflect the Shuʿūbiyya movement – most clearly seen in sources focused around Abbasid Baghdad in its court during the late second/eighth and third/ninth century – but also in subsequent cen- turies.9 The evidence that Savant uncovers extends from the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries. If the Shuʿūbiyya movement were a primary factor in these claims by the Persians about their history and their past, we should not find the extant evidence that Savant analyses from the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries.

development of perso-islamic historiography

The fourth/tenth century is also critical because it is the era when local histories of cities and regions first emerged. Authorship of these histories should be understood in the broadest sense of the word to include a text being compiled, composed, or translated with abridgements or additions. The extant histories that remain today are in many ways composite works. Authors began to write history not just in Arabic but also in Persian. The local biographical dictionary – the literary sibling to the local history – existed as early as the second half of the third/ninth century and became an important genre in the late tenth century, as scholars began rapidly compiling biographical dictionaries of Muslim notables.10

9 Savant, The New Muslims,27–28 and 52–54. 10 On biographical dictionaries, see Jürgen Paul, “The Histories of Herat,” Iranian Studies 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 2000): 95, 97; Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” 125. A still eminently useful summary of general histories, dynastic histories, chronicles, local histories, biographical works, adab, geographical and travel literature, and works of poetry and philology from the tenth and thirteenth centuries that touch on Ghaznavid history is C. E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994–1040 (Edinburgh: Edinbrugh University Press, 1963), 7–27. 40 Contexts and Authorship

The development of local historical writing in Persia was, up to the fourth/tenth century, primarily in Arabic, after which time material in the Persian language developed and achieved general acceptance in the fifth/eleventh century. During this period, universal histories, which purport or aim to cover history from creation to the Islamic period, were also composed in Per- sian. The earliest example of such a work is the Samanid vizier Abū ʿAlī Balʿamī’s Tārīkhnāma, composed in the fourth/tenth century in Central Asia and commissioned by the Samanid amir Mansūrb.Nūh, whose _ _ court was based in Bukhara. Though Balʿamī’s (active ca. 946–973) Tārīkhnāma is ostensibly an abridged Persian translation of Tabaṛ ī’s (d. 310/923) Arabic Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk(“History of Prophets and Kings”), which was composed in Baghdad earlier during the fourth/ tenth century, Peacock demonstrates that it diverges so significantly from Tabaṛ ī’s text that it is an original work.11 Literal and symbolic transmission of knowledge through such a transla- tion project was one way in which the Samanids legitimized their dynasty and their rule.12 Political ambitions were inextricably linked with the production of historical writing. As Bosworth aptly notes, “poets and writers were the publicity men of the age.”13 For a work like Balʿamī’s translation of Tabaṛ ī, Meisami speculates that it was directed not at the ulama and scholars who could read history in Arabic, but might have included Turkish members of the court and military, Turkish ghulāms groomed for important posts, or for recent or potential Turkish converts.14 Local Persian dynasties sponsored and produced historical writing in the fourth/tenth century. These included the Daylami and Kurdish dynasties that patronized historical writing in the fourth/tenth century

11 Andrew C. S. Peacock, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Balʿamī’sTārīkhnāma (New York: Routledge, 2007). Peacock argues that history and “translation” during Balʿamī’s time went beyond merely recording events and literally translating the written record. See Introduction, esp. 5. For a summary of the differences between Tabaṛ ī and Balʿamī, see 76. 12 Peacock, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography, 170–171; Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century, 287–288. 13 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 133. 14 Julie S. Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian? Historical Writing in the Samanid Period,” in Studies in Honor of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, II: The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture, edited by, C. Hillenbrand (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 364–366. For the linguistic and sectarian inclination of different Samanid rulers, see Julie S. Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian? Historical Writing in the Samanid Period,” 364–365. On the ghulām (pl. ghilmān) in the caliphate, Persia, India, and the Ottoman Empire, see D. Sourdel, C. E. Bosworth, P. Hardy and Halil İnalcık, “G̲̲hulām,” EI2. Development of Perso-Islamic Historiography 41 in order to legitimize their presence in the context of Islamic history.15 Persian was increasingly used in writing in the fifth/eleventh century, including Persian translations of works originally written in Arabic, which dates to the era of the Ghaznavids (367–583/977–978—1187). However, not all of the texts were produced for the courts. Pre-Mongol texts elucidate the nature of umma and identity in early Islamic Iran at the critical turning point at which Iran became majority Muslim in identifiable and meaningful ways. The bulk of early local histories, especially from Khurasan, were written before the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century.16 Pre-Mongol city histories are gener- ally focused on learned men, hadith teachers, and hadith transmission as it related to the city. Ulama are the pre-eminent religious figures. How- ever, over the centuries the ulama were displaced as the pre-eminent religious figures in favor of saints and Sufis – both in the literature and in social history – and the sources reflects this shift.17 The anxiety of legitimacy permeates many aspects of life, both medieval and modern. What it means to be Muslim, much less a “good Muslim” or a “real Muslim,” remains as contested today as it was a thousand years ago when the texts in question were composed. Yet an intuitive explanation that the distinctive characteristics in the form and content of Persian local histories manifest a late converting area’s anxiety regarding Islamic legit- imacy cannot be a sufficient explanation. Conquests of the former Persian Empire occurred at various times, but many conquests occurred early.18 Political legitimation in the historically Persian Islamic east was a serious concern, but the distinctive qualities of Persian local historical writing are not the same as another non-Arab region conquered and Islamicized even

15 C. E. Bosworth, “The Persian Contribution to Islamic Historiography in the Pre-Mongol Period,” in The Persian Presence in the Islamic World, edited by, Richard. G. Hovannisian and Georges Sabagh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 227–228. 16 For a dated but nevertheless valuable summary of Arabic and Persian local histories, see Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 150–172; on Persian local histories, see 160–162. Rosenthal considers more annalistic works that concentrate on political and military events “secular local historiography,” while those that are closer to biographical dictionaries are “theological local historiography,” which, with the notable exception of early Meccan and Medinan sources, consist primarily biographical entries. In Rosenthal’s scheme, the fadāʾil genre is an off-shoot of “theological local historiography.” 17 Jürgen Paul, “The Histories of Samarqand,” Studia Iranica 22: 1 (1993): 69–92. 18 The Arab conquest of Fars occurred in the mid-seventh century. Armies during the caliphate of ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb (Umar I, r. 13–23/634–644) and ʿUthmānb.ʿAffān __ (23–35/644–655) made incursions into Fars, and the conquest was ultimately successful when the army under the command of ʿAbd Allāhb.ʿĀmir besieged and captured the city of Istakhr in 28/648–649. L. Lockhart, “Fārs,” EI2. 42 Contexts and Authorship later, such as Anatolia, a phenomenon analyzed in Chapter 9.19 Whether the issue was conquest or conversion is itself a knotty one, but the con- quests in general occurred early and conversion subsequently occurred over the following centuries.20 Persia was no latecomer to Islam.

contexts and authorship

Revolt, localism, transition, and political instability characterize the social, political, and military contexts in the centuries and decades surrounding the composition of the five main texts I analyze in this study. Despite the fact that they were composed in different regions of Persia over several centuries, contexts of the production of Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān,andTārīkh-i Tabaristān are all marked by conflicts between local authorities – be they dynasts, the patrici- ate, princes, or rebels – and the increasingly decentralized Abbasid caliph- ate. When read within this framework of revolt and transition in the Persian peripheries, the authors’ and translators’ imperative to present these communities as bastions of political legitimacy and religious authority appears as a natural outcome of the center-periphery and numerious local- versus-local power struggles that continuously occurred in the centuries and decades surrounding the composition of these texts.

political and military turning points in the caspian region

Narrative and numismatic evidence alike point to the resistance to cali- phal authority and consequent rebellions that marked the Caspian region

19 On the Arab conquest of Khurasan, the importance of the city of Tūs, and issues of political legitimation, see Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Khurasan and the Crises of Legitimacy: A Comparative Historiographical Perspective,” in Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet, edited by, Neguin Yavari, Lawrence G. Potter, and Jean-Marc Ran Oppenheim (New York: Columbia University Press for the Middle East Institute, Colum- bia University, 2004), 208–229. 20 What conversion actually meant in the earliest centuries following the conquests is most convincingly described as a social movement and a social conversion. As Bulliet describes it, “conversion to Islam in the early Islamic period was more a matter of social behavior than of religious belief,” in which an individual left one religious community to join another one that was initially primarily Arab in terms of race and customs. Conversion came first and learning doctrine followed, as “a convert first became a member of the Muslim community and later discovered, or tried to discover, what it meant to be a Muslim.” Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” 128–129; 131. Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān and its Author, Ibn Isfandiyār 43 in the centuries preceding ibn Isfandiyār’s composition of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān in the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century. The region of Tabaristan is located along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea in modern-day Iran, a region known today as Mazandaran.21 The Zaydi ʿAlids were an important component of Caspian rebellion and resistance. During the mid-third/ninth century, the Zaydi ʿAlids established their Imamate in Tabaristan and Jurjan, and during the tenth century the Zaydi ʿAlids extended their presence beyond these two provinces. In the mid-third/ninth century, the Abbasid caliphate of al-Mustaʿīn Billāh (AH 248–252/862–866) was marked by rebellions in multiple sites across the caliphate, and Tabaristan was no exception. In Rayy, an individual named Muhammad b. Jaʿfar rebelled in support of the Tabar- _ istani ʿAlid Hasaṇ b. Zayd, who had already rebelled in Tabaristan. In Qazwin, Hasaṇ b. Ismaʿīl al-Kurkī led a rebellion that also sucked in Qum, which then rebelled during the reign of al-Muʿtazz Billāh(252–255/ 866–868). The rebellion in Tabaristan was the most severe, when in 249/ 863 the ʿAlids, led by Hasaṇ B. Zayd, seized Amul and established the Zaydi state in Tabaristan, which the ʿAlids maintained for several decades.22 The Zaydi ʿAlids were strategic in their use of alliances, agreements, and relationships with competing powers in the region. By the latter half of the fourth/tenth century, the ʿAlids built alliances with the Samanids and Ziyards; made agreements with Daylami chieftains Mākānb.Kākī, Asfar b. Shīrawayh, and Layla b. Nuʿmān; maintained a balance of power in Jibal with the Samanids, Ziyarids, and Buyids; and maintained a political equilibrium in Khurasan with the Saffarids and the Khujistani rebel Ahmad b. ʿAbd Allāh.23 _

ta¯ rı¯kh-i tabarista¯ n and its author, ibn isfandiya¯˙r

Bahā al-DīnMuhammad ibn Ḥasan ibn Isfandiyār (d. after 613/1217), _ known as Ibn Isfandiyār, composed Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān in the early

21 The boundaries of medieval Mazandaran included Tabaristan, Ruyan, and Astarabad (formerly known as Gurgan), and was bounded on the north by the Caspian Sea. V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. 22 Aram Vardanyan, “Numismatic Evidence for the Presence of Zaydī ‘Alids in the North- ern Jibāl, Gīlān and Khurāsān from AH 250 to 350 (AD 864–961),” The Numismatic Chronicle 170 (2010): 355–374. 23 Vardanyan, “Numismatic Evidence for the Presence of Zaydī ‘Alids.” 44 Contexts and Authorship part of the seventh/thirteenth century. Both E. G. Browne and ʿAbbās Iqbāl date Ibn Isfandiyār’s composition of the text to 613/1216.24 Ibn Isfandiyār was connected to the Āl-i Bāvand family, who ruled the region of Tabaristan and whose rule he documents in his history. His patron was Ḥusām al-Dawla Ardashīrb.Ḥasan (567/1171–1172—602/ 1205–1206).25 Like many Persian local histories of its era, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān is a composite work. Ibn Isfandiyār penned the original work in Persian and died sometime after 613/1216–1217, because he was still writing his history in that year. An anonymous compiler working sometime after the mid-fourteenth century then added to the work by updating it. The writer continued where Ibn Isfandiyār left off, which was in 606/1210 when the Āl-i Bāvand initially lost some of their control over Tabaristan. He brings the history up to ca. 750/1349, when the Āl-i Bāvand lost their control over Tabaristan for a second time. Whoever this anonymous compiler was, he used Awliyāʾ Allāh Āmulī’s Tārīkh-i Rūyān, completed ca. 764/1362, as a major source for his additions.26 Ibn Isfandiyār describes the circumstances under which he composed his work, which suggest that he was well travelled and cosmopolitan. Ibn Isfandiyār likely spent time in Baghdad, Rayy, Amul, and Khwarazm, and he probably composed his history partially on the basis of other texts that he came across during his travels, including the no longer extant Bāwand- nāma, composed for Ḥusām ad-Dawla Shahriyārb.Qārin, and ʿUqūd al- sihr wa qalāʾid al-durār by Abū al-Ḥasan Muhammad al-Yazdādī.27 _ _

political and military developments in khurasan, including bukhara and bayhaq

To the far north and east of Tabaristan lies Bukhara, a major urban center in the Khurasan region. Bukhara was a tumultuous and bloody place

24 Multiple manuscripts of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān have been incorporated into Iqbāl and Browne’s respective editions. Of the four main and two supplementary manuscripts that Browne used in his abridged translation 1905, all date from the eleventh to thirteenth century. Iqbāl based his 1941 Persian edition primarily on two manuscripts, one from tenth century and another from eleventh century. 25 Ehsan Yarshater, “Ibn-i Isfandiyār,” EI2. 26 Ehsan Yarshater, “Ibn-i Isfandiyār,” EI2. 27 Bahā al-DīnMuhammad ibn Hasaṇ ibn Isfandiyār, Abridged Translation of The History of _ Tabaristān Compiled about A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216) by Muhammad b. al-Hasaṇ b. Isfan- _ diyār, Based on the India Office Ms. Compared with Two Mss. in The British Museum, by Edward G. Browne (Leiden: E. J. Brill; London: B. Quaritch, 1905), 3–4. Political and Military Developments in Khurasan 45 during the eighth century and into the early ninth century with constant rebellion, instability, and displacement. This era of revolts and uprisings extended from the late Umayyad period to the rise of the Tahirids gov- ernors (amirs), an influential family of probably non-Arab and likely Persian ethnic origin who governed Khurasan from 205–259/ 821–873.28 Bukhara was involved in five major revolts in the 50 years after the Abbasid revolution, not including the actual Hashmite Abbasid revolution itself that resulted in the Abbasid caliphate.29 Sogdia, of which Bukhara and Samarqand were a part, was racked by constant rebellion, violent bloodshed between local forces and those of the Islamic empire, and its consequent destabilization.30 Though the boundaries of Sogdia shifted over time and according to interpretation, it generally refers to the Central Asian region of ethnically Iranian people under Persian control that stretches from the Oxus River (Āmu Daryā) in the south to the Yaxartes (Syr Daryā) in the north. The term Sogdia (Soḡd/al-Sọḡd) con- stricted after the ninth century and referred to the rural stretch of land between the urban centers of Samarqand and Bukhara, which had histor- ically been two of the capitals of Sogdia.31 In Sogdia, even the smaller rustāq, or agglomeration of small villages, such as Bayhaq, were not immune from the violence and destabilization. From the earliest instance of Islamic rule in the region, authority and military might were constantly contested between local forces and those of the Islamic empire. The Arabs invaded Sogdia under Qutayba b. Muslim (b. 49/669, d. 96/715, governor of Khurasan 86–96/705–715). Through Qutayba, the Umayyads occupied Bukhara and Samarqand, but lost and regained Sogdia repeatedly until 122/739. Although Qutayba was instrumental in bringing Sogdia into the Umayyad state, Qutayba himself ultimately unsuccessfully rebelled against the Umayyads in 96/ 715 when his patron al-Hajjāj died and the caliphate passed from al- Walīd to Sulaymān. Qutayba stood alone with only his family, some fellow-Bāhilī tribesmen, and Iranian bodyguards in his rebellion against the state; he was killed by his own soldiers in 96/715.32

28 On the constant state of rebellion in Sogdia generally and Bukhara more specifically, see Crone, Nativist Prophets, 106–121, esp. 114–121. On the ninth-century Tahirid govern- ors of Khurasan, see Elton L. Daniel, “Taherids,” EIr. 29 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 120. 30 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 114. On the geographic location of Sogdia and a condensed summary of the history of the region and its inhabitants, see 96–102. 31 É. de La Vaissière, “SOGDIANA iii. HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY,” EIr. 32 C. E. Bosworth, “Ḳutayba b. Muslim,” EI2. 46 Contexts and Authorship

During this century of violence marred by a skein of rebellions, author- ity shifted – painfully, violently, and chaotically – from Sogdian elites to Muslim elites, and from Umayyad elites to Hashemite elites.33 This bloody shifting of power, as multiple layers of elites ceded their homes, authority, and autonomy to new forces, serves as the early background to the military and political context of Bukhara and the composition of Tārīkh-i Bukhārā.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i bukha¯ ra¯ : arabic original by narshakhı¯ and persian translation by qubavı¯

Tārīkh-i Bukhārā is a local history that is a Persian translation of a lost Arabic original. The Persian text is simultaneously an abridgement of the original Arabic and an extension of it with new material. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was originally written in Arabic by Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn _ Jaʿfar ibn Zakarīyā ibn KhattābibnSharīk al-Narshakhī from the village __ of Narshakh in the vicinity of Bukhara, who dedicated it to the Samanid amir NūhibnNasr (r. 331–343/943–954) in 332/943 or 944.34 _ _ Narshakhī wrote for a patron who championed Sunnism against the challenge of the Ismaʿili Shiʿa, who at one point posed a significant threat and gained converts through their network of dāʿī missionaries. Befitting a man who presented himself as a guardian of law and right belief – particularly in contradistinction to the Ismaʿili Shiʿa – Nūhibn _ Nasr appointed as his vizier the Hanafi Imam Abū al-Fadl Muhammad _ _ _ al-Sulamī.35 During the tenth century, when Narshakhī composed the original Tārīkh-i Bukhārā in Arabic, the Samanids ruled Khurasan and Transox- ania as amirs from Bukhara and established their administrative offices there, including those of the Vizierate, treasury, correspondence, police, postmaster, surveillance, muhtasib (whose main task was to monitor _

33 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 118–123. 34 The Samanid amir Mansūrb.Nūh commissioned the Balʿamī’s Tārīkhnāmā, ostensibly _ an abridged Persian translation of Tabaṛ ī’s (d. 310/923) Arabic Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al- Mulūk (“History of Prophets and Kings”). On the original nature of Balʿamī’s Tārīkh- nāmā and a reconstruction of the politics of the Samanid court based in Bukhara, see Peacock, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography. On translation movements as a mode of storing up a dynasty’s legitimacy, see Dmitry Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/ 8th–10th centuries) (London: Routledge, 1998), 29 and 45. See also Peacock, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 169. 35 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 28. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā 47 markets and maintain honest trading by merchants and craftsmen and oversee guilds), and the qadi (or judge, a position which was appointed by the caliph in the early era of the caliphate but generally nominated by the local ruler or provincial governor during the era of local dynasts in Persia).36 The Samanids were local dynasts form Sogdia who first gained their foothold in political administration as successors to the Tahirid governors of Khurasan. The Samanids traced their origins to the Sasanian hero BahrāmChūbīn and presented themselves as orthodox guardians of Sunni law and religion. They did this in contradistinction to both the Ismaʿili Shiʿa and to their Saffarid rivals in neighboring Sistan, who were a highly militarized local Sunni dynasty of humble origins, associated with the anti-Khārijite mutatawwiʿa religious volunteer warriors, and _ who battled a strong Kharajite rebellion movement.37 Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was translated into Persian by Abū Nasr Ahmad _ _ al-Qubavī in 522/1128–1129 because, as he claims in his translation, people did not want to read the Arabic, and because his friends asked him to translate it into Persian. Meisami highlights the ways in which Narshakhī’s composition was part of the broader Samanid project of legitimating their own rule.38 Writing about the Samanid’s projects in translating Arabic works into Persian, and specifically Balʿamī’s transla- tion Tabaṛ ī’s Arabic Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk into Persian as the Tārīkhnāmā, Meisami argues that there existed the “perception of the connection between the transfer of learning and that of power.”39 Translation is itself a mode of asserting power. In his Persian translation, Qubavī extended the history covered to the year 365/975. The Persian translation was then abridged in 574/1178–1179 by Muhammad ibn _ Zufar ibn ʿUmar, who also added to the work from other texts.40

36 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 29; Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,31–32; Narshakhī, The History of Bukhara, edited and translated by, Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA: Medi- aeval Academy of America, 1954), 25–27. On the muhtasib, see A. K. S Lambton, _ “Hisba,̣ ” EI2; on the qadi, see A. K. S. Lambton, “CITIES iii. Administration and Social Organization,” EIr. 37 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids,27–35. See also Bosworth, EI2, “Sāmānids,” and Bosworth, EI2, “Saff̣ ārids.” 38 On this point, see Meisami, “Rulers and the Writing of History,” 73–95. Meisami also notes the use of dreams as legitimators on 77–78. 39 Meisami, “Rulers and the Writing of History,” 76. 40 Narshakhī trans. Frye, History of Bukhara, xii. Crone uses Tārīkh-i Bukhārā as an important source in Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran and briefly addresses the text’s composition on 106 and 180. Crone uses Tārīkh-i Bukhārā to reconstruct some of the rebellions in Bukhara and Sogdia; see, for example, Crone, Nativist Prophets, 106–108, 111–114, 121, 127, 129–131, 133–140, 180, 434, 446. 48 Contexts and Authorship

When Narshakhī composed the text in Arabic and dedicated it to the Samanid amir Nūh ibn Nasr at the beginning of that amir’s reign, _ _ Bukhara and the Samanid court were in a state of crisis. Nasr b. Ahmad, _ _ who was Nūh ibn Nasr’s father, was swayed by the Ismaʿili dāʿīs and _ _ converted to Ismaʿili Shiʿism at the end of his life.41 This inspired a backlash, in which Abū al-Tayyib al-Musʿabī, who was Nasr b. Ahmad’s _ _ vizier, and some others were killed. After his father’s death, Nūh ibn Nasr _ _ attempted to reverse the course of Ismaʿili ascension two years into his reign (r. 331–343/943–954) and purged the dāʿīs and killed Ismaʿili converts. However, there continued to be mistrust of the Ismaʿilis and their daʿwa and suspicion at the court of who might have Ismaʿili sympathies.42 Narshakhī states that his work contains not just information about fadāʾil but also about the traditions on the superior qualities of Bukhara, which are transmitted from the Prophet and his Companions.43 His book brims with the virtues of Bukhara, in stark contrast to the great geog- rapher Muqaddasī’s unsentimental judgment of the qasba of the city as _ smelly like Fustat and with houses cramped cheek by jowl, the city growing with each passing day.44 Narshakhī says he will limit the men he covers in this book, because mentioning all of the notables is too extensive a task, and that “the group which we have mentioned are

41 The dāʿī credited with this is Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Nasafī (or al-Nakhshabī). He was _ _ executed by Nūh ibn Nasr in Bukhara in 332/943 soon after Nūh became Amir following _ _ _ his father’s death. Farhad Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122–123. See also Daftary, “The Medieval Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian Lands,” in Studies in Honor of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, II: The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture, edited by, C. Hillenbrand (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 43–81. 42 Luke Treadwell, “Shāhānshāh and al-Malik al-Muʾayyad: The Legitimation of Power in Sāmānid and Būyid Iran,” in Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd Madelung, edited by, Farhad Daftary and Josef W. Meri (London; New York: I. B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2003), 318–319. 43 Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,3–4; Frye, History,3–4. 44 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Muqaddasī (b. ca. 946), Kitābahsan al-taqāsīmfī maʿrifat al- _ _ _ aqālīm, lil-Muqaddasī al-maʿrūf bi-al-Bashshārī, edited by M J deGoeje (Leiden: Matbaʿat Brīl, 1906, 1962), 280; al-Muqaddasī (b. ca. 946), Best Divisions for Know- _ ledge of the Regions: A Translation of Ahsan al-taqāsīmfī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, translated _ by Basil Anthony Collins; reviewed by Muhammad Hamid al-Tai (Reading, UK: Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilisation: Garnet Publishing, 1994), 249. Muqaddasī’s name is Shams-al-dīnAbū ʿAbdallāhMuhammad b. Ahmad b. Abī Bakr al-Bannāʾ al- _ _ Shāmīal-Muḳaddāsī al-Bashshārī (also vocalized as al-Maqdisī; there is no consensus on the appropriate vocalization). See A. Miquel, “al-Muḳaddasī,” EI2; C. E. Bosworth, “Ahsan Al-Taqasim,” EIr. The Region of Bayhaq 49 among those of whom the Prophet said, ‘The learned men of my faith are (equal) to the prophets of the sons of Israel’.”45

the region of bayhaq

The merit of Bayhaq, like many small towns of negligible beauty and resources, lies in its connection to other, more important locations. Bayhaq was a stop on the path that ran along the northern edge of the Dasht-e Kavīr desert and connected Rayy in the west with Nishapur and Khurasan in the east.46 Bayhaq, also known as Sabzavār, was a rural area (rustāq) and a tax district with a string of villages near Nishapur, a city of religious prominence, in Khurasan. During the tenth century it was one of the rural districts (rustāq, pl. rasātīq) of Nishapur.47 Bayhaq-Sabzavār and Khosrowjerd, two towns located two farsakhs apart, were the largest centers in the Bayhaq district, which was between the district of Nishapur and the eastern borders of Qūmes.48 Bayhaq was the district to the west of Nishapur in Khurasan and was essentially a tax district that contained 390 villages during the Tahirid era (c. 205–278/821–891),49 but whose fortunes declined during the Mongol Il-Khanid period (1256–1353) to the point where it only had a meager forty villages.50 From the late tenth to early twelfth centuries, Bayhaq was subject to periodic raids and incursions, although an interlude during the second half of the eleventh century was notable for the stability brought on by the rise to power of the Great Seljuqs.51 In Khurasan, a major city like Bukhara and a small collection of villages like Bayhaq alike were subject to invasions from outsiders, polit- ical instability, and the designs and predations of local dynasts like the Ghaznavids and Oghuzz Turkmen as well as the caliph in Baghdad. According to Ibn Funduq, the author of the mid-twelfth century Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, raiders from Tus, Isfaraʾin and Juwain joined forces to attack the Bayhaq-Sabzavar region in 378/988. The villagers defended Bayhaq- Sabzavar, but not before the raiders blocked the precious qanāt irrigation system and damaged the region. Bayhaq was again attacked and again

45 Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 7; Frye, History,6. 46 Bosworth, “Bayhaq,” EIr. 47 Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 299–300, 318; Collins, Best Divisions, 264–265, 280. _ 48 Bosworth, “Bayhaq,” EIr. 49 A. K. S. Lambton, “Bayhaḳ,” EI2; C. E. Bosworth, “Sabzawār,” EI2. 50 Lambton, Continuity and Change, 171. 51 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 170–171. 50 Contexts and Authorship defended itself in 396/1006. A generation later, the Oghuzz Turkmen constantly raided the region, grazing their animals, eating some crops and destroying others. The Ghaznavid army that camped outside Bayhaq in 428/1037 was almost not better, since they trampled across agricul- tural fields and cut down whole trees not to eat the edible nuts but to burn the wood as fuel.52 Like Khurasan writ large, Bayhaq-Sabzavar in the tenth through twelfth centuries was marked by rebellion, raids, violence, and political transition.

the question of ʿalids and shiʿainbayhaq

Based on the proximity of Bayhaq-Sabzavar to Nishapur and documen- tary records in the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq and al-Fārisī’s biographical diction- ary, al-Siyāq li-taʾrīkh Naishābūr of ʿAlids who settled there, Bosworth agues that Bayhaq-Sabzavar played an important role in the spread of Shiʿism in eastern Persia in Khurasan and Transoxania, which during the Ghaznavid period (994–1040 CE) were dominated by Sunnism.53 On the basis of the onomastic evidence in al-Fārisī’s biographical dictionary for Nishapur of nisbas like “Gurgānī” and “Astarābādhī,” Bosworth con- cludes that many of the ʿAlids in Khurasan emigrated there from the Caspian, where Shiʿa communities were well established, and that conse- quently these ʿAlids transplanted to Khurasan were also, to varying degrees, Shiʿa.54 Bosworth’s conclusion that Bayhaq-Sabzavar was important for the spread of Shiʿism in Khurasan should be tempered with an important caveat. As Chapter 5 of this book endeavors to demonstrate, ʿAlid iden- tity is expansive, fluid, and not necessarily synonymous with Shiʿa iden- tity. Bernheimer and Morimoto’s recent findings on ʿAlid identity and sayyido-sharifology, analyzed in Chapter 5, complicate our understand- ing of who constituted the ʿAlids and how that socially and biologically constructed identity was expressed. It is certainly true that Zaydi ʿAlids established their Imamate in Tabaristan and Jurgan in the mid-third/ninth century, which they expanded during the tenth century. However, it is difficult to measure the extent to which the identities of ʿAlids who

52 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 170–171, 260; Abū al-ḤasanʿAlī ibn Zayd Al-Bayhaqī, “Ibn Funduq,” (1105 or 1106–1169 or 1170), Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, edited by, Ahmad Bahmanyar (Tehran: Mu’assas va Mudir-i Bungah-i Danish, 1317/1938, 2nd edition 1965), 51, 124, 267, 268, 273. 53 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 147 and 194–200. 54 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids,147and 194–200. Tārīkh-i Bayhaq and its Author, Ibn Funduq 51 emigrated from the Caspian region to Khurasan were tied to Shiʿa prac- tice and identity. Indeed, Bosworth underscores the level of assimilation of the ʿAlids of Khurasan into the generally Sunni population. The ʿAlids overall enjoyed good relations with the Sunni Tahirids and Ghaznavids, who tolerated moderate Shiʿism but aggressively persecuted the Ismaʿilis and their dāʿīs, who represented a challenge to Ghaznavid power and Sunni claims to legitimate rule.55

ta¯ rı¯kh-i bayhaq and its author, ibn funduq

Tārīkh-Bayhaq is a mid-twelfth-century Persian local history of the modest city of Bayhaq, located in northeastern Iran near the modern day city of Mashhad and the Iranian border with Turkmenistan. The author of Tārīkh-Bayhaq is Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī bin Abī al-Qāsim Zayd b. Muhammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī, also known as Ibn Funduq or _ Fārid-i Khurasān.56 Ibn Funduq was born in 490/109757 or in 493/ 110058 in a village in Bayhaq and died in 565/1169–1170. This places him at the tail end of the Seljuq era and into the period when the Oghuzz and then the Khwaresmshah took power in Khurasan.59 Ibn Funduq himself traced his Arab ancestry back to Khuzayma b. Thabīt, one of the Companions of the Prophet. His ancestors belonged to the elite who migrated to Bayhaq in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.60 Ibn Funduq included biographical information about himself in his now lost historical text Mashāreb al-tajāreb, which covered the history of Iran from 410–560/1020–1165, and which is preserved in in Yāqūt’s Udabāʾ.61 Snippets of his life are also reconstructed from the remarks of his family friend ʿImād-al-DīnIsfahānī, which are also preserved in _

55 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 147 and 194–200. 56 For biographical information, see D. M. Dunlop, “al-Bayhaḳī,Zaḥīr al-DīnAbū ‘l-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Zayd b. Funduḳ,” EI2. 57 Meisami, Persian Historiography, 209. 58 Dunlop, “al- Bayhaḳī,Zaḥīr al-DīnAbū ‘l-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Zayd b. Funduḳ,” EI2. 59 The Oghuzz/Ghuzz Turks and then the Khwaresmshah took power when the Seljuqs squabbled amongst themselves and lost control of the region (and essentially lost all control after Sanjar’s capitivity in 1153 CE). Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 256–260. 60 Pourshariati, “Local Historiography,” 140–143. 61 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪN ABU’L-HASAṆ ʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 208–213. 52 Contexts and Authorship

Yāqūt’s Udabāʾ.62 Ibn Funduq was socially and educationally well placed, although he does not seem to have been a particularly desirable son-in- law. Prior to his marriage, Ibn Funduq went to Marv in 517/1123 to complete his studies in Hanafi fiqh with the jurist Abū SaʿdYahyā b. _ Sạ̄ʿid, returning to Nishapur several years later in 521/1127 to be married.63 Ibn Funduq then went to work for his father-in-law and the governor of Rayy, Shihab-al-DīnMuhammad b. Masʿūd. _ Despite the fact that his father-in-law had Ibn Funduq appointed qadi of Bayhaq in 526/1132, Ibn Funduq did not hold that post for long, resigning after a few years, moving to his father-in-law’s home in Rayy to study mathematics and astrology and reacquaint himself with scholarly life. Ibn Funduq travelled again to Nishapur in 529/1135 staying there only for a year before moving to Sarakhs to study astrology, during which time he squandered all of his money, returning to Nishapur, broke, in 532–536/1138–1142.64 Although he wrote the history of Bayhaq, Ibn Funduq failed to estab- lish himself in the town, ostensibly because of “his relatives’ envy.”65 Having failed in Bayhaq, Ibn Funduq repaired to Nishapur, where his life was devoted to the seminary and the mosque and where he enjoyed the patronage of the vizier Tạ̄hir b. Fakhr-al-Mulk and was appreciated by the court. Ibn Funduq wrote in Arabic and Persian, although mostly in Arabic. He lists seventy-one of his own works, most of which are lost; only four are in Persian. His Arabic works may actually be highly bilin- gual. Tārīkh-Bayhaq and an astrological work would bring the Persian tally to six.66 Ibn Funduq apparently wrote Tārīkh-Bayhaq in 563/1167, two years before his death, during the rule of Muʾayyad al-Dawla Ay Aba (d. 659/1174), who controlled Khurasan after Muʿizz Al-Dīn Sanjar (477 or 479–552/1084 or 1086–1157).67 Critical to the city’s

62 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪN ABU’L-ḤASANʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 214. 63 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪN ABU’L-ḤASANʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 209. 64 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪN ABU’L-ḤASANʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 210f. 65 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪN ABU’L-ḤASANʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 210f. 66 Halm, EIr, “BAYHAQĪ,ZAḤ ĪR-AL-DĪNABU’L-HASAṆ ʿALĪ B. ZAYD,” citing Yāqūt, Udabāʾ V: 211ff and citing Charles Ambrose Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio- bibliographical Survey, 5 vols. in 12. (London: Luzac & Co., 1927–), vol. II, part 1, 48. 67 Meisami, Persian Historiography, 209. Political and Military Turning Points in Qum 53 portrayal is a focus on the city’stiestosahāba and tābiʿūn,evenin _ _ cases where that link is potentially tenuous or fictional. The effect of affiliating notable sahāba with Bayhaq as central to the city’svirtues _ _ and merits is to amplify Bayhaq’s religous legitimacy and prestige and to foreground the city and its surrounding areas within the broader Muslim umma.

political and military turning points in qum

In the arid inlands of central Iran lies Qum. Qum is an ancient settlement, with evidence of communities in the fourth and first millennium BCE, with most recent archaeological evidence of settlement also during Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian eras.68 After the initial conquest of Qum in in 23/ 644 by Abū Mūsā Ashʿarī, Qum may have been largely untouched for sixty years and was probably administered from Isfahan.69 The dominant pic- ture of Qum is that it was an ʿAlid haven and destination to which Ashʿarī Arabs migrated in the eighth century in larger numbers after initial Arab settlement on the eve of the seventh or dawn of the eighth century. According to this view, ʿAlids migrated in the early and mid-eighth century from Iraq into other lands, including Qum. The first wave of permanent Arab settlers in Qum took place during the revolts of Mukhtar b. Abī ʿUbayd Thaqafī and Mutarrif b. Mughīra b. Shaʿba in 66–77/685–696, _ when small groups of refugees moved there and Qum itself was affected by the fighting between Umayyad forces and the rebels.70 Goldziher concluded that Qum was the first place in Persia to which Shiʿism was introduced by Arab settlers.71 The initial Arabs from the Ashʿarī tribe migrated from Kufa to Qum under the leadership of Ahvās (or Ahwās) b. Saʿd, an event that Shimamoto traces to the year 82/701.72

68 Andreas Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr; J. Calmard, “Ḳum,” EI2. 69 Drechsler, EIr, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” citing Balādhurī, Futuh al- _ buldān, edited by, Michael J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1866), 312–314 and citing Drechsler, Geschichte der Stadt Qom im Mittelalter (650–1350): politische und wirtschaftliche Aspekte (Berlin, 1999), 69–74. 70 Drechsler, EIr, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” citing Qummī, 38 and citing Tabari,̣ 2: 992. 71 Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, translated by Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton NY: Princeton University Press, 1981), 212, n. 125. Goldziher cites Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, IV, 176:4f. 72 Takamitsu Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qom –Myth and History,” Orient (Tokyo) 27 (1991): 98–99. 54 Contexts and Authorship

As the destination of Arab Kufan Shiʿa migrations, Qum was an Arab outpost, and the initial waves of Ashʿarī Arab migrants left a heavy imprint on the character of the city.73 Tārīkh-i Qum contains a number of stories about the genesis of the city, in which Ashʿarī Arabs, lead by Talha ibn al-Ahwāsal-Ashʿarī, established a garrison near what would become the city of Qum as early as the middle of the first/seventh century. Like Sistan, Tabaristan, and Khurasan, Qum was the site of multiple revolts, as local leaders rebelled against the fiscal and administrative authority of the Abbasid caliphate. The area was politically unstable and racked by rebellions. Provoked by harsh taxes and the caliph al- Maʾmun’s refusal to lower the tax assessment, which he had obliged and done in Rayy, an Ashʿarī Arab in Qum named Yahyā b. ʿImrān led a _ rebellion in 210/825–826. His revolt failed and he was killed; the caliph punished the unruly Qummis by steeply raising their taxes even further. After a rocky start that saw him deposed due to unpopularity, the Ashʿarī governor ʿAlī b. ʿIsā was reappointed governor (wāli) in 217/833, at which point he extracted taxes from the populace and surrendered a wanted local rebel named al-Muʿtasim to the caliph.74 After being puni- _ tively fiscally administered by the Abbasid caliphate, Qum was fiscally cannibalized by the Daylami warlords from 316/928, changing hands several times over the next fifteen years. The Buyid dynasty controlled the region from the mid-tenth century, and while the region was militarily stable, it stagnated financially.75

ta¯ rı¯kh-i qum: a composite text

“The most common kunya amongst the people of Qum is Abū Jaʿfar, amongst the people of Isfahan, it is Abū Muslim, and amongst the people

73 Heinz Halm, Shiʿism; translated by Janet Watson and Marian Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 41–42. 74 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr, citing the following: Qummī, 35, 102–104, 156–157, 163–164; Tabaṛ ī, III/1092–1093, 1102, 1106, 1111; Modarresi Taḅ ātabāʾī, Kharāj in Islamic Law (London: Modarresi Taḅ ātabāʾī, 1983) 166; Drechs- _ _ ler, Geschichte der Stadt Qom im Mittelalter (650–1350): politische und wirtschaftliche Aspekte (Berlin: Schwarz, 1999), 132–139. 75 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr, citing the following: Qummī, 99–100, 105–106, 142–144, 164–165, 21718; Ibn al-Athīr, VIII/102–4, 162, 196, 290, 388–389; Drechsler, Geschichte der Stadt Qom im Mittelalter, 166–181. Tārīkh-i Qum: A Composite Text 55 of Qazvīn, it is Abū al-Ḥusayn,” noted Muhammad ibn Ahmad _ _ Muqaddasī (b. ca. 946).76 His observation that the most common kunya in Qum was Abū Jaʿfar underscores the importance of Shiʿi genealogies and identity in the city during the same century that Tārīkh-i Qum was originally composed there. Tārīkh-i Qum was originally written in Arabic in the tenth century by Ḥasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ḥasan Qummī in 378/ _ 988–989, although that original text is now lost. Tārīkh-i Qum survives only in the form of a later Persian translation made in 805–806/ 1402–1403 by Ḥasan b.ʿAlī b. Ḥasan b.ʿAbd al-Malik Qummī for Ibrahīm b. Mahmūdb.Muhammad b. ʿAlī al-Safī. The translated manu- _ script was then copied in 837/1433 in the city of Qum.77 Ḥasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ḥasan Qummī wrote the original Arabic history under _ the patronage of Ismāʿīlb.ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbāsb.ʿAbbād, wazir to the Buyid Fakhr ud-Dawla b. Rukn al-Dawla (r. 366–387/976–997), to whom he dedicates the history.78 Although the birth or death dates of Ḥasan b. Muhammad Qummī are unknown, we know he completed the _ history in 378/988–989. Ḥasan b. Muhammad Qummī was connected to _ his city as a descendant of the early Ashʿarī Arab settlers originally from Yemen who settled in Qum and through his brother Abū’l-Qāsim ʿAlī b.

76 Muqaddasī, Kitābahsan al-taqāsīm, 398; Collins, Best Divisions, 353. Muqaddasī’s _ contemporary, Ibn Ḥawqal, also deemed the majority of Qum’s population to be Persian-speaking Arab Shiʿa. Halm, Shiʿism, 41, citing Ibn Ḥawqal,Configuration de la terre (Kitab surat al-Ard), Introd. et traduction, avec index, par J. H. Kramers et G. Wiet (Beyrouth, Commission internationale pour la traduction des chefs-d’œuvre, 1964), 370. Ibn Ḥawqal’s work is known by two names, Kitāb al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik or Kitāb Sụ̄rat al-ard, and it is confusingly both a continuation and revision of al-Istakhrī’s Kitāb _ __ al-Masālik wa l-mamālik. See also Ibn Ḥawqal,KitābSūrat al-ard (Beirut: Dār Maktabat _ al-Ḥayah,1992). 77 The editor Muhammad Rizā Ansārī Qummī states that the extant manuscripts of the _ Persian translation of Tārīkh-i Qum he has seen originate from two sources. The manu- scripts on which the text is based have some special characteristics, including numerous letter substitutions, which the printed edition retains, along with the occasional use of Arabic words instead of Persian ones, and variant spellings of proper nouns. Some of the most common of these letter substitutions are the use of the letter jīm instead of chi, kāf instead of gāf, hamza with a kasra instead of a yee, bā instead of pe, dha instead of da, _ connection of the letter baa with the noun instead of using baa+ha, use of the taa marbūta instead of a full tā, use of ba+alif instead of be (ba+ha), eliminating/not including the ibn in names, and the letter alif in the middle of a name. Ḥasan ibn Muhammad Al-Qummī, _ Tārīkh-i Qum (Qum: Kitābkhānah-ʾi Buzurg-i Ḥazrat-iĀyat Allāh al-ʿUzmá Marʿashī _ Najafī, 2006), 60–61, 64, 4, 63 –67. See also Ann K. S. Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,” BSOAS 12: 2 (1948): 586–596. 78 Lambton’s important early study of the work summarizes the history of the text. Ann K. S. Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm.” 56 Contexts and Authorship

Muhammad Kātib, who was dispatched to Qum as tax collector (ʿāmil)in _ the year 352/963.79 The dominant characteristics of the city and its surrounding areas that Tārīkh-i Qum emphasizes are its ʿAlid heritage, independence, fiscal rebellion, and tendency to chafe under centralized control. The text contains repeated descriptions of violent discontent about taxes in Qum, both before and after the redistricting of Qum into a separate city inde- pendent of Isfahan.80 The city of Qum in north-central Iran became, over the centuries, a center of religious learning and pious visitation to a shrine complex, and the literary representation of Qum furthered the position of the city as a religious center. Scholarship on Tārīkh-i Qum has been surprisingly spare. Lambton wrote an article on the Tārīkh-i Qum in 1948, titled “An account of the Tārīkhi Qumm,” but little work has been done on the text since then. Lambton’s main interests were the economic and political history of Qum and, to a much lesser extent, the systems of water distribution.81 Shima- moto applied a religious studies methodology and used Mircea Eliade’s idea of a “center” of a religion to determine why, in Eliade’s terminology, Qum is a religious “center” for Shiʿi Islam.82 Pourshariati put the history to use in determining patterns of Arab settlement in Khurasan.83 Savant, in her work on memory and forgetting and the construction of Iranian identity, considers it possible that multiple authors composed the section on the conversion of Qum to Islam.84 However, no work has looked at the literary forms and tropes Tārīkh-i Qum contains or examined how they function as literary devices securing religious authority and political legitimacy for autonomous rule for the region. The Persian translator Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Hasaṇ b. ʿAbd al-Malik Qummī includes a series of praise for his patron, Ibn ʿAbbād, more fully Abū’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīlb.ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbāsb.ʿAbbādb.Ahmad b. Idrīs _ (b. 326/938 d. Rayy, 385/995), to whom the book is dedicated. Qummī

79 Drechsler, “TĀRIḴ-E QOM,” EIr. 80 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,72–82. 81 Ann K. S. Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2(1990): 322. Lambton underscores the changing character of Qum over the centuries. Though its fame now rests on its status as a holy shrine city, in the medieval era Qum referred to both the city and the province to which it belonged as the central city, and these two were administratively indistinct. 82 Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qom – Myth and History,” 95–113. 83 Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurasan and the Pattern of Arab Settle- ment.” 84 Savant, The New Muslims, 222–228. Sistan in Context 57 lauds his patron’s kindness, generosity, and the charitable provisions he made for the people of Qum. The patron was a vizier to the Buyids Adud _ al-Dawla, Fakhr al-Dawla, and Muʾayyid al-Dawla, and was also noted as a man of letters.85 In patronizing the Persian translation of the work on Qum, Ibn ʿAbbād inserts himself into the narrative of the city not only as a vizier who supported the recording and transmission of history but also as someone who also supported the ulama and the material well-being of the city. Ismāʿīlb.ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbāsb.ʿAbbād, the Persian translator notes, bestowed his munificence upon the ʿAlids of Qum, scholarly endeavors, and the ulama. Charitable gifts included building qanāts or kārīz water channels and improving irrigation by bringing streams of water from outside the city to within it. Other provisions included support of litera- ture, arts, and learning by creating awqāf for learning and knowledge and for the use of the writing of books.86 In his sponsorship of Tārīkh-i Qum, Ibn ʿAbbād become entwined with the scholarly, religious, and material development of Qum in the literature about the city. In this way, Ibn ʿAbbād supported the pietistic virtues of the city and is a beneficiary of the legitimacy and authority accorded to Qum.

sistan in context

The far eastern region that is Sistan, perched astride the modern Iran- Afghanistan border, was gradually Islamized over the centuries. The Arabs first invaded Sistan during the Umayyad caliphate in 31/652 with a full-scale invasion led by al-Rabīʿ b. Ziyād b. Anas b. al-Daiyān al- Hārithī, at which point Zarang peacefully sued for peace while Bust fought the invading army.87 Bust became the Arabs’ forward operating

85 Claude Cahen, “Ibn ʿAbbād, Abu’l-Ḳāsim Ismāʿīlb.ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbāsb.ʿAbbādb. Ahmad b. Idrīs,” EI2. _ 86 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,7–11. 87 Bosworth, “SISTĀN ii. In the Islamic period,” EIr, and Bosworth, Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs: From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saff̣ ārids (30–250/ 651–864) (Rome: Istituto Italiano Per Il Medio Ed Estremo Oriente (IsMEO), 1968), 16, citing Tabaṛ ī and Ibn al-Athīr; Tārīkh-i Sīstān renders his name slightly differently. Bosworth has devoted significant scholarship to the history of Sistan. For a thorough overview of the pre-Islamic history of Sistan and a detailed monograph on the regional from the Arab conquests through the Abbasid period, see Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs. As additional representative works, see Bosworth, The Ghaznavids; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz: (247/861 to 949/ 1542–3) (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers in association with Bibliotheca Persica, 58 Contexts and Authorship base during the Umayyad and Abassid periods for raids further east, and the caliphate was only intermittently able to collect revenue in the form of tribute from the region.88 Problematically for the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the city of Bust itself demonstrated long-standing separatist movements; caliphal authority in the form of administration and troops was often centered in the city of Zarang.89 Sistan was frequently opposed to the imposition of caliphal authority. Even local dynasts, like the Tahirids (205–259/821–873) were not able to maintain control over Sistan, ceding power to the highly militarized Saffarid dynasty (r. 265–287/879–900).90 Through the Saffarids, the histories of Sistan, Tabaristan, and Khurasan overlap. ʿAmr b. Layth and Yaʿqūb b. Layth, the founders of the Saffarid dynasty, battled the ʿAlids in the Caspian regions, while ʿAmr b. Layth sought to extend Saffarid control into the far eastern realms of Khwarazm and Transox- ania.91 Saffarid control gave way to the Ghaznavid rule. During the fifth/ eleventh century, the Ghaznavids absorbed power that had been held by the Dailami Ziyārids in Tabaristan and Gurgan, who became tributary to the Ghaznavids.92 Sistan was also internally fragmented. More important than the separatist tendencies of the city of Bust and the Arab tribal divisions that caused strife in Sistan were the major and long-standing conflicts between the Kharijites (khawārij) and their orthodox opponents.93 The Kharijites, a strong source of rebellion and opposition to the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates prior to the rule of the Saffarid amirs,declinedin ferocity and militarism after the early Saffarid period during the closing decades of the ninth century CE (second half of the third century AH).94 In their turn, the Saffarid dynasty (r. 247/861–393/1003), established by

1994); Bosworth, “The Tahirids and Saffarids,” in Cambridge History of Iran, IV, The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, edited by, R. N. Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 90–135; Bosworth, “The Armies of the Saff̣ ārids,” 534–554. On Bust, see also Klaus Fischer and Xavier de Planhol, “Bost,” EIr; J. Sourdel- Thomine, “Bust,” EI2. 88 Bosworth, “SISTĀN ii. In the Islamic period,” EIr. 89 Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs. 90 E. Daniel, “Taherids,” EIr. 91 C. E. Bosworth, “The Armies of the Saff̣ ārids,” 534–554. On the military nature of the Saffarids and Yaʿqūb b. Layth role amongst the mutatawwʿ the Sunni religious warriors, _ and the ayyārūn, see also Debra Tor, “Historical Representations of Yaʿqūb B. Al- Layth,” JRAS, Third Series, vol. 12, No. 3 (Nov. 2002): 247–275. 92 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids,74–75, 90–91. 93 Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs,37–42, 63–64, 68, 73, 75–78, 79–81, 84–85, 87–91, 92–100, 103–107, 112–113, 115–116, 118–119. 94 Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs, 118–119. Tārīkh-Sīstān and its Anonymous Author 59 the brothers ʿAmr b. Layth and Yaʿqūb b. Layth, became limited in its power due to Samanid challenges, especially after Ismāʿīlb. Ahmad defeated ʿAmr b. Layth 287/900. In 911 CE, the Samanids _ controlled Sistan itself. After that point, Saffarid power waxed and waned as the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, and Mongols rose into and out of power, until the Saffarids were finally crushed with the rise of the Safavids in 1501 CE.95 After centuries of gradual Islamization, Sistan became increasingly Islamic around the era of the Saffarid dynasty (r. 265–287/879–900), although Kharijite sectarianism remained particularly vigorous in the region.96 Mahmud of Ghazna invaded Sistan in 393/1003, holding it _ for several decades before the Seljuqs assumed power in the mid-eleventh century. Local dynasts, such as the Maliks of Nimruz, held sway before the Mongol invasion. In the post-Mongol period, another line of Maliks, the Mehrabānids (633/1236 to mid-sixteenth century) rose to intermittent and contingent power.97

ta¯ rı¯kh-sı¯sta¯ n and its anonymous author

Tārīkh-i Sīstān is an annalistic work and anonymous Persian urban history, which pays considerable attention to documenting the earlier local dynasts, including the Saffarids (fl. third/ninth century) who, along with the Sama- nids, Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, Mongols, and Safavids, had their turn in con- trolling Sistan.98 Tārīkh-i Sīstān provides a detailed history of the Saffarids as well as Kharijite sectarianism.99 Unlike many sources, Tārīkh-i Sīstān devotes about a third of its contents to the history of the Saffarids, focusing on the period from 247/861, when the dynastic co-founder Yaʿqūbb. Layth seized power, until the Ghaznavids – a major rival of the Saffarids – occupied Sistan in 393/1003 and overthrew Khalaf b. Ahmad, the Saffarid ruler. Tārīkh-i Sīstān points a more balanced picture of the Saffarids, who, having championed brute military force, are generally presented more

95 Bosworth, “The Armies of the Early Saff̣ ārids,” 534. 96 Bosworth, “TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN,” EIr; Bosworth, “The Armies of the Early Saff̣ ārids,” 534–554; Bosworth, “The Tạ̄hirids and the Saff̣ ārids,” in the Cambridge History of Iran IV, 116–122. 97 Bosworth, “TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN,” EIr. 98 Bosworth, “The Armies of the Saff̣ ārids,” 534–554. 99 E. Yarshater, Foreword to Tārīkh-e Sīstān, translated by Milton Gold (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1976), xvii–xxi. 60 Contexts and Authorship negatively in the medieval sources. Bosworth attributes the negativity towards the Saffarids in the sources to their subordination to brute military force of the “ethical values which were supposed to underpin the temporal authority delegated by God to man.”100 The anonymous history is the product of at least two hands and possibly three.101 There are lacunae between the sections composed by the two or three different but equally anonymous authors.102 It was initially composed circa 448/1062, the year in which the history ends, covering both the legendary and more documentable history of the region.103 The first part, which comprises the bulk of the text, covers pre-Islamic history, including legendary elements, and the history of the province up to 448/1062, at which point the text is interrupted. A second shorter section – 1/13 of the text – by another also unknown hand continues the history and covers the events from 465/1073 to 725/ 1325.104 The manuscript tradition is muddled, but Ehsan Yarshater provides a clear analysis in overview and concludes that the manuscript used by Mohammad Taqi Bahar for the 1935 Tehran edition105 is pos- sibly unique, coupled with a very similar manuscript (MS P-124) held in the Institute of Manuscripts of the Georgia Academy of Sciences, copied in Tehran in 1861.106 This possibly unique manuscript, from which later

100 Bosworth, “The Armies of the Saff̣ ārids,” 536. See also Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs, 111–112. 101 Bosworth, “TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN,” EIr; Meisami, Persian Historiography, 131–134. 102 For a detailed summary of the structure, contents, and earlier and contemporary sources cited in Tārīkh-e Sīstān, see Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,” Iranian Stud- ies½ 33: 1/2 (Winter–Spring, 2000): 31–43. In an argument that is complimentary to this study, Savant convincingly argues that, in the ways that it opens with fadāʾil and a description of the conquest of the region, Tārīkh-e Sīstān presents an “overarching prophetic and Islamic framework” for Sistan’s history, including the ostensible associ- ations of Adam, Noah, and Solomon with Sistan. Savant, The New Muslims, 117–129. For the sections on the prophets associated with Sistan, see Tārīkh-i Sīstān, edited by, Malik al-Shuʿarāʾ Bahār (Tehran: AHS 1314/1935–1936), 3–10; Tārīkh-e Sīstān Trans- lated by Milton Gold, 2–7. Savant argues that the text presents Sistan, including the brutally violent conquest of the region by al-Rabīʿ b. Ziyād al-Ḥrithā ī, as a place ready for Islam, evidenced by the alleged resigned acceptance of the Sistanis to Islam and the righteous character of Sistan’s people and rulers, including the Saffarid Yaʿqūbb. al-Layth. 103 Yarshater, Foreword to Tārīkh-e Sīstān, xvii–xxi. 104 Bosworth, “TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN,” EIr; Yashater, Foreword to Tārīkh-e Sīstān, xvii–xxi. 105 This is the edition used for this study, along with Milton Gold’s 1976 English transla- tion. 106 Yashater, Foreword to Tārīkh-e Sīstān, xvii–xxi. For a discussion of the likely sources used by the anonymous author of Tārīkh-i Sīstān and its manuscript history, see Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan,23–28. Local History and its Audience 61 manuscripts derive, was copied at the latest by the mid-ninth/mid- fifteenth century.107 In his masterful reconstruction of the history of Sistan in the traditional mode of positivist history, Bosworth leaned heavily on Tārīkh-i Sīstān and Ihyaʾ al-mulūk of Malik ShāhHusayṇ b. Malik Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muhammad, who claimed to be a distant descendant of the Saffarids and _ completed the history of his province in 1028/1619 in Isfahan at the Safavid court.108 Bosworth considers Tārīkh-i Sīstān “an essentially secu- lar”109 history in that it is first and foremost an annalistic work of history. In addition to the accounts of the Saffarids and the notable themes con- sidered in this study, Tārīkh-i Sīstān recounts the pre-Islamic history of Sistan and its mythical foundation by Garshasb during the time of Zahhāk, _ _ 4,000 years before the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, and as well as _ the wonders and virtues (fadāʾil) of the region. As a local Perso-Islamic history, the anonymous authors situate the history of region in its local and pre-Islamic context but foreground the importance and role of Sistan within the umma and its Islamic history.

local history and its audience

Access to historical writing was not exclusively the preserve of the elite. During the early fifth and eleventh centuries to the early tenth and sixteenth centuries, elite and non-elite individuals alike accessed written texts aurally at reading sessions at which written works were read to groups. In Arab cities, such reading sessions of written works often occurred in public places, such as the Umayyad Mosque, over a period of years. This practice gradually gave way to written culture. Samāʾ reading certificates were generally for readings of hadith works, but samāʾ certificates also exist for the massive compendium of Damascene history that is Ibn ʿAsākir’s twelfth century Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq.110

107 Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,” 35. 108 Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan,27–29. Bosworth also mines universal histories, chronicles, dynastic histories, and numismatic evidence. On Malik Shah Husayn’s claims to descend from the Saffarids, see Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 424–425. 109 Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,” 37. 110 Ibn ʿAsākir disseminated his Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq at reading sessions at the Umay- yad Mosque of Damascus, beginning in 559/1164, and the work continued to be read and taught at hundreds of sessions by other teachers for almost a century. Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). 62 Contexts and Authorship

Ibn ʿAsākir’s local history attracted elites and non-elites alike to listen to readings of it because the virtues of Syria and Damascus held more than an abstracted academic interest for them. In listening to the catalog of the merits (fadāʾil) of their land, the listeners studying the text found meaning and affirmation in the very soil on which they trod. Thus “in this sense, readings of the work allowed a local audience to assure itself of the city’s excellence and its prominent position in salvation history. The author conceptualized – and celebrated – the history of the city and Syria at large as the sum of its prominent and especially scholarly inhabitants.”111 As the audience sat in the central courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque, under the shadow of the former Church of Saint John the Baptist, they participated in the continued sanctification and legitimation of Damascus and its pious scholarly heritage by listening to the fadā’il of the region, including the 10,000 patricians and notables associated with Syria and Damascus.112 As Persian local histories demonstrate, not all histories are accompan- ied by samāʾ reading certificates. Persian local histories such as Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, Tārīkh-i Tabaristān, Fadāʾil-i Balkh, and Fārsnāma do not enjoy such documen- _ tation. Nevertheless, they are useful sources that yield valuable informa- tion about how the authors and compilers of these texts framed their cities. Fortunately, we do not need to know who read or heard these local histories to discern the ways in which authors and compilers creatively crafted narratives for their cities, steeped in specifically local criteria for religious and political legitimacy as well as Islamic virtue and piety. A thorough grounding in the context of these works’ composition illu- minates the guiding events, circumstances, and expectations that framed and determined how the authors presented their histories.

spatio-communal identity: making the global local

The regional identities that emerge in these texts are multivalent identities. They are simultaneously Muslim without fully relinquishing their

111 Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, 58. 112 Ibn ʿAsākir configured Damascus and Syria more broadly as a vital force for Islam, and this resonated with his audience. As Hirschler notes, Ibn ʿAsākir’schoiceofSyria– as opposed to the city of Damascus only – as geographical frame of reference was attuned to the centraliz- ing ethos of Nūr al-Dīn and Zangid rule. Significantly, it is Nūr al-Dīn who founds for Ibn ʿAsākir Syria’s first dār al-hadīth, which remained in the control of his family for the next century. Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands,59–60. Spatio-communal Identity: Making the Global Local 63 pre-Islamic identity. Significantly, this pre-Islamic identity is not reducible to one element or virtue of the Iranian past, such as a tradition of imperial kingship or religious worship.113 Texts such as the Tārīkh-i Qum describe explicitly non-Islamic qualities such as Zoroastrian fire-temples (ātesh- kade-hā)114 in addition to the explicitly Islamic qualities of the area, such as various ʿAlid descendants of the Prophet.115 In other instances, the pre-Islamic past is effaced and written over with fidelity to the new Islamic identity. In describing the construction of the grand mosque in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, Narshakhī describes how Qutayba b. Muslim led the effort to build the mosque in 94/712–713. When the Muslims asked the pre-Islamic patrician nobility to contribute funds to

113 For a concise overview of the ways in which Iranian identity has been construed and articulated from the pre-Islamic to contemporary period, see Abbas Amanat, “Introduc- tion: Iranian Identity Boundaries: A Historical Overview,” in Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective, edited by, Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–33. For lengthier but narrower overviews of Iranian identity and the physical contours of Īrān-zamīn, see Ahmad Ashraf, “Iranian Identity i: Perspectives,” EIr; Ashraf, “Iranian Identity iii: Medieval Islamic Period,” EIr; Gherardo Gnoli, “Iranian Identity ii: Pre-Islamic Period,” EIr; A. K. S. Lambton, “Kawmiyya iii: In Persia,” EI2. In Lambton’s analysis, “Although there was no term to express nationality in the early centuries or in mediaeval times, there was a concept which did imply a consciousness of distinct identity, defined historically and geographically, which can be described by the modern term īrāniyyat, ‘being a Persian’. This was associated with and experienced in a sharing of a common cultural and literary background. It did not imply a consciousness of political nationality or a territorial and ethnic nation, although it carried with it the memory of the old Persian empire.” Lambton’s emphasis is on the fluid and more flexible “cultural and literary background” as constitutive of īrāniyyat instead of a strictly bounded territorial and ethnic nation construct. Lambton dates the Safavid period in the tenth/sixteenth century as the first time since the Islamic conquests that the notion of Persia becomes a “territorial state.” Gnoli’s major work on the idea of Iran in the Sasanian period is Gnoli, The Idea of Iran. For a critical assessment and contextualization of Ashraf and Gnoli’sdefinitions and those of other twentieth-century scholars, including Ehsan Yar- shater’s voluminous contributions on the subject, see Afshin Matin-Asgari, “The Aca- demic Debate and Iranian Identity: Nation and Empire Entangled,” in Iran Facing Others, 171–190. On the ethnicity and boundaries of Īrānshahr as it appeared to various religious communities during the Sasanian period, see Touraj Daryaee, “Ethnic and Territorial Boundaries in Late Antique and Early Medieval Persia (Third to Tenth Century),” in Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis, Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, edited by, Florin Curta (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 123–138. 114 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 29, 104, 249–255. 115 There are also virtues of indeterminate origin – such as virtues of the fruits, trees, rivers, and natural bounties – that could just as well resonate with Islamic conceptions of geographies of heaven as indigenous Iranian notions of virtuous bounty. ʿAlids are descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, the Prophet Muhammad’s paternal first cousin and _ son-in-law. 64 Contexts and Authorship construct the mosque, the latter refused, flinging stones from the roofs of their villas at the pious poor. The Muslims then fought the arrogant wealthy, defeated them, and removed the gates from the patricians’ villas to use on the new mosque. The patrician elite had decorated their gates with the image of an idol upon each gate, which the Muslims effaced when repurposing them as the doors of the mosque.116 The reliefs of the old religious idols were literally scratched out and reused as the portal to one of the most sacred communal spaces of the newly Islamic city.117 It is not exclusively a Muslim identity that these sources articulate, but one that traverses the cultural and religious boundaries of multiple commu- nities and rests astride them all. Identity is simultaneously local and geographically specific while also being Muslim. Acknowledging the ancient heritage of Zoroastrian fire- temples (āteshkade-hā ) in Qum alongside staunchly Islamic qualities of authenticity, such as Imams, sayyids and sharīfs118 affiliated with the city, allows for a continuation of Persian piety from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. Other sources incorporate literary devices that signal forms of legitimacy and heirship to the Prophet, such as remembering or recasting Persians’ pre-Islamic past and early ties to Islam and Arabs in ways that embed the Persians deep into prophetic and Qurʾanic heritage.119 One way of accommodating the pre-Islamic past with the Islamic present was to compress, overlay, and rearrange chronologies or identities in a linear or quasi-genealogical fashion. The Qurʾanic prophet Idrīs was, for example, the same individual as the biblical prophet Enoch as well as Alexander’s cook.120 Such mechanisms allow for pre-Islamic Persian piety to be transferred into the Islamic period within a new framework. These

116 Such theft and repurposing is not an isolated incident. On the theft and reuse of the gates from the ancient sites of Zandaward, al-Dawqara, and the monastery of Mar Sarjis and Sarābit and their re-purposing as gates in Baghdad, see al-Tabaṛ ī, Tārīkh, 3:321–322, as _ cited by Hugh Kennedy, “How to Found an Islamic City,” in Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, 400–1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, edited by, Caroline Goodson, Anne E. Lester, and Carol Symes (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 54. Though the events seem rich in symbolism, the Arab sources state that they were used in the Round City in Baghdad for utilitarian reasons, because they were stronger and better that extant contemporary ones. 117 Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,68–71; Frye, History,48–49. 118 For a discussion of these terms that denote descendants of Muhammad, see Chapter 5. _ 119 On the re-remembering and reconstruction of Persians’ pre-Islamic past, see Sarah Bowen Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam,” Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008): 73–91. 120 Roy Mottahedeh, “Some Islamic Views of the Pre-Islamic Past,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 1: 1 (1994): 20–21. Spatio-communal Identity: Making the Global Local 65 texts articulate, in their locally differentiated ways, Perso-Islamic iden- tities that were simultaneously deeply local and Muslim. Another common thread that weaves through local histories is a pre- occupation with issues of Prophetic authority, piety, and legitimacy as a Muslim and as a ruler. The writing in Persian local histories took the form it did because the concerns – about Persian Muslim identity, local identity, religious legitimacy, and a region’s role and place in the broader and somewhat notional umma – were pressing concerns that shaped the texts. Political legitimacy and religious authority become particularly pressing issues because some of the texts, such as Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān and Tārīkh-i Qum, display a fierce localism. Moreover, some of the regions militarily resisted the caliph’s fiscal and administrative control. Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān documents the violent struggles and considerable bloodshed that resulted from the region resisting attempts by the caliph to fully subdue the region and extract taxes. In these texts, the implicit relationship between religious autonomy and administrative and fiscal freedom is made explicit: religious authority and pious heritage are coupled with a fierce localism and assertion of fiscal and political independence. Historical writing in Persian and Arabic contains recurring images, tropes, and motifs, but this does not mean that the texts are fictional or that they fail to convey important data about the world in which they were composed.121 Instead, this commonality of focus and form in local histories written in Persia indicates that these issues of a spatio-communal identity were pressing matters during the tenth to early fifteenth centuries. What it meant to have a local Muslim identity or a Persian or Perso- Muslim identity differed greatly over time and place. Many different iden- tities – tribal, ethnic, and within the broadly religious, those affiliations by madhhab, tarīqa, and various Shiʿigroups– were aggregated under the _ broad umbrella of Muslim. Moreover, pre-Islamic Persian identity is itself a

121 A topos can both function as a literary device within the conventions of a genre and have a basis in reality. Clarke, The Muslim Conquests of Iberia, 2; Robinson, “The Conquest of Khuzistan: A Historiographical Reassessment,” 30–37. The pietistic virtues that bind Persian cities to critical moments in Islamic history and therefore to prophetic and religious authority incorporate modes of piety that are both tied to Islamic institutions or organizations as well as extra-institutional elements of piety. The former include awqāf (charitable foundations), localized hadith collections and local hadith transmit- ters, as well as ulama (religious scholars) and pious exemplars, both deceased and living. The latter are constituted by dreams and visions of Muhammad, Khidr, and other _ prophets, and ziyārat (pious visitation) sites such as graves and tombs of pre-Islamic prophets, religious notables, and holy men, such as ascetics and saints. 66 Contexts and Authorship complex, compound, and multifaceted construction. In the national epic the Shāhnāma, the central characters have mixed ancestries: the quintessen- tially Iranian king Kay Khosrow had one grandparent who was definitely Iranian and three grandparents who were Turanian,122 while the hero Rostam has an “ethnically dubious ancestry” that includes descent from ademon.123 If the archetype of Iranian kingship is himself of mixed descent between those from Iran and Iran’s enemy, Turan, then the very notion of exclusively “Iranian” or “Persian” identity is itself problematized. Persian local histories elucidate some regional iterations of this hybrid and multifaceted Perso-Muslim identity. Although Persia has been under- stood as largely Shiʿi for the past 500 years, Madelung and more recently Newman have argued that the majority of Muslims in Persia during the tenth through thirteenth centuries were Sunni.124 Though Imami Shiʿism was solidly established in large parts of pre-Mongol Iran, it was a small minority in an overall Sunni country. Cities like Qum, where Imami Shiʿism was the dominant religious force, were in the minority. Even Mashhad, which houses the sacred tomb sanctuary of the eighth Shiʿi Imam ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā, was a largely Sunni town at the beginning of _

122 Turān is the hostile non-Iranian land in the Iranian national epic, the Shahnameh,in which it generally refers to the geographic region beyond Khurasan and the Oxus (Amu Darya) River, which runs through modern-day Central Asia. It was considered the home of the Turks and other non-Iranians, and Turān is often the enemy of Iran in the Shāhnāma. See Bosworth, “Tuṛān,” EIr. 123 Dick Davis, “Iran and Aniran: The Shaping of a Legend,” in Iran Facing Others,39–41; 44–45. Davis concludes that “it is very hard to extract an idea of a unitary Iranian identity from the mythological and legendary sections of the Shahnameh,” (Dick Davis, “Iran and Aniran: The Shaping of a Legend,” in Iran Facing Others, 44) and it is “a society that embodies constant internal contradictions and conflicts; that has an extremely porous rather than simply oppositional relationship with surrounding cul- tures, incorporating as much as it excludes; and that is as much vitalized by the edge ... as by the imperial center” (Dick Davis, “Iran and Aniran: The Shaping of a Legend,” in Iran Facing Others,44–45). 124 Andrew J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shi ʿism: Hadith as a Discourse between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), chapter 3. Though Sunnis were the majority, Newman argues that “Zaydīs were the first organized Shiʿi grouping to make themselves felt in Iran” (Andrew J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shiʿism: Hadith as a Discourse between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), 34). Newman argues that this Zaydī Shiʿi presence in Iran resulted from the migration to Iran of sayyids descending from Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib following failed Zaydi revolts against the Abbasids. According to Madelung, the Hashimiyya was the first Shiʿi group in Iran. The Hashimiyya was a sectarian group that formed after the failure of al-Mukhtār’s Kufan Shiʿi revolt supporting ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s son Muhammad b. al-Hanạ fiyya. Wilferd Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic _ Iran (Albany, NY: Persian Heritage Foundation, 1988), 77. Legitimating the Local 67 the Safavid era.125 Local histories and their literary self-representations articulate various iterations of this early Perso-Muslim identity.

legitimating the local

Beneath the notional and idealized umma in all its multilingual, multi- ethnic, multiracial manifestations, Persian local histories evidence attempts to simultaneously articulate and formulate spatio-communal identities unique to specific cities or regions. The focus on fadāʾil and _ other connections to Muhammad and prophetic authority contained in _ these local histories articulate a localized Perso-Muslim spatio-communal identity. In the case of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, this localized identity includes a strong emphasis on the region’s local Persian ruling families as well as its ʿAlid heritage. In the case of Tārīkh-i Qum, there is a simultaneous emphasis on the area’s Ashʿarī Arab lineage and association with the Shiʿi Imams, as well as violent refusal to capitulate to caliphal demands of fiscal and administrative subordination. In folk etymologies, the naming of Qum is deeply enmeshed in a Qurʾanic framework and association with Muhammad, Gabriel, Noah, and Iblīs. For Bukhara, on the far fringe of _ the Islamic empire in Central Asia, we see a move to bypass genealogical affirmation and instead an investment of power and legitimacy through a local pious exemplar interacting with the Prophet Muhammad in the _ bazaar of Bukhara in a dream. These local histories document a balancing act of the local and the universal – of the particularities of the region and the notion of the Muslim umma more broadly – that occurred in the self-representational literature of cities and regions on the geographical fringes of the empire. The content and form of these histories were shaped by the authors’ individual agendas, the specific contexts and constraints in which they wrote, as well as the guiding meta-narratives and frameworks that under- lay medieval Islamic historical writing more broadly. Authors of Persian local histories articulate and construct a role for cities and regions to play in the grander scheme of Islamic history. More specifically, some of the notable characteristics of Persian fadāʾil and _ tārīkh texts is that they may include some or all of the following: an introduction in which the author states his reason for writing the text and a discussion of the didactic role of writing history and studying history, in

125 Madelung, Religious Trends, 86. 68 Contexts and Authorship which the author clearly sees himself participating; the etymology of the name of the city; sahāba or notables who visited the city and the hadith _ _ they taught there; the natural virtues of the city and its environs, such as the climate, terrain, fruits, and marvels, as well as other holy or marvelous places, such as shrines and curiosities; and encounters the Prophet had with the city, such as through a dream of one of the city’s denizens.

the idealized umma

Muslims on the peripheries during the early centuries after the Islamic conquests saw themselves as part of the broader umma of the Islamic community, yet these texts evidence a local identity alongside the broader Muslim identity. The Persian component of identity that these local histories make a concerted effort to assert is not a Sasanian identity tied to Persia’s past as an empire.126 It is a localized identity that, in some cases, addresses the pre-Islamic past, but also takes into account local language, dialects, and the sanctification of the particular city by inserting it into the broader Islamic narrative. In addition to belonging to the umma more broadly, the spatio- communal Perso-Muslim identity is one based on piety, authority, and legitimacy that pervades the very Persian soil on which these Muslims live. Lapidus argues that for Iranian Muslim and specifically Khurasanian identity during early centuries of Islam up to the tenth century, the doctrine and symbolic importance of unity was critical despite the fact that it did not reflect the reality of increasing factionalization and the development of sectarian divisions.127 In Lapidus’s words, “The doctrine of a single brotherhood, a single community, a single Caliphate descended from the Prophet served, whatever the realities, to suppress the awareness that Muslim consciousness was polarized between the need for complete unity and fear of a total collapse of society into hostile and warring

126 For a discussion of the Sasanian Empire and the Arab conquest of Iran, see Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confeder- acy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (London; New York: I. B. Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation; New York: Palgrave Macmillan [distributor], 2008). For a generally very laudatory assessment of the book that is nevertheless critical of Pour- shariati’s discussion of “Mihr worship” in chapters 5 and 6 of her book, see Daryaee’s review of Pourshariati’s work in Touraj Daryaee, “The Fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Arab Muslims: From Two Centuries of Silence to Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Partho-Sasanian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran,” Journal of Persianate Studies 3(2010): 239–254. 127 Ira M. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” IJMES 6: 4 (Oct. 1975): 363–385. The Idealized umma 69 factions.”128 Therefore, despite the reality of racial, political, adminis- trative, and linguistic differences between the native population of Khur- asan and the conquering Arab invaders, an idealized identity of a united Muslim umma persisted and exercised symbolic power. Local and regional histories are literary self-portraits that reflect an impetus to preserve this nominal idealized identity of a united Muslim umma in the face of a fractured reality: rebellions and revolts across the caliphate; rapid changes in political fortunes as local dynasts and govern- ors lost power to new rivals; rebellions mounted by Kharijites in Sistan; challenges posed by Ismaʿilis, Zaydis, and ʿAlids, in Tabaristan; displace- ment and emigration as a result of rebellions and raids; and the shifting of power at very local levels as different elites rise to the fore and then fade in the face of new authorities and often overlapping categories of religious, political, social, and military elites. By focusing to a large extent on the sahāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, sharifs, pious notables, saints and pious exem- _ _ plars and their tombs, sacred etymologies, and dreams, local Persian histories articulate a local identity that is closely tied to embodiments of authority and reflected the early Islamic community united around Muhammad. _

128 Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” 367. 4

Dreaming of the Prophet

Whoever sees me in sleep has seen me, for Satan cannot appear in my form, and the dream of the believer is 1/46th part of prophecy.1

The story of Muhammad visiting the city of Bukhara in a dream to listen _ silently to the perfect recitation of the Qurʾan by a local pious exemplar is a striking yet natural blurring of the dream world and waking life that occured in the medieval Islamic world. This chapter will revisit the mysterious appearance of the Prophet in Bukhara, located in the fractious region of Khurasan, which was marked by rebellion and violence when the author of the Bukharan local history recorded the lore and legacy of the city for the Samanid amir Nūh ibn Nasr in 332/943 or 944. Rich in _ _ meaning and with strong implications for local autonomy, the narrative of the Prophet’s appearance in the Bukharan dreamscape was meant to affirm the legitimacy of local traditions. Dreams are an oft-ignored strand in a subtle and sinewy web of references that imbue medieval Islamicate writing with structure and meaning. Like the diaphanous filaments that give spider webs their uncanny strength, dreams weave together numerous references, allusions, and intimations to create a web of meaning that undergirds Islamicate historical writing. Narratives of dreams or visions are contained in a broad range of genres: local histories, biographical material, chronicles, dream interpretation manuals, Sufi literature, and theological literature.

