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The Lost Biography of BahaɔAl‐Din Al‐cAmili and the Reign of Shah Ismacil II in Safavid Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Devin J. Stewart
Devin J. Stewart*
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

Published in 1933, Walther Hinz's detailed study on the short and turbulent reign of Safavid Shah Ismacil II (984-85/1576-77), which he likens to that of Ivan the Terrible, has yet to be surpassed. Although Hinz consulted many Safavid chronicles then in manuscript, including a number which have yet to be published, his discussion of a major facet of the period's history, Shah Ismacil II’s religious policies, is based primarily on the account of Iskandar Beg Munshi in Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbasī, which he essentially paraphrases. Hinz concludes that Shah Ismacil II’s pro-Sunni policies, including primarily his prohibitions against cursing the Companions of the Prophet and his attempt to remove the Shicite credal statement cAlīyun walī Allāh “cAli is the ally of God” from the coinage, resulted not from political expediency but rather from personal conviction. In the end, these policies failed. Realizing that he could not win over the Qizilbash and that he himself was in grave danger, Shah Ismacil rescinded his decrees, had his pro-Sunni ṣadr and advisor, Mirza Makhdum Sharifi, placed under house arrest, and reconfirmed his commitment to Shicism before the end of his short reign.

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Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2: Historiography and Representation in Safavid and Afsharid Iran , Spring 1998 , pp. 177 - 205
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Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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Footnotes

This research was supported in part by the National Humanities Center and the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina.

References

1. Hinz, Walther “Schah Esmacīl II. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Ṣafaviden,” Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen 26 (1933): 19-100Google Scholar. More recent treatments include Savory, Roger M. “Ismacīl II,” EI2, 4:188Google Scholar; idem, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 68-70Google Scholar; Roemer, Hans Robert “The Safavid Period,” in The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume Six: The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 189-350, esp. 250-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Persien auf dem Weg in die Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989), 295-98Google Scholar; Mazzaoui, Michel “The Religious Policy of Safavid Shah Ismacil II,” in Mazzaoui, Michel M. and Moreen, Vera B. eds., Intellectual Studies on Islam (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1990), 49-56.Google Scholar

2. For the Safavid chronicles he used see Hinz, “Schah Esmacīl II,” 22-23. For his discussion of Shah Ismacil II's religious policies, see pp. 76-85.

3. This phrase walī Allāh is often translated as “the friend of God,” probably as a result of its usage in the contexts of Muslim saints, where the concept of love is emphasized. On the basis of Koranic usage, however, I believe “ally” is a much more fitting translation, for the term walī in the Koran is usually paired with naṣīr, “supporter, protector, ally, confederate” (e.g., Koran 2:107), or shafīc,“mediator, intercessor, advocate” (e.g., Koran 6:70), in contexts which imply that the paired terms are nearly synonymous. In other passages, the plural awliyāᵓ clearly means “allies”: “… fight the allies of Satan!” (Koran 4:76); “Oh ye who believe! Do not take the unbelievers as allies instead of the believers” (Koran 4:144); “They took the demons as allies instead of God” (Koran 7:30). The epithet walī Allāh stresses the idea that cAli is always on the side of God and therefore right and justice; he supports God, and God supports and protects him.

4. Beeson characterizes the ṣadr as a minister of “Religion, Justice, and Education.” The ṣadr was responsible for introducing the sayyids and religious scholars at court, overseeing pious endowments of the realm, and distributing stipends to the men of learning. Beeson, Caroline Joyce “The Origins of Conflict in the Ṣafawī Religious Institution” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1982), pp. 17-45.Google Scholar

5. The manuscript I have consulted is Mirza Makhdum al-Sharifi, al-Nawāqiḍ fī alrawāfiḍ, MS, Princeton University Library, Garrett 2629. Studies that draw on the work are Stanfield, Rosemary “Mirza Makhdum Sharifi: A Sixteenth-Century Sunni Sadr at the Safavid Court” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1992)Google Scholar; idem, “Sunni Survival in Safavid Iran: Anti-Sunni Activities during the Reign of Tahmasp I,” Iranian Studies 27 (1994): 123-34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gholsorkhi, Shohreh “Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi: An Interlude in Safavid History,” IJMES 26 (1994): 477-88.Google Scholar

