Files

Download

Read More (623 KB)

Description

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.

ISBN

9781107127036

Publication Date

2016

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

City

New York

Keywords

Iran history, Turkey history, Islamicate historical writing

School

School of Arts and Sciences

Department

Religion

Disciplines

History | Religion

Comments

Read the introduction to the book by clicking the Download button above.

[Introduction to] Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries

Share

COinS