1 “Man rāʾnī fī al-manām fa-qad rāʾnī, fa-inna al-Shaitānlā yatakhayyalu bī wa ruʾyā al- muʾmin juzʾ min sitta wa arbaʿīn juz min al-nubuwwa.” al-Bukhārī (810–870), Sạhīh al- _ _ Bukhārī, vol. 3, Kitāb92al-taʿbīr,Bāb 10, 1415, hadith 7080.

70 Dreams and Sacred Space 71

Dreams or visions may occur in waking life or in sleep, and such narra- tives in historical writing may be as short as a couple of sentences or be presented as longer developed narratives. Dreams can be read as social history embedded within historical texts as literary devices that reveal the anxieties, priorities, positions, and agendas of the author or of the era in which the sources were written or translated.

dreams and sacred space

The dream world constantly intruded on the waking world, and pious urban life collided with the dream world in significant tangible ways. Dreams and visions communicated information about the waking world to the dreamer, including the burial places of saints or martyrs. Those wishing for a pious dream would engage in istikhāra, familiar to the classical world as incubation, and attempt to solicit a dream to answer a question by performing rituals, sometimes in a sacred or religiously charged space such as a mosque, tomb, or shrine.2 The burial site of a saint could be discovered or rediscovered in dreams.3 This is the case with the “rediscovery” or “discovery” tombs, such as that of the tomb of the Prophet Daniel in Samarqand, Prophet Ayyūb in Bukhara, and the tomb of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib near Balkh in Mazarisharif in the sixth/twelfth century and again in the ninth/fifteenth century.4 Dream encounters with saints were a way of establishing a shrine, and pilgrimage guides recount encounters between the living and deceased saints.5 The practice of

2 T. Fahd, “Istiḵh̲āra,” EI2. 3 Hamada notes this tendency in his translation and commentary on Turkic sources in Masami Hamada, Higashi torukisutan, chagataigo seija densetsu no kenkyu = Hagiog- raphies du Turkestan oriental; textes cagatay éd., trad. en japonais et annotés avec une introd. analytique et historique par Masami Hamada (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Daigakuin Bungaku Kenkyu-ka, 2006). For a brief summary of Hamada’s work, see Alexandre Papas, “So Close to Samarkand, Lhasa: Sufi Hagiographies, Founder Myths, and Sacred Space in Himalayan Islam,” in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, edited by, Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Farnham, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011): 262. 4 Jurgen Paul, “The Histories of Samarqand,” 80. For history about the shrine of ʿAlī in Mazarisharif, where the tomb of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib was twice “discovered,” see R. D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). 5 J. W. Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints and Medieval Popular Culture.” Al-ʿUsūr al-wustā 11: 2 (Oct. 1999): 34. 72 Dreaming of the Prophet dreams or visions revealing the place of burial of saints and martyrs is also evident in the Christian tradition, such as the vision that revealed to Ambrose the burial location of Protasius and Gervasius.6 The propensity of dream interactions with saints to sacralize space and indicate the location or imperative to construct a shrine remains potent today. In modern Israel, for example, dream encounters with saints have led Moroccan Jews who emigrated to Israel to proclaim their dreams and establish shrines.7

dreams and islamic writing

The dreams of a region’s denizens offer an ethereal counterpart to the physical structures of Islamic cities and the events that transpired within them. The dreams described in local histories form the dream landscape of the city or region, and functioned, at least in part, as a literary device to provide a portrait of the virtuous city. Dream narratives dot the literary landscape of medieval Persian local histories. Dreams function as literary devices that sanctify and legitimate specific Persian cities and individuals. Islamic structures of authority were initially Arab and based, in large part, on genealogies into which Persians did not neatly fit, so dream narratives provided a creative avenue through which medieval Persian historians couched claims to authority and legitimacy between the tenth and early fifteenth centuries.

scholarship on dreams and historical writing

Recent volumes and articles on dreams by John Lamoreaux, Louise Mar- low, Ozgen Felek, Alexander Knysh, Amira Mittermaier, Jonathan Katz, Sara Sviri, Elizabeth Sirriyeh, and Pierre Lory complement the earlier work of Leah Kinberg, M. J. Kister, Henri Corbin, Toufic Fahd, Gustave von Grunebaum, and Roger Caillois, and have significantly expanded our

6 Everett Ferguson, “Martyr, Martyrdom,” Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition, edited by, Everett Ferguson, Michael P. McHugh and Frederick W. Norris (Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998. Religion Online). 7 Yoram Bilu, “The Role of Charismatic Dreams in the Creation of Sacred Space in Present- Day Israel,” in Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, edited by, Benjamin Z. Keder and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 295–315. Scholarship on Dreams and Historical Writing 73 understanding of dreams in Islamicate societies.8 Scholars of mysticism past and present have generally been more attuned to dreams than positivist historians. Working largely with sources from the traditions of Islamic mysticism, saint veneration, and Islamic philosophy and theology, Knysh, Katz, Sviri, Sirriyeh, Lory, Corbin, Fahd, von Grunebaum, and Caillois have been particularly engaged with the ways in which dreams and their inter- pretations have been understood in Islamicate societies. This includes

8 John C. Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation; Louise Marlow, ed., Dreaming Across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands (Boston, MA: Ilex Foundation; Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies Trustees for Harvard University; Cambridge, MA.; London: distributed by Harvard University Press, 2008); Ozgen Felek and Alexander Knysh, eds., Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012); Amira Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). Like Mittermaier, Hoffman examines dreams in contemporary Egypt, but extends her study to Coptic Christians and Muslims in Valerie J. Hoffman, “The Role of Visions in Contemporary Egyptian Religious Life,” Religion 27: 1 (1997): 45–64. For a short treatment of dreams in Islam, see Marcia Hermansen, “Dreams and Dreaming in Islam,” in Dreams: A Reader on Religious, Cultural, and Psychological Dimensions of Dreaming, edited by, Kelly Bulkeley (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 73–91. Sara Sviri examines the psychological dimensions of medieval dream accounts and their role in the Sufi tradition in Sara Sviri, “Dreaming Analyzed and Recorded: Dreams in the World of Medieval Islam,” in Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, edited by, David Schulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 252–273. For an overview of dreams in Islam with a focus on Sufi literature, see Nile Green, “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam,” JRAS, Third Series 13: 3 (Nov. 2003): 287–313. Hermansen also presents an overview of dreams, including technical terms and theo- logical implications, in Hermansen, “Introduction to the Study of Dreams and Visions in Islam,” Religion 27 (1997), 1–5; and Hermansen, “Visions as ‘Good to Think’: A Cognitive Approach to Visionary Experience in Islamic Sufi Thought,” Religion 27: 1 (1997): 25–43. Katz’s book is a case a study of a Sufi having dream conversations with Muhammad. See Jonathan G. Katz, Dreams, Sufism & Sainthood: The Visionary _ Career of Muhammad al-Zawâwî (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996). Sirriyeh notes the ambigu- ous boundary between dreams and waking visions (ruʾyā) in Elizabeth Sirriyeh, “Dreams of the Holy Dead: Traditional Islamic Oneirocriticism Versus Salafi Skepti- cism,” Journal of Semitic Studies 45: 1 (Spring 2000): 115–130. For a historical overview of the subject that concentrates on dreams and waking visions in the pre- modern Muslim world, from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries, and particularly within Arab lands, see Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Dreams and Vision in the World of Islam: A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). Pierre Lory, Le rêve et ses interprétations en Islam (Paris: Albin Michel, 2003); Lory, “L’in- terprétation des rêves dans la culture musulmane,” in Le mythe: Pratiques, Récits, Theories, vol. 2 (Paris: Economica Anthropos, 2004), 95–105; Lory, “L’interprétation des rêves de portée religieuse chez Ibn Shâhîn,” in Le developpement due soufisme en Egypt a l’epoque mamelouke = Tatawwur al-tasawwuf fi Misr fi al-Asr al-Mamluki = The Development of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt, edited by, Richard McGregor with A. Sabra, (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale Press, 2006), 74 Dreaming of the Prophet investigations into how dreams function as doors into the imaginary, sym- bolic, and religious dimensions of Islam. It also involves analyzing how and why dreams are a dynamic force that have come to be understood, in different times and places, as a form of “révélation permanente.”9 Approch- ing the material from a different vantage point and methodology, Kinberg and Kister paid particular attention to classical oneirocritical literature, the ways in which dreams were presented in the Quran and hadith literature, and the subsequent uses of dreams, for example, to obtain access to per- ceived truths or to legitimate a position, person, or group.10 These scholars have paid particular attention to the traditional oneir- ocritical literature and the themes contained within this genre, noting how dreams have been presented and understood in the Qurʾan and hadith. These ideas have consequently been developed and elaborated in Islamic philosophy and theology over the centuries. Mittermaier is distinctive for her training and methodological approach, which is grounded in socio-cultural anthropology, in her nuanced and astute analysis of the roles dreams play in contemporary Cairo. However, the dominant pattern of these scholars is that they have harnessed their training in history, religion, and area studies

259–266; Lory, “La vision du Prophète en rêve dans l’onirocritique musulmane,” in Autour du regard: mélanges Gimaret, edited by, E. Chaumont with D. Aigle, M.A. Amir-Moezzi and P. Lory (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 181–212; Lory, “La Vision de Dieu dans l’Onirocritique Musulmane Médiévale,” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy, and Mysticism in Muslim Thought: Essays in Honour of Hermann Landolt, edited by, Todd Lawson (London; New York: I. B. Tauris; London: In association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies; New York: Distributed in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 353–363. Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum and Roger Caillois, eds., The Dream and Human Societies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966); Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sụ̄fism of Ibn ʿArabī, translated from the French by Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1981], 1969); TouficFahd,La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam (Paris: Sindbad, 1987). 9 Lory, Le rêve et ses interprétations en Islam. 10 See, for example, within Kinberg’s work: “Dreams as a Means to Evaluate Hadith,” JSAI 23 (1999): 79–99; Kinberg, “The Individual’s Experience as it Applies to the Community: An Examination of Six Dream Narrations Dealing with the Islamic Understasnding of Death,” al-Qantara 21 (2000): 425–444; Kinberg, “Interaction between This World and the After- world in Early Islamic Tradition,” Oriens,29–30 (1986): 285–308; Kinberg, “The Legitim- ization of the Madhāhib through Dreams,” Arabica 32: 1 (Mar. 1985): 47–79; Kinberg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic Hadith in Classical Islam – A Comparison of Two Ways of Legitimation,” Der Islam 70: 2 (1993): 279–300; Kinberg, “The Standardization of Qurʾan Readings: The Testimonial Value of Dreams,” The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic,3–4 (1991): 223–238; Kinberg, “Dreams and Sleep” in Encyclopaedia of the Quran,editedby Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001–2006), 546–553. Scholarship on Dreams and Historical Writing 75 to approach dreams and their interpretations as they are presented within theological, philosophical, and mystical sources to understand and analyze their functions within their societies and contexts. Despite this scholarship on dreams more broadly, the use and meaning of dreams in Persian local histories remains largely underexplored. Along with Hossein Ziai, one of the few scholars who has ventured into the territory is Sholeh Quinn, who observes that, along with lists of the benefits of history and legitimizing genealogies, dreams are a common theme in post-Timurid Persian historical writing in Mughal India, Cha- ghatayid Central Asia, Savafid Iran, and Kurdistan, with precedents as early as the Buyid period.11 In later historical chronicles, “historians express contemporary notions of political legitimacy by including their own elaborations on the dream’s interpretation and its significance,” and “the dreams themselves tend similarly to emphasize how the reign of a particular ruler was pre-destined and divinely approved.”12 Dreams are political forces, malleable and potent, presented in service of a ruler’s political aims and as part of the divine order of things. Evident in Hamada’s translations of Chatagay hagiographies from Turkestan are numerous recurrences of dreams, of the types often seen in hagiographic and mystical sources. Some of these are dream episodes in which pious men learn of their impending death through premonitory dreams.13 In other dreams, a deceased individual appears to communicate something to the living. This is the case of a certain Khwāja Khifz al-Dīn Kabīrī who appears in a dream to Sultan Iskander in Constantinople to say that he rests in Bukhara; Sultan Iskander then goes to Bukhara and donates a great deal of money to a mazār there, whereupon Khwāja Khifz al-Dīn Kabīrī reappears and thanks him.14 A familiar theme is a visitation to the grave of a pious man, which results in the establishment of a mazār.15 Dreams, which frequently fit into familiar typologies of dreams

11 Sholeh Quinn, “The Timurid Historiographical Legacy: A Comparative Study of Persia- nate Historical Writing,” in Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Savafid Period, edited by, Andrew J. Newman (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 19–31. See also Hossein Ziai, “Dreams and Dream Interpretation,” EIr. 12 Quinn, “The Timurid Historiographical Legacy,” 29. 13 For dream episodes in which pious men learn of their impending death through premoni- tory dreams, see Hamada, Higashi torukisutan,89–92, 103–107, 111–112, 114–116, 121–125. 14 Hamada, Higashi torukisutan,48–53. For an episode in which an individual sees his grandfather in a dream and then decides to visit a family grave, see Hamada, Higashi torukisutan, 92–96. 15 Hamada, Higashi torukisutan, 130–131. 76 Dreaming of the Prophet of the types identified and analyzed by Kinberg, sometimes hold the crux of the narrative. The dream is a connection to a realm of truth to which the pious enjoy privileged access through their dreams and visions. Hagi- ographies are saturated in dreams, but they extend into many genres of writing, including historical narratives. Visions and dreams are woven into the rich tapestry of historical chronicles. al-Masʿūdī and al-Tabaṛ ī employed dreams in their chronicles to enrich the structure of the narrative and for edifying purposes.16 The chronicler al-Dhahabī generously wove dream narratives into his history, and he was tolerant of these unverifiable dream accounts because, in addition to their moral and literary potential, their inherent unverifability made dream narratives – in contrast to hadith – highly supple tools at the author’s disposal.17 Medieval dynasties, including the Buyids and the Ghaznavids, incorporated dreams into the narratives describing their origins.18 Stories about the beginnings of later dynasties, including the Safavids and the Ottomans, incorporated dream narratives, and dreams also functioned as a literary device in the epic Shāhnāma.19

16 Operating from the premise that al-Tabaṛ ī’s (d. 310/923) medieval chronicles, including the various dream narratives embedded within them, should be read as unified narratives, El-Hibri reads the texts as incorporating commentary – as opposed to pure reportage – about the events that transpired. See Taybed El-Hibri, Parable and Politics; El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography. 17 Cooperson rightly notes, “dream-stories concede from the outset that they can never be verified. Having solicited a judgment based on a lower standard, they place themselves beyond (or below) dispute. A story about seeing al-Khidr in sleep is therefore acceptable ... while a claim to have seen him in reality is not.” Michael Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic Biography,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, edited by, Phillip F. Kennedy (Wiesbaden: Harrassovitz Verlag, 2005), 73. Khidr is the immortal shape-shifter who _ Islamic tradition identifies as the otherwise unnamed “servant of God” in Surat al-Kahf Q 18:60–82 in the story with Moses. Since Khidr, “the green,” possesses esoteric _ knowledge that Moses does not have, he resonates with the mystical tradition and is considered a teacher of prophets. The origins of the Khidr story are unclear and remain _ speculative, although it resonates with the Alexander romance, the epic of Gilgamesh, and the Jewish legend of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, in which Elijah fulfills the role performed by Khidr in the Quran. Khidr’s immortality and esoteric knowledge means that Sufi _ _ orders and individuals have identified him as an initiating shaykh – sometimes thorugh a dream – thereby bypassing other living, non-immortal shaykhs. J. Renard, “Khidr,” EQ; _ Wensinck, “al-K̲h̲adir (al-K̲h̲idr),” EI2. _ _ 18 Mohammad Mahallati, “The Significance of Dreams and Dream Interpretation in the Qurʾan: Two Sufi Commentaries on Sūrat Yūsuf,” in Dreaming Across Boundaries, 156. 19 Sholeh Quinn, “The Dreams of Shaykh Safī al-Dīn in Late Safavid Chronicles,” in Dreaming across Boundaries, 222. Scholarship on Dreams and Historical Writing 77

In Islamicate writing, dream narratives flesh out biographical accounts, in which dreams are generally recorded in the biography not of the dreamer but of the person who appeared in the dream. In such dreams, the identity of the dreamer is usually less important than the person who appears in the dream. In the case of dream narratives about hadith transmitters in biographical dictionaries, the purpose of the dream may be to legitimize or delegitimize the individuals as hadith transmitters.20 Dreams about individual transmitters have significant consequences for hadith transmission because if a particular transmitter is validated in a dream, the same dream also validates later transmitters’ musnads if they transmitted hadith from the transmitter who appears in a dream. Dreams that validate Abū Hurayra as a transmitter validate more than just Abū Hurayra – they validate the chains of transmission of those who trans- mitted hadith from him, in one case including the very dreamer of the dream in which Abū Hurayra is validated.21 Unlike hadith and akhbār reports, with eye-witness reports and isnads to indicate their chain of transmission that attest to their veracity – or the plausibility of their veracity – dreams and visions lack the scholarly apparatus that accompany hadith and akhbār reports. However, “there was nothing wrong with dream-reports in the moral sense. Because everyone agreed that such reports were not even trying to be Hadith, no one seems to have minded relating them, hearing them, or copying them into biographies.”22 The literary representations of these dreams are authentic artifacts from the era in which they were written in that they record the themes, conflicts, and pressing issues that purportedly perme- ated the dream lives of the denizens of the early Islamic world. By neglecting dream narratives in Islamicate historical writing, modern scholars strip the sources of meanings, allusions, and references embed- ded in the texts. In his critique of contemporary scholarship on the medieval chronicler Masʿūdī (d. 345/956), Moin notes that modern

20 Dreams about hadith transmitters such as Abū Hurayra (d. 57, 58, or 59/677–679), Yazīd b. Harūn (d. 206/821), Abū Zakariya Yahya b. Maʿīn (d. 233/847), ʿĀlī b. ʿĀsim _ (d. 201/816), Abānb.ʿAbī Ayyāsh (d. 138/755) reflect the opinions and concerns of the hadith critics, such as an uneasiness amongst hadith critics about Abū Hurayra’s reliabil- ity as a transmitter. A dream about Yahya b. Maʿīn unambiguously suggested that it was _ his relationship with hadith that raised Yahya to a blissful rank in heaven in which he was _ permitted to encounter God. Kinberg, “Dreams as a Means to Evaluate Haḍ īth,” 82–83, 88. 21 Kinberg, “Dreams as a Means to Evaluate Haḍ īth,” 81. 22 Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’,” 73. 78 Dreaming of the Prophet studies often ignore dreams, a tendency that “represents a hermeneutical lapse in our approach to early Islamic historiography: that is, a general tendency to prefer fact over ‘fiction’ and material over ‘immaterial’ reality ... the dream belongs to the lost ‘intellectual scaffoldings’ with the help of which early Muslim historians constructed narrative.”23 Medieval Islamicate writing does not bifurcate neatly into the genres of fact and fiction, categories into which dreams, at any rate, do not neatly fit. Meisami objected in her critical assessment of Noth and Leder, “the idea that history should accurately and objectively depict ‘reality’ is ...a recent one ...And when medieval Islamicate historians ... employed the stylistic and rhetorical techniques ... they were creating, not fiction, but meaning.”24 Hoyland argues for the utility and necessity of fiction and fictive elements for the medieval historian, because “history required the mediations of fiction in its treatments of the past.”25 The inclusion of fictive elements does not entail the deceit or fraud, but instead the intro- duction of meaning into the narrative. In this context, dreams provide us with a keyhole through which to peer into medieval minds and their shared points of intellectual, religious, and cultural reference.

islamic traditions of dream interpretation

Prior to Muhammad and the advent of Islam, dreams were woven into the _ fabric of the ancient and Late Antique Near East.26 The notion that

23 A. Azfar Moin, “Partisan Dreams and Prophetic Visions: Shīʿī Critique in al-Masʿūdī’s History of the Abbasids,” JAOS 127: 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2007): 415. This is not to say that scholars have ignored dreams and their uses. An early example is the collection of essays in G. E. von Grunebaum and Roger Caillois, eds., The Dream and Human Societies,in which the contributions of von Grunebaum, Toufic Fahd, Henry Corbin, Fazlur Rahman, and Jean Lecerf and Fritz Meier are of particular interest to Islamicists. 24 Meisami, “Masʿūdī and the Reign of al-Amīn: Narrative and Meaning in Medieval Muslim Historiography,” 152. 25 Hoyland, “History, Fiction, and Authorship in the First Centuries of Islam,” 18. 26 On the influences on Islamic oneirocriticism, including foreign as well as Arab and Islamic materials, see Elizabeth Sirriyeh, “Arab Stars, Assyrian Dogs, and Greek ‘Angels’: How Islamic is Muslim Dream Interpretation?” Journal of Islamic Studies 22: 2 (2011): 215–233. For a discussion of the cultural context and function of wordplay (such as punning and allusions) in dream narratives from the ancient Near East, see Scott B. Noegel, Noctural Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2007). On the intersection between dreams and texts in Late Antique rabbinic literature and its theoretical implications, see Erik Alvstad, “Reading the Dream Text: A Nexus between Dreams and Texts in the Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg, 2010. On Byzantine oneirocritica and Byzantine-Arab connections, the standard work is Maria Dreams in the Qurʾan and hadith 79 dreams are related to prophetic experiences was extant in pre-Islamic and non-Islamic traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the soothsayer (kāhin, pl. _ kuhhān), who allegedly spoke in rhyming prose (sajʿ), acted as an inter- _ _ preter of dreams and omens.27 Interestingly, the early Islamic dream interpreter Ībrāhīmb.ʿAbd Allāh al-Kirmānī (fl. late second/eighth cen- tury) credited his ability to interpret dreams as handed down to him in a dream – literally in the form of a mantle given to him – from the prophet Yūsuf (Joseph) during a dream encounter.28 Varying and competing concepts about the origins, use, and meanings of dreams permeated the world of Late Antiquity, and as identifiably Muslim modes of dream theory developed, dreams constituted an integral part of the intellectual, spiritual, and social life of the medieval Islamic world. As Muslim believers and scholars established foundations for the legitimacy of dream interpretation within Islam, it was material common to the Abrahamic faiths, combined with Prophetic traditions and inter- pretations of Qurʾanic passages that formed the basis of Islamic oneiro- mancy. Muhammad spoke of dreams and stated that they were part of _ prophecy. The Prophet addressed dreams in his hadith; the Qurʾan speaks of the interpretations of dreams; and scholars composed dream manuals to interpret the dreams of the faithful. Dreams occupy a liminal space on multiple levels: between waking life and prophecy, between the living and the dead, between the umma and the Prophet of Islam, and as a conduit of truth from the afterworld to this world.

dreams in the qurʾan and hadith

The Islamic understanding of dreams is grounded in the Qurʾan and hadith. Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams is recorded in Qurʾanic reve- lation in Sura 12 (Yūsuf), and there are references to ruʾyā, understood as dreams or visions, in Suras 17:60, 37:105, and 48:27.29 Muhammad _

V. Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and its Arabic sources (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2002). An earlier work on Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia’s Arabic recension is S. Pines, “The Arabic Recension of Parva Naturalia and the Philosophical Doctrine Concerning Veridical Dreams According to al-Risala al-Manamiyya and Other Sources,” Israel Oriental Studies 4(1974): 104–153. 27 Moin, “Partisan Dreams and Prophetic Visions,” 417–418. 28 Lamoreaux, Dream Interpretation, 26. 29 Analysis of Sura 12 (Yūsuf) is overwhelmingly popular within material on dreams in both pre-modern exegesis and contemporary scholarship. There are Persian tafsīr works that exclusively focus on Sura 12 (Yūsuf), such as al-Sittīn al-jāmiʿ li-latāʾif al-basātīn by Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Zayd Tūsī (written in the sixth/twelfth century), and Hadāʾiq _ _ 80 Dreaming of the Prophet himself interpreted dreams and visions and was touched by God through them.30 Muhammad describes the first experience of the revelation _ through the Angel Gabriel as occurring during sleep, and after Gabriel departed, Muhammad states, “I awoke from my sleep.”31 Hadith in the _ canonical collections attest to the trustworthiness of dreams in which the Prophet appears and generally support the authority of ruʾyā, or visions, which may occur during wakefulness or in sleep. The widely transmitted prophetic hadith that a good dream is one forty-sixth’s part of prophecy has many variations, which place dreams as 1/90, 1/70, 1/50, 1/44, 1/60, 1/49, 1/44, 1/45, 1/24, 1/25, 1/76, 1/40 1/46, 1/76, 1/26 part of prophecy.32 Scholarship on dreams and hadith in the Arabic literary tradition has been led by Leah Kinberg and M. J. Kister.33 Prophetic hadith vouchsafe the veracity of a dream in which Muhammad appears.34 Abū _

al-haqāʾiq by Mowlā Moʿīn al-Dīn Farāhī Haravī (d. 908/1502–1503), also known as _ Mollā Meskīn. See Mahallati, “The Significance of Dreams and Dream Interpretation in the Qurʾan: Two Sufi Commentaries on Sūrat Yūsuf.” The Joseph/Yusuf story in the Quran and Bible has piqued the interest of scholars over the years, and some have approached the Joseph/Yusuf story from a literary perspective and attended to dimen- sions of narrative structure, plot, theme, and literary devices. See, for example, Ayaz Afsar, “Plot Motifs in Joseph/Yūsuf Story: A Comparative Study of Biblical and Qur’ānic Narrative,” Islamic Studies 45: 2 (Summer 2006): 167–189; Mustansir Mir, “The Qur’anic Story of Joseph: Plot, Themes, and Characters,” Muslim World 76: 1 (Jan. 1986): 1–15; M. S. Stern, “Muhammad and Joseph: A Study of Koranic Narrative,” JNES 44: 3 (July 1985): 193–204. 30 In the Sīra of the Prophet, al-Zuhrī reports on the authority of ʿUrwa b. Zubayr that one of the first signs of prophethood that Muhammad received from God were “true visions, _ resembling the brightness of daybreak, which were shown to him in his sleep.” ʿAbd al- Malik Ibn Hishām (d. 834), The Life of Muhammad; A Translation of Ishāq’sSīrat rasūl _ Allah, Translated, with Introduction and Notes by A. Guillaume (Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1967), 105. Graham notes the close relationship between Muhammad’s _ own dreams and prophetic revelation in William Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam: A Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special Reference to the Divine Saying or Hadith Qudsī (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), 37. For these hadith Graham cites Bukhārī 4:5; 10:161:3. Mirza analyses fifteen dreams recorded in Ibn Hishām’s Sīra, including dreams that appeared to Muhammad, other Muslims, female _ non-Muslims, and male non-Muslims. Sarah Mirza, “Dreaming the Truth in the Sīra of Ibn Hishām,” in Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies,15–30. 31 Ibn Hishām, The Life of Muhammad, 106. On the relationship between dreams and prophecy, see T. Fahd, “Nubuwwa,” EI2; and Fahd and H. Daiber, “Ruʾyā,” EI2. 32 M. J. Kister, “The Interpretation of Dreams: An Unknown Manuscript of Ibn Qutayba’s ʿIbārat al- ruʾyā,” 71. The Babylonian Talmud specifies dreams as 1/60 part of prophecy. Fahd, “Nubuwwa,” EI2. 33 Both Kinberg and Kister address the various interpretations and uses of dreams, and both have documented the use of dreams as a tool to confirm the veracity of hadith. 34 For a discussion of this tradition, see Kinberg, “Literal Dreams.” Dreams in the Qurʾan and hadith 81

Hurayra transmitted the Prophetic hadith that whoever sees the Prophet in a dream has seen him in wakefulness, and Satan cannot take the Prophet’s form. The Prophet is said to have stated: “Whosoever sees me in a dream sees me in waking life, because Satan does not take my appearance.”35 Alternate interpretations suggest that if this hadith refers to contemporaries of the Prophet who have not emigrated to Medina, then they will see the Prophet in Medina, and that if it refers to gener- ations after the Prophet they will see him in the next world.36 Shiʿi hadith add that Satan cannot take the form of the Shiʿi Imams and that Satan cannot even assume the figure of anyone who is merely Shiʿi, either.37 Hadith prohibit lying about seeing the Prophet in dreams, and the formulae of these hadith are similar to and often paired with similar prohibitions about lying about hadith.38 A hadith transmitted on the authority of Abū Hurayra from the Prophet states, “whoever tells a lie against me intentionally, then let him occupy his seat in Hell-Fire.”39 A refrain that emerges from canonical hadith about dreams is that good dreams (manāmātsāliha) are to be shared and bad dreams (adghāth _ _ ahlām) kept to oneself.40 This provides a theological basis for promulgat- _ ing good dreams. Given the rich nexus between dreams, prophecy, and divine communi- cation, it is no surprise that dream interpreters and their manuals

35 Bukhārī, Sahīh, Kitāb92al-taʿbīr,Bāb 10, hadith 7079, p. 1415. _ _ 36 Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Khatīb al-Tibrīzī,(fl. 1337), Mishkāt al-Masābīh; English _ _ translation with explanatory notes by James Robson (Lahore: S. M. Ashraf, 1975), Book XXIII (Visions), chapter 1, 962. Krenkow discusses whether the hadith refers to those who were contemporary with Muhammad and had seen him in Fritz Krenkow, “The _ Tarikh-Baghdad (vol. XXVII) of the Khatib Abu Bakr Ahmad B. ‘Ali B. Thabit Albagh- dadi. Short Account of the Biographies,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Jan. 1912): 31–79. 37 Kister, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 73–74. 38 Muhammad ibn ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Tirmidhī (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Jamʿīyat al- _ Maknaz al-Islāmī, 2000), vol. 2, Kitāb30al-ruʾyā,Bāb 8, 587, hadith 2452, Such prohibitions also appear in the other canonical collections. See A. J. Wensinck, Concord- ance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden: Brīl, 1936–1988) I:504 (h.l.m.) and V:549 (k.dh.b). 39 Bukhārī, Sahīh, vol. 1, Kitāb3al-ʿilm,Bāb 38, 29–30, hadith 110. _ _ 40 Muhammad ibn Yazīd Ibn Mājāh, Sunan Ibn Mājāh (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Jamʿīyat al- _ Maknaz al-Islāmī, 2000), Kitāb36taʿbīr al-ruʾyā,Bāb 5, 562, hadith 4045. Muslim’s Sạhīh includes various hadith in which the Prophet states that one should not tell others _ _ of bad dreams, which are the caused by Satan. Muslim, Sạhīh Muslim (Vaduz, Liechten- _ _ stein: Jamʻīyat al-Maknaz al-Islāmī, 2000), Kitāb43al-ruʾyā,Bāb 3, 980. The term “adghāth ahlām” appears in Q 12:44 and Q 21:5. _ _ 82 Dreaming of the Prophet proliferated. Early Islamic dream manuals include those by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), whose text is the earliest extant manual, while earlier works, such as those by Muhammd b. Sīrīn (34–110/654–728), are not known to _ be extant today.41 al-Hasaṇ b. al-Husayṇ al-Khallāl(fl. fourth/tenth century) wrote a no-longer extant biographical dictionary of dream inter- preters called Tabaqāt al-muʿarribīn, in which he apparently recorded at least 7,500 people known for their talents as dream interpreters.42

reading dreams as social history

Dreams narratives serve multiple functions across the array of texts in which they appear. Authors employed dream narratives to bring the pres- tige of religious authority and importance to their respective cities and provinces. Dreams may advocate for a religio-political community, deni- grate an individual, or legitimate a local practice. Dreams are a liminal space through which the dreamer can access authentic truth, whether it be in the form of the dead speaking from dār al-haqq or Muhammad blessing _ the believer with a dream, which is a form of prophecy.43 Dreams are also a bridge to the world of the Prophet’s family, through which dreamers are informed about proper conduct towards sayyids and sharifs.44 A typology of dream narratives recorded in local histories includes polemical or sect- arian dreams, premonitory dreams, and legitimating or validating dreams. Two factors make dreams particularly well suited to being incorpor- ated into various genres of historical writing. Firstly, dreams have roots in early Islamic society and in the corpus of Qurʾan and hadith material. Secondly, dreams contain phrases and motifs that were easily incorpor- ated into histories. Common tropes in dreams include images of a chain

41 Muhammd b. Sīrīn’s father was manumitted by the caliph ʿUmar after being taken _ captive during the conquests in Iraq, and his mother was a slave of Abū Bakr. Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation. Ibn Qutayba wrote widely on subjects including adab, theology, poetry, and the dream interpretation manual KitābTaʿbīr al- ruʾyā. Georges Lecomte doubted the authenticity of Ibn Qutayba’s authorship Kitāb Taʿbīr al-ruʾyā.OnKitābTaʿbīr al-ruʾyā, see. Lamoreaux, Dream Interpretation, 11. G. Lecomte, “Ibn Ḳutayba, Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim al-Dīnawarī,” EI2. _ 42 Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation,17–19. Lamoreaux pro- vides a valuable book-length treatment of the genre of dream manuals. 43 Kinberg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic Hadith,” 288. 44 Kazuo Morimoto, “How to Behave toward Sayyids and Sharīfs: A Trans-sectarian Tradition of Dream Accounts,” in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet, edited by Kazuo Morimoto (London; New York: Routledge, 2012), 15–36. Reading Dreams as Social History 83 for lineage, a tree emanating bright light, visions of Muhammad, Khidr, _ _ and abdāl in dreams, as well as memorizing or learning material such the Qurʾan and hadith, during dreams.45 In their formulaic quality, dreams function as malleable templates on to which authors could add particular judgments, whether they be judgments about hadith transmitters or edify- ing messages about ideal behavior or belief.46 The flexibility of tropes and motifs allows dreams to operate in a number of ways according to the author’s intentions. Dreams featuring Muhammad can, for example, legitimate the dreamer, the content of the _ dream, or the place in which the dream takes places or is dreamed, in the case of Tārīkh-i Bukhārā. In the case of a dream featuring abdāl in Tārīkh-i Tabaristān, the dream advocates for a sociopolitical and sectarian stance. Authors of history and adab, using composite akhbār reports to draft their narrative works, could smoothly weave dream narratives into their texts or eliminate them to reinterpret and shift the emphasis of the narrative.47 For example, in Tārīkh-i Tabaristān, a dream interlude appears in the chrono- logical section about the local rulers of Tabaristan and political events to make a point about the importance of treating ʿAlids with justice. As inherently unverifiable accounts that were nevertheless pious and import- ant, dream narratives gave the authors who incorporated them consider- able flexibility in recounting them. Similarly, Akhbārīsmassagedthe akhbār reports to form a coherent narrative out of multiple and conflicting reports instead of including all of the different and conflicting traditions, as a muhaddith would.48 Dreams were reported as true and beyond the realm _ of what was provable through eyewitness accounts. Authors composing

45 On dreams and saints, see John Renard, Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commit- ment, and Servanthood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), esp. chap. 3. 46 Kinberg, “The Individual’s Experience,” 425–444. 47 It is the composite nature of how akhbār reports are used and incorporated into broader narratives that make these akhbār reports so malleable. Stefan Leder, “The Use of Composite Form in the Making of the Islamic Historical Tradition” in On Fiction and Adab, 125–148. The term khabar (pl. akhbār), most broadly interpreted as reports or narrative, denotes a wide range of material that ranges from one line to several pages and includes “simple statements, utterances of authoritative scholars, saints, or statesmen, reports of events and – sometimes rather complex – stories about historical events and personalities.” Most significantly for historiographical studies, it is their flexibility that make akhbār so useful, and “akhbār in general are characterized by an intense and complex process of ‘reactive transmission’, including unadmitted authorship and funda- mental reshaping of the ‘original’ narrations.” Leder considers certain elements, such as hyperbolic embellishment, to be telltale signs of a “fictitious element” within narratives incorporating akhbār. Stefan Leder, “The Literary Use of Khabar,” 278–279; 312. 48 Hoyland, “History, Fiction, and Authorship in the First Centuries of Islam,” 21–22. 84 Dreaming of the Prophet works of history kneaded the sometimes considerable and conflicting material at their disposal into a consistent narrative with a clear message, and dreams fit seamlessly into the continuum of historical writing that includes veracious and fictive elements. As supple literary devices that were infinitely pliable in the hands of a capable author, dreams capture the anxieties and concerns of the author and the environment in which the sources were written or translated. Writing about Persian histories written from 1100 to 1300 CE, K. Luther cautioned, “the modern researcher cannot use these histories by simply ‘extracting the facts’. The nature of the whole work is important if we are to understand the entirety of the author’s message.”49 Dreams gesture towards a perceived truth or concern that the author wished to indirectly communicate. Dreams and vision narratives can be read as social history embedded within historical texts because they are “cultural products, conditioned by the complex environments in which they were created and ‘expressive of culturally specific themes, patterns, tensions, and meanings’.”50 Kinberg has argued that dream narratives are fragments of evidence that reflect the ideas and circumstances in which they appeared, and moreover that the study of dream narratives is akin to the analysis of hadiths,since“both are products of given circumstances which prevailed at a given time and place, and both were narrated to answer certain questions, or to approve of existing phenomena; both, therefore, should be treated as the mirror of their environment.”51 What follows are examples of two Persian local histories in which dream narratives occur: Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān from the seventh/thirteenth century and Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, a Persian translation of a lost Arabic original that was written, translated, and then modified between the fourth/tenth–sixth/twelfth centuries. Paying close attention to the local conditions that contextualize the texts reveals hidden layers of meaning embedded within the dream narratives.

Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān

Embedded in the thirteenth-century Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān is a polemical dream about abdāl and two ʿUmars who ruled as caliphs. The author

49 Luther, “Islamic Rhetoric and the Persian Historians,” 94. 50 Marlow, ed., Dreaming across Boundaries, 2. The methodological presupposition of Marlow’s edited volume follows the work of David Schulman and Guy G. Stroumsa. 51 Kinberg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic Hadith,” 292. Reading Dreams as Social History 85 inserts this dream narrative into one of the sections that discusses local rulers as well as a Kharijite leader named Qatari ibn al-Fujāʾat al-Māzinī _ and developments under the seventh Abbasid caliph, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 96–9/715–17). Importantly for the way in which he frames the upcoming dream narrative, Ibn Isfandiyār’s portrait of caliph Sulaymānb.ʿAbd al-Malik – who had upheld the practice of cursing ʿAlī and his family – is of a grotesquely vain man with unguent dripping from his beard. Ibn Isfandiyār also portrays caliph Sulaymānb.ʿAbd al- Malik as fundamentally un-Islamic in his alleged proclamation in a khutba to rule as a youthful king instead of a caliph. Ibn Isfandiyār relates, via his source Ibn ʿĀʾisha, that a week after this impious khutba, caliph Sulaymānb.ʿAbd al- Malik was dead.52 In this dream, the second caliph of the Rashidun, ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb __ (ʿUmar I, d. 23/644) is seen physically stationed a few levels under the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz(ʿUmar II, d. 101/720). ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz is the Umayyad Caliph known as ʿUmar II (r. 99–101/ 717–720), who was the great-grandson, on the maternal side, of the second caliph of the Rashidun, ʿUmar b. al- Khattāb, known as ʿUmar I __ (r. 13–23/634–644; d. 23/644). The abdāl featured in the dream are one of the rank of saints who, according to different sources, vary in their number, with either 40, 269, 300, or possibly even 7 at any given time; their identity as abdāl are unknown, and they are instrumental in main- taining the order of the universe.53

Ibn Isfandiyār states that in Khwarazm, he heard Nidhām[al-Dīn] Samʿānī speaking at the minbar say that in his sleep [be khwābdīd]hesawoneoftheabdāl of the Messenger of God (prayers and peace be upon him and his family), in the seat of honor of the prophetic mission [dar sadr-e risālat neshaste]. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was beside him [pahlū-ye ou], and ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb was a few levels under ʿUmar __ b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz[ʿUmar b. al-Khattābbe-chanddarajezīr ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz]. “I __ asked: ‘Oh Messenger of God, who is this person sitting beside you [pahlū-ye to]?’ He answered: ‘It is ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.’ I asked them one by one until I reached ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb, and I asked ‘Oh Messenger of God, how did Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz __ reach such closeness [Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīzchandīnqurbatbe-cheyāft]?’ And he replied ‘He was just.’ And then I asked ‘Was ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb not more just than he?’ And __ he replied: He [ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb] was just in an era of justice, and this [person, __ ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz] was [just] in an era of oppression [jūr] and injustice.”54

52 Bahā al-DīnMuhammad ibn al-Hasaṇ Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh Tabaristān, edited by, _ ʿAbbas Iqbal, 2 vols. (Tehran: Muhammad Ramazani, 1941), 1:164–165; Browne, _ Abridged Translation, 108–109. 53 I. Goldziher, “Abdāl,” EI2. 54 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:165; Browne, Translation, 109. 86 Dreaming of the Prophet

As an early Companion and second of the Rightly Guided Caliphs who lead the nascent Muslim umma, ʿUmar I’s piety is richly attested to in Islamic tradition. The story of fiery ʿUmar I’s remarkable conversion to Islam is likewise well known. His initial antipathy transformed into fervent devotion to Islam and Muhammad following his conversion, _ and ʿUmar I is credited in the Islamic tradition with initiating the collec- tion of the Qurʾan after the death of the Prophet. Yet Ibn Isfandiyār clearly asserts that it is the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar II who is more virtuous and just. ʿUmar II, the fifthcaliphof the Marwānid branch of the Umayyad dynasty, has a mixed image in the historical sources. His propensity for luxury in his youth is inverted into piety and humility later in life. Earlier in his career he was governor of Medina, where he was educated and mingled with pious figures and muhaddithūn.55 ʿUmar II is most well known for his fiscal _ policies, and his image in the sources is not one that is obviously more pious than that of his famous ancestor and namesake. On the contrary, it is from ʿUmar I that ʿUmar II often draws legitimacy, since ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s mother, Umm ʿĀsim, was the granddaughter of ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb. __

sectarian dreams and local legitimation

In the dream the reputations for piety and justice are inverted. Why is the second of the Rightly Guided caliphs, the fiery convert ʿUmar I, credited with initiating the collection of the Qurʾan, seated in a rank below the Umayyad ruler ʿUmar II, the caliph with a mixed reputation descending from a dynasty that is often reviled in the Muslim sources as nepotistic and with a penchant for luxury? That ʿUmar I ranks lower than ʿUmar II suggests a sectarian inter- pretation of the characters. It is because of ʿUmar II’s justice that he is placed in a seat of honor next to the Prophet. This dream narrative is placed in a section on the houses of Washmgir and Buwayh, in a sub- section about the Ispahbud Farrukhān, following a brief note about the virtues of ʿUmar II. Ibn Isfandiyār notes that ʿUmar II is the caliph who is credited with repealing the stridently anti-Shiʿi practice of publicly cursing ʿAlī,Fātima, Ḥasan, and Ḥusayn. Ibn Isfandiyār lauds ʿUmar II’s _ piety in addition to his earlier praises that ʿUmar II’s justice, knowledge,

55 P. M. Cobb, “ʿUmar (Ii) b.ʿAbdal-ʿAzīz,” EI2. Alid Piety and Shiʿi Communities 87 superiority, and clemency are well known.56 By claiming that ʿUmar I was just in an era of justice while ʿUmar II was just in an era of injustice and tyranny (“be-rūzegārjūrozulm”57), Ibn IsfandiyārcreditsʿUmar II with persevering in a hostile and anti-Shiʿi climate of tyranny and therefore being more just. The dream narrative reflects several key themes that Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes in the larger narrative of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān: the historical independence of Tabaristan, the importance of Shiʿi imams in the area, and the imams of Tabaristan as the local exemplars and interpreters of the faith who exercise religious authority and guidance. ʿAlids, sayyids, and the family of the Prophet are integral components of Ibn Isfandiyār’s Islamic narrative for Tabaristan.58 Anecdotes about Sufis, sayyids, and other notable Muslims set a tone of ʿAlid piety and emphasis on the Shiʿi tradition. The living fadāʾil of Tabaristan – princes, patricians, rulers (such as the Ispahbads), notables (maʿārif), ascetics, writers, physicians (atubbāʾ), astronomers (munajjamān), philosophers (hukamāʾ), poets and sayyids – are the human counterparts to the physical excellences of Tabaristan. In addition to the emphasis on the pre-Islamic Persian nobility and the Islamic lineage of sayyids that forms the backbone of the elite and the ruling classes of Tabaristan, Ibn Isfandiyār highlights the magnanim- ity of the local patricians and rulers.

alid piety and shiʿicommunities

The communal and theological affiliation of the author of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān and his description of the people of Tabaristan might be most accurately described as “ʿAlid piety.” An admittedly vague term, “ʿAlid piety” is a broader concept than “Shiʿa” and “Shiʿism,” and therefore retains a more flexible way of seeing the broad agglomeration of commu- nities that evidenced pious reverence for ʿAlids and the prophet Muhammad’sfamily– including but not limited to sayyids and sharifs – as _

56 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1:164; Browne, Translation, 108. 57 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1:165; Browne, Translation, 109. 58 For a detailed discussion of the important dynastic families and groups in Tabaristan, see Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 287–381. The rivalries between competing notable dynastic families shaped the history of Tabaristan. “In sum, Khurāsān and Tabarisṭ ān were contested by the Parthian families of the Ispahbudhān and the Kārins, while the central and western parts of the region, that is to say, Rayy and the regions to the west of it, were the traditional homelands of the Mihrāns over which they were given the ērān-spāhbedī of the north” (Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 296). 88 Dreaming of the Prophet they are, without imposing strict sectarian divisions where they may not clearly exist or are undeterminable based on the sources.59 In the centuries prior to Ibn Isfandiyār, various Shiʿi communities had a strong presence in Tabaristan. Multiple dynasties also held sway in the Caspian provinces.60 Along with Qum, Tabaristan served as a refuge for ʿAlids fleeing Abbasid persecution.61 Arab governors contributed to the spread of Sunni Islam in Tabaristan in the second/eighth century, but the presence of ʿAlid rulers in Daylam contributed to the Zaydi influence.62 Abū Hātim, who is credited with converting many locals in Tabaristan to Ismaʿilism, noted around 313/925 that the region was “a sanctuary for numerous Alids who had fled the ʿAbbasids,” and converted many in Daylam and Gilan.63 In Tabaristan there was a complex dynamic of

59 For a broader conceptualization of the role of members of the holy family, including the categories of sayyids and sharifs and the more expansive ways in which we can think about “ʿAlid piety” and the people involved in that without limiting it to categories of “Shiʿism,” see Kazuo Morimoto, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies. Najam Haider charts the genesis of Shīʿa identity in second/eighth century Kufa in Najam Iftikhar Haider, The Origins of the Shīʿa: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth- Century Kūfa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Haider utilizes Kufan legal and hadith material (instead of heresiographical sources) and subjects these traditions to a new methodology for dating the development of distinctly Imāmī and Zaydī Shīʿa identities in second/eighth century Kufa. Haider concludes that, in contrast to the trad- itional account of Zaydī identity, Zaydism gradually evolved from one that was predom- inantly Batrī in orientation and that a Jārūdi alignment replaced the former in the late second/eighth century. Haider focuses on matters of ritual and dietary law as critical to the formation and performance of sectarian identity. 60 On the various dynasties that ruled Tabaristan in the early Islamic period, see Wilferd Madelung, “The Minor Dynasties of Northern Iran,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, edited by, R. N. Frye (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 198–249. The article also addresses the withholding of tribute payments by the rulers of Tabaristan. 61 Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shiʿism, 35. 62 M. S. Khan traces the beginning of ʿAlid claimants taking refuge in Daylaman to Yahyā b. _ ʿAbd Allāhb.Hasan,̣ a great-grandson of al-Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, who took refuge in Daylaman in 175/791 to escape Abbasid persecution after two of his brothers were executed. More ʿAlid sayyids migrated to Tabaristan in the mid to late second/eighth century from the Hijaz, Syria, and Iraq. Khan argues that ʿAlid rulership in Tabaristan was critical to spreading the Zaydī madhhab in the south Caspian regions and that Zaydism was already introduced in the South Caspian by the mid-ninth century. M. S. Khan, “The Early History of Zaydī Shīʿīsm in Daylamān and Gīlān,” in Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, edited by, Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Tehran Branch: 1977), 257–260, 263, 264. 63 Abū Hātim converted Asfār b. Shirawahy (d. 319/931) to Ismāʿīlīsm. Abū Hātim also converted Mardāwīj b. Ziyār (d. 323/935), who rebelled against Asfār b. Shirawahy and then founded the Ziyārid state with his capital at Rayy. Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 120–121, 165. Alid Piety and Shiʿi Communities 89 forces vying for power, the balance of which shifted. Contending local forces over the centuries included the local Zaydi ʿAlid rulers of Tabari- stan, Ismaʿili Shiʿis, dynasties such as the Ziyārid Ismaʿili dynasty in Tabaristan, the Bāwandids of Tabaristan and Gīlān (who were opposed to the Nizārī Ismaʿilis), other local dynasties, and other ʿAlid rulers in Tabaristan.64 Rising to power through a rebellion in which they seized Amul in 249/863, Zaydi ʿAlid rulers of Tabaristan maintained a complex balance of allegiances and power in the state that they maintained in Tabaristan for several decades.65 It is not clear if the origin of the dream is Imami, Ismaʿili, or Zaydi Shiʿi.66 The overall tenor of Ibn Isfandiyār’s text is Shiʿi in his focus on the Shiʿa Imams of the region as legitimate leaders and authorities. The presence of Zaydi Imams in Tabaristan and the Caspian region suggests the possibility of Zaydi influence on the dream narrative.67 The dream itself is ambiguous; it could be Zaydi Shiʿa, although it would also be more broadly and most accurately ʿAlid. Muqaddasī noted two centuries before Ibn Isfandiyār penned his Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān that “The Shiʿa are in evidence in Jurjan and Tabaristan,”68 but does not offer more specific observations. That the narrative includes ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb ranking __ among the abdāl in the seat of honor of the prophetic mission suggests that it is not vehemently Shiʿi, because it acknowledges that ʿUmar b. al- Khattāb – regarded by the Shiʿa as one of the usurpers of the caliphate __ from ʿAlī – is seated in an elevated position. ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb’s __

64 On the power dynamics between Ismāʿīlī and Zaydī rulers in Tabaristan, see Farhad Daftary, “The Medieval Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian Lands,” 50–52; 69. 65 Vardanyan, “Numismatic Evidence for the Presence of Zaydī ‘Alids,” 355–374. 66 During this period the Nizari Ismāʿīlīs (or Eastern Ismāʿīlīs), led by Hasan-ị Sabbāh _ (d. 518/1124), established themselves in the Caspian region and “founded a vigorous state,” with its center located in the mountain fortress of Alamūt in the Caspian region, but the Nizārī state collapsed in the mid seventh/thirteenth century. After about a century of underground developments, Ismāʿīlī movement clearly appeared after the middle of the third/ninth century. Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 2, 105. Hasan-ị Sabbāh was born into an Imami _ Shiʿi family in Qum in the mid-440s/1050 and converted to Ismāʿīlīsm soon after the age of 17. Daftary, “The Medieval Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian Lands,” 62. 67 On the ʿAlid influence and Caspian Zaydī community in the region, see Wilferd Made- lung, “Abū Ishāq al-Sạ̄bī on the ʿAlids of Tabaristān and Gīlān,” JNES 26: 1 (Jan. 1967): _ 17–57. Daylam was considered a region of Tabaristan. On ʿAlid rule in Tabaristan, see Madelung, “The Assumption of the Title Shāhānshāh,’” JNES 28: 2 (April 1969): 84–108. On the geography of the Tabaristan region, see G. E. LeStrange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, From the Moslem Con- quest to The Time of Timur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 7, 173, 175, 368–376. 68 Collins, Best Divisions, 320; Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 365. _ 90 Dreaming of the Prophet position is lowered in comparison to his namesake, but he is not deni- grated or condemned outright. Ibn Isfandiyār states that in Khwarazm, he heard one Nidhām al-Dīn Samʿānī speaking at the minbar about this dream. It is unclear who this Nidhām al-Dīn Samʿānī is based on the information that Ibn Isfandiyār supplies. However, Khwarazm is not particularly known for Shiʿi senti- ment during Ibn Isfandiyār’s era in the sixth/twelfth century. On the contrary, Bosworth argues “Khwārazm became, like Khurasān and Transoxania, a bastion of Sunni orthodoxy and scholarship,” and “one manifestation of the orthodoxy of Khwārazm was, according to Ibn Fadlān, the customary cursing of ʿAlī at the end of the daily prayers.”69 The persistence of Zoroastrianism or Christianity in Khwarazm does not explain the Shiʿi bent to the dream narrative, and neither does the influ- ence of the Sunni Ghaznavids nor the Sunni Seljuks. However, Khwarazm may have had pro-ʿAlid elements in a largely Sunni environment.

religious authority and fiscal autonomy

The argument for religious legitimacy in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān is more than merely theoretical. Ibn Isfandiyār’s emphasis on religious authority goes hand in hand with assertion of local political and fiscal autonomy. Ibn Isfandiyār chronicles the history of the dynasties of Washmgīr and Buwayh from their ascendancy to their establishment as the local rulers, and simultaneously underscores the Shiʿi elements of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār documents Tabaristan’s historical unruliness and frequent uprisings against external control and the allegedly Shiʿi stance of the Abbasid caliphs, including Harūn al-Rashīd and his son al-Maʾmūn. Into his narrative Ibn Isfandiyār blends various pro-ʿAlid sentiments that bolster the Shiʿa and the religious credentials of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār also documents the Tālibi sayyids who ruled Tabaristan. Descendants of ʿAlī are portrayed as the true custodians of religion and the guardians and rulers of the region. In Ibn Isfandiyār’s account, the presence of religious notables and authorities in Tabaristan justifies the righteous fiscal and administrative localism. The region’s political and fiscal independence reinforces the image of Tabaristan as a community set apart and a haven for the Shiʿa. Ibn Isfandiyār presents the relationship of the region to the caliph as a

69 C. E Bosworth, “Ḵh̲WĀrazm,” EI2. Religious Authority and Fiscal Autonomy 91 contentious one: Baghdad seeks control, while the region boils over with righteous indignation at attempts of central control. Multiple times the implicit relationship between religious autonomy and administrative and fiscal freedom rises to the fore: religious authority and pious heritage are coupled with a fierce localism and assertion of fiscal and political independence. There are other markers of Ibn Isfandiyār’s pro-ʿAlid and anti- Umayyad stance, including his description of Abū Muslim: “There was never a more wonderful story than that of Abū Muslim. To a villager of humble original and lowly position God gave so much power that he took in hand and successfully carried out one of the greatest enterprises ever planned.”70 Ibn Isfandiyār mentions ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib in between sections on Abū Muslim, despite the fact that they could not have chronologically overlapped.71 His intention is to establish and develop the validity of ʿAlid claims and Tabaristan’s ties to the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib. The meaning of the dream about the two ʿUmars makes sense when we consider that Ibn Isfandiyār paints Tabaristan as a fractious region, where claims of religious authority reinforced the legitimacy of the region’s independence. Tabaristan was racked by rebellion and consequent polit- ical instability in the centuries prior to the early part of the seventh/ thirteenth century, when ibn Isfandiyār composed Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. As the long fingers of empire lost their grip on their domains, particu- larly on the physical peripheries that lay hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the seat of power in Baghdad, Harūn al-Rashīd faced revolts along many fronts. The Abbasid caliphate increasingly lost its administrative effectiveness, and the centralized power of the caliphate gave way to political fragmentation. In the century to come, local dynasts such as the Tahirids would rise to power to in Khurasan. Though they nominally acknowledged fealty to the Abbasid caliph, they functioned as independent dynasts upon whom the caliph relied to maintain a modicum of control and fiscal authority. The dynamics of power were constantly contested and negotiated, as lord and vassal maintained a balance of power that was at times marked by collaboration and at others by violent refusal to cooperate.

70 I have quoted here G. E. Browne’s translation, Browne, Abridged Translation, 110; Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:166. 71 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:167; Browne, Abridged Translation, 111–112. 92 Dreaming of the Prophet

The dream elevates ʿUmar II over ʿUmar I because ʿUmar II treated the Shiʿa better than his predecessor, and the welfare of the Shiʿa is one of Ibn Isfandiyār’s major concerns. Dreams are one among multiple signals of ʿAlid authority and legitimacy in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Dreams comple- ment akhbār and other narratives through which Ibn Isfandiyār empha- sizes the region’s historical independence, the importance of Shiʿi Imams in the area, and the Imams of Tabaristan as the local exemplars and interpreters of the faith who exercise religious authority and guidance. The form and content of Tārīkh-i Tabaristān situates Ibn Isfandiyār’s sectarian polemical dream about ʿUmar I in its religio-social context. The argument for religious legitimacy is entwined with claims for the fiscal and political autonomy of Tabaristan.

