Introduction

ORIENT Volume 50, 2015 Introduction Koichi HANEDA and Yasuhiro YOKKAICHI The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (NIPPON ORIENTO GAKKAI) Introduction Koichi HANEDA and Yasuhiro YOKKAICHI The aim of this special issue “Multilingual Documents and Multiethnic Society in Mongol-Ruled Iran” is to clarify the structure of coexistence that underpinned the multiethnic society in Iran under Mongol rule and enabled multilateral interactions among different components of that society. This special issue approaches this question by analyzing Ilkhanid manuscripts, notably including the Šayḫ Ṣafī al-Dīn Ardabīlī shrine documents (the so-called Ardabīl documents), most of which are now preserved at the National Museum of Iran (MMI). The Ardabīl documents consist of the royal decrees and administrative papers of the Ilkhanate and of other dynasties in Iran and Central Asia that flourished in the following centuries, as well as legal records and contracts produced by Islamic courts and other public authorities. Those documents, which mostly concern the estates and interests of the Šayḫ Ṣafī al-Dīn Ardabīlī Order (Safavid Order), have been archived at the order’s center, the shrine of Šayḫ Ṣafī al-Dīn Ardabīlī, for certification of the order’s rights to its possessions. They reflect aspects of the social, economic, and cultural relations among regimes and various social aggregations under Mongol rule. As is well known, the Ardabīl documents have been utilized as sources for studying the socio- economic history of Iran under Mongol rule (e.g., Minorsky 1954; Gronke 1982, Gronke 1993). At the same time, scholars interested in the cultural history of Iran have found these documents useful, especially because they reveal the chancellery practices in the Mongol empire and the Ilkhanate as well as their successor states, which were invariably multiethnic and multi-religious and had multilingual administrative systems, where Mongolian, Turkic, Persian, Arabic, and other languages were in use. A series of studies by Gottfried Herrmann and Gerhard Doerfer of some documents that were microfilmed before the Iranian Revolution shed light on the characteristics of Mongolian and Persian documents in Iran under Mongol rule. Among them, three studies (Herrmann and Doerfer 1975a; 1975b; Doerfer 1975) are of special importance, as they not only demonstrate that the chancelleries of the Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid periods functioned in a multilingual environment, but also elucidate that Mongolian and Persian chancellery practices were inextricably linked. Further, Herrmann’s comprehensive study of twenty-eight administrative documents, Persische Urkunden der Mongolenzeit (PUM; 2004), provided us with valuable materials on the basic structures, customs, and processes of chancellery practices in Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid Iran. In 2009, our knowledge of the Ardabīl documents has been dramatically enhanced by the publication of the Fihrist-i Asnād-i Buq‘a-yi Šayḫ Ṣafī al-Dīn Ardabīlī (FABṢ), a comprehensive catalog of these documents by ‘Imād al-Dīn Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī. This catalog presents for the first time the whole picture of the Ardabīl documents, which have been essentially inaccessible to foreign scholars since the 1970s. Now, we can easily access the necessary information on these materials and approach them in a more effective manner. * * * Vol. L 2015 1 This special issue presents part of the findings of the international research project “Collaborative Research Project on Multiple-Language Documents in the Mongol Empire” and articles that discuss the Ardabīl documents or topics deeply related to them. The project, which has gathered scholars from Iran, China, and Japan, is headed by Yasuhiro Yokkaichi (Japan). Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī (Institute of Archaeology, University of Tehran, Iran) and Qošud Čenggel (Institute of Chinese History, Chinese Academy of Social Science, China) serve as supervisors of the subgroups in their respective countries. All the authors contributing to this special issue––Hiroshi Ono, Dai Matsui, Ryoko Watabe, and Sanae Takagi, in addition to Yokkaichi and Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī––are also project members. As the lineup of the project team indicates, one of the aims of this research project is to undertake comparative studies of the multilingual documents produced in the east and the west of the Mongol dominion. It goes without saying that even when we focus on the documents produced in one particular region under Mongol rule, it is useful to refer to the research findings on comparable materials from other such areas. This is especially true when we study Ardabīl documents, since studies on Mongolian, Uigur-Turkic, and Chinese documents produced under Mongol-Yuan rule have recently conspicuously developed. Studies of the Ardabīl documents from the fresh perspectives engendered by studies of the eastern sources will no doubt allow for a more productive comparison between the western and eastern sources and hence contribute to a better understanding of the multilingualism that characterized similar Mongol administrations