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Quinn, Sholeh A.
2020.
Persian Historiography across Empires.
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Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
Persian authors couched claims to the religio-political authority and legitimacy of their cities through dream narratives in local histories written between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Persians did not always fit neatly into genealogical claims to legitimacy like the Arab descendants of Muḥammad and his clan, and dreams form alternate avenues that sanctify and legitimate specific Persian cities and individuals. Dream narratives embedded in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā and Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān are literary devices that bring the prestige of religious authority to their city and province and to specific persons. These dream narratives are not only windows into understanding the broader social, political, and religious contexts of local histories but also the particular anxieties and priorities of the authors.
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References
1 Ismāʿīl Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), vol. 3, Kitāb 92 al-taʿbīr, Bāb 10, hadith 7080, p. 1415Google Scholar. On this hadith that dreams are part of prophecy, see Kister, M.J., “The Interpretation of Dreams: An Unknown Manuscript of Ibn Qutayba's “ʿIbārat al-Ruʾyā,” Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 71Google Scholar; see also Lamoreaux, John C., The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany, NY, 2002), 83Google Scholar.
2 Narshakhī describes Muḥammad as wearing a “kulāh-e 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). EI2, “Libās”; “Tulband”; “Ḳalansuwa.”
3 The female camel is known as al-Qaswāʾ, al-Jadʿāʾ, or al-ʿAdbāʾ. Jarīr b. Yazīd al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b., The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. IX : The Last Years of the Prophet, translated and annotated by Poonawala, Ismail K. (Albany, NY, 1990), 150–51Google Scholar.
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9 Operating from a related premise that al-Ṭabarī'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 El-Hibri, Tayeb, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (New York, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; El-Hibri, , Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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21 In the Sira of the Prophet, al-Zuhrī reports on the authority of ʿUrwa b. Zubayr that one of the first signs of prophethood that Muḥammad received from God were “true visions, resembling the brightness of daybreak, which were shown to him in his sleep.” Ibn Hishām, ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 834), The Life of Muhammad; A Translation of Isḥāq's Sīrat rasūl Allah, Translated, with Introduction and Notes by A. Guillaume (Lahore, 1967), 105Google Scholar.
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24 For a discussion of this tradition, see Kinberg, “Literal Dreams.”
25 al-Bukhārī, Saḥīḥ, Kitāb 92 al-ta‘bīr, Bāb 10, hadith 7079, pp. 1415. 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 generations after the Prophet they will see him in the next world.ʿAbd Allāh Khaṭīb al-Tibrīzī, Muḥammad ibn (fl. 1337), Mishkāt al-Masābīh; English Translation with Explanatory Notes by James Robson (Lahore, 1975), Book XXIII (Visions), Chapter 1, p. 962Google Scholar.
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27 ʿĪsā Tirmidhī, Muḥammad ibn, Sunan al-Tirmidhī (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), vol. 2, Kitāb 30 al-ruʾyā, Bāb 8, hadith 2452, p. 587Google Scholar. Such prohibitions also appear in the other canonical collections. See Wensinck, A.J., Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden, 1936–88), I: 504Google Scholar (h.l.m.) and V: 549 (k.dh.b.).
28 al-Bukhārī, Saḥīḥ, vol. 1, Kitāb 3 al-ʿilm, Bāb 38, hadith 110, pp. 29–30.
29 Muḥammad ibn Yazīd Ibn Mājāh, Sunan Ibn Mājāh (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), Kitāb 36 taʿbīr al-ruʾyā, Bāb 5, hadith 4045, p. 562. Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ includes various hadith in which the Prophet states that one should not tell others of bad dreams, which are the caused by Satan. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb 43 al-ruʾyā, Bāb 3, p. 980. The term “aḍghāth aḥlām” appears in Q 12: 44 and Q 21: 5.
30 Multiple manuscripts of Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān 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 the tenth century and another from the eleventh century.
31 ibn Ḥasan ibn Isfandiyār, Bahā al-Dīn Muḥammad, Abridged Translation of the History of Tabaristān Compiled about A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216) by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Isfandiyār, Based on the India Office Ms. Compared with Two Mss. in The British Museum, by Edward G. Browne (Leiden and London, 1905), 3–4Google Scholar.
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39 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 Ziyarid state with his capital at Rayy. Daftary, Farhad, Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), 120–21, 165Google Scholar.
40 During this period the Nizari Ismāʿīlīs (or Eastern Ismāʿīlīs), led by Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ (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.
41 On the Alid influence and Caspian Zaydī community in the region, see Madelung, Wilferd, “Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī on the Alids of Tabaristān and Gīlān,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26, no. 1 (January 1967): 17–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the geography of the Tabaristan region, see LeStrange, G.E., The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, From the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (Cambridge, 1930), 7, 173, 175, 368–76Google Scholar.
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47 Treadwell, Luke, “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, ed. Daftary, Farhad and Meri, Josef W. (London and New York, 2003), 318–19Google Scholar.
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50 Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 77–81; Frye, History, 56–9. Mudarris Razavī notes that another manuscript lists the imam's name as Muḥammad Ḥusayn Shaibānī.
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53 See Frye, History, 139–40, note 212.
54 Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79.
55 This is Frye's translation. Frye, History, 57–8; Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79–80.
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58 Mendelsohn, I., “The Columbia University Copy of the Samarqand Kufic Qur'an,” The Moslem World 30, no. 4 (October 1940): 375–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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