Tārīkh-i Bukhārā

The local histories of Tabaristan and Bukhara, though composed at significant geographic and chronological remove from each other, share the common thread of a dream that argues for the legitimacy of local practice. At the time of the texts’ composition, the two regions were both destabilized by rebellion and violence. Khurasan generally and Bukhara specifically was characterized by rebellion and violence in the eighth and ninth centuries, when Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Zakarīyā ibn _ Khattāb ibn Sharīk al-Narshakhī originally composed Tārīkh-i Bukhārā __ in Arabic and dedicated it to the Samanid amir Nūh ibn Nasr (r. 331–343/ _ _ 943–954) in 332/943 or 944. Local forces and those of the nascent Islamic empire were locked in near-constant conflict over political and military authority over the region, underscored by the six major revolts in which Bukhara was invovled from the Hashemite Abbasid revolution 750 to 800 CE.72

legitimating a local qurʾan recitation

It is in this context that we return to the curious story about the Prophet Muhammad visiting the city of Bukhara in a dream of one of the city’s _ denizens. Narshakhī posits a powerful form of non-biological lineage and heirship to the Prophet by tying the city of Bukhara to the Prophet through a dream. Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s al-Bukhārī was amongst the _

72 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 120. Legitimating a Local Qurʾan Recitation 93 most prominent denizens of the city of Bukhara. Of the several anecdotes and praiseworthy stories about Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s al-Bukhārī, the _ most interesting is that of his interaction with the Prophet. Narshakhī describes him as “an ascetic (zāhid) as well as a man of knowledge (ʿālim),” who “went from Bukhara to Baghdad and became a student of ImāmMuhammad Hasaṇ [or perhaps Husayn]̣ Shaibānī...He was one of _ the honored teachers of Bukhara.”73 There is some confusion about Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s al-Bukhārī’s _ identity. His name was either Ahmad ibn Jaʿfar (known by his kunya Abū _ Haf̣s and who had many followers), or perhaps Abū Haf̣sAhmad ibn _ _ _ Haf̣s ibn Zarqān ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Jarr al-ʿAjilī al- Bukhārī, who was _ born in 150/767. Alternatively, he may even be ʿUmar ibn Maslama al- Haddād, who died about 264/877.74 He may also be Abū Haf̣s Kabīr, _ who died in 832 CE and was a notable Hanafi in Bukhara.75 Books used by Chinese Muslims suggest that Abū Haf̣s al-Bukhārī was a famous _ scholar in Central Asian Islam and Chinese Islam.76 This identity would make sense, since Tārīkh-i Bukhārā uses Abu Hafs al-Bukhārī as the central character in the story in part to appeal to his authority.77 Despite the confusion of Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s al-Bukhārī’s identity, _ according to Narshakhī, “He died in 217/832 and his ashes are by the new gate which is well known. It is a place where prayers are answered. The mound is called the hill of Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s. There are _

73 Narshakhī, Bukhārā,77–81; Frye, History,56–59. Mudarris Razavī notes that another manuscript lists the imam’s name as Muhammad Husayṇ Shaibānī. _ 74 Frye, Bukhara, 139–140, notes 203–205. 75 Wilferd Madelung, “The Early Murji’a in Khurasan and Transoxania and the Spread of Hanafism,” Der Islam 59 (1982): 32–39; reprinted in Wilferd Madelung, Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985). 76 Tatsuya Nakanishi, “Shindai no Chuugoku Muslim ni okeru Perusha go bunka juyou [Persian language reception amongst Qing Dynasty Chinese Muslims],” in Perushiago ga musunda sekai: mō hitotsu no yūrashiashi [The World that Persian Bound Together: Another Eurasian History] edited by, Kazuo Morimoto, (Sapporo: Hokkaidōdaigakush- uppankai, 2009), 175–203. I am grateful to Dr. Kazuo Morimoto of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo for pointing out that Abū Haf̣s was _ a well-known figure for Chinese Muslims in Central Asia. 77 Bukhara may have been home to several Abū Haf̣s over the centuries, since several _ centuries later in Chatagay hagiographies we learn of a certain Khwāja Abū Khifz Kabīrī (or alternately Kabīr), who also sometimes appears as ImāmAbū Khifz or ImāmAbū Khifz Kabīr Bukhārī. According to Chatagy hagiographies, this figure was known as one of the seven saints of Bukhara who was martyred by Hulegu, or, according to the Tārikh-i Rashīdī, Gengis Khan. Hamada, Higashi torukisutan, 31, 40–41, 46, 48–53, 55–58, 899–902. 94 Dreaming of the Prophet mosques and monastery-cells there. Adjoining it live attendants. The people consider that earth blessed.”78 Despite the confusion in the texts about his identity, what is evident is that Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s was one of the notable scholars and ascetics _ in Bukhara during his era. His acknowledged piety is the source for his encounter with the Prophet in dreams. A composite identity Khwāja Imām Abū Haf̣s need not be problematic if we read this dream account as social _ history. Narshakhī claims:

It is related from Muhammad ibn Salām Baikandī,79 who was an ascetic and scholar, that in a dream [“goft ke be kwābdīdam”]80 he had seen the Prophet (may God give him mercy and peace), in Bukhārā, in the bazaar of Kharqan. The area from the beginning of the quarter of the Magians to the section of the dihqāns, was called the bazaar of Kharqan in olden times. He said he saw the Prophet sitting on that same camel, which is mentioned in tradition, with a white cap on his head [“kulāh-e safīd bar sar nehād”]. A large crowd was standing before him showing delight at the coming of the Prophet. They said, ‘Where will we lodge the Prophet (may God bless him)?’ Then they lodged him in the house of Khwāja Imam Abū Hafs. (He said) he saw the Khwāja Abū Hafs sitting before the Prophet and reading the Book. For three days the Prophet remained in the house of Abū Hafs, while he read the Book and the Prophet listened. In those three days he never once corrected him, for all was correct. Today the home of the Khwāja does not exist, although several times people re-built it; but traces of it still remain. His prayer-cell also remains in that house, and prayers are answered there.81 The dream bestows legitimacy to the dreamer, the man who appears in the dream, and to Bukhara and its religious practices. Sites of holiness both bestow and receive meaning through dreams. The implication of the dream is that the dream occurred because Bukhara is blessed; the virtuousness of Bukhara and its denizens causes the dream to be dreamed in Bukhara and about Bukhara. Muhammad appears in the bazaar of Bukhara – not an _ inherently sacred place – and is lodged by a local man, Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s. The dream sanctions the reading of the Qurʾan by Khwāja ImāmAbū _ Haf̣s as legitimate. Furthermore, Muhammad ibn SalāmBaikandī,the _ _ dreamer, is authenticated as a good Muslim who has a dream about the Prophet, which connects him to the prophetic legacy. The dream is related as part of a section on the division of Bukhara into Arabs and the natives, which includes several anecdotes that attest to Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs’s piety, learning, and his position as a _

78 This is Frye’s translation in Frye, History, 58; Narshakhī, Bukhārā,79–80. 79 See Frye, History, 139–140, note 212. 80 Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79. 81 This is Frye’s translation in Frye, History,57–58; Narshakhī, Bukhārā,79–80. The Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan 95 source of wisdom for the inhabitants of Bukhara. In one such narra- tive, the learned men of Iraq cannot answer questions posed to them, and they suggest that the interlocutor instead ask Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs or his children in Bukhara, suggesting that Abū Ḥafs’s reputation _ _ for learning was renowned throughout the lands of Islam.82

the samarqand codex of the qurʾan

Proximal to this dream and the social-political context of Bukhara, in geography and chronology, is the Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan. Located in modern-day Uzbekistan, approximately 130 miles to the east of Bukhara, Samarqand was a major city in Transoxania (Māʾ warāʾ al- Nahr) known for its production of both paper and scholarship in the early Islamic world.83 The codex allegedly dates from the era of ʿUthmān but legend brings it to Samarqand in the latter half of the fifteenth century.84 This Samarqand Codex records peculiarities in the Qurʾan. Jeffery and Mendelsohn documented the orthographic particularities of the Samar- qand Codex, the composition of which they placed in Iraq and probably Kufa in the third/ninth century.85 Working off the photographic repro- duction published in 1905, Mendelsohn first published a study of the lost original codex in 1940, and Mendelsohn and Jeffery elaborated on the orthographical particularities of the codex in their 1942 article.86 It may be that during the tenth century (when Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was composed in Arabic by Narshakhī) or during the twlefth century (when

82 Frye, History, 56; Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 77. For a detailed treatment of this episode, see Mimi Hanaoka, “Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories,” Iranian Studies 47: 2 (Mar. 2014): 289–303. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2013.860326. 83 Schaeder, H. H., C. E. Bosworth, and Yolande Crowe, “Samarḳand,” EI2. 84 The legend of the codex is that it belonged to the third caliph ʿUthmān and was the Qurʾan he was reading when he was murdered. However, other codices also boast the same pedigree, all purportedly showing ʿUthmān’s blood on its pages. The codex was given as a gift to a disciple of Khōja Akhrār – who apparently lived in Tashkent during the second half of the fifteenth century and was perhaps a Naqshabandī pīr, and whose name was Ubaidallah – when his disciple cured an unspecified caliph in Constantinople with a prayer taught to him by Khōja Akhrār. The codex was moved from Tashkent to Samar- qand when Khōja Akhrār built his mosque in Samarqand. A. Jeffery and I. Mendelsohn, “The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur’ān Codex,” JAOS 62: 3 (Sep. 1942): 175–176. 85 Jeffery and Mendelsohn, “The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur’ān Codex,” 175–195. Jeffery and Mendelsohn compare the orthography of the Samarqand Codex against a study published by Shebunin in 1901 of an ancient Qurʾan codex in Cairo. 86 I. Mendelsohn, “The Columbia University Copy of the Samarqand Kufic Qur’an,” The Moslem World 30: 4 (Oct. 1940): 375–378. 96 Dreaming of the Prophet

Abū Nasr Ahmad al-Qubavī translated the work into Persian and when _ _ Muhammad ibn Zufar ibn ʿUmar abridged and extended it) that the _ reading of the Qurʾan common in Bukhara differed from Qurʾan readings elsewhere. Perhaps not only the ulama, but anyone with a vested interest in the legitimacy and prestige of Bukhara as an Islamic city – including its Samanid and other later rulers – felt the need to defend and authenticate the reading of the Qurʾan common in Bukhara as a legitimate one. The dream related about Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s describes him read- _ ing the Qurʾan before the Prophet for three days. The statement that the Prophet did not once in those three days correct Abū Haf̣s signifies that _ the Prophet accepted as correct the recitation of the Qurʾan common in Bukhara. The dream authenticates the local version of the Qurʾan in Bukhara. This type of religious knowledge, legitimated in a dream, authenticates the authority of the dreamer (Muhammad ibn Salām Bai- _ kandī), the pious exemplar seen in the dream (Khwāja ImāmAbū Haf̣s) as _ well as the religious practices generally and specifically the reading of the Qurʾan in Bukhara. By extension, this dream sanctions and sanctifies the city of Bukhara itself and the learning of the religious sciences, such as the hadith and Qurʾan that occurs in the city. It is the very central issue of the local recitation of the Qurʾan that is being legitimated through this dream, instead of the much larger corpus of hadith material.

prophet muhammad’s silent approval as a trope

The Prophet may give his explicit and verbal opinion on a matter, or he may tacitly approve something through his silence.87 The dream narrative in which the Prophet appears and stays silent may be a common trope in Islamicate literature. In the biography of al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī by Tāj al- Dīn al-Subkī (ca. 1327–1370) in Tabaq̣ āt al-Shāfiʿīyah al-kubrā, there is a narrative that is very similar to the dream narrative in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā in which the Prophet appears but stays silent. In this narrative, Abū Qāsim al-Makkī states that while asleep in Baghdad, he dreamed that he was at a study session as al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī recited his own Tārīkh Baghdād. Shaykh Nasr al-Maqdisī sat to al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī’s right, and to the _ right of Shaykh Nasr al-Maqdisī sat a man who Abū Qāsim al-Makkī did _ not recognize. When Abū Qasim al-Makki asked about the unknown

87 Goldziher noted several cases of prophetic approval, some of them explicit and verbal. Goldziher, “The Appearance of the Prophet in Dreams,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1912): 503–506. Prophet Muhammad’s Silent Approval as a Trope 97 man’s identity, he was told that it was the Prophet, who had come to listen to the reading of the Tārīkh Baghdād. The Prophet stays silent, which implies that the Prophet approves of al- al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī’s book, vindicating al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī’s work against accusations that it contained biases.88 This example suggests that dreams functioned as validators of truth and authority akin to the way in which isnads validated the truth and authority of hadith. It is the very medium of dreams that confirms and validates its contents, much in the way that the soundness of a hadith is accepted on the authority of the transmitters in the isnad attached to it. Despite the seeming circularity of the logic at work, the function of dreams in narratives is to signal that the content revealed in the dream is valid.89 By dreaming the Prophet into Bukhara and into an encounter with a notable and pietistic local scholar, Baikandī and Narshakhī also confer onto the city a connection with the Prophet that transcends the boundar- ies of time and waking consciousness. In the previous story, considering the authoritativeness of dreams, the Prophet came to Bukhara through the liminal space of a dream. In tying the city of Bukhara to the legacy of the Prophet through the dream, Narshakhī argues for a powerful form of non-biological lineage to the Prophet and his legacy. Narshakhī’s

88 Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿAlī al-Subkī (ca. 1327–1370), Tabaq̣ āt al-Shāfiʿīyah al- kubrá / li-Tāj al-DīnAbī Nasr ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Kāfī al-Subkī;tahqīq _ _ MahmūdMuhammad al-Taṇ āhī [wa] ʻAbd al-FattāhMuhammad al-Hilw,̣ 10 vols. _ _ _ _ _ (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Halaḅ ī [1964–1966]), 4: 36–37; the full biographical entry for al- Khatib al-Baghdadi is on pages 4: 29–37. I am grateful to Dr. Moriyama Teruaki from the Japan Institute of International Affairs for alerting me to this trope of the Prophet’s silent approval of a book. For a discussion of this episode in the context of the biograph- ical tradition about al-Khatīb al-Baghdadī, see Fedwa Malti-Douglas, “Controversy and Its Effects in the Biographical Tradition of Al-Khatīb Al-Baghdādī,” Studia Islamica 46 _ (1977): 115–131. Douglas notes that this dream narrative also appears in the biograph- ical notices about Al-Khatīb Al-Baghdādī in Ibn Asākir and al-Safadī. On dreams in _ medieval autobiographies, see Dwight F. Reynolds, “Symbolic Narratives of Self: Dreams in Medieval Arabic Autobiographies,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, edited by, P. Kennedy (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2005), 261–286. An example of an autobiography rich in dreams is Muhammad ibn ʿAlī Haḳ īm al-Tirmidhī, _ (fl. 898), The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works; An Anno- tated Translation with Introduction by Bernd Radtke and John O’Kane (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996). 89 In the Turkic context, see Karakaya-Stump for an example of a dream vision of the Prophet that facilitates the integration of an ethnic group into a socio-religious commu- nity, in this the case Kurds being in absorbed into the Alevi community. Ayfer Karakaya- Stump, “The Vefā’iyye, The Bektashiyye and Genealogies of ‘Hererodox’ Islam in Ana- tolia,” Turcica 44 (2012–2013): 279–300. 98 Dreaming of the Prophet narrative about Muhammad visiting Bukhara in a dream transcends the _ narrow strictures of biological lineage to the Prophet and expands it to a direct encounter with the Prophet in the far reaches of Khurasan. This episode demonstrates that, at least in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, the author forms links with foundational moments and characters in Islamic history. Narshakhī binds the Prophet to the city of Bukhara in a relationship that creates a non-biological prophetic pedigree for the city.

summary and conclusions

Authors of local histories molded and presented dream narratives in service of their aims and the larger narrative arc of a particular local history. ʿAlid concerns were central to Ibn Isfandiyār’s aims, and in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān he includes a dream narrative to affirm the position of the Shiʿa of Tabaristan and condemn those who have persecuted them. In Bukhara, legitimizing a local Qurʾan recitation was critical, and in composing Tārīkh-i Bukhārā the author or translator used a dream to bind Bukhara to the Prophet’s legacy and legitimate a local reading of the Qurʾan. Narshakhī or his later translator strove to embed Bukhara deep into the framework of piety that would resonate on multiple levels, and the narrative captures Narshakhī’s impulse to portray Bukhara as a privileged site in Islamic history. One of the multiple historiographical functions of dreams is their use as literary devices that capture essential facts about the anxieties, con- cerns, or issues of the era in which they were written into the historical record. Local histories are a diffuse and diverse lot, and yet their literary and narrative dimensions nevertheless reveal commonalities of reference and focus. In particular, local histories yield valuable insights about the formation of local identities in Persian Muslim communities within the broader Islamic context and employ dream narratives as tools of legitim- ation and authority in doing so. Paying serious attention to the roles that dream narratives play in local histories will allow scholars to integrate dream narratives into the mosaic of literatures that informs early Islamic historiography. In this sense, dream narratives are akin to the folk etymologies and foundation narra- tives about cities that are addressed in Chapter 8. The following chapter considers how, like dreams, the Prophet’s descendants and the hadith they transmit also bind cities and regions to prophetic authority. 5

Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Marhaban, our brothers from the people of Qum ... God has a sanctuary, and that is Mecca. And the Prophet of God has a sanctuary, and that is Medina. And Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī has a sanctuary, and that is Kufa. And we have a sanctuary, and that is the city of Qum. Know that soon a woman of my descendants, whose name is Fātima will be buried in Qum, and everyone who does pious visitation _ (ziyārat) to her [grave] will find he or she certainly goes to heaven.1

In this reordered sacred geography attributed to Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq in Tārīkh-i Qum, Jerusalem is omitted and Qum appears as the fourth most sacred place after Mecca, Medina, and Kufa. The sixth Shiʿa Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq has foreknowledge that the Shiʿa, like God, Muhammad, and _ ʿAlī before them, have a sanctuary, which they find in the hallowed ground of Qum. The purpose of this narrative that repositions Qum as one of the four most sacred refuges on Earth is to weave Qum into a sacred geography imbued with divine purpose. Qum is not merely the refuge for fleeing Shiʿa or proto-Shiʿa communities, but it also provides sanctuary to a persecuted and pious community, mirroring what Muhammad found in Medina. The image of Qum as a refuge and _ sanctuary resonates with etymologies of Qum, discussed in Chapter 8, which describe the area as a panāh-gāh, or sanctuary. Sanctified as a refuge akin to the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Kufa, Qum became a

1 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 573. The editor notes that the same hadith is in al-Majlisī, Bihār al-Anwār, vol. 60, 216, with the same isnad.Muhammad Bāqir ibn Muhammad Taqī al- _ _ Majlisī, (1627 or 1628–approximately 1699), Bihār al-anwār: al-jāmiʿah li-durar akhbār _ al-aʾimmah al-athār (Tehran: Wizārat al-Irshād al-Islāmī, 1365– [1986–]). _ 99 100 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging place of pilgrimage when Fātima, Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq’s descendant, was _ buried in the city. According to Tārīkh-i Qum, which was originally composed in the tenth century and then translated and revised in the early fifteenth century, the city is doubly sacred: it is a holy refuge and a blessed place of pilgrimage. The very land of Qum has a purpose and a place in the cosmic order. This hadith has a similar structure and emphasis to the widely attrib- uted hadith of the three mosques, in which the Prophet urges believers not to depart for pilgrimage to any site other than the three mosques in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.2 Instead of the Masjid al-Harām, the Masjid al-Nabawī, and the Masjid al-Aqsā that are identified by Muhammad as the only appropriate mosques for pilgrimage, here Jaʿfar _ al-Sạ̄diq identifies Mecca, Medina, Kufa, and Qum as the sacred refuges for his community. Qum derives its blessed status as a refuge and as a repository of the sacred body of Fātima. According to Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq, Fātima’s flesh _ _ imbues the city with the force of baraka (blessing and sacred power) so strong that those who perform pilgrimage to her grave will find their places in heaven. Sacred bodies have the power to sanctify a physical site, and this assertion credited to Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq in Tārīkh-i Qum shares tendencies with Arabic- and Persian-language city and regional histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries in which religiously significant people and their legacies function as mechanisms of legitim- ation for a city or region.

links to the prophet: sayyids, sharifs, and social capital

Religiously significant people bring the sanction and prestige of genealogy and lineage to regions on the peripheries of the medieval Islamic empire.

2 On this hadith, see M. J. Kister, “‘You Shall Only Set out for Three Mosques’. A Study of an Early Tradition,” Le Muséon 82 (1969): 173–96, Reprinted in: Studies in Jāhiliyya and Early Islam (London: Variorum, 1980), III. For a discussion of this hadith in the context of the rivalry and legitimation of cities, see Antrim, Routes and Realms,79–81. On early Shiʿa attitudes towards Jerusalem, particularly as they are expressed in hadith, see Ofer Livne-Kafri, “The Early Šīʿa and Jerusalem,” Arabica 48: 1 (2001): 112–120. Goitein disagrees with Goldziher and argues that the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik’s purpose in constructing the Dome of the Rock was not to divert the pilgrimage from Mecca to Jerusalem in S. D. Goitein, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in Early Islam,” reprinted in Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 135–148. Links to the Prophet: Sayyids, Sharifs, Social Capital 101

Genealogies – sacred, invented, or based on clientage – were a well- practiced way of establishing legitimacy. The importance accorded to genealogy extended, in chronology and geography, far beyond the Arab tribal emphasis on lineage. In Islamicate sources, genealogy should not be construed narrowly as a bloodline but instead broadly understood to include biological lineage, the fictive legal genealogies of mawlā clien- tage, and those relationships that are supra-biological. These supra- biological genealogies of heirship include Sufis initiated onto the mystical path by Khidr, the Prophet appearing to an individual in a dream or a _ vision, and signs and symbols in material culture and in the literary sphere meant to indicate a shared cultural, literary, or intellectual heritage. The material scattered across a constellation of local and regional histories about descendants of the Prophet indicate that concerns about religious and political legitimacy were intertwined and ranked among the central concerns that shaped the ways in which the authors mapped the narratives of their cities and regions. The hadith preserved in Tārīkh- iQum, combined with the central importance of sayyids, sharifs (sing. sharīf,pl.shurafāʾ), ʿAlids, and early Arab settlers demonstrates how Ḥasan ibn Muhammad Qummī (d. 1015 or 1016) frames his city within _ the broader Islamic umma. Genealogy and hadith are distinct but twinned issues: those who descended from Muhammad were also often _ those who transmitted traditions about him. Qummī’s claims that des- cendants of the Prophet constitute the living virtues, fadāʾil,oftheland _ are integral to the discourse of legitimation in which Qummī participates. Real and putative sayyids, sharifs, and other descendants of Muhammad possess social capital on the basis of their descent from _ the Prophet, a prestige that is umdampened by the staggering number of people who claim this status. No reliable global statistics of Husaynid sayyids and Hasanid sharifs are available, but a recent conservative estimate suggests that it is an enormous number: there are probably tens of millions of direct Hasanid and Husaynid descend- ants.3 Respect and esteem for descendants of Muhammad are shared _ by Shiʿa and Sunni alike, although descent from Muhammad and ʿAlī _ ibn Abī Tạ̄lib holds an important role in Shiʿa doctrine and social organization.

3 Kazuo Morimoto, Introduction to Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies, 2, 11. 102 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

definitions and terms

What confers the status of sayyids, sharifs, and other categories of descent from the Prophet and his family is a complex issue that has shifted over time and place. The terms ʿAlids (al-ʿAlawī), Hasanids, Husaynids, Tali- bids, sayyids, and sharifs were used flexibly and with variation in the medieval sources themselves, and refer to ambiguous terms and phenom- ena. In the medieval Islamic east – in what is now modern Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia – it is anachronistic to impose even the divisions of sayyids for Husaynids and sharifs for Hasanids.4 ʿAlids encompass a wide range of people. In her recent study of ʿAlids, Bernhei- mer convincingly argues that “ʿAlidism is characterized by a distinctly cross-sectarian reverence and support for the Prophet’s family,” and what unifies this diverse coalition of individuals and communities, spread out over time and place, who identified as ʿAlids or with ʿAlidism, was “their increasing sense of themselves as a distinct social force – as the First Family of Islam,”5 an awareness and identity that underwent formative and crucial transitions during the eighth to twelfth centuries CE. Furthermore, sharaf is a legal category with its own implications within Islamic law. The core definitions of sayyids and sharifs are gener- ally coterminous. Being a sayyid or sharif indicates descent from the family of the Prophet and generally more specifically descent from ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib and Fātima bint Muhammad through their sons Hasaṇ _ _ and Husayn.̣ The basic definition of a sayyid or sharif is a male who is a patrilineal descendant of the prophet Muhammad through his grandchil- _ dren Hasaṇ and Husayn,̣ whose parents were Fātima (Muhammad’s _ _ daughter) and ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib (Muhammad’s paternal cousin and _ son-in-law). With the caveat that the terms as we use them today are anachronistic if we apply them to the medieval sources, in most general terms in contemporary usage the term Hasanids denotes those who are the des- cendants of Hasaṇ ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib and Fātima, who are also known _ as sharifs. Husaynids, who are the descendants of Husayṇ ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī

4 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,2–4. 5 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,1–2. Bernheimer’s study is particularly useful for this project since she also focuses on the eastern realms of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia in her social history of the ʿAlids over the first five centuries of Islam. On the periodization of “ʿAlidism,” and the definition and terminology of what constituted an ʿAlid, see Bernhei- mer, “Genealogy, Marriage, and the Drawing of Boundaries Among the ʿAlids (eighth– twelfth centuries),” in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies,75–91. Definitions and Terms 103

Tạ̄lib and Fātima, are referred to as sayyids. Broader categories of the _ Prophet’s kinsmen, in increasing order of breadth, are ʿAlids, who claim descent from ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib, including those children through wives other than Fātima bint Muhammad;6 Talibids, who claim descent from _ _ Abū Tạ̄lib, though not necessarily through his son ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib; and Hashimids, who claim descent from Hāshim b. ʿAbd Manāfofthe eponymous Banū Hāshim, who was the prophet Muhammad’s great- _ grandfather.7 However, the terms ʿAlids (al-ʿAlawī), Hasanids, Husaynids, Talibids, sayyids, and sharifs are used differently in the tenth- to fourteenth-century sources addressed in this book, so I will not impose anachronistic rigidity onto sources in which the boundaries of these terms are shifting, flexible, and occasionally interchangeable. Nevertheless, as a prestigious and heterogeneous group, the ʿAlids and ʿAlid genealogy had a trans-sectarian appeal. ʿAlids included Sunnis, Shiʿas, rebels, scholars, and patricians. As a “blood aristocracy without peer,”8 they enjoyed a status and prestige that transcended boundaries of sect, madhhab, polit- _ ical allegiance, and ethnic origin. The term “family” is itself problematic, since it is often unclear where these boundaries begin and end. There have been various competing understandings of where the boundaries of “family” lie, especially regarding those who claim to be of the genealogical elite related to the Prophet. The notion of “family” runs the gamut from the narrow modern Arabic notion of usra, which denotes a modern sense of a family, to the earlier medieval and expansive concepts of family as bayt in the Ottoman period, or even ahl, often used in context of the Ahl al-bayt, as the family of the Prophet, referring to relatives linked through a common ancestor.9

6 ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib had eighteen sons and seventeen daughters, but only five of the sons had children. Therefore, patrilineal descent from ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib is traced through his five sons, al-Hasaṇ (son of ʿAlī and Fātima), al-Husayṇ (son of ʿAlī and Fatima), Muhammad _ _ b. al-Hanạ fiyya (son of ʿAlī and Khawla), ʿUmar (son of ʿAlī and al-Sạhbāʾ, also called _ Umm Haḅ īb), and ʿAbbās (son of ʿAlī and Umm al-Banīn). Lewis, “ʿAlids,” EI2. See also Madelung, “Sh̲̲īʿa,” EI2. 7 For a discussion of terms sayyid, sharif, Hashimid, ʿAlid, Hasanid, and Husaynid, with a simplified chart of Muhammad’s close relatives, see Morimoto, Introduction Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies,1–12. See also Bosworth, “Sayyid,” EI2. 8 Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur, 234. 9 Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Alexandre Papas, Introduction to Family Portraits with Saints: Hagiography, Sanctity, and Family in the Muslim World, edited by, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Alexandre Papas (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz; Paris: L’Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 2014), 7–25, esp. 8–17. 104 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

taxonomies of belonging

Descent from the Prophet is both a biological and a social phenomenon. There is a social element that contributes to the self- and communal- designation of an individual or group as sayyids and sharifs. Morimoto’s work on sayyido-sharifology and Bernheimer’s work on ʿAlids form the touchstone and fundamental premise of this chapter, which is that descent from the Prophet is a phenomenon that is both biologically and socially generated.10 Genealogies are intangible relics of the past, and they create taxono- mies of belonging amongst communities that confront the realities of transition and flux. As Savant and de Felipe note in their recent edited volume on genealogy and knowledge in Muslim societies, genealogies “create an aura of continuity with past times and a sense of connectivity,” which are harnessed by communities “to create a picture of continuity precisely in times of change, when a group’s heritage is scattered across geography and its need to feel rooted in place and time is ... most acute.”11 In the face of geographic dispersion, genealogies – even in cases of dubious authenticity, in which individuals are grafted onto older, more prestigious genealogies – create social cohesion and delineated boundaries of communities and sub-communities. In times of real fragmentation, communities turn to genealogies to connect to the past and recapture lost identities, grounded in the people and places that hold a foundational status for the community and its self- perception and projected identities. Savant convincingly argues that the genealogical workaround to the conundrum of ethnic Persians’ ancestral relationships to the Arabs, who were the earliest Muslims, was that “Traditionists promoted the idea that in the distant past the Persians were descended from Muhammad’s spiritual ancestors, that is, the prophets who preceded him ... their reports connected Persians to history before Muhammad and God’s final revelation.”12 Through these “primordial connections to the spiritual tradition of Islam,” promoted by historians

10 Morimoto, “Toward the Formation of Sayyido-Sharifology,” 90; Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,1–12. 11 Sarah Bowen Savant and Helena de Felipe, eds., Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies: Understanding the Past (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press in associated with The Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, 2014), 2. 12 Savant, The New Muslims, 32. For genealogical representations of Iran’s conversion to Islam, a significant portion of which happened during the ninth to eleventh centuries, see Savant, The New Muslims,31–60. Taxonomies of Belonging 105 such as Tabaṛ ī, this diffuse and heterogeneous body of “traditionists” in the broadest sense of the word offered the possibility of a hybrid Perso- Muslim identity that compromised neither its ancient Persian dimensions nor its primordial associations with Muhammad’s ancestors and, through _ them, to Islam.13 Other widely circulated genealogical claims extant in Umayyad-era Arab poetry by Jarīrb.ʿAtiyya (d. ca. 110/728–729) was _ that the Persians descended from Abraham through his son Isaac.14 One way to elide the past, with its sticky, complicated genealogies that do not always neatly fit into the Arab-Islamic framework, was to present Iran’s past as a specifically Persian history of a specific place and people, as one history to be considered alongside other histories of different peoples.15 Persianate local histories evidence how their authors tied very import- ant people to a place by grafting Arab ancestors and pious exemplars onto Persian lands. These local histories were composed during the era when genealogy as a discipline developed and matured during the tenth and eleventh centuries.16 In the centuries during and prior to the compos- ition of local histories, the ranks of the patricians, who included but were not limited to ʿAlids and the ulama, were establishing themselves as local elites, and the production of prosopographical and genealogical writings was part of this process.17 The production of Talibid genealogies in the third/ninth century and the maturation of this genre over the following two centuries evidence, as Bernheimer convincingly argues, a definition of boundaries and a desire to protect its own interests by the ʿAlids, who developed self-conscious group identities, however heterogeneous and varied over place and time.18 The Arab proclivity for genealogies and the prestige attached to early Arab Muslim progenitors endured, but by this period being Muslim was no longer synonymous with being Arab. The Muslims of the Persianate world held fast to multiple identifies – local

13 Savant, The New Muslims, 32. For Savant’s summary of how Tabaṛ ī accounts for the ancestry of the Persians, see Savant, The New Muslims,41–47. 14 This poem is cited in Masʿūdī’s (d. 345/956) Murūj al-Dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar. Savant, The New Muslims,47–54. See also Savant, “Isaac as the Persians’ Ishmael: Pride and the Pre-Islamic Past in Medieval Islam,” Comparative Islamic Studies 2: 1 (2006): 5–25. 15 Savant, The New Muslims, 168–169. 16 Kazuo Morimoto, “Keeping the Prophet’s Family Alive: Profile of a Genealogical Discip- line,” in Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies, 12. 17 Bernheimer notes, “... the genre of prosopographical writing in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries reflects a desire to contextualize and legitimize the new conquest elite.” Bernheimer, The ʿAlids, 16. 18 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,13–31. 106 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging and global – and local histories demonstrate how authors appended Persian places and people to Arab ancestors while at the same time asserting distinctly local dimensions of identity and belonging. In some cases, such as Qum, these genealogical claims were in all likeliness true. The issues were editorial ones, in which the author, com- piler, or translator chose what to emphasize. What mattered, first and foremost, was that these early generations of Companions, Successors, and the traditions they related established the Persian city or province as a bona fide Muslim community with Arab-Muslim origins that traced back to the earliest phase of the community: those who personally knew the Prophet or the generation that immediately followed. The genealogical connections tied the Perso-Muslim community on the periphery to antique origins, articulating claims of belonging, legitimacy, and author- ity through bloodlines and across generations.

social and scientific bases of genealogies

The social capital of sayyids and sharifs does not rest exclusively on their scientific documentation, and as Morimoto argues, “sayyid/sharīf pedi- gree is something that could be socially generated at the same time that it was, and was always believed to be, biological.”19 Although patrilineal descent is the strict criteria of genealogical affiliation, social affirmation and group identity is a critical component of individual and collective identity as direct descendants of the Prophet. Results of recent genetic analysis suggest that a sample of non-related sayyids in Iran as well as non-related sayyids and sharifs of Indian and Pakistani origin in the UK lack a biological basis for their claims to be sayyids.20 Strictly speaking, descent in Islamic law is patrilineal: one

19 Morimoto, “Toward the Formation of Sayyido-Sharifology,” 90; see also 95–96. 20 For diaspora South Asian sayyids, see E. M. S. Belle, S. Shah, T. Parfitt, and M. G. Thomas, “Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin,” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2010), 2: 217–224, accessed August 15, 2011. doi: 10.1007/s12520-010-0040-1. For sayyids in Iran, see M.-R. Rafiee, A. Sokhansanj, M.-A. Naghizadeh, and A. Farazmand. “Analysis of Y-Chromosomal Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Polymorphism in an Iranian Sadat Population,” Russian Journal of Genetics, 45: 8 (2009): 969–973. Genetic analysis of the Y-chromosomes of self-identified sayyids is useful. If putative sayyids are patrilineal descendants of Hasaṇ and Husayn,̣ their Y-chromosomes should have less genetic diversity than non-sayyids, indicating their common patrilineal ancestry. The combined sampled population of self- identified sayyids, Hashemites, Qurayshīs, and Ansarīs did evidence higher incidence of Impostors, Authenticity, Creation of a Discipline 107 inherits one’s lineage through the father’s line. Y-chromosomes are also passed down the paternal line from father to son. Muhammad and his _ paternal first cousin ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib shared a common paternal grand- father: ʿAbd al-Muttalib b. Hāshim. Since Muhammad’s daughter Fātima __ _ _ married Muhammad’s paternal first cousin, ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib, her sons _ Hasaṇ and Husayṇ essentially inherited the same Y-chromosomes (from their paternal great-grandfather ʿAbd al-Muttalib b. Hāshim) that __ Muhammad inherited (from his paternal grandfather ʿAbd al-Muttalib _ __ b. Hāshim). Although Hasaṇ and Husayṇ are grandchildren of Muhammad through their mother Fātima, they inherited the Y- _ _ chromosomes that they share with Muhammad not from their mother _ but from their father, ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib. Even in the case of sayyids and sharifs, where identity rests on genea- logical claims, many self-identify as sayyid or sharif although they are not, genetically speaking, strict patrilineal descendants of Hasaṇ or Husayn.̣ The study of genealogy is a serious issue in Islamicate societies. Given that claims of prestigious genealogy can entail material benefits, such claims go through a process of verification. Nevertheless, a large body of sayyids and sharif claim and, in some cases, retain significant social capital despite their lack of testable genetic descent. Acknowledgment of an individual’s pedigree as a sayyid or sharif – much in the way that a saint is a saint in so far as he or she is recognized by the community as much – relies on a broader social agreement within a community about what constitutes sayyid/sharif status and a distinct individual and group identity as a subset of the broader umma.

impostors, authenticity, and the creation of a discipline

For genealogies to be compelling forces that created credible taxonomies of belonging and categories with which to organize societies, the people in those societies had to be convinced of the merit and plausibility of the genealogies. In other words, what was important was the combination of knowledge about genealogies and the belief that this knowledge was the

Arab ancestry than non-sayyids. However, sayyids showed greater genetic diversity than non-sayyids from the same region. This greater genetic diversity was not statistically significant, meaning that both sayyids and non-sayyids showed roughly the same level of genetic diversity. In other words, these genetic studies suggest that most self-identified putative sayyids and sharifs are not patrilineal descendants of Muhammad through his _ grandchildren Hasaṇ and Husayn.̣ 108 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging product of a reliable discipline that could be trusted.21 Morimoto charts the establishment of the discipline of sayyid/sharif genealogies – as distinct from the older discipline from which it grew, that of Arab genealogies – to the mid-to-late ninth century, maturing as a discipline in the tenth and eleventh centuries.22 The era of the discipline’s establishment in the mid- to-late ninth century is precisely the period during which the Prophet’s family dispersed widely across the expanding Islamic empire. The forma- tion of a genealogical discipline of sayyids and sharif underscores how physical dispersion created the imperative for modes of social cohesion. The multiple different sub-genres of writing that form the basis of genea- logical works and establish it as a discipline includes martyrologies, glossaries of nisbas, and lists of reputable genealogists from the past in addition to actual genealogies, all of which bolster the discipline of genealogies.23 Fundamental to the establishment of the discipline of genealogies of descent from the Prophet was the office of the niqāba, or the naqīb al- ashrāf, the head of the syndicate or registrar of the ʿAlids. It was and remains the role of the naqīb al-ashrāf to record and vet the genealogies, which were especially important when it came to issues of marriage and inheritance.24 The office of the niqāba as an institution may have origin- ated in the late third/ninth century in Kufa.25 Since it was ʿAlids themselves who established and maintained the office and practice of the naqīb al-ashrāf, the sayyids and sharifs were their own auditors. Consequently, they had a vested interest in

21 Morimoto, “Keeping the Prophet’s Family Alive,” 12. 22 Morimoto, “Keeping the Prophet’s Family Alive,” 12. 23 Morimoto, “Keeping the Prophet’s Family Alive,” 14–19. 24 Savant and de Felipe, eds., Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies, 3. For a more detailed analysis of the office of the niqāba and the naqībal-ashrāf, see Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,51–70. There was an increasing tendency for endogamous marriages for ʿAlid women in the early medieval east, as demonstrated by Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,32–50 and Bernheimer, “Genealogy, Marriage, and the Drawing of Boundaries,” 75–91. The naqīb was especially involved in restricting Sunni ʿAlid women’s husbands to ʿAlid men. While recommendations existed for Sunni ʿAlid men, these were not enforced in the same stringent way that the rules for women were in the medieval Islamic east. That the Imami, Ismaʿili, and early Zaydi Shiʿa did not have the same restrictions for ʿAlid women’s marriages and ʿAlid men’s marriages is evidence of the disengagement of ʿAlidism from Shiʿism; see Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,32–50, esp. 46–48. For evidence of this propensity for endogamous marriages for ʿAlid women in the modern period, particularly in Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, see Raffaele Mauriello, “Genealogical Prestige and Marriage Strategy among the Ahl al- Bayt: The Case of the al-Sadr Family in Recent Times,” in Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies,131–148. 25 Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,51–70, esp. 53, 65. Tārīkh-i Qum: A Composite Text 109 safeguarding their claims, identifying impostors, and advancing the social, political, and economic prestige and prominence of sayyids and sharifs. The existence of the niqāba worked to ensure its own survival, and “the discipline contributed to keeping the Prophet’s family alive not so much by effectively exposing impostures as by continuously claiming its own existence as the guarding of authenticity.”26 In attempting to systematize the discipline of genealogy into something resembling a sci- ence, sayyids and sharifs sough to vet impostors and advance their own cause while at the same time advocating for the trustworthiness of their enterprise and the importance of their privileged position. Recent scholarship has underscored the need and value of a frame- work for studying sayyids and sharifs within disparate Muslim societies andtousea“sayyido-sharifology,” as a lens through which to study the varied local iterations of kinsfolk of the Prophet across different academic disciplines.27 Recent work, particularly edited volumes, by Bernheimer, Savant, de Felipe, Morimoto, Amoretti, and Bottini are heading the call for a new framework from which to approach the issues of authority, knowledge, and power, by considering how genealogies – particularly those associated with the Prophet – function in Muslim societies.28

ta¯ rı¯kh-i qum: a composite text

In Persianate local histories, descent from the Prophet – including but not limited to ʿAlids, sayyids, and sharifs – and hadith attributed to the Prophet or his descendants function as legitimating devices. Tārīkh-i Qum, originally written in Arabic in the late tenth century and extant

26 Morimoto, “Keeping the Prophet’s Family Alive,” 12. 27 Morimoto, “The Formation and Development of the Science of Talibid Genealogies in the 10th and 11th century in the Middle East,” Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, 18 (79): 2, The Role of the Sādāt/Ašrāf in Muslim History and Civiliation/Il Ruolo Dei Sādāt/Ašrāf Nella Storia e Civilità Islamiche (1999): 541–570; Morimoto, “Toward the Formation of Sayyido-Sharifology.” For a recent collection of essays that range geographically from the Iberian Peninsula to Indonesia and chronologically form the ninth century to the present, see Morimoto, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet. 28 Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti and Laura Bottini, eds., The Role of the Sādāt/Ašrāfin Muslim History and Civilization: Proceedings of the International Colloquium = Il ruolo dei Sādāt/Ašrāf nella storia e civilta islamica: atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 2–4/3/1998) (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino, 2000); Savant and de Felipe, eds, Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies; Morimoto, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies. 110 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging today only in a Persian translation made in 805–806/1402–1403, cap- tures the ways in which the author’s claims to legitimacy and authority focus on the ʿAlid and Ashʿarī Arab emigrants to Qum during first few decades of Islamic rule and expansion. These religio-ethnic claims form a critical layer of the author’s hybrid identity for the region. The author of the original Arabic version of Tārīkh-i Qum,Hasaṇ b. Muhammad b. Hasaṇ Qummī, offers three reasons for composing his _ history of Qum. He states that his first intention was to collect reports, stories, and information, including those about the virtues of Qum. Secondly, he did this so that the people of Qum would know the reports (akhbār) about Qum, because people have forgotten them. Thirdly, he claims he did this because he wanted to write a book recording the reports (akhbār) of Qum, much in the way that Hamzạ al-Isfahānī [Abū ʿAbdul- _ lah Hamzạ ibn Hasaṇ Isfahanī] (280–360/893 or 894–970 or 971) wrote _ the Kitāb-i Isfahān, while no such work existed for Qum.29 This is _ particularly relevant since Qum was administratively once part of Isfa- han. In this section, the author quotes his brother [Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Muhammad b. al-Hasaṇ al-Kātib] who did much research on the akhbār _ of Qum and wanted a book about these but was not able to produce such a volume.30 The precise dates of the Arab conquest are contested, but Qummī, the author of Tārīkh-i Qum, posits an identity for Qum that has several firm pillars: it is overwhelmingly ʿAlid, populated in large part by Ashʿarī Arabs and their descendants; retains a strong sense of fiscal and political independence from the caliphal center; and is a refuge and sanctuary for the Shiʿa. Even the physical land of Qum is imbued with its Ashʿarī Arab heritage: all six of the mīdāns mentioned are named after one of the Ashʿarī Arabs who settled in Qum, and all four of the bridges mentioned are named after or were built by one of the Ashʿarīs who settled in Qum.31 Abu Musā Ashʿarī and the Ashʿarī Arabs des- cended from a group originally from Yemen. They led a group of Arabs from Kufa to settle in and around Qum, who then began a program of buying land, taking over villages, pasturing their cattle, and defeating the local Persian nobility when conflicts arose, and melding the original

29 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,19–26. 30 The original author’s(Hasaṇ b. Muhammad b. Hasaṇ Qummī’s) brother, Abū al-Qāsim _ ʿAlī b. Muhammad b. al-Hasaṇ al-Kātib, was at some point the governor [hākim]of _ Qum. See Lambton, “An Account of the Tārīkhi Qumm,” 586. 31 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,67–71. Tārīkh-i Qum: A Composite Text 111 six villages into one urban center, constructing urban architecture and agricultural infrastructure. The author’s goal is to collect and record information about the Talibi Shiʿa, the Arabs, and the Iranians (ʿajam) of Qum, and to praise them and, as Ḥamza of Isfahan did in his book Kitāb-i Isfahān,relate _ stories about the people of Qum.32 Some of these efforts were inter- rupted during the period when the author was not in Qum.33 The translated Persian work includes only five chapters out of the original twenty, but the Persian translator provides at the beginning of his work chapter summaries, in which he describes the contents of the extant chapters and the fifteen lost chapters.34 These summaries permit us a rough idea of the contents and form of the lost Arabic original. Based on the Persian translator’s summaries of the no longer extant chapters, Tārīkh-i Qum contained a broad range of information about the genealogies of prominent Arabs and their descendants, the ulama, andtheelites,inadditiontopolitical history and information about the caliphs, rulers, and administrators of Qum. The lost portions of the work contained more financial and tax information. Some sections were devoted to hadith about Qum, the writers and litterateurs affili- ated with the area, and material about the Jews and Zoroastrians in Qum and the surrounding areas. Tārīkh-i Qum seems to have taken a turn towards a universal history in its latter sections, and included material on the wonders of the world (ʿajāʾib-i dunyā), and the lives of the prophets, akhbār about the nations (umam) from Adam to the era of the hijra of the Prophet, the sunan of the Arabs and their virtues as well as their lives and idols during the Jahiliya. Qummī elaborated on the special characteristics of the Quraysh and the Banī Hisham, and Mecca and Medina, and rare akhbār (akhbārnādire)fromamongst the narratives of the Shiʿa and others.35

32 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 25. 33 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,19–22. 34 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,29–36. 35 For chapter summaries of both the extant and lost chapters, see Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 29–36. The information about the caliphs, rulers, and administrators of Qum included those who were walī, hākim, sāhib, qudāt, and mutawalliyān from amongst the Arabs _ _ _ and non-Arabs; fadāʾil about the ʿAjam [Iranians] who were in Qum in ancient and _ contemporary periods. There was material, now lost, about the writers and litterateurs who were in Qum and their compositions, and information about the poets, philoso- phers, engineers, and astronomers/astrologers (munajjam), scribes, and papermakers (warrāq). 112 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

form and content of ta¯ rı¯kh-i qum

The form and content of what remains of Tārīkh-i Qum falls within the broad matrix of material associated with tenth- to early fifteenth-century local and regional histories. Tārīkh-i Qum records financial and adminis- trative information about Qum and its constituent and surrounding villages, including information about tax revenue, revenue assessments, and water distribution. The work also documents major administrative changes – such as Qum’s split from Isfahan, the district to which it originally belonged – and administrative boundaries, such as descriptions of villages that belong to the district of Qum, as well as the distribution of water in Qum. Chapter 1 documents Qum’s conquest as well as its borders, boundar- ies, and measurements. Access to water and its apportionment was a pressing issue in Qum, and there is information about Qum’s water channels (kārīzhā), streams, rivers, water-mills, and the divisions of the water-mills’ water. Qummī does not shy away from Qum’s pre-Islamic past, and includes material about Qum’s famous Zoroastrian fire-temples (āteshkade-hā). Chapter 2 includes agricultural and administrative infor- mation such as changes in the measurement of agricultural land for the purposes of determining the annual kharāj to be levied on it.36 Chapter 3 focuses on the Talibi Shiʿa who settled in Qum and their virtues (fadāʾil) _ as well as material on the children of ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib and Fātima, and the infallible imams.37 Chapter 4 focuses on the arrival in Qum and nearby Āve of the Arabs from the family of Mālik ibn ʿĀmir Ashʿarī and their settlement in Qum. The final extant chapter contains akhbār about the Arab Muslim Ashʿarīs coming to Qum and the virtues related about them.

ashʿari arabs and an ʿalid haven

Elements of Tārīkh-i Qum most explicitly bound to claims for its legitimacy are the form and content of extant material about the

36 “Dar ān ke Qum ra chand noubat masāhat karde-and.” On the term masāhat, see p. 283 _ note 1. It refers to the measurement of the amount of the agricultural land in order to determine the amount of the annual kharāj tax levied on it (andāzegīrī-e wasʿat zamīn-hā- ye keshāvarzī, be mandhūr-e taʿīn miqdār-e kharājsāliyāne har zamīn). Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 283. 37 For the chapter summary, see Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 30. Ashʿari Arabs and an ʿAlid Haven 113 descendants of the Prophet in Qum, the settlement of the Ashʿarī Arabs in Qum, and the fadāʾil of these groups of individuals as well as the _ physical and non-human virtues of the city and region. In composing and translating Tārīkh-i Qum, the author and his later translator bound the city to key moments and characters in Islamic and cosmic history and to prophetic authority. They achieved this by constructing an identity for the city based on its ʿAlid inhabitants, Ashʿarī Arab ʿAlid progenitors, and considerable number of sayyids and other descendants of the Prophet. Descendants of the Prophet and Talibi sayyids constitute the living fadāʾil of Qum and are the focus on the latter sections of the Tārīkh-i _ Qum that remain available to us.38 al-Qummī catalogues the Talibi Shiʿis who settled in Qum and their virtues. This is a lengthy section of the work that begins with the most prominent ʿAlids and then provides what amounts to a register of their descendants affiliated with Qum. The author opens with information about ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib then emphasizes his Hashemite lineage, his relationship to Muhammad, and his marriage _ to Fātima. Qummī identifies the children of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s and Fātima _ _ and the number of their children, their ages, and how old they were when they died, including a large number of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s children other than Hasan,̣ Husyan,̣ and Muhammad b. al-Hanaf̣ īyya. The author _ reckons that ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s total number of male and female children (dhukūroranāth) equaled twenty-eight.39 _ Qummī catalogues the descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib through Hasaṇ and Husayn.̣ 40 This exhaustive list extends to the infallible Shiʿi Imams, how long they lived and when they died, and the length of their imamate, and the locations of their tombs. The author also describes some of the Talibis (tālibiye) who came and settled in Qum (be-Qum āmadand o watan sākhtand),41 and a presentation of their virtues (fadīlat-hā-ye _

38 Talibi sayyids refers to members of the family of the Prophet who are descendants of Muhammad’s paternal uncle Abū Tạ̄lib (d. ca. 619) through his sons, ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib _ (d. 40/661), the first Shiʿi Imam, and Jaʿfar (d. 8.629). Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs,57–58. Amoretti draws on two genealogical texts – one from the mid tenth century and another from the first half of the eleventh century – and Tārīkh-i Qum to reconstruct, in part, the history of the ʿAlids and their geographic distribution and patterns of settlement. Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, “A Historical Atlas of the ʿAlids: A Proposal and a Few Samples,” in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies,92–122. 39 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 489. This number is at odds with modern scholarship, which suggests that he fathered fourteen sons and nineteen daughters by nine wives and multiple concubines. L. Veccia Vaglieri, “ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib,” EI2. 40 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 492–678. 41 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 536. 114 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

īshān), which are transmitted from the Prophet and his family. By sheer force of numbers, the author underscores that Qum is a city endowed with the living descendants of the Prophet, thus granting Qum and its environments a privileged place on the map of Islam. In proposing new frameworks for inquiry regarding the Ahl al-Bayt, Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti recently used two genealogical texts from the tenth and eleventh centuries composed by a Shiʿa author, apro-Shiʿauthor, and Tārīkh-i Qum to offer a prototype of what a historical atlas of the ʿAlids would look like. With two chapters dedi- cated to the Talibids and to the Ashʿarī clan, Tārīkh-i Qum is acutely interested in establishing the authority and legitimacy of Qum in sig- nificant part through its connections to the Prophet and his family. Amoretti is concerned about ʿAlid migrations to and from Qum because that would shed light on whether Qum was a “center” for Shiʿa activity or merely a convenient place, a question that Amoretti considers unresolved and would require untangling Hasanid and Husaynid clans and comparing their geographic distributions to better address the question. Nevertheless, Amoretti agrees that the author of Tārīkh-i Qum wantstostresstheImamiShiʿa characteristics of Qum, especially by emphasizing the Husayni ʿAlids’ presence, noting that the ʿAlids of Qum often migrated to Qum from Kufa and from Qum migrated to Baghdad.42 An unambiguous Islamic identity dominates but does not erase Qum’s pre-Islamic heritage. The author includes material on the pre-Islamic life of Qum, in which individuals and characters such as Ardashīr, Afrasiyāb, and Kay Khusraw43 factor in along with characters from the Islamic era. The author describes Zoroastrian fire-temples (āteshkade-hā) in the dis- trict of Qum.44 The tenor of Qum is an overwhelmingly Islamic identity that is laid over an acknowledged and accepted pre-Islamic character. There is no forgetting or failure to remember the region’s pre-Islamic past. Rather, for Qum there is a conscious overlaying of an Islamic heritage over the region’s Sasanian legacy. Reports about Ashʿarī Arabs and their virtues constitute another bulk of the extant sections of Tārīkh-i Qum.45 The format of the text includes hadith, poetry, and an emphasis on the Prophet. Ashʿarī Arabs are the direct ties of Qum to Islam and the Prophet. There are multiple stories

42 Amoretti, “A Historical Atlast of the ʿAlids,” 104–111. 43 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, for example, 209–210, 229–230, 229–230, 233–235, 241, 242. 44 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 249–255. 45 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 741–851. Sayyids and Sharifs: Hadith and the Fadāʾil of Qum 115 _ about these Ashʿarī Arabs being spoken to by the Prophet, including traditions rendered in Persian and Arabic. Sections containing akhbār about the Ashʿarī Arabs who came to Qum emphasize the Prophet, whereas other sections stress the Shiʿi character and the legacy of the Imams in Qum.46 There is a dual focus on the Ashʿarī Arabs and ʿAlids as legitimating connectors to Muhammad and ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s legacy. _ Qum, like any plot of land on the globe, is not inherently sacred. Generations of believers bestowed the land with meaning and interpreted the significance of people, events, and the natural landscape within a broader world-view. The characterization of Qum in this local history is one of the ways in which pious believers conferred onto Qum local and global significance that acknowledged its pre-Islamic past and framed its present firmly within the broader umma. The argument for religious legitimacy and prophetic sanctification in traditions related in Tārīkh-i Qum are more than just literary embellishments. The religious legitimacy articulated through sāhāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, sharifs, and other descend- _ _ ants of the Prophet and their traditions furthers the case of what was happening in terms of fiscal and political autonomy. The claims for Qum’s religious legitimacy, fiscal autonomy, and political authority are enmeshed with pivotal moments and characters in Islamic history.

sayyids and sharifs: hadith and the living fada¯ ʾ il of qum ˙ Tārīkh-i Qum catalogues the virtues, or fadāʾil, of Qum. These virtues _ form a common thematic link between Tārīkh-i Qum and other city histories written elsewhere in the Persicate world. These virtues are com- prised of living fadāʾil, who are the descendants of the Prophet – over- _ whelmingly ʿAlid – and ulama in Qum, as well as natural virtues and excellences of the land, and the utterances made by the Prophet, his family members, or sahāba that are recorded in hadith. _ _ Andrew Newman recently argued that certain hadith collections from the formative period of Twelver Shiʿism evidence the milieu in which they were compiled and highlight issues that were particularly pertinent for those communities at that time. The Ashʿarī Qummi isnads of the hadith collections indicate who were in positions of religious authority and prominence at the time. Relevant are two Twelver Shiʿi collections of

46 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 776–851. 116 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging traditions of the Prophet and Imams, Kitāb al-Mahāsin of Ahmad b. _ _ Muhammad al-Barqī (d. 274–280/877–894) and Basāʾir al-Darajāt of _ _ Muhammad b. al-Hasaṇ al-Saff̣ ār al-Qummī (d. 290/902–903), both _ compiled in Qum in the later third/ninth century. These collections, through their foci on certain theological, practical, and leadership issues addressed in the traditions, evidence the besieged nature of Qum, which under threat from the caliphal center in Baghdad as well as regional political forces and in contest with other Shiʿi groups, namely the Zaydis and Ismaʿilis47 during the third/ninth centuries when the work was com- piled.48 Notable among these theological and leadership issues is the emphasis in Basāʾir al-Darajāt on the Imams’ miraculous knowledge _ and the stress in al-Barqī’s Kitāb al-Mahāsin on the traditions of the _ Imams as the crucial reference on matters of doctrine and practice.49 The abundance of Ashʿarī Qummis in the isnads of the collections points to the community’s prominence in religious authority in Qum. Al-Saff̣ ār’s Basāʾir al-Darajāt, compiled after al-Barqī’s Kitāb al-Mahāsin, _ _ includes a greater proportion of Qummi traditionists and particularly the Ashʿarīs, which Newman argues indicates the increasing involvement of Ashʿarīs in religious, political, social, and economic authority in Qum. The compiler al-Saff̣ ār was himself an Ashʿarī mawlā and a companion of eleventh Imam, al-Hasaṇ al-ʿAskarī.50 Isnads included in the traditions of Muhammad b. Yaʿqub al-Kulaynī’s (d. 329/940–941) al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al- _ Dīn, targeted for the Twelver Shiʿi community of Baghdad, also include a significant number of Ashʿarī Qummis.51

47 The Ismaʿili daʿwa had spread to the al-Jibal region, including Qum, by this time. Daftary notes, “Ismāʿīlism spread also in many parts of west-central and northwest Persia, the region called al-Jibāl by the Arabs; like Rayy, Qumm, Kāshān and Hamadān. It was shortly after 260 AH, when the Qarmatī leaders of Iraq were at the beginning of their activities, that the central leaders of the movement dispatched dāʿīs to the Jibāl; and later the daʿwa was extended to Khurasan and Transoxiana.” Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 120. 48 Newman, Formative Period. A third work, al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al-Dīn of Muhammad b. Yaʿqūb _ al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940–941), was assembled in Baghdad in the early fourth/tenth century. al-Kāfī was a collection with many Qummi transmitters compiled in Baghdad in the early fourth/tenth century and was directed for an Imami community in Baghdad. Newman argues that al-Kulaynī’s al-Kāfī was a Qummi response to Baghdadi rationalism, Newman, Formative Period, chap 6. Whereas Baghdadi hadith emphasized rationalism, Qummi hadith emphasized centrality of al-ʿAql [reason] and al-ʿIlm and the critical importance of the Imams as the source of doctrine and practice. 49 Newman, Formative Period, xxi, 59, 95. 50 Newman, Formative Period, 67. 51 Newman, Formative Period, 45. The curious phenomenon sometimes seen in hadith – that the farther distanced from the actual event the more elaborate the recollections become of it – is demonstrated in the case of Qummi hadith collections. Shimamoto Sayyids and Sharifs: Hadith and the Fadāʾil of Qum 117 _

Akhbār and traditions about the fadāʾil of Qum and its areas and _ inhabitants are marked by pronounced emphasis on the area’sShiʿiand sayyid identity, through such characters as ShiʿiImams– especially ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and Imam Ridā – and its monotheistic and specifically _ Muslim identity through references to the angel Gabriel, Iblīs, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad.52 One report that binds Qum to prophetic _ authority is an exchange between ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and Abū Mūsa al- Ashʿarī.Abū Mūsa al-Ashʿarī asks Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib: “What city is the healthiest city, and which city is in the best position, since discord (fitan) and hardship (mihan), and anarchy (harj o marj) have become _ evident?” Imam ʿAlī dismisses Khurasan, Jurjan/Gurgan, Tabaristan, and Sijistan, and states that the “healthiest (salāmattarīn) place is the capital of the district of Qum (salāmattarīnmoudaʿhā qasba-ye Qum _ _ bāshad), from which a person’s best defenders and supporters (ansāro _ yāvarān) emerge, such as one’s father and mother, and grandfather and grandmother, and uncle and aunt. And that area is called Zahrā.” Here apparently is a stream, and “everyone who drinks from there is rid of pain and suffering (az dard or ranj khulāsyābad).” ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib _ continues, “This area [called Zahrā] is the place that Gabriel was given that command.” The Imam continues to quote from Sura Āl-i ʿImrān 3:48–49, and evokes the bird that God created out of clay, breathed into, and turned into a living bird as much as Jesus breathed new life into the Banī Israīl.53

observes, “The traditions thus accepted increased in number as time progressed. Though we count some twenty traditions in [Tārīkh-i Qumm], written at the end of the 10th century, the number was inflated up to forty or maybe more in the Safavid work Kh. B. [Khulasat al-buldan], written in the middle of the 17th century.” Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qom,” 108. 52 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 256–280. On the Shiʿi Imams see, for example, 259–261, 262, 266, 269, 277, 279; on Iblīs, 259; on the angel Gabriel, 261, 262; on Muhammad, 266, _ 259–280. 53 Sura Āl-i ʿImrān 3:48–49 reads in English in Pickthall’s translation as: “And He will teach him the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel. And will make him a messenger unto the Children of Israel, (saying): Lo! I come unto you with a sign from your Lord. Lo! I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and I breathe into it and it is a bird, by Allah’s leave.” Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (New York: New American Library, 1953). Alternatively, Ahmed Ali’s translation reads: “He will teach him the Law and the judgment, and the Torah and the Gospel, And he will be Apostle to the children of Israel, (saying:) ‘I have come to you with a prodigy from your Lord that I will fashion the state of destiny out of mire for you, and breathe (a new spirit) into it, and (you) will rise by the will of God.’” Ahmed Ali, Al-Qurʾān: A Contemporary Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 118 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Imam ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā drank from this spring, and commanded ghasl _ at that location, and from that station Abraham’s ram, and the staff of Moses, and Solomon’s ring emerged.54 Multiple elements signal heightened religious importance: Qum is linked to Qurʾanic characters and moments, Shiʿi Imams, and the revelation of the Prophet.

hadith as pious connectors to prophetic authority

As living links to the Prophet, sayyids and sharifs sometimes transmitted hadith, which is one avenue through which local histories assert a con- nection with the Prophet. Hadith adduced in these texts function as pious connectors to the Prophet’s life and legacy. As custodians of religious knowledge and tradition, descendants of Muhammad appear in Persian _ local histories as living virtues of the city and custodians of the faith who are tied to a particular place. Traditions adduced in local and regional histories, such as the one attributed to Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq in Tārīkh-i Qum, are literary artifacts of early Islamic social life and cultural production. By reading hadith as a mode of social history, a functionally skeptical reading of the sources renders hadith in literary sources as one element that illustrates the issues that concerned the learned classes when the narratives were produced. The historicity of traditions – whether the Prophet, Imam, or sahāba actually _ _ stated or performed what later transmitters say he did, or the date a particular hadith came into circulation – is irrelevant from this perspective. What matters is what the authors sought to accomplish, argue, debate, and demonstrate by including these traditions in their historical writing. In Qum, this means incorporating Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq’s hadith to demon- strate that Qum has a purpose and a place in the cosmic order alongside the sacred earthly sanctuaries of Mecca, Medina, and Kufa. As a genre and practice, hadith could not be contained within the canonical works. Despite – or perhaps because of – its highly elevated status, hadith was an expansive and permeable genre that defied the strict and elaborate standards of ʿilm al-rijāl and Islamic scholarship that developed to organize it. R. S. Humphreys argued:

All this scholarship and all these institutions never quite established a closed canon of hadīth. There came to be a stable core, defined by the Sạhīhayn or (more _ _

54 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 256–257. A Pedigreed Past 119 fuzzily) by the Six Books, but outside these limits the corpus of hadīth in circula- tions seems to have been remarkably plastic. From the moment hadīth first emerged as a clear-cut genre, early in the second hijri/eighth century, it could never be confined within the fences of the formal collections.55 The hadith included in the local and regional histories in this study do not always include their full isnads, and canonical acceptance is clearly not the point of their inclusion. The hadith are placed within the broader narrative of the city, its inhabitants, its history, and its virtues in order to link the city with prophetic experience as it is exemplified and articulated in hadith. Hadith seeped across boundaries of genre, moving through and within disciplines of writing. In the third/ninth century, “hadiths permeated the religio-ethical writings of Ibn Qutayba, Ibn Abī al-Dunya,” as well as historical writing, such as Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq,and were models of eloquence such that “authors and compilers did not always feel constrained to stick to the rigorous and exceedingly complex criteria elaborated by ʿilm al-hadith between the third hijri/ninth and seventh hijri/ thirteenth centuries.”56 Consequently, “Many of their citations are of very dubious ancestry.”57 Local histories contain traditions not because they are canonized through their inclusion in the Sạhīhayn but rather because the _ _ traditions served different ends: to bind a city or region to foundational moments and people in Islamic history and to record the local traditions that were important to that community’s self-representation.

a pedigreed past

Notable early Muslims brought prestige to a city by his or her association with the location by living, visiting, teaching hadith, dying, or being buried there. In the case of Muhammad, Khidr, and abdāl, associations _ _ with the city can take the form of visitations in dreams or visions. In Jurgen Paul’s observations about a fifteenth-century Persian history of Samarqand, the Qandīyya-yi khurd,58 a “translation” into Persian by an anonymous author, he notes:

A tendency to boast the coming of Very Important Persons (as Qutham b. al- ʿAbbās) to the city in question, or claiming to have been conquered before the

55 R. Stephen Humphreys, “Borrowed Lives: The Reproduction of Texts in Islamic Cul- tures,” in Text and Context in Islamic Societies, edited by, Irene A. Bierman with an introduction by Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot, (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2004), 73. 56 Humphreys, “Borrowed Lives,” 73. 57 Humphreys, “Borrowed Lives,” 73. 58 Īraj Afshār, ed., Qandīyah: dar bayān-i mazārāt-i Samarqand/bikūshish-i Īraj Afshār (Tehran: Zabān va farhang-i Īrān, 1334 [1955]). 120 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging neighbors were (in Samarqand by Saʿīdb.ʿUthmānb.ʿAffān) in order to add some luster to one’s home town, a tendency evident even in pre-Mongol times, if not right from the start, was turned into traditions that these figures were buried “with us” (or, in the case of Qutham, even living “with us”). Thus, authors kept embroidering on the canvas handed down to them by previous writers.59 We do not know the extent to which this tendency was evident in the eleventh-century Arabic Qandīyya histories that are no longer extant, but this characteristic is manifest in local histories from elsewhere in Persia, such as Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Bayhaq,60 Tārīkh-i Sīstān,andTārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. The propensity to absorb early or pivotal characters in Islamic history into the foundational stories and identity of the city continued for centuries during the medieval period. Sạhāba who were dispersed within the nascent umma and orally _ transmitted the hadith of the Prophet were profoundly important in connecting a physical place to the concept of the wider Muslim umma. Local hadith that were eventually excluded from the canonical collections but are adduced in local histories indicate the local umma existing within

59 Paul, “The Histories of Samarqand,” 80–81. The Qandiyya-yi khurd is a “translation” into Persian by an anonymous author, which is largely focused on the tombs of the holy men associated with Samarqand. Paul does not consider this “translation” into Persian by an anonymous author to be based on the no-longer extant eleventh-century Arabic sources by similar names. Paul further describes these no longer extant Arabic Qandīyya histories. One is Tārīkh Samarqand or Kitāb al-kamālfī maʿrifat al-rijāl (bi-Samarqand) by Abū Saʿd ʿAbd al-Rahmānb.Muhb.Muhb.ʿAbdallah al-Idrisī al-Astarabadī (d. _ _ Samarqand 405/1015), which is no longer extant. Another text is Tārīkh Samarqand or Tārīkh Nasaf by Abūʾl-ʿAbbāsJaʿfar b. Muh b. al-Muʿtazz al-Mustaghfirī (350–432/ _ 961–1041, probably living mainly in Nasaf), which is also no longer extant. 60 On Ibn Funduq’s list of the ʿAlids of Bayhaq, see Tārīkh-i Bayhaq,54–65, 254–255. For Bernheimer’s analysis of the ʿAlids in Bayhaq using Ibn Funduq’s Lubāb al-ansāb and Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, see Bernheimer, The ʿAlids,9–10, 20–22, 67, 76, 78. Bernheimer highlights Ibn Funduq’s discussion of descendants of Zaynab bt. ʿAlī as sayyids, who he refers to as “Jaʿfarīs,” although they are more commonly referred to as Zaynabīs. Bernheimer, The ʿAlids, 3; In Funduq, Tarikh-i Bayhaq, 63. On the Imami Shiʿa commu- nity in Sabzavar/Bayhaq during the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, particularly the Sarbadārs – local dynasts who enjoyed a brief period of power between the last Mongol Il-Khān Abu Saʿīd in 1335 and their capitulation to the Timurid at their defeat by Tīmūr in 783/1381 – see Halm, Shiʿism,57–59, 71, 72. See also Momen Moojan, An Introduc- tion to Shiʿi Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shiʿism (Oxford: George Ronal, 1985), 93, 98. Momen dates their “small Shiʿi state” in Sabzavar/Bayhaq as lasting from 1337 to 1386. For a list of the Sarbadārid rulers, see Momen, An Introduc- tion to Shiʿi Islam, 306–307. Melville characterizes the Sarbadārids as a movement of self-rule by an indigenous population in Khurasan during the waning years of Mongol control. This certainly seems an accurate characterization, especially because while the Sarbadārids’s Shiʿa character became evident and pronounced, the earliest Sarbadarid coinage minted in 748/1348 was Sunni in form. Melville, “Sarbadārids,” EI2. Legitimizing Bloodlines 121 the larger global umma. Local histories suggest that hadith were region- ally differentiated during the time these texts were written and translated during the tenth to early fifteenth centuries. In contrast, there is no similar treatment of regionally differentiated Qurʾans. Rather, we have instead an insistence in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, couched in a dream narrative, that the Qurʾan recitation there is the correct one, which implies that the hetero- geneity of hadith was acceptable in a way that a heterogeneous Qurʾan was not. Given that these texts show no similar attempt to prove that the hadith in circulation in these regions were the canonically accepted ones, this suggests that the homogenization of the Qurʾan as a closed corpus occurred earlier than it did for the hadith.

legitimizing bloodlines

Genealogy was one amongst many markers of cultural and religious identity. Multi-layered identities – Persian, Muslim, and differentiated at the regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological, and professional level – were overlaid one upon the other. Genealogies were an important component in legitimating a community, creating a historical memory for itself and a sense of belonging. Flood’s theoretical insights about markers of identity are valuable when considering not only pre-modern cultural geography and the Delhi sultanate, on which Flood focuses, but also the broader question of the ways in which religious, cultural, ethnic, and religious identities are overlaid on each other.61 Genealogy can be sig- naled through various media, including architecture, literature, clothing, actions, language, etymologies, and mythologies. Beyond the recording of data, the semiotic function of Perso-Muslim genealogical claims in local histories is to firmly place the region into the Islamic narrative and imbue it with various forms of religious authority and political legitimacy.