6. On Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili in general, see Newman, Andrew “Towards a Reconsideration of the ‘Isfahan School of Philosophy’: Shaykh Bahāᵓī and the Role of the Safawid cUlemāᵓ,” Studia Iranica 15 (1986): 165-99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kohlberg, Etan “Bahāᵓ al-Dīn cĀmelī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (1989), 3:429-30Google Scholar; Stewart, Devin J. “A Biographical Notice on Bahāᵓ al-Dīn al-cĀmilī,” JAOS 111 (1991): 563-71Google Scholar; idem, “The First Shaykh al-Islām of the Safavid Capital Qazvin,” JAOS 116 (1996): 387-405Google Scholar; idem, “Taqiyyah as Performance: The Travels of Bahāᵓ al-Dīn al-cĀmilī in the Ottoman Empire 991-93/1583-85,” Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 4 (1996): 1-70Google Scholar; and the sources cited therein.

7. Mirza cAbd Allah al-Isfahani Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ wa-ḥiyāḍ al-fuḍala', 6 vols., ed. al-Husayni, Sayyid Ahmad (Qum: Matbacat al-khayyam, 1980).Google Scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Khwansari and Muhsin al-Amin both paraphrase these passages in their works, which have been available for considerably longer. Rawḍāt al-jannāt, 8 vols. (Beirut: al-Dar al-islamiyah, 1991), 2:313-14Google Scholar; al-Amin, Muhsin Acyān al-shīcah, 10 vols., ed. al-Amin, Hasan (Beirut: Dar al-tacaruf li'l-matbucat, 1984), 5:475.Google Scholar

8. Stanfield has drawn on this source in treating these topics in her dissertation, where she refers to it as “the treatise of Mulla Nasr cAli, one of Shaykh Bahaᵓi's students.” Stanfield, “Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,” 104, 113-15.

9. Munshi, Iskandar Beg Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 2 vols. (Tehran: Chapkhanah-yi Gulshan, 1971), 1:174Google Scholar; idem, History of Shah cAbbās the Great, 2 vols., trans. Savory, Roger M. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1978), 1:270.Google Scholar

10. Beg, Iskandar Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:148, 223Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbās, 1:237, 332Google Scholar. I confused the author of Bahāᵓ al-Dīn's biography with Muzaffar al-Din al-Shirazi in “The First Shaykh al-Islām,” 388 n. 12.

11. Qummi, Qazi Ahmad Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, 2 vols., ed. Ishraqi, Ihsan (Tehran: Intisharat-i Danishgah-i Tihran, 1981—85), 2:663, 671.Google Scholar

12. Brockelmann, GAL, SII:595.

13. See Devin J. Stewart, “The First Shaykh al-Islām.”

14. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ 2:72-73.Google Scholar

15. al-Isfahani uses Arabic al-mawlā to render the Persian title mullā.

16. The text reads n-ẓ-r for Muẓaffar.

17. Ismācīl Mīrzā in the text. In Safavid usage, the names of royal princes appeared with the suffixed term Mīrzā, which derives from amīr-zādah, meaning son of a sayyid or prince.

18. The text reads a-kh-t-ṭ for ikhtalaṭ.

19. al-Isfahani uses Arabic al-amīr to render the Persian honorific mīr, which derives from amīr and identifies a sayyid.

20. This prayer is said to have been received from the Twelfth Imam in a dream by the Egyptian Shicite Muhammad b. cAli al-cAlawi al-Husayni (fl. 3rd/9th c.), who was defamed by an enemy before the governor Ahmad b. Tulun (254-70/868-84) and had to flee Egypt. The relief of al-cAlawi's tribulations and the death of his tormentor are attributed to the prayer's efficacy. Radi al-Din Ibn Tawus (d. 664/1266) includes it in his Muhaj al-dacawāt, citing a manuscript copied by Husayn b. cAli b. Hind in 396/1006. It was included in later collections of prayers such as al-Balad al-amīn, by Ibrahim b. cAli al-Kafcami (d. ca. 900/1495). See Kohlberg, Etan A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Ṭāwūs and His Library (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; al-Kafcami al-Balad al-amīn wa'l-dirc al-ḥaṣīn (Beirut: Muᵓassasat al-aclami li’l-matbucat, 1997), 533-44.Google Scholar

21. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ, 2:73-74.Google Scholar

22. al-Tihrani, Agha Buzurg Ṭabaqāt aclām al-shīcah. Iḥyāᵓ al-dāthir min al-qarn al-cāshir, ed. cAli Naqi Munzavi (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tihran, 1987), 92-93.Google Scholar

23. j-l-v-a-z in the text for jalāvuz.

