Safavid Persia

Charles Melville is a Fellow of Pembroke College and Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

• The historiography of Safavid prefaces; the early years of Shah Ismail in the "Afzal al-tavarikh" and elsewhere; the iconography of the "Shah-nama-yi Shahi"; kinship ties between the Safavids and the Qizillbash Amirs in late 16th-century Iran - a case study of the political career of members of the Sharaf al-Din Ogli Tekelu family; le "Dar al-Saltana" de Qazvin, deuxieme capitale des safavides; sufis, dervishes and mullas - the controversy over spiritual and temporal dominion in 17th-century Iran; Shii rituals and Power II - the consolidation of Safavid Shiism - folklore and popular religion; Shah Abbas and pilgimage to Mashhad; "barrier of heterodoxy"? - rethinking the ties between Iran and Persian during the Safavid period - sketch for an "Etat de Langue"; similar farmans from the reign of Shah Safi; the rise of the Julfa merchants in the late 16th century; the Dutch and the Persian silk trade; the character of the urbanization of Isfahan in the later Safavid period; unwalled cities and restless nomads - firearms and artillery in Safavid Iran.