61 To observe the geographic reach of this impulse to assert a genealogical connection with Islamic legitimacy, we may consider the example of the Delhi sultanate. During the Delhi sultanate that emerged in the wake of collapse of the Ghurid sultanate around 1206 CE, sultan Iltutmish (d. 633/1236) desired to form an Indian-Muslim identity, and in this he sought to develop the mosque as the physical site where Indian-Muslim lineage coalesced. Thus, “the mosque became the locus for an agglomeration of signs that sought to project the authority of the sultanate while shaping the identity of the Muslim community of northern India. The endeavor was indeed to construct a genealogy for the sultanate that addressed the dialectical nature of Indian Islamic identity ...asserting a relationship with the wider Islamic world while accommodating and appropriating the signs of an Indian past.” Flood, Objects of Translation, 14. 122 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Literary production and material culture converge in their use and creation of historical memory and legitimizing genealogies. Flood argues:

This image of the objectivized past embedded in the material present finds a ready point of comparison in medieval Arabic and Persian historical writing, “in which older texts were continually being reproduced or embedded in new ones” that encompassed and built on them... This textual paradigm could be extended to encompass the material correlates of valorized quotations by those engaged in the business of creating usable pasts and fictive genealogies in the thirteenth century.62 Local histories evidence a concerted effort to assert genealogies – to Muhammad, his descendants, sahāba, and other exemplars and saints – _ _ _ as a means of signaling an Islamic heritage and asserting a pedigreed past. In the case of early Islamic Persia, Savant argues that, through simul- taneous actions of forgetting the Sasanian pre-Islamic past and remem- bering and recasting the role of Persia and Persians in the pre- and early Islamic past through tradition, Persian Muslims melded the memory of the Persian past to their Islamic present in order to authenticate and recast their identity as Muslims.63 Tradition is a broad term that includes not only hadith and historical reports (akhbār), but, borrowing from Shils, “anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present.”64 Forgetting and remembering were selective and deliberate processes. The past became a dynamic element and the pre-Islamic past could be recast to correspond to the new Islamic master narrative. Remembering or recasting Persians’ early ties to Islam includes various elements, such as the presence and roles of Persians in Arabia during the

62 Flood, Objects of Translation, 253. Flood here quotes Julie Meisami. Meisami, Persian Historiography, 287–288. 63 Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam.” In a study of conventions of lexical practice regarding the terms and concepts of “Persia” and “Persians” in early Islamic Persia, Savant convincingly documents a shift in how the terms were used. The change in how the terms were used and what they referred to demonstrated a reconfiguration and a “re-imagining of Iranian social identities” and new ideas about Persia and Persians. An example of this dual action of forgetting and recasting is that during the early Islamic period in Persia, the term Fārs, and not Irān or Irānshahr, became more popular in general. Though geog- raphers distinguished between Fārs (the province in southwestern Iran) from Irānshahr as the former imperial domains of the Persian Empire, more discussions, and even geograph- ical ones, use the term “Persia,” for Fārs. Muslims generally reserved the term Irānshahr for discussions of Iran’s pre-Islamic past and the Iranian “national” tradition. While in the earliest era after the conquests, the terms al-Majūs and Persians were interchangeably used – since Persians were conflated with Zoroastrians – as Persians converted to Islam, the term Fārs, or Persia, was preferred over Irān and Irānshahr. See Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam.” esp. 74–76, 89. 64 Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam,” 77. Tangled Bloodlines 123 conquests; Islam’s antique origins in Persia; the Prophet speaking of Persia; Salmānal-Fārisī; the Persians’ warm reception of Arabs and Islam; Proph- etic hadith about Persia; and the pre-Islamic prophetic progenitors of the Persians. The latter is particularly interesting since, in claiming descent from earlier prophets such as Noah or Qurʾanic characters such as Adam, the Persians’ antique origins prefigure the arrival of Islam and their recep- tion of Muhammad. This embeds the Persians deep into a prophetic and _ Qurʾanic heritage. There are also traditions which assert that Shahrbānū, the daughter of the last Sasanian Emperor Yazdegird III, married the third ShiʿaImamal-Husayṇ b. ʿAlī, thereby linking the Sasanian imperial lineage with all imams from Imam al-Husayṇ onwards.65 Claiming that Persians are descendants of prophets is to claim a pre-Islamic monotheistic heritage and assert a continuation of Persian piety from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. “This idea of islām before Muhammad’s Islam placed the new religion, and its followers, within the history of Near Eastern mono- theisms,”66 and Persians were, in a sense, Muslims before Islam.

tangled bloodlines

A Companion of the Prophet often invoked regarding Persians and early Islam is the early convert, Salmān al-Fārisī. In the middle of the twentieth century, Massignon documented the relationship of Salmān al-Fārisī to Persian Islam and to Shiʿi thought, and Daftary more recently examined the role of Salmān in Ismaʿīlī thought.67 Salmān al-Fārisī was one of the four sahāba who came to be known as the four pillars of the early Shiʿa.68 _ _ On a Shiʿi hadith that Salmān, taken into Muhammad’s household, was _

65 Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam: Beliefs and Practices (London: I. B. Taurus in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2011), 45–100. Amir-Moezzi dates the beginnings of these traditions to the 3rd/9th century, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam: Beliefs and Practices, 48–50. Savant offers a different chronology in Savant, The New Muslims, 102–108. 66 Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam,” 79. 67 Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs,37,99,100–101, 394, 454. On the relationship between Imami Shiʿism and Sufism in Persia, Daftary argues that “Twelver Shīʿism developed its own rapport with Sufism in Persia during the period stretching from the fall of Alamūt to the rise of the Safawiḍ dynasty” (Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 454), beginning with the works of Sayyid Haydaṛ Āmulī, the Twelver “theologian, theosopher, and gnostic (ʿārif)fromMāzandarānwho died after 787/1385.” On the paradigmatic nature of the conversion story of Salmānal- Fārisī,seeJaakkoHameen-Anttila,“The Corruption of Christianity: Salman al-Farisi’s Quest as a Paradigmatic Model,” Studio Orientalia 85 (1999): 115–126. 68 The three other Companions are Abū Dharr al-Ghiffārī, al-Miqdād b. al-Aswad al-Kindī, and ʿAmmārb.Yāsir. Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 37. 124 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging from the house of the Prophet (“Salmān minna Ahl al-Bayt”), Massignon concludes that this came from a longer sentence uttered after the death of Salmān “and placed in the mouth of an Imam, in that of ʿAlī or of Bāqir.” Massignon dates the concept that Salmān had become a member of the Ahl al-Bayt to the end of the first/seventh century, and this concept of “Salmānian adoption [by the Prophet] had, among the Shīʿite conspir- ators a ritual value which supposed his participation even in the inspir- ation of the Prophet.”69 As the power and symbolic importance of Salmān developed, mashhads for Salmān sprung up. Fatimids supplied their patronage to _ build mashhads for Salmān, which Massignon argues are not attested _ before the sixth/twelfth century.70 As a Persian and notable member of the sahāba, Salmān granted all Persians a kind of privileged access to the _ _ Prophet. This relationship of Persians to the Prophet through Salmān, though not actually genealogical, formed a type of expansive heritage linking Persians to the Prophet. Like Hasaṇ al-Basrī, Salmān al-Fārisī was an early Companion who _ provided a strong link for Persia and Persians to foundational moments in Arab-Islamic history.71 Using an array of materials, including local his- torical writing, Savant ascertains that a shift in perspective began from the second half of the third/ninth century. During the second half of the fourth/tenth century, with the emergence of a Muslim community in Iran, this shift in perspective translated into the notion that Salmān al-Fārisī’s Persian and specifically Isfahani origins – as opposed to just his foreign,

69 Louis Massignon, Salmân Pâk et les Prémices Spirituelles de l’Islam Iranien; SalmānPāk and the Spiritual Beginnings of Iranian Islam, Translated from the French by Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala (Bombay: J. M. Unvala, 1955), 10 and 12, respectively. 70 Massignon argues that Salmān’s real tomb is located in Madāʾin (Ctesiphon) near the Tāq-i-Kisrā, a site traditionally considered to be the palace of the Sasanian King Khosrow I (r. 531–579). Massignon, Salmân Pâk., 15, 1. 71 For a detailed treatment of the shifting ways in which Salmān al-Fārisī is represented and used in remembering and forgetting Persian identities, see Savant, The New Muslims, 61–89. The three elements on which Savant focuses in local histories vis-à-vis Salmān al- Fārisī to emphasize his Persianness and origins in Isfahan – as opposed to his more generally being non-Arab – are: reframing content, emphatic reiterations, and discovery of new information. The local histories on which Savant focuses are biographical com- pilations and, to a lesser extent, more prose oriented historical work. These are: Abū al- Shaykh al-Isfahānī (d. 369/979), Tabaq̣ āt al-muhaddithīn bi-Isfahān wa al-wāridīn _ _ _ ʿalayhā, edited by, ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ʿAbd al-Haqq̣ Husayṇ al-Balūshī, 4 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1987–1992); Abū Nuʿaym al-Isfahānī (d. 430/1038), Dhikr akhbār _ Isbahān by edited by Sven Dedering, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1931–1934); and Kitāb _ Mahāsin Isfahān by al-Māfarrūkhī, composed ca. 464–484/1072–1092. See Savant, The _ _ New Muslims,73–89. Imagined Genealogies: A Discourse of Legitimacy 125 non-Arabness – solidified in historical writing, including local histories, in addition to his earlier importance in biographical and hadith literature.72 Bloodlines were twisted and tangled things in the hands of medieval historians. Tabaṛ ī (d. 310/923) transmitted traditions that place Persians as descendants of the first Persian king Gayūmart (Kayumars), who was simultaneously also Adam, Adam’s progeny, or Noah’s grandson. Tabaṛ ī also provided other bloodlines through which Persians belonged to Noah’s family. Abū Haṇ īfa al-Dīnāwarī (d. c. 281 or 282/894–895) includes both mythical Iranian characters and heroes – Farīdūn, Īraj, and Manūchir – in the Persian genealogy, and accommodates the proph- etic lineage by making everyone descendants of Noah.73 Similarly, in Tārīkh Jurjān,orKitābmaʿrifat ʿulamāʾ ahl Jurjān by al-Sahmī (d. 1035), from northeast Iran, the author situates Jurjan (Gurgan) as a place where sahāba settled, the ʿulamāʾ continuously transmitted the _ _ traditions of the Prophet, and relays the claim that the etymology of Jurjan derives from a person named Jurdān, who was a descendant of Noah, thus embedding the very ground of Jurjan into pre-Islamic mythic history.74

imagined genealogies: a discourse of legitimacy

Persian and Turkic dynasts alike used genealogies to legitimate their rule, and genealogies included real, mythical, and semi-mythical elem- ents, which looked both to a pre-Islamic heritage and an Arabic Islamic past. In weaving their tangled genealogies, dynasts hoped to sanction their rule. Such genealogies were the “stock-in-trade of the arriviste eastern Iranian dynasties that emerged after the weakening of central- ized caliphal authority.”75 Local dynasties in Persia starting in the third/ ninth century claimed connections to an Arab-Islamic past beyond those forged through walāʾ, or the relationship of clientage, to include tribal affiliations, relations to sahāba, and descent from early Muslims, a _ _ period that overlapped with its twinned phenomenon of looking back to a pre-Islamic Persian past. Bosworth dates the end of the compulsion

72 Savant, The New Muslims, 62, 88. 73 Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early Islam,” 77–78. 74 Robinson discusses this episode in Islamic Historiography, 141, referring to Hamzaḥ ibn Yūsuf Sahmī, (d. 1035) Taʾrīkh Jurjān, aw, Kitābmaʿrifat ʿulamāʾ ahl Jurjān (Hydera- bad, Deccan: Matbaʿat Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmānīyah, 1950). _ 75 Flood, Objects of Translation, 92. 126 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging to automatically try to connect the imperial and mythical Persian past to the fifth/eleventh century.76 This roughly coincides with the period of local dynasties. During the fourth/tenth to seventh/thirteenth centuries, “the unified state was replaced by a commonwealth of regional polities,” including dynasties of Arab, Turkic, and Persian descent, whose “ties to Baghdad were tighter or looser, depending largely on distance and ambition.”77 These genealogical claims served multiple functions, and the discourse of legitimacy and genealogy appealed to the local audience or patron who commissioned the text. Flood notes in his work on medieval Hindu- Muslim encounters, that, “intended for consumption both at home and in the wider Islamic world, these genealogies addressed the heterogeneous nature of that world, on occasion asserting descent from both the Arab tribes of early Islamic Arabia and the Persian heroes of the Shāhnāma, the Book of Kings.”78 The audience for claims of legitimacy and prestigious lineage was domestic and foreign, local and universal. Dynasts commis- sioned for themselves the history they desired and projected their pedigree onto their reign and as their outward image. A number of Persian dynasties fashioned their real and imagined genealogies during the tenth to thirteenth centuries. The Ghurid sultans – who reigned in what is Khurasan, modern Afghanistan, and northern India during the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth century – claimed a strange Islamo-Persian legitimacy, descending from Zahak (Zahhāk/ _ _ Dhahhāk) of the Shāhnāma on the one hand and converted to Islam by _ _ ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib on the other.79 Ghurids claimed Arab tribal connections as well as ties to ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib. The Ghurids claimed this despite the fact that it was the Ghaznavids who introduced Islam into the mountain- ous region of Ghur in Afghanistan in the eleventh century. The Ghurid court historian Fakhr-i Mudabbir Mubārakshāh traced the Ghurid genealogy back to Azhd Zahak (Zahhāk/Dhahhāk), the mythological _ _ _ _ despot, whose descendants took refuge in Ghur when Zahak (Zahhāk/ _ _ Dhahhāk) was overthrown. The Ghurid historian Minhāj-i SirājJūzjānī _ _ (d. seventh/thirteenth century) suggested that the founder of the Ghurid dynasty, Shansab or Shanasb (Gushnasp), was converted to Islam by ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib from whom he received an investiture patent (ʿahd) and a

76 C. E. Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran and the Search for Dynastic Connections with the Past,” Iran 11 (1973): 62. 77 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 139. 78 Flood, Objects of Translation, 92. 79 Flood, Objects of Translation, 92. Imagined Genealogies: A Discourse of Legitimacy 127 standard (liwāʾ). The Ghurid Amir Fūlād b. Shansab allegedly fought alongside Abū Muslim in the Abbasid revolution.80 As Ghurid sources demonstrate, genealogical claims meant to convey legitimacy sometimes inelegantly straddled the mythical and quotidian realms. At other times, the historians forcibly compressed time and created ahistorical genea- logical links that suited their needs. The Tahirids and Buyids claimed both an Arab-Islamic past and a Persian lineage. Masʿūdī records the claims of the ninth century Tahirids – who patronized scholarship in Arabic – to be descended from both the Persian Rustam b. Dāstān while simultaneously claiming to be related to the Arab tribes of Khuzāʿ and Quraysh. Likewise, the Daylami Buyids laid claims to both an Arab-Islamic past and Persian and Zoroastrian heritage, evidenced in titular claims such as ʿAdud ad-Daula’s adoption of the _ imperial title Shāhānshāh.81 On the far eastern fringes of the Islamic empire, where Arab notables, sahāba, and their descendants were fewer in number than they would _ _ have been in the Arabian heartlands, historians and dynasts balanced local sensibilities and appeals to pre-Islamic Persian identity with the need to map their physically peripheral presence onto the wider Islamic empire. Local dynasties, Bosworth argues, more strongly asserted connec- tions to the Iranian epic past, Sasanian imperial past, or to the Persian land, than they did to claims of an Arab-Islamic past, since it was probably easier to assert a Persian connection than an Arab tribal or prophetic connection. This tendency applies to the Samanids, Ghazna- vids, and Daylami Buyids.82 Some claims to a Persian aristocratic past were true. Claims of the Samanids, who originated from the dihqān class and had marriage ties to Persian royalty, were true, while claims of aristocratic origins by the Daylamis and Saffarids were fabricated.83 The Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty – Sebuktigīn, the founder of which was formerly a member of

80 Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 53–55. 81 Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 56–57. Bosworth argues, “... this ambivalent attitude towards the relative desirability of Arab or Persian lineage reflects the currents of thought and the uncertainties of this century of transition, in which the Persians had already reached the highest pinnacles of political influence in the state and were now challenging the social dominance of the Arabs” (Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 56). 82 Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership.” 83 Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 55, 58. Bosworth writes, “We know of no attempt to connect the Samanids with the Arab heritage, but it was generally accepted amongst the Samanids’ contemporaries that the family was of aristocratic, if not royal, Iranian origin. Sāmān-Khudā, the earliest attested member of the family, was a dihqan 128 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging the Samanid military slave institution – quickly became Persianized and created Persianized genealogies. The Tārīkh-i Mujadwal of Abū l-Qāsim ʿImādī quoted by the Ghurid historian Jūzjanī supplies Sebuktigīn with a genealogy that traces his lineage over six generations to the last Sasanian king Yazdigird III (r. 11–30/632–651, d. 30/651). The great dynasties of Turkish chieftains who rose to power roughly contemporary with the Ghaznavids, including the Qarakhanids and the Seljuqs, did not draw initially on claims of a Persian past, but this was because they relied on Turkish support.84

ʿalid loyalism in ta¯ rı¯kh-i tabarista¯ n ˙ Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, like Tārīkh-i Qum, evidences a broad type of ʿAlid loyalism that extends beyond a narrowly defined Shiʿi allegiance. While ʿAlid loyalism and Shiʿi political commitment overlap, they are not neces- sarily identical. Shiʿi names, such as ʿAlī,Hasan,̣ and Husayn,̣ appeared in non-Shiʿi families, demonstrating that reverence for ʿAlī’s family extended well beyond sectarian lines and did not necessarily entail Shiʿism.85 ʿAlids were respected, admired, and held in high esteem by Sunnis and partisans of ʿAlī alike. ʿAlid loyalism cannot be conflated with Shiʿi allegiance, since they “came to be held in high esteem even by those who rejected their claims to the leadership of the Muslim community.”86 A wide cross-section of Muslim society piously revered ʿAlids and des- cendants of the Prophet.87 Though Qum and Tabaristan are both ʿAlid

from the Balkh area of Tukharistan, who in the eighth century was converted to Islam and served one of the last Umayyad governors of Khurasan. Birūni, followed by subse- quent sources such as Ibn al-Athir, says that there is “universal agreement” that the Samanids descend from BahrāmChūbīn. BahrāmChūbīn, son of Bahrām Gushnasp, led a revolt against the Emperor Hormizd IV in 590 and temporarily occupied the imperial throne himself as Bahram VI. His family of Mihran claimed descent from the Arsacids, hence his bid for the throne and his displacement of the Sasanids” (Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 58). 84 Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership,” 61–62. 85 Bulliet, Patricians, 14, and Peacock, Medieval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy, 24, 75. 86 Teresa Bernheimer, “The Rise of sayyids and sādāt: The Āl Zubāra and Other ʿAlids in Ninth- to Eleventh-Century Nishapur,” Studia Islamica 100: 1 (2005): 43–44. 87 Schimmel concisely explains, “Sufis – and many of the pious Sunnites in general – felt a kind of sentimental allegiance to the family of the Prophet without believing in Shiʿa doctrines. The veneration of ʿAlī was widespread among the Muslims, and he was often regarded as an important link in the spiritual chain leading the Sufi masters back to the Prophet. Widespread, too, was the veneration of sayyids, Muhammad’s descendants through ʿAlī and Fātima.” The khirqa, or mantle presented to a Sufi as his initiation to _ Shiʿa Allegiance 129 and Shiʿa, a strong veneration for the family of the Prophet need not indicate a sectarian stance. Upon leaving the Hijaz, ʿAlids settled in various cities including Nisha- pur, Hamadan, Qum, Rayy and Samarqand. Though these ʿAlids did not technically exercise political power (which went to caliphs) or religious authority (which went to scholars, who were not necessarily descendants of the Prophet) in Khurasan on the basis of their prophetic lineage, they were nevertheless socially powerful, and ʿAlid families emerged as local elites.88 There were multiple layers of authority in medieval Persia: power claimed by the caliph, the consolidated authority of local dynasts, schol- arly prestige exercised by the ulama, local pietistic movements and indi- viduals, and a local patrician elite. The power that ʿAlids commanded should be seen as one (albeit very prestigious) pole among many parities vying for authority.

shiʿa allegiance

Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes not only Tabaristan’s ʿAlid loyalism but also more specifically its Shiʿa allegiance. This is apparent in multiple places, particularly when he discusses the termination of the early Umayyad practice of cursing ʿAlī,Fātima, Hasan,̣ and Husayṇ under the caliphate _ of ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-Azīz(ʿUmar II), whom he credits with restoring property to the descendants of Fātima. Ibn Isfandiyār’s favorable por- _ trayal of ʿUmar II contrasts sharply with his depiction of previous caliph Sulaymānb.ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 96–99/715–717), who accuses him of impiety and vanity. Ibn Isfandiyār highlights the activities of the ʿAlids and the sayyids in his sections primarily concerned with the political and military history of Tabaristan. In one such episode a sayyid from the house of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib called Husayṇ b. ʿAlī and known as Sāhib al-Fakhkh was involved _

the mystical path, also has symbolic ties to the Prophet, evoking the mantle with which Muhammad cloaked ʿAlī,Fātima, Hasan,̣ Husayn,̣ and himself, a group known as the _ _ “five of the mantle.” Thus, with a mantle symbolic of the Prophet, the mystic joined the Prophet’s symbolic family. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) 82; 222–223. 88 Bernheimer, “The Rise of sayyids and sādāt,” 43–69, esp. 44–50. ʿAlids and sharifs were more active in Syria during the tenth and eleventh centuries as, for example, qadis. “At least in the Islamic East until the end of the eleventh-century, there are very few ʿAlid qādīs, and even fewer ʿAlid families who held this office for more than one generation (as came to be fairly common in many medieval Islamic cities for non-ʿAlid families of judges),” (Bernheimer, “The Rise of sayyids and sādāt,” 47). 130 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging during the Abbasid Caliphate of al-Mahdī in a battle in a revolt in the Hijaz at a place called Fakhkh. Sāhib al-Fakhkh was killed, along with many of his _ party, by the caliph’s forces.89 Ibn Isfandiyār incorporates this story – which does not even take place in Tabaristan – to highlight a sayyid specifically descended from the house of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, their propensity for rebellion, and the marginalization they suffer at the hands of the caliphs.90 Ibn Isfandiyār’s depiction of the caliph al-Maʾmūn as Shiʿi develops the pro-ʿAlid stance of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Ibn Isfandiyār explains that al- Maʾmūn and his father Harūn al-Rashīd’s anti-Shiʿi actions were political but not religious. He presses the claim that Harūn al-Rashīd was also a professed Shiʿa. According to Ibn Isfandiyār, al-Maʾmūn informed Sindī b. Shāhak and others that he was Shiʿi: “Man tashshīʿa az pedar-e khīz Harūn āmoukhtam.”91 To this, Sindī b. Shāhak and others retorted in Arabic that al-Maʾmūn’s rather Harūn al-Rashīd killed members of the family of the Prophet: “Hūwwa kāna yaqtilu ahl hātha al-bayt.”92 To this al-Maʾmūn replies – here in Arabic – that he killed them for political reasons, ‘for the state is a barren mother’ (“lianna al-mulk ʿaqīm”).93 Ibn Isfandiyār claims that al-Maʾmūn and Harūn al-Rashīd were Shiʿa and simultaneously explain their actions that seem to undermine the ʿAlid cause. Ibn Isfandiyār accuses al-Maʾmūn of his complicity in killing Imam al-Ridā, but concludes that al-Maʾmūn committed his crime because of his _ ties to mulk.94 Ibn Isfandiyār places the blame for al-Maʾmūn’s anti-Shiʿa actions on the corrupting influence of state power. Ultimately, Ibn Isfan- diyār simultaneously praises and condemns al-Maʾmūn in this episode for harming the Shiʿa, although he allegedly professed Shiʿi faith.95 Shiʿa Imams loom large in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān.96 Ibn Isfandiyār fre- quently refers to ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and adduces several sayings attributed

89 Mūsā al-Kazīm, with his quietist policy, allegedly refused to support Husayṇ b. ʿAlī, who was known as Sāhib al-Fakhkh. Daftary writes on Sāhib Fakhkh that “This Hasanid,̣ a _ _ grandnephew of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahd, revolted in the Hijāz during the short caliphate of al-Hādī (d. 169–170/785–786), and was killed at Fakhkh near Mecca, together with many other ʿAlīds, in 169/786.” Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 95. 90 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:181–182; Browne, Abridged Translation, 124–125. 91 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:202. 92 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:202. 93 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:202; Browne, Abridged Translation, 144. 94 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:203–204; Browne, Abridged Translation, 144. 95 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:199–205; Browne, Abridged Translation, 143–144. 96 The most notable descendants of ʿAlī described as having some kind of relationship to Tabaristan include Imam Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (2nd Shiʿi Imam); Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Shiʿa Allegiance 131 to ʿAlī in the context of a section on Khārijites.97 Ibn Isfandiyār under- scores the ʿAlid underpinnings of Tabaristan and firmly grounds his regional history in the context of ʿAlid piety and belief. The visionary qualities of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib also factor in the Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Ibn Isfandiyār notes that ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib had foreseen in his writings (dar malāhim az ou khabar dāde būd) the appearance of the Sayyid-i-Burqāʾī or “the Veiled Sayyid,” also known as Sāhib al-Zanj, or “the Leader of _ the Ethiopians.”98 Ibn Isfandiyār includes stories not just about the Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib99, but also about the fourth Imam ʿAlī b. al-Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn). One such narrative focuses on tawakkul, or total reliance on God, and sets a pious and tone at the beginning of the text. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn stood mournfully in Medina when a figure dressed in white appeared before him. The anonymous interrogator asked Zayn al- ʿĀbidīn why he was sad, and the fourth Imam found that he had no reason to be. The fourth Imam realized that God never disappoints one who trusts fully in God and never denies what a believer asks of Him. When he realized this, his questioner disappeared.100 The fifth Imam Abū Jaʿfar Muhammad b. ʿAlī, known as al-Bāqir, also _ figures in the text. In one such story he visits the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99/717–101/720), known as ʿUmar II and generally regarded and portrayed as a pious caliph who studied with the muhad- dithun of Medina and governed Medina in frequent consultation with the

Abī Tạ̄lib (3rd Shiʿi Imam); ʿAli b. Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tālib (4th Imam, known as “Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn”); Abū Jaʿfar Muhammad b. ʿAlī b. Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tālib, _ known as al-Bāqir (5th Shiʿi Imam); Imam Abū al-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Mūsa, known as ʿAlī al- Ridā (the 8th Shiʿi Imam and son of Imam Mūsā al-Kāzim); Imam Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī al- _ _ ʿAskarī, (11th Imam, second half of the 9th century). There are also the four ʿAlawi sayyids who ruled over Tabaristan from 864–928 CE: Sayyid Hasaṇ b. Zayd b. Ismāʿīl “Jālib al- Hijāra” b. Hasaṇ b. Zayd b. Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (r. 864–883 CE), or Dāʿī; his brother Muhammad b. Zayd, al- Dāʿī ila al-Haqq̣ or Dāʿī al-Kabīr; Sayyid _ Nasir-i-Kabīr, called al-Thāʿir; and Sayyid Ab Muhammad Hasaṇ b. Qāsim b. Hasaṇ b. _ ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sharajī b. Qāsim b. Hasaṇ b. Zayd b. Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, called also al-Dāʿī ila al-Haqq̣ or al-Dāʿī al-Saghīr). In addition to references to the Prophet Muhammad, anecdotes about ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib weave through the text, as do _ Talibi sayyids, particularly in the contexts of the Buyid rulers from Daylam, who professed Shiʿism. The descendants of ʿAlī noted in Ibn Isfandiyār’s Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān is both extensive and scattered constantly throughout the work; consult the index in Browne, Abridged Translation, for citations of individual descendants and Imams. 97 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:159; Browne, Abridged Translation, 101–103. 98 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:244; Browne, Abridged Translation, 180. 99 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:54–55; Browne, Abridged Translation,12–13. 100 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:53; Browne, Abridged Translation, 11. 132 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging fuqaha of the city. When al-Bāqir visits ʿUmar II as part of the latter’s open invitation for those who feel they have been wronged by the Umay- yads to visit him and be compensated, ʿUmar II breaks down into tears in a burst of repentant sorrow. ʿUmar II is portrayed as repentant, despond- ent, and weeping for the wrongs the Umayyads have inflicted on the Shiʿa, ʿAlids, and family of the Prophet.101

sayyids and sharifs in tabaristan

Tabaristani sayyids are exemplars of generosity, but more importantly they bring prestige and piety to Tabaristan through their relationship with Muhammad.102 According to Ibn Isfandiyār, these ruling sayyids _ included Ḥasan b. Zayd b. Ismāʿīl “Jālib al-Hijāra” b. Ḥasan b. Zayd b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (d. 270/884), or the Dāʿī, and his brother Muhammad b. Zayd, known as al-Dāʿī ila al-Ḥaqq or Dāʿī al-Kabīr _ (d. 287/900)103, whose pious qualities stand out. Muhammad b. Zayd _ al-Dāʿī ila al-Ḥaqq annually sent a large amount of gold dinars to the shrines of ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib, his sons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and other members of the family of the Prophet, and Ibn Isfandiyārcredits him with being the first to rebuild the tombs of the Imams after the caliph al-Mutawakkil (206–247/822–861, r. 232–247/847–861) des- troyed them.104 In another narrative, Muhammad b. Zayd al-Dāʿī ila _ al-Ḥaqq treats with fairness and kindness a descendant of Yazīd, des- cended from Muʿāwiya from the tribe of Abū al-Shams, despite the violence inflictedontheShiʿabytheman’s ancestors. Sayyids left their mark on Tabaristan through their many descendants. Abū Muhammad Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. ʿAmr b. ʿAlī al-Sajjād _ b. Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, known as al-Nāsir al-Kabīr, had a tomb in

101 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:53–54; Browne, Abridged Translation, 12. 102 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:94–106; Browne, Abridged Translation,47–58. 103 On these ʿAlid rulers of Tabaristan – al-Hasaṇ b. Zayd, known as al-Dāʿī al-Kabīr and the founder of an ʿAlid Zaydī dynasty in Tabaristan (d. 270/884), and Muhammad b. _ Zayd (d. 287/900) – see Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 166. Another ʿAlid ruler of Tabaristan that Daftary addresses is al-Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī al-Utrūsh (d. 304/917), “who led the case of Zaydī Shiʿism in the Caspian region.” 104 The sum of gold dinars varies in the manuscripts form one thousand to thirty thousand gold dinars. Although one manuscript says one thousand gold dinars and another says thirty thousand, clearly what is being emphasized here is his piety by donating annually to the shrines of ʿAlī,Hasan,̣ and Husayṇ and other members of the Prophet’s family. The amount is not really relevant. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:94–96; Browne, Abridged Translation,47–48. Sayyids and Sharifs in Tabaristan 133

Amul extant at the author’s time, and three of whose sons lived and ruled in Gilan and Daylam.105 Members of his family knew and studied with the eleventh Shiʿi Imam Abū Muhammad al-Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī (230 _ or 232–260/844 or 847–873).106 The emphasis is on the direct lineage of the transmission of knowledge from the Imams to the sayyids of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār includes material on sayyid Abū al-Husayṇ al-Muʾayyad Biʾallah ʿAdud al-Dawla and Sayyid Abū Tạ̄lib Yahya an-Nātiq biʾl- _ _ Haqq,̣ the sons of al-Husayṇ b. Harūn b. al-Husayṇ b. Muhammad b. _ al-Qāsim b. al-Husayṇ b. Zayd b. al-Imām al-Sibt al-Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbī Tạ̄lib, in an entry that underscores the effectiveness of the Shiʿi dāʿīs and the adherence of the people of the region to it.107 Ibn Isfandiyār provides what amounts to an intellectual vitae of Sayyid Abū Tạ̄lib Yahya an-Nātiq _ biʾl-Haqq,̣ who taught in Gurgan before going to Daylaman.108 Notably, al-Sayyid Shams al-Āl-i Rasul Allāh is the first of the sayyids who Ibn Isfandiyār identifies as one of the nussāk (pious ascetic recluses) and ʿubbād (worshippers).109 For Ibn Isfandiyār, sayyids are the true custodians of religion in Tabaristan. The locals respect the learning, piety, and asceticism of the fugitive Talibi sayyids, who have fled Darfu and Lapra, as the true heirs of the Prophet and therefore righteous custodians of religion.110 Tabarista- nis ask these sayyids to overthrow the tyrannical Muhammad b. Aws. Ibn _ Isfandiyār documents the political and military history of Tabaristan by presenting it in chronological order in the era of the ruling sayyids of Tabaristan. The first ruling sayyid, Ibn Isfandiyār tells us, was the third/ ninth century Hasaṇ b. Zayd, who held a fervent and violent belief in the Muʿtazili doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾan.111 As in the case with descriptions of other local rulers, Ibn Isfandiyār explicitly couples Hasaṇ b. Zayd’s religious authority with the political and fiscal autonomy of Tabaristan.

105 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:97–98; Browne, Abridged Translation, 49. 106 J. Eliash, “Hasaṇ al-’Askarī,Abū Muhammad Hasaṇ b. Alī,” EI2. _ 107 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:98–101; Browne, Abridged Translation,50–54. 108 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:101–102; Browne, Abridged Translation,54–55. 109 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:105; Browne, Abridged Translation,57–58. 110 “zuhd o ʿilm o waraʿ-a-e īshnā rā iʿatiqād kardand oh goftand’ānche sīrat-e Musulmānī ast bā sādāt ast’.” Browne, Abridged Translation, 161–162; Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:228. 111 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:241; Browne, Abridged Translation, 176. 134 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Ibn Isfandiyār pairs his description of the piety of the Talibi sayyids with accusations against the Abbasid vizier ʿAbd Allāhb.Yahya b. _ Khāqān, who he describes as a stridently Sunni anti-Shiʿi vizier who persecuted Talibi sayyids.112 ʿAbd Allāhb.Yahya b. Khāqān was vizier _ under the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, and Ibn Isfandiyār portrays the vizier as a drunk and a murderer who killed ʿAlids. This unsightly portrait contrasts with the Shiʿi piety of Muhammad b. Zayd, the self-professed _ ruler of Tabaristan (during the reign of the Caliph al-Muntasir, 247–248/ 861–862) and the Shiʿi Buyid ʿAdud al-Dawla Fanā-Khusraw b. Rukn al- _ Dawla Hasaṇ [b.] Buwayh (324–372/936–983).113 Ibn Isfandiyār accuses the vizier ʿAbd Allāhb.Yahya b. Khāqānof _ grave offenses against the ʿAlids. He was someone who was continually provoking [the caliph Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil] to kill the descendants of the Prophet, and even succeeded in convincing him to destroy the tombs of the Martyrs of Karbala, dam up the water, grow crops on the site of their graves, and set Jewish watchmen and keepers there to arrest and kill any Muslim who visited these holy places ... . Therefore in the era of al-Dāʿī Muhammad b. Zayd the tombs of the Commander of the Faithful ʿĀlī, peace be _ upon him, the shrine of Imam al-Husayn,̣ peace be upon him, and other descend- ants of Abū Tạ̄lib were in ruins.114 The polemic firmly situates Ibn Isfandiyār within a Shiʿi context. The polemic accusations about Jewish watchmen and orders to kill Muslims who attempted to visit the Shiʿi tombs at Karbala is clear: these are extravagantly anti-Shiʿi actions. Ibn Isfandiyār goes further to portray the caliph al-Mutawakkil as a bloodthirsty killer of ʿAlids. Not only did al-Mutawakkil persecute Talibi sayyids,115 he killed Imam Abū al-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Muhammad al-ʿAskarī _ (b. 214/829 or 212 or 213/828 or 829, d. 254/868), the tenth Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿi Imam known as al-Hādī. Historical accounts state that al- Mutawakkil did have an anti-ʿAlid policy and had al-Hādī brought to Samarra to be kept under surveillance, but they do not describe al-Hādī as murdered. Though Shiʿi tradition claims had al-Hādī was poisoned by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil, the Maqātil al-Tạ̄libiyyīn does not include al-Hādī among the ʿAlid martyrs.116 Ibn Isfandiyār rounds out the negative

112 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:224. “Nāsibī madhhab būd.” 113 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:224–227; Browne, Abridged Translation, 158–161. 114 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:224; Browne, Abridged Translation, 158. 115 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:226–227; Browne, Abridged Translation, 161. 116 B. Lewis, “al-ʿAskarī,” EI2. Sharifsm and Power across the Muslim World 135 portrait of al-Mutawakkil by describing how he indulged in drink and debauchery.117 While the allegations of al-Mutawakkil’svirulentanti-Shiʿi sentiments have merit, Ibn Isfandiyār’s strategy is to build a sympathetic case for the ʿAlids and the Talibi sayyids of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyārconsist- ently underscores Tabaristan’s loyalty to the ʿAlids and the Talibi sayyids of the region. Muhammad b. Zayd declared himself the ruler of Tabaristan _ during the caliphate of the Abbasid al-Muntasir (r. 247–248/861–862), and Ibn Isfandiyār credits him with the revival of Shiʿism in the region.118

sharifsm and power across the muslim world

The enduring influence of sayyids and sharifs and the material manifest- ations of that power remain potent to this day. A few comments here about Moroccan shurafāʾ and their connections to power and authority underscores the ways in which sayyids, sharifs, ʿAlids, and other descend- ants wielded enormous social capital as living links to the Prophet and his legacy not only in the east, but also in the far western periphery of the Islamicate world. The ruling monarchies of Jordan and Morocco owe their legitimacy to privileged genealogies. The status of sharaf as the basis of both political power and religious authority is evident in the ʿAlawite ruling family of Morocco today. The power of the sharifan ʿAlawite ruling family endures centuries after they rose to power in 1635 (in part through their alliances with other sharifan families),119 and centuries after the doctrine of sharifan authority was firmly established by Sultan Mulay Ismaʿil (r. 1672–1727) in the seventeenth century and well after the political events in the sixteenth century that paved the way for this ideology.120

117 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:224–225; Browne, Abridged Translation, 158–159. 118 al-Muntasir took it upon himself to “preach the Shiʿite doctrine, and to inculcate the deepest veneration for the House of ʿAlī, and to repair their shrines, and to build fresh ones where he supposed their graves to be. In all this he was aided by ʿAdud al-Dawla _ Fanakhusraw b. Ruknu’d-Dawla Hasaṇ [b.] Buwayh, who surrounded these holy places with houses and bazārs, and instituted the observances of Muharram [Persian ʿāshūrāʾ] and the Yawmu’l-Ghadīr and other Shiʿite practices, and was himself buried when he died at Mashhad ‘Alī.” Here I quote E. G. Browne’s English translation: Browne, Abridged Translation, 158; Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:224. 119 Rachida Chih, “Shurafāʾ and Sufis: The Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Contemporary Morocco,” in Family portraits with Saints, 215–217. 120 Zakaria Rhani, “The Genealogy of Power and the Power of Genealogy in Morocco: History, Imaginary, and Politics,” in Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies, 38–39. Mulay Idris I was descended from the Prophet through Fatima and ʿAli through 136 Holy Bloodlines, Hadith, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Sharifan rule in the region began as early as the eighth century, when the Idrisids (f. Mūlay Idrīs I, d. 791), were the first dynasty of shurafāʾ to rule Morocco. Moroccan shurafāʾ were entrenched in the religio-political elite of the Maghrib, starting with Mūlay Idrīs I (d. 791), a phenomenon that became more pronounced over the subsequent centuries. On the basis of compil- ations of fatwas from the Marīnid period, David Powers demonstrates the extent to which the growth of Maliki jurisprudence, the intensification of sharifism – which was particularly associated with ʿAlids – and the development of institutional Sufism were intertwined in the Maghrib between 1300 and 1500.121 Muslim saints, be they from the ranks of Sufis or not, generally were husbands and fathers (although there were some celibate exceptions, such as qalandars). This propensity for produ- cing offspring among sharifs and saints underscored the belief that sanc- tity and charisma were hereditary, a tendency that increased in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the proliferation of ashrāf across the Muslim world and in the Maghrib.122 This nexus of power, charisma, and descent from the Prophet remains alive and well today. A contemporary (f. 1960s) branch of the Qādiriyya in Morocco, the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya, place a premium on genealogy in the way it constructs charisma within the order, a feature common to many Sufi orders across time and place. The categories of mysticism and descent from the Prophet often blur, and the overlapping categories of sharifs and mystics, extant across the Muslim world, have been particularly pronounced in Morocco.123 Examples of sharifism from Morocco underscore the blend of Sufism and sharifism that constitutes hereditary transmission of charisma. Des- cent from the Prophet is a category of belonging that becomes a critical component of communities’ identities and their representation of them- selves. Sayyids, sharifs, and other categories of descent from the Prophet,

their son al-Hasan. The term shurafāʾ refers in Morocco to the descendants of the Prophet. 121 David Powers, Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–22. Powers considers the iterations of Sufism heavily influenced by Maliki law, which was particularly notable in the Maghrib, a type of “juridical Sufism,” (David Powers, Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500, 16). See esp. 167–205 for a case study of how sharifs and Sharifism was treated in a legal dispute concerning descendants of the Prophet and insulting the Prophet. 122 Mayeur-Jaouen and Papas, Introduction to Family Portraits with Saints,7–9. 123 Chih, “Shurafā’and Sufis: The Qādiriyya Būdshishiyya in Contemporary Morocco.” Summary and Conclusions 137 including ʿAlids and other descendants, wielded enormous social capital – and sometimes significant political power or material wealth – in the medieval Islamicate world, a tradition that remains vital even today.

summary and conclusions

The material scattered across a constellation of local and regional histor- ies about descendants of the Prophet indicate that concerns about reli- gious and political legitimacy were critical concerns that shaped the ways in which the authors mapped the narratives of their cities and regions. Claims of heirship to the Prophet are one amongst multiple literary strategies employed in local and regional histories to forge links with foundational moments and characters, particularly descendants of the Prophet and the early generation who knew him. Though far from uniform in their form and content, local histories nevertheless evidence similar patterns and commonalities in focus, including the incorporation of legitimating hadith or linkages to significant individuals. The hadith preserved in Tārīkh-i Qum and the central importance of sayyids, sharifs, and other descendants of the Prophet and early Arab settlers demonstrate how Hasaṇ ibn Muhammad Qummī (d. 1015 or _ 1016) frames his city within the wider umma. His claims that descendants of the Prophet constitute the living virtues, fadāʾil, of the land is integral _ to the discourse of legitimation in which Qummī participates. Ibn Isfan- diyār’s sustained emphasis on the family of the Prophet, ʿAlids, and Shiʿi Imams in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān are meant to legitimate his claims for the independence of the region. The following chapter analyzes how claims that certain sahāba are linked to a city or region function in Tārīkh- _ _ Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, and Tārīkh-i Sīstān. I argue that these claims are mechanisms that amplify these regions’ religious and political legitimacy, regardless of whether these sahāba were, in fact, associated _ _ with these places. 6

Living Virtues of the Land

None among my Companions dies in a land except that he will be resurrected as a leader and a light for those people on the Day of Resurrection.1

Heirship to the Prophet takes many forms, and if the actual or ostensible descent from Muhammad that sayyids, sharifs, ʿAlids, and other descend- _ ants enjoy is a biological iteration of that heirship, then the close associ- ation to Muhammad of the sahāba, tābiʿūn, and other early members of _ _ _ the Muslim community expands the notion of heirship from biological connections to ones based on association and community. Just as the Prophet’s descendants are held in high esteem as living links to him, individuals who are not biologically linked to the Prophet are also cele- brated as living virtues of the land and feature as integral components of Persianate local histories. These individuals can take the form of sahāba, _ _ tābiʿūn, and their descendants, as in the base of Tārīkh-Bayhaq, or they can be a wider array of individuals who are considered the living fadāʾil _

1 Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Kitāb45al-manāqib,Bāb 60, 977, hadith 4239. “Mā min ahad min ashābī yamūtu bi-ard illa buʿitha qāʾidan wa nūran lahum yaum al-qiyāma.” In _ _ _ _ his English translation, Abu Khalil rendered the hadith as follows: “There is no one among my Companions who dies in a land except that he shall be resurrected as a guide and light for them (people of that land) on the Day of Resurrection.” See English translation of Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī =Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī/ compiled by Abū ʿEīsā Mohammad ibn ʿEīsā at- Tirmidhī; translated by, Abu Khaliyl; Ahādith edited and referenced by Abu Tāhir Zubair ʿAli Zaʾi; final review by Islamic Research Section Darussalam (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2007), chapters on al-manāqib, chapter 58, hadith 3865.

138 Patrician Elites and Genealogical Elites 139 of the region, including notables,2 learned men,3 Imams,4 saints and ascetics,5 sages and philosophers,6 and to a lesser extent writers and scribes,7 physicians and poets,8 and astronomers9 described in Ibn Isfan- diyār’s Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Through their corporeal remains, the trad- itions they transmitted, and their temporary or permanent residence in the region, individuals who form a link to the Prophet are held by authors as integral aspects of the region in ways that deliberately and consciously staked out the region’s religious legitimacy and political authority for the Perso-Muslim inhabitants of these regions on the fringes of empire. Companions of the Prophet are linked to a city or region and constitute the living fadāʾil of the land. Persian local histories claim connections _ with Muhammad and his authority in the form of sahāba and tābiʿūn _ _ _ living, teaching, or dying and being buried in the city. Accounts preserved in Tārīkh-Bayhaq by ʿAlī ibn Zayd Bayhaqī, known as Ibn Funduq (d. 1169 or 70), the anonymous fifth-/eleventh-century Tārīkh-i Sīstān, and Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān by Ibn Isfandiyār (d. after 613/1217) demon- strate that binding a city or a region to sahāba and other religiously _ _ significant individuals and the hadith they transmitted amplified the region’s legitimacy as an integral Muslim community in the context of political and religious authority.

patrician elites and genealogical elites

The patrician class, a term used by Bulliet to describe the local elite in his onomastic study of the social history of Nishapur, was also not a firmly defined and fixed social group. The medieval currency of choice was religious piety, so the patriciate included ulama and descendants of the Prophet, which are not mutually exclusive groups. Keeping in mind that a city included both the inner city and surrounding villages, this patriciate was “urban” in the broad sense of the term. There is debate about who to include in this patrician class, and in this study I follow Bulliet’s use of the term as “a limited number of wealthy extended families whose dominance

2 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122; Browne, Abridged Translation,73–74. 3 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122–125; Browne, Abridged Translation,74–76. 4 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:125–130; Browne, Abridged Translation,76–80. 5 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:130–135; Browne, Abridged Translation,80–85. 6 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:135–137; Browne, Abridged Translation,85–86. 7 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:130; Browne, Abridged Translation, 80. 8 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:137; Browne, Abridged Translation, 86. 9 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:137; Browne, Abridged Translation, 87. 140 Living Virtues of the Land remained relatively stable over a period of many generations,” and whose “prestige and power ... derived from one or more of three sources: landholding, trade, or religion.”10 Lacunae and silence in local histories can be as useful as explicitly stated claims. Pourshariati noted the curious phenomenon whereby Per- sian local histories that have significant Arab settlement do not emphasize the sahāba who lived in the area. In certain Persian local histories, there is _ _ an inverse relationship between evidence for Arabs in a region and the claims about them: “there seems to be a negative correlation between the preponderance of Arab settlement in a given territory and the emphasis that its local history puts on the presence of the sahāba in the locality: in _ _ other words, the greater the evidence for substantial settlement in a given territory, the less the focus on the sahāba in its local history.”11 _ _ In the case of Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Pourshariati notes the suspicious absence in the local histories of sites, such as the developments of mosques, qanāt irrigation channels, gates, or other physical or symbolic markers of Arab settlement in the region. This stands in contrast to the material contained in the local histories of Jurjan, Bukhara, and Qum

10 Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur, 20. Shoshan surveyed the scholarship on patterns in the behavioral politics of notables – what he considers a broader category than “patri- cians” and includes not only the ulama and descendants of the Prophet but also mer- chants and, in the case of the Ottoman Empire, commanders of local garrisons who held “elevated social positions”–in the medieval Islamicate world (from Muhammad to the _ sixteenth century) that was detectable in the relationship along what Shoshan called the “axis” between the imperial centers and provincial towns. Boaz Shoshan, “The ‘Politics of Notables’ in Medieval Islam,” Asian and African Studies: Journal of the Israel Oriental Society 20: 2 (July 1986): 179–215. In his summary and critique of scholarship on notables – which includes but is not limited to the narrower category of patricians – Shoshan assessed what he sees as three patterns identified by scholars: a pattern of symbiosis (advanced by Lapidus and Bulliet), a pattern of conflict (proposed by Ashtor), and a pattern of notables as rulers, based essentially on the history of Syria and especially Damascus, but also, thanks to Bulliet, the Islamic East (Nishapur, Bukhara, Samarqand). Shoshan ultimately dismisses the possibility of notables as rulers, arguing that, unlike medieval Europe, there was no theoretical framework within Islam to understand towns as independent legal entities, as opposed to the case of medieval Europe with its heritage of Roman law. He further argued that a bourgeoisie with mercantile wealth is essentially a modern phenomenon in the Middle East that dates from the nineteenth century. Shoshan’s evidence and analysis is limited to medieval Syria and essentially Damascus, making his conclusions too far removed for this study. 11 Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurasan and the Pattern of Arab Settlement,” 52. Pourshariati’s sources are Tārīkh Jurjān of Abu al-Qāsim Hamza b. Yūsuf b. Ibrahīm al- Sahmī (d. 1036), Tārīkh-i Bayhaq by Ibn Funduq (d. 1170), Kitāb-i Ahvāl-i Nīshāpūr by al-Khalīfa al- Nīshābūr, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā by Narshakhī (899–950), and Tārīkh-i Qum of Qummī (originally composed 989–990). Tārīkh-i Bayhaq 141 about such sites. Pourshariati argues that this lack of narrative material about physical or symbolic markers of Arab settlement, coupled with a list of sahāba alleged to have lived or died in Bayhaq, suggests Ibn _ _ Funduq’s insistence on early Arab progenitors in Bayhaq despite a lack of evidence for this. Pourshariati finds that of the sahāba listed by Ibn _ _ Funduq, only two individuals had anything to do with Bayhaq.12 This chapter argues that one of these two individuals, al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī, likely did not have a significant connection to Bayhaq, either. This chapter offers a micro-history from Tārīkh-i Bayhaq that builds on Pourshariati’s work and, by extending her findings, pushes further the implications of her theory on Persianate local histories regarding the relationship between physical evidence of Arab settlement and claims made about Arab progenitors, such as sahāba in the region. _ _ The insistence of Tārīkh-Bayhaq on Arab sahāba as critical early _ _ members of the community betrays a strong undercurrent about the anxiety of legitimacy. This micro-history, along with similar examples from the anonymous fifth-/eleventh-century Tārīkh-i Sīstān and Ibn Isfan- diyār’s early thirteenth century Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, captures the ways in which sahāba and the succeeding generation of tābiʿūn function in local _ _ histories as one of many focal points used by the author to express and legitimate religious and political authority for the area as a significant and blessed place in the Muslim umma.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i bayhaq

Those who were in a position to write historical texts and who enjoyed patronage had the benefit of a scholarly apparatus to support their project. Consequently, they had some sort of self-conscious identity about their participation in history. Ibn Funduq laments in his twelfth-century Tārīkh-i Bayhaq that the people of his generation are not interested in history and do not learn from its lessons, and that this intellectual lacuna is one of the reasons he was moved to write the history. He also includes a long preamble on the benefits of history and the necessity of studying it.13 The writer is not merely a bystander to history but a conscious participant in shaping, recording, and defining it.

12 Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurasan,” 64–66. Pourshariati renders his name as al- ʿAbbās bin Mardās al-Salmī. 13 Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq,1–15. 142 Living Virtues of the Land

al-ʿabba¯ sbinmirda¯ sal-sulamı¯

If the merit of a city is to be judged by the quality of its past and present inhabitants, then Ibn Funduq claims an illustrious pedigree for his city. Ibn Funduq’s desire to claim for Bayhaq prophetic sanction and blessing through association with sahāba is evident in the way that he _ _ organizes his work. He opens his chapter on the virtues of Bayhaq with the hadith that “None among my Companions dies in a land except that he will be resurrected as a leader and a light for those people on the Day of Resurrection.”14 Ibn Funduq explains in Persian that the hadith means that “in every place on the earth that one of the great ones of the Companions of the Prophet dies an exalted death (shahādat yāfte bāshad)orbidsfarewellfromtheworld...on the Judgment Day those Companions will be a leader and a light for those people.”15 Ibn Funduq also writes that “The Prophet of God – prayers of God be upon him – said ‘Blessed be Nishapur in Khurasan,’ because Nishapur in Bayhaq is part of Khurasan, its regions are the best regions, and the blessed Prophet – peace be upon him – arrived in Khurasan and built in every city,” followed by an explanation of why the Arabs were drawn to Khurasan.16 In the fadāʾil section of the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Ibn Funduq identifies _ seven sahāba, two tābiʿūn, and twelve other notables who are not _ _ explicitly identified as a sahāba or as tābiʿūn. One of the Companions _ _ is al-ʿAbbāsbinMirdās al-Sulamī, a renowned poet who converted to Islam before the conquest of Mecca. Strikingly, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq claims the Companion al-ʿAbbāsbinMirdāsal-Sulamī as one of its own, having died in the district, although no other source associates him with Bayhaq. Regardless of the veracity of his claim, the purpose and effect of Ibn Funduq’sclaimonal-ʿAbbāsbinMirdās al-Sulamī is to intertwine the story of Bayhaq with the story of the formative years of Islam and to establish Bayhaq’s legitimacy as a Muslim city of significance. Al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī (d. after 23/644 and born approxi- mately in 570)17 was one of the Companions of the Prophet, a warrior of

14 al-Tirmidhī (d. 892), Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Kitāb45al-manāqib,Bāb 60, 977, hadith 4239. “Mā min ahad min ashābī yamūtu bi-ard illa buʿitha qāʾidan wa nūran lahum yaum al- _ _ _ _ qiyāma.” Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 22. 15 Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 22. 16 Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 22. 17 Seyyed Mohammad Seyyedi, “ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī 143 the Banū Sulaym, and a prominent poet classified as one of the mukha- dram poets who lived both during the Jahiliya and during the Islamic period.18 Al-ʿAbbās is cited in al-Balādhurī and Khalīfa b. Khayyātas _ collecting the zakāt alms tax from the Banū Sulaym on behalf of the Prophet, and he is purported to have been an envoy from the Prophet to the Arabs of Bādiya sent to persuade them to participate in the Battle of Tabūk.19 The data about al-ʿAbbās is so slim that it is not even clear what his full name is.20 Despite the paucity of factual data, the sources paint a vibrant portrait of him. There are two particularly famous stories about al- ʿAbbās. The first is his demand for more spoils of war after the Battle of Hunayn. This event is famous because Ibn Hishām, in his Sīra of the Prophet, devotes significant attention to this incident when al-ʿAbbās rebuked the Prophet for what he considered an unfairly meager share of the booty. The Prophet gave some men many camels but gave al-ʿAbbāsb. Mirdās only a few, so al-ʿAbbās retorted with a tart poem in which he demanded from the Prophet a greater share of the spoils of war.21 Muhammad subsequently complied with this demand. The second _ notable story about al-ʿAbbās is his conversion to Islam. The general characterization of al-ʿAbbās is that he abstained from drinking even before his life as a Muslim. Tārīkh-i Bayhaq largely echoes these claims. However, what is notable is that, in contrast to the other biographic sources, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq claims al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās one of its own inhabitants. Writing in the mid-twelfth century, a good 500 years after al-ʿAbbās’ death, Ibn Funduq claims that al-ʿAbbās is buried in Khosrojird, one of the chief

18 Renate Jacobi, “Mukhadram,” EI2. _ 19 Seyyedi cites al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf (Damascus, 1997) 1/629 and Khalīfa b. Khayyāt, Taʾrīkh, edited by, Suhayl Zakkār (n.p., n.d.) 1/75–76 as sources for the infor- _ mation on the zakat and al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās, and Dīwān al-ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās al-Sulamī, coll. and edited by, Yahyā al-Jubūrī (Baghdad, 1968), 24, as the sources for al-ʿAbbās _ being an enjoy to Bādiya. Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. 20 The following is according to Seyyedi: his kunya is alternatively Abū al-Fadl and Abū al- _ Haytham. His great-grandfather’s name is listed as Abū ʿĀmir or Abū Ghālib b. Rifāʿab. Ḥāritha. Seyyedi cites the following: Ibn Hazm,̣ Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab, 263; IbnʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿābfī maʿrifat al-ashāb 2/817; al-Marzubānī, Muʿjam al-shuʿarāʾ, 102. _ _ Blachère (Histoire de la littérature arabe, 274–275) estimates that he was born around 570. Abū ʿUbayda identifies as his mother al-Khansāʾ, the famous female Arab poet (see Abū al-Faraj, al-Aghānī 14/285, 301). On the other hand, some sources claim that all of Mirdās’s children, except for al-ʿAbbās, were al-Khansāʾ’s children (Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī, Simt al-laʾālī, 1/32). Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. _ 21 Ibn Hishām (d. 834), The Life of Muhammad, 594–595. 144 Living Virtues of the Land towns of the Bayhaq district.22 Ibn Funduq claims that al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās had children in Khosrojird and that his descendants are called the children of Mirdās. The descendants include shaykh Abū ʿAla al- Ḥusayn bin Abī al-Qāsamak Mirdās, who was the hadith teacher of his generation and transmitted many hadith from shaykh Ahmad bin ʿAlī _ bin Fātima al-Bayhaqī.23 _ However, if al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās is associated with any place in the biographical sources, it is with desert area surrounding Basra. Ibn Saʿd writes: “And Muhammad bin ʿUmar said: al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās did not _ live [in] Mecca, and neither did he live in Medina, and he engaged with military expeditions with the Prophet, and he returned to the country of his tribe24 and he settled in the Bādiya area near Basra and would go often to Basra, and the people of Basra spoke about him. The rest of his children were in the Bādiya [area] of Basra and a tribe descended [in] Basra.”25 Al-ʿAbbās allegedly visited Basra frequently and, we would infer, taught hadith there. Mizzī (654/1256–742/1341) also places al-ʿAbbās in Basra.26 His student Ibn Hajar concurs and claims “he settled in the Bādiya area near Basra.”27 There is nothing in the Sīra by Ibn Hisham that would imply that al-ʿAbbās died or settled in Khosrojird or anywhere in Bayhaq.28 All the sources agree or imply that wherever he settled, al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās taught hadith. He appears in the isnads of several collections of canonical hadith, including the Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Sunan Ibn Mājāh, Sunan al-Nasāʾī, and Sạhīh Muslim.29 Several sources claim that _ _

22 Bayhaq was conquered by the Muslim armies led by ʿAbd Allāhb.ʿĀmir in 30/650–651. Lambton, “Bayhaḳ,” EI2. On Khosrojird, see C. E. Bosworth, “Sabzawār,” EI2. Khosrojird and Sabzawār were two townships that together comprised the administrative district of Bayhaq. See also note 36 that follows in this chapter. 23 Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 25. 24 “Qoumihi” 25 Abū ʿAbd Allah Muhammad Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Tabaq̣ āt al-kabīr, (Cairo: Maktabat al- _ Khānjī, 2001), vol. 5, entry 821, 160–162. 26 “Wa nazala ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-bādīyat bi-nāhīyat al-Basra.” Al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb al- kamālfī asmāʾ al-rijāl, 35 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risālah, 2002), vol. 14, entry 3142, 249–252. 27 “Wa kāna yanzil al-bādiyyat bi-nihāyat al-Basra.” Ahmad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqa- _ lanī, Kitāb al-isābah fī tamyiz al-Sahābah, (Cairo, 1389–1396/1969–1976), vol. 3, entry 4502, 31. 28 Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. See al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās, 25; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, 2/820; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Isāba, 272; Ibn al-Athīr, 3/169. Other sources that _ place al-ʿAbbāsinBādiya are al-Istīʿābfī maʿrifat al-ashāb by IbnʿAbd al-Barr, Usd al- _ _ ghāba fī maʿrifat al-sahāba Ibn al-Athīr, and the Dīwān al-’Abbās ibn Mirdās al-Sulamī. _ _ 29 Some of the hadith in which al-ʿAbbās is featured in the isnad include: Sunan Abī Dawūd, entry 5236, Book of al-Adab, Bab 169, part (juzʾ) 2, 873 (or 872); Sunan Ibn Mājāh, al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī 145 al-ʿAbbās retired to Bādiya30 after the memorable events of his career such as the Battle of Hunayn, but a number of hadith transmitted by him suggest that he visited the Prophet several times over a long period of time.31 Al-ʿAbbās is consequently venerated as a Companion and trad- itionist.32 The content of the hadith are varied and unremarkable. One, for instance, falls into the tradition of adab, or general behavior or etiquette, and is the following: “Narrated ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) laughed [and] Abū Bakr or ʿUmar said to him: ‘May Allah make your teeth laugh!’ He then mentioned the trad- ition.”33 Mizzī,inTahdhīb al-kamālfī asmāʾ al-rijāl, mentions this hadith along with others in his entry on al-ʿAbbās.34 As a Companion who enjoyed firsthand knowledge of the Prophet, people would have asked al-ʿAbbās to teach and transmit hadith.Most sources claim that al-ʿAbbās did this in Basra and its environs. Tārīkh-i Bayhaq claims that al-ʿAbbās visited Bayhaq, while the other biographical sources clearly state that he settled in the Bādiya area near Basra. If al- ʿAbbās visited the Prophet a number of times over the intervening years,35 then it might be possible that he visited Bayhaq or Khosrojird during these years and taught hadith there, although it is only Tārīkh-i Bayhaq that asserts that he visited or settled in Khosrojird.36 One speculation is that Ibn Funduq and the hadith transmitters of Bayhaq cottoned onto al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās and inserted him into the

entry 3127, al-Manāsik, bāb 56, part (juz’) 1, 440; Sunan al-Nasāʾī, entry 3703, al- Habbat, bāb1, part (juz’) 2, 609; Sạhīh Muslim, entry 2490, al-zakāt, bāb 47, part (juzʾ) _ _ 1, 417. 30 Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. Seyyedi the following: al- ʿAbbās b. Mirdās, 25; cf. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, 2/820; Ibn Hajar,̣ al-Isāba, 272; Ibn al-Athīr, _ 3/169. 31 Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. Seyyedi cites the following: al- Fākihī, 5/16; Ibn Qāniʿ, 2/276–277; Ibn Hajar,̣ Tahdhīb, 5/130; idem, al-Isāba, 2/272; Ibn _ ʿAsākir, 26/402, 403. 32 Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. On the veneration of al-ʿAbbās as a Companion and traditionist, Seyyedi cites the following: al-Fākihī, 5/16; Ibn Qāniʿ,2/ 276–277; Ibn Hajar,̣ Tahdhīb, 5/130; Ibn Hajar,̣ al-Isāba, 2/272; Ibn ʿAsākir, 26/402, _ 403; al-Baghdādī, 7/23; Ibn Abī ʿĀsim, 74. _ 33 Sunan Abī Dāwūd, entry 5236, Book of al-Adab,Bāb 169, part (juzʾ) 2, 873 (or 872). 34 Mizzī cites the same hadith but cites Sunan Abī Dāwūd, entry 5234 (instead of 5236). 35 Seyyedi, “Al-ʿAbbās b. Mirdās,” Encyclopaedia Islamica. Seyyedi cites the following: al- Fākihī, 5/16; Ibn Qāniʿ, 2/276–277; Ibn Hajar,̣ Tahdhīb, 5/130; idem, al-Isāba, 2/272; Ibn _ ʿAsākir, 26/402, 403. 36 On Khosrojird, see C. E. Bosworth, “Sabzawār,” EI2. Khosrojird and Sabzawār were two townships that together comprised the administrative district of Bayhaq. See also note 22 earlier in this chapter. 146 Living Virtues of the Land isnads of hadith taught in Bayhaq, thus guaranteeing for Bayhaq the legacy of prophetic authority through association with a notable Com- panion. This is admittedly conjecture. However, it does not imply mali- cious deception. It is entirely possible that by the mid-twelfth century, when Ibn Funduq wrote the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, al-ʿAbbās had been a part of the isnads of hadith transmitted there for centuries. Perhaps, for all intents and purposes, what was once myth functioned as reality. If it is clear that an author such as Ibn Funduq, as well as his Iranian contemporaries, would associate a particular Companion with a city in order to gain religious legitimation and prestige through a connection with the Prophet, then it is still unclear why an author would choose a specific Companion. We do not know why Tārīkh-i Bayhaq associated al-ʿAbbās with the area. We might speculate that the lore in Bayhaq formed around al-ʿAbbāsbinMirdās al-Sulamī because of his name: there was once somebody in Bayhaq with the Arab name Mirdās, and since al-ʿAbbāsbinMirdās was a relatively famous Companion, the descendants of whoever the Bayhaqi Mirdās was might have been latched onto al-ʿAbbāsbinMirdās al-Sulamī and claimed him as their progenitor. In this type of folk lineage, an Iranian individual and his descendants gained legitimation through their lineage with a well- known Companion. The mechanics of forged or false genealogies suggest that being at a great geographic distance is linked with a propensity to a forged geneal- ogy, as are cases of “mistaken” identity of two individuals with the same name. For the former, if an individual were to make a false claim about membership in a prestigious lineage, he would be most likely to succeed in doing this far from his own known kin, who may not make any such claims. A false genealogical claim would be most likely to succeed if a man moved to a new community and claimed descent from a distant branch of a high-status lineage based far away from both his original home and his newly adopted one.37 Sincerely or intentionally mistaking two people with the same common name and attaching the individual to a prestigious lineage took advantage of the confusion arising from individuals with the same name.38 Whether this was the case for al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al- Sulamī in Bayhaq, however, remains speculation.

37 Zoltán Szombathy, “Moves and Techniques of Genealogical Forgery in Pre-Modern Muslim Societies,” in Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies,27–30. 38 Szombathy, “Moves and Techniques of Genealogical Forgery,” 30–31. al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī 147

Ultimately, we do not know why Ibn Funduq claimed that al-ʿAbbās lived in the environs of Bayhaq, but it is the mythic construction that is functionally relevant for Tārīkh-i Bayhaq. If al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al- Sulamī lived and died in the region, the entire district of Bayhaq would be legitimized through the living fadāʾil that were the descendents of al- _ ʿAbbās, who graced the city with their presence. Close to Bayhaq, Nishapur was a prominent city of religious signifi- cance while Bayhaq was a tax district with a string of villages. It would make sense for a person of religious knowledge who visited Bayhaq to also travel further east and visit Nishapur. To visit Bayhaq without continuing onto Nishapur would be analogous to a pilgrim visiting Jeddah but neglecting to continue onto Mecca. If al-ʿAbbās visited or lived in Bayhaq, we would expect him to appear in the tabaqāt of _ Nishapur. However, al-ʿAbbās does not appear in the tabaqāt of al- _ Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī. Of his descendants, the only named individual listed in the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq is shaykh Abū ʿAlāʾ al-Husayṇ bin Abī al-Qāsa- mak Mirdās, who was a hadith teacher who transmitted hadith he learned from the shaykh of the sunna Ahmad bin ʿAlī bin Fātima al-Bayhaqī. _ _ Neither al-ʿAbbās’s descendant nor the descendant’s hadith teacher has an entry in the tabaqāt of al-Ḥākim in Nishapur.39 This silence furthers _ the likelihood that the historical al-ʿAbbās may not have had any ties to Bayhaq. It is unlikely that we will ever know with certainty whether al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al- Sulamī lived and died in Bayhaq. What Tārīkh-i Bayhaq does suggest is that Ibn Funduq focuses on al-ʿAbbāsasalegitimatorfor his role as one of the sahāba who was a link to the Prophet. The context _ _ of the legal tradition that was developing during the ninth through twelfth centuries is largely irrelevant for the veneration of al-ʿAbbās, since he did not have a particularly notable reputation as a hadith transmitter. He is not in the isnads of a huge number of hadith.While revered as a transmitter and Companion, he is not amongst the most prominent of the Companions who transmitted hadith. For Ibn Funduq, what made al-ʿAbbās an important person was not his transmission of certain hadith, some of which were eventually included in what became the canonical collections, but rather his proximity to the Prophet through his position as a Companion. What mattered was al-ʿAbbās’s role as a Companion who tied Bayhaq to the Prophet.

39 Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (933–1014), Tārīkh Naysābūr: tabaqāt _ _ shuyūkh al-Ḥākim (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmīyah, 1427 [2006 or 2007]). 148 Living Virtues of the Land

fact, fiction, and myth

The story of Al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī, one of the pious Arab progenitors of the town of Bayhaq, contains mythic elements. The mythic element that weaves through his narrative does not undermine the signifi- cance of the event or person, nor is it clear what aspects of his story are mythic and which are veracious. Since mythic elements are those “motifs that the evolving culture of Islam, for whatever causes, happened to produce or preserve in its early stages,” whose continued survival amidst “transition suggests that they contain meanings too valuable to be jetti- soned,”40 the modern reader or even the medieval author and his audi- ence are unlikely to know what actually happened. My analysis of Tārīkh-i Bayhaq both challenges and builds on Pourshariati’s earlier work on the same text in three ways. Pourshariati observed that Iranian local histories in areas with small patterns of Arab settlement often emphasize the number of sahāba who settled in the _ _ region. In other words, the fewer the Arabs, the more discussion there is of them. This chapter builds on Pourshariati’s earlier observation and asks: what reasons might there be for a local history, such as Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, to emphasize the sahāba who settled in the city? It challenges and _ _ extends her earlier study by locating another Companion who Tārīkh-i Bayhaq identifies as belonging to the city who does not appear to be associated with Bayhaq in any other sources (he is in fact associated with a region in Iraq). Both of the preceding are part and parcel of the broader question that drives this book: how do the authors of local histories present their cities and their local identities, and why do they do so in these specific ways? For Ibn Funduq, al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī was an indelible part of the city’s biography and its genealogical heritage. Is it the possibility that al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī was a foundational member of early Islamic Bayhaq that gives the assertion its weight. The claim that he was amongst the earliest generation of Muslims in Bayhaq is no less significant for the fact that it might not be true. The strength of the claim, and therefore its importance for the lore about Bayhaq, rests upon its possi- bility. Cooperson warns, “Any consideration of fictionality and veracity in classical Arabic historiography must begin with the reminder that no

40 Julia Bray, “‘Abbasid Myth and the Human Act: Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih and others,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medival Arabic Literature, edited by, Phillip F. Kennedy (Wiesbaden: Harrassovitz Verlag, 2005), 7–8. Fact, Fiction, and Myth 149 discourse is intrinsically fictional or veracious. Rather, its status is deter- mined by conventions of reader reception,”41 and such a cautionary note applies equally to Persian historiography. Stressing the importance of plausibility in the Islamic tradition, Coop- erson emphasizes that “plausibility was usually expressed in terms of probability: that is, the likelihood (rather than the mere possibility) that a certain event had occurred. For Hadith scholars and jurists, very few texts could be the subject of a categorical predication of authenticity.... [and] Most biographers knew a thing or two about Hadith, and many were experts in it.”42 Since the curriculum of a scholar producing history would have included hadith along with knowledge of akhbār and other modes of knowledge, we can safely assume that plausibility, possibility, and probability were important considerations for historians. Based on biographical dictionaries such as Dhahabī’s Siyar aʿlām al- nubalāʾ, Cooperson analyzes the comments that Dhahabī inserts about the akhbār reports he uses in the biographical entries as a way to recon- struct Dhahabī’s criteria for assessing the veracity and plausibility of akhbār reports. Being one of the “hadith-minded biographers” like his predecessors Ibn ʿAsākir and al-Khatīb al-Baghdadī, Dhahabī was sensi- _ tive to the ways in which reports could be trusted and used.43 The isnad of a khabar report was precisely the type of evidence to which a hadith- minded scholar should be attuned. By analyzing the way in which Dha- habī comments on akhbār reports and their isnads, Cooperson recon- structs the bases on which Dhahabī evaluated akhbār reports and assessed their plausibility and likelihood of truth, which Dhahabī based largely on the standards of reliability of transmission and the suitability of a report for a particular purpose. Dhahabī tolerated varying degrees of plausibility or even unwittingly transmitted fabrications, but he thor- oughly objected to fabricated reports that were coupled with an impres- sive isnad in order to give them a false sheen of truth and reliability.44

41 Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic Biography,” 69. 42 Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic Biography,” 70. 43 Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic Biography,” 71. 44 Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic Biography,” 71–73. Cooperson cites Shams al-Din al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, edited by, Sạ̄lih al-Samr (Beirut: Muʿassasat al-Risala, 1304/1982). _ 150 Living Virtues of the Land

Cooperson’s findings demonstrate that the standards of hadith trans- mission inform biographical literature, with broad implications for wider genres of early Islamic historical writing. My argument about Ibn Funduq builds on Cooperson’s findings that biographical akhbār reports varied widely from fabricated to likely veracious, with a compiler such as Dha- habī sometimes including multiple reports of various pedigrees, inserting his opinion on their truth value through his comments. The author of Tārīkh-i Bayhaq likely took a very generous view of his sources, which draw on local knowledge and lore and give credence to the knowledge and opinion of the local community. In this sense, Ibn Funduq is not the most rigorous critic of his sources, but that was never his intention. His purpose is to collect local history and tradition, including local lore, to present a history of his city and his community. By presenting locally acknowledged belief in al-ʿAbbās’ descendants in the region, Ibn Funduq offers reports that, while uncorroborated, were held as valuable and probable for the inhabitants of Bayhaq. It is methodologically fruitful to extend Wael Hallaq’s analysis about Islamic law into new territory by applying some of his arguments about fiqh and hadith to local historical writing, especially hadith, narrative, and biographical material about the people who transmitted hadith in local histories. Hallaq argued earlier in the context of Islamic law that the modern anxiety over the authenticity of hadith – an issue to which scholars such as Goldziher and Schacht devoted extraordinary energy – is misguided and rests on the assumption that early and medieval Muslim scholars were convinced that the corpus of Prophetic hadith is largely genuine. Hallaq argues that since the medieval Muslim scholars did not necessary believe in the genuineness of Prophetic hadith, then the question of authenticity is a non-issue. If the medieval Muslim scholars were not convinced of the authenticity of Prophetic hadith, then modern scholarly attempts to determine their authenticity is irrelevant. Hallaq argues: “If both the traditionists and the jurists – the two most important groups in the study of hadīths – have acknowledged the precarious epistemological _ status of the literature, then we need not squander our energies in arguing about the matter of authenticity. We have been told that except for a score of hadīths, the rest engenders probability, and probability, as we know – _ and as we have also been unambiguously told by our sources – allows for mendacity and error. What more do we want?”45

45 Wael B. Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Haḍ īth: A Pseudo-Problem,” Studia Islamica 89 (1999): 90. Fact, Fiction, and Myth 151

Hallaq argues, contra Schacht, that traditional medieval Muslim scholars did not presume the authenticity of hadith. Rather, traditional scholars treated the vast majority of hadith as resting somewhere on a scale of probability of veracity. Hallaq’s methodology comes from within traditional scholarship itself, using the methods of usul al-fiqh to analyze the epistemic criteria for accepting hadith as authentic. The issue is one, in Hallaq’s analysis, of different “epistemic criteria for historical narrative” held by influential Orientalists such as Schacht and Goldziher, on one hand, and the epistemic criteria held by traditional medieval Muslim legal scholars for assessing the veracity of hadith, on the other. Hallaq argues that the Orientalists misunderstood the criteria of traditional Muslim juridical scholarship: the former assumed that Muslim scholars held hadith as authentic, whereas, Hallaq argues, traditional Muslim legal scholarship held that the authenticity of hadith could only be asserted to varying degrees of probability, not apodidactic truth.46 Ibn Funduq, the author of Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, took a generous view of the local traditions relating to the presence and legacy of al-ʿAbbas al-Mirdās and his descendants in Bayhaq. Ibn Funduq does not comment on the reliability of his sources, nor does he make any rigorous attempt to corrobor- ate them. That was not his point. While medieval historians were often trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, including hadith, Ibn Funduq’s stated aim is to record the history of Bayhaq and its scholars and inhabitants. Ibn Funduq set out and succeeded to outline the history and lore of his town and its inhabitants as he understood and wished to present it, privileging the local community’s understanding of itself and tying Bayhaq to important figures in early Islamic history who were proximate to the Prophet. The case of al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī and the way that he is presented in _ Tārīkh-i Sīstān is one way in which the categorical boundaries of ulama, awliyā, sahāba,andtābiʿūn are overlapping and blurred. In the person of _ _ al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī, these categories converge on the aspect of his character _ that is most integral to why and how Tārīkh-i Sīstān claims him as one of their own and a foundational member of the city: his proximity to the Prophet. al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī’s close affiliation with the early Muslim _

46 Wael B. Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Haḍ īth: A Pseudo-Problem,” 75–90. In contrast to legal theoreticians, the traditionists, or those who focused on hadith, were concerned with the utility of hadith for its value in guiding religious praxis (ʿamal). Consequently, the traditionists were uninterested in the issue of certainty versus prob- ability, but instead sought out hadith that met the minimum criteria for “soundness” for its utility in religious praxis. On this latter point, see Wael B. Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Haḍ īth: A Pseudo-Problem,” 83–86. 152 Living Virtues of the Land community and his role as a pious exemplar in Sistan links the reigon, on the far fringes of empire, to the Prophet’s legacy.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i sı¯sta¯ n and al-hasan al-basrı¯ ˙ ˙ Binding a location with a pious exemplar, even if the case is tenuous, recurs in Persian local histories contemporary with Tārīkh-i Bayhaq.The anonymous fifth-/eleventh-century Tārīkh-i Sīstān claims the famous Suc- cessor al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī (b. 21/642 Medina, d. 110/728 Basra) for Sistan _ by portraying him as a foundational member at the moment of the region’s establishment as an Islamic region with urban centers, a claim that secures prophetic legacy and Islamic legitimacy for the region. Sistan refers to a region of southeast Persia south of Khurasan and north of Baluchistan, and that falls within the boundaries of both modern Iran and Afghanistan.47 According to the text, “ʿAbd al-Rahman [ibn Samora] built the congre- gational mosque of Sistan, and [al-]Hasaṇ [al-]Basri constructed the _ mihrāb. For three years [al-] Hasaṇ [al-] Basri sat most of the time in _ _ the congregational mosque of Sistan, and the people of Sistan studied with him.”48 Additionally, the text credits al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī with having _ a foundational role in establishing Sistan as an Islamic region. In the section about the arrival of Rabīʿ al-Ḥārethī in Sistan as its administrator in the Year 46/666–667, the text claims, “Upon his return to Sistan, [Rabīʿ al-Ḥārethī, the administrator] set up a treasury with secretaries, accountants, a collector of taxes, regulators of accounts, inspectors, and other trustworthy officials. All this was the work of [al-] Hasaṇ [al-] Basrī, _ who came here [to Sistan] with Rabīʿ. Rabīʿ would do nothing until he asked him [al- Hasaṇ al-Basrī].”49 Based on Ibn Saʿd, Balādhurī, and Ibn _ Qutayba, Bosworth does not challenge the claim in Tārīkh-i Sīstān that the Persian-speaking al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī, who was himself of ethnically _

47 For a detailed history of Sistan, see Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, and Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan. For a summary, see Bosworth, “Sīstān,” EI2; Bosworth, “TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN,” EIr. al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī is also invoked by the author of a late _ twelfth-/early thirteenth-century al-Tadwīnfī akhbār Qazwīn, a local history of Qazwin. Savant argues that his depiction echoes the portrayal of Salmān al-Fārisī as a bridge between the Arab and Iranian worlds and also adduces information on Salmān al-Fārisī and his Iranian origins. Savant, The New Muslims,90–91. 48 Tārīkh-i Sīstān, Anonymous, edited by, Malik al-Shuʿarāʾ Bahār (Tehran: AHS 1314/ 1935–1936), 88–99; Tārīkh-e Sīstān, Anonymous, translated by, Milton Gold (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1976), 71. 49 Tārīkh-i Sīstān, edited by, Bahār, 91–92. See also Tārīkh-e Sistan, translated by, Gold, 73–74. Tārīkh-i Sīstān and al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī 153 _

Persian origin (his father’s original name was Fīrūz before he was renamed Abū al- Hasaṇ Yasār) taught for almost three years in the congregational mosque in Zarang. It is documented that al-Hasaṇ al- Basrī accompanied ʿAbd al-Rahmān b. Samūra in 43/663 to Zamīndāwar _ _ and Kabul, and served as secretary to al-Rabīʿ b. Ziyād upon the latter’s appointment as governor of Sistan in 46/666.50 The anonymous author emphasized Al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī’s role in the _ development of Sistan not because of his reputation as a hadith transmit- ter but because of his increasing prestige within the ascetic mystical tradition. In fact, al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī was accused by Ibn Saʿd of transmit- _ ting hadith from people he had never met as well as changing the wording (although not the meaning) of hadith.51 Ibn Saʿd includes a tradition from Yahya b. Saʿīd al-Qatttān that he heard that the hadith that al-Hasaṇ _ __ transmitted was from a book.52 Another tradition has Abū Hurayra emphasize the importance of wudūʾ, a tradition that al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī _ transmitted with significantly different wording, although with the same essential meaning.53 Despite the number of hadith al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī is _ said to have transmitted from Abū Hurayra, Ibn Saʿd includes a tradition that states that al-Hasaṇ never heard hadith from Abū Hurayra.54 Dhahaḅ ī also transmits a statement by Ibn ʿAwn that al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī _ transmitted the meaning of traditions: “Kāna al-Hasaṇ yarwī bil- maʿanā.”55 Al-Hasaṇ was apparently also known for tadlīs, which means that he was accused of transmitting from vague and weak transmitters and of transmitting traditions with a concealed defect in the isnad.56

50 Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs, 22–23, 25–26. 51 Suleiman Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī (d.110H/ _ 728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 47. 52 Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Tabaq̣ āt al-kabīr, vol. 9, 158. For the entry on al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī, see _ 157–178. 53 In this instance, Abū Hurayra transmitted a hadith stating what whoever changed wudūʾ would go to hell, whereas al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī transmitted this hadith by stating “Never _ omit wudūʾ (lā adaʿuhu abadan).” Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Tabaq̣ āt al-kabīr, vol. 9, 159. For the entry on al-Hasan al- Basrī, see 157–178. _ 54 Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Tabaq̣ āt al-kabīr, vol. 9, 159. For the entry on al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī, see _ 157–178. 55 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dhahaḅ ī (1274–1348), Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, vol. 4, 583. _ _ For the entry on al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī, see 563–588. _ 56 Dhahaḅ ī (1274–1348), Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, vol. 4, 588. For the entry on al-Hasaṇ al- Basrī, see 563–588. Mourad, who examined al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī’s sanctification in later _ _ historical literature, builds his argument on a claim that Juynboll made decades ago, the principle of which applies more generally to sahāba and tābiʿūn who became prominent: _ _ “[al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī] cannot possibly be identified with hadith transmission on any _ 154 Living Virtues of the Land

Al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī was desirable as a foundational member of Sistan _ not because he was a venerated traditionist, but because of his increas- ingly pietistic credentials and his religious prestige. After his death, al- Hasaṇ al-Basrī became notable for his asceticism and piety, and mystical _ movements framed al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī as an early forerunner of their _ movements. Despite having died in 728 CE in Basra, he appeared quite anachronistically in Sufi narratives alongside Ibrāhīmb.Adham (d. 777) _ and Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawīyya (d. 801).57 Al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī’s lack of success as _ a hadith transmitter was no impediment to his later importance as a pious early forerunner of Sufism. This phenomenon of latching onto a pious exemplar who wields reli- gious prestige and authority extends beyond local histories and into the biographical literature and across multiple other genres.58 Brockopp argued that the contradictory material in the biographical accounts of early pious characters, particularly those who become very important, are significant in that they reveal how the characters were cast and recast in different molds that emphasized different roles – such as legal expert, Sufi, philosopher, or theologian, in the case of Abū Haṃ īd al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – depending on the author’s aim and focus.59 Exemplary individuals, in contrast to their more average counterparts, are credited with so much contradictory material precisely because of their importance to various parties and interests. The plurality of portraits in the biographical material of an early exemplar, such as Sahnūnb.Saʿīd _ (d. 854) suggests that, while in “a strict historicist sense, most of these tales do not hold up to scrutiny,” nevertheless “their pluriform nature renders them adaptable to a wider variety of circumstances than would a simple, uniform vision of a man.”60 In the case of Sahnūnb.Saʿīd, his _ stature and status increased in the years after his death, and so the

measurable scale, if at all. But as his fame spread, a rapidly increasing number of people falsely claimed, especially after his death, that they had heard traditions with him.” Juynboll, Muslim Tradition, 50. See also Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History. 57 Michael A. Sells, trans., Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qurʾan, Miraj, Poetic and Theo- logical Writings/translated, edited, and with an introduction by Michael A. Sells (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 151–170. 58 On the discourse of power at work in narratives about shrines, saints, and rulers in South Asia, see Nile Green, “Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-Membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad,” Modern Asian Studies, 38: 2 (May, 2004), 419–446. 59 Jonathan Brockopp, “Contradictory Evidence and the Exemplary Scholar: The Lives of Sahnūnb.Saʿīd (d. 854),” IJMES, 43: 1 (Feb. 2011): 115–132. _ 60 Brockopp, “Contradictory Evidence and the Exemplary Scholar,” 127. Identities, Boundaries, and Definitions 155 biographical material written 200 years after this death is paradoxically more elaborate than the material written by a student of his student.61 Similarly, the incorporation of al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī as a foundational _ member of Sistan was not due to any venerated position as a hadith transmitter, but because of his increasing religious prestige and pietistic authority as an ascetic exemplar within mystical movements.

identities, boundaries, and definitions

Categories of belonging integral to our understanding of the medieval Islamicate world, such as ulama, sainthood/wilāya, sahāba, and tābiʿūn _ _ are necessary and useful, but they can also misleadingly suggest that these categories are mutually exclusive when they are in fact fluid. The plasticity of the term patrician, discussed earlier in this chapter, underscores how there were multiple overlapping groups who collectively comprised a city’s hereditary elite. The boundaries and definitions of these identities were not fixed across time and place in the medieval world, and the use of these terms should be approached with caution. While the terms ulama and Sufis, or awliyāʾ, are frequently presented as different categories of belonging and identity, ample work has demonstrated the permeability of these boundaries. Based on examining “wonder working scholars”62 in Ayyubid and early Mamluk biographical sources, Talmon-Heller draws attention to the sacred powers of blessing (baraka), intercession (shafāʿa), and performance of miracles (karāmāt).63 As Morimoto has recently and convincingly argued, Talmon-Heller’s approach is pioneering in its sug- gestion that ulama may be approached as a category of saintly figures, but it generally overstates the difference between the categories of ulama and awliyāʾ, when in fact the boundaries between the two categories was non- exclusive and, as Talmon-Heller notes, “porous” and overlapping.64 Such

61 Brockopp, “Contradictory Evidence and the Exemplary Scholar,” 117–118. 62 Daniella Talmon-Heller, “`Ilm, Baraka, Shafa`a – the Resources of Ayyubid and Early Mamluk `Ulama,” Mamluk Studies Review, 13: 2 (2009): 3. 63 Talmon-Heller, “`Ilm, Baraka, Shafa`a,” 1–23. 64 Kazuo Morimoto, “The Prophet’s Family as the Perennial Source of Saintly Scholars: Al- Samhudi on ʿIlm and Nasab,” in Family Portraits with Saints, 106–124. On the “porous” nature of the divisions between these communities, Talmon-Heller, “ʿIlm, Baraka, Sha- faʿa,” 19. Overstating the differences between the categories of scholars and Sufisis undermined, in Morimoto’s analysis, by the existence of a work from roughly the same period by the Egyptian Sufi, Hasanid, and Shāfiʿī scholar Al-Samhūdī (844–911/ 1440–1506), the Jawāhir al-ʿiqdayn fī fadl al-sharafayn [Jewels of the Two Necklaces on the Merits of the Two Kinds of Nobility] that characterizes ulama as awliyāʾ and 156 Living Virtues of the Land categories of belonging are fluid, permeable, and overlapping. Like the sahāba adduced in Tārīkh-Bayhaq and Al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī’s foundational _ _ _ roles enumerated in Tārīkh-i Sīstān, the many individuals who are con- sidered Tabaristan’s living jewels weave these regions on the peripheries of the Islamic empire into central narratives of the Muslim umma.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i tabarista¯ n: conquest, rebellion, and local autonomy˙

“Tabaristan is a district on a plain, beside the lake; here also are moun- tains. Rain is abundant. It is a squalid, depressing, dirty, fleasome place,”65 sniffed Muhammad ibn Ahmad Muqaddasī (b. ca. 946), _ _ approximately two centuries before Ibn Isfandiyār penned his Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, a regional history about the land on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, located in modern Iran.66 In its much more positive description of the region, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān includes distinctly pre- Islamic Persian characteristics, Islamic characteristics, and those that are neither explicitly pre-Islamic nor Islamic. The Islamic characteristics of the region that the author stresses – a strong and sustained emphasis on the family of the Prophet, ʿAlids, and Shiʿi Imams – secures prophetic legacy and Islamic legitimacy for Tabaristan.67 The dual focus on the

characterizes the features of ulama-awliyāʾ, of whom descendants of the Prophet are ulama-awliyā par excellence. Morimoto, “The Prophet’s Family as the Perennial Source of Saintly Scholars: Al-Samhudi on ‘Ilm and Nasab,” 106–124. Al-Samhūdī, who later settled in Medina, is therefore the embodiment of the very category of Prophetic descend- ant and ulama-awliyāʾ that he describes and lauds. 65 Collins, Best Divisions, 313; Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 354. _ 66 On the history of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān and its author, see Chapter 3. 67 The definition of who precisely was part of the Ahl al-Bayt changed over time. Daftary argues that in the “formative period, though the imāms who succeeded al-Husayn continued to come chiefly from amongst the ʿAlids, the Prophet’s family was still defined more broadly in its old tribal sense. It covered the various branches of the Banū Hāshim, the leading Quraysh clan, regardless of direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad _ himself. The Ahl al-Bayt, then, included the progeny of Muhammad through Fātima and _ _ ʿAlī as well as those of his two paternal uncles; not only the Tālibids, the descendants of Abū Tālib (d. ca. 619) through his sons ʿAlī and Jaʿfar (d. 8/629), but even the ʿAbbasids, the descendants of al-ʿAbbās (d. ca. 32/653) who had embraced Islam only in 8/630.” The narrowing of Ahl al-Bayt into a more restricted group came during the ʿAbbasid era. “It was later, after the accession of the ʿAbbasids, that the Shīʿīs came to define the Ahl al- Bayt more restrictively to include only the descendants of the Prophet through Fātima, _ known as the Fātimids (covering both the Hasanidṣ and Husaynids);̣ while the bulk of _ non-Zaydī Shīʿīs had come to acknowledge chiefly the Husayniḍ Fātimids. The latter _ definition was the one adopted by the Twelver and Ismāʿīlī Shīʿīs.” For the Zaydī Shīʿīs, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān 157 related phenomena of Tabaristan’s fierce independence and its propensity to resist control by caliphal forces stresses the local dynamics of the region in relation to the caliphal center. Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān’s treatment of sahāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, and other descendants of the Prophet evidence _ _ the dynamic of Ibn Isfandiyār making what is global – belonging to the Muslim umma – local and Persian without erasing or suppressing a fierce localism. Ibn Isfandiyār’s dual emphasis on pre-Islamic local and Talibi sayyid elements occurs in the context of the local political balance of power. A host of forces ruled Tabaristan, including local dynasts, ʿAlid sayyids, external dynasties, and Arab governors administering the region for the caliphate. Important local families of pre-Islamic origin included the families of Gushnasp; the Sasanian prince Kāwūs son of Kawādh; Zarmihr; GīlGāwbāra; the Bāwāndids, who traced their lineage back to Kāwūs; the Qārinids, who descend from a brother of Zarmihr; and the Paduspanids or Baduspanids.68 Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān describes multiple uprisings and repeated episodes of resistance to external dynasties and forces that attempted to control it. Pre-Islamic local nobles and ʿAlid sayyids, along with other local families who carried less influence, were the leading local dynasts in medieval Tabaristan.69 There is numismatic evidence that multiple local, external, and central powers minted coins in Tabaristan. These include Arab governors appointed by the caliph, and from the third/ninth century, ʿAlid dāʿīs and the Samanids.70 In the later periods the competing dynasties of the Buyids, Samanids, and Ziyarids all minted coins. There is also coinage issued by the local Bawandid Ispahbad rulers.71 Local dynasties during

“The Zaydīs originally maintained that the imāmate might legitimately be held by any member of the Ahl al-Bayt, though later restricting it to the Fātimids. This was under the _ condition that the claimant possessed the required religious learning along with certain other pious qualities; he would also have to be able to launch an uprising (khurūj), as Zayd [b. ʿAlī] was to do, against the illegitimate ruler of the time (70).” Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 57–58, 69, 70. See also Chapter 3 for a discussion of sayyids and sharīfs. 68 V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. 69 V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. 70 Zaydi ʿAlids’ minted coins in Amul, Hawsam, Qazvin, Muhammadiya, and Nishapur indicate ʿAlid presence and activity not only in Tabaristan but also in the northern Jibal region, Gilan, and Khurasan. Vardanyan, “Numismatic Evidence for the Presence of Zaydī ‘Alids,” 355–374. 71 Those who minted coins include Arab governors appointed by the caliph, such as Khālid b. Barmak, in whose name coins are issued from 150/767, as well as Umar b. ʿAlāʾ, who issued coins from 155/772. From the third/ninth century there is also evidence for coins minted by the ruling ʿAlid dāʿī s, including al-Hasaṇ b. Zayd b. Muhammad, Dāʿī al- _ 158 Living Virtues of the Land this period established control elsewhere in Iran, and the swelling ranks of these dynasts included the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, Ziyarids, Ghaz- nawids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmshahs, Mongols, Sarbadars, Timurids, and later the Safavids. Rivalries between competing notable dynastic families shaped the history of Tabaristan, and even led to what was essentially a civil war in eastern Tabaristan between the powerful Ispahdbudhān and Qārin families during the 660s and 670s.72 Independence from caliphal control is a large theme in Ibn Isfandiyār’s text. Dynastic families in the region enjoyed significant autonomy after the Arab conquests, though they were at times at war with each other. That ʿAlids and other competing rulers and dynasts were minting coins, notably with their own inscriptions that do not necessary mention the ʿAbbasid caliph, indicates the limits of caliphal power during this time.73 Some Caspian and Khwarazmian dynasties can be traced back to the Sasanian period. These dynasties include the Baduspanids or Paduspanid (45–1006/665–1599) in Gilan and Tabaristan, who traced their origin to Gāvbāra, who was appointed governor of the Caspian regions by the last Sasanid Emperor, Yazdigird III (632–651). Gāvbāra’s sons were the pro- genitors of dynasties in Gilan and Tabaristan. The Dabuyids (40–144/ 660–761) and the Bāwāndids (45–750/665–1349) can also be traced to the Sasanian period, and they traced their genealogy to Bāw, who was “either the Ispahbad of Tabaristan appointed by Khusrau Aparvīz (591–628) or a leading Zoroastrian of Rayy.”74

conquest and rulership in early medieval tabaristan

Rulership in early medieval Tabaristan was characterized by only inter- mittent caliphal control of the region from 22/644. The protective terrain

Kabīr[q.v.], from 253/867. Dynasts who acknowledged the suzerainty of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, such as the Sāmānids (who controlled Āmul from 289/902), minted coinage with Sunni markings. V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. 72 Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 306–310. 73 Vardanyan, “Numismatic Evidence for the Presence of Zaydī ‘Alids,” 355–374. Pourshar- iati convincingly argues that in Gilan and Tabaristan, Jīl-i Jīlānshāh from the family of Āl-i Jamasp and Ispahbudhān Farrukhzād from the family of Ispahbudhān represented the two most powerful families. Ispahbudhān Farrukhzād (also known as Bāv) was ruler of Khur- asan with authority over Tabaristan, and Jīl-iJīlānshāh controlled Gilan. They both signed a peace treaty with the Arabs, who subsequently permitted them significant autonomy in the administration of their territories. Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 304–36. 74 Bosworth, “Heritage of Rulership,” 55. Conquest and Rulership in Early Medieval Tabaristan 159 of Tabaristan explains to some extent the sporadic caliphal control of the region. The mountainous region of Tabaristan, generally known from the Seljuq era onwards as Mazandaran, runs along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, and lies between Gilan and Daylam to its west and Gurgan (Jurgan) to the east.75 As a consequence of the natural defenses of the region against attack or control, the region fostered a strong independent streak, which Ibn Isfandiyār underscores with his emphasis on pre-Islamic Persian and ʿAlid sayyid dynasts of the region, as well as the recurring theme of local autonomy and rebellion that runs through Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān.76 There remain considerable questions about when the conquest of Tabaristan occurred.77 Pourshariati offers a detailed examination and analysis of the conquest of Gurgan and Tabaristan and notes that Tabaṛ ī gives 18/639 as the date of the conquest of Gurgan, while Balʿamī states that the Ispahbad Farrukhān made peace on behalf of Qumis, Gurgan, and Tabaristan with Suwayd in 22/642–643. Pourshariati ultimately offers a revised chronology and concludes that 30/650–651 is the most likely date for the conquest of Gurgan and Tabaristan, during which time an enigmatic figured named Zīnabī Abū’l-Farrukhān (who Pourshariati identifies as the same person as Ispahdbudhān Farrukhzād) held authority as the “ispahbud-i ispahbudhān” over Khurasan, Tabaristan, and all of the ispahbads in Tabaristan.78 Arab control of Tabaristan was only intermittent after the conquests and local rulers exercised a degree of autonomy. The Umayyad governor Yazīd b. al-Muhallab failed to subju- gate Tabaristan during an unsuccessful conquest from around 98/716 to 100/718, though some Arab settlers may have established themselves in Tabaristan and Gurgan.79

75 Ed, “Tabarisṭ ān,” EI2. 76 On the ʿAlid influence and Caspian Zaydi community in the region, see Madelung, “Abū Ishāq al-Sạ̄bī,” 17–57. For a description and analysis of Tabaristan, see LeStrange, The _ Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 368–376. Daftary notes that during the late fifth/eleventh century, “Daylam, a stronghold of Zaydī Shīʿīsm, was not only out of the reach of the Saljuqs, but it had also been penetrated by the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa.” This is the era of Hasan-ị Sabbāh (d. 518/1124), the leader of the Nizarī state in Persia based in Alamut. Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 338. 77 For a detailed discussion of the conquest of Gurgan and Tabaristan, see Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 253–281; 303–318. 78 Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 254–256; 250–257; 256; 305. On Zīnabī Abū’l-Farrukhān being the same person as Ispahdbudhān Farrukhzād, see 264–265. 79 For discussion of this chronology and Yazīd b. al-Muhallab’s failed conquest of Tabari- stan, see Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 310–313. 160 Living Virtues of the Land

The Abbasids only succeeded in asserting greater control over Tabari- stan a decade into their rule in 144/761.80 The early Abbasid caliphs succeeded only erratically in ruling Tabaristan. Even then, the early Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī (third Abbasid caliph, 126 or 127–169/ 743–745–785, r.158–169/775–785) exercised intermittent control. The brief reign of his son Mūsa al-Hādī (r.169–170/785–786), who succeeded al-Mahdī upon his death, pursued policies hostile to the ʿAlids, unlike his father. al-Mahdī’s other son Harūn, the fifth and anti-ʿAlid Abbasid caliph who took the title al-Rashīd (b.149/766 or earlier in 145/763, d. 193/809; r. 170–193/786–809) also only succeeded in sporadic control of the region.81 Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes the historical independence of the region and characterizes Tabaristan as a refuge and a stronghold of kings and self-sufficient in its products, blessed in its fecundity and its strength.82 Ibn Isfandiyār celebrates how the famous and the powerful alike took refuge in the court of Ispahbad ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla ʿAlī b. Shahriyār b. Qārin.83 Despite Ibn Isfandiyār’s propensity to emphasize Tabaristan’s ʿAlid ties, he describes fadāʾil from both the Islamic and pre-Islamic era in _ addition to the virtues and marvels of Tabaristan.84 The natural virtues of the region include the fertility of the land, the excellent merchandise that Tabaristan produces, its mineral wealth, the health and beauty of the women, the absence of harmful animals and plagues, its lack of poverty, and, suggestively, its light taxes.85 Ibn Isfandiyār does not elide the

80 V. Minorsky and R. Vasmer, “Māzandarān,” EI2. On the final conquest of Tabaristan, see also Pourshariati, Decline and Fall, 316–318. 81 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:185–189; Browne, Abridged Translation, 128–132. 82 To this end, Ibn Isfandiyār includes a story about Shahr-Khwāstān, a rich man, who chides the Ispadbad Farrukhān, who had essentially claimed that he the Ispahbad had brought material wealth, progress, and trade to Tabaristan. Shahr-Khwāstān proves that Tabaristan had enjoyed all these things before the arrival of Ispadbad Farrukhān. Shahr- Khwāstān proves that Tabaristan does not depend on other countries for imported goods and actually existed in self-sustaining comfort and nobody else coveted Tabaristan; it is only after the Ispahbad brought attention to Tabaristan, Shahr-Khwāstān claims, that people began to covet Tabaristan and the region had problems. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:76–78; Browne, Abridged Translation,30–32. 83 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:107–108; Browne, Abridged Translation,58–60. 84 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān,1:76–89; Browne, Abridged Translation,30–42. 85 Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:76–81; Browne, Abridged Translation,30–34. There are also fantastical and superstitious sounding stories, such as the place where, when there is a drought, people throw crushed onions, at which point it rains but the person who crushed the onions dies; marvelous, odd, or unusual things (ʿajāʾib) such as the village where people die early and don’t live past twenty years; and even an alleged Resistance and Revolt 161 pre-Islamic Persian characteristics of Tabaristan, nor does he attempt to portray them in ways that are Islamically acceptable. These distinctly pre-Islamic elements of Tabaristan include the existence of wagers and gambling,86 wine parties,87 mythical stories about the pre-Islamic charac- ters and kings of Tabaristan in the region’s foundational narratives,88 and mythical tales, such as the story of Rustam-i-Zāl and the episode of Rustam slaying Suhrāb and then allegedly burying him in Sārī.89 Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān also brims with Islamic characteristics, especially those that emphasize the region’s Shiʿi credentials and ties to ʿAlid sayyids. There is a section devoted to the sayyids who ruled in Tabari- stan.90 As in other Persian local histories, Ibn Isfandiyār records the names of notables and the places they visited, such as Imam Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī visiting a place called Māmtīr.91 Ibn Isfandiyār adduces anecdotes _ about notable pious Muslims, such as the famous ascetic and proto-Sufi al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī.92 Ibn Isfandiyār’s literary repertoire includes references _ to Abrahamic narratives, such as that of Sāmiri’s golden calf.93 Beyond the general Islamic characteristics of the rulers of Tabaristan, it is the specifically ʿAlid sayyid ties that Ibn Isfandiyār underscores. Spec- tacular and generous gifts lavished by the Ispahbad, the local ruler of Tabaristan, during Hajj season included gifts to the poor, and the amirs of Mecca, and to multiple shrines of members of the house of the Prophet. The purpose of this catalog of gifts is to underscore the spectacular generosity of the Ispahbad towards the shrines of the Shiʿi Imams and other pious figures.94

resistance and revolt

Tabaristan chafed under central control. Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān indicates that the region repeatedly erupted in episodes of revolt against the caliph.

dragon in Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh Tabaristān, 1:88–89; Browne, Abridged translation,40–42. 86 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:113–114; Browne, Abridged Translation, 66. 87 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:93, 1:112–113; Browne, Abridged Translation, 46, 65. 88 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:56–76; Browne, Abridged Translation,14–30. 89 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:81–82; Browne, Abridged Translation, 35. 90 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:94–106; Browne, Abridged Translation, 47–58. 91 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:73; Browne, Abridged Translation, 27. 92 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:55; Browne, Abridged Translation, 13. 93 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:46; Browne, Abridged Translation,9. 94 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:120; Browne, Abridged Translation, 70. 162 Living Virtues of the Land

In Ibn Isfandiyār’s view, the presence of religious notables and authorities justifies the region’s righteous fiscal and administrative localism. Tabari- stan’s political and fiscal independence reinforces the image of Tabaristan as a community set apart and a haven for ʿAlids. Ibn Isfandiyār documents numerous instances when Tabaristan revolted in outbursts of anti-Arab and anti-caliph sentiment. Many of the disputes were over the levying and collection of taxes. Ibn Isfandiyār introduces Ahmad ibn Hanbaḷ (164–241/780–855) in a context that _ attests to the historical independence of Tabaristan and its propensity to resist invasion and control, particularly when incited over its fiscal admin- istration. In a particular year when there was a large earthquake, Ahmad _ ibn Hanbaḷ suggested that Tabaristan should be taxed more heavily, because Tabaristan had not surrendered to caliphal control willingly with a treaty but had been subdued by force.95 This instigated resentment and violence. According to Ibn Isfandiyār, “A day was then fixed on which the people of Tabaristan should make a general massacre of all Arabs and servants of the Caliph. This was done; and so thoroughly were the Tabaristanis in accord that women who were married to the followers of the Caliphs dragged their husbands out of their houses by their beards, and delivered them over to the executioners, so that in all Tabaristan not an Arab was left.”96 The caliph al-Mahdī heard of this uprising and arranged a retaliatory attack, but the caliph’s forces were defeated by the people of Tabaristan. Tabaristan was a region that was only intermittently governed by caliphal rule to such an extent that, when push came to shove, the local women privileged their alle- giance to Tabaristan over their bonds of marriage to men loyal to the caliph. Ibn Isfandiyār also describes the revolt of the Qārinid prince Wandād- Hurmuzd97 and the Ispahbad SharwīnBāwandid against the caliph’s armies. This revolt began in 165/781 during the reign of the third Abbasid caliph Muhammad ibn Mansūr al-Mahdī (r.158–169/ _ 775–785) and continued after the reign of his son Harūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–193/786–809). Harūn al-Rashīd is the caliph featured in this story. The unruly people of Tabaristan, galvanized and organized by the

95 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:182; Browne, Abridged Translation, 125. 96 This is Browne’s translation. Browne, Abridged Translation, 126; Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:183. 97 These Qārinids were a local dynasty of Tabaristan who ruled over parts of Tabaristan’s mountains areas for around 300 years from the era of Sasanian Khusraw I, known as Khusraw Anushirvan (r. 531–579 CE), until 225/840. M. Rekaya, “Ḳārinids,” EI2. Resistance and Revolt 163

Qārinid prince Wandād-Hurmuzd and his ally in this venture Sharwīn Bāwand,98 revolt against the caliph’s forces and kill his governors. In Ibn Isfandiyār’s telling, Harūn al-Rashīd considers the revolt and slaughter justified, deeming that the people of Tabaristan revolted against an unjust governor. The injustice of the governor justifies the revolt against him. Harūn al-Rashīd then sends to Tabaristan ʿAbdullāhb.Saʿīd al-Harashī as the new governor, who governed for three years and four months.99 In Ibn Isfandiyār’s account of the Qārinid prince Wandād-Hurmuzd and the Ispahbad SharwīnBāwandid’s rebellion, Harūn al-Rashīd agrees with the people of Tabaristan that they were saddled with an unjust governor against whom they reasonably revolted. Harūn al-Rashīd expli- citly agrees with the region’s claims of greater political autonomy and implicitly supports the region’s religious independence and fierce localism. However, other sources reveal a different picture. Tabaṛ ī’s terse account of the revolt in 185/801–802 includes no inkling that Harūn al-Rashīd approved of or condoned the Tabaristanis’ slaughter of his governor. Tabaṛ ī simply notes that the people of Tabaristan killed the governor of that province, Mahrūyah al-Rāzī, and that Harūn al-Rashīd appointed Abdullāhb.Saʿīd al-Harashī as his replacement.100 There is nothing to suggest that Harūn was pleased with the disintegration of the Abbasid empire. According to Ibn Isfandiyār, a long-simmering revolt came to a brutal climax during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harūn al-Rashīd, who considers the Tabaristan revolt and slaughter justified on the basis that the people of Tabaristan revolted against an unjust governor.101 Harūn al-Rashīd then sends ʿAbdullāhb.Saʿīd al-Harashī to Tabaristan as the new governor, who governed for three years and four months.102 The purpose of Ibn Isfandiyār’s narrative is to vindicate the ʿAlids of

98 The Bāwandids were a long-standing Iranian dynasty that ruled in Tabaristan for more than 700 years (45–750/665–1349), primarily in the mountain regions but also in the lowlands of Tabaristan, which lie to the south of the Caspian Sea. R. N. Frye, “Bāwand,” EI2. 99 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:196; Browne, Abridged Translation, 140–141. 100 Tabaṛ ī (d. 923), The History of al-Tabaṛ ī, XXX: 174–175. 101 The Qārinid prince Wandād-Hurmuzd, along with the Ispahbad Sharwīn the Bāwandid, revolted against the caliph’s armies in 165/781. The armed confrontation began during the reign of the third Abbasid caliph Muhammad ibn Mansūr al-Mahdī (r. 158/ _ _ 775–169/785) and continued, as we see in this story, through and even after the reign of Harūn al-Rashīd (r. 170/786–193/809). Ibn Isfandiyār recounts that the unruly people of Tabaristan, galvanized and organized by Qārinid prince Wandād-Hurmuzd and his ally in this venture, SharwīnBāwand, revolted against the caliph’s forces and kill his governors. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1:196; Browne, Abridged Translation, 140–141. 102 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:196; Browne, Abridged Translation, 140–141. 164 Living Virtues of the Land

Tabaristan by claiming that even the caliph, whose forces were slaugh- tered, acknowledges and confirms the legitimacy of the Tabaristanis’ limited autonomy and the Tabaristanis’ desire to rid themselves of the yoke of caliphal control. Ibn Isfandiyār positions his claim for the autonomy of Tabaristan in the context of the disintegration of Abbasid authority, the rise of the Buyids and their occupation of Baghdad in 333/945, and the proliferation of local dynasties. Ibn Isfandiyār wrote as a man of his time, as a historian, and for his audience. Robinson poses the questions that framed the ways in which historians understood the purpose and significance of events: “What role now remained for the caliph and those (such as provincial governors) whom he had appointed? What about those who had usurped his power by defeating one of these governors, and who now paid allegiance to him? How were Muslims to conduct themselves in this new world?”103 Ibn Isfandiyār’s argument for Tabaristan’s autonomy is more than just theoretical, since religious legitimacy as a pious commu- nity populated by sayyids furthered the case for fiscal and political auton- omy of Tabaristan.

living virtues of tabaristan

The living fadāʾil of Tabaristan are the fleshly counterparts to the physical _ excellences of the region, and both human and natural fadāʾil ground the _ narratives about the military and political history of Tabaristan in the early parts of Ibn Isfandiyār’s work.104 The living fadāʾil of the region are _ critical to the claims of Islamic legitimacy and authority that Ibn Isfan- diyār develops. These living fadāʾil include sahāba and tābiʿūn but also _ _ _ extend to notables,105 learned men,106 Imams,107 saints and ascetics,108 sages and philosophers,109 as well as writers and scribes,110 physicians and poets,111 and astronomers.112 In all cases, Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes

103 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 139. 104 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:90–94; Browne, Abridged Translation, 42–47. 105 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122; Browne, Abridged Translation,73–74. 106 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122–125; Browne, Abridged Translation,74–76. 107 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:125–130; Browne, Abridged Translation,76–80. 108 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:130–135; Browne, Abridged Translation,80–85. 109 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:135–137; Browne, Abridged Translation,85–86. 110 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:130; Browne, Abridged Translation, 80. 111 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:137; Browne, Abridged Translation, 86. 112 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:137; Browne, Abridged Translation, 87. Living Virtues of Tabaristan 165 the learning and piety of the region and emphasizes the connections to Muhammad within these groups. _ The local imams are living virtues of the region who, as local exem- plars and interpreters of the faith in Tabaristan, exercise religious author- ity and guidance.113 This phenomenon occurred elsewhere as well. Writing about Tārīkh Jurjān, Robinson argued that the purpose of the emphasis on the sahāba, a pre-Islamic prophetic genealogy, and the _ _ generations of the traditionists of Jurjan in the introductory sections: was to assert the orthodoxy of provincial learning, by anchoring the provincial learning undertaken by non-Arab converts to Islam in the heartland of Arabia ... By positing the continuous transmission of authoritative teaching from master to pupil over several generations, a local prosopography of the tabaqāt variety functions to link one of a multiplicity of branches (usually the local tradition of jurists) to a single trunk (Prophetic sunna as it was explicated in Medina, Basra, Kufa, and Baghdad – the centers of eighth- and ninth-century learning, which produced the legal schools’ eponyms).114 As the fadāʾil of the region, the local imams of Tabaristan are a legitimat- _ ing link of learning to the Prophet and to the generations of now disparate ulama who transmitted prophetic traditions and knowledge. One of the characteristics of the living fadāʾil is their propensity to _ extreme generosity. Ibn Isfandiyār highlights the outstanding generosity of the local ruler Ispahbad Husām al-Dawla wa al-Dīn Ardashīrb. Husayṇ (567–602/1172–1206).115 The Bawandid Ispahbad Husām al- Dawla wa al-Dīn Ardashīrb.Husayṇ is portrayed as sympathetic to the Ismāʿīlī Shiʿa, since an Indian envoy arrives to inform Ardashīr of the success of an Imamī Shiʿi dāʿī in India in 579/1183–1184. The most memorable anecdotes about the Ispahbad are those about his magnanim- ity, which includes gifts to sayyids and to the needy. On Fridays, the day of congregational prayer, he would order the Justice Minister to distribute

113 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:125–130; Browne, Abridged Translation,76–80. 114 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 141. 115 The entry on the Ispahbad Husām al-Dawla wa al-Dīn Ardashīrb.Husayṇ is Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:125; 1:114–120; Browne, Abridged Translation, 67–73. According to Richard Frye’s account of the Iranian Bawand dynasty that ruled in Tabaristan for more than 700 years (45–750/665–1349), “After the Mongol invasion there was anarchy in Tabaristan, and finally a member of the Bāwand family, Husām al- Dawla Ardashīrb.Kīnakhwār was chosen ruler by the people. He moved his capital from Sārī to Āmul for safety’s sake. Under his rule (12 or 15 years) the Mongols invaded Tabarisṭ ān. His son, Shams al-Mulūk, was put to death in 663/1264 by Abaḳā Ḵhān after ruling 18 years. This dynasty ruled as vassals of the Mongols but they suffered nonetheless from Mongol invasions and depredations.” R. N. Frye, “Bāwand,” EI2. 166 Living Virtues of the Land

100 gold dinars amongst the most deserving in the public square. In his capital at Sārī, the Ispahbad Husām al-Dawla wa al-Dīn Ardashīrb. Husayṇ patronized men of learning and literary men, who he sponsored generously with goods, clothes, and money. The Ispahbad lavished his pious generosity on the Alawīs who would come to Tabaristan from Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. During Hajj season the Ispahbad donated gifts to multiple shrines of the Ahl al-Bayt, the poor, and the Amirs of Mecca.116 These charitable donations included money for water, money for the Amir al-Hajj who led the caravan, and charitable donations to the shines, amongst others, of Imam Ḥasan, ʿAbd al-ʿAdhīm in Rayy, ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, Salmānal- _ Fārisī,ImamḤusayn at Karbala, and Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Mūsā al- Ridā. The function of this lengthy list is to highlight the Ispahbad’s _ generosity towards the shrines of the Shiʿi Imams and other pious notables. In doing so, Ibn Isfandiyār bolsters the pietistic credentials of the Ispahbad and, by extension, Tabaristan. It simulatneously attests to the importance of Tabaristan as a benefactor of Shiʿishrinesandits pious ruler as a supporter of the custodians of the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. The ulama of Tabaristan held privileged positions as custodians and disseminators of knowledge. What is striking is the absence of munifi- cence in their stories. Generosity is for rulers. Ispahbads and princely and dynastic governors bestow their munificence upon the region; men of learning need only share their learning.117 The leading light of the ulama is Muhammad b. Jarīral-Tabaṛ ī, the prolific author whose works _ include the encyclopedic history and Qurʾan commentary. Ibn Isfandiyār’sentryforTabarī is surprisingly short, albeit very flattering, for such a famous individual. This entry is followed by a list of a few of the most illustrious scholars of Tabaristan. These include Imām-i-Shahīd Fakhr al-Islām ʿAbd al-Wāhid b. IsmāʿīlAbū al-Mahāsin, known as “the _ second Shāfiʿī,” and for whom Nizām al-Mulk built a college at Amul, and the qādī al-qudāt Abū al-ʿAbbāsal-Rūyānī,whoflourished during the era of Shams al-Maʿālī Qābūs (366–403/976–1012), and whose descendants still held judicial offices in Tabaristan in Ibn Isfandiyār’stime.118

116 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:120; Browne, Abridged Translation,70–71. 117 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122–125; Browne, Abridged Translation,74–76. 118 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:122–125; Browne, Abridged Translation,74–76. Summary and Conclusions 167

summary and conclusions

Claims of heirship to the Prophet through living virtues of the land were one amongst multiple literary strategies employed in local and regional histories to forge links with foundational moments and characters. Tārīkh-Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, and Tārīkh-i Sīstān evidence similar patterns and commonalities in focus, and the authors and translators of these works bind their regions to sahāba, tābiʿūn, scholars, notables, and _ _ the Prophet’s descendants amplify the region’s legitimacy. By underscor- ing the life and legacy of al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī and other sahāba _ _ and tābiʿūn in Tārīkh-Bayhaq, Ibn Funduq maps his town, chronologic- ally and geographically, onto privileged moments in Islamic history. This occurs much in the way that underscoring al-Hasaṇ al-Basri’s founda- _ tional role in the establishment of Sistan as a Muslim community empha- sizes its Islamic credentials. It is through a more heterogeneous body of religious VIPs, including notables, the ulama, saints, ascetics, and Imams that Ibn Isfandiyār presents the identity of the fractious region of Tabari- stan as one that is highly localized yet firmly Islamic. The following chapter explores the claims to prophetic authority and sanctity embedded within local histories by focusing on the impact of the physical interment of saints or holy people as sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) or other manifestations of blessing or sacred power (baraka) and placing this literature in the context of scholarship on the urban environ- ment in the Islamic world. Claims to prophetic authority, piety, and sanctification in local histories include foundation legends of cities as well as descriptions of tombs of saints and pious visitations to them. By analyzing the social, institutional, and literary processes at play in the attribution of sainthood and sacredness, the following chapter argues that traditions about Fātima al-Maʿsūma in Tārīkh-i Qum and narrativess _ _ about sacred bodies and relics in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān are ways in which these authors framed their claims to authority and legitimacy. These claims are intertwined with notions of saint veneration, practices of shrine visitation, and the sacralization of place. This sacralization of place at times goes hand-in-hand with the hereditary sacrality of sayyids and sharifs and other descendants of the Prophet. A varied matrix of narra- tives, etymologies, and pious individuals and sacred sites in local histories articulate an identity simultaneously deeply local, Persian, and regionally differentiated, yet firmly embedded within the broader framework of Islamic history. 7

Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

The endowments of the capitals are ten: chivalry in Baghdād, eloquence in al-Kūfa, manufacture in al-Basra, commerce in Misr, treachery in al- Rayy, harshness in Naysābūr, avarice in Marw, boasting in Balkh, and craftsmanship in Samarqand.1

In medieval histories, spiritual and material identities segue into one another like adjoining rooms in a house. Claims to political and religious legitimacy embedded within Persian local and regional histories are inter- twined with descriptions of sacred places within the city and its environs. Entries in local and regional histories about the foundation legends of cities, the tombs of saints, and pious visitations to sacred sites are rooted in a discourse about the sacralization of place. This chapter explores the foundation legends of cities and descriptions of places of pious visitation, such as shrines and tombs. To this end, it focuses on Tārīkh-i Qum as a case study of how the description of Fātima’s relationship with Qum _ engages in the discourse of place. Persian local histories – written in Arabic, Persian, and both – demon- strate a deeply intertwined relationship between the physical components of the city and the spiritual state of its denizens. These local histories portray the region’s collective identity and the identity of individuals as twinned like the double helix of DNA. The physical city is the material counterpart to the pietistic and religious core of its inhabitants as well as the sacred grounds and material objects within its boundaries. Place and identity are inextricably linked. Tārīkh-i Qum and Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān

1 Attributed to al-Jāhiz in Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 33; Collins, Best Divisions, 32; _ 168 Medieval Islamic Urban Landscapes 169 are local histories steeped in the broader context of the social, institu- tional, and literary processes at play in the attribution of sacredness. The authors of local histories highlight the presence of notables in their cities. This is the case not only when the figure lived or was born in thecity,butalsowhentheindividual was buried there. Fātima, the _ sister of the eighth ShiʿiImamal-Ridā, was buried in Qum in the early _ third/ninth century, and the shrine complex that developed around her grave marked a turning point for the city. The body and story of Fātima becomes absorbed into the land of Qum and its mythology. _ I borrow and apply the non-pejorative definition of “myth” that Castelli uses in her study of the martyrdom and early Christian culture making, in which myth, far from being a cheap fabrication, is a power- ful force in the collective imagination that forges a culture. In this sense, amythisasetof“narratives that promote a coherent portrait of the past and that forge links within a community among its members and between the community and its claimed past. Myth is the product of collective imagination, a compelling answer to urgent questions about foundations and identities.”2 Fātima’s brother is the eighth ShiʿiImam _ al-Ridā, who is commonly referred to as a martyr in Shiʿi literature and _ martyrology. Just as “the designation ‘martyr’ is not an ontological category but a post-event interpretive one, that martyrs are produced by the stories told about them,”3 Fātima’s elevated status and the _ sacrality of her body is established by the narratives told about her and the rituals and physical symbols of her baraka produced by believers in her power.

medieval islamic urban landscapes

The medieval Islamic city includes not just the walled city but also its affiliated villages and its environs. It is possible to differentiate between various levels of urban development, though the discourse about the sacredness of a place transcends these distinctions. Wheatley’s work on cities in the Islamic world between the seventh and tenth centuries uses Muqaddasī’s Ahsan al-Taqāsim fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm as its basis, in _ which Muqaddasī schematized four descending levels in the urban

2 Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 30. 3 Castelli, “The Ambivalent Legacy of Violence and Victimhood: Using Early Christian Martyrs to Think With,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 6(2006): 1–24. 170 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities hierarchy: the metropolis (misr), provincial capital (qasabah), district capital (madīna), and then various small urban centers.4 Volumes of scholarship have been produced on the Islamic city, and most of these have been attuned to the fiscal, administrative, architectural, and political function of cities in the Islamic world. Some of the most notable scholarship in this field is by Albert Hourani, S. M. Stern, Claude Cahen, Andre Raymond, J. Sauvaget, N. Elisséeff, Ira Lapidus, Gustave von Grunebaum, and Oleg Grabar.5 A much slimmer body of scholarship has considered the various purposes and effects of literary depictions of Islamic cities. In this respect, O’Meara’s work on the foundation legend of Fez and Meisami’s chapter on palace descriptions in medieval Persian poetry are notable exceptions to the general pattern.6

4 Paul Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 74–78. Wheat- ley’s work on cities in the Islamic world between the seventh and tenth centuries, which in turn uses Muqaddasī’s Ahsan al-Taqāsim fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm as its basis. Cities that _ Muqaddasī categorized as amsār (sing. misr) that are relevant in this book are: Īrānshahr (Naysabur/Nishapur) in Khurasan, al-Mawsil (Mosul) in al-Jazīrah (Aqūr), Damascus in al-Shām, al-Fustat in Misr, Qurtubah (Cordoba) in al-Andalus and, to a lesser extent, Shiraz in Fārs, Mecca in al-Hijāz, and Baghdad in al-Irāq. 5 For a representative publication within this scholarship, see Albert Habib Hourani and S. M. Stern, eds., The Islamic City: A Colloquium [Held at All Souls College, June 28–July 2, 1965] published under the auspices of the Near Eastern History Group, Oxford, and the Near East Centre, University of Pennsylvania (Oxford, Cassirer; [Philadelphia] University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970). 6 Simon O’Meara, “The Foundation Legend of Fez and other Islamic Cities in Light of the Life of the Prophet,” in Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State and Society, edited by, Amira K Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne (Milton Park, Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2007), 27–41. Meisami, “Palaces and Paradises: Palace Description in Medieval Persian Poetry,” in Islamic Art and Literature,editedby, Oleg Grabar and Synthia Robinson (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2001)21–54. Meisami traces a tendency towards abstraction about palaces in poetry composed at the Ghaznavid court followed by increasing concreteness in the later Ghaznavid and Seljuq dynasties. Ultimately, poetry was about power; the poetry does not necessarily give a clear description of the physical dimensions of these palaces. Occasionally, a work combines the study of dreams and cities, such as van Gelder’s study of the archetype of the town in Islamic oneirocritical works. See Geert Jan van Gelder, “Dream Towns of Islam: Geography in Arabic Oneirocritical Works,” in Myths, Historical Archetypes, and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature: Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach: Proceedings of the International Sym- posium in Beirut, June 25th–June 30th, 1996, edited by, Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1999), 507–520. Pressing against both established and recent scholarly trends, Hameen-Antilla has argued that there is a “basic alienation between identity and place,” in the classical Arabic literary landscape, including biographical dictionaries, and argues that “Place is thus not necessarily intimately connected with identity in Classical Arab culture,” but curiously continues to argue that “we do, however, find occasional stories where there seems to be a close link between a place and a Cities as Sacred Places 171

cities as sacred places

In describing a city and its affiliated villages and environs, as Tārīkh-i Qum does, or whether considering a region in the mold of Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, medieval authors bounded and defined their realms and attributed multiple levels of significance to these places. Antrim formu- lates an innovative conceptual framework of a “discourse of place” as a means of corralling the diverse array of texts that represented territory in the early Islamic world and examines how these varied texts represented places as homes, cities, and regions and articulated “land-based categories of belonging.”7 Though Antrim’s project is on Arabic sources from the ninth to eleventh centuries and include geographies, travelogues, poems, and other genres not considered here, her argument that categories of belonging articulated in the texts can be “connective and universalist on one hand, or bounded and particular on the other,” and “often construct belonging in universalist terms, but tie it to the particularities of a plot of land,” is born out in Persian local and regional histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries.8 More specifically, Persian local and regional histories articulate com- munities that are profoundly local yet nested securely within an overarch- ing Islamic narrative. Descriptions of cities and their environs or a region sacralize a specific territory by associating it with Muslim notables or embedding it within critical moments in Islamic history.9 Such claims of

person, so that we may even say that his identity is built on the place.” Hameen-Anttila, “Building an Identity,” 27. For a starkly opposing view, see Antrim, Routes and Realms. 7 Antrim, Routes and Realms,1–8; 2. A good example of the intersecting roles of literary production and monumental construction in the formation of sacred space is Nancy Khalek, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), chapter 4. Khalek considers some of the same questions as Antrim but focuses exclusively on Damascus. 8 Antrim, Routes and Realms, 6; 34. Antrim rightly notes the flexibility and porousness of these identities as they related to cities. While she addresses Arabic texts from the ninth to eleventh centuries, her insight that “Cities between the ninth and eleventh centuries remained remarkably ‘up for grabs,’ available to a wide range of people and, at least in the texts that made up the discourse of place, able to accommodate a variety of political and religious agendas,” also applies to Persian local histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries. 9 On the role of mosques and pilgrimages in the construction of sacred space and sectarian identity, specifically among the Shiʿa in the second/eighth century Kufa, see Haider, The Origins of the Shīʿa, 231–248. On the basis of a methodology that analyzes the structure of hadith in terms of authority figures, transmitters, and narrative style, Haider finds that Imami Shiʿi identity emerges as a distinct phenomenon during the second/eighth century that sets it apart from the rest of Kufan identity. Haider focuses on three case studies 172 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities sacredness confer religious and political legitimacy to a territory and its denizens, who live beyond the Arab heartlands in which the Prophet and first Muslim communities emerged. Such gestures of sacralizaiton are not unique to Persian sources. Looking further to the north and east, Alexandre Papas notes the signifi- cance of naming and etymologies as expressions of religious affinity and communal identity in Himalayan Islam.10 In so doing, he also highlights the use of hagiographies in creating and delineating sacred space and the sacralization of new Muslim settlements. In areas on the physical peripheries of the Islamic empire, such as Tibet, Iran, and Central Asia, such narratives and literary devices demonstrate the pull of local mytho- logical elements as well as the push towards an Islamic narrative that inserts the place deep into the land and lore of Islam. There is always a balancing act at play when texts describe a sacred space in a way that makes the global and universal Muslim umma local and specific. Local specificity and global significance do no overlay seam- lessly upon each other. As Stauth and Schielke rightly argue, “claims to continuity, competing theories of the origin of a saint and varying and often contradicting modes of authentication – that is, of ways to imagine and to argue for historical, territorial and normative foundations of a religion, a nation, a culture, or any other such imagined community – significantly contribute to the kind of importance and dimensions that are assigned to a location.”11 Although Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān documents a distinctive case in which buildings of Iranian nobles who did not convert to Islam are cannibalized by Muslims for use in a mosque, the physical structures of sacred space, such as a mosque or a shrine, are by-and-large unmovable. Thus, while concrete markers of sacred space may be fixed, what they signify shifts according to time, place, and audience. How the physical place performs sacrality in the eyes of the beholder is perpetually in flux.

within the hadith literature, and focuses the formulation of the baslama, the qunūt (which is a curse or invocation as part of the daily prayer), and the prohibition of drinking alcohol. 10 Alexandre Papas, “So Close to Samarkand, Lhasa,” 261–279. 11 Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke, “Introduction,” in Dimensions of Locality: Muslim Saints, Their Place and Space (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam No. 8), edited by, Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke (Bielefeld: Transcript; Piscataway, NJ: Distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers, 2008), 8. See also Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke, “Introduction,” 12 for a critique of Geertz and Gellner for portraying the relationship between local and global (such as “Indonesian Islam” versus “Moroccan Islam”) in ways that are static. Founding an Islamic City 173

Relics, graves, and other pietistic items that tie a location to a sacred or revered presence are analogous to the sahāba, tābiʿūn, prophets, saints, _ _ and notable figures who bind a city to pivotal movements in sacred history. Scholars of Christianity have documented the proliferation of holy relics in Christianity, such as the shroud of Christ at Turin, handker- chiefs that touched the skin of St. Paul, and the bones of martyred bishops.12 Sacred relics and sites similarly proliferated in the Muslim tradition. In the Islamic tradition, the taking, plundering, or recapturing of relics could also be a form of asserting power and legitimacy. Posses- sion of relics symbolized power.13

founding an islamic city

The story of how a city was founded is integral to its identity and history. There are multiple levels on which an Islamic city is founded. Firstly, there is the literal level of conquest, when the initial Arabs or Muslims arrived in the region. Secondly, there is the physical component of founding the city, which includes building a walled city or a garrison that becomes an integral part of the city, the establishment of a mosque, and other physical components of urban development. A third level includes the legends, myths, or etymologies that describe the essential elements of the city that may or may not be related to the initial conquest or physical construction or urban space.14

12 On the cult of saints in Christianity more broadly, see Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 13 On the acquisition of relics as a mode of rivalry and legitimacy, see Paul E. Walker, “Purloined Symbols of the Past: The Theft of Souvenirs and Sacred Relics in the Rivalry between the Abbasids and Fatimids,” in Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam, 364–387. 14 Hugh Kennedy summarizes the scholarship on the Islamic city and then explores what, precisely, the “founding” of an Islamic city entails in Kennedy, “How to Found and Islamic City,” 45–63. Kennedy addresses Arab cities, with the exception of Isfahan, and concludes that while the foundation of cities is extremely varied, common characteristics include: the establishment of a financial framework and opportunities for profit and trade; the building of a mosque and possibly a palace; some water supply or fortifications; and the active role of administrators – including the court, caliph, governor, or local Bedouin chief – in encouraging and attracting settlement. See also Cahen, “Tribes, Cities, and Social Organization,” in The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4: The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, edited by, R. N. Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1975), 302–328. Some relevant studies in the field of monumental architecture and sacred space include, by Oleg Grabar, “Space and Holiness in Medieval Jerusalem,” Islamic Studies, 40: 3/4, Special Issue: Jerusalem (Autumn–Winter 2001): 681–692; Grabar, “La mosquée et le sanctuaire: Sainteté des lieux en Islam,” Revue de l’histoire 174 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

Pious institutions, characters, and places in the fields of archaeology, social history, and economic history have deservedly received scholarly significant attention.15 This project concentrates on the ways in which narratives, etymologies, figures, and traditions in local and urban histor- ies bind a place to the Prophet or to foundational moments in prophetic history and the Islamic narrative. The foundation narratives of cities include mythical and competing elements, but an attempt to establish the veracity of such claims would fail to answer why authors purposefully chose to incorporate these mythical components and competing claims. The critical question is why the authors portrayed the cities at their foundational moments in the way that they do. There are multiple reasons for the existence of competing narratives about the foundations of various cities. Particularly for garrison cities that the Arabs created in the course of the initial conquests, there could be a gap of several centuries between the garrison’s formation, its transform- ation into a city, and its establishment in the literature. Unlike cities that were formed as adaptations or developments onto other pre-existing cities – such as Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Palermo, and Seville – there may have been genuine confusion regarding the formation of cities that were created on the basis of Arab garrisons or that were effectively created ex nihilo in the course of the Islamic conquests, such as the garrison cities of Kufa and Basra in Iraq.16 The foundation story of the garrison city of Basra demonstrates the genuine confusion that created competing narratives about its founda- tion. Two variant versions are recorded in al-Balādhurī about ʿUtbah ibn _ Ghazwān establishing Basra. One of them has him founding the city in 14/ 635–636, while another version reported by Masʿūdī credits ʿUtbah ibn

des religions, 22: 4, Lieux de culte, lieux saints dans le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam (OCTOBRE–DÉCEMBRE 2005): 481–489. On medieval Iranian architecture of sacred spaces, see, for example, Sheila Blair, “Sufi Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Muqarnas,7(1990): 35–49; Blair, “The Madrasa at Zuzan: Islamic Architecture in Eastern Iran on the Eve of the Mongol Invasions,” Muqarnas 3(1985): 75–91. 15 For example, McChesney has documented the history of a waqf for the shrine of ʿAlī in Mazarisharif (in Balkh, now in Afghanistan) from the 1480s to the 1880s. McChesney’s book is an economic history of the region of Mazarisharif vis-à-vis the ʿAlid shrine and its relationship with waqfs. While McChesney investigates a different phenomenon, his project identifies an alleged shrine of ʿAlī that was a physical entity that tied the city to the legacy of ʿAlī and the Prophet. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia. 16 Wheatley, Places Where Men Pray Together, 39. On Kufa, see also C. E. Bosworth, ed., Historic Cities of The Islamic World (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 290–298. Founding an Islamic City 175

Ghazwān with the foundation the city, but at a different date (16/637 or 638, or possibly 17 or 18/638 or 639) on the site where his followers had camped in 14/635–636. The existence of a variant version does not necessarily imply purposeful deception but may result from genuine confusion.17 Likewise, there are differing accounts of the Islamic conquest of Qum, where the facts about the Arab conquest of Qum are murky. There is no dispute that Qum existed prior to the Islamic period and the Arab conquests. It is also certain that in the Islamic era it was settled primarily by members of the Arabian tribe from the Ashʿarī clan who came to Qum from Kufa after the initial conquest of Qum in 23/644 by the Arab commander Abū Mūsa al-Ashʿarī. However, there are different accounts of the Arab conquest of Qum and when these Arabs from Kufa arrived in Qum. Possibly the Arabs came when al-Hajjājb.Yūsuf was governor of Iraq.18 One account suggests that Ashʿarī Arabs fled Kufa and the Umay- yad governor al-Hajjāj following his suppression of a rebellion by ʿAbd al-Rahmān b. al-Ashʿath in 82/701. This account also posits that Saʿdb. _ Mālik al- Ashʿarī’s sons escaped to Qum.19 Another account argues that the same sons of Saʿd b. Malik al-Ashʿarī settled in Qum in more peaceful

17 Wheatley echoes Charles Pellat’s earliest suggestion that it is genuine confusion that gives rise to multiple conflicting stories. Wheatley, Places Where Men Pray Together, 42. Wheatley cites al-Balādhurī, Futūh al-Buldān, 346 and 341. 18 Abū Muhammad al-Hajjājb.Yūsuf b. al-Hakaṃ b. ʿAkīl al-Thaqafī was a famous _ Umayyad governor and descended from the Ahlāf clan of the Banū Thakīf. He was born in Tāʾif, in the Hijaz, around 41/661 and died in 95/714 in Wāsit, Iraq. He was appointed governor of Iraq when he was aged thirty-three years in the year 75/694. He was also appointed governor of Khurāsān and Sisijistān in 78/697. He died at the age of fifty-two in Ramadān 95/June 714. A. Dietrich, “al- Hadjdj̣ ādj b. Yūsuf b. al-Hakaṃ b. ʿAḳīl al- _ Thaḳafī,Abū Muhammad,” EI2. _ 19 Hajjāj b. Yusuf, operating under the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 685–705), impelled ʿAlids to flee from harsh treatment in Kufa, particularly in light of the killing of Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib in Karbala in 61/680 as a consequence of his refusal to pledge the bayʿa to Yazīd, and al-Mukhtārb.Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī’s pro-ʿAlid move- ment and rebellion in Kufa in 66/685. For a discussion of Mukhtar b. Abī ʿUbayd al- Thakafī and his rebellion, see Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs,51–53, 56–61, 63, 65, 66, 80. Of the period that followed al-Mukhtār’s rebellion, Daftary argues: “For the sixty-odd years intervening between the revolt of al-Mukhtār and the ʿAbbasid revolution, Shiʿism did not represent a unified and coherent movement. During this period, different Shīʿī groups co-existed, each having its own imam, and developing its own doctrines, while individuals moved freely and frequently between them” (Hajjāj b. Yusuf, operating under the caliph, 57). In this rebellion, al-Mukhtār claimed to be the representative of Muhammad b. al- _ Hanaf̣ īyya, who was ʿAlībAbī Tālib’s son by Khawla, a woman from the Banū Haṇ īfa tribe. G. R. Hawting, “al- Mukhtārb.Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaḳafī,” EI2. 176 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities circumstances in 94/713.20 Alternatively, the Arabs may have arrived later, in 99/717–718 with Ahwāsb.Saʿd, who was fleeing the conse- _ quences of the ʿAlid uprising in Kufa and was given land in the area by the Persian Yazdanfadhar, which gradually became settled by other Arabs who took control of the area. The author of Tārīkh-i Qum includes multiple accounts of the conquest of Qum. He relays several khabar reports, dutifully reporting several without decisively favoring one. He includes a report that the area surrounding Isfahan,21 which included Qum, was conquered by force.22 However, he also includes another narrative that suggests that Qum was not conquered by force.23 The author also suggests that the first Ashʿarī Arabs, who included ʿAbd AllāhibnSaʿd, who had fled from Iraq, may have arrived and settled (nuzūl kardand) in Qum in 74/693.24 It is typical of an author compiling akhbār to report multiple accounts. Despite the confusion about the foundation of the city, Qummī adduces sacred etymologies for the city. The foundation story of a city shapes its identity and, in the case of Persian local histories, frames the way in which the authors situate their city within the broader umma. There can be genuine confusion about the foundation of some

20 Madelung, Religious Trends,78–79. For a recent echo of Madelung’s original argument, see Newman, Formative Period, 39. Within the Ashʿarī clan, the first clear association with the Imams was Mūsā b. ʿAbd Allāhb.Saʿd. Mālik al-Ashʿarī, an associate of Muhammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Sadiq,̣ the fifth and sixth Imami Shiʿa Imams, respect- _ ively. The clan was more broadly associated with Shiʿism from the battle of Siffin in 37/ 657. Newman cites Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldan, 4:175–176. 21 Isfahan, of which Qum was originally considered a part and from which it would later separate to become its own distinct city, was similarly established as a garrison. After the initial establishment of Ashʿarī Arabs in the garrison near Qum there was a later influx of Arabs. There were tussles between the Arab ʿAlids from Kufa and the indigenous Persians who originally possessed the land. Eventually Arab ʿAlids became the dominant group in Qum and established a settlement within one city wall, which Wheatley dates to the first three decades of the eighth century CE. Wheatley, Places Where Men Pray Together, 138– 139. “As early as the fifth decade of the seventh century, Arab garrisons were established at a number of strategic locations, inclusion Isfahan, Qazwin, al-Rayy, Qumm, Nihāvand, Dīnāwar, Sīrawān, and Saymarah” (Wheatley, Places Where Men Pray Together,138). 22 Isfahan was an agglomeration of smaller settlements and smaller towns, such as Yahu- diya (the commercial center) and Jayy (a fortified town), and not one large city during the early Islamic period. Kennedy, “How to Found an Islamic City,” 59. On the urban history of Isfahan, see Lisa Golombek, “Urban Pattersn of Pre-Savafid Isfahan,” Iranian Studies, 7: 1/2, Studies on Isfahan: Proceedings of the Isfahan Colloquium, Part I (Winter–Spring, 1974): 18–44. For a more detailed treatment of early Islamic Isfahan, see Hossein Kamaly, Four Moments in the Early Islamic History of Isfahan, Columbia University PhD thesis, 2004. 23 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,53–54. 24 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,83–85. Metanarrative, Semiotics, and Hybrid Identities 177 cities, particularly when it was conquered repeatedly or when there was a gap of decades between the establishment of a garrison and its development into a full-fledged city.

the iranian city

Iranian cities such as Qum, Bayhaq, and Bukhara were in some ways qualitatively different from certain Arab cities such as Damascus, Jerusa- lem, Alexandria, Cairo, and Seville in the Iberian Peninsula, which were metropolises or settlements that pre-dated Islam. Cities such as Damascus in Syria and Cairo in Egypt had sizeable Christian populations, and Baghdad in Iraq had a sizeable Jewish population. In contrast, the Iranian cities of Qum, Bayhaq, and Bukhara were smaller settlements on the order of several thousand people. Tabaristan had no major cities but instead had clusters of villages. In addition, whatever Christian or Zoro- astrian communities that existed in Iranian areas were likely small, unlike the Christian and Jewish communities in the Arab cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. For these ancient major cities in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, the advent of Islam marked an additional religious community, a new form of architec- ture, and a new type of administration that was added on to an extant settlement. Islam was another, albeit extremely important, development in the longer history of the ancient city.25 In contrast to these large and ancient Arab metropolises, cities in Iran had a different character. The foundation or expansion of extant Iranian cities were largely develop- ments that occurred with the Islamic conquests and the garrison cities, which did not have the para-Biblical importance for Jewish and Christian communities that cities such as Damascus and Jerusalem could claim.

metanarrative, semiotics, and hybrid identities

The impulse seen in these texts to capture the history and identity of local communities through quintessential pious individuals tied to the city – crystallized in the example of Fātima of Qum – builds on Sizgorich’s _ earlier insights about motifs and patterns in early Islamic historical writing. Sizgorich’s work centered on the Late Antique world and the

25 On the phenomenon of Islam and Islamic sacred space bringing only the most recent dimension of sacred topography to the ancient city of Damascus and its surrounding areas, see Khalek, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest, esp. 125–126. 178 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities overlapping and transitioning of one religious community to another in one physical setting. This book considers a related type of transition: that of a community transitioning into a hybrid identity that is simultaneously Persian, local, and Muslim. The pattern in local histories in which local- ities are tied to pious figures connected, in one way or another, to the Prophet, reflects patterns in earlier Islamic historical writing that, in turn, drew on a well of powerful motifs and images that functioned as signifiers amongst multiple faith communities in the Late Antique Near East. Writing on the early Muslim historical narratives in the context of other Late Antique faith communities and the ways in which they defined themselves and each other, Sizgorich argues that the “histories of local communities flowed through the remembered deeds of holy personages, monks and martyrs, wonder-workers and zealous defenders of the faith.”26 Unlike the classical historians and ecclesiastical historians, these early Muslim works are notable for their monotheistic topoi. For Sizgor- ich, akhbār reports in early Islamic historical writing are marked by the “juxtaposition of pious monotheistic topoi with traditional Arab battle narratives,” which are “are best understood as hybrid texts composed in part of semiotic elements held in common among a spectrum of late antique monotheistic faith communities.”27 Images of holy people, such as the figure of the monk, martyred saints, and pious ascetics and warriors resonated in the Late Antique Near East with Hellenized Christians, the Arab allies of both the Byzantines and their opposition, the Sasanians, and Persian Zoroastrians in the cultural “borderlands” of Syria and Mesopotamia on which Sizgorich concentrates, which are rich with examples of “fusion of cultural expression.”28 To speak in culturally

26 Thomas Sizgorich, “Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity,” Past & Present 185 (Nov. 2004): 11. Sizgorich builds on the work of scholars of Late Antique and early Islamic historiography, especially Fred Donner, R. S. Humphreys, Albrech Noth, Lawrence Conrad, Tayeb El-Hibri, Uri Rubin, and Chase Robinson. 27 Thomas Sizgorich, “Narrative and Community,” 11. 28 Thomas Sizgorich, “Narrative and Community,” 17–18, 20. In his book-length treat- ment, Sizgorich argues that real and imagined violence and militant piety – which Sizgorich considers defining features of these early communities – were part of the conversation that imagined, defined, and attempted to enforce confessional boundaries among early Christian and Muslim communities. In this process, he examines the role of narrative in the formation and articulation of identity within and between religious communities through sources that include, sermons letters, and histories. As Sizgorich argues, these valorizations of pious defenders of the faith also operate within a religious community, as in the case of the debates manifested amongst authors, jurists, warriors, and communities about the Kharijite movement, which was known for its early and pivotal violent encounters. Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Metanarrative, Semiotics, and Hybrid Identities 179 recognizable symbols was powerful, even if the specific meaning of these symbols changed from one community to another, because the symbols – for Sizgorich, these are the militant pious – were nevertheless recognizable as powerful signifiers. Further east, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, medieval Buddhist elites in Ladakh adopted Turko-Persian dress as a self-conscious mode of self-fashioning and an assertion of prestige, in which material objects and symbols migrated across cultures.29 While their meanings could shift, the material objects nevertheless retained their position as powerful signifiers. Similarly, in Balkh during the eighth to twelfth cen- turies, the tombs and shrines of Muslim ulama and holy figures were placed in the physical locations that were sacred to the pre-Islamic com- munities of Balkh, including its Buddhist inhabitants. In this way, the community in Balkh retained the same physical sacred sites and the conviction that the city was a pious place – what Azad terms the “sacred landscape”–at the same time that the precise symbolic meanings of the signifiers changed with the shifting religions of the occupants of those shrines, tombs, and sacred sites.30 This impulse seen in local histories to tie the city’s identity and history to a series of quintessential pious individuals was a broader phenomenon that transcends the narrow genre of local histories. The tropes contained in local histories were articulated in earlier Islamic sources of the Late Antique Near East, which, as Sizgorich convincingly demonstrates, par- ticipated in a broader vocabulary of shared symbols and signs that

Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 29 Flood, Objects of Translation, chapter 2: “Cultural Cross-Dressing.” Paintings in a Buddhist temple made sometime between 1150 and 1220 in Alchi, in Ladakh, located in the northwestern Himalayas, depict some of the royal rulers wearing the qabāʾ, which was common in the Islamic world and was common in the Persianate and Turkic world, as well as the tīrāz arm bands. Flood argues that this “cultural cross-dressing” is because during the era of the paintings Ladakh was nestled between two powerful rulers – in the south, the kingdom of Kashmir, and in the west, the Ghaznavid and Ghurid sultanates in Afghanistan. Flood argues: “The adoption of common modes of self-representation reflects not only their ability to render adoptees legible according to hegemonic or valorized cultural codes, but also the conferral of status that this implies. It is worth nothing here that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Arab and Persian visitors to the courts of southern India distinguished between the importance of the local rulers that they encountered based on their appearance, according higher status to those who had adopted Islamicate modes of dress” (Flood, Objects of Translation, 75). 30 “This imagined landscape had lost its Buddhist meaning by now, but it had retained its iconic power of the city’s sacredness and goodness.” Azad, Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan, 169. 180 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities retained their significance even as their specific meanings changed when they crossed confessional boundaries. While it is true that the umbrella term “local histories” from early Islamic Iran contains a wide variety of materials, it is also true that distinct patterns emerge. These patterns include the instinct to connect the locality to foundational pious figures from Islam’s early formative period, figures who are also emblematic of that region’s identity within Islam. For Qum, Fātima’s physical shrine complex and her association in _ the literature are part of the Qummī’s broader narrative for the city, defined by its early Arab migrants, its ʿAlid heritage, and Shiʿa connections.

shrine visitation and saint veneration

The physical presence of a notable Muslim in a city, either in life or in death, brought religious power to settlements. Saints and martyrs were commemorated and their bodies, relics, and memories were venerated. Notable sahāba and members of the family of the Prophet were martyred _ _ during the Islamic conquests, and traditions of martyrdom in Shiʿim were central to pious practice and remain so to the present day. Within early Christianity too there existed the belief that on the Judgment Day those buried in physical proximity to a saint would be raised up with that saint.31 There was also the belief that martyrs are the first to be resur- rected.32 Consequently, people wanted to be buried near martyrs’ bodies, so that they would be in physical proximity to the bodies that will be the first to be resurrected and to “share in their power at the resurrection.”33 Burial near a saint and his or her tomb would be beneficial in the next world, just as access to a saints’ relics brought protection, miracles, cures, and blessings, not to mention the financial benefits of pilgrimage traffic and donations to monastic communities. This belief in the power of saints’ bodies shows continuity with earlier religious traditions, including the pagan cult of heroes in the Graeco-Roman world, which venerated the bodies of exceptional men.34

31 Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 33–34. 32 André Dartigues, “Resurrection of the Dead,” Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, First Edition, edited by, Jean-Yves Lacoste ([S.I.]: Routledge, 2004. Religion Online). 33 Ferguson, “Martyr, Martyrdom,” Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. 34 Geary, Furta Sacra,33–34. Shrine Visitation and Saint Veneration 181

Similar practices occurred in Islam, as Fātima and her shrine in Qum _ demonstrate. Though not martyred herself, Fātima’s hagiographical _ account is inextricably tied to that of her brother, the eighth Shiʿi Imam al-Ridā, and the broader tradition of Shiʿi martyrology. When Fātima _ _ died en route from Medina to Marv, she was buried in Qum, and her interment in the city becomes an occasion for later Safavid rulers to develop the city into a full-fledged shrine city. Her sacred body becomes a locus of sanctity and a source of bakara for its inhabitants and visitors alike. In medieval Islam proximity to the burial place of sahāba, notables, _ _ saints, or martyrs also took the form of pilgrimage or pious visitation, known as ziyārat. Visitation to a sacred site was a pious act in itself. Participation in a pious ritual in proximity to a shrine – which often included supplications, rituals, recitations of the Qurʾan, prayer, and physically touching some part of the shrine in an act of devotion – occasioned an accessing of the saint’s intercessory power and baraka.In seeing and touching sacred sites, the believer participated in saintly power by both performing pious action and accessing a saint’s power through baraka. As a consequence of the power that saintly bodies exercised in the medieval world, great volumes of visitors flocked to shrines and burial places of notable Companions, notables, saints, and martyrs. This occa- sioned the proliferation of the genre of pilgrimage guide, or ziyārat literature. The earliest ziyārat literature, kutub al-ziyārāt, is a highly localized genre and dates from the third/ninth century with the Shiʿi guide, Kitāb al-ziyārāt, by the Kufan jurist and theologian Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Faddāl al-Taymī al-Kūfī (d. 224/838–839). The earliest extant guide, which served as a model for later works, was written by Ibn Qūlūya (d. 978–979). The institutionalization of Shiʿi pilgrimage and the manāsik (sacred rights) of the ziyārat occurred by the tenth century.35 This is the period in which the original and no longer extant Arabic Tārīkh-i Qum was written. Though there is a profusion of Shiʿi and Sunni ziyārat literature, the sources differ in audience and in content. One notable general difference between the Sunni and the Shiʿi traditions is the greater institutionaliza- tion and centrality of ziyārat in the Shiʿi tradition, as well as traditions of the imams about ziyārat, and especially those of the sixth imam Jaʿfar

35 Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints,” 34–35, 44. 182 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities al-Sạ̄diq (d. 765).36 Sunni guides have a broader audience that includes mentors, rulers, devotees, and learned guides; Shiʿi guides were directed towards the learned who would then instruct devotees on the traditions of the imams, and Shiʿi texts often included supplications to memorize. Shiʿi guides also include hadith and the traditions of the imams, and virtues or merits (fadāʾil) traditions about holy cities, such Kufa and Karbala, and _ descriptions of rituals to be performed and when such rituals should be performed. The development of the ziyārat genre occurred at difference paces in the Islamic world. Guides for some areas such as Sham did not proliferate until after the tenth/sixteenth century, while in other areas, such as Egypt, kutub al-ziyārāt existed in Fatimid and Mamluk eras.37 Attribution of sainthood occurred through social, institutional, and literary processes that identified and created a saint. No single central authority could effectively control saint veneration. A similar process also occurred in medieval Christianity, in which the recognition of sainthood was a social project that was constantly negotiated: a saint could, in the course of his or her life, gain or lose to various degrees the saintliness accorded to him or her by the community.38 Far from being a decision exclusively sanctioned by the papacy, community recognition was a prime factor in the recognition of a saint.39 Social process was critical in confer- ring sainthood. In the Islamic tradition, despite conflicting theological and historical arguments for and against the practice, shrine visitation and saint

36 Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints,” 35. 37 Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints,” 34–35, 44; M. Gaborieau, et al., “Ziyāra (a., pl. ziyārāt),” EI2; Meri, The Cult of Saints Among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 143, 144, 150, 157, 158. Though the profusion of guides was later in Shām than elsewhere, the region is notable for the great volume of pilgrimage guide literature, which includes places associated with pre- Islamic figures common to the Abrahamic tradition. 38 Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 5–6; 21–26, 27. 39 “The medieval papacy is portrayed as having a clear ideal of sainthood which it sought relentlessly to impose on the masses. In fact, canonization was never a major factor in the medieval veneration of saints.” Rather, “The papacy began in the twelfth century to show a growing interest in the veneration of saints. A decisive step toward a papal supervisory role was taken by Alexander III (1159–81) ...The language used in the papal letter may suggest that the pope expected all possible saints to be submitted to papal scrutiny; but this has no nearing in reality. The papacy did not expect every small community to await papal permission before it expressed its devotion to a saint. It reserved for itself, however, the right to disqualify a cult it did not approve of.” Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country, 21, 26–27. Tārīkh-i Qum: A Shrine City and its History 183 veneration permeated Islamic society. Both the elite and non-elite alike participated in the culture of ziyārat by contributing to the construction and upkeep of shrines, creating pious endowments, and going on visit- ations.40 Veneration of friends of God (awliyāʾ), members of the Prophet’s family, and martyrs transcended social strata and physical locations in the early Islamic world. For the family of the Prophet, some of the most important sites of pilgrimage include ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib’s tomb in Najaf, his son al-Husayṇ ’s tomb in Karbala, and the eighth Shiʿa Imam ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā in Tus _ (now Mashhad). ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā’s sister Fātima is buried in Qum. _ _ The shrines in Damascus of Sayyida Zaynab (daughter of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad) and Sayyida Ruqayya _ bint al-Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (daughter of Imam Husayṇ b. ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib and the great-granddaughter of Muhammad) are popular pil- _ grimage sites for Shiʿi pilgrims today. As pilgrimage sites proliferated in the Arab and Persian realms, so too did the attendant phenomenon of ziyārat literature which catered to the pious visitors. Control and promo- tion of human traffic to pilgrimage sites was a political as well as religious concern, a topic addressed in the context of Tārīkh-i Qum.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i qum: a shrine city and its history

Qum gained religious prominence for multiple reasons through the cen- turies. Qum was initially settled primarily by Ashʿarī Arabs41, and many sayyids settled there.42 But it was in the early third/ninth century that Fātima, the sister of the eighth Shiʿi Imam al-Ridā, was buried in Qum, _ _ and a shrine complex developed around her grave. When considering this balancing act between the local Persian context and the global Muslim framework, it is critical to keep in mind that Tārīkh-i Qum repeatedly

40 Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints,” 44. 41 Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 325–326; 335–336. Lambton notes that the sources include conflicting reports on whether the conquest was by treaty or by force; al-Balādhurī states in Futūh al-buldān that Qum was conquered by Abū Mūsa al- Ashʿarī in 23/643–644. See also Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,” 586–596. 42 For a convenient summary of the ulama and ʿAlid sayyids in Qum and their account in Tārīkh-i Qum, see Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 335–336. There were a significant number of ʿAlid sayyids in Qum. In 371/981–982 there were 331 (men and children) sayyids in Ava, Qumm, Kashan, and Khwurazan was 331, each of whom was given a monthly allowance of 30 mann of bread and 10 silver dirhams. Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,” 596. 184 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities describes explicitly non-Islamic qualities such as Zoroastrian fire-temples (āteshkade-hā)43 as well as the relations of various ʿAlid descendants of the Prophet. There are also virtues of indeterminate origin – such as virtues of the fruits, trees, rivers, and natural bounties – that could just as well resonate with Islamic conceptions of geographies of heaven as indigenous Iranian notions of virtuous bounty. The identity of Qum is simultaneously deeply local and Persian. The city history acknowledges its existence before the arrival of the Arabs, and yet it is firmly embedded within the framework of Islamic history. Tārīkh-i Qum catalogues the virtues, or fadāʾil, of Qum. These virtues _ form a common thematic link between Tārīkh-i Qum and other local histories. These virtues comprised of living fadāʾil, who are the descend- _ ants of the Prophet – overwhelmingly ʿAlid – and ulama in Qum, as well as natural virtues and excellences of the land, and the utterances made by the Prophet, his family members, or Companions that are recorded in hadith that are related to the location. One such virtue of the city is the shrine of Fātima. In his articulation the relationship with Qum of the _ descendants of the Prophet through Hasaṇ (sādāt-i Hasanṇ īye) who came to Qum from the descendants of Mūsa b. Jaʿfar44, the author includes a section on Fātima, daughter of Imam Mūsa b. Jaʿfar and sister of Imam al- _ Ridā.45 This covers her travel, her illness during the travel – at which _ point she asked to be taken to Qum – and her death and burial in Qum.

fa¯ tima al-maʿsu¯ma ˙ ˙ Fātima’s travel to Qum is linked with the fate of her brother, the eighth _ Shiʿi Imam ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā (b. Medina, 148/765 or 151/768 or 153/ _ 770, d. Tus in 203/818).46 When al-Ridā reluctantly accepted the caliph _ al-Maʾmūn’s (r. 813–833) designation of him as the heir to the Abbasid caliphate, he travelled from Medina to Marv, in Khurasan. When anger in Iraq over the effective movement of the capital away from Baghdad provoked revolt, al-Maʾmūn journeyed back from Marv to Baghdad, as did al-Ridā. We know that al-Ridā died en route in Tus sometime in 203/ _ _ 818 after falling ill. Shiʿi narratives attribute al-Ridā’s death to poisoning _

43 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 29, 104, 249–255. 44 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 565–600. 45 Shimamoto suggests that the modest description of the event in the Tārīkh-i Qum is the oldest and longest description of Fātima’s arrival in Qum. Shimamoto, “Some Reflections _ on the Origin of Qum,” 100–102. 46 B. Lewis, “ʿAlī al- Ridā, Abu ‘l-Hasaṇ b. Mūsā b. Ḏjaʿfar,” EI2. _ Fātima al-Maʿsūma 185 _ _ either by the caliph al-Maʾmūn himself or on his orders. Al-Ridā was _ buried near the tomb of the Abbasid Harūn al-Rashīd, and al-Ridā’s _ sanctuary, or mashhad, became and continues to be the dominant feature _ of the town of Tus, which became known as Mashhad, after the sanctuary. Fātima al-Maʿsūma (Fātima the Innocent), ʿAlī al-Ridā’s sister, set off _ _ _ _ from Medina for Marv in 201/816–817 to visit her brother, but she became ill in Sāwa or Sāve, a Sunni town47 10 farsangs or roughly 60 km from Qum. When she became ill, Fātima asked to be taken to _ Qum for an unspecified reason. According to the Tārīkh-i Qum, the people of Qum welcomed Fātima. Mūsa b. Khazraj b. Saʿd Ashaʿrī _ housed Fātima as his guest, and when she died after seventeen days, he _ buried her on his property called Bābelān. It would be most logical if Fātima knew of Qum and that it had an ʿAlid population there, as _ Shimamoto suggests.48 When Fātima died and was buried in Qum in 201/816–817, the city _ was already established with an ʿAlid identity. Fātima’s death and inter- _ ment in Qum becomes a pivotal moment for the city’s identity and significance.49 In later centuries, Qum would enjoy Buyid patronage, and would become famous in the Seljuq era for its madrasas and for the shrine sanctuary of Fātima – which Sunnis as well as Shiʿa visited – and _ for its awqāf, and for the ulama who lived in Qum.50 However, pilgrim- age to the shrine in Qum of Fātima al-Maʿsūma increased after deliberate _ _ intervention at the political level to draw pilgrimage to Safavid territory, of which Qum was an important (though not exclusive) focal point. A striking tradition about Qum and Fātima illustrates how Qummī _ binds Qum to key moments and characters in Islamic history and to prophetic authority. This story revolves around a conversation between Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq and a gathered crowd.51 This story is about the sixth Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿi Imam, Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq52, as well as Fātima, who is the _

47 J. Calmard, “Ḳum,” EI2. 48 Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qum,” 102. 49 Wheatley is incorrect when he claims that “No medieval author mentions the tomb of Fātima, sister of the eighth Imam ʿAlī al-Ridā, which now ranks second only to Mashhad _ _ _ as a Shī ‘ite sanctuary. In fact this shrine was practically unknown until early in the seventeenth century ...” Wheatley, Places Where Men Pray Together, 138. 50 J. Calmard, “Ḳum,” EI2. 51 Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq greets a group of people in Arabic with “marhaban,” although the rest of the conversation is rendered here in Persian. 52 Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq was born in 80/699–700 or 83/702–703 in Medina, and died in 148/765. “Ḏjaʿfar died in 148/765 (poisoned, according to the unlikely Twelver tradition, on the 186 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities daughter of the seventh Ithnā ʿAsharī Imam, Mūsa b. Jaʿfar, known as Mūsa al-Kāzim53 and the sister of the eighth Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿi Imam, _ ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā.Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq is therefore the grandfather of _ Fātima. The event it describes would have taken place in the second/eighth _ century. First, Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq greets the gathered crowd in Arabic with “marhaban,” although the rest of the conversation is rendered in Persian. Imam Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq says “Marhaban, our brothers from the people of Qum.” When the assembled group of people says, “Oh Imam, we are from Rayy,” Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq again says “Marhaban, our brothers from the people of Qum.” This repeats three times, and every time Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq greets the group as his brothers from Qum. Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq then says the following:

God has a sanctuary, and that is Mecca (Khodā–i haramist, o ān Makke ast). And the Prophet of God has a sanctuary, and that is Medina. And Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī has a sanctuary, and that is Kufa. And we have a sanctuary, and that is the city of Qum. Know that soon a woman of my descendants, whose name is Fātima, will be buried in Qum, and everyone who does ziyārat to her will find he _ or she certainly goes to heaven (har kas ke ziyārat-e ou dar yābad, be-behesht ravad, o behesht-e ou rā wājib shavad).54 The translator notes that the narrator of this tradition (rāwī) said that: “During the time that Imam Abīī ʿAbdallāhJaʿfar b. Muhammad al-Sạ̄diq _ had this conversation, Mūsa al-Kādhim [who would become Fātima of _ _ Qum’s father] was not yet visible in the belly of his mother, and his mother was not yet pregnant with him.”55 The critical theme in this narrative is the sanctification of Qum as the holy city of the Shiʿa, so privileged that it is mentioned alongside Mecca, Medina, and Kufa. Qum is painted as a second Kufa and as the sacred

orders of Mansūr) and was buried in the Baḳīʿ cemetery in Medina, where his tomb was _ visited, especially by Shīʿīs, till it was destroyed by the Wahhābīs.” Umm Farwa, his mother, was a great-granddaughter of Abū Bakr. He is the last imām recognized by both Twelver and Ismāʿīlī Shīʿīs. Many of his partisans – shīʿa, or personal following – lived in Kufa, and some in Basra. “He lived quietly in Madīna as an authority in hadīth̲̲and _ probably in fiḳh; he is cited with respect in Sunnī isnāds.” M. G. S. Hodgson, “ḎJafar al- Sạ̄diḳ,” EI2. The city of al-Rayy is the ancient city of Raghā, and in the contemporary period the city has become contiguous with the greater metropolitan area of the capital Tehran. 53 He “who restrains himself” or “who keeps silent,” for his politically quietist policy. 54 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 573. For a discussion of this hadith, its significance for Qum, and the relationship between genealogy and hadith, see Chapter 3. 55 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 573. Measuring Shiʿism in Qum: Metrics and Periodization 187 base of the Shiʿa.56 It is also a premonitory statement by a descendant of the Prophet about further progeny: Fātima. This story actively _ sanctions pilgrimage to Fātima’s grave and rewards heaven for those _ who do so. In so doing, the author of Tārīkh-i Qum perhaps retroactively sanctions the already extant pious practice of visitation to Fātima’s _ tomb sanctuary in Qum. In another tradition about Qum and Fātima, _ Tārīkh-i Qum reports a hadith that “Ziyārat to Fātima’s grave is the _ equivalent to Heaven, without a doubt (ziyārat-qabr-e Fātime ʿalayha _ al-sallām, muʿādil o mawāzī o barābar-e behesht-st, bī shakk).”57 The emphasis of this story is unmistakable: Qum is holy city of the Shiʿa, sanctified by Shiʿa Imams, and the eternal resting place of Fātima _ al-Maʿsūma. Qum was sacred ground from its earliest days, and it was _ predicted that it would be the eternal resting place of Fātima and a sacred _ enclave of the Shiʿa. There is a strong affiliation throughout of the Ashʿarīs of Qum with Kufa.58 Given that Ashʿari Arabs settled in Qum, the tradition can be seen in its historical perspective. Since many of the Ashʿarī Arabs who settled in Qum were originally from Kufa, this continuity makes perfect sense: in the early 700s, Arabs from Kufa from the Ashʿar clan seeking refuge from persecution by the Umayyad governor al-Hajjāj chose Qum and its environs as a sanctuary.59 Ashʿarī Arab ʿAlids found Qum as their refuge from Umayyad persecution.60

measuring shiʿism in qum: metrics and periodization

If Qum is central to ʿAlid and later Shiʿi life and identity, then when did this association between Shiʿism and Qum begin? Metrics for measuring the Shiʿa quotient and establishing the periodization of Shiʿism in Qum generally revolve around the number of Shiʿa in Qum, how often and how much privilege hadith transmitters accord to other hadith transmitters in Qum, and networks among scholars and others that involve Qum and people based in Qum. By these metrics, certainly by the time the

56 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 573. 57 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum, 573. 58 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum. See, for example, 797, 805, 811, 813, 822, 824. 59 “The town [of Qum] and its environs were chosen by a clan of Ashʿar from Kufa as a haven of refuge from the awesome Umayyad governor al-Hajjāj.” Madelung, Religious Trends,78–79. 60 Madelung, Religious Trends, 79, 81. See esp. 78–84 on the spread of Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿism in Qum. 188 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities original – and now lost – Arabic Tārīkh-i Qum was penned in 378/ 988–989, the character of Qum was that of a Shiʿi community. Using centers for the transmission of Shiʿi hadith as a proxy for the establish- ment of Shiʿism in a region and its prominence in Shiʿa learning, Qum was a locus of Shiʿi activity in the fourth/tenth century, during which time transmitters in Qum were instrumental for what became two of the four canonical books of Shiʿi hadith. The expulsion from Qum of Shiʿi ghulāt, (“extremists” or “exaggerators”) by the Ashʿarī Arab tribal head Ahmad _ ibn Muhammad around 255/869 solidified the Imami Shiʿi character of _ Qum.61 Madelung assesses the saturation of Shiʿism in Qum on the basis of Shiʿa and Sunni works in the Rijāl genre, primarily al-Rijāl by al-Najāshī (372–450/982–1058) and al-Fihrist by al-Tụ̄sī (385/995–459 or 460/ 1066–1067).62 Madelung catalogues the spread of Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿism in Qum and finds that, “by the end of the second/eighth century Qom was, like Kufa, solidly Shīʿite and, unlike Kufa, solidly Imāmī,”63 and “Qom thus became the chief center of orthodox Imāmī traditionism in the third/ninth century.”64 Agreeing with Madelung’s dating and method- ology, Newman posits that Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿism was the established dominant religion in Qum by the late second/eighth century. Newman argues that it was “most definitively a Shīʿī haven,” albeit a besieged one, and given the city’s socio-political elite were Imami Shiʿi they “established Qum’s reputation as a Shīʿī, and especially Imāmī, haven, if not the city- state, by the third/ninth century, in contrast to other cities in the region in which pockets of believers might be found.”65 Newman concludes that Qum was a Shiʿi city by analyzing networks of hadith transmission for important Shiʿi traditionists. By identifying the ways in which Qummi hadith transmitters supported and privileged ideas promoted by other

61 Halm, Shiʿism, 42. On the early Islamic history of Qum, including the conquests, migrations of the Ashʿari Arabs from Kufa to Qum, and the role of the city as a locus of Shiʿa learning and activity, see also Halm, Shiʿism,41–42. On the emigration of Ashʿarī Arabs to Qum and Ahmad b. Muhammad b. ʿIsa al-Ashʿarī expelling the ghulāt _ _ from the city, see also Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 78, citing Ahmad ibn ʿAlī _ Najāshī, Rijāl (Bombay, Ḥajj ShaykhʿAlī al-Mahallātī al-Hāʾirī, 1317 [1899–1900]) _ pp. 132, 231, 234. 62 Madelung uses the following editions: Muhammad ibn al-Ḥasan Al-Tụ̄sī, (995–1067), _ Kitab Fihrist kutub al-shiʿa, edited by, A. Sprenger and Mawlawy ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq (Cal- cutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal: 1853–1854 [or 1853–1855]) and Ahmad ibn ʿAlī al- _ Najāshī, (982–1058), Al-Rijal (Tehran: n.p, n.d.). 63 Madelung, Religious Trends, 79. 64 Madelung, Religious Trends, 81. 65 Newman, Formative Period, 38, xx. Measuring Shiʿism in Qum: Metrics and Periodization 189 traditionists with ties to Qum, Newman identifies the discourse and networks that existed between hadith transmitters.66 Drechsler likewise uses the movement of people and networks between important Shiʿa as evidence of Qum being a center of gravity for the Shiʿa. This includes the emigration of a hadith transmitter from Kufa to Qum (probably in the mid-ninth century) as evidence of the importance of Qum as a center of Shiʿa learning and activity, as well as the movement of ʿAlids to Qum during the governorship of Mofleh, the _ Turkish officer of the caliph al-Mustaʿīn, in the city, in the mid-third/ ninth century.67 During the third/ninth century, there were a significant number of Shiʿi ulama, particularly in comparison to the number of Sunni ulama based in Qum: 266 Shiʿi ulama to a meager 14 Sunni ulama.68 Networks among the Shiʿa in Qum include the alleged close contacts there between local Qummis and Ahmad b. Ishāq, representative of the _ _ eleventh ShiʿiImamḤasan al-ʿAskarī.69 Ahmad b. Ishāqservedmultiple _ _ roles among the ʿAlid and Shiʿa in Qum. In addition to being the representative of the eleventh Shiʿi Imam, Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī,Ahmad b. _ Ishāq administered the sanctuary of Fātima and served as the agent _ _ (wakīl) responsible for distributing and pensions for the ʿAlids.70 The community of ʿAlids, which recorded 331 male ʿAlids in Qum in 988–989 out of a population of perhaps 50,000, created a small but prestigious community that could be coterminous with the Shiʿawithout being synonymous with it.71 Momen’s 1985 study would benefit enormously from the big data, which can be harnessed by digitized texts and computational analysis in the manner and methodology currently undertaken by Romanov,72 but

66 Newman pays close attention to the al-Mahāsin of al-Barqī (d. 274–80/887–894), which _ was assembled in Qum in the latter part of the third/ninth century; Basāʾir al-darajāt of _ al-Saff̣ ār al-Qummī (d. 290/902–903), also assembled in Qum in the late of the third/ ninth century; and al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al-dīn by al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940–941), which was assembled in Baghdad in the early fourth/tenth century. 67 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr. 68 Calmard, J., “Ḳum,” EI2, citing ʿAlī Asghar Faqīhī, Tarikh-i madhhabi-i Qum (Qum: _ Hikmat 1391[1971]), 309. 69 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr. 70 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr. 71 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr. This number, based on Tārīkh-i Qum, is also cited in Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,” 596. 72 See, for example, Romanov, “Toward the Digital History of the Pre-Modern Muslim World,” 229–244. 190 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

Momen’s tables showing the geographic distribution of the origins and death locations of Shiʿi ulama are nevertheless very illustrative in showing the centers of gravity of Shiʿism, using ulama and their numbers in a particular location as a proxy for its importance in Shiʿi Islam. Qum is heavily represented through the first five Islamic centuries (through the twelfth century CE), dropping off during the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries, a trend that accelerates in the eleventh/seven- teenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries.73 Of three authors of the four canonical works of Shiʿi hadith, al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941) and Ibn Bābūya (or Bābawayhī) (b. ca. 306/918 in Qum, d. ca. 381/991 in Rayy) are associated with Qum. al-Tụ̄sī (385/995 in Tus, d. 459 or 460/1066–1067 in Najaf) left Tus for Baghdad, which he in turn left for Najaf, after religious turmoil made the capital untenable for him.74 The Imami Shiʿi hadith transmitter Abū Jaʿfar Muhammad ibn _ Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (or al-Kulīnī), who himself was from a village between Rayy and Qum, compiled the earliest of the four canonical collections of Shiʿi hadith, Kitāb al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al-dīn (The One who is Competent in Religious Science). Kulaynī heard many of the Shiʿa transmitters in Qum and probably lived there sometime around the years 903–913 CE.75 Kulaynī later moved to Baghdad, where he is thought to have labored on al-Kāfī for twenty years, and died in Baghdad ca. 328/939–940 or 329/ 940–941.76 Of al-Kulaynī’s many works, only al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al-dīn has survived.77 Muhammad ibn ʿAli ibn Bābūya (or Bābawayhī, in Arabized form) al- _ Qummī (b. ca. 306/918 in Qum, d. ca. 381/991 in Rayy), who authored

73 Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 84, 91, 97, 123. Momen’s sources are Shaykh Muhammad ibn Hasaṇ al-al-Tụ̄sī (known as Shaykh al-Tāʾifa), al-Fihrist, published _ together with Muhammad Muhsin ʿAlam al-Hudā, Nadād al-Īdāh, edited by, _ _ _ _ A. Sprenger, revised by MahmūdRāmyār (Mashhad: Chāpkhānā Dānishgāh Mashhad, _ 1351 Sh./1972); select volumes of the biographical dictionary by Muhammad Muhsin al- _ _ Tihrānī (known as Aghā Buzurg), Tabaq̣ ātAʿlām al-Shiʿa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al- ʿArabiyya, 1971–1975, and Najaf: Matbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1954); and Muhammad ʿAlī _ Kashmīrī, Nujūm al-Samā (Lucknow: MatbaʿaJaʿfarī, 1303/1885). _ 74 The four canonical works of Shiʿi hadith are al-Kāfī fī ʿilm al-dīn by al-Kulaynī (d. 329/ 941), Kitāb man lā yahduruhu’l-faqīh by Ibn Bābawayhī (Muhammadd. b. ʿAlī b. _ _ _ Husayṇ b. Mūsā, d. 381/991–992) and Istibsār and Tahdhīb al-Ahkām, both by _ _ Muhammad b. al-Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī Abū Jaʿfar al-Tụ̄sī (385/995 in Tụ̄s, d. 459 or 460/ _ 1066–1067 in Najaf). See A. A. A. Fyzee, “Ibn Bābawayh(I),” EI2; Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “al-Tụ̄sī,” EI2; Halm, Shiʿism, 42. 75 Halm, Shiʿism, 41; Madelung, “al-Kulaynī (or al-Kulīnī), Abū Dj̲a̲ʿfar Muhammad,” EI2. _ 76 Madelung, “al-Kulaynī (or al-Kulīnī), Abū Dj̲a̲ʿfar Muhammad,” EI2. _ 77 Madelung, “al-Kulaynī (or al-Kulīnī), Abū Dj̲a̲ʿfar Muhammad,” EI2. _ Measuring Shiʿism in Qum: Metrics and Periodization 191

Kitāb man lā yahduruhu’l-faqīh (One Who Has No Jurist in His Proxim- _ _ ity), another of the four canonical collections of Imami Shia hadith, was from Qum.78 Other notable Shiʿi traditionists from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth century include al-Kulaynī’s teacher, Abū l-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī (d. after 307/919).79 Many other early Shiʿi tradition- ists also have the nisba al-Qummī, suggesting that Qum was a locus of Shiʿism and Shiʿa hadith.80 The center of gravity of Shiʿism shifted, with Baghdad and Qum alternating as a locus of activity between the third/ninth and fourth/ tenth centuries.81 Daftary argues that Qum was firmly Imami Shiʿaby the end of the second/eighth century, and while Kufa was also solidly Shiʿa at that time, in Kufa there were multiple Shiʿa factions, including the Zaydis.82 The center of Shiʿi scholarship moved from Baghdad to Najaf in the fifth/eleventh century, with al-Hilla (between Baghdad and Kufa) rising to scholarly prominence in the sixth/twelfth century.83 Qum under Seljuq rule84 was Shiʿa, and the pragmatic Sunni Seljuqs

78 Halm, Shiʿism, 42. 79 Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī,” EI3. 80 Halm, Shiʿism, 42. 81 Baghdad was of central importance starting around the mid-third/ninth century, when the four representatives of the Hidden Imam lived in the city, as did the powerful Nawbakhti family. However, in the early fourth/tenth century, the center of gravity shifts to Qum, with the traditionists then moving back to Baghdad after the death of Ibn Bābawayh, until Najaf rises to the fore during the Seljuq period. Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 81–82. Within Shiʿism, Qum was associated with the hadith transmitters, or traditional- ists, and became known as the center of the akhbarī “school,” while Baghdad was associated with rationalist thought and became associated with the usulī “school.” On this, see A. J. Newman, “The Development and Political Significance of Rationalist (usuli) _ and Traditionalist (akhbari) School in Imami Shiʿi History from the Third/Ninth to the Tenth/Sixteenth Century A.D.,” Doctoral Thesis, UCLA, Los Angeles, 1986. 82 Farhad Daftary, A History of Shiʿi Islam (London: I. B. Taurus in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2013), 69–70. On Imami and Zaydi Shiʿism in Kufa, see Haider, The Origins of the Shīʻa. In Kufa, there was also Fathī faction, or the Aftahiyya, _ _ _ _ who supported ʿAbd Allah al-Aftah, the eldest surviving son of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, as Jaʿfar _ _ al-Sadiq’s successor. Those who would become known as Imami Shiʿa supported ʿAbdal- lāh al-Aftah’s half-brother Mūsā al-Kāzim (d. 183/799) as the seventh imam after as Jaʿfar _ _ _ al-Sadiq’s successor. After the death of Mūsā al-Kāzim (d. 183/799), a faction emerged _ that did not recognize the imamate of the eighth imam, ʿAlī al-Ridā, and instead con- _ sidered ʿAlī al-Ridā and his descendants as the Mahdi’s “lieutenants (khulafaʾ).” On the _ Wāqifī and Fathī factions in Kufa, see Madelung, Religious Trends,78–82. _ _ 83 Madelung, Religious Trends, 83; Halm, Shiʿism, 64. Hilla became the pre-eminent center of Shiʿa learning after the Mongol conquests, surpassing Qum and Baghdad. Daftary, A History of Shiʿi Islam, 77. 84 This is the period from around 442/1050–51 until the mid-sixth/twelfth century, after which point power transitioned to the Atābakān-e Āḏarbāyjāns (Ildegozids) and 192 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities do not seem to have interfered with the sectarian temperament of the city, evidenced by the prominent Shiʿa family of Daʿwidār, who were judges (qadi)ofQum.85 Qum, at the time of the translation into Persian of the original Arabic Tārīkh-i Qum around 805/1402–1403, would have been a stronghold of Imami Shiʿism, even if was not a center of scholarly output. Much of this evidence of Qum as a locus of Imami Shiʿism comes from the physical presence of Shiʿaaswellasthe related by non-synonymous group of ʿAlidsinthecityandnetworksof hadith transmitters active in Qum or privileging traditions transmitted by those associated with Qum. The city experienced depopulation after the first Mongol invasion in 621/1224, but was revived during the Timurd period in the fifteenth century and was ultimately patronized by Shah ʿAbbās I during the Safavid era.86 Talibi graves from the Umayyad period in Qum, along with Shiraz, Isfahan, and Kashan, evidence the movement of Talibis to these cities, which functioned as regional Shiʿi centers, Qum more so than the others.87 It was in Qum that “the traditions of the imams first transmitted in Kufa and else- where were sifted and collected.”88 When dating the ʿAlids and Shiʿi trend in Qum, the Ashʿarī Arab influence reinforced not only an Arab identity but also the ʿAlid heritage of the Ashʿarī Arabs who migrated to and settled in Qum.89 Indeed, it was these Ashʿarī Arabs – as opposed to mawālī,aswasthe case in Kufa – who comprised the majority and the prominent

Ḵwārazmshāhs. See Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr, and Luther, “Atābakān-e Āḏarbāyjāns,” EIr. 85 Drechsler, “QOM i. History to the Safavid Period,” EIr. 86 Halm, Shiʿism,63–64, 85. Hilla was the center of Imami Shiʿi scholarship during the Mongol period. 87 Newman, Formative Period, 41. 88 Madelung, Religious Trends, 79, 81. See especially 78–84 on the spread of Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿism in Qum. Madelung cites Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān,4:175–176. See also Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 212 note 125. Muʿjam al- buldān by Yāqūt(575–626/1179–1229) is an early source for the presence of Kufan Shiʿi in Qum. 89 Claims that “western Iran was more open to ʿAlid-Shiʿite ideas than the center or the East. The Shiʿite movement had primarily grown in Arab lands, though it did so in the border zone between Arab and Persian culture, Iraq, where, no doubt, it assumed many features of ancient oriental religions,” may be placed in the broader context of the influence of Arabs from Iraq who settled in regions in Iran, such as Qum. Annemarie Schimmel, “The Ornament of the Saints: The Religious Situation in Iran in Pre-Safavid Times,” Iranian Studies, 7: 1/2 (Winter–Spring 1974): 101. Measuring Shiʿism in Qum: Metrics and Periodization 193 traditionists in Qum, and Shiʿi works such as the al-Usūlminal-Kāfī by Muhammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940–941) document _ the pro-Arab sentiments of some local notable traditionists.90 The Ashʿarī tribe had an enormous physical impact on Qum in addition to its importance in the spheres of religious authority and socio- political prominence. Members of the Ashʿarī clan are credited with building or refurbishing various elements of the city, including mīdāns, karīz water channels (kārīz-hā), water-mills (āsiyāh-hā), bridges (qantara-hā).91 From the vantage point of a traveler and geographer in the fourth/ tenth century writing around 375/985, the geographer Muqaddasī had particularly generous praise for the region of al-Jibal, to which Qum belonged, but his judgment of Qum itself was more severe. Despite considering Rayy glorious (al-Rayy al-jalīlat) and Isfahan, to which Qum once administratively belonged, as a precious district (al-kūra al-nafīsa Isbahān),92 Muqaddasī accuses the Qummis of being extrem- ists who have neglected their mosque and communal prayers. “The people of Qum are extremist Shiʿi. They have abandoned communal assembly and they have neglected the mosque, such that Rukn al- Dawla forced them to take care of the mosque building and its needs.”93 This is despite the expulsion from Qum of the Shiʿi ghulāt, (“extremists” or “exaggerators”)bytheAshʿarī Ahmad ibn _ Muhammad around 255/869, almost a century earlier.94 Qummis, as _ well as others in the region, also adopted noticeably Shiʿinames:“The most common kunya of the people of Qum is Abū Jaʿfar, and for the people of Isfahan it is Abū Muslim, and for the people of Qazvin it is Abū al-Ḥusayn.”95

90 Madelung, Religious Trends, 82. 91 Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum,39–71. 92 Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 384; Collins, Best Divisions, 340. _ 93 “Wa ahl Qum Shiʿaghāliya, qad tarakū al-jamāʿātwa‘attalū al-jāmiʿ ila an alzamahum Rukn al-Dawla ʿimāratuhu wa luzūmuhu.” Muqaddasī, Kitābahsan al-taqāsīm, 395. See _ also Collins, Best Divisions, 351. 94 Halm, Shiʿism, 42. On the early Islamic history of Qum, including the conquests, migrations of the Ashʿari Arabs from Kufa to Qum, and the role of the city as a locus of Shiʿa learning and activity, see also Halm, Shiʿism,41–42. On the emigration of Ashʿari Arabs to Qum and Ahmad b. Muhammad b. ʿIsa al-Ashʿari expelling the ghulāt _ _ from the city, see also Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 78, citing Ahmad ibn ʿAli _ Najāshī, Rijāl (Bombay, Hajj̣ Shaykh ʿAlī al-Mahallātī al-Hāʾirī, 1317 [1899–1900]) _ pp. 132, 231, 234. 95 “Akthar kunyā ahl Qumm Abu Ja’far o ahl Isfahān Abu Muslim o bi-Qazvīn Abu al- Husayn.” Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 398; Collins, Best Divisions, 353. _ 194 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

the sacred power of shrines

The death and burial of Fātima al-Maʿsūma in Qum enables its later _ _ transition from a district and seasonal capital city into a shrine city. From the late 1400s to the early 1500s onwards, Qum – religiously significant from its early days – transitioned from a seasonal capital city with political significance into a full-fledged shrine city under the Safavids. This transition lent prestige and legitimacy to the dynasty through its patronage of the city and in having such a sacred site within its territories. The Safavids based themselves in Tabriz, Qazvin, and Isfahan, and as these cities developed into political seats of government, Qum became a sacred shrine city of Shiʿi worship. Despite the importance of Qum in later centuries and the early date of Fātima’s burial there in 201/816–817, it was only in the Safavid era that _ Shah ʿAbbās I (978–1038/1571–1629, r. 995–1037/1587–1629)96 made magnificent developments to the shrine of Fātima in his attempt to redir- _ ect pilgrimage traffic to Qum and Mashhad away from the Ottoman Sunni held sanctuaries in Najaf and Karbala.97 Mashhad, formerly Tus, contains the burial sanctuary of Fātima’s brother and the eighth Shiʿi _ Imam, al-Ridā, who died in Tus in 203/818 and was buried in there next _ to the tomb of Harūn al-Rashīd.98 Shah ʿAbbās I enhanced the shrine sanctuary of Fātima, which included remodeling part of the sanctuary _ into a madrasa with a hostel to house visiting pilgrims.99 Shah ʿAbbāsI’s pilgrimage – which he conducted on foot in (in 1009/1601) over twenty- eight days – from Isfahan to the shrine of the eighth Shiʿi Imam ʿAli al- Ridā in Mashhad, was an act of piety intended to divert pilgrimage traffic _ into Safavid realms away from shrines and tombs in Iraq and Arabia under Ottoman rule.100 Shah ʿAbbāsI’s descendants were buried in Qum,

96 R. M. Savory, “ʿAbbāsI,” EI2. 97 Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 331. 98 ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā’s place of martyrdom or tomb-shrine, or mashhad, then began to _ _ refer to the town as well and not just the burial sanctuary, and today the city is known as Mashhad. More correctly, it was within the town of Nūqān, which contained the village of Sanābādh, that the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. (193/809) and ʿAlī al-Ridā b. Mūsā _ (d. 203/818) were buried; the site is now called Mashhad. See M. Streck, “Mashhad,” EI2. 99 Calmard, J., “Ḳum,” EI2. 100 Matthee, “Safavid Dynasty,” EIr. On Shah Abbas I’s pilgrimage, see also Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shi’ism,” Iranian Studies, 27: 1/4, Religion and Society in Islamic Iran during the Pre-Modern Era (1994): 156–157. The Sacred Power of Shrines 195 along with thirty-one other princes, and in the centuries to follow, several hundred tombs of imām-zādas were built in the city.101 Shah ʿAbbās I both asserted his alliance with and consolidated power over the religious establishment through many other channels, including marriage and the strategic use of pious endowments.102 Shah ʿAbbās I appointed as grand vizier Khalifa Sultān, who was both married to Shah _ ʿAbbāsI’s daughter and who was the first grand vizier to emerge from a clerical background.103 His act of establishing the center of the city of Isfahan into a wafq did the double duty of asserting his piety and gaining financial advantages.104 Shah ʿAbbās I also transferred the Safavid capital to Isfahan in 1597, where he built madrasas to attract and systematically nurture the production of Shiʿi ulama, rather than have students study with individual clerics.105 Establishing a system of madrasas would pro- duce a clerical class in Iran, whereas the Safavids has previously relied on Imami Shiʿi ulama who were trained in the Arab Shiʿa centers of learning in Najaf (Iraq), Bahrayn (the Gulf), and Jabal ʿAmil (Lebanon).106 In this way, Shah ʿAbbās I drew Shiʿi scholarship and ulama to Isfahan.

101 J. Calmard, “Ḳum,” EI2, citing the following: M. Bazin, “Qom, ville de pèlerinage et centre regional” in Revue Géographique de l’Est,1–2 (1973), 84, and AmīnAhmad _ Rāzī, Haft iqlīm, edited by, JavādFādil, vol. ii (Tehran: ʿAlī Akbar, [1930?]), 493–518. _ Writing in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, AmīnAhmad Rāzī recorded _ that there were 444 imām-zādas in Qum. 102 R. Matthee, “Safavid Dynasty,” EIr. On the Safavid’s relationship with the Qizilbash Turkic tribal groups and Safavid consolidation of religious, political, and military power and legitimacy, see Kathryn Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis,” 135–161. Babayan focuses on the figure of Ismāʿīl I (r. 1501–1524), who, as a teenager, extended the movement beyond a millenarian, messianic movement lead by a shaykh and established the dynasty as a political entity with a shah. The mystical order upon which the Safavid dynasty was established was founded by Shaykh Saf̣ī-al-Dīn (1252–1334) in Ardabil, in the northwest of Iran. Although the early history of the movement is unclear, it included Sunni beliefs before ultimately adhering to Imami Shiʿi beliefs. Safavid centralizing policies freed the dynasty from its dependence on the power of the Qizilbash Turkic tribal groups to administer and control its territories. 103 Matthee, “Safavid Dynasty,” EIr. 104 Matthee, “Safavid Dynasty,” EIr. Shah ʿAbbās I also suppressed the Nuqtavi rebellion, which sought to overthrow him, in (1002/1593) – despite the fact that, as Babayan argues, Shah ʿAbbās I was fascinated with Nuqtavi beliefs and took them seriously – and in this process backed the Imami ulama. Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis,” 154–156. 105 Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 111–112. 106 Daftary, A History of Shiʿi Islam,83–84. For all of his massive centralizing policies, Shah ʿAbbās I was not the first Safavid to marry imperial power with Imami Shiʿism. At the very inception of the movement as a political dynasty during the rule of Shah Ismāʿīl I (r. 1501–1524), the eponymous founder of the dynasty, Shaykh Saf̣ī-al-Dīn (1252–1334) from Ardabil was appended to the genealogy of seventh Imam, Mūsa al- Kāzim. (d. ca. 800), thereby creating am Imami Shiʿi genealogy for the emerging Safavid _ 196 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

The decision to advocate ziyārat to the shrine of Fātima in Qum was _ motivated to a significant degree by a series of factors that were not strictly religious or theological: directing pilgrimage traffic within the empire was in line with the centralizing policy of the Safavids.107 By encouraging pilgrimage to Qum as the second most sacred site after Mashhad, the Safavid shahs put the weight of the ruling dynasty behind the shrine of Fātima in Qum. With sacred Shiʿi sites in the far east of their _ domains at Mashhad and in the west at Qum, the Safavids could lay claim to sanctified ground and the legitimacy, prestige, and pilgrim traffic these sites would draw. The Safavids were not unique in attempting to draw pilgrimage traffic into their realms. In medieval Europe, acquiring relics of saints by theft, purchase, or gift was an important way in which monastic communities and, to a lesser extent, urban areas increased donations, pilgrimage traffic, and economic activity in their communities during the ninth to eleventh centuries.108 A decision to enrich the religious significance of Qum within both the Safavid Empire would enhance and bolster the Shiʿi credentials of the Safavids. This elevation of Qum through the historical literature, popular piety, financial support, and central authority creates a type of self-affirming circle: it is a place of religious significance because various people say it is so, which then increases its religious importance.

local saints

Given Fātima’s relatively early incorporation into Qum’s literary self- _ image and the later importance of the shrine, it is clear that saints played a role in the physical and literary development of local identity and localization of religious identity. The theoretical framework about Chris- tian saints and local identity in the Late Antique Mediterranean is a useful heuristic device.109 In the Christian context, local saints “served to

dynasty. Matthee, “Safavid Dynasty,” EIr. See also Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis,” 143–144. 107 Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 332. 108 Geary, Furta Sacra. See, for example, the acquisition of the relics of St. Nicolas Myra, in Turkey, and their transportation to Bari, in Italy, during the eleventh century, which was intended to attract pilgrims, 126–127. 109 For example, churches produced their own calendars, which would commemorate a particular group of saints, and “the celebration of a particular set of saints’ feasts became another means of asserting and performing local identity and solidarity.” Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult and Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 251. Local Saints 197 connect local history and the local church to the wider set of Christian feasts and the broader sweep of sacred history.”110 Localized commemor- ation of saints, such as Fātima, embed Qum deeper into the broader _ Islamic sacred geography. As Meri writes on the power of ziyārat to connect the local and the universal for the believer, “The ziyārat is the collective conscience of Islamic society on the local and universal levels. To the reader local elements no longer remain in the local realm. They assume a new meaning as they are expounded in an Islamic frame- work.”111 Such modes of embedding and enmeshing demonstrate a bal- ancing act that asserts a local articulation of Muslim identity while appealing to universalist pietistic values. In her study of how churches functioned as social and ritual spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean, Yasin argues that the sacrality associated with a saint extends far beyond his or her place of commem- oration or burial.112 Christian tradition attests to the desire for despo- sitio ad sanctos, or burial near tombs of saints or martyrs, because resurrection would occur first near the saints. A saint’stombwasalso believed to be the meeting point of heaven and earth; burial near the tomb moved a believer closer to salvation and a personal relationship with the saint, proximity to whom may include the saint’sprotec- tion.113 For Fātima of Qum, her sphere of sanctity extended beyond _ her burial ground in Bābelān to include the city of Qum itself. Her shrine complex was the focal point of pilgrimage, and pious believers also sought to be buried near her. As shrine complexes, relics, burial near saints, and pious visitations to them attest, Yasin’s observation on the Late Antique Christian phenomenon that “the holy graves evidence of a strongly place-based sacrality”114 also holds true in the Muslim tradition.

110 The full quote is below. By combining the local calendar with other holidays and the feasts of saints martyred in other locations, “each calendar of festivals embedded local saints within the larger liturgical cycle. The saints in turn served to connect local history and the local church to the wider set of Christian feasts and the broader sweep of sacred history.” Yasin, Saints, 252. See also Yasin, Saints, 253–256. 111 Meri, “The Islamic Cult of Saints,” 44. 112 Yasin, Saints, 2. As Yasin notes in the Christian tradition, there are “features of monuments and aspects of saint veneration that are not fully explained by the material- ity of relics and the ‘placeness’ of cult. Often, for example, the inscription of saints’ names or images on church surfaces do not mark the location of relics but instead testify to votive prayers, donors’ benefactions, or liturgical celebrations.” 113 Yasin, Saints,70–71, 221. 114 Yasin, Saints,1. 198 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

burial bonanza

Fātima’s burial in Qum encouraged a burial bonanza in later centuries. _ Her shrine – especially after royal patronage was lavished on it – drew pilgrims and money to Qum. Burial, particularly for those buried in close proximity to the shrine of Fātima, also brought money to Qum. ʿAlids _ and ulama were drawn to Qum because of the shrine of Fātima, the status _ and cachet of the Qum as a religious center, and in order to be buried in Qum. Using the records of British travelers to Persia in the nineteenth century, Lambton notes: “The traffic in corpses were also a source of revenue ... The price of internment varied according to proximity to the shrine.”115 Indeed, the center of gravity of the city of Qum shifted and centered on the sanctuary of Fātima, which now occupies the center of _ Qum.116 The expansion of Fātima’s sanctuary and its mounting religious pres- _ tige, helped by the patronage that Shah ʿAbbās lavished on it, drew both pilgrims and ulama to Qum. Safavid rulers were, in their deaths, also drawn to Qum. Safavid rulers, including Shah Saf̣ī, (d.1052/1642), ʿAbbāsI’s grandson and successor; Shah ʿAbbās II (r. 1052–1077/ 1642–1666) Shah Saf̣ī’s son and successor; and Shah Sulaymān (d. 1105/1694), the penultimate Safavid shah, were all buried in Qum.117 In Qajar times, Fath ʿAlī Shāh (1185–1250 /1771–1834), also known _ as Bābā Khān, and his grandson and successor Muhammad Shāh _ (1215–1264/1808–1848), the second and third Qajar rulers, were both buried in Qum. After Fātima’s death, Umm Muhammad, the daughter of _ _

115 Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 333. 116 Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qum,” 102. “Though Bābelān, Fatemeh’s eternal resting place, was originally located at the southern part to the city away from Komīdān and Mamjān, which were the center of the city at the time, with the passage of time her tomb helped shift the gravitation of importance from the north to the south. As a result, her shrine has occupied the very center of Qum as we see it now.” 117 Lambton finds the history of Qum under the Saljuqs as “uneventful,” with both Shiʿis and Sunnis living in the predominantly Shiʿi area. Qum likely did not experience great damage during the Mongol and Khwarazmshah eras, although its economy likely suffered due to the destruction in other regions. The Saf̣ī family in Qum was a local dynasty from the mid-1300s to the early 1400s, which had been influential from the mid- 1200s. Such was the power of the independent dynasts that Mahmud b. Saf̣ī (d. 791/ _ 1389 or 792/1390) even “issued coins in his own name as sultan.” In the fifteenth century Qum functioned as a center of the Qara Qoyunlu (who were Shiʿi) and later the Aq Qoyunlu (who were Sunni), who periodically settled there and used Qum as a seasonal capital. Lambton, “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City,” 328–331. Saintly Bodies in Tabaristan 199

Mūsa b. Muhammad (Imam Jawād) b. ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā (known as _ _ Mūsa Ridāʾiyāt), was buried in a grave next to that of Fātima.118 _ _ Safavid centralizing policy curtailed and pre-empted the independence of Qum, and the city struggled in the post-Safavid period, with some return to prosperity during the Qajar era. There were chronic water shortages and irrigation problems. Though it had suffered these periodic- ally for centuries, even up through the nineteenth century, Qum’s prestige for its shrine sanctuary became tremendous. It was later, in the late nineteenth century, that Qum became a dissident center and place of religious independence in the late 1800s onwards.119

saintly bodies in tabaristan

Further north in Persia, on the southern shores of the Caspian, Ibn Isfandiyār incorporates narratives about Sufis and saints in the opening sections of his Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Saints (awliyāʾ) and ascetics (zuh- hādd) are prominent amongst the human fadāʾil of Tabaristan.120 Sufis, _ in the sense of pīrs and mūrids, are mentioned as popular when the text covers the 1300s, although ascetics (zāhid, zuhhād) are mentioned in the _ _ _ context of notables, sayyids, and Imams. Ibn Isfandiyār’s writing ends at some point in the sections that cover the thirteenth century, as Ibn Isfandiyār’s portion of the work is dated to 613/1216. After this point someone else – an anonymous author who continued the text – takes over, although precisely where in the text this occurs is unclear. Anecdotes about Sufis, posthumously elevated in the literature and living tradition to the level of friends of God (awliyāʾ), fit into the broader pattern of appealing to not just ʿAlids or Shiʿi Imams but more broadly religious exemplars (such as al-Hasaṇ al-Basrī). These include Abū Yazīd _ (Bāyazīd) Tayf̣ ūrb.ʿĪsā b. Surūshān al- Bistāmī (d. Bistām 261/874 or 264/ __ 877–878)121,Ḥātim al-Asamm (‘the deaf’), Abu Saʿīd Kharrāz, Abu Ibrahim Ismāʿāl ibn Yahya al-Mazanī and Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakaṃ al-Misrī, _

118 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 570, note 2. Umm Muhammad is therefore the daughter of _ Mūsa Ridāʾiyāt, who was the son of the ninth Ithnā ʿAsharī Shiʿi Imam Muhammad b. _ _ ʿAlī al-Rida (d. 220/ 835), known as Muhammad al-Tāqī or Muhammad al-Jawād. This _ _ _ means that Mūsa Ridāʾiyāt is also the younger brother of the 10th Ithnā ʿAsharī Imam _ ʿAlī al-Hādī. W. Madelung, “Muhammad b.ʿAlī al-Ridā b. Mūsā b. Ḏjaʿfar, Abū Ḏjaʿfar _ _ al-Ḏjawād or al-Tāḳī,” EI2. 119 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 332–335. 120 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:131–135; Browne, Abridged Translation,80–85. 121 H. Ritter, “Abū Yazīd(Bāyazīd) Tayf̣ ūrb.Īsā b. Surūsh̲̲ān al- Bistāmī,” EI2. __ 200 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities who were students (shāgardān)ofShāfiʿī.122 Ibn Isfandiyār presents miscellaneous anecdotes about the Sufis, including in this context remarks about God, man’s rebelliousness, and man’s dangerous propen- sity to sin.123 Ibn Isfandiyār also includes stories, peppered with Qurʾanic quotations, about ʿĀmir ibn ʿAbd al-Qays, and well as Sufyān al-Thawrī,Mālik Dīnār, Abū ʿAbd al-RahmānZiyādb.Anʿam al-Ifriqī, _ and al-Ḥasan al-Basrī to connect pious and revered figures to the history _ of Tabaristan.124 Many of these friends of God (awliyāʾ) and ascetics have tombs in Tabaristan, and miraculous powers are attributed to their tombs or shrines. The saints and ascetics whose tombs are in Tabaristan include the curiously violently named Shaykh Abū al-ʿAbbās Qassāb(“the Butcher”). Shakyh Abū Jaʿfar al-Hanātī’s shrine allegedly housed a Qurʾan copied by ʿAlī ibn Abī Taliḅ ’s son Muhammad Ibn al-Hanạ fiyya _ (16–81/637–700 or 701). The Qurʾan’s power was such that those who swore falsely on it died horribly within the year. Certain sectors are imbued with spiritual and physical power: those who dare to drink wine in the quarter of Aliabad, by the Gate of Zindana-kuy, are cast out of Aliabad. At least one saint, Qutb-i-Shālūsī, counted Sultan Sinjar amongst his students (Sultan Sinjar khirqa-i ou pūshīdobesūmaʿou āmad)125 and amongst those who visited his monastic cell. Ibn Isfandiyār transmits a story which credits Qutb-i-Shālūsī with visionary powers, since he allegedly knew the moment when Sultan Sinjar’s minister Nāsir al-Dīn _ Muhammad Bū Tawba – who Qutb-i-Shālūsī pointedly refers to as _ Muhammad-i-bī-Tawba (“the Unrepentant”), and who had disliked and _ allegedly persecuted Qutb-i-Shālūsī i – dies. Qutb-i- Shālūsī’s cell (sūmaʿ) apparently still existed at the time of Ibn Isfandiyār.126 Some tombs, however, are misidentified, and Ibn Isfandiyār notes that some tombs are mistaken for those of saints or ascetics or Companions.

122 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:131–135; Browne, Abridged Translation,80–85. 123 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:48–50; Browne, Abridged Translation, 10, although the Sufis mentioned differ somewhat form the Persian edition. 124 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:50–55; Browne, Abridged Translation,10–13. Not all of these notable characters possessed spiritual powers: some were known for their literary prowess. The tomb of Qādī Hishām, who was known for his literary powers (in both Arabic and Persian), is in the quarter of Awamma-kuy and near the tomb of Shām-i- Āl-i-Muhammad. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:131–135; _ Browne, Abridged Translation,80–85. 125 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:131; Browne, Abridged Translation, 81. 126 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:131; Browne, Abridged Translation,80–81. Sacred Relics 201

One such example is the tomb of Masqala b. Hubayra al-Shaybānī (who _ unsuccessfully invaded Tabaristan). Masqala b. Hubayra al-Shaybānī _ bought slaves – women and children from the Banu Nājiya who had reverted to Christianity, and whom ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib had subsequently fought – from ʿAlī ibn Abī Tạ̄lib but had been unable to fully pay his debt. Ibn Isfandiyār notes that this tomb is located where he was killed, which is on the road between Kaju and Kandasan. The ignorant and common people (ʿawwām al-nās) visit it as a shrine and mistake it for a tomb of one of the sahāba.127 _ _

sacred relics

Ibn Isfandiyār further binds Tabaristan to the Prophet by noting the sacred relics of the Prophet of Islam, members of his family, and friends of God that are housed in the region. As Ibn Isfandiyār relates that al- Jāhiz includes in his Kitābal-Bayānwaal-Tābiʿīn a story about the last _ Umayyad caliph Marwānb.Muhammad b. Marwānb.al-Ḥakam, _ known as Marwān II (r. 127–132/744–750). During his confrontations with Abū Muslim’s army and not wanting to surrender relics of the Prophet of Islam, Marwān II ordered one of his most trusted servants to bury the staff and cloak of the Prophet (“qadīb o burda”)128 in the sand and chop off the head of the servant’s daughter to prevent her from revealing the hiding place of the relics. MarwānII’s men also took this same servant himself captive, but the servant balked: “If you kill me, the location of the inheritance [the Prophet’s staff and cloak] will remain lost.” Marwān II realized that the servant was right. The servant showed Marwān II and his men where he had hidden the Prophet’s relics. Ibn Isfandiyār records, on the basis of Abūʾl-Faraj ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. Hindū’s Kitāb-i Amthāl-i-Muwallada, who reports on the authority of Ibn Durayd (who wrote the Kitāb-i Humayra)that Kaʿb b. Zuhayr received this mantle from the Prophet in reward for a panegyric qasīda.Muʿāwiya then bought this mantle for 20,000 dirhams, which is now in the possession of the Abbasid caliphs (“īn sāʿat dar dast khulafā-ye Banī ʿAbbāsast”).129

127 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:157–158; Browne, Abridged Translation, 100. 128 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:166. 129 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:166; Browne, Abridged Translation, 110. 202 Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

piety and prosperity

Local history as a form of showcasing the piety and virtues – and the consequent material bounty of the city – continues after the period under consideration here. Centuries after Tārīkh-i Qum and Tārīkh-i Tabari-̣ stān were initially composed in the fourth/tenth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, respectively, the association with piety and prosperity con- tinues. In her study of the fifteenth-century history of Yazd, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd by Ahmad ibn Husayṇ ʿAlī Kātib, Miller underscores how _ the author considers the locals’ piety a source for the prosperity of Yazd.130 Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd contains characteristic markers of Persian local histories, and it focuses on the religious sites and pious inhabitants of the city. It also includes foundation stories, descriptions of the urban topography, and irrigation systems, in addition to narratives about the rulers, political events, and disasters – including famine, epidemic, flooding – that occurred in Yazd. Miller argues that “the work must be seen as an exposition of the devoutness of the people of Yazd” and, moreover, “the ultimate source of prosperity was God and the hardwork- ing, pious Yazdis had received his blessings.”131 It is the piety of the Yazdis, physically manifested in mosques and madrasas and embodied in Sufi shaykhs and holy men, that was the source of prosperity for Yazd.

summary and conclusions

The nexus between multiple modes of piety and the subsequent authority it conferred in early Islamic Persia is evident in Tārīkh-i Qum and Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān. Authors of Persian local histories employed various modalities of piety and literary devices to assert the virtues of their cities. This in turn bound the city to key moments and characters in Islamic and cosmic history. Sacred bodies and relics adduced in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān craft and articulate identities for themselves that are specifically local yet firmly embedded within the framework of Islamic history. Tārīkh-i Qum high- lighted this tendency in its traditions about Fātima al-Maʿsūma and the _ _ importance and prestige of ziyārat to her tomb and shrine. Fātima’s body _

130 Ahmad ibn Husayṇ ibn ʿAlī Al-Kātib, [fl. 1435–67], Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd/ Bi-kushish-i _ Iraj Afshar (Tehran: Ibn Sīnā, 1345 [1966]). Isabel Miller, “Local History in Ninth/ Fifteenth Century Yazd: Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd,” Iran 27 (1989): 75–79. 131 Miller, “Local History in Ninth/Fifteenth Century Yazd,” 76, 77. Summary and Conclusions 203 and shrine were commemorated in the literature, but the Safavids, par- ticularly Shah ʿAbbās I, supported ziyārat to her tomb in manifest con- crete ways. It was also part of a concerted effort to draw pilgrims away from Ottoman-held shrines in Iraq and the Hijaz and into Safavid Persian lands. Tārīkh-i Qum and Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān illustrate the ways in which the authors of Persian local histories employed rhetorical strategies for legit- imation to articulate a spatio-communal identity that stressed Muslim piety while also retaining pre-Islamic Persian elements. This tendency for rhetorical strategies for legitimation also finds voice through the etymolo- gies that authors incorporate into their histories as another mode of claiming a privileged connection with the Prophet. Transitioning from physical sites to the names given to these locales, the following chapter argues that analysis of etymologies in local histories and micro-historical accounts based on them is a fresh angle from which to approach local historical writing. 8

Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

On the night of the Prophet’s ascension, Iblīs the Accursed came to this place on his knees and he put both his elbows upon his knees, and looked upon the ground. The Prophet said to Iblīs: “Qum, yā malʿūna,” which means “Rise, oh accursed one.” And it is for this reason that Qum was given the name “Qum.”1

If the sacred body of Fātima sacralized Qum through her interment there, _ Tārīkh-i Qum also asserts sacred and prophetic origins for the physical site of Qum and its name. Sacred etymologies compress and flatten time to connect to a pivotal Qurʾanic and prophetic moment to the city. Several aspects of Tārīkh-i Qum illustrate how its authors employed rhetorical strategies for legitimation to assert that the city was a bona fide Muslim community and was an integral part of the larger umma. Qum’s sacred etymologies demonstrate the dynamic of how Persian local histories attempted to make the global – the notional universal Muslim umma – local by simultaneously asserting a strongly local identity while tying the city to critical moments and characters in Islamic sacred history.2 The etymology of Qum, including hadith and akhbār reports, is one avenue through which Qummī builds the sacred credentials for his city. A similar process occurs in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā by Narshakhī, and Tārīkh-i Tabari-̣ stān by Ibn Isfandiyār.

1 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 51. 2 On etymologies of cities and the power of naming, particularly in Arabic texts, see Antrim, Routes and Realms,35–42; on the conquest narratives of Mecca, Jerusalem, and Baghdad, and their effect on naming and belonging, see 42–60.

