Gifts in the Age of Empire

Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

589 kr

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Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts.When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-07-28
Mått178 x 254 x 28 mm
Vikt1 220 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieSilk Roads
Antal sidor288
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226820422

Tillhör följande kategorier

Konsthistoria inom Kultur
Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Mellanösterns historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Historia inom Historia och arkeologi

Note on TransliterationIntroduction1 Scandal and Decorum2 An Exquisite Shahnama3 King of the World4 Little Prince Bearing Gifts5 Diplomacy and TransactionEpilogueAppendix 1: Favors to Ahmed Beg, July 1505Appendix 2: Remittance to Shaikh Ismaʿil, November 1510Appendix 3: Gifts to Selim II, 1568Appendix 4: Gifts to Murad III, January 1590Appendix 5: Favors to Haydar Mirza, January 1590Appendix 6: Gifts to Mehmed III, January 1597AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"A highly nuanced study of the shifting relationship between the Safavid Empire of Iran (1501–1726) and their western neighbor the Ottoman Empire (ca. 1299–1922) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the gifts sent by the Safavids to the Ottoman court. Sinem Arcak Casale does not simply place the material gifts in a history that we already know but instead uses them to unearth new understandings of the relationship between the two empires. . . . Gifts in the Age of Empire is a beautiful example of how to fruitfully study what is no longer there. The book provides images of archival documents as well as appendices that contain translations of six gift lists, which are an invaluable resource, a gift from Casale to other scholars, shared in the spirit of generosity encapsulated in the final words of her epilogue about how more than one book should take up the study of lost gifts."