24. The Sayyid's comparison here is of course helped by the fact that his own name is Husayn.

25. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ 2:73-74.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 2:74-75.

27. Mulla Hayrati (d. 961/1553-54) was a famous poet from Kashan who served at court during part of the reign of Shah Ismacil I and the reign of Shah Tahmasb. A close companion of Shah Tahmasb himself, he was known as a fervent Shicite and wrote a number of poems critical of contemporary Iranian Sunnis. See Stanfield, “Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,” 76-79.

28. This is quite a pregnant ellipsis, for the remaining hemistich of the verse is “lacn-i Bū Bakr ast u cUsman u cUmar,” “God damn Abu Bakr, cUthman, and cUmar!” Mirza cAbd Allah's text gives the first hemistich of this line in the original Persian, “har kujā naqsh ast bar dīvār u dar,” and omits the second hemistich. The ellipsis was perhaps a feature of Muzaffar cAli's text, and the intent may have been that al-Karaki did not actually say the remainder of the verse but counted on it being understood by all those present at court. Muhammad Baqir al-Khwansari provides the remaining hemistich, though he separates the letters of the words in question because of their potentially offensive content. al-Khwansari, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, 2:314.Google Scholar

29. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ 3:133.Google Scholar

30. The editor, Ahmad al-Husayni, informs us that there is an illegible phrase here. Ibid., 3:133 n. 1.

31. Published in Cairo: Lajnat ihyaᵓ al-turath al-Islami, 1986.

32. al-Ghazzi, Najm al-Din al-Kawākib al-sāᵓirah bi-acyān al-miᵓah al-cāshirah, 3 vols. (Beirut: al-Matbacah al-Amirkaniyah, 1945-58), 2:71-72.Google Scholar

33. The complete work is not extant, but parts are preserved in cAli b. Muhammad al-cAmili al-Durr al-manthūr min al-maᵓthūr wa-ghayr al-maᵓthūr, 2 vols. (Qum: Matbacat mihr, 1978), 2:149-98.Google Scholar

34. al-Amin, Muhsin Acyān al-shīcah, 7:303; 10:198.Google Scholar

35. On the translation of Shicite religious texts from Arabic into Persian, see Jacfar al-Muhajir al-Hijrah al-cāmilīyah ilā Īrān fī al-caṣr al-Ṣafawī (Beirut: Dar al-rawdah, 1989), 181-90.Google Scholar

36. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ 5:88-97.Google Scholar

37. This possibility seems the most likely, given that al-Isfahani does not mention any of Bahaᵓ al-Din's students in his biographical notice.

38. I have endeavored to clear up some of the confusion surrounding his career during these middle years in “A Biographical Notice,” 567-71.

39. See Stewart, “The First Shaykh al-Islam” 390-94.

40. Ibid., 393-94.

41. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili al-Kashkūl, 2 vols. (Qum: Dar al-cilm, 1961), 1:24-25.Google Scholar

42. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili al-Kashkūl, 1:44.Google Scholar

43. Stewart, “A Biographical Notice,” 567-68; idem, “The First Shaykh al-Islam,” 394.

44. This is corroborated by the fact that cAbd al-Samad's descendants were still living in Herat and retained claims to the office of shaykh al-islām when al-Isfahani was writing Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ in the early twelfth/eighteenth century. See al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ, 3:124Google Scholar; Stewart, “A Biographical Notice,” 567-68. In addition to the secondary literature cited there, Andrew Newman also states that Bahaᵓ al-Din served as shaykh al-islām of Herat in “Ṣafawids I. Religious trends,” EI2, 7:779.

45. Stewart, “A Biographical Notice,” 569.

46. Although Shah Ismacil II had already entered Qazvin on 17 Rabic I 984/13 June 1576, he postponed all petitions and matters of state until after the coronation. Even then, Iskandar Beg reports, the Shah failed to take care of state matters in a timely manner and was indecisive about his appointments. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:201-12Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbās, 1:297-315.Google Scholar

47. Printed with Qazizadah, Musa b. Muhammad al-Sharḥ al-chaghmīnī (Tehran, 1893-94), 22.Google Scholar

48. Jacfar al-Muhajir Sittat fuqahāᵓ abṭāl (Beirut: al-Majlis al-Islami al-shici al-acla, 1994), 209.Google Scholar al-Muhajir found this note on the margin of a MS in the collection at the Madrasah of al-Sayyid al-Burujirdi in Najaf.

49. I discuss this journey in detail in “Taqiyyah as Performance.“

50. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili al-Kashkūl, 1:93.Google Scholar

51. al-Majlisi, Muhammad Baqir Biḥār al-anwār al-jāmicah li-akhbār al-aᵓimmah al-aṭhār, 110 vols. (Tehran: al-Maktabah al-Islamiyah, 1956-72), 42:3.Google Scholar

52. For Arbacūn ḥadīth, see Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols. (Leiden; E. J. Brill, 1943-49), 2:414Google Scholar; for the work on weights and measures, see British Museum, MS Or. 4936, fol. 15, reproduced in Browne, E.G. A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), facing page 4:428.Google Scholar

53. Afushtah-yi Natanzi, Mahmud b. Hidayat Naqāwat al-āār fī dhikr al-akhyār, ed. Ishraqi, Ihsan (Tehran: Bungah-i tarjumah va-nashr-i kitab, 1971), 334-45.Google Scholar

54. Stewart, “A Biographical Notice,” 568-70.

55. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili, al-Kashkūl, 1:25Google Scholar. He had also resided there for three years in his youth, ca. 960-63/1553-56. Stewart, “The First Shaykh al-Islām,” 391, 394.

56. al-Amin, Muhsin Acyān al-shīcah, 9:243.Google Scholar

57. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ, 3:131.Google Scholar

58. al-Amin, Muhsin Acyān al-shīcah, 8:17.Google Scholar

59. Arjomand, “The Mujtahid of the Age and the Mullā-bāshī: An Intermediate Stage in the Institutionalization of Religious Authority in Shicite Iran,” in Arjomand, Authority and Political Culture in Shicism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 80-97, esp. pp. 81-84.Google Scholar

60. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:154Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:244-45.Google Scholar

61. Stewart, “The First Shaykh al-Islām,” 395-96, 402.

62. Babayan, Kathryn “The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shicism,” Iranian Studies 27 (1994): 135-61, p. 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Qummi, Qazi Ahmad Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, 2:1086-87Google Scholar; idem, Die Chronik Ḫulāṣat at-tawārīḫ des Qāżī Aḥmad Qumī. Der Abschnitt ūber Schah cAbbās I, ed. and trans. Müller, Hans (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1964), 93-94.Google Scholar

64. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili, al-Ḥadīqah al-hilālīyah, printed together with the commentaries of Mir-i Damad, Nicmat Allah al-Jazaᵓiri, and Muhsin al-Fayd al-Kashani on al-Ṣaḥīfah al-sajjādīyah (Tehran, 1899), 298Google Scholar; al-Ḥadīqah al-hilālīyah, ed. Sayyid cAli al-Musawi al-Khurasani (Beirut: Muᵓassasat al al-bayt li-iḥyaᵓ al-turath, 1990), 156.Google Scholar An ijāzah Bahaᵓ al-Din granted to his student Husayn b. Haydar al-Karaki places him in Baghdad on nearly the same date, 7 Jumada II 1003/17 February 1595. See al-Majlisi, Biḥār al-anwār, 110:6, 12.Google Scholar

65. Newman suggests that Bahaᵓ al-Din performed the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1003/1595 and returned to Iran via Iraq. Andrew Newman, “Towards a Reconsideration,” 174. The trip of concern here was probably a short excursion to visit the shrines of the Imams in Iraq. Pilgrims from Iran during this period usually traveled to Mecca through Azerbaijan and northern Syria, rather than Iraq, joining the pilgrimage caravan in Damascus and returning by the same route. This is the route Bahaᵓ al-Din himself followed in 991-93/1583-85. If he had indeed performed the pilgrimage just before he recorded these statements in Iraq in Jumada II 1003/February 1595, he would have had to reach Damascus by Shawwal 1002/July 1594 in order to join the pilgrimage caravan, and the whole trip would have taken over a year. Bahaᵓ al-Din remarks, though, that he had begun writing al-Ḥadīqah al-hilālīyah in Qazvin, and it seems improbable that it would have taken him a year to complete this short text or that he would omit mention of the pilgrimage to Mecca had he just performed it.

66. Natanzi, Naqāwat al-āār, 565-66.

67. This may have been the well-known Damascene scholar al-Hasan al-Burini (d. 1024/1615). Stewart, “Taqiyyah as Performance,” 17-18.

68. al-Taluwi, Sāniḥāt dumā ‘l-qaṣr wa-muṭāraḥāt banī ‘l-caṣr, MS Yahuda 4338, Princeton University Library, fol. 124b.

69. al-Taluwi first heard of Bahaᵓ al-Din in Jerusalem on his way to Cairo. al-Taluwi, Sāniḥāt dumā ‘l-qaṣr, fol. 123. al-Taluwi describes his trip to Cairo and studies there in some detail (fols. 81-120). He traveled to Cairo in 998/1590, and a number of ijāzahs and other documents he cites place him there that year. He returned to Damascus in 999/1991, for on 19 Rajab 999/13 May 1591 he sent a letter from Damascus to Cairo expressing his longing for Egypt (fol. 120b). It was in Damascus that he interviewed the unnamed informant.

70. al-Taluwi, Sāniḥāt dumā ‘l-qaṣr, fol. 125a.

71. It was standard Safavid practice to appoint deputies for officials, including those who held the office of shaykh al-islām, when they were temporarily unable to carry out their duties for any of a variety of reasons. When Shah cAbd al-cAli al-Kirmani, shaykh al-islam of Yazd, left Iran to perform the pilgrimage in 982/1574, his brother Mir Razi al-Din cAbd al-Riza and his son Mir Muhammad Muᵓmin were appointed to serve in his place during his absence. Qazi Ahmad includes the decree appointing those deputies in Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh (2:624-25). Mirza Makhdum Sharifi was appointed to serve as deputy for his father Sharif cAbd al-Baqi as qāżī of Shiraz when Shah Tahmasb summoned him to court at Qazvin and appointed him to a position there. Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ fī al-rawāfiḍ, fol. 105b. A similar arrangement may have been made when Bahaᵓ al-Din left Īrān to perform the pilgrimage in 991/1583.

72. Andrew J. Newman, “Towards a Reconsideration,” 181-85; idem, “The Myth of the Clerical Migration to Safawid Iran: Arab Shicite Opposition to cAlī al-Karakī and Safawid Shiism,” Die Welt des Islams 33(1993): 66-112, here p. 105Google Scholar; Stewart, Devin J. “Notes on the Migration of cĀmilī Scholars to Safavid Iran,” JNES 55(1996): 81-103, esp. 97-99Google Scholar; idem, “The First Shaykh al-Islām,” 398-99.

73. Stewart, “The First Shaykh al-Islām,” 395-405.

74. Ibid., 402-3.

75. Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ, fol. 102b.

76. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ, 2: 221.

77. Bahaᵓ al-Din al-cAmili al-Kashkūl, 1:355Google Scholar.

78. Zonis, Marvin “Autobiography and Biography in the Middle East: A Plea for Psychopolitical Studies,” in Kramer, Martin ed., Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 60-88.Google Scholar

79. Rosenthal, Franz A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), 105-6.Google Scholar

80. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:192-221Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:294-330.Google Scholar

81. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:214-15Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:318-20.Google Scholar Mirza Makhdum refers to Husayn as one of his main opponents in Qazvin (fol. 102), but Gholsorkhi's statement, “Throughout al-Nawāqiḍ, Makhdum Sharifi attacks and ridicules Mir Sayyid Husayn,” is unwarranted, for Mirza Makhdum mentions Sayyid Husayn only in this one passage. Gholsorkhi, “Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,” 482. The scholar whom Mirza Makhdum criticizes most regularly and vehemently in al-Nawāqiḍ is cAli al-Karaki, Sayyid Husayn's grandfather al-Muhaqqiq al-Sani, whom he treats as the leading representative of Safavid Shicism.

82. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:213-15Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:317-20.Google Scholar For conflicts over cursing before and during Shah Ismācīl II's reign, also see Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ, fol. 106 and passim.

83. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:217Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:324Google Scholar.

84. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:215Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:320Google Scholar.

85. Rawḍāt al-jannāt, 2:314Google Scholar.

86. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:218Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:325Google Scholar.

87. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:123Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:205Google Scholar.

88. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:218Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:325Google Scholar; Qummi, Qazi Ahmad Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, 2:652Google Scholar; Natanzi, Naqāwat al-āār, 61.

89. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:218-19Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:325-27.Google Scholar

90. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:215Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:320.Google Scholar

91. Naqāwat al-āār, 41. Gholsorkhi states that this was Mir Sayyid Husayn, but the text reads janāb-i mujtahid al-zamānī shaykh cAbd al-cĀlī. Gholsorkhi, “Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,” 488, n 45. Citing the Berlin MS of Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, Arjomand also notes that cAbd al-cAl served at the coronations of Ismacil II and Muhammad Khudabandah. Said Arjomand, Amir The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shicite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), 178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the published text of Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, however, Qazi Ahmad Qummi reports that at the coronation of Shah Ismacil II, two men spread out the ceremonial rug, Mir Rahmat Allah and Mir Sayyid cAli cArab. [Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, 2:626.] It would thus appear that cAbd al-cAl did not actually spread out the rug, though the Shah may indeed have suggested that he do so prior to the event. The Mir Rahmat Allah whom Qadi Ahmad mentions is Sayyid Rahmat Allah al-Najafi, who had become prayer leader at court during the later reign of Shah Tahmasb, but it is not clear who “Mir Sayyid cAli cArab” is. Although the editor notes variants of the text, it is unlikely that Mir Sayyid cAli cArab would be a corruption of cAbd al-cAl's name, for the latter was not a sayyid and would not have been designated by either of the titles “Mir” or “Sayyid.” One possibility is the khātīb Mir Sayyid cAli Astarabadi, mentioned above as a prominent opponent of Shah Ismacil's religious policies later on in his reign.

92. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:154Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:244-45.Google Scholar

93. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:215Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:320Google Scholar.

94. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:215Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:320Google Scholar.

95. Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ, fol. 102b.

96. Natanzi, Naqāwat al-āār, 60.

97. Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ, fol. 102b.

98. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:214-15Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:317-21.Google Scholar

99. Mirza Makhdum, al-Nawāqiḍ, fols. 44a, 115b—116a.

100. al-Isfahani, Riyāḍ al-culamāᵓ, 2:72Google Scholar.

101. Mazzaoui observes that these executions were not uncommon among rulers of the period, and that the threat other possible heirs to the throne posed to Shah Ismacil's rule were real. “The Religious Policy of Safavid Shah Ismacil II,” 52-55.

102. Rumlu, Hasan Beg Aḥsan al-tawārīkh, ed. cAbd al-Husayn Navaᵓi (Tehran: Intisharat-i babak, 1979), 623.Google Scholar

103. Qummi, Qazi Ahmad Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh, 2:654Google Scholar; Natanzi, Naqāwat al-āār, 57-58.

104. Natanzi, Naqāwat al-āār, 58.

105. Ibid., 41.

106. Gholsorkhi suggests a similar interpretation in “Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,” 482. Mazzaoui also notes this conflict with the Shicite establishment and suggests that Shah Ismacil, who had spent twenty years in captivity, may have been out of the touch with religious developments in Iran and may not have realized the extent of Shicism's hold on the people. Mazzaoui, 55. Mazzaoui also suggests the interpretation of Shah Ismacil's policy as a move toward Shicite-Sunni reconciliation. Mazzaoui, 50-51.

107. See Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis.”

108. Said Arjomand, The Shadow of God, 122-59; Caroline Beeson, “The Origins of Conflict in the Safawi Religious Institution,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1982, passim.

109. Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbāsī, 1:148, 327, 385; 2:719Google Scholar; History of Shah cAbbas, 1:237, 461, 555; 2:910.Google Scholar