204 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces 205

Tārīkh-i Qum offers multiple etymologies for Qum, some fanciful and some more plausible.3 The author relates that Ahmad ibn [Muhammad] _ _ Abī ʿAbd Allāh Barqī relates in his Kitāb-i Bunyān various explanations for the etymology of Qum. This includes one that the translator finds most plausible, which is that Qum is a derivation shorted from the word kūma, which referred to the shelters (māvī,ormāwī, which meant panāh- gah, or shelter) used by shepherds grazing their flocks in the fields near Qum. The kūme became Kum, which was then Arabized (muʿarrab) into Qum.4 Another etymological explanation is that it referred to a spring that was plentiful with water in a village called Kūb that flowed into Qum from the spring of KūbRūd, or from the wādī of Kūb and KūbRūd was Arabized into Qum. Lambton advocated this latter theory.5 Another etymological explanation in the Kitāb-i Buldān of Abū ʿAbdullāhAhmad _ b. Muhammad b. Ishāq Hamadānī al-Faqīh is that Qum was built by _ _ Qumsāre ibn Lahrāsuf.6 Shimamoto summarizes several theories about the etymology of the naming of Qum: that Qum is the shortened and Arabized form of the name of Komīdān, one of the largest villages that were built by the Ashʿarī Arabs who came to the area; that Qum derives from the Arabic word qamqamah, which refers to a place where water gathers, because there was a watering place, filled with plants and birds, in the Qum area. However, this theory goes against the grain of the significant information in Tārīkh-i Qum about water shortages in Qum.7 Certainly more interesting and arresting than an etymology that derives from a shepherd’s shack or a local stream, however, is the story about Qum, Muhammad, and Iblīs on the night of the miʿrāj. The miʿrāj, _ the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem (al- _ masjid al-aqsā) and subsequent ascension to heaven from there, is a pivotal event on which to hinge an etymology. The miʿrāj is alluded to in Sura 17 (al-Isrāʾ) of the Qurʾan: “Glory to Him who took His votary to a wide and open land from the Sacred Mosque (at Makkah) to the distant Mosque whose precincts We have blessed, that We may show him some

3 For the etymologies, see Qummi, Tārīkh-i Qum,39–52. Many are based on word play. 4 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum,41–42. The author of the Tārīkh-i Qum frequently cites Barqī, whose full name is Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Khālid ibn ʿAbd-al-Rahmānb.Muhammd b. _ _ _ _ ʿAlī Barqī Qummī, as one of the important muhaddithīn and Ithnā ʿAsharī fuqahāʾ in the third/ninth century, whose ancestors were from Kufa. Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, note on pp. 39–40. 5 Lambton, “An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,” 586–596. 6 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 44. 7 Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qum,” 97. 206 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces of Our signs.”8 According to Qummī, “On the night of the Prophet’s ascension (miʿrāj), Iblīs the Accursed came to this place (boqʿ) on his knees (be zānū dar āmade būd) and he put both his elbows9 upon his knees, and looked upon the ground. The Prophet said to Iblīs: ‘Qum, yā malʿūna,’ which means ‘Rise, oh accursed one.’ And it is for this reason that Qum was given the name ‘Qum.’”10 In extending the miʿrāj to include a detour overlooking Qum with Iblīs, Qummī extends the physical boundaries of Muhammad’sheavenly _ ascension beyond Mecca, Jerusalem (al-masjid al-aqsā), and the heavens into the land above Qum. The conceptual thrust of Savant’sargument, which is that for the Arabs their genealogical claims to Ishmael tran- scended the geographical boundaries of Arabia while simultaneously sacralizing it, applies here in a Persianized context.11 Qum’ssacred etymology simultaneously allows Qummis to transcend geographic boundaries by placing Qum in a Qurʾanic moment while also sacralizing Qum. Persian local histories such as Tārīkh-i Qum looked to the central Arab narratives of the Islamic tradition while simultaneously challen- ging and extending them. Muhammad’s heavenly ascension, which now _ includes him overlooking Qum with Iblīs, sacralizes Qum by binding it to a foundational and Qurʾanic moment in history. Another tradition states that Muhammad, on the night of the miʿrāj, asks Gabriel what _ dome (qobbe), it is that he sees in all the levels of heavens that he ascends to, which is the best dome. Gabriel answers that it is Qum that the Prophet sees, a city filled with believers who wait for Muhammad on the _ Day of Judgment (va intidhār-e to keshand az barāye qiyāmat o _ hisāb).12 _ Another etymology traces the origins of Qum back to the prophet Noah. A tradition, related on the authority of Abū Muqātil Sabl Daylamī, the naqīb of Rayy, which was transmitted to the author from Abī al- Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Muhammad [the tenth Imam, al-Hādī], claims: _ Qum is named as such because it was the place (boqʿ) that during Noah’s flood – may God grant him salvation – was protected, and secure, and inviolable (be-himāyat būde ast, o mahfūzomasūn). Qum is a section of Jerusalem (Qum _ _ _ _ qitʿa īst az bayt al-muqaddas), and during the days of the flood Noah came to _ Qum, and he came to the place that is today called Qum (dar ayyāmtūfānNūh _

8 Q 17:1, Ahmed Ali, al-Qurʾān: A Contemporary Translation. 9 The editor translates mirfaq as āranj, meaning elbows. Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 51. 10 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 51. 11 Savant, “Isaac as the Persians’ Ishmael,” 15. 12 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 270. Myth, Metanarrative, and Communal Identity 207 bedīn maqām resīde ast), and here he stopped here and stayed (injā muqām kard o be-īstād), and called this place Qum.13 The name of Qum is influenced by a pun on the words maqām (place) and muqām (stay) and because the Prophet Noah named the land Qum. There is also Shiʿi tradition about the naming of Qum, which claims that Qum is named as such because its inhabitants will be standing steadfast with the family of Muhammad, and they will stand upright _ with him and will represent the victory of the family of the Prophet and will come to his aid (ke ahl-e ānbā qāʾim-e āl-e Muhammad ʿalayhi _ al-sallam jamaʿ shavand, o bā ou qāʾim o mustaqīmbāshand, o ou rā nasrat o madad nemāyand).14 There is also a khutba giveninBasraby _ ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib in which he mentions Qum.15 The example of the Imam’s khutba underscores the depth of the relationship of the Shiʿi Imams with Qum. Qummī’s etymologies invoke the sacred. Etymologies involving Muhammad, Gabriel, Noah, Iblīs, and Qurʾanic moments suggest that _ the very earth of Qum is hallowed ground on which the pious tread. By participating in Qurʾanic and biblical events, Qum exists both within and beyond time – at once both memorialized in Qurʾanic time and existing in its Persianized present. Qummī’s narratives about the tombs of saints and other important Muslims located in the city or region form another constellation of realities that constitutes the history of Qum as its resi- dents understood and wished to remember it. Qummī weaves the etymol- ogy, mythology, and history of Qum deep into the fabric of revelation and prophecy.

myth, metanarrative, and communal identity

Offering a definition metanarrative in his study of social networks and the networks of hadith transmission, Senturk follows the work of Hayden White, Patricia Waugh, and Margaret Somers and defines metanarratives thus: “The cultural subtext that comes with the narrative, without which it is possible to interpret the narrative structure, is called metanarrative.”16 In this scheme, “Metanarrative ... assigns identities to narrators, narratives, their ties, and

13 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 269–270. 14 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 278. 15 Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 277. 16 Recep Senturk, Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Net- work, 610–1505 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 34. 208 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces their networks.”17 Metanarrative is the cultural architecture that provides the framework and the background within which a particular narrative func- tions.18 Traditions about the Prophet, Iblīs, and Qum are part of a larger meta-narrative that framed the composition of these local histories. In the early Islamic period, these metanarratives are framed and perme- ated by deeply resonant Qurʾanic and biblical images, allusions, archetypes, and tropes. In this project I adopt the definition of metanarrative put forth by Senturk, White, Waugh, and Somers because the dual Perso-Islamic iden- tities that these local histories advocate are not so unwavering that they offer a single vision of reality that dominates all others. Rather, the identities are ambiguous and ambivalent, simultaneously locally specific and distinctly Islamic. The metanarrative is the cultural framework within which these local histories make sense and resonate with their audiences. Thus, it is most productive to read etymologies of Qum as a mode of commemorative writing that participates in a metanarrative that ties Qum to foundational characters of religious significance. The aforementioned traditions were employed as rhetorical devices in service of the concerns that framed the author’s conception of place and piety. These narratives may be mythical, in that they are “narratives that promote a coherent portrait of the past and that forge links within a community among its members and between the community and its claimed past.”19 As Stefan Leder writes on the role of fictional materials – some of

17 Recep Senturk, Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Net- work, 610–1505, 43. 18 An alternative definition of metanarrative is one put forth by Miller, who defines a metanarrative as “a system of thought, or a structure of thinking, that suppresses difference in order to legitimate its own vision of reality; because it makes totalizing claims to universal validity, a metanarrative suppresses or devalues discourses that are ‘other,’ that are different.” The crux of Miller’sdefinition of a metanarrative is that it is a system that advocates a vision of reality that quashes and dominates all other narratives that suggest otherwise. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity, 166. 19 In her study of the martyrdom and early Christian culture making, Castelli examines the role of myth and the collective imagination in terms of culture making and forms the following definition of the term. “‘Myth,’ in this context, refers to narratives that promote a coherent portrait of the past and that forge links within a community among its members and between the community and its claimed past. Myth is the product of collective imagination, a compelling answer to urgent questions about foundations and identities.” Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 30. Writing half a century earlier, von Grunebaum noted in passing in his short piece on the Samanids and Ferdowsī’s concept of history that “Persian national sentiment had to appropriate both the Zoroastrian past and the Muslim present as effective motivations.” von Grunebaum, “Firdausî’s Concept of History,” in Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, 2nd edition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961), 174. Arguments for Legitimacy 209 which approach the level of myth – in non-fictional Arabic literature, “Fiction cannot be conceived of in opposition to reality. By measure of an intentional selection effected by the author, narratives represent realities of social life, as well as emotions and perceptions.”20 Myths are part of metanarratives that frame and guide history and are instrumental in forging communal identities. Regardless of the centuries or religious milieu in which authors operate, they must always find ways to accommodate the past in ways that preserve or enhance their narrative about the present. The prophetic etymology of Qum on the night of the miʿrāj is a form of “an elaboration of memory.”21 If the sacred experience of Muhammad’s _ miʿrāj is a myth in the most expansive sense, then it is this “myth that generated the places which became the objects of memorialization.”22 Through commemoration, ritual, and collective agreement, the myth cements the events and individuals it describes into the collective memory of a community. The etymology of Qum is woven into the story of the miʿrāj and the broader Qurʾanic experience of revelation. Sacralized etymologies illustrate a way in which the Persian local histories articulate a spatio-communal identity that is framed in terms of connections to Muhammad, the Shiʿi imams, and other pious individuals. _

arguments for legitimacy

In the idiom of Persian local histories, these assertions of connections to pious or sacred individuals are markers of religious and political legitim- acy within the broader socio-political concerns of pre-Mongol Persia. A claim that Muhammad visited the city in a dream or is a critical figure _ in the naming of the city is more than a record of a curiosity or miracle. It

20 Stefan Leder, “Conventions of Fictional Narration in Learned Literature,” 43. Leder continues: “It is evident, on the other hand, that the fictional text is not restricted to the description of reality, but lives on the author’s imagination. According to a distinction introduced by Wolfgang Iser – whose suggestion has found a wide approval – fictional narration unfolds within the triad of reality, fiction as an act of feigning (fingieren) and imaginary. The act of feigning, which produces a sort of imitation (‘repetition’) of reality, is at the core of fictional narration. Feigning gives a realistic shape to imagination, which is by nature not restricted to the appearances of the real. Fiction depicts reality, but it serves purposes which are not part of the reality depicted. The particular feature of fictional literature consists of the exposure of this act of feigning; the imitation of reality thus does not remain a deceptive device, but becomes an art of literary expression.” 21 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 112. Smith discusses Christian myth and reconstructions of visits to the Holy Land through ritual experience. 22 Smith, To Take Place, 115. 210 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces is an assertion of legitimacy that reflects very real anxieties about legitim- acy and authority in Persia in the context of the umma at the time. Though Donner argues that “collective memory” can only be metaphor- ical – since a community does not share a single mind – he does advocate the notion of “collective images” or “collective visions” of a community’s past. These “collective images” are what constitute a group’s historical self-understanding and vision of itself as a community.23 Arguments for legitimacy respond to and resonate with a collective (though in many ways imagined) memory of the umma. Writing on collective memory, Halbwachs claims that the present milieu informs the recording of the past. This observation applies to local Persian histories: “even at the moment of reproducing the past our imagination remains under the influence of the present social milieu.”24 Therefore, “religious memory ... does not pre- serve the past but reconstructs it with the aid of the material traces, rites, texts, and traditions left behind by that past, and with the aid, moreover, of recent psychological and social data, that is to say, with the present.”25 Sacred etymologies incorporate and re-position critical moments and figures in Islamic history, particularly those involving prophets, sahāba, _ _ sharifs, ʿAlids, and pious exemplars. The value of these etymologies is not in their historical accuracy. These narratives are important because they highlight the concerns – namely piety and religious legitimacy – that were paramount at the time these texts were composed. The effect that sacred etymologies have in their drive to connect a place, such as Qum, to a pivotal Qurʾanic and prophetic moment is to collapse time between the prophetic past and the present. This is not a phenomenon unique to etymologies or to the Muslim tradition but resonates with aspects of the Christian tradition, in which evocation of a rich communal past through narratives, visual depictions of saints’ lives, and miracles in the Christian tradition had the goal, “particularly in the case of visual and narrative accounts of miracles ... to lessen the gulf between past and present.”26 Sacred etymologies collapse time and space to render a specific place eternally sacred.

23 Donner argues that it was not until the last third of the first century AH, or 66–100 AH (approximately 685–719 CE), that the early Muslims, a group who Donner thinks is more accurately understood as the “community of Believers,” had a collective sense of themselves as a community. Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Begin- nings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998), 139. 24 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited and translated by, Lewis A. Coser (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 49. 25 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 119. 26 Yasin, Saints, 250. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā 211

ta¯ rı¯kh-i bukha¯ ra¯

Tārīkh-i Bukhārā is another local Persian city history that similarly illustrates dual Perso-Islamic identity through its etymologies. Narshakhī, the original author who wrote the text in Arabic in 332/943–944 or Qubavī, the Persian translator who translated the work in 522/ 1128–1129, selectively chose the etymologies they include. Their purpose was to record for posterity the glory of their city, and they chose an etymology that binds Bukhara to a prophetic utterance about the beauty and merits of the land. Not all etymologies for Bukhara are flattering. When Muqaddasī visited Bukhara in the mid-tenth century, he noted that the stream around Bukhara was filthy, because excrement was cast into the stream around the town. Muqaddasī reports that the name Bukhara derives from the root “K-w-h” and was originally called “Khūrān,” which became “Kakhārā” for ease of pronunciation.27 Collins translates Muqaddasi’s next sentence with the accurate but rigid phrase “Then someone substi- tuted a ‘b’ for the ‘k’, to misrepresent it to people, so it became Bukhārā,”28 but the transition from “Kakhārā” to “Bukhārā,” appears as something much naughtier in Arabic. Muqaddasī notes, tongue in cheek, that he heard “some of the udabāʾ” recite an etymology for the city that is the opposite of adab,orrefined culture. The short rhyme reads as follows:

Inna bā Bukhārā bā zāʾida, wa al-alif al-wustā bilā fāʾida, falam yabqa illa kharā.29

The “b” in Bukhara is unnecessary, and the “a” in the middle is useless, so all that is left is shit. There is also the obvious and filthy bilingual pun of “Bū-khārā,” since “bū” means smell in Persian, and “kharā” is the vulgar term for excre- ment in Arabic. Muqaddasī may well have heard this apocryphal etymol- ogy, the playful purpose of which was to underscore the filth of the city, but its purpose in his geographic work is theatrical. For one thing, the local language of Bukhara was likely a dialect of Sogdian, not Arabic.

27 Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 332; Collins, Best Divisions, 293. _ 28 Collins, Best Divisions, 293. 29 Muqaddasī, ahsan al-taqāsīm, 332. Collins translates this rhyme differently: “The bā [b] _ of Bukhārā is bāʾ that merely makes the word bigger; and the alif [a] in the middle is of no avail to it; then nothing remains but ‘kharā’ [excrement].” Collins, Best Divisions, 293. 212 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

Narshakhī was a tenth-century contemporary of Muqaddasī, but if he ever heard this crass etymology, he gave no hint of it in his history of the city. In an early article, R. N. Frye surveyed the etymology and pre-Islamic history of Bukhara and exhaustively scoured the sources for convincing etymologies and ran through the possibilities, but he ultimately found the data inconclusive.30 One of the more plausible etymologies is that Bukhara may have derived its name from the Sanskrit vihāra, meaning Buddhist monastery, since there was a monastery near Numiddjkath, a town that may have predated and later merged with what became Bukhara. There were also Buddhist monasteries in Balkh and Samarqand. Alternatively, Bukhara may also refer to a tribe or other community.31 In sharp contrast to Muqaddasī’s touristic glee at a vulgar etymology, one way that Narshakhī ties the city to Muhammad’s legacy is through _ prophetic hadith about the naming of Bukhara. Narshakhī states that although the region is known by many names, Salmān al-Fārisī transmit- ted a tradition about the prophetic etymology of the city. Salmān al- Fārisī’s tradition is as follows:

The Prophet of God said that Gabriel told him that in the land of the East was a place called Khurasan. On the Day of the Resurrection and Final Judgement, three cities of Khurasan will be adorned with red rubies and coral, and their radiance will shine about them. Around these cities there will be many angels, and they will praise, glorify, and exalt God. These angels will bring forth these cities onto the plains in grandeur and splendor, like a bride who is brought into the house of her betrothed. In each of these cities there will be 70,000 banners and under each banner there will be 70,000 martyrs. In the entourage of each martyr will be 70,000 believers, who will be speaking Persian and receiving salvation. On the Judgment Day on every side of these cities – to the right and left, front and rear, for ten days journey – will be filled with martyrs. The Prophet said, “Oh Gabriel, tell me the names of these cities.” Gabriel replied, “The name of one of these cities in Arabic is Qāsimīya and in Persian Yishkard. The second in Arabic is Sumrān, in Persian Samarqand. The third in Arabic is Fākhira, and in Persian Bukhārā.” The Prophet asked, “Oh Gabriel why is it called Fākhira?” Gabriel replied, “Because on the Day of the Resurrection and Final Judgement, Bukhārā shall excel all other cities in glory because of the multitude of

30 Richard Nelson Frye, “Notes on the History of Transoxiana,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19: 1/2 (June 1956): 106–125. Frye also included some corrections to his History of Bukahra. See also W. Barthold and R. N. Frye, “Buḵh̲ārā,” EI2. 31 Frye, “Notes on the History of Transoxiana,” 106–125. See also Barthold and Frye, “Buḵh̲ārā,” EI2. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā 213 martyrs [buried there].”32 The Prophet cried, “God bless the people of Fākhira and purify their hearts through the fear of God. Improve their actions and make them among the merciful of my people.” The significance of this is that from the east to the west it is attested that the people of Bukhārā are noted for their belief and purity.33 The Prophet’s claim that the inhabitants of these glorious cities, especially those of Bukhara, will be speaking Persian and receiving salvation, sug- gests that this would have been a popular tradition with strong traction in the city. In tying the city of Bukhara to the legacy of the Prophet through etymology, Narshakhī posits a powerful form of non-biological lineage and heirship to the Prophet and his legacy. The Prophet describes the blessedness and sanctity of Bukhara and gives the city pride of place on the map of the Islamic world. Relevant when considering this tradition and the dream of Muhammad appearing in the bazar of Bukhara, in both _ its proximity in geography and chronology, is the Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan discussed in Chapter 4. This prophetic etymology, coupled with the dream narrative discussed in Chapter 4, suggests that those with a vested interest in the legitimacy and prestige of Bukhara as an Islamic city – including its Samanid and other later rulers – may have felt the need to authenticate the importance of Bukhara within the Islamic empire. The fourth/tenth century is the era when Iran reached a critical point of conversion to Islam. It may be that during the fourth/tenth century, when Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was composed in Arabic by Narshakhī and during the sixth/twelfth century, when Qubavī translated the work into Persian, the Islamic identity of Bukhara had become cemented, and the issue of Islamic legitimacy of the city had become one of importance to the city’s scholarly and political elite and its Muslim populace. This narrative evidences Narshakhī’s move to bind the city of Bukhara to the Prophet. In tying the city of Bukhara to the legacy of the Prophet through the etymology related on the authority of Salmān al-Fārisī, Narshakhī underscores the importance of Salmān al-Fārisī in Persian Islam and argues for a powerful form of heirship to the prophet and his

32 I add “buried here,” since this is occurring on the Day of the Resurrection and Final Judgment, when there would be the bodily resurrection of all people. I take the 70,000 martyrs who will appear on the Resurrection in Bukhara to be 70,000 martyrs who were buried there. 33 This is Fyre’s translation. I have added diacritics on the locations to emphasize the phonetic component of this etymology. Frye, History,21–22; Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,30–32. 214 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces legacy.34 As a Persian and particularly notable sahāba, Salmān granted all _ _ Persians a kind of privileged access to the Prophet. This relationship of Persians to the Prophet through Salmān, though not actually genealogical, formed a link and type of expansive heritage linking Persians to the Prophet in Bukhara’s local history.

ta¯ rı¯kh-i tabarista¯ n: pre-islamic iranian and islamic virtues˙

Ibn Isfandiyār includes various etymologies and foundation narratives in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, some fantastical and some plausible. Similar in tenor to Tārīkh-i Qum’s repeated references to explicitly non-Islamic qualities in describing the area’s past,35 so too does Ibn Isfandiyār reach into the memory pool of Tabaristan’s pre-Islamic heritage and reference Islamic as well as non-Islamic elements. The effect is to articulate an identity that is simultaneously local and Persian yet enmeshed within the Islamic narrative. The etymologies and virtues of Tabaristan are rich in pre-Islamic lore and ʿAlid elements, as well as those that are not discernibly either. According to Ibn Isfandiyār, there are numerous wonders and virtues of Tabaristan. Taxes are light; there is plenty of good water accessible to all; the local rulers of Tabaristan (such as the Ispahbads) have been well respected by caliphs and others, who seek their advice; famous scholars and doctors and prominent people have sought refuge in Tabaristan; and even Rustam’s son Suhrāb is said to be buried in Sari.36 Etymologies capture the ancient Iranian and pre-Islamic character of the region. On the etymology of Farshwāgdar, Ibn Isfandiyār offers several etymologies that range from “Living safely” to “land of the mountain, plain, and sea,” among others.37 The mythological elements are particularly apparent in the section that references Rustam, son of Zāl, as the killer of Jamshīd, king of Mazandaran. Ibn Isfandiyār relates that Mazandaran was in the possession of demons until the era of Jamshīd, who purportedly conquered them and commanded them to transform the land to make it more habitable and hospitable. The region, allegedly, was

34 On Salmān al-Fārisī as a connector between Persia and Muhammad’s legacy, see _ Chapter 4. 35 For example, Qummī repeatedly references Zoroastrian fire-temples (āteshkade-hā). Qummī, Tārīkh-i Qum, 29, 104, 249–255. 36 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:81–82; Browne, Abridged Translation,34–35. 37 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:56; Browne, Abridged Translation, 14. Foundation Stories: Explaining the Past and Present 215 originally called “Mūz andar ūn,” meaning that the region was within the area of the Mūz mountains.38 In his section on Mazandaran, Ibn Isfandiyār’s emphasis is on the pre-Islamic ancient Iranian past. The emphasis on ʿAlids, sayyids, and the family of the Prophet and the Islamic elements of the city that are evident in later sections is absent in this portion of the text. Far from needing to forget or elide the pre-Islamic past, Ibn Isfandiyār incorporates it into a broader narrative that ultim- ately leads to the region of Tabaristan being imbued with ʿAlids and sayyids and embedded within the Islamic narrative.39 Corresponding to the broader pattern that exists in Persian local and regional histories, the fadāʾil of Tabaristan include physical elements as well as its denizens and _ pious notables associated with the region.40 Ibn Isfandiyār offers as an etymology of Tabaristan a story about how Bozorgmihr said that the region’s name is happiness (Tarab) and garden (Bustān) to which ʿAbdul- lāh b. Qutayba replied that the region ought to be called “Tabaristan.”41

foundation stories: explaining the past and the present

Within the region of Tabaristan, the foundation story of Sari blends mythical pre-Islamic and Islamic elements. Foundations stories, like etymologies, are one way of asserting a privileged connection with Muhammad and core Islamic narratives while also explaining how the _ region’s pre-Islamic past fits into its present. The foundation narratives adduced in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān attest to the local traditions, dialects, rulers, and identities that were powerful sources of identity and belonging in the mountainous Caspian region of Tabaristan. Sari’s ancient foundation was allegedly laid by Tūs, the son of Nūdhar, during _ the era of the mythical Kayānid ruler Kay Khusraw (son of Siyāwush/ Siyāwakhsh/Siyāvash and the maternal grandson of the Turanian enemy Afrāsiyāb).42 Sari was host to the fugitive Burzfarrah/Farīburz, Kay Khusraw’s uncle. Its mosque was built during the reign of Harūn al-Rashīdbytheamir Yahyā b. Yahyā and was later completed by _ _ Māzyārb.Qārin. The simultaneous emphasis on the pre-Islamic ancient

38 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:56–58; Browne, Abridged Translation,14–16. 39 On concepts of Persia, Persianness, and memories of the pre-Islamic and proto-Islamic past, see Savant, “Isaac as the Persians’ Ishmael.” 40 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:76–89; Browne, Abridged Translation,30–42. 41 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:79; Browne, Abridged Translation,32–33. 42 Cl. Huart, “Kay KHusraw,” EI2. 216 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

Iranian past and Islamic aspects demonstrates the dual bicultural identity that Ibn Isfandiyār places on the region.43 Similarly combining pre-Islamic and Islamic elements, the foundation story of Amul44 also incorporates oneirocritical and etymological elem- ents to create an epic narrative.45 In short, King Fīrūz in Balkh sees a beautiful woman and tries to find in waking life the woman he saw in his dream. Through his dream encounter with her, King Fīrūz falls in love with the woman, who turns out to be the daughter of Ashtād, one of the two Daylami brothers who had taken refuge for a crime they committed and settled near Amul. Through various schemes, the king is finally united with and marries the woman, who is found in Tabaristan. She marries the king and lives with him in Balkh. However, the climate of Balkh did not agree with her, so she also had built what became the city of Amul. The narrative contains stock elements: the beautiful woman seen in a king’s dream, the quest to find her, a city built at her behest. The important Islamic characteristic of the city – here the congregational mosque, includ- ing information about the cost of the land occupied by the mosque46 – is mentioned alongside pre-Islamic mythical ones. Further emphasizing the distinctively local character of Tabaristan is Ibn Isfandiyār’s description of the dialect spoken there. In the sections on foundation narrative of Amul as well as elsewhere in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, Ibn Isfandiyār shows that the Tabaris had a different dialect. Ashtād’s beautiful daughter, whom King Fīrūz saw him in dream and eventually married, explains the beauty of the women of Tabaristan in her own Tabari dialect.47 Ibn Isfandiyār also notes that Imam Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī visited a place called Māmtīr (for which he gives another etymology), and emphasizes the region’s Islamic ʿAlid credentials along with the pre-Islamic elements.48 For Ruyan, Ibn Isfandiyār’s emphasis is on the pre-Islamic ancient Iranian past. Ruyan’s foundation story references the fratricidal narrative contained in the Shāhnāma about the murder of Īraj (who was

43 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:58–59; Browne, Abridged Translation,16–17. 44 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:62–73; Browne, Abridged Translation,20–28. 45 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:71; Browne, Abridged Translation, 26. Amul in the Tabari dialect is apparently āhūsh, meaning death, and its meaning in Amul is “may you never die.” 46 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:72–73; Browne, Abridged Translation,26–27. 47 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:70; Browne, Abridged Translation, 24. Other stories that attest to the language of Tabaristan are Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:81, 1:82, 1:137–139; Browne, Abridged Translation, 34, 35, 87–89. 48 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:73; Browne, Abridged Translation,27–28. Marvels and Curiosities: Local Lore and Tradition 217 bequeathed Iran by his father Ferīdūn), at the hands of his brothers Tūr (who possessed Tūrān) and Salm (who controlled Rūm). The fantastical elements are striking: the resolution of a land dispute with the treacherous Afrasiysāb is solved by Ārash shooting an arrow over the implausible distance from a village near Amul to Marv, which allows King Manūchihr to establish himself in as the ruler Tabaristan.49 Far from being forgotten, Ibn Isfandiyār records the area’s mythical pre-Islamic heritage for posterity.

marvels and curiosities: local lore and the continuity of tradition

The marvels and curiosities remembered in Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān attest to the continuity of traditions, including pre-Islamic or non-Islamic narratives. Some of the stories about the wonders of Tabaristan are fantastical, and some of the ʿajāʾib, or marvels, appear to be superstitions or oddities. Like etymologies, some of these traditions blend local lore with an Islamic figure, such as ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, and biblical and prophetic figures, such as King Solomon. There is allegedly a place where when there is a drought, people throw crushed onions, at which point it rains but the person who crushed the onions dies.50 Amongst the other marvelous, odd, or unusual things is the village where people die early and do not live past twenty years old.51 There is even an alleged dragon in Tabaristan.52 The alchemists’ Philoso- pher’s Stone is allegedly found somewhere on the slopes of Mount Dama- wand. There is also a tradition on the authority of ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib that attests to Mount Damawand being the site where King Solomon imprisoned Sakhr, the jinn who stole his ring.53 There is a fantastical anecdote about a turbaned micro-cephalic hairless king called Māhiya-sar, who with his mother lived near Amul. His true identity was unknown (some thought he was a Jew, others a Zoroastrian) and whose mother was a witch. They buried treasure in the vicinity, but all attempts to recover the treasure were prevented by landslides whenever people went to try and dig it up.54

49 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:59–62; Browne, Abridged Translation,17–20. It is a staggering 547.51 mi or 881.12 km, approximately, from Marv, in modern day Turkmenistan, to the city of Amul, on the south shores of the Caspian. 50 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:88; Browne, Abridged Translation, 40. 51 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:88; Browne, Abridged Translation, 40. 52 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:89; Browne, Abridged Translation,41–42. 53 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:82–83; Browne, Abridged Translation,35–36. 54 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:84–85; Browne, Abridged Translation,37–39. 218 Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

Ibn Isfandiyār closes the section on the cities of Tabaristan with a summary of those that lie beyond the Darband range, and describes the dual pre-Islamic and Islamic nature of the region.55 The cities beyond the Darband range include Gurgan, Rayy, Qumis, Dinar-jay, and Malat, and what stands out is his emphasis of their Islamic components. The twenty- eight cities in the district of Tammisha that Ibn Isfandiyār mentions have various Islamic components, such as mosques, markets, and learned men, and Ibn Isfandiyār provides a list of the cities but without the elaborate foundation stories for the individual cities. Only Gurgan is credited with a small etymology. In describing the origins, characteristics, rulers, and history of the region of Tabaristan, Ibn Isfandiyār stresses that Tabaristan is place associated with the family of the Prophet. Regional rulers and descendants of the Ahl al-Bayt serve as custodians and guardians of the Shiʿi faith.

summary and conclusions

Muslim Persian identity was a balancing act: simultaneously locally Per- sian and universally Islamic. Analysis of etymologies in local histories and the construction of micro-historical accounts based on them is a fresh angle from which to approach local historical writing and can shed light on the building blocks of local identity: the beliefs, myths, and explan- ations of how a community came to be and what it means to be from a region. Such an approach builds on an earlier generation of scholarship – including that of C. Bosworth, C. Melville, J. Paul, A. K. S. Lambton, and J. Meisami – which has uncovered the political, economic, and dynastic, sectarian, and historiographical conditions of early Islamic Persia. This approach is also in conversation with more recent works, including those by S. Savant and Z. Antrim, which focus on how communities balance their pre-Islamic pasts with their Islamic presents and how groups and individuals have formulate a discourse of place, respectively. Tārīkh-i Qum and Tārīkh-i Bukhārā deftly wove sacred etymologies and foundation narratives into the cities’ identities. Through pre-Islamic Iranian and Islamic fadāʾil, foundation stories, and marvels and curios- _ ities, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān articulates an identity that is simultaneously distinctly Tabaristani yet firmly embedded within the framework of Islamic history. Beneath the notional and idealized umma in all its

55 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 1:74–75; Browne, Abridged Translation,28–30. Summary and Conclusions 219 multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-racial iterations, these Persian local his- tories evidence an attempt to articulate and formulate a spatio-communal Persian Muslim identity unique to them. The focus on fadāʾil and ety- _ mologies in Persian local histories and the other connections of the particular region to Muhammad and prophetic authority articulate a _ longing, if we can call it that – or perhaps a sense – of a localized Persian-Muslim spatio-communal identity more pertinent for the lives of the authors and the denizens of the growing Persian cities than an illusory and distanced notion of the Muslim umma more broadly. 9

The View from Anatolia

“Why did you bring these Turkmens into your realm? You committed an error here! But now that you have admitted them, either kill them all or [at least] allow me to cut off their thumbs so that they won’t be able to shoot arrows ... If you don’t do it, you’ll much regret it!” It happened exactly thus, and even to this present time, there has been no satisfactory outcome of the problem.1

the value of comparing anatolia and persia

The amir of Tūs, Abū’lḤārith Arslān al-Jādhib, thus quailed with fear and horror at the decision of the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmūd I (d. 421/1030) _ to allow Turkmen nomads to cross the Oxus (Amu Darya) River from Transoxiana (Mā warāʾ al-Nahr) into Khurasan. ʿAbd al-Hayỵ ibn Zahhāk Gardīzī wrote his history during the mid-eleventh century during _ _ the acme of the Ghaznavid dynasty that would soon give way to the Oghuz (or Ghuzz)–Turkmen tribal groups, also known as Turkoman nomads, and the rise of the Turkic Seljuq dynasty.2 The influx of Turk- men nomads from the steppes southwards and westwards into dār

1 This is the exchange reported by ʿAbd al-Hayỵ ibn Zahhāk Gardīzī in his eleventh-century _ _ Zayn al-akhbār in which the Amir of Tus, Abū’lḤārith Arslān al-Jādhib, warns the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmūd I (d. 421/1030) against his decision to allow Turkomen _ nomads to cross the Oxus (Amu Darya) River from Transoxiana (Mā warāʾ al-Nahr) into Khurasan. ʿAbd al-Hayỵ ibn Zahhāk Gardīzī, The Ornament of Histories: A History of _ _ the Eastern Islamic Lands AD 650–1041: The Original Text of Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Hayỵ Gardīzī, translated and edited by, C. Edmund Bosworth (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 96. 2 On the incursions of the Oghuz (or Ghuzz)-Turkmen tribal groups, the Seljuqs in Khur- asan, Ghaznavid-Seljuq relations and the decline of the Ghaznavids, see Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, Part III, 206–269.

220 Comparative Constructions of Identity 221 al-Islām resulted in another major Islamicate civilization, this one Turkic in origin and, like Persia, on the periphery of the ostensible heartlands of the Islamic empire based in Syria, Arabia, and Iraq. All stories are composed for an audience with whom they are meant to communicate and resonate. Persian narratives crystalized in the form of local histories to articulate identities that are regionally differentiated yet incorporate various modes of legitimation to stake their claims as import- ant regions within the umma. What did another non-Arab community do when it joined the Muslim world? Exploring historical writing in Muslim Anatolia is a useful heuristic device that compares the trends in historical writing in Islamic Iran and Islamic Anatolia and highlights the character- istic differences. This chapter briefly examines three histories from early Islamic Anatolia as a heuristic device to compare how local histories positioned themselves and to highlight the distinctive aspects of local historical writing in Persia. The purpose of casting a glance at Anatolian histories is to see whether there are patterns in local historical writing that are shared across cities and regions on the peripheries of empire, where issues of legitimacy and autonomy loomed large, and where local authorities were important players in the administration of the regions that lay hundreds or thousands of miles from the caliphal seat in Baghdad. Anatolian narratives highlight the differences with Persian texts and sharpen the distinctive contours of Perso-Islamicate historical writing. Persian local histories are characterized by the use of myriad literary strategies to claim religio-political authority, including dream narratives; emphasis on sahāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, sharifs, and other associates of _ _ descendants of Muhammad, sometimes as hadith transmitters who lived _ and taught in the region as living virtues (fadāʾil) and custodians of the _ faith; and foundation narratives or etymologies that embed the city or region into pivotal moments in Islamic history and to prophetic authority. Anatolian sources do not share the Persian emphasis on the sanctification of the land. Instead, Anatolian sources frame Seljuq religio-political legit- imacy by recording the Seljuq sultans’ heroism, their legitimate descent from their eponymous ancestor, and the dynasty’s prowess as warriors.

comparative constructions of identity in persia and anatolia

The history of pre- and early Islamic Anatolia is notoriously frustrating, and no attempt is made here to reconstruct a chronology of conversion or 222 The View from Anatolia

Islamization in Seljuq Anatolia, in the vein of A. C. S. Peacock or Andrew Marsham.3 Instead, the analysis in this chapter is purposefully kept at a heuristic level to answer the following questions: Why do dynastic concerns emerge as the dominant way of claiming religio-political legitimacy in Anatolian sources? Why is this not the case in Persian sources, which focus on a variety of fadaʾil, including but not limited to genealogies, as the forces that bring them into the fold of an Islamic narrative? In so doing, this chapter relies heavily on the substantial work on Turkic, Anatolian, and Seljuq history undertaken most recently by C. E. Bosworth, Peter Golden, David Durand-Guedy, C. Hillenbrand, C. Melville, J. Meisami, Songul Mecit, Andrew Marsham, A. C. S. Peacock, Sara Nur Yildiz, and in an earlier generation by C. A. Storey and C. Cahen.4 This chapter is an

3 On conversion in Anatolia and Seljuq history, see Andrew C. S. Peacock, Early Seljūq History: A New Interpretation (London; New York: Routledge, 2010); Peacock, Medi- aeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy. See also Andrew Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). For a rich recent volume of edited essays that focuses on Seljuq Anatolia from the late twelfth through late thirteenth centuries, see Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz, eds., The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (London; New York: I. B. Tauris: Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). To the north and east of Anatolia in Central Asia, the Qarakhanids were a major Turkic dynasty in Central Asia, and the definitive work on the significance of and use of conversion narratives and the Golden Horde is Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Recent work by Undine Ott is more interested in how legitimacy is represented once the populace reaches a significant point of conversion, not in reconstructing a chronology of conversion. Undine Ott, “Medieval Conversion Narratives from East Central Europe and Central Asia: A Case Study on the Arpads and the Qarakhanids,” in Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages, edited by, Leszek Słupecki and Rudolf Simek (Wien: Fassbender, 2013), 265–290. Since the conversion narratives date from approximately a century after the actual conversion, the narratives are useful sources for this later period of composition and show how the authors perceived their past rather than as actual records of the earlier period of conversion that they describe. As Peacock, Yildiz, and Mecit make clear, it is anachronistic to conflate modern Turkey with medieval Muslim Anatolia, a region that was rich with Christian, Greek, Turkic, and Muslim influences with various degrees of hybridity in identity, language, architecture, coinage, and material culture. 4 Major works by the earlier generation include Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330, translated from the French by J. Jones-Williams (New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1968); Cahen, The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm: Eleventh to Fourteenth Century; translated and edited by P. M. Holt (London; New York: Longman, 2001); Cahen, La Turquie pré-ottomane (Istanbul: Dıvıt Matbaacılık ve Yayıncılık, 1988). Storey, Persian Literature. More recent notable contributions to scholarship include Bosworth, The Ghaznavids; Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories”; Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz; Comparative Constructions of Identity 223 exercise in different ways to frame questions about local historical writing and the construction of authority and identity. This is not to suggest that there is one definitive or homogenous Anatolian style, either in historical writing or other forms of cultural production. Rather, my aim is to use Anatolian works as a heuristic device to reach clearer conclusions about trends in local historical writing from Persia. By identifying why genea- logical legitimation of the dynasty is a pressing concern for the Seljuqs in a way not seen in Persian local histories, this chapter confirms some distinct- ive characteristics of Persian local histories by assessing Anatolian equivalents.5

Bosworth, “The Tahirids and Saffarids”; Bosworth, “The Origins of the Seljuqs,” in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture, edited by, Christian Lange and Songul Mecit (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 13–31; Peter Golden, “The Migrations of the Oguz,” Archivum Ottomanicum IV (1972), Reprinted in Nomads and Their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars and Qipchaqs,45–84 (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT : Ashgate/Variorum, 2003); Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1992); David Durand-Guedy, Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Isfahān in the Saljūq _ Period (New York: Routledge, 2010); Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Histori- ography,” in Eastern Approaches to Byzantium: Papers from the Thirty-Third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, March 1999, edited by Antony Eastmond (Aldershot; Burlington USA: Ashgate/Variorum, c2001), 73–88; Hillenbrand, “Aspects of the Court of the Great Seljuqs,” in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture,22–38; Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Melville, “Anatolia under the Mongols,” in K. Fleet (ed.), Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. I (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2009), 51–101; Meisami, “Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūr: History or _ Hybrid?” Edebiyât n.s. 5.2 (1994): 181–215; Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian?”; Songul Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2014); Christian Robert Lange and Songül Mecit, eds., The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture; Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy; Peacock, Early Seljūq History; Peacock, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy; Peacock and Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia. 5 In the field of the history of art and architecture, Patricia Blessing’s recent study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia following the Mongol conquests considers Anatolian monumental architecture from the 1240s to1330s within the framework of the Mongol Empire, as opposed to the context of the transition from Seljuq rule to the Ottoman Empire and Turkish national identity. Blessing emphasizes the cultural networks at play during that time, including the mobility of the craftsmen and their workshops in creating the diverse and heterogeneous local styles of the frontier region of Anatolia. As a borderland between Christianity and Islam as well as the western frontier of Mongol rule, Anatolia was a true frontier region, and Blessing argues that trans-regional movement and networks of crafts- men and workshops created diverse local styles in Anatolia. The Mongols had their centers of gravity further east, in Iran and Iraq. While the Mongols themselves retained fiscal control, it was wealthy local nobles who worked as Mongol vassals who became major patrons of monumental architecture after the decline in power of the Seljuq sultans. 224 The View from Anatolia

There are significant differences between Anatolia and Persia that prevent a direct comparison between the two regions. However, a heuris- tic comparison between the two regions highlights the differences in the processes of Islamization that occurred in Anatolia and Persia which, in turn, shaped the form and content of historical writing produced in the two regions. Anatolia was deeply influenced by Byzantine culture in the form of Orthodox Christianity and Greek language and culture, and the process of Islamization took place roughly 500 years after it occurred in Iran. Whereas the Arab armies invaded areas of Persia within the first few decades of the nascent umma and an urban Persiante Muslim civilization flourished in the tenth century, nomadic bands of tribal Turkic peoples gradually invaded Anatolia at the turn of the eleventh century to slowly Islamize the region. In contrast to the Persian local histories, which use myriad literary strategies to claim religio-political legitimacy, the Anatolian examples of local history from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries considered here are dynastic chronicles about the Seljuqs of Rūm that couch claims to legitimacy in terms genealogy and the virtues of kingly rule. The modes of legitimation are framed in terms of the genealogy of the Seljuq dynasty, military success, the validity of their rule, the activities of their sultans, and the importance of Konya in the region.

the emergence of the seljuqs

Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor in the West and as Bilād al-Rūmto the Arab and Persian geographers, was a latecomer to joining the Islamic world. Neither ethnically Arab nor Persian, Anatolia forms a physical as well as metaphorical bridge between Central Europe and Western Asia. Prior to its Islamization, Anatolia was deeply influenced by Byzantine culture in the form of Orthodox Christianity and Greek language and

Patricia Blessing, Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture in the Lands of Rūm, 1240–1330 (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), see esp. 1–6, 21, 66–67, 206–208. Scott Redford recently used building inscriptions as a way to assess how the Rum Seljuqs built and rebuilt the urban environment between the mid-1210s and the mid-1230s in Sinop, Konya, Antalya, and Alanya. In his assessment of the period three decades earlier in than Blessing’s study, Redford finds increasingly centralizations of the Rum Seljuq state and the power of the sultan as recorded in the inscriptions on citadel walls. Redford argues that these citadel inscriptions are evidence of the sultan attempting to limit the influence of provincial governors and military amirs. Scott Redford, “City Building in Seljuq Rum,” in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture, 256–276. The Emergence of the Seljuqs 225 culture. It was only in 463/1071 that the Turkic Seljuq sultanate defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert (Malazgird), and this victory marked the turning point that began the sustained and permanent exposure of Ana- tolia to Islamic culture.6 The story of the Islamization of Anatolia begins even before the victory of the Seljuq Turks at Manzikert. Approximately seventy years before the Seljuqs definitively broke into Byzantine territory in 1071 CE, members of nomadic tribal confederations migrated from the Turkish steppes and into Transoxania, on the far eastern fringes of Muslim Persian domains.7 There is debate on when, precisely, these migrations and raids began and the significance of these early raids.8 Nevertheless, we know that the process of Islamization and infusion of Turkic peoples was diffuse and gradual as the Oghuz (Arabized as Ghuzz)-Turkmen tribal groups, also known as Turkoman nomads, entered Anatolia. The Ghuzz/Oghuz Turks were a group possibly composed of nine tribes, although the term is sometimes used ambiguously. Peter Golden and most recently A. C. S. Peacock considered the Oghuz a tribal union of nomadic Turkic steppe peoples, who formed something that might at a stretch be called a “state” around the Aral Sea sometime between the ninth and eleventh centuries, but whose history is wholly unclear, and is it especially unclear what part of the Oghuz territory was associated with the Seljuqs.9

6 On the depiction of the battle of Mazikert in Islamic historiography, see Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol. 7 On the Turks more broadly and the rise of the Seljuqs, especially the Great Seljuqs, see Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey,1–51. On the etymology of the Oghuz Turks, their migra- tions, and their relations with the Uighurs, the Qirghiz, and the Qarluq, see Golden, “The Migrations of the Oguz.” 8 See, for example, Gary Leiser, “Ibrahim Kafesoglu, ‘The First Seljuk Raid into Eastern Anatolia (1015–1021) and its Historical Significance’” in Les Seljoukides d’Anatolie, edited by, Gary Leiser, 27–47. 9 Peacock, Early Seljūq History, 17, 20–21, 24. See Peacock, Early Seljūq History,47–60 for a discussion of the terms Ghuzz, Turk, Turkmen, and Seljuq, which Peacock argues are used ambiguously by modern historians and by the sources themselves, which don’t offer clear ways to differentiate and distinguish between these terms. Peacock focuses on the early Seljuq history up to the death of the second Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan in 465/1072. Peacock offers a revisionist account of early Seljuq history by challenging three pillars of earlier scholarship on the dynasty: that they sought to rule in the model of Perso- Islamic rulers; that with their adopted settled Perso-Islamic patterns of rule, they subse- quently found the nomads over whom they ruled embarrassing; and that they were aggressively committed to promoting and defending Sunni Islam. Instead, Peacock argues that the Turkmen tribesmen were extremely important to the Seljuq dynasty and that, from the emergence of the dynasty and even through to after the conquest of Baghdad in 447/1055, the descendants of the chief Seljuq b. Duqāq fought amongst themselves over 226 The View from Anatolia

The Ghuzz Turks generally, and more specifically the group led by the Seljuq dynasty, emerged as a powerful force within the broader agglom- eration of Turkic peoples.10 The descendants of a Ghuzz Turkmen chief named Seljuq, who was part of the Qiniq tribe, founded their eponymous dynasty, which fractured into multiple branches. The origins of the Sel- juqs are murky, and it is possible that their origins are even associated with the Khazar Empire of the southern Russian steppe, an empire that was ethnically Turkish with a Jewish elite.11 A legacy of a mamluk class of Turkish military slave soldiers and commanders long survived the Seljuq dynasty after their loss of power in the thirteenth century.12

the great seljuqs and the ru¯mseljuqs

As a Turkic dynasty with multiple offshoots, the Seljuqs opened Anatolia to a Persianate Turkic empire based in Iran and Persian Iraq, or ʿIraq-i ʿAjam, and whose histories were composed by the scribal classes that wrote in Persian and Arabic. However, the branch of the Seljuq dynasty that ruled Anatolia split, at an early point, from the broader family of Seljuqs, and became known as the Seljuqs of the Rūm sultanate. The more well-known and better documented branch of the Seljuqs are the Great Seljuqs, who were based in western Iran and Iraq. The Great Seljuq sultanate ruled in Iraq and Iran ca. 1030–1194 CE, whereas the Rūm

who would attain the support of the Turkic tribesmen (not a homogenous group), and that the Turkmen steppe army was more sophisticated than hitherto believed. Moreover, Peacock argues that the demographic and economic decline in the Byzantine Empire began before the migrations and raids of the Seljuqs, who benefitted from a thinly populated area without adequate defenses against invasions from the east. 10 Essential reading on the Seljuqs, which includes some useful maps, is Bosworth, “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217),” 1–202. Bos- worth’s scholarly output on the Seljuqs is immense. For a much shorter summary of the origins of the Seljuqs and the Oghuz Turks, see, for example, Bosworth, “The Origins of the Seljuqs,” 13–31. 11 Peacock argues for this Khazar connection, which he admits is speculative, in The Early Seljuqs,27–35. 12 K. A. Luther provides a succinct summary of the emergence of the Seljuqs and two historical works that document their dynasty in the introduction to his translation of the Jami` al-Tawarikh of Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl Allāh Tabīb (d. 1318). Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl Allāh Tabīb (d. 1318); Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185); Kenneth A Luther; Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq Turks from the Jami` al-Tawarikh: An Ilkhanid Adaptation of the Saljuq-nama of Zahir al-Din Nishapuri; Tran. and annot. by K. A. Luther, edited by C. E. Bosworth (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001). On the rise of the Seljuqs and the Seljuq Sultanate, see also Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, 216–225, and 224–225 on the Rūm Seljuqs specifically. The Seljuqs of Rūm 227

Seljuqs broke off from their relatives and predecessors and ultimately outlasted them, ruling in Anatolia ca. 1077–1307.13 The Great Seljuq dynasty reached their acme with the three most powerful sultans who ruled during 429–485/1039–1092: Tughril Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malik Shāh.14 As Melville notes, the Seljuqs of the Rūm hardly feature in the few dynastic histories of the Seljuqs that exist.

the seljuqs of ru¯m

The Seljuqs of Rūm descend from the same Turkic ancestors as the more famous Great Seljuqs, but were, in effect, rebels who broke off from the main Seljuq branch and moved westwards to establish their own princi- pality and then sultanate in Anatolia in the latter half of the fifth/eleventh century. The Great Seljuqs, who ruled over Iran and Iraq, established themselves as Islamic rulers and defenders of Sunni Islam against both the Shiʿi Buyids and the Ismaʿili Shiʿa. They absorbed a Persianate bureau- cracy, epitomized by the famed vizier Nizām al-Mulk, and became settled rulers. In this, the Great Seljuqs departed from traditional nomadic Turkic patterns of leadership, which included leadership amongst the family, eschewing primogeniture in favor of dividing a ruler’s holdings across his sons, and the position of the nomadic leader as a first amongst equals.15 The dates of the Rūm Seljuq sultanate are debated. The period of their rule may be considered ca. 473–641/1081–124316 or ca. 483–707/

13 Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 73–88. 14 On the Great Seljuqs, see the chapters by Bosworth, Lambton, and Bausani in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods. On the apogee of the later period of the Great Seljuqs, which Cahen considers 1205–1243 CE, see also Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, 119–139 and Cahen, The Formation of Turkey,47–71. This covers the reigns of Kay Khusraw I (1205–1211), Kay Kāwūs (1211–1220), Kay Qubādh I (1220–1237), and Kay Khusraw II. For a detailed study of Iranian elites and Turkish rulers in the city of Isfahan, see Durand-Guedy, Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers. 15 On traditional patterns of nomadic Turkic leadership and patterns of state formation established by the Rūm Seljuqs, see Mikail Bayram, “State formation among the Seljuqs of Anatolia,” in Les Seljoukides d’Anatolie, 137–155. 16 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs. Mecit’s main argument is that for the Seljuqs of Rūm, it was not merely military prowess but rather ideology that was a significant factor for the success for the sultanate and transformed the dynasty from rulers over a principality in Asia Minor to a true sultanate. To this end, Mecit proposes a four-part periodization for the development of the Rūm Seljuq sultanate. During phase I (473–500/1081–1107), the first Seljuqs in Anatolia migrate there because they rebelled against the Great Seljuqs and flee 228 The View from Anatolia

1081–130717 or ca. 1077–1307.18 What is generally accepted is that the Seljuqs who established themselves in Anatolia and become known as the Seljuqs of Rūm reached their apogee in the early thirteenth century during the rule of their sultans Kay Kāwūs I (608–616/1211–1220) and Kay Qubādh I (616–634/1220–1237). The Seljuqs of Rūm descend from Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl (d. 456/ 1064)19, who rebelled against his own nephew Alp Arslan (r. 455/1063 to 465/1073; b. ca. 421/1030; d. Rabīʿ I 465/January 1073),20 the Great Seljuq sultan, for control of the Seljuq family.21 In this rebellion, Qutlu- mush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl was killed and his son Sulaymān taken captive.

westwards; these Seljuqs retained traditional patterns of Turkic nomadic rule and, while they wanted to rule in Anatolia, they had no ambitions to overthrow the Great Seljuqs against whom they rebelled. Mecit argues that the main goal of the first three Seljuq rulers in Anatolia was to take over power from the Great Seljuqs and not to establish an independent sultanate in Anatolia. Consequently, these rulers did not develop an ideology that would legitimate a new sultanate in Anatolia, because they claimed to be the legitimate heirs to the Great Seljuqs in Iran and Iraq and sought to assume the power held by the Great Seljuqs. These first three Seljuq rulers in Anatolia were Qutulmush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl b. Seljuq (d. 456/1064), his son Sulaymān b. Qutulmush (r. 473–479/ 1081–1086, d. 479/1086), and his grandson Kilic Arslan (r. 485–500/1092–1107). Phase II (500–551/1107–1156) was a period of transition during which the Rūm Seljuqs were dominated by their rivals, the Dānishmendid principality. Mecit contends that it is only with Rukn al-DīnMasʿūd (r. 510–551/1116–1156) that authors writing about the Rūm Seljuqs attribute to them qualities befitting a Perso-Islamic model of rulership. It is also with Rukn al-DīnMasʿūd that the Rūm Seljuqs first mint coins on which Rukn al-Dīn Masʿūd assumes the title of sultan. Taking advantage of internal divisions and weak- nesses within the Dānishmendids, Rukn al-DīnMasʿūd was, Mecit argues, the first of the Rūm Seljuqs to concentrate on consolidating power in Anatolia instead of attempting to take over power and expand east, into the Great Seljuq territory of Iran and Iraq. During Phase III (551–600/1156–1204) that the Rūm Seljuqs transformed from a principality into a full-fledged sultanate, and Mecit contends that it was during this time, starting with ʿIzz al-Dīn Kilic Arslan II (551–588/1156–1192), that they developed an ideology in contradistinction to their rivals Saladin and Nūr al-Dīn Zengī, both of whom presented themselves as waging jihad against the Crusaders. During the final and fourth phase, the peak of the sultanate – which coincides with the period of Mongol invasions in Khur- asan – with the rulers ʿIzz al-Dīn Kay Kāwūs I (608–616/1211–1220) and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kay Qubādh I (616–634/1220–1237) were rulers in the Perso-Islamic model who retained Turkic nomadic elements but were sedentary rulers who imitated the model of Iranian kings. For a summary of Mecit’s main argument and periodization, see esp. xv–xxxv, 38, 39, 42–46, 54–55, 98–99, 181–182. For an overview and periodization, see also G. Leiser, “Sulaymānb.Ḳutulmıs̊h̲,̲” EI2, and C. E. Bosworth; R. Hillenbrand; J. M. Rogers; F. C. de Blois; R. E. Darley-Doran, “Saldj̲̲ūḳids,” EI2. 17 Lange and Mecit, Introduction to The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture,1–9. 18 Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 73–88. 19 Leiser, “Sulaymānb.Ḳutulmıs̊h̲,̲” EI2. 20 Alex Mallett, “Alp Arslan,” EI3, and Cahen, “Alp Arslan,” EI2. 21 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs, xiii–xv. The Islamization of Anatolia 229

Sulaymān b. Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl (r. 473–478/1081–1086) later escaped with a band of his followers to Anatolia, establishing himself in Nicea. Sulaymān’s descendants in turn establish their own dynasty, the Rūm Seljuq sultanate, centered around Konya.22 The conquests of Ana- tolia and the Caucus were primarily accomplished by nomadic Turkmen waging war and conquest and not the more professional army of ghulām slave soldiers that developed later in Seljuq history, especially after the Seljuq conquest of Baghdad in 1055.23

the islamization of anatolia

It was not until a constellation of events in the thirteenth century – the Mongol invasions, the subsequent disintegration of Byzantine and Seljuq power in Anatolia, and the influx of Turkmen group into the region – that the Orthodox Church was further weakened while Muslim institutions, such as Sufi orders and brotherhoods as well as educational institutions like madrasas and waqfs, grew and proliferated.24 The first mosques in Anatolia were built in the late twelfth century (after ca. 550/1155) in areas controlled by the Seljuqs, Dānishmendids, Mengujekids and Saltukids (all Turkmen dynasties) and the first madrasa in Anatolia is built in Kayseri in 589/1193, a good two centuries after the blossoming of the madrasa in the Arab and Persian world.25 The gradual Islamization of urban centers in Anatolia, particularly Konya, grew out of these religious institutions that were established by Persianate Muslims. Hillenbrand argues that it was the Muslims in the mid-thirteenth century (from 1220–1250) – the period of the Mongol invasions, which displaced many from the Persianate world westwards into Anatolia, especially Konya – that the flood of Persianate Muslim refugees, including scholars, bureaucrats, and craftsmen, cemented the presence of Muslim religious institutions in Anatolia.26

22 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs, xiii–xv. 23 Peacock, Early Seljūq History, 73. 24 R. Stephen Humphreys offers a summary and assessment of Speros Vryonis’ evaluation of the process of Islamization in Anatolia from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries in R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 279–281. See also Speros Vryonis Jr., The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971). 25 “Saldj̲ūḳids,” EI2. 26 Hillenbrand, “Rāvandī, the Seljuk Court at Konya and the Persianization of Anatolian Cities,” in Les Seljoukides d’Anatolie, 157–169, esp. 162–169. 230 The View from Anatolia

Even the establishment of Islamic institutions was not synonymous with a complete Islamization of society. Melville notes, “Rūm was still far from being a fully Muslim society by the late 13th century and even in the towns, religious pluralism was the rule.”27 Extensive Christian populations persisted in Anatolia into the twelfth and thirteenth centur- ies.28 Ultimately, the confiscation and reappropriation of Church proper- ties and their assets materially supported the Turkish conquests, while waqf endowments, Sufi orders, and futuwwa organizations furthered the process of Islamization in Anatolia through its fruition in the fifteenth century.29 The process of Islamization was gradual and occurred over centuries. The Arab conquests of the Middle East were comparatively swift in contrast to Byzantine Anatolia, where full Islamization took another 400 years from the Turkish conquests in the eleventh century, as the region – with various mountainous areas that sometimes served as natural defenses – was incrementally Islamized and gradually Turkified.30 The invasions of the Seljuq Turks marked a turning point for Anatolia, but for more than a century and a half the Greek populace and the Orthodox Church was a significant presence, both because the Seljuqs prioritized stability over total Islamization and because the Byzantine Empire con- solidated its political and administrative interests along the coast of Anatolia and in western Anatolia.

sources on the seljuqs

There is a dearth of local histories from early Islamic Anatolia. A striking lacuna in sources from Islamic Anatolia between the eleventh and fif- teenth centuries is the lack of local or regional histories in the mold of

27 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” in History and Historiography of post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East, 161. 28 Vryonis, Jr., Decline of Medieval Hellenism, 182, 223, 239. 29 On the importance of the waqf for the Islamization and cultural transformation of Anatolia, see Vyronis, Jr., Decline of Medieval Hellenism, chapter V, esp. 351–355; on the development of Muslim institutions and the forces of conversion to Islam in Anatolia, see Chapter V. On the decline of the Greek Orthodox Church in Byzantine Anatolia in the fourteenth century, see Chap IV. 30 Vryonis, Jr., Decline of Medieval Hellenism,68–69. See 142–144 for a summary of the reasons why the Anatolian conquests took so long in contrast to the Arab conquests of other regions in the Middle East. See also 117–118 on the incremental nature of Turkish military victories against the Byzantines and the Islamization of the region. On the process of Turkification, see 465; 496–497. Sources on the Seljuqs 231

Persian local histories such as Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, or the biographical dictionaries of patricians, or even conquest narratives akin to Tārīkh iftitāh al-Andalus _ or FutūhMisrwa-akhbāruhā from Islamic Spain and Egypt, respectively. _ Instead, what we have are primarily dynastic histories and chronicles. The majority of extant histories about Anatolia are dynastic histories – such as those of the Seljuqs who successfully invaded Anatolia in the eleventh century – or general histories that focus on political and military history of Anatolia and perceive Anatolia as one region within the broader horizons of dār al-Islām.31 Some Ottoman sources have a particularly narrow purview, and focus on particular rulers, such as Sulaymān I or Sultan Murād III.32 In his early article originally published in Turkish in 1943, Mehmed Fuad Köprülü stressed that there are in general very few sources for the Seljuqs of Anatolia. Köprülü catalogued various types of documents that could shed light on the region, including records of qadis (sijiller), waqf deeds, edicts (farmānlar), and chancellery letters and records, but no local or regional histories in the mold of Persian local histories. Köprülü notes that there remain a few extant chronicles (though again, no local histor- ies) including Anīs al-qulūb by Burhān al-Dīn al-Anawī (thirteenth cen- tury); Saljuqnāma by Ibn Bībī, whose full name was al-Husayṇ b. Muhammad al-Munshī [the secretary] al-Jaʿfarī (thirteenth century); _ Tadhkira-i Aqsarāyī, more correctly known as Musāmarat al-akhbārva musāyarat al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and keeping up with the good”), by Karīmal-DīnMahmūdb.Muhammad al-Āqsarāyī (four- _ _ teenth century); Al-Walad al-Shafīq by Ahmad of Nigde (fourteenth _ century); and the anonymous Tarīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq (fourteenth century).33 Of these five extant chronicles, Melville provides a comparative analysis of the motives and contexts of Ibn Bībī’s Saljuqnāme, Āqsarā’ī’s Musā- marat, and the anonymous Tarīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq.34 Storey also describes Ibn Bībī’s Saljuqnāme, Āqsarāʾī’s Musāmarat, and the anonymous Tarīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq in his survey of Persian literature.35

31 For a chart with dates of sources about the Seljuqs, focusing on the Great Seljuqs, see Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 87. 32 Storey, Persian Literature, 408–422. 33 Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources; translated and edited by Gary Leiser (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1992), 1–29. 34 For a rich and concise exploration of the Persian historiography of Anatolia and the Seljuqs of Rūm, see Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. 35 Storey, Persian Literature, 408–422. 232 The View from Anatolia

Works such as the Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185), the anonymous Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Anatūlī, Karīm al-Dīn Āqsarā’ī’s chronicle titled Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and keeping up with the good”) and Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūrwaāyat al-surūr36 are dynastic histories that commemor- _ ate and celebrate the Seljuq dynasty. Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūr is largely _ based on the Saljuqnāma of Zahīr al-Dīn al-Nīshāpūrī, and the two histories are the major dynastic histories of the Seljuqs.37 These histories commemorate the Seljuqs, celebrate their successes on the battlefields, and record the events of the Seljuq dawla. The Seljuq lineage is a major element in Seljuq identity. Seljuq genealogy is celebrated for being Seljuq, not because it connects to some earlier, prestigious, pre-Islamic prophetic or patrician lineage. The Seljuqs are celebrated qua Seljuqs, not as the inheritors of an earlier dynasty. In contrast, Persian sources focuses on a variety of fadāʾil, including but not limited to genealogies, which often trace back to an early Companion, descendant of the family of the Prophet, early pious exemplar, or early Muslim convert.

historiography of the great seljuqs: dynastic histories

The histories of the Great Seljuqs in the Iraqi–Iranian region have domin- ated studies in Seljuq historiography.38 The majority are dynastic histor- ies of the Seljuqs focus on the Great Seljuqs, or the eastern branch of the dynasty that reigned over Persia and Iraq. There are no contemporary sources from the first century of Great Seljuq rule. If we consider that the Great Seljuq sultanate ruled in Iraq and Iran ca. 1030–1194 CE, there is a

36 Muhammad ibn ʿAlī Najm al-DīnAbū Bakr al-Rāwandī (fl. 1202), The Ráhat-us sudúr _ _ _ _ wa áyat-us-surúr, being a history of the Saljúqs. by Muhammad ibn ‘Alí ibn Sulaymán ar- _ Ráwandí, edited with notes, glossary and indices, by Muhammad Iqbál... Printed by _ Messrs. E. J. Brill of Leyden for the Trustees of the E.J. W. Gibb memorial (Leidein and London: Brill and Luzac & co., 1921). 37 Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian?” 370–371. On Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūr, see _ also Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 77–78. 38 Cahen’s early survey of the sources for Seljuq historiography focused on the Seljuq branch in Iran and Iraq, and therefore didn’t address the historical writing about the Seljuqs from Syria-Jazira, the successor dynasties in Khwarasm, or the Seljuqs of Rūm. On the historiography of the Seljuqid period, Cahen identified three types of historical writing: pan-Islamic, regional, and dynastic, written in Arabic and Persian. Cahen, “The Historiography of the Seljuqid Period,” in Historians of the Middle East, edited by, B. Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 60. Historiography of the Great Seljuqs 233 lacunae of Islamic sources from 1050 to 1150, and the sources about them only appear later, in Arabic and in Persian.39 Universal histories, including the Arabic al-Kāmil fī’ltāʾrīkh by the Iraqi ʿIzz al-DīnAbū al- Hasaṇ Alī ibn al-Athīr (555–630/1160–1233), covered the Great Seljuqs, as do the thirteenth-century Arabic Mirʾāt al-Zamān by Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī _ (581–654/1185–1256) – grandson of the famous Ibn al- Jawzī – and the Persian Rawdāt al-safāʾ fī sīrat al-anbiyāʾ wa’l mulūkwa’l-khulafāʾ by _ _ Muhammad b. Amīr-khwāndshāhb.MahmūdMīrkhwānd (836 or _ _ 387–903/1433–1498).40 As A. C. S. Peacock recently argued, the Great Seljuqs sought legitimacy mainly by appealing to notions of Islamic kingship.41 A late twelfth-century chronicle is the Nusrat al-fatra by _ ʿImād al-DīnIsfahanī. Although this text survives only in a unique manu- _ script, a thirteenth-century abridgement by Bundarī called Zubdat al- Nusra was published in 1889, and the section on the Seljuqs is essentially _ the same in the abridgement as the manuscript of the earlier work.42 Other sources on early Seljuq history include sources that focus on the Ghaznavids, a dynasty that in many ways were succeeded by the Seljuqs. These include Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī by Bayhaqī (385/995–470/ 1077). Bayhaqī was a Ghaznavid historian, and since his Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī covers the years 421/1030–431/1040 and is focused on the Ghaznavid court, it is a valuable source on the emergence of the Seljuqs (albeit with limitations) and is a work that is independent of the Maliknāma tradition.43 The Zayn al-Akhbār by Gardīzī,written ca. 443–444/1051–1052 for the Ghaznavid sultan ʿAbd al-Rashīd, is another source on the early Seljuq period.44

39 Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 73–74. 40 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty, xxx–xxxii, 20–23. Authors such as Ibn al-Athīr draw a narrative of the origins of the Rūm Seljuqs as a rebellious branch of the Seljuqs who lose their dynastic rights but were later reinstated as legitimate Seljuq princes by the Great Seljuqs and given reign over frontier provinces, such as Anatolia. In this scheme, the Rūm Seljuqs and Great Seljuqs are rivals for power, while Mecit argues that the Rūm Seljuqs had “an ideology of protest” when they first rebelled against the Great Seljuqs who framed themselves too much like kings in contrast to the Turkic tribal notion of a leader as a first amongst equals (Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty, 20–23). Following their attempt to take over power from the Great Seljuqs, the Rūm Seljuqs themselves would later present themselves within the Perso-Islamic model of rulership and as the vanguard of Sunni Islam as legitimate leaders. Mecit argues that the Rūm Seljuqs formulated an ideology to support and complement their military efforts. 41 Peacock, “Seljuq Legitimacy in Islamic History,” in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture, 80. 42 Peacock, Early Seljuq History, 10. 43 Peacock, Early Seljuq History,7. 44 Peacock, Early Seljuq History,8. 234 The View from Anatolia

The historiography is complicated by the fact that the Great Seljuqs do not appear to have had a court historian during their lifetimes, and therefore the history of the acme of the Seljuqs during the reigns of Tughril Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malikshāh have been pieced together from sources composed elsewhere, and Buyid Baghdad in particular.45 For the Great Seljuqs, the court, as it were, was a relatively mobile phenomenon. The Seljuq court was “wherever the sultan happened to be.”46 With Sultan Malikshāh (r. 465–485/1073–1092) – whose rule, along with that of his father Sultan Alp Arslan (455–465/1063–1073) is generally con- sidered the height of the Great Seljuq rule – there is a preference for Isfahan as the court and evidence of less peripatetic movement, but it was still a mobile court.47

akhba¯ r al-dawla al-salju¯qiyya by al-husaynı¯ (1180–1225) ˙ The major dynastic histories of the Great Seljuqs include Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya, an Arabic work with a complicated provenance attributed to Sadr al-DīnAbū’l-Hasaṇ ʿAlī b. Nāsir b. ʿAlī al-Husaynī.48 It is chronologically organized around the reigns and extraordinary events that occurred during the dawla of successive Seljuq sultans and uses as its source material the Maliknāma tradition. The Maliknāma, originally dedicated to Alp Arslan and about the origins of the Seljuqs, is no longer extant. However, extracts from it are preserved in other works, such as Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya by Husayṇ ī as well as al-Kāmil fī’ltāʾrīkh by the Iraqi ʿIzz al-DīnAbū al-Hasaṇ Alī ibn al-Athīr (555–630/ 1160–1233).49 Husaynī lauds the Seljuqs for their just rule and defense of Muslim domains, but the text is ultimately a dynastic, political, and military history.50 As a work uninterested in the fadāʾil, dream narratives, or sacred spaces, Husayṇ ī’s dynastic history is useful for gaining a

45 Cahen, “The Historiography of the Seljuqid Period,” 60. 46 Hillenbrand, “Aspects of the Court of the Great Seljuqs,” 23. 47 Hillenbrand, “Aspects of the Court of the Great Seljuqs,” in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society, and Culture, 23. See also eds., “Saldj̲̲ūḳids,” EI2. 48 See C. E. Bosworth’s translation with commentary of Sadṛ al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Nāsir Husayṇ ī _ (1180–1225), The History of the Seljuq State: A Translation with Commentary of the ‘Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya’ (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011). 49 Peacock, Early Seljuq History,8–9. 50 Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq State,1–8. Saljūq-nāma by Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī 235 broader picture of the Great Seljuq sultanate in western Iran and Iraq during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but is not useful for this project.

ja¯ miʿ al-tawa¯ rı¯kh by rashı¯d al-dı¯n fadl alla¯ htabı¯b (d. 1318) ˙ In the dynastic histories of the Great Seljuqs we see claims to legitimacy and authority couched in terms of genealogical legitimacy and virtues associated with kingship. In his analysis of Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl Allāh Taḅ īb’s (d. 1318) Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, which is based on the earlier Sal- jūqnāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185), K. A. Luther argues that the author was a member of the Iranian scribal elite writing after the fall of the Seljuq dynasty, who applied a Perso-Islamic concep- tion of kingship to the Seljuqs and framed history within religio-ethical terms.51 Historical events proved an ethical point for the elite scribe, who desired to demonstrate, through his account of historical events, that “virtue and the understanding of the principles of kingship bring success and that any kind of deviation from these things brings loss.”52 Virtue and the nobility of genealogical prestige – in this case descent from the eponymous ancestor Seljuq – confers dynastic legitimacy, but genealogy alone is not a sufficient condition for successful rule. Unsurprisingly for a work with echoes of the “mirrors for princes” (Nasīhat al-Mulūk) genre _ _ of advice literature, viziers loom large in Jamiʿ al-Tawārīkh; good council benefits the realm, while conniving or immoral viziers create the condi- tions for his masters’ downfall.

salju¯q-na¯ ma by zahı¯r al-dı¯n nı¯sha¯ pu¯rı¯ (d. ca. 1184 or 1185)

The important Seljuq dynastic history called the Saljūq-nāma attributed to Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185), the original of which is lost, became a significant source about the Seljuqs for later works. It is concerned with the reign of Seljuq sultans in Persia, but the author’s peripheral vision hardly extends to the events further west in Anatolia.53

51 Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl AllāhTaḅ īb (d. 1318); Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185); translated by, Luther and Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq Turks, 8, 9; 11. 52 Luther and Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq Turks, 8, 9; 11. 53 Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī’s Saljūq-nāma is considered the source for Seljuq material in several general histories, including Rāwandī’s Rāhat al-sudūr, Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl Allāh Taḅ īb’s (d. 1318) Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, Hamd Allāh Mustawfī’s Tārīkh-i Guzīda 236 The View from Anatolia

The Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī, completed in 571/1176 and long thought to be lost, was edited by A. H. Morton and published in 2004 based on a recovered unique manuscript in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society.54 Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī was Persian and wrote his Saljūq-nāma about the Great Seljuqs of Iran-Iraq in Persian.55 This dyn- astic history about the Great Seljuqs of Iran-Iraq was written during the reign of Tughril Beg, the last of the Seljuqs of Iran. The Saljūq-nāma is not about the Seljuqs of Anatolia, but it is a very significant source for Seljuq historiography since it becomes the basis for multiple other later works, including Rāwandī’s Rāhat al-Sudūr and Majmaʿ al-Tawārīkh by Hāfiz-i Abrū.56 Meisami argues that Nīshāpūrī’s concept of Seljuq legitimacy in the Saljūq-nāma is based on their espousal of Sunni orthodoxy and the alleged treachery enacted against the Seljuqs by Mahmūd of Ghazna.57 _ Later sources from the Ottoman period include chronicles that docu- ment the rise of the Ottoman sultans and their reigns. These include the linguistically ornate Hasht-bihisht (started 908/1502) by Hakīm al-Dīn Idrīs b. Husām al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Bidlisī, the continuation (Dhayl)ofthe work, also known as the Sulaimān-nāmah, by the author’s son, completed in 974/1566, and the Salīm-nāmah, begun by one author and then com- pleted by his son, Abū’l-Fadl M. b. Idrīs al-Daftarī in 974/1566.58 _

historiography of the seljuqs of ru¯m inthe late thirteenth century

In contrast to the historiography of the Great Saljuqs of western Persia and Iraq, there are few very works about the Seljuqs of Rūm who ruled

(ca. 1329–1330 CE), Hāfiz Abrū’s Zubdat al-Tawārīkh (ca. 1426–1427), and Mīr Khwānd’s Rawdat al-Safā. See Luther and Bosworth, The History of the Seljuq Turks, 6. See also Storey, Persian Literature, 408–422 and Hillenbrand, “Some Reflections on Seljuq Historiography,” 76–77. 54 Zaḥīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 5), The Saljūqnāma of Zaḥīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī: A Critical Text Making Use of the Unique Manuscript in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, edited by A. H. Morton (Warminster: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004). Morton’s introduction in English is followed by the text in Persian. 55 Cahen addresses the Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī in “The Historiography of the Seljuqid Period,” 73–76. 56 Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma of Zaḥīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī, edited by, A. H. Morton, 3–4. 57 Meisami, “Rulers and the Writing of History,” 85; see also Meisami, Persian Historiog- raphy, 231–2. 58 Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, vol. 1, Part 1: Qurʾanic Litera- ture; History and Biography, 408–422. On Abu’l-Fadl M. b. Idrīs al- Daftarī, see Storey, _ Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, 416. Historiography of the Seljuqs of Rūm 237 independently and further west. Melville argues that the dearth of histor- ical works from the Islamic perspective produced in or about Seljuq Rūm is due at least in part to the unfavorable circumstances in Anatolia. The conditions for producing historical writing were poor: the Greek and Orthodox Christian culture was slow to be replaced by Islamic structures of learning and governance; initial colonization was not by settled Per- sians or Arabs but by nomadic Turkomans; the long resistance of the Byzantine forces; and shifting boundaries between the Byzantines and incoming Turkomans.59 The historiography of Anatolia, or Muslim Rūm, differed from the Persian historiography that flourished further east. During the Seljuq period Anatolia did not develop a tradition of city histories, regional histories, or biographical dictionaries of patricians or other notables. A few notable works that focus on the Seljuqs of the Rūm appear in the late thirteenth through mid-fourteenth century. These include the chron- icle of Ibn Bībī (d. ca. after 1285 or 1288 CE) titled al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya (“ʿAlāʾī commands over exalted affairs”), the chronicle of Karīm al-Dīn Āqsarā’ī (d. ca. between 1323–1333 CE) titled Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and keeping up with the good”), and the anonymous Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq (“History of the Seljuqs”), completed in 1363 CE. All three works were written during the period of clear decline of the Rūm Seljuqs ruling Anatolia as well as the Great Seljuqs ruling further east in Persia and Iraq. Given the scarcity of available sources, they have been used to reconstruct the events of the sultanate of Rūm after the Mongol invasions and the role of the Khwarazmshāh during the period.60 The sources are also useful for the admittedly tricky and imprecise task of discerning how local identity was expressed in early Islamic Anatolian sources. Without earlier indigenous models for the Muslim historiography of Rūm, Anatolian authors looked elsewhere for examples of dynastic histories. They produced what Melville describes as “works of local historiography, as one would expect from a peripheral regional both geographically separate and accustomed to political autonomy, yet at the same time they were composed in, and part in response to, a wider

59 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. 60 Kōzō Itani, “Mongoru shin’nyū-go no rūmu: Kyōdai-kan no surutan-i arasoi o megutte (The Rūm Saltanat after Mongol Invasion),” Tōyōshi Kenkyu, 39: 2 (1980): 358–387. See also Itani, “Rūmu sarutanato to horazumushā = [Rum Saltanat and the Khwārazmshāh],” Tōyōshi Kenkyu, 47: 1(1988): 116–149. 238 The View from Anatolia imperial context ...the Mongol conquests generated an interest in histor- ical literature that the earlier Seljuk invasions had not.”61 In his positive evaluation of Cahen’s work, Melville agrees with Cahen’s linkage of the chronicles of Ibn Bībī, Karīm al-Dīn Āqsarā’ī, and the anonymous Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq to the development of a local identity in Anatolia that is marked by its allegiance to the Rūm Seljuq sultanate that was in a state of decline, coupled with increasing Mongol power during the three authors’ eras.62 A major difference between Persian and Anatolian sources lies in how local identity manifests itself. Where the authors of Persian local histories of Bukhara, Qum, and Bayhaq keenly evidence a loyalty to the land, local religious practices, local patrician families, and notable local individuals, their Anatolian counterparts demonstrate their allegiances to the ruling but outgoing Seljuq dynasty as it gave way to the Mongol empire. The types of claims to legitimacy in these dynastic histories are more genealogically based than the creative and multifaceted claims – dreams, etymologies, and lore, as well as fadāʾil, including genealogies – characteristic of early Islamic Persian local histories. Peacock recently and convincingly argued that it was during the sev- enth/thirteenth century that Seljuq descent became an important factor for the legitimacy of the Rūm Seljuqs, although their rival Dānishmendids and Saltukids ruled without recourse to claims to Seljuq descent to legitimate their rule.63 As claims of descent from the common ancestor Seljuq become an important component of legitimacy, rivals of the Seljuqs in Anatolia during the seventh/thirteenth century tried to use connections to those who claimed to be Seljuqs to establish their own authority via Seljuq connections. This was the case of the Mamluk ruler Baybars, who used symbols of Seljuq power, such as the nawba drum band and chatr parasol, to signify his legitimacy, even though the Seljuqs were by then defeated and out of power.64 Analyzing the titulature used by the Great Seljuqs and the Rūm Seljuqs, Korobeinikov substantiates Peacock’s claims and finds that the Rūm Seljuqs looked to the Great Seljuqs – and not Byzantium – for legitimacy.65

61 Melville argues that a distinct historiography develops in Muslim Anatolia in the late thirteenth century when it became an important province of the Mongol empire. Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 136. 62 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135. 63 Peacock, “Seljuq Legitimacy in Islamic History,” 81–82. 64 Peacock, “Seljuq Legitimacy in Islamic History,” 82–84. 65 Korobeinikov argues that there is no surviving evidence of Rūm Seljuq titles until the mid- twelfth century, ca. 551/1156. The tile of the Rūm Seljuq sultan Qilich Arslan II Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār by Āqsarāʾī 239

Later dynasties such as the Ottomans and Karamanids also presented themselves as successors to the Seljuqs as a way to claim legitimacy as rulers of Anatolia, with evidence as late as the twelfth/ eighteenth century of claims of real and mythological descent. A common refrain in explaining how the Ottomans and Karamanids came to rule includes assertions that they shared mutual Seljuq ancestry and that when the Rūm Seljuqs lost their grip on power, they effectively forfeited the right to rule. The ability to rule was, in effect, confirmation of the right to rule.66 Similarly, claimants to power on a local level in Nigde and Simre used Seljuq descent as a mark of legitimacy between the seventh/thirteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, well after the decline and disappearance of the Seljuqs of Rūm.67

musa¯ marat al-akhba¯ rvamusa¯ yarat al-akhya¯ rbykarı¯m al-dı¯n a¯ qsara¯ ʾı¯

A chronicle focused on Anatolia that betrayed local allegiances and concerns is Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and keeping up with the good”) by Karīm al-Dīn Aqsarā’ī (d. ca. between 1323 and 1333).68 Aqsarāʾī, a scribe in the local bureaucracy, includes information about his hometown of Aqsarā (Aksaray), where he

(r. 1156–1192) refers to some of the titles used by the Great Seljuq sultan Malikshah. Qilich Arslan II didn’t style himself through his titulature as the successor to the Byzan- tines, but rather as a sultan with rule limited to Anatolia. Later, as the Rūm Seljuqs consolidated their power, Sultan ʿIzz al-Dīn Kaykawūs I (r. 1211–1219) made claims for universal rule in his titular as “king of the East and West” and “lord of the Arabs and Persians,” styling himself in the model of the Great Seljuqs of Iran and Iraq, who used their titles to assert limitless and borderless power as malik al-mashriq wa’l-maghrib (King of the East and West), claims asserted by the Great Seljuqs of Iran and Iraq. Korobeinikov argues that epigraphy shows that Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād I (r. 1219–1237) used the title “the crown of the dynasty of Seljuq,” distinguishing the Rūm Seljuqs and their genealogical legitimacy in contradistinction to other dynasties in Anato- lia, including a branch of the Seljuqs in Erzurum, the Saltukid dynasty in Erzurum, the Artuqids in Diyarbakir, and the Mengujekids in Erzincan. Dimitri Korobeinikov, “‘The King of the East and the West’: The Seljuk Dynastic Concept and Titles in the Muslim and Christian Sources,” in The Seljuks of Anatolia,68–90. 66 Peacock, “Seljuq Legitimacy in Islamic History,” 86–92. 67 Peacock, “Seljuq Legitimacy in Islamic History,” 84–86. 68 Karīm al-DīnMahmūd ibn Muhammad Aqsarāʾī (fl. ca. 1300), Tārīkh-i Salājiqah, yā, _ _ Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Asātīr, 1362 [1983 or _ 1984]). 240 The View from Anatolia also held property and an administrative position. Written with a bureau- cratic administrator’s interest in the affairs of the empire as it affected his region, Aqsarāʾī wrote a broader history, though with few dates, that focused on the contemporary Seljuq rulers but maintained a broader peripheral vision attuned to the events of the Mongol Ilkhanid government.69

ta¯ rı¯kh-i a¯ l-i salju¯ q by anonymous

The anonymity of the author of Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq (“History of the Seljuqs”) makes tracing the author’s intensions and milieu more difficult, although we do know it was composed for one of the last Seljuq sultans.70 It is a short dynastic history that focuses on the Seljuq sultans of Anatolia. It is organized annalistically, records the reigns of the Seljuq sultans of Rūm interposed with the information about caliphs, and emphasizes the importance of Konya.71 Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq was completed in the mid-fourteenth century after Muharram 765/October 1363, when the brother of the author’spatron _ died. There is some debate about when the work was started. Since the anonymous author was relying on his memory to compose the work, in which he does not specifically cite earlier or contemporary works, he may have started the work well in advance of its completion after 765/ October 1363.72 Alternatively, it may be a composite work that was started earlier and completed by a second hand around 765/October 1363.73 The work was composed for ‘Sultan’ ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ibn Saljuq Sulaymānshāh, who was son of Seljuq Malik Rukn al-Dīn and grandson of Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusraw ibn Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayku- bād.74 The patron was a great grandson of Giyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusraw II (r. 1237–1246).75

69 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. 70 Nadirah Jalali, ed., Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Ānātūlī (Tihran: Daftar-i Nashr-i Miras-I Maktub, Ayinah-i Miras: 1999). 71 See Melville’s concise summary of the work in “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 150–154. 72 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,31–32. 73 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 150–151. Melville finds that Cahen shares his opinion in Cahen, La Turque pre-Ottomane, 333, 355. 74 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 40. 75 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 151. Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq by Anonymous 241

The organizing principle of the history is to record the glory of the Seljuqs and present the material chronologically. After the dedication, the first section of the history is “The beginning of the Seljuq dynasty and an explanation of their origins and descendants, may God have mercy upon them.”76 The author then continues with the circumstances of the rise of the Seljuqs,77 the reign of Sultan Adud al-Dawla Abū Shujāʿ Alp Arslan ibn Dāwūd,78 the reign of Sultan Abū al-Fath Malik Shāh79 and on _ through several sultans, the Khwarazmshāhs, and caliphs up to the events of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rūm with ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kay-Qubād (1220–1237).80 Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq frames Seljuq legitimacy and authority to rule by recording the Seljuq sultans’ heroism and prowess as warriors. Melville succinctly argues, “The emphasis is on enumerating glorious military victories, expanding conquests and propagating Islam.”81 While Persian local histories also celebrate local dynasts (such as the sayyids of Tabari- stan) and their military success (or resistance of the caliph’s forces, in the case of Tabaristan) it is merely one marker amongst many of religious authority and political legitimacy, along with etymologies, dream narra- tives, emphasis on sahāba, tābiʿūn, sayyids, sharifs, and an attention to _ _ human and natural fadāʾil of the region. _ The anonymous author records the events of the Seljuq sultans of Rūm, who are the descendants of Isrāʾīl ibn Seljuq.82 The anonymous author begins his section on the Seljuqs of Rūm by describing the ascension of Malik Shāh b. Alp Arslan. The author lauds the way in which his father, Alp Arslan, slaughtered his opponents, and continues with a description of the military campaign of SulaymānShāhinRūm.83 The work continues in this tenor, with the anonymous author recounting the events of succes- sive Seljuq dawla, stressing the military conquests and victories of the descendants of Seljuq. Sultan Malikshāh ibn Alp Arslan, one of the most notable of the Great Seljuq sultans (447/1055, reigned 465–485/1072–1092), ascended to power during the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Mustazhir Bi’llāh(b. _ Shawwāl 470/April–May 1078; r. 18 Muharram 487/7 February _

76 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 41. 77 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,41–48. 78 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,49–51. 79 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,51–73. 80 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,74–78. 81 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 152. 82 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,78–81. 83 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,78–79. 242 The View from Anatolia

1094 to 6 Rabīʿ II 512/6 August 1118; d. aged 41).84 The Turkmen leader Sulaymān ibn Qutulmush (d. 479/1086) played a leading role in the conquering Anatolia, making incursions into Konya,85 and the anonym- ous author credits him with essentially founding the sultanate of Rūm under the suzerainty of Malikshāh ibn Alp Arslan, a feat that was achieved gradually through numerous battles.86 During this time, Qilij Arslan became a powerful king (padishah-i bozorg shod).87 The work continues with the history of the Seljuq sultans organized chronologically by their reign. It includes material about the following: the reign of Qilij Arslan II (ibn Masʿūd), which begins in 550/1155;88 the accession of Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusrow ibn Qilij Arslan;89 the accession of Sultan ʿIzz al-Dīn Kay-Kawus ibn Ghiyāth al-Dīn;90 the reign of Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn and the establishment of the city of Konya;91 the accession of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusrow ibn Alāʾ al-DīnKay- Qubād;92 the accession of Sultan ʿIzz al-DīnKay-Kāwūs;93 the vizirate of the province of Rum by Jalālal-DīnQarātānī;94 the arrival in Rūmfor the second time of Bājū andhisbattlewiththeSultan95; the reign of the sultan upon the throne of Konya without obstacle or claimants;96 the events of the ruler Fakhr al-DīnKhwāja ʿAlī;97 The accession of Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn ibn Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslan;98 thearrivalofthedes- cendants of Sultan; ʿIzz al-DīnKay-Kāwūs ibn Khusrow ibn Kay- Qubād;99 the reign that featured with Arghun ibn Abghan returned;100 the murder of Bahā al-Dīn;101 and the death of the brother of Akhī Ahmad Shāh.102 Despite the significant differences between this anonymous history, Ibn Bībī’s al-Avāmir,andĀqsarā’ī’s Musāmarat, they are united in their understanding of “the moral basis for sovereign authority and the exer- cise of power.”103 Historians do not so much record events but give meaning to them and draft a compelling and edifying historical narrative that makes sense of the events that transpired.

84 Hillenbrand, “al-Mustazhir Bi’llāh,” EI2. _ 85 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 79. 86 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,78–81. 87 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 79. 88 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,81–83. 89 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,83–86. 90 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,86–88. 91 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,89–91. 92 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,91–94. 93 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,94–96. 94 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,96–97. 95 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,97–99. 96 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,99–100. 97 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 100. 98 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 101–106. 99 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 106–109. 100 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 109–123. 101 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 124–130. 102 Jalali, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq, 131. 103 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 161. al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya 243

al-ava¯ mir al-ʿala¯ ʾiyya fı¯al-umu¯r al-ʿala¯ ʾiyya by ibn bı¯bı¯

Ibn Bībī’s al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya (“ʿAlāʾī’scom- mands over exalted affairs”) is a thirteenth- entury dynastic history of the Seljuqs of Anatolia.104 The work is also known as Mukhtasar-i Saljūqnā- _ mah, which is an anonymous Persian abridgment of Ibn Bībī’s al-Avāmir al-ʻalāʼiyya fī al-umūr al-ʻalāʼiyya, which was also composed in Persian. Ibn Bībī’s work combines Seljuq dynastic history and personal memoir and records the events of the Seljuq of Rūm from ca. 584/1188 to late 679/early 1281, despite having few specific dates.105 Ibn Bībī was a product of Seljuq Anatolia, although his parents were Khwarazmian, from modern-day Uzbekistan. Ibn Bībī’s mother was astrologer to Jalālal-Dīn Minkubirnī Khwārazmshāh (d. 1230), a Khwarazmian prince, and she later held a position in the court of Sultan Kayqubād.106 Ibn Bībī’sparentsfled Khwarazm after Jalālal-DīnMin- kubirni Khwārazmshāh died in 1230 CE, after his defeat by the Mongols. Following in the footsteps of his father, Ibn Bībī (d. ca. after 1285 or 1288 CE) was a secretary or scribe (munshī)intheKhwar- azmian court, and he wrote the book at the request of Atā-Malik _ Juvaynī, the governor of Baghdad, whose relative had been Ibn Bībī’s father’s patron.107 The Juvaynīs employed historical literature as intel- lectual propaganda to bolster the legitimacy of the Ilkhans by portray- ing them as custodians of justice, Muslim piety, and traditions of Iranian kingship. Ibn Bībī’s work, which focuses on Anatolia and specifically Konya, reflects the aims of his patrons to legitimate the increasingly powerful Mongol empire.108 Ibn Bībī was still alive during

104 Nāsir al-DīnHusayṇ ibn Muhammad Ibn Bībī (d. 1284 or 5), Akhbār-i Salajiqah-ʾi _ _ Rūm, bā matn-i kāmil-i Saljūqnāmah-ʾi Ibn Bībī,jāmiʻ-i matālib-i tārīkhī-i kitāb-i al- _ awāmir al-ʿAlāʾīyah fī al-umūr al-ʿAlāʾīyah (Tihrān: Kitābfurūshī-i Tihrān, 1971). This 1971 Tehran edition edited by Mashkur is a reprint of the 1902 edition published in Leiden by Brill and is also known as Mukhtasar-i Saljūqnāmah. It is an anonymous _ Persian abridgment of the Ibn Bībī’s al-Awamir al-ʿAlāʾīyah fī al-umūr al-ʿAlāʾīyah, which was also composed in Persian. 105 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. On Ibn Bībī, see also Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs, xxxi–xxxii. 106 Anooshahr, Ghazi Sultans, 110–111. 107 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. 108 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166. 244 The View from Anatolia the 1280s when an anonymous author abridged al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūral-ʿalāʾiyya.109 Ibn Bībī served the Seljuqs of Rūm through a cycle of success and decline, from their acme under Kayqubād I (1220–1237) through their decline during the Mongol rise to power through the 1270s.110 Ibn Bībī was tasked with retroactively rehabilitating the image of an originally rebellious branch of the Seljuqs and to present their history in a way that adhered to a Perso-Islamic model of rulership.111 Ibn Bībī legitimated the Rūm Seljuqs by presenting the sultans, such as Kilic Arslan, as rulers who were given independent rule over provincial domains by the Great Seljuqs. This occurred despite the fact that these authors wrote after the decline of the Great Seljuq sultanate, demonstrating that despite their decline, the Great Seljuqs were still seen as the true and legitimate Seljuq sultanate.112

abu¯ muslim-na¯ ma by abu¯ta¯ hir tarsu¯sı¯ ˙ ˙ There are Ottoman and Persian Abū Muslim-nāma works that contain stories about conversion in Anatolia. Abū Tạ̄hir Tarṣ ūsī’s(fifth/eleventh or sixth/twelfth century) Abū Muslim-nāma is an epic tale of the eponym- ous hero, and follows the contours of what is known about the historical Abū Muslim, who led a revolt against the Umayyads in Khurasan in the second/eighth century.113 Tarṣ ūsī himself was a professional storyteller, and many prose narratives are attributed to him, including those about the heroic figures of pre-Islamic Iran, such as the Dārāb-nāma, Qirān-i Habasḥ ī (“Qiran the Abyssinian”), and Qahramān-nāma or (also known as Qahramān-i Qātil). Narratives from the Islamic period include the Abū Muslim-nāma; Musayyab-nāma; Jang-nāma-yi Muhammad Hanạ fiyya _ (“The battles of Muhammad Hanạ fiyya”).114 However, Abū Muslim _

109 Anooshahr covers Ibn Bībī and al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya fī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya in The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam, 110–117. See also 13, 100, 136, 143, 147, 148, 151. Anooshahr uses an earlier Ankara edition of the Persian text that includes an introduction in Turkish: Nāsir al-DīnHusayṇ ibn Muhammad Ibn Bībī (d. 1284 or 5), _ _ Kitāb al-avāmir al-ʻAlāʾīyah fī al-umūr al-ʻAlāʿīyah, edited with introduction by Lugal Necati and Adnan Sadık Erzi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1957). 110 Anooshahr, Ghazi Sultans, 110–111. 111 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs, 20. 112 Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs,23–29. 113 Muhammad ibn Hasaṇ Abū Tạ̄hir Tarṣ ūsī, Abū Muslimʹnāmah/bih rivāyat-i Abū Tạ̄hir _ Taṛtūsī; bih ihtimām-i Husayṇ Ismāʻīlī, 4 vols. (Tihrān: Muʿīn: Qatrah: Anjuman-i _ _ Īrānʹshināsī-i Farānsah dar Īrān, 1380 [2001]). 114 Marina Gaillard, “Abū Tạ̄hir Tarṣ ūsī,” EI3. Symbolic Legitimation in the Sharafnāma 245 stories and the Abū Muslim-nāma are a separate genre, distinct from local or dynastic histories, and fall beyond the scope of this book.115

symbolic legitimation in the sharafna¯ ma

A later source that touches on Anatolia is Bitlīsī’s Persian language Sharafnāma, which is history of Kurdish dynasties. The author’s primary motive is to craft a history of the rulers of Kurdistan, and so Bitlīsī’s work, produced in 1005/1597, is only concerned with Anatolia in passing in so far as Anatolia related to Kurdish history. Origin stories are a common feature of dynastic histories, and the Sharafnāma includes several curious and mythical stories about the origins of the Kurds: that the Kurds descend from the stateless refugees who escaped having their brains used as ointment by Dhạ hhāk, the mythical Persian tyrant whose legend has _ _ been woven into historical record; or that they are the are a type of jinn; or offspring of demons (dīv) who married humans.116 Bitlīsī, who was a dynastic Rozhiki aristocrat on his paternal side and whose mother was a Turkmen princess, claimed paternal lineage that ultimately traces itself to the Persian Sasanian kings.117 Unsurprisingly, Bitlīsī determines the legit- imacy of the various rulers of Kurdistan in terms of their genealogies.118 Unlike the pattern we see in Persian local histories, where we see a multiplicity of claims of authority and legitimacy – through dreams, etymology, saint shrines, and pious individuals – here dynastic history is the main concern and legitimacy is couched in genealogical terms.

115 On the Abū Muslim-nāma of Tarṣ ūsī, see Appendix V in Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Iran- ian Tradition in Tụ̄s and the Arab Presence in Khurāsān,” PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1995. In French, see Irène Mélikoff-Sayar, Abū Muslim: le “Porte-Hache” du Khorassan dans la tradition épique turco-iranienne, Illustré de 6 reproductions fac- similés de manuscrits persans et turcs (Paris, A. Maisonneuve, 1962). On the Abū Muslim stories and the Abū Muslim-nāma, see Meisami, “Why Write History in Per- sian?” 365 fn. 57, 367 fn. 65. During the period of Buyid and Samanid rule during the tenth century, Abū Muslim is one of figures identified as the “king from the east” predicted in Zoroastrian apocalypses who would restore justice to the world, who was possibly the same person as BahrāmChūbīn, and was also concealed along with the Mahdi. 116 Sharaf al-Dīn Bitlīsī (b. 1543), The Sharafnama, or, The History of the Kurdish Nation, 1597; English translation and commentaries by M.R. Izady; Sharafnāmah by Sharaf al- Dīn ibn Shams al-DīnRūzhkī al-Akāsirī (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2005), 28–33. 117 Bitlīsī, Sharafnama, xvii–xix. 118 For an example of a dream vision of the Prophet that facilitates the integration of the Kurds into the socio-religious community of the Alevis, see Karakaya-Stump, “The Vefā’iyye, the Bektashiyye and Genealogies of ‘Hererodox’ Islam in Anatolia,” 279–300. 246 The View from Anatolia

thequestionofaudience

Who read these works of history that betray local concerns and focus? It is difficult to know who the audience of these works was, beyond the small world of patrons for whom the work was composed, those individ- uals explicitly mentioned in the text as the reader for whom it was written, and contemporary or later sources that use or acknowledge these earlier works as a source. The writers came from the scribal classes. Ibn Bībī’s father, for example, was also a scribe (munshī), but again it is difficult to say conclusively if the text was read or heard by someone that does not leave a written record – in his own text – of whether he accessed the text. Without something like a samāʾ reading certificate of people who were certified to teach or transmit the work, our knowledge about where the text later travelled is very limited.119

differences between persian and anatolian sources

What factors account for some of the notable differences in the literary strategies for asserting legitimacy and authority that Persian and Anato- lian sources use? Firstly, it could be that the culture of writing among the settled scribal classes in early Islamic Iran differed greatly for the situation in Seljuq Anatolia, where there was an influx of Turkmen group into the region that slowly Islamized. Another dimension of the difference between these and Persian local histories is the great influx of Turkmen who migrated into Anatolia. Unlike the situation in Qum, for instance, where the majority of the local population traced their origins to the Ashʿarī Arabs who migrated there in the seventh century and

119 A combination of social history and cultural history that addresses reading in the Middle Period (early fifth/eleventh century to early tenth/sixteenth centuries) is Konrad Hirsch- ler’s recent work, which focuses exclusively on Arabic literature and generally on Syria and Egypt, especially on Damascus and Cairo. Hirschler uses samāʾ reading certificates, endowment deeds, and library catalogues (including those of local endowed libraries) as important sources of evidence of who read and studied particular works, such as Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq. He investigates how elite and non-elite individuals accessed written texts as well as when and how they accessed these texts. While samāʾ reading certificates were mainly for readings of hadith works, Ibn ʿAsākir disseminated his Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq at reading sessions at the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, beginning in 559/1164, and the work continued to be read at taught at hundreds of sessions by other teachers. Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands,1–32. Piety and Prosperity: A Common Theme 247 consequently identified the land of Qum as significant for their Muslim heritage, the originally nomadic Turkic tribesmen brought to Anatolia Islam, tribal affiliation, and Turkification, but not strong ties to particular cities or regions. The case of Tabriz notwithstanding, the powerbase of the Turks was generally in the countryside, where they preferred to live in tents.120 In contrast, the Persian dynasts based themselves around urban centers. While the Persian dihqān class of landed gentry certainly held power, it was qualitatively different from the Turks, who formed tribal confeder- acies and pastured their animals in Anatolian highlands. The Turkic histories are more focused on dynastic legitimation and the genealogy of a ruling Turkic dynasty rather than on the legitimation of the city as a unit of measure, like the Persian sources. With the major exception of Tabriz, which became a de facto capital, the Turks tended to live in tents, not in cities, and they did not establish a permanent court.121 The Turks favored Tabriz, but without a permanent court established there the city could not become a permanent metropolis with an established cultural apparatus, a “cultural magnet” like Baghdad or Cairo.122 Thus, the Anatolian sources focus on tribal elements and dynastic legitimation, in contrast to the Persian sources that tend to focus on the city as the unit of measure. With their lack of sanctification of the land emphasis on legitimacy and authority to rule through genealogy and military success, these Anatolian sources are conditioned and defined by their contexts and the constraints of their composition. The differences in the culture of writing between the settled scribal classes in Persian cities versus Seljuq Anatolia; the great influx of Turkmen who migrated into Anatolia from the steppes; and the penchant for Turks to form their powerbase in the countryside without establishing a permanent court are all contributing factors for the major differences between Persian and Anatolian histor- ical writing.

piety and prosperity: a common theme

There are some thematic similarities in Seljuq dynastic histories and Persian local histories. There is a linkage between piety and prosperity: spiritual richness leads to material success, and a dearth of piety leads to ruin. In her study of the fifteenth-century history of Yazd, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i

120 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 490–491. 121 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 490–491. 122 Crone, Nativist Prophets, 491. 248 The View from Anatolia

Yazd by Ahmad ibn Husayṇ ʿAlī Kātib,123 Miller underscores how the _ author considers the locals’ piety a source for the prosperity of Yazd. According to Miller, Kātib’s ethical-historical position is that the piety of the Yazdis led to God bestowing blessings and prosperity upon them.124 The Yazdis’s piety, exemplified in mosques and madrasas and embodied in Sufi shaykhs and holy men, served as the source of prosperity for Yazd. Similarly, two Seljuq dynastic histories essentially present a similar ethical-historical understanding of history. Meisami has argued that Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūr and the Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī, _ on which is it largely based, attribute Seljuq success to piety and their eventual downfall to their religious decline. Meisami claims, “Both Nīshā- pūrī and Rāvandī attribute the Seljuq’s rise to power and initial prosperity to piety, religious patronage and good works, and their downfall to the spread of irreligion and heresy, the declining repute of the ʿulamāʾ and the injustice, immorality, and corruption of officials and military command- ers.”125 The arc of history is seen in ethical terms: piety leads to prosper- ity, and spiritual rot leads to material decline.

summary and conclusions

Early Islamic Anatolian sources, such as the few extant Seljuq histories considered this chapter, stress genealogical and military factors as major elements of their legitimacy and identity. In contrast, Persian sources focuses on a variety of fadāʾil, including but not limited to genealogies, as the forces that bring the Persian cities and denizens into the fold of an Islamic narrative. This difference is in part a reflection of the urban audience of the Persian texts and the fundamentally different audience for which the Seljuq sources are composed. The Seljuq histories are written for the court, and their memories and frames of reference resonate with the Seljuq court. The anonymous author of Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq,for example, is concerned with the heroic deeds of the Seljuqs and their dawla, but not the land of Anatolia, per se. In contrast, Persian local histories, such as Tārīkh-i Qum, laboriously document the areas of the city named after the Arabs who settled the area. The dream of the Prophet appearing in the city’s bazaar and the sacred etymologies adduced in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā sanctify the land. In contrast, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq

123 Ahmad ibn Husayṇ ibn ʿAlī Al-Kātib, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd. _ 124 Miller, “Local History in Ninth/Fifteenth Century Yazd,” 76, 77. 125 Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian?” Summary and Conclusions 249 focuses on the bravery and skill of the Seljuqs as warriors as the basis for their legitimacy as rulers. Persian local histories were written not just for consumption at court for also an urban audience. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā,Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, Tārīkh-i Qum, Tārīkh-Sīstān, Tārīkh-i Tabaristān contained within them crystal- lized lore about the city and its habitants. These include legitimating dreams; records of the sayings, teachings, and burial places of notables, imams, descendants and associates of Muhammad; and physical marvels _ and virtues of the land. Glorious etymologies bring the prestige of reli- gious sanction to these cities and regions through their very names. In the protracted events that led Anatolia to transition from being a part of the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic empire, Anatolia was con- quered by nomadic Turkic peoples who lacked a long tradition of histor- ical writing based in urban centers. As Meville has argued, the dearth of historical works from the Islamic perspective produced in and about Seljuq Rūm is due at least in part to the unfavorable circumstances there: Islamic institutions of governance and learning, such as the madrasa, took a long time to replace the dominant Greek and Orthodox Christian culture; nomadic Turkomans, not settled Persians or Arabs, raided the region; the Byzantine forces resisted the Turks for a long time; and boundaries between the Byzantines and incoming Turkomans shifted.126 Moreover, Christians remained in Anatolia, and particularly central and inland Anatolia retained a “substantial” Christian element.127 Whether by tolerance, indifference, or strategy as a minority ruling group, the Seljuqs of Anatolia entertained a degree of accommodation for the Chris- tians, and the sultans married Greek and Georgian princesses.128 Anatolian Seljuq identity was tribal and nomadic. Given the great influx of Turkmen who migrated into Anatolia, the originally nomadic Turkic tribesmen brought tribal affiliation and Turkification and Islam- ization, but not strong ties to particular cities or regions, unlike their Arab counterparts who raided and settled in Persian lands. The Turks were not tied to the land through their lore in the same way that the Persians in Qum, Bayhaq, and Tabaristan framed their identity and place in the umma in part through their associations with their cities. The Hellenized Christian and Jewish populations of Anatolia did not disappear after the Turkic invasions. While some doubtless left, significant numbers remained in place, so a non-Muslim identity persisted well after the

126 Melville, “The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia,” 135–166, esp. 136. 127 Bosworth et al., “Saldj̲̲ūḳids,” EI2. 128 Bosworth et al., “Saldj̲̲ūḳids,” EI2. 250 The View from Anatolia

Islamization of Anatolia. This, coupled with other elements, accounts for some of the differences we see in Anatolian sources with their lack of sanctification of the land and instead emphasis on legitimacy and author- ity to rule through the heroism and prowess as warriors in battle and inheritors of Seljuq lineage. 10

Lessons from the Peripheries

The scholars have always desired to compose works so that their traces may not vanish from this earth, and their fame not pass away.1

conclusions

Local histories encompass a disparate collection of texts, which has led to the difficulty of defining the scope of one’s exploration in ways that are neither too limiting nor too expansive. This book has proposed an alter- nate methodology. Reading annalistic Persian local histories in the broader context of local histories composed in the peripheries of medieval Islamic empires allows us to discern patterns, tendencies, and structures that emerge across this wide array of texts. Through this methodology, the material included in these histories about dreams, local lore, improb- able etymologies, locally significant places of worship, and pious individ- uals rise to the foreground as potentially rich sources of data about the priorities and perspectives of the authors who composed and compiled such histories. We are also better able to understand the socio-political contexts in which these texts were composed. This way of approaching local histories rehabilitates and finds fresh use for valuable material that would otherwise be cast aside or over- looked because of its unverifiable nature, as in the case of dreams and local lore; its ostensible irrelevance in the case of etymologies; or limited interest, in the case of locally significant sacred spaces and pious

1 Attributed to Abū ʿAbd AllāhMuhammad bin Ahmad al-Muqaddasī in Muqaddasī, _ _ Ahsan al-taqāsīm, 1; Collins, Best Divisions,1. _ 251 252 Lessons from the Peripheries individuals. It is a way of reading history that acknowledges the profound utility of names, dates, facts, and figures, but also finds meaningful use for the vast amount of other material that is not as obviously quantifiable.

persia

Persian writers of local and regional histories deftly wove their lands and their communities into Islamic narratives. At times, they positioned and repositioned their communities to better fit into the scope of Islamic history. Authors of local histories were certainly interested in dynastic history and the events of successive dawla. In addition, however, they also portray the physical and spiritual landscape of their regions, such as sacred sites, and record pious – even prophetic – etymologies. The authors and compilers achieved this despite the fact that structures of authority in early Islam were predominantly Arab and based on genealogies into which they did not neatly fit. There was no one way in which the Persian authors embedded their land deep into Muhammad’s legacy, and many _ incorporated a number of literary strategies. Dreams, some of which feature Muhammad, link a location, such as _ Bukhara, to prophetic authority and confer into it a type of legitimacy that transcends the boundaries of time and place. Other exemplars appear in the flesh. Pious notables, imams, descendants of Muhammad, and _ religious scholars, such as hadith transmitters, become living treasures of the region because they form the living links to memories of Muhammad. In life in and in death, by being buried in the city and _ therefore becoming part of the very soil of the region, these descendants and exemplars make Persian soil hallowed ground. The traditions related about these individuals, the etymologies for local toponyms, and the foundation stories of cities all exert a centripetal force by driving these regions on the physical peripheries of empires deep into the story of Islam. At the same time, there is centrifugal force at play in these histories. Regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, and ideological frameworks and concerns shape the ways in which the authors present their narratives. These stories are engaged in a delicate balancing act of making broader Islamic themes locally specific and distinctive. Local and regional histories, composed on the peripheries of medieval Islamic empires, articulate local iterations of the global umma. Persian local histories elucidate regional iterations of a hybrid and multifaceted Perso-Muslim identity. Pre-Islamic Persian identity is not effaced. Simultaneously, a Perso-Muslim identity is not compromised. Anatolia 253

Qummī records the Zoroastrian fire-temples in his city of Qum, in which sectors are conspicuously named for its early Arab Ashʿarī settlers. Ibn Isfandiyār notes the magnanimity of Tabaristan’s dynastic rulers and the piety of the region’s sayyids. Sacred sites, such as Fātima’s shrine sanctu- _ ary in Qum, transform the soil into sacred ground. Authors employ multiple literary strategies to embed their regions into the arc of Islamic history while maintaining the regions’ local identities.

anatolia

There is a lacuna of local histories from Islamic Anatolia between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries that are akin to those that were composed in Persia during the same period. What sources that do exist are mainly histories of the Great Seljuqs in the Iraq–Iran region. Of the limited sources about Seljuq Anatolia that exist today, the Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī (d. ca. 1184 or 1185), the anonymous Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq dar Anatūlī, Karīm al-Dīn Āqsarā’ī’s chronicle titled Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and keeping up with the good”), and Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūrwaāyat al-surūr are _ dynastic histories. Rāvandī’s Rāhat al-Suḍ ūr is largely based on the Sal- _ jūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī, and the two histories are the major dynastic histories of the Seljuqs.2 These histories commemorate the Seljuqs, celebrate their successes on the battle fields, and record the events of the Seljuq dawla. Lineage is a major element in Seljuq identity, and the genealogy that is celebrated is ultimately a Seljuq one: Seljuq genealogy is celebrated for being Seljuq, not because it connects to some earlier, prestigious, pre-Islamic prophetic or patrician lineage. The Seljuqs are celebrated as Seljuqs, not as the inheritors of an earlier legacy. As descendants of the bands of the Oguz-Turkmen tribal groups that entered Anatolia, Anatolian Seljuq identity was largely tribal and nomadic. Islam was a relative latecomer to the Anatolia, which was steeped in the Byzantine culture of Orthodox Christianity. The Hellenized Christian and Jewish populations of Anatolia remained in the region after the influx of the Turkmen tribal groups, so a non-Muslim identity per- sisted after the Islamization of Anatolia. The limited sources about Seljuq Anatolia were composed for the Seljuq court, and they reflect the audi- ence and the frames of reference for which they were written.

2 Meisami, “Why Write History in Persian?” 370–371. 254 Lessons from the Peripheries

The originally nomadic Turkic tribesmen who invaded and Islamized Anatolia did not hold strong ties to particular cities or regions. This is in contrast to the more sedentary populations of Persia, where urban centers and the satellite villages around them became centers for the development of Islam. Without strong ties to particular cities or regions, the Seljuqs based their Islamic legitimacy to rule Anatolia on their genealogical ties and military success. Consequently, Anatolian sources lack the broader focus on a variety of fadāʾil that characterize Persian local histories. _

implications

This study holds several implications for research using historical sources. Firstly, this study affirms the critical importance of reading historical sources in ways that are both broad and deep. Such a reading is crucial for understanding a particular author’s objectives, literal meanings, and target audience, while simultaneously digging deep into a source and considering other related texts and events that are immediately relevant to it. When considering a local history of Qum, for example, this entails both the author’s text and sources that are peripherally connected to it, such as hadith collections, works that were available to the author, and other material mentioned in the text. Since a deep and vertical reading of a text has its limits, approaching texts related by genre – though they may be geographically separated – allows us to see the themes that emerge from the thick tapestry of texts. Annalistic Persian local histories as a genre do not form a neatly regi- mented whole. Rather, they are a loose collection of texts that roughly resemble each other in format, while some lean closer to their sibling genre of the local biographical dictionary and others are closer to chron- icles. Reading several annalistic Persian local histories from the tenth to early fifteenth centuries allows us a bird’s eye view: certain images recur and link together like tessellating tiles. It is through this bird’s-eye view that a loosely repeating series of motifs of dreams, etymologies, myths, and holy sites shifts into focus. Such a reading highlights the utility of reading across time periods and places in tandem with close readings. Dream narratives, etymologies, and foundation myths appear in tenth- to early fifteenth-century Persian local and regional histories from Bukhara, Bayhaq, Qum, Tabaristan, Sistan, and Fars. Works on the Seljuqs of Anatolia from the thirteenth and fourteenth century evidence a focus on genealogy and prowess as war- riors as a source of legitimacy to rule. When we are open to reading Connections with Christianity 255 geographically disparate works side by side, we are able to see the literary patterns that emerge across a wide physical and linguistic divide within early Islamic historical writing. Approaching historical sources in such a way allows us to use the portions of local histories that are thin on quantifiable data about taxes, land tenure, the iqtāʾ system, waqfs, and other numbers that have traditionally yielded rich fields of data. Even material that is almost devoid of names, dates, facts, and figures – such as dreams, myths, etymologies, and foundation myths – express the prior- ities and frameworks that guided the author’s composition. We can and should read across genres in ways that are attuned to such literary strategies. Tayeb El-Hibri has already set the pace with his ground-breaking works, which he positions as a continuation of revision- ist historical scholarship. El-Hibri advocates reading the chronicles of Tabaṛ ī not as discrete works that record what transpired but rather as a unified whole that seamlessly weaves commentary into events using bib- lical, Islamic, and prophetic templates, motifs, themes, and tropes. It is not that Tabaṛ ī can be read in its entirety; the only way to read Tabarī is in its entirety, because only then can the reader recognize the templates, motifs, themes, and tropes that weave through the years to serve moral and didactic ends.3 The well of Arabic-language chronicles is deeper and better preserved than its Persian counterpart, and Tabarī’s encyclopedic compendium alone dwarfs whatever early Persian local histories that still exist. Nevertheless, this points to the rich potential of reading both within and across genres in ways that are attuned to literary strategies, since the themes of legitimacy, providence, authority, and moral guidance occur across the boundaries of genre and language.

connections with christianity: prestige, belonging, and saintly bodies

The themes on which Persianate local histories focus – pious dreams, proximity to holy figures, shrine visitations, and sacred space – are also manifest across a spectrum of sources from medieval Europe. In the field of medieval Christianity in Europe, Patrick Geary analyzed the social and cultural contexts of the ninth to eleventh centuries in which the real and alleged theft of relics, or furta sacra, acquired their significance. Geary

3 See, for example, El-Hibri, “The Unity of Tabari’s Chronicle,” 1–3; El-Hibri, Reinterpret- ing Islamic Historiography; El-Hibri, “The Regicide of the Caliph al-Amīn and the Challenge of Representation in Medieval Islamic Historiography,” 334–364. 256 Lessons from the Peripheries assessed the attitudes towards relics and relic thefts, the perceptions of which formed the bedrock of the social and cultural significance attached to these thefts. If a relic was forcibly prized away from a community, it increased the desirability of the relic, since it was perceived as worth stealing; if a relic might be purchased or given as a gift, that ease of transfer undermined its perceived value.4 The theft of relics, or furta sacra, was a common practice in medieval Europe, with nearly 100 accounts of such thefts from the era of Charlemagne in the eighth century to the Crusades in the late eleventh century.5 Relics have a semiotic function. Relics are signs and signifiers, and quite apart from any sacred power they may or may not have, relics can

4 Geary, Furta Sacra, 51–52, 67, 68–105. Pious theft narratives, or furta sacra, may disguise the purchase of relics from a relic merchant, because a story of a religiously motivated theft is a better story that underscores the piety of the theft, the desirability of the relic, and the welcome it received in its new community. Europe was mainly rural in the tenth to twelfth centuries, and most relic theft narratives concern monastic communities (as opposed to kings, emperors, or ecclesiastics) trying to acquire relics of powerful patrons. Urban thefts also increased the prestige of a place. This is the case in the alleged theft, or “translation,” of the body of St. Mark from Alexandria to Venice, Italy, purported to take place in 827 CE. In the early ninth century, Venice attempted to be independent of both Carolingian Italy and the Byzantine Empire but also to maintain good relations with both. There was also a rivalry between Aquileia and Grado for which church was pre-eminent, which effected Venice. St. Mark was revered as a major apostle and evangelist for Italy, so claiming St. Mark would be a great coup for Venice and would be a way for the city to maneuver away from Byzantine influence over the city. A tenth-century “translation” account claims that the custodians of the church of St. Mark in Alexandria were saddened because the region’s Muslim rulers wished to take the marble columns and tablets from the church to use in the construction of a palace. Hearing this, the Venetians offered to take the body of St. Mark along with the two most important custodians of the saint, the monk Stauricius and the priest Theodorus, to Venice. The two Greek custodians eventually agree to the Venetian suggestion. They secretly replace the body of St. Mark with that of St. Claudia so no locals realize the bodies have been switched. The Venetians hide St. Mark under pork on their ship, so the Muslims, when they stop the Venetians, are disgusted and leave the pork alone. The monk Stauricius travels to Italy with the Venetians, and St. Mark is ultimately housed in Venice. Regardless of the veracity of the event or its “translation” narrative, the ultimate effect of this narrative was successful, with Venice acquiring religious pre-eminence over other towns on the northern Adriatic coast and asserting independence from the Byzantine Empire and its influence. On the “translation” of St. Mark from Alexandria to Venice, see Geary, Furta Sacra, 107–115. 5 Geary, Furta Sacra, ix–x, 3–5. Geary doesn’t distinguish between real and false relics – or real and alleged thefts, for that matter – since that is immaterial to his study of the people who came into contact with these relics and gave them value and significance. Geary focuses on the ninth to eleventh centuries because that is when relics peaked in their importance in terms of the essential roles they performed. This is in significant part due to the requirement during the Carolingian period that all altars contain relics and that the swearing of oaths take place in churches and on relics, 16–20. Connections with Christianity 257 retain their importance as a signifier of power and piety, even as the precise meaning it signals may shift as it moves – or is “translated”– from one community to another. If we take a functionally skeptical view that makes no judgment about whether relics truly have miraculous powers, then relics have no intrinsic value. Rather, relics have power and value because the communities that hold them dear believe them to be special and consequently give them meaning. A relic needs a reliquary or some kind of written or oral explanation of its symbolic meaning, or its code, because a relic without a code to its symbolic value is incompre- hensible and meaningless. In Geary’s formulation, the symbolic meaning of a relic is the value given to it by a community.6 Geary’s sources centre on hagiographical accounts and “translations,” a hybrid genre between the vitae of saints’ lives recorded in hagiograph- ical accounts and the historical writing in the form of chronicles and annals that recorded important events in the history of a church (such as a local holy man being recognized as a saint). Relic thefts often occurred during crises. Geary identifies six circumstances, which alone or combined created the occasion for the real or purported theft of relics: the establishment of new religious communities, such as churches and parishes, which occurred frequently during the Carolingian period; the procurement of relics connected to a saint who was already venerated in a particular place; political turmoil and violence; competition among reli- gious communities, including rival monasteries; desire for prestige and pre-eminence; and efforts to increase popular devotion to a saint, includ- ing increasing pilgrimage traffic to a location. To this list Geary adds economic opportunism as a force that could accelerate the effects of any of the six factors identified previously.7 During times of crisis, accounts of relic theft were used “as calculated means of crisis intervention,” and the authors who recorded accounts of these thefts were aware that they were participating in the hagiographic genre of furta sacra “which had its own limitations, topoi, and forms.”8 The treatment of sahāba and the bodies of pious individuals in Persia- _ _ nate local histories plays a similar semiotic function to the theft of relics in medieval Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Geary argues

6 Geary, Furta Sacra,3–9. 7 Geary, Furta Sacra, 158–160. Each account that Geary examines correlates with one or more of these conditions, which don’t necessitate a theft, but creates a climate which could prime a community for a real or purported “translation” of a relic. 8 Geary, Furta Sacra, xi; see also 10–11 on topoi. 258 Lessons from the Peripheries that the theft of relics – which medieval Christians believed really were the living saint with agency, much in the way that the Eucharist really was the body and blood of Christ – was tantamount to the ritual kidnapping of a saint, who was transferred from one community to another. And, this being a saint, it was only with his or her complicity that the relics of the saint could be transferred from one community to another.9 How these relics were stolen – and just as importantly how communities remembered and recorded these acquisitions – is a window into the medieval mind akin to the way in which Persianate local histories and their characteristic themes and patterns offer a window into the mind-sets of those who wrote and compiled them. As Geary convincingly argues, relic acquisitions during the ninth to eleventh centuries and the stories told about them were critical for a community to forge a link with the past in a time of crisis and remain important. There were plenty of invasions and strife during the ninth and tenth centuries that could trigger crises, including invasions within Europe by Vikings, Arabs, Magyars; competition between monastic communities; and incursions by local notables, all of which resulted in destruction of property, loss of wealth, and interruption of continuity.10 Beneath all this, there was also a level of local pride and fidelity to one’s community and region. This flux and violence, coupled with the social and economic problems it led to, were similar to the instability and violence seen in early Islamic Persia, as we saw in the cases of Bukhara and Tabaristan. Ashʿarī Arabs emigrated to Qum to both escape persecution and to expand the bound- aries of Islam. The desire to forge links with the past through holy bodies in Europe is remarkably similar to the impulse seen in Persianate local histories to forge links with the past through sahāba, dream narratives, _ _ and the body of a holy person (such as Fātima of Qum) during times of _ crisis and flux brought about by political instability, violence, economic strife, invasions, and changing dynasties at a time when the caliphate based in Baghdad was an ineffective and insufficiently powerful central authority. In his argument that “in the custom-bound world of the

9 Geary, Furta Sacra, xi, 152–157. “When the theft of relics is placed within the entire spectrum of practices, devotions, and uses of relics described in the first five chapters, it becomes evidence that relics were perceived as the living saint, and that the translation account is really that of a ritual kidnapping by which the saint passed from one community to another” (Geary, Furta Sacra, xi). A saint may wish to be moved – or not – from one church community to another and would communicate those wishes through miracles. 10 Geary, Furta Sacra,68–70. Perspectives from the Peripheries 259 eleventh century, monasteries had to re-establish ties with a distant and ill-remembered past in order to maintain dignity and importance in the present,” Geary could have been writing about the local communities of Bayhaq, Qum, and Tabaristan and the narratives preserved in their local histories.11 Like relics, the pious dimensions described in Persianate local histories were ways of remaining (or becoming) important and connecting a community to a prophetic and sacred narrative, coupled with local patriotism and pride.

perspectives from the peripheries

Historical works composed in Persia and Anatolia evidence a clear pre- occupation with religious legitimacy and political authority and auton- omy. These texts present local identity as a deeply hybrid phenomenon that overlays central Islamic motifs and themes with locally resonant characters, practices, rituals, and sacred spaces. Identities articulated in local and regional histories are inherently multi-layered constructions that simultaneously balance several categories of belonging, each of which brings social, political, and religious ramifications.12 Composing history and presenting a community’s place within the umma was a way of asserting religio-political authority. Translation projects and the trans- mission of knowledge; the minting of coins; patronage of waqfs, build- ings, schools; and material culture were other modes of legitimation. Regional and local histories are highly localized: their preoccupation is with notables whose prestige and fame are generally limited to his home- land or adopted city, and the sacred sites and holy places described are often of local or at best regional interest. But these locally significant items are presented within a broader Islamic narrative in a way that maintains allegiance to both local values and membership in the Muslim umma. The memory of Zoroastrian fire-temples in Qum are retained as fadāʾil instead _

11 Geary, Furta Sacra, 68. 12 In an strident critique of characterizing early seventh century Meccan society as overly determined by tribal kinship relationships, Akira Goto rather anachronistically enumer- ated multiple contemporary categories of belonging in contemporary society (family, company, alumni association, hobby groups) and noted that at each level, “belonging to each has its own political and social meanings in every case.” A. Goto, “Keynote Presentation: A Challenge to the Notion of Islamic Cities,” in Urbanism in Islam: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Urbanism in Islam (ICUIT II), November 27–29, 1990, edited by Tadeshi Yukuwa, 287–300 (Tokyo: Research Project “Urbanism in Islam” and Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan, 1994), 298. 260 Lessons from the Peripheries of being purposefully forgotten, just as prominent pre-Islamic families in Tabaristan retain their political prowess. An enduring tension in Islamicate societies is the perpetual balancing of the local community with the global umma. This tension has manifested itself in local histories composed on the peripheries of what were per- ceived as the geographic and spiritual centers of Islamic empires between the tenth and early fifteenth centuries. Medieval authors in Persia and elsewhere wrote themselves into the arc of Islamic history, injecting the miʿrāj into the etymology of their city, in the case of Qum, or through dreams that come to a pious dreamer that confirms the legitimacy the community’s practices, which in the case of Bukhara is a particular recitation of the Qurʾan. The authors of these works had a foot in both the global umma and their regionally differentiated communities, and their works negotiate the delicate balancing act of the notional global umma within their tangible local worlds. Bibliography

Note on alphabetization: The articles such as al-, von, van, and de La at the beginning of names are not considered for the purpose of alphabetization and the name is alphabetized according to the main part of the name (e.g., Hasaṇ ibn Muhammad al-Qummī appears “Al-Qummī,Hasaṇ ibn Muhammad,” _ _ under “Q”).

Journal and Reference Works Abbreviations BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition EI3 Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition EIr Encyclopedia Iranica EQ Encyclopaedia of the Quran IJMES International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society JSS Journal of Semitic Studies

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261 262 Bibliography

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ʿAbbās I, Shah (Safavid Shah) (978–1038/ al-ʿAbbās bin Mirdās al-Sulamī, 141–148, 1571–1629, r. 995–1037/1587–1629), 151 192, 194–196 ʿAmr b. Layth, 31, 58 Abbasids, 91, 134, 160, 162 Āmu Daryā, 45 abdāl, 84–85 Amul, 216 ʿAbd al-Rahman [b. Samora], 152–153 Āmulī, Awliyāʾ Allāh, author of Tārīkh-i Abū Muslim, 91 Rūyān (completed ca. 764/1362), 44 Abū Muslim-nāma, 7, 244 Anatolia, 6, 221, 224–225, 231, 249 ʿAdud al-Dawla Fana-Khusraw b. Rukn Islamization of, 229–230 _ al-Dawla Hasaṇ [b.] Buwayh (324–372/ Antrim, Zayde, 4, 18–19, 171 936–983), Buyid ruler, 134 Ashʿarī Arabs, 53–55, 110, 113–114, Ahl al-Bayt, 103, 114 175–176, 183, 187–188, 192 Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal,162 Ashʿarī,Abū Mūsā, al-, 117 _ akhbār, 149, 178 Authorship, 7, 29, 60 Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqiyya by Ḥusaynī Azad, Arezou, 23 (1180–1225), 234 al-Avāmir al-ʿalāʾiyya f ī al-umūr al-ʿalāʾiyya Baikandī,Muhammad ibn Salām, 2 _ by Ibn Bībī (d. ca. after 1285 or 1288 Balkh, 23, 179, 216 CE), 7, 243–244 Balʿamī,Abū ʿAlī (active ca. 946–973), Āl-i Bāvand family, 44 author of Tārīkhnāma, 40 ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib, 91, 102, 107, 113, 117, Banū Hāshim, 103 130–131, 207 Basra, 144, 174 ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b.ʿAlī b. Abī Tạ̄lib (Zayn B āwāndid family of Tabaristan and Gīlān, al-ʿĀbidīn). 131 157–158, 165 ʿAlī b. Mūsa al-Ridā, 8th Shiʿi Imam, 118, Bayhaq, 5, 49, 52, 142, 144, 147–148, 151 _ 169, 181, 183–184 Bayhaq-Sabzavār, 49–50 ʿAlids, 50, 53, 102–103, 1089 , 12 , 136, 184 Bayhaqī,Abū al-Fadl Muhammad ibn _ _ of Qum, 192 Ḥusayn,24 ʿAlid loyalism, 128–129 Bernheimer, Theresa, 102, 104 ʿAlids of Qum, 56–57, 110 biographical dictionaries, 13, 16, 20 ʿAlids of Tabaristan, 88–90, 158–159, Bosworth, C. E., 61 161, 214 Bukhara, 1–2, 5, 44–46, 48, 75, 92, 94, Alp Arslan, 227–228, 234 96–97, 211–213

297 298 Index

Bukhārī, 1 Flood, Finbarr Barry, 30, 121 Bukhārī, Khwāja ImāmAbū Ḥafs, al-, 2, furta sacra, 255, 257 _ 92–96 Bulliet, Richard, 3, 139 Gabriel, 1, 206, 212 Buyids, 19, 37, 54, 127 garrison cities, 174 Gāvbāra, 158 Caspian, 42, 158–159 Geary, Patrick, 255, 258 Christianity, 180 genealogies, 64, 104–105, 108, 121, 125– medieval European, 258 126, 146 saints, 196 Ghazālī,Abū Ḥamīd, al- (d. 1111), 154 Christians Ghaznavids, 37, 233 in Anatolia, 230 Ghurid sultanate, 126–127 Orthodox Church, 230 cities, 177 hadith, 5, 34, 97, 100–101, 115, 118, 120, foundation narratives of, 174–176 142, 144–145, 147, 150–151, 153, 212 conversion to Islam, 37, 42 hadith transmission, 154, 207 rates of, 36 local hadith, 118–119 Crone, Patricia, 3 Qum and, 115–118, 207 Shiʿi hadith, 115, 185, 188–192 Damascus, 62 Ḥkimā al-Nīsābūrī,Muhammad ibn ʿAbd _ Daylam Allāh, al- (933–1014), 147 Daylami dynasties, 40, 43 Harūn al-Rashīd, Abbasid caliph, 162 Dhahabī,Muhammad ibn Ahmad, Ḥasan al-Basrī, al-, 151–155 _ _ _ al- (1274–1348), 149 Ḥasan b.ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī, al- (230 or dreams, 70–71, 76, 92, 97 232– 260/844 or 847–873), 11th Shiʿi dream interpretation manuals, 82 Imam, 133–134 dream narratives, 2, 72 Hasanids, 102 dreams and hadith, 77, 79–81 histories, 247 dreams and legitimation, 83, 97 Anatolian, 247–248, 253 dreams and mysticism, 73 dynastic histories, 4, 237 dreams and sacred space, 71 historical writing as a genre, 20 dreams and the Qurʾan, 79 imagined histories, 32 dreams as social history, 84 Local histories, 4, 6–7, 13–14, 16, 18, 20, dreams of Muhammad, 94 29, 39, 67, 180, 251–252 _ dreams that result in the establishment of universal histories, 40 a shrine, 71 Historiography 27 dynasties methodologies, 7–8, 251, 254 local dynasties in Persia, 37, 40 positivist approach to history, 2 quantitative history, 16 El-Hibri, Tayeb, 3, 21, 255 skeptical methodologies, 17, 34 etymologies, 176, 204–206, 210, Husaynids, 102 213–214 hybrid identities, 3, 18, 30, 62, 66, 68 fadāʾil, 67, 115, 160, 184 _ living fadāʾil, 164–165, 184 Iblīs, 206 _ Fadāʾil-i Balkh, 23 Ibn ʿAbbād, 56–57 _ Fakhr ud-Dawla b. Rukn al-Dawla, 20, 55 Ibn ʿAsākir, 62 Fath ʿAlī Shāh(1185–1250 /1771–1834), 198 Ibn Bābūya (or Bābawayhī), 190 _ Fātima bt. Muhammad, 102, 107, 113 Ibn Bībī, 243 _ _ Fātima of Qum, 99, 169, 177, 181, 183– Ibn Funduq, 49, 51–52, 151 _ 187, 194, 196, 198, 202 Ibn Hishām, 143 Index 299

Ibn Isfandiyār, 43–44, 86, 129, 133, 162, Mūlay IdrīsI, 136 164, 199, 201 Mūlay Ismaʿil (r. 1672–1727), Sultan of Ibn Saʿd, 144, 153 Morocco, 135 Iran, 14–15 Muqaddasī,Muhammad ibn Ahmad, _ _ Iranian identity, 68 al- (b. ca. 946, also vocalized as al- Iraq, 2 Maqdisī), 55, 156, 169, 193, 211–212 Isfahan, 195 Musāmarat al-akhbār va musāyarat Ismāʿīlb.ʿAbbād b. al-ʿAbbāsb.ʿAbbād, al-akhyār (“Night-time narratives and 55, 57 keeping up wit the good”) by Karīm istikhāra, 71 al-DīnMahmūdb.Muhammad _ _ Āqsarā’ī (14th century, d. ca. between Jaʿfar al-Sạ̄diq, 6th Shiʿa Imam, 99–100, 1323–33 CE), 7, 232, 239 118, 182, 185–186 Mutawakkil, al-Abbasid caliph, 134 myths, 209 Kay KāwūsI, 228 role in culture-making, 169 Kay Qubādh I, 228 Kharijites, 58 naqīb al-ashrāf, 108 Khosrojird, 49, 143 Narshakhī,Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar _ Khurasan, 5, 37, 44, 49–50, 212 ibn Zakarīyā ibn Khattāb ibn Sharīk, __ Khwarazm, 85, 90 al-, 2, 46, 92 Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, 231 Nidhām al-Dīn Samʿānī, 85, 90 Kufa, 186 niqāba, 108–109 Kulaynī,Muhammad b. Yaʿqub, al- (d. 329/ Nishapur, 52, 139, 147 _ 940–1), 190 Noah, 206 Kurdish dynasties, 40, 245 Nūh ibn Nasr, 46, 48, 92 _ _ Local dynasties, 127, 157 Ottomans, 239 Oxus River, 45 Maliknāma, 234 Malikshāh b. Alp Arslan, 227, 234, 241– patricians, 139 242 peripheries, 4, 8, 19, 68, 172 Marwānb.Muhammad b. Marwānb. center-periphery dynamics, 31 _ al-Hakam,̣ known as MarwānII Persia, 14 (r. 127–132/744–750), 201 Persians Mashhad, 194, 196 Persian identity, 38 Mazandaran, 24, 215 piety, 202 Mecca, 186 Pourshariati, Parvaneh, 23, 140, 148 Medina, 186 Pratt, Mary Louise, 25 Melville, Charles, 24 Prophet Muhammad, 1 _ memory, 26, 210 prophets, 67 collective memory, 210 theories of memory, 27 Qādiriyya Sufi order metanarratives, 209 Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Morocco, 136 Mittermaier, Amira, 32 Qilij Arslan, 242 miʿrāj, 205, 209 Qilij Arslan II (ibn Masʿūd), 242 Morimoto, Kazuo, 104 Qubavī,Abū Nasr Ahmad, al-, 47 _ _ Morocco, 135–136 Qum, 53–54, 99, 110, 112, 115, 169, 175–176, Muhammad, 1–2, 5–6, 8, 92, 94, 96, 98, 181, 183–187, 194, 196, 198, 204–207 _ 107, 205, 207, 209, 212 Arab conquest of, 175–177 Muhammad b. ʿAlī, 5th Shiʿa Imam, 131 Qummī,Hasaṇ b. Muhammad b. Hasan,̣ _ _ Mukhtar b. Abī ʿUbayd Thaqafī, 53 al- (d. 1015 or 16), 55, 101, 110, 176 300 Index

Qummī,Hasaṇ b. ʿAlī b. Hasaṇ b. ʿAbd Shuʿūbiyya movement, 38–39 al-Malik, al-, 56 Sistan, 57–58, 152, 154 Qurʾan, 2, 96, 118 Sogdia, 45 Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan, 95 Sogdian, 211 Qutayba b. Muslim, 45, 63 Sufis, 199 Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl, 228 Sufism, 136 Sulaymān b. Qutlumush b. Arslan Isrāʾīl, Rabīʿ al-Ḥārethī, 152 229 Rāhat al-Suḍ ūrwaāyat al-surūr, 232 symbols, 179 _ Relics, 173, 201, 256, 258 as signifiers, 179 revolts, 54 Syr Daryā, 45 rustāq, 45, 49 Syria, 62 Ruyan, 216 Tabaṛ ī,Muhammad Jarīr, al- (d. 310/923), _ sacred space, 172 40, 125, 166, 255 Saffarids, 37, 58–59 Tabaristan, 43, 129, 131–132, 157–158, sahāba, 53, 138–139, 142, 148, 157, 180, 160, 162, 164, 166, 200–201, 214– _ _ 257 216, 218 Sahnūnb.Saʿīd (d. 854), 154 conquest of, 158–160 _ saints, 136, 155, 180–181, 197, 199–200 Tabaristan and sayyids, 132–135 burial near, 197 tābiʿūn, 53, 138, 142, 157 sainthood, 155, 182 Tahirids, 37, 45, 127 Saljūqnāma, 7 Talibids, 103 Saljūq-nāma of Zahīr al-DīnNīshāpūrī Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk, 40 (d. ca. 1184 or 1185), 232, 235–236 Tārīkh Baghdād, 96 Salmān al-Fārisī, 123–125, 212–213 Tārīkh-Bayhaq, 51–52 Samanids, 37, 46–47, 127 Tārīkh-i Āl-i SaljūqdarĀnatūlī, 7, 232, 240– Samarqand, 45, 95 241 Samāʾ reading certificates, 61 Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 5–6, 42, 50, 140–141, Savant, Sarah Bowen, 15, 25–26, 39, 104, 143, 145, 147–148, 150–151 122–123 Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī, 24 sayyido-sharifology, 50, 104, 106, 108–109 Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 2, 5–6, 42, 46, 63, 92– sayyids, 101–103, 107, 113, 129, 132, 135, 93, 96, 98, 211, 213 157, 161, 183 Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, 202, 248 Seljuqs, 222, 248, 253 Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī by Bayhaqī, 233 Great Seljuqs of Iran and Iraq, 226–227, Tārīkh-i Qum, 6, 13, 20, 42, 54–56, 63, 99, 232, 234, 238 101, 109–115, 118, 137, 176, 183, 202, Oghuzz Turkmen, 231–232 204–206 origins of, 225–226 Tārīkh-i Rūyān, 44 Seljuq historiography, 230–232, 237 Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 59, 61, 151 Seljuqs of Rūm, 224, 227–229, 236–238, Tārīkh-i Tabarisṭ ān, 6, 13, 42–44, 84, 87, 241, 244, 249 90, 92, 130, 156–157, 159, 161, 172, semiotics, 257 199, 214, 217 Shāhnāma, 126 Tārīkhnāma, 40 Sharafnāma, 245 Tārīkh-Sīstān, 6, 42 sharifs, 101, 103, 107, 135 taxes, 65, 162 Shiʿa, 99 topoi Shiʿism, 50, 66, 115, 129–130, 181 culturally recognizable symbols, 178 in Qum, 187–193 Translators and translations, 47, 57 in Tabaristan, 90 transmission of knowledge, 57 shrines, 183, 194 Transoxania, 95 Index 301

Tughril Beg, 227, 234 Waldman, Marilyn, 24–25 Turks, 220, 247, 254 Wandād-Hurmuzd, Qārinid prince, 162 Oghuzz Turkmen, 50, 225–226, 253 White, Hayden, 27–28, 207 Turkification, 249 Yazdigird III, 158 ulama, 139, 155, 166 Yaʿqūb b. Layth, 58 ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Umayyad caliph (ʿUmar II, r. 99–101/717–720, d. 101/ Zahhāk, 61, 126 _ _ 720), 85–86, 92, 129, 131 Zarang, 58 ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb, (Umar I, r. 13–23/ Zaydis __ 634–644, 85, 87, 89, 92 Zaydi state in Tabaristan, 43 urban environment, 170–171 Zaydi ʿAlids, 43, 50 Uzbekistan, 1, 5 ziyārat, 181, 183, 196–197 Zoroastrianism visions, 71 Zoroastrian fire-temples, 114, 184 Other titles in the series: Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo Boaz Shoshan Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb Al-sijistānī Paul E. Walker Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750 Stephen Frederic Dale Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration Around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem Amy Singer Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period Tarif Khalidi Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk—Īlkhānid war, 1260–1281 Reuven Amitai- Preiss Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought Louise Marlow The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis Jane Hathaway Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles Thomas T. Allsen State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540–1834 Dina Rizk Khoury The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Socieity Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haar- mann (eds.) The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History Peter Jackson European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey Kate Fleet Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-rashīD and the Narrative of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate Tayeb El-Hibri The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire Şevket Pamuk The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600–1730 Rudolph P. Matthee The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History G. R. Hawting Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of Al-ma’mūn Michael Cooperson Empire and Elites After the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia Chase F. Robinson Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam: Mamluk Egypt, 1250–1517 Adam Sabra Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism Bruce Masters Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia Thomas T. Allsen Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad Al-Shawkani Bernard Haykel Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition Yohanan Friedmann Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire Gábor Ágoston Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society Yossef Rapoport The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World Michal Biran Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World Ruby Lal Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran Beatrice Forbes Manz Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World Adam J. Silverstein Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds Anne F. Broadbridge Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination Christian Lange The Shiites of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1788 Stefan Winter Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire Madeline Zilfi The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World Baki Tezcan Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence Milka Levy-Rubin The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in Central Asia Ron Sela Law and Piety in Medieval Islam Megan Reid The Origins of the Shi’a: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kufa Najam Haider Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment Ovamir Anjum The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World Linda G. Jones Animals in the Qur’an Sarra Tlili The Logic of Law Making in Islam: Women and Prayer in the Legal Tradition Behnam Sadeghi Empire and Power in the Reign of Sūleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World Kaya Şahin Law and Piety in Medieval Islam Megan H. Reid The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Sarah Bowen Savant Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam Asma Sayeed The Mamluk City in the Middle East: History, Culture, and the Urban Landscape Nimrod Luz The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia Harry Munt Disability in the Arab Ottoman World, 1500–1800 Sara Scalenghe Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East Avner Giladi The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire Guy Burak Doubt in Islamic Law: A history of Legal Maxims, Interpretation, and Islamic Criminal Law Intisar A. Rabb Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure Hina Azam Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses Karen Bauer