in Eurasia. * * * The history of our research project goes back to 2003, when Yokkaichi examined, at MMI, the Ardabīl documents stamped with ’Phags-pa and Chinese seals for the first time. Yokkaichi and Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī had their first meeting on that occasion. In 2006, a joint research team was set up, gathering scholars from Iran and Japan. At about the same time, a two-year research program, jointly headed by Koichi Haneda and Yokkaichi, entitled “Study of the Persian and Multilingual Decrees of Ilkhanid Iran,” was established at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Ono, Matsui, Watabe, and Takagi regularly attended the seminars of this program. All these activities led to the formation of the current, enlarged research group in 2009, with the addition of scholars from China and the generous financial support of the Toyota Foundation. Haneda assumed the role of an advisor. The first meeting of the enlarged group was held at the Center for Eurasian Cultural Studies (Haneda Memorial Hall) of Kyoto University in November 2009. Subsequent meetings were held in Tokyo, Beijing, and Tehran. Among the notable gatherings of the group were the workshop on “Historical Research on Multiple-Language Documents in Iran and China in the Mongol Empire” at Waseda University, Tokyo, in 2010 and the international workshop on “Comparative Research on Iranian- Islamic and Mongolian-Chinese Aspects of the Ardabīl Documents” at Osaka University, Osaka, in 2011. These meetings were ideal occasions to advance discussions on related topics and exchanges on the results of the latest research. For example, all three articles published in this volume on the 2 ORIENT Introduction document SAMI, s. 250––the articles of Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī, Yokkaichi, and Matsui––draw heavily on the discussions at the two workshops. An investigation of the original Ardabīl documents has been the most important task of our research project. Since 2010, the members of the projects have investigated those that are archived in MMI and the materials that are deeply related to them. In that year, Haneda, Yokkaichi, and Takagi investigated some Mongolian and Persian documents, including some unpublished documents with āl-tamġā imprints, at MMI. At the same time, Takagi examined four kinds of the Ṣarīḥ al-Milk (listing of the estates of the Safavid Order) at MMI and the Central Library and Documentation Center of the University of Tehran. On March 3, 2012, with Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī’s much appreciated help, our project signed a memorandum of understanding with MMI on conducting joint research on the Ardabīl documents from the Mongol period. The agreement gave us official permission to study those documents, to which we have had exclusive access. We have since then been conducting systematic investigations at MMI. For example, in the same year (2012), Yokkaichi and Takagi examined Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid official documents in Persian, Arabic, Mongolian, and Turkic, with the permission of MMI, and uncovered some unknown documents in Mongolian and Turkic. * * * This special issue consists of six articles that invariably present new perspectives on the political, social, or cultural history of Mongol ruled or post-Mongol Iran through the examination of multilingual documents. It is also notable that this special issue presents philological editions and fully annotated translations of three important documents: an administrative document from the Ilkhanate period, a private contract drawn up under public authority, and a royal decree from the post Ilkhanate period. The first three articles concern a Persian decree of Amīr Čoban from the Ilkhanid period. The document in question, an āl-tamġā document with two kinds of āl-tamġās (vermilion seals) in Arabic and ’Phags-pa scripts, is now preserved at the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran (SAMI). Although the document does not belong to the Ardabīl documents, it is considered here because of its value for comparative study. Šayḫ al-Ḥukamā’ī published the decree for the first time in 2005 in an article in Persian. The first article of this special issue is the revised English version of that Persian article. This English version comes with considerable modifications and the addition of new insights, the fruits of our discussions in the joint research project. The second and the third articles explore some of the important questions pertaining to the same āl-tamġā document. Yokkaichi’s article deals with the vermilion seal in ’Phags-pa and Arabic scripts on the recto of the document. This seal represents a unique instance in which ’Phags-pa script was used in the legend of an āl-tamġā seal in the west of the Mongol dominion. In addition to analyzing this particular seal, Yokkaichi discusses the changing attitudes in the choice of the languages of comparable multilingual seals through the Ilkhanid period and shows that their alterations reflected social changes. In the third article, Matsui deciphers the legends of six seals in Uigur and Arabic scripts on the verso